2009. Starring Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz. Directed by Quentin Tarantino. The lady who handed me my ticket asked me, why do they call them “Inglourious Basterds”? I knew there was a 1970s movie with the same name, but I wasn’t completely sure whether this was one of those Tarantino homages — like how his film company is named A Band Apart, or how Sonny Chiba appears in Kill Bill as a past-his-prime samurai sword artisan. So I muttered, I don’t know, I haven’t seen the movie yet — maybe they’re like the Dirty Dozen? I wasn’t too far off. The …
Month: August 2009
Passings: Les Paul
You know that you’re a success when your name is used to represent your creation and, in the same breath, endows in it a sense of quality and authenticity. I’m going to defer to the many guitarists who are mourning the 94-year-old Les Paul online today, who love what he created and did with his life — they are better than I am at describing how his work changed the world. But I want to acknowledge the passing of this man and what he accomplished. By all accounts, a master with a guitar in his hands, Lester Polfus didn’t settle …
Movie Review: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
2007. Starring Casey Affleck, Brad Pitt, Sam Rockwell. Directed by Andrew Dominik. A film that announces its conclusion in the title promises to cast the events through some very subjective filters. The legend of Jesse James, I’m sure, is known by most people much like it’s sung by a barroom busker (nice cameo, Nick Cave), mistakenly crediting Jesse with stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. He also gets the number of Jesse’s kids wrong. But it doesn’t matter, because legends are legends, and as John Ford taught us in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, when the …
Year Two
Today marks the first day of my second year without a job. I don’t get tired of saying that it’s not so bad — every day is like that laundry day you add to the end of a long vacation. The biggest hit has been to my savings, but I figure that if the period spent rescuing my self-esteem while mourning my father wasn’t a “rainy day,” I’d never save enough for a real downpour. Back in the dark days, coming home from another unrewarding day at the office, that Bright Eyes song would always drift into my head. Especially, …