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Category: Media
This is a container category for media reviews and related drivel.
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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.
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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.
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Earth below us, twisting, falling.
Since I’m not prone to writing actual reviews, I’m renaming the “Reviews” category to simply “Media.” That way I can talk about movies, games, music and what-not and have somewhere to put such specific (yet still pointless) ramblings.
What? This is the sort of thing I lose sleep over, folks.
Anyway. I just thought I’d mention that Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom” is one of my all-time favorite songs. I like David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” too, of course, but that song isn’t on my portable music player. There’s just something perfectly 80’s-pop-music about “Major Tom” (aka “Major Tom’s Return”) that suits me right down to the ground.
As it were.
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Toy Matinee
This is the album that my old buddy Steve and I bought solely because of a tiny article in Tower Records’ “Pulse” magazine. It told of a new band whose writers’ chief influences covered the gamut of everything Steve and I liked.
Oddly enough, we weren’t disappointed. “Toy Matinee” is a great pop record. It’s got some of the snappiest lyrics anywhere, it’s chock full of catchy beats and nifty hooks, and it tugs at your emotions. “Last Plane Out” and “Turn It On Salvador” are brilliantly smirking pieces. “The Toy Matinee” is a gorgeously sad song, and one of my all time favorites all on its own. “Queen of Misery” and “There Was A Little Boy” are a bit dark, while “We Always Come Home” is gentle and homey in a non-tacky way.
I love this album, and I always intended to save the best for last. (Sure, nobody’s awake to see it. It’s the principle of the thing, donchaknow?) The promo contains parts of “Last Plane Out,” “Queen of Misery,” “The Toy Matinee” and “We Always Come Home.” Enjoy, please, won’t you?
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Fiction
What do you get when you take a prolific composer and producer and have her rework some of her most familiar music, add some original material and release the album Stateside? You get Yuki Kajiura’s “Fiction.”
Kajiura has a fairly distinctive style even apart from the fact that a lot of her songs’ lyrics are written in languages other than Japanese. And no, not all of the songs on the album are English either, as a couple of the tracks from the anime series Noir are represented here, namely “Salva Nos” and “Canta per Me,” albeit in renditions far more grandiose than the originals. The versions of “Key of the Twilight” and “Fake Wings” (from .hack) are fairly straightforward but no less enjoyable for that fact.
It’s the lesser-known tracks that really make the album, though. “Cynical World” is pretty, peppy and dark all at once. “Fiction” and “Vanity” are a hauntingly beautiful pair of songs. “Zodiacal Sign” is a collection of what could be considered “action sequence” background music from another anime title, and “Open Your Heart” is sweetly uplifting, almost too sweetly perhaps, but by that point on the album one tends not to mind too much.
Don’t let the fact that half of this album started life as music for anime series turn you away. Try the promo, which features “Key of the Twilight,” “Open Your Heart,” “Cynical World” and “Fiction.” Unless what you hear really turns you off, I wholeheartedly recommend this album to you.