Wednesday, March 31, 2010

congratulations


so mgmt's new album has seems to have leaked, in retaliation they're offering it streaming on their website: whoismgmt.com

it's a really enjoyable listen, the second track song for dan treacy is obviously a tribute to television personalities, however at first listen, i guessed the cardiacs.

and oddly enough, some of the tracks, especially the opening, make the iamamiwhoami connection somewhat believable. and in an interesting overlap there is this:



jonna lee, swedish musican, and everyone's favourite pick for iamamiwhoami.
and while i won't deny our mandrake looks incredibly like miss lee, i wouldn't say anything has been confirmed.
her management has denied it being her, she's been silent on the issue, even after performing at SXSW not long after b went live.
also, and most importantly, the music doesn't really fit. jonna lee isn't a bad musican, a few of her songs are quite catchy, however her music is no iamamiwhoami, even noting the tonal shift with b.
iamamiwhoami seems to be lacking her accent as well.
it could well be her, this could be a new sideproject, i can't say, iamnotsurewhoyouare.
like always though, i'll just say, let's wait for the next video to tell us more.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

uhn tiss uhn tiss uhn tiss baby



i'm sure everyone that was around their teens in the late 90's knows the bloodhound gang for the bad touch.
or fire water burn if you were hip.

and those are both fine and well, however this is the song that i've come to think of when i think of the bloodhound gang.
i mean who knew repetition could be so fun? so fun? repetition is so fun.

i remember at the time this song came out, rolling stone called hefty fine the worst album of the year.
that's just uncalled for, this was by far the gang's most mature album.



oh come on, i meant musically mature.
although if you were to sum up the bloodhound gang in one image, bam margera driving a banana car gets the job done.

this album also gave us the wonderful song ralph wiggum.
composed entirely of ralph quotes.
well, the chorus starts out with chief wiggum, however it is one my favourite ralph moments.
i feel both sad and totally awesome because i know which episode all the quotes are from.

the bloodhound may never be herald as musical geniuses, yet you have to admit, they are the best at what they do.

Monday, March 15, 2010

sup /b/?



here it is the sixth video, b.
and while not a complete reveal , it is nearly five minutes long, the music running about three minutes. it still seems a bit too cacophonous, too distorted to be a full song, but it is something.

in the video, our suddenly blue-eyed blonde is covered in plastic, as to whether this is encasing her and harking back to her polluted birth, or if it's a skin she's simply shedding, i cannot say.
the factory seems to now be a house, focusing on a crib with a cat. there are a number of entranced and disfigured men. they look like they're right out of the 1970's.
it's hard to tell who's controlling who.

listening to the song without the visuals also proves to be interesting.
the plastic skin and endless cat remind me of the hiss and ending skip of a record.
or perhaps that's just me.

what's driving me crazy though, is that the few times her voice isn't distorted, it sounds really familiar. perhaps just wishful thinking.
either way it is haunting and beautiful.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

oscars shmoscars


like many people i was tweeting about the oscars while they were happening live, and it was oddly entertaining, i even started following roger ebert, and was fairly amused when we both shared the same ideas (although i'm sure everyone made a "dude abides" joke)

so i'm not here to bore you about how badly presented or directed the oscars were, i mean it would only be something to talk about if the oscars were something amazing.
just a few things i feel the need to vent about

christoph waltz winning best supporting actor:
i'm so glad this was the first award, i would have turned it off had he lost, inglourious basterds was one of my favourite films of last year, and he fucking made it work.

hans zimmer not winning best score:
oh come on, did up really need to win this? excluding elfman scores and musicals this is the first film score i've felt compelled to pick up since fight club. zimmer was robbed.



avatar winning best cinematography:
are you fucking kidding me? a largely CGI and blue screen movie winning best cinematography, what a fucking joke, i'm willing to let avatar have best visual effects, personally i liked the special effects of district 9 more, however i didn't except it to win, and see why avatar did. but cinematrography is bullshit, art direction is pretty bad too, not as bad as cinematography though.

a serious man not winning anything
oh come on! best movie of last year. at least it won best cinematography at the spirit awards, which were amusing due to everyone's drunken and heartfelt speeches.

sandra bullock winning best actress
sort of lame, considering she up against some real actors.

kathryn bigelow winning best director.
while i haven't seen the hurt locker yet, i do think it's awesome that she's the first woman to even win best director.
even though it is a bit ridiculous it took this long to happen.

lastly: logorama
go watch it, right now.

plinkett reviews



so on the youtube i came across an epic seventy minute review of the phantom menace.
it's a bit off putting at first, due to the character plinkett, he's an impossibly old, prostitute killin', family man (well other than his wife, he killed her too)
but once you start watching the review, you realize the guy behind the character is actually really smart, and knows a lot about film.
and the character of plinkett does pay off for some good laughs.
also worth watching, his review of avatar:





glad i'm not alone on this 3D shit.
i think his most brilliant observation is how avatar isn't james cameron ripping off dances with wolves, it's really just james cameron combining aliens with titanic.

but yeah, be sure to check out his webzone, he also has a bunch of star trek movie reviews up, i haven't seen most of the star trek movies though, so i have no drive to watch them. i always always been a star wars nerd, what can i say.



can't wait.

law abiding citizen




i've wanted to see this movie since i first saw the trailer before district 9, it looked badass, in a punisher meets batman kind of way. i held off on seeing it because, well, i was afraid hollywood would fuck it up.
well guess what?

i fucking loved this movie, up until the last ten minutes. i can't even begin to describe how horrible and insulting the ending is. dark night x 10.
the only thing i can think of is either, a. they couldn't think of a way to end up or b. some higher up deemed it "too dark"
frustrating.

in the trailer they reveal he's a "brain" which amounted to a black ops think tank, however in the movie you don't find out until after the lawyer gets killed while gerard is in prison. so yes, this movie is about a cold and calculating killer that wants to take down the whole justice system that let the man that murdered his family free.
awesome.
it's interesting because they make gerard so cold and inhumane, yet we still cheer him on, i did anyway, the way his murders played out were top notch, the cell phone bomb being my favourite.



brutal and satisfying!

so what pisses me off about the ending is this:
this guy that's been built up as an inhumanly smart and calculated killer, is outsmarted by a DA and a street cop.

that's the gist of it, the small things that bother me:
that he would leave the bomb out in the open
that he wouldn't have security on his warehouse/tunnel/cell.
that the DA and cop somehow beat him back to the prison despite his headstart.
where was the bombsquad guy when they went through the front door?
fuck you movie!

how should it have ended you ask?
well gerard needed to die, it wouldn't have been satisfying had he lived, he's not human. but jamie foxx needed to have lost everything, as it stands he lost nothing, in fact, he gained a better job and a appreciation of his family that he once took for granted.
bullshit.
so let's say we leave the movie the same up until they find the bomb.
turns out the bomb is the ruse.
he really went after foxx's family (because he wouldn't know they were in hiding?)
foxx and that guy from star trek rush off and arrive to find gerard over their dead bodies.
he eliminates the trekkie and gloats to foxx, making foxx kill him, making foxx get some justice, do what's right.
that's satisfying because foxx lost everything, he now knows how gerard felt.
bit too much like seven i suppose, but at least it's on the right track, i mean, can you tell me the end of that movie wasn't satisfying.

if it weren't for the ending, this movie would have gotten a five...

two and a half out of five

Monday, March 8, 2010

forgetters



why was i not aware blake schwarzenbach had a new band?
way to fail me internets.

luckily while having a conversation about jawbreaker tonight, i decided to look up where mr. schwarzenbach was teaching english.



glad he's come back to music, now i just hope they record some music or i get a chance to see them live.
ideally both.

stylo



i would like to to post the entire video, as this is an excellent song with a weird and awesome video.
but emi is on the stubborn few that still won't let their videos be embedded.
get with the fucking times already, you're not losing out on anything by having myself and other post videos and get them more attention.

here's the full video.
it took a few listen to grow on me, i mean come on womack and mos def?
epic.



suddenly bruce willis!

Sunday, March 7, 2010

$15 for a night in salem


so last night i attended the surprisingly packed banshee brawl.
pitting the cherry city derby girls against the sick town derby dames
and while not everything went as planned, and the side attractions were a mess.
the game itself was surprisingly entertaining.
some of the girls were awesome at what they do, and others were just plain vicious.
good times were had, or as my friend put it, sexy times.
to which i corrected: sexy times, on wheels.

instead of the after party, there was the space
were greeted by a drone metal band blessing their equipment with sage.
oh oregon, how i love thee.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

the wolfman




despite the bad press surrounding this movie, it's actually decent.
it pays great homage to old monster movies, the actors are great, the cinematography was interesting and quite nice to look at, made it all seem very dream-like, and most importantly it was really entertaining.

i have a few minor issues with this movie though, one is the CGI, which was just wonky at times.
then the silver cane, in the original movie, this cane was used to kill the wolf man, so here it is in this movie, and it's not really used, one wolf is killed by beheading and the other with silver bullets, although not before infecting another.
why show off the cane if you're not going to bludgeon one of the wolves with it?
it's like one thing that really annoyed me about the hitchhiker's guide the galaxy movie, they set up the "Beware of the Leopard" joke, but then didn't follow through, what the fuck was the point of setting it up?

then there's the end, which i sort of mentioned, weaving gets infected, which you know, lame. and even worse is how del toro dies, just so cliche, doesn't even go well with cheesy monster movie, it's more like a romance novel death.

the one thing i really loved about this movie though, is that it never gives up on the cheap scares, loud jumpy things one after another, it gets to the point where it ridiculous, and i loved it everytime.
and hey a score by danny elfman, all in all, not a bad movie.

four out of five

Thursday, March 4, 2010

welcome home



the most musically complete of these viral videos.
i love this video, the mysterious figures in the mirrors, the silhouetted workers
the juxtaposition of the epic roots spreading over the calm xylophone sounds.
and this video seems to be making the most of the number six that's been featured in most videos.
six "cakes", six puppies, six eggs (i imagine), six strawberries, six crosses, six shadows.
perhaps video six will be the big reveal.
it does seem we're close.


the title of this video reminds me though, coheed and cambria's new album is out soon.


because apparently using album names that my chemical romance rejected is what's in right now.
i'm not sure what to make of the song the broken, i listened to it when it first came out and promptly forgot about it until now.
later on today it seems another new song here we are juggernaut will be premiering on their website.
they've also announced this, a novel based on the story of the album. and you know, i suffered through the horrible comic, this though, is where a draw the line. sorry cluadio.
i'll likely be picking up the album though, because while i do still long for the old days, at the end, it's still coheed and cambria.