Records Ruin the Landscape
David Grubbs (Gastr Del Sol et al) talks with Marc Masters about the vitality of performed over recorded music, a notion I totally get -- but I still feel like the documenting is important, for manifold reasons. #link
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Date: November 2014
David Grubbs (Gastr Del Sol et al) talks with Marc Masters about the vitality of performed over recorded music, a notion I totally get -- but I still feel like the documenting is important, for manifold reasons. #link
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Doesn't surprise me at all that Andy Warhol was an early adopter of computer art tools, him being a commercial artist at heart and all. #link
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So late to the party with this show, because it was never on TV over here. We've got the 20th anniversary tin but there's only a few episodes in that. #link
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My answer is: of course. But never forget the simple matter of whether a film is worth the viewer's investment, which can vary with context. And technique is only one part of that, because film might be an art form, but not all films are meant to be art. #link
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Something that isn't mentioned in this piece [c/o Kottke] but what I think is a prime example is puroresu. #link
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Big thumbs-up for Ticket to Ride and Dominion in this neat introductory list. So yeah, Christmas is coming up soon, how about that? #link
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I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed the set-up for a future John Cena heel turn, as The Masked Man writes on Grantland about the ‘Chekhov’s Gun’ of the erstwhile wrestling rapper’s newfound power to reinstate The Authority as ‘the powers that be’ in WWE. It’s a twist that was clearly designed to plant the seed in every Cena-hater’s mind that there may come a day when the children’s champion swerves on the good people of the ‘WWE Universe’ (I hate that phrase so much) and throws in his lot with Triple H and Stephanie and company. That it will likely never happen is completely beside the point; it’s enough for the smarks to be flattered that Creative put something in there for them to ‘get’ and feel smug about. That’s some nice misdirection, there.
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Still one of my favourite movies, and not even for the fantastically biting dialogue. #link
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The Guardian’s 10 best chickpea recipes
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The moral of the story? Never go 'legit'. #link
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Reddit AMAs made readable, finally! #link
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"An editor may be butcher, but they are also a midwife, a parent, a nanny, a matron, a therapist, a conspirator and a friend. But don't forget that, in the end, only a butcher can turn a live, stamping, snorting, animal into something you can stomach. So perhaps it's time we heard it for the butchers." #link
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So you love The Lego Movie, right? I mean, how could you not? But if you felt weird that it isn't really stop-motion (come on, it's really well done CGI, and would have taken years to make otherwise) here's a great feature on the end titles, which actually were done in stop-motion, and are fabulous like (most of) the rest of the movie. #link
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Quite a lot, as it happens. But I think making Guile, a bit player in the game's storyline, into the lead character was the biggest error, and everything snowballed from there. #link
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A nice chat with the band on the release of their fourth album. Which I meant to review for Thumped months ago and, ah well. It's good, though. Much better than the last one, which was very disappointing to me. #link
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I remember this story when it happened, but I don't recall its resolution ever being reported. (It's a happy ending, hooray!) #link
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The Independent with a decent primer on something that's been on my mind the last few months. #link
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On using Markov chains to build a perpetual Friends scripting machine. Removed from context, the randomly-linked quotes give often deliciously weird results, far funnier than the actual show ever was. #link
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Reblogged from my Goodreads list:
Kate Bishop’s west coast adventures are a little too sunny, a little too wacky to fit comfortably in the same series as Clint Barton’s relatively serious situation in Brooklyn. Annie Wu’s more conventional art style is fairly jarring compared to David Aja’s stylised look, too. The Kate issues work better separated out in this volume, though it’s far from perfect, with the story arc resolving itself awfully neatly. Still, the writing is witty enough to paper over those cracks for the most part.
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Reblogged from my Goodreads list:
Stewart Lee’s autobiography of sorts is part memoir (only a fraction, really, more a summary than an in-depth examination of his life and career), part director’s commentary on three of his own extended stand-up sets (making up the bulk of this tome, and what really makes it worth reading). How you like it of course depends upon how you like his comedy, but I’ve been a fan of his (and of Richard Herring) since the TMWRNJ days so I’ve been primed for more than 15 years.
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Something I completely forgot to mention in my previous weeknotes, maybe because I’d love to pretend it never happened, is that my iPhone was hacked a fortnight ago. There I was, awake with a start on a Sunday morning as my phone blared some random video (I don’t remember what; I wasn’t in the best of moods to take notes, like) and witness to someone, somewhere, bumbling their way remotely through a number of my open apps, and attempting to access others, most unsettlingly 1Password — which I could see them open, chancing their arm at my master password (good luck with that, chumps).
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Reblogged from my Goodreads list:
I feel it’s premature to judge this on its own with two more parts of the trilogy (really one book split in three, since they’ve been published so close together) still to go. But I will say that it’s been a long time since I’ve read anything like this, and I look forward to seeing where Jeff VanderMeer takes the story.
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Reblogged from my Letterboxd list:
So yeah, it’s pretty rotten in hindsight; clearly no money was spent on either the special effects or a decent screenplay. And the main conceit – Supes giving up his powers as if he’s The Little Mermaid to be human for Lois Lane, like who gives a fuck about all the other people in this shitty world who need protecting – says it all, really. But I’ll be darned if it isn’t a bit fun to watch, even if that is to original director Richard Donner’s chagrin.
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Reblogged from my Letterboxd list:
Far, far better than the marketing would lead you to believe, Edge of Tomorrow suffered at the cinema due to woeful trailers and TC fatigue. But the film itself is a treat, despite boiling down to a cross between Groundhog Day and Aliens (and it knows it, with the very aware casting of the great Bill Paxton, among other nods throughout). Anyone with a bugbear over temporal paradoxes will have something to argue about when the credits roll, but for me that doesn’t mar what’s a jolly well done, thrilling sci-fi action bonanza. Even with Tom Cruise in it.
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Reblogged from my Letterboxd list:
So it seems Hollywood can still produce a heartwarming yet unsappy romantic comedy, one with actual substance, uncynical despite its quirky hook (its conceit is that most of its characters work in and around the voice-over and vocal coaching industry) and – and it’s a shame this has to be remarked upon, but it’s kinda key to how it works – one where the woman is the fulcrum of the story. It won’t be long before that won’t need to be said anymore, of course, once people like Lake Bell (and Lena Dunham, et al) carve out more space in the multiplexes or the cable networks. And then I’ll look like a sexist for pointing it out at all. I kid, I kid!
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In which I rant a bit about Scientology and Paul Haggis' evident problem with women. #link
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Essaying the typography employed in Duncan Jones' excellent debut, reaching Kubrickian levels of attention to detail. Spoilers abound for those who haven't seen the film, however. #link
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Seriously, this isn't about pedantry: it's about written language meaning something. With a tongue as homophone-filled and context-dependant as English, these basic rules are necessary. No excuses! #link
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English is already full of loan words, and plenty of made-up ones; why not add more? #link
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The DxAx/GridLink screamer shares his technique and talks his musical history with Invisible Oranges. #link
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Reblogged from my Letterboxd list:
If one must, this can be summarised as both a film about the mechanics of filmmaking (the artistry behind the bits we don’t notice precisely because they work so well) and of the mental breakdown of a homely man, an expert in his field, who’s unable to handle the new environment – both physical, being in a foreign land, and artistically, being employed to work on a limit-pushing giallo-esque horror flick – he’s been thrust into. But Berberian Sound Studio is so much more than the sum of those parts, and precisely because of my summary above, it must be experienced to understand why it’s so enthralling.
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Reblogged from my Letterboxd list:
It was worth sitting through Man on Fire to catch this excellent short right afterwards on Film4. Michael Mort’s hilarious and enthusiastic stop-motion tribute to the bombast of the ’80s action thriller is a must-see for any fans of movies that KICK ASS!
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Reblogged from my Letterboxd list:
I wish Tony Scott had made this back in the mid 1980s when he was originally supposed to do it before money issues got in the way, because by the time he got around to it nearly two decades later, his work had become subsumed by Style with a capital S.
Sure, he was always a stylist – we wouldn’t remember films like The Hunger or Top Gun nearly as much if they didn’t look as modish as they do – but Man on Fire plays like he was trying to outdo Michael Bay in all of his key, horrible aspects: tiresome length (at 2 1/2 hours it’s an hour too long), ADD editing and effects (so much jittery zooming and shaky cam, random Final Cut Pro filters and ‘unique’ subtitle placement), and teal-and-orange colour timing so atrociously fucked-up that even full daylight scenes are swathed in shadow.
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Reblogged from my Letterboxd list:
Remember when comedies had heart? Goon has it. That and actual belly-laughs.
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Reblogged from my Letterboxd list:
Whether Slavoj Žižek is right or wrong isn’t the point (he’s a philosopher; being wrong about things just makes the whole thing more interesting). The point is that he’s so enthusiastic and entertaining and honest about what he’s arguing and where he’s coming from. That he can see through the often bullshit divisions of culture into ‘high’ and ‘low’ is a bonus, in this only slightly lesser sequel to his immensely rewarding Pervert’s Guide to Cinema. (Pervert in this case meaning to pervert received wisdom or the canonical order of things. Although…)
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...and I returned from my break with my review of this quite good drama-with-a-hint-of-comedy, starring SNL alumni Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig. #link
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I had a bit of a break from film writing last month for reasons. But I got this finished before the pause, because it's a great film and I hope my words encourage you to see it. #link
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It’s been a few weeks, so it has, but few working particulars to catch up on, mostly extracurricular activities.
The first two weeks of last month were spent chaperoning Bee’s parents around the city and beyond as they came to visit from South Africa. That, of course, was preceded by a number of ‘why is this all happening right now?’ chores ahead of their arrival, such as getting our toilet unblocked (the local kids had kicked gravel into the drain, it appears) and our immersion timer fixed (can’t be having no hot water in the mornings). A lot of stress there as you can imagine, hence my brief entry previous.
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