The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick
So, March actually turned out fine, but so far, April has been a real kick in the nuts. In a small way, it's feeling like 2005 all over again. I mean that the winds of change are blowing fiercely, my friends. As firmly as I've tried to plant my roots, some gales are simply too vicious to withstand. I don't mind telling you that I'm as spooked as I am curious about where I'm gonna land.
I got stuff in the works. Expect a bevy of posts sometime soon. You'll see. In the meantime, here are some amusements...
Which "Dark Crystal" character are you?
You are Kira. One strong little Gelfling, you thought you were alone for much of your life, only to find you were wrong when you met the man of your dreams. You are full of surprises and fear very little. You are selfless, brave, loyal and loving.
Take this quiz!
+A selection of absoludicrous quotes about musicians, which I've collected from actual promotional materials:
-"America’s biggest, loudest and hardest-hitting band of all time, Aerosmith..."
-"Brett Dennen doesn’t think outside the box. That’s because he never believed in boxes and boundaries to begin with."
-"If you have never seen Bobby Vinton, you have never been entertained!"
-"Referred to as the 'Richard Pryor and George Carlin of original comedy' within the Hispanic community, Paul Rodriguez..."
-"We are extremely honored and excited to have Hinder represent the MadPackers lifestyle brand... they truly represent how rock music should be played, just as MadPackers represents how college shipping should be executed."
-"[Ex-Fuel/current Riders on the Storm singer Brett Scallions] wears leather like it's licorice..."
-"...'Soldier of Love,' Donny [Osmond]'s first smash hit in more than a decade, heralded in the press as 'THE comeback of the '80s'..."
-"Ronnie Rice picked up a guitar when he was 16 years old and hasn't put it down yet!"
-"Lina Koutrakos wrings more emotion out of her songs than Barbara Stanwyck and Ida Lupino ever managed in a prison flick."
-"[Biffy Clyro] are a true rock n' roll band by definition."
-"Uncle Milty, an 18 year veteran of the Chicago nightlife scene, is known for being a complete madman for fun."
+Here's a clip from a movie I want to see real bad. Anyone looking to get old non-bloggin' SoulReaper a Memorial Day present would be warmly thanked for ordering "The Devil's Sword," an Indonesian fantasy/action movie from 1984 that stars Barry Prima, the mulleted martial arts master you see kicking ass all over a bunch of dudes in cheesy reptilian suits. The film apparently includes a horny crocodile queen, a flying guillotine, laser beams and a sword carved out of a meteor, so you can imagine why I would be enthused. It was released a few years ago by Mondo Macabro, the awesome DVD label devoted to fucked-up cinema from underrepresented corners of the globe. (I believe MM spawned from the book of the same title by international sleaze guru Pete Tombs, an invaluable tour of crazy foreign movies which I highly recommend.) You totally have to watch this clip. Tell me "The Devil's Sword" doesn't look better than "Speed Racer."
+We got reviews a-poppin. Quite a backlog here... let's see, there are four movies ("Doomsday," "Shutter," "Flawless" and what is easily the worst movie I've seen in ages, "Prom Night") and four CDs (Poi Dog Pondering, Lair of the Minotaur, The Dino-5 and Yakuza). Hope you enjoy. I bid you adieu for now. Love and nostalgia call!
I got stuff in the works. Expect a bevy of posts sometime soon. You'll see. In the meantime, here are some amusements...
Which "Dark Crystal" character are you?
You are Kira. One strong little Gelfling, you thought you were alone for much of your life, only to find you were wrong when you met the man of your dreams. You are full of surprises and fear very little. You are selfless, brave, loyal and loving.
Take this quiz!
+A selection of absoludicrous quotes about musicians, which I've collected from actual promotional materials:
-"America’s biggest, loudest and hardest-hitting band of all time, Aerosmith..."
-"Brett Dennen doesn’t think outside the box. That’s because he never believed in boxes and boundaries to begin with."
-"If you have never seen Bobby Vinton, you have never been entertained!"
-"Referred to as the 'Richard Pryor and George Carlin of original comedy' within the Hispanic community, Paul Rodriguez..."
-"We are extremely honored and excited to have Hinder represent the MadPackers lifestyle brand... they truly represent how rock music should be played, just as MadPackers represents how college shipping should be executed."
-"[Ex-Fuel/current Riders on the Storm singer Brett Scallions] wears leather like it's licorice..."
-"...'Soldier of Love,' Donny [Osmond]'s first smash hit in more than a decade, heralded in the press as 'THE comeback of the '80s'..."
-"Ronnie Rice picked up a guitar when he was 16 years old and hasn't put it down yet!"
-"Lina Koutrakos wrings more emotion out of her songs than Barbara Stanwyck and Ida Lupino ever managed in a prison flick."
-"[Biffy Clyro] are a true rock n' roll band by definition."
-"Uncle Milty, an 18 year veteran of the Chicago nightlife scene, is known for being a complete madman for fun."
You Are a Cadbury Creme Egg |
 |
+Here's a clip from a movie I want to see real bad. Anyone looking to get old non-bloggin' SoulReaper a Memorial Day present would be warmly thanked for ordering "The Devil's Sword," an Indonesian fantasy/action movie from 1984 that stars Barry Prima, the mulleted martial arts master you see kicking ass all over a bunch of dudes in cheesy reptilian suits. The film apparently includes a horny crocodile queen, a flying guillotine, laser beams and a sword carved out of a meteor, so you can imagine why I would be enthused. It was released a few years ago by Mondo Macabro, the awesome DVD label devoted to fucked-up cinema from underrepresented corners of the globe. (I believe MM spawned from the book of the same title by international sleaze guru Pete Tombs, an invaluable tour of crazy foreign movies which I highly recommend.) You totally have to watch this clip. Tell me "The Devil's Sword" doesn't look better than "Speed Racer."
+We got reviews a-poppin. Quite a backlog here... let's see, there are four movies ("Doomsday," "Shutter," "Flawless" and what is easily the worst movie I've seen in ages, "Prom Night") and four CDs (Poi Dog Pondering, Lair of the Minotaur, The Dino-5 and Yakuza). Hope you enjoy. I bid you adieu for now. Love and nostalgia call!
posted by SoulReaper at 4:57 PM
1 Comments:
"Doomsday"
Starring: Rhona Mitra, Bob Hoskins, Adrian Lester, David O'Hara, Malcolm McDowell
Written and directed by: Neil Marshall
A Rogue Pictures release. Rated R (strong bloody violence, language and some sexual content/nudity). 105 minutes.
The post-apocalyptic action flick needed a comeback. Now, as the '80s continue to return in increasingly terrifying ways, "Doomsday" finally revives the post-nuke template. Like dozens of Reagan-era Italian knockoffs, it mixes the journey-into-anarchy plot of "Escape from New York" with the cyberpunk fashions and clashes from the "Mad Max" sequels. Nods to "28 Days/Weeks Later" prove it's contemporary and British.
The result is as entertaining as 1982's "The New Barbarians" or 1983's "Endgame." However, with a bigger budget than those Eurotrash cable classics of yesteryear, writer/director Neil Marshall can go wild with the carnage, and, thankfully, he does.
A voiceover tells us that in April 2008, the uncontrollable "Reaper virus" laid waste to Scotland, and a giant steel wall was erected around the entire country to seal off the infection. After 25 years, Great Britain's become a teeming slum, and the virus reappears, threatening the rest of the United Kingdom. Suddenly, evidence of survivors from the Scottish outbreak becomes useful to the British.
Rhona Mitra stars as Major Eden Sinclair, a tough soldier enlisted by her Domestic Security mentor (Bob Hoskins) to lead a team beyond the wall and find a cure. In what's surely a wink to Snake Plissken, Kurt Russell's eyepatch-sporting mercenary from "Escape," Sinclair also has one eye, a souvenir from the night she was rescued as Scotland was sealed off, leaving her mother behind.
It's not long before the team runs afoul of wasteland denizens, who dress like punk rock cavemen according to genre tradition. Their leader, Sol (Craig Conway, bearing an eerie resemblance to cult horror actor Michael Berryman), holds a flamboyant rally during which he dances to an old Fine Young Cannibals hit (!) and roasts one of the Brits to feed his people.
Sinclair and a few others escape and locate Kane (Malcolm McDowell), once a government scientist searching for a cure but now ruling his own Luddite society inside a medieval castle. Between brooding and preening, Kane tells Sinclair the secret to survival, then sticks her in a "Thunderdome"-style arena.
"Doomsday" is dragged down by spastic editing during the action sequences, and it lacks the claustrophobic tension of Marshall's previous films ("The Descent," "Dog Soldiers"). Yet, from the fallout punks' outrageous hairdos to the final highway brawl, the filmmaker delivers a decent homage to end-of-the-world survival sagas, a little too flashy but still fun.
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"Shutter"
Starring: Joshua Jackson, Rachael Taylor, Megumi Okina, David Denman
Directed by: Masayuki Ochiai
A 20th Century Fox release. Rated PG-13 (terror, disturbing images, sexual content, language). 85 minutes.
This week's horror remake comes to us from Thailand. The original "Shutter" was a big domestic hit there in 2004 and was already remade last year in India.
Now a third version exists, thanks to producers Taka Ichise and Roy Lee, whose combined U.S. remake resume includes "The Ring" and "The Grudge" series, "Dark Water" and "The Eye."
"Shutter" offers yet another wronged girl ghost with long black hair. The original was informed by phi tai hong, Thai spirits who seek vengeance for their violent deaths. How these differ from cheesed-off Japanese ghosts (onryo) is of little concern to Ichise, Lee and director Masayuki Ochiai (the man behind 2004's much better "Infection"). They move the action to Japan, making our Western protagonists outsiders as in "The Grudge."
The stilted exposition begins with American newlyweds Ben (Joshua Jackson, a poor man's Tobey Maguire) and Jane (Rachael Taylor). While driving one night, Jane is distracted and hits a woman who appears in the road. The woman disappears just as quickly.
Ben urges her to forget the accident, and the couple relocates to Tokyo. Ben's a professional photographer (who oddly has no problem using disposable cameras), and his old buddy Bruno (David Denman of TV's "The Office") hooked him up with a job.
Jane's not thrilled about the young models and assistants surrounding Ben, but she soon becomes more concerned about the weird white blurs that appear in the couple's photos. In some, she can make out a spectral woman, who looks like the woman Jane hit with the car.
Through a combination of incredible deductive leaps and convenience, Jane determines that the photos are capturing a ghost. It's lucky that Ben's assistant has an ex-boyfriend ("Heroes" sidekick James Kyson Lee) who works for a spirit photography magazine. He gives Jane a mini-lecture on the phenomenon as we see a series of real spirit photos in the film's only truly spooky sequence.
Otherwise, "Shutter" alternates between languid domestic scenarios and endless versions of the ol' "gulp! Who's there?" routine until its final third, when the ghost finally turns mean. Her identity is revealed, as is her connection to Ben, which anyone who's seen the TV ads can guess. The truth is much nastier than the film's PG-13 rating suggests, and coming so late feels both forced and tawdry.
The only real mystery here is how long this barrage of subpar Asian horror remakes will continue.
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"Flawless"
Starring: Demi Moore, Michael Caine, Lambert Wilson, Joss Ackland
Directed by: Michael Radford
A Magnolia Pictures release. Rated PG-13 (brief strong language). 105 minutes.
"Flawless" delves into a diamond heist, paying equal attention to the reasons for the crime and the ways it's carried out.
Set in 1960, the drama concerns Laura Quinn (Demi Moore), who has achieved executive status at the London Diamond Corporation. Laura's given up life and love in her service to the company, yet can't seem to get any higher on the corporate ladder, even as less qualified men rise past her.
Along comes affable Cockney janitor Mr. Hobbs (Michael Caine), who is privy to a lot of insider office info because the suits talk in front of the cleaning staff "like we don't exist." Knowing Laura's silent frustration, Hobbs informs Laura that the diamond giant is about to throw her under the bus to keep quiet a backroom deal with Russian businessman that she devised.
Hobbs proposes that they smuggle a Thermos full of diamonds out of the company's vault, not enough to be missed but enough to compensate them for unrecognized service. The wily janitor has all the details worked out and plans to do the job. Laura just needs to lift the vault code from her boss (a crusty Joss Ackland) and pass it along.
These two disgruntled workers are the core of "Flawless," and they help give it some weight over the flashy technique of recent heist pictures. Moore and Caine, last seen together as daughter and father in 1984's "Blame It on Rio," play the uneasy alliance well, although due to the audience's shifting sympathies, both come off a bit chilly in the end.
Laura is conflicted between her allegiance to the company and her sense of personal justice. This heightens in the aftermath of the theft, when she realizes there's more to Hobbs' scheme than she initially believed. In an attempt to regain control of the situation, she volunteers to help a chiseled detective (Lambert Wilson from "The Matrix" sequels) track down the diamonds, but becomes torn among suspicion of Hobbs, attraction to the cop and self-preservation.
Director Michael Radford ("Il Postino") and first-time screenwriter Edward Anderson tell the story from Laura's point of view as she recounts it to a reporter (Natalie Dormer of Showtime's "The Tudors"), decades after the events took place. Thankfully, they're conscientious enough to not show us things Laura couldn't have known, a fatal flaw in many first-person-recollection movies.
Moore handles Laura's turmoil well, her somewhat flat expression betraying discord and doubt behind a professional veneer. At first, she sounds like she's doing a bad English accent, but once her character is revealed as an American educated and working in London, her pseudo-Brit affectations (she says “shedule”) are actually quite intuitive.
Caine's the bigger presence, all gregarious charm and earthy genius, but he's also not putting everything on the surface. This detachment, despite good performances from both leads and an admirably tense heist sequence, contributes to the film's slightly alienating sensation of distance.
The filmmakers lace the film with political references, ranging from corporate glass ceilings and the anti-Red movement to morally dubious diamond trading practices. Whether or not people were actually protesting "blood diamonds" on the streets of London in 1960, communism is just a red herring here. Laura's unique route around institutional sexism should feel more triumphant, but we don't really get to know her well enough to cheer too loudly.
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"Prom Night"
Starring: Brittany Snow, Scott Porter, Jessica Stroup, Dana Davis, Idris Elba
Directed by: Nelson McCormick
A Screen Gems release. Rated PG-13 (violence and terror, some sexual material, underage drinking and language). 88 minutes.
This week's horror remake revisits a beloved Jamie Lee Curtis-led slasher movie from 1980, ignoring its two sequels as well as much of the initial film's template.
Viewers might get the feeling that the filmmakers, including TV-bred director Nelson McCormick, simply used the old title as an inspiration. Sure, "Prom Night" had a more indicative name than other lesser vintage slashers (say, "The Prowler," "Madman" or "Just Before Dawn"), but a title is not enough.
Like the original, the remake begins with a flashback, commencing here with Ben Taylor's indietronica cover of The Zombies' "Time of the Season" (even the music is recycled!). Teenager Donna (Brittany Snow of the "Hairspray" remake, who mainly registers emotion by clapping her hands to her mouth) comes home from a movie to find her father and brother murdered. Donna hears the killer still in the house and hides under the bed, only to helplessly watch as her mother is killed.
Turns out the psycho was Richard Fenton (Johnathan Schaech), a former teacher of Donna's who was romantically fixated on her. Three years later, Fenton's in a psych ward and Donna, now living with her aunt and uncle, prepares for her prom. She's coming along, but still plagued with paranoia that Fenton is coming to get her.
Naturally, Fenton infiltrates the hotel that hosts Donna's outrageously expensive-looking prom. He picks off random hotel staffers and friends as he attempts to get the object of his unrequited obsession alone. Meanwhile, detective Winn (Idris Elba of HBO's "The Wire"), who caught Fenton when he killed Donna's family, hunts for the unbelievably slick madman.
So, the original film's "mystery" killer is jettisoned in lieu of an identified madman. His distractingly unmessy stabbings take place offscreen or are otherwise obscured. With its PG-13 rating removing any vague promise of T&A, the only thrills left for this "Prom Night" are cheap startles and endless sequences where characters shuffle cautiously, calling "Hello? Who’s there?"
It doesn't even have the camp appeal of the old movie's disco-era hair and clothing mistakes. The flashy non-horror prom sequences are smothered by a constant barrage of pop and hip-hop music. Although someone at least had the good taste to include Bloc Party, these scenes give "Prom Night" the gravity of a Disney Channel movie.
The flick is less modernized than sanitized. And, after this and last year's shoddy "Halloween," some genius is surely bound to complete the Curtis/slasher trifecta with a remake of "Terror Train." We can't stop it from happening, but we can at least hope it's fucking rated R.
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Poi Dog Pondering, 7 (Platetectonic)
Poi Dog Pondering's obviously titled seventh release proves once again that Frank Orrall and crew never met a "come on come on come on" chorus they didn’t like.
7 is more libidinous than the Chicago institution's genteel image lets on. Early on, "Sticky" offers a polite funk bounce to go with its slightly randy lyrics ("I'm gonna love you, baby/With the rough hands of a man/I'm gonna kiss you, baby/As deeply as I can"). From Orrall's wavering yelps to the instrumental swells, the joyous "From This Moment On" sounds like a sexualized Arcade Fire, while "Baby Together" is a creepily hetero disco/soul come-on ("Maybe we could make a baby together/rhythm movin' smoothly getting wetter and wetter").
Some of the band's mellow moments fare very well, as swirling strings and voices send "Butterflies" skyward and a vocoder lends "Palm Leaf Effigy" a sweet psychedelic edge. Elsewhere, they're so chill they're nearly imperceptible, such as the lead-off trifle "Perfect Music," low-key jangler "Outta Yer Head" or the first half of "Heaven Only Knows," before the tune peaks with syrupy easy listening melodrama.
"Lemon Drop Man" couches a perceptibly personal anti-heroin statement inside an upbeat, horn-driven rootsy rocker. It's the most interesting track on 7, its fusion of moods hinting at something deeper than the good time grooves which are, unfortunately, all we primarily get from Poi Dog Pondering this time.
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Lair of the Minotaur, War Metal Battle Master (Southern Lord)
Scabrous and ready for combat, Chicago's Lair of the Minotaur is the right band to deliver "a concept album about solving conflicts with a big fucking axe!" As always, the trio's barbarian lashings draw from the primitive end of the old school metal pool, their torches fueled by the meanest tendencies of favorites like Black Sabbath, Venom and Celtic Frost. Yes, if you're mourning the loss of Chicago metal institution Usurper, this may be your new favorite local band.
Their third LP feels more controlled than past recordings, yet just as varied. "Assassins of the Cursed Mist" pulses with the ugly blackened throb that's propelled recent Satyricon, and the rollicking "Slaughter the Bestial Legion" is a thrash n' roll monster. The crusty guitar hooks infesting closer "Hades Unleashed" lend it an old Swedish death metal vibe. At nearly ten minutes, "Doomtrooper" wallows in groaning sludge, with only a keyboard intro by Zombi's Steve Moore and some stratospheric solos suggesting "epic" moods.
Sometimes the band's a bit too frantic for its own good, as "Horde of Undead Vengeance" and "Black Viper Barbarian Clan" mostly whisk by in energetic but uninspired blurs punctuated by audibly human roars. Yet LotM leave shamanic transcendence to their more popular spiritual brethren High on Fire, preferring the sweat and heat of combat. When their hammer blows connect connect on War Metal Battle Master, prepare to lose your skull.
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Baby Loves Hip-Hop Presents: The Dino-5 (Baby Loves Music)
A hip-hop album made expressly for little kids sounds like a terrible idea, conjuring images of Flintstones characters rapping in '80s Fruity Pebbles commercials. Thankfully, this follow up to 2006's Baby Loves Jazz comes from real rap sources, each playing a young dinosaur character in the album's narrative.
MC T-Rex (Jurassic 5's Chali 2na) scares the other dinos with his size and ferocious demeanor until Billy Brontosaurus (Wordsworth) gets to know him and invites him to his house after school. There, he meets fellow rapper Tracy Triceratops (Digable Planets' Ladybug Mecca), beatbox master TEO Pterodactyl (Scratch, formerly of The Roots) and DJ Stegosaurus (Prince Paul). They become friends and enter the school talent contest as a hip-hop crew called The Dino-5.
The plot, recounted as a mother reading her daughter a bedtime story, is slight, but gives the brief, non-hostile tunes some momentum and context. Sure, the rappers sound reined in and legendary producer Prince Paul's beats are light and bubbly. Baby Loves is nonetheless a pretty cool young person's introduction, with qualified tour guides addressing common hip-hop themes such as prejudice, competition and teamwork in a colorfully sing-song manner. And parents will be glad to have "What About Ten?" stuck in their head rather than "Old McDonald" again.
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Yakuza, Transmutations (Prosthetic)
Chicago's Yakuza continues the refining process that began on 2006's powerful Samsara, making stronger distinctions between the quartet's aggressive and mellow sides. Not having many (well, any) competitors on the psychedelic artcore/free jazz front, Yakuza finds increasing success in translating their unique sound to a wider audience.
"Tear out your eyes so you can see" vocalist Bruce Lamont intones at the onset of "Egocide." Lamont drops his trademark saxophone drones over Matt McClelland's jangling guitar and Jim Staffel's tribal drum dance, assuring that the song's impending off-kilter woodwind grind is recognizable as Yakuza. This is of course after the charmingly titled "Meat Curtains" kicks off the album with a Mastodon-meets-Isis plod, sounding more in line with accepted indie metal tropes than ever before.
So goes Transmutations. Most of the disc vascillates between eye-popping, guitar-and-scream-centered thrashers like "Praying for Asteroids" and "Steal the Fire" and numbers such as "Raus," "Perception Management" and "Zombies," which lace lotophagic slow-burn atmospheres with Lamont's hazy croon and reverbed sax.
The most impressive songs here ("Egocide," "Existence Into Oblivion," "Black Market Liver") utilize all the slow, fast, harsh and mellow aspects of the Yakuza sound, achieving genuine mini-epic status through ebb and flow rather than abrupt transitions. Seriously, if Opeth's stately prog metal has an artsier, freakier, crustier American cousin, its name is Yakuza.
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