Sonny Smith is a native of San Francisco, by way of Gunnison, Colorado (of all places), and now he’s back in the gloomy San Francisco bay turning out some cool songs with his band The Sunsets (that sometimes includes Shayde Sartin, Tim Cohen and Kelley Stoltz). They remind me a bit of another San Francisco band, Girls, cept Sonny & The Sunsets have a lots more of a 50’s sound. I’m hearing some Buddy Holly, some “Teenager In Love” by Dion (speaking of why doesn’t Ronnie James Dio sue DIon if he’s gonan try and fuck with Dios? They’re both only one letter…) and some of The Beatles in here. All of the above are good things. Plus who the dude blogs his dreams on his band’s website, totally rad. Check those out HERE.

In 2009 the band released their debut 7″ single (“Love & Death”) and their debut LP “Tomorrow is Alright” shortly after, both are on Soft Abuse Records (who doesn’t send me promos – hint hint). And I posted mp3s from both releases both for you to check out… and don’t go missing those links after the digital music files.

MP3: Sonny – “Too Young to Burn”

MP3: Sonny – “Death Cream”

MP3: Sonny – “Chapters”

Link: http://sonnysmith.com

Link: http://www.softabuse.com/artists/sonny_and_sunsets.html

Link: http://www.myspace.com/sonnythesunsets

Yep, not only is it Monday night but it’s also Buddyhead’s night of rock n’ roll at The Hotel Cafe…

Tonight, March 1st, 2010 from 9pm til 1am come see live performances by: Paige, Dora, Liv and Lindsay, Dios, Thousand Dozen Gloves, Brandon Intelligator and the Sheriffs (members of Slang Chickens) & Sean Y Zander (members of The Circle Jerks & Throwrag).

It’s gonna be a good ol’ time.

Promise.

Check websites, photos and mp3s of all the bands below.

Welcome.

RSVP via Facebook – HERE.

9:00 PM – Paige, Dora, Liv and Lindsay – http://www.myspace.com/paigestarkmusic

MP3: “Long Black Evil”
MP3: “Fight”
MP3: “Baby Come Home”

10:00 PM- The Dirty Mac (members of Dios) – http://www.myspace.com/diosmalos & http://wearedios.com/

MP3: “Stare At Wheel” (from the new LP “We Are Dios”)
MP3: “Grrrl”
MP3: “Starting Five”

11PM – Thousand Dozen Gloves – http://www.myspace.com/tdg1929

MP3: “Pick Me”
MP3: “Broadway Limited”
MP3: “No Guns”

12PM – Brandon Intelligator and the Sheriffs – http://www.myspace.com/intelligatormusic

MP3: “Nightmare”
MP3: “Ashes To Ashes”

See you tonight.

Jaguar Love
“Hologram Jams”
Fat Possum

Let’s get one thing straight before anyone gets the flame whips out. This is filthy pop music. There’s none of the tintinnabular prettiness of the Magnetic Fields or kitschy prog-electro of Basement Jaxx… just grimy, noisy pop. To try and press the attack (whether libellous or mere analytic) from the angle of some kind of avant garde alternative beacon that happens to trade in hooks and melodies, is fruitless and frankly, missing the point. That’s like calling out Liars for making noise music or Mike Patton for being criminally insane. The only sense in which this music suggests experimentation is Johnny Whitney and Cody Votalato’s feverish desire to push the envelope of indie cred as hard as they can on gates of mainstream electro-pop, like a dog dragging itself across the carpet. Make no mistake, friends: these boys are digging through the dumpsters of trash culture like some kind of junkie Beck straight out the Mellow Gold era, except with broken keyboards and stolen drum machines. What my job to ascertain is just exactly what circle of pop hell have they dug themselves into? Are they the ones frying in the river of blood or just the demon keepers of those that do?

So if this is pop, and it is, let’s go through the criteria of just what makes it so. Most importantly

(a) does it make me stupidly happy, irrespective – or perhaps as a direct result –of whatever disgusting synth manipulation and 4-bit drumbeat they have dredged up?

And

(b) are the tunes so molasses saccharine that I can’t do anything but smile like I’m juiced to the eyeballs on pure MDMA and alternate between stupidly bobbing my head and down and swaying like a boogier at a ‘Dead concert?

Short answer: yes. It’s unconscionably fun music: from the synth-basted krautpop (99 Luftballoons, anyone?) of I Started A Fire, to the earworming rock freak out chorus/bridge of Piece of My Heart. It’s a sickly sweet concoction of tunes that are almost as lively as they are emasculating.

And yet the worst moments here are also often the most endearing. Cherry Soda speaks for itself, both in cock-teasing accessibility and nomenclature. Visualise: a pseudo-rapped (a la Anthony Kiedas circa One Hot Minute) tropological collage with something about riding a mastodon to the prom and and plugging your earphones into the sewer to listen for 808’s. Cue gratuitously pitch shifted title chants, wilfully hacked into a sample-destined, dancepit ready sing-alongs and you get the picture. Gross, yeah? You’re damn right it’s gross. And yet, like a bad rash, you just can’t stop scratching at that shit. The play count on my laptop is at 7 and I’ve already wasted a good 100 words on it… that’s one to the not-Blood Brothers Pt. II.

So really, when we get right down to it, the crux of the fragile partition that separates them from their more bourgeois female counterparts is secreted in Whitney’s eccentric vocal tic. That’s it. If this were a female singer with more pedestrian lyrics, it would be game over. That, the boys punk credentials and the thin layer of overdrive that permeates every nook and cranny of every beat are the only thing holding this back from the  itunes Top 30 list, and this thing hasn’t even dropped yet.

The reason that the Blood Brothers worked so well is that it was a classic Lennon/McCarntney writing partnership, in spirit anyway. Seems like the other dudes in Past Lives have the musical wherewithal to pull off the whole, you know, “technically interesting music” thing but lack what a more eloquent critic might call the joi de vivre to make it actually worth listening to. Conversely, Jaguar Love are just spilling their formless pop load over everything that they can passably formulate into song. And I, for one, dig it just enough to critically ruffle their hair and say “Ey, you guys are alright!”

You see, for all the bogus song-writing and half-screamo hooks it does make me want to dance, and ever moreso every time I listen. It’s a deliberately grating effort for anyone, either because of it’s mica-shiny presentation or for the obvious self-imposed limitations on that. Maybe I’m a bad person for getting off on ‘bad’ pop like this. Fine, consider this my integrity served up on a silver platter, I’ll still take Purple Rain with me to the grave.

Breaking Banners Is Fun

Jaguar Love \”Welcome to the Birdskull Palace”

Punching George Bush in the Crotch Interview

My homeboys, and some of the biggest Metallica fans on the planet, The Dillinger Escape Plan are back with a new record and with a long ass list of tour dates (which is basically a list of days that Greg their singer is gonna climb shit like a wild animal). And by the look of that list of shows, chances are they’ll be melting people’s faces off with solos in your town, wherever you live in the US. DEP’s new studio album “Option Paralysis” doesn’t come out March 22nd, 2010 but in the meantime you can watch the trailer for the video of the record’s first single, “Farewell, Mona Lisa”…

…Download an mp3 of the blistering “Farewell, Mona Lisa”…

The Dillinger Escape Plan – “Farewell, Mona Lisa”

… And via http://www.optionparalysis.net/ you can pre-order the new album in a variety of formats, including a massive cube box set (pictured below) that I’m hoping Ben or Greg gift me. Hint hint!

Tour Dates:

Mar 11 2010 Irving Plaza – HEADLINING     New York City, New York
Mar 12 2010 The Palladium – HEADLINING     Worcestor, Massachusetts
Mar 13 2010 Le Cabaret JPR – HEADLINING     Montreal, Quebec
Mar 14 2010 Opera House – HEADLINING     Toronto, Ontario
Mar 15 2010 Grog Shop – HEADLINING     Cleveland Heights, Ohio
Mar 16 2010 Blue Note – HEADLINING     Columbia, Missouri
Mar 20 2010 Granada Theater – HEADLINING     Dallas, Texas
Mar 21 2010 Wired Live – HEADLINING     Houston, Texas
Mar 23 2010 The Social – HEADLINING     Orlando, Florida
Mar 24 2010 The Masquerade – HEADLINING     Atlanta, Georgia
Mar 25 2010 Tremont Music Hall – HEADLINING     Charlotte, North Carolina
Mar 26 2010 The Greene Street Club – HEADLINING     Greenesboro, North Carolina
Mar 27 2010 The Basement – HEADLINING     Columbus, Ohio
Mar 28 2010 First Unitarian Church – HEADLINING     Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Mar 29 2010 Otto Bar – HEADLINING     Baltimore, Maryland
Mar 30 2010 Chameleon Club – HEADLINING     Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Mar 31 2010 Diesel – HEADLINING     Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Apr 1 2010 The Eagle Theatre – HEADLINING     Pontiac, Michigan
Apr 2 2010 Reggie’s Rock Club – HEADLINING     Chicago, Illinois
Apr 3 2010 The Rock – Headlining     Maplewood, Minnesota
Apr 6 2010 Republik – HEADLINING     Calgary, Alberta
Apr 7 2010 Starlite Room – HEADLINING     Edmonton, Alberta
Apr 9 2010 Rickshaw Theatre – HEADLINING     Vancouver, British Columbia
Apr 10 2010 El Corazon – HEADLINING     Seattle, Washington
Apr 11 2010 Hawthorne Theatre – HEADLINING     Portland, Oregon
Apr 13 2010 Glass House – HEADLINING     Pomona, California
Apr 16 2010 COACHELLA     Indio, California
Jun 24 2010 Cricket Amphitheatre – WARPED TOUR     San Diego, California
Jun 25 2010 Home Depot Center – WARPED TOUR     Carson, California
Jun 26 2010 Shoreline Amphitheatre – WARPED TOUR     Mountain View, California
Jun 27 2010 Seaside Park – WARPED TOUR     Ventura, California
Jun 29 2010 Cricket Pavilion – WARPED TOUR     Phoenix, Arizona
Jun 30 2010 N.M.S.U. Practice Field – WARPED TOUR     Las Cruces, New Mexico
Jul 1 2010 AT&T Center – WARPED TOUR     San Antonio, Texas
Jul 2 2010 The Showgrounds At Sam Houston Race Park – WARPED TOUR     Houston, Texas
Jul 3 2010 Superpages.com Center – WARPED TOUR     Dallas, Texas
Jul 5 2010 Verizon Wireless Amphitheater – WARPED TOUR     St.Louis, Missouri
Jul 6 2010 Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre – WARPED TOUR     Indianapolis, Indiana
Jul 7 2010 Post Gazette Pavilion – WARPED TOUR     Burgettstown, Pennsylvania
Jul 8 2010 Time Warner Cable Amphitheatre – WARPED TOUR     Cleveland, Ohio
Jul 9 2010 Arrow Hall – WARPED TOUR     Toronto, Ontario
Jul 10 2010 Parc Jean Drapeau – WARPED TOUR     Montreal, Quebec
Jul 11 2010 Comcast Theater – WARPED TOUR     Hartford, Connecticut
Jul 13 2010 Comcast Center – WARPED TOUR     Mansfield, Massachusetts
Jul 14 2010 Darien Lake P.A.C. – WARPED TOUR     Darien Center, New York
Jul 15 2010 Toyota Pavilion – WARPED TOUR     Scranton, Pennsylvania
Jul 16 2010 Susquehanna Bank Center – WARPED TOUR     Camden, New Jersey
Jul 17 2010 Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum – WARPED TOUR     Uniondale, New York
Jul 18 2010 Monmouth Park Racetrack – WARPED TOUR     Oceanport, New Jersey
Jul 20 2010 Merriweather Post Pavilion – WARPED TOUR     Columbia, Maryland
Jul 21 2010 Virginia Beach Amphitheatre – WARPED TOUR     Virginia Beach, Virginia
Jul 22 2010 Verizon Wireless Amphitheater Charlotte – WARPED TOUR     Charlotte, North Carolina
Jul 23 2010 Vinoy Park – WARPED TOUR     St. Petersburg, Florida
Jul 24 2010 Cruzan Amphitheater – WARPED TOUR     West Palm Beach, Florida
Jul 25 2010 Central Florida Fairgrounds – WARPED TOUR     Orlando, Florida
Jul 26 2010 Lakewood Amphitheater – WARPED TOUR     Atlanta, Georgia
Jul 28 2010 Riverbend Music Center – WARPED TOUR     Cincinnati, Ohio
Jul 29 2010 Marcus Amphitheater – WARPED TOUR     Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Jul 30 2010 Comerica Park – WARPED TOUR     Detroit, Michigan
Jul 31 2010 First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre – WARPED TOUR     Tinley Park, Illinois
Aug 1 2010 Canterbury Park – WARPED TOUR     Shakopee, Minnesota
Aug 2 2010 Sandstone Amphitheatre – WARPED TOUR     Bonner Springs, Kansas
Aug 5 2010 Race City Speedway – WARPED TOUR     Calgary, Alberta
Aug 7 2010 Utah State Fairgrounds – WARPED TOUR     Salt Lake City, Utah
Aug 8 2010 Invesco Field – WARPED TOUR     Denver, Colorado
Aug 11 2010 Pomona Fairplex – WARPED TOUR     Pomona, California
Aug 12 2010 Sleep Train Amphitheatre – WARPED TOUR     Marysville, California
Aug 13 2010 Idaho Center Amphitheatre – WARPED TOUR     Nampa, Idaho
Aug 14 2010 Gorge Amphitheater – WARPED TOUR     George, Washington
Aug 15 2010 Washington County Fairgrounds – WARPED TOUR     Hillsboro, Oregon

Echo & The Bunnymen have a string of US dates lined up to support their new album, The Fountain (which if you’re a fan – ain’t that bad). The only bummer is, due to those damn Coachella contracts they signed their John Hnacocks on, there will be no LA show! So if you live in LA and surrounding areas, you’re gonna have to catch the band while you’re standing in a polo field dealing with the desert heat instead of a dark venue. Hey man, just feel lucky you live in LA. The perks highly out-weigh the downsides! Don’t trip. By the way, ever noticed that Echo & The Bunnymen’s frontman, Ian McCulloch, looks allot like Liam Gallagher’s dad? Well he does. Imagine how stoked these Brits are about coming over here and eating real food. Dudes, check out Mexican food… shit will BLOW YOUR MIND!

Now, check out the links and dates below.

“The Killing Moon” is my favorite Echo & The Bunnymen song and yes, I’m still mad at whoever is responisble for putting it in the movie “Donny Darko”. Download the song below… First by the dudes who wrote it and then by Steve and his band called Pavement. Cuz I know you internet dorks have raging hard-on’s for Pavement, so enjoy.

MP3S:

Echo and the Bunnymen  -  Killing Moon

Pavement – “The Killing Moon” (Echo and the Bunnymen cover)

TOUR DATES:

4/16: Indio, CA @ Empire Polo Grounds (Coachella Festival)
4/18: Sparks, NV @ John Ascuaga’s Nugget
4/19: San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
4/21: Chicago, IL @ Metro
4/23: Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Theatre
4/25: Glenside (Philadelphia), PA @ Keswick Theatre
4/26: Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club
4/27: Fairfield, CT @ Fairfield Theatre Company
4/28: State College, PA @ State Theatre
4/30: Washington, DC @ Black Cat
5/1: New York, NY @ Irving Plaza

http://www.bunnymen.com

http://www.twitter.com/officialeatb

http://www.facebook.com/thebunnymen

http://www.myspace.com/thebunnymen

The Magnetic Fields
“Realism”
Nonesuch

I’ve always been fascinated by the inherent irony in music between instrumentation and lyrics. Admittedly, it’s pretty rare but when you find it, its like a bell has been struck and you think “This is why I keep coming back to pop music.” Prince takes a swing at it occasionally (All the Critics Love You In New York,) Pulp got it down years ago (Common People, Party Hard) and Lily Allen is currently queen of the pop world at it (say what you want but The Fear is as good as pink gooey sugar pop gets.)

It is arguable, however, that Stephin Merrit, auteur of indie pop (I love the fact that the aforementioned genre is no longer considered a contradiction in terms) phenomenon the Magnetic Fields, has truly mastered the concept. Take a listen to the first few lines of You Must Be Out of Your Mind, the opening track of their new album, Realism.

“I want to see you crawling back to me down on your knees, yeah. Like an appendectomy, sans anesthesia”

Out of context, it could easily be the opening salvo of hardcore punk or metal track. It’s got everything: the aggressive sexual connotation, the otherwise meaningless but line filling affirmative, even the vaguely horrific medical jargon. But upon listening, the principle instrument is a gently plucked mandolin, lightly augmented by all manner of other delicate sounding pizzicatos and staccatos all layered up with weary but pretty. Contradictory? Sure, but maybe also just cheeky enough to be a little slice of genius.

The cover of Realism, conversely, is  nice and literal. Featuring a women’s room pictogram on a slightly crumpled brown paper background, it’s the perfect symbol to complete a trilogy of albums which Merrit himself has admitted as intentionally synthless.

Anyone who has heard their three disc critical-raver 69 Love Songs can tell this is a far cry from that musical sprawl. One could always hear sprinklings of Brian Wilson in his earlier work, but this is almost an all-out homage to Pet Sounds. If you can’t hear Merrit channelling You Still Believe In Me in I Don’t Know What to Say (as if that doesn’t sound like a Good Vibrations B-side) then there is no hope for you. The difference is that that batch of Beach Boys tunes always focused on the joy of finding love and happiness in a rapidly changing social matrix. Merrit, like virtually everyone reading this now, reached maturity in world where change is simply a given and consequently, the cynicism that we have built into our egos is implicit. So, with the intent as a moreorless complete about face, this has almost surpassed Wilson’s effort. Fuck the canon, the old always gives way to the new sooner or later.

Don’t believe the hype or the press release, this ain’t folk rock, its reductionist orchestral pop at its finest in years.

back in 2010

Photo: Robin Laananen

Thursday, March 18

3.00pm – Buddyhead/Buzzgrinder party

Venue: Annie’s, 706 W6^th Street (bet Rio Grande & West)

4.50pm – 5.20pm – Little Radio Party

Venue: Red Eye Fly, Red River (at 6th St.)

Friday March 19

4.00pm – Filter Magazine/Dickies party (with Those Darlins, Jason Collett)

Veue: Lustre Pearl, 97 Rainey St (one block east of Red River/one block south of East Cesar Chavez)

Saturday March 20

1.00pm – Vestal Party (w/ Icarus Line, Darker My Love)
Long Branch Inn, 1133 E11th (at Lydia)

11.00pm – Official SXSW showcase (w/ Black Angels, Darker My Love)
Galaxy Room, 508 E6th St (bet. Red River and Neches)

“WE ARE DIOS” finds the band going back to what they do best: recording in their home studio with intent to blow minds. They reinforce their experimental approach to song arrangement, instrumentation and studio-craft with the idea that well written SONGS are the strong point to any album. After a brief foray into the world of professional recording with the Phil Ek (Shins, Modest Mouse) produced sophomore effort, “dios (malos)“, the band felt compelled to once again embrace their fusion of budget gear, DIY-fi and spiritual melodic devotion that had defined their previous efforts, this time adding a greater degree of sonic experimentation and genre-bending.

Taking an almost Howard Hughes-ian approach during the recording process, leader Joel Morales largely disappeared from the Los Angeles music scene to commit the better part of a three-year period toward realizing and expanding the schizophrenic combination of powerful melodies and compelling arrangements that debut effort “dios” hinted at. Songs melt together, creating a pocket-symphonic-folk-song-..cycle in which leitmotifs drift in and out, aurally suggesting a Fellini score played over the Electric Kool-Aid acid test.

“WE ARE DIOS” IS OUT DIGITALLY THROUGH ITUNES, AMAZON
OR DIRECTLY THROUGH THE BAND AT http://WeAreDios.com/

^{AVAILABLE APRIL 13 THROUGH BUDDYHEAD}

“Dios are dry and spacy, as indebted to Neil Young as they are to Brian Wilson. Constantly shifting focus– from earnest folk-singing to found-sound experimenting to deliquescent indie psych-pop– Dios are also stubbornly contemporary, a quirky, whimsical bit of California past, present and future.” Pitchfork

“Their sound weaves together the blissed-out pop textures of Sister Lovers-era Big Star, the perverse production sensibilities of the Flaming Lips, and pure California mellow psychedelia.” Allmusic

“The schizophrenic, loopy and all-powerful world that Dios makes its home in is one for the diehards, for the bachelors for life, for those who don’t have room for any new friends for the mistress – the all encompassing one – is the perfect song and it’s a lady that can only be touched by the dedicated.” Daytrotter

Many of you, or at least some of you (one of you?) have undoubtedly seen Cop Out by now. I haven’t. Now, I know, you’re violently shaking your screen and shouting “How dare you write about a movie you haven’t even seen? Especially a movie by the almighty Kevin Smith, who is physically incapable of creating anything less than a masterpiece of modern cinema? [citation needed]” Well, I’ve also never been stabbed in the pancreas with a rusty shank, but there’s enough evidence and first-hand accounts by prison inmates out there to give me a pretty reliable indication that I wouldn’t enjoy it. Maybe I’m wrong; maybe someday I’ll look back with regret on never having experienced the joys of tetanus, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take. I’ve seen the trailers for Cop Out, I’ve read reviews and “plot” summaries, and I’ve watched clips on the internet. Unless Smith & Co. are deliberately employing some sort of reverse psychology tactic by showing only the worst parts of the film, and the remainder of it not only makes up for the shortcomings of what I have seen but is so staggeringly transcendent that it would make Francis Ford Coppola throw up his hands and quit, I think I can say with a reasonable amount of confidence that Cop Out sucks.

The following is an exerpt from Roger Ebert’s review (he wasn’t crazy about it, it seems):

Jimmy and Paul are cops hunkered down across the street from a stakeout when they see a mysterious figure run across rooftops and break into a house. Seconds later, he can clearly be seen in an upper window, sitting on a toilet and reading a magazine. “What kind of a guy breaks into a house and takes a crap?” asks Paul, or words to that effect.

Paul explains he always delays this elementary function until he gets home. He’s not relaxed until then. But once he’s home — ooohhh boy! Then he lets loose. He describes the results in great detail. The walls, the ceilings. All right! I’m thinking, all right, already! I got it! Mudslide! Paul isn’t finished. Now he’s talking about the reaction of the neighbors.

Whew! It looks like Coppola can breathe easy for now. Of course, this is the part where Smith and his legions of mental midget fans will tell me to lighten up, it’s just a movie, nobody ever said it was Casablanca, etc. His Twitter feed for the last week (or more, I really couldn’t bring myself to go back any further) consists nearly entirely of retweets from his loyal apologists responding to those big mean critics and regular Joes who just happen to have standards. Anyone who dares to send Smith a tweet to say that, well, he can do better than this, will promptly be “KA-BLOCKED” (his term, of which he seems disproportionately proud). And by re-tweeting these sycophants, he can put these ridiculous exculpations out there while simultaneously stepping back and claiming “Hey, don’t look at me, I didn’t say that, they did.” Case in point:

See, Kevin Smith didn’t compare Cop Out to Blade Runner. He’s not pulling the “misunderstood artist” schtick. He was just quoting someone else who did so he could make a hilarious joke about it. Get it? Relax! Don’t be so uptight! Life is short! We’re just having fun! The movie is called Cop Out for fuck’s sake! The problem with resorting to this common defense is that in so doing, Smith is attempting to have his cake and eat it too (and quite a lot of it, apparently). The brilliant Harlan Ellison had this to say in regards to the “it’s all in good fun” argument:

When they fail to deliver what they’ve promised in all those tv clips, and we express our anger at having been fleeced, the shooters tell us we’re overreacting and we should feel a lot better about losing our five or ten or whatever amount they got out of us, because it was all a gag.

I wonder how well they’d take the gag if we paid for the tickets with counterfeit bills. Or pried open the firedoor at the theater and sneaked in with the entire Duke University Marching Band. “It was all a joke, fellahs; don’t take it so seriously; gawd, are you overreacting!”

-Harlan Ellison’s Watching, Installment 7: In Which An Attempt Is Made To Have One’s Cake And Eat It Too, [1985]

Smith’s endless backpedaling is blatantly hypocritical, but more than that, it’s simply lazy. See, Cop Out was never supposed to be a quality film, and if you’re one of those weirdos who actually goes into a movie theater expecting to receive entertainment commensurate with what you paid for, well, that’s your problem. The movie is even called Cop Out, so that somehow makes it okay for it to actually be a cop out! Fuck, if you’re going to go down that road, why stop there? Why not go all the way and call it what it really is?

Equally lazy is the way Smith rushes to the arms of his horde of endlessly loyal devotees who apparently still live in the 1990s, when his style of microbudget films stuffed to the gills with hip cultural references and toilet humor was still relatively fresh and new. The fans will always be there for him, and whenever his latest release gets savaged by those who value such things as “quality” and “maturing as an artist,” he can simply point to those slobbering fans and say “But they like it, so screw you!”

As a point of comparison, let’s take a look at Quentin Tarantino. In the early ’90s, both Smith and Tarantino were unknown film geeks who suddenly achieved cult hero status with their indie films Clerks and Reservoir Dogs, respectively. Both directors showed great potential, and enjoyed continued success during the following years. Like Smith, Tarantino also had millions of adoring fans who kissed his ass like most people breathe oxygen. What sets them apart is that Tarantino continues to make the movies he wants to make, not just what he thinks his fans want or expect of him. He’s willing to leave his comfort zone and to challenge himself and his audience. When you watch any one of his films, you can tell he genuinely cares about it.

In the opening scene of Inglourious Basterds (which somehow manages to be funny and terrifying at the same time), Col. Hans Landa is visiting with French dairy farmer Pierre LaPadite, and asks him for a glass of milk. When one of LaPadite’s daughters obliges, Landa takes a drink, smiles, and says “Mes compliments à vos filles et vos vaches,” which translates to “My thanks to your daughters and your cows.” However, “vache” is also a French slang term for “vagina,” a subtle detail that gives the innocent remark an entirely different, sinister meaning for those who are paying close enough attention. It’s that level of detail that is the mark of someone who genuinely cares about their work. You know, as opposed to Tracy Morgan talking to Bruce Willis at length about taking an enormous shit. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great to see people with Down syndrome getting work, but I think even Tracy Morgan can do better than this.

Granted, Kevin Smith didn’t write Cop Out. The guilty parties in this instance are Robb and Mark Cullen (yes, it took two people to write this dreck), whose previous illustrious credits include episodes of TV’s “Gary the Rat” and “Las Vegas.” This minor detail is hardly relevant, though, because unless blackmail or threats from the Mafia are involved, nobody forced Smith, who previously only directed his own scripts, to take the job. Of course, after the failures of Jersey Girl, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and the wholly unnecessary Clerks II, it’s understandable that he’d jump at the chance to score an easy paycheck. All right, fine. But the simple fact remains that it is not a good movie. There may be a few cheap laughs along the way, but if that’s all I’m looking for, I can just watch cat videos on YouTube. That’s not a substitute for quality filmmaking.

Kevin Smith says to stop being uptight. Life’s too short for that! But I would counter that with this: If life’s so short, why is he piddling around with tripe like this? Why is he okay with what he freely admits is a mediocre (but fun! It’s totally fun!) movie? Does he really think anyone is going to remember Cop Out in ten years? Honestly, the only reason I care enough to write all this is because I believe he can do better. That is, if he’d put the bong down, stop catering to his audience, and get out there and challenge himself to do something worthwhile. He’s become a slave to his fans. In this week’s LA Weekly, he’s quoted as saying he spent six months during his recent creative slump “smoking a shit ton of weed and watching a lot of hockey videos.” Yeah, it shows.

You can download the app for your Iphone or Ipod touch in the Itunes store @ http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dios/id356989257?mt=8 for FREE. Grab it now cuz we may change our minds and start charging for it. Cuz it’s pretty fuckin’ cool. Check it out and let us know what you think.