As you can see from the above video, which I did not shoot, her middle C was out of tune so she had to play Sentimental Heart an octave higher which She couldn’t keep a straight face through. It was my favorite moment of the evening. Zooey and M Ward did not disappoint in a set that ran the gamut from big barnyard stompers to slower intimate moments where the eponymous She & Him were the only two on the stage. There was an army of Zooey-ites who had dressed so fancy with flowers set in their hair and thoughtfully that I began to wonder if they really understood why we like her at times. On stage it was more than clear Zooey is the girl in the Sunday dress skipping church to catch bullfrogs with the boys but never being a boy herself. This concert would have been better if we were all naked dancing in a barn. Instead we all stood painfully still, and no one was able to swim the gap between the music and our inhibitions. Or maybe it was because I was wedged between a concrete piling and mini-Zooey and her big poofy hair?

So without further handwringing…

Like Up, the title of Sam Raimi’s low key horror comeback Drag Me to Hell is not an easy sell. Last time I checked not a whole lot of moviegoers enjoy being dragged to hell. Aside from some residual post Spiderman buzz and goodwill leftover from three Evil Dead movies released over a decade ago, Drag Me to Hell, the story of a female loan officer who is cursed by the grungiest gypsy in film history, never became the smash hit Raimi-ites were hoping for. Instead, it’s destined to rise in cult status as people discover the joys of watching gross things go in and out of Alison Lohman’s mouth. Whether you choose to see Drag Me to Hell as a straight forward horror romp or a tragedy about a delusional formerly overweight country girl struggling with an eating disorder and self image problems the simple fact is the movie is a joy from start to finish. It’s a goofy, gross, good time.

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Even the title of Pixar’s Up is a risk. Just one, single syllable word and one predominantly used as an adverb at that? Preposterous! Like 2008’s Wall-e, which was dialogue free for a good 45 minutes into its runtime, Up dares to start its adventure story on a complete downer. The movie opens by introducing us to a boy and girl who could well be the plucky main characters of any generic coming of age saga in which animal friends are met, bad guys get their comeuppance and pirate gold is found. But none of that happens. Instead the boy and the girl, grow up, get married, and face difficulties that propel them farther and farther out of the orbit of their childhood dreams.

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The very existence of this movie is proof that the universe has a sense of humor. Not quite a remake and not quite a sequel, this re-quel to the 1992 article-deprived original Bad Lieutenant, starring Harvey Keitel as a morally and chemically compromised officer of the law, is batshit insane. Nicolas Cage has never been more Nic or more Cage than he is in this movie. It’s very nearly a cosmic event.

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Watchmen oozes cool. The end is so punk rock it makes me want to smash a TV with an actual rock in a show of solidarity. It deconstructs the American hero/superhero and exposes all the gooey messed up insides that compel them. Zack Snyder, auteur behind the extremely watchable 300, doesn’t so much adapt the subversive graphic novel for the screen as directly lift scenes from its pages and bring them crackling to life. The result is a mess but it’s a wonderful mess that I find myself increasingly eager to romp in again and again.

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Underneath the “knocked up at 16″ afterschool special premise of Juno was a movie about a girl struggling to define what a family is and whether love really exists. In the same way, Jennifer’s Body has the equally schlocky premise of a demon-possessed, man-eating, cheerleader skank when in actuality it’s more about the phenomenon of “best friends forever” and the sometimes symbiotic, sometimes toxic nature of those relationships. It’s far more interesting than the TV ads and reviews would have you believe.

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Happy New Year to all my inu-tachi. The future is what we make of it!

One thing I applaud Zombie for is his willingness to make unpretty scenes. The movie starts with the aftermath of Michael Myer’s legendary killing spree and almost immediately strips the glamour away; the grunt level police officers mumble complaints about having to lug the bodies around and the survivors struggle for a life that may not be worth returning to when they realize just how scarred and crippled they’ve been left by their chance encounter with the devil. Later scenes in the movie reveal a Zombie that wants to know why we find this ugliness entertaining.

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I said I was going to be serious, and trust me I am. Just follow the bouncing ball/flaming skull harbinger of apocalypse.These are the lyrics to Party in the USA if you were to buy it on iTunes or acquire it in a similarly unclever way in which a fool and his money were parted:

 The taxi man turns on the Radio and a Jay-Z song was on… and a Jay-Z song was on… and a Jay-Z song was ON.

The morning that I heard it on the radio, however, the lyrics were different.

 The taxi man turns on the Radio and Z100’s on… and Z100’s on… and Z100’s ON.

Frankly, I wish I could say I was more surprised than I was but I’ve come to expect gross -emphasis on the ick- commercialism in popular music. Don’t let my jaded apathy dull the point though. This is terrifying stuff. When a song can be formatted to fit the listener’s needs, the world is indeed looking more and more like the shiny future of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report where advertisements show you what you need based on who you are, where you are, and how you acquire things. Mind you this isn’t a live recording, this was tailor made for the station and mixed into the studio recording.

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