DVD/CD
Wayne Coyne's film Christmas on Mars is an abysmal clunker, even by vanity project standards. It’s a mostly black-and-white, sci-fi, faux philosophical adventure strongly indebted to Stanley Kubrick's infinitely superior 2001:A Space Odyssey and David Lynch’s superior, if equally obnoxious, Eraserhead. Whereas Flaming Lips live shows are charmingly weird and fun, the band's silver screen debut reeks of film-school pretentiousness and art-house arrogance. Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne wrote, co-directed and appears in the flick, as do his fellow band members, but there are no musical performances. Which makes Christmas on Mars even less appealing than The Song Remains the Same sans the concert footage. Even with a head full of high-grade acid I can’t imagine finding this film more entertaining to view than, say, the popcorn ceiling of your average shitty apartment. As for the CD part of this twofer package, it's the instrumental soundtrack to the film: 32 meandering minutes of trite, trippy washes that ebb, flow and then dissipate before leaving any real mark on the listener — just like the movie itself. (Warner Bros.) *
This article appears in Dec 3-9, 2008.