Look out! He's got a knife!

By the by...

...Stuart is right about LSD.

Moozak reviews

It's all hip-hop again, sorry. Does anyone who reads my blog even like hip-hop? Do I even care?

Common - Be
I was a bit disappointed in this album at first. Common's 2002 effort Electric Circus was a fascinating experiment, musically combining elements of hip-hop and psychedelic rock and lyrically pushing him both into more abstract areas and also into apologies for his prior misogynistic and homophobic tendencies (I suspect Erykah Badu was an influence there). However it didn't sell well, it was critically maligned (idiots), and the label basically said to him "You are not Jimi Hendrix."

His new attempt is an almost complete reversal, musically. Kanye West produces almost the entire album, and even for him it's a commercial affair. The sound is soft and smooth and very RnB.

But I kept returning to it and it kept growing on me and now it's one of my favourite early morning albums. Go figure.

Pharrell - Can I Have It Like That? (single)
If I was one half of the most successful production team in hip-hop and I was going to release a single in my own name to try and make it as a ***star***, I think there are two things I would do. The first is to pull out all the stops and make a really hot track, and the second is to get an awesome guest who'd make me look good by association.

I mean, The Neptunes did Milkshake (Kelis), Drop It Like It's Hot (Snoop), On And On (Missy), all in the past year. Every one is shit hot - distinctive, non-imitative, catchy, weird and cool.

So naturally, for his bid for the crown, Pharrell brings in Gwen Stefani to help him pad out his warmed-over collection of bits of other Neptunes songs. He's also re-christened himself with the somewhat teh ghey name of Skateboard P.

He apparently produced this track on his own, so maybe the absence of Chad Hugo explains the musical deficiencies. And it's possible that everyone he approached to guest said "No way fool, you a wack nigga!" except for Stefani (who wouldn't know wack hip-hop if she looked in a mirror).

I like The Neptunes. I liked Pharrell as the frontman of N.E.R.D. This song is a turd.

Talib Kweli - Right About Now
The prevailing wisdom is that Kweli has fallen off. Don't believe the hype. Sure, The Beautiful Struggle was a disappointment, but right before it he released The Beautiful Mixtape and it was awesome. Now he's released another mixtape and it's - um - awesome. His flow is tight, his lyrics are dextrous, and while the beats are kinda basic, that works (like it always has) because it makes him more of a focus.

Mos Def turns up of course, as does recent collaborator (and maybe more than that, the liner notes suggest) Jean Grae. There's a soppy tribute to Lauren Hill that I could have done without, but the best tracks (Drugs Basketball and Rap, Who Got It, Where You Gonna Run) more than make up for it.

Throat Sprockets blog

Tim Lucas wrote Throat Sprockets.

It is my favourite book.

He has a blog.

Nice.

Pat Morita - R.I.P.

1932 - 2005

24 hour movie marathon

So we did the 24 hour movie marathon and lo, a mere two weeks later I blog about it.

Here's what we had.

KONGA
They did a nice King Kong fake-out before this movie, but it was spoilt when the projectionist screwed up and the title never came up. Michael Gough plays a mad scientist back from the jungle with huge-ass carnivorous plants and secret serums and a baby chimp that grows up first into a full-grown chimp, then into a man in a gorilla suit, then into a man in a gorilla suit matted into a rear projection. It was an awesome black & white b-movie that didn't fuck around. Gough was wonderfully nasty and lecherous, and the rest of the cast (prim assistant with unrequited love, innocent girl Gough lusts after, Indian scientist, man in gorilla suit) do fine.

THE DESCENT
Despite a bravura opening, it took me a while to warm up to this movie. However when the six main characters (all women) go caving, things get very harsh very fast. Scary and claustrophobic and quite gory at times (Chris Gilman supposedly fainted during one scene), this is one of the best new horror movies in quite some time.

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SNOW WHITE
Marie Liljedahl (from Jess Franco's Eugenie) plays the title character, but this is really a mash-up of a bunch of Grimm fairy tales connected by two dimwit brothers on a quest to lose their fortune. The print was faded to a glorious pink. There's some unexpected gore, all taken from the original stories. It contained the first adaptation of Cinderella I've seen where they retain the scene of the stepsisters hacking off their toes & heels to fit into the glass slipper. Overall an entertaining, delerious, sometimes disturbing movie. Instead of sending for Snow White's heart, the Queen wants her sexual organs, which she eats with relish; and the scene of Snow Shite sucking on a cow's udder is unforgettable. Demented movie.

DEAD MEAT
One of the few duds of the evening, this was a zombie movie from Ireland. It copped its attitude straight from Peter Jackson's and Sam Raimi's early movies, but could not come within a country mile of Bad Taste or Evil Dead. The zombie cow was good for a laugh, but most of the movie was people wandering around and every now and again being attacked by zombies. Full marks to the incomprehensible guy though.

TOP SECRET
Yes, the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker movie starring Val Kilmer. Funny movie.

SACRED KNIVES OF VENGEANCE
The dullest movie of the evening was this Shaw Bros. kung fu epic, a true snoozer. Lots of jumping around on wires and arm-flailing fights. I wandered off to get a bite to eat and some fresh air for a bit during this one.

CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE
Seemingly-endless soft-core porn starring three very good looking women, one of whom is constantly eating. A daugher turns her mom on to the swinging scene, and the movie barely pulls back from lesbian incest. Despite all this, it was curiously boring and lifeless. This probably helped soften us up for the sucker punch of...

FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE
This movie was goddamned rough. It was a Desperate Hours/Last House on the Left sort of "prison escapees kidnap and terrorize innocent people" deal. This time a muli-racial gang lead by an utter scumfuck white-trash racist hold up a nice, middle-class black family in their home and terrorize and brutalize them for a whole movie. Endless racist monologuing from the chief asshole just makes it all harder to take. The sarcastic comments from the audience dried up for this one, though the sassy black grandmother got some cheers. All in all it was nerve-wracking and deeply unpleasant, never boring but impossible to recommend.

Breakfast was odd. Was that another movie?

THE DEVIL'S REJECTS
Rob Zombie's second movie was a vast improvement over his first. Even more than House of 1000 Corpses this was a '70s-style horror/sleaze epic, but it was more spare and grimly effective than its predecessor. I really enjoyed it, and admired its utter lack of a moral compass; 1000 Corpses's biggest flaw was that the victims were too unsympathetic, and Rejects turns that into an advantage by making the killers the audience identification figures. Sherri Moon Zombie, Bill Moseley and (especially) Sid Haig are fantastic. Ken Foree is almost a match for Haig in a smallish role as his brother. It's all good nihilistic fun.

THE CHRISTINE JOURGENSEN STORY
A very sensitive movie about the first sex change recipient, told with deep sympathy and tolerance. Shame it comes across like a dull tv movie remake of Glen Or Glenda. I yawned, I fidgeted, I drank too many cans of V.

THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE
Almost everyone else seemed to hate this courtriin drama horror movie, but I thoroughly enjoyed most of it. A priest is on trial for negligent homicide after a young woman he was trying to exorcise dies. The story is told as flashbacks. Laura Linney is great (of course) as the lawyer, Tom Wilkinson is great (predictably) as the priest, and whoever plays Emily Rose is great in the flashbacks. There's a lot of philosophy, some great scares, and a really dumb ending. It's supposedly based on a true story.

THE THING
John Carpenter's classic remake, back when he could still make movies worth a damn. I've seen it many times before, but watching it on the big screen was a kick!

Then we all got out, and I started getting txts saying that Rod Donald had died. Total bummer.

Lovely

All blogs are now banned by my work net-nanny equivalent. Can still read stonesoup.co.nz but that's it - and I bet that disappears soon. Shame.

Of course this also means that I can't post anything during the day either. _{And there was much rejoicing.}

Angst angst bloody angst. Oh well at least I've got a stack of Psychotronic back-issues to read.

Spinning my wheels

Bah! I always want to blog even when I have nothing to say.

Though if anyone knows someone who's looking for a flatmate, I'm looking for a flat. I'm reasonably house-trained and won't eat your pets.

The Cinema of Takashi Miike Part Six: Full Metal Yakuza

This is Miike's version of Robocop. Lots of people made their own versions of Robocop, usually focusing on the sci-fi violence and ignoring the great social commentary. I was hoping Miike's film would be an exception to this rule, but alas no. This is easily the least interesting movie I've seen by him to date, but it's not a total loss.

It starts off like a typical yakuza movie, with a hard-as-nails assassin slicing up several people with a sword and going to jail in glory. The movie cuts to seven years later, when he gets out and is swiftly gunned down by representatives of the sole survivor of the massacre. At this point his body parts are mixed up with the bits of a loser would-be yakuza by a mad doctor, who finishes off his Frankensteinian creation with metal armour, super-strong muscles and the like. The resulting creatrue has the heart and limbs (and enormous cock) of the hard-ass, and the head and torso of the loser.

They fight crime!

Or that seems to be the mad doctor's plan (this doofus minces around in a weird PVC trenchcoat). Robo-kuza has other ideas and goes for revenge. Lots of fairly low-grade violence ensues. Then there's a weirdly maudlin sub-plot involving the woman who had loved the hard-ass, which provides the most Miike-esque portion of the movie both in terms of character development and of holy-shit-I-can't-believe-they-did-that fucked-upness.

It all ends in one of Miike's trademarked ambiguous endings, but it doesn't add up to much. I bet he's made tons of relatively anonymous movies like this. I should stress that although this is a pretty blah movie compared to Ichi The Killer or Happiness Of The Katakuris, it's pretty interesting compared to most Robocop rip-offs.

Next up: I'm not sure. Maybe it'll be Shinjuku Trian Society, and maybe it'll be The Bird People In China. Who knows?

A rare connection

Ha - I finally found someone who shares my sense of humour, or at least the aspect of it that noone else seems to. All the little things Best of all it's a workmate so this kind shit can potentially happen every day.

The other day before leaving, I left a note on my workmate's screen saying "Don't forget!" I then walked away giggling. The yesterday the note was gone and there was no mention of it, so this time I left a note saying "I can't believe you forgot!"

This morning when I arrived, my workmate said "Good morning, Pearce. Did you bring it?"

"Bring what?"

"The thing you were going to bring."

A pause. Recognition! "I can't believe I forgot it!"

Unfortunately I forgot to leave a note tonight saying "Remind me."

I find this sort of silly shit hilarious, and now I know I'm not the only one.

The Cinema of Takashi Miike Part Four: Visitor Q

I've put off writing this review for a while. I didn't want to think about the movie too much because, well, yuck. Visitor Q revels in debauchery in a way I haven't seen before. It's sort of like an early John Waters movie remade as a Japanese embarrassment comedy.

It opens with a scene of a journalist having sex with his own daughter in a love hotel, all the while filming it for the tv show he works on. The movie is about their family. It never really gets any easier to take than that. To begin with it appalled me. As it continued I started to see its sense of humour, and by the end I was roaring with laughter (but still appalled).

It seems to be a satire on Japanese family life. Every member of the family (father, mother, teenage son & teenage daughter) is an exaggerated and grotesque caricature, yet somehow they remain sympathetic. The cast is actually very good. It has some thematic similarities with the much lighter Happiness of the Katakuris, so maybe you could double feature them.

Expect a big-budget remake from Brett Ratner any time now.

Next up: Dead Or Alive 2: Birds.

Hallowe'en After-Party

Party was good. If you missed it, and you weren't either thousands of miles away and/or at an unexpected wedding, you lose!

It figures that after having spent so long thinking about & planning what to do with the flat, I'd only think to organize my own costume on Saturday afternoon. My original plan for The Big Bad Wolf was quickly scuppered in favour of the boring old Devil. Annoyingly I couldn't find anything I was looking for and had to improvise - the spray paint was still wet when I put the costume on, but at least I looked suitably ghastly.

Much alcohol (and some other consumables officer) was consumed. Worried looks were exchanged when a drunk guy was spotted passed out on downstair's porch, but he turned out to be one of theirs. Nobody got out of control, but a few people got seriously weird.

Without a doubt the best costume was Billy's, which I won't even attempt to describe. Scott looked the most like he'd actually been nuked. Brian's was the cleverest; he wired a cauliflower up to his head and introduced it to people as "My brain, Colin." I was a bit disappointed that Ems didn't go for the "arms made of raw meat" idea she'd told me about, but it was hardly surprising (she'd been planning on using actual meat).

Amy made up for no triffid costume with a cracking good face wound. Actually there was a small crowd of gory head-wound victims, all pretty damn disgusting. (Most disgusting was Daryl, who kept eating bits of his wound and inviting people to lick his head - "It tastes really nice!")

It was a fun evening, though I still have a four-foot mirror in my room that doesn't belong to me. Perhaps not quite as epic as some previous Hallowe'ens (particularly the Kelburn blackface extravaganza) but definitely a winner.