EDIT: Alright, alright. I finished watching the Steve Zissou movie. It picks up, has a few laugh out loud moments, and overall is a decent movie. I felt kind of bad after ripping into it. No, I didn't end up loving it or wanting to see it again, but it wasn't as bad as the first 20 minutes or so had led me to believe.

Watched a movie last night...Wes Anderson's "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou". I know what some of you might be thinking: "here comes more effusive praise of some album, movie, or book he just discovered." Well, not exactly.

In fact I thought the movie was abysmal. And not just bad in a traditional sense. Technically there was much that was good about it, such as the beautiful colours and interesting camera angles. The real problem lies in Wes Anderson himself. The guy has finally started listening to the craven hordes of sycophantic jackasses that attach their identity and self-worth to indie art and indie music and open-source software (kidding, huh-hoy!) and any manner of self-important crap. They told him he was the Messiah, that he could do no wrong, that all he touched turned to gold, and he believed them. The guy thinks he can do a closeup of Bill Murray and it is funny...not even funny, some other annoyingly pretentious word, like "wry" or "pithy".

This was a vapid, vacuous movie that drips with snot-nosed arrogance. I can only imagine the types who sit around droning about the wit and irony and dualism and existentially interposed post-modernism of this movie, trying to convince their fellow snobs that they, too, "get it" and should be considered part of the stylish intelligentsia...while in their hearts they know as well as any of us that it really isn't that good. They just want to fit in.

I loved Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore, don't get me wrong. I even liked Bottle Rocket. I'm all for intelligent humour, but this movie didn't make me laugh at all. I may have cracked a smile at the "rattlesnake bit the cat in the throat" bit, but that was it. Turned it off 2/3 of the way through. Couldn't handle any more of that utter tripe.

I can handle a bad movie that kind of realizes its bad...a humbly bad movie, you know, a low-budget, lets go out and make a cheap throwaway movie sort of thing. But a movie that reeks of arrogance and self-consciousness like this one, into the trash bin it goes.

On the subject of things I DO like...Chris Squire's "Fish Out Of Water" album is one of the best bits of music I've ever heard, and its so tragically obscure. Also, the grooves of Steely Dan's "My Old School" helped me wake up this morning over a cup of coffee. "That'll be the day I go back to Annandale!"

And don't forget my "brog":

http://stcrispins.blogspot.com