Here is an album that should appeal first and foremost to fans of Agalloch. Waldgeflüster is a rather recent creation. The one-man project was started by Winterherz in Germany in 2005 and released its second full length this past May. I can’t speak for his first album, but Femundsmarka definitely deserves more attention than it’s bound to get. A product of that marriage of black metal and ambient folk that has become rather common these days, it might not reach the very top but it certainly rises above the status quo.
Interlude II: Night
Unfortunately most of the folk and ambient tracks of the album aren’t available on youtube. This one, as much as I love it, is my least favorite of the four. Just consider that while the vibe this track offers is present throughout the album, the musical styles creating it vary. The intro and outro make use of acoustic guitar, and the first interlude is a beautiful ambient piano piece.
The concept of the album is pretty self explanatory, but requires a bit of German translation. Femundsmarka is a national park situated in the mountain range separating Norway from Sweden, and the album is a musical retelling of the artist’s travels there, translating literally as “Femundsmarka: A Journey in Three Chapters”. The track list, roughly, translates to:
Prologue: Departure
Chapter 1: Lakeland
Interlude: Rest
Chapter 2: Stony Deserts
Interlude: Night
Chapter 3: Spruce Grove
Epilogue: Homecoming
Generally speaking, the main chapters are black metal and the in-betweens are folk, but there is plenty of cross-over both ways.
Chapter 1: Lakeland
So if many of the metal portions of the album are as reminiscent of Drudkh as the folk bits are of Agalloch, it should come as no surprise that all three bands highlight nature as their main theme. I could go about comparing them all, but I don’t think it would be entirely fair. This isn’t some monumental standard-setting album like Swan Road or Pale Folklore, nor does it strive to be.
And any first impressions that Winterherz is just copying other artists’ styles should vanish around the 2:30 mark anyway. It commences the most descriptive movement of the album, as you can hear the traveler begin to comprehend the beauty that surrounds him, exploding in a final triumphal realization around 4:20.
The work certainly isn’t perfect. I struggled at times in Chapters 2 and 3 to remember that Winterherz was trying to show me something and not just writing another metal album. But its high points are pretty great, and the only standard you might say it falls short of at times is its own–it’s consistently good, just not consistently visual. The introduction, interludes, and outro are my favorite moments, and give the album a higher degree of stylistic variance than most metal of its kind. The more subdued entries aren’t sparse, either, filling up nearly half of the album.
In the absence of a full track list on youtube, someone took the effort to compile an eight minute sample of the album that covers a lot of ground without revealing too much. I’ll leave you with this. If you have to buy it to hear the rest, well, your money will be well spent. Not an album of the year contender, but a pleasant surprise from an artist you’ve probably never heard of.
San Diego Comic-Con is just less than a day away from official opening up it’s doors for 2011 and already we’ve gotten the official trailer for the fourth film in the Spider-Man film franchise, The Amazing Spider-Man. This time around the trio of Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst have been replaced by Marc Webb, Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone as the franchise goes through a major franchise reboot.
The trailer pretty much shows a new take on the Peter Parker/Spider-Man origin story. There looks to be some changes in this version of the character’s origin. For one thing there’s no Mary Jane Watson to be seen as this reboot takes a page from the first issues of the Stan Lee and Steve Ditko comics as Gwen Stacy comes in as Peter Parker’s love interest. Emma Stone as a blonde still needs some getting used to, but then again she’s Emma Stone and I haven’t seen her in anything where she didn’t rock. Another major change to this origin story in the inclusion of Peter Parker’s biological parents in the early scenes before Uncle Ben and Aunt May make their entrance.
The question really is how does Andrew Garfield look as Peter Parker. He definitely looks the part to a certain degree, but from some of the scenes shown of him being Peter it looks like the filmmakers may be going a tad too much on the angst-part of Peter’s personality. Hopefully, Peter’s initial awkwardness and goofy attitude didn’t get toned down too much. If there’s anything about Peter Parker’s personality which long-time fans will agree on it’s that Peter’s always been a goofball and all-around smartass which is why Spider-Man was always a fan-favorite. He was never a brooding, emo-driven character.
Did the trailer blow me away or raise my anticipation for the film which is still a year away from release? Sadly, I will have to say no. The trailer looked good, but showing scenes of another take on the origin story that everyone who saw the first film already knows may be a misfire decision. I had trepidation about both X-Men: First Class and Green Lantern before those films’ releases. The former surprised me with how well the filmmakers pulled off that franchise’s reboot while the latter was a major disappointment despite having such positive buzz after WonderCon 2011.
Will The Amazing Spider-Man be the former or the latter? We shall find out in a year when the film official comes out on July 3, 2012.
Hi there and welcome to the latest edition of Let’s Second Guess The Academy. Previously, we second-guessed the Academy’s choice for best picture of 1990, 1994, and 1998. It seems only fitting that we now jump ahead another 4 years and reconsider the race for best picture of 2002.
In 2002, the Academy nominated five films for best picture. Those films were Chicago, Gangs of New York, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Pianist, and The Hours. They ultimately named Chicago the best film of 2002. Were they right?
And now, here’s my favorite part of second guessing the Academy. What if none of the five nominated films had been released in 2002? Which other films would you have nominated? Below is a list of some of 2002’s most acclaimed and memorable films. You can vote for up to 10 replacement nominees and write-in votes are allowed.
Blut aus Nord have released eight albums, and prior to this I’d only heard their last one, Dialogue with the Stars. So shame on me for thinking they were a rather chilled out black metal band with space-themed music and a lead guitarist with progressive rock tendencies. Fans of the band might hear a lot of consistencies in 777 Sect(s), but I could barely tell it was the same group. For better or worse.
Epitome 1
Because if Dialogue with the Stars was a pleasant ride, 777 Sect(s) is a chaotic nightmare. “Painful to listen to” is a description few bands acquire by intent, and bravo to them, I guess, for breaking from that norm. 777 Sect(s) tours some astral wasteland–some distant dimension of post-industrial horror that you’d really rather just avoid but can appreciate all the same. After about five and a half minutes of running for your life, just when you can barely stand any more of it, the music finds a safe haven, a place to reflect on the monster you’ve just engaged. It is remarkably effective, with the outro of the first track giving you time to catch your breath before gazing out from your refuge onto Epitome 2.
Epitome 2
The music describes what you’re looking at better than words can–some vast vulgar hell that marries a cyberpunk scene to an installment of the Doom series. Take what you will from this song. It seems to me like the centerpoint around which the rest of the album is designed–a portrait of the world you’ve briefly escaped from and are doomed to dive back into after seven minutes’ repose.
Epitome 5
777 Sect(s) isn’t like some Hollywood action-horror flick though, packed with distracting eye candy and special effects. It has its highs and lows, its moments of intensity and calm, but nothing is ever pleasant. After the second track you are never again permitted to live in the moment or appreciate the vastness of it all. No, it’s more realistic than a movie. You’re there, and it’s a shitty place to be, so there will be no relief. The feeling of dread never goes away, constantly nagging and distressing you. Blut aus Nord see to it through a series of songs that are not only ugly but sometimes downright annoying. The annoyance though–the repetition of unmelodic nonsense no matter how often the songs beg for coherence–can’t be directed at the band. You know that it’s intentional. You know that you’re not supposed to like it. So it manifests instead as anxiety.
Epitome 6
Even the closing song, the only coherent track besides Epitome 2, isn’t something you can really enjoy. Like track 2, it’s more of a grand view of the hell that surrounds you, but unlike that first look, where the recognition that you were a part of it had not quite sunk in, you’re not going to leave this one feeling good about yourself. The fear and disgust are ever present.
The end result is an album I never want to listen to again. You know, a lot of black metal, especially atmospheric scene-setting stuff, is really enjoyable if you aren’t too stubborn to appreciate the darker side of things. But this album, for me at least, doesn’t tap into the dark and vulgar. It harnesses fear and distress as its focal points, and does so not in real-world settings that anyone with a backbone wouldn’t be startled by, but rather within a nightmare. That’s something I’ve not come to sufficient terms with yet to enjoy. Perhaps what I take from 777 Sect(s) isn’t quite what the band intended, but there’s certainly something there for the taking, and it’s not for the meek.
It’s been a while since I posted a What Lisa Marie Watched Last Night, which is unfortunate because these are some of my favorite posts to write. If nothing else, they give me an excuse to use this site to extol the virtues of a good Lifetime movie. Well, last night, I watched a made-for-TV movie that belonged on Lifetime, despite the fact that it actually premiered on ABC Family. The name of this film is Cyberbully and it doesn’t have much in common with Larry Clark’s Bully.
Why Was I Watching It?
After you see the same commercial about fifty times, you really don’t have much choice but to watch. That’s why commercials work. However, I am happy to say that I did stand up to the forces of relentless advertising by DVRing the movie and watching it on my own time. So there.
What Was It About?
So, there’s this teenage girl (played by Emily Osment) who gets a laptop for her birthday and her mother (Kelly Rowan) foolishly allows Osment to spend hours surfing the web unsupervised. So, Osment joins this social site called Clickster which is supposed to be like Facebook but, from what they showed onscreen, really looked a lot more like MySpace. And I mean the MySpace of today and not the cool MySpace that we all used to brag about being on.
Anyway, somebody hacks Osment’s Clickster Account which leads to Osment getting a reputation for being a slut and soon all the rich girls in high school are giving her a hard time and then somebody sets up a fake account as some boy from another school and eventually, Osment tries to commit suicide and her mom ends up blaming it all on a lack of governmental regulation.
What Worked?
It’s difficult to really criticize this film, despite the fact that — like a lot of films about cyberbullying — it was obviously made by people who don’t really understand how the Internet works or how teenagers view the world. The people who made the film obviously had their hearts in the right place and the film’s ultimate message was a pure and sincere one. It was obvious that a lot of the film’s plot was inspired by the true life of case of Megan Meier, a 13 year-old girl who committed suicide after being cyberbullied in much the same way as the character played by Emily Osment in this film. The case of Meier was so tragic that I can still not write about it without getting tears in my eyes.
The film was actually pretty well-acted, especially by Osment and Kay Panabaker, who plays Osment’s best friend.
Most importantly, the film didn’t allow its good intentions to keep it from going totally and completely over the top in a few key moments. Perhaps the moment that most made me forget about the film’s good intentions and just enjoy it on a camp level was when Osment, struggling to open up a child-proof bottle of pills, screams, “I CAN’T GET THE TOP OFF!”
What Didn’t Work?
Okay, maybe this wasn’t a big moment but it’s something I noticed and it really gnawed at me. When Osment first finds herself being bullied, she responds by calling one of the bullies a “bitch” online and then her mom finds out and goes, “No, you cannot be mean just because other people are being mean,” and as the film goes on, it becomes apparent that we’re meant to agree with her. But seriously, some day, I’m going to have a daughter and if she ever gets in trouble for calling a bully ” a bitch,” you better believe I’m going to stand behind my daughter 100%. Actually, I’ll probably call the bully a bitch first.
When I saw that scene, I immediately flashed back to what my mom once told me when I came home from school crying because of some mean girls. She sat me down, explained to me the importance of keeping my thumb on the outside whenever I made a fist, and then said, “Lisa Marie, if those putas de mierda try to make you cry, you break their nose.”
Now, I have to be honest — despite the fact that I now knew how to make a fist, I still had no idea how to use that fist to break someone’s nose. I doubt I have the upper body strength to pull that off anyway. But, regardless of whether it was good advice, it was what I needed to hear at that time because, at the very least, it let me know that I had someone in my corner and, even more importantly, it assured me that I was the victim and not to blame.
Anyway, back to Cyberbully, the main problem with this film is that after one hour or so, the movie’s storyline becomes far too much of a PSA for its own good. Unfortunately, the PSA isn’t for bullies to reconsider their actions or for the victims of bullies to know that “it gets better.” Instead, the PSA tries to convince us that we can wipe out bullying by passing legislation, getting the government involved, and doing the whole activist thing, as if 1) bullying is an activity that can be regulated as opposed to just a really ugly expression of human nature and 2) we can actually trust the government to make life better for anyone.
This is one of those films where, at the end of the film, the entire school stands up to the bully and basically bullies her into being a nicer person. Honestly, it seems like it would be a lot more helpful for all these anti-bullying films to just say that being a teenager sucks, it’s going to suck for a long time, but if you get through it, you’ll have the pleasure of seeing everyone who bullied you get fat and miserable. Instead, we get these false visions of humanity in which the entire world will have your back just because you’re in the right. That’s all very uplifting but what are you going to do once you realize that the world, for the most part, doesn’t even know you exist?
“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments
Well, the entire film was about silly girls acting over dramatic so there were … ahem … there were a few just like me moments. Well, more than a few.
Perhaps the biggest just like me moment was due to the fact that I had my e-mail, Facebook and MySpace accounts hacked by an ex-boyfriend once and he changed all of my statuses to something slutty (well, more slutty and definitely lacking my trademark sense of postmodern humor) and sent out a mass e-mail under my name that read, “I want to fuck you madly.” (If nothing else, that made me the most popular girl in the Art History study group for a week or two.) Anyway, I ended up deleting every account I had, getting a restraining order on the guy, and spending the next two years being very paranoid and untrusting. So, in other words, don’t be a cyberbully because it seriously fucks people up.
Lessons Learned:
Be kind and remember that there’s a human being reacting to everything you say. Also, some pill bottles are more difficult to open than others. But mostly the be kind part.
There’s a commercial out for Summer’s Eve that I’ve seen in the theatre. In it, it shows various battles while in the background, there’s a voice over explaining that “Men have fought for it, killed and died for it.” While that ends up being a little humorous at the end, it does point out something. Guys will often do anything for love (or is it lust)?
Take Olive Oyl as a case in point. I know, it’s off the wall and weird with all of the Hotties that have graced the Shattered Lens (and I could get myself kicked for all this), but hear me out. I made something of a fun dare with Arleigh that I could write this – despite the shame that may come from it – and am getting it out there.
That red shirt.
Her Leia-like hairdo, complete with the ponytail.
And those sexy boots.
It’s Olive’s apparent flaws that make her beautiful, at least to two men.
Ms. Oyl, the love of Popeye the Sailor, manages throughout to always attract the attention of both Popeye and his rival, Bluto (or Brutus, in some stories). Like the characters in Twilight, the two men are always at each other to defend her honor over the years in Max Fleischer’s serials. While she may be petite by today’s standards, Olive brings a sense of vitality and clumsiness that adds to her allure, not to mention her bright smile. She’s all woman.
Olive Oyl is also a resourceful girl, whether it’s by helping her man sneak into a Rodeo or even putting up a fight for him (she once at the spinach and beat up a girl), she shows she’s not one to always wait to be saved (note that I say always – she does have her times where she needs help). Imagine how she’d be if she were written differently, with a darker tone. Perhaps she’d be like Catherine Trammell, Sharon Stone’s character in Basic Instinct, dancing between but never being “owned” by either suitor. As long as Bluto has an interest in her, Popeye will run to her defense. Thus, she owns all the cards. A wise one, that cutie.
The first season of the tv adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s critically-acclaimed zombie comic book series, The Walking Dead, was a huge hit for AMC despite only running a truncated 6-episode for the initial season. For it’s second season the series will get a much heftier 13-episode season which put’s it in line with most basic cable series like Breaking Bad, Mad Men and True Blood.
Both a new poster promoting the series’ return this coming October and a quick first look footage from the new season premiered within 24-hours of each other with the footage premiering during the latest season premiere of fellow AMC stablemate Breaking Bad. The poster shows the Winnie with the main characters from the first season standing upon it with hordes of zombies surrounding it. It’s a scene done many times before with the most recent one in the French zombie film, The Horde. The poses of the characters also look like they’re from solo character portraits and just photoshopped into the image. They definitely could’ve done a better job, but at least the zombies look cool.
The footage shown is pretty straightforward as we see Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes hiding and waiting behind a tree to ambush a shambling zombie with a huge rock and then doing the same to another which enters the frame. This scene looks too simple, but watching Lincoln’s expression and mannerism spoke much about how much darker his character becomes. I like how the zombies look much more emaciated here as if they’re starting to starve as their food source begin to get smaller and smaller.
The Walking Dead Season 2 will return to AMC this October. Here’s to hoping it’s early October and not another Halloween weekend premiere.
The first official teaser trailer for the third and final installment of Christopher Nolan’s Dark KnightSaga has finally arrived in it’s official form. The teaser had leaked in bootleg form last week. People who went to watch Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Part 2 were able to see the teaser in all it’s glory on the big-screen and from my own experience it was one of the major highlight’s even before the main attraction began.
The teaser trailer plays exactly as it sounds. It teases just enough to begin the buzz and hype which should run a full year before the film’s release. We see glimpses of Tom Hardy in the role of Bane. Most of the teaser has Police Commissioner Jim Gordon in a hospital bed looking like he may have just gone a round or two with Bane. It also brings back the lesson first given to Bruce Wayne by Ra’s al Ghul from the first film about how a man could become a legend. There’s even some Inception-like imagery of crumbling high-rises that could only mean Gotham City itself now under siege.
It’s going to be a long wait til The Dark Knight Rises premieres in the theaters on July 20, 2012.
Riois one of those films that I missed when it had it’s initial run at the theaters. However, last week, I finally got a chance to see it at the “dollar” theater. Now, I have to admit that I consider the dollar theater to be something like the sixth ring of Hell and, before the movie started, I posted the following to twitter: “Wow, there’s a lot of ugly and obese children in this theater.” And indeed, that was the case. What I forgot to mention is that a lot of them were there with equally ugly and obese parents, the types who talked loudly through the film in accents that carried the dual twang of ignorance and stagnation. Despite the surroundings though, I found Rio to be a perfectly pleasant little animated film.
Rio is the story of Blu (voice by Jesse Eisenberg), a blue macaw who, though originally from Brazil, has grown up in Minnesota and, as a result, has never learned how to fly. Blu returns to Brazil with his owner (Lesley Mann) so that he can mate with another macaw, Jewel (Ann Hathaway) and keep the species from dying out. However, things don’t go exactly as planned as 1) Jewel is more interested in escaping captivity than in mating and 2) both Rio and Jewel are abducted by a psychotic Cockatoo named Nigel (Jermaine Clement). Nigel works for a bunch of poachers and soon Jewel and the flightless Blu find themselves on the run, looking for their owner while the Rio Carnaval goes on all around them.
As one of my old theater teachers one said about me, Rio “is not without a certain fun charm.” The film’s storyline of neurotic animals getting lost in an exotic locale and eventually finding the strength to believe in themselves is pretty much standard animation fare but the action moves along quickly and the movie takes full advantage of the whole Rio mystique. The film’s animators create the Rio de Janeiro that everyone hopes they’ll discover if they ever make it down to Brazil. Perhaps most importantly, Rio is child-appropraite without ever being so childish as to inspire adults to start drinking while the little ones laugh.
The voice actors all do a pretty good job distinguishing their individual characters. Jesse Eisenberg is perfectly neurotic as Blu while Anne Hathway’s vocals are properly headstrong as Jewel. The real stand-out here is Jermaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords. Clement, with his deep, wonderfully dramatic voice, brings a lot of flair to the villainous Nigel and, despite being a psycho Cockatoo, quickly became an audience favorite. Though the human bird owners don’t get much to do, Leslie Mann and Rodrigo Santoro are so endearing that you actually wish they had more screen time. On the other hand, if, like me, you found George Lopez to be grating before seeing Rio, this film isn’t going to do much to change your mind. (Lopez, not surprisingly, plays the know-it-all bird who helps Blu and Jewel make their way through Rio.)
As I watched Rio, I realized just how spoiled we all got last year as far as animated films were concerned. Last year, I got a chance to see Toy Story 3, How To Train Your Dragon, Shrek Forever After, A Town Called Panic, The Illusionist, Megamind, and Despicable Me. It was, in many ways, a banner year for cinematic animation. With the exception of Rango, there haven’t been any animated films so far that can really compare with what we were given last year. As a result, it’s easy to be dismissive of a straight-forward, relatively simple family film like Rio. That’s unfortunate because, taken on its own terms, Rio is a perfectly enjoyable way to spend 90 minutes. Just don’t go into it expecting to see Toy Story 3 and you’ll be fine.
The first episode of the fourth season of Torchwood was a major success for the series as it moves from it’s British locale over to the United States. It was a move which gave the series (now dubbed Miracle Day) an even more epic tone which was a good thing since the series truly became an epic one throughout it’s third season, Children of Earth. The premiere episode saw the introduction of the American half of what I assume will be the newly-reconstituted Torchwood Institute. Mekhi Phifer comes in as the confidently arrogant CIA operative Rex Matheson who has a major stake in finding out the true agenda behind what the world has been calling “Miracle Day”. Taking on the role of support to Rex is the idealistic and, somewhat, naive CIA analyst Esther Drummond (played by Alexa Havins) who first introduces Rex to the term Torchwood in the first episode of the new season.
“Rendition” marks the second episode of the series and continues exactly where the premiere episode left off with Rex taking custody of the last two surviving members of the Torchwood Institute, the previously immortal Capt. Jack Harkness and Gwen Cooper, and renditioning them back to the US through some vague US-UK intelligence cooperation program in the hopes that Torchwood will either shed a light into whats happening in the world or flush out the people who do know and who seem intent on killing Jack and Gwen.
This episode brings in a couple three new players into the new series whose agenda range from ambiguous to outright hostile in regards to the event of “Miracle Day” and the Torchwood survivors. There’s Rex’s fellow CIA operative Lyn (played by Dollhouse alum Dichen Lachmann) who has been sent to “assist” Rex in bringing stateside Jack and Gwen on a chartered jumbo jet. We find out soon enough Lyn’s agenda in accompanying Rex on this rendition flight as she secretly communicates with CIA deputy director Brian Friedkin (Wayne Knight) who seems to want Capt. Jack out of the way before the plane lands on Dulles International. The interaction between Lyn, Rex and the rest of Torchwood and flight crew really sets her up as the clear antagonist for this episode though it’s not yet established whether she will stay beyond this episode. Wayne Knight as the duplicitious CIA director Friedkin was a hit-and-miss addition for me. His character was written quite well, but I think the casting director for the show really dropped the ball in putting such a recognizable face in a role that needed someone who could get lost in the role. I’m sure I wasn’t the only viewer of this episode who either vocally or mentally shouted “Newman!” when he first appeared in the episode.
The third new character to make their appearance in this episode was the PR consultant Jilly Kitzinger (Lauren Ambrose) who seemed really gung-ho in trying to represent the suddenly famous (instead of infamous) pedophile-murderer Oswald Danes whose blubbering breakdown during a news interview has begun to earn him shouts of forgiveness from the faceless masses. Lauren Ambrose as Kitzinger looked to be too peppy at first glance, but as the show progressed and she began appearing in places where one would wonder why she was there at all it planted seeds of just exactly who Jilly Kitzinger really is. This character is definitely one whose agenda may just swing back and forth as the series goes on.
This was the first episode of the new series to not be written by showrunner Russell T. Davies and one written by a newcomer to the Torchwood series in Doris Egan. The fact that Egan is new to the series didn’t really hamper the tone of this episode. It felt and sounded like a Torchwood episode. She even got a good handle on the Gwen Cooper character who bordered on organized panic during the flight to the US as Capt. Jack suffered through an attempt on his suddenly mortal life. I still get a kick at how quickly Gwen’s speech patterns get the more stressed out she gets. I was told by a hardcore fan over on Twitter that it was due to her being Welsh that she speaks so fast in such situation. That may or may not be true, but it made for some very amusing segments during an episode which continued to explore the dark side of the world population’s sudden bout with immortality.
It’s this exploration of whether “Miracle Day” actually is a miracle or a curse which gave the episode it’s serious weight throughout the episode. We see through Dr. Suarez (Arlene Tur) interacting with every expert trying to find out just exactly what has happened that “Miracle Day” looks to be a miracle by name only. The episode points out that people may night be dying but they’re still succumbing to injuries, diseases and plain old age. This dilemma brings about talks of a need to change how triage now operate and how “Miracle Day” looks to be the perfect breeding ground for super-germs and viruses. And while these were being discussed the series still hasn’t determined or given any clue as to the cause of this event whether it be natural, supernatural or extraterrestrial.
Overall, “Rendition” was a very good follow-up to an excellent premiere episode. We learn more about the new characters (all of them American) and see the old Torchwood faces back to doing what they do best and that’s solving a grave problem by the skin of their teeth. The new series has so far kept this Torchwood neophyte’s attention and actually has sold him on revisiting the past episodes and looking at them with eyes opened up by Miracle Day.
Through the Shattered Lens 