Friday night was to be a highly anticipated adventure - a Boxing Day celebration at The Tractor Tavern, hosted by The Dudley Manlove Quartet. I had the pleasure of catching DMQ a year ago as part of "Night of 1,000 Benatars", when they one-upped the divine Miss B's own rendition of "Love Is A Battlefield". I've been itching to catch their astro-lounge 80s coverband act since, but cruel fate postponed our reunion until now. I was to be disappointed.
Despite all the makings for a great show - A decent warmup set by instrumental surf-rock/game-show-theme-loving band, Johnny Astro, a crowd buzzed on Kokanee beer and a DMQ set that ranged from Loverboy to Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind", one critical and unexpected piece was missing: unbeknownst to me, DMQ parted ways with their founder and lead singer, Paul Jensen. The new singer completely lacked Jensen's oily charm and snappy lounge act vibe, reducing DMQ to a karaoke-level status act. Pity. I overheard someone in the crowd say Jensen was with a new band, so I'll have to seek that out and hope for better.
The weekend ended with a showing of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons" - a movie I scoffed at when I originally saw the trailer months ago, but warmed up to when I learned the inconsistent-but-rarely-boring David Fincher directed. I wanted to see Danny Boyle's "Slumdog Millionaire", but that would have required spending 2 hours killing time at Alderwood Mall - something I wasn't keen on doing after a month of excruciating Christmas shopping. My second choice would have been "Valkyrie", but Adrienne said "If I have to choose between Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, I'm going with Brad Pitt".
It's a somewhat saccharine and predictable story that borrows too much from the structure of "Forrest Gump" (no surprise, since it's written by the same screenwriter), but it has great signature Fincher boilerplate-and-sepia cinematography and setpieces. Not having seen any additional spoiler-laden trailers helped keep the story fresh, especially the short but impressive WWII sequence. The creepy, shrunken, geriatic Brad Pitt was better than I expected. They also impressively reverse-aged Cate Blanchett - making me wish she'd looked so unearthly smooth-featured in her portrayal as the elven queen Galadriel in Jackson's Lord of the Rings.
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