Friend and avant-garde folkster Normanuniform (some 12apostrophes readers may know him as Eric Nolan) has released his new album, Woodways, on a Website I built for his music.

Check it out: www.normanuniform.net.

On July 15, everyone’s favorite youthful necromancer this side of Mickey’s Apprentice, returns for another enchanting installment. The hilarity begins when a wicked school marm, in league with the mighty Wormawort, who if you believe the bumper stickers is widely supported by Republicans, punishes Harry’s entire class for turning the chalkboard eraser into a toad.

In the previous 13 installments of this series, Harry has had to learn tough lessons on his way to otherworldly wizardry. Now, however, as we begin the next eighteen-part chapter of this long awaited series, Harry emerges as the ensorcelling hocus-poser we’ve all been awaiting. And in one mystic movement, he points to his lightning bolt birthmark, winks at his classmates, and conjures Marm Ugglidty-Bugility into a Blood Prince.

A Blood Prince, for those living in a cave, is much like the Prince of Tides, except of blood. It is an extraordinarily powerful being, with a head, arms, legs, torso, eyes, and teeth all made of blood. Unfortunately for Harry, he forgot to cast the containment spell, so Marm Ugglidty-Bugility quickly starts to drain away.

A little abracadabra later and Harry and friends have half the Blood Prince, formerly Marm Ugglidty-Bugility. At this point, Republicans and the Wiggles are very mad. They begin to protest all the occult and witchcraft. Harry and friends are simultaneously faced with the diabolic armies of Wormawort and the insidious bobos listening to a man named Rush over his spooky black-arts invention: the radiator.

Do Harry and friends find the other half of Marm Ugglidty-Bugility ? Do the legions of Wormawort and Rush join forces? Do the Wiggles put out another album? This review can’t give everything away, but it is fair to say that in time Harry and friends learn some important lessons, spend a lot of time pondering their fate, particularly the question of Harry’s mortality in the 50^th and final part of this movie saga, and make lots of whooshing noises with their magic wands. You’ll be bewitched by this charming and wonderful tale. And you’ll come away with an uncanny prophecy of your own: Harry’s tricks will be back for more next summer!<–>

Pulao, Jayu, and I saw the worstest of worst movies at a friend’s house the other night. I saw the box at the movie store and picked it up of my own free will, even though the title was I’m Reed Fish, which should have told me all I needed to know. I saw the funny kid from the short-lived TV show Undeclared and the girl from Gilmore Girls, arm in arm, smiling up at me from the cover. They looked so happy, but it was all a lie.

The IMDB Plot Synopsis reads “This plot synopsis is empty” which turned out to be a scarily accurate description. You learn, after about a half hour, that the film you are watching is really a film within a film, directed and screened by the main character, Reed Fish, to an audience of characters in the film, some of which play themselves, and some of which are played by each other. Yeah.

There’s a “zorse,” which is a striped horse–half horse, half zebra–and the zorse really stole the show–although it was only onscreen for 24 seconds, he elicited a pleasant “huh,” and then a slight intake of breath that almost led to a chuckle, which was the emotional highlight of the film.

I’m Reed Fish is the recipient of two awards too many, by which I mean the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival Film Discovery Jury Award in two categories–Best Actor and Best Actor Award. So that’s one award too many. It also grossed 3,130 dollars too many, if you know what I mean. If what I mean is that it grossed $3,000, which is one of the greater scams of the century.

I’m Reed Fish proves Einstein’s special theory of relativity, which shows there’s no absolute measurement of time, but that time depends on an observer’s position, speed, and on the soulless quotient when measuring the delivery of inane dialogue, so that the 93-minute running time advertised on the box easily stretched to 6 or 7 hours in the space-time fabric of the couch where we sat.

Anybody seen any bad movies lately? Worst. Movie. Ever?

P.S. More I’m Reed Fish reviews: “Compared to “Princess Diaries 2″, another PG movie I saw this weekend, “I’m Reed Fish” was easily the more enjoyable film.“

A couple of weeks ago certain planets aligned and I went to two, count them, two concerts, Regina Spektor and Spoon. This is high living for me, since that comes to about 17% of the concerts I have attended in my life so far.

They were both amazing shows. But the venues were like apples and oranges, (literally) like downtowns and suburban malls. Specifically, like First Avenue and Myth the Nightclub. Going with the food simile again, more like apples (if you like apples) and something bad; let’s say spoiled milk.

Regina Spektor played at Myth, in Maplewood (a suburb 15 minutes north of St. Paul). Myth is next door to a shopping mall, has tall boxy walls, and looks, from the outside, like it used to be a Home Depot, a Home Depot with a giant Vegas-style sign showing a fiery “M.”

They frisked me on the way in, and though they were gentle, I wasn’t into it. Digital cameras were banned, we were informed. Before the show started, a girl in red was escorted out, why I don’t know. In the middle of the set, two burly bouncers pushed their way through the crowd on the balcony, where I was, and scanned the crowd on the floor, barking to each other: “Down there!” and “Third row!” Who they were after this time, I don’t know, but the cumulative effect was a lot like prison, with better décor.

I’d never been to First Avenue, the fairly-famous nightclub where Spoon played (it’s featured in Prince’s Purple Rain), but I liked the vibe a lot better. (For Minneapolitans, it felt to me like the CC Club with a stage.)

First Ave was dark, noisy, and relaxed. I can’t imagine that digital cameras or much of anything was banned, and as I stood on the balcony by the stairs, I could barely read the “Stairs must be kept clear for fire hazard” sign through the throng of people cluttering the stairs, hazarding fires. The drinks were good and more affordable. I think I recognized half the people there (although that could have been because we all seemed to wear the same rectangular glasses and Converse sneakers, which tends to make people look familiar in the dark). Tidy, I know, but First Ave felt like the opposite of Myth.

One last thing: although Myth had a stilted vibe for me, Regina Spektor was anything but. She was amazing, full of soul, once beating time on a wooden chair as she sang and played piano, the whole show an accomplished mix of precision and fun.

Myth the Nightclub
[where: 3090 Southlawn Dr., St Paul, MN 55109]
First Avenue & 7th St Entry
[where: 701 1st Ave N., Minneapolis, MN 55403]

Ridley Scott must have seen Pearl Harbor and said, “That’s what I want to do!”  And William Monahan, who had split a jumbo carton of Raisinets with Scott, said, “I’ll get you a script by Monday.”  What other explanation is there?  Since Pearl Harbor, no one can claim ignorance of the historical epic’s cinematic follies; Scott & Co. must have meant to employ them.  Judged by those standards, Kingdom of Heaven acquits itself admirably.  It nails the trifecta of overblown-period-piece suck.

1. Writing.  William Monahan won an Oscar for writing the departed.  He sure didn’t earn it here; Kingdom of Heaven has one of those rare scripts that dares to show and tell.  Like when Balian (Orlando Bloom), accused of killing a priest, helpfully informs his just-found father (Liam Neeson) that the charges are true.  We know, Balian.  We saw you set him on fire.  And how about the clichés?  Surrendering Jerusalem to Saladin—after lots of period battle scenes, after lots of speeches that are stirring only in that they sound like other speeches that actually are stirring—Balian asks his erstwhile opponent what the city is worth.  “Nothing,” says Saladin.  He paces away, then turns back.  Guess his next line.  There’s also the fact that the screenplay grants its characters as much depth and humanity as a crime blotter, and probably ended every line of dialogue with “[Significant pause].”  Hell, that’s probably why this thing runs 150 bloated minutes.

2. Directing.  Kingdom of Heaven had a budget of $130 million.  Ridley Scott puts every dollar on screen in the least efficient way.  Okay, he couldn’t really film character development, since the script gave him nothing to work with, but instead of trying to tell a story Scott loads up every frame with stuff.  During the siege, Saladin’s forces storm the walls of Jerusalem with wheeled assault towers.  Balian’s defenders attach ropes to spears, skewer the towers, and topple them.  We get it the first time, but apparently Scott had some CGI budget to spend, because he shows another tower falling, then another, then another, and then pans across the wall to show them toppling in sequence.  The movie is so rich in visual detail that it ends up being as redundant as the script.

3. Acting.  Why is Orlando Bloom here?  His biggest hits were CGI-heavy series where thespianism got bumped from the marketing strategy in favor of Burger King cups.  Don’t make him do the heavy lifting in a “philosophical” historical epic, because the result is 150 minutes of his must-not-fart face.  The script gives Balian one note—grim but noble determination—so it’s hard to blame Orlando for milking it dry, but no one else gets more than one note and they somehow work around it.  David Thewlis owns the movie in the filler role of the priest, Liam Neeson manages to enliven Balian’s Crusader father, Kevin McKidd does the work as a doomed exposition mouthpiece—fuck, Martin Csokas shifts himself to enliven a villain whose main task is to wind up naked and dunce-capped on the back of an ass.  It’s Balian’s story, so it’s Bloom’s movie, and in it Bloom reveals that his only talent is making teen girls squeal.  If he starred in a romantic comedy with his fellow grooming-salon graduate Jennifer Aniston, the charisma vacuum they’d generate would turn the universe inside out.

Somewhere in Kingdom of Heaven, there’s a point about Christianity and Islam, West and (Middle) East, coexisting in piece—about the value of religious belief when weighed against human life.  Someone else can talk about that.  I’m more interested in the movie’s point about Hollywood.  The witless script, the clueless direction, the somnambulant acting—these were all mistakes that Pearl Harbor made.  That movie still stands as a cinematic nadir.  Not for nothing did the puppet in Team America sing, “I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark when he made Pearl Harbor—and that’s an awful lot, girl.”  But since PH made $450 million worldwide on a $140-million budget, the crappiness of the thing was forgotten and the parasitic lifeform flourished.  Here it is again, and the only good thing I can say about it is that this incarnation is (slightly) better than King Arthur.

I guess at this point I have to start justifying my Netflix queue, so here goes. I liked Ben Kingsley in Dave and thought he was impressive in Sexy Beast (although I couldn’t get through the movie as a whole), plus HBO Films has a reputation for quality. That’s how I came to see Mrs. Harris. Based on a true story, it stars Annette Bening as the title character, a headmistress who attaches herself to Kingsley’s self-professed “country doctor” Herman Tarnower. Tarnower is less rural sawbones and more egocentric, womanizing publicity hound, and Harris soon finds herself taking a backseat to Tarnower’s pursuit of younger women and his rise to fame with the Scarsdale Diet. As he neglects her (except to write her dubious prescriptions), Harris goes into an emotional tailspin that ultimately drives her, one rainy night, to go to his house with a gun. Before night’s end, Tarnower is dead and Harris is facing murder charges.

I hate Annette Bening. Part of me thinks she keeps choosing to play brittle, needy types who snap in hopes of capturing the Oscar that Hilary Swank denied her the first time; another part of me remembers her staticky, Lifetime-movie “complexity” way back in The American President; neither part of me likes to see her on screen. Mrs. Harris has to accomplish a lot of heavy lifting to get me past that. That it does is due to some strong direction and an interesting script, both by Phyllis Nagy. Was it murder? The movie presents two scenarios: in the opening, the gun goes off as Tarnower tries to wrest it from Harris (the real-life Harris’s story); at the end, Harris arrives at Tarnower’s in a near-fugue state and shoots him in the back out of anger. (In both scenes, after the shooting Bening puts an acquiescent Tarnower to bed. I’d want a ride to the hospital, but the good doctor and I differ on many points.) Thus the movie manages to avoid passing judgment (in real life, she was convicted) without glossing over the details of the case.

The fact is, the Jean Harris of the movie—borderline under a façade of patrician competence—is exactly the kind of role that suits Bening, and the fact that I don’t like that role doesn’t mean she inhabits it poorly. She captures the way emptiness can erode the foundations of a personality until the whole edifice collapses. The sequence where Harris, having been dumped, sends Tarnower a letter by registered mail and then calls him, near tears, to request that he destroy it is exemplary. She knows he’ll have to sign for the letter and, thus, still have some marginal contact with her; by the time she realizes how pathetic and desperate this plan is, it’s too late for her to extricate herself without another flaky gesture. She sees what she is but can’t change it. As Tarnower, Kingsley is both sane and plausibly blind to Harris’s precarious emotional state, and manages to infuriate me even though Harris generally deserves his callous treatment. The movie is packed with familiar faces (Michael Gross has a basically silent role as a society husband; there are also Mary McDonnell, Brett Butler, Lee Garlington, Cloris Leachman, Frances Fisher, Chloe Sevigny, and Philip Baker Hall), but Nagy has the sense to clear the dance floor and let Kingsley and Bening destroy each other unimpeded.

It’s a true story, but I find Mrs. Harris odd in that Tarnower never seems to like Harris all that much. Maybe it’s just that Kingsley applies his smarmy charm equally to Bening and to any other woman Tarnower wants to get naked with. When Tarnower proposes to Harris, it’s like he couldn’t find anything else to do that week; when he backpedals, swearing he loves her but doesn’t want to be married, why doesn’t he back out all the way? My best interpretation is that he liked having a long string of ladies on his line too much to let her go completely. If that’s the case, then frankly, they both got what they deserved.

Because coming of age is boring unless something else is going on.

Because the best time to make a list of your favorite albums of the year is less than three hours after you’ve had two teeth yanked from your lower jaw, with the dentist breaking one in the process and having to poke around in the hole to tweeze out all the root fragments—right?

10.  Mission of Burma, The Obliterati, 2006
It has its flaws, like the too-sludgy sound throughout and the fact that they let their drummer, Peter Prescott, write a few of the songs when they shouldn’t.  But I’ve been missing guitar breaks for a while, and there’s an amazing one in Roger Miller’s “Careening with Conviction.”  Plus they’re haunted by the freakish size of Nancy Reagan’s head.  I can get behind that.

9.  Sons and Daughters, Love the Cup EP, 2004
I already had The Repulsion Box, so I knew what to expect:  punk set to a Scottish-folk beat.  (Or Scottish folk with punk vocals.)  Nonetheless, “Broken Bones” has some of the most restrained guitar I’ve heard this year, and “Johnny Cash” rumbles along quite nicely.

8.  Michael Gordon (composer), Decasia, 2002
Decasia the movie is a compilation of decaying filmstrips that flicker in and out of resolution for an hour.  Decasia the symphony is the best haunted-house music I’ve heard since Mocket’s Pro Forma.  The even-numbered movements are the spookiest—think Sonic Youth with a full orchestra.

7.  Gorillaz, Demon Days, 2005
A party album about the apocalypse.  “November Has Come” is my favorite song.

6.  Wilderness, Vessel States, 2006
I think every review of this album that I read compared Wilderness to Public Image, Ltd.  Fortunately, I’ve never heard Public Image, Ltd.  Whichever guy is the vocalist, he doesn’t sing so much as declaim, and the guitars sound pretty piddly to my PJ-Harvey-trained ears, but not in a bad way.

5.  The Timeout Drawer, Nowonmai, 2005
In the same post-rock (so:  instrumental-rock) vein as Sigur Ros and Mono, but without the adscititious sense of grandeur.  They wield keyboards, flutes, and cellos when necessary, but the whole album still sounds like it was recorded in a garage.  That’s the charm.

4.  Maximo Park, A Certain Trigger, 2005
I probably listened to this more than any other album I bought this year.  I finally figured out where they got their guitar sound:  Tommy Tutone.  “The Coast Is Always Changing” has the best chorus I’ve heard in a while.  Pure radio pop, or at least it would be if Clear Channel had any sense.

3.  Carla Bozulich, Evangelista, 2006
Carla Bozulich could fart on tape and I’d buy it and praise it.  The Geraldine Fibbers were just that good.  Evangelista is a little disappointing, though, mainly because I was hoping for an album that would sound like “Blue Boys” from the Kill Rock Stars compilation Fields and Streams:  all children’s instruments and toys, shaped into song.  Instead, she borrows Godspeed You! Black Emperor to make an album that sounds a lot like ‘30s blues, only with more screaming.  The cover of Low’s “Pissing” is too faithful, but “Evangelista I”…dude.

2.  Thomas Stronen, Pohlitz, 2006
Basically, he pulled out all his pots and pans, plinked away on them for half an hour, and added some keyboard squiggles to flesh out the sound.  But it works.  With its weird triangle pings, “Dispatches” is my favorite track.

1.  P.O.S., Audition, 2006
Local.  Genius.  At first I thought P.O.S. wasn’t as good as Atmosphere.  Then I noticed that I listed to this album every day, whereas I listened to Atmosphere about twice a month.  It’s like the crapitization of mainstream hip-hop never happened—there’s cello on “De La Souls,” punk screaming on “Half-Cocked Concepts,” self-deprecation on “Living Slightly Larger,” and P.O.S. acts like it all belongs there.  Best line is the first one.

This is the kind of album that isn’t bad on its own terms. Mono plays moody, atmospheric instrumental rock that would have made a good soundtrack to The Lord of the Rings if Peter Jackson were as innovative as everyone says he is and didn’t bow to convention with a full-blown orchestra and choir. Several of the six songs stretch into the ten-minute range, the better to incorporate thrilling sequences of crescendos, climaxes, and decrescendos. The shorter, quieter songs are welcome interludes between the epic-battle, tragic-death compositions that dominate the album. And the art is great—the blue booklet imitates the texture of a cloth-bound memoir, the watercolor portraits inside remind me of Genesis’s We Can’t Dance, and the whole CD comes in a cardboard sleeve like Interpol’s Antics, with a different painting on each side so that you can choose your cover.

No, the issue with Mono is that I already have a Sigur Ros album in my collection, and it’s actually by Sigur Ros.

In other news, I see that Penis Enlargement felt it necessary to weigh in on Pulao’s prelims-vs.-virginity post.  I offer our guest this humble suggestion:  get some better search algorithms.

Here’s the pitch:  “A bad action movie—with puppets!”  Here’s the result:  a bad action movie with puppets.  Team America, ostensibly a superhero supergroup, destroys a plethora of UNESCO World Heritage sites in order to save them.  This irritates the Film Actors Guild (F.A.G.), the members of which, led by Alec Baldwin, organize world leaders against Team America and for peace.  But this plays right into the hands of Kim Jong Il, who plots to destroy the world while its dignitaries are enjoying a stage show starring the likes of Janeane Garofalo and Sean Penn.  (Which raises the question, “When’s the last time anyone enjoyed Janeane Garofalo or Sean Penn?”)  The only one who can save the world is Gary, a Broadway actor whose juvenile thespianism indirectly got his brother eaten by gorillas.  Can Gary conquer his fears and stop the madman?

Trey Parker and Matt Stone deliver a note-perfect rendition of American action clichés, from the flags spattered all over Team America’s G.I.-Joe-style vehicles to the members’ homophobic homoeroticism.  The problem is, they get so invested in imitation that they forget the mockery.  They seem to think the clichés will be funny because they’re acted out by puppets, which is like saying Friends was funny because they had a chimp.  Passing for humor are gross-out set pieces that punctuate long stretches of conventional action.  When Lisa poops on Gary during their mid-movie humpathon, the camera zeroes in on stringy brown turds that squirt from a plastic butt and fall onto Gary’s grinning, open-eyed face.  This basically rips off the joke from South Park:  Bigger, Longer, Uncut, but this time around the set-up is too blunt to be funny.

Matt and Trey have been treading comedic water for a while now.  Ever since That’s My Bush!, they’ve shown more interest in aping Hollywood crap than they have in parodying it.  They’ve also gotten into the lazy habit of assuming that F-bombs are funny just because fourth graders drop them.  When I was in fourth grade, my classmates and I said “fuck” on a daily basis.  We weren’t trying to be funny; that was just how we talked.  The creators of South Park have forgotten that.  From producing some of the most hilarious stuff I’ve ever seen, they’ve come all the way to being lazy schlockmeisters whose obligatory nods toward their incendiary roots are both obnoxious and out-of-place.  Make a Barbra Streisand movie, guys.  At least that’ll be honest.