Sunday, February 24, 2013
Joss Whedon Accepting An Award at the James Dublin Int. Film Festival
This was just before A screening of Whedon's latest film, an adaptation of Shakespeare's "Much To Do About Nothing". According to aintitcoolnews, during the Q&A part of these proceedings someone in the crowd asked Mr. Whedon about Avengers 2, to which part of his response was, "Death, death and more death". Now - it would be easy to interpret this as the killing of characters, but also as ainitcool points out this is also possibly a reference to Death, as in the female embodiment of it that Thanos tries soooo hard to impress in The Infinity Gauntlet. How hard does he try to impress Death? By killing a very large percent of the galactic population. Might this be what the after-credits appearance of Thanos in the Avengers, the forthcoming Guardians of the Galaxy, and perhaps even the sequel to Thor, thus far titled Thor: The Dark World all be leading towards?
One can hope. After watching Whedon's Avengers film I dug out my old Infinity Gauntlet comics and started reading them for the first time in over twenty years. The concept is great but the execution... not so much. Hence the rabid anticipation fans have in seeing this adapted into the Marvel Movie Verse - it can be updated, streamlined and improved upon to no end (let's start with no Adam Warlock, shall we? A large part of Infinity Gauntlet's problem is it reeks of being a kickstarter series to launch what ended up being a pretty short-lived Adam Warlock series).
Frightened Rabbit - Backyard Skulls
Again, breaking my prejudice against videos featuring the band "playing" the music - at least in this case they were slick and did the school dance setting. That helped a lot. I don't know a lot of this band's material but what I know I like. Also working in the band's favor, A) their from Scotland so that's always a plus in my book and B) they remind me at times of that Pulp-era Brit indie rock.
PJ Harvey - Big Exit Live! 2001
Ah, the bombastic opening track from my favorite PJ Harvey record (that I know - I still don't have them all). There is such a tone that runs over this record; it's a little bit Nick Cave (that's probably more due to Mick Harvey's presence on this record and less to do with the fact that Polly Jean and Mr. Cave were at one time an item) and a little Radio Head (which is accented by not entirely because of Thom Yorke's presence on three tracks). It's also claustrophobic and quiet and a little bit hopeless and violent, as if just months before 9/11 Ms. Harvey was channeling the new Zeitgeist of fear and aggression that would be coming down the pipes and never quite leaving us here in the States. Listening to this record is a very specific mindset. It's fun and creatively-inspiring in the right moments but perhaps a bit bleak and haunting at others.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
The Dark Knight Does Indeed Return
Just finished re-reading Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns in preparation for back-to-backing both of these animated adaptions tonight. Can't wait - even without the internal monologue I think these will be freakin' awesome!
Now someone animate Grant Morrison's Gothic storyline from issues 6-10 of the Legends of the Dark Knight book circa 1989.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds 2001 Concert
Well, the video for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds live at LA's Henry Fonda Theatre may have been taken off-line, but here's an older show to get us through those withdrawals.
Fen's New Album Dustwalker
Somehow a new album by the band Fen came out on January 25 and I missed it entirely!!! Here's the first song I could find on the ol' tubeyou. If you're into good black metal (yes, there is such a thing, quite a lot of it actually!) then this is the band. I reviewed their last record here. To sum it up, the thing sounds as though you are listening to it through a rain storm. It goes great with reading John Crowley's Little, Big as it has a forest tone, all dry branches and soiled, dead leaves, mud trails and flickers at the edge of your vision.
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