"Passin' Me By"

They don't make rap videos like this anymore:



The rap video honeys were classier and a lot better looking back then. The Pharcyde's signature jam--the ultimate "shy guy anthem," as one YouTube commenter calls it--is one of my favorite songs. It's also a great summer song--that is if your summers are often on the angsty side (it was released as a single in March 1993, but was all over the music video channels during the spring and summer). The sample of Quincy Jones' cover of "Summer in the City" lends "Passin' Me By" that summery vibe.

"The only lying I would do is in the bed with you."

Recappin' and yappin'

Because of the Judd Apatow media empire's success with The 40-Year-Old Virgin and this summer's Knocked Up, Alan Sepinwall has been recapping episodes of Apatow's earlier work, the cult favorite Freaks and Geeks (1999-2000), all summer long on his What's Alan Watching? blog. Sepinwall ought to compile his insightful recaps into a book--maybe a Freaks and Geeks Compendium like that Star Trek Compendium tome I bought when I was a kid and was into Star Trek reruns. I recommend checking out Alan's recaps, as well as the interesting fan discussions in the comments section. If you're a Freaks and Geeks fan like I am, you probably already have read two or three of the recaps.

The recaps have made me want to dust off my limited edition Freaks and Geeks yearbook box set and revisit some of the eps, especially one of my personal favorites that Alan has recapped, "Girlfriends and Boyfriends," which features some great non-verbal acting by Linda Cardellini and John Francis Daley. The scene between them at the end of "Girlfriends and Boyfriends," in which Lindsay comes home from her bizarre Styx-scored evening with Nick and watches her brother Sam get stuck on the phone with Cindy Sanders, who's prattling on and on about the jock she's crushing on, is my favorite Lindsay/Sam moment, as well as one of my favorite scenes in the whole series. The way Lindsay and Sam interact in this scene is a lot like how I interact with my older sister.

Alan's posts have even made me want to watch the last three or four eps, including the series finale, "Discos and Dragons," all eps I never saw because I was so bummed about the show's cancellation.

Simpson Tide

SoundtrackNet has posted an early review of Hans Zimmer's Simpsons Movie score. The reviewer says the score is one of the year's most enjoyable ones. Though I can't wait to hear Danny Elfman's opening theme reinterpreted by an orchestra much bigger than the one that performs the music on the show, it's a bit disappointing that TV show score veteran Alf Clausen, the series' clever musical director, got passed over for the Crimson Tide composer, whom producer James L. Brooks has relied on for his film projects. (Some of the NoHomers.net fans are especially pissed.)

Maclean's staff writer and blogger Jaime J. Weinman wonders if there's any validity to the notion that a composer with more film experience like Zimmer is better suited for The Simpsons Movie than Clausen, who's worked more often for TV:

Is it right to assume that a feature film needs someone with "feature experience"? With movies based on TV shows, the truth may be the other way around. Sometimes movie composers can't match the style of the original series; the movie version of Mission: Impossible wrecked the famous theme song by arranging it in the wrong time signature. How Zimmer will do on the Simpsons movie remains to be seen, but his music may not sound Simpsons-esque, because Clausen's music has already defined what's right for the characters and the setting.

But The Simpsons Movie has a problem that most movies don't: its characters are in syndication several times a day. The use of a big-name movie composer may be a way of giving audiences something they can't get for free in syndication.

Weinman is referring to U2 members Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton and their much-maligned end credits version of Lalo Schifrin's Mission: Impossible theme in a 4/4 beat instead of Schifrin's original 5/4, not Danny Elfman's version of the theme, which was faithful to the original. Elfman's score is one of the best scores from a feature film based on a TV show because he paid tribute to Schifrin's jazzy music, which was like a sixth character on the old show (Elfman even brought back Schifrin's bongoes), and he did so without sacrificing his own style.

One fact about Zimmer that Weinman overlooked is that in 2000, Zimmer wrote the score to the extreme sports-ish sequel Mission: Impossible 2. Unlike Elfman, Zimmer mangled Schifrin's timeless theme in a nu metal version that's aged badly, one of the few missteps in Zimmer's career. I can't hear Zimmer's nu metal Mission: Impossible 2 theme without thinking of the "Extreme!" dorks from Harold & Kumar.

Zimmer may have wrecked the Mission: Impossible theme seven years ago, but I think it's unlikely that he's bungled this new assignment. Unlike all those Comic Book Guys out there who have already formed their opinions on the Simpsons fan forums without hearing a single note of the score, I'm a wait-and-see guy (or rather, wait-and-hear guy), so I'll say what I think of this score after I see the movie. The fact that Zimmer wrote a large-scale choral rendition of Homer's "Spider-Pig" theme may be a sign that he gets The Simpsons.

Ratatouille leftovers

Even though I usually avoid G-rated movies like the President avoids troop withdrawal bills--or reality--the G-rated Ratatouille is the summer movie I've been looking forward to the most before its release because 1) it stars the voice of one of my comedy idols, Patton Oswalt, 2) it's writer/director Brad Bird's follow-up to The Incredibles, my favorite Pixar flick, and 3) it features an original score by Incredibles and Lost composer Michael Giacchino. I'm not as familiar with Giacchino's filmography outside of Pixar and Bad Robot, but is this Giacchino's first foray into romantic comedy?

Ratatouille is a love story, but it's not your usual one. The main romance of the film is not the Linguini/Colette relationship--it's Remy the rat's love of cooking and fine dining. Giacchino's lush and playful score beautifully captures Remy's optimism and enthusiasm for the art of cooking without getting all overly gooey on us, which is why I'm adding to "Assorted Fistful" rotation four cues from the Walt Disney Records release of Giacchino's Ratatouille soundtrack.

Other things I dug about Ratatouille: the clever casting of Ian Holm, who played a similar "sellout" restaurateur character in the Deep Throat of food porn flicks, Big Night; Bird's jabs at the merchandising tactics of a certain parent company with a name that rhymes with "piznee" (during the scenes in which Holm's villainous Skinner plans to launch an inane line of frozen dinners exploiting the image of his deceased former boss, celebrity chef Gusteau); and the refreshing absence of corny and unsubtle pop culture reference gags that have been abundant in sub-Pixar animated flicks.

Was the casting of Brian Dennehy as Remy's dad Django an intentional nod to one of Oswalt's greatest stand-up bits, his parody of Robert Evans' strange ESPN radio ads ("A heroin-crazed Brian Dennehy burst into my trailer and punched me in the solar plexus...")? It must have rocked Oswalt's world when he found out one of the celebs he name-dropped in his Evans routine was cast as his dad. And it would have been even cooler if the animators threw in a moment in which Django put his arm around his son and then lightly punched him in the solar plexus.

Next on my list of summer flicks I want to see: The Simpsons Movie, followed by The Bourne Ultimatum, Superbad, Live Free or Die Hard, and Sam Witwicky: The Movie (why so much focus on Shia LaBeouf in the commercials?--I understand Paramount wants to create an aura of mystery with the new versions of Optimus, Bumblebee and Megatron, but the LeBeouf-heavy ads are like if someone did a feature film version of The Munsters and gave most of the screen time to Marilyn).

Ripley--believe it or not

I'm between episodes of A Fistful of Soundtracks right now. I recorded the most recent one, "I'll Kill You and Recommend to God That He Put His Foot in Your Ass," in mid-June. The next scheduled show, "Cover-Blinded," an episode that will consist of cover versions of film and TV themes from all over the world, will be recorded on, uh… I don't know when. I don't move on to recording the next ep until someone sends me a response or comment about the program or the station. I find it pointless to be doing a new show if no one responds because then it looks to me like no one's listening. So if you want me to record a new ep, you have to say something, even if it's just along the lines of "Hey, I'm listening."

The other night, I caught USA's new P.I. show Burn Notice, a diverting mashup of The Equalizer, MacGyver and Grosse Pointe Blank. (The hero, an ex-spy-turned-P.I., is played by Jeffrey Donovan, who should have been a star after his bravura and funny turn as the unhinged Creegan on USA's unfairly neglected remake of Touching Evil.) However, the coolest thing about the latest airing of Burn Notice actually wasn't part of the episode. It was a new DirecTV commercial I had never seen before, in which Sigourney Weaver reprises the awesome Aliens battle between Ripley-in-the-Constructicon-esque-exosuit and the Alien Queen. My jaw dropped right when Weaver addressed the camera. I couldn't believe DirecTV got Sigourney fuckin' Weaver to reprise her role as Ripley.

In past DirecTV ads in which a movie or TV character suddenly breaks the fourth wall to persuade cable subscribers to convert to DirecTV, we've seen:

• Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown.
• Charlie Sheen as his Major League pitcher character "Wild Thing."
• Ben Stein reprising his "Bueller? Bueller?" scene.
• Bill Paxton as his Twister character.
• Pamela Anderson as C.J. from Baywatch.
• Verne Troyer as Mini-Me.
• William Shatner as Star Trek VI-era Kirk in an ad that was particularly painful to watch because the digital airbrushing of the Shat's face made him look creepier than a Wrath of Khan eel.
  

Unlike the disturbing Shatner ad, DirecTV didn't digitally Botox Weaver's face. They didn't need to. One of the few middle-aged actresses who has wisely stayed away from plastic surgery, Weaver has barely aged since the 1986 release of Aliens. She must have a portrait of herself hanging in the attic.