To pack for Desert Island.

Currently Listening to: Michael Jackson – I Wanna Be Where You Are

RIP Michael Jackson.  I never really grew up listening to him or followed him and such, but I’m starting to pick up some of his stuff right now, and it’s awesome.  I guess it took his death for me to latch onto his magic.

I saw this floating on Nah Right.

For some reason, it got me thinking about Desert Island.. like what 5 albums or whatever, I would take with me onto a Desert Island.

So what I’m going to do is 5 Movies, 5 Albums, 5 Books, and 5 TV Shows.

Movies

1. The Dark Knight Out of all of Nolan’s stuff, I think this is his best.  Memento and The Presitge come really close, but I’m a comic book nerd and I need a super hero movie.

2. American History X Edward Norton is by far my favorite actor of all time, and this is his best work.  Great story with great characters.

3. Infernal Affairs I could watch this over and over again.  Andy Lau and Tony Leung are exceptional, and this version is clearly better than that debacle that won Scorcese an Oscar.  Treachery.

4. Remember the Titans The mere thought that I wouldn’t ever be able to watch fooball again could drive me to drown myself.  Great stuff by Denzel Washington.

5. Good Will Hunting. Robin Williams is an alum of CMC, Matt Damon is awesome.  I love the story and the raw characters.

Strong considerations- The Wackness, Apocalypse Now, Shawshank Redemption, Usual Suspects

Albums

Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not I’m pretty sure I LOVE every track on this album except maybe.. “Perhaps Vampires is a Bit Strong…”.  ” The View from the Afternoon”, “Fake Tales From San Francisco”, and especially “When the Sun Goes Down” pushed me through highschool. Humbug is out soon.  I’m excited.

Blu and Exile – Below the Heavens Again, I love every single track.  This is probably what propelled me from just listening to music to living and obsessing over Hip Hop.

Lupe Fiasco – The Cool.  If you could only choose one Lupe album, which one would it be? This is hard cause I LOVE “Daydreamin’” but you can’t go wrong with “Hip Hop Saved My Life” and “Superstar”.   Hopefully Lasers is just as good.

Jay-Z – The Black Album. Blah blah blah, The Blueprint is better. whatever.  This is MY Jay-Z album.

The Cool Kids – Bake Sale. Just cause its fun.  really really fucking fun.

Strong considerations. N*E*R*D – Seeing Sounds (it was this or Cool Kids), K’naan – The Dusty Foot Philosopher, Atmosphere – When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint that Shit Gold, and Outkast – Speakerboxx, The Love Below

EDIT: OH SHIT OH SHIT! I FORGOT ABOUT NE-YO’S YEAR OF THE GENTLEMAN!  that trumps JAY-Z for me. GAHHHH

Books

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - the one HP book I could associate myself with the most and I have to bring a HP book.

Reza Aslan’s No god but God – Something about Reza Aslan’s diction/voice/writing soothes me.

Chuck Hogan’s Prince of Thieves – Love the main character (forget his name) and his internal conflicts.

Y: The Last Man - I read the entire series in about 36 hours. Yeah.

Bill Simmon’s New NBA book – I don’t know what its called and its out this fall, but I know I won’t survive without the Sports guy.  It’s a true love/hate relationship.

Strong Considerations: The Quran, Goblet of Fire, Ender’s Game, Beck, The Last Halloween, Pax Romana

Shows (I’m not going to explain this)

Battlestar Galactica

Cowboy Bebop

How I Met Your Mother

Band of Brothers

Entourage

Strong Considerations: Life, Tenjou Tenge Gurren Lagaan, The Office, Samurai Champloo

To back up Transformers 2.

Currently Listening to: Novel – Hold On

There was probably only one moment where I was truly removed from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen last night when I went to grab the midnight screening with a couple of friends.  It was around the two hour mark, and fatigue really started settling in…  I started to think that this movie just might be a little bit too long.  Not that its a bad thing…  I love the first Transfomers (although I don’t think I’ve reached fanboy status), but now that first movie just seems boring and plain; understated to a fault.  Revenge of the Fallen is everything you expect from Michael Bay, but now to new, uncharted levels.  The action is exponentially better, and the plot exponentially worse (I can’t even count how many holes there are in the plot.)  The visuals are stunning – and yes it extends beyond Megan Fox, – but at the same time, the camerawork remains very much Michael Bay.  You see the plane/helicopter in front of the sunset, the 360 camera pan of each individual characters as they slowly rise; not to a fault  per se, but we’ve seen it done before in the last 15 or so years.  The dialogue is bad, VERY BAD, but at the same time, injected with wit and humor that you realize that it’s SUPPOSED to be bad.

It isn’t the rebirth of Apocalypse Now or Casablanca, but it is a highlight of the mindless fun and action that makes Hollywood insurmountable amounts of money every summer.  Not to mention that it may very well be the last summer for such mindless fun, because Hollywood is always a year behind the economy.  After all, movies take time to develop and it is very much a “long term” investment.  But it is Michael Bay, at his best (because he knows no better), and we should treat it as much.  Put it this way, if he really is that bad, he wouldn’t be allowed to make movies, but he sets goals (which are drastically different from Francis Coppolla or David Fincher) and he reaches them.

That’s why pseudo-intellectuals from major publications (Huffington Post, Huffington Post 2, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune.. to name a few) judged the movie without even truly watching it… and why (for a movie with a target audience that was clearly 13-39 year old males) a woman, was one of the few to actually grasp the movie for what it was/should be.

It’s the only reason why lines like this -

“It’s also good to see that a sequence in Egypt (first believed by intrepid humans to be Las Vegas) includes praise for Jordanian choppers that come to Sam’s rescue, though one wonders where the Egyptians were, and what they will think about a rampaging robot lopping the top off a Pyramid.” The General contacts the Egyptians for help.

-or this-

“Sam goes off to college, but finds himself beset by bizarre visions and arcane symbols that prompt him to announce, during a lecture class, that Einstein was wrong. About what? The movie doesn’t say.” He disproves E=MC^2 and mumbles in Cybertronian or whatever it is, to prove it.

- are written.  Despite the fact that the movie is supposed to be “Michael Bay’s 150-minute celebration of attention deficit disorder,”  I seemed to get a better grasp of it (despite watching it at a relatively absurd hour on very little sleep) and saved judgment for the movie until AFTER it was over.  Please Mr. Morgenstern, at least try.

What’s surprising is just how critically successful Star Trek is despite the fact that they’re almost the same movie, with the same plot holes, the same effects, the same cheesy lines, and the same obsessive fan base (okay, not really).  Not to mention that both movies were written by the same crew of writers.

Okay.  so the movie is perhaps racially insensitive, a bit misogynistic, and crude.  But we, the ones don’t watch movies for a living, seem to see it for what it is supposed to be, treated it as such, and loved it.   It’s time you do the same; because lets be honest, its not like you didn’t do it for Star Trek.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-mendelson/huff-post-review—transf_b_219510.html

To explain why I’ve lost faith in the NBA.

Currently Listening to: Amerie – Dear John
This is supposed to be an epic era; the NFL of the summer because, lets be honest, nothing in American sports even pales to either college or professional football.  But its not.  Bill Simmons is right; the NBA needs to fix its policy with its referees but I’m getting increasingly frustrated with the NBA for so many more reasons.

1)  The Dick Bavetta’s and Joe Crawford’s should not be on the court.  They are not in the adequate physical and mental condition to be referees at this level.  If the athletes are considerably faster, stronger, and quicker now in comparison to say… 1975, the year Bavetta started reffing, does it make sense to have slower, weaker judges on the court?   It isn’t so much that they’re no longer adequate to do their jobs, its more that they seem to force themselves to dictate the game.  Lets just go to the OT of Game 4 of the finals..  The Derek Fisher foul on Dwight Howard was not a foul, but it was called and forced a tie.  The Bryant elbow to the jaw of Jameer Nelson is a foul but wasn’t called and forced a three point lead.  Trevor Ariza roughing on Turkoglu as he shot before Gasol’s dunk to make it a five point lead was a foul and that was the final nail in the coffin.  Come on.  That was disappointing to watch.

2) Pau Gasol, beforing getting bitched by a whiny Pietrus, should have passed that ball and not dunked it and just let the time play out.  Its how you play the game.  Instead he boosted his stats from a decent 13 and 10 to a more-decent 16 and 10.  But see this isn’t something that happened once.  From now until Sunday, I’m going to have to listen about Pietrus and Gasol.  They’re going to debate whether there should be suspensions handed out  (NO.  If they do, I’m definitely jumping ship).  And then they’re going to draw the.. Oh France and Spain hate each other.   This bitter rivalry, “oh shit I’m the best mentality”, pussy whiny shit happens every series.  Rockets Lakers?   Nuggets Mavs? Nuggets Lakers?  Cavs Celts? Magic Cavs?  We have Ronny and Kobe/Scola D-Fish, and their subsequent bitching, and then we have K-Mart and Mark Cuban, and then we have this Melo v. Kobe crap, and then we have Rafer Alston and Eddie House doing their thing, and then Dwight Howard complaining and then Lebron bailing.  Enough.  Grow up.

3) Game 2 should actually be a Magic win.  Even Phil Jackson said that the last attempt by Courtney Lee in regulation was a goaltending by Pau Gasol.   Lets, because of how things were playing out anyway (the Magic, save for Turkoglu, stunk in the last 10 minutes of the game… this is including OT) say that the Lakers win game 4 anyway.  The series should be 2-2… Wouldn’t that make things more interesting?  Instead, I’m going to watch a team probably throw away game 5 to win in Staples in game 6 and another team that probably won’t buy what their coach says because no one takes him seriously and just drop in 6.

4) The 2-3-2 format is retarded.  Seriously.  If a team wins one of the first two games; they have homecourt for three straight?  To be fair, both Staples and Amway aren’t great homecourts because LA defines front running and does not know how to will a team, and Orlando is in Florida.  If you live in a town not called Tampa Bay, you’re a front running douche.  EX.1  Miami.  The Heat win two championships but now attendence is ridiculously low.  EX.2 the Marlins.  I mean come on.  EX.3 The Panthers.  To be fair, its hockey in Florida.

But lets put the away team in MSG, American Airlines, or TD Bankworth.  That’s a town where a team will, for that entire week your in town, not let you forget you were away from home sweet home.  They’re towns where, as an opposing player, I would not go out to eat, and If I did, I would have some towel boy taste my food before I eat.  Lets put this way.  If the 2-3-2 were great, we’d use it for the entire playoffs, and the NHL would use it. I would RATHER have home court in the three games in between.

5) The top two picks go to the worst franchises in professional sport history.  I struggle to find two more teams with a worse track record then the Grizzlies and the Clippers.  God hopes that the Zombie Sonics get Ricky Rubio and not Hasheem Thabeet.

I’m going to watch the Stanley Cup Game 7 tomorrow.  Celebrate another great season of hockey, and then just watch baseball for the rest of the summer.  Go Dodgers, go Red Sox.  I’m over it.