Chimpomatic

How To Make It In America

Season 1

HBO

With Entourage winding down after an epic 7 (soon to be 8th and final) seasons, HBO have started to line up it's successor. While the no-money, Lower East Side vibe of aspiring fashion entrepreneurs Ben Epstein and Cam Calderon might seem like a million miles from the valet parking of Vincent Chase's Hollywood, there are many parallels with this East Coast cousin - following the same dreams of success and the high life, just jumping on board at an earlier stage.

Despite the opposing fortunes, lifestyle envy also plays a big part here and while the reality of always being a dollar short might not quite hold the everlasting appeal of having a dollar too much, always knowing the hippest parties and being on first-name terms with every door man in town is something many of us would have loved 15 years ago. Slow motion mixes with flash frame photography and well chosen music to beautifully capture the gritty, exciting world of opportunity of both the Lower East Side and the just-graduated student mentality.

How To Make It In America has that quick-fix vibe that gets you high in 25 minutes and leaves you wanting more. Well-rounded episodes that fly by, but the season arc stays strong and is filled out well with multiple story strands (including a career-best performance from Luis Guzman and Rasta Monsta) all staying as strong as each other, while still building the bigger picture of the show's overall themes and agenda.

Great stuff. Should be back for season 2 later on in 2011.

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1st Jun 2011 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Punisher: War Zone

One of the thinnest plots I've ever seen. Like Neighbours does superheroes.

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20th Jun 2010

Male Bonding

Nothing Hurts

Sub Pop

Male Bonding are trio from London and after an early spell of pretty abrasive noise-pop they've evolved into a more well rounded band and have been scooped up by Sub Pop the lucky little beggars. Their early noise excursions still remain in the mix here but have been filled out with a delicious serving of mangy punk-rock packed full of hooks, fierce guitars, crashing cymbals, basically everything you'd want from this label. Very much in the neighborhood of bands like No Age or Abe Vigoda these guys marry perfectly the lo-fi scuzz with the garage-rock sensibility and always keeping a sideways glance in the direction of melody and structure. Nothing Hurts doesn't quite match the reckless abandon of Japandroids but it's brimming over with excitement and raw passion. Killer tracks are More Things This Way and Franklin.

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4th Jun 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Doctor Who - The Waters Of Mars

(dir. Graeme Harper)

BBC One

Another fun entry in modern Who cannon as the current Doctor heads towards his final episodes. We're off to Mars here, as the Tardis lands on the red planet in 2059, just in time to find the crew manning Bowie Base One in trouble with some H20.

The Doctor's initially pleased to meet the crew, lead by Lindsay Duncan and Peter O'Brien (Neighbours, Flying Doctors and Casualty) - until he realises he's arrived at one of those points in time which just can't be changed - "certain points in time are fixed... Everything else is in flux, anything can happen, but those certain points, they have to stand... This base on Mars... what happens here must always happen." Something about altering the course of future events etc (not that it's really bothered him much in the past) (or is that the future?). So as soon as he arrives, he's getting ready to go. 

Duncan's a good foil for the Doctor here - it always seems to work when they try that that Harry Potter trick of roping in some classy British thesps to bump up the acting credentials on this show. The monsters are quite engaging, even though it's hard to escape the feeling that they're wetting themselves all the time (you'll see what I mean). Even though he's only got as far as Mars, it's fun to see the Doctor getting off Earth - one of the main problems in the new Who is that the Tardis seems stuck on ending up in recognisable moments in our planet's history. Bit of a shame when you could go anywhere in the universe, at any time, really. 

Basically Waters Of Mars is a set-up to remove the Doctor's man of action status and get him to angst over all his interventionist tendencies -  a theme that looks like it's set to play out as we head towards his impending doom/regeneration. Will he ever pay for mucking about with time? Are there consequences when you can keep zipping back and forwards through the time stream?

Was it always this heavy when they used to get near  the moment whenthe actors got worried about being typecast as the Doctor each regeneration? I remember it all being much more of a surprise when I was a kid and Tom Baker or Peter Davison suddenly morphed into view, but maybe that's because I wasn't online wading through the geek soup all day. Does seem to be wavering on that fine line between not taking itself seriously (the GADGET robot stuff here is pretty silly) and then getting disappearing up its own Tardis with the weight of it all. Still, it's a good teatime thriller, and I'm intrigued enough to want to see how they finish David Tennant's tenancy off/introduce Matt Smith in the Christmas specials. 

Whoniverse extras:

The Doctor's back in his own astronaut suit, from The Impossible Planet. 

Nice K-9 ref.

Looks like there's going to be a bit of a greatest hits reunion coming - The Master, Donna and the Ood are all heading our way for the Christmas finale.

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7th Nov 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Inglourious Basterds

(dir. Quentin Tarantino)

Miramax

After the pasting that Death Proof got here (we even had to get Tech Support to code us up a special Zero Stars graphic) expectations haven't exactly been riding high for Tarantino's Nazi-bashing opus. It's also had one of those long gestation periods that puts you off, with rumours flying around that he's had to cut chunks out/ add loads back in, that it was going to be split in two (again!) or was so long he was going to have to turn it into a TV series (actually, it would be kind of fun if HBO would let him loose some time); the mixed reviews at Cannes certainly didn't seem to bode well either. 

But forget all that. About five minutes into this film, you'll remember what it is you liked about Tarantino in the first place. Yes, he's a total film geek whose only frame of reference seems to be other films - but when he pulls it off, he's more than capable of turning that encyclopedic knowledge into something thrilling. Basterds is exciting, has something to say, has a great cast - and more than anything, it's surprisingly fun.

Here, we've got two main threads running in tandem through five chapters. On the one hand, the Basterds - a kind of Dirtier Dozen, with Brad Pitt leading a commando unit of Jewish avengers on a rampage through second world war Germany, scalping as many Nazis as possible and generally causing total havoc. That's the story that's featured in the early trailers, and again, the prospect of watching a bloodbath for two hours didn't really seem that promising. 

The other thread involves a Jewish woman (a brilliant Mélanie Laurent) who's running a small cinema in the heart of Nazi-occupied Paris. She's living in secret, passing herself off as a gentile, when a German war hero falls for her, and convinces Goebbels and the rest of the Third Reich (including Hitler) that her little cinema would be the perfect venue for the premiere of Nation's Pride, a propaganda film about his real-life war exploits (which he's also starring in)...

Tarantino pulls these two stories together with typical flair, but it's much more subtle than the tricksiness of Pulp Fiction. There's real drive and tension here as the pieces weave together - don't want to go into too much more plot detail here, as half the fun is not knowing how it fits together.

What's also worth noting is that Brad Pitt aside, this is a cast of relative unknowns - you may have seen Diane Kruger in Troy, but don't hold that against her - she's great here as a German movie star. Hostel director Eli Roth plays one of the Basterds, Sgt Dony Donowitz (and he also shot the footage for Nation's Pride). Michael Fassbender (Bobby Sands in Hunger) is the British spy teaming up with the Basterds. Daniel Brühl is the smooth-talking German war hero. Even Mike Myers is hilarious again in a cameo as a British army officer barking out mission instructions. But the real stand-out is Christopher Waltz as the creepy Nazi Col Hans Landa - effortlessly flipping between German, French, English and Italian (in one of the film's most hilarious/tense scenes). He's a character that lingers long after the credits have rolled. And you won't look at a glass of milk in the same way for a while.

It's heavily subtitled, which Tarantino uses to great effect. Unlike a lot of second world war films, he's not afraid to let everyone speak in their own language, which builds a sense of the war taking place across the continent; language becomes something to hide behind, or give people away. Even Pitt's Southern-drawling Lt Aldo Raine could do with some explanation at times - his accent is so hilariously OTT it should come with subtitles... 

For film buffs there's plenty to enjoy - although you may want to brush up on your war films before watching if you want to get all the references here. The title of the first chapter - "Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France" - sets the tone. This is a fantasy, a film that's not afraid to take history and play fast and loose with it; to talk about cinema's power and potential, and ideas of revenge; and also, for once, to start to examine some of the more gratuitous aspects of the QT violence in the cinema aesthetic (alright, while still giving us some more insanely gratuitous moments). It's also just really enjoyable - much more of a romp than you'd expect.

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18th Aug 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Cave Singers

Welcome Joy

Matador

Rising from the ashes of Pretty Girls Make Graves, the Cave Singers have quickly expended beyond the success of that band and carved out a nice niche for themselves. Debut record Invitation Songs was an unknown quantity, bringing a certain mystery and uniqueness that was initially a little difficult to crack. Was it a guy singing? A girl? Marge Simpson? Are they taking the piss? Once those initial questions had settled down a little, the record settled in to become an easy stand-out of 2007.

There's certainly less mystery to this new record, but instead just a welcome anticipation that this is going to be good record. On first listen there's certainly little disappointment, but the initial reaction is 'here's some more Cave Singers' - 10 new tracks that sound like a direct expansion on the first album. Repeated listening quickly dispels that simple notion.

Over the course of opener Summer Light and second song Leap, the album ramps up to a higher tempo than Invitation Songs and it never looks back. The eclectic folky sound of the debut is subtly pulled back, stripping away some of the washboard and the melodica influence and giving way to a more traditional rock sound. That sound is bolstered by the production of Colin Stewart, who returns to man the decks after the debut, plus stints producing favourites including Black Mountain and Ladyhawk.

As the record settles in, the evolution of the band's sound starts to emerge, with them now sounding somewhat more grown into their sound. Songs are belted out with a more self-assured style and what was something of a novelty with the first record is now the definitive sound of an accomplished band. Songs like Townships, At The Cut (mp3 here), Beach House (mp3 here) and VV have an instant familiarity, sounding like old classics that you haven't heard in a while.

Warm, nostalgic, rocking and powerful - this is the ghost of Fleetwood Mac, channeled through the Pacific Northwest with magnificent success.

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15th Aug 2009 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Cosmos

Jar Of Jam Ton Of Bricks

Happy Jack Rock

By the time you’ve read this short review, there’s every chance that Robert Pollard has released another album under one of his various monickers, such is the prolific nature of the 52 year old Ohio native. Regular Pollard-watchers will not be (overly) disappointed with the new Cosmos project - Jar of Jam Ton of Bricks is a mixed bag of quirks and curveballs with the immediately recognisable and strangely comforting voice of Pollard (mostly) at the reigns.

Whether it’s stripped down acoustic (Don’t be A Shy Nurse, Zeppelin Commander), effortless piano-led pop (Nude Metropolis) or all out rockers (The Neighbourhood Trapeze, Westward Ho) it’s Pollard's voice and melodies, signing signature wildly imaginative/just plain odd lyrics that sits atop it all - holding it in place.That is until he hands over singing/song writing duties with Indie stalwart Richard Davies. The strongly-accented Australian steps up to the mic on four fragmented tracks, that sadly punture any momentum JoJToB threatens to build up.

That said, there’s enough here to keep Pollard fans happy until the next project , unless that next project has already been and gone of course.

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25th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet