News
Reviews
Articles
Surveillance
How to open a bottle of Wine with a phonebook
Here's one from the 4 Hour Work Week files.
18th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Star Status: Jeff Bridges
How does the much-loved Jeff Bridges actually rate in the Chimpomatic Star Status Movie Maths Generator?
It's 10 points for a Hit, 5 for a Maybe and 1 for a Miss... No TV movies, just cinema releases to date.
How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008) .... MAYBE
Iron Man (2008) .... HIT!
Surf's Up (2007) (voice) .... MAYBE
Stick It (2006) .... MISS
Tideland (2005) .... MAYBE
The Moguls (2005) .... MAYBE
The Door in the Floor (2004) .... MAYBE
Seabiscuit (2003) .... HIT
Masked and Anonymous (2003) .... MAYBE
K-PAX (2001) .... HIT
Scenes of the Crime (2001) .... MAYBE
The Contender (2000) .... HIT
Simpatico (1999) .... MISS
The Muse (1999) .... MISS
Arlington Road (1999) .... HIT
The Big Lebowski (1998) .... HIT!!!
Hidden in America (1996) (TV) .... MAYBE
The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) .... MAYBE
White Squall (1996) .... MAYBE
Wild Bill (1995) .... MAYBE
Blown Away (1994) .... MISS
Fearless (1993) .... HIT!
The Vanishing (1993) .... HIT
American Heart (1992) .... HIT
The Fisher King (1991) .... HIT
Texasville (1990) ....MAYBE
The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) .... HIT
Cold Feet (1989) (uncredited) .... MISS
See You in the Morning (1989) ....MISS
Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) .... HIT
Nadine (1987) .... MISS
The Morning After (1986) ....MISS
8 Million Ways to Die (1986) ....MISS
Jagged Edge (1985) .... HIT!
Starman (1984) .... HIT!
Against All Odds (1984) .... HIT!
Kiss Me Goodbye (1982) .... MISS
The Last Unicorn (1982) (voice) .... MAYBE
TRON (1982) .... HIT
Cutter's Way (1981) ....MISS
Heaven's Gate (1980) .... MAYBE
The American Success Company (1980) .... MISS
Winter Kills (1979) .... MISS
Somebody Killed Her Husband (1978) .... MISS
King Kong (1976) .... MISS
Stay Hungry (1976) .... MISS
Hearts of the West (1975) .... MAYBE
Rancho Deluxe (1975) .... MAYBE
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) .... HIT!
The Iceman Cometh (1973) .... HIT
The Last American Hero (1973) .... MAYBE
Lolly-Madonna XXX (1973) .... MISS
Bad Company (1972) .... HIT
Fat City (1972) ....HIT
The Last Picture Show (1971) .... HIT!
23 hits, 16 maybes and 15 misses.
So that's 307 points out of a possible 540.
Jeff Bridges: you have scored 56.9%.
There's no doubting he makes some odd choices, and his huge work-rate brings him down with a lot of 'maybes' but even in a bad film he remains pretty much 90% watchable. If he worked at a Harrison Ford rate, he'd probably have a near-perfect record, with a serious hit every couple of years.
If you need any further convincing that The Dude is a very cool dude, check out his own great website.
If you dare make a purchase, you can do so here, allowing Chimpomatic to profit from his loss success. Check back soon for more Star Status movie maths. Same Chimp Channel, same Chimp Time...
18th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Gerhard Richter
I'm disappointed to learn that most of Gerhard Richter's Sonic Youth-inspiring candle series are less that 1.5m wide. I had been thinking how nice one would look filling out my living room wall.
18th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
UUVVWWZ
UUVVWWZ
Saddle Creek
This one should appeal to David Lynch, I'd have thought. Great female vocalist, voodoo guitars, lots of reverb, very catchy songs in a variety of styles. Hey, what's not to like?
Just the wilfully daft band name - that's what's not to like. It's never going to be easy saying that one is it? Yeah I 'd like to order the album by this band called ooove-wa-zed. Or zee. Either way, a terrific band name would be one of the only things I'd want to change about this release. Sitting comfortably alongside the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (in rock mode) - there's something about the way this album is recorded that really appeals to me - everything sounds big without it sounding like a competition for space in the mix. The arrangements make the most of the basic rock format of guitar bass drums and vocals - always good to hear a band that can sound fresh with the most traditional line-up of instruments.
Touches of Tom Waits, Jacques Brel, Badelamenti, Portishead and the Cramps all contribute to a sonically rich and pleasing album that ought to see this Nebraskan four piece on their way to great things. But, they should have chosen a name that would make it easier to discuss them or order their records.
18th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 4 star reviewsHancock
Peter Berg steps nicely into mentor Michael Mann's shoes. Still excellent.
17th Sep 2009
Read more 4 star reviewsI'm loving the Monsters of Folk album. Retribution for all concerned. Looking forward to the show, it's a dream team.
17th Sep 2009
Read on TwitterThe 4 Hour Work Week
I'm aiming for a new zen-like existence after reading Tim Ferris' excellent book The 4 Hour Work Week. In fact, I've been living such an existence for many months now, meaning I didn't get round to writing this up.
The basic concept of the book deals with streamlining your work life to make you more efficient, giving you time to pursue recreational ambitions and further yourself. Luckily, it just about stays on the right side of being a self-growth, believe-in-yourself type load of spiritual mumbo-jumbo and focuses on practical applications, many of which are easily done, most notably checking your emails only once or twice a day, turning down troublesome work and sub-contracting many tasks - even to the point of hiring an assistant in India.
A major focus is the 80/20 principal, where 80% of a lot of things is unnecessary waffle, while 20% is the useful core. I imagine it's applicable on chimpomatic too, with 20% of our readers being loyal followers, while 80% are just here for the early word on Torchwood.
Once you're on top of your game, the fun begins - letting you blow 80% of your time on more fun pursuits, with Ferris having become a kick-boxing champion, a speed swimmer and even built up 34lbs of muscle in 4 weeks. Check out his excellent website for occasional tips on speaking a new language in 1 hour, sleeping better, travelling the world with 10lbs of luggage, speed reading, never forgetting anything, holidaying by twitter, getting a good table at top restaurants and more.
Ferris has become something of an internet personality in the wake of the book's success, making maximum use of the likes of Twitter and Facebook to rustle up followers and crowd-source content for his next book - and even knock out a possible TV show, where he learns a new skill per episode. All that stuff can actually get a bit annoying, and he sometimes seems so obsessed with efficiency that the writing can be a bit dry ("Post reading time: 15 minutes" etc.), and his collaborations with Digg founder Kevin Rose tend to make one of the two seem strangely closed-minded...
17th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Augment Me
Some good-looking augmented reality apps on the slate from developer Across Air. They are listed as being available 'as soon as iPhone OS 3.1 launches', which happened last week. Apparently that update included some code-improvements that will enable all this future mapping technology to unfold...
17th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Pavement Reform
There have been rumblings for a while, but now it's official - Pavement are reforming.
Don't get your knickers in a twist just yet, as they are quick to caution not to expect too much. At this stage, it's for a series of shows and tours 'around the world' to coincide with some sort of anniversary (ten years since break-up - if that's an anniversary) and a 'greatest hits' record.
"Please be advised this tour is not a prelude to additional jaunts and/or a permanent reunion."
More details here.
17th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
PYO Books
Thanks to the Google Books service, which has digitized several million out-of-copyright books, you can now print your own editions. Throw in the $100,000 expresso printer and you can even pop into a book store and get a nicely bound version of an out-of-print rarity for around $10. Wired has the details.
17th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Search
Listen To Folk
The forthcoming Monsters of Folk album - from Jim James, Bright Eyes and M. Ward - is up in full over at Myspace.
16th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
3D Printing
Printable trainers may still be a way off, but 3D printing is finally starting to make a bit more sense. Bruce Wayne used a computer to re-assemble and remove a finger print from a bullet in The Dark Knight, but CSI were way more up to speed with their tech, using 3D printing to sculpt a bullet - and then remove the finger print themselves.
Prototyping seems to be the main application so far, where silicon is used to build-up or cut out a precise 3 dimensional object based on detailed computer specification, and I did hear about 3D animators starting to use the technique to produce perfectly adjusted models.
With tech like this getting cheaper and cheaper it was only a matter of time before it becomes available to all of us and as Wired report, companies like Ponoko and Shapeways will begin to popularise the service. If only we can think of something to do with it.
16th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Hello, Nasty
The Beastie Boys re-release juggernaut continues, with masterpiece (aren't they all?) Hello Nasty getting a de-luxe remastering. This one also has a considerable amount of actual rarities on the disc two.
16th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Vampire Weekend: Contra
Details up for the next Vampire Weekend, which isn't set to be released until January 11th/12th 2010.
16th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Batman Returns
(dir. Tim Burton)
Warner Bros
THEN: The seemingly perfect casting of DeVito, plus 80's babe Michelle Pfieffer made this seem like the ideal follow-up to Burton's (at-the-time) phenomenal 1989 Batman re-imagination.
A change in scheduling moved the production from London's Pinewood back to Burbank in California, where a whole new Gotham took up 50% of the Warner Brothers back-lot, which at the time provided a mixed continuity. Little did we know the inconsistency of the future franchise.
NOW: With some of the pressure off after the success of the first movie, Tim Burton created a movie which fits far more homogeneously into his directorial cannon, thanks to the the skull-headed clowns, the Christmas setting and the disturbed strangeness of the penguin. Many of the problems from 1992 still exist - too many anatagonists, the dumb Max Shreck character (Christopher Walken), the doofus Penguin - but Michelle Pfeiffer pretty much plays the definitive Catwoman (with a sympathetic Selena Kyle origin story to boot). There's also no over-the-top Jack Nicholson to chew his way through the back-lot scenery and no shoe-horned Prince soundtrack.
In retrospect, the change of shooting location made for a massive improvement in the art direction of this second movie, without the visible location repetition that shrinks the scale of the first. The result is a surprisingly organic Gotham and a much fuller world. There are still many touches of the camp comedy of the TV show - which is bizarre, considering how dark and dirty Burton's Batman films seemed at the time.
Retroactive-praise aside, this is still way too long, pretty campy and extremely dopey for a superhero movie. Action and suspense-wise it offers virtually nothing, but it can certainly take some credit for paving the way for Christopher Nolan's far more thoughtful re-boot.
16th Sep 2009 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 3 star reviews
Promo Promo: VU & Nico - Femme Fatale
well, it's probably not really all the Velvets, but looks like Lou and John backing Nico on Spanish TV in 1975?
15th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Gil-Scott Heron
Suitably mysterious website up for Gil-Scott Heron's forthcoming new album - I'm New Here - out next year on XL.
15th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
This week's Entourage is low on eating and high on shopping. http://bit.ly/HzSNn
14th Sep 2009
Read on TwitterTrailer Park: A Single Man
Good-looking trailer up for fashion maestro Tom Ford's first foray into film-making - A Single Man.
14th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Spotify For iPhone: Review
With a ton of never-played-CDs archived around my house, I've been looking for a reason to get rid of them and move forwards with technology. Spotify has been looking like a likely candidate to fill that gap for a while - although with little difference between their offering and the likes of Real Player or the current incarnation of Napster, I'm not sure why - as I would never have gone near them. I think their stand-alone app (and now iPhone/Android app) just came along at the right time, as the market matured to a suitable place.
At £10 a month it rivals the price of buying a new CD per month - with around 80% of the other music in the world thrown in as a bonus, although it is always disappointing when they don't have something - and as the Chimp iTunes is loaded with pre-release stuff it often seems a little behind. New releases generally become available as soon as you can buy them however, and a simple small auto-playlist from iTunes could fill the remaining gap.
I was a little unsure of the sound quality at first, though suspected my fading headphones to be the more guilty party - and Hot For Teacher sounded better and clearer than ever. While listening over 3G there were minor delays between tracks and it dropped out in a couple of notorious 3G black spots en route to work, but generally it's very acceptable. Changing the way you think about using the app can certainly improve things and offline syncing of playlists is a simple task - but it's the playlists themselves that highlight the main issue with both the desktop app and the phone version - the organisation of music. If you could sort and search within playlists like iTunes, you could easily build up favourite playlists, ratings and dynamic playlists too. Importing your owned music from iTunes would also be a major bonus.
With the desktop version of Spotify only at version 0.3.19 however, it's a very reasonable assumption that there's plenty more to come - and any success is bound to be met with a retaliatory offering from Apple, or at the very least Napster and Real Rhapsody - both of which allegedly have mobile versions under development. Exciting times.
P.S. Since launching the iPhone version, Spotify has reverted to an invite-only service in the UK. We have 2 invites for any struggling listeners in UK, Spain Sweden, Norway, Finland or France.
14th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Everett True
You may have heard about the war of words between Courtney Love and Grohl/Novoselic last week, but one good thing to come out of it was the discovery of the website of music journo Everett True, the man often credited with promoting Nirvana and grunge's big break-through.
Here's a run down of his Last FM page.
14th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Google Timeline
Nice timeline for the Google corporate history over here. Why am I not surprised that Larry and Sergey were off to Burning Man in 1998?
14th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Over Her Dead Body
Even the excellent Paul Rudd can't save this turkey.
13th Sep 2009
Read more 1.5 star reviews
Broken Flowers
Disappointingly one directional arty-ness from Jim Jarmusch and Bill Murray
.
13th Sep 2009
Read more 2.5 star reviews
Promo Promo: The Rolling Stones - 2000 Light Years From Home
a little Friday freakpower from back in the days when the Stones weren't quite the international conglomerate they are now, via Dangerous Minds
11th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: Up In The Air
George Clooney racks up some serious frequent flyer miles for Up In The Air
11th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
