The Automatik

Something is wrong with the world when I start feeling less annoyed by crappy bands like Korn, Rage Against the Machine, or Crazy Town in the face of bands like Godsmack, Full Devil Jacket, and Linkin Park. Even Moby and Gwen Stefani now seem appealing. At least Gwen is a more positive role model than the singer from Snake River Conspiracy. Wes Borland from Limp Bizkit (you know, the one that looks like a mime on crack) has a new album out called Big Dumb Face. And while I am sure that it is more than his face that is dumb, even that doesn’t turn my stomach like Mudvayne, who must be seen and heard to be believed. MTV2 has a special on this week about “new artists” and Mudvayne is being spotlighted. Riiiiiiight. They are artists in the way an infant is an artist when it craps in its diaper.
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The most appalling video that I have seen recently, and probably of all time, is Robbie Williams’ “Rock D.J.”
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I broke my promise not to watch the Oscars this year, but only because I wanted to see Benicio del Toro. It was actually a lot less cheesy than I thought, although I’m still groaning over the fact that Gladiator won anything except Best Special Effects. Steve Martin’s one-liners were refreshingly funny and I hope he’s back next year, because Billy Crystal’s cornball song and dance numbers have grown pretty tiresome. I was cracking up when he quipped, “I hope my plastic surgery will heal in time for the Oscars” and the camera cut to Michael Douglas. If only it had cut to Winona Ryder when he jokingly lamented how hard it is to keep a relationship going in Hollywood because you “sleep with so many other people.”
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Dir. John Herzfeld

I have said many times lately that the music industry has gone so far in its crassness and sheer vulgarity, that the only logical next step is for bands to start killing each other and/or audience members on stage. The creators of 15 Minutes seem to have reached a similar conclusion. However, I found the movie somewhat disappointing and I wish that it had focused less on instant celebrity and more on the masses who devour the most grotesque side of humanity as entertainment. For all of its preaching on the pitfalls of fame, the big-name cast of 15 Minutes (Robert DeNiro, Charlize Theron, Kelsey Grammer) was distracting. It actually weakened the message of the movie, one which seemed to shout that the famous always get their come-uppance.

The filmmakers did well in casting unknowns in the role of the two Eastern European criminals. The most impressive was Karel Roden, particularly menacing as cold-hearted murderer Emil Slovak. His friend Oleg videotapes Emil’s killings with meticulous yet detached tenacity. Soulless talk show host Robert Hawkins (Grammer), who airs the tapes on national television, is almost cartoonish in his depravity, but he doesn’t seem all that different from trash tv hosts like Jerry Springer and Jenny Jones with their pending lawsuits from real-life murders. By showing so many explicitly violent scenes however, the movie seems to be undermining its own point. It is most effective in its more subtle moments. Ed Burns is good as nice-guy-firefighter Jordy Warsaw who is not exempt from being starry-eyed over hot shot police detective Eddie Flemming (DeNiro). His aborted love affair with a murder witness is sweet but too short. Flemming’s romance with television reporter Nicolette Karas (Melinda Kanakaredes) is another effective, but underdeveloped plot point.

Rather than being grave and graphic, I think 15 Minutes would have worked better if it had been either more detached from its subject or more intimately involved with its characters. Better still if the filmmakers had gone the other route and done the whole think as a deadly black comedy, the kind mastered by Bret Easton Ellis in novels like American Psycho and Glamorama. No matter how heavy-handed or clumsy 15 Minutes may be, its point is well-taken. How far will we push the envelope of celebrity culture until it pushes back too hard?

Jude Law is one of the most gorgeous creatures ever to smolder across the big screen. Yeah, but can he act? Law’s career has been dominated by roles as the handsome, cocksure bastard with the devastating grin. But as Vassili Zietsev, the sniper hero of the Red Army, Law doesn’t have much to smile about. His kill record is impressive and thousands worship him, but the Nazis have already destroyed Stalingrad and it is not a pretty sight.
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Forget Oasis. If you really want to hear the legacy of the Beatles, you should listen to Sloan. I hate to even compare them to anyone, but trust me, it’s fitting. It’s a crime that Creed and Limp Bizkit CDs have sold a gazillion copies because Sloan are the saviors of rock and roll music that we’ve all been waiting for.
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