Why I love Oliver Platt

I have been following Oliver Platt on the big and little screen the past couple months, some newer projects such as Showtime's The Big C and HBO's Bored to Death as well as an older Showtime series Huff. His most recent movie which I loved was, Please Give which was a great go no where but mean a lot movie.

In Huff Oliver Platt co-stars with long time friend and college buddy Hank Azaria.
Platt majored in drama at Tufts University, where he met and became close friends with Hank Azaria. He spent three years working in theater in Boston, Massachusetts, where he said he had a "wealth of serious amateur theater at that time…I played many roles, and it was the best training I could have had."

His role in Huff as Russell Tupper made him my favorite addict character on television and favorite of creator Robert Lowry, who said, "Oliver plays an alcoholic, drug-addicted, sexaholic, workaholic, womanizing misogynist who is adorable. I don't know any actor who could do that. I originally saw Russell as a blond stud, but when I saw what Oliver could do, I realized how much better, richer, and less predictable he was than my idea of the character...Oliver is very committed to the idea that story and dialogue be character-driven and unique."

Huff sadly was canceled after two seasons on Showtime leaving a lot of unanswered questions.

His next and favorite project of mine is Bored to Death, where he plays Ted Danson's arch nemesis/ buddy as a dueling New York Publisher. They ironically each have the same Chuck Close portrait in their offices showcasing the awesome narcissist that they are.

Platt brings bag the loveable fat guy unlike how Jonah Hill does it in his style, or Seth Rogen for that matter. He has legit background in acting and has brains to back it up.

In The Big C Platt is a silly husband who rides a Vespa around Minnapolis unknowning that his wife played by Laura Linney has cancer at stage 4. It takes mearly half the season for her to tell him and you just keep wanting for more. The series has been renewed for a second one to accompany the other complicated women in the Showtime franchise like Nancy and Nurse Jackie. Oliver's sweet nature and goofyness is so loveable once again. The fact that he plays adult rugby is endearing and finds laundry as relaxing as most mother's do is kind.

So yeah I love Oliver Platt and so should you.

Limitless

This trailer is for a new Bradley Cooper and Robert Dinero movie called Limiteless. It's about a drug which a down and out writer takes to tap into the 80% of the brain that you can't normally excess. It sounds like a better version of Adderall to me....

Ubran Sprawl

I am into the new Arcade Fire album The Suburbs.

My favorite song of this epic album right now is Sprawl II which can be heard above.

The album listens like a grand statement of narrative winding you through the urban sprawl on bikes. Ideas of nostalgia mixed with anger and fear for what really lies behind the white picket fences and manicured lawns of ticky tacky houses.

Some of the lyrics from Sprawl II that really stood out to me:

"Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock

These days my life, I feel it has no purpose

But late at night the feelings swim to the surface"

.....

"'Cause on the surface the city lights shine
They're calling at me, come and find your kind
Sometimes I wonder if the World's so small
That we can never get away from the sprawl
Living in the sprawl
Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains
And there's no end in sight
I need the darkness, someone please cut the lights'"

"It's a rare and thrilling example of the group stepping out of their musical comfort zone, an airy disco bounce evoking "Heart of Glass" that serves as further evidence of just how crucial the often underappreciated Chassagne is in tempering Butler's grimmer outlook." - Pitchfork.com

Much of the lyrics from the suburbs are from band members Win and William Butler's upbringing in the suburbs of Houston. Its kind of like Desperate Housewives meets Weeds combining the pain of wasting your time as an adult by romanticizing the wasted time of your youth.

So naturally for their single The Suburbs they had to go back to their home state to really capture their childhood essence.The Suburbs is actually part of a short film they wanted to corroborate on with Director Spike Jonze. A larger form of this work will be released called "Scenes from the suburbs"by Jonze sometime this month.

It was shot in Austin with local youth. The scene is average suburban kids loitering after school in their cul de sac neighborhood with the impending signs and feelings of war looming. They are just riding their bikes when the signs of darkness peak through the horizon. The video is vague as to what is actually happening and why these military trucks are all the sudden moving in. Its hard to tell who the bad guys are. Its reminiscent of the weirdness of MIA's Born Free. The kids are NOT ALRIGHT in this video as they soon turn against each other and beat each other up for a reason unbeknown to us the viewer. Both the Arcade Fire and Spike Jonz have been obsessed with what layers lie underneath the ordinary.

Inline

I used to really be into this inline skating when I was in middle school and high school, I had these cool K2 skates that were the talk of the neighborhood, and me and the boys from the hood would skate around our condo complex jumping over speed bumps and making home made ramps on the tennis court, sometimes we would play music and show off for the neighbors, grinding on our waxed steps outside.

When I skated there were 4 wheels and a space in between two for grinding, now they have adapted the skates to only have 2 wheels.

This documentary was shot in my home town of Boston and extremely well done by a inline skater and art student. Enjoi....and skate till you die.....

In The Dark from kyle couture on Vimeo.

Rollerblades are no longer a easy way to tell your parents your gay...these fruit boots fly high!
This documentary shows the brotherhood and comrade of the underground inline skating community. The bails are harder; but the bonds are stronger. The sport has been tossed out of the mainstream and even exiled from the X-Games leaving the streets as the source of showcase.

Harlem Shakes- Strictly Game

some of my favorite excerpts:

1. "Make a little money, take a lot of shit
Feel real bad, then get over it"

2. "The East Coast kids, man, we just don't know
Singing wait, wait, stop, drop me, go, go, go
But I'm taken by the hand to a blue pay phone
We can break blue laws with our skin and bones"

3. "And now I'm back in the city, I'm counting Brick, Brick, Brick
Heard of milk crate kings, speaking soft and thick
He said, "If life gives you lemons, then thus god bade.
So put a little bit of bitter in your pink lemonade"