Scarlett Johansson in granny panties

Boy, did yesterday ever suck. I'd originally planned to take one of many remaining vacation days, but after making a Herculean effort to negotiate an interview with Katatonia, it ended up getting scheduled for 10:30 in the morning that day. Then, I got talked into going in to work to do some crap I was going to put off until Monday, so that shitcanned my plan of going in, doing the interview and booking. At 11 a.m., I still hadn't heard from anyone, which lead to me calling the publicist frantically, and her suggesting I track down guitarist Anders Nyström at his hotel. He had already checked out, the publicist stopped answering her phone and after doing all my other shit, I just went home. There, I tried to call the publicist several more times before passing out for a few hours. She didn't answer when I called after awaking, either. Then, my plans to go to the Midnight Hellhouse were derailed when everybody bailed. I ended up drinking alone, watching the OnDemand. Man, motherfuck yesterday.

Anyway, I've noticed that I tend to go through cycles of entertainment consumption. I'm always flipping back and forth between movies and music. Spring and summer are naturally music times, because there's not as much impetus to sit inside and stare at a screen, and a lot of new releases are unleashed during those months. Conversely, autumn and winter are when the movies I like best are usually released, and it's a good time to play catch-up on flicks I missed while out gallivanting during the outdoor months. As proof, here is a look at what has been hitting my eyeballs lately.

"The Ice Harvest": I know, I posted about renting this a while ago, but I just got around to watching it recently. It's a dark Xmas-time comedy directed by Harold Ramis, who as a director gave us two early classics in "Caddyshack" and "National Lampoon's Vacation" before delivering a long line of sappy audience-pleasers. On the commentary, Ramis says he was attracted to this script's jaded nihilism, which is interesting. Two guys (John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton) steal a bunch of money from their boss on Xmas Eve and need to kill a few hours until their plane leaves town. Strippers, thugs, family members and other folk complicate things. I liked "The Ice Harvest." It's dark and funny as advertised, shows off lots of Chicago burb locations and owes more than a bit to the Coens - especially "Fargo." However, I felt the ending was a bit too sunny. The original ending, presented as a DVD extra along with several other alternates, is truer to the rest of the film.

"Incident at Loch Ness": I borrowed this mockumentary from a friend at work who generally has good taste, and she wasn't wrong about this one. The premise is that young hotshot Hollywood guy Zak Penn, desperate for credibility, decides to bankroll a documentary by legendary German New Wave director Werner Herzog about the Loch Ness Monster. Penn and Herzog play themselves as they hire a crew and set out on a ship to make their flick, and both are really good. Their sensibilities naturally clash, and their mismatched ideals make up much of the film's humor. Eventually, some ingenious crossings of trickery and improvisation conspire to make the whole thing somewhat believable. I wonder what my reaction to their self-referential hoax would have been had I not known it was fake going in. Anyway, check this out if you enjoy mockumentaries. It's very clever.

"Rock & Rule": I remember seeing ads for the theatrical run of this animated feature on TV when I was a kid and wanting to go to it, but I didn't see it until it was on cable. Although I barely remembered it, I saw it at the store for cheap and figured it was something I should own. It was the first theatrical release by Nelvana, the Canadian animation house behind TV specials like "A Cosmic Christmas" and "The Devil and Daniel Mouse" (I want those on DVD!). Today, Nelvana is a kids' animation staple, having subsequently developed a crapheap of shows from "Care Bears" to "Franklin." "R&R" is a vintage, hand-drawn relic from the golden age of PG-rated animated flicks, and often comes off like a family-friendly version of "Heavy Metal," complete with a post-apocalyptic sci-fi setting, rotoscope overload and Cheap Trick on the soundtrack. Like a lot of animated features from the early '80s, it looks kind of dingy, or at least "shadowy," which I personally find cool. It incorporates some early computer graphics, and while their effect is as cheesy as the flick's story (some bunk about a megalomaniac future rock star kidnapping a young ingenue), there's some really tripped-out eye candy here. I have no idea why this flick flopped, but it took three years to make, and while not perfect, the independent, homemade and experimental approach under which it came to be makes it worth remembering.

"The Swinging Cheerleaders": Not ten minutes into this '70s relic, I realized I've seen "The Swinging Cheerleaders" before. Back in the '90s, when Quentin Tarantino had his boutique company Rolling Thunder, his first move was to re-release director Jack Hill's "Switchblade Sisters" in arthouses. Hill's cult appeal was already inflated by the then-vogue blaxploitation redux and the rediscovery of his flicks with Pam Grier ("The Big Doll House," "Coffy," etc.), so a mess of his other movies came out on video. I'd rented this rather chaste sex romp and totally forgot I'd watched it, since I just bought it used as part of a 4-for-$20 deal. It's not much better now, mashing together post-Watergate journo idealism, post-hippie cynicism about activists, a harebrained football gambling scheme and a whole lot of bare (college) cheerleader skin. In the commentary track he shares with trash culture gadabout Johnny Legend, Hill calls it an "adult Disney film," which is to say it's simple, linear and the good guys win. Well, it does have a plus in the adorable Rosanne Katon. I'm not really into the whole skimpy cheerleader outfit thing, but that girl was smoking hot.

"Match Point": Critics were hyping this as Woody Allen's best movie in years, and I can't disagree. I've seen every single one of his movies except "Interiors" and the recent "Scoop," and have enjoyed most of them - even "Anything Else," which was pretty universally reviled, had some insight to me. "Match Point" sort of goes back to the well from which "Crimes and Misdemeanors," one of my personal faves, drew its inspiration. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is a former tennis pro who gives lessons to a rich English guy and hooks up with the guy's cute sister. But, being a scumbag, he gets all hot and bothered when he meets the guy's fiancée, a skanky American wannabe actress, and he ends up cheating on the sister. All right, I know I'm in the minority here, but Emily Mortimer, who's playing the sister/wife, is a lot more appealing to me than Scarlett Johansson, who's the fiancée/mistress. Yeah, Mortimer's creepy skinny, but I like her smile, and her character is completely sympathetic. Johansson's character is your typical Woody Allen flick woman: sexy, but out of her fucking gourd. So, I really had no sympathy for the tennis pro. Still, although I knew where it was going, I found the story's coherence and construction compelling. It's tighter and more purposeful than anything Mr. Allen has done recently. Worth a look for anyone who appreciates Woody's non-wacky flicks.

"The Black Dahlia": Here's something currently in theaters, the latest from the generally overrated Brian De Palma. In this one, Scarlett Johansson plays the "good" girl, and I like her better when she's not being testy. Hillary Swank is a pretty good femme fatale, which I wouldn't have suspected. Maybe she's just a convincing bi. The main stars, though, are Aaron Eckhart and Josh Hartnett, who both have the craggy, jaded look to pull off 1940s cops. This is not a movie about the infamous Hollywood "Black Dahlia" murder, in which a young ingenue's corpse was found cut in half and violated in various ways postmortem. It's based on a "what if?" novel about two cops working the case. The book was written by the same guy who wrote "L.A. Confidential," and it's similar to that movie, just not as intense. Like a lot of De Palma's movies, it's aesthetically pleasing, but really kind of empty and disappointing if you think about it afterward. Part of the problem is that so many alliances have shifted and switcheroos pulled by the end, you feel as punchdrunk as Hartnett's ex-boxer cop character. I only saw it a few weeks ago, and I was relatively sober, but fuck if I can tell you all of what happened. And I still think they should have used a song by The Black Dahlia Murder over the end credits.

"V: The Final Battle": Oh, damn! I paid $5 for this! When I was in third grade, if you didn't watch this three-part miniseries, you were a shit and a nobody. My nine year-old brain was so psyched for a follow-up to the original "V," it wouldn't have mattered if it was crap. Thankfully, it wasn't. In case you don't remember the '80s, I should explain that "V" was an NBC miniseries about an army of aliens who came to Earth and gradually took over by buttering up politicians and acting all friendly. In secret, the so-called Visitors had green lizard faces under their human masks, ate huge rodents whole and intended to harvest everybody on the planet for food. It was ratings gold, spawning this sequel as well as an unfortunately short-lived weekly series. In this installment, we see the human Resistance making strides and succumbing to internal struggles. The girl who was impregnated by an alien gives birth. Diana, the alien villain who was one of my biggest crushes as a kid, takes out everyone in her path to total control. Sure, its construction is cheesy and stilted, as was the convention of the time, but it's pretty smart for what it is, and it's fun to view it in light of the political climate in which it originated. The sight of those Visitor ships hovering over the cities, which was unabashedly ripped off in that garbage heap "Independence Day," still gives me the goose pimples. And that nasty alien baby? Still awesome.

Oh, there's more where those came from, but I'll save those for another day. Click here for a look at Wednesday night's Iron Maiden concert. I was prepared to slag it due to the set list, but I was pleasantly surprised. They convinced me that A Matter of Life and Death is a better album than I initially believed. And can you imagine how refreshing it was to see Maiden but not hear damn "Sanctuary," "Run to the Hills" or "The Number of the Beast"? Still would have liked something from Piece of Mind, though...