The X-Men Movie Franchise - The Wolverine (Part 3)

The first two posts I made on this blog was my in-depth look back and review of the X-Men movie franchise as it stood and my thoughts on the existing properties and the future of the series. I said I'd make a new post when I saw The Wolverine, and eventually one for Days of Future Past. Well, this past Saturday I saw The Wolverine and then several hours later I saw Days of Future Past. I took a couple days to think about what I'd seen and now I think I know what I want to say about both. Without further ado...

                                  The Wolverine (2013)

Before having seen The Wolverine, I was pretty excited about it. I had heard they did a good job with it, and since the franchise had put out First Class I had faith they could do at the very least a competent film again. I was disappointed when it was announced Darren Aronofsky wasn't going to be directly the film anymore, as I had been really excited to see how that kind of movie would be, but when it was announced James Mangold was taking over I was pretty satisfied, as he made one of my favorite movies of the last decade, the remake of 3:10 to Yuma.

I enjoyed The Wolverine, for the most part. It has it's problems, but it's a fun and easily watchable movie that remembers who it's main character is. I grew up with the animated 90's X-Men cartoon as my introduction to the franchise, and even though I love  X-Men and X-2 a whole lot, I was still disappointed to a degree of how series they took everything. That's not to say this movie isn't serious, it actually deals with some heavy stuff about the character of Logan, and what it means to be him. What it means to be immortal, to be forced to continue living even when everything you love is dead. What purpose do you give yourself to keep living? If someone offers you the chance to die after all this time, do you say yes?

I think what makes the film work is that they tackle those questions while still bringing us the Logan we've all come to love from Hugh Jackman, but they give him more to do than just be sad and mopey about being immortal. He gets fun one-liners, he tells people to fuck off, he gets to do some fun action sequences. That being said, the story isn't anything to write home about, but the thing is, it doesn't need to be. I could have predicted all but one plot point in the film, but not every movie needs to break new ground, it just needs to be a solid entry. In the X-Men franchise at this point, we had a trilogy of films that had this grandiose scale to them, with stories involving hundreds-to-thousands of people. We then had a very bad attempt at a solo origin movie for Wolverine, where I think one of it's biggest problems was trying to preserve that grandiose scale in a solo movie, between all the mutants in it and the references to others. Then we had First Class, which was a return to form. It operated on about the same level as the first X-Men film did. Two-three main characters, a handful of supporting cast on the good and bad side and that's about it. Then we get The Wolverine, a film that has in it 3 mutants and just a handful of other characters. By focusing on just these few people, we're about to spend more time with them and just go on this ride through Japan with them.

The cinematography is lovely, the fight scenes are fought well. The story of Yashida is bland, at the end of the day, but it's a story that I think works specifically because of our main character, and his previous history. At the opening of this film we see a flashback to Nagasaki in 1945, where Logan (Who was fighting in WWII and taken as a POW and held underground, saves a young soldier named Yashida, who grows up to be the most powerful man in Japan with a very successful corporation. The story is pretty simple; it's present day and Yashida is an old, frail man who is on his deathbed. He summons Logan in order to make a proposition, he has a machine that could drain his life force, so he could continue living and Logan could finally die. Logan, knowing the pain that immortality has caused him denies Yashida the request, and he dies. It turns out that instead of leaving his business to his son, he's left everything to his 20-something incredibly beautiful granddaughter, who is now being hunted by all sorts of evil people because of this fact. Logan decides to help her and off her goes on an adventure to protect this girl and save the day.

Like I said, kinda bland, but it works. Because we have the trilogy before it, we've seen what Logan has had to go through to be at this point. In this film he's constantly dealing with seeing Jean Grey in his dreams and he's living as a hermit in the Alaskan wilderness. Between the cameo he had in First Class and the opening sequence of this film, we know Logan is old, with no signs of slowing down. This movie's underlying subject matter is dealing with the theme that you have to live with the decisions you make, but for Logan, living with a decision means potentially being reminded of what you've done for eternity. His new-found partner mutant Yukio and Yashida's granddaughter Mariko both try to further the point that no matter what has happened in the past, people need Logan's help.

Overall, I really enjoyed this film and I hope the next one they're planning on doing in a couple years will be just as good if not better than this one, and another solid entry into an ever-expanding franchise. If you were holding out on seeing it, just see it, you'll probably have a good time with it, and that mid-credits sequence is the necessary story-tying piece that connects the old trilogy with the new X-Men movie franchise. Below this point I will post what I don't like about the movie, and it will involve spoilers.


What I didn't like about this film is a pretty short list, but pretty significant I thought. First off, the lack of blood. The movie should have been rated R, but they just took out the majority of blood. I'm not someone who demands to see large amounts of blood in my movies, but if you have someone continually stabbing people with metal claws, as well as samurai swinging swords, there should be blood. You'll get some blood on Logan's claws in between moments of him stabbing, but during the act and afterward no one has any blood on them, characters barely bleed. It reeks of a grab at PG-13. I've heard the Director's Cut fixes some of this, but I haven't gotten the chance to see that version yet, but I have hope for it. Second, Logan's lovestory with Mariko seems a little odd. She's someone that, while very beautiful, he's really only known as someone who he has to keep protecting from getting killed, and she knows Logan as this mythical being who saved her grandfather during the second world war. Mariko is somewhere in her early 20's and Logan is somewhere around 120-200 years old. I mean, I guess he can't really abide by an age code when he's immortal, but at least with Jean Grey she was not only incredibly smart and talented but also had a good relationship with Logan for years, and they never got to be together. Mariko and Logan's love storyline feels like a forced love interest plot for added dramatic weight for him to protect her. Finally, and this is a big one...the mid-credits scene setting up Days of Future Past completely devalues the end of the film. At the end of The Wolverine, Mariko becomes the owner of the Yashida corporation and her and Logan have feelings for each other. She gives Logan and Yuriko their own private jet to fly around in and it sets up the two of them having mutant adventures for future sequels. Then the mid-credits scene just timeskips to two years later and Logan is suddenly in a public airport by himself going through security when he is approached by Professor X and Magneto. So the end of the The Wolverine sets up Logan having some sort of relationship with Mariko and him and Yukio flying off to wherever they want in their own plane, and then two years later he's lost Yukio, the private jet and is on his own? What the hell, that completely undercuts the movie you just watched to set up another film in the franchise.

The mid-credits sequence, while cool in it's own right, feels incredibly forced by the studio to set up Days of Future Past. In Days of Future Past, present day Professor X and Magneto band together to send Wolverine back into the 70's to change history and save mutant (and human) kind. Since the movie is about tying the franchises together and the last movie we saw old man Professor X in he died (though that end credits sequence sets up he's alive in some form) so if they didn't put this sequence into the end of this film, they would have had to spend a good 10 minutes of Days of Future Past setting up not only why Logan was there and working with Professor X and Magneto, but also explain Professor X being alive. It's extra tie-in plot they need for the next film, but since they needed Wolverine by himself, it completely undercuts the movie we just watched. Disappointing in the end on that front, but otherwise well done.

Movie Review - Kick-Ass 2

One of my most anticipated films of last year, which quickly diminished to expected disappointment after the reviews came out. I ended up not seeing Kick-Ass 2 while it was in theaters and only just now got around to watching it. I know it's pretty late now to effect anyone going to see it now, but I figured that since I watched it, I'd write about it.

I was a big fan of the first Kick-Ass from 2010, though I do easily acknowledge that is has it's own problems. The first half of Kick-Ass is a fantastic satirical look at the origin stories of superheros and how they would look set in a real life environment. Then, about halfway through, it just becomes the kind of movie it's satirizing. That isn't to say it's bad, but it switches tone from funny and violent superhero parody to violent and dark superhero film. I still enjoy watching it, but I feel it could have been better. I never did read the comic, though I have wanted to. Amidst stories stating that the book was finished at the same time as the movie, I figured I'd get the same basic story from watching the movie. Later I found out a lot of people like the movie more because it's somehow more reserved than the comic. The movie does have a lot of fun moments and it's action is as enjoyable as it is violent. The actors all put in great performances, especially Nicolas Cage, who was unbeknownst to the cast and crew at the time doing an Adam West impersonation. Chloe Grace Moretz did a fantastic job and Aaron Taylor-Johnson did a pitch-perfect rendition of what I always hope Spider-Man will be, though less smart and more of a loser. The soundtrack uses a few songs from The Prodigy's album Invaders Must Die multiple times and they help give the movie some music motifs along with the movie's score. It's also shot and edited very well, it's infinitely watchable.

I said all that about the first film to make this one point; Kick-Ass 2 has hardly, if any, of these qualities. The writing is stupid, the cinematography is bland, and the soundtrack generic. The acting from Chloe Grace Moretz is still great, in fact, better than ever, but it's hard to recognize that when you just get bogged down with so much stupid.

The main plot of this film is Dave Lizewski coming to terms with what it means to be a superhero. As we start the film, he's angsty and frustrated that all these superheros have come out because of what he did, but he's promised to not be Kick-Ass again for the sake of his worrying girlfriend. Mindy Macready has taken to skipping school every day and hanging out in her dad's lair, training up her superhero skills. When Dave decides he needs to be Kick-Ass again he tries to recruit Mindy but due to her new parental figure telling her he won't tolerate her being Hit-Girl, she continuously says she's out of the game. We spend the rest of the movie with Dave meeting up with the Supergroup Justice Forever and him trying to bring Hit-Girl in while Mindy holds out and tries to be a normal high school girl. At the same time, Chris D'amico who was one time faux-hero Red Mist has decided to become the world's first actual supervillian.

That basic plot isn't bad. We spend a lot of the first movie showing how woefully unprepared for the superhero life Dave is. He's a bare minimum hero that is essentially a figurehead while people like Hit-Girl and Big Daddy do actual work. It makes sense that in this movie he's retired. At best he was a figurehead for the superhero movement, but at worst he was a catalyst for a lot of bad things happening to people around him. We also spend a lot of time with him trying to win the affections of a girl who admired Kick-Ass, but made him promise to stop once they were together because she cared about him too much. So we open this movie with Dave saying he can't be a superhero because of his girlfriend. He then does nothing but try and get back in the game from there on out and ignores the wishes of his girlfriend. When she sees Dave and Mindy talking together often in the halls and witnesses a conversation out of context, she immediately thinks Dave is cheating on her, which...would make a lot of sense. However, when asked to explain himself right then and there he doesn't, which makes sense because they're in a crowded hall in a public place. But he...then never tries to explain to her in private that it was about superhero business and that she was Hit-Girl and nothing was going on and they just break up. A relationship that was one of the primary focuses of the first movie is just thrown aside. Once we meet Justice Forever you can figure out why.

So already we've lost one of the primary focuses of the first movie, his girlfriend, which he worked pretty damn hard for in the first film. And she's gone in the first half hour and that's the last we see of her. Then there's the focus on Dave's friends. Clark Duke gets a pretty good role in this film, about as good as the first one, and he gets about all the same one liners as he did before. Unfortunately his other friend Todd just gets absolutely screwed. In the first film, Todd, played by Evan Peters, is just as equally Dave's friend as Clark Duke's character Marty is. In this film, Evan Peters was busy filming American Horror Story, so they recast Todd and made him one of the worst damn things of this movie. Todd went from every bit of Dave and Marty's equal to being just shy of mentally retarded. You don't understand why Dave and Marty would hang out with this guy in the first place, and it makes sense later why they'd stop hanging out with him, even if they were being jerks about it. This leads to one of the dumbest things in the whole movie, but it spoils a whole lot of the end so I'll save that for later.

When we get introduced to the Supergroup Justice Forever, it's mostly just sad and not the funny you want it to be. They went the serious route with everyone except Marty who is now a clone of Captain America in costume, and Donald Faison's Doctor Gravity. Colonel Stars and Stripes, played by Jim Carrey becomes the Hit-Girl violence replacement for the time he's on screen. A former gangster inforcer who is a born-again Christian. The rest of the team includes a girl who's sister was an unsolved murder, a husband and wife who's young son went missing and never found and a gay guy who was bullied and decided to step up for those who can't stand up for themselves. Donald Faison's Doctor Gravity is a guy who just wants to go and do cool superhero shit and goof around. See the difference here? Doctor Gravity, Colonel Stars and Stripes, Marty and Kick-Ass all feel like they're fun, goofy characterizations of superheros that would fit with the light-hearted but violent tone the first half of the first movie takes. The rest of them are all these super grim and depressing characters that don't feel like they exactly belong in this world. Well, either they belong or the others don't. Having both exist is what feels weird.

The introduction of Night Bitch is the whole reason they got rid of Katie, so Dave could start hooking up with her as Kick-Ass. They spend a good amount of time cementing how close they are as a replacement relationship for Dave, but then when a certain event happens about mid-way through the film, they just drop it.

Jim Carrey's performance as Colonel Stars and Stripes is wonderful. Apparently he's only on screen for roughly 8 minutes of an hour and forty minute movie, but he's one of the most inspired characters of the whole thing. I wanted more of him. Along with Chloe Grace Moretz, I think he has the best performance of the movie. Aaron Taylor-Johnson does what he can, but the writing is just not the same. In the first film he's a comic-book loving nerd who has the crazy notion that he could become a superhero and right some wrong-doings. In this movie he's just your standard boring superhero, but with even less motivation for half the things he does. Christopher Mintz-Plasse does a fine job as The Motherfucker, but he was just an older version of the same guy as the first movie, I expected nothing more or less from him.

The writing is awful. I already mentioned the destruction of Todd and Dave is hardly any better. Mindy gets fine writing treatment, but I think that's mostly because her sub-plot was already covered in a separate book that wasn't being published as the same time as the film was made. The rest of the movie though is just so dumb. For every good thing that the movie does for itself, it takes two steps back within minutes. They traded in the wit and common everyday man style dialogue for crass jokes. There is a device in this film that makes people vomit and shit themselves when it's pointed at them. Not only that, it's used for comedic effect and as an important game changing device. I hated every second on screen. The fact that they went through the trouble of making it look like a high school girl is violently uncontrollably shitting and vomiting in a school cafeteria is all I need to say about the quality of the writing. That would not have happened in the first movie. Sure, there were jokes about jerking off, but it's not like it showed you a geyser of jizz shooting out and that being the joke. It's hard for me to say that a joke about jerking off with Jergens and tissues is a refined joke, but in comparison to the shit (literally) in this film, it totally is.

Before I go into spoilers I'll say this. The cinematography is for the most part boring, the soundtrack is generic, the editing is nothing like the first film. It's just...all wrong. A lot of the acting takes a dive because they have nothing to work with and the plot is largely dumb. I still enjoyed the film, but it's not one that I will enjoy like Kick-Ass. It's one to watch for a continuation of the story when you need something dumb and violent on, but not something that can just be appreciated as a good film, because it's not. If you were a fan of the first movie, you'll probably still like this one, just not as much. Jim Carrey's performance is worth seeing however, and Chloe Grace Moretz does a fine job. The film has some interesting concepts but squanders them in search of crude humor. If you were midly interested, skip it. This one just barely makes the cut of an enjoyable film for me. I'll watch it again, but probably not by first choice. Maybe if a third one comes out I'll re-watch it. But it's nothing like the first movie.

Spoilers

I had so many problems with this movie that by the end I was just mad. They literally made Todd a bag of bricks. The plot needed something to bring Hit-Girl back, because Mindy was done with that. So what do they do? Why, they just have Todd walk into the fuckin' bad guy's lair and tell him who Kick-Ass is. I don't care if your two best friends are becoming famous superheros and they were being jerks to you, you don't go up to the nortiously bad, bad guy, who in a few scenes prior had a fuckton of cops murdered, and just tell him where your best friend is. The worst thing is, they don't play it like Todd's getting revenge on Dave. That would have still been dumb, but at least he reasoning is there. Instead, they just have him fuckin' tell him like he couldn't connect the dots. "Oh, you're looking for Kick-Ass? Yeah, that's a guy I know. Hey, you want to know who that guy is? I'll tell you because I've been one of his closest friends and you two should clearly meet up and have a chat. I did a good thing just then, I tell you what." He gets Dave's dad killed which was totally unnecessary because they already gave Dave the anti-superhero origin story of his mom dying of like a brain tumor or something in the first movie. Now both his parents are dead because they needed a reason for Hit-Girl to get involved. Not only was it unneccessary, the death of Colonel Stars and Stripes served the exact same purpose for everyone except Hit-Girl. They did two deaths for the same exact reason except the first time was for all the other characters and the second time was just for Hit-Girl.

I did like the majority of Mindy's side story however. Her trying to fit in and be a normal girl and have it backfire when the other girls are Mean Girls ripoffs. It almost had a nice resolution too, with her deciding to be herself but still embrace her feminine side, and then she uses a poop machine on them. Then they brought the poop and vomit machine back for the final battle and it plays a part in saving someone's life. Utterly stupid.

One thing I never liked about the first movie was that Big Daddy "traced the location of Kick-Ass through his IP address through his postings on Myspace." That is not how that works, but I was able to forgive it because essentially it leads to nothing. In this movie, the police trace the location of Kick-Ass through his IP address through postings on Twitter. Come on. That's even less valid because Twitter is generally a mobile phone app. Unless he was posting only from his room there would be many more than one solid location from his postings, and a mobile device not on Wifi would use the IP Address of the nearest tower it is connecting to. Even then, you can't just look at a post and go "hmmm, this post came from here!" Because IP addresses are based on an approximate location. You can track IP Addresses to neighborhoods, not houses. They find out where Kick-Ass lives and set Dave's dad on the path to death on something that does not happen.

The attempted rape scene I kind of liked, because it serves a purpose. Chris D'Amico is trying to be as stereotypically evil as he can but, but he being shown repeatedly just hiring people to do the dirty work for him. He attempts to commit an evil act such as rape and can't do it. I think that's a good character-building insight. I've heard that in the comic he actually does commit a rape and does many other evil things. I think that would have been a total misstep in the movie world. In the first movie Chris is never evil, just misguided because the person he looks up to most happens to be a very bad guy and when he gets caught in between being a hero and being the person his father was, he loses focus. His father does get murdered, that's enough to drive someone over the line between good and evil in my book. But in this movie you can tell that he's not truly evil, he just wants to do what he thinks is the way to exact revenge for the death of his father, by being the most bad guy he can be to counteract the most evil act he has ever witnessed.

The shark was the one of the dumbest things ever. You can't just say half a dozen times that the shark should be dead because he literally should be, and just have one character continuously state that it's just hungry. That doesn't make sense. They said exactly that it was in the wrong kind of water and it's implied it hasn't moved in days. It's a dead fucking shark. It's not hungry. It doesn't sit perfectly still in the wrong kind of water for days on end just because a character says it's hungry. So what does it do when The Motherfucker lands in the water in the end? It eats him because it was hungry. Fucking stupid. What's more, after the credits Chris D'Amico is revealed to not be dead, just that it ate his legs and his dick off. One last dick reference in the movie in case you forgot, and a totally implausible outcome to the situation. Everyone around him was dead except for the good guys, who did not take him out of the water. He falls into the shark tank and pools of blood come up. How could he have gotten out of there by himself? He couldn't have. They just couldn't kill him because he needed to be around for a third movie and also to make reference to not having genitals anymore.

This movie was stupid. It has it's fun moments but is greatly outweighed by the dumb and nonsensical. I went into this movie expecting a piece of shit, and I got a fun piece of shit. You've been warned.

Web Spotlight #7 - Black Prism

I found these guys through some clicks through the related videos section on Youtube.

Black Prism are an L.A. outfit that aren't trying to sound new. In fact, if you said they sounded like anything from the last 20 years they'd probably hit you. Black Prism are instead going for that Doom-y/Acid Rock-like vibe from mid-to-late 70's Black Sabbath. The guitars are fuzzy as all hell, the singer is howling in a not-unpleasant way reminiscent of 70's Ozzy, and it's wonderful. Hell, even their video for this debut single Satan's Country is made to look like some cheap 70's horror movie. The only thing that detracts from that image is the record label Easy Rider's Twitter and Facebook hashtag suggestions being in the bottom left corner.

It seems we're currently in a Hard Rock/Heavy Metal revolution that takes us back to the 70's, and I'm certainly okay with that. Black Prism aren't here to break any new boundaries, but instead explore a side of music we haven't heard from in a while. Check out the video, and if you like it, you can buy it for $7-8

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Movie Review - 12 Years A Slave

I know I'm pretty late to this one, but I could only see so many movies in theaters so this one ended up at a local independent theater and then I jumped on it. I heard nothing but great things about this movie. Directed by Steve McQueen and produced largely by Brad Pitt, 12 Years A Slave is based off of a book of the same name about a free black man in 1841 New York being kidnapped and sold into slavery in the south, where he spends, as you might imagine, 12 years as a slave.

The movie is brutal, physically and emotionally. It's exhausting to watch, as you do nothing but feel bad for Solomon Northup, our unfortunate main character. Normally I don't mind and can even joy violence and gore in movies, but in this one it was excruciating, and I believe that to be because in our minds we can generally separate in film was is real and not real. In this movie, sure, the violence and gore was not real, but it happened. That's the real pain of this film, it all happened. Everything feels that much worse because we know that that was how black people were treated in those times. As a white male, I left the movie feeling guilty about my ancestors, for things they did 170+ years ago. For how society as a whole treated a whole race of people. As a society, we now accept that people of all races are equal human beings, which for me made me cringe every time a black person was treated as inferior. It made me sad that there was a time in our cultural history, that didn't even really end until about 40 years ago, that people of a different skin color were treated so inhumanely.

The cinematography of the film is absolutely beautiful, and McQueen does a terrific job directing, as do all the actors, specifically Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong'o as Solomon Northup and Patsey. Michael Fassbender does a terrific job of being a despicable villain, as well as Benedict Cumberbatch for being the decent guy who is a part of a bad time in history. There were scenes in this film that will linger with me for years to come. One particuarly devastating shot in particular which was a long, continuous shot that went for at least 3-4 minutes had Solomon being partially hung from a tree after picking a fight with one of the plantation hands. They string him up in the tree and are just about to hang him when they get chased off by another plantation hand. But he decides that it's the owner who has to cut him down, so they go off to fetch him. In this time, Solomon is just left hanging there, with the tips of his toes just barely touching the ground as he chokes from the noose. If his toes leave the ground he will die, so it's just one long shot of Solomon swaying back and forth trying as hard as he can to keep his toes on the ground while the other slaves go about their business and the wife of the owner just standing there watching him. It's truly devastating to watch.

As brutal as this film is, I'm incredibly happy that it's already being chosen to be aired in schools as a part of US history. While we often learn about Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman in school, we don't learn about the story of Solomon Northup. While Douglass and Tubman achieved many a great thing in their time, they present just one side of the slavery injustice. They were born into slavery and escaped it to provide the world with great accomplishments. Solomon Northup however was born a free man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery. Twelve years later he escapes and writes the memoir this book is based on and tries to take the people who kidnapped him to court. However, since black people were not allowed to testify in court he lost his cases. Over the years, I think it's safe to say that the way we're taught about slavery, we forget that there were free people living at the same time as slaves. The idea that someone could be born free and then sold into slavery is a truly haunting tale that we don't hear as often as we should.

Overall I loved the film, however, I don't plan on watching it again. It was beautiful and tragic, an amazing film with a powerful story, but I have no desire to ever revisit the film. It's one you should watch, it's one you should remember. Remember how far we've come in nearly 200 years, and don't let anything drag us back down that path.

Music Review - Stone Titan - Scratch 'N' Sniff

This one's a heavy sumbitch, I tell you what. Stone Titan are a heavy, sludgy, doom-inspired Metal band that combine everything from Punk to Psychedelic music. Last month, Stone Titan put out a small album (8 songs) of just pure sludge-laden Metal, named Scratch 'N' Sniff. I've found it both entirely different and off-puting, but I keep coming back for more, and I'm finding myself enjoying the madness a little more each time.

Scratch 'N' Sniff certainly isn't for everyone. It's abrasive and offensive. The album cover has a man using a toilet and slitting his wrists, with rainbows and all sorts of brightly colored objects flowing outward. And with song titles like "I Wish I Was Fucking Dead" and "Alaskan Thunderfuck" they certainly aren't looking for anyone else's approval.

The album opens with "I Wish I Was Fucking Dead" and it just slams you right in the face, with a heavy riff and screamed vocals. Then it goes into "Groovy Warhead Commander" where the vocals are mostly growled...until the last minute or so where it just becomes weird guttural screams and noises. After that is my favorite song, "Alaskan Thunderfuck" and instrumental. The riffing and groove on this song have me going back to it the most, it's a fun, noisy raucous. If there is one song you listen to, it's this one. Next is "Faul", and it hits like a kick in the teeth with it's growled vocals and immediate, hard as nails riff. Are you starting to see a trend here? The next song up is "Can O Worms" and it brings in some Hardcore like blastbeats before settling down into a noisy groove. Feedback as part of the riffs in these tracks I think is ingenious, and is a nice technique borrowed from Noise Rock. As soon as "Can O Worms" starts, you have just enough time to headbang a couple dozen times and then it's over, coming in at only 2:18, and then it bursts right into the next selection of aggression, "Miles Away From Sober", which is all of 1:19. It's pure noisy goodness, right up until the end, which is all just...fart sounds. After that display we get "A Brief Overview of Overweight Men", which returns back to the sounds earlier on the album of combining screaming and growling with real doom-y, fuzzed out riffs, and a heavy ass beat. Then we round out the album with the self-titled track, "Scratch 'N' Sniff", which at 6:23 is the longest song on the album. It runs through all the previously explored concepts and just lets them flow through until they've explored them all they could, which turns out to be about 6 1/2 minutes, give or take the 2 minutes of silence before a blast of nothing but noise that finishes out the track.

I've found reviewing this album to be a bit difficult because I'm having a hard time figuring out why I've been connecting with this album so much when usually something like this wouldn't be my style. Truthfully, if you hear one song you've heard them all, all 8 songs on Scratch 'N' Sniff sound roughly the same. Some have different riffs, some have different drum beats, some have more or less feedback, but they mostly sound the same. And I think that's kind of why I like it. Since it's coming in at approximately 27 minutes in length, it's not long enough for me to get annoyed at the same-ness. Instead, Stone Titan come in and just blast pure testosterone at you for just under a half hour and then they're done. Another thing that stands out to me is that the vocals are never in the fore-front. The vocals are 99% of the time screamed or growled, but they aren't mixed in the front of the tracks, they're mixed more like another instrument, while the super fuzzy and distorted guitar takes more of a front seat. A lot of the times with Hardcore music where all they do is growl or scream, my ears will get tired of it real quick because it's all I can focus on. But with Scratch 'N' Sniff, I can focus more on just the experience of the song, blasting me in the goddamn face like a bag of bricks. This isn't something I would recommend for everyone. In fact, even I don't want to listen to the individual tracks, save "Alaskan Thunderfuck", unless I listen to the whole thing and just soak it in.

I looked Stone Titan up, and they're about as Indie as can be. Up to this point, they've released everything themselves. I decided that for an experience like this that is so unique to me, I had to support them, so I went to their website and ordered Scratch 'N' Sniff on vinyl, of which they've only pressed 300 copies. What I did find interesting is that they didn't press a cd. You can either buy the vinyl or you can go to their Bandcamp and buy the digital copy for $10. At any rate, if you're into Doom Metal, Noise Rock/Metal, or just want a new experience, check out Scratch 'N' Sniff.




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Web Spotlight #6 - Limalo

I found this artist through Reddit's electronic music sub.

Limalo is interesting. They're a music duo from Texas that specialize in atmospheric, ambient,  beat-driven music. In my mind, the strongest comparison is to Boards of Canada. Yesterday, Limalo released their first ever album, Human Bloom, on Bandcamp, and hot damn do I like it. 14 tracks, but it's about quality, not quantity, the longest song is 3:25. Human Bloom was recorded with all analog instruments, and that's a quality I can't praise highly enough, but you can hear the difference. The synths sound earthy and dream-like. The beats behind the synths never get too intense, but their is glitching abound, and that's something I can get behind.

Human Bloom has this great lo-fi sound to it that doesn't sound like a mastering effect. It's not so lo-fi that you lose a lot of detail in the tracks, in fact you can clearly make out everything that's going on, but it's a kind of fuzzy/blurriness that lets you just enjoy it in the background. It doesn't require your full attention, you can just let it roll out and envelop you. It's an action I support, because that means I can let the music be the soundtrack for an experience in my mind. I can just let it take me places. Hell, this is the kind of music I could see getting tied to memories of this summer when I think back in later years. I cannot stress enough how the entirety of Human Bloom is something to experience, but there are tracks that stand out. Clouds In My Puddle, Gamogy's Creek, Magic Lantern, Blurry Mood and Tiwa are all great pieces by themselves that really stood out to me.

Right now the entire album is on Bandcamp, and it's set at a Pay What You Want model, meaning it's donation based. You can enter $0 and get the album for free, or you can choose to pay however much you like. I'll be supporting Limalo and I hope you will too.

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TV Review - House of Cards - Season One

Until recently I did not have access to Netflix, and had put House of Cards off from watching regardless, because as much as I liked the new season of Arrested Development and Orange is the New Black, I had a million other things that I was watching before I figured I'd get around to House of Cards. But, with the second season dropping, and me being an avid Twitter and Tumblr user, I didn't want to end up getting spoiled on the second season before I'd even seen the first. So I spent the last three days plowing through Season One of House of Cards.

In short, I really, really enjoyed it. No surprise there, it won 3 Emmy's. I was bound to agree with the rest of the world on it. Though I didn't like it as much as I thought I would. I really enjoyed the first 4-5 episodes, and just enjoyed the rest of the episode. What really gravitated me to the show and kept me watching was the combination of Kevin Spacey's Frank Underwood breaking the fourth wall to tell you the meaning behind his actions and his plot antics, as well as Underwood's ability to exert his power to change politics to get what he wants. Unfortuantely for me he only gets to do that up until episodes 4-5, and then with few exceptions, he spends the rest of the season trying to keep his actions that he pulled in those first few episodes under wraps. While intriguing and fun, I really wanted to see more of that pushing and pulling political bargaining before making our main character scramble to cover his tracks for those actions.

In regards to the show itself, the writing is top-notch, especially for Underwood. The southern drawl and utter and masterful control of words (except for one episode where they play off of the opposite of this) make for a compelling watch every second he is on screen. Robin Wright also does excellent work, as well as Kate Mara and the majority of the other actors in the show. The cinematography is excellent, and the production value feels pretty high for a show from a streaming video service. That does come with a price however, as the product placement is pretty prominent. Claire uses a Mac, everyone uses iPhones, Frank prominently plays a PS3 and even drops some knowledge of the PSVita. Nothing wrong with any of that though, I just find it funny how clearly obvious it was, about as much as The Walking Dead's Hyundai, which stays nearly immaculate in a zombie apocalypse. Hey, if that's what it takes to get good programming out there, then I'm all for it.

I can see why everyone was raving about the first season, it was certainly a good watch. One of the best shows I've seen as of late, between the strength of the acting, the cinematography and the screenwriting. Which is something that makes me super excited for the future of television, because if a show created by a streaming service can be this damn good then that says anything goes for who can create awesome content in the future.

If you've had any reservations about seeing House of Cards (which by this point I highly doubt) I urge you to give it a watch. It's not perfect, but it's damn good. Now I'm off to marathon the brand new second season and I'm ready to be once again immersed in this world.

Music Review - White Wizzard - The Devil's Cut

It's been a couple years since the last album, Flying Tigers, and a lot has changed for White Wizzard, but a lot has also stayed the same. New to the band (in studio anyway) are guitarists Jake Dreyer and Will Wallner, bringing both Neo-Classical leads and Blues based leads, trading off throughout each track. The biggest change up however is lead singer Joseph Michael. Michael is different than Wyatt Anderson, lead singer on the last two albums, but he is still great in his own way. His vocals have a much more "Power Metal-y" ring to them than Wyatt, but his range is impeccable. He can hit falsetto's whenever he needs to and can bring his voice down to a growl and will often switch it up through the songs so that he hits both of those and everything in between, which gives the tracks a nice diverse sound.

The Devil's Cut is a solid 9 track album. The songwriting by Jon Leon is at this point very predictable, but that doesn't mean it's bad. If you've heard the other two Wizzard albums you know what you're getting. Some of the tracks have lyrics that are even a little too cheesy for me, mostly Kings of the Highway and Lightning In My Hands, but they are also immensely enjoyable. I thought it was really interesting how Leon brought the guitar parts into the tracks. Dreyer is well versed in the Neo-Classical shredder style, and Wallner is rooted in the Classical and Blues styles. So Leon would write the tracks and then pick which guitarist would fit each part of the song the best, and it pays off. Each tracks feels like it was meticulously crafted to hit the best way possible. The drum work from Giovanni Dürst is excellent as always. He never really stands out on his own, but the drumming is solid and there is never a beat or a drum hit that sounds out of place or unnecessary. Leon's bass work is in my opinion, incredibly interesting. For the most part, he's not really going into the songs trying to stand out, instead, his bass is always doing something in the background. It's not prominent, but any time the songs get a little quiet you can hear him just noodling away back there. Little riffs and hooks filling up space and keeping the tracks from ever being stale.

Since the album is only 9 tracks, that let the band explore longer song forms and get a little more Prog-y on this release. Nothing spectacular, but they're able to explore songs and take them into directions you might not go if you're aiming for a three minute and thirty second time slot. We open the album with Forging The Steel, a two minute instrumental that serves as an intro to the first real song, the decidedly epic Strike The Iron, which comes in at nearly 7 minutes. It's catchy and full of memerable vocal and guitar riffs and hooks. Michael's voice take pretty much every twist and turn that it's going to go on this album, so it's a nice showcase for what he can do and what the new guitarist duo can bring to the table. Then we get Kings of the Highway, which isn't a favorite of mine, but is a shred-tastic song. It sounds similar to a mix between Turbo-era and Painkiller-era Judas Priest. Lightning in My Hands is a pure Wizzard classic. It has all the staples, killer riffs, epic, machismo-ridden lyrics (My finger's tapped to rocket fuel/ignite the fire in me and you) and it just rocks hard. It's a highlight of the album. Then we get into a sort of ballad that is full of warning and concern, Steal Your Mind, that clocks in at nearly 7 and a half minutes. It's full of lyrics telling you to stay true to yourself, and I can get behind that. Then we get to the title track, The Devil's Cut, which picks the tempo back up and it's full of more empowering lyrics, like "Music is the truth that sets me free." After that, we lead into the first song released from this album, and the song most reminiscent of the last two White Wizzard albums, Torpedo of Truth. If you've heard the other two Wizzard albums, you already know exactly what Torpedo is going to sound like, but that doesn't make it any less fun. It's a raucous. The next track, Storm Chaser, is a fun little jaunt that goes for a more Blues based Metal approach over the Neo-Classical, and sounds similar to L.A. Nights from the last album in tone. More about fun and partying than it is about devils or demons or magic. We close the album with the 9 and a half minute epic The Sun Also Rises, a wonderful exercise that brings the whole band together to shine. Everyone gets a little showcase. It's a song to close concerts with, with everyone pumping their fists in the air, chanting along with the band that the sun will surely rise.

Overall, I really enjoyed the album. The biggest problem I had with Flying Tigers was Leon playing all the guitar parts and having the second half sounding a little same-y for me. He disclosed in an interview with Metalsucks that he didn't enjoy doing that, and he mostly did it to get the songs done without having to spend the time finding new band members, because they had run out of time. At 9 tracks and with two guitarists with different but complimentary styles I think Leon avoids most of that this time around. He said that they mostly put out this album so people could get used to this incarnation of the band, and they're already working on a follow up. Unfortunately, On their European tour, singer Joseph Michael and Leon got in a huge fight, and the whole group disbanded, so White Wizzard is once again just Leon.

So if you enjoy cheesy, over the top Metal that also happens to be technically really well preformed and an exemplary release from this genre of "Retro" Metal, get The Devil's Cut. 




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Web Spotlight #3 - Ratskull Rascal

I found the lovely artist that is Ratskull Rascal through Reddit's free music subreddit.

Now, I don't know much about this guy, but maybe in the future he could drop by and inform us himself. Ratskull Rascal has just recently released his first EP through Soundcloud, called Quantum Compression, and calls his music a mix between electronic and psychedelic, and that sounds about right.

There are guitars, organs, keyboards and various other fuzzy sounds and tones that blend the genre lines and leave us with a nice down-tempo EP that is great for chill out sessions. When you need something playing in the background, or when you want to just focus on the music and nothing else. There are six tracks and they are all nice, but my favorites seem to be the first and last tracks, Revelation and Genesis, probably because I really dig the fuzzy, distorted guitar sound.The melodies are tight, the songs are pretty short and the ideas within hit me just right.

So check out Quantum Compression, you can listen and download for free right through Ratskull's Soundcloud.

Web Spotlight # 2 - Beliefs

This week I've got some Dream pop goodness to spotlight. I found this week's band, Canadian act Beliefs, through their US record label Manimal Vinyl's Tumblr. Beliefs are a Canadian duo who have been combining light, ethereal vocals with lush wispy audio soundscapes. Before the release of their self-titled album in March, they put out a video for a bonus track for the album, Violets, and it's what got me turned on to Beliefs.

It's light and airy, dreamy and sweet. A perfect song for summer.

Web Spotlight # 1 - Zack Hemsey

Do you remember the score to Inception? Maybe. Maybe not. I do guarantee however you remember the music for the trailers of Inception. The Hans Zimmer-esque rhythm with the "BWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAM" sound that became synonymous with the movie. Well, that sound wasn't a creation of Hans Zimmer's, rather, it was of an independent New York musician named Zack Hemsey. He was the creator of "Mind Heist", the track used in the trailers for Inception. It turns out he does more than just make memorable movie scores. He also makes his own unique brand of hip-hop.

The track I'm spotlighting is "Slave" from his album, Ronin. His lyrics and flow are simple but effective, a song about the common people being slaves to, essentially, the system.  His production is really interesting because of that work in scoring he has, it's more elaborate and uses a wider variety of instruments than what would typically be used. The production has a lot of depth and texture and it's fascinating to hear.

The thing I find most intriguing about Hemsey is the making and distribution of this album. Hemsey did everything on this album himself, right up to mastering and the album art,  which are handled by other people. That means he wrote the songs, he produced the tracks, he preformed on them and he also mixed them before sending them off to be mastered. A one man show at it's finest. He also has made the album as widely available as possible, he uploaded every track from the album to Youtube. If you can access Youtube you can hear the whole thing, start to finish. He's also put up a Bandcamp page where you can purchase Ronin.

With his distinct production, his interest in different forms of delivering content to fans and his varied musical interests, Zack Hemsey is one to watch.

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Two Brief Movie Reviews - American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street

This week I also saw American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street. I won't be saying too much about them and figured I'd condense it down into one post because both are up for a bunch of awards at the Oscars and everyone is talking about them. So I figured with this post I'd just write down my general thoughts on both movies.

First up,    American Hustle

I had an absolute blast with American Hustle. I make it a point to not watch trailers for movies after the first initial one unless it's playing in a theater (because then I can't avoid it) as I like being surprised by movies and not knowing every detail going in. So the trailer I saw for this movie was the initial one with just Christian Bale's speech to Bradley Cooper about who the real artist is if a forger can make an exact copy of a piece of art. So going in I thought it would have some sort of art forgery angle to the movie and was a little disappointed when that's hardly touched on in the film. However, I thought the film was fantastic. It was humorous and fun, and felt smart, and what I mean by that is the "hustles" that the characters pull off felt like they could actually do them based on their back stories, not just because the plot requires it. For contrast, my examples are the Sherlock Holmes films with Robert Downey Jr. Those films don't have writers that are as smart as the character of Sherlock Holmes is to be written, so when he solves a case it feels like he pulls it out of mid-air because they weren't able to write up to his intelligence level.

Going in I had heard reviews stating that they felt the film dragged and felt overly long, while The Wolf of Wall Street is longer but people are generally riveted the entire run time. I do say I agree with that consensus. American Hustle felt long. In the last third I had realized the film had been playing for a long time and was waiting for them to wrap it up. For me however, the length was not a problem for me plot wise. The movie felt like it needed a certain amount of time to set up and pay off each hustle. The problem I had instead was that I thought the character development scenes could have been shorter once we're past the first hour. I felt like once we hit the middle of the movie a lot of character interaction scenes go on a minute or two too long. That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed the film, it's actors, it's music choices and especially the hairdos.

Next - The Wolf of Wall Street

I love Martin Scorsese, and I enjoy Leonardo DiCaprio. I love every movie they make together. The Wolf of Wall Street is no exception. A movie that pushes boundaries of what can be considered appropriate for R rated films. It's a gloriously raunchy tale of excess. The cast all around is once again great. I had never heard of Margot Robbie before this film and now I absolutely adore her. Leo turns in another fantastic performance, and goes a lot further than I would have expected him to go. Jonah Hill I didn't find as amazing as a lot of critics are saying, but I think he turned in a solid performance.

The movie is long, and it has loads of nudity and drug use and explicit language. But The Wolf of Wall Street is a tale about ultimate excess. It helped to sell the image you needed of Jordan Belfort, that he was so filthy rich he could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. I enjoyed the majority of the song choices, especially Scorsese's penchant for the Blues. I noticed a lot of Howlin' Wolf in this thing, which is always appreciated. Though at times the sound editing was distracting for me. There seemed to be this odd sound editing choice for the first half of the movie that would play some sort of high-energy pop song and right as it crescendos immediately switch to a Blues song. It felt out of place and took me out of the movie a couple times because of how unsmooth it was. This movie felt long to me too, but I was entertained the whole time. I never felt bored. Not having done any research on the real life Belfort before, I knew he had to eventually get his comeuppance, but I didn't know the twists and turns the story would take leading up to that and it was so ridiculously excessive I couldn't wait to see what was next. I saw some critics saying the film was glorifying Belfort's lifestyle and making it cool. All I have to say about that is they clearly did not watch the same film. By the end of this movie you get a pretty good idea of what happens to people who live life thinking they're above the law in every regard. 

In the end, I really enjoyed both movies and think they were similar, albeit different glimpses at the same sort of live life to the absolute fullest, no matter the legality, ideal. Though I believe American Hustle shows what can happen if you have compassion and a heart and end up in that territory, where as The Wolf of Wall Street shows the absolute negative side, someone destroying their lives to keep their status that way. I'm rooting for both films at the Oscars and I can't wait to own both of them.

Movie Review - August:Osage County

So last week I saw the movie August:Osage County, a film adaptation of a play by the same name by Tracy Letts, which opened in 2007. My friend and I went primarily because Benedict Cumberbatch was listed in it, but the rest of the cast also drew me in.

I was very surprised by this movie, because I went in knowing nothing about it, and the trailers did not know what to do with the movie. Every trailer I saw, in the theater or on tv, just used one scene with the majority of the cast all smiling and laughing around a dinner table with some lines from Meryl Streep and highlighted that certain actors were in it. Judging from the looks of that dinner scene and Streep's dialogue I thought it might be a play, and lo and behold, the credit "Based on the play by Tracy Letts" came up within about 2-3 minutes of the start, if I remember correct.

August:Osage County was...interesting. All the info I could find on the play and the movie say it's a Dark Comedy, which generally means there is humor in dark or depressing subjects. While I admit there were humorous points within the film, enough to garner a chuckle now and then, it overall felt bleak and depressing. You watch a family disintegrate in three acts. By the end of this movie I just felt sad.

The basic plot of the movie is that the head of the Weston family, played by Sam Shepard, goes missing. So his drug addled and cancer ridden wife played by Meryl Streep calls her sister and three estranged daughters for support. They all convene on the old family home and have to deal with the high dysfunction between each member of the family.

In the end, I didn't feel like August:Osage County was a good movie. I thought it was a great play in movie form. As a movie, I don't think it worked as well as it could have, with an ending I could tell from a mile away was added because the kind of closure needed in a play is not the same as a movie. I thought every actor did a great job, no matter how big or small the part was. Meryl Streep did some of the best work I've ever seen her do, and that's saying something. I was definitely colored by my expectations for the movie however. All the trailers I saw just showed the introductions of characters and them laughing and smiling around the dinner table. I thought it was going to be some sort of comedy. But if you go into this movie thinking it's going to be a barrel of laughs you're mistaken. In fact, the majority of that dinner table scene they use so prominently in the trailer is Meryl Streep's drug addled character systematically delivering cruel insults or opinions to everyone at the table. The most laughs my friend and I had actually came from one character's music choice in his douchey car as he would speed past people. I'm pretty sure I'll actually never watch the film again, though I do think it was good. It's just not something I'd revisit. Though if I had a chance to see the play I'd go and see it, but as a movie I think it's worth seeing once.

Music Review - Forest Swords - Engravings

Forest Swords is the stage name of English producer Matt Barnes, and Engravings is his debut album.



I've been a big fan of Forest Swords' work since his 2010 EP Dagger Paths, which captured my attention. When I found out he had made a full length album I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was even better, though still riding the same style of "lost in the forest" style Indie Electronic Barnes is becoming known for.

When I said "lost in the forest" I wasn't kidding. The majority of the music Forest Swords makes, particularly on Engravings, has this old, earthy sound to it, tones I can't even fathom sounding anything less than a part of the earth itself. And yet, it's brand new. The way it sounds to me is as if you've just gone on an exploration of an old forest and are wandering through. You don't particularly care which way you're going, you're just letting the experience wash over you. And so the same goes for Engravings. While the songs all have a pretty clear beginning and end, it album as a whole feels more like a singular experience, letting these unusual sounds and textures wash over you. The song I think stands out the most on it's own however is Thor's Stone. Barnes probably felt the same way, as he made a music video for it and made it the single.

The music is certainly odd, but it's charming and beautiful. I'd say if you're into either the Indie Electronic scene or just unique listening experiences you should check out Engravings. Put it on and go for a walk, or a drive. Don't make the album your prime focus, instead, do something else with it on and let it wash over you. See how it effects your mood.

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