I'm really excited to see this movie. Here's a strange thought I just had while reading your review - just going by the trailer(s), and the color palette etc. displayed therein, this seems like Michael Bay's attempt at a Tony Scott movie to me. Like, his version of Domino. Any thoughts on that?

You had me until you quoted Christgau...but that was the very last line of the piece, so I guess it worked out all right.

When I was 14 or 15, my dad took my brother and me to the Palace in Paterson - I wanted to see SURF NAZIS MUST DIE!, and unsurprisingly that was the only theater in the tri-state area showing it. The weirdest thing happened, though - we got there and the movie was already in progress, showtime be damned. So we watched the end of it, and then another movie started up - NEAR DARK. So we watched that, and then ANOTHER movie started - PRINCE OF DARKNESS! So we hung out for a little bit of that, and then went to get pizza. One of the great moviegoing experiences of my teenaged life.

I'll rep for 'R Xmas, The Blackout and New Rose Hotel. None of 'em touch Bad Lieutenant or King of New York (or even The Addiction, another one I think is worth seeing, just for the way Christopher Walken says the line "Have you read William Burroughs?"), but each has individual scenes that make the whole thing worthwhile. Hell, The Blackout makes me wish Ferrara had been hired to direct The Hangover.

So is RAMPART pretty much a rehash of DARK BLUE (also Ellroy-scripted, but set in '92 and with Kurt Russell in the Harrelson part)?

Haven't seen this yet - it's unlikely to reach the NJ multiplex where I do my flick-viewin'. But both of the OSS 117 movies made me laugh my ass off (something only the first Austin Powers managed); hell, Dujardin makes me laugh just looking at him. He's got a fantastic comic face. And I've never seen Vertigo. So maybe I'm the kinda uncouth barbarian for whom this is ideally suited.

I don't like it. But I don't like Lou Reed very much at all. I've tried, for decades...he's part of the required curriculum, after all, thanks in large part to the efforts of Christgau and Bangs, so as a person who has written about music (mostly rock-based music) for over 15 years, I pretty much had to contend with his catalog to some degree, at some point. I could probably cull a half dozen songs, total, from the dozen or so albums (solo and VU) I've heard, but there's so much other stuff I like better, why bother? Life's short. You're right, LULU is not totally unlistenable. Not by a long shot. There are riffs on there I'd love to hear Metallica repurpose on their next album. And the second (instrumental) half of "Junior Dad," the album's 20-minute closer, is very pretty. The biggest surprise coming out of the whole thing, for me, was Robert Trujillo's bass playing, and I've been a fan of his since he was in Suicidal Tendencies and calling himself "Stymie." But everything I don't like about LULU can be laid right at the feet of Lou Reed. Which was kinda what I expected to happen before I ever pressed play on the thing. I would rather have heard Metallica collaborate with David Thomas, or Mark E. Smith, or Leonard Cohen, or Scott Walker.

The exact line Cinetrix quoted was running through my head this very morning. Napier was indeed awesome. Shame his death (and the death of Sarah Palin's career as a public figure) are destined to be swallowed up by the loss of Jobs.

I'm with bill upthread - seeing this one for sure this coming weekend, and I'll sit through the bad stuff to get to the gold, like any genre fan does pretty much every time they head to the theater.

I need to hear this record now. Newborn is one of many gaping holes in my knowledge of jazz, and I have been known to mutter about being perfectly happy to go the rest of my life without ever hearing another piano trio, but you've done an excellent job of salesmanship. I saw Roy Haynes play at Sonny Rollins' 80th birthday show at the Beacon Theater last year (the recording comes out on Tuesday). Even at 86, he hits HARD.

Saw the first Pusher movie, was unimpressed, skipped the second and third. Popped Bronson out of the DVD player about 10 minutes in, maybe sooner. Saw Valhalla Rising and fucking LOVED it; wrote about it for MSN, in fact: http://on-msn.com/eP04BA I'm planning on seeing Drive because I like Gosling and I love Walter Hill's The Driver. The presence of Albert Brooks is only a plus because I liked him in Out Of Sight; I don't find him funny at all.

I own the DVD box (the one that doesn't include the Burton shitpile) and Beneath is the one I haven't revisited yet, because I saw it as a little kid, as the after-school movie on Channel 5, and it blasted my tiny brain all over the room. I can't say I'm particularly tempted to see this one, because I am of a generation that believes if you want apes in your movie, you GET YOUR ACTORS IN SOME GODDAMN SUITS.

I have just never been able to get into Brazilian music, with the exception of the rock sound of the Pernambuco region (the band to hear is Naçao Zumbi) and some early Sepultura. Samba and bossa nova do absolutely nothing for me. You can imagine what a huge problem this was when I was editing the world music magazine Global Rhythm from 2005-2007. Every time we ran a feature on a Brazilian artist, which was often 'cause that's one of the biggest subsets of the whole world music realm, you could hear me cringing and muttering from across the office.

We had some of the same thoughts (including thoughts of Elvis), it seems. I reviewed the new Britney album at BurningAmbulance.com today; here's a link: http://bit.ly/gYUeiA

I LIKE the new Harvey disc, a lot, and I'm not even a huge fan. It's part Kate Bush, part Siouxsie, and part Fairport Convention/Pentangle. If any of those things appeals to you, you'll dig it. (SFJ is a vastly overrated critic and thinker, by the way.)

I, too, am a member of the "Statham's in it? Sold" club, and fortunately, so is my wife. Very much looking forward to this one - and to catching FASTER on DVD.

>brian p: "Spanglish" had Paz Vega. So "Spanglish" wins.

Link to my Centurion review didn't show up in my last comment; here 'tis: http://bit.ly/bkXX1n

Glad to see Centurion on your list. I wrote about it for MSN - not in their movie section, though; on my metal blog.

The commercials for Tangled have been TERRIBLE, so your review is damn intriguing to me. Might wind up at this one instead of that Rock movie this weekend.

This movie used to come on Channel 5 in the afternoons on a fairly regular basis. I remember watching it after school with my brother. Not even slightly scary, even to elementary school kids, but kinda awesome.

"Wonder if she gets to keep any of her various costumes." Based on red carpet photos I've seen, I think she SUPPLIES her costumes when she shows up for a role.

Two reviews, two references to Chekhov. Have I spotted a critic's tic? (Mine is the use of "reminiscent of" in the place of "sounds like." I don't know when I started making that switch, but it shows up in a whole lot of my album reviews.) Anyway, I like Tony Scott's movies, even/especially at their most absurdist; I own "Domino" on DVD. I'm not seriously hoping "Unstoppable" will be as good as "Runaway Train," but I am probably gonna check it out this weekend. I had semi-high hopes for "Skyline," but that's probably just a result of spending too much time on io9.com, so I'll take your word for it and wait for it to show up on Netflix. (I liked "Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem," though, for the record.)

Dub Housing is my favorite Ubu album. I don't think I ever played it around my mom, though; the only disc of theirs I owned while still living w/parents was the "greatest hits" disc Terminal Tower. The only music I was forbidden to play around the house was AC/DC, because Brian Johnson's voice drove my mom batshit. She liked Iggy's voice, though, and she was a big Talking Heads fan.

I interviewed Thomas for a cover story in The Wire a couple of years ago, around the time Pere Ubu released Why I Hate Women, an album with one of the all-time great titles. A fascinating guy, with some really compelling ideas about the role of the rock frontman and about songwriting POV - basically, he doesn't feel at all obligated to present his "real self" onstage or in his lyrics; in his view, he's being paid to be "David Thomas," and "David Thomas" is what you'll get. David Thomas (minus the quotes) is who he is in his off-hours.