It’s a little late to make this post now, but I’ve been meaning to get through it. This is what I’m looking forward to this year, in events, albums, games, etc. Continue reading
I was thinking recently about how I have a category for games but I haven’t actually talked about any games in this blog. The thing is, I don’t play a lot of games, mainly because of money but also because I don’t have a lot of free time. This year I have only bought Red Dead Redemption, Starcraft II, Worms, Fat Princess, Borderlands and The Godfather II. And most of those just because they were on sale. I do, however, rent a lot games or borrow them from friends. Hopefully now that I have a substantial and somewhat steady income I’ll be able to play more games, like the upcoming Gran Turismo 5, Killzone 3 and LBP 2. Also Mass Effect 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Need for Speed and a wheel to play GT5 the proper way.
With that cleared out, now it is time to talk Call of Duty. Continue reading
Talking about Spoon yesterday and how they got Yankee Hotel Foxtrot‘ed before the whole YHF controversy happened reminded me of a movie that I’ve been meaning to watch, but had never found available in Mexico or online. Well, to my surprise I did find a copy of the movie and I ended up watching it last night.
I Am Trying To Break Your Heart is both the first song in Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and also the name of the film that documents the recording process of said album. At the time (2001-2), Wilco was already famous within it’s scene and they had 3 full lengths released and were signed to Reprise Records, a subsidiary of Time Warner. And so, the focus of this film is the recording, mixing and controversy of releasing Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, while also documenting the problems that were going on within the band.
The film starts with the recording sessions of the album and it touches on the at-the-time good relationship between Reprise Records and Wilco, apparently Reprise “blindly” gave them a truck of money to finance the initial stage of the album and the band was surprised about it. But through the recording of it some misunderstandings happen between the front man of the band, Jeff Tweedy, and the multi-instrumentalist (who may R.I.P.), Jay Bennett. Jay wanted more control over the album and Tweedy wouldn’t let him have it. Initially the band was supposed to be self-producing the album but they ended up calling Jim O’Rourke to get the job done.
And so with the album done they pitched it to Reprise, who refused to release it as it was because it “didn’t have a single” and the band ended up without a label, but with their record. They finally signed with another Time Warner subsidiary, Nonesuch Records and released the record to great success. Although the success of the record isn’t documented on the film, the search for their new label was, and so are some people commenting how “any label would be happy to have a band like Wilco”. And it was true, hell came down on Reprise as the whole YHF controversy happened, and so did the fact that YHF ended up being the best selling record Wilco ever made, and one of the best of last decade’s. It was like an alarm; how could a band like Wilco end up being ditched by their record label when they made something as awesome and original as YHF? What has the world come to? and so forth…
And so, the band found a label, but before the release of the album, it started to leak. And like everybody who has a brain and understands how the internet works would, they decided to put it up streaming for free in their website. That was 2001. We’re in 2010 and there are still labels/bands that don’t understand this. But anyway, everything was ponies and rainbows for Wilco, right? Well, not really. The Bennett-Tweedy-O’Rourke controversy scaled up and after the album was done Tweedy fired Jay Bennett, and the band was like “Oh?”. And Bennett was like “He can’t handle my awesomeness, he’s a selfish mo’fucka”. And Tweedy was like “I fired him because… well, shit, I don’t know”. And that’s basically how the film ends.
Now, I can see this film being boring to anyone who doesn’t understand the background or doesn’t care about the music industry, or doesn’t like Wilco, or doesn’t like good music at all. But I found it very interesting. It’s shot in greyscale, which is interesting and adds to the whole drama and obscureness that surrounded the band at the time. It was directed by Sam Jones, who I’ve never heard of, not before this. And there’s also a lot of live footage in it. There’s Tweedy doing “Misunderstood” solo, then the band playing a bunch of songs from YHF, and there’s also footage of the band recording songs from the studio and some early versions of some YHF songs, like this more rocking version of “Kamera” that I liked a lot more than the album version.
And there’s also Jay Bennett’s famous phrase when referring to the recording of “Poor Places”, “Sometimes when you’re playing if you don’t have a sonic landscape behind you, everything turns into a folk song”.
This year the contract between Wilco and Nonesuch Records ended, and the band is planning to release their own label, just like they have done recently with Wilco (The Festival), Wilco (The Album), Wilco (The Song), Wilco (The Burger Joint), Wilco (The Tour) and now Wilco (The Record Label).
It is sad when evil big corporations take advantage of great art to monetize. That’s sort of what happened with Inception here in Mexico. The two main movie theatre chains had Inception announced on their websites for release on July 23. I checked last weekend. Then on Monday, they both took it down. I thought it was an error in the page, and decided to wait until they fixed it to buy my tickets for the official release. Well, that didn’t happen. People started noticing this and started wondering what the fuck was going on. Rumor has it, they both refused to have this movie in their theatres because Warner was trying to overcharge them for the projection of the movie, and so it was only going to be released in minor independent movie theaters. Now, I won’t go into detail about who I think is to be blamed for this, mainly because it’s a rumor and there’s not a lot of info on it, but in the meantime, I got my tickets to see Inception last night at 10 PM in a minor theater, and I must say this might be my new favorite movie.
I’d never heard of Christopher Nolan until after I saw The Dark Knight. I didn’t even want to see The Dark Knight, all I knew about it was that it was part of a Batman reboot and that reboots usually sucked. At the time I was vacationing in California and the people I was with were very excited about it and decided to go to the midnight release. I thought, “ok, but I don’t think I’ll like it”. Boy, was I wrong. The night we went to see it we had dinner at Ihop and then drove in a hybrid to the theatre while listening to the pop songs of the moment. I remember feeling very american. When we went into the movie I was very sleepy and a bit grumpy about being dragged into another shitty american summer film. Then it started and I had to eat all the shit I had previously given to this movie. When I came back home I went back through all of Nolan’s films. He had become one of my favorite persons on the planet.
When I heard about Inception and that it was completely done by Nolan (writing, producing, directing) I nearly shit my pants. I decided to stay away from anything related from it, trailers, reviews, commercials, comments, buses. And I managed to do it. I went into the movie knowing nothing about it other than that it had something to do with dreams and it was done by Nolan with DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I LOVED this movie. Every moment about it was perfect. If anything, the dialog was a little “meh” at times. But, the story, fuck. It was a mindfuck. It was complicated and very unconventional but somehow they made it very easy to follow. It was so original and weird and awesome! It’s impossible to explain, I doubt I can spoil it for anyone, but all I can say is that this is how you make a movie. Every moment was key, as long as you followed it you were going to understand it easily, but if you drifted away from the movie for a moment it got hard to pick up the plot. I know I missed some moments because I got distracted, and I will have to watch it a few more times to completely understand it, and then another dozen times to enjoy it’s brilliancy!
I can’t imagine how someone could write this, come up with all of this theory about dreams and then all the plot above it all, which while it needed a bit more relevance in it’s final purpose, the details about it were very good and the story of the main character and how the other characters come into play with his destination are awesome. I read this theory about SPOILER: how the whole movie might have all been a dream by DiCaprio’s character, that all the movie and all the characters were all just how DiCaprio’s character interpreted them. It’s definitely possible although the plot is open for a lot of interpretations. That’s how you make a plot! When there’s not just one truth but many possible ways the movie could go or could have been. There might be plot holes, I know I thought some while I as watching the movie but then forgot about them later, but that’s with any good story and you really have to go deep into the plot to dig them out. All I have to say is this is how you make a movie. Entertaining from start to finish, a challenge to your audience that comes with a payoff, and just completely go out of line and do something unexpected and totally original! I also like the whole “Nolan ambience” that is characteristic of him. There’s this thing to the lightning, feeling and the gamma of colors in his movies that make them feel so unique. It’s like an alternative world where everything seems shady. Please don’t change, Nolan.
It still has to stand the test of time, but as it looks like right now, I’m looking at my new favorite movie.
Posted in Movies
Why would anyone use Office on a Mac?- I used to think. I got my Macbook earlier this year and the same day I got it I bought iWork. At first it was hard getting used to it but after a few uses it became really useful and productive. Still, eventually I wouldn’t know how to do one simple thing and 30 minutes later realized that it was super easy.
It wasn’t until a few months into my Mac/iWork experience that I stumbled upon a bit of a problem with it. I had just started working on a new temporary job and my boss ordered me to do some graphic stuff on Excel. I thought “Awesome, I’ll go into my Mac, finish it in two seconds and it’ll look beautiful!”. Well, no, that didn’t happen. I tried doing what I wanted to do in Numbers and I couldn’t, there weren’t many options to chose from and it was impossible to do what I was supposed to do. That night I went home and downloaded Office for Mac (of course I didn’t buy it, the thing is like $200 bucks for a bunch of stuff I was going to use once.
And so that’s the end of my story. The next day I did my graphics and my boss used them to sell some shit. I didn’t get much work with Office (although I did use it a couple more times), and my experience with it wasn’t bad, but it was clear what each of them is for. Office is complicated, there’s a lot of menus, options, buttons; there’s really a lot of everything. It’s professional. And the price reflects it. So do the different versions available like Enterprise, Student, Home, Ultimate and so forth. It’s not exactly pretty, it doesn’t look bad but it doesn’t quite go with the aesthetics of the Mac interface. Actually, it’s the complete opposite. While the Mac apps are clean, simple and easy with the eye, the Windows ones are loaded with stuff and buttons everywhere, options and menus and headaches. But that’s not bad, it gets more stuff done, stuff more specific and complicated; like I said, Professional.
iWork, on the other hand, is a bit more efficient. It feels faster and cleaner. It’s simple. There’s no versions, just iWork. No iWork Students and Enterprises and Home. Just iWork. And the apps in it are also simple. Pages, Numbers and Keynote. Instead of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Publisher, Outlook, OneAccess, and the dozens of little useless apps and folders that Office installs. Even starting little projects like Invitations, presentation cards, personal budgets and stuff like that is super easy with pre-existing layouts that come with it. And it’s cheaper. But there’s also limitations, you can’t go too deep into documents or projects, there’s just not a lot of profound functionality. It’s great for little projects and stuff like that but if you’re gonna use it for more professional work there’s not a lot to do there.
And so there it is, iWork is for light users that don’t need a lot of features in their work, say students, home owners, teachers, etc.
If you need to do office work, and need a lot of features, then you need Office, because iWork will do shit for you.
Posted in Random
I like Showtime series a lot. Californication is probably my favorite series in recent years. Although the 3rd season was out of line with the previous seasons, the finale made up for everything. I also like Dexter but I have only watched the first couple seasons (and I am very intrigued to watch the next ones). I have only watched a few episodes of Weeds and I liked them, but I haven’t had time to get into it. Another series that I recall liking was Secret Diary of a Call Girl, it was british but I think I remember watching it on Showtime.
Anyway, the reason I’m saying this is because I recently heard in Californication’s Facebook page that this fall Showtime will debut a new series starring Matt LeBlanc (from Friends… and Joey) called Episodes. It’s supposed to be about a couple that is remaking a british show for US audiences (like The Office… or the Top Gear NBC project). Now, when I first read the announcement I was pis-sad because it also said that the fourth season of Californication was not going to premiere until January, when usually the new seasons premiere around September. That’s about a bit more than a year long wait for the most breathtaking cliffhanger I’ve seen. But we’re not discussing the awesomeness that Californication is (why am I talking plural?). We’re here (I’m here) to talk about how unexpectedly interested I am in watching this. Joey was mediocre, but I never expected much from it. The last seasons of Friends were not as good. But this is Showtime. And it’s a cool concept, but most importantly, I’ve never seen Showtime do anything wrong. And I like Matt LeBlanc as an actor. He can be too much, but I usually enjoy him. Not to mention that it has one of the writers/creators from Friends. And did I mention it’s on Showtime?
Posted in TV
We’ve all seen it. A show lasts for too long and then it loses audience and becomes boring. This is something that happens to almost every TV show nowadays, and I, with all my authority, have decided to name it the “no, it doesn’t need to end syndrome”.
An excellent example of this syndrome is “24”, it started strong and became even more popular near the fourth and fifth season; the fifth especially because it was fucking awesome. But then the sixth season happened and almost everybody stopped giving a shit. I recently heard that it ended this season (I had previously heard that it signed for another 3 seasons, that was back in season six I believe), and nobody gave a fuck. I had completely forgot about it and the fact that it existed. I tried to watch after season five but it seemed boring and tedious. Like, there was people alive, then dead, then alive, then bad, then good, then dead. And then they resurrected them. Like, what the fuck? It was too much. Too stupid, too complicated, and it had been going for too damn long. Suddenly, the writers, and the cast won’t be remembered by that awesome show that ended on a high note, but by that mediocre show that nobody can quite recall well and nobody is really certain about what happened to it. Had “24” ended in the fifth season, with all the praise and shitty TV awards that it got, everyone would have been anxious to see what the creator of the series would do next. Since it did the exact opposite, it just got lost in that big sea of failing TV shows.
Now, House is doing the exact same thing. I watched all available seasons (one through five) last summer and I quite enjoyed it. I usually don’t like medical anything (especially TV shows), but House M.D. had one of the most interesting, clever and funny characters I’ve ever seen (it’s called “House” for a reason). I liked the direction they were gonna take with the rehab and all that stuff, and the sexual tension with House and Cuddy is interesting, but it’s been dragged too much. I have watched the first episodes of season six and I’ve found it’s not fun anymore. This shit about the old team coming back and then going away again and all the personal relationship problems that are presented this season make me want to stop watching this. It feels old and forced. House is still funny sometimes, and I will keep watching it to see if it can somehow regain it’s shape. I’ve heard the ending is good but I can’t see how they could make it interesting for me again.
Other series that have also suffered from this syndrome are The Office (I can’t imagine how it could work without Steve Carell), The Simpsons, Friends, E.R., Law & Order, CSI, and countless amounts of other TV shows.
The ones who have done it right are The Sopranos, and that is basically all I can think of. I hope Californication doesn’t fuck it up, it could have ended last season.
Watch this trainwreck for yourself:
Posted in TV
The Strangulation 