Among the numerous new artists I find every week or so, there is sometimes the occasional performer that I will keep coming back to. The ones I'll still be listening to in a year. Over the past few weeks, I've learned to love Andrew Bird. I mentioned him in passing twice before; the first time being a link to a zeusaphone playing "A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head To The Left" (video, sadly, now removed), and the second time being a brief intro to my post on sand art. Well, now I've heard more than one song by the guy. In fact, I've heard almost all of his albums. And you can too.
His 1996 album Music Of Hair is a good deal different from the rest of his oeuvre. In it, he truly shines as a violinist (which is his whole thing). It's a slightly funky mix of bluegrassy, almost-Irish sounding melodies, which is a little off-putting. However, if you're going to put in the effort, I would recommend the tracks "Ambivalence Waltz", "Oh So Insistent", and "Ratitat/Peter's Wolf/Oblivious Reel". Especially "Oh So Insistent". It's divided into an A section and a B section, where the A section reminds me of Firefly and the B section is just awesome. You may also notice that none of the recommended tracks have vocals. That's because his 1996 vocals are weird and creepy.
Next up, his 2003 album Weather Systems. I only link to it out of some sense of continuity, because I honestly don't really like any of the tracks. If I must choose a few, let them be the songs "I" and "Skin", if only to serve as some form of groundwork for his later, better stuff (you'll see).
Unfortunately, his most recent album, 2007's Armchair Apocrypha, really only has one good track, nowhere near the great selection on his last album. That track is "Imitosis" and it really is one of his best. It's a musical sequel to Weather System's "I" and is the only Andrew Bird song to have its own music video. So, that's pretty good.
Other than that, the only things left to talk about are his Fingerlings albums. That's all his live stuff: Fingerlings, Fingerlings 2 and Fingerlings 3. In many cases, the live stuff is better, but in many more cases, they're worse. Try "Gotholympians", "Sweetbreads", "The Water Jet Cilice", and his live redition of "A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head To The Left". Fingerlings 2 is a Rapidshare link, sorry. From that, I'd really only recommend "Banking On A Myth", but you have to download it all. Enjoy.
I didn't watch a lot of Sesame Street back in the 1970s, so I must have missed this gem. Had I been around, however, I'm sure I would have run screaming from the room every time I saw those rubber bands.
In the style of those 8-bit beauties you were perpetually unable to beat, an independent developer brings you "I Wanna Be The Guy", a somewhat sarcastic take on the video games of yesteryear. Implementing recycled sprites, obvious palette-change characters, and a gratuitous amount of spikes, the game reminds you of everything you loved/hated about those old NES classics. What is so noteworthy about this game, however, is not its old-school appeal. No, what truly stands out about this game is how incredibly hard it is. Not only are there the gratuitous amounts of spikes mentioned above, The Kid (your player-character) explodes into red gibs at the first brush with any arbitrary enemy. Some of the nerdier among you may have seen this video floating about in the depths of the interwebs (Warning: Totally NSFW; language), depicting an impossible Mario level and one gamer's beleaguered attempts to complete it. Well, "I Wanna Be The Guy" (IWBTG) is at least that complex and a good deal more well-made. You can read more about its history here at its homepage, as well as a download link if you're insane enough to think you can get past the first screen (It's hella hard, and I don't use the term "hella" unless I mean it). Unfortunately, it's only available for Windows machines, so Mac users have to either wait for an unlikely port or find an unused Windows box sitting around. And for those of you who are either unwilling or unable to play the game, I found a helpful YouTube vid detailing how to get past the first few dozen screens (Here there be spoilers).
To blatantly plagiarize from the site I found it on, "one intrepid fan dares to rank the original songs of The Beatles and give his reasons why in a worst-to-first countdown." All of the original 185 (give or take) Beatles songs are ranked and have had a helpful little paragraph written about them. It's worth checking out for any Beatles fan (or if you're not, which mean you're just not a Beatles fan yet). I'm afraid I must respectfully disagree with the low rankings of "Good Day Sunshine", "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)", and "Her Majesty" (although he has a good reason). "Cry Baby Cry", "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "I'm Only Sleeping" deserved higher rankings, while "Helter Skelter", "Taxman" and "Within You Without You" probably didn't deserve the higher ranking they got (I'm just sayin' is all). On the other hand, I agree with all of the top twenty songs (though I don't know if I would have chosen that order). I'm also glad to see "Dear Prudence", "For No One" and a personal favorite, "Yes It Is" (comparative footnotes in The Beatles' catalogue) given such high praise. Check it out here.
Recently, in an attempt to clear off some space on my bloated hard drive, I watched some movies that I had been "meaning to get around to" for a few months. These are, of course, the movies that I didn't really want to watch, but felt obligated to anyway for some reason. This is because I spent the time to locate and download these films, so I feel that I shouldn't just delete them without ever having seen them. These movies were Babylon A.D., Resident Evil: Extinction, Death Race, Ultraviolet and Hitman. Shall we?
Babylon A.D. was... not bad. Surprisingly enough, it wasn't bad at all (comparatively). Despite being a shameless Vin Diesel vehicle, the movie has shockingly high production values and decent acting. Vin can act just fine if he doesn't open his mouth too much (he doesn't). It also helps if the dialogue he does have isn't pun-based in nature. The plot, admittedly based on a French novel and not a Vin original, is pretty good. At the very least, it keeps you guessing until the end. Which is where the whole thing falls apart. The entire film moves at a fairly decent clip with just the right amount of explosions and just the right amount of exposition to keep you watching. Then it betrays the audience it worked so hard to earn with a confusing and unsatisfactory ending (not based on the original ending, it should be noted). All in all, I give it six stars. Also, it has black market tiger clones.
Then there was Resident Evil: Extinction. Don't take me as an elitist, I'm not above a good zombie flick. I'm also not entirely opposed to films based on video games (though I should be. Anyone else see Max Payne? Man, I could do a separate post entirely on that piece of junk). But if I'm going to invest time in a movie that I was lured into with the understanding that I'd see zombie birds, I don't want them to be killed by the psychic main character in, like, thirty seconds. So, tips for improvement: more zombie crows and less plot. Because the plot that was there was ridiculous. Also, I'm offended that you thought that the audience would be won over by zombie dogs that are obviously just Rottweilers with a bad paint job. Shameful. Four stars.
I have to cut Death Race some slack. Not much, but more than it deserves. It was based on Deathrace 2000, a film produced in 1975 by the inimitable Roger Corman. For the uninformed, Roger Corman was king of the B-movie during the latter half of the 50's and most of the 60's and 70's. Perhaps the best-known of his stories is that of The Little Shop Of Horrors (not the musical; it was the film that inspired the Broadway musical of the same name), a black comedy that he filmed in three days on a budget of $30,000. According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, his most prolific period was marked in 1957, when he produced nine films. In case you don't know, both films center around the premise that at some point in the future, a gladiatorial road race would become a source of national entertainment. In the 2008 remake, the plot takes a turn for the wacky when Jason Statham is framed for his wife's murder. This is eventually revealed to be an elaborate set-up by the warden of the prison where he ends up (who run the races as a way for inmates to win their freedom), who needs a replacement driver for her star racer, Frankenstein. Frank died in his most recent race, but any driver with Frank's old hockey mask could pass for him, drawing in the pay-per-view money. It's a tenuous excuse for a plot, but that's not why people went to go see it. They went to go see a live-action version of the N64 classic Carmageddon (remember that? Yeah, you do). These people, along with the film's investors, were severely disappointed. The racing element was given far too little attention for a movie entitled Death Race, meaning a disproportional amount of film stock was wasted on Jason Statham worrying about his dead wife and baby daughter or whatever. That being said, there is a part where the race organizers introduce the Dreadnought, an enormous 18-wheeler-cum-tank. Sweet. Three stars.
Kurt Wimmer is a confusing human being. He wrote The Thomas Crown Affair and The Recruit, two seemingly average, if not better-than-average, films. He also wrote and directed Equilibrium, a film that, while being absolutely ridiculous, could also be easily called better-than-average. Then he comes along and decides to destroy all his hard-earned cred by writing and directing Ultraviolet. I could talk about the choice to use the queen of the "New B" school of film (Milla Jovovich, also star of Resident Evil: Extinction), I could talk about his decision to awkwardly shoehorn in a vampire angle, I could even talk about how the film makes no sense whatsoever, but instead I'll talk about his gratuitous use of Photoshop's Blur tool.
Honestly, the entire film is like that. Watch the following clip from the movie to see an example of the "kinda-neat-idea; poor-follow-through" feel that permeates the film. Two stars.
And that leaves us with Hitman. I should just go ahead and tell you now: this movie gets one star. That's out of ten. It's also the only movie I would recommend. This is because you cannot possibly understand the level of its suckitude from the mere written word. It is... quite possibly the worst movie I've ever seen. This is not to say that it's bad in the same way as Army Of Darkness, but it's bad in the sense that I honestly didn't have fun watching it. I didn't enjoy a single moment. Also they make a gross spelling error that I notice every time. Yeah. Every time. Can anyone explain why I've seen this three times?
So I happened to catch a glimpse at 20/20 the other day and I can't help but notice this story (Probably Not Safe For Work, but I guess that depends on where you work). Crazy. I think I have life all figured out, then I see something like this and it's essentially back to square one. But that's not the point.
Recently, I've been listening to a lot of Abney Park. I don't really like them, but I feel I should. That's because they're the world's only Steampunk band. Since their goth roots in Seattle in the Nineties, they've decided to specialize somewhat and become exclusively Steampunk. This means that their onstage personas are that of probably the best literary archetype, sky-pirates. Their airship Ophelia has been the subject of at least one song and they dress appropriately. And by appropriately, I mean like this:
Anyway, aside from "Steampunk", their music is best described as industrial dance influenced heavily by world music. This places them firmly outside my personal tastes, which is a shame. But in the event that YOU might like them, I offer their 2001 album "From Dreams Or Angels", their 2005 album "The Death Of Tragedy", and their 2008 album "Lost Horizons". Which, I guess, was released last year. Happy 2009, all.
A true captain of industry, Josiah Blocker has (among other achievements) successfully circumnavigated the globe using only a (heh) sextant, attained popehood, slept through an entire winter and escaped a Kafkaesque nightmare world in which muffins were outlawed. One of the above is actually true.
Posts
