Look out! He's got a knife!

Friday music

Here's a song.

Here's background on the song.

I found the first verse (by the Jedi Mind Tricks guy) to be close to worthless - just another didactic political MC, nothing you haven't heard before. The second verse is something else. Listen to the song then read the interview, or read the interview than listen to the song.

I just watched a huge amount of movies

OK, let's see if I can remember 'em all.

Update: I've added clips so that you can simulate the experience in heavily truncated form and in the comfort of your own home.

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T
Co-written & designed by Dr. Seuss, this '50s children's movie musical is terrific fun. A bit like Invaders from Mars only even better. Here's the elevator scene:

Made In Britain
Tim Roth as a teenage skinhead with a swastika on his face rejects authority in violent fashion and his life goes down the tubes. Very good and tough (script by David Leland, direction by Alan Clark). Not life-affirming though. Here's the first scene:

Better Off Dead
Cartoonish & surreal '80s teen comedy starring John Cusack took a while to warm up but emerged a winner. Contained the best line of the night. Here's the paperboy:

Never Say Never Again
Generally regarded as the poor cousin of the Bond movies, this was actually very solid entertainment with great villains (Klaus Maria Brandauer and especially Barbara Carrera). Here's Carrera in action:

The War Game
Pseudo-documentary about the effects of nuclear war on England that was banned by the BBC from the '60s until the '80s, this was not cheerful. Here's a scene:

Point Break
Surfing, sky diving, and bank robbing are all stylishly filmed by Kathryn Bigelow. The script (partly written by an uncredited James Cameron) is not great and neither is Keanu Reeves, but the director and Patrick Swayze make the most of it. Here's the skydiving:

Inside Deep Throat
The story behind the movie. Pretty interesting and entertaining, but a very skimpy and somewhat sanitized view of the industry.

All the Colours of the Dark
Stylish, sleazy giallo about a woman with a mysterious past who gets involved with a Satanic cult. Here's the Sabbat:

Curse of the Demon
One of the best horror movies ever made, subtle and quietly terrifying. Here's a related thing:

Sunset Boulevard
Downbeat story of Hollywood losers in the '40s is entertaining and full of great dialogue. Here's a clip from Gloria Swanson's never-realised musical version:

The Emperor's New Groove
Amusing Disney movie that isn't a musical. Closer in spirit to Warner Bros. cartoons than most Disney. A compilation of scenes:

The Man Who Saved the World
This Turkish movie from 1982 steals a lot of footage from Star Wars and music from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Transformers to tell the story of two guys who... Um... Well it was quite hard to figure out, but involved how the Earth had been exploded into a cloud of dust and people now live on chunks of it flying through space protected by a coating of human brain, and now an evil magician wants a green brain. Basically an endless series of mind-destroying action scenes (with sound effects seemingly pinched from kung fu movies) strung together by a few surreal dialogue scenes. Aka Turkish Star Wars. Here's clips from it used to make a music video:

Purple Rain
Prince: The Movie, from back when he was easily the best thing about American popular music. Here's a live version of the title song from 1983:

Bodies, Rest and Motion
Mid '90s slacker drama that felt like it was based on a play. [checks] Yep, it was. Slightly dull, but Bridget Fonda was cute in those days. Can't found a clip from the movie, so here's one from the play:

The Yellow Sign
Modern-set adaptation of the Robert W. Chambers short story that changes much of the story while keeping a lot of the tone. Overcomes its miniscule budget with style. Here's a trailer:

La Terza Madre
Dario Argento at his most bugfuck. The trailer:

Devil Doll
Bank president framed for robbery & murder serves 17 years, helps a mad scientist escape, and disguises himself as an old woman so he can use miniature people to kill those who had him put away. He's also the good guy. A clip:

Friday music

Update: more music now added at bottom.

It's 5:23am on Good Friday - time for some music. Today it's film music.

Lizard in a Woman's Skin is a 1971 giallo directed by Lucio Fulci and with a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone.

Beat Girl is a cool British movie from 1960 that's not really about beatniks. The score by John Barry does what he does best.

Charade is a 196- caper movie starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn with a score by Henry Mancini. This is not the original version.

Happy Easter! If anyone says "yay" in comments, I'll upload 3 Morricone tracks that have never been commercially released.

These three tracks are from the soundtrack to the awesome anti-hero fumetti-based movie Diabolik, one of Morricone's more playful scores.

Just for the sake of an update

This is the best essay on horror movies I've read online for a while (though it is a few years old).

This is the best video I've been able to find on Yourtube of someone falling on their head, not least because I can't work out what these two are actually trying to do:

My head hurts just from watching that.

And everyone needs a video of a cute baby somewhere on their blog:

More music tomorrow.

Dave Stevens RIP

The creator of the Rocketeer & ex-husband of Brinke Stevens died of leukemia on March 10.

Friday music

UPDATE: Three more songs added. Who loves ya, baby?

Today, three artists I quite like cover three songs I'm quite fond of. I've always liked covers. I like to hear a good song interpreted in a way that brings a new meaning to it or that illuminates something about it. I think all three of these do that, each in their own way (one does it by changing nothing).

This song was written from a female perspective. I've long thought that male singers should sing female narratives and vice versa, but Tom Waits doesn't really sell his version so it's good to have Neko Case's version.

Pharoahe Monche covering Public Enemy.
Hip-hop artists covering each other is quite rare (you're more likely to get a novelty like Ben Folds singing Bitches Ain't Shit) but Pharoahe Monche clearly thought this Public Enemy song was still relevant 20 years on.

A band known for hardcore metal tempo & rhythm gymnastics covers an RnB song by a skinny white boy. The Dillinger Escape Plan, meet Justin Timberlake.

If you grab any or all of these, please leave a comment saying whether you liked them or not. Even if it's monosyllabic.

Ruth Copeland was an English soul singer whose main claim to fame is that her backing band was Funkadelic. This is a Rolling Stones cover from her first album.

I've always liked the pairing of a quiet chick voice with a deep dude voice - Nancy & Lee, Nick & Kylie, and here's Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan covering a Hank Williams song.

Sometime in 1987, Warren Zevon & REM (calling themselves Hindu Love Gods) spent an evening jamming some of their favourite blues songs then capped it off with this Prince cover. I like it better than the original.

Aw geez

There's another Howard the Duck comic without Steve Gerber.

Gerber put a lot of time, legal fees & heartbreak into trying to stop Marvel letting anyone else write Howard on the grounds that he is too personal of a character. If Ty Templeton really wanted to respect Howard and Steve, as he claims, he wouldn't be writing it.

He must know the background to this, surely. I mean, Jack Kirby himself drew the comic put together as a fundraiser for Gerber's lawsuit against Marvel. How could a professional comic book writer not know?

Horrible. Just awful. And the duck's new design is butt-ugly to boot - it looks closer to the movie version. Yuck.

The best motherf**king font in the world

Hey. What's the best motherf**king font in the world? Any why is it just so goddamned good?

The answer I like best will win a Prize, which is a material object whose precise nature I choose not to reveal at this time. A nice object, if relatively inexpensive.

Anyone not me free to enter. Deadline is Thursday 13 April at 5:23am (NZ daylight savings time).

Answers in comments or if you prefer in private email to my first name dot my last name at gmail.

7COTS

Seven Copies of the Scream launches. Morgue's site has a more readable version.

I was political advisor on 7COTS, but only after its completion fnord. Making my contribution to this zine similar to John Lydon's to Sid & Nancy! Am I the only one excited by that?

The Welsh Dragon Bar is a good place to have a birthday, by the way. Just go to Morgue's site and leave a comment asking what they did on his birthday.

crap did i get kilt

i don't know if i got kilt or not.

it is the worst feeling in the world to not know whether or not you got kilt.

Friday music

Three songs from three countries and three decades. Odds are you haven't heard them.

Why not more Killer Barbies? Jess Franco probably didn't direct this, but it's on one of his dvds (Killer Barbys weirdly enough).

Do you DARE decode the secrets of this post?

Gravity and other myths

I strongly recommend you to see this aerial dance/circus thing at Civic Square. It's on until the 9th at 7:45pm and from 11 - 15 March at 7:15pm.

Don't mind the opening acts - they are a barely adequate warm-up for the main event.

If you saw it last year, so did the chick I went with and she said this year was better.

So. Cool. I'm going again.

If you smoke, smoke one. I didn't, but with the coloured lights and the incredibly fit girls & boys defying death swinging about on trapezes and ropes and things and the fire - oh wow the fire - I'd imagine it would go down a treat.

And it's free, but I felt compelled to give hefty donation because they deserved it.

Hee! I am hyped. I didn't even mind being snubbed by an ex at the event. Go!

Why is it

that googling the phrase "I agree with Joey Narcotic" returns only 1 hit, and that's for a page that refuses to load?

Makes me want to spill my cereal. That's the euphemism I'm looking for, right? Cereal spillage?

Leonard the Duck

About 7 years ago, I got really excited about a devious trick Steve Gerber played in his crossover comics Spiderman/Howard the Duck and Savage Dragon/Destroyer Duck. So excited I spent an afternoon making a fan site about it, which despite never being updated is located here.

It never occurred to me to tell Steve about it, but he found it anyway and sent me an email that said very nice things about the site. Later, when he was writing Howard the Duck vol. 2, he found reason to put up a link to my site, which really made my day.

The reason I love this comic is less because it's good (although it is, though hardly Steve's best work) but because of the extremely clever thing he did with Howard the Duck in it. He came up with a metafictional rescue that Grant Morrison would have been proud of.

My Name Is Bruce

Based on this trailer, I just got less excited about Bruce Campbell's new movie.