TMNT Zerophelia is Stranger than Fiction

Ok, so that might sound like a strange subject, but the reason is that I watched three movies today, and I felt like writing about them.

The first was TMNT, the first Ninja Turtles film in over thirteen years. I approached this with much trepidation - I have been a TMNT fan since, like so many others, when I was a kid. I don't often care about many things that other people make - I prefer to not base the importance of my life on that of the creation of others - but the Ninja Turtles have always been something I love, and I can say that my interest in them led me to comics, which led me to a lot of art in general, so you can see the importance here. Either way, I was worried that this film would turn the memory of my childhood cartoon heroes to dust; luckily I was proved almost entirely wrong.

The entirety of the film was enjoyable on a whole - for being computer animated, it looked great, and even had times where I didn't think it was CGI. I was not in any way a fan of the look of the humans in the film; they all looked like characters from The Incredibles, with eyes like ostrich eggs and waists as large around as their necks. This was not at all how I liked seeing Aprl O'neil and the other human characters of the TMNT universe portrayed, but the action, the writing and the overall feel of the film was very well done, and very true in many ways to the original comics, and it was a proper sequel, with callbacks to the past films throughout. Overall, I had a lot of fun watching it, and I didn't feel cheated. I can't say I expect the same from the upcoming Transformers movie.

Moving along, I came home and proceeded to burn thru my Netflix, the first of which being a little film called "Zerophelia", an off beat comedy about a man who finds that he can literally physically change his sex almost entirely at will; a wholly unbelievable premise, though this film conducted itself quite well. The comedy was well placed, the story original, and the acting quite good. I can't fully explain this film, you'd just have to see it for yourself.

That leads me into Stranger than Fiction, the Will Farell vehicle which came out late last year. I can tell you that I enjoy Will Farrel in almost everything he's done; like him or not, he does what he does well. On top of that, I enjoy that he's not a pompous egotistical hollywood ass, which actually enables me to watch his films much more willingly. In this case I truly enjoyed this film, it presented itself with a big budget storefront, but performed like a well written independent film. Farrel was toned down at least ten notches from his usual self, but he gave a depth to his main character of Harold Crick in all the right ways, and had a subtle insecurity about himself that made him a believable and likable character.

So there you have it, three films, I suppose not the most in-depth of descriptions, but I wasn't shooting for in-depth so much as to process some of the huge amount of moving images I saw today.

I'd also like to say congrats to hacked for getting voted Albuquerque's best DJ in the Weekly Alibi. Nice job rockstar! I also managed to grab second best band in ABQ (I have almost no clue how, probably because I whored myself out), and even more strangely third best DJ (I'm no DJ!), and a mention in best Singer/songwriter. I can only say thank you to anyone who voted, it means a lot to have people paying attention to what you do, even if you tell yourself sometimes that people don't.

I played a gig at Aztec cafe last night in Santa Fe, and it was quite fun, although I didn't have the floor moving like the DJ's before and after me - but to sum it up, after my set I politely said to a girl whom I had seen dancing to my songs, "Thank you for dancing so mightily to my music". She proceeded to say, "Oh, yeah, it was ok - I usually like louder and faster, but there's some promise there, so work on it".

I smiled, and said, "I can do that - though I don't think I'll be making hard drum and bass anytime soon", and proceeded to carry my keyboard stand out the door. An interesting exchange, but not without its merit. It's good to listen to my listeners, so when I next play there I'll hit it even harder - if I can. Either way, I dropped an hour long set and played my heart out, and really had a lot of fun, which is what matters, right?