Two Geeks Three Cats

Dear Hollywood,

Now you know I don't like to get my feathers all ruffled over rumors, but I heard earlier this week that Spike Lee is in talks to direct a Hollywood remake of Park Chan-wook's legendary revenge drama Oldboy. Now as I'm sure you can imagine, Hollywood, this rumor is eliciting a wide range of responses on the Internet from "Sweet, finally a Hollywood foreign film remake that sounds awesome!" to, "Oh, shit, not again."

Place me firmly in the latter camp. I suffered through years of your remakes of J-horror films, from The Ring to Dark Water, before realizing there wasn't much point in ever watching one of your foreign film remakes again. I didn't bother with Let Me In. Though many of my friends told me I should give you a chance on that one, I just didn't feel any real need to see it. I had the Swedish original, and it was enough for me. I will admit that the trailer for David Fincher's remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo looks absolutely epic, but ironically it makes me want to see the original - which I haven't seen yet - not the remake. I am openminded enough to accept the fact that sometimes remakes can be good (especially when Tim Burton is not involved) but I'm sorry, Hollywood, the historical evidence is really stacked against you on this one.

It's not that Oldboy is perfect as it is, even though I believe it is pretty damned close. Park Chan-wook made a film as beautiful to look at as it is horrifying to watch, funny when it can be and brutal when it should be. Choi Min-sik delivers an incredible performance as Oh Dae-su, from his wild-eyed been-in-the-shit PTSD stare to his love for calling people "dickshits". And Yu Ji-tae is creepy and sympathetic at the same time as the film's antagonist. Aside from having figured out the "twist" early on, I really can think of nothing negative to say about the film. And it's arguable that Park's intention was to make the "twist" obvious from the beginning anyway: obvious, that is, to everyone except the main character.

The good news is, none of that stuff that made Park's Oldboy absolutely amazing will go away if you decide to remake it. I'll always have the original.

I'll admit that having Spike Lee on board for this would be a bit of a problem for me. It's not exactly profound to say that Spike Lee's work is divisive. You know, Hollywood, that I've always considered him to be incredibly overrated as a filmmaker. Yes, his films tackle sensitive issues - most commonly racial issues, but let's credit Spike with being attuned to other injustices as well - in a hard-hitting way. But that's the problem. Lee hits too hard. He hits us over the head. His films lack subtlety, and Oldboy demands subtlety. Not to mention that Spike Lee's directorial style (which seems to consist entirely of taking shots from exaggerated angles) is nothing to match against Park Chan-wook's. There's a scene in the original Oldboy that shows Dae-su taking down an entire hallway full of thugs armed with nothing but a hammer. I just don't see that working in a Spike Lee Joint. Let's hope that rumors of his involvement are, at this point, greatly exaggerated.

Even without Spike Lee, it's hard to see what good your American sensibilities could possibly bring to the story. No one does vengeance like South Korean filmmakers: they live it, breathe it. You must know that, or you wouldn't have your eyes on this movie, would you, Hollywood? Park Chan-wook loves revenge stories so much he made a thematic trilogy of them, of which Oldboy is the middle (and the only one that doesn't have the word vengeance in the English title). Trying to beat South Korea at revenge flicks sounds to me as about as intelligent as opening a Starbucks in Italy: you're just not gonna beat these guys at their own game.

So, what exactly is your take on Oldboy going to do that the original doesn't? There are plenty out there who say that when you remake foreign films, Hollywood, you're doing a good thing, by exposing American audiences to stories they wouldn't otherwise see because they "don't watch foreign films". Okay, that's partly bullshit, because anyone who can read a marquee should be able to read subtitles. But I realize that some moviegoers don't go to the theater to (*gasp*) read, and they love that you accept them for who they are. So I acknowledge the fact that remaking foreign films in English can expose a wider audience to the story, if the remake is good. But if the result is something as awful as your remakes of The Grudge and Pulse, aren't we working against this lofty goal by trying to win over American audiences with crap that's not worth their time?

And seriously, let's not kid ourselves about the real motivation here. You and I both know you're not remaking Oldboy because you want to expose American audiences to this story. You're not some cinematic apostle, seeking to educate and enlighten the American moviegoing public by translating this classic into the vernacular. Admit it, Hollywood: you're remaking Oldboy for the same reason you're rebooting every genre franchise and scraping the bottom of the Marvel/DC barrel; for the same reason TV execs are rolling out three new reality shows a week about cake and still more shows about ordinary folks singing and/or dancing: because that's easier than coming up with something new. And you should know how much that offends me, both as a film fan and as a writer.

But deep down, I still love you, Hollywood. We've had some great times together. And I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, I really do. I've just been burned so many times, I'm not sure I can trust you anymore. You've got a good heart, Hollywood, but sometimes you get lost. You get lazy. I know there are a lot of demands on you to be rich, powerful, famous, and I know sometimes the easy way out is to rehash something that's already been done; to copy and parrot and distort until all that's left is the shallow hull of an idea that offends as few people as possible and generates modest revenues for a minimal investment. I know you think nobody notices when you take the easy way out, but we do. We notice and we feel sorry for you, Hollywood, because we know you're capable of better. And the only reason you don't realize that yourself is because you haven't been paying attention to the world outside your own window. You haven't noticed that there are so many great original stories out there that haven't seen the light of day. That there are many well-meaning film lovers out there who have good ideas, have stories to tell, and some of which might even be in screenplay format already. If you saw some of these stories, you'd love them, Hollywood, and so would the rest of the world. You just need to look, and listen. You've been listening to the wrong people, Hollywood: people who don't care about you, who only care about your money. Listen to those of us who still love you, who want to make you great again. We still care about what's best for you, and if those other guys walk out on you, we'll still be there. We've got ideas, Hollywood. And many of us will let you have them for cheap.

Seriously. Don't be a dickshit.

Love, Shawn

And no the title does not refer to Sam Worthington (though I suppose it could.)  I admit that I do not like Sam Worthington.  I think he is pretty talentless and not even good looking enough to be eye candy.  I cannot believe he was rumored to be a finalist to play James Bond before Daniel Craig won the role. 

Shawn has already written a rather scathing review of the film, so why am I adding my proverbial $.02?  I loved the original film - lame Perseus, the addition of the Kraken(um that's not Greek) and all.  It made me interested in Greek mythology from a young age.  And Harryhausen's stop-motion effects were glorious.  Sure they may look cheesy to the modern eye, but they were magnificent and scary back in 1981.  But like so many current mainstream films, this was a soulless mess - millions of dollars poured into a film full of lame dialogue, empty machismo, and wooden characters.  Oh and they decided to put it into 3D after it was done.  I saw it in 2D since I had heard that the 3D makes it even worse and I wanted to try to give the film a fair shot . . .

To think that Louis Leterrier and the laundry list of screenwriters stuck with the general story, but then mucked around with the theme is ridiculous.  The new version basically fuses the original story of Perseus with Wagner's Gotterdammerung.  Sure that may sound good in theory, but it really is a mess. There was a lot of criticism over the decision to leave the gods out of the 2004 film Troy.  Anyone who has read the Iliad knows that the gods play a pivotal role in the story.  Clash of the Titans (2010) leaves the gods in, but makes them the antagonists which is a significant change from the original.  Perseus' main purpose is not to rescue Andromeda, but to prove that man > gods.

 One of my favorite things about the original was the petty interactions amongst the gods.  Sure, they all looked a bit long in the tooth - Lawrence Olivier looked more like a renaissance rendering of God than Zeus.  And Ursula Andress' Aphrodite was no longer the hot Honey Ryder from Doctor No, but somehow it worked.  I believed their bickering and favoritism. The new version basically focuses on two gods - Zeus (Liam Neeson) and Hades (Ralph Fiennes).  For some reason, Hades is always hanging out on Olympus and NOT in his OWN realm.  WTF?  They basically made him a Satan/Old Testament God figure with his tricksy nature and punishment of the mortals who do not respect and worship the gods.  I love both of these actors, but I felt like they were just in it for the paycheck - each of them hamming it up in ornate costumes.

Back to the effects.  Sure the new film's effects were good.  They had better be in this day and age.  But let's compare the new version's CGI Medusa with that of Harryhausen.  The Medusa from the original movie may have had some jerky movements which I find it not unlike the freaky movement you often see in Japanese films like Ringu.  While the movement may have looked unnatural, that is part of what made her so scary.  I remember closing my eyes as a child so as not to have to look at her horrifying face.  Compare that to the remake (reimagined?) version's Medusa, who looks flawless, but giggles like a petulant school girl and slithers seamlessly around the set like a young grass snake.  Sure, I don't like snakes much so the very lifelike snakes in her hair kinda bother me, but she was NOT scary at all.  Some may say, "Well duh.  You're also not six years old anymore."  I doubt even a six year old would be scared of the Russian Supermodel version of Medusa.  And in case you were wondering, the motion capture used for Medusa was based on a Russian Supermodel.

There is so much more I could say about this film, but I won't.  I will say that 20 minutes in I thought to myself that this film "needs its nuts cut off" for being so hyper masculine and boneheaded.  And while Avatar was in my opinion one of the worst and overrated films of last year, it was better than this.

There was exactly one thing I liked about the new remake of Clash of the Titans: Gemma Arterton's bare left shoulder.

All right, I'll admit that two other things in the movie were okay, but with qualifications. The boat of Charon, ferryman of the dead across the river Styx, was really spiffy even though it looked like it belonged in a video game. And Ralph Fiennes acted the hell out of a cliché role as Hades, even though fans of the Harry Potter films may find Fiennes' wheezing, icy-eyed villain irritatingly familiar.

That's it. That's all the film has going for it ... with sympathy for Liam Neeson, who delivers his lines as Zeus with the same sad resignation he wore on his face throughout Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, not even wasting the effort to use his considerable talent trying to redeem an underwritten part in an awful script.

Of these few positives in the film, the presence of Gemma Arterton was the only one that kept me from walking out of the theater. (Believe me, I thought about walking out a lot.) Arterton, whose brief turn as Bond girl Strawberry Fields was the best five minutes of 2008's 007 snoozefest Quantum of Solace, did a similar service for Titans, being the only thing on the screen I wanted to look at more than my watch. But don't mistake the object of my praise: Arterton is great, but her character Io – a once-human woman cursed with immortality and bearing no resemblance to the Io of Greek mythology - is one of the bigger problems with Titans. The victory she scores on screen is attributable not to the writers or director, but to some happy accident of Ms. Arterton's apparently superior genetics, which makes her incredibly easy on the eyes. She radiates in every scene, despite the best efforts of the filmmakers to make her not stand out with unbecoming costumes and several terrible hair moments. And this gets at the biggest problem I had with the film.

See, Clash of the Titans doesn't really suck for any of the reasons you may have heard or read. It's not because of Sam Worthington's poor performance, or because there's not enough of Neeson's Zeus or Fiennes' Hades. It's not because they made Pegasus black or because Andromeda – Perseus' love interest in the original film and the myth – is all but written out of the story. It's not because they kept in the worst crimes perpetrated against Greek mythology by the original Titans (Kraken, I'm looking at you) or because they took even more liberties with the source material. Yes, all those things suck, but they aren't why the film sucks. The film sucks because it suffers from an ugly, offensive and childish ideology.

Clash of the Titans takes place in an unrealistic ancient Greece where human beings have chosen to reject their gods in favor of a vague “freedom” that's expressed in overly simplistic terms. In this world, humans – no, men – think themselves above the gods, who need the prayers of men more than men need the blessings of the gods. Did the ancient Greeks ever have any such attitude toward their religion? Of course not, but that's irrelevant. The filmmakers are more interested in telling a story that resonates in locker rooms and playgrounds in the twenty-first century than they are in paying homage to ancient Greek religion and stories.

The result is a bullheaded, macho story that is as blunt as it is stupid. It is a world where Greek heroes wear buzzcuts and ride black horses because it looks more badass than curly locks and gleaming white steeds. It is a world where men vie for penile dominance by pushing each other around – literally – and insulting one another without remorse or humor. And most offensively, it is a world more misogynistic than anything the ancient Greeks left behind ... it does worse than objectify women; it marginalizes them.

This world has no use for women. There are exactly five speaking female roles in the film, and one of them has snakes for hair. With the exception of Arterton's Io, all of them have less than ten minutes on screen. And none of them does anything to move the story, including Io, whose primary purpose is to explain things to Perseus, and the audience, that we need to know. Cassiopeia (played by Caprica ballbuster Polly Walker, but with none of the matronly gusto of Siân Phillips in the original) does not enrage the gods with her pride; the gods were already angry at something her husband did. Andromeda (played by Alexa Davalos) does not win the heart of Perseus and urge him to complete his quest; Perseus does it for his father. Medusa is reduced from the nightmare-inducing monster of the original to a giggling snake-bimbo. And Io, for all her charms, does not belong in this film. She wanders through it, looking nice, yes, but mostly just keeping quiet and staying out of the way of the menfolk who are trying to work ... and the fate she suffers at the end of it might just be the most offensive thing of all.

Beware.

Today was March 25, also known as Tolkien Reading Day. And, in places where folk believe that the events in Tolkien's books actually took place in the distant past (such as, for example, your neighborhood pen-and-paper RPG shop, or the Denny's where the local LARP chapter in your town has breakfast every Saturday before "battle"), it is something like the 8,500th anniversary of the fall of Sauron and the destruction of Barad-dûr, the day that Frodo completed his quest.

So it is with great pleasure that I hereby announce today that I am now delving like a dwarf into a mithril mine back into that spectacular tome that has taken up so much of my reading attention since adolescence. Yes, I am reading The Lord of the Rings again, for the - I don't know, tenth? - time.

In fact, I already started. I read Book I (that's Book I of VI, the first half of Fellowship of the Ring, for those only familiar with the films) last week. Although I have three copies of LOTR in the house, purchased at various times, the only copy I can find right now is a one-volume hardcover containing all 1,000+ pages. So I took a break from it for this week so I could bring a more portable book with me on a plane trip. But I will be resuming my read with Book II tonight.

And not soon enough. Re-reading Book I was like getting reacquainted with an ex-lover and quickly remembering why I was happy to leave her ass behind in the first place. Okay, the Barrow-Downs are cool for about two pages, and everything from the Prancing Pony on is pretty wonderful, real down-the-rabbit-hole kind of great fantasy writing. But I have always felt that the story doesn't really get going until Rivendell, at the beginning of Book II. This is not a case of outgrowing an old favorite. I still love the parts that I have always loved, but in general I have always been critical of Book I. It is slow, directionless, and filled with family-friendly, fairytale fantasy elements whose relationship to the broader Middle-Earth cosmology is either poorly conceived or insufficiently explained. (That creepy old willow! That merry Tom Bombadil and his common law wife Goldberry! Those Barrow-wights, are they ghosts or monsters or what?)

Most of all, and I know I'm going to get so much flak for this from my pot smoking friends ... I'm sorry, but the Tom Bombadil stuff sucks. Don't get me wrong, he's a merry fellow, his jacket is blue and his boots are yellow, yeah yeah yeah. I've read nearly everything Tolkien ever wrote, including his standalone poems published as The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, and I think Tom is great in that. But the insertion of the character by Tolkien into an epic fantasy masterpiece like LOTR seems misguided. His only narrative purpose seems to be to rescue Frodo and friends from situations they can't possibly get out of themselves because they are hobbits, and therefore out of their depth the moment they leave the kitchen. Tom is there to save them not once, but on two consecutive perilous occasions.

Consecutive!

And I just don't think Tom belongs in Middle-Earth. He's not an Elf, Dwarf, Man, Hobbit, Ent, Wizard, Orc, etc. In fact, we don't know what the hell he is. Even Tom doesn't seem to remember where he came from. It has been suggested that he might be a Maia, one of the quasi-angelic beings who pop up in the story from time to time. The Elves call him Iarwain Ben-Adar (translation: Eldest, Fatherless) and there has even been speculation that - SPOILER ALERT - this jovial, powerful and childlike being may be Eru Ilúvatar himself, the creator of the world and all its creatures and the closest thing to a monotheistic deity in all of Tolkien's work. I'm sure anyone who reads can agree that you're in bad shape as a writer if your deus ex machina is an actual deus. Well done, Professor T.

That said, I do love every other thing about LOTR with rabid fan-boy fervor, as much today as I did when I read it for the first time all those years ago. I even love the hokey stuff: the baffling archaic language, the black-and-white morality; those fit the story, and the story would not be the same without them. I really am excited to be getting back to the book once again after several years away. Wingnut Films, you did an excellent job with your adaptation and I love you dearly, but the book is still king. And I'm thrilled to be returning to the king tonight.

Mae govannen!

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog entry are solely those of the author and are not the views of Shawn, Mulder, Pookie, or Claudia, though I suspect Claudia would rather watch Dancing with the Stars than most of the stuff we watch around here.

OK, I admit it. I watched the premiere of Dancing with the Stars last night. I don't really know why or how. It came on and I wasn't doing much of anything. It just kind of happened. Curiosity got the worst of me.

Now, let me preface this by saying that I have never seen an episode of Survivor, The Amazing Race, The Bachelor, or any of the ubiquitous un-reality shows. Though in the spirit of disclosure, I do enjoy Project Runway and some of the cooking competition shows as they seem to have a bit of artistry involved in the drama, but generally speaking, I like scripted entertainment. Unfortunately there is far too little out there that doesn't involve some sort of police procedural BS. I mean, how many shows can they make with the premise: "A person with X ability helps the police solve crimes"? But that is a question for another blog entry . . .

Back to my encounter with Dancing with the Stars. Having no interest in dancing outside of my ill fated 1984 dance school tap routine to Denise Williams' "Let's Hear it for the Boy," I never had any desire to watch the show. This show is cheesy, without a doubt. A random hodgepodge of pseudo celebrities (Kate Gosselin?!?), has-beens (Shannon Doherty, Pam Anderson), athletes (Chad Ochocinco, Evan Lysechek), and the occasional astronaut octogenarian (Buzz Aldrin) along with assorted others wear overdone costumes and perform traditional dances such as the Cha-cha-cha and the Viennese Waltz to bizarre covers of oldies and current songs. Really - who thought it was necessary to have people cha-cha-cha-ing to Ke$ha's TikTok? I'm sure some folks loved it . . .

Some of you may ask why did I watch the show and feel compelled to blog about it if I seem to dislike it so much. Admittedly it was somewhat entertaining, but what struck me most was the vulnerability of the "stars." Learning to dance is not easy and you can't fake the precision and poise needed. Poor Buzz looked stiff and a little confused at times, but mad props to the guy for even getting out there at 80 years old. Shannon Doherty has worn the Queen Bitch mantle for so long, yet last night she seemed just like a daughter who was out there trying to make her ailing dad proud. And Niecy Nash. Admittedly, I'm not a huge fan of hers, mainly because i don't really like Reno 911 or Clean House, but the sassy big girl was out there workin' it. So what, if the judges didn't love it, she worked hard, dedicating her dance to "all the thick girls out there." I don't envy any of the women who dance in those heels, but to be plus sized and do so - Wow.

I likely will not watch the show again, but I was surprised by what I saw beneath the glitzy cheese, over-the-top judges, and horrible covers - for within such lameness was a glint of unexpected humanity.

My opinions of the album-long cover of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon by the Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs (with special guests Henry Rollins and Peaches) continue below, song by song:

"Money" - The classic-rock-standard intro of cash register whirrs and chings of change in 7/8 time has been replaced here by an electronic buzz like my old modem used to make. Are the Lips making a subtle comment here about how credit cards and numbers in computer systems have replaced cash and coin? I hope so. The song itself is slower and more electronic than the original, and Wayne Coyne sings in a slightly sleazy digitized Zappa-esque whisper (is that a Vocoder?) that could not be more unlike David Gilmour's slick fat-cat croon. There's a also a fuzzy, distorted but appealing homage to Gilmour's guitar solo, but no saxophone.

"Us and Them" - Musically, this is another trip into vaguely Yoshimi territory, and that's not a bad thing. Coyne's nearly unprocessed vocals make this sound almost like it could be a demo version recorded by the Floyd in 1972. The notes of the sax solo in the original are appropriated, chopped up and rearranged into a really nice guitar solo here. There's nothing wrong with the track, but I miss the wall of sound from the original. Unfortunately, Rollins cheapens the proceedings again with voiceover deliveries that sound like he's reading straight from a page he hasn't seen before. Really, guys, couldn't you have given Henry the script ahead of time?

"Any Colour You Like" - Oh. My. God. The original was funky, but not like this. Kudos to the Lips for finding a common thread between Roger Waters' bass groove from this song and the breakdown in "Echoes" (from Floyd's 1971 Meddle) and presenting us with something that sounds like the best of both. I didn't know Michael Ivins could play like this.

"Brain Damage" - I need to give props to Lips multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd here, because I haven't yet. I can only imagine he is the reason this song sounds as cool as it does. The minimalist guitar work of the original is replaced here by organs and theremins in near-harmony, with a couple of fuzzy guitars - one sounding remarkably like it's played by long-departed Lips guitarist Ronald Jones - weaving in and out throughout. Rollins finally earns his keep as the cackling lunatic. I'm not sure if Coyne is on lead vocals here, because it doesn't sound like him. I'd like to find out.

"Eclipse" - I don't dislike this, but it fails to provide the epic climax to the piece that the original did. It's not bad, starting off with rocking guitars, making me expect a final track with a kick, a final burst of glory, an anthem for the ages like "The W.A.N.D." from At War With the Mystics. Instead, it left me a little cold.

The heartbeat comes in again at the end, making me think of Tull once more, before Rollins gives a self-aware, 10th-grade-Shakespeare recitation of the iconic final line: "There is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark."

God damn you, Henry.

I've just finished listening to the album-long cover version of Pink Floyd's 1973 space-rock masterpiece The Dark Side of the Moon as reimagined by the Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs. It came out on December 22, but I have just gotten around to downloading it. I blame iTunes.

The Dark Side of the Moon was the first Pink Floyd album I heard - I imagine it was the first for many - when I was a wee lad of 12 years old, and it established the Floyd as my favorite band of all time soon after. So when I heard that the Flaming Lips, one of my favorite bands active today, was tackling this, I was understandably excited. When I learned that they would be doing it with the help of Stardeath and White Dwarfs, an Oklahoma City band fronted by Lips leader Wayne Coyne's nephew Dennis - whom I saw open for the Lips on New Year's Eve 2008, and was pretty impressed - I was even more excited. I later learned that warrior-poet Henry Rollins and a Canadian singer named Peaches (who I wasn't familiar with) had contributed to the project as well. I was pumped. This had all the makings to be even better than my most recent favorite album-long cover, Japancakes' 2007 instrumental post-rock cover of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless.

Having heard it now, finally, I can say that in general, I like it. No doubt there will be some diehard Floydoids out there who disagree. There will be complaints of the Lips trying to take away Floyd's masterpiece, and how they are not up to the challenge. They will say and post things like "How dare they!?" and call Coyne & Co. arrogant, and look down their noses at those of us who would even think of listening to such blasphemy.

I say rubbish. Whether you like it or not, you have to respect the effort here - not to mention the massive balls - to recreate one of the most influential, best loved and best selling albums of all time in your own image. And that is what is done here. The Flaming Lips have taken apart this album, song by song, and redesigned it into a Flaming Lips album, one that their fans would appreciate; and that is no crime. Because above all, it is clear that the Lips recognize the place Pink Floyd has in their own psychedelic, space-age, art-rock musical ancestry. The cover project is obviously a labor of, and done with, love.

Here's a breakdown of my opinions, song by song:

"Speak to Me" - At 50 seconds long, it's less than a minute shorter than the original version, but it feels much shorter. Henry Rollins' opening spoken word delivery sounds way too California-dude for the psychedelic sonic assault to follow. And the heartbeat reminds me far more of the heartbeat at the beginning and end of Jethro Tull's A Passion Play than the one on The Dark Side of the Moon.

"Breathe" - We have liftoff. The Lips have transformed the flowing, sleepy ethereality of the iconic overture track into a driving tribal freak-out worthy of their latest album, Embryonic, or the second disc of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew. It is obvious now that they are going to do something to make this classic album their own, and I'm loving it. The Lips have actually managed to make this song sound like a call to action ("Don't be afraid to care!") instead of a nap in a lawn chair on a lazy afternoon.

"On the Run" - They've tempered the oscillating synthesizers of the original, evoking the same atmosphere in a way that is more musical, but not necessarily easier to listen to. I've got mixed feelings about this one, but will need to listen to it some more. They've also revised the airport voiceovers (barely audible in the Floyd original) with references to the Lips' hometown of OKC. Cool.

"Time" - The song starts off with sampled respiratory sound effects keeping time. I'm not crazy about it. Once the music starts, though, it's beautiful. Wayne Coyne delivers David Gilmour's vocals in a strained, mournful falsetto even higher than I've ever heard him sing before. Peaches completes the duet by coming in on the verses sung by the late Rick Wright in the original, with heartfelt indie-waif honesty. The thinness of both vocal parts fits the lyrical theme of fleeting hours, short lives, and impermanence very well. I only wish they would have kept a guitar solo between verses 2 and 3 like the original did - it's one of my favorite guitar solos in Floyd history.

"Breathe (Reprise)" - Brings us right back to the opening theme of the album. Again, even though it's only about 10 seconds shorter than the Floyd version (clocking in at about a minute), this one seems much shorter.

"The Great Gig in the Sky" - From the beginning, it's easy to feel good about this, another Lips reinvention of a classic tune. The familiar piano and slide guitar of the original has become a sweet, dreamy lullaby that would fit in well on Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. I don't even mind Rollins' flat delivery of some voiceover lines from the original. Once Peaches steps in to provide the wailing wordless vocals, though, it's clear that she is no Clare Torry. She does her best, but at times she's clearly in pain. The sudden change of the tune into some kind of crazed booty-funk, however, is brilliant.

Finally, because so many classic Pink Floyd songs have at least a part 1 and part 2 (and also this post would be intimidatingly long otherwise), I've held off on finishing my comments here. My opinions on "side 2" will be up tomorrow. Stay tuned!