Losing my religion

"I made you a leaving gift"
"What is it?"
"A stick with some orange peel glued to it"
(or something along the lines of that...)

So last night after a weekend of unexpected partying, expected partying and recording I took a solo trip to the cinema to see Wanderlust. Very weirdly the cinema seemed to be full of people doing the very same thing, I guess a solo cinema trip is the perfect activity for a rainy Sunday afternoon in North London.

I don't want to give too much of the plot but basically George and Linda buy a tiny flat in NYC, lose their jobs, end up losing their flat (I don't understand why they didn't rent it out, I guess that would be less dramatic) and drive to Atlanta, on the way stay overnight at a commune and have an awesome night, then go to stay in Atlanta, hate it and end up back in the commune, where of course hilarity ensues, there is a money grabbing hippy, a nudist author and yep we get to see Jennifer Anniston tripping out on iowaska.

Watching the movie you spend a lot of time cringing at Paul Rudd embarrassing himself, doing his sexy talk and attempting to play the Spin Doctors. Paul Rudd is awesome as ever, but I think I would have liked to seen writer Ken Marino do the George part instead, he was so good as the cringworthy Ron in Party Down, that I think that would have really worked.  Ken Marino was awesome as George's brother Rick and deffo one of the highlights, though seeing as he wrote it, you think he would make sure he got a good part! Michaela Watkins did a great job as Rick's bored wife too.

I think my favourite bits were with Ken's ex-"The State" buddies David Wain, Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black (GO BUY HIS BOOK, mine is in the post!) who play news readers, and yeah, when they parody the Atlanta Grape Lady that kinda made me chuckle.  I also liked all the jokes about hippies, my brother's a bit of a hippy and has hung out with Shamen (but not Mr C), and I do tease him about drum circles and hippy stuff, I think I'd like to watch it again with him!

There are not really any indie references in the movie, but I think I heard an REM song being played, I guess any movie which is set in Georgia should have at least one REM song in it somewhere?  There were more references throughout this movie to "I Believe I Can Fly" than really necessary too, what was that about? 90's tastic!

I was so excited about the prospect of this movie, with so many awesome people being involved, but yeah something lacked a bit in it, still I do think laughing at hippy jokes is a fun way to spend a rainy day in North London.

I leave you with a song...a video from the best band from Atlanta, ExcaliBrah!!!



Official movie site

Are we having fun yet?

Happy new year readers!
Hope you had a fun night last night, mine was spent giggling and dancing to 90s chart classics in Stoke Newington before marvelling at Myleen Class' freaky face whilst she introducing the fireworks on the telly. I'm so glad I wasn't in that crowd, they looked so bloody miserable!

OK, here's my pick of the best of 2009 telly and films, yep I probably missed loads...
Best TV program - Party Down
In brief a comedy program about a catering company staffed by out of work actors, writers and comedians who don't seem to do any work and cause chaos at every event they work at. It's total cringe comedy but I don't think I've laughed so hard in ages.
With a creative team including Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas, Paul "hottie" Rudd and TV's Fred Savage (?!) there was always high expectations. There are also loads of familiar faces including Freaks and Geeks Martin Starr, pretty much everyone from Veronica Mars (including an awesome cameo from Kristin Bell in the last episode of the series) and George Takei!

I also unashamed loved Series 3 of Californication (Kathleen Turner's character Sue Collini was probably the scariest thing I saw on TV last year!), Greek, Ugly Betty, Curb Your Enthusiasm and John Safran's Race Relations.

I am also enjoying the current series of Glee but I can't stand the singing (if I wanted to watch X Factor I'd watch it alright?!) it has reminded me of the merits of Journey though and Jane Lynch is amazing as ever.

Best Films
Of course it would be Whip It if they weren't taking ages getting around to releasing it in the UK, they still haven't scheduled it yet, god dammit! So I guess it'd have to be

Paper Heart, Where The Wild Things Are, Funny People



Best indie rock cameo
I guess this has to be Sonic Youth on Gossip Girl, which I mentioned in the first post.

What did I miss?

And finally, nothing cheers me up more than hearing one of my favourite indiepop bands played on the telly. Yep tonight's Gavin and Stacey featured a tiny snippet of Comet Gain's classic 'You Can Hide Your Love Forever', watch the episode again here on iPlayer. Don't stay watching though as you'll have to listen to Florence and The Machine whilst Gavin talks about his balls, yelp! They have no class on this program...

EDIT - I have since been informed that fellow Fortuna Pop-sters The Lucksmiths were also played later on in the episode (shows how much attention I was paying!). This episode was brought to you by the letters F and P...


Hope you are all well and your teenies (is that what we call this decade?) are awesome!
Alicexx