Thighs Wide Shut

12 Years A Slave 
Chain In The A$$
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 133 min

Whatever you does, do not bring your significant other to see Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave, unless you want to go 12 years without having sex.  A most important movie, filled with zero fun, and has about as much rewatchable-ness as Schindler’s List done doesn’t (which means you’ll never want to watch it EVERRRR again).  Actually, after seeing 12 Years, I’ve now had enough of the slavery movie genre.  No mo fo me.  Add it to the list of non-starters, alongside Holocaust pics + westerns + rom coms + anything with vampires or zombies + anything directed or presented by Guillermo del Taco

12 Years is truly important, cause it fo reals happened – it’s what happened to a born-free black man named Solomon Northup, wrongfully turned into a slave.  This story, based on Solomon’s own book, certainly needed to be told (it was once before), but I don’t know if I needed it told to me.  I’m not one for turning a blind eye to things that are horrible in history, but I also wasn’t eggzactly all that interested in having my senses blinded and numbed completely.  Maybe the point is that watching something so hard to take should be exactly that, but c’mon man, couldn’t they have at least cut out 1/4 of the whipping and yelling and awfulness and made this excruciating experience only 90 minutes long???  We know that Solomon (Chiwetel Ejiofor, FINALLLLLLY with a meaty role to match his acting might) will become a slave, and then 12 years later, not be a slave.  And so we’re forced to watch him go from 0 to 12 years, without a clue as to which year we’re in.  If only there was a countdown ticker, so we could get excited about crossing the finish line of this torture-fest 

But hey, look at all those famous actors playing horrible people!!  Solomon gets conned by Scoot ‘Poop’ McNairy! & Taran Killam!, and sold into slavery!  Where he’s chained up with Michael K Williams!  Then sold by Paul Giamatti! To Benedict Cumberbatch!  Who’s plantation-hand Paul Dano! is out of hand and forces Benedict to send Solomon to the much more evil plantation owner (and McQueen regular) Michael Fassbender!  And his nasty wife Sarah Paulson!  Well, at least he can find some sympathy in slaves Lupita Nyong’o! (don’t know who she is, but won’t be soon forgetting her performance), and former slave or something Alfre Woodard!  Don’t worry, things get better once (the film’s producer) Brad Pitt! and his Amish beard show up!  Maybe Brad can save the day!!  But where’s Clooney????  Why can’t the whole Ocean’s 12 crew free the slave of 12 yearss??  Oh yeah, and oh, look there’s Beasts of the Southern Wild alumz Quvenzhané Wallis AND Dwight Henry!  Man, slavery has never been so well cast and acted!  

Am I better for seeing this film?  Maybe better off not.  But what’s been seen was seen, and it aint going away, from my head, or from history.  And oh, that final scene – a scene that packs a super-HEAVY emotional punch that’s equally AS punchy as Captain Phillips‘ UNFORGETTABLE final scene wiz was, making the torturous torture ALMOS worth letting yerself get tortured by

But c’mon McQueen, when are you going to make a ‘happy’ movie?

Verdictgo: hard to watch, but still – Jeepers Worth A Peepers

12 Years is how long it will feel like sitting in a theater watching this, tomorrow in NY/LA/DC/Chicago/ATL/Toronto, and elsewhere elsehwhen

oh, and here are some previous the würstest date movies EVER, reviewed on TWS –  Amour, Towelhead, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, The Babysitters, Vera Drake & Lake of Fire 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Kill Your Darlings 
Beat, Off
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 104 min

Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs and Carr.  One of these names does not belong… to the annuals of history, but does to the Beat Generation‘s history.  Lucien Carr was the supposed ‘glue’ of the crew.  Without him, would the other three have crossed paths, and beat on???  Who knows, but in John Krokidas‘ inspired, but tiring directorial debut – Kill Your Darlings – Carr’s story is driven to the forefront, and he’s eventually driven to murder!!!!!!!!  Oooooh, sounds intriguing!  It is, but it somehow doesn’t end up being all that intriguing (as a movie)

What does it end up being like?  Muppet Babies for the Beat Generation stizz!!  Looks, there’s beardless, skinny Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), discovering all kinds of things at college thanks to new found literary ‘maybe more than friends’ friend Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan, always giving it his de-All), and their buddies Jack Kerouac (pretty boy Jack Huston) and spacey mumblecored William S Burroughs (Ben Foster).  They drink!  They smoke!  They listen to jazz!  The reject what their teachers are teaching them!  They pull pranks!  They flirt with being gay!  Oh my, so much going on in the mid-1940s!  I KNOW!!!  But trouble lurks, in the form of David Kammerer (Michael C Hall), a man obsessed with Lucien.  After endless years of unwanted attention and advances, Lucien can no longer withstand his predator, and so one knife-fight later, Kammerer dies, Carr gets incarcerated, and the other three Beat-ers go on to infamy.  Carr becomes a footnote and here we are, and yet, I feel like we’re nowhere.  Just a Muppet Babies take on young dudes about to become men.  Beat on?  More like beat off

Cross Roads: David Cross is the only man on earth to play both Allen Ginsburg (I’m Not There) and his father Louis Ginsberg (Darlings)

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Darlings doesn’t exactly kill it, today in NY & LA only, and elsewhere elsehwhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Lucien, Jack, Allen & Bill

Deltron 3030 
Highline Ballroom
October 14, 2013
Buy The Album | Band Website

Dude, you know all about Deltron 3030, right????  They’re like the older brother of the Gorillaz that has always been overshadowed by their younger, more popular broseph.  In 2000, Dan the Automator, Del the Funky Homosapien and Kid Koala (the first two being Gorillaz album #1 collaborators) formed like voltron and came up with a masterful eponymous concept album about a dystopian future.  It’s basically hip-hop’s Pink Floyd’s The Wall.  9reals, it’s that good (for hip-hop).  And then what?  Nothing, literally NOTHING.  13 years passed and they finally decided to follow-up album #1 with #2 – The Event II, which not only continues on the same bad future theme, but also on the same rAWEsomeness in all around musical craftsmanship + a who’s who of coolness for guest starringness - Damon Albarn, Mike Patton, Zack De La Rocha, Emily Wells, Jamie Cullum, Mary Elizabeth Winstead (and her HEAVENLY voice) + (pointless) interstitial skits from David Cross, Amber Tamblyn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, David Chang and the Lonely Island boys (theirs is worth skipping every time it plays cause they are unfunny like Nazis)

Don’t remember if the original album was ever toured, but I remember not having the chance to ever see the 3030ers live, and would jump at the first opportunity to do so.  That day finally came, and boy was it well worth the wait.  Supported by a 16-piece orchestra, Dan, Del & Kid took their concepts and put them into overly-good practice.  Kid’s beats were sick, and Del’s voice, clear to hear (a rarity in a hip-hop show), was even sicker, while Dan automated the rawking orchestra by conducting all the madness.  This was a big big big show that deserved an even bigger venue.  The Highline Ballroom juss can’t handle something of this magnitude.  Deltron 3030 should be playing the likes of MSG or Radio City, and if they did, they should do it with a symphony CAUSE THIS SH!T IS SYMPHONIC, YO!!! 

Setlist - State of the Nation / 3030 / Things You Can Do / Positive Contact / Stardate / The Return / City Rising From The Ashes / Nobody Can / Mastermind / Melding of the Minds / The Agony (Kid Koala Solo) / Virus / My Only Love / Memory Loss

Encore – Do You Remember / Clint Eastwood (YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!  but why couldn’t they get Damon to show up???)

Buy the albums, and see them when they come to your town

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Fetch Clay, Make Man 
New York Theater Workshop

I know you know who Muhammad Ali is, but how about Stepin Fetchit?????  As a movie buff, it almost pains me to say that I knew NOTHING about the first black man to ever receive a screen credit!  Fetchit (real name Lincoln Perry) was a trailblazer, but also a controversial figure.  The roles he typically played were of a lazy black man.  Those were the only roles Hollywood allowed him to play, and so he went with it, and made a career out of it, until he didn’t have much of a career.  By the time the civil rights movement was in full force, he was basically nothing, and his own people looked down at him for what he had done to further stereotype the existing stereotypes

Anywho, as a big man of his time, Fetchit knew boxer Jack Johnson – aka the first African-American heavyweight champion – and newly-minted heavy weight champ, and Nation of Islam convert Muhammad Ali wanted to know Johnson’s boxing secrets – specifically his ‘anchor punch’ – and so he brought Fetchit into his inner circle as a secret strategist, before his rematch with Sonny Liston in 1965  

This is the subject of the mos eggsalad play Fetch Clay, Make Man, a knockout look at the crossroads when a new black identity in America was being forged, with Ali at the forefront, and moving away from the one Fetchit represented in the times leading up to it.  Ray Fisher went all in as Ali, and K Todd Freeman frees Fetchit from his own ghosts, giving the man some depth and understanding.  Supporting, most strongly is Nation of Islamer John Earl Jelks + Richard Masur (the guy who played a dad in every 80s movie) as Hollywood mogul William Fox

The play ended its run, but it should be turned into a movie cause I said so

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Blue Caprice 
Insight In Sight
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 93 min

You remember the DC Beltway sniper attacks of 2002, right????  Honestly, it’s best to forget about the horrible horribleness that happened, but now I can’t stop thinking about it, after catching the Alexandre Moors directed / RFI Porto written powerful account of how John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo got from point A to the point of no return – senseless murders of innocent people, and terrorizing a region, and in turn, a nation  

What were Muhammad and Malvo’s motivations?  That’s not clearly stated in Blue Caprice (named after the make of car that ultimately became their killing machine), but their motivations were never clearly made in real life either.  And does their motivation even really matter?  What’s done is done, and it’s hard to make sense of any of it  

Muhammad was endlessly bitter about the custodial loss of his children to his ex-wife.  He met a basically abandoned Malvo in Antigua, took him under his wing, and back to America.  He was good for Malvo, until the surrogate father figure turned him into a sniper, bent on creating death and chaos.  Watching the transformation of these drifters into killers, embodied by incredible performances by both Isaiah Washington and Tequan Richmond, is a sight to be seen, and to be feared.  Adding solid support is Tim Blake Nelson, and when does he not add solid support in anything he’s in??

Verdictgo: mos def mos def mos def Jeepers Worth A Peepers

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Captain Phillips 
A Must SEA
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 134 min

Captain Phillips is a real person.  Some really really real sh!t happened to him.  Fo’real.  Five’reals.  999999’reals.  None of us would ever want to walk/sail a mile in his poop-deck shoes, even if the stuff that happened to him didn’t happen to him.  That’s probably why none of us are captains of cargo ships that pass thru ye dreaded pirate alleys of today.  Who be the pirates of today?   No, they aint from Pittsburg, they from Somalia. It’s a poor country, and sometimes people go to such extremes that they have to hijack ships and demand money and stuff.  This is what happened to Captain Richard Phillips and the crew of the Maersk Alabama.  But Captain Phillips wouldn’t let any harm come to his crew or cargo or ship, so he saved them all by putting himself in more danger.  What happens next is either something you already know or (hopefully) not, but either way, Paul Greengrass‘ rivitinglisciously-rousing panic-stomach-knot-inducing 134 minute thrill ride movie is BEYOND required viewing, especially if you consider one of THE best films of the year to be something you should probably see

Cap’n P is embodied by our generation’s Jimmy Stewart – Mr Tom Hanks, but I don’t think even Jimmy Stewart could pull off what Hanks does done in Greengrass’ grassy knoll (whatever that means).  You know Hanks can play any type of character (usually nice dudes), and will make whatever character he plays instantly likable and believable, but Hanks has been taking on such blah roles for most of the past decade.  Don’t think he’s won our heart this much since he got lost as Viktor Navorski in the horribly amazing The Terminal.  But what Hanks does in Phillips isn’t just his best work in a decade, it’s one of his best pieces of work period.  Yep, right up there with Gump, Woody, Josh Baskin, Jimmy Dugan, and whomever he played in Philadelphia.  Wow, just wow.  Still being wowed just typing the word ‘wow’ when describing Hanks in Phillips

But Hanks isn’t even really the star of the movie.  He literally takes a backseat to the four dudes who play the pirates.  Every single one of them should be given awards, parades, a street named in their honor, and probably some food, so they aint so dangs skinny.  Oodles of kudos galore go out to Barkhad Abdi, Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed and Mahat M Ali (with the bestestest forehead-afro combo on planet earth).  They scare the Captain & crew onscreen, and us off screen.  I’m sure they scare themselves juss looking into a mirror.  Look at this gif below and tell me you aint scared of that man and his barely fingers!!?!??!?!  Can he even pick up a fork????  Doesn’t matter, cause he picks up our eyes and keeps them glued to his

Verdictgo: beyond Breast In Show

Captain Phillips sets ails and sails into a theater near jews today

Ship Mates:  filming happened on the Alabama’s sister ship, the Alexander Maersk 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Gravity 
The Airless Up There 
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 90 min

Love love love love love love love the space (and the fakery to make it look real) stuff goings on in Alfonso Cuarón‘s Gravity.  Don’t really love anything else about the movie.  It’s boring.  It’s characters are lame (Sandra Bullock) and smug and annoying (George Clooney).  There’s too much Murphy’s law being practiced.  There’s not enough aliens.  There’s not enuff space breasts.  There’s not enuff penetration of Uranus.  There’s a lot of tension, but it didn’t really make me feel all that tense.  Maybe it’s cause I was over-filled with udder delight & joy that George Clooney died in space!!!!!!!  SPOILER ALERT.  ooops.  oossps.  Being stuck in space is actually one of my biggest fears (even though I LOVEEEEEEEEEE space), but I didn’t fear what was going on in this movie 1 bit.  Why?  I dunno, I can’t really explain why I didn’t react to something that I probably shoulda had a reaction to.  Maybe it’s cause I could give about minus 15 sh!ts about Sandy Bullock and her troubles on earth and above.  This movie is no 2001, it’s no 2010 even, it’s certainly no Children of Men, and it’s kinda like a better SpaceCamp, but maybe not.  Sure, it’s beautiful and breathtaking, but it’s also beautifully & breathtakingllllly airless and dull

Verdictgo:  Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Gravity is grounded at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…