The A.V. Club - Inventory

Music: Inventory:A soundproofed room of one’s own: 17 well-intended yet misguided feminist anthems

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0500

1. Pink, “Stupid Girls” Pink has made a career out of working just far enough outside the pop-tartlet mold that she can make fun of the Britney Spearses and Jessica Simpsons of the world while remaining marketable to the exact same audience. Take her hit single “Stupid Girls,” which uses annoying L.A. starlet indicators like “itsy-bitsy doggies” and blonde hair as an excuse to indulge in some girl-on-girl hate, including an ugly interlude where she mocks bulimia. While in theory the song’s message about being yourself and avoiding destructive superficiality is admirable, it’s distressingly black-and-white and dismissive ...

Film: Inventory:We aren’t the champions: 11 sports movies where the losers are winners

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

1. Bull Durham (1988) Ron Shelton’s classic comedy about minor-league baseball remains the ultimate antidote to the syrupy nostalgia and late-inning theatrics of most movies about the sport. Irreverent, wise, and richly informed by Shelton’s own experience in the lower realms of the Baltimore Orioles organization, Bull Durham sees the minors for what they are: a training ground for raw young prospects who will most likely never mature, and a purgatory for long-in-the-tooth players whose veteran stability (and consistency) makes them useful before they’re put out to pasture. Kevin Costner plays a career minor-league catcher—save for ...

TV: Inventory:“You’re off the case!”: 19 instances where authorities were justifiably too close to a case to work on it

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

1. Tango, Brooklyn’s Finest Cop films traffic in cliché as much as they do illicit narcotics. When the stereotypical lieutenant isn’t threatening to bust his detectives down to parking-meter duty for being loose cannons, he’s reassigning them for being “too close” to the investigation. In many cases, that proximity to the crime/victims/victims’ relatives gives the protagonist the extra drive to see the investigation through to the end, but sometimes, he should just listen to his boss. Case in point: In Antoine Fuqua’s new gritty crime drama, Brooklyn’s Finest, Don Cheadle plays a cop ...

Music: Inventory:Odds and sods: 35 B-side/rarity/outtakes collections as essential as the “official” albums

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600

1. The Who, Odds & Sods While The Who has released some concept albums with fairly loose frameworks, those albums couldn’t flex far enough to accommodate some of the band’s best songs. The collapse of Pete Townshend’s sprawling science-fiction narrative Lifehouse, as well as a subsequent rock opera called Rock Is Dead—Long Live Rock!, left a handful of gems buried in the rubble. They first came to light in 1974 with the release of Odds & Sods, which—even in its expanded, less-cohesive present form—stands shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the band’s second-rank albums. At this remove ...

TV: Inventory:Buffy wouldn’t listen to Widespread Panic: 11 fictional characters assigned questionable taste in music

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600

1. Buffy and Willow embrace Widespread Panic and The String Cheese Incident, Buffy The Vampire Slayer Just being fictional doesn’t prevent characters from being entitled to their own tastes in art. Sometimes a character’s musical preferences can serve as lazy shorthand to establish an identity: Slap a Clash T-shirt on Jesse Bradford in Bring It On, and bang, instant punk cred. Other times, what characters listen to feels as essential to their personalities as what they actually say. Witness Samantha Morton in Morvern Callar, soundtracking her hazy way through an in-between-days state-of-mind with krautrock, or Lee Hazlewood and ...

Film: Inventory:The ugliest truth: 24 romantic-comedy characters who don’t deserve love

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600

1. Renée Zellweger, Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) As romantic comedies come to lean more and more on the twin beams of predictable formula (obnoxious people meet each other, hate each other, then come to appreciate each other) and ridiculous gimmicks (as said people are kept apart by outsized misunderstandings and contrivance), it’s apparently becoming necessary for each new rom-com to distinguish itself by making its characters progressively broader and more cartoony. Which tends to leave audiences without much stake in the proceedings as they wait for the bad behavior of some shrill, irritating caricature to be rewarded ...

Music: Inventory:“Got to have faaaaaaaaaaaith!”: 26 attempts to give familiar hits some edge

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600

1. Limp Bizkit, “Faith” Is there a more diabolical act of commercial calculation than Limp Bizkit’s cover of George Michael’s signature hit “Faith”? One of the singles off Bizkit’s sadly unstoppable, functionally illiterate 1997 nü-metal smash Three Dollar Bill, Yall$, “Faith” finds backward-cap-wearing frontman Fred Durst more or less piggy-backing on Michael’s frothy pop confection through the verses. This way, Bizkit fans can have it both ways: They can sing along to a song they would never confess to liking, while knowing they’re in the hands of their favorite sludge-slinging badass. 2. Chris Cornell ...

Books: Inventory:That’s cancertainment!: 25 great songs, books, films, albums, and TV shows in which cancer plays a major role

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0600

1. Terms Of Endearment (1983) Terms Of Endearment has maintained its place in the tearjerker pantheon as not just a cancer film, but the cancer film of the past 25-plus years. Where its lesser predecessors like 1970’s Love Story trafficked in cheesy melodrama (“Love means never having to say you’re sorry”), Terms Of Endearment offered a more believable portrayal of the strained-but-loving relationship between mother Shirley MacLaine and daughter Debra Winger. It helps that the film—based on the Larry McMurtry novel, and adapted by director James L. Brooks—focuses on their relationship, not Winger’s unexpected illness ...

Film: Inventory:Tough guys in tutus: 13 comedies with cinematic bad-asses playing second fiddle to kids, dogs, and adorable old ladies

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0600

1. K-9 (1989) Nothing softens up—and plays off—a tough guy’s image like pairing him with either a misbehaving animal or a gaggle of small children, a gimmick that dates back well before this year's one-two punch of The Tooth Fairy and The Spy Next Door. For instance, 1989’s action-comedy K-9 partners James Belushi’s bad-ass working-class cop with a preternaturally bright police dog. K-9 puts the unlikely twosome through all the usual mismatched-buddy-cop paces; at first they can’t stand each other, but before long, mutual antagonism gives way to friendship. As the film’s ...

Film: Inventory:“Oh, I’m chasing this guy? No, he’s chasing me.” 34 essential uses of voiceover in film

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0600

1. Memento (2000) All too often, voiceover in films is a lazy crutch, either an artificial means of shoehorning in exposition that would be better conveyed cinematically, or an attempt to handhold viewers whom the filmmakers don’t trust to follow along. It always feels like an exception to the rule when the voiceover element is actually used well, as Christopher Nolan uses it in Memento. Sure, he needs protagonist Guy Pearce to keep up his running internal monologue for exposition’s sake, since there’s a lot of complicated backstory to convey. But Nolan makes a complicated, layered character ...

Music: Inventory:“I wanna bite that hand so badly!”: 21 songs about hating the radio

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0600

1. Elvis Costello And The Attractions, “Radio, Radio” Elvis Costello was too much a square peg for anyone to categorize as punk or new wave when he first started recording in the late ’70s. It would make sense for him to be grateful for any sort of airplay, but the snarling 1978 single “Radio, Radio” makes good on its lyrical promise to bite the hand that feeds him by criticizing the commercialization, homogenization, and play-it-safe policies of the recording industry and its radio partners. “You either shut up or get cut out,” Costello sings, and while that might not have ...

Books: Inventory:The waiting is the hardest part: 32 of our most anticipated 2010 entertainments

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0600

1. The return of Chuck (premières January 10) Almost as soon as Chuck’s much-improved second season began last year, speculation about its fate raged; in spite of a major reboot that included attention to serialized show elements; a much looser, funnier ensemble; and an unabashed embrace of nerdtastic pop-culture references, the show wasn’t drawing a crowd. Websites with “Save Chuck” headlines popped up all over the place, and star Zachary Levi orchestrated an outing to show-sponsor Subway that numbered in the hundreds. Finally, at almost the 11th hour, NBC came through with a third-season order, and show-runner ...

Music: Inventory:Of snowness and of sleeves: 15 strange holiday songs that deserve to be Christmas classics

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0600

1. The Residents, “Santa Dog” (1972) No song can trigger an obsession with strange holiday music better than the very first single issued by the mysterious, deeply weird masked musicians known as The Residents. From its snarling opening to its irresistible sing-along falsetto chorus (“in the FUTURE!”), this bizarre tale of the “Jesus fetus” is a classic just waiting for sanction. Special bonus lunacy: The Residents sent a copy of the song to Richard Nixon for Christmas 1972. His reaction, sadly, is unrecorded by history. Availability: The Residents have released many versions of “Santa Dog” over the years. This is ...

Books: Inventory:The year in swag: 27 ridiculous promotional items we received in 2009

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0600

1. A faux-fox-tail tie, promoting Fantastic Mr. Fox In Wes Anderson’s stop-motion-animated film Fantastic Mr. Fox, based on Roald Dahl’s children’s book, the titular smug adventurer gets his tail shot off by a nasty farmer. In a textbook case of adding insult to injury, the farmer then starts wearing the severed tail as a necktie, prompting the fox’s son to launch a dangerous quest to retrieve it. Thanks to the marketers at 20th Century Fox, one lucky slob here at The A.V. Club now has the daily opportunity to cosplay as that comically evil farmer ...

Music: Inventory:Don’t look now: 10 surefire ways to make a terrible video for a good song

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0600

1. Do it on the cheap. The Minutemen—great band. And “King Of The Hill”—very, very good song that metaphorically equates the brutal world of geopolitics to the childish game of the title, exactly the sort of blending of the personal and political the band was known for. It’s tough to blame the group for the accompanying video; a lack of commercial success and dedication to the D.I.Y. ethos of “jamming econo” made a big-budget high-concept production seem silly. But “King Of The Hill,” filmed in one afternoon in an L.A. suburb, is so low ...

Music: Inventory:Cognitive dis: 21 great albums with questionable cover art (2000-2009)

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0600

1. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III (2008) Lil Wayne obviously puts a lot of thought into his lyrics (right?), but apparently he has little time left to consider such trivialities as album artwork. (Who cares, when you’re just going to put out three mix-tapes in the following week anyway?) With Tha Carter III, Wayne was presumably paying tribute to Illmatic and Ready To Die, but without bothering to have someone with an artistic eye give it the once-over. It’s like a Photoshop nightmare, with a baby photo abused by fake tattoos and a weird suit. Still, it’s ...

Music: Inventory:“Give me some root beer!”: 17 particularly peculiar Beach Boys songs

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

1. “Chug-A-Lug” (1962) The Beach Boys first hit the charts singing about three subjects: surfing, cars, and girls. (Especially, in the very early days, surfing and cars.) The group debuted with the independently released 1961 single “Surfin’,” then followed it up with their first smash in 1962, the double-sided hit “Surfin’ Safari” and “409.” Given a shot at recording a full album, they tried to apply their boisterous embrace to other all-American pursuits. The full-length debut Surfin’ Safari featured eponymous tributes to a cuckoo clock and county fairs. “Chug-A-Lug” finds Mike Love taking lead vocals to sing the praises of ...

Music: Inventory:Ça plane pour wha?: 19 foreign phrases we wouldn’t know without pop songs

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

1. “Ça plane pour moi” (French slang, “This works for me”): Plastic Bertrand, “Ça Plane Pour Moi” Plastic Bertrand’s 1977 hit “Ça Plane Pour Moi” is almost certainly the only instance of a song cut in English that then became a bigger hit recorded in French. It followed an odd path from one language to another, beginning life as the 1977 Elton Motello song “Jet Boy, Jet Girl.” That song’s frank, homoerotic lyric about sadomasochistic underage sex pretty much assured it wouldn’t get much radio play—“I’d like to hit him on the head until he ...

Film: Inventory:Inventory book excerpt: No, seriously, you’re next! 15 movies where the crazies are right

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Here’s another list written for our new book Inventory: 16 Films Featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls, 10 Great Songs Nearly Ruined By Saxophone, And 100 More Obsessively Specific Pop-Culture Lists. 1. Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956) There’s no more famous small-town crazy whom no one’s ever going to believe than Kevin McCarthy in Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. And there’s no more famous unheeded warning than his chilling prediction, delivered straight at the camera, “They’re here already! You’re next!” This was meant to be Body Snatchers’ final scene; the alien pod creatures that ...

Books: Inventory:Checking out of the Overlook: 16 ways to survive a Stephen King story

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

1. Don’t be evil. In Stephen King’s vast library of work—more than 60 books and nearly 400 short stories written over 35 years, according to The New York Times—the death tolls are vast, and the antagonists are monstrous, powerful, and often arbitrary. The protagonists often make it out in one piece, but there are no guarantees for anyone else. There are a few helpful paths to survival, though, starting with the most boring, obvious one: Don’t be the bad guy. While King’s has drawn from early predecessors like Edgar Allan Poe and H.P ...