Thom Yorke: Pretentious

A wee while ago I wrote an album review. It’s not something I do very often, but I prefaced the actual review with my reasoning for not liking music reviews in general. I’ll not repeat it, but you can read it here - http://jcthefirst.blogspot.com/2011/10/album-review-noel-gallaghers-high.html

However, despite all the pretentiousness of album reviews and music magazines in general, sometimes it’s the artists themselves that are the guiltiest of it. And even without having read the following quote, I reckon most people would consider Thom Yorke to be at least at little pretentious. I mean, just listen to the albums if you don’t believe me. Don’t get me wrong, they’re great albums (well, some of them) but you can’t deny Thom is a pretentious fella.

So, for me, anyone that spews this kind of bollocks doesn’t deserve to actually ever speak about his own songs ever again.


"'Street Spirit' is our purest song, but I didn't write it. It wrote itself. We were just its messengers; its biological catalysts. Its core is a complete mystery to me, and, you know, I wouldn't ever try to write something that hopeless. All of our saddest songs have somewhere in them at least a glimmer of resolve. 'Street Spirit' has no resolve. It is the dark tunnel without the light at the end. It represents all tragic emotion that is so hurtful that the sound of that melody is its only definition. We all have a way of dealing with that song. It's called detachment. Especially me; I detach my emotional radar from that song, or I couldn't play it. I'd crack. I'd break down on stage. That's why its lyrics are just a bunch of mini-stories or visual images as opposed to a cohesive explanation of its meaning. I used images set to the music that I thought would convey the emotional entirety of the lyric and music working together. That's what's meant by 'all these things you'll one day swallow whole'. I meant the emotional entirety, because I didn't have it in me to articulate the emotion. I'd crack...

Our fans are braver than I to let that song penetrate them, or maybe they don't realise what they're listening to. They don't realise that 'Street Spirit' is about staring the fucking devil right in the eyes, and knowing, no matter what the hell you do, he'll get the last laugh. And it's real, and true. The devil really will get the last laugh in all cases without exception, and if I let myself think about that too long, I'd crack.

I can't believe we have fans that can deal emotionally with that song. That's why I'm convinced that they don't know what it's about. It's why we play it towards the end of our sets. It drains me, and it shakes me, and hurts like hell every time I play it, looking out at thousands of people cheering and smiling, oblivious to the tragedy of its meaning, like when you're going to have your dog put down and it's wagging its tail on the way there. That's what they all look like, and it breaks my heart. I wish that song hadn't picked us as its catalysts, and so I don't claim it. It asks too much. I didn't write that song."

Fuck off, Thom. You wrote a great song that sounds a little depressing. Get over it.

And yourself.

After all that I feel this little comic sums it up even better.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyLmJeTmvB8r5sY0Bngek8gtnxc0OcDl7KkASZh2XoIOJ1RyUcq_hjzmpD34oSGnUJVjj2sRjH8Sxk1jNiapWn0Cq7h6-52sAcPrMAlCn7nmVktrB-4xs2reb8dvpSihD5slZmBD2w2yw/s1600/1289656223384.png

And besides, The Bends is your best album. After that, it all went downhill and people are just kidding themselves that your albums are still good.

Here's a wee funny Thom gif to let you know he's not all bad. It really makes me smile.

Cheers
JC

GAME REVIEW - Batman: Arkham City

Back in 2009, Arkham Asylum was released and was easily the best Batman game there had ever been (not hard), and was possibly the best game of that year (slightly harder). With the weight of expectation for a sequel that was just as good, developers Rocksteady were under a lot of pressure. Thankfully with Arkham City, they’ve created a game that is every bit as good as its predecessor.

Starting off with Bruce Wayne getting thrown into Arkham City, a slice of Gotham cordoned off and being used as a prison, you have to escape from Hugo Strange, suit up and get to the bottom of whatever the not-so-good doctor is up to. Eventually you find out he’s up to something called Protocol 10, but this main campaign strand is only one small part of the game, which has so much more to offer.

Essentially, City is exactly the same as Asylum only in a bigger playground. While it adds nothing completely new gameplay wise, the open world is a nice touch meaning you don’t have to do the story missions until you want to, and can just fly about the city beating up thugs and solving the riddles that have been scattered about the city. With the bigger game world, Rocksteady have room to add pretty much every Batman villain you could think of; all the big hitters are present (Joker, Penguin, Two Face) as well as some 2nd tier Batman villains (Mad Hatter, Zsasz, Deadshot) and each of these villains have their own distinct missions for you to complete. These extra side missions add hours of extra gameplay that you can complete or choose to ignore. Many times though, these missions are far more enjoyable (and harder) than the main game. The Riddler challenges are back as well, and form the biggest non-campaign part of the game. There are about 3 times as many as there were in Arkham Asylum, and they’re a lot harder as well. In fact this time, the Riddler has captured some hostages this time and it’s up to you to save them by solving a series of his puzzles. These quite often were my favourite parts of the game, having a different flavour than just punching a whole load of guys.

But punching a whole load of guys is still awesome fun, by the way.

Also, included in all new copies of Arkham City is a downloadable code for some Catwoman side missions which are intercut into the game’s plot at certain points. This adds another few hours of gameplay as well as new Riddler trophies to find as Catwoman. It’s a nice change of pace to play as another character every now and again, and certain missions as Catwoman are easily better and more fun than some of those you play as Bats.

The fighting mechanics are the same as they were before, but which some extra moves and gadgets thrown in as well all with easy quick fire button commands which enables you to use them in combat without ever losing your combo. Thankfully Batman has all of the gadgets he spent so long trying to get in Asylum, so at the start of the game you have all your tools at your disposal.

With the bigger playing area traversing the city quickly is a necessity, and there are some new gliding mechanics designed to make flying about Arkham City as fluid as possible, especially when you combine it with your grapple hook. In fact, if you perfect it you can get around the whole city without ever having to touch the ground although it is a lot of fun dive bombing from a great height and scaring the crap out of a group of thugs, before knocking the crap out of them. The city itself is beautifully realised with familiar locations scattered about (Crime Alley is there as well, and it contains a quite frankly lovely moment) as well as buildings that can be (and in most cases have to be) explored. In fact, just as with the first the greatest triumph of this game is that it really makes you feel like the world’s greatest detective. And that’s all I ask of it really.

If I had one complaint, and it’s a silly one really, it’s that it doesn’t feel as fresh as Arkham Asylum, and there are no real surprises like the Scarecrow sections (although Ra’s Al Ghul’s demon trials and the Lazarus Pit come close) but as a sequel it’s going to be hard to do that without changing everything that made the first game so special.

So, in conclusion, a worthy sequel to one of 2009’s best games and one of this year’s best as well.

4 stars

GAME REVIEW: LIMBO

[This short (but brilliant) game shall be getting a short (and hopefully brilliant) review.]

Games very rarely astound me.

Games very rarely astound me for reasons I cannot explain.

LIMBO astounded me.

I cannot explain why.

No cut scenes, no explanation, no words, no instructions. Just you, an impressively realised black and white world and some of the best sound design I’ve ever witnessed.

You start the game waking up in what looks like a forest, you walk right, you have a lot of different and treacherous terrain to cross and only the environment around you to help you. Or kill you. You’re looking for your lost sister. Everything else wants to kill you, for reasons unknown.

The joy of LIMBO is that it doesn’t ever treat you like an idiot. There are no hints or tips on how to progress; you just have to work it out for yourself using the environment. And if you get stuck, well, just keep trying. The solution is there, you’re just too dumb to see it. The only other game I could compare it to is Portal, which is kind of similar with all the puzzle elements, but at the same time it’s nothing like Portal.

It’s very rare a game offers up no definite resolution. Without spoiling anything, I’m still thinking about the end of LIMBO three days after completing it. There are a lot of theories on what the game world of LIMBO actually is, and what actually happened throughout the game, but I was incredibly impressed with the bold ending and its implications when you consider it in the context of the entire game. So, an existentialist game that causes you to think, as well as solving a series of devilishly difficult puzzles.

And it has a giant spider. Aces.

To paraphrase Morpheus, you cannot be told what LIMBO is. You have to play it for yourself.

5 stars, easily.

Movie Sunday/Sundae

So, yesterday, I decided I was going to watch a few movies that I'd been planning on watching but for whatever reason had been putting off, on what I have christened Movie Sunday/Sundae. Here's my thoughts on them:

[REC]2

I loved the first [REC]. When I saw it for the first time almost 2 years ago, it was probably the scariest movie I’d seen for a long time. My dad will probably agree with me. I bought the sequel the day it came out.

And while it doesn’t reach the heights of the first, it’s still a solid entry into what I hope will become a strong franchise ([REC]’s 3 and 4 have already been greenlit). The story picks up minutes after the first ended as we follow a group of heavily armed soldiers entering the building to find out what’s the hell is going on. Cleverly, instead of following one camera for the whole movie, each of the soldiers has a little headcam so we get lots of different viewpoints throughout the film, whether it’s following a soldier as he crawls through a vent (terrifying, by the way) or watching the other soldiers patch in to a missing soldier’s headcam to find out where he is.

However, it does add some story elements that, while expanding the universe, make it a little less believable. In the first, everything just seemed so random, shit-hitting-the-fan for no reason. In this the outbreak is explained away as almost a conspiracy; a conspiracy involving the Vatican(!). It loses some of the realness that the first had. And the whole night vision revelation is a little too far fetched for my liking.

However, it’s still scary and it’s still awesome, with a killer/disgusting last scene that makes me hungry for the next installment.

4 stars


Catfish

If you’ve seen the trailer for this, you’re probably expecting an unsuspecting man to become friends with a girl on Facebook, who then flies out to meet her only to discover she, and her family, are a bunch of serial killers or something.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Well, actually it is mostly true. Apart from the serial killer part. A young photographer (Nev) meets a little 8 year old girl on Facebook after she has been sending him her paintings of some of his photos , and begins corresponding with the girl herself, her mother and her attractive sister (see below). As time goes on, an almost romance blossoms between Nev and the sister, entirely via Facebook, telephone, text and email. When Nev discovers some discrepancies in what his online ‘girlfriend’ has been telling him, he flies out to meet her. And that’s when things get really interesting.

I’ll not say anything more so as not to gave the game away, but this documentary is a great insight into the power (and perils) of the internet, and one that will have you constantly changing your mind about the people involved right up until the end.

4 stars


Attack the Block

The directorial debut of Joe Cornish (of Adam and Joe fame) set in a council tower block which comes under attack from aliens was a bit of a mixed bag for me. There were a few things I liked about it, but at the same time there were a lot of things that brought it down.

Firstly the good. I loved loved loved the design of the aliens; just pure black with rows of luminous teeth. An inspired design, and while never out and out scary they make a lasting impression, like a furrier version of the xenomorph, all teeth and no eyes.

However I could not enjoy the film wholly, due to the fact that the main characters are such scumbags for most of the running time. When you introduce your characters by showing them mugging a woman you have to do a hell of a lot throughout the movie to make them seem like redeemable characters. The leader of the gang, Moses, while having somewhat of a redemptive arc during the movie didn’t really have enough of one to convince me that this guy is the hero, and that I should be rooting for him.

Reviewers have noted that the film has some scathing social commentary within it. Well sorry, but when the only social commentary is “some hoodies are just products of their environment and not really that bad” it’s not enough for me. Especially when at the end, it doesn’t seem as though Moses has changed any. Just that he saved the day after feeling guilty for causing some of the deaths of his friends; if anything, to me, the film suggests that he’ll not change at all with the residents of the block (who didn’t all know about the aliens) basically cheering him on for blowing up his flat and for being arrested by the police.

I also didn’t think the film was as funny or as scary as it was advertised as being. I can forgive it for not being funny, as that seemed like the marketing people advertised it as such, not really a fault of the film. But it wasn’t scary either which I believe was to be the point of it.

So overall, it’s a technically accomplished film with fine performances, but ultimately for me kind of a hollow experience, blud.

2 stars

Anyway, I hope to do another Sundae next week.

Bye, JC.

ALBUM REVIEW: Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds

I always find music reviews to be kind of pretentious. I used to buy Q a lot in my younger days when I was trying to pretend like I was all knowledgeable about music. I never really read much of it, because I figured buying it was enough.

“Do you read Q?”
“Why yes. Yes, I do.”

…as I sipped my tea, and looked down my nose at fans of pop music.

But even then, I recognised that their album reviews always seemed to be pretentious, and snooty. They had the air of snobbishness to them, like if you didn’t know all the songs that a particular artist was making reference to; you weren’t enjoying the album properly. And I hated that. It’s not like the album is a sequel that you need to have the entire back catalogue of the band, to enjoy this new album.

I also hated the dissection of the lyrics, as if the reviewer is peering into the soul of the artist. Or is writing an essay on the poetry of Robert Frost. I have no doubt that there are songwriters that spend hours on their deep and meaningful lyrics and that’s great. But I don’t look at an album as a window into the soul of a tortured artist. I look at an album as a (hopefully) great collection of songs that I can sing along to and will do for years to come.

And so, with that in mind, here’s my first ever review of an album: Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds.


It’s great.


THE END





Ok, not really.

But it is a brilliant record. It’s really just a collection of slightly different Noel songs that he was knocking out as Oasis tracks for the best part of the last 20 years, but by jove they’re good. Freed from the Oasis sound, it sounds at once familiar but pleasingly different. If anything, it sounds like a transitional record; one to bridge the gap between his past and any future albums that may come, and perhaps a little afraid to stray too far from the successful previous formula, but it goes (just) far enough that it doesn’t just sound like some abandoned recordings from an Oasis session, although there are some familiar riffs in there (I heard the beginning of Wonderwall at one point).

At the end of the day though, this is an album I was destined to at least like, and at best, love. And love it I do.

4 stars
****

DVD REVIEW: Sucker Punch

The trailer for this promised so much. Hot girls in skimpy costumes kicking all kinds of arse. I could get on board with that; a simple, escape flick with added T‘n’A. But that’s not what I got.

That’s not what anyone got.

Instead, we have a convoluted mess of a plot, where the action scenes are dull and by the end you don’t know what just happened. The story such as it is, involves Babydoll getting sent to an asylum (maybe) by her abusive stepfather after wrongly being accused of killing her sister, and in five days she will be lobotomised so as she doesn’t tell anyone the truth. So, to counter the horrible reality of being in an asylum, where they are abused by the misogynistic male staff, Babydoll imagines that she’s actually in a brothel, where they are sold to lecherous men, and abused by the misogynistic male staff. So, imagining a shitty situation to replace the shitty situation you’re currently in. Great, makes no sense. And then when she’s trying to steal the items she needs to escape, she imagines that she’s in various different worlds, when in the brothel reality she’s dancing for the bosses, and in the actual reality (or maybe not) she’s using her imagination to think that she’s dancing when she’s really being abused. Still with me? Good.

At least I think that’s what was happening. The film never clearly tells you, not that I expect any film to explicitly state it’s intention, but this one is just so deliberately obtuse and vague that it makes you wonder if the writer knew what the actual point of his movie was. For example, I like to think Inception has a definite interpretation, even if we never know for sure what it is, it’s seems as though Chris Nolan does have a definitive answer for the whole movie. Sucker Punch just seems to throw a whole bunch of things together with no real coherence and it seems as though they thought it would inspire debate as to what was real and what wasn’t (a la Inception) but come the credits, you’re still no surer of what the writer’s end game was.

Still, at least there was some great action, right? Well, sort of. While I liked the idea of the action being a figment of Babydoll’s mind, by the time we actually to some, it was so bogged down in plot mechanics that I didn’t care. And it’s not as though the plot was difficult; it basically came down to steal 5 things then escape, but it took about 5 minutes for this to be explained to Babydoll. However, the WW2 trenches, with (get this) steam powered clockwork Nazi zombies was, while mental, a very good action sequence, as was the fight on the train, and the one with the dragon. But when these scenes are all part of someone’s imagination, they may look cool, but there are no real stakes. You never think anyone is in danger, despite what is happening in the fantasy is also happening (in a more mundane way) in the real/brothel world; for example, Rocket being stabbed to save her sister, is mirrored in the fantasy as her being blown up after saving her sister by activating her jet pack (seriously). I will say however, that these sequences looked amazing. Visually spectacular, but emotionally hollow. Which sums up most of Zack Snyder’s work really, except this time it didn’t work. Sorry Zack.

(Seriously, he made this boring)

So, overall Sucker Punch is a bit of a mess really. It confuses intrigue with vagueness, and comes of stupid when it trying oh so hard to be clever. And there’s a female empowerment subtext running throughout, which never really convinces and only seems there as some sort of justification for dressing its heroines the way it does, by making them male fantasies but at the same time fighting the power/male objectification as it were.

And I haven’t even mentioned that perhaps Babydoll isn’t actually the protagonist, which throws a whole new set of problems into the mix.

Who’d of thought you could make a movie with hot girls wearing next to nothing fighting monsters so boring?

1 star.

FLASHBACK MOVIE REVIEW: Batman and Robin

I have three words that sum up this ungodly experience and which exemplify just how far this once mighty franchise has fallen since the heady days of 1989’s Batman, and those three words are: Bat Credit Card.

Let me say that again just to let it sink in: A Bat Credit Card.

About halfway through the movie Batman and Robin get into a bidding war (they’re at a charity event, don’t ask) over Poison Ivy. They outbid each other until Batman bids a huge amount and whips out his Batman Credit Card from his utility belt, all but looking to the camera saying “Don’t leave home without it.”

I felt like throwing up.

By the way, the expiry date on said credit card is Forever. Which aside from making no sense (so it’s always expired?) is just downright retarded and insulting to the audience. Which is how I would sum up the entire damn movie.

It’s not even the garish set design or the Bat-nipples that upset me most, although they are completely hideous. Seriously Gotham is constantly bathed in neon light, and there are massive Adonis-like statues all over the place. And don’t get me started on the structure of the city, which literally makes no sense. Gotham is meant to be dark and gothic as it was in the first two Batman films, not a multi-coloured MC Escher inspired gay bar.

And the Batsuit, a suit supposed to be designed for stealth and to strike fear into the hearts of criminals, is, in the final act, made sort of metallic in nature. You could practically see your face in it. The there’s the Batmobile. Oh lord, the Batmobile. It resembles a ribbed fluorescent condom on wheels.

The whole thing is so camp it makes the 60’s Batman with its “POW! BIFF! SHONK” antics seem almost Kubrickian.

But I can almost forgive these things, if the movie itself were any good. But it’s really not. There is no subtlety in the whole thing, everything happens in big loud moments with absolutely no attempt to make anything resemble actual dialogue. Arnie’s Mr Freeze doesn’t say anything in the movie that isn’t a terrible ice/cold/snow/winter pun and it’s easily the worst performance of his not exactly glittering career, leading us to believe that maybe his best performances are the ones where he doesn’t say much (see: The Terminator). George Clooney makes a mess of both Wayne and Bats. His Wayne is a perma-smirking (although that could just be Clooney’s face) asshole, and his Bats (like Freeze) just speaks in terrible puns for the most part. Chris O’Donnell is just as awful as he was in Batman Forever, and a plot strand about him leaving Batman to be his own hero is dropped as quickly as it starts rendering him pointless. Alicia Silverstone’s apparently English (though you wouldn’t know it) niece of Alfred’s is just there to eventually don a Bat suit of her own come the end, which despite no training in the Bat-gadgets can use them all really well. Seriously, no-one questions this. In fact, only Uma Thurman comes out of this with any dignity. Her Poison Ivy is actually quite fun and works in the campy context of the movie.
The action, if you can call it that, is terrible and consists mostly of Batman and Robin fighting Freeze’s goons on ice. Seriously, when is ice skating ever exciting? All other action is either Batman punching Freeze or Bane (oh, poor Bane) in the face, with both of these characters being so huge it doesn’t look as if they actually feel any punches at all. Freeze in particular doesn’t look like he can move at all in his ice suit much less fight.

In fact, there is nothing in the movie that isn’t completely over the top; if there’s a wall, someone will smash through it; if there’s an opportunity for a pun, this movie will not just take it but ram it down your throat; if there’s a chance to make it even more stupid, camp and dumb beyond belief you’d better believe they’re going to produce a fucking Bat Credit Card.

All in all, it’s much more of a toy advert than a movie and the decision to make it a more family friendly movie is a terrible one. I doubt any children were playing with action figures from this movie, or if they were they would have made a better movie than this. I’d have rather watched a movie about Alfred fighting his illness than watch this.

However this abomination did cause WB to not make any more Bat movies with Joel Schumacher and lead into Batman Begins so maybe we can be thankful for that.

0 stars.