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.