hedwig & the angry inch

this is not a new movie, even to me. it is, however, my favorite movie of all time and i've just realized i've never done one of my movie reviews on it. and it deserves one, really. for something to bump Tommy out of first place for My Favorite Rock Musical, it's gotta slay. it's funny, campy, emotional, rocking, and fucking wicked awesome.

this is not a movie for those that are really uncomfortable with homosexuality. i've watched it with girls and dudes, and more often than not, the dudes freaked out. so for those of you that are not comfortable with this type of thing, i suggest you don't see the movie until you get over your irrational fear of the unknown. here's the gist quoted from IMDB:

Hedwig, born a boy named Hansel in East Berlin, fell in love with an American G.I. and underwent a sex-change operation in order to marry him and flee to the West. Unfortunately, nothing worked out quite as it was supposed to - years later, Hedwig is leading her rock band on a tour of the U.S., telling her life story through a series of concerts at Bilgewater Inn seafood restaurants. Her tour dates coincide with those of arena-rock star Tommy Gnosis, a wide-eyed boy who once loved Hedwig... but then left with all her songs.

i heard one of the songs from the soundtrack (Origin of Love) before i even saw the movie, and already i was blown away. the songwriting is amazing. the lyrics are incredible. the entire soundtrack is this way, and now i find myself not able to go out anymore without bringing the soundtrack CD along with me. i adore John Cameron Mitchell's voice, it's not your usual rock sounding vocals. i think i'll slip one of the songs into my radio.blog so you can hear for yourself, and save myself the trouble of trying to describe it. here are the lyrics for it:

ORIGIN OF LOVE

When the earth was still flat,
And the clouds made of fire,
And mountains stretched up to the sky,
Sometimes higher,
Folks roamed the earth
Like big rolling kegs.
They had two sets of arms.
They had two sets of legs.
They had two faces peering
Out of one giant head
So they could watch all around them
As they talked; while they read.
And they never knew nothing of love.
It was before the origin of love.

The origin of love

And there were three sexes then,
One that looked like two men
Glued up back to back,
Called the children of the sun.
And similar in shape and girth
Were the children of the earth.
They looked like two girls
Rolled up in one.
And the children of the moon
Looked like a fork shoved on a spoon.
They was part sun, part earth,
Part daughter, part son.

The origin of love.

Now the gods grew quite scared
Of our strength and defiance
And Thor said,
"I'm gonna kill them all
With my hammer,
Like I killed the giants."
But the Zeus said, "No,
You better let me
Use my lightning, like scissors,
Like I cut the legs off the whales
And dinosaurs into lizards."
Then he grabbed up some bolts
And he let out a laugh,
Said, "I'll split them right down the middle.
Gonna cut them right up in half."
And then storm clouds gathered above
Into great balls of fire

And then fire shot down
From the sky in bolts
Like shining blades
Of a knife.
And it ripped
Right through the flesh
Of the children of the sun
And the moon
And the earth.
And some Indian god
Sewed the wound up into a hole,
Pulled it round to our belly
To remind us of the price we pay.
And Osiris and the gods of the Nile
Gathered up a big storm
To blow a hurricane,
To scatter us away,
In a flood of wind and rain,
And a sea of tidal waves,
To wash us all away,
And if we don't behave
They'll cut us down again
And we'll be hopping around on one foot
And looking through one eye.

Last time I saw you
We had just split in two.
You was looking at me.
I was looking at you.
You had a way so familiar,
But I could not recognize,
Cause you had blood on your face;
I had blood in my eyes.
But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine.
That's the pain,
Cuts a straight line
Down through the heart,
We called it love.
So we wrapped our arms around each other,
Trying to shove ourselves back together.
We was making love,
Making love.
It was a cold dark evening,
Such a long time ago,
When by the mighty hand of Jove,
It was the sad story
How we became
Lonely two-legged creatures,
It's the story of
The origin of love.
That's the origin of love.

long song, but tells an awesome story, and...well, fuck, just listen to it, it slays the day.

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on another note, and this is way overdue, but i thought i'd do a tribute to my cousin's dead hamster, Oreo. therefore, i am putting Heavy Metal Hamsters by Helloween onto my radio.blog.