Happy Halloween

Heroin Holiday & Dirty Sprite

Vice is one of my favorite websites to go to. My Saturday mornings are spent watching Chris Harris on cars or browsing content on Vice. I don't love everything they do, some of it can be pretty obnoxious, but a lot of the time they get it right. They tip toe the line between real journalists and being exploitive and obnoxious. Anyways, here are two things from the site that I found interesting over the last week, both focusing on different aspects of drug culture, which I find pretty interesting. The first is a video about heroin addicts in Prague cooking their product and the other is an article focusing on the abuse of prescription cough syrup within American rap culture. Enjoy!

http://www.vice.com/Fringes/heroin-holiday

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/lean-on-me

Mr. Nice

The second druggie film for this weekend, Mr. Nice.

This one hops the pond. We trade Haight and Ashbury for Oxford, England, circa the 60's. Weed is rampant all over the world. Yanks and limeys, toking it up.

This film came out in 2011 and it's by the director of Candyman, oddly enough. I remember that being pretty scary as a 12 year old. It's probably shite, though. Mr. Nice is awesome. Definitely worth watching pronto.

It stars Rhys Ifans and he does a terrific job in this true account of Britain's biggest drug dealer of the 60's and 70's, Mr. Howard Marks. Chloe Sevigny and David Thewis back him up. It's a very well acted film all round.

This film is slick. It's entertaining. Takes you on a good ride from innocent Oxford student to international drug smuggler extraordinaire. And unlike Mesrine, Mr. Nice is a hell of a nice guy.

I liked everything about this. You should stream it on Netflix.

The car porn is pretty sweet, too.

The only odd thing is what appears to be the use of green screens with period footage. I'm not buying the superimpositions of Rhys in the 60's and 70's. It's just no done slickly enough. Whatever.

Yeah, check this out.

Psych-Out

Had a druggie movie weekend. First I watched AIP's Psych-Out and then today I watched Mr. Nice.

Psych-Out is from 1968. Dick Clark produced it, American International Pictures released it, and Jack Nicholson starred in it.

And importantly, Laszlo Kovacs was the DP. (He was famous for Easy Rider and highly revered by cinema nerds the world over.) I just learned that when Jean Paul Belmondo used the alias "Laszlo Kovacs" in Breathless, he wasn't referring to the Laszlo Kovacs. It was just a weird coincidence. Godard dropped Breathless in 1960 and Kovacs wasn't on the scene til later that decade. Interesting.

Anyway, this was an AIP picture from the late 60's starring Nicholson and Bruce Dern...so you know exactly what you're in for. It's drugged-out. It's got a good soundtrack. It's sensational. It has a paper-thin plot. It's crap. But it's good.

Psych-Out is about a deaf girl who goes to SF in search of her brother. She's leaving her troubled life behind and finding solace in weed and LSD, love-in's and jive talk.

Freak out the squares, maaaaaan.

Psych-Out makes it look like everyone in their 20's or 30's in SF was a jobless, stoned, bum. The chicks were all hot and ready to bone ya at the drop of a hat. Drugs were aplenty, and booty was too. Looked like a fun time.

Oh yeah, and everyone talked a lot of psycho-babble and sounded like pretentious fucking retards.

Did I mention Jack Nicholson's character was named, "Stoney?" Yeah.

This is streaming on Netflix. It's not bad to check out. But it's not a "good" movie. It's...interesting.

This Is The End.

A very funny movie to watch during the month of October. Unlike some of these other guys films, where it gets a little more serious towards the end, this movie is funny through the end. Have a couple drinks and enjoy it.

http://youtu.be/Cu4fGqSIxU4

Dust to Glory

Dust to Glory is a film by Dana Brown. His dad is the man behind Endless Summer and On Any Sunday. So you know where Dana is coming from. Like father like son.

This flick covers the Baja 1000. It's a totally insane 1000 mile race from Ensenada to La Paz, Mexico. Motorcycles, trucks, Beetles, buggies...whatever. Even dudes like Robbie Gordon and Mario Andretti get in on the action. The only crazier race than this is the Dakar Rally.

Brown's cinematography on this flick is fucking superb. Lots of helicopter footage as well as helmet-cam footage. Every angle and perspective you'd want. It's very slick. Really well put together. The Brown's have a very long history with sports documentaries and Dust to Glory does not disappoint.

This film charts the paths of some specific riders/racers, including "Mouse" who's riding all 1000 miles on a bike solo!!! If the race wasn't crazy enough...doing it solo?!

This is streaming on Netflix. Check out the trailer. It's god damn exciting stuff.

These lovely ladies aren't in the flick, but his photo came up when I did a Baja 1000 search...so.

Love the Beast

This was really fuckin good. 90 minuted doc about Eric Bana's Ford Falcon.

I don't really know anything about Eric Bana, but this film ruled. He directed it. It's about the one car that Eric has owned since he was 15 and how it's evolved over the years and been a constant in his life.

Eric and his friends have rebuilt this car 3 or 4 times over the years. This film documents the last Targa rally he entered it in, the time leading up to the race, and a brief period after.

Jeremy Clarkson, Dr. Phil and Jay Leno round out the celebrity cast. Although it's really Eric's family and friends who have the real supporting roles in this flick. Clarkson is as funny and controversial as ever. It's good fun all round.

I don't really want to go into too much detail but this is definitely a flick that anyone slightly interested in cars can enjoy. See it.

Bosozoku by Masayuki Yoshinaga

I ordered this book from Amazon and got it a couple days ago. It's a photo book on Bosozoku gangs. I know I've touched on them a few times in the past, but to recap; Bosozoku are young Japanese biker gangs. Disenfranchised teenagers riding around on modified UJM's. They make noise, lots of noise, get drunk, party, get in small time fights. And wear kimonos when they ride.

A minority of them take the leap into Yakuza, but Bosozoku aren't as bad as their media portrays. Most of them are done by the time they hit 20 years old.

I'm interested in all things bike-related, so I wanted to have this book. It's a very unique tome. It comes in a hefty hard-cover slipcase, but once you pull the book out you realize there's no spine. It's a hard-cover, but all the pages are glued together in one massive accordion fold. So you read it from front to back, and you can make each spread as wide as you want, and then when you get to the end you turn it over and read it the other way around. When I say "read" I really mean "look." It's all photography. If you were to unfold the book it'd probably be over twenty feet long!

The photography isn't that great, to be honest. It could be a lot better. The photographer was at the right places at the right times...but his photos come across amateur. The Bosozoku have a crazy, unique bike style that's all their own. I dig.

It's a cool book to add to the collection, but I wouldn't run out to get this.

Like Water

I started watching the Ultimate Fighter last season. I dug it. And it just started again a couple weeks ago, so MMA is on my mind.

I saw Like Water come across Netflix and I decided to check it out. It's a 76 minute documentary about Anderson Silva. More specifically, it's about his 2010 title defense against Chael Sonnen (who was a couch in last year's TUF).

It was well done. Definitely more smooth and artistic than I expected. It's got a good original score and nice editing. Zero complaints. I guess the one thing...they should have shown the entire fight at the end for those of us who didn't see it live three and a half years ago. But whatever, you see the important parts and get the gist. Looked like a fucking phenomenal match!

This is definitely one of the better docs I've seen about any sort of fighting or martial art. Recommended.

Early Fall 2013 Mix

Here's a quick mix  of some of my favorite songs at this movement. Right now "R U Mine?" is top on that list for sure. You can stream it on yer phone as well. Enjoy.

PS The above pic is one I took from Laneway the other day, more to come on that soon(ish).