777 times lovelier than I'd ever seen
February 2003
February 25, 2003
Dog Soldiers
My friend Claxy summed up Dog Soldiers quite neatly: (Night of the Living Dead - zombies) + (Aliens - aliens) + werewolves + self-awareness. Still, that doesn't mean it's a bad bad thing. Being neither as uncomfortably smart and unexpected as Night of the Living Dead nor as slick and white-knuckled as Aliens is not a damning flaw; Aliens was one of the best action movies of the Eighties, and Night of the Living Dead is one of the great horror movies of all time. Dog Soldiers is a movie about a small British Army unit conducting a field exercise in rural Scotland. I hope no readers will be shocked to discover that things go horribly, horribly awry when the werewolves turn up. Once the soliders hole up, along with a mysterious and taciturn Special Forces operative and the obligatory beautiful local, Dog Soldiers succeeds by keeping things moving. The key to great horror movies is a growing sense of either claustrophobia or the unheimlich, but Dog Soldiers is really a horror film more in the late Carpenter vein, which is to say an action film, quips and all. That's not a flaw, however: the characters are largely charming and believable, the plot suffers from no gaping holes until the very end, and the special effects are quite impressive for what must have been a limited budget. If a movie willing to sacrifice what mimesis it can get from a story about werewolves squaring off with the British Army for a cheap pun sounds appealing and the idea of a self-conscious horror movie hasn't been spoiled by Scream knockoffs, then Dog Soldiers is worth a rental. Plus, V. claimed that a number of the soldier boys were cute, and the obligatory beautiful local was awfully easy on the eyes.
February 22, 2003
Burma/Oxes
Tone/Oxes/Mission of Burma, the 9:30 Club, 21 February
Tone are playing when we arrive at the 9:30 Club. Tone consists of many, many guitar players, two bassists, and a drummer, or at least it did when I saw them last, a few years ago. We stand around in the lobby and chat. Our friend Nihar drifts by. We chat further. Everyone is amused by my $3 bag of earplugs, which contains ten pairs. Tone finishes their set and we troop into the main part of the club. Andrew has brought his Holga in the hopes of getting some good action shots of Oxes, but it is not to be; we're too far from the stage. Oxes play a very loud set. Their Shellac meets Van Halen schtick isn't quite as pronounced -- the mathy stuff is less obviously weird, and the this-one-goes-to-11 guitar solos don't seem quite as blisteringly fast -- but they've got some weird anti-charisma mojo working (the drummer announces that the tie he is wearing was a gift from his mother) and, as I've heard, take full advantage of their wireless guitars and wander around the crowd. V. declares the guitarist, zipping through the crowd on his knees, "unheimlich". I strongly suspect that the Fucking Champs don't kneehop. Despite the presence of decently-sized audience) (including Jenny Toomey, J. Robbins, and a bunch of people who will dance like loons when Mission of Burma comes on), the crowd seems kind of dead for the Oxes set.
We have a minor brush with fame when one of the Oxes apparently gives Jane a shout-out; he has recognized her as associated with her high school boyfriend. Jane bursts out laughing. Later, our friend Bob wanders by, and reports that someone over where he was standing also seemed to think they were being referred to. Jane's high school boyfriend must get around. Bob mentions both that Martin Swope is not with the band for the reunion and that Big Bob Weston is manning their tape loops instead. He also tells me that Suicide is playing tomorrow night. If I hadn't already committed to going to a coworker's party, I could have a theme weekend. We chat some more, then Mission of Burma come on. I'm not sure why it is that I find punk rock reunions less creepy than, say, the eternal touring of the Rolling Stones, the Las Vegas-ready acts of people like Peter Frampton, or Depeche Mode's camp-injected revivals. Maybe it's because they're still playing clubs of approximately the same size as when they were in their heydey; maybe it's because they peaked before I was listening to punk rock and never became overly familiar through MTV. A singalong "Academy Fight Song" seems neither creepy nor pathetic. Mission of Burma is about what you'd expect for a bunch of guys who've been playing off and on since the early '80s -- slightly flat vocally, quite tight instrumentally. They rock hard for old guys. Between songs, Bob notes how mindblowing it must have been to wander into the Rat and hear these guys in 1982. Everyone sings along to "That's When I Reach for My Revolver", and V. and I stagger out into the snow to catch the last train home.
(indie) (live) (music) (retro)