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Mirrors
New Regency Pictures/20th Century Fox
Unrated
110 Minutes
2008
I should have known better. Any film that sells itself with the pitch "From the director of 'The Hills Have Eyes'" is bound to be utterly terrible, but I hoped against hope that the supernatural thriller Mirrors would be more than just another gorefest, light on the scares and heavy on the fake blood.
Whatever the elements for making a good horror film may be, Mirrors has practically none of them.
The Wrestler
Protozoa Pictures/Saturn Films/Fox Searchlight
R
115 Minutes
2008
It's Oscar season, and with the recent announcement of the nominations film fanatics everywhere are undoubtedly debating their best and worst lists of 2008, who should win what, and so on. Though the David Fincher epic The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the heavy favorite, with a whopping 13 nominations including Best Picture and Best Actor for Brad Pitt, for my money it doesn't get much more powerful than Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler.
Strangely enough, despite heapings of critical praise, The Wrestler is not up for Best Picture - which is really a crime when you take into account the superlative writing and the transcendant performances from Mickey Rourke, Marissa Tomei, and Evan Rachel Wood. The Wrestler may not be as attractive to look at as Benjamin Button, but it's a sad, heartfelt, honest tale that is brought to life through the pain and angst displayed in its performances.
Hybrid
Wide Angle
2000
Distinctive Records/Kinetic Records
Buy This Album / Wider Angle UK Special Edition
In 1999 Moby released his critically acclaimed album Play and went from being a popular underground techno and dance artist to a member of the public conscious. Every song from Play was eventually licensed for use in various films and television commercials, Moby videos were suddenly being shown on television, and the once obscure self-proclaimed Little Idiot from Connecticut embarked on a worldwide tour that spanned two years.
In 2000, Moby teamed up with a duo of electronic producers/artists based on out Swansea, Wales to support him on the second leg of the Play tour. This duo of Mike Truman and Chris Healings called themselves Hybrid and had recently released their debut LP, Wide Angle.
My brother and I were in the midst of a five city road trip to see Moby, starting in Chicago, Ill. Unfortunately, confusing directions and terrible traffic caused us to arrive late, catching only the last few minutes of Hybrid's opening set. As we walked into the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, I was immediately taken with what little I'd heard and we vowed to arrive early for the next night's show in Ohio.
Planning ahead, we did indeed arrive with plenty of time to catch Hybrid's full set and what I saw was intriguing. Little more than three members - Truman, Healings, and Alex Madge, their live drummer - and a stack of keyboards, Hybrid had a unique sound I'd never heard before - a mishmash of progressive house, breaks, and what appeared to be sampled strings. I walked away impressed and in the day between the next show, this time in my hometown of Detroit, I ran to the local record store to purchase Wide Angle in order to better know Hybrid's music. By the time the road trips were over, capped off by a wonderful show in Toronto where I purchased my first (and still favorite) Hybrid t-shirt (affectionately named "Old Bluey" due to it's blue-on-blue color scheme), I began looking forward to Hybrid's set more than Moby's.
This discovery has since resulted in the realization of one fact: Hybrid are not only the greatest act in electronic music today, but one of the best groups in any genre.
Taken
20th Century Fox/Europa Corp
PG-13
94 Minutes
2009 (US)
There are some films that are so utterly generic, so formulaic, so predictable that you practically forget about them by the time the credits have stopped rolling. The action-thriller Taken is just such a film.
Penned by the talented French filmmaker Luc Besson (The Professional, The Fifth Element) and Robert Mark Kamen (all three Transporter films), and starring Liam Neeson, Taken is the type of paint-by-numbers drek that takes a somewhat decent premise and squanders all of its potential with its lack of imagination.
The Future Sound Of London
Dead Cities
1996
Astralwerks
A long, long time ago there was a channel called MTV, which stood for Music Television. That channel is still around today, but to suggest they still play music videos is both silly and inaccurate. However, over a decade ago, MTV had a late night show dedicated to electronic music videos called Amp.
Amp was largely responsible for introducing me to many of the electronic music artists that I would go on to love. I first heard Orbital's "The Box" on the program. It was where I discovered DJ Shadow after they showed the video for his classic single "Midnight In A Perfect World", and it was where I got my first taste of The Future Sound Of London, the British duo of Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans, in the form of "We Have Explosive" - a grinding, pulsating, visceral tune with a siren-like keyboard, funky chicken-scratch guitars, a ferocious, mind-blowing drum pattern, layers of buzzing noises, and a shouted vocal sample from Run DMC's "Tougher Than Leather", among other things.
It was a life-changing experience.
Continue reading "Essential Albums: The Future Sound Of London - Dead Cities" »
The Dracula Dossier
by James Reese
William Morrow Publishing
350 Pages
First Published: 2008
It may seem as though I'm not much of a reader, judging by the fact that this is only the second novel I've reviewed since beginning this blog a year and a half ago. The truth of the matter is that I love to read, but I'm easily distracted, which often makes for slow-going. The slightest noise will break my concentration, or my mind will wander to other matters, forcing me to reread passages I had glazed over, but not fully comprehended.
Not so with James Reese's latest novel, The Dracula Dossier, which tells the story of on Abraham Stoker, better known to the world by his more casual name - Bram - and his (fictional) involvement in arguably the greatest, most horrible series of crimes ever committed - the Jack the Ripper murders. Combining two subjects I have been fascinated with since my youth, quite frankly, I found it difficult to stop reading.
Pineapple Express
Columbia Pictures
Unrated
117 Minutes
2008
It was inevitable that the comedy goldmine of Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen would hit a wall eventually. After truly gut-busting comedies like Superbad, Knocked Up, and the utterly classic 40-Year-Old Virgin, it seemed like young writer/actor Rogen and producer Apatow were unstoppable, producing hit after hit and raking in the box office dough.
With the release of Pineapple Express, however, the duo have not only hit the wall, they crashed into it going 160 miles per hour.
Beetlejuice
Geffen Pictures/Warner Bros.
Rated: PG
92 Minutes
1988
Tim Burton has always been a visionary film maker, though lately he seems more comfortable with churning out dark and gothic remakes of existing properties than creating fresh and original works. Still, he has left his creative mark on the movie industry with modern classics such as Edward Scissorhands, his take on DC Comics' Caped Crusader, Batman, and of course, the black comedy Beetlejuice.
Beetlejuice strikes the perfect balance between comedy and the low budget horror found in the best B-movies. It's too funny to be terrifying, but a little bit too eerie to be just a comedy. At its heart though, Beetlejuice is still a hilarious film, thanks to a stellar cast including Alec Baldwin (who has proven his comedic skills time and again with numerous hosting gigs on Saturday Night Live, as well as on the Emmy Award-winning series 30 Rock), Catherina O'Hara, and especially Michael Keaton in the film's title role - that of the bio-exorcist, Betelgeuse.
