She & Him: Volume 2
I still listen to She & Him's first album, Volume 1, all the time. With the aptly titled Volume 2, they've moved beyond "Hey, listen to this amazing little side project we made," skipped right past "We're here to stay," and rocketed right on through to "We're a major force to be reckoned with" without missing a bop or a beat.
Believe it.
"She" is lovely and talented actress Zooey Deschanel, who has long been one of my favorite celebrity crushes. The "Him" here is M. Ward, a singer, songwriter, and wildly gifted guitarist and producer whose solo work has rightfully earned him a loyal and eager following. Together, they're a special kind of magic that combines the best of modern pop sensibilities with the warmth of old-school AM radio intimacy.
Ward's production here is every bit as big, as expressive, and as inviting as Deschanel's giant baby blues, enveloping her clear, earnest voice in one delightful arrangement after another. Ward's fans will be happy to hear more of his harmonies on this volume than on the last, and he even steps all the way up to sing a co-lead vocal on their whiz-bang cover of NRBQ's "Ridin' in My Car."
Deschanel's delivery on these tracks is most often very matter-of-fact, but she's constantly, instinctively doing a million little things to give her vocals variety and an earnest sense of knowing far beyond her years. That's far too rare a talent these days, but she just knows exactly where to go with every moment and word. This isn't an acting gig where rehearsals are involved, either; the things she does here with her voice come from the kind of instinctual connection to music that you either have or you don't. We're lucky that she's got it so good.
Before I talk about some of the other songs, let's take a minute to watch the video for the album's first single, "In the Sun," which immediately became one of my all-time favorite videos. And make sure you crank it up to 720p or 1080p to see it in higher quality:
Gaaaaaaaah. How brilliant and fun was that? (I love how Zooey is obviously having a difficult time not smiling every single second.)
I think this album has a better lyrical variety than Volume 1 did; if I wrote down every line that made me smile, I'd damn nearly have to transcribe the entire album. Piano-driven bopper "Don't Look Back" begins with more of that old-soul vibe that defines so much of the album: "Orpheus melted the heart of Persephone, but I never had yours. I followed you back to the end of the path, but I never found the door," heading to the chorus of, "Don't look back, all you'll ever get is the dust from the steps before. I don't have to see you every day, but I just want to know you're there."
The more mellow "Lingering Still" is another of my lyrical favorites: "I like to learn things slow. I like learning a lot. I like to get it all again and in the end you know you get what you got," and then the chorus is, "And the world's like a science and I'm like a secret, but I saw you lingering still." Some of the album's best backing vocals and guitar work can be found on this one, too.
Lots of great string arrangements can be found across the album, and I hear a lot more electric guitar here than on the first one. That extra jig-a-jig-a-jangle goes a long way to making everything so sonically pleasing.
"Me and You" is another laid-back track highlighted by M. and Zooey lazily trading "ba-da-da-dum" and "ba-da-da" over a refrain of "You've got to be kind to yourself."
Mandolin accents bolster the poppy piano on "Home" as Zooey builds to one of the album's sweeter ideals: "I could be your state and I could be your nation. It doesn't get better than home, now does it? I could be your welcome and I could be your greeter, I could be sweet and I could be sweeter. I want to be where your heart is home. I want to see you with the light in the morning. There's never been such a beautiful warning to me, to me. Why don't we just sit and stare and do nothing? Nothing at all for a while." And like an afterthought, she effectively punctuates it with, "I like the way you smile." Just like that, my heart is hers.
"I'm Gonna Make It Better" is just as charming, and "Over It Over Again" comes in late in the game to become one of the album's most memorable tracks. "Why do I always want to sock it to you hard?" Zooey asks. "Let you know what love is like, when I'm keeping all my cards up on the shelf," right before a tough, delightfully nonchalant girl-group harmony (that's all Zooey) adds "where you can't see them." The "just like" and "and I'm" in "Running away from is just like running a business, and I'm keeping up with the games you play every day" are all Zooey, too, segueing into one of the smartest lyrical moments on the record: "I've gotten over it over and over again. I've gotten sick of it, but a lick of it will suck me back in."
After a wonderfully varied mix of faster and mid-tempo tracks, the album ends on two slower notes. "Brand New Shoes" begins with, "I had some brand new shoes. They were all red, but they gave me the blues." Second verse: "We are all made of air. There's stars in my eyes and there's sun in my hair. And I'm running away, it makes me feel better." Makes me feel pretty good, too.
"If You Can't Sleep" glides along like a gospel lullaby, with the huge, sweet swell of a soothing "mmmm" behind beautiful sentiments like these: "If you can't sleep, I'll be there in your dreams. If you can't sleep at all, and in your dreams I'll touch your cheek, and lay my head on your shoulder." After a delivery of "Goodbye, shadows" that could wash away the sadness from anything, Zooey sings, "If you're far away, if you can't see my face, if the world is cold, but the sun shines the same, shut your eyes, there are bluer skies, for you're embraced in my heart."
All throughout the album, M. and Zooey make all of it seem so effortless, even though this one really is a lot more lyrically, vocally, and musically complex in every possible way than its predecessor. And yet it never sounds busy or forced.
I can't stop listening to it — it's a perfect spring/summer album with a heart that will be beating along with mine all year long.
Nolan! Bale! Batman returns …
… to a theater near you on June 20, 2012!
(Get the guest room ready, Kareem. I'm coming out there.)
More news at Batman on Film via Heat Vision!
Comic book reviews and other news
As you can see, the look of the site has changed quite a bit. That's because I'm gearing up to make it a lot more active, and I'm sorry I've left it so neglected. I've sort of been making an effort to stay away from computers, and I've used that time to get myself back into physical shape.
Over the course of 2009, I gained about 40 pounds. How could I have allowed that to happen? I don't know. Same way anything happens, I guess. It just happens. Anyway, I've lost 35 of it since November, with 22 of that 35 since the middle of February. Lots of exercise and a total overhaul of my diet. I'm within 5 pounds of where I'd like to be. (All the extra weight is gone except for a stubborn little band of belly, and I'm going to start this exercise program next week to get rid of that and tune up everything else.) I'm easily in the best shape now that I've ever been in my entire life, and feeling this good is addictive. So off I go toward even better results.
The Hercules movie is in good shape, too — our producer and star, Alexander Nevsky, has been busy competing on the Russian version of Dancing with the Stars, and we'll be back to work on movie stuff soon. And as always, there are some other things on the table that I can't talk about. Yet. I've also gone back to work for Adrian Paul (the Highlander!) and the PEACE Fund, the charity he created to Protect, Educate, and Aid Children Everywhere. Check out the new website and take a long at all the awesome things we've been doing for children here and abroad.
In the meantime, here are a couple of months' worth of reviews of the Batman titles I do for Bill Ramey, who operates Batman on Film and remains the hardest working Batman fan on the planet.
Review: Gotham City Sirens #10
Review: Gotham City Sirens #11
Batman movie news is also beginning to heat up again, so stay tuned for more of that, too!
First official photo of THOR!
McKean Twitters up a lovely Monday
Michael McKean — Smallville's Perry White! — Twitters yet another photo of his wife, Annette O'Toole, who plays Clark Kent's mom, Martha Kent, with Erica Durance, who plays the hottest Lois Lane in this or any galaxy.
Click it to see it full size.
The episode, Hostage, airs May 7!
McKean and O'Toole return to Smallville
In the Superman comics, Lois and Clark's editor at the Daily Planet is Perry White. Michael McKean — celebrated for his stellar (and hilarious) work in everything from Laverne & Shirley to Christopher Guest's films — played Smallville's version of the character in the appropriately titled third season episode Perry back in October of 2003, and he's set to return in the May 7 episode, Hostage.
But he's not the only familiar face we'll be seeing in that episode. McKean's real-life wife, the outrageously gorgeous Annette O'Toole, reprises her role as Clark's mother, Martha Kent. She's been missing from the show for quite some time after the writers decided that Martha needed to move to our nation's capital to be a senator.
(As much as I still enjoy Smallville, I've never been happy with how the writers treated Clark's parents in the aftermath of the poorly handled killing off of Clark's dad, Jonathan Kent, played with so much warmth by John Schneider. The dynamic between Clark and the Kents was one of my favorite aspects of the show's early seasons.)
McKean has been posting all kinds of Smallville goodies on his Twitter, including a couple of really great photos of him and "the Missus" with Clark actor Tom Welling and Erica Durance, who in addition to playing Lois Lane on the show also owns a mighty chunk of my heart. Seriously. I love this woman.
McKean's Tweets of interest:
1. "Off we go: Martha Kent and Perry White are on their way back to Smallville. Mmmm, smell them cornfields!"
2. "Fun Smallville shoot today. Nice to see Tom, Erica & the crew; the Missus did a lot of hugging."
(That's massively sweet. I'd love to get a hug from Annette O'Toole; I miss her, too.)
Here's the photo of Annette with Tom Welling …
… and here's the one of Erica Durance with a very, very, very lucky Mr. McKean:
(Click the links to see them at full size.)
Smallville, currently in the home stretch of its ninth season, has been renewed for a tenth.
And have I mentioned how in love I am with Erica Durance?
Trivia: Annette O'Toole played Lana Lang opposite Christopher Reeve in Superman III.
After a long, public, and often troubling casting process, Chris Evans has accepted the role of Captain America.
I think this is really good news.
Evans was excellent in one of my favorite films, Sunshine, an under-seen sci-fi masterpiece you've probably been forced to watch if you've ever been a guest in my home.
As Johnny "The Human Torch" Storm, he was easily the best thing about the mostly terrible Fantastic Four movies — he was charming and hilarious and, more than anything else, he seemed to me to be the only actor in those films who understood what was going on in terms of what the movie was and what he needed to do to make his corner of it work.
So by taking on Captain America, does that mean he'll be doing double duty for Marvel? Not really. Fantastic Four is being rebooted without the original cast, and Evans gave the revamp his blessing back in September. And this isn't the first time Marvel has used an actor for two different roles — a recent example is Ray Stevenson playing Frank Castle in Punisher: War Zone before being cast as Volstagg in Thor (which is filming now). If an artist draws such an amazing Spider-Man that he's also hired to draw Wolverine, why can't the same apply to actors who do such great work in one role that they're asked to come back and play another? It's even an easier sell when the actor in question is as talented as Evans.
Let's look at the history of this thing. On February 3, director Joe Johnston told Sci Fi Wire that he hoped to have an actor cast "within the next couple of weeks." But the list of potential actors leaked on February 24 didn't exactly give fans a lot of confidence. From that initial list, I was pulling for John Krasinki (whom we all know and love as Jim Halpert on The Office), not because he was an obvious choice but because he absolutely wasn't — in the same way people didn't believe Michael "Mr. Mom" Keaton could be Batman, or couldn't see how a handsome Australian like Heath Ledger could be the creepy, calculating Joker. Or how a skinny, theatrically trained stage actor named Christopher Reeve could ever be a believable Superman. But oh, how we believed.
Right around the beginning of the second week of March, things got really confusing. As some sources reported that Krasinski was definitely going to get the role, others reported he was definitely out of the running. No one knew what to think. Neither, apparently, did Marvel.
Meanwhile, I watched the trailer for The Losers and said to myself, "It's a shame Chris Evans already played a superhero for Marvel, because he'd be a perfect Captain America."
Two days later, it was reported that he'd indeed been approached — along with Channing Tatum, who mumbled his way through G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and most certainly didn't strike me as a leader of men — to test for the role. With Krasinksi confirmed to be truly off the list, all of my hopes fell on Evans.
If I had access to the Marvel/Disney bank account, I'd have written the big check to someone like Matt Damon or Leonardo DiCaprio. But those guys would have been considered too expensive, while a guy like Mark Valley (from TV's Human Target, who served in the army, has degrees in math and engineering from the United States Military Academy, and looks exactly like Captain America) would have been considered too old. Another perfect candidate would have been Chris Pine, who stepped off the bus a fully fledged movie star as Captain Kirk in last summer's successful Star Trek reboot.
At the end of the day, what truly matters is that the actor chosen for Captain America would have to be able to hold his own against Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, and Ed Norton in the eventual Avengers movie (currently scheduled for release on May 4, 2012). Evans will easily be able to do this — he's got the charisma and he's got the chops.
(And he looks like Captain America, which doesn't hurt.)
The movie opens July 22, 2011, and filming begins in June. I don't know how the rest of the cast will turn out, but we're in good hands with Evans behind the star-spangled shield. More to come.
UPDATE: Variety says his initial deal is for three Captain America movies and The Avengers.
And you can read it all right here!
I'll write more about this when I'm calm enough to type again.
This news is excellent and huge.
Source: Batman on Film
Here are my reviews for the three Batman-related titles I write about for Batman on Film …
… and an extra one to help out the site's owner and editor, Bill "Jett" Ramey, the hardest working Batman fan on the planet, who couldn't get to his comic shop due to snow and ice:
Detective #862 is one of the best single issues of a title I've read in a long time!
And it felt so good to see Bruce Wayne in action as Batman.
And I still can't believe I even have to say that in the first place.
Vin's not rid of Riddick, revving
Universal Pictures is back in the Vin Diesel business, and business is sounding awfully good.
Here's the news:
Variety: Vin Diesel signs up for another 'Riddick'
Variety: Universal revs up another 'Fast and Furious'
In summary, Diesel is returning to the two franchises that made him famous. We'll likely see the next Fast and Furious first, as filming is set to begin later this year for a 2011 release.
Even though I still haven't forgiven Universal for not using my title — 4ever Fast, 4ever Furious — for last year's fourth installment, I absolutely loved the movie. In fact, I'd go as far as saying it was one of the best movies of 2009 in terms of knowing exactly what it was, knowing exactly what it needed to be, and delivering on those promises with confidence and a whole lot of fun.
Writer Chris Morgan, who's thankfully returning for the next one (already tentatively titled Fast Five) is truly a scholar of the franchise, and I'm sure he'll come up with something fun and exciting. Chris, if by any chance you ever read this, please don't forget the things you did that made number four such a knockout. (And please figure out a way to bring back Jack Conley as Penning; that guy was hilarious.)
Director Justin Lin and producer Neal Moritz are also back on board; Diesel will get a producing credit of his own, and I wouldn't be surprised if returning co-star Paul Walker gets one, too. I absolutely love these movies, and I'm not ashamed to say that I can't wait for the next one.
The new Riddick, on the other hand, won't be as easy a success.
I remember rolling my eyes back in February 2000 when my Impact editor, John Mosby, asked me to review a low-budget sci-fi movie called Pitch Black.
Five minutes into the movie, I was so close to the edge of my seat that I'm still surprised I didn't fall off it.
The film introduced me to the lovely Radha Mitchell, whom I sincerely thought was Juliana Hatfield for a few minutes, and also to Diesel, whose name made me wonder if he was a wrestler I'd never heard of.
(Actually, I take that back — I'd seen Diesel in Saving Private Ryan but didn't realize it was the same guy.)
Diesel man-handled the film like a guy who steps off the bus a fully formed movie star, and director David Twohy (who took his own pass at the screenplay by Ken and Jim Wheat) never faltered in making sure that all the scares and thrills were driven by how much his audience cared about the characters and the connections and themes that defined them.
Diesel wanted to turn his role as intergalactic anti-hero Richard B. Riddick into his very own "Conan in Space" kind of franchise, and he got his wish. Kind of.
The sequel, 2004's The Chronicles of Riddick, built such a huge new universe of mythology around Riddick that certain things seemed to get lost in the shuffle; concepts became more important than characters, and the movie suffered for it. I still love watching it — it looks absolutely amazing, the action is massive and intense, and Diesel certainly gives it everything he's got and then some.
But again, it's the character issues that ultimately killed it, and nearly all of them involve the character of Jack.
In Pitch Black, Jack (played by Australian actress Rhiana Griffith) was a young girl who disguised herself as a boy to suffer less harassment on the dangerous space-lanes. Riddick became her unlikely hero, and she idolized him so much that she shaved her head to look like him. Riddick, Jack, and holy man Imam (Keith David) were the only survivors of the film's pterodactyl-like predators, and they seemed likely candidates for inclusion in the sequel.
David returned as Imam, but only briefly. Griffith didn't return at all … but Jack did.
Here's where things get confusing — Griffith joined Diesel and David in the recording studio to voice their characters for the Riddick animated short, Dark Fury. Griffith was 19 years old (and staggeringly beautiful) when the sequel came out, and even underwent physical training to reprise her role.
But something happened on the way to the Underverse, because a reported squabble between Diesel and Universal resulted in Griffith being replaced by Alexa Davalos. Diesel fought for Griffith, while the studio wanted someone they considered prettier.
Unfortunately, the film's story was just as cruel to Jack as the studio was cruel to Griffith. Her age was seemingly rearranged to accommodate Davalos, and the character's journey was just as cruel as her fate. Why change both actress and age when they were only going to kill her anyway? Davalos certainly doesn't deserve any blame. She's very tough in the film, and the documentaries on the Blu-Ray show an actress who's deeply committed to the difficult physical challenges that come with such a role. But everything about how Jack was handled in the sequel came as a slap in the face not only to Jack and her original portrayer, but also to the fans who agreed that Jack was one of the coolest characters in Pitch Black and wanted something better for her in the sequel.
Anyway, the story in Variety suggests that the next Riddick movie will be closer in size and scope to Pitch Black, which would also suggest that it will jettison much of the mythology introduced in The Chronicles of Riddick. That seems easier said than done, especially since the film's finale turned Space Conan into King Conan, complete with a troubled brow.
My solution? Write Rhiana Griffith a check, and bring Jack back.
It's easy. Just say that the Jack — who was calling herself "Kyra" anyway — in The Chronicles of Riddick was an impostor or something like that, planted in the prison to be used against Riddick. Begin the new movie with Riddick in a jam, and have Jack rescue him. That would immediately throw him off center and create opportunities for some really interesting story and character directions. They could even have fun with it. Maybe the real Jack sent Kyra to find Riddick. Riddick says, "I thought you were dead." Jack replies, "Who, Kyra? How dense are you? She didn't even look like me!" See how easy it is?
I'm sure they'll leave Jack dishonored and dead, but it would certainly be an interesting idea to explore. Either way, I hope they can at least create a new female character as strong as Mitchell's Captain Carolyn Fry from Pitch Black.
And that's the Vin Diesel Report. More on these projects as they happen.
