CleverDonkey.com …Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel

This is the resurgence of garage rock, hunh? I’m no expert (couldn’t tell a Hive from a Vine if I had a bad case of both), but I have to say, if you’re going to listen to non-groundbreaking musical stylings, I find that straight-up, just-one-shade-above-playing-at-a-local-bar type rock-and-roll ain’t a bad way to go.

So far everything about this CD experience has been nearly straight out of the late 70’s. I bought it low-tech: I heard their song once on the radio, thought it catchy, and went right out to Best Buy to get it without hearing / researching any further (“How retro,” comments engineerboy dryly). The album looks low-tech: I’m convinced the cover art might actually be the “Stillwater” album from Almost Famous. Either that or Jet found the guy who did the cover art for my mom’s album The Best of Bread, circa 1976. The sparse liner notes don’t even

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Click here to see the review of Kill Bill: Vol 2.

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is Quentin Tarantino’s fourth film as a director. Well, third-and-a-half would be more appropriate, since this is really the first half of one film, not the first film in a film/sequel progression. So far he’s batting .500 in my book. I *loved* Reservoir Dogs, and still watch it once every year or two, even though it’s a tough, gritty ordeal. I’ve never been able to watch Pulp Fiction all the way through, finding it to be a moronic, but more slickly Hollywood, pale imitation derived from Dogs. I’ve seen enough movies that I believe I can tell the difference between good films that I just don’t happen to like and bad films. Pulp Fiction may not be a bad film, but it’s sure not good, and certainly not great, and I have always struggled to

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Another star is born. Jack Black has slowly been working his way up the movie role food chain, starting with small roles in movies like Waterworld, Bob Roberts, Demolition Man, The Cable Guy, and Mars Attacks, and then moving up to more visible roles in such films as High Fidelity and Shallow Hal. And now, in School of Rock, he has grabbed the mic in his first big, mainstream, successful starring vehicle.

He is starting to be compared with John Belushi and Chris Farley, and I think those comparisons are close to the mark. Black has a unique style, and while he doesn’t appear to trying to emulate either of them (or anyone else), he does have Belushi’s commanding presence and Farley’s endearing earnestness, as well as the comic abilities shared by both. One hopes that Black will be able control the conflagrations of fame to become an enduring fixture, and

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