19 posts tagged “review”

Until recently, I've only been a fan of Radiohead vicariously. In other words, bands that I like tend to list Radiohead as being influential.

A few months ago Radiohead announced that their new album would be available only on the web, for whatever price you choose! That got my attention, so I bought it on the day it came out. I decided to pay 4 pounds (~$8). 

Really great decision. This is one of the best new albums I've heard in a while. It gets my "best album of 2007" vote. I love the flamenco-meets-Bjork  beats on 15 Step, the make-a-fool-of-yourself-at-the-bus-stop-cause-you-can't-help-dancing-to-it vibe on Bodysnatchers, and all the beautiful whining on tracks like All I Need.

Unfortunately, the "choose your own price" site has come down to prepare for mainstream distribution in 08. Oh well, it comes out in a few days (on Jan 1) and is worth paying full price for.

Check it out if you like Coldplay, Death Cab for Cutie, Bjork... 

We've been really into Ryan Adams lately. I first noticed him on the Elizabethtown soundtrack, then picked up the Gold album which quickly made it into my short list of desert island discs.

Easy Tiger is the new album which I pre-ordered from iTunes and have been playing constantly. It's like country without the boots and truck... He's somewhere between Nick Drake and Bob Dylan with a bluegrass thing going on. Ryan Adams' music is hard to pin down and that is part of what is so great about it. There is so much diversity that I can't recommend a representative track, you'll just have to buy the album.

Ryan seems like the type of singer that should be seen live, and preferably in a smoky bar with sticky floors in the middle of nowhere. He is coming to The Moore at the end of the month which is close enough. Lisa and I are really looking forward to it. If there are tickets left, you should come too.

I've bought a handful of new albums this month and thought I should start posting some reviews...

This one I bought myself "for my birthday" when I was down in San Francisco. I heard it playing in between sessions at the conference. Let me try to paint the scene...

There are about two hundred or so computer geeks sitting in a large theatre type room waiting for a technical session to start. Most people are checking their e-mail on their laptops or just chilling. The sound guys are mixing music over the sound system like sound guys always do...

The piano intro to Coldplay's Clocks starts, but 10 seconds into it morphs into a Cuban piano groove. Then a band kicks in Buena Vista style, but yet it's still Clocks. What is this? Chris Martin is singing with a Latin band? Geeks, normally not social creatures, start leaning over to talk to the neighbors. Whispers of "Do you know what this music is?" are spreading across the room... I'm sure the sound guys are thrilled as this what they are always going for when they play warm up music.

Anyway, I figured out what it was and had to do a bit of searching around San Francisco to find the album. The big Virgin mega-store didn't have it but the funky indie record store did. Apparently it is a top 10 album in the UK, but nowhere close in the USA. iTunes ironically doesn't sell the entire album, so you'll want to sample some of the 30 second previews there but pick up the whole thing from Amazon or something.

Wherever you find it, you'll come for the Buena Vista treatment of songs you know (Maroon 5, U2, Coldplay, Jack Johnson, etc...) but you'll stay for the spicy Cuban salsa tracks. This is perfect summer BBQ music. It will definitely be in the house warming party mix once we buy a house.

Lisa and I don't have a TV, but we are big NetFlix fans and sometimes watch TV shows on DVD (usually about 5 years after they air, so don't give anything away!).

Our latest favorite has been Smallville. We burned through the first season in no time and are just finishing up the second season. The beauty of the first season was it's predictability. Some mildly unstable person encounters something contaminated with meteor rock and turns into an evil villain. Clark Kent would have an easy time of stopping them except that he is always weakened by the meteor rock at a crucial time. The bad guy or gal always throws him out a window though where he regains his strength and saves the day again, but misses another date with his crush.

The last episode of the first season was so good that we had to restrain ourselves from cheering so as not to wake up Lucy. The second season has turned the corner nicely and added some complexity just when the first season formula was getting a bit too predictable. Lex is a great character. You can't help but like him. But, that has always been true of Lex in the movies too.

If you haven't seen it, or you boycott television like us, check it out. It's certainly better than the latest attempt at a Superman movie.

We rented this but weren't expecting much. Maybe some slow motion hair flipping by Tom Cruise and a plot that has too many twists to get into it.

But, I have to say, this was a really fun movie. The best Mission Impossible movie yet.

I liked a lot of things about it, but my favorite is the "joy of location" that J.J. Abrams brings to the film. This is one of the elements that makes the his Alias shows so fun to watch. His appreciation of the look, feel, and sounds of various world locations seems to spill out of his work.

Unlike the Alias shows, where these locations are faked on some Hollywood back-lot, many of the MI3 scenes are actually filmed on location. When Tom runs up a wall and the beautiful Vatican architecture springs into view, it really is Italy in the background. When he is running though a Chinese village, it actually is a Chinese village.

I applaud movies shot on location since so few of them seem to be anymore. When I pay for my movie ticket or my movie rental, I want to be taken on a journey for a couple hours. It's a much better jouney if the film crew actually went somewhere.

Thanks J. J. for a fun journey. Tom Cruise talks in the special features about how good it feels to give you a break into the movie business, but you may have given Tom Cruise something he hasn't had in a while and badly needed, a great movie. You name deserves to be on the cover!

So a couple weeks ago when I was sick, I spent the day eating comfort food and watching Gone with the Wind. I had never seen it before, but somehow it seemed like a good sick day movie.

"Epic" is a word that gets tossed around with movies too much, sometimes it means "poorly edited," but in this case, it was a truly epic film.

It seems to me, like a Tolstoy novel, that everything and everyone in this movie is more that themselves, they are an archetype. The fading of the "old west" is something bigger (though, I'm having trouble putting my finger on it)... maybe the fading of blissful ignorence?

There is good, evil, birth, death, love, hate, truth, lies, sacrifice, greed, war, and peace. What can I say? Epic.

Collateral
I know what you are saying, because I said it to. How bad can a movie be if it has Tom Cruise and Ray Charles (oops, I mean Jamie Foxx)? The answer, is real bad. Do you ever find yourself wishing a movie will just hurry up and finish so that you can go to sleep? Seriously.

OK, enough negativity. Back to movies worth writing about next time.

Lisa and went out last Wednesday evening for dinner and a show. I had a cold coming on, so we tried to find some comfort food for dinner. French Onion soup sounded good so we were trying to think of where to find it in downtown Seattle...

We decided to try The Brooklyn, which didn't have French Onion soup but was a good choice anyway. We sat at the kitchen bar and watched them make steaks while waited for our food. I decided to break from steak and try the pork chops which were awesome. Highly recommended.

Then we headed over to The Moore to watch Bruce Hornsby do a solo show. The first thing we noticed was that this wasn't the Snow Patrol crowd (who we saw here last month). It was older on average but there was a fair amount of age diversity. There were people with dates, and people who had come alone. The best way to describe the crowd is that it seems like the kind of people that would own nice stereo systems, if you know what I mean. Mellow, and a bit of grey hair, but hip.

Bruce Hornsby shows are unique experiences. When we came in, they were giving out copies of his new 5 disc box set to all ticket holders. There was only one t-shirt for sale for 20 bucks that just had the name of his new album on it. It was decidedly non-commercial.

We found our seats about 10 minutes before the show watched people file up to the front to leave pages of paper with their song requests in a neat stack next to the piano (see the photo). When Bruce came out, he was waiving fists full of requests that the someone had picked up earlier and announced that it was an 'all request' evening. He plops the stack of papers in the lid of the piano, and periodically throughout the night, flips through the pages and tosses aside the songs he has done, and selects the next few he wants to play.

Bruce is very good at connecting to an audience. You get the feeling it isn't about him entertaining us, but rather, he is there to be entertained with us. He talks to the crowd and the crowd talks back. At one point he was telling the story behind a song a woman interupted with "let's hear it," Bruce says, "OK, I get it. 'Shut up and play the song'. Well I guess you will either like it or you won't." He seemed amused rather than annoyed.

Several times people shouted songs and he played them, at one point playing the Pink Floyd song "Comfortably Numb" after someone shouted it. When a guy shouted for Jackstraw, he said that he was tired of deadheads requesting that song but he'd do a different Greatful Dead song instead (he played with the band for a short stint).

One intertaining crowd interaction was when he read a request from a gal who had been to 7 shows and requested the same song at every show which he had never played. He said that he still wasn't going to play it because some songs "don't age well", but then decided that he should do it so that she wouldn't feel like she had to keep coming to all his concerts and because he had made such a big deal about it. He played "Every Little Kiss" which sounded great, and the woman shouted Thank You as the last notes were fading out.

As far as the music, let's just say that it's a good thing Bruce Hornsby is a piano player and not a mountain guide. It was all over the map! He was throwing Bach in with pop, modern jazz, and who knows what. The dude's been practicing, I can tell you that. By his own words, he is into dissonence now, but that's cool. It's different every time.

Who should see this movie?

You should see it if you like Gwyneth Paltrow... and who doesn't? I mean she was in Shallow Hal and Shakespeare in Love right? She must be one of the best actors of our generation.

You should also see it if you like Anthony Hopkins... and again, who doesn't? I mean, you gotta respect a guy who can play both C.S. Lewis and Hannibal Lecter.

As an added bonus, think of the last movie about a crazy math genius that wasn't great... That's right, you can't think of one because they're all great! In Hollywood, this is what they call a "slam dunk."

Seriously, get off your butt and go rent this, then get back on your butt and watch it. Afterwords, let me know if I'm steering you true.