I’m surprised that this is the very first post I’ve made for “Song of the Day” that’s unfiltered blues. I’ve posted songs which have blues influence in them from blues-rock to rhythm & blues, but never just pure blues. To rectify that slight mistake I’ve picked one of my favorite blues songs from one of my favorite bluesman with Taj Mahal’s dixieland blues jazz track, “Irresistible You“.
Right from the start this song just hooks it’s upbeat blues tempo with jazz trumpets and percussion plus Taj Mahal’s raspy, lived-in vocals. Most people equate blues to dour, downbeat songs, but just one listen to “Irresistible You” should disabuse that sort of musical stereotyping. This song may sound like dixieland jazz, but it’s a blues song true and true even when the piano section show’s up later to be followed by some solo horns before it leads to the final chorus.
I’ve listened to this song for an uncounted number of times and it always reminds me of my time when I visited and vacationed in New Orleans. When down and out this song always does it’s job in picking me up and telling me everything will be alright.
Irresistible You
Your magic hands … your lovin’ eyes Kissable lips … Baby, mine oh mine I’m in love … I’m in love And I know it’s true Tell me… who-o-o wouldn’t fall for irresistible you.
I don’t know what you got But it’s got me and I’m hooked Like a fish in the sea You make eagles call from above Make the Devil fall in love An-a … who-o-o … irresistible you.
Ohhh, come on … Lets walk awhile … I wanna talk … Talk talk talk to you honey child … You’ve been blessed … And you’re much … too much … There’s a wonder of a love in your touch.
Don’t ever fret … Don’t you worry about me I’ll never regret … How much you mean to me I love you … I love you My whole life through Tell me … who-o-o w=couldn’t fall for irresistible you.
Lets twist awhile …
Don’t ever fret … Don’t you worry about me I’ll never regret … How much you mean to me I love you … I love you My whole life through But tell me … who-o-o wouldn’t fall for irresistible you.
One of the big surprises for me film-wise in 2010 was a CG animated film that came out of left field. It wasn’t by Pixar and it didn’t come from Dreamworks Animation. No this CG film came from a little-known animation studio called Illumination Entertainment. Their very first full-length animated film would turn out to be a critical and box-office success. I’m talking about Despicable Meand while the character Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) and the three girls he adopts in the film were quite good it was Gru’s minions who stole the film from the bigger names.
In 2013 we’ll have the sequel to this film and what better way to lead off the first teaser trailer for Despicable Me 2than get the beloved minions announce the film’s arrival.
We’re just a little over two months away from the release one of this summer’s most-anticipated films. It’s a film that’s been 4 years in the making. The first pieces that set it up were 2008’s Iron Manand The Incredible Hulk. This was followed up by 2010’s Iron Man 2then finished up by the double-shot of 2011’s Thorand Captain America: The First Avenger.
It’s now 2012 and those five films will finally see it’s culmination with Joss Whedon’s The Avengers. It’s a superhero ensemble film starring each lead from all the aforementioned films with only Mark Ruffalo replacing Edward Norton in the role of Dr. Bruce Banner and his Hulk persona.
This latest official trailer from Marvel Studios gives a bit more insight as to the meat of The Avengersstory. Where the previous teasers and trailer just showed the Avengers team in action with explosions happening around them this new one shows some of the initial dysfunctions which will plague the team when it first goes into action against a resurgent Loki and his invading alien army. We also get more scenes with Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk not to mention some action sequences involving Captain America, Iron Man and Thor.
To say that the release of this trailer elicited a global geekgasm would be an understatement. Even now the interwebz is rife with theories as to what is the huge serpent-looking machine that chases Iron Man before the trailer ends.
The Avengersis set for a release date of May 4, 2012.
The video above was released today by 20th Century Fox as part of their marketing machine to help create buzz for their upcoming summer blockbuster scifi film Prometheus.
It’s a clip of a fictional keynote speech by one Peter Weyland at the TED 2023 conference. Guy Pearce plays the role of Peter Weyland and talks about how technology’s influence in human history from the beginning with fire (he mentions the Greek myth of Prometheus stealing the technology of fire from the gods and giving it to man) all the way to artificial intelligence and realistic cybernetic constructs.
Anyone who has been a fan of the Alien franchise will recognize the name Weyland. It’s the fictional transnational corporation which has become a major part of the films in the franchise and, to a degree, even to the Predatorfranchise. They’re the corporation which sends Ripley and the crew of the ore mining hauler Nostromo to the desolate planet of LV-426 where they encounter the very lifeform that would become one of film’s iconic monsters. It is also the corporation which 70+ years later would send a terraforming colony to the very same planet which would become a major part of the plot for Aliens. Even the David Fincherdirected third film, Alien3, would use the corporation as the monolithic badguy behind-the-scenes.
Weyland is just part of the corporation’s name as through the years it would combine with another corporation to become Weyland-Yutani. While the aliens in the franchise have been the immediate threat in all the films in the franchise it would be Weyland-Yutani who became the face of the corporate evil that continues to try to get samples of the very alien the franchise is known for.
It’s going to be interesting how this viral video ties into the upcoming Ridley Scott “prequel” to Alienand whether Weyland-Yutani will play a major role in the film’s plot. One thing I’m sure is that Pearce definitely plays a convincing corporate visionary with a God-complex that’s part Steve Jobs and part Richard Branson (if both iconic businessmen channeled their inner-darkside).
The latest AMV of the Day comes courtesy of AMV creator Rider4Z. Outside of Chiikaboom, his amv creations have become some of the best I’ve seen and have earned a place on my favorite list.
This time around his latest anime music video takes a song from one of my favorite metal bands and uses it to score a well-edited selection of scenes from the romance-fantasy anime series, Romeo x Juliet. While some fans of the video has nitpicked and pointed out that it spoils the ending to the anime I just laugh at such fools. Fools I say! I mean how can an anime series adapting Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet be spoiling anything.
I like the song choice of Within Temptation’s track “Faster” from their 2011 concept album, The Unforgiving. This is not the first time Rider4Z has used this band’s symphonic metal sound to score one of his videos. Each and everytime he uses this band’s music it just makes those videos very epic in tone and scope. This video has already won some early year accolades. It recently won Best Drama in the Katsucon 2012 AMV contest. I have a feeling this video will be making the rounds at this year’s anime conventions and should pick up a few more awards.
Last week we saw the cinematic “Take Earth Back” trailer for the upcoming Mass Effect 3rpg title from BioWare and EA. During tonight’s latest episode of AMC’s The Walking Dead we got to see another trailer for this upcoming game. This time around we get a live-action trailer about Earth being visited upon by the main antagonists of the series and that’s the giant, extragalactic biomechanical alien race who call themselves “The Reapers”.
For a live-action trailer this one does a great job at emphasizing the fact that Earth is royally screwed and that the player in the guise of Cmdr. Shepard must lead an army to take it back from the brink of destruction. I like how even in this future Earth once the proverbial crap hits the fan everyone will begin to riot instead of actually trying to band together to fight the invaders.
Mass Effect 3is set for a March 6, 2012 North American release date.
The Glen Mazzara era of The Walking Dead has done a very good job of speeding things along after an almost glacial pace that we got from the first half of the season. While the mid-season premiere with “Nebraska” continued some of the flaws which viewers and fans complained about in regards to the first half of the season it ended with a sequence which showed that Mazzara and his writers may have turned a corner from the more cinematic storytelling-style Darabont brought to the show. With last week’s episode, “Triggerfinger”, the show continues to make strides in adding a sense of desperation to the proceedings even when zombies are not involved.
Fans of the comic book and genre fans will always be thankful for Frank Darabont and his diligence in getting the comic book adapted to the tv screen, but with these last two episodes and then tonight’s “18 Miles Out” now in the bag we’ve begun to see that Frank’s style of drawing things out may have been hampering the show this season. Whether it was his vision for how the show was to unfold or just his style of storytelling, Frank’s first half of season 2 had lost that sense of danger that the show had built with a truncated first season. Tonight’s latest episode was a prime example of why it might have been the right call to let Darabont go and put a seasoned tv veteran on the helm.
We enter “18 Miles Out” in medias res just like episode 3 (one of the best episodes of this current season) and it’s a good sign of things to come for this episode. Before continuing I must say that anyone who still complains that the show was not showing enough zombie action need to sit down and just shut up or just stop watching a show that they’ve already decided to complain about no matter how good or bad each future episodes turn out.
With the past regime the issue with the character Randall recovering after his encounter with the spiked fence and Rick in the previous episode would’ve taken the rest of the season, but instead we’ve skipped a whole week in the show’s timeline as Rick and Shane drive 18 miles out of the farm to let the recovered kid go on his merry own way. This cold opening has Rick and Shane on the run from zombies with Randall still tied up and crawling his way towards a knife that could be his only salvation. For cold openings this one was actually pretty action-packed and full of tension that the episode will just continue to build on.
The episode switches back and forth between the adventures of Rick and Shane w/ Randall and the going’s on back on the farm with the youngest Greene daughter, Beth and her sudden crisis of of faith. Whenever scenes of the farm came on the screen in the past I’m sure there were much groaning and mumbling about how things were now about to slow down. For the first time in this season the farm without zombies was just as tense as the scenes with Rick and his group avoiding a group of zombies. The first season and some of the early parts of season 2 saw Andrea also go through the same crisis as Beth Greene goes through tonight. It’s a crisis born out of hopelessness about the situation they’re now in. Hershel has had to adjust to the revelation that what he thought about the zombies were all wrong and now his youngest must go through something same thing. Beth contemplates and even pleads with her older sister, Maggie, that there’s nothing left out in the world and just trying to persevere and move on was a wasted effort with the only guarantee was to be “gutted” by the very things they first thought were people who could be cured.
This situation back at the farm brings to a head what looks like the female version of the Rick and Shane power struggle. On one side we see Lori trying to raise Beth’s spirits and trying to bring what she calls a sense of “normalcy” in their chaotic new world. On the other side is Andrea whose has gone through what Beth is going through and doesn’t disagree with it. She sees it as an option that she was denied by Dale at the end of the last season and she won’t disagree and deny Beth the same choice. The confrontation between Lori and Andrea about this very subject matter brings to mind just how much Andrea has begun to see Shane as the leader of the group. While Lori still comes off across as somewhat of a shrew she does seem to be more in agreement with her husband’s way of thinking even in this zombie apocalypse.
This encounter between the group’s leading ladies just continues to highlight how much the show has moved to warp speed in abandoning the teasing of the first half of the season and just letting all the cards on the table in terms of each character’s motivations and agendas.
While the scenes at the farm were pretty good the highlight of the episode has to be the travails that Rick, Shane and Randall encounter 18 miles out. We see Rick finally have that “talk” with Shane about everything which has occurred while he was in a coma and since. There were several moments in this half of the episode’s story that showed not just Shane in a bad light but Rick as well as decisions have to be made to see who will survive the zombies. How things finally come to a head by episode’s end shows just how different Rick and Shane are and just how much Shane has been posturing trying to convince everyone that he’s the only one who could make the tough choices and decisions.
“18 Miles Out” goes to great lengths to make this second half of the show’s season 2 make up for the slow pacing of the first half and it succeeds. There’s still some little nitpicks and flaws here and there in terms of dialogue and how some of the characters come off, but it looks as if Mazzara and his writers have finally realized that subtlety might not be this show’s forte and, when handled accordingly, the show can succeed with being blunt. This show looks to be finally getting it’s focus down and we get one of the series’ best episodes since the pilot and I would say it’s best episode since.
Notes
Some great zombie make-up work by Nicotero and his gang over at KNB EFX for tonight’s episode. With the whole episode set in the daytime they don’t have the luxury of darkness and little light to hide imperfections in the make-up work. Every zombie chasing after Rick, Shane and Randall looked to have been given the “hero” treatment.
Some very good zombie kills tonight with the best one coming courtesy of Rick and using another zombie he’s already put down to help aim his third kill in a row.
Randall, played by Michael Zegen, comes off both as a scared kid who knows that his past associations may just be the death of him, but also as someone with a mean and sadistic streak in him as shown when he plays with the one zombie before he takes it out.
For may be the first time in this show’s short life, so far, the show doesn’t use the full cast in the episode. In the past we may have two or three cast members not making an appearance, but tonight we almost get a whole group. Not showing up tonight: Glenn, T-Dog, Carol, Daryl, Patricia, Jimmy, Dale. It made the episode feel so much more leaner.
We get some bit of fallout about Glenn freezing up because of what Maggie had told him before he went to town. I don’t know if Maggie should be going to Lori for advice but what she got was the right advice despite what people may think of Lori as a character.
While Lauren Cohan as Maggie Greene has been the more vocal and active of the Greene girls this season it was nice to see Emily Kinney get more than just a couple lines. Her predicament and how she played the role of the little girl who has lost all hope was quite good. Her message about how things were hopeless and that there really was nothing left to live for came off better than when Andrea did the same last season and earlier this season.
Tonight we get to see someone come off even worse than Lori. Andrea as the show has portrayed the character was already not a fan favorite, but her channeling of her inner-Shane in regards to Beth’s situation won’t be making her any new fans. It’s ironic considering how she lectured Shane about how his presentation about the right decisions left much to be desired. Her own presentation about her viewpoints was very Shane-like.
It’s a small step, but Sarah Wayne Callies’ performance as Lori continues to improve. We get some reasoning why she’s acted the way she has since we met her back in the pilot, but she still retains some of the shrewness that has made her hated by fans. It’ll be interesting how Mazzara and his writers balance this two sides to Lori’s character.
Rick and Shane finally have it out and it was quite the throwdown. One would think that Shane would have the upper-hand in this dust-up between the two friends, but Rick showed different. He may not be as cold and calculating as Shane likes to show he is, but Rick definitely showed he could handle himself not just against Shane but zombies who get the drop on him.
For a moment the writers almost made it so that Rick was about to pull a Shane on Shane in the end, but we see why Rick is different than his erstwhile deputy by episode’s end.
Shane has been one-upped by the very person he has been hounding as weak and pathetic all season and the look of impotence on Jon Bernthal’s face when this epiphany finally hits him was a great moment for this series.
The show has finally shown some clues as to how quickly the zombie apocalypse turned the world upside down. Two or weeks if we’re to believe what Shane told Rick in the beginning of the episode. Also, noticing how the zombie guards they put down earlier had no bites on them which goes a long way in putting The Walking Dead into Romero-style zombies.
Rick telling Shane to deal with how things between everyone in the group are as of now or leave. Telling him in the end to come back shows how much Rick still sees Shane as a friend who has lost his way and to come back to them instead of continuing the darker path he has set on since everything went to hell and especially since Otis.
Last week’s episode didn’t have a song to end the episode but tonight we have Wye Oak’s “Civilian” which went well with Shane looking at the grassy field with it’s lone zombie walking towards nowhere in particular. It was a very strong scene.
Time of a new “AMV of the Day” post and this time around it involves an anime which I thought was one of the best I’ve seen in the last ten years. This particular anime music video is called “Calling”.
The anime film SummerWars (released in 2009) was quite a surprise for me. I haven’t really gotten into anime films unless it’s made by Hayao Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon, but this particular one by Mamoru Hosada became quite a favorite. During Anime Expo 2011 an amv by creator NekoKitKat25hug ended up winning AX2011’s Best In Show during it’s AMV Competition. While I wasn’t able to attend AX2011 I was still intrigued to check out the amv which ended up winning the con’s top AMV trophy.
“Calling” pretty much condenses Summer Warsinto a four minute video to the tune of Shiny Toy Gun’s “Major Tom“. This wasn’t just a straight-up quick re-telling of the anime, but one that doesn’t really give away too much of the story like other amv’s who follow the same editing style. My favorite section of the video has to be final minute which still manages to make the film’s best scenes come off exciting and new.
“So, let’s chalk this up for what it is…wrong place, wrong time.” — Rick Grimes
It looks like no matter what some viewers may complain about The Walking Dead moving as slow as the zombies that ended the world it still manages to surprise everyone with scenes of great tension and burst of quality that we all want the show to be. This was most evident with how the mid-season return episode “Nebraska” at first seemed like it was going nowhere once again, but actually moved the story along. The ending of the previous episode helped Rick as a character grow though it also manages to make his fairer half in Lori become even more hated by most everyone with her stupid decision to try and go into town by herself.
Tonight’s episode continues the two major storylines which ended the previous episode. We get a cold opening which is terrifying despite what people may think about Lori as a character. That scene of the zombie trying to pop it’s head through the crack in the car’s windshield while Lori remained out of it then just before we segue into Bear McCreary’s opening theme she wakes up to see the half-eaten face pushing through.
The title of this latest episode is “Triggerfinger” and for the first third of the night it’s quite a proper one at that. No sooner as Rick, Hershel and Glen gather the weapons of the downed Dave of Tony from the previous episode do the trio get penned in the bar by the very friends the “would be” raiders spoke of. The episode shows just how much a danger survivors continue to be toward other survivors as cooler heads rarely prevail. Soon enough both sides are trading fire like a scene out of Rio Bravobut this time with the added danger of zombies in the midst.
During this scene between two groups trying to just survive we see differing philosophies. Rick’s group tries to defuse the situation even once the bullets start flying and when casualties begin piling up we see Rick still trying to hold onto his humanity by trying to save one of the opposing numbers who have seriously hurt himself in an attempt to leave town. The other group was shown to be more willing to cut loose anyone too injured to save themselves thus leaving them behind to the mercy of the approaching zombies. Mercies that involve the very thing some fans have complained about and that’s not enough zombie carnage. For just the second time in this show’s short life we see someone still alive being set upon by a group of zombies and eaten while still alive and screaming.
The other continuing story from the previous episode has Lori trying to survive the night after crashing her car. No matter what people personally think about Lori as a character this sequence show’ that she can go into survival mode when circumstances needs for her to suck it up and survive. She doesn’t whine or appear helpless despite the precarious situation she put herself in. The fact that people back in the farm don’t even realize she’s been gone for hours must just add fuel to the fire fans have been fanning since the show first started. The series has a role for Lori and while it seems to be one of wet blanket for the most part the ending of tonight’s episode showed that she too will do anything to try and protect her family from dangers both zombie and human.
If the last couple episodes show’s anything it’s that Glen Mazzara’s turn as replacement showrunner has added much needed energy to the show. With last week’s episode and then tonight we’ve seen more action and character developlement than the first half of this second season. There now seems to be a feeling of desperation in how things have started to unfold. We still get some quieter moments between characters back on the Greene farm, but they’re not as prevalent as they’ve been in the past. Again I think this positive development has to be laid down at the feet of veteran tv show producer Glen Mazzara who understands that tv shows rely on keeping it’s audience’s attention focused on what’s going on the screen. So far, he and his writers have been doing a good job in moving the show with much forward momentum and keeping things that would slow it down to a minimum. As much as I love Frank Darabont for bringing this show to tv I think him being replaced was just what this show needed to succeed in the long run.
Notes
Now that is what I call a scary opening. I’m sure many people watching tonight’s episode were hoping the zombie got through the windshield and chowed down on Lori, but then we wouldn’t have seen how badass she can be when the chips are down. Her actions in this sequence and in the episode’s end was a nice bookend in helping grow this character beyond the harping shrew many have been calling her.
Her reaction to another Shane lie and then her own reveal to him about their relationship to Rick goes a long way in making her go beyond much-hated character to one that’s conflicted but set in trying to fix what she thinks was a mistake that should never have happened.
It doesn’t bode well for the rest of the group, especially for the Grimes clan, now that Shane looks to have been shot down once again by the woman he says he love and done so in a way that leaves him with no opening for redemption. The fact that Lori has repeated Dale’s own suspicions about Shane’s role in Otis’ death all the way back in episode 3 of this season show’s that Shane was losing the support of the very person he believes he’s protecting. With talk of actor Jon Bernthal being coveted by Frank Darabont to star in his police detective tv series it’s almost a foregone conclusion that Shane’s much-delayed demise will not have a clock counting down. Whether that clock strikes “zero” before or right at this season’s finale will be speculated on by fans for weeks to come.
I like how the show has made the little character details really stand out since Mazzara and crew took over from Darabont. I don’t know if anyone else picked up on it, but during the gunfight back in town we finally hear Hershel leave behind any notion of what he thought about the zombies as being people just sick when he began to call them walkers as he and Glenn tried to survive against the other group of survivors.
Tonight’s episode goes a long way in making Hershel the new right-hand man for Rick. While Hershel looks to still be upset by what Rick’s group did with the barn zombies he has at least begun to admit both in his language and mannerisms that Rick had been right all along and that he now needs to protect his own family and Rick’s group may be a key to their survival.
Love Hershel puts Shane in his place after Shane once again tries to kneecap Rick’s place as group leader. Tonight really was a coming out party for Scott Wilson and here’s to hoping his Hershel continues to back Rick.
On the Glenn and Maggie relationship front…we see Glenn becoming more gunshy and clumsy when it comes to taking care of business when away from the group. Seems Maggie’s professing of her love for him has muddled his brain. We see him make several mistakes tonight that’s damaged his confidence. It will be interesting how both he and Maggie deal with his crisis of confidence as the season moves along.
Daryl looks to be pulling himself back from the group emotionally and it’s good to see Carol trying to prevent that from happening. This subplot looks to be in it’s gestation period but if done right it could turn out to be a good sign in keeping Daryl from further isolating himself from the group and at least keeps Carol busy trying to be savior for the show’s resident badass.
T-Dog watch: one line of dialogue and not much else. Please, Mazzara and crew just kill him off and bring in Tyrese.
We see some great work from Greg Nicotero and his make-up FX wizards from KNB EFX with tonight’s zombie carnage. Whether it was the zombie peeling it’s face off in an attempt to get through the busted car windshield to get to Lori or the face ripping of the wounded shooter as they begin to eat him alive. I know shooting these scenes at night and in the dark helps in keeping the tricks if the trade from being more obvious, but I think even if the scenes were filmed in the daytime I believe the effects work would be even better and much more bloody.
Finally, the show ends with Lori channeling her inner Lady MacBeth as she tries to turn Rick into solving the Shane problem (by any means necessary) which looks to be a spark away from destroying everything the group has worked for since they left Atlanta.
During one of the many commercial breaks for February 19th’s episode of The Walking Dead audiences were treated to the premiere of a trailer for one of 2012’s most-anticipated video games.
Mass Effect 3 is the final title in the series trilogy that first began five years ago with the Mass Effecttitle. The series has just gotten bigger since then with the second title selling even more and improving on the first game. This third title looks to tie-up all the storylines begun with the first two games and finish them off in the only way possible: EPIC.
This trailer is simply called “Take Earth Back” and we see just why it’s called just that. The Reapers (extragalactic robotic beings of extreme intelligence who scour the galaxy of all living life every 50,000 years or so and this time they’re returning with their sights set on taking on the homeworld of the person who has tried to stop them from returning: Earth. We see much in this trailer from major cities being destroyed by giant Reaper ships then to the arrival of Cmdr. Shepard and his allies to take on the possessed “Husks” of aliens the Reaper has turned against everyone.
The game has been hyped since the second game ended and this trailer just adds to that as we get nearer to the title’s March 6, 2012 release date. This trailer preaches to the loyal and should go a long way to helping convince those still on the fence to pick it up.
Through the Shattered Lens