Encounter #83: Wave yo face all you want.

I know this is old hat but this video is pretty well edited. Also, I didn't catch that thing right at the beginning: "Hey, nigga I was in Oakland; Oakland like Brooklyn." Skippy. Also, tomorrow's game is big. I'm torn. I really dig Caron Butler, and I'm happy for Antawn Jaminson in a way, but I do loathe the tactless, classless DeShawn Stevenson... and as Team America said, the longer I get to watch LeBron play (ahem, slash and explode and rise higher than the rim) the better. Or, you know, force a Game 7; prove you don't need Gil. That way Agent Zero can opt out and go to Toronto with D'antoni and Calderon and Bosh for the next high flying Seven Seconds or Less team. --RWK [via Fear The Beard]

What Community? #31: Seven seconds or less.

Bill Simmons has just written what could be termed the definitive history of the Suns from when they were THE SUNS! to now when we know them only as the suns. You should read it. It's just too bad he had to go and make a reference to how great the Celtics are there at the end. It's predictable, Bill. However, I will say, I'm glad I didn't grow up a Suns fan. No matter how good the Diamondbacks franchise has turned out to be, I don't think I could live through the kind of pain this remembrance must stir up in a die-hard SUNS! fan. Especially after that "Joe Johnson Owns The Fourth Quarter" game last week. Even if Boris Diaw played the best of any Suns player in games 4 and 5, I'd rather have Joe Johnson, Amare, and any number of the Suns' former draft picks. For instance, they once drafted a player named Rajon Rondo and traded him to Boston for some money. How would you like him backing up Nash right now? --RWK

[Pix: Then and now.]

Title sequences #9: Vertigo

It's just gonna turn into a series on Saul Bass if I keep this up. But this one really is great. As is the Bernard Hermann score. No fronting: I would listen to that right now instead of Glenn Gould. --RWK

What Community? #30: Obama AND1, son!

I didn't know Obama was a lefty. Makes his game that much more tantalizing, doesn't it? Apparently he played ball with the Tar Heels Tuesday morning at 7:15AM (EST). Tuesday morning at 7:15AM (PST) I was asleep and loving it. How come he's 20 years older than me and is in such better shape? Oh, right, he's driven to succeed, a politician and former lawyer, a Harvard graduate, a possible future for our country, and he balled as a kid. Big surprise. I'm sure he'd be a dope pick-up partner. Gotta love that take at the end of the clip. Still: how do you guard Barak Obama with grace? I'm sure that idiot hard worker Tyler Hansborough could have stuffed him in his grill but here he is, always playing the game "the right way." Well, there's this telling scrimmage stat: zero points. Maybe playing the right way did work. Me? I'd probably get caught up in the competition, forget who he was and Bruce Bowen his ass without realizing it, annoying the piss out of him. --RWK [via]

Encounter #82: Caminito del Rey

Some fearless fool walking the Caminito del Rey. Bear with the music, or even turn it off: this is awesome. I want to do it even though just watching this video scares me whiter than I already am. And this dude is doing it one-handed. --RWK [via Rob Davis]

Cure & Family Game: Japanese Cinema is Amazingly Strange and Wonderful

Been watching a string of violent Japanese films from the end of last century. The fifteen years or so after WWII is said to have produced some of the most overtly angry and violent films in Japanese history (fucking makes sense!) but somehow I dont agree. There is something to be said for violent movies with a positive outlook on life, which i'd argue, Cure is. Although, Family Game (rather Kazoku gêmu) is not positive. It is amazing though. Funny, playful, grim and while, purely theatre, completely real.

(You wouldnt believe the difficulty in finding a good pic or trailer for this movie. Jesus!)

Title sequences #8: INLAND EMPIRE What Community? #29

Fuck it: I'm giving away the screen shot below. This is seriously one of the great things. Too bad it's best when big and loud and crisp not small and tinny and blurry. Oh well. That's life. --RWK

Songs #18: Digital Love (Cover)

Well now. This comes from Discobelle. It's a rock-ish cover of a Daft Punk anthem, which is a dancey cover, of sorts, of a soul song by George Duke. Talk about art in the age of mechanical reproducibility. This is sweet, if almost too sweet; catchy ditty for a few weeks of plays at best, novelty one-time listen at worst. Right now, I'm in the former camp. --RWK

Daft Punk - Digital Love (Alphabeat, FrankMusik & Leon Jean-Marie cover) (zshare)

[Pic: like RS, I stole it from DVDBeaver.]

Songs #17: One Word Extinguisher

I'd forgotten how great this album is when you're in the right mood. And, surprisingly, how great it is to write to. As Pager Code said once, I thought Scott Herren here was going to determine my musical outlook for a long time when this album came out. Too bad it only lasted another EP. I mean, I was into Appropa't more than the rest of my friends but it's chilled out vibe was kind of the opposite of what I dig so much about how nervy and dense stuff like song folds into itself. And this is carried out over the whole album, which is amazing, Mr Lif appearance aside. (Mr Lif and Diverse are serious downgrades from Mikah 9 and Aesop Rock, but you take what you can get.) I may even like the follow-up EP more (Crazy!) because it doesn't have any featured rappers. --RWK

Prefuse 73 - One Word Extinguisher (zshare)

[Pix: keeping with the Denzel theme from a much lesser (but I'd still argue interesting) movie than _He Got Game_ whose title makes a nice joke with the title of this song. Besides, everybody loves Christopher Walken these days.]

Encounter #80: To the throat. Encounter #81: The Pearl, "Black Jesus"

Cooler's been saying that's his next move next time. As I look at these clips on youtube, I'm beginning to think this is the Denzel performance. It's so natural. He gets the pain and the joy and looks like he knows how to move his body, too. But, of course, that shouldn't be a surprise: acting is physical as much as facial, right? Also, gotta love Ray's overalls below. --RWK

Title sequences #7: He Got Game What Community? #28

Aaron Copeland never sounded so right. I feel like I should own this movie. Spike Lee's definitely into the kind of America I'm into. --RWK

Encounter #79: "Joe Johnson Owns The Fourth Quarter"

I know this is a day late. But when the Suns get bounced after a truly valiant game from Boris Diaw and yet another obscene Hack-a-Shaq routine from Mr. Evil, Greg Popovich, I thought I'd go ahead and post some uplift. We all know the Hawks are bound to get bounced, too, cuz -- who are we kidding, here -- they're not this year's Warriors, but like Shoals said, all of "Johnson's slow-mo isolations that hovered somewhere between smooth and drunken" were awesome. And cuz this series just got way more fun (less depressing) than that "Oh SHIT Tony Parker is the real deal" cake walk the Spurs just finished. We'll just have to see what tomorrow brings us, as ever, won't we? No way the Hawks keep it up, right? As much as I loathe Boston, and don't find the Celtics' game to be that interesting, I still really dig KG (no matter how insane he's gotten) and Ray Allen (who doesn't like He Got Game?) and a Celtics-Lakers series would probably be pretty dope. And kind of hilarious. Imagine the spin. --RWK

(NOT) Genius Marketing #18: NotJägermeister

Nice logic. Promote your own product by inventing a fake opposite product and promoting it. Also, this kind of sarcasm is just old and tired now. (Or is that just me?) If you really think your drink, which is ordered chiefly by fools in too-loud tones (and one curious grad student I know by the bottle), is the drink of wild and crazy guys and gals the globe over why not run with that? Oh, wait, there was that Napoleon Dynamite movie they all liked, wasn't there? (Guess it's just me. And other like-minded bloggers eager to pose smart.) --RWK [via]

Genius Marketing #17: New Dark Knight poster.

This comes via Rob Humanick, and while it certainly gets my fanboy juices flowing, it's still pretty hard to top those Joker-specific posters from a while ago (look here). But Heath Ledger's unfortunate, left-field death definitely stopped that marketing plan. How fitting is it that the new tagline is "Welcome to a world without rules"? I'm glad the print team, at least, is back to making this a supreme ad campaign (let's forget this hack-job and the worries it instills) because I have faith that this will be one pretty fucking awesome blockbuster with its questions about seriousness (what is the worth of seriousness and unseriousness? isn't unseriousness still a form of seriousness?), its abandonment of rules (think about how rules work, or don't, in The Prestige) and its Joker (RIP) and its mack trucks flipping over. I hope to see it in IMAX. I hope it knocks my socks off. Then again, I don't want to get too excited. It's not like Christopher Nolan knows how to shoot actions scenes like Gore Verbinski or Steven Spielberg. (Yup, I made that link.) --RWK [Cross posted on VINYL IS HEAVY]

What community? #27: En la Ciudad de Sylvia

Youtube is so amazing. Thank you LaMujerTendida. --RWK