Now that Star Trek has opened, broken some records and delighted an apparent majority of critics and moviegoers, it’s time for the backlash to begin. The complaints are not tremendous, but they have popped up here and there on the web today, and it’s worth taking a look at some of them, especially for those of us who haven’t yet gotten around to watching the thing. I’ve already learned, courtesy of actor/comedian Aziz Ansari that I should be careful in choosing where I see J.J. Abrams’ reboot if I want to see it in IMAX. What else might I be wary of before I go into the movie, in general? Let’s see what negativity is coming out of the blogosphere after the jump:
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It takes a special brand of moxie (or delusion or intoxication) to play metal seriously. For the Toronto, Canada based Anvil, who are the subject of The Terminal screenwriter and former #1 Anvil fan Sasha Gervasi’s documentary, the outrageous dream of everlasting youth that fuels even the most pedestrian of aging rock bands to continue on is still in full force as its members grapple with life in their fifties.
The film, which opens on Friday after a stellar, year long trip around the American festival circuit, chronicles the band’s origins, their decade of relative success and their fall into obscurity. For its members, Steve “Lips” Kudlow (lead vocals, lead guitar), Robb Reiner (the drummer, not the director of This Is Spinal Tap), Dave Allison (vocals, rhythm guitar) and Ian Dickson (bass), Metal is not something to be outgrown, to be cast aside as an embarrassing folly of youth. While it may seem that being a faded eighties hair metal band star is one of the more unfortunate paths that could befall a professional musician, for the members of Anvil, who began a new tour last night that is largely due to the publicity the film has generated, perhaps a third act can still exist. I doubt we can say the same for the following bands.
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It’s fitting that the last film I saw at SXSW was Nerdcore Rising. I’d begun my experience of this year’s festival with a screener of We Are Wizards (review here), a documentary that mostly focuses on the Harry Potter-based “wizard rock”, which I’d then assumed was the nerdiest music genre in existence. And now I’d finished my experience with this doc, which is actually about the nerdiest music genre in existence, “nerdcore hip hop”.
The proof is not in the artists, though. It’s in the fans, which director Negin Farsad is right to concentrate on and showcase so significantly here. The film may center on one specific nerdcore hip hop artist, MC Frontalot, and his band’s first tour, but Nerdcore Rising is really, ultimately, about the freaks and geeks who make up the audience at each show along the way. Not since the height of the ska scene ten years ago has there been a genre so well defined by the character of its fanbase.
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