Netflix Queue Review: March 2014

Posted on March 4, 2014 by The Chop

No time like a snow day to fire up the Internet and settle in for a nice long movie-watching spree. Like everyone else on the Eastern Seaboard the Netflix has been a constant companion to the chop in recent days. Well, almost constant. We are unfortunately dealing with the ongoing problem of Comcast slowing Internet speeds at random times throughout the day and regularly late at night.

You’ve probably already heard all about Netflix agreeing to pay ransom to Comcast to insure smooth streaming. Instead of launching into a major rant here we’re just going to say FUCK COMCAST and leave it at that.

And another thing: Fuck Hulu Plus. We finally got around to trying it and didn’t even get past day 3 of a seven day trial before we were bored to death. There’s no content there. If you’re thinking of trying it, don’t. Maybe try Amazon Prime instead? Or just stick with the good ol ‘Flix.

PRO TIP: If you’re streaming through anything that’s not a computer, the user interface varies but no matter what you’re using you won’t see as much selection as there really is. So for someone like us who streams through set-top boxes it pays to keep your queue up to date on your computer so that you can access it easily from other devices. It took most of a lazy Sunday for us to go through the whole site alphabetically, but our own queue has grown from like 40 very mediocre titles we’ll probably never watch to 140 titles we’d actually like to see.

An Idiot Abroad.

We’ve been watching a lot of this British show produced by Ricky Gervais in which he sends his friend Karl Pilkingto around the world to places like the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids. The thing is, Karl doesn’t much care for things like exploring other cultures or trying new cuisines or even doing anything that’s not entirely clean and comfortable. If you’ve got some romantic notions about travel and have always dreamed of seeing the world, this show gives a better idea of what the world is really like than any other travel show we’ve ever seen. We all like too think that we’ve got the smooth bonhomie and appetite for adventure of an Anthony Bourdain, but before you actually do travel the globe look deep into your soul and ask yourself “Is it possible I’m more Pilkington than Bourdain?” Spoiler alert: it is. ★ ★ ★ ★

30 For 30: The House of Steinbrenner

As we’ve said before we’re generally a fan of the 30 For 30 series, all of which is available on Netflix. And George Steinbrenner is certainly an interesting figure in Baseball. But this movie isn’t really about Steinbrenner. The first 15 minutes was all footage from the 2009 Yakees World Series victory parade and people talking about how much they loved Old Yankee Stadium. It’s boring and completely terrible and we turned it off pretty quickly. To be avoided. ★

M*A*S*H

MASH The movie has been entirely overshadowed in the culture by MASH the TV show, which, if you’re under 35 you’ve probably never seen and don’t give a shit about. That’s a shame because MASH is an outstanding movie. Directed by Robert Altman, it’s funny in both very subtle and very obvious ways and features one of the best casts ever assembled. It’s the kind of movie you can, and should, watch over and over again. ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Down Periscope

Sticking with the theme of Absurdist military comedies, we come to a little movie called Down Periscope. The first time we saw it we weren’t expecting much, but to our pleasant surprise this movie represents nothing less than the pinnacle of Kelsey Grammar’s career. It’s like if they took the movie McHale’s Navy and burned the script, fired that hack Tom Arnold and started over from scratch to make a good movie. The Chop is a sailor, after all, so take it as our professional estimation: this is one of the best nautical movies ever made and you should watch it immediately. ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Pricing Artwork @ Creative Alliance Today

Posted on March 3, 2014 by The Chop

You know Minas, right? If you’ve got anything to do with anything in the arts in Baltimore, you should. If you don’t, he was profiled over at What Weekly recently. Making a go of a small gallery is no easy task, and to remain successful after more than 30 years is proof enough that Minas knows a thing or two about selling artwork.

If you’re an artist who’s hoping to sell work, or sell more work, it would behoove you to get down to the Creative Alliance today at 3:00 for a workshop on the topic of pricing artwork. It’s $45, but that’s a mere drop in the bucket when compared with possible increased sales.

Because let’s face it: most local artists are completely clueless about what their work is worth. Some are too lazy to even frame works properly. To the prospective buyer the gallery’s cut is not a consideration. Nor are the artist’s rent and student loans. Most buyers locally don’t even care much for an artist’s name or career history. For better or worse Baltimore is very much a Will-This-Look-Good-Over-My-Sofa kind of town when it comes to the art market. Why do you think Robert McClintock outsells every other artist by a wide margin?

Just this weekend we dropped by an opening at Gallery 788 and saw two pieces we admired very much hanging side by side. One was underpriced by about $200 and had already sold in just a few hours. The other was something we’d have considered investing in, but unfortunately it was (in our estimation) overpriced by about $700. We hope that Minas’ workshop sells out, and that CA won’t hesitate to hold this workshop on an annual or semi-annual basis in the future. The Baltimore art market would be well served if they did.

(Feature image via Creative Alliance’s Website)

A Word About Beards

Posted on February 28, 2014 by The Chop

According to an article from today’s Chicago Tribune hipsters are dead. Or beards are dead. Or was it newspapers? Maybe it was beards made of alternative weekly newspapers that died? In a Normcore world even your Chop has trouble sometimes remembering what is supposedly dead and whether Death is the new Black.

But the article was quite timely for us and gave us a bit of a knowing chuckle when we read about Brooklyn douchebags seeing plastic surgeons for elective beard transplants. You see, while we prefer to remain clean shaven and have for our whole adult life, last week due to some extreme circumstances we were forced to grow a beard for the first time in about 20 years. It doesn’t take much effort- for constantly lurking just below the Chop’s chinny-chin-chin is a thick, full beard just 3-4 days away from full flourish.

When, like the mighty Groundhog, it made an appearance at the end of winter before burrowing back into its hole we’ve got to say we were pretty damn pleased with the results. For you see, there was some salt in the pepper. Many of our cohort sport beards marked by unkempt edges and inconsistent fullness. Our own, which we trimmed neatly as soon as was required, grew full and thick with just a slight patina of silver. It is the highest and best, the most correct way to wear a beard, a look that can’t be faked and never goes out of style, as shown in just a few examples below…

Current king of the look, Clooney.

Al Pacino.

Robert Downey Jr.

Sir Sean Connery.

Ewan McGregor.

Ben Affleck.

Jon Hamm.

The Dude.

Harrison Ford.

Sir Michael Caine.

Pontiak @ Ottobar Tonight

Posted on February 27, 2014 by The Chop

Some time in the recent past we found ourselves watching a band play. It was a young band, college kids. They were decent players and earnest musicians and all, but a few songs in it dawned on us that this particular band was probably not really ready to be playing shows in clubs. They were still in the phase of bandhood which required a lot more writing and practicing outside the public eye. It was a little annoying, the more we thought about it: why should we be paying good money to watch what essentially was band practice? Just like we’re out of patience for old bands on the punk rock nostalgia circuit, so too is it difficult to watch bands stutter through sets like toddlers in Daddy’s shoes.

No fear of that with Thrill Jockey’s Pontiak. Here’s a band that, after many records to their credit is squarely in their stride. They’ve tried a little bit of everything and found what works. Over the last couple of years they’ve been better than ever and if you’re going to see them live now is the perfect time for it. Not just now as in 2014 but now as in tonight, when they come to the Ottobar with Soft Peaks and Et Al.

Unpopular Opinions: Our Bi-Weekly Political Roundup

Posted on February 26, 2014 by The Chop

Hi Baltimore. We’re back from the sea, which means it’s time for the Chop to get all caught up on news and current eventsy type things. Living on a ship, even one with a (painfully slow) Internet connection can sometimes feel like living under a rock, with many stories escaping our notice entirely.

And what better way to get caught up on the news than to discuss it over beers with the friendly and like minded folks at Baltimore’s Drinking Liberally? DL’s Regular bi-monthly meeting is tonight (every 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month at 8 pm) at Dougherty’s pub in Mount Vernon. Admission is free. Meetings are highly informal and open to Liberals and Progressives of all sorts.

But even in a city like Baltimore where Republicans fear to tread it’s a fact that not all Liberals agree on all things. And today at the Chop we fear we’re holding a few opinions which may prove unpopular among the general readership, but we’re going to go ahead and get them off our chest anyway.

Today marks the release of the first issue of City Paper since it was announced last week that it had been bought by the Sun for an undisclosed sum. We’re right there with everyone in lamenting consolidation and fearing for the editorial independence of the new CP. What the Sun is doing to the staff is despicable and we hope that once they move to Calvert Street what’s left of the CP staff will have the chance to vote in the Union. But we’re going to say now what no one has said publicly all week: City Paper isn’t that great to begin with. Let’s face it… the quality on Park Ave has been slipping for quite a few years now. The paper has gotten thin. The website is full of clickbait photo galleries barely distinguishable from Buzzfeed. The Baltimore Weekly section is not as vibrant and crucial as it used to be. We could go on but our intention here isn’t to shit-talk what is still an overall good paper. Only, let’s not pretend it’s the circa 2001 version of CP that the Sun just swallowed whole.

For an idea of the quality CP was putting out on the regular 10-15 years ago one need look no further than Edward Ericson Jr’s recent takedown of House of Cards.

Netflix announced recently that it expects millions in tax incentives from Maryland taxpayers in exchange for gracing our state with its presence. If it doesn’t receive the ransom, Netflix isn’t shy about auctioning itself off to the highest bidder and moving to whatever state will pour the most money into its lap. If we were Governor O’Malley we’d put our answer in cinematic terms so maybe they could understand it better:

The CP blog post is quite long and does a great job of explaining the fallacy of the productions-as-job-creators and job-creators-as-demigods myth and shows how productions don’t create jobs but instead spark business locally. It’s a shell game with a few small time winners and a lot of tax-paying losers. Personally, we say Netflix can pay up or go screw.

And while we’re at it we’re going to add this: House of Cards isn’t really that good. Sure, we watch it and enjoy it and all, but it rarely has us wanting to watch back to back episodes. It’s a solid 3 stars out of five, no more in our book.

As long as we’re ranting about the movies and TV and the Internet here’s another unpopular opinion: we’re not at all upset about Harold Ramis dying this week. We’d dare say no one else is either, despite all the virtual lamentations of social media. The truth is Ramis hasn’t done much in the way of movie making for a long time now. Check his IMDB page. All he’s done in the last decade is Year One which barely qualifies as mediocre. We saw it in the theater and fell asleep in the middle. Personally, we’re glad that any notion of a Ghostbusters 3 has died with him. It would have been terrible. And it’s not like he died young or anything. Despite rising life expectancies 69 is still as old as it’s ever been.

Was he a brilliant comic mind with a place in the all time pantheon? Absolutely. An eternal A-lister in our book. Just remember, when the iTunes store or whatever puts the Ghostbusters movies on sale it’s not about memorializing, it’s about making a buck.

Finally in the list of stuff that’s not that great and can take a fucking walk: Pussy Riot. Yeah, if we have to take sides we’d rather be on the Pussy Riot side than the Putin Side, but it’s kind of a shitty choice. First of all we’re pretty sure they’re not a band in any real sense of the word. The little bit of what we’ve heard online is pretty terrible music. They seem more like some kind of professional protesting troupe.

What the hell was that showing up in Sochi getting horsewhipped nonsense? If you want to stay out of jail, and presumably you do, then cut that shit out. The games are about the athletes, not your shitty political performance art. But more than anything their form of protesting doesn’t seem to advocate for anything more than their own right to make a spectacle with terrible music.