I’m not much for introductions, so I think I’ll just go right into it. Watch this spot for more on music, tv, movies, religion, cults, and other fringe lunacy.

Everybody’s been comparing Kindercore to a zombie risen from the dead, and I can run with that. Remember Weekend at Bernie’s? Me neither, but I think it’s about a dead guy that gets resurrected by a Voodoo spell. Like a zombie, right? Sort of, but this guy only moves when there’s music playing. And if Kindercore’s gonna move, it’s gonna need something to move to.

Wale feat. TCB - “Ice Cream Girl”

That’s where Wale comes in. He’s from my hometown, Washington, DC, and I have to laugh when I hear his line about putting DC on the map (It’s the nation’s capital, it’s on even the least detailed maps of the US,) but when I hear this song, I wanna believe. DC hasn’t ever really been a major player in the hip-hop scene, but the one thing it has that no other city does is go-go, live bands with badass rhythm sections playing beats you can bounce to. Go-go has never really gotten much national recognition, but you can hear its influence on tracks like Amerie’s “One Thing” and a dozen others produced by DC native Rich Harrison. Ludacris and Justin Timberlake have played go-go versions of their songs live, but these never seem to make it on the radio outside of DC.

On “Ice Cream Girl,” Wale pays dues to the homegrown style with a beat courtesy of TCB, or Total Control Band. Right now it’s a regional hit, blowing up DC stations like WPGC and WKYS. I’d love to see go-go get more attention on a national level, and as great as this track is, I’m not sure it’s going to be the song to do it.

Posted by Mat on 30 Jun 2007 at 08:30 pm

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HB: Okay, so, the promised meme. I left my notes at home so hopefully I can remember all of my answers or come up with new ones that are equally good.

THE MEME

1. Total number of films you own on DVD and video?

JB: 341 not including t.v. shows and other things that aren’t explicitly movies.

HB: Obviously this answer is going to be the same for both of us. I don’t have a secret stash of DVDs somewhere that Jared doesn’t know about. It does, sadly, include more things than you would think that are still in their original plastic, not intentionally but more out of laziness.

2. Last film you bought?

JB: Blow Out

HB: Yep.

3. Five films I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me.

JB: The Philadelphia Story, Naked, Phantom of the Paradise, Grey Gardens, and Sleuth. That’s a top-of-the-head sort of list, so don’t hold me to it. That is, these films do mean a lot to me but they may not be the best five to choose.

HB: Dang it. I was really happy with my list of five, but it’s sitting on the desk at home (we’re in Atlanta right now, not in Athens). So, I know that Naked was also on my list because it’s just really a fantastic movie and I never get tired of it, also Shoot the Piano Player, a Truffaut film from 1960 that has always been one of my favorites. Hmm. The Lady Eve. Rushmore. And Holiday.

4. Name a movie you have seen more than ten times.

JB: Murder By Death. It’s hard for me to know just what all movies I’ve seen more than ten times, but this one is a no-brainer.

HB: I’m really not sure if I’ve seen any movie more than ten times (that’s a heck of a lot of times), but eventually I decided to go ahead and humiliate myself here by saying The Birdcage. It’s always, always on TV, and there’s something about it that compels watching, partially the feeling of “oh, no, it’s on again, and I’m going to watch it. I really should slap myself in the face.”

5. Name a movie you’ve seen multiple times in the theater.

JB: Pulp Fiction. I saw a sneak preview of it before it opened, and it was one of the best movie-going experiences I’ve ever had probably. Went on to see it another four or five times in the theater.

HB: Jared also used to be a projectionist at the theater in the University of Georgia’s (our alma mater) student center, so he saw a lot of stuff more than once. I’ve seen Citizen Kane at least twice in the theater, maybe even three times, and I’d go see it again.

6. Name an actor who would make you more inclined to see a movie and an actor who would make you less inclined.

JB: More likely: Cary Grant; Less likely: Rosie O’Donnell

HB: I’d see any movie with Nicolas Cage in it. Any movie. I tend to shy away from movies with Andie MacDowell. (This sounds a little bit like those word puzzles, or, rather, puzzles that turn out to word puzzles, where the person hates words with double letters. But it’s not. MacDowell and O’Donnell just both happen to suck.)

7. Name a movie you keep meaning to see but haven’t gotten around to yet.

JB: Day for Night

HB: Cool Hand Luke. Even people who don’t like movies all that much have seen it.

8. What is the scariest movie you’ve ever seen?

JB: Probably seeing bits of The Shining when I was a kid.

HB: I’m going to say Repulsion because it’s the only movie that’s ever scared me so much I couldn’t finish watching it. I’m much less of a wuss now, but Polanski’s good at being scary.

9. What is the best page-to-screen adaptation you’ve ever seen?

JB: The A&E Tom Jones is fantastic, but was made for television. I dunno, the Harry Potter movies really nail the tone and characters of the books.

HB: I agree on the Tom Jones adaptation. Usually, I get irritated with movies adapted from books that I love, but not with that one at all. Plus, they insert Henry Fielding as a character, the narrator, which means you get his hilarious voice throughout. It really gets the book, and the length allows them to do a lot with it.

10. If you could be any character portrayed in a movie, who would it be?

JB: James Bond seems like an easy and obvious choice, but I’m a lot more like some jerk from a Kevin Smith movie.

HB: Nora Charles. Hot, rich, martini-fueled, and happily married.

11. Who’s one of your favorite underappreciated directors?

JB: I’m not sure that David Mamet gets his due when it comes to cinema.

HB: Paul Verhoeven. I haven’t even seen any of his early stuff, but RoboCop, for example, is a pretty great movie. He’s always interesting, even if sometimes it’s mostly in his total crassness.

12. If you had to pick one movie to bump from AFI’s list (either the old version or the new version), which one would it be?

JB: I don’t hate any of them, but my list would probably look pretty different. I’d bump Easy Rider, just because I probably liked it the least of all of them that I’ve seen (I haven’t seen about 8 of them).

HB: Dump the Gump.

13. Name a movie you’ve seen that you doubt anyone else reading this has. Why do you think that is?

JB: Probably The Fire Next Time, which we watched because Hillary was an extra in it as a child and we wanted to see if she ended up in the movie. She didn’t. Another possibility though, that I’d actually recommend, is this movie called Tomorrow, the World!0 about this evil Hitler Youth kid.

HB: Jon Jost’s Last Chants for a Slow Dance. A friend of mine made me watch it in high school, but I wouldn’t recommend it. IMDB says “this plot synopsis is empty.” You bet it is. Also, a rabbit gets its head chopped off.

14. What’s the first movie you remember seeing in the theater?
JB: I really have no idea. Possibly Fantasia?

HB: I’m pretty sure it was The AristoCats. It looks like that was re-released in the United States in December 1980, meaning I was three. That seems about right.

15. What was your best theatrical experience of a movie?

JB: Probably the aforementioned Pulp Fiction sneak, but the Tarantino openings are always good.

HB: That Pulp Fiction sneak preview was amazing, especially as we sat outside it for at least an hour ahead of time, talking and so on, but I think I’m going to say Spirited Away. We saw it at the student center theater on a horrible rainy February day and followed it with a big meal of Chinese food, but the whole experience, even in the theater, was just incredibly cozy and made the movie, if possible, even better than it is.

16. Who’s your favorite child actor?

JB: Probably that kid who played Beans on Even Stevens.

HB: Jerry Mathers. I’m not sure that he ever really got to display his talents fully, but even on Leave It to Beaver he’s always really great, and he doesn’t ham it up the way a lot of kids do. He’s mournful all the time in a very believable way.

17. Are lists a good thing?

JB: Sure. I mean, inherently flawed and all that, but they’re fun to discuss/debate, and they help you remember things at the grocery store.

HB: Yeah. I agree. Lists are a pain when stupid people make them but even then they make you think about things and they’re good for compulsives like us.

18. What movie do you think should be made into a TV show? What TV show should be made into a movie?

JB: Well one of my favorite “movies” of all time was actually made for television: Lars Von Trier’s The Kingdom (parts I and II), and I love it as both (though it makes a really long “movie”). I do think it could work as a t.v. show for years and years though. I probably prefer the television format these days, in a lot of ways, and I think, assuming they lived up to their potential, a lot of current t.v. shows could make great movies: Deadwood, Battlestar Galactica, 24, Prison Break (that show actually seems like it could be better as a movie) Joss Whedon stuff, etc. (fingers crossed for The Simpsons—wasn’t there supposed to be a Red Dwarf movie?) The real question for me is what movie would I like to see developed into a series that could last five or more years…off the top of my head…I dunno I keep coming back to Michael Winterbottom and Mike Leigh stuff, which I do think could be good. I also think if you drama-ed up Sky High a bit and gave it to Joss Whedon it could be pretty awesome.

HB: I was pretty happy with my answers until I saw Jared’s. I want a Sky High TV show! Okay, so I said I’d like to see Metropolitan made into a TV show, but it could be any Whit Stillman thing, mostly because he works sooo slowly and it would be nice to have some of his stuff out there on a regular basis. As far as TV into a movie, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis would be great. I haven’t seen much of that show, but I really liked what I did see, and I think it’s ripe for a reimagining.

Like Jared said earlier, feel free to steal this meme or comment or whatever.

Posted by teambrown on 30 Jun 2007 at 05:29 pm

4 Comments »

HB: The problem with an introductory post is that, in some ways, we’re two terribly indecisive people. You could call this flexibility. Or you could call it wussiness. Anyway, what do we write here?

JB: You bitch. Hillary just passed the laptop off to me without warning me what she wanted me to do–her Kindercore homework, it turns out. Okay, well, I envisioned this first post as a brief introduction to us, Team Brown, so I think I’ll tell you a bit us, more specifically Hillary, and then I’ll pass the computer back off to her and she can tell you about me…our posts won’t always be this cute annoying.

Hillary Brown is my wife of almost eleven years, and collectively we are frequently known as “Team Brown”–Hillary is quite literally the better half. She is an editor by day and freelance editor and writer by pretty much all the time. Her blog is antidisingenuous.

HB: Jared is clearly trying to distract me from introducing him well by spraying me with a can of compressed air. No, really. Anyway, there’s not much point in bickering right from the beginning here. Who do we think we are? Cary Grant and Irene Dunne? Well, sometimes. Goodnight, Gracie and all that. So, my husband. Let’s skip the whole thing about how adorable he is because you don’t want to hear that. I mean, clearly, if you’re already at the Kindercore site, you should assume that everything on here is cute in some way, shape, or fashion. He also has a blog, devoted to art (both his and other folks’ [his is better]). And we have a podcast, which used to be about whatever and is currently about B-movies. So we’re a little overextended. Or substituting blogs for having children. So be it. What this particular blog might be about, in addition to whatever else we come across that we want to write on, is working on some lists of classy movies that we have yet to see. I mean, we’ve seen a lot of movies. And we really like lists. In fact, we have a list, stored on our computer, of every movie we’ve ever both seen. Yes, it’s alphabetized. Sheesh. You shouldn’t even have to ask that question. So that’s somewhere between 3,000 and 3,100 right now. We’ve seen 90% of the AFI 100 Greatest American Films list. But, sometimes, it’s hard to make yourself sit down and watch Eric von Stroheim’s Greed, especially when we have trashy reality TV to watch. So, blog audience dears, you are now our motivation to work on completing viewing of some lists of really genuinely acclaimed and classic movies. Tag.

JB:What Hillary said. We’re also open to suggestions for other blog topics, and I’m sure we’ll have random posts about whatever is entertaining us for the moment, but since the movie thing will be kind of a leitmotif, we’ve come up with our own movie meme (our next post) to serve as further introduction to ourselves, our blog, and our movie tastes. Feel free to post your own answers in our comments section.

Posted by teambrown on 30 Jun 2007 at 07:56 am

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Well, as you can see Kindercore has indeed risen from the grave - the rumors are confirmed, the details are sketchy, but one thing is clear… this is a very different Kindercore than the one you might be used to. Time, age, experience and a three year legal battle have left their scars and changed our temperment, outlook and values.

What am I talking about? Have a look around and see for yourself. Kindercore.com is meant to be an evolving, cooperative with input from artists, writers, designers, filmmakers, scientists, bands, fans and all of those in between. So, kick the tires, breath in the new car smell, post in the forums and get involved in the next faze of the Kindercore family - Kindercore Mark II: Jazz Odyssey!

Once more into the breach!

Posted by ryan on 29 Jun 2007 at 08:51 pm

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