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Four 2011 albums you should listen too
So it is about half way through the year and I have found the time to listen to some music when I haven’t been working and procrastinating. I have recommendations for you to take or to ignore. I won’t shed no tears about it.
Cloud Control – Bliss Release
I literally only gave the debut album from this Australian band a virtual spin on Spotify today whilst working away on all the work things I have. I’d previously heard and enjoyed the single ‘There’s Nothing In The Water We Can’t Fight‘. The rest of the album is great and being from Australia you always worry they might sound shit but thankfully they fall into the Howling Bells (debut album) category rather than the INXS bracket. A longer review might be more appropriate but I have another 4 albums write about and I’ve got a book next to me I’m desperate to read. If I was to give this a pretentious Pitchfork rating I would give it a 8.6 You can listen to the album on this link that will follow my sentence. Cloud Control – Bliss Release
Cults – Cults
This album is one I expect to be quite big, eventually, it might take time but I think they’re a band that will benefit from word of mouth or sound of ear…
Anyway, I’m fairly sure that I heard ‘Go Outside’ on some advert earlier which always helps. It is another debut album and I think I wrote about it the last time I updated this blog – certainly recently – so do I really need to go over it all again? Maybe a little – it has a retro vibe which according to the discussion on The Wright Stuff today is a bad thing, I think not – in most cases – although I have been known to crow about bands not being original so maybe I should start a hate campaign on Cults… I suggest you check out the album for yourself rather than listening to my blatherings. 8.6 Cults – Cults
PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
What can I say about PJ Harvey that others haven’t? I’ve always imagined she smells like a liquorice stick from a Sherbert Dib Dab that has been sucked dry. Whilst no one has probably said that I don’t really know if I think that or whether I’m making it up because I’m running out of things to say. Needless to say she rarely makes a bad album and this one is fantastic – whilst it doesn’t have the rocking rockyness of my favourite album of hers ‘Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea’ it is nonetheless a really good piece of work. 7.5 PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
Esben and the Witch – Violet Cries
I first listened to this band because I loved the name and then carried on listening to them when I enjoyed the music. They remind me a little of Miranda Sex Garden who you probably haven’t heard of but were very good as well. You should check this album out if you like dark (gothic or whatever, eeeerie – Twilight fans probably like listening to it in the black of night whilst they decide which hand to touch themselves with, the Edward hand or the other ones hand) electro. 7.7 Esben and the Witch – Violet Cries
There are lots of albums I’ve been meaning to listen to and perhaps they’re better than the ones I have mentioned but I haven’t listened to them. If you think I should listen to any albums please leave a comment. A few other honourable mentions (that I can’t be bothered writing a paragraph about; Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring for My Hal, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – Belong, Raekwon – Shaolin vs Wu-Tang, Thurston Moore – Demolished Thoughts.
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Film review: The Ghost
The Ghost (2010, dir. Roman Polanski)
Not to be confused with the Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore supernatural love-fest, or South Korean horror film from 2004 or Ghost Dad – the film where Bill Cosby dies with hilarious consequences; this The Ghost is Roman Polanski’s most recent film. It dropped through my doorstep some weeks ago and I’ve only just found myself getting round to watching it. Based on the novel by Robert Harris, he and Polanski adapted it for the big screen.
The story follows Ewan McGregor as the eponymous Ghost Writer who is recruited to complete the manuscript for the autobiography of former British Prime Minister Tony Bla… I mean Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) following the death of the previous ghost writer. He’s flown to America to an isolated island where Lang and his wife (Olivia Williams) are holed up – escaping from the glare of the media due to less than friendly public opinion of Lang who is suspected of being complicit in the illegal seizure and torture of terrorist suspects. The book needs to be finished in 4 works at the behest of Maddox – CEO of the publishers of Lang’s memoir – played by a very bald James Belushi.
As The Ghost (he isn’t named in the film) attempts to get down to business of prying information from the stern Lang he becomes more and more drawn into the intrigue surrounding Lang life’s, the high-level of security, the death of his former ghost writer and charges brought by The Hague against his subject. What starts off at fairly slow pace soon escalates into a thriller that to me felt like The Da Vinci Code only with and IQ of three figures. Having one the great film directors helming the film helps somewhat. The film is just over two-hours long and fairly races along once McGregor gradually begins to unravel the mystery behind his predecessor’s death and piece together an exciting puzzle. Certainly it goes to show you don’t need endless shootouts or Vatican assassins to make a good thriller these days. One key action scene involves Ewan McGregor cycling through the country in the rain.
Polanski has a great cast at his disposal which always helps, there’s some excellent with some great British talent and an Eli Wallach cameo – who doesn’t enjoy one of them? Ewan McGregor is excellent portraying a certain level of naivety and ambivalence toward the job he has taken on mainly looking to bank the 250k, but he and his rather odd English accent becomes fully engaged in his ad hoc investigation.
Tom Wilkinson puts in a fairly neat little cameo as an old university friend of Lang and Kim Cattrall turns up as Lang’s Personal Assistant proving she can act instead of judge flounce around in expensive clothes waving her aging fanny at every man she meets in Sex and the City. Pierce Brosnan is intriguing as the former PM; vainglorious, aloff, self-important and out to save his own neck – yet like Blair seemingly 100% committed to doing what he sees is right. The comparisons between Lang and Blair aren’t exactly subtle. Whilst the characters are fictional Lang is a cypher for Blair slotting in nicely to take his place – the references to Iraq and the war on terror make it fairly obvious.
Top of the class for me though is the wonderful Olivia Williams; who I’ve really enjoyed watching in An Education and Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll in the last couple of years. As the wife of Adam Lang she seems most at ease at being away from her home, whilst she seems somewhat reticent she has fire in her belly and is a lot more steadfast than her husband and isn’t afraid to point the finger at the fact he’s probably boffing his PA, though she does find a little time to do some boffing of her own.
All in all it’s a really entertaining film. I haven’t read the novel but like any good book it keeps you involved with the twists and turns of the narrative encountered in unison with The Ghost, you’re never ahead or behind him.
4 out of 5
18
Games that’d better as good or better than LA Noire
If you read this you will know I am not the biggest fan of L.A. Noire. I’ve still not finished it – not because it’s difficult, it isn’t when all you do is press X, but because it is painfully dull and repetitive.
So I was chatting to Moff on Facebook and I thought I could come up with ideas for games that’d be as good or better than LA Noire. So here goes.
Social Worker
This would be an adventure game where you work your way through the ranks or departments of Social Care – much like you do the police force in LA Noire – starting off with older people, moving on to working with children and also including people with learning disabilities or mental health problems. You can play as a male or female and earn XP points for working over time and closing cases.
You could start off as a student social worker and learn the ropes as you move up the ranks before going into the full blown thrilling world of full on social work.
As rewards for good assessments and helping people you could earn costumes, from woolly jumpers, casual blazers, half-mast jeans and hush puppies. You could would be able to drive to each visit you have to carry out and if you get bored of driving your Ford KA you could upgrade to VW Beetle and eventually get yourself a 4×4 to roam around the county meeting people.
Of course social work isn’t a walk in the park and sometimes you’d come into contact with difficult and challenging cases, but if you keeping pressing X you will get to the bottom of things without too much trouble. Although beware of the dreaded ‘Media Challenge’. If you do a bad job on a case and it gets reported to the press or your local MP you’ll have to jump in your car and drive away as fast of you can to avoid the evil reporters or even national news (if you really fucked up).
Other side games could include ‘Making the drinks’ when you have to go and make drinks for everyone in the office and get the right drinks in the right cups or you’ll fall foul of ‘Office banter’ and lose XP.
Football Hooligans MMORPG
The MMORPG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game – like what Warcraft is. However in this game instead of fighting orcs, elves and smiting wizards you’d charge around England getting into skirmishes with other football hooligans.
You’d start off by designing your avatar. First you would select your class, there are three classes ‘Ninja’, ‘Guvnor’ and ‘Casual’. As a ‘Ninja class’ character you would be a young hooligan causing chaos on the streets whilst in your tracksuit and hoodie. Whilst the Ninja benefits from added mystery - being able to hide their identity – they fight best when in groups of fellow Ninjas.
The ‘Guvnor’ class is your classic hard man. The Guvnor comes complete with skinhead which may seem restrictive but the benefit is an extremely thick skull, protecting a small brain meaning that you can withstand more fierce blows to the head. As well as this the Guvnor can cast ‘Intimidation’ spells which when used your character will shout random racist views and sing songs to opposing hooligans and make them weaker when going into battle.
The ‘Casual’ is a hooligan whose main benefit comes in that he will fight with anyone and also has greater ability sniff out weaponary – suchs as broken bottles, shanks or traffic cones. The Casual also has exclusive access to an extensive wardrobe of Lacoste polo shirt, Stone Island jackets and white trainers.
Once you’ve chosen your class you select your allegiance by picking your ‘faction’ – essentially which team you will support and therefore the crew you will fight with. Allegiances can change if you’re a fair-weather fan and fancy ditching the Hollywood Meerkats in favour of the Golders Green Geese.
In the game you will tour England fighting opposing factions on game days, in the streets and outside the ground. You can build your strength by drinking beer on the coach trip to the fight and heal yourself during fights by buying pies and drinking more.
Of course you must always watch out for the police who will come charging in with batons to control you – the last thing you want is to get a night in the cells and lose lots of XP.
As well as the standard fight scenarios there will be major game events that occur when international matches take place at Wembley. On these events all players of all hooligan factions team up to take on the visiting foreign fans.
The first expansion pack for the game would be : European Tour
In this expansion of the game you and your faction would support your team around Europe in the continental competitions, but more importantly get the chance to lock horns with some of the fierce European factions such as the Bilbao Bulls and the Warsaw Whackos. There would also be a new class ‘the Ultra’ allowing you the opportunity to play as an Italian hooligan giving you unlimited access to flares and knives.
Interior Designer
In this game you’d play as an Interior Designer who renovates homes, just like on the telly. You would work your way from small renovations of flats or small houses up to earning enough money to buy dilapidated properties and do them up for a profit, before finally becoming so successful you would do the interior design on major projects.
The more successful you become the more money you earn and the more XP you gain. More XP allows access to more extravagant ideas such as water features, fancy paints or wallpapers and patterns. The main aim of the game is to quote a price for the design project to your customer but take forever in doing the renovation and overspending. Of course a key tactic is in how you negotiate and speak to your customers, rub them up the wrong way and they might not pay up but if you keep them sweet they’ll pay more and more until you’ve rinsed them dry.
2
The Good, The Bad and The Dy-no-mite
Three little reviews about three things that have been causing me joy and frustration over the past fortnight.
The Good: Cults by Cults – the debut album from the band Cults
I’ve had this on repeat all week and am completely loving the album – it’s probably the best album I’ve heard all year (along with PJ Harvey and Esben & The Witch). I’m a sucker for dreamy indie-pop with female vocalists and this band tick all the right boxes with their retro pop vibe going on – they’re doing what Best Coast did for me last year. Some of the songs on the album – Go Outside, You Know What I Mean and Oh My God – I can see myself listening to for a long, long time. That’s a crappy review to be fair but I haven’t written any in an eternity. I’ll let the music do the talking with the video for Abducted and audio of You Know What I Mean.
The Bad: LA Noire – the latest game from Rockstar
I’m amazed how many unbelievably good reviews this game seems to have got and frankly I blame most of them for getting me into a state of delirium about getting this game. The end result? Well last week I choose to do some work instead of play on it and I’ve been off all week this week and haven’t even contemplated putting it in the PS3. Now the facial recognition/motion capture wizardry is really amazing and going through the storyline and seeing all those familiar faces from TV and films is pretty cool. The actual cases you go through are on the whole interesting and the cars are awesome. BUT that’s as far as the good things go for me.
Firstly there seems to be no logic in terms of realism. You go driving down the streets at 70mph smashing into and knocking down traffic lights, street lamps and smashing the shit of other cars and trams. However when you go joyriding (or actually get involved in a car chase) you get stopped by wooden fences and washing lines. I know driving isn’t the point of the game but it feels a bit stupid driving around causing all sorts of mayhem and mowing down the public – who 99 times out 100 either get up or use their cat like agility to dodge your oncoming vehicle.
Secondly, it is so mind-numbingly repetitive. “Phelps go investigate this…” so you go to a crime scene and you walk around waiting for you control pad to rumble (the sign you have a clue) and look at clues, only sometimes they aren’t clues which just prolongs the agony. Then you go off and start interviewing people which is kind of like Who Wants to Be Millionaire with the ‘remove an answer’ and ‘ask the community’ options when you need to decide if someone is telling you the truth, if you doubt what they are saying or just want to call them an outright liar. After you’ve done this you usually end up getting a confession, finding a clue or just bumping into a perp who does a runner at which point you either run after them or go on a car chase. Then you move onto the next case where things unfold in a similar fashion and so and so on. I’m probably 40-60% spot on in my responses but the problem is I get the feeling that if I got every response incorrect I’d still solve the crimes and move on to the next one.
Maybe I’ve only got myself to blame for hoping this was going Red Dead Redemption but in a film noir era. Yet what I’d give to go back and start Red Dead Redemption again with it’s entertaining side stories and games, honour system allowing you to play a good guy or bad guy. I mean there have been times playing LA Noire when I’ve longed for the mundane stuff like shooting coyotes or herding cows.
To call it bad may be a little harsh, I can’t fault it for ambition, but when you expect so much and read so many good things you the overwhelming response is one of huge disappointment. I haven’t finished the game yet but I don’t really know if I will bother.
The Dy-no-mite: Black Dynamite – the 2009 film directed by Scott Sanders starring Michael Jai White
I’d heard a little bit about this film and then forgotten about it. Whilst looking for something to watch on Lovefilm (via the fantastic watch online service) I stumbled across this and decided I had to watch. I was not disappointed; it’s the funniest film I’ve seen for years and easily one of the best spoofs in a long time. Essentially it’s a take on the blaxploitation movies of the 1970′s, a spoof that loves it’s inspiration (which you feel is a big difference to the all the ‘INSERT RANDOM GENRE’ Movie films). If you’ve seen Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place it is in a similar vein to that with lots of purposeful mistakes such a booms in shot, bad acting, over the top action scenes but still very very funny.
Michael Jai White plays Black Dynamite a former CIA agent who sets out on a mission to not only avenge the death of his brother but take smack off the streets after his finds out smack is being sold to orphans – he used to be an orphan. Along the way he meets all kinds of hilarious characters some jive turkeys that he dishes out a kung fu beating to and some that he teams up with to take on The Man.
If you didn’t know it was made in 2009 you really would think it was genuinely a film of that era, it looks perfect and all the cast do a great job – giving over the top performances with a tongue in cheek at all times. It’ll go right over the heads of some people but anyone who has a love of exploitation films or just a knowledge of them will surely get into it. I couldn’t recommend it enough, I seriously think it’s the film Quentin Tarantino has been trying to make for years but keeps missing the point and winds up becoming too self-indulgent.
There is a Black Dynamite cartoon either out or coming out soon but I really hope Sanders and White can get a sequel together because Black Dynamite is really a character and a film that deserves one. Can you dig?
The trailer is below and trust me; unlike most comedies that use almost all the best jokes in a trailer this one has just one of the best jokes there’s many more in the film.
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11 songs from Q2 of 2011 (with playlist)
I did this playlist a while back based on the music I have listened to in the first quarter of 2011 – it had 11 songs and if you click the link below (providing you have Spotify) then you’ll only be able to bloody listen to it.
Anyway, I’ve been at it again and done another Spotify playlist – one for the second quarter (I think the second quarter of 2011 has now passed – if not you’re in for a massive early treat you jive ass turkeys.).
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30 Day Song Challenge
So I finished this 30 Day Song Challenge thingamy on Facebook, over thirty days (technically probably 40 or 50 days). To commemorate this glorious achievement I made a Spotify Playlist (bottom of this post) of the songs I picked, so if you’re like a stalker or really interested in listening to music I like then you can do just that. There’s a nice wide range of songs and artists.
The ‘challenge’ features 30 often repetitive and stupid questions and you basically stick up a video or whatever for a song for the question. The questions are as follows:
day 01 – your favorite song
day 02 – your least favorite song
day 03 – a song that makes you happy
day 04 – a song that makes you sad
day 05 – a song that reminds you of someone
day 06 – a song that reminds you of somewhere
day 07 – a song that reminds you of a certain event
day 08 – a song that you know all the words to
day 09 – a song that you can dance to
day 10 – a song that makes you fall asleep
day 11 – a song from your favorite band
day 12 – a song from a band you hate
day 13 – a song that is a guilty pleasure
day 14 – a song that no one would expect you to love
day 15 – a song that describes you
day 16 – a song that you used to love but now hate
day 17 – a song that you hear often on the radio
day 18 – a song that you wish you heard on the radio
day 19 – a song from your favorite album
day 20 – a song that you listen to when you’re angry
day 21 – a song that you listen to when you’re happy
day 22 – a song that you listen to when you’re sad
day 23 – a song that you want to play at your wedding
day 24 – a song that you want to play at your funeral
day 25 – a song that makes you laugh
day 26 – a song that you can play on an instrument
day 27 – a song that you wish you could play
day 28 – a song that makes you feel guilty
day 29 – a song from your childhood
day 30 – your favorite song at this time last year
Enjoy
