Where I Was From

Various Amusements

Well, it's here, at long last. They finally got around to making a Simpsons movie and it's pretty good. Our crowd came out of the theater trying to pinpoint what made it seem a little off (beyond the obvious strangeness of seeing Springfield on a big screen after eighteen years on a little TV screen). The colors were duller (groundskeeper Willie's hair was an odd shade of maroon, almost purple), but something about the plot stood out. Hayley pointed out that it was completely linear. You're hit with a sense of purpose from the opening scene's great Titanic reference on. I dug the movie, but one of the things I love about the show is how it can open with Homer taking a drive to enjoy new billboards and result in him outsmarting the mafia. The movie plot just made too much sense.

I caved in and read the new Harry Potter and I have to admit it was exciting. The kids fell back on their invisibility cloak and identity-altering potion almost every time they were faced with the slightest challenge, so it was a huge cop-out. And nobody on the heroes' side of the climactic battle sequence shot to kill. They stunned their adversaries and ran away without so much as tying them up. I'm not usually a fan of violence at all, but it made me think of Gimli and Legolas in Lord of the Rings, slaughtering orcs left and right, trying to beat each other's running tally of kills. I would expect teenagers to be more bloodthirsty when under siege. All in all, I buy Harry's development as a reluctant hero. It used to bother me how he was central to the story yet somewhat passive compared to Dumbledore and the other adults' more active roles in the way things unfolded, but Rowling really knows how to craft a sympathetic protagonist. You can't identify with a hero who knows what the hell he's doing. You identify with the hero who wakes up groaning in the morning, wondering what to do next.

And now, I'm requiring myself to read The Infinite Jest or maybe Crime and Punishment as penance for reading 750 pages of genre candy.

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Two Gallants are coming to town and I am absolutely tickled. I haven't seen my favorite San Francisco band play their folk-punk murder ballads in a long, long year. It's going to be strange to walk into the show and not be surrounded by all my/their friends jumping around, cosier than a house party. But I'll be there, front and center.


Updated listings:

Prince night @ Berlin 7/29

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah @ Metro 8/3
Sea Wolf @ Schubas 8/11
Rentals @ Metro 8/14
Ditty Bops @ Old Town School 8/25 & 26

William Elliott Whitmore @ the Note 9/8
Animal Collective @ the Vic 9/10
Okkervil River @ Logan Square Auditorium 9/18
Two Gallants @ Schubas 9/29

John Vanderslice @ Empty Bottle 10/6
Raveonettes @ Empty Bottle 10/19
Appleseed Cast @ Abbey Pub 10/26-27

Jens Lekman @ Logan Square Auditorium 11/12

posted by Leah @ 1:25 PM