Wow, it's been a whole year since I started this column. Kind of amazing. I usually get distracted by something shiny at this point. But I guess, since this column is dedicated to the shiny things I was distracted by each month, it probably helps with doing this!
Well, let me show you the things that caught my attention in May.
1) JoCo Cruise Crazy
I've mentioned before how we here at FRED are very jealous of the sea monkeys who get to experience the Jonathan Coulton cruise. Booking for next year's cruise has opened up and to coincide with that they've been releasing videos of this year's one.
These videos are great. You can find them all on Coulton's YouTube page HERE but my favourite has to be this one entitled "Quitting". More than just an advertisement, it's a very inspirational video about doing what you love.
I don't get a chance to go to as many gigs as I used to. Part of growing up, I guess. But there are certain musicians I will always make the effort and find time for. Brendan Benson is one of them. Last night was my 4th BB show (3 solo and 1 with The Raconteurs) and by far the oddest one I had been to. Very little of the oddness was the musician's fault though.
The least blurry photograph I took.
Benson is a quiet man and a shy performer so his stage presence has never been his biggest asset. He, quite literally sometimes, lets the music do the talking for him. Very rarely does he engage in crowd banter or rock and roll cliches. In fact, he played the first 3 songs of the night in quick succession without even acknowledging the audience. This is common for him and results in an unusual show but this was not my first as previously stated so I was prepared and used to it. If anything I would say he has even loosened up a little bit compared to the past.
No, the oddness of the night really came from the audience. For one, there was about a fifth of the crowd that was at his show two years ago. That's a big drop in attendance. I don't know if he was just riding the popularity of The Raconteurs last time, but the difference was stunning.
It was also quiet. Not in an unimpressed sense, there was cheering at the end of songs and applause to his arrival but once the cheering was over it became deathly silent. The crowd was polite... too polite. It lent to a lot of awkward situations leading to Benson himself commenting "oh, it's going to be one of those nights, is it?". Save for one rather drunk couple in front of us, there would have been no dancing at all. I understand Brendan Benson attracts the type of music nerds who alphabetise their record collection (of which, I am one) and they're not known for their acts of exuberance but this was just painful.
In the end we were only treated to a short show, somewhat understandably considering the circumstances. But despite it's lack of length he played a great set filled with a lot of fun moments like the song Jet Lag being sung a capella to round out the night. Not a bad gig, just a strange one.
Here is Brendan and his ridiculously model-like band playing one of his new tracks for a radio station.
I have deliberately been avoiding stuff for the new Spider-Man film. Not because I'm prejudiced against the movie, I would love nothing more than to have a great Spider-Man film, but because I was burnt out. The previous 3 Sam Raimi efforts left me cold for Peter Parker's exploits on the big screen. With Marvel doing so well with their own productions I just wanted Sony to release the rights and let The House of Ideas do it themselves.
I'm tired of seeing characters be misrepresented on the big screen. I'm not a "you raped my childhood" sort of geek. I understand I can't control every iteration of a character. New versions don't ruin the old version for me. Sometimes changes are great too, just look at the Ultimate line of comics and the success of the Batman movie franchise currently. Everything is gravy as long as you get the character's principles and ideals correct. I don't care about costumes or anything, just get his personality, his beliefs, his reason for being, right.
Simple, ins't it? Not much to ask for.
Ang Lee's Hulk is a prime example of somebody getting it wrong. He changed the reason why Banner became the Hulk. He made the catalyst an experiment gone wrong rather than Banner throwing himself in harms way to help an innocent boy. Taking away that heroic effort completely changed the whole premise of the Hulk and the movie was just a series of miss-steps from there on in.
Get the basic stuff right and it will be easier from there.
For example, the recent Captain America movie got it pitch perfect. Steve Rogers was just a man who wanted to do the right thing. He wasn't perfect. He wasn't craving action or enacting revenge. He just wanted to give his life for his country because it was in danger. When they made that movie they understood what kind of character Steve Rogers was and everything fell into place from there.
How does this relate to the Spider-Man preview I'm about to review? Well I started to get on the bandwagon for this flick for the very same reasons I enjoyed Captain America. It looked like they were getting the character right. He was wise-cracking against crooks, he was building gadgets in his bedroom, he was an outcast in his personal life. They seemed to get who Peter Parker is and maybe things will work out in the movie.
Sure, all I can go on when I do these reviews is about a minute and a half's worth of footage. I can never make a stone-wall assessment that a movie will be good or bad based on the trailers but I can pick out certain bits that will hopefully give us a good idea of what is to come. Little things will hint to the quality.
On that note, we have a great opportunity to ponder what The Amazing Spider-Man will be like now that a 4 minute preview has been released. Some things in this extended trailer made me happy, some things made me laugh, and some things made me cry. I don't think it was meant to make me cry.
Take a look yourself and then we will get into this extended review.
Do you know what I have a problem with? You should. It happens about 30 seconds in...
With a title like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter you'd think that this movie was tailor made for us here at DOOM Towers. However, I haven't read the book by Seth Grahame-Smith nor had I seen or heard much of the movie before stumbling across the trailers.
I guess the film's lack of star power might be a reason for this one slipping under my radar. Sure, the film holds Dominic Cooper and Mary Elizabeth Winstead amongst it's cast but neither are big banner names. The director's previous list's big highlight is Wanted and the less said about that the better.
20th Century Fox aren't mugs though and with Tim Burton on as producer there should be some semblance of quality behind the production. Possibly. Maybe. I guess we'll have to take a look at the trailer to gauge things...
I've been stocking up on some football related t-shirts and such now that we're less than a month away from the big show in Poland. I don't know why particularly but I feel like I should be decked out appropriately for the event.
There are two particular ones I liked.
First, is a nice piss-take of the fact that we're facing the world champions. Spain have the best squad in the world and we... well we have lads who will throw themselves in front of the ball as if their life depended on it. Come next month that might be enough.
Hopefully.
Probably not.
As you can see the design is based on the old boxing posters like the ones from the Frazier/Ali era. It gave me a good giggle when I saw it so thought it was worth the cheap price. You can also buy one here.
Weekend Justice is excitement. Weekend Justice is adventure. Glamour and glitter. Fashion and fun. Weekend Justice is truly outrageous. Truly, truly, truly outrageous. Weekend Justice, the music is contagious. Weekend Justice is its name, no-one else is the same, Weekend Justice is its name.
This week I join Widge, Jon, Leigh, Rox, Scott, Tuffley, Serv, and Rob. And we discuss such outrageous things as:
Leigh and meds
Massive Avengers Cast!
Scott vs. volume. Repeatedly.
Serv vs. Kirsten Dunst
Saturday Night which?
Harry Dean Stanton
Time tampons
Ethnicity and comics
Comics and continuity
North Carolina, redneck central
Where is MASK? Wait, for God's sake, we were talking about MASK!
I've mentioned once or twice before that I've been working on a short film for the past year. It's finally finished and I've started to enter it into a couple festivals. It's adapted from the Rudyard Kipling short story of the same name.
I'm quite proud of the thing but I can't upload the full film for a year because of festival rules and other boring things like that. I can however make a trailer so I put together this 30 second teaser below to give you an idea of how it looks.
There is a Facebook page for the film which will get updated with where it will be shown and such so like it if you're that way inclined. http://facebook.com/HowTheWhaleGotHisThroat
I saw the movie over a week ago but was sworn to silence by the fine folks at Mars Needs Podcasts so that we could review the movie without any prior knowledge to how the other felt.
The result? A 2 hour podcast of 3 geeks gabbing about pet peeves and nerdgasms.
One of my favourite timewasting websites is Broadsheet.ie. It covers everything from cats to corrupt politicians. While I have to burn 10 hour work shifts each day it has become invaluable for making time pass a little quicker.
One thing I had started to notice a lot lately though was that while the page was loading on my work computer's rather crap set up (complete with IE8 browser) the site would freeze for a few moments. If I scrolled down on the page during this freeze time it would stretch whatever image was there, sometimes into rather wonderful patterns. I decided to "Print Screen" some of these and collect them.
Weird? Sure but as I said I have a lot of time to kill. Here are some of my works of art.
Yeah, I know, I need to find something better to do...
This week's episode stars myself, Widge, Jon, Rox, Tuffley, and Rob.
Here is a little fun fact. Every week when I include this list of topics, I copy Widge's list and edit out any bits I don't remember. When doing this week's list I realised that I remember the majority of it. I must have been lucid as hell. For once:
I've always been fascinated by the iconic cover to Grace Jones' famous album Slave To The Rhythm.
There is something amazing about it, the simplicity of the idea, the madness in her eyes, how it captures her already caricatured public personality. Because of my love for this cover and a particularly slow day in work I looked up the photographer Jean-Paul Goude who created it. It seems it's a technique he still uses to this day.
Fascinated and inspired, I knew I wanted to try it for myself. As I was still in the office I thought I would try the technique with just a picture I googled and MS paint. It seems easy enough...
Although I could see the differences pretty quickly in his technique and what I tried. So I made an attempt. I thought arms would be the easiest limb to try this with so I decided to do a simple pose and stretch things out.
CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE
I think I've learned enough now to try this out with something a bit more special. Maybe do a fight scene with the combatants' limbs stretched out like this. Obviously that will take more prep so it might be a while before I can do it. Dragon*Con could be the perfect time considering the cosplayers I can get involved.
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