Music Review – Lindsay Rae Spurlock Tuesday, Jul 29 2008

Lindsay Rae Spurlock

So I’m a little embarrassed about this plug. I actually don’t own any of Lindsay’s music, but I want to. I remember the first time I met Lindsay. It was way back in 2000. I was a young punk (as in inexperienced and stupid, not mo-hawk and boots) with long hair and a goatee in my freshman year at LSU. I think I ran into her at the Varsity or (the old) Chelsea’s or maybe the Spanish Moon. Anyway, it doesn’t matter where, but I got invited to see her play a small gig at a coffee shop off of Sherwood Forest I had never heard of called the Daily Grind. I went out to the show and really enjoyed it. In retrospect I probably creeped her out just a bit. I know it’s hard for my dear readers to imagine, but I was not always the smooth and suave operator you know and love today. Anyway, she had some cool stuff, covered some Brak songs (which was really cool at the time), and generally made a good impression in terms of who she was and what she was about.

Anyway, Lindsay is one of those people you just see around. I’ve bumped into her a few times over the years and it always seems to be that she’s still doing the really cool living the dream and playing music still thing. Recently she came out with a new CD and did a release party at the Spanish Moon that I really should have gone to but didn’t. So I guess the point of this post (like most of these reviews) is to tell you that she’s good and you should check her out.

Clicking on the picture above will send you to her website with streaming audio of some of her stuff. The Advocate says she sounds like Imogen Heap, the Cranberries (I can actually hear a bit of Delores in her voice), and Bjork. I like all of those artists and I like LRS too. I’m definitely going to keep a look out for her next show and, when not broke from dentist bills and saving for another trip to Little Rock, buy her CDs. Remember to support your local artists and musicians, folks.

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Music Review – Muscles Monday, Jul 28 2008

Hey all, I’m still uploading images to Flickr to get the old blog posts working with the embedded photos. Since I only have a free account I can only put up 100mb a month, so things are going slow. I could probably knock it all out in a single upload, but I don’t want to compromise picture quality on the photos if I can help it.

Anyway, in an effort to bring new content, I’m going to try and post something new at least once a week. Here goes the first bit:

http://www.myspace.com/musclesmusic

Muscles is an Australian electronic music artists that I’ve been digging lately. Standouts on his first album are “The Lake,” which is the video posted above. Others include “Ice Cream,” and “Marshmallow.” He does this blend of desperate emotion and manic sound play off really well. It’s a bit emo teenage angsty in terms of the overall feel, but it’s a bit more powerful than that in terms of how it actually hits you. Anyway, I dig it, and his voice is a fresh sound even if it isn’t the sweetest thing to listen to.

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Review: Meet Joe Black Saturday, Mar 31 2007

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meet_Joe_Black

So last night I popped on a film to which I felt I could fall asleep. I knew that Meet Joe Black was notorious for being a slow moving film, and that it got poor reviews — VERY poor — but I wanted to give it a try. So, late in the night / early in the morning I put it on. Three hours later I didn’t want it to end.

This film just plain surprised me. I thought the script was masterful, and that the pace was perfect. Yes, it moved slowly, but it moved slowly with the same inevitability towards its ends just as a movie about Death personified should.

I will admit, there were some things I thought could have been improved upon Death seemed, to me, far too ignorant and innocent with regard as to how to interact with humans at the beginning of the film. He’s Death! An eternal and omnipresent being. Sure, he might not know what peanut butter tastes like, but he should know how people interact with one another. He is far, far more suave at the end of the film, and I like that. At the beginning the only time he seems confident when speaking to Mr. Hopkins’s character.

However, Death’s desires to experience life as a mortal, to learn from them and understand them better, and ultimately feel as they do is powerfully portrayed. At the same time, the reflections of a man faced by his own mortality are performed quite well. I also particularly like the interaction of Mr. Pitt as Death and an elderly Islander woman, spoken in Island dialect. Their relationship showed another side of death.

As an added bonus, Claire Forlani was in this film. Despite having seen her in Mallrats and some other minor roles before, I never noticed her until now. She is stunningly beautiful. I looked around for a decent picture of her, and this is as good as I could get:

However, this photo does not do her justice. You should really see her in the film. There she appears much less like a model and much more like a common woman with simple and natural beauty. She absolutely dazzles, especially in some of the elegantly simple dresses the in which the costume department put her. I was absolutely captivated.

So, if you’re willing to invest three hours of your life in what is most assuredly a film that is for thought and digestion, rather than instant gratification and action, I recommend this film. Of course, most people who reviewed it don’t agree with me.

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Movie Review: Casino Royale Monday, Jan 15 2007

This movie absolutely blew me away. I think this is the best James Bond movie ever made. I think Daniel Craig is the best Bond to date. Yes, even better than Sean.

Let me explain this, though. This really isn’t a Bond movie in terms of how we have understood them so far. This is something different. Disregard for a moment that this is a reboot of the series, starting off with a new timeline. They could have simply done that and left the formula the same: womanizing Bond with lots of cheesy lines, gadgets galore, Q, cars with machine gun mounts, over the top goofy villains (Oddjob, Jaws, etc.), and so on. But they didn’t do that. No, they made James Bond as a genre better. How? Well, they made it into a true action thriller without all that fluff. The extent of the gadgetry is limited to information technology and an emergency medical kit. That’s it. No laser watches or pocket sized water breathers to be had. The villains were equally down to earth, and there’s nothing there to be turned into a Dr. Evil parody. The only thing that makes this villain even Bondesque in terms of what that used to mean is that he has a tear duct defect that makes him cry blood, but even that is fairly muted in the movie, occurring only occasionally (rather than the over used petting of a cat, for instance). And while Bond is still getting with the ladies, it’s put in the light of him actually being a suave, attractive, and magnetic person, rather than just some guy with a cheesy line. Craig David has made Bond a badass, not a pretty boy. So this metamorphosis of the genre has made Bond something new and different. They took the best aspects of Bond and merged them with the neck breaking action of The Born Identity. I love it.

In supporting roles, Judy Dench reprises as M, but we see her as a creating force in Bonds life as a ruthless agent carrying out his government’s interest, and it makes her all the more sinister. Sure, we’re on her (and Bond’s), but we’re certainly glad of that when we see what they do. The supreme lack of attachment they both show in what they do (and its display in this film is much more gruesome) make them frightening characters. There’s an ugliness to what they do, and they know it. The film even explores this, and one of the major dilemmas Bond faces is how every time he kills he loses a bit of his humanity. This film doesn’t glamorize him as a spy with a “license to kill” and kid gloves like Mac the Knife as though that were something to aspire to. It shows him as a man with blood on his hands knowing that they will get bloodier. M, for her part, recognizes the James and other Double O’s like him are “blunt instruments” that must be used. She also knows they have short life spans and are expendable. But they are needed to get the job done, so she sends them to kill or be killed, all the while calculating the risks and benefits of their missions to her government.

Wow.

On the other hand, the Bond Girls in this film are fantastic (see above)! They did well by casting unknowns (unlike Madonna or Denise Richards, for instance), but even better by casting such amazing beauties! Eva Green plays her part to perfection to boot! You just can’t complain about either of the two.

So yes, go see (or rent) the new Bond film. It rocks. The only complaints I have is that Texas Hold ‘Em has replaced Baccarat as James’s game of choice, which while more contemporary is less interesting and that the pacing of the film slows near the end and then speeds up again, giving up two competing climaxes. I think this could have been done a bit better, but in a way the story requires it.

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Heroes Thursday, Nov 23 2006

So I’ve become completely and utterly enthralled, and I do mean enthralled, by a new show on NBC called Heroes.  It’s amazing.  The basic premise is that  some people all over the world are evolving into X-Men type mutants, and through various plot devices are drawn together.  Add in a rogue super powered human named Sylar that’s a serial killer, a pending nuclear explosion in New York that’s been both seen by a time traveller and a clairvoyant artist, and a mysterious man that seems to be capturing the super powered humans to study them and possibly use their powers for his own sinister ends before releasing them (or mybe not, we don’t really know what he’s doing).  Anyway, I’m up to episode six, but will soon have up to 9.  Visit its Wikipedia page listed below for more info.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroes_%28TV_series%29

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Cat Power Thursday, Nov 23 2006

Cat Power is the stage name of Chan Marshal, a good Southern girl with a great voice. I’ve been in love with one song from her for a long time, called “Cross Bones Style.” Watch that video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXWvjkX446A

I mention her today because while looking around at NPR’s website I found this article on her, along with a link to a live concert in D.C. that I reccomend you guys listen to. Her style has developed and changed, but it’s still great music.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6492459

Here’s her entry on Wikipedia as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Power

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Never-Ending Stories, How to Fix Shows Like “Lost” Sunday, Nov 12 2006

I found this on Boing-Boing I think, or maybe it was Attuworld, but regardless, it sums up exactly how I felt about “Lost” halfway through season two. Hopefully someone with a brain in their head will read it too.

http://nymag.com/arts/tv/features/23763/index.html

Never-Ending Stories

How to fix shows like ‘Lost.’

• By Adam Sternbergh

The few devoted fans of new series like Vanished and Kidnapped might grumble as these shows get yanked, but they should take solace: It could have been worse. Kidnapped could have become a Lost-size hit and been extended indefinitely. That’s the real irony this season: not that these convoluted, Lost-alike shows aren’t succeeding, but that the model they aspire to doesn’t work at all. Sure, Lost drew massive audiences in its first two years, but in its third season, it’s losing both viewers (down a third from last year) and narrative steam (who’s in the hatch with the Others and the numbers and the—oh, forget it). And for anyone who didn’t sign on from the beginning, there’s little incentive to catch up now. Why invest hours wading through past DVDs when your co-workers are grousing that the mysteries still haven’t paid off? There is, however, a simple solution: Change the format, or at least reimagine it. When it so-called arc shows, we need something between a mini-series and an open-ended run. We need the TV equivalent of a novella: the limited-run show. Series driven by a central mystery (Twin Peaks, The X-Files) peter out precisely because they have indefinite life spans. The writers are forced to serve up red herrings until the shows choke on their own plot twists. (Whereas 24 works because it’s more cliff-hanger than puzzle—though Jack Bauer is surely the unluckiest man alive.) Now let’s imagine an alternate reality in which, say, Lost was designed to run for only two seasons. Rather than getting an increasingly tedious shaggy-dog story, we’d get 48 episodes of tightly plotted, expertly interwoven suspense. Viewers would be both more willing to sign on at the beginning (knowing their investment will pay off) and more inclined to buy DVDs later (either as catch-up for newbies or as a satisfying boxed set). Sure, the show won’t syndicate well, but shows like Lost don’t syndicate well anyway. And the series finale would be huge—the kind of event TV network executives drool over. Obviously, this approach isn’t right for every show. Stand-alone dramas (CSI) and cyclical sitcoms (Two and a Half Men) can still run open-ended. And, granted, no network will be eager to pull a massive hit after its allotted two-year run. But which would you rather tune in to next fall: a brand-new mystery from the creators of Lost, that entirely satisfying and thrilling limited-run series you loved? Or yet another season of Lost, that show that started out so well but is now meandering all over the damn place? Puzzles are meant to be solved, not prolonged. You can only tease viewers so long before they feel like they’re being mocked.

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Musical Discoveries – The Mashup Genre Wednesday, Oct 11 2006

So I found this on Boing Boing today: http://www.bride-of-monster-mash.com/

It’s a cool collection of mashups, all with somewhat horror or scarey themes. Great for a Halloween party!

I’ve also been slowly exploring mashups as a genre. A buddy of mine back home (Kevin Kupperman for anyone who knows folks over at KLSU) has a show on Saturday nights and I’ve been talking with him about it tonight and he gave me the following links for folks interested in exploring the genre:

http://www.bootiesf.com/
http://www.divideandkreate.com/
http://this.bigstereo.net/
http://theprettiestpony.typepad.com/

Wanted to add this site:
http://www.mashuptown.com/

And this album:
http://www.bootiesf.com/bestofbootie_2005/

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