It Might Get Loud is a documentary from director Davis Guggenheim profiling 3 of the greatest living Rock guitarists – The Edge, Jack White, and Jimmy Page.  It takes the form of cutting between a sitdown with the 3 musicians all talking to each other and the musicians each showing off important places in their musical career while giving essentially a mini biography of their life with the guitar.  It goes into many of their biggest hits and how they came up with them but also delves deep into their personalities and differing styles.

Now I’m a drummer, but like everyone else I appreciate the guitar and as a fan of music I really love conversations about it, especially the behind the scenes sort of reason why kind of stuff.  Also as a drummer there was actually some really interesting stuff in here, as the musicians talk they talk about their various bands and there’s obviously conversations about the rest of the band members.  For me a big highlight was seeing inside Headley Grange where Zeppelin recorded most of IV, and having Jimmy Page explain how they recorded the drums for When The Levee Breaks.  It was sort of funny because I was actually talking about that just a few weeks ago with my own band.

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I could have made a huge list of great shows of 2009, but instead decided to just go with my number one pick and explain why it’s so great.  This is of course only choosing from new in 2009-2010 season shows.

I have to say though the pickings were thin this year, even so Community had a serious run for its money in my choosing it to both:

and

Both are worthy adversaries but Community is just a great show.  Here’s why:

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The Invention Of Lying is the latest movie from the mind of Ricky Gervais (original creator of The Office).  The plot is extremely simple.  There’s an alternate universe where no one knows what a lie is and can only tell the absolute truth, then one day an out of luck loser after a horrible date, getting fired, and evicted, figures out how to not tell the absolute truth. You can view a trailer and a clip on

I have to admit that I was concerned about this movie.  I mean I love Ricky Gervais’ work and with something he both wrote and directed (along with Matthew Robinson) is bound to be good, but the plot seemed too simple.  It seemed like one of those SNL skits where they drag out something way too long.  I’m glad to say I was dead wrong. First oddly the movie seems a little more like something you’d encounter on Mr. Show rather than SNL.  There’s all kinds of social satire going on, later getting into religion, and an odd wackiness to the whole thing.

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Invictus is Clint Eastwood’s latest Oscar bait about Nelson Mandela and his unlikely bond with a Rugby team.  The movie is based on John Carlin’s book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation (which has now been re-named Invictus: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation), which is based on the true story of Mandela’s first term as president of South Africa.  He saw that his nation was deeply divided and if he was ever going to solve any of it’s problems he needed to heal that division first.  He saw his opportunity in the South African rugby team.  The team was a symbol of the old white regime and the blacks openly cheered for whoever they were playing against.  Mandela thought that getting his nation to unite around this team may be the answer he was looking for.  The film tells the story of their 1995 World Cup matches.

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Up is Disney/Pixar’s latest film.  Released earlier this year to tons of hype I unfortunately never got to it in theatres, so I was excited to see it on Blu-ray the other day.  The plot of the story is that as a young boy Carl Fredrickson (Asner) is obsessed with an explorer who travels to South America.  He meets a girl who shares this obsession and they spend the rest of their life together always intending to go exploring themselves, but life always getting in the way.  Finally she passes on and Carl is an old man.  The entire neighborhood is being taken over by a developer and he’s about to lose the house he shared with his wife.  In a last ditch effort he attaches balloons to his house and flies it to South America, accidentally being joined by a Wilderness Scout named Russell.

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Merry Christmas I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight

The Weather Girl is an independent romantic comedy written and directed by Blayne Weaver and starring Tricia O’ Kelly and Patrick J. Adams.  The basic plot is a local Seattle weather girl (O’ Kelly) on a morning show discovers her lover and one of the hosts of the show (NCIS’ Mark Harmon) is sleeping with the other host of the show (It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia‘s Kaitlin Olsen) and has an on air breakdown.  With no job, being considered unhireable and having virtually nothing of her own she’s forced to move in with her brother (Ryan Devlin) where she meets his best friend and neighbor, Byron(Adams).

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The Men Who Stare At Goats is a comedy based off of the true story and book by Jon Ronson.  The plot revolves around a reporter (McGregor) trying to find himself after his wife leaves him. This takes him to Iraq where he runs into an ex-military officer (Clooney) who he’d been told of while doing a story back in Ann Arbor about a man who claimed to have psychic abilities.  The entire story of the New World Army and how it came to be and eventually un-be is told in a flashback style as the two adventure through the Iraqi desert in what is ultimately a secret mission.

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As you probably know by now Brittany Murphy died yesterday.  This post is to remember some of her greatest work that will be remembered for many, many years to come.  She was a great actress who could do both comedy and drama and I think was often overlooked.  I for one though have watched movies just because I saw her name somewhere on it.  At 32 she was only a few years older than me and perhaps that’s why I feel a connection to her, perhaps it’s that she was also very attractive, perhaps it’s that she was in some of my favorite movies, or maybe it’s some sort of combination of all of the above.  Anyway let’s talk about her work, not her death.

Clueless (1995)

Murphy, Alicia Silverstone, and Stacey Dash in "Clueless"

This is probably the movie you remember Brittany Murphy from (also I had a hell of a time finding an actual image of her in the movie using Google, very odd).  Her character of Tai was made over by Silverstone’s Cher in this adaption of Emma, to the tune of Jill Sobule’s “Supermodel”.  If you grew up in the 90′s you probably saw this about a billion times.  I can still quote almost every single line of dialogue along with the film.  The soundtrack was great, the movie was funny (although who Cher finally ends up with still is a little creepy to me), and this is just a piece of gold from Amy Heckerling.

You can get it on DVDor VODfrom Amazon.com or watch it on
Also the soundtrack is kick ass and I suggest picking that up on as well.

Girl, Interrupted (1999)

This is another movie that you’ve most likely seen.  I mean Angelina Jolie won an Oscar for it and Winona Ryder should have.  A brilliant movie about a girl in a mental hospital in the 60′s based on the memoirs of the same name.  Murphy played Daisy Randone, a girl who’s daddy paid for her to have a private room and all she would eat is his chicken.  In light of Murphy’s recent death her death scene in this might be hard to watch for some right now, but it’s such a beautifully done scene set to “The End of the World”.

Obviously you can watch onlineor buy the DVDfrom Amazon, but I really suggest if you are a fan of the movie to check out the book
as well.

Also available on

Spun (2002)

This might be the movie on this list you’ve never seen.  It’s a cult classic indie film about meth addicts that features a long list of actors and actresses you’ve heard of before all putting on wonderful performances.  It’s highly stylized and is pretty much a thrill ride from start to finish.  If you’ve never seen it, then you must check it out.  Brittany Murphy plays Nikki, a meth head who’s boyfriend is “The Cook”, the guy cooking up the meth, played by Mickey Rourke, in what’s probably his second best performance of all time after The Wrestler.

It like everything else is available on DVDvia Amazon.

It’s a shame none of these movies are out on Blu-ray for some reason.  Hopefully that’ll be resolved soon.  Anyway you will notice with each of these movies that Murphy plays a very different character.  That’s one of the signs of a good actress.  Being able to change like that and be believable is something remarkably few actors actually possess.  She will be missed.  Very, very much.  Goodbye Brittany, you left too soon.  I’m sure you would have given us a lot more brilliance.

If you’re looking for other Brittany Murphy stuffjust click that link.

This is going to be a very quick to the point review of the movie “Gamer“. Basically the plot is sort of The Running Man meets The Sims if that makes any sense. In the future a CEO developed a technology to allow people to control other real people in video games. He first uses it to put out a sort of real life Sims game where people pay to control people and the people getting controlled get paid. But then he stepped it up with a new game called “Slayers” where death row inmates are the ones being controlled and if they win 30 matches they are set free. Gerard Butler plays Kable, an inmate who has gotten the farthest so far with 27 wins, when most don’t make it to 10. Of course he’s innocent.

Now the plot, while ridiculous, could be alright, but this movie is just stupid. It’s mainly just shots of gore and tits cut together so fast and in no context so they really don’t mean anything. Go ahead and watch the first scene and tell me if you have any clue what the hell happens in it. It seems like they made this movie for an audience with less than no attention span, but then there’s a whole convoluted plot that makes no sense anyway. Also Marilyn Manson’s version of “Sweet Dreams” is used not once, but twice. I guess they couldn’t afford another song. I dunno. The first time is fine, the second time was unnecessary.

Then we have everything else. The acting, even with actors that are generally good, is absolutely horrible. Phoning it in would be too good of a description. Michael C. Hall (Dexter, Six Feet Under) plays the main bad guy and could not be worse (except possibly during an odd dance number that comes out of nowhere for no reason). This movie really has absolutely no redeeming qualities. Actually no, it has one redeeming quality and that is a very quick cameo by James Roday and Maggie Lawson who play Shawn and Juliet on Psych. I have no clue why they were there, but it was the one moment of the movie that drew my interest.

I really don’t recommend this to anyone, but should you be interested it comes out on Blu-ray and DVD January 19th.