Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day Movie Review
I've not read the book (other than a few sample pages courtesy of Amazon.com) but I imagine, as was the case with Where the Wild Things Are, that the book is a much more economic and elegant tale than the resulting feature film. The film appears to be riding the coat tails of the recent Diary of a Wimpy Kid films (which do a very good job of translating its literary source to the silver screen) but where the Wimpy Kid films riff neatly on the familiar misfortunes and fears of our youth, the ...
Pharrell Williams – Girl Album Review
Williams is an incredibly busy individual and with all his forays into both music production and fashion, it has taken him over seven years to release solo album number two, Girl. All his recognizable flourishes are intact and there are hooks everywhere (of both music composition and sound effects nature). The most obvious starting point is the Oscar nominated song Happy.
Happy pulls out all the stops with a great handclap hook and background harmonies that help the song float right out ...
Gone Girl Movie Review
The primal questions of marriage comprise the underlying theme of David Fincher's Gone Girl and shine a light on an uncomfortable and confronting truth: that marriage is inherently beset with elements of emotional manipulation. For the purposes of this story, that theme is naturally taken to a science-fictionesque nth degree and like any propaganda film - for this operates much like a propaganda film - there are seductive elements of truth that draw us in to its unpalatable thesis.
Like ...
Broken Bells – After The Disco Album Review
Your acceptance of this new third party is mostly predicated on your expectations. Burton’s previous partners have been a diverse lot and there is a major variance between, say the introspective downer rock of the late great Mark Linkous (AKA Sparklehorse) on Dark Night of the Soul and the sublime cinematic feel of his work with Italian composer Daniele Luppi on Rome (an album that refuses to go away from my current play list). The only parallel of these two works being the featuring of a ...
The Little Death Movie Review
The actor/director/writer, probably best know as Doug Guggenheim on the American TV show House Of Lies has delivered an Australian comedy that doesn’t rely on the bogan ethic for its laughs. It is also unafraid to show its main protagonists in all their ugly humanity and this gives the proceedings a more authentic feel than most comedies.
This ensemble piece follows a number of couples and their attitudes and approaches (and sometime dysfunction) towards sex. These couples seem to have ...
Bruce Springsteen – High Hopes Album Review
For lovers of underground music, it’s a virtue but for fans of the main stream, it leaves a gap in your record collection to play requests. The artist is question this time is Bruce Springsteen. He has never been a featured artist in this abode as his voice has always underwhelmed. His song writing chops are of course admirable but that voice. He’s also just too American, too accessible.
When word developed of him releasing an album featuring ex-Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom ...
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie Review
Well, lots could go wrong and a lot does. The film is an exercise in groan-inducing predictability right up to the casting of Megan Fox as April O'Neil and its clear influences from Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins to Bay's own Transformer films.
Formally the ‘director’ is Jonathan Liebesman (Wrath of the Titans, Battle Los Angeles), Bay is credited as ‘producer’ but his fingerprints are all over it. This includes his usual teenage adolescent farts and giggles humour, banal ...
Boyhood Movie Review
When the film starts, we catch up with six year-old Mason (Ellar Coltrane) and his family, sister Samantha (Linklater’s real-life daughter Lorelei Linklater) and mom and pop (Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke). What follows is a coming of age tale that touches on many elements of the modern day life, single parenthood, sibling rivalry and just trying to figure out this crazy thing called life.
The concept is interesting but it’s the performances that make this film transcendent. ...
The Wrong Object – After The Exhibition Album Review
Your senses will be assaulted and your musical boundaries will be challenged by an onslaught of almost overwhelming proportions. But it will be good and you will come out the other side a better man.
The sonic spectrum will be filled by devices that make sounds, bold sounds. Musical notes from vibrating steel and fibrous material. Notes from zeroes and ones and tangible forces being applied to all manner of receptive surfaces. It will redefine the term elasticity and the physical ...
Sons Of Anarchy – Songs Of Anarchy: Vol. 3 Album Review
Many are the times that he drops into story development mode by using the montage approach with a driving or reflective song playing over the top. He also has a penchant for using established songs covered by new artists and this gives some very familiar songs a new lease on life.
The current season in America (which is season’s ahead of what Australian free to air television is currently broadcasting) sees Sutter delivering some of his best dialogue ever and the songs in the current ...
