“We wanted to be more like Zeppelin. We didn’t want to be locked into a specific style.” – Eddie Vedder

“I might be a fucking genius, or I might be the biggest dick ever. I don’t know.” – Conan O’ Brien

There is a really funny and revealing moment in Cameron Crowe’s excellent documentary, “Pearl Jam Twenty,” that deals with what the band’s guitarist/founder Stone Gossard calls, “the birth of no.” After getting wasted at an MTV party for Crowe’s 1992 movie “Singles,” which was the band’s only day off in weeks, Pearl Jam realized they couldn’t say yes to everything asked of them. Even though they were still just happy to be asked to do anything, the up and coming band couldn’t do it all, or it would have led to an inevitable burnout and breakup. There is a reason that the band is celebrating their 20^th anniversary though. They are an amazing live band but they also say “yes” to many causes they believe in: anti-monopolies (Ticketmaster), voting, the innocence of the West Memphis Three, and Neil Young’s Bridge School Benefit. They say “yes” when it feels right, “no” when it’s too much, and try to add enough variety to keep themselves sane.

Consistent touring and a rabid following sustain the band financially, but their thoughtfulness and passion for social justice keep the band relevant; even if there relevancy ebbs and flows through the variety of pop music. Part of the appeal of “Pearl Jam Twenty” is re-discovering how great some of their lesser known albums really are – Yield, Riot Act, Binaural – and trying to figure out where the band fits into the rock landscape of the last 50 years.

In contrast to Pearl Jam, the artist known as Conan O’Brien has a tough time saying no, and that reluctance becomes the driving theme of the entertaining documentary, “Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop.” (Both of these are available on Netflix Instant right now – so between these flicks and the return of Arrested Development exclusively to Netflix, I’d say it’s a little premature to cancel that subscription.)

Crowe clearly loves Pearl Jam, so the “Singles” party is basically the most embarrassing segment in the movie; it’s really a doc for fans, by a fan. But “Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop” paints a very different picture of the man than the self-deprecating, excessively kind interviewer we know from late night. Conan is pissed about losing The Tonight Show, clearly, but he also seems to be a little tough to work with. He is funny as hell and probably one of the smartest people in show biz, but he borderline abuses his employees, even if it’s in a jokey, Conan-style way. (Borderline abuse except in the case of one poor writer, who Conan repeatedly punches in the arm and leg, hard.) This is not the Conan O’Brien we have seen on air for almost 20 years.

“Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop” follows Conan during his Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour, a 30-city live comedy/music/variety show that took place in 2010 between The Tonight Show and his current TBS gig. An extended sequence in the middle of the film demonstrates how much Conan has trouble saying no, and how it has probably affected his career: during an L.A. show, his producer sets up a lengthy pre-show party and then post-show, he is visited by various friends and family of the tour’s backup dancers. Conan constantly worries he’ll lose his voice and since he sings quite a bit during the tour, it’s a legitimate concern. But his bitching about saving his voice sounds a bit juvenile – the movie does a great job of cutting from Conan’s complaints to then entertaining a large crowd of VIPs. He just can’t stop saying yes. (And even his ultimate no to NBC, refusing to move his show to 12:05am, came with a ridiculous multi-million dollar severance. So you can’t really call that taking a stand.)

But has that willingness to please everyone and be liked hurt his creativity? He worked on the Late Show from 1993 – 2009, then transitioned to The Tonight Show for the well-storied 8 month run, and is now doing almost the exact same show on TBS. I still think O’Brien is the best late night host right now, but his show definitely seems tired and his heart doesn’t totally seem in it. When he was forced to stretch creatively during the chaos of the end of his Tonight Show run, or during his tour, he was phenomenal: angry, spontaneous, and hilarious. It makes you wish he didn’t take all that NBC severance money so he could let loose on Jay Leno and the executives who fired him. And I think I would rather watch this angry, behind-the-scenes Conan than the current on-air version.

Pearl Jam learned to say no pretty early on – that, coupled with their ability to stretch creatively (change the set list every night, dabble in other bands/solo gigs), has kept them musically vital for two decades. Despite drastic changes in the pop music landscape, they still have a huge following. How many boy bands, teenage divas, and hip hop artists came and went during the last 20 years? And what about legitimate rock bands like the Killers/The Strokes/White Stripes/Phoenix? Very few artists have had the staying power of Pearl Jam, and the documentary attributes much of that sustainability to the band’s willingness to challenge themselves, along with Eddie Vedder’s immense creative energy.

I highly recommend both of these movies, even if you’re not a huge Pearl Jam or Conan O’Brien fan, just to get a look at the creative process and how different people deal with success. (But “Pearl Jam Twenty” is a must-watch for PJ fans like yours truly. Did I create my own Best of Pearl Jam CD and send it to my friends because of this movie? Yes, yes I did. Did I scream the words to Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town last year at a Pearl Jam show? Yes, yes I did. Did I tear up a little bit while Eddie sang Release in the documentary? Maybe. Maybe I did.)

Their story didn’t end there!

Ok, I’ll give you a minute to enjoy the innocence and wonder of late 70′s movie trailers. (And yes, that is Harrison Ford narrating. Possibly not the last time in his career he would decide to take the money and run.)

So P, B, and J are back. And it’s been a year between posts. But what did we really miss?

Here is the list of the 2011 worldwide box office results so far: http://boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?view2=worldwide&yr=2011&p=.htm

It’s pretty ugly. Like usual, sequels and comic book movies came out with a vengeance, but R-rated comedies did very well this year. It seems like this happens every fall, but the movie landscape again looks incredibly bleak and the main awards contenders will all be released in the next six weeks (a few standouts such as Moneyball, Win Win, The Ides of March, and Drive were really good but may be out of sight/out of mind for voters). A few exciting directors still have movies coming out: Martin Scorsese, Cameron Crowe, Alexander Payne, David Fincher, and Jason Reitman to name a few, but Eddie Murphy Ricky Gervais James Franco Anne Hathaway Billy Crystal may have a hard time selling this year’s Oscar nominees.

Sorry to be negative about the silver screen, but the phenomenal amount of good television right now makes the drop in quality movies that much more conspicuous. In 2011 alone, we had the following:

• Friday Night Lights series finale
• Breaking Bad season 4
• Game of Thrones season 1
• Walking Dead season 2
• Community seasons 2/3
• Parks and Recreation seasons 3/4
• Louie season 2
• Curb Your Enthusiasm season 8
• Justified season 2

Even with the loss of Lost, The Shield, Battlestar Galactica, and now Friday Night Lights in the last few years, the amount of great tv shows is staggering. So, expect a lot of ongoing reviews and commentary about my favorite shows, rallying crys to save dying ones (watch Community now please!), and constant criticisms of Phindo’s esoteric and pretentious film choices.

It will be almost as exciting as a big, new, sprawling space adventure in the Star Wars saga.

Sometimes, when the mood is right, the blues is just what we need.

In 1957, 24 year old Louis Malle submitted his notice to the world that cinema was changing. In Elevator to the Gallows, Malle lays the foundation for the French new wave while at the same time constructing a razor sharp narrative that is overwhelming in its romantic fatalism. Miles Davis, himself a budding jazz visionary at the time, lays down an almost iconic score which envelopes the film in a hazy, drunken, passion-filled surrealism. The films thematic catalyst? Murder, unrepentant love, and betrayal, which in film noir is somewhat run of the mill. What really separates this film from, say the American classic Double Indemnity, is its parallel focus on the youth culture gestating within Paris at the time. Specifically, the street thugs Louis and Veronica display a complex mix of naiveté and hell bent determination to make something happen. While a murder gone awry may be the narrative foundation of this film it is not, most certainty, what it is about.

Briefly, I would like to mention the stylistic flourishes that Louis Malle employed within the film. First and foremost his use of natural light is brilliant, especially concerning his treatment of the great Jeanne Moreau. In probably the most well known scene from the film, Moreau’s character desperately seeks out her lover Maurice through the streets of of a dimly lit Paris street. She saunters from shadow to shadow, briefly pausing within the bright glow of a street vender, only to disappear again into the darkness of the Paris night a moment later. By todays todays standards this may not seem ground groundbreaking, but at the time it was not normal practice to shoot your female star in dark, half lit scenes. Secondly, his use of hand-held camera work, while not the first of its kind, furthered the pseudo-realist trajectory of the forthcoming new wave.

If you’re wondering why I have not included a brief rundown of the story, or its main plots points it is not because I have forgotten to include these. I will say it again….Murder, unrepentent love, and betrayal…sometimes that is all you need to say.

See this movie.

Can I interest you in a little show called Boardwalk Empire, pilot directed by Martin Scorsese, created by Terence Winter (of The Sopranos), and starring Steve Buscemi? I thought so. PB&J is roaring back with BE talk after the premiere tomorrow. Here are a few links to whet your appetite:

Alan Sepinwall’s review: http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/review-hbos-boardwalk-empire

Time Magazine: http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2010/09/17/dead-tree-alert-boardwalk-empire-review/

LA Times: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2010/09/boardwalk-empire-executive-producer-terence-winter-talks-going-back-to-the-20s.html

If you haven’t already heard, Michael Lewis’s fascinating non-fiction book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, is being turned into a semi-fictitious film starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. There’s a new article at MLB Fanhouse that talks a little about the difficulty in making the film as well as the amount of detail the filmmakers seem to be putting in the movie. If anyone has read Moneyball, they can understand why the making of this movie is so interesting – it’s a great book but there’s not a lot of dramatic ammo for a feature film. Are they going to focus on the field more than the office? Is the film going to acknowledge that Billy Beane and the A’s have been pretty terrible the last 7 years? Is Jonah Hill going to actually do something different and make us believe he is a Harvard stats genius? Unfortunately, we’ll need to wait until next summer to find out.

Here is the Moneyball page on IMDB for more information.

I have a confession to make: I have seen only two movies in the theaters this year, Hot Tub Time Machine and Iron Man 2, and the latter was a free screening. I’ve watched a few other 2010 movies but it’s safe to say that nothing has blown my mind thoughts in any way. My Oscar ballot so far includes Kick-Ass and Hot Tub Time Machine for Best Picture, Nic Cage in Kick-Ass for Best Supporting Actor, and Scarlett Johanssen in Iron Man 2 for best spandex. The second half of 2010 better be special. It’s getting clichéd to mention the superiority of television series versus movies, but the finale of Lost, the emergence of shows like Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy, plus the introduction of new series like Justified and Modern Family prove that it really is a golden age for tv.

Which brings me to Christopher Nolan’s secretive and heavily anticipated Inception.

I would pretty much sign up for anything that features a combination of Nolan, DiCaprio, and science-fiction, but this year’s film landscape has been so freaking barren that that I’ve amped myself up to Ludicrous Speed. Hopefully, the building-bending will not just be a cool effect for the trailer and Ellen Page won’t be channeling Juno whatsoever, but either way, Nolan and Leo almost always deliver and the reviews have been stellar so far. I’m there…if I’m not re-watching Lost.

What is your anticipation level for Inception?

Can you think of a worse year for movies?

Best 2010 movie so far?

I finished reading the popular summer novel, The Passage by Justin Cronin, and of course, I tried to imagine how the movie will look. And this is a movie blog (although lately it’s been kind of a forgotten blog – sorry to the thousands of PB&Jers who refresh the site every few seconds for new content, things will pick up soon).

The Passage is the first part of a planned vampire trilogy with real vampires – no hair gel or teen hormones in sight. They’re more akin to Danny Boyle’s zombies in 28 Days Later if the zombies were on steroids. Here is a quick description from Amazon:

“Fans of vampire fiction who are bored by the endless hordes of sensitive, misunderstood Byronesque bloodsuckers will revel in Cronin’s engrossingly horrific account of a post-apocalyptic America overrun by the gruesome reality behind the wish-fulfillment fantasies. When a secret project to create a super-soldier backfires, a virus leads to a plague of vampiric revenants that wipes out most of the population. One of the few bands of survivors is the Colony, a FEMA-established island of safety bunkered behind massive banks of lights that repel the virals, or dracs—but a small group realizes that the aging technological defenses will soon fail. When members of the Colony find a young girl, Amy, living outside their enclave, they realize that Amy shares the virals’ agelessness, but not the virals’ mindless hunger, and they embark on a search to find answers to her condition.”

The Passage is the best Stephen King novel not written by King but it is also quite a bit better than the prolific author’s recent work – King is just one of Cronin’s many influences including Lost, The Road, Battlestar Galactica, and most of Michael Crichton’s novels. I loved it and can’t wait for the next two books in the series; although I’m definitely reading those two on my new Nook eReader, the hardcover was just silly. I don’t really have anything more to add besides, go read it, so I wanted to talk about how the heck they are going to make The Passage into a film. Watch out for spoilers from here on out if you plan on reading it.

Ridley Scott and his company apparently bought the movie rights for $2.5 million in 2007 when the novel was still only half-finished. The sparse details so far indicate he plans on directing but it’s still way to early to tell. Either way, the novel has already been very successful so it’s likely the movie will get green-lighted, especially during this ridiculous vampire craze America seems to be going through.

So, how will Scott turn this epic trilogy into a feature film? The book will most likely never find Harry Potter or Twilight mainstream success so the film-makers won’t have endless resources, and the extreme violence throughout the novel will turn off a huge portion of potential movie-goers. Part of me thinks they should turn it into a HBO miniseries or regular series, but that’s not really what Scott does. The fact that Scott may direct the movie is interesting as well. Look at his IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000631/. Besides Alien, Blade Runner, and Gladiator, there’s not a ton of great work on his resume – he does huge, epic movies that are usually too damn serious and are filled with a lot of flat characters. Robin Hood got terrible reviews as well – but no one can improve on the Disney Robin Hood anyway so this isn’t Ridley’s fault. I do think, however, that the source material of The Passage is a lot better than what he has been working with recently.

The first 200 pages or so of The Passage are set about 10 years into the future and could make a kick-ass thriller on their own. Cronin then jumps ahead 100 years into the future after the virals have eliminated all but a few survivors in America – it’s unknown what happened to the rest of the world. And about 200 pages after the jump, an even smaller number of survivors basically go on the worst road trip of all time from southern California to Colorado. Cronin sets up a few major action pieces for the movie: a devastating train ride, a race through an obliterated casino in Vegas, and multiple viral attacks. Basically, the movie has to be huge. But it’s also spiritual, sad, contemplative, and even funny – all of the things Scott’s movies usually lack.

There’s another fun novel, Max Brooks’s World War Z, that could be an amazing and huge movie but it’s had a ton of development problems and may prove too difficult to make. I’m not too confident about Ridley Scott and his team either, but if he at least gets the train scene right, I will consider the movie a success. So Ridley, if you need any help, let us know.