Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Haven’t seen TATTOO, but I saw and dug GIGANTIC last year. Whassup, Mr. Capone?
Hey Harry. Capone in Chicago back to my usual job of seeing a movie or two that will only play in one or two screens in an art house near you (if you’re fortunate).
TATTOO
Out last year in parts of Europe and now finally making its way to the states if the German serial killer thriller TATTOO, a visually impressive but slightly overblown entry in the serial killer genre (let’s face it: it is its own genre now). The film begins with extreme promise. A dazed naked woman with most of the skin missing from her back gets hit by a truck, which then explodes on a telephone pole burning the victim to a crisp. Marc, a new graduate from the police academy (played by August Diehl), gets into trouble almost immediately for being in a night club with drugs. It’s clear the guy doesn’t take being a cop seriously and plans on doing the least amount of work possible. But Det. Minks (Christian Redl) has other plans and essentially blackmails the young rookie into joining him on the search for a serial killer who skins off the highly elaborate tattoos of his victims. Using a finger found in the victim’s stomach, the two officers are rather easily able to track down the man doing the recent carving, but the search doesn’t end there. Turns out the tattoos being collected are all done by the same Japanese tattooing master, who only created something like 13 works, all but one of which has been reported dead or missing in recent months. Marc and Minks uncover a nasty little underground tattoo trading and collecting ring (most of which are collected from live victims), and the film goes on to uncover the identity of the ringleader of this nasty business.
TATTOO is slick, loud, bloody, and full of kinetic energy. Nearly everyone on both sides of the law is hiding something, especially the highly damaged Minks, who didn’t just pick Marc from the litter at random. But as the film goes on, the story gets more and more preposterous, and it didn’t take me very long to figure out who the real tattoo collector was. (When they don’t show us the face of a killer, that usually means he/she is someone in the cast, and this cast ain’t that big.) The acting is strong, the blood and guts looks very realistic, the female lead (Nadeshda Brennicke) is beautiful with and without her clothes, and I loved the atmospheric feel of the film, but TATTOO is something of an empty shell and I found myself losing interest in the proceeding as they went on. And let’s face it, once you figure out any film’s big mystery, that kind of let’s the air out of the thing. Imagine something like SE7EN but without the interesting characters whom we actually grow to like. Most of the characters here simply irritated my skin rather than getting under it. In Chicago, the film opens this Friday, June 13 at the Landmark Century Center Theatre.
GIGANTIC (a tale of two johns)
When I was in college in the late 1980s (did I just date myself?), there were two kings of indie rock: R.E.M. and They Might Be Giants. R.E.M. essentially went into the stratosphere throughout the 1990s, and while TMBG had a few songs enter the collective mindset, they never really took off commercially. That’s probably the best thing that could have happened to them. I never took a serious interest in either of these bands, but TMBG almost skimmed the surface of my interest in music. I had plenty of friends that considered them the saviors of music, and I entered GIGANTIC with this (and a scattered knowledge of their repertoire) in mind. Shot over seven months in 2001, GIGANTIC follows the Brooklyn-based duo of John Flansburgh and John Linnell as they prepare to release their first new studio album in five years, and we learn all there is to know about the 20-year career of one of the biggest bands in indie history. Scattered among interviews with the Johns, members of TMBG’s touring band, their manager, and various record execs are chats with other notables, including The Pixies Frank Black, Syd Straw, Mark Hoppus; journalists; authors; television talk show legend Joe Franklin; and NPR broadcasters Ira Glass and the utterly bizarre looking and oddly attractive Sarah Vowell. Other noted celebrities (Harry Shearer, Michael McKean, Andy Richter, Janeane Garofalo) do dramatic readings of TMBG’s song lyrics. Neither the film nor the band take themselves too seriously, and the film works as both an interesting examination of a much-beloved band and as a foreground to the background rise and commercialization of “alternative” music. Anyone remember the “post-modern” movement?
We see how the band used avant-garde; low-budget music videos to launch their popularity; how they were one of the pioneers of selling music on the internet, how they used an ancient telephone answering machine to maintain the most dedicated group of followers/addicts I’ve ever seen; and how they parlayed their cult popularity into some fairly high-profile soundtrack work (including the theme songs for “Malcolm in the Middle” and “The Daily Show”). And on top of all that, we get a retrospect of their finest songs, either from music videos or concert footage. I guarentee that even those of you who have never heard of TMBG will find yourself saying, “I didn’t know that was their song” more than once watching this movie.
Many attempts are made to explain the longevity of the band and the working and friendship dynamic between the two men, but nothing quite hits it (even the explainations from the Johns). The bottom line is that it works, and the more it’s questioned, the more impossible it is to explain. The tale and adventures of TMBG is singularly special. There is no other band like them, and this fact alone makes GIGANTIC something highly entertaining and amusing. Try not to fall in love with these guys, I dare you. The film open in Chicago at the Music Box Theatre on June 20.
Capone
Groovy, man. Thanks.
"Moriarty" out.
