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Genius 8.0
Blah blah blah. Not much to note in yesterday's Apple launch. New Nano iPods, 120GB across the board for the 'Classic' and an update to the iPod Touch - which is clearly the direction Apple wants to be taking the pocket-sized player.
The big news for me is iTunes 8, with it's new 'Genius' playlist feature. Once the program has indexed your music, you can highlight a track in your library and automatically create a playlist of similar music. Boom, instant mix-tape without the hours of agony.
So far it's been working pretty well - as noted in the attached playlist, based on Pavement's Gold Sounds.
10th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Eat Like Vince
Unmissable lifestyle-envy extravaganza Entourage is back for season 5 - which kicked off on Sunday in the US and will be debuting a mere 4 days later in the UK. On ITV2 at 11pm this Thursday.
Highlights include:
- Vince hiding out in Mexico afetr the Medillian disaster.
- Vince's awesome beard while he hides out in Mexico
- Ari's Indiana Jones Lear Jet
In a shameless bit of promotion, check out www.eatlikethem.com, which mashes the restaurants featured in the show into a Google map. It's LA/Entourage only for now, but will expand to include brazillions of films/TV shows/cities and restaurants/bars/hotels. Hug it out here.
10th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: A Quantum More S007ace
New trailer up for Quantum of Solace. Daniel Craig's second outing as James Blond, which looks to add even more credibility back to the character after the doldrums of the 70's, 80's and 90's.
10th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
ConC.E.R.N.ed?
As noted previously, C.E.R.N.'s Large Hallidron Collider is being powered up for the first time today. It's already running as of 08:43, but the real danger is expected later this morning - when the actual collisions start happening.
The best-case scenario involves the discovery of some major scientific data. Worst case sees an apocalyptic beam of light appear out of the Indian ocean, before the climate of the planet nose-dives and we are sucked into a black-hole - presumably not likely to emerge at the other end.
10th Sep 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: Frost/Nixon
Not quite sure what to make of Richie Cunningham's new Frost/Nixon movie, but it's certainly a pretty ambitious project for such a major director. Trailers up at Yahoo.
10th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Secret Nuclear Bunker
No, seriously. Check out this Secret Nuclear Bunker under a forest outside Berlin, which was surrounded by a village populated by Stasi agents. It was built to house East German leader Erich Honecker and 400 staff in the event of war, and frighteningly it was completed in 1983 - a time when I was sure that during my lifetime the world would end in total Armageddon.
9th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
SQPUSHER
Noise merchant Squarepusher is back with a new album - Just A Souvenir - his 11th following 2006's Hello Everything. Check out track Delta V on the Warp Records Myspace page - and keep your eyes on his Myspace and official site for more news.
9th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Tune Up
Got a sloppy, mis-labled, shabby iTunes collection? Put your feet up and let Tune-Up clean things up for you, finding missing artwork and adding missing titles. It's Windows-only at the moment and it isn't free either - for more than 500 songs it's $11.95 a year.
In fact, head over to Doug Apple's Scripts and you can probably cover a lot of these bases yourself, lazy bones.
9th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
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RocknRollOver
The Guardian don't think much of Guy Ritchie's new movie. Ouch.
They must not have a graphic for zero stars. I know the feeling, we had to make this one up specially.
8th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Re-animated
The less-than-legit folks from Demonoid are backing a new project to literally re-animate classic zombie movie The Night Of The Living Dead. The collaborative effort invites people to contribute animated scenes from different parts of the film, which will then be editing together into a whole - and the final movie will be distributed under a Creative Commons license.
8th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Minifigs
I remember the moment Lego evolved from being a chunky bunch of blocks (that a family friends kid had grown out of) and became a world of it's own. 1978 ties in nicely with that moment and now I see why, as the first smiling yellow face was introduced and would remain unchanged until the Pirates invaded in 1989 and I had moved on.
From Wired: "Some quick facts: Over four billion minifigs have been manufactured, or nearly four figures are sold every second, for an average of 122 million per year. The very first minifig was a police officer, and he has appeared in 41 different versions in 104 sets"
Check out gominimango.com for some more stuff, and don't miss the Flickr photo contest. The featured picture is titled "Mid-nineties: The Rise of Indie Rock" by Profound Whatever.
8th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Somers Town
(dir. Shane Meadows)
Optimum
Young runaway Tomo leaves Nottingham and gets the train to London's King's Cross, before getting mugged and losing all his posessions. He falls in with Polish immigrant Marek, who has moved to England with his father - a builder at the new St. Pancras station who passes the evenings drinking with his mates. The two boys develop a friendship with french waitress Maris - all the time growing closer themselves.
Shane Meadows black and white follow-up to his superb Dead Man's Shoes and This Is England takes a simple premise and fleshes it out with outstanding performances and a lightness of touch. The film realistically portrays the birth of a friendship and the genuines camaradarie between two boys from different circumstances and the pains of growing up - and the acting is superb, particularly from Thomas Turgoose, who displays a baffling assuredness and confidence for a fifteen year-old.
Some controversy surrounds the film's production - as it was revelaed that it was produced by advertising agency Mother, on behalf of it's client, Eurostar. While the sponsors input is not overt in the Casino Royale sense ("Is that a Rolex? No, Omega"), it is present and it's most substantial effect is possibly the restriction of the film entering the kind of difficult territory that Dean Man's Shoes or This is England delved into. Without any real antagonism, the film doesn't move forward very far and settles instead for being a funny and charming portal of a new friendship, rather than explore the notions of immigration, homelssness and exploitation that it merely touches on.
Even though Tomo can't possibly have a passport the boys don't bunk the train, but manage to take a trip to Paris (only two hours away!) in search of their first love. This scene perhaps sums up the film's best aspects, with the earlier black & white photography serving as a counterpoint to this eventual Super 8 nostalgia that looks fondly upon coming of age. At 75 minutes this serves as more of an EP that a full-length, but it provides enough evidence that Meadows has a mature confidence behind the camera that shows yet more promise of great things to come.
8th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 3 star reviews
Skate or die: Matt Hensley
Matt Hensley in Hokus Pokus - one of the first skate movies to eschew the finesse of 16mm and get grungey with video on a low budget. This video pretty much summed up H-Street as a brand, as skating got way more street orientated. The label was one of the first rivals to the dominance of Santa Cruz and Powell - and introduced a ton of legendary skaters including Eric Koston and Danny Way.
Bonus fact: Matt Hensley is in the band Flogging Molly.
5th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Revolutionary Road
Looking forward to Sam Mendes Revoultionary Road (and not just for the Titanic casting reunion of Winslet and DiCaprio). Aint-it-cool has some positive reviews up from advance screenings.
No trailers yet, but it's a great book - which as noted previously was written by occasional blogger Larry David's former girlfriend's dad - Richard Yates.
5th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Simplify Media
Simplify Media is a little program to let you access your music from a remote location. Once authorised, the program can load up your iTunes/Winamp/Rythmbox files on a distant computer or phone and let you stream away. There's a few hurdles (bandwidth, drm, connection availablity) but overall it works surprisingly well.
5th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
The Serpent
(dir. Eric Barbier)
Fid?lit? Productions
Midway through a divorce, successful middle-class Parisian Vincent Mandel gets involved with old classmate and blackmailer Joseph Plender, who has held a grudge since their school days. As Plender infiltrates his life, things slowly descend into hell.
Another tight French thriller coming up fast on recent success Tell No One. Based on an English novel - "Plender" by Get Carter writer Ted Lewis - The Serpent takes the Hollywood conventions of suspense and film noir and transposes them seamlessly to modern day Paris. The movie is confidently directed by Eric Barbier, who is happy to play on the storylines of the past - including France's own Cache, as well as Manhunter and The Fugitive, while Vincent is played suitably empathetically by Yvan Attal (from Munich, and er Rush Hour 3, Prison Break Season 4 and Tom Cruise in the French dubbed version of Eyes Wide Shut) - who himself directed a chunk of upcoming ensemble movie New York, I Love You.
In hindsight, some of the plot twists are a little precarious - and the movie actually ends up wriggling out of some of the traps it sets itself up for- but when you're in the moment it all makes perfect sense. It all gets a bit epic in the end, but remains far more restrained then your average Hollywood effort. Why can't Britain make more movies like this?
5th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 3.5 star reviewsPromo Promo: MMJ Touch Me Part 2
Spooky animated promo up for My Morning Jacket's Touch Me, I'm Going To Scream Part 2.
4th Sep 2008 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Kick-Ass
Mark Millar's comic Kick-Ass is getting a big-screen makeover, with Superbad's McLovin' possibly in the title role - as a kid who takes his love of comics one step further and sets himself up as a superhero, with a myspace page.
Matthew Vaughn is set to direct, with shooting in Canada and the UK. Nicolas Cage is playing the retired-cop-single- father.
Mark Millar seems to be man of the moment following the big-screen adaptation of Wanted and now this. He's even been talking big about another Superman re-boot.
Links
www.kickass-themovie.com
www.kicking-arse.co.uk
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4th Sep 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Boycott Viking Quest!
Turns out Johnny Drama is not happy about the Viking Quest video game - and has ranted on YouTube about how he expects to be compensated "monetarily and muscularily".
4th Sep 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
The Dudes
Brain, Heart, Guitar
One Four Seven
So, ambitious name aside, how do Canadian rockers The Dudes sound? Like a smoothed out White Denim that's been thrown through the blender and re-packaged with a more cohesive brand. Singer Dan Vacon has vocals so similar to White Denim's front man that I was convinced it was a related release. Must just be fans of that sound.
The only problem is, this is actually a UK release of The Dudes overlooked 2006 album, and these Dudes have been tearing up the plains of Calgary since 1996, when White Denim were still playing catch in the garden with their dads.
For such an independent record, this album has a polished studio sound that makes it hard to place the record in a particular period. Live favourite Dropkick Queen Of The Weekend is a highlight, harnessing infectious pop licks to a rock mentality, while the story-telling lyrics of A Cup To Put Your Blood In are built around offer a more engaging narrative. The Fist recalls the mainstream sound of 80's American rock - a highway pounding bassline, backed up my a harmonious chorus - while The Celebration Of Kindness attempts to stretch things out with a more ambitious jam.
The sound and style of the band often recalls the Black Keys (Don't Talk, Love Is Dangerous, Mom 100m), again offering a smoothed-out, more approachable take on things. While White Denim's oddball character is one of their most appealing aspects, the Black Keys lack of cohesion has always seemed like there's a missing element in their sound, which prevents it really taking hold. Here that gap is filled with more hooks, beefed up guitars and sing-a-long chorus'.
Admittedly there's not a huge range here either, which has saved them from any kind of scathing attack, as I'd struggle to pull out a sub-standard track. This is a band you can throw on the stereo, crack open a beer and kick-back to - and sometimes that's just fine.
4th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 3 star reviewsLondon At Night
London At Night is the latest subject on killer photo website The Big Picture. It looks about ready to star in a Michael Mann movie.
3rd Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
New Pods
New iPods are expected to be announced next week (September 9th), as well iTunes 8.0 and rumours of a possible iTunes music subscription service which for $130 a year would allow your to listen to about half of the tracks on the iTunes store. Presumably this kind of offering would tie in with the iPhone / iPods too - allowing you to call up new music wherever you are. Apple have been resistant to this model in the past, so it'll be interesting to see if they have changed their stance.
Nokia's "Comes With Music" service makes a similar offer, and is launching in the UK shortly.
3rd Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: Zack And Miri Make A Porno
Kevin Smith smoked his last cigarette a long time ago in my book, but if anyone can spark him up again it could be Seth Rogan. Check out the trailer for Zack And Miri Make A Porno here - and I'd just like to say I don't read AskMen.com on a regular basis.
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3rd Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Viking Quest!
HBO is revving up for next weekends new season of Entourage, and to get you in the mood why not step into Johhny Drama's shoes and assume the mantle of Tarvold in Viking Quest - The Video Game.
3rd Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Chrome Dreams
Google are stepping into the browser wars later today, with a beta release of their own Internet Browser - "Chrome". It's based on Apple's WebKit engine and will be running all the latest tech under the hood - such as client side database storage and HTML 5 specifications. They've designed a fancy-pants comic to showcase it, which you can check out here.
Download the beta here (Windows only). It work fast and smooth, but is a little on the Fisher-Price tip.
UPDATE: Read Wired's thorough back-story on the development of the browser here.
2nd Sep 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Play-as-you-go
The iPhone will soon be available on pay-as-you-go for all you boys on the corner that need a burner. The phones will cost £350 (8GB) and £400 (16GB), but that includes unlimited WIFI and 3G browsing for the first 12 months ....which seems like a pretty hefty concession. On top of that you get bonus minutes or texts for every £10+ you spend per month.
Available September 16th.
2nd Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Incoming!
I doubt you will have reacted quickly enough for this, but there's a missile heading across Google maps. Zoom out to determine the target...
2nd Sep 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Ladyhawk and The Dudes On Tour
2008 favourites Ladyhawk are hitting Europe this month, with London dates at the Windmill and the Borderline - where they are playing with The Dudes. A review of their album will be hitting these pages on Thursday.
September 23 London, The Windmill 8pm, £5
September 24 Leeds, Brudenell Social Club 7.30pm, £5
September 26 Glasgow, Nice N Sleazy w/The Dudes 7.30pm, £7.50
September 27 Dublin, Crawdaddy w/The Dudes 8pm, €14
September 28 Manchester, Roundhouse 8pm, £6
September 29 Bristol, St Bonaventure's Parish Club w/The Dudes
September 30 Cardiff, Clwb Ifor Bach w/The Dudes 8pm, £6
October 1 London, Borderline w/The Dudes 7.30pm, £10
Then The Dudes are back at The Windmill on October 2nd and are playing at the Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes on October 3rd.
2nd Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Moon Smash!
NASA has plans to crash land a probe into the moon's polar surface in order to test for water. The March 2009 mission will hitch a ride on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter - and is all part of the build-up to get humans back to the moon by 2020 so we can get used to space travel and living on other planets, before we can then push on to Mars by 2030.
It always seems strange to me how much we worry about global warning and the rise of Carbon Dioxide in our own atmosphere, yet we're dead keen to get up to a zero-atmosphere rock and then on to 95.32% Carbon Dioxide atmosphere of Mars....
1st Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Dance-a-thon
Complusive dancer dipsetmuthafucka put his dedication to the test with a YouTube dance every day for six months. That's a highlights reel above, but as noted by the man himself, you should start here.
Good taste in music too. Here's Richard Hell's I'm Your Man.
1st Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Skate or die: Mike Vallely
More from the skateboard nostalgia files: Mike Vallely is pretty legendary in street skating, pioneering the first double ended street boards. Essential for the huge ollies he pulls.
Here's a later, Boss-infused clip from 1995's Powell video Scenic Drive. Pulled from Vallely's own comprehensive YouTube page, which has pretty much everything you might be looking for.
BONUS FACT: Vallely was the singer with Black Flag for a small reunion run in 2003.
MUSICAL LEGACY: The clip below from Speed Freaks kick-started by Dinosaur Jr addiction.
29th Aug 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: Ashes Of Time Redux
Wong Kar Wai's overblown and underdeveloped wuxia epic Ashes Of Time is getting a redux, promising to deliver the potential the original film had to offer. That seems to involve cutting some out and adding a little digital gloss to the production quality.
Unfortunately, Christopher Doyle's cinematography proved a little unsuitable for the grand scale of this story - a mistake he later rectified with his magnificent work on Hero - and the pop video colour grade they seem to have applied looks like it just makes things worse.
Watch the trailer at Apple.
29th Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Stereolab
Chemical Chords
4AD
Stereolab return with Chemical Chords - their ninth studio album, which is being billed as something of a comeback. While technically this is the band's first studio album since 2004's Margerine Eclipse, it's not like there's been nothing but silence. 2005 brought the EP collection Oscillons from the Anti-Sun, while 2006 brought 6 new singles (collated on Fab Four Suture) and the 'Greatest Hits' collection Serene Velocity. With the winding down of Too Pure, this album is brought to your senses by 4AD, but Stereolab's own label Duophonic is still calling the shots.
In the seventeen or so years that the band have been going, their once unique style has been much appropriated - by other bands, as well as dozens of Stereolab-esque purveyors of music-for-mobile-phone-adverts. With the odd exception, as time has passed the band themseleves have become less abrasive - less post-rock, more yacht rock - and that trend contunes here.
Stangely, the upbeat Neon Beanbag is not dissimilar to Yo La Tengo's bean bag infused track - Beanbag Chair. They must have got that memo. While there are darker moments here and there - such as the atmospheric title track - it's Laetitia Sadier's upbeat vocals that provide the defining constant here, floating in and out around through the light pop of Valley Hi!, the xylophones of Silver Sands and the piano of Daisy Click Clack. There are touches of Motown here and there and the electronics have a more organic, less organic sound than on some efforts - but to be honest, having pretty much pioneered this style, it's hard to criticise Tim Gane and his merry band of popsters.
The delay may have been (somewhat) significant but the results are the same. Another album of pleasing, if not challenging electronic nicety.
29th Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 3 star reviewsBirthday Boy
He may be getting on a bit, but Tom Cruise still has those Old Time Rock 'n Roll moves when someone sticks a bit of Bob Seger on the stereo.
28th Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
King Khan & The Shrines
The Supreme Genius Of King Khan & The Shrines
Vice
"King Khan and the Shrines" aka "King Khan and His Sensational Shrines" aka "The Supreme Genius of King Khan and His Sensational Shrines" is the work of Blacksnake, aka King Khan. Phew, that's a pretty major identity crisis. After rave reviews for their 11-man-band live shows, Vice Records (home to the not-dissimmilar Black Lips) has put together this Greatest Hits, for a first-time-ever worldwide release. Thankfully it's a Greatest Hits of 16 actual songs, not band names - and musically there is a lot less of an identity crisis.
Pulling tracks from 3 studio albums (the Liam Watson produced Three Hairs & Your're MIne, the Hazelwood produced Mr Supernatural and the more recent What Is?) this compilation rounds up pretty much everything you will need from the Nugget's infused nostalgia of Khan's heavy garage psych.
From the word go it's a hotrod-race of breakneck guitars, thundering bass-lines and unhinged solos - and it's not until Fool Like Me that things slow down. The bluesy balladry of Shivers Down My Spine changes the pace briefly, while Burnin Inside starts by attempting to move out of the pre-defined template, before realising what the 'supreme genius' of King Khan & The Shrines actually is. 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'.
Khan's former Spaceshits bandmate Mark Sultan (aka BBQ) is absent from this release, and the effect of that is hard to judge through the lava-lamp haze, but at a guess I'd say there's slightly less of a 50's vibe here, and more of an early/mid 60's - but that could just be the herb talking. While it's lacking the unhinged genius of the BBQ album, What's For Dinner?, everything else is present and correct. Funky bass-lines, broken hearts, and hot chicks with great ass.
28th Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 2.5 star reviewsCrime Doesn't Pay
I think they might have missed the obvious suspect in this debacle, but the FBI have cracked down on blogger Kevin Cogill (aka Skwerl), after he posted 9 supposedly finished songs from Axl's long-in-the-tooth comeback Chinese Democracy on his website Antiquiet.com.
Skwerl wasn't exactly subtle about it though - and the blog still seem to think they haven't really done anything wrong. Crazy.
28th Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Desk Space
Nice Flickr group up to round up contributions to Ping Magazine's desk project - providing a cross-section of desk spaces from around the world. But what is it with graphic designers and plastic toys?
27th Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Soundgarden
It's a bit late for our Sub Pop celebration, but rumor has it Soundgarden have been back together.
26th Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Nail The Cross
New Cross has come even further into its own recently - first the Montague Arms was named best pub in Britain and now we have our own music festival.
Thanks to the folks from Domino Records and Adventures In The Beetroot Field, September 27th will see New Cross over-run with quality music from established acts like Archie Bronson Outfit, Clinic and These New Puritans - as well as newcomers like Micachu & The Shapes.
Domino is hosting a stage at the famous local university, Goldsmiths... Performing will be the miraculous talents of Archie Bronson Outfit, Clinic, These New Puritans and The Count (AKA Herve) all preaching the good word and exorcising your dance demons with an revelation of new music. There’ll also be other five others stages and numerous galleries, with arts based activities and music from the likes of during throughout the day Benga, Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man, the XX, Loefah (Digital Mystikz), Afrikan Boy and Oneman until 5am.
Tickets are £15 and available here. Check out myspace for more info.
26th Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Richard Swift
Ground Trouble Jaw
Secretly Canadian
Since the fairly tepid review we gave Richard Swift's breakout album Dressed Up For The Let Down in 2007, he's proved to be a grower and surpassed all expectations with a barrage of mid-season releases - from the electronica of Music From the Films of R/Swift (released under the name Instruments Of Science And Technology), to the low-key Richard Swift As Onassis, to this free EP - available from Myspace and eMusic amongst others.
This release is closer in style to his 2007 LP than any of the other releases, taking in as many styles as a Ween record, while somehow maintaining Swift's own identity (a telent Ween often seem to lack). The sarcastic taunts of The Bully make for an amusing listen, literally kicking off like one of The Pharoahs from American Graffiti, the song takes a swinging 50's vibe and overlays the sarcastic jaunts of local tough guy. "Huh. Nice ending, jackass".
60's Motown is the touch stone of choice on Lady Luck, as Swift again applies his modern touch to a classic sound. The comedy keyboards on The Original Thought and A Song For Milton Feher manage not to disrupt things, highlighting Swift's love of Lennon-era Harry Nilsson,before it's back to a rolling 50's vibe for highlight Would You.
A hook up with Jeff Tweedy (witnessed in person by our man BC) has led to Swift recording his next 'proper' album at Wilco's loft studio in Chicago - and if this EP is the kind of stuff the guy is capable of 'between' albums, I'll be paying far more attention next time.
26th Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 3.5 star reviewsInterview: Sub Pop
When Nirvana went global and 'Grunge' became a household word, Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavitt's fledgling record label hit the big time. Geffen Records bought out their contract with Nirvana in a tidy deal that gave the Seattle label percentage points on future Nirvana releases - as well as reviving sales of Bleach to make it the label's biggest seller to this day. With interest in S... read article
26th Aug 2008 - Add Comment
Harvey Speaks
Interesting article by celebrity blogger Harvey Weinstein over at Portfolio, discussing the struggles of trying to break an indie movie in an over-crowded marketplace. It's a hard life.
25th Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Skate or die: Eric Dressen
Back when skating was still a pretty neon sport, Eric Dressen and the other skaters on the resurrected Dogtown label brought a bit of heavy metal into it. Gnarly tricks, tons of speed and a lot of concrete. As a kid in Bristol we used to skate Bedmister skate park, where the best kids would get 3 foot airs out of one of the double bowls onto the flat. When Dressen, Bill Danforth and Jeff Hartsel arrived on tour, Eric Dressen blew everyone away by smoothly pulling 6 foot airs out of one bowl and down into the other bowl - 12 feet away.
I was always a huge fan of how fast he's going at the start of this clip from the Santa Cruz video Speed Freaks (1989). Check out the massive powerslide he does as he's motoring down the hill. You can see the whole video over at the now obsolete Google Video.
BONUS FACT: Turns out he's still skating and is also a tattoo artist. Read this interview for a bit more info (conducted by an original Dogtown legend - Jay Adams).
22nd Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
In Search of Alex Holdridge
Inspriring article up on Wired behind film-maker Alex Holdridge's efforts to get In Search of a Midnight Kiss made.
22nd Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Microseinfeld
It looks like chimp favourite Jerry Seinfeld is pocketing $10 million to feature in $300 million effort to make Microsoft seem cool again. A strange choice, as Jerry is a mac guy if I ever saw one - but maybe that's the point.
Larry won't be making an appearance, leaving the straight-man role to Bill Gates himself ...although Jerry has worked with straighter straight-men before.
22nd Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Lucky You
(dir. Curtis Hanson)
Warner Bros
Hot shot poker player Huck Cheaver (Eric Bana) struggles to raise the $10,000 needed to get into the World Series of poker. His chances seem slim when his world champion father returns to town and cleans him out. Luckily, he meets aspiring singer Drew Barrymore, who puts a few things into perspective and teaches Huck a few life lessons. A deal with a loan shark gets him into the final and Huck has finally has the chance to prove himself to his father.
Eric Bana's series of hollywood mis-steps continues with this dull poker-drama from 2007. As usual, you can see the thinking behind his unfortunate choice - written by Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, Ali, Munich, The Good Shepherd) and directed by LA Confidentail man Curtis Hanson. Unfortunately Hanson's reputation is one of inconsistency, having followed LA Confidentilal with a series of not unsuccessful left-turns - the excellent Wonderboys, then 8 Mile, then In Her Shoes. What's the comon demonimator here?
You've seen this movie a million times before - Rocky, Karate Kid, Color Of Money - but with poker the subject matter is so dull that a near-constant stream of exposition is needed to let the viewer know what's happening. "Two Kings? Huck's going to need a Jack or better to win this one!". Hanson's already covered this story in the excellent 8 Mile, and without the captivating double act of Tom Cruise and Paul Newman in Color of Money, or the flashy direction of Casino, this is just another dull Vegas drama.
Robert Duvall is the wise old man who teaches his distant son a thing or two - the hard way. Drew Barrymore delivers a fairly typical sub-par performance, telling Bana the cold hard truth and making him look inside himself. Unfortunately on this occasion he doesn't find a green giant.
22nd Aug 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 2.5 star reviewsYour New Superpowers
I can't see it myself, but invisibility just got one step closer.
21st Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet