Sufjan Stevens, Illinois (2005)

Talkdemonic, Beat Romantic (2006)

Victory at Sea, All Your Things Are Gone (2005)

Young People, All at Once (2006)

First off, I should say that this post is several years past its expiration date. It’s like I see a requiem for indie rock in some magazine or another every year, so I shouldn’t annoy anyone by adding my voice to the chorus now. But the sheer mediocrity of three of my recent CD orders left me with no other way to review them than by clustering them into a . . .

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It’s a pirate movie, and that’s it.  Anything you saw in Pirates of the Caribbean, you could pretty much see here first.  But despite its lack of ambition, Cutthroat Island is nowhere near bad enough that it should have ended Geena Davis’s career.  It keeps its feet firmly planted in B-Movie Land, whether with the incongruously lipsticked British governor-general or with the immortal line of Marion-Berry-esque dialogue, “Bitch stole my map!”  Which is delivered with a perfect poker face by Frank Langella, who doesn’t seem to care that he’s in B-Movie Land. 

Davis, by contrast, doesn’t seem to . . .

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Because just because he’s dead doesn’t mean he deserves a movie.  And just because he got a movie anyway doesn’t mean it’s good.  As the steadily balding and steadfastly boring cinematic pope, Thomas Kretschmann treads water for a while until a tidal wave of the usual biopic suspects (temporal fragmentation, indifference to characterization or theme, dialogue bound for Barlett’s Familiar Quotations) drags him under.

O mighty Python, O mighty Boa!
One moved fast, the other no slowah…

Hunters and agents were on your tails,
and perky blondes with skin so pale.

Boa Vs Python, Brother versus Brother;
both hunting, both hunted, pitted against the other.

Alas! I knew only one could prevail
but what if that train had derailed?
Would you still be battling, great serpent gods?
Would I still be taking midnight odds?

All I know is now it’s done,
but Komodo Vs Cobra is on at one.

I sure didn’t add this to my Netflix queue for its plot. Here’s the synopsis: “While she spends her days filing papers as a harried office temp, Myra returns home each evening to an even more chaotic world, where her eccentric younger brother, Ludlow, staves off manic episodes through his art. But when Myra opens her heart to a shy but endearing co-worker, her love for her brother finds a rival…and Ludlow fights back for her affection.” Meaningless jobs? Shy people with problems? Mental illness? Bonding against all odds? Stinks of Eau d’Generic Indie to me.

No, what drew me . . .

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