Snoopy Museum Tokyo

SNOOPY MUSEUM TOKYO

You're speaking Japanese Charlie Brown

The Peanuts are a part of the American experience. It has helped shaped almost everyone born in the last century, and maybe it will continue to, but who knows? When my friend who is really into Snoopy told me she wished she could go with me to Japan so she could go to the Snoopy Museum, I felt I had to go out of obligation. I doubted whether I would enjoy it since I didn't consider myself a huge fan who needed to make the trek to another museum about another comic, but I remember how much I loved seeing the Tin Tin museum in Europe years ago, and figured I'd give it a go. I'm glad I did.

A little surprise twist pulling the exhibit together

The Snoopy Museum is one of the most heart-string-pullingest exhibits I've ever seen. It's called Love is Wonderful, and it dives deep into the relationships between the characters of Charles Shulz's famous comic strip. It becomes aparent that it could also have been called Love is a Toturous Beast Forcing You to Die Alone. But it saves you from that with cute imagery and real hand-drawn comics and an incredible layout. There's a part when you turn a corner and realize there are cuts in the walls that frame a picture of Shulz and his sweetheart, an image you walk past in the beginning, so you're looking back on a love story in someone else's life much like you do in your own, and contemplate how his experiences colored his iconic work.

It gave me goosebumps.

Gift shop totally packed

They even have a kite-eating tree

Snoopy through the ages

You're a foodtruck Charlie Brown

Kendrick Lamar's Black Panther Masterpiece

KENDRICK LAMAR IS HIP HOP'S LEONARD COHEN

 

If you weren't excited about Black Panther, this album, dropping a week early will get you in the mood. If you were already excited, this thing will get you PUMPED!

The first time I listened to it, my first thought was, how did they get Disney to agree to this? I imagine most conversations between directors and their studios go something like this:

Director: Can I please just do what I want and maintain creative control over the whole product?
Studio: NO!!!!

Studios haven't trusted directors since the '70's. Every once in a while, you get an auteur who sticks to his guns, but attached to a tent pole franchise? I don't think I've seen that since Lucas was still in charge of Star Wars. And it it all reminds me of Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller, where the director tapped Leonard Cohen for all the songs of the film and reinvented westerns. Tim Burton did it with Batman too, when he somehow got Prince to do all the songs and invented the modern comic book movie. It's seldom that directors squeak that much control out of a project, and when they do, it's awesome.

Ryan Coogler is an Oakland guy who made Fruitvale Station and Creed, both of which were fantastic. That's how he landed the gig, but how the hell did he get Disney to sign off on this soundtrack? I want to meet him just see what a smooth-talker he is. Shit. I want to be his best friend. I love this guy.

The stand out track for me is the second track: All the Stars.

• SZA is on the track with her sad but optimistic voice perfectly suited for the lyrics.
• The intro beat sounds like an old African animal skin number. It sounds like a live drum, and it anchors the song in warm tradition while voice filters kick in and distortion knobs get turned. And there's something that sounds like a steel drum/keyboard in there sparingly so as not to become a Jamaican tune. That sound comes back on other songs on the album, and it really is a concept album; you don't see that much these days.
• Kendrick's verse is reminiscent of other tracks he's done about the aspiration and letdown of love and trust, and it's great.

I love a song that can be soulful and sad and happy and inspirational at the same time. They're rarer than diamonds.

I'm over the MCU, but I think this album might have won me back for now. I was a passing fan of the character, and I bought a bunch of the comics in the 90's. I hope it lives up to my memories of this cool icon.

Catch up with Black Panther:

Have You Seen Top Five?

Let's face it: most comedies suck. I mean, they might make us laugh, but most of them appeal to our basest tastes, filled with dick jokes and gross-out humor. There's a little of that in Top Five, but at least it has a heart, and it's charming as can be.

Remember Adam Sandler's Funny People? It's kind of like that except it's also a romantic comedy. And it feels realer in a lot of ways. Alcoholism plays a major role in the film, and it's a fair depiction of the fight against addiction, I'd say. There's some weird butt jokes that seem weirdly sex-negative and even homophobic, but it plays because the characters have all sorts of hang ups. The characters are good depictions of the contradictory efforts of Americans. "I don't care what Michelle Obama says; fry or die." Chris Rock's Andre Alan wants to be famous but only for the right things. He wants to be brave, but he's afraid to do almost anything he's already loved for. Rosario Dawson falls for duplicitous men but is a duplicitous man (it's a spoiler if I say more). Rock is surrounded by friends who want to save him but also say he's only funny when he's drunk. I'm a giant fan of contradictions within people and our culture. This film explores that.

There's even a scene where Rock pays to jump rope with kids in the street but is too afraid to jump in. Rosario ends up jumping in for him, launching her character dangerously close to MPDG territory, but she never ends up quite so manic or quite so pixie to go all in and lose the verisimilitude.

The title refers to an in-joke that owes its roots undeniably to High Fidelity (the book--let's forget the movie, shall we?). It's an answer to the question "what are your top five hip-hop musical acts?" Even Jerry Seinfeld gets his answer in with a credits cut scene.

When Adam Sandler, Whoopie Goldberg, Jerry Seinfeld, and Chris Rock are all at a strip club chatting about marriage, I just wanted a whole movie of that. In fact, I wish Robin Williams and Billy Crystal were with them. There's also a part on a subway or bus where Rock is talking about his favorite comics, saying he wished he hung out Bill Murray and could talk about him like they were friends. Seriously, there are gems all over this flick that make it rewatchable and just a down-right charmer, scenes that leave you wanting more. That's hard for a writer to do, and Chris Rock does it with casual grace.

Comedy doesn't come like this enough. This film points boldly at what the genre could offer. And I'd even go so far as to say that it shows us what a multi-cultural cast could do for our culture. This isn't a black movie or a white movie. This is an American movie, and I love it for that. In Jerry Lewis's book, he says he always wanted what Chaplin had: Pathos. He wanted to be able to tug at your heart with comedy, maybe even make you cry. Who would think Chris Rock would have it?

And if that's not enough, DMX has a cameo that is as funny as anything you'll see this year. Brilliant stuff.

If you haven't seen it, please do so in the cinema. Your dollar is your vote for more of this.

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This is the second beautiful comeback I've noticed this year. Maybe there are more. Let me know if you can think of one in the comments. I'm thinking of John Wick here. Is Sandler going to come out with something decent out of nowhere? Are we finally in a decade with good movies again? Are the studios finally as desperate as they were in the 70's and are beginning to allow our auteurs a little freedom? Let's hope so!

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My top five:

• Tupac Shakur
• Beastie Boys
• The Fugees
• Busta Rhymes
• Ice Cube

The Dark Knight Rises

Actually, after all of my fears regarding this one, it's my favorite and I'm glad it didn't suck.
Lots of violence and suspense, plenty of sexiness, and a healthy dose of fanboy stuff, this final film of Nolan's Batman story is pretty great.
I loved that the film didn't try to be more than a hero epic, and I love that its makers were talented enough and thoughtful enough to make it unique. The similarity batman has to his enemies and the similarities his enemies have to Batman's friends provide some thought-provoking fodder for anyone who feels like looking deeper, but the movie doesn't ask you to. That's a great little trick for an action movie to accomplish, allowing its audience to decide how many levels to enjoy it on.
Maybe my favorite thread of it was the way the military was portrayed. And here, I mean militarism more than our armed servicemen. We start with a CIA operative who is as ruthless and cowardly as the villain, and the villain is promptly boosted from custody by a sort of Navy Seal team that is as loyal to their cause as the special forces supposedly are to theirs. I hated the military badassedness of Batman in the previous films with a Hummer AV as the Batmobile and jelly grenades and that part when he's sucked out a window by an airplane. In this movie, Bane has all those tricks and more. He even drives the same car and has an army of cop-like thugs whom he somehow manages to organize. Batman did this with cops in previous films with a military grade spotlight and tech support.
There's even a scene where a football player is depicted like war hero running from a bomb crater. And later, cops literally condemn a school bus of orphans and the whole city to death. The fact that both Bane and Batman are former League of Shadows movers who use Hi-tech military style devices to deal with their pain is also kind of fun.
If you liked the comics Knight Fall, in which Bane breaks Batman's back or if you liked the Thalia Al'Gul storyline and were wondering why the Lazarus Pit isn't ever mentioned in the first film, you might like this interpretation of the Batman Mythology. I did.