The Worst Sequel Ever.

Doing your taxes is horrible. Turbotax, that makes it easy. Having a beautiful woman do them for you also makes it easy. My plan to reward said gorgeous woman? A dinner from a nowhere DC pizza joint, some candlesticks and two lit candles. A 3-D late showing of Wrath of the Titans on a night you have to wake up early? That too.

I rediscovered the Clash of the Titans remake, which I didn’t particularly care about when I saw it, years later (not even two to be less exact.) I became obsessed with it because the DVD of it I bought is one of the few that just loops the film if you pass out watching it, thus making it one of my favorite movies to fall asleep to. In a word, it comforted me. Also, I love Gemma Arterton.

I must’ve subjected my girl to this movie dozens of times over the years, and became super hyped when the cleverly titled Wrath of the Titans decided to become a reality.  The bad news? Gemma Arterton was out. The happiest moments of the first film (and due to the way I watched it, one I rarely saw) is the ending, where Zeus, after being a prick to his half-mortal son Perseus, rewards his son with bringing the cursed and beautiful Io back to life, for his son to presumably settle down with. That is literally the last scene of the first movie. Naturally I was curious how this would be addressed. An interesting side note about this ending is that much of the advertising and some of the film itself seems to suggest that Perseus would go for a random princess, however he never shows any interest in her.

The biggest mistake I made for Wrath of the Titans was getting 3-D tickets. The 3-D for the first film is infamous for kicking off many debates over whether 3-D was worth it, or any good, or necessary. The postproduction 3_D conversion of the first film should’ve remained in my mind, but I forgot. I also forgot that drinking before a 3-D movie makes it hard to see.

But that doesn’t matter. The first scene of the movie is Perseus looking sad but stoic over Io’s grave, which is a shitty rectangle of stone that says “Io” on it. I wanted to throw a rock at the screen. It turns out that 10 years had passed (the first movie came out two years before) and after giving birth to a son, Io died because she had to go be in Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. Perseus lives solitarily in a crowded fishing village (see how that makes sense?) and is just trying to live down his heroic past and raise his son. Then I think some dick relative (Aries, I looked it up after writing this sentence) of Zeus or Hates or both decides to release the Titan who fathered the gods from the first movie.  I say release because the sons of this Titan locked him up so they could be powerful. Original Titans like Poseidon are being killed to make way for the generation they fathered. Apparently history repeats itself. Perseus becomes involved because Aries sends monsters to destroy his village and kidnap his son, both of which are things that happen.

The quest to get the son back is sadly the most entertaining part. Bill Nighey plays a good guy for once, and there is an awesome Minotaur maze that ends with Perseus prison-shanking the Minotaur to death, resulting in the only scene someone emotes in. The actual Titan-freeing sequence made my head hurt. I think I fell asleep and woke up at this part. The Titan that is freed, Kronos, is basically a giant smoke and fire monster that is a complete rip-off of the Balroug (did I spell that right? Spell check says no) from Fellowship of the Ring. It somehow is defeated in a way that involves Zeus and Hades sacrificing themselves. Also why do pieces of entertainment insist on spelling ‘C’ words with ‘K’s?

Here is the biggest piece of bullshit about this movie. Hades killed Perseus’ adopted human fishing family (“Another day! Nothing!” RIP Pete Postlethwaite) in the first film, and they are all good at the end of this movie. In both real life and the movies, that should be a blood feud that spans “Decoration Day” worthy family feuds, not some shit you pound it out on ten years and two hours later. The only good part of this movie is the Minotaur shanking. And the part where I got to leave and pretend that I had only seen the first one, and that in some straw hut on the ocean Io and Perseus live and just bang all day long.

But the funny thing is I hated Clash of the Titans kind of too after I saw it, and only after it was on demand for free on HBO did I bother to check it out again. That was lightning in a bottle, however. I have had to stop myself from looking at Wrath of the Titans again, because it is the most disappointing sequel I have ever seen. Another trip to the movies! Nothing!

It's Expected I'm Gone

The point is just try and get away with whatever you can, you don’t have to be a part of any machine…except maybe your own. –Mike Watt

For a while, the Minutemen were my favorite band. I went through a brief hardcore phase when I was a freshman in high school that lasted about thirteen months, into my sophomore year. This was not a result of a new environment; I never changed schools. A friend merely played me Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death by the Dead Kennedys and that was it: I researched, mainly by coolness of t-shirts on interpunk.com, and bought a lot of used CDs. I stumbled on the Minutemen when I bought a shitload of used CDs at a flea market. I thought the name was cool.

By the time I was getting into them, the Minutemen had already been around for over two decades, with singer D Boon having been dead for 90% of them. The albums for me were Ballot Result and Post Mersh Volume 2. I listened to the “classic,” Double Nickels on the Dime, a few times. For me the songs were Tour-Spiel, Cohesion, It’s Expected I’m Gone, History Lesson pt. II, Cut, and Boiling. They were an amazing band to me. My AIM screen name and email was DBoonLivesOn for over three years. I listened to History Lesson pt. II on repeat for an embarrassing amount of time when my first girlfriend broke up with me, over a pay phone.

I haven’t listened to the Minutemen in awhile. I have Double Nickels playing in the background as I write this. I received the film We Jam Econo from netflix, because I wanted to learn more about the band, not just the facts of its singer’s death. I wanted to know more about a band that meant a great deal to me during some very formative years in my life.

The first impression one gets from We Jam Econo is that the focus, when everything else is stripped away, is on a friendship. All three Minutemen went to them same high school and graduated the same year, 1976. 1985 Footage of Mike Watt (bass) and D. Boon (guitar, vocals) explaining how they met is juxtaposed with Mike Watt in 2003 returning to the very spot. This occurs frequently, as about a third of the documentary is Mike Watt driving around showing the band and the scene’s historical landmarks which have all changed: an old hole-in-the-wall venue is a Petsmart, a recording site is an abandoned shack. Yet the film and its participants manage to avoid the trappings of nostalgia, it is told with a historian’s care for detail. Interviews with a who’s who of hardcore players of the late eighties coupled with those most familiar with the Minutemen band members as youngsters, such as parents, furthers the documentary’s mix of intimacy and history.

History plays an extremely important part in the Minutemen, and particularly in the relationship between Mike Watt and D. Boon. “The first thing he turned me on to was history,” Watt recalls. D. Boon injected history into all of his lyrics, from songs paranoid and alarmist to aggressive and revolutionary. D. Boon seemed to inhale knowledge, perpetually reading and learning, and passing that along to his bandmate, who recalls getting into Dada and Ornette Coleman. Concepts other than history and politics would infiltrate Minutemen songs, such as insecurities, dream imagery, inside jokes. Mike Watt describes the band as “insular,” We Jam Econo breaks that boundary down.

All the talking and reminiscing would be nothing without the music. We Jam Econo is able to splice entire songs into itself, as the average minutemen song is under two minutes, that practice does not smack of filler. The song choice often goes hand in hand with prior topics. The topic amongst the talking heads is mostly laudatory, with many hardcore notables of the time praising the Minutemen, but that backslapping drives home one of the documentary’s other points, that this was no ordinary punk band. That they were “great players, bringing a level of musicianship to the scene” seems to be the consensus. They covered Blue Oyster Cult and Creedence Clearwater Revival, which ensured they were not pigeonholed. Amongst the congratulatory remarks are encased the type of stories that can only come from people who were present at the time, intimately involved with the subjects. We learn about everything, from super-supportive parents to live show tics and habits. The ample amount of live footage ensures that the audience is both shown and told.

Although We Jam Econo has the typical extolling peers on the greatness of its subject, it also has an intimate, low-key quality where the viewer feels as though they are the one being talked to, being told the story. The archetypal rise and abrupt fall storyline has a unique poignancy when D. Boon’s death is finally arrived at. Brilliantly, it is only briefly focused on. The particulars of his death are only shown in a handwritten note to Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat. Instead of excessive eulogizing, the film ends with a simple acoustic performance of History Lesson pt. II and brief words from George Hurley and Mike Watt. “December 22^nd, 1985 man…heavy day for me,” is all Mike Watt is able to say. “It’s like having a hole where your heart was,” drummer George Hurley says, with an expression of pure emotion. We Jam Econo is more celebration of a life then depiction of a death, and is far more moving for it.

Made You Look

I don't have a film degree. I have taken four college level english classes. I have a hard time spelling words like "college." I haven't written for professional or academic reasons in at least two years. I am not really sure how to use spell check on this website.

I love movies. I love Nicolas Cage. Any film that's good is good, and if it's not it's not. That may sound very authoritarian and I don't subscribe entirely to that belief myself, but it is a good starting point. Writing about a film, I always start with "did I like it?" A good friend of mine said once, "I give out zeroes and tens." Not a bad way to think.

Another friend suggested a funny weekly idea, "Goes out hard," where I will describe an extreme, funny or badass death. There will also be "Goes out soft." You get the idea. These will be clearly marked as SPOILERS.

I think that watching film should be entertaining first. I love movies that make me feel deep emotions. Some of those are "Children of Men," "The Limey," "Punch-Drunk Love," and "The Road." All of those movie to me are very deep and very moving. They all contain scenes and sequences that I find extremely entertaining. When I say that films should be entertaining first, that doesn't mean devoid of intelligence and feeling.

I guess to criticize certain other critics means I should start doing film reviews myself. My goal is to get on the same nerves that get on mine. Welcome to Shooting at the Screen.