Category: Media

This is a container category for media reviews and related drivel.

  • Music Library Meme

    The guy who draws Dork Tower posted a silly meme a few days ago, and I decided to hop on board. (Hey, I haven’t done one of these in a while. I think I’m allowed.) Mind you, I don’t use iTunes (no Ogg Vorbis support) so all I can do is make Winamp jump through the hoops. Luckily I’m already in the habit of using the Media Library…

    So here goes:

    How many songs total: 5,028
    How many hours or days of music: 15 days, 2 hours, 37 minutes
    Most recently played: Dodo/Lurker by Genesis
    Most played: Integral by Pet Shop Boys (10 times) *
    Most recently added: “Version 2.0” (album) by Garbage **

    Sort by song title:
    First Song: #1 Crush by Garbage
    Last Song: Zoot Suit Riot by Cherry Poppin’ Daddies

    Sort by time:
    Shortest Song: Vitamin C by Yoko Kanno (Cowboy Bebop OST #2 “No Disk,” 0:06) ***
    Longest Song: Sasha’s Voyage of Ima by BT (“Ima” CD#2, 42:45) ****

    Sort by album:
    First album: “10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1” by Midnight Oil
    Last album: “Zone Of The Enders OST” *****

    First song that comes up on Shuffle: I’m With Stupid by Pet Shop Boys

    Search the following and state how many songs come up: ******

    • Death – 9
    • Life – 71
    • Love – 190
    • Hate – 31
    • You – 377
    • Sex – 9

    Most Represented Artist: Genesis (233 tracks) *******

    Footnotes:

    * I’ve only recently gotten into the habit of using the Media Library. Otherwise there’d be songs with much higher play counts.

    ** I had to find this the old-fashioned way: Doing a date search in the file directory. Winamp seems not to track my “recently added” very well for some reason.

    *** I’d have found the shortest “proper” song in the list, but I ran out of time this morning. The first dozen entries were “non-songs” of one sort or another. So I gave up.

    **** Which beat out Genesis’ “Supper’s Ready,” the previous (three) contender(s) (original and two live renditions), by almost twenty minutes!

    ***** Last studio album, not a single, by a proper band: Worldillia by Porno Graffitti

    ****** In Winamp, file path and album are included in all searches. These numbers are therefore inflated a little bit. Yes, this annoys me but there seems to be no way to search only in the title of a song. (Argh.)

    ******* By no means is all of my Genesis music ripped to MP3 or Ogg. The same is true for most of my other favorite artists, actually. That first number (~5000 tracks) would be much, much higher if I really wanted to go crazy with the digital music library…

  • Whirled Tour

    I’ve not yet left the United States to see foreign parts, but my music collection has gone far and wide. In a bit less than an hour you can visit the Congo, Amlapura, Kashmir, Beirut, London, Leipzig, Moscow, Bangkok, swing through California (domestic and yet alien), and end up in a couple of very cold places like the mountain K2 and the continent of Antarctica.

    Have you packed your bags, or at least your headphones? Okay then, enjoy your trip!

  • Forty Eight Oh Seven

    This post is part challenge, part present to you, my faithful readers. (The rest of you schmucks are just getting lucky. Hah!)

    Several times during the last few weeks I’ve answered the question, “What kind of music do you like?” Rattling off a list of musical artists provides a clue, perhaps, but I think the only way to make sense out of the mish-mash of names is to hear what kind of sound puts a tap in my foot and a smile on my face. And so, I’ve carefully assembled what amounts to a broadcast hour of solid music. No commercials, no chatter, just tunes I love by some of my favorite musicians.

    It’s up to you to a) see if you can stand listening to every song and b) try to discern who, if not what, you’re hearing. Ready? Steady? Go!

    [audio:FortyEightOhSeven.mp3]

    Good stuff, eh?

  • Testing, testing: MP3 player plugin

    This is just a quick test to see if the following actually works:

    [audio:BT_Movement_Promo.mp3]

    If it doesn’t play for you, please let me know what web browser you’re using and on what operating system. Thank you.

  • Spider-Man 3

    I’m coming late to this party, but not as late as I am to the TMNT party. (Yes, that’s a review I should have gotten around to weeks ago. Whoops.) Please note that I’m making no attempt to hide spoilers here. It’s my firm belief that nothing I say here will “ruin” your enjoyment of the movie, but if you disagree with that on principle then you should probably wait to read this posting until after you’ve seen the film.

    I’ll wait.
    (more…)

  • Curse of the Golden Flower

    We managed to miss seeing it in the theater, so Kyla picked this one up on DVD a while back. Last night we made time to take it in. And oh, there’s so much to take in!

    “Curse of the Golden Flower” is an expensive and beautiful Chinese film portraying an imperial family that, to put it simply, is one hell of a mess. The Emperor, his three sons, his consort, and the family of his key physician are almost the entirety of the cast… if you set aside the small army of servants and large army of… well, soldiers. I’ll try not to spoil much of the plot, but suffice to say that nobody has truly clean hands among the royal family.

    The trailers make this movie look like just another pretty, wire-fu spectacle starring Chow Yun Fat. In fact the martial arts action is quite limited, and appropriately so. What we get instead is a slow-boiling cauldron of familial frustration, plots and counterplots, and a peel-the-layers sense that these people are all quite dreadfully messed up and miserable. As all hell finally breaks loose we’re treated to a series of action set pieces slightly more grounded in reality than one would expect, and it’s all the more effective for the restraint. (“House of Flying Daggers,” by comparison, becomes so completely absurd in this regard that the dramatic, tragic ending is thoroughly weakened because the audience’s suspension of disbelief is trampled beyond repair.)

    In the meantime there’s plenty of good performances and outstanding costumes and sets to gaze upon. Seriously, this is a lavishly gorgeous film that you could run with the sound and subtitles off just for the sake of feasting on the eye candy. Apparently this is the most expensive Chinese feature film to date, and there’s no doubt that every penny of the cost made it to the screen.

    If you’re remotely interested in Asian cinema, “Curse” should be on your “to see” list even if you don’t end up purchasing a copy. It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and even someone who enjoys these movies as much as I do probably won’t watch it often. We’re not talking about a cheerful and uplifting film, after all, but Chinese actions dramas rarely feature happy endings. Still, this is a better movie sporting more depth than I originally expected, and is definitely worth the time.

    I leave you with this parting thought: When in doubt, bet on the assassins with the chain-sickles. Those guys kick ass.