Bob Dylan: The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration Album Review
Helping to celebrate Dylan’s then 30 years in the recording business was a collection of powerhouse friends as well as a few artists somewhat new to the scene. The line-up was also not so genre specific, so Country legends Johnny and June Carter Cash, Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson shared the stage with newbie’s (at the time) like Eddie Vedder, Sinead O’Connor and Tracy Chapman. The common denominator was the songs by Bob Dylan.
Well-known tracks are everywhere but along side ...
Whiplash Movie Review
Every now and then a film comes along that reorganizes your mind in regards to the obtainable level of acting performance. It forces you to raise the bar in your mind and reassess how powerful the art form known as acting can be. The film Whiplash provides just such an example.
The story of a young prodigy musician joining a demanding music school and running headlong into its most obsessive teacher becomes the canvas on which actors J.K. Simmons and Miles Teller paint one of the most ...
Xavi Reija – Resolution Album Review
In what other world would a drummer’s album be completely void of percussive grandstanding? This isn’t to say Catalan drummer Xavi Reija doesn’t show off some impressive chops, it’s just that pocket groove in the outstanding feature here.
Reija has pared back his band to a power trio format this time out and they live up to that lofty name, not by overstatement but by a process of subtraction. By removing as many superfluous notes as possible, the end effect puts sharper focus on ...
Fury Movie Review
It's the cold hard truth of the matter, verbalised by hardened veteran, Don ‘Wardaddy’ Collier (Brad Pitt), in an effort to annul the peacenik ideals of Private Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman), a typist clerk ordered to serve behind enemy lines in Nazi Germany. And it is the thesis for the film as we follow the titular American war tank and its occupants: damaged, battle weary individuals jammed in the middle of history in the making; protecting the world against the Nazi threat at great ...
Elvis – Recorded Live On Stage In Memphis (40th Anniversary Edition) Album Review
Now marking forty years from its initial release on July 7 in 1974 comes an expanded version of Recorded Live On Stage In Memphis with both extra tracks and a complete second version of the show from a test run through that was recorded. Drop into any Elvis live recording from this period and you get a real mixed bag. First it must be stated that Elvis always surrounded himself with kick ass musicians and this period was no exception with a powerhouse band that included guitar legend James ...
Dracula Untold Movie Review
From Nosferatu in the twenties to Bela Lugosi in the thirties to Peter Cushing in the fifties and now to modern versions like True Blood, the vampire myth and the Dracula character in particular has seen so many theatrical versions it’s amazing. Into this landscape comes Dracula Untold.
In this latest take we are introduced to Vlad ‘The Impaler’ Tepes (Luke Evans) before he became the Count. He is a family man and leader trying to save both his family and his people and he becomes ...
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 ...
