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(01/13/11 12:31am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>You might know ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro from the YouTube video in which he performs the Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”He builds on his ability to convincingly translate complex, polyphonic songs onto the ukulele in his latest album, “Peace Love Ukulele.” Somehow he manages to perform a rendition of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” to full effect despite the ukulele only having four strings.Shimabukuro’s tone is startlingly sweet and clear, with deftly articulated melodies rising above harmonies. His playing style is a departure from more traditional ukulele music that features strumming of chords. In “Pianoforte,” Shimabukuro plays a melody over a background ukulele arpeggio, creating a sound reminiscent of Mozart.The album’s sound is quite diverse, featuring the ukulele in several different roles and genres, from virtuosic solo pieces to violin duets to jazz style playing backed by drums and bass.Highlights include a moving rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and a live version of the aforementioned “Bohemian Rhapsody.”Shimabukuro’s transformation of the ukulele from a modest background player to a virtuosic solo instrument, combined with his skillful renditions of popular music, makes for a very engaging listening experience.
(12/08/10 11:30pm)
LCD Soundsystem tops WEEKEND's list of the best albums of the year.
(11/17/10 10:41pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“Skyline,” the latest alien thriller, wasn’t all bad. Here’s a list of the good qualities: not all the acting was terrible. Donald Faison (Turk from “Scrubs”) gave a decent performance, all things considered.Okay, that was the list.The script was atrocious. The characters seemed to only be capable of speaking in melodramatic clichés. As if sounding stupid wasn’t enough, they act stupid too. The alien threat comes in the form of harmful light and flying, “Matrix” rip-off aliens, so the protagonists wisely choose to spend 90 percent of the movie in a room with floor-to-ceiling windows. Come on. Even elementary schoolers know to stay away from windows during disasters. Even the special effects disappoint. They might have been impressive in the mid-1990s, but not today.It seems like the movie’s creators set out to make the most derivative, lackluster sci-fi film of all time. Their effort resulted in a moronic charade that will have viewers on the edge of their seats — but not from suspense. Instead, they’ll be quaking with incredulous laughter.
(11/11/10 12:47am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When an album without words is able to clearly express emotion, you know it’s good. When an album with no words expresses emotion more powerfully than many that have words, you know it’s great. Ambient innovator Brian Eno’s latest work, “Small Craft on a Milk Sea,” is one of the latter.The first track, “Emerald and Lime,” is peaceful and calming and serves to cleanse the listener’s emotional palette, giving the subsequent tracks room to have full emotional impact. “Complex Heaven,” the second track, is ominous and beautiful, and it feels distinctly like the calm before the storm. That foreboding intensifies in the title track. The album crescendos into unconstrained anger during the next three tracks, culminating in a minute-long guitar frenzy in “2 Forms of Anger.”The rest of the album is a spiraling descent from that anger, moving through a gallery of brooding emotions, frenetic restlessness, dissatisfaction, melancholy, fear, mourning, anxiety and finally peace.Eno’s uncanny ability to both express and implant emotions through his music is on full display in this very stimulating album.
(11/03/10 11:36pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“Winter’s Bone,” a grim portrait of desperation, is far from what you’d expect for a feel-good flick. Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), age 17, has a father who cooks crystal meth. When a bondsman tells Ree that her father used the deed to their home to pay his bail, she sets off to look for him, fearing that her already struggling family will be left homeless. Her father’s associates are cold, desperate and disturbingly recognizable. The America shown in this film is the America we like to forget, where the rare acts of kindness are just as brutal as the more plentiful cruelty.Every actor in this movie gives a chillingly convincing performance, and the writing is powerful, reinforced by a deftly matched soundtrack. As this grippingly real film unfolds, viewers are reminded how truly lucky they are not to have these experiences. Although it avoids the beaten path for feel-good movies, it succeeds in simultaneously arousing sympathy for Ree and her family while making viewers elated to not be in their shoes.
(10/27/10 11:57pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Yeah, we know you’ve all seen “Night of the Living Dead,” “28 Days Later...,” “Shaun of the Dead” and “Zombieland.” Lots of people have, but that doesn’t make them zombie lovers. Who wants an interesting film when all we really want are zombies? Sometimes it’s just more fun to watch an awful (or not), guilty pleasure horror B-movie that the “Twilight” crowd would’ve never heard of. Here’s a list of some our favorite, goriest and dumbest zombie movies ever made. So, if you’re like a zombie looking for brains, this is not the list for you.“White Zombie” (1932)One of Hollywood’s first interpretations of the zombie is 1932’s “White Zombie.” Based on Haitian folklore of ‘zombis,’ Bela Lugosi (better known for his title role in the 1931 classic monster movie, “Dracula”) plays Murder Legendre, a voodoo sorcerer with the power to raise the dead to work in his sugar mill. Unlike other zombies, these undead are meant to be objects of pity, not fear. As the first of its kind, it is an important zombie movie to check out, but with weak performances and unbelievable dialogue, “White Zombie” is a one-time watch. — Charles Scudder“The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?” (1964) This verbosely-titled film is probably the worst zombie movie ever made, and I don’t mean that as a compliment to some gloriously campy send-up. It’s actually just a terrible, boring movie with some tangential attachment to zombies — who, according to this film’s special effects crew, just look like people. This movie is only notable because it is responsible for one of the funniest episodes of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” — Brad Sanders“The Astro-Zombies” (1968) “The Astro-Zombies” is one of those films that you feel embarrassed for everyone involved with by the time the movie is done. There are some movies that are so bad that they’re good, but “The Astro-Zombies” is not good. In a nutshell, a “space agency” scientist goes rogue and creates a zombie, the zombie breaks loose and goes on a killing spree, the CIA tries to track down the zombie, somehow a Mexican gang gets involved, there’s a damsel in distress and in the end, well, in the end you’re just confused. — CS“Zombie” (1979) Italian director Lucio Fulci’s most famous film (known everywhere but America as “Zombi 2”) is a scary, fun romp through the jungles of fictional Matul Island. It’s a solid enough movie all around, but it’s still talked about today primarily because of one particular scene involving a zombie, a woman and a shard of wood. YouTube “Zombie eye scene” and have your life changed forever. — BS “The Evil Dead” (1981) In director Sam Raimi’s (“Spider-man”) first feature film, five college-age students go on a trip to an abandoned cabin in the woods. As usual in such situations, stuff goes wrong. Someone reads an ancient passage from an old book, the forest attacks a girl who tries to leave and people start turning into zombies — really anything that could go wrong does. This isn’t your normal back-from-the-grave zombie, but more of a possessed-spirit zombie. “The Evil Dead” is one of the most extraneously bloody zombie movies out there, but it’s definitely one not to miss. Make sure to check out the sequels, “Evil Dead II” and “Army of Darkness.” — CS“Return of the Living Dead Part II” (1988) While the first installment in the now five-part long “Return of the Living Dead” series is considered a minor classic, it’s the second film that perfectly encapsulated the 1980s horror-comedy vibe that director Ken Wiederhorn was trying to accomplish. Every performance is overacted to the max, the special effects are fantastically cheesy and the plot drips with late Cold War paranoia about government secrets and conspiracies. The entire series is worth at least one run through, but if you’re likely to revisit one movie, it’s “Part II.” — BS“The Serpent and the Rainbow” (1988)This is perhaps the most notable film in the “real life zombies” subgenre. Wes Craven’s mid-career masterpiece is based on a nonfiction book of the same name that details an herbal brew concocted by Haitian witchdoctors that generates the symptoms of being “undead.” The film’s protagonist, a Harvard ethnobotanist, goes to Haiti to investigate the drug for a pharmaceutical company but becomes obsessed with the zombies instead. — BS“Dead Alive” (1992) Before Peter Jackson was tossing off billion-dollar masterpieces in the early 2000s, he was a young Kiwi with a camera and a love for gore, zombies and over-the-top schlock. “Dead Alive” (released as “Braindead” outside of the U.S.) might be the best film from this era of his career, and it is certainly the goriest. And honestly, isn’t any film whose premise can be summarized as, “plague rats raped tree monkeys to create rat-monkeys who make humans into zombies if they bite them,” worth watching at least once? — BS“Fido” (2006) This Canadian comedy takes place in a world where living with zombies has become normal. In fact, zombies have been domesticated as pets/servants. The dead can choose to be decapitated and buried separately from their head or return as a zombie-slave. But just like you hear news stories about supposedly “domesticated” tigers attacking their owners, this zombie-as-pet analogy was never meant to work properly. In this strange, twisted love story of a boy and his zombie, we see one of the most romanticized interpretations of the zombie to date. — CS“American Zombie” (2007) “American Zombie” is a mockumentary about the life of the modern zombie in their own world. Zombies are completely sentient but simply do not remember their past life. Some zombies spend time trying to re-discover their past while others attempt to re-integrate into “normal” life. This movie puts an entertaining new twist on the old zombie, but the last half-hour flips the story on its head, keeping you on the edge of your seat until the final scene. — CS“Zombie Strippers!” (2008) This largely failed attempt at political satire and camp appeal tells the story of a strip club in which a stripper is infected with the zombie virus. After becoming undead, she becomes a more popular stripper, and so naturally the other strippers become zombies one by one to stay competitive. The zombie strippers kill clients in private dances, begin fighting each other and overcome lackluster attempts to contain them. Really, the only excuse for having seen this film is “I watch every movie with ‘zombie’ in the title” or “I really love Jenna Jameson,” the movie’s lead actress. — Corin Chellberg
(10/27/10 11:19pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Everybody has demons, but the characters in “Paranormal Activity 2” have a truly horrifying one.At its heart, the formula of “Paranormal Activity 2” is extremely similar to its predecessor.The creators appear to be operating under the “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” philosophy, and it’s not unwise considering the incredible success of the first film.However, while the movie is similar to its predecessor, it is still very different from the rest of the horror canon. Instead of being filmed from just one camera, much of the movie is shown through a home security system the family has installed early in the movie. This larger number of cameras lets “Paranormal Activity 2” deliver more of the startling, jump-inducing moments that helped make the original so unnerving. This allows for the truly terrifying scenes to be extended, with more of the action visible when it takes place in multiple rooms.With a more compelling story and more frequent scares than the first movie, “Paranormal Activity 2” should be right up there with eating huge quantities of candy on your Halloween to-do list.
(10/20/10 11:44pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Who needs expensive, cutting-edge, commercial space flight? British electronica group The Orb’s latest album, “Metallic Spheres,” a collaboration with Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, makes the listener forget the outside world and evokes visions of alien planets on a voyage through the cosmos.The album’s two tracks are divided into five movements each. Unfortunately, because of the gradual development of each movement, by the time each one blossoms into a rich, interesting sound, the transition to the next begins. This happens several times and is the album’s greatest downfall.Another low point is a breathy, trite, off-key vocal theme, which is a recurring trend on the album. Apart from these flaws, the music is very listenable and intriguing. The fusion of Gilmour’s effortless guitar style, which is almost ambient in itself, with the rapidly changing sonic background, is seamless and makes both tracks very enjoyable. Gilmour’s sound dances in and out of its dark surrounding music with a wail here and a well-fitting riff there.Assuming listeners can overlook the imperfections in “Metallic Spheres,” it will provide them with a relaxing respite from their ordinary, earthly lives.
(10/13/10 9:39pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“It’s Kind of a Funny Story” is a dramedy, directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, in which 16-year-old Craig (Keir Gilchrist) checks himself into a mental hospital after having suicidal thoughts. Surrounded by a fairly typical troupe of mental patients, Craig embarks on a fairly typical journey of self-discovery. What saves this film from being fairly typical itself is a combination of accessible characters, solid writing and intermittent flares of brilliance. Among these moments of greatness was a visually and sonically stunning music video featuring the patients of the psychiatric ward performing David Bowie/Queen’s “Under Pressure.”Craig’s artistic awakening was another high note, a flashback-style flight through a watercolor city in his imagination. Zach Galifianakis as Bobby, Craig’s mentor, shows a depth and subtlety in his portrayal of an amiable man struggling with depression that might surprise viewers who are only familiar with his more comedic roles. “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” is a touching, upbeat portrait of a society’s struggle to deal with stress, in which the serious subject matter is buoyed by just the right amount of laughs.
(10/07/10 12:16am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“The U,” director Billy Corben, 2009 — After the Dolphin’s 1972 perfection and before Dan Marino (and even into his tenure), the University of Miami, aka “The U,” was defining what football meant to South Florida. Billy Corben’s documentary of the same name is a fascinating depiction of how the social and racial unrest of early Miami of the 1980s manifested itself in the Miami football program. The players coaches Howard Schnellenberger and Jimmy Johnson recruited were as brash and unpredictable as the rapidly developing city itself. The interviews and footage are brilliant snapshots of how gangster and thug culture were really received before hip-hop took them to the mainstream. — Adam Lukach“Man on Wire,” director James Marsh, 2008 — “Man on Wire” follows Philippe Petit, a 24-year-old wire walker from France, as he sets out to fulfill an extremely lofty dream. Petit wanted to perform a high-wire walk between the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, which were the tallest buildings in the world in 1974 when the events of the film took place. As the fascinating events unfold, interviews with Petit’s friends add richness to the narrative and offer insight into Petit’s motivations. “Man on Wire” won the 2009 Academy Award for Best Documentary, a collection of other prestigious awards and the hearts of audiences everywhere. — Corin Chellberg “Super Size Me,” director Morgan Spurlock, 2004 — “Super Size Me” follows filmmaker Morgan Spurlock as he sets out to eat nothing but food from McDonald’s for 30 days. His goal is to illustrate by exaggeration the health risks of the country’s increasing consumption of unhealthy fast food. He goes through an ever-worsening range of symptoms as the film progresses, starting with weight gain and eventually including depression, sexual dysfunction and heart palpitations. By the time Spurlock completed his experiment, he had gained almost 25 pounds. This entertaining but stomach-turning film will make you think twice before ordering a Big Mac the next time you are at McDonald’s, and that’s probably a good thing. — CC“Sherman’s March,” director Ross McElwee, 1986 — “Sherman’s March” begins with a shot of a massive empty apartment as McElwee narrates how he always dreamed of making a movie tracing Northern general William Sherman’s march through the South during The Civil War and seeing if its effects are still relevant today. However, it quickly turns into a tale of McElwee’s love for the women in his life and his failures in connecting with them. At times heartbreaking and hilarious, “Sherman’s March” is the film Woody Allen would make if he made a documentary. — Mikel Kjell“Jesus Camp,” directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, 2006 — In the last decade, dozens of skeptical filmmakers have directed their vitriol at organized religion, blaming its influence for everything from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 to the corruption of young children. While Bill Maher’s much more successful “Religulous” uses humor to aim at the former, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s “Jesus Camp,” the far superior documentary, seeks to shine light on the latter. Scenes like the one of home-schooled children of Evangelical Christians pledging their allegiance to the flag of the Christian nation after being taught by their mother that evolution is an unproven theory are truly disturbing. The film should serve as a call to arms to stop extremists from teaching their kids whatever they want. — Brad Sanders“For All Mankind,” director Al Reinert 1989 — Filmmaker Al Reinert documented the history of the Apollo space missions using footage shot by the astronauts themselves. The film features a classic score from Brian Eno, the perfect accompaniment to Reinert’s celestial visuals. No fictional movie to date has represented anything as visually stunning as the documentary footage used here. — Brian Marks“F for Fake,” director Orson Welles, 1974 — Orson Welles’ final film was this free-form documentary that was part a study of reality and fiction, a pure experiment in filmmaking, a biography of an international art forger, an autobiography of Welles’ career, factual to the smallest detail, and part lying through his own teeth. It’s a bizarre work of art by the greatest of all directors, and real or fake, it’s absolutely mesmerizing. — Brian Welk“An Inconvenient Truth,” director Davis Guggenheim, 2006 — “An Inconvenient Truth” is the famous documentary of former Vice President Al Gore’s efforts to teach people around the world about global warming by giving detail-rich and visually stunning presentations. A large portion of the film is that very presentation, presented on a massive scale. That format combined with Gore’s reputation as a bland speaker may sound more like a nap-inducing lecture than a documentary film, but the presentation is dramatic, compelling and backed by a mountain of widely accepted data. The film paints a chilling picture of a slowly warming planet and serves as a clarion call to action, and it was the first to do so for the masses. — CC“Night and Fog,” director Alain Resnais, 1955 — Alain Resnais’ documentary about the Holocaust is one of the shortest made on the subject and also one of the most important. Resnais avoids minutiae and instead focuses on why something so unimaginable could happen. The answer: There is no explanation. — BM“Woodstock,” director Michael Wadleigh, 1970 — “Woodstock,” directed by Michael Wadleigh, helped to define an entire generation.Wadleigh (with the help of editors, including a young Martin Scorsese) used innovative visual techniques to catalogue all of the music and mayhem of the famous festival. See it if only for Jimi Hendrix’s closing performance. — BMThe “Up” Series, director Michael Apted — The “Up” series became the most ambitious collection of films ever made, fact or fiction, after starting in 1964 with 14 students and the mantra, “Give me a child until the age of 7, and I will give you the man.” Michael Apted faithfully followed how 14 kids from different parts of Britain grew and developed in seven-year intervals, and his project has not stopped. In 2005, Apted’s subjects turned 49 in the series’s seventh installment, and “56 Up” has been announced for a 2012 release. — BW“The Man With the Movie Camera,” director Dziga Vertov, 1929 — Regardless of whether you can call it a documentary, “The Man With the Movie Camera” is one of the greatest films ever made. Released in 1929 with an average shot-length as rapid as today’s action extravaganzas, the film was the first wholly cinematic experience of the time. It has no plot, no characters and no intertitles, and it proved that audiences could watch the shooting, editing and screening of a film about the day in the life of the people of Moscow. It’s one of the most remarkable cinematic experiments of all time. — BW“The Cove,” director Louie Psihoyos, 2009 — The Oscar-winning documentary of last year is one of the most heartbreaking, empathetic documentaries I’ve ever seen. It condemns the practice of dolphin slaughter in Japan on an emotional, environmental, ecological, political, cultural and medical level. It does all of this as though the viewer were watching a crime caper. Try not to cry at the horrific footage of dolphins being stabbed to death in a secret cove off the coast of Taiji, Japan. — BW
(10/06/10 11:32pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“Jackass” is back, and it’s now cashing in on the 3-D craze too. The crew is releasing “Jackass 3-D” Oct. 15, and WEEKENDers Brett Eppley and Corin Chellberg had the chance to participate in a conference call with lead man Johnny Knoxville and director Jeff Tremaine to discuss the difficulties of 3-D and what this movie means to the crew.WEEKEND: Do you have any rituals that you do prior to performing a stunt? And can you tell us what convincing it takes, if any, before you agree to film a potentially dangerous scene? KNOXVILLE: Before I’m doing a big stunt, I’ll probably, just about 20 minutes before it’s on, go sit and listen to my cousin’s (Roger Alan Wade) music. And then when it’s on I’ll say, “Just come pat me on the shoulder,” and I’ll walk right in and do it because I want to just get it out of the way. WEEKEND: What’s the process for shooting 3-D or using the Canon cameras compared to what you’re normally accustomed to? TREMAINE: The 3-D cameras were a lot bigger and bulkier, but man, once we got all the guys together, it just felt like we were shooting a normal “Jackass.” They took a little more prep time to get everything ready so when the guys show up, we can just shoot. But for the most part, it felt the same. KNOXVILLE: Yes, my request to Jeff was if we shoot 3-D, I don’t want to have to worry about the cameras one time during filming, because we just need to be able to do what we do. And Jeff had absolutely set it up where we filmed it just like a regular “Jackass.” We did not think about the cameras once. WEEKEND: And what was the prep time? TREMAINE: The call time for the crew was a little bit earlier, and the crew almost doubled in size to shoot it in 3-D. Each camera had three people assigned to that camera. And then what’s funny is we had these really expensive 3-D cameras, but I would put our half-ass cameraman to shoot it. WEEKEND: What do you think the 3-D format will add to the movie experience? TREMAINE: It feels like you’re right in the middle of a stunt with us. It really elevated the movie to a whole other level. Like this bit, “The Beehive Tetherball,” we’re playing tetherball with a beehive, and it feels like 50,000 bees are swarming around the theater or around your head. It really works in 3-D.KNOXVILLE: And it just makes a dumb idea even dumber. WEEKEND: Other than the 3-D, is there anything that takes this movie above and beyond the other two? KNOXVILLE: We give each other hell, but you can really feel how close we are, and that just seems to be there. It was in there in the other films, but it was in this film bigger than ever. We think that naturally elevates the stunts and pranks in each film, not super consciously, but just it takes a little more to make us laugh. TREMAINE: There’s a competitiveness that goes on when we shoot those. There’s a real natural one-up-manship that happens with the guys, so everybody wants to get the best footage. And then once you start getting really good stuff, they realize how hard it’s going to be to get in the new movie, so everyone steps up. WEEKEND: At the end of “Jackass Number Two,” Bam Margera says that he hopes there’s not a “Jackass 3,” and lo and behold, there’s a “Jackass 3-D.” It reminded me of the old-man-balls skit you guys do. How long are you planning on doing “Jackass?” Are you hoping to get to a point where you don’t even have to wear a costume anymore?KNOXVILLE: Yes, on the first movie it took like three hours to make me an old man. On this one, it took like 15 minutes. The Three Stooges did it until they were 60. I don’t know how long we’re going to do it because we shoot each movie like it’s our last, but we’re not going to make any predictions anymore. We just have a ball. And Bam did wish that this wasn’t going to happen back then, and now that it did, I’m sure he wished it didn’t happen.WEEKEND: Is it hard coming up with ideas since you guys have done pretty much everything already? TREMAINE: No, this movie seems like, man, we were just bursting with them. This one happened more naturally than any of the ones before.KNOXVILLE: Yes, it was easier coming up with ideas for this movie than any of them. But we have a stockpile of ideas that we never even got to because we ran out of time. TREMAINE: Even the 3-D lent itself to writing some jokes. WEEKEND: Has there been any time in “Jackass” history when you had to turn down a stunt because it was just too crazy?KNOXVILLE: The only time that we won’t do a stunt or I won’t do a stunt is if like there’s a negative vibe going around the set, and it just kind of puts a dark blanket over everything. Like we were filming this stunt up in Tahoe on this big ski slope, and someone on that ski slope died that day. Nothing associated with the production, but there was a death on that ski slope the day we were there, and then it was on the same mountain the Donner Party cannibalized themselves on. We’re getting ready to do a big stunt, and it just felt weird. Man, we were like, “let’s call it off.” But that is super, super rare.WEEKEND: Can you share a story of the worst injury that happened? TREMAINE: Our friend Loomis, he jumped off the trampoline — we had a fighter jet that we had parked on the end of a runway, and we were using the big thruster at the back, and we set a little mini-trampoline up, and he was jumping into the jet stream holding an umbrella. That dude only weighs probably 63 pounds soaking wet, and he hit the ground pretty hard. He broke his collarbone and got his hand tore up. KNOXVILLE: He had to have surgery on his hand. I think he might have surgery on his shoulder, maybe not. WEEKEND: What is your favorite stunt that you performed in the movie? KNOXVILLE: Well, between Jeff and I it’s kind of a tie between the high five where we built the five-foot-tall hand and spring loaded it so whenever someone walked into the kitchen in the morning, they just got smoked by the palm coming around the corner. And between that and the port-a-potty bungee where we took a full port-a-potty and shot it 100 feet in the air with a bungee cord and a crane.