April 2012
21 posts
2 tags
Album: Zammuto (Self Titled)
Hearing singles from Zammuto’s self titled debut might imply that you’re in for a round of afro-pop with electronic touches and the guitar stylings of Delicate Steve. It’s a record that tries to be alternatingly clever (see titles: F U C-3PO, Too Late to Topologize) and ironically dumb (Zebra Butt, Weird Ceiling) or perhaps it’s all happening at the same time. This truly...
9 tags
Thoughts on Sony's NEX-7
For many reasons this isn’t a review, among them that until recently I was advancing film manually and as such don’t have a strong understanding of the DSLR/MILC/etc. market. Recent DSLRs offer a wealth of features, and alongside them a wealth of convoluted buttons and pictographs. A manual film camera has two options: aperture and shutter speed. This highly simplifies shooting for...
4 tags
Film: Days of Being Wild (1990)
Wong Kar-wai seems to have a strength in revealing a very intimate, almost claustrophobic lens on characters’ day to day lives. The characters rub shoulders with one another in hallways. Some address each other head on, others may never realize how well they actually know the person they are passed. Days of Being Wild is a surprisingly melancholic look at the titular days of...
3 tags
Album: Blunderbuss - Jack White
Musicians seem to be held to a standard. Form a band, release an album, and release another every two years after that. If an album fails, it’s a serious hit for the musician - it was the culmination of their efforts for several years. Many bands or individual musicians manage to break from this, however. By generating output in different manners, an odd album or so isn’t the end...
3 tags
Stories: Monstress - Lysley Tenorio
Lysley Tenorio’s story Super Assassin, which comes halfway through his debut collection, Monstress, begins with the history of Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern. The story itself is about a nerdy boy who considers himself something of a crime fighter. He has a secret lab in his house. He views the kids who bully him at school as villains. The narrator has moved to California from the...
3 tags
Album: House of Baasa - Zambri
This album does not let up. It is a haunted house of dark pop, eerie, creepy noises thumping around at all times. Zambri achieves a distinct sense of movement in the background of all of these tracks. Regardless of the overtones, something scary is moving behind them.
Zambri is comprised of two sisters (Zambri being their surname). It’s interesting then, that the overtones of this album...
3 tags
Film: Poetry (2010)
A girl at the local middle school has killed herself. Mija is raising her grandson, an angst ridden classmate of the girl. They live modestly. She cares for an older man who seems to have been partly paralyzed. Her grandson has several good friends who he is almost always with. Soon after the girl’s death, Mija is asked to a meeting the fathers of the other boys. Their sons have lead...
3 tags
Album: Spooky Action at a Distance - Lotus Plaza
The opening track to Spooky Action at a Distance is a slow wash of sound like some otherworldly wind chime. It’s understated and simple. Not much else appears within the wave. It’s the perfect preparation for this album. These songs live in a place slightly removed from the physical, something gently emotional but not far gone. It comes together to create a long set of immediately...
4 tags
Facebook Buys Instagram
I’d been wondering what happened to the leaked photo app that Facebook was working on earlier in the year, but it seems that they had other things in mind. Instagram, which previously had declined Facebook’s offer, is now theirs. Instagram had made it sound like they were determined to succeed on their own. Apparently they were being courted by Google as well, but Facebook seems...
7 tags
Project Glass & A Tablet of the Highest Quality
Some news and rumors out of Google last week. First, Google released a promo video for Project Glass, their (previously top secret) augmented reality glasses. The video shows map overlays, location based alerts, and deep Google+ integration. Everyone seems to be using Google+, so it’s clear that this is a vision of the future. Really, being a ‘vision’ seems to be the problem...
2 tags
Film: Drive
He gives you five minutes, not a second on either side, and no matter what unscrupulous business you’ve been partaking in, he will get you out of there. Everything about Drive is terribly cool, from the Driver’s rules to the music (and his lack of a name doesn’t hurt either). It’s what The Fast and the Furious wishes it could be. Chase sequences can be difficult to make...
2 tags
Journey
In the early 2000s, I was a something of gamer. Aside from a few games that I sunk a sizable amount of time into, I have little recollection of much else that I played. I still fondly recall one game in particular, a game that I spent little time with. Even their website admits, its more of a tech demo than a game. In Drivey, you are in the driver’s seat of a car, traveling along a road...
6 tags
Instagram Launches on Android
In just over a year, Instagram has amassed an impressive user base of over 30 million - and only on the iPhone. Yesterday, Instagram finally launched for Android. The app is nearly identical, lacking only a few small features. But this is more important for the Instagram community as a whole than simply for owners of Android phones. Instagram has succeeded wildly in an over saturated marked -...
4 tags
Album: A Wasteland Companion - M. Ward
M. Ward was last seen this holiday season singing Christmas songs alongside Zooey Deschanel in She & Him. Ward has been on the scene far longer than Deschanel, having around half a dozen solo albums out before their collaboration. In She & Him, the sense has always been that Ward brought Deschanel’s bubbly pieces a certain grounding. Of course, the success lies in both...
3 tags
Film: A Woman is a Woman (1961)
The term Manic Pixie Dream Girl was coined by an A.V. Club writer in the mid-2000s. It defined the bubbly ingenue who is present to rescue the male lead from dreariness. As a stereotype, it certainly fits in a lot of places, but overeager cataloguing of female characters under this umbrella does more harm than good. This character has been around for some time, and that’s clear through...
March 2012
22 posts
3 tags
TV: Game of Thrones
The second season of Game of Thrones will premiere in two days. It’s surprising that it’s been a year already and that HBO has managed to produce another season so quickly. It seems that Game of Thrones is HBO’s newest big thing. It’s a massive fantasy world, and watching a serialized Lord of the Rings like saga sounds like a hit. Unfortunately, Game of Thrones is not...
2 tags
Google & The Error of Over Expansion
Even several years ago, before Android was a player and Google’s social induced sprawl had commenced, it was clear that Google was facing an issue of over expansion and property definition. In the beginning, this growing concern was illustrated by Google Labs. Labs products, by definition, were inside of Google’s test area. However, Google had a tendency to leave their products in...
5 tags
Stories: The Beggar Maid - Alice Munro (1978)
Munro’s work is continually surprising. In spite of a surface simplicity, Munro breaks rules. She shifts time and perspective. She has characters do exactly the opposite of what they should do. She has a humble mastery of short stories and a stunning knowledge of how we live. The Beggar Maid is one of her earlier collections, now among over a dozen to her name. And even this early,...
4 tags
TV: The Legend of Korra
The original Avatar: The Last Airbender series ran for three seasons, and it became as epic a saga as Lord of the Rings. That’s quite an feat for any series, let alone one on Nickelodeon about a group of twelve to sixteen year olds. The show was funny, emotional, and held a rich mythology. It had an attitude specific to itself that was both lighthearted and deeply serious. The first two...
4 tags
Album: Silent Hour/Golden Mile - Daniel Rossen
Fleet Foxes’ sophomore album did a fantastic job of expanding their mountain-folk/Cat Steven’s channeling songs from the more accessibly upbeat tracks on their debut to thicker and deeper cuts. The album also served to deliver these sounds to a new audience. Now, Daniel Rossen of Grizzly Bear seems to be working with similar influences on his debut solo EP. These pieces treat their...
