Noiseless Chatter Archive

When I was a little boy, I loved Jim Henson. I didn’t just like him. I didn’t just enjoy his work. I loved the man. He was probably the first person I knew as an artist behind the material he produced. Certainly I enjoyed other TV shows, and songs and films, but I always saw them in isolation. As products distinct from whatever anonymous forces breathed life into them. Not so with Henson’s work. I don’t know why that is, but I knew his name. I knew what he looked like. I know not only that there was a human being out there bringing all of this wonderful stuff to life, but I knew who it was. He was the first artist I knew as an artist, and that’s either a cause or symptom of how important his work was to me. He was also a less exciting first for me: his was the first death that hit me personally…and it hit me hard. I guess I was fortunate that, by nine years old, I hadn’t had a family member die. Or a close friend. Or a beloved pet. But when Jim Henson died, it...

So ends my week of cleaning out the Netflix queue…and what a way to go. Dogtooth is a genre hybrid, a coming-of-age tale crossed with lingering, shivering horror. It’s a story told between extremes…one where we don’t know the beginning or the end, but whose middle is open to us and lets us know that its beginning and end are being withheld as an act of mercy. The film is a relentless hour and a half of Hell. A family is held on some remote estate by its patriarch, who keeps his children in a state of fear so constant and extreme that they dare not set foot off their lawn for fear of being killed by creatures unknown. Their mother is complicit in this scheme, though it’s unclear why. She has knowledge of the outside world the likes of which her children will never know, but agrees with her husband that it’s best to keep the children confused, ignorant, and in abstract terror at all times. They feed their children misinformation to keep from developing as human being...

This is one I’ve been wanting to see for a while, and I definitely enjoyed it. Vincent Price is predictably fantastic as the titular Last Man, and it’s a delight watching him simply go about his day. Radioing for help, seeking out fresh garlic for the front door, clearing corpses from his yard and dumping them into a pit…post-apocalyptic New York is a lonely place, and Vincent Price has been trapped there, alone, for three years. It’s taking a toll on him, but he moves forward. Humanity has been decimated by the very disease he was once working to cure…but now it’s too late. Even if he finds a cure, there’s nobody left to give it to. Something keeps him going, though. Something keeps him broadcasting on all frequencies every day for three years straight, even though there’s nobody out there to hear him. He spends his days collecting food and survival gear from abandoned supermarkets, but he’s careful to take only what he needs. Inside he still harbors the hope t...

Well, this is some extremely sad news. Muppeteer Jerry Nelson has died. Nelson was one of the few original Muppeteers who remained active with his characters. (Dave Goelz and Carrol Spinney being the only others I’m aware of.) His signature Sesame Street character was probably Count Von Count, but he also handled Sherlock Hemlock, The Amazing Mumford, and Herry Monster. My personal favorite? Mr. Johnson, the bald blue guy who would always go to Grover’s restaurant and get soup dumped on him or something. Poor Mr. Johnson. On The Muppet Show he played Floyd, Kermit’s nephew Robin, and Camilla the chicken. My personal favorite though? Pops the doorman, who introduces the gang to The Happiness Hotel in The Great Muppet Caper . On Fraggle Rock he was Gobo, arguably the main character of that show. He was also Pa Gorg and Marjorie the Trash Heap. It’s impossible to put into words quite how much Jim Henson’s creations shaped my life, and every time we lose another c...

A friend of mine has been insisting that I watch this for well over a year, and now that I have, I can say one thing for sure: this was definitely a movie that I watched. Dororo is…well, a summary would take around four thousand words to hit all of the cardinal points so forgive me if I gloss over many of them in the interest of time. (Something I wish the film-makers did as well, but we’ll get to that shortly.) In the distant future of feudal Japan, Lord Daigo finds his land and his people besieged by unstoppable enemies. On the verge of finding his world and heritage wiped out, he makes a dark pact with 48 demons: if they give him the power to fight back and conquer them, he will give them his unborn son, which they can divide into 48 pieces as they please. Unfortunately this moment of weakness for Daigo evolves quickly into a lust for power, and he uses his dark blessing not just to defeat his enemies, but to enslave humanity. Okay, that’s the background inform...

Richard Ayoade has been involved in some great stuff. The IT Crowd , AD/BC: A Rock Opera , and my probable candidate for funniest television show of all time, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace . I was surprised to see that he directed a film, though, and would have been a bit apprehensive if the reviews didn’t all seem to conspire with one another to convince me that this was exactly the sort of movie I’d fall madly in love with. And this was exactly the sort of movie I’d fall madly in love with. Submarine plays games with cinematic grammar, with unreliable narration, and with basic plot and character development, but that’s not what’s impressive. What’s impressive is that it does all of these things in service of a sincerely affecting and bittersweet experience. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from reading endless volumes of modern and postmodern literature, it’s that absolutely anybody can subvert expectations. It’s a trick pulled so often that it’s no longer surprising...

I have no idea what I just watched. I do know that its full title is The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension but that was too long for WordPress. That’s all I know about what I just watched, because I have no idea what I just watched. It’s about some brain surgeon who performs experimental surgery, but that doesn’t tie into the rest of the movie at all. The movie focuses more on this same man’s career as a rock musician / physicist / comic book hero / cosmic adventurer / crash test dummy / sex symbol, but that doesn’t tie into it really, either. I have no idea what I just watched. This is a movie I’ve been meaning to get around to for some time. Mainly because it immortalized in film Yoyodyne, the shady corporation known to literary geeks like myself from The Crying of Lot 49. That means that this film is one of very, very few that could possibly be said to take place within the same universe as any of Pynchon’s works, and that’s worth a recommen...

I’ve never seen any of the Marx Bros. films. That makes me, I’m aware, a really fucking awful human being…and an even worse fan of both film and comedy. I’ve seen them in other things, and in the most famous clips that end up embedded in documentaries and retrospectives, but I’ve never sat down and watched one of their films wall-to-wall. For that reason, I can’t provide much context about Duck Soup , nor can I really say that it is or isn’t representative of the Marx Bros. canon. What I can say, though, is that I was sincerely taken aback by just how modern this film felt. It’s a political satire, at least ostensibly (more on this in a moment), but structurally it’s just a series of disconnected moments and set pieces. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s interesting how much lazy comedy this sort of approach has given birth (and berth) to since. When it comes to screwball comic nonsense, films justified by the laughter each scene or moment brings as opposed t...

Like every red-blooded American adult, I’ve got far more in my Netflix queue than I could possibly watch in my lifetime, barring, perhaps, a Twilight Zone -like nuclear event that leaves me as the last remaining man on Earth, in which I’ve also got ten thousand spoons when all I need is a knife or something. So I figured that I’d set aside a week and watch one movie per night, keeping myself accountable by PROMISING THE WHOLE INTERNET THAT I’D WRITE A PROMPT REVIEW OF EACH BECAUSE I’D HATE TO DISAPPOINT THE INTERNET. Anyway, this was a movie that I decided I wanted to see the moment I heard about it. It’s not often at all that I’m ensnared by a concept — I tend to gravitate instead toward talent, whether in front of the camera or behind it — that I feel I can rely on, because all too often the concept is irrelevant. Take an excellent idea and give it to the wrong crew and you end up with…oh, say Watchmen . Take an idea that isn’t particularly remarkable and give it to a...

My girlfriend was kind enough — and lucky enough, but mainly kind enough — to get us to tickets to see The Book of Mormon on opening night here in Denver. I was unquestionably excited when she got the tickets, but if she hadn’t been able to get them, I wouldn’t really have felt disappointed. After all…it’s The Book of Mormon. Matt Stone and Trey Parker are absolutely talented individuals — as well as genuinely gifted showmen — so I knew it’d be fun to watch, but the subject matter sort of rubbed me the wrong way. I don’t mean to say that I’m insulted that they’d poke fun at a religion of any kind. After all, South Park ‘s been doing it for years. That , however, was the root of my concern: South Park ‘s been doing it for years. Matt and Trey already have an outlet for this and, what’s more, I’ve seen it. Many times over. Top that off with the fact that they’ve let Mormonism have it several times already. “All About Mormons” is the most obvious example in South Park ...

  Or, perhaps, we’re just one of God’s little jokes. When it comes to sincere and affecting meditations on the human condition, Monty Python will probably not be the first thing that comes to mind. And yet the globally-popular sketch comedy troupe made a name for themselves with material about God, about philosophy, about death, about inner conflict, about melancholy, about fear, about desperation, about alienation, and about pretty much anything else you could imagine. Those skits, produced mainly for their television program Monty Python’s Flying Circus (though also performed in other media, such as comedy albums and live performances), are more popularly remembered for their clever wordplay and unrivaled physical comedy than they are as any profound explorations of their subjects, but there’s something intrinsically human about the Monty Python canon. After all, that wordplay wouldn’t be as funny if society wasn’t already so confusing, and that physical comedy w...