the william division

A Book Report: Cryptonomicon

It is a difficult endeavor, indeed, to try to pin down exactly what kind of a novel Cryptonomicon is trying to be. It is fiction, but it is based on real mathematical theories and proven formulae. It is historical, but it is also modern. Its 900 pages contain elements of romance, comedy, adventure, computer programming, history, and a tremendous amount of mind-bending storytelling.
At its core, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is an adventure that spans from just before World War II to then-present 1999. It involves three major protagonists (and, later in the novel, a fourth) and a plethora of minor characters spanning two generations in war- and postwar time America, the Pacific and Europe. Describing the plot without re-writing the book itself is nigh impossible. The best way I can describe it, on a very simple level in broad strokes, is that it is about the human mathematical prodigies who designed executed some of the most incredibly complicated math-based code systems (and code-breaking systems) ever conceived and the ramifications of those codes on then-current (circa 1945-ish) events and the future events (circa 1998-1999), drawn in a meandering, sprawling, far-flung line through history.
Perhaps the novel's greatest strength (and some may argue weakness) is that Stephenson allows the story to evolve through the progression of chapters. This is not, I repeat NOT, by any means, a strictly linear story. It is not a static plot. It does not start at point A and proceed directly to point Z. However, allow me to be clear: this is not a Shyamalan story; there are no 90-degree turns here. Instead, Stephenson likes to keep the story moving fast, but he leaves enough bread crumbs that the reader isn't lost in the woods alone. One of his literary mechanisms is to rotate chapters, each in succession telling another piece of the story concerning the three (four) major protagonists. This creates a rather resilient web that changes shape to suit the story. I can provide a number of specific examples but to describe them even in minor detail a) would take far too long and b) may result in spoilers. Suffice to say that as a reader, one is pleasantly kept on guard for the next turn. Indeed, Stephenson doesn't take himself too seriously, and because of that, the story is kept lighthearted most of the time, even during tragedy, and moves quickly.
The quick pace is accomplished, as I said, not by having the story progress from A to Z, but by placing the reader inside a web of patches of story. Each one is very small, but fits inextricably into the larger framework. Perhaps, if I had to make a small criticism, it is that Stephenson takes the concept of time and compresses it whenever it suits him; this results in minor occasional disorientation. In one story patch a character can be on a journey that lasts several months, but it takes place over paragraphs. In another scrap, a small event can be described in complete detail, with exquisite attention paid to the most excruciating minutiae. For example, a character's (admittedly fascinating) trip to the dentist is granted its own entire chapter and serves no real purpose in advancing the story; it's there, though, to develop character. Likewise, a character travels literally around the world and the process is described in less than three pages. Time is a flexible commodity in Stephenson's world and it does take some time to acquaint oneself with the process.
Despite the fact that Cryptonomicon was published in 1999, it is technically a spiritual successor to Stephenson's grand opus, The Baroque Cycle (being comprised of the three mega-novels Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World). I originally read Cryptonomicon over the course of two months sometime around three or four years ago. I'll admit now that there were elements in the novel that I just did not understand - large elements of the story seemed totally alien to me. I enjoyed it, but I can't say that I really understood it. I liked the novel enough that I went back and read Stephenson's other works, including Snow Crash (which I may have to go back and re-read, as I'm not sure I understood that one, either, but still a mighty enjoyable cyberpunk in a very Gibson-esque way) and the fairly ok The Diamond Age, both of which were admittedly easier to understand but not as biting, not as immediately sharp as Cryptonomicon.
Apparently immediately after he finished Cryptonomicon, Stephenson began writing his Baroque Cycle - in longhand. Two thousand seven hundred pages later he had created a story of a magnitude that I had not previously encountered. I'm not speaking necessarily in the sense of look-how-heavy-these-books-are; instead, I mean the sheer scale and breadth and depth of character development and plot and fast-paced story he was able to construct inside a plot as convoluted and turning and patchwork as Crypto except way more involved. At any rate, I've reviewed that work in earlier posts.
I recently went back and re-read Crypto and it was as if I was reading a different book. A better book, even, than I had remembered. The exciting thing is that there were many things that were paid off during the course of 1945- and 1999-era Crypto that Stephenson had planted way back in the 1650- and 1715-era Baroque. The reader didn't know that they were being paid off, though, until Stephenson wrote the next three mega-novels (spiritual prequels, or sorts) after he had written the last book in the quadrilogy. In particular, we find that the two major families - the Waterhouses and the Shaftoes - are ineludibly entangled throughout the course of history. In a sly (and, now that I understand it, tremendously exciting) aside, one of the characters, when asked about this relationship in the course of the story, says that "[t]he connections make a very long story. I would have to write a whole fucking book."
It's clear that Stephenson had had these ideas already worked up - at least in rudimentary form - when he was writing Cryptonomicon and took five long years to pay them off (in reverse, actually) in The Baroque Cycle. One of my favorites directly involves a certain set of certain weapons, which I literally cannot descibe without spoiling anything. Stephenson reveals this so casually and in such an offhand manner that it almost slips by - the reveal isn't even a sentence long and is never mentioned again - but that it exists is testament to his dedication to intricate storytelling.
So what does this all mean? On its surface, Cryptonomicon is a tremendously entertaining book, although the hard math is still, to this day, totally bewildering. Also totally baffling to me are the bits of (real, functional) Perl script that Stephenson occasionally weaves into the text. Overall, though, it's an amazing read.
What makes it more amazing, though, as I said, are the three books that come before (came after) it. Really, I think the best way to experience Cryptonomicon is to read it once, then read the entire The Baroque Cycle, and then go back and re-read Cryptonomicon. This, (un)fortunately means devouring 4,500 pages, which would result in a pile of softcover reading materials stacked about eight inches high if laid flat on top of each other. If I had a full-time job reading books, I estimate it would take me about a calendar year.
But it would be totally worth it.

PS - in the course of researching this article I learned two new words, one of which applies to both Stephenson and another of my favorite authors, David Foster Wallace, and the other to a character in The Diamond Age.)

Ten Redux: Grunge Made Clean Again

If one were to ague that the concept of “subtlety” was not in the original blueprints for Grunge, then certainly you’d have myriad evidence to bandy that point; for example, have you ever seen a Grunge music video? However, now, where at a certain point one only knew headbanging and big riffs and few guitar solos, one confronts the existence of the nebulous, unquantifiable nuance of going back to a seminal recording and having a big-time producer twiddle the knobs. It’s a way of going back to see what may have been, had we not been confused and blinded by improbably long hair and the abundance of plaid, in that hangover just after hair metal’s demise.

As you may know, Pearl Jam has just released what some would call a stopgap between releases proper (being 2006’s self-titled affair and whatever they’re working on for 2009) in the form of a remastered/remixed/redone version of their debut full-length album, 1991’s Ten. Regardless of which version you settle on – there are four: two- and three-disc versions, a double vinyl, as well as a mammoth, surfboard-sized boxed set that includes the three aforementioned discs plus an actual audiocassette of their demo, plus the whole thing on vinyl, etc., etc. – you will end up with the original version of Ten remastered, as well as a fully-remixed version produced by Brendan O’Brien, titled, appropriately enough, Ten Redux.

In short terms, the remastered version is what you’d expect. The album is louder and clearer, with little change as far as actual content. It’s a nice spit-and-polish to a great album, but really unnecessary if it was the only thing available. Luckily, there is more to this 17-year anniversary than just a nice dinner out.

The Redux remix is, to say the least, impressive. The subtleties of Grunge that may not have been initially noticed – or of which one may not have even been aware – are presented here with the deft authority of someone finally getting a nagging job done.

Taken as a whole, the project has done something that has been a problem even way back in the days of Ten’s original release – reverb. For the uninitiated, reverb is basically an undesirable echo which, for example, comes from recording music in a studio that’s not properly insulated. Conversely, it may be artificially added later in mixing, although only God knows why. It creates the effect of poor sound, even when the subject matter is listened to through high-quality sound systems. Here, with the new mix, O’Brien has ruthlessly gone through and removed every trace of audible reverb.

With the reverb removed, three things are immediately noticeable: one, that everything sounds so much clearer. It is a revelation. Two, that Eddie Vedder sounds as if he’s in your fucking living room, sitting next to you on your couch. And three, that the bass guitar is so clean, so gloriously clean now. The bass, in the original mix, was so washed-out and smeared and concealed by the rest of the music that it may as well have been left off the final master track.

As for the mixing itself, the differences are many and, to someone who has heard this CD literally a hundred times, maintain different levels of audibility. Overall, two of the more noticeable differences between the original and the new is that the jangling, electro-acoustic guitar has been mercifully turned down in the mix, letting that early-‘90s electric guitar riffage stretch itself out across the soundscape, and the bass, instead of sounding big and bloated and reverb-y is now tight and clean, beyond any wildest hope.

Taken individually, the songs have all seen some kind of drastic overhaul. “Evenflow,” for example, has noticeably more prominent opening guitar licks. Interestingly enough, O’Brien included (or maybe clarified) some vocals Eddie Vedder had laid down of begging for change, which are now clearly audible in the bridge; they are not in the original recording. Also of note is that the guitar solo, somewhat disappointingly, is buried in the left speaker and turned down now, so that the rhythm guitar’s choppy chords come through in a much more obvious way.

“Why Go,” too, in addition to being much more of a “powerful” mix, has had some rather startling and totally inexplicable echoes added to Vedder’s voice in the chorus; not a bad thing, mind, but definitely rather abrupt. “Jeremy,” too, has stronger vocal harmonies in the chorus and a more “aggressive” sound, although that may be more attributable to the newfound clarity, which is absolutely brilliant.

In addition to the original 11 tracks are six bonus tracks. These are basically throwaway tracks – two demos of full songs available elsewhere, two rather dull-b-sides, and two other totally disposable, previously-unreleased songs that only die-hard Pearl Jam fans will care about. These are not the reason to get this CD, and can be easily ignored while ripping the original 11 tracks to high-bitrate mp3s for portability’s sake.

Pearl Jam, to a man, has said publicly that they’ve always disliked the mixing on Ten, and now, finally, they’ve made good. Overall, this set – either the two- or three-disc version, is definitely worth picking up (the surfboard edition may be a bit expensive for what you get in it). I guarantee that, once the comparison is made between the two mixes, the first disc will not be listened to again.

 

Included in the three-disc and surfboard editions of Ten is a DVD copy of the band’s controversial 1992 appearance on MTV’s Unplugged. Until now, this performance of a scant seven songs hasn’t been available commercially in any form, seemingly because seven songs (36 minutes) isn’t really album-length but too long for an EP. Finally, though, we see it as a bonus disc, if for nothing more than nostalgia and/or historical value.

“Controversial” may have been a bit of an overstatement. Really, the major issue (aside from the content of the lyrics – murder, incest, obsession, etc.) was that Vedder wrote the phrase “pro-choice” on his arm in black magic marker. Today, that’s about as shocking as watching ice cream melt in the sun, but back in 1993 it was apparently a bit confrontational for low-tier cable programming.

The other odd thing is that this “pro-choice” marking appears and disappears through the concert; during the second-to-last song (“Evenflow”), the marks are visible under the end of Vedder’s sleeve. However, when he takes his jacket off for the last song (“Porch”), the arm is clear and he proceeds to write on it. The only conclusion I can come to is that the producers somehow switched around songs, or perhaps had Pearl Jam re-record “Evenflow” for some reason, and made Vedder put his jacket back on for continuity.

From a technical standpoint, the disc winds up as a mixed bag. The video has a lot of video noise in it; it was recorded using cheap magnetic tape, apparently, and this makes for a lack of sharpness, even for standard-definition material. The sound is, for a show originally broadcast on television, very good. Comparing the PCM 2.0 and the newly-created 5.1 Dolby surround mix, it’s evident that some care has been put into mastering both tracks. To nitpick, the master is quite loud – louder than regular DVDs and even newer blu-rays – and the drums are turned up too hot, but otherwise, a very good presentation.

While understandable, it’s still a shame that this never got the wide release that Pearl Jam’s contemporaries saw; the legendary full-length Unplugged sets from none other than Nirvana and Alice in Chains, but again, at a slim seven songs it’s difficult to justify this as a separate release. It is, however, the perfect extra addition to a decently-priced boxed set.

 

Stargate on Blu-Ray, Finally

I've been a big fan of Stargate for quite a while now, for any number of reasons. It's not an easy movie to like unless you're of a particular breed of human. To wit, the movie features wormhole travel, Egyptian-style pyramids and civilizations, pyramid-shaped spaceships (known from now on as space-pyramids), laser weapons, pre-bronze-age cities, bizarre animatronic alien animals, alien spacepod strafing runs, and basically everything else that would deliberately drive any fan of subtlety and eloquence literally nuts. There are plot holes a-plenty, poor dialogue, and deus ex machina rears its ugly head without shame. The suspension of disbelief that must be maintained throughout the entire affair is Herculean in task; yet, for all that, this movie is awesome. Not necessarily "good," mind you, but awesome and incredibly entertaining.
James Spader stars as some kind of linguist, an expert researcher on prehistoric Egyptian heiroglyphs. He is contacted by a mysterious woman about a job deciphering symbols on a piece of rock dug out of the Egyptian desert about 80 years ago. Kurt Russell stars as a borderline-suicidal military man, complete with standard-issue jarhead haircut; his is the role of the defender, in case, he puts it, "they succeed" in activating the Stargate.
To really compress a long story (the "extended cut" is safely over two hours long), they activate the Stargate, natch. An elite military strike team (with Spader in tow as comic relief) travels to another planet, and are thrown immediately into battle with a seemingly all-powerful, immortal alien god-king who was apparently responsible for human civilization and now wants to destroy it. I never said it has to make sense - it just has to be awesome, which it does vigorously.

External shot shows little noise.

The Video
Before I say anything about the video quality of the BD version, it's safe for me to say that no matter how good or bad the picture is, it will be better than how it looked on DVD. With that said, the BD picture, compared to other movies from the same time period (around 1994), is absolutely miserable. This is one of Lionsgate's earliest offerings on the HD media and it shows. Exterior shots in the desert, and in general any other well-lit shots, are generally acceptable, but ocasionally display dull edges and blurring. However, any time the movie is in the slightest bit dark, or there's a scene where shadows cover any portion of the screen, there is an exceedingly high amount of video noise and compression crush. I'm not talking film grain here, either - this is full-on noise. In addition to that, in some scenes there is banding, particularly at the top of the screen, and black levels are grayish and crushed to within an inch of their existence. Unintended softness is visible is several shots, and detail is sorely lacking in all cases. I can say that so far, the only worse picture I've seen from a BD is Ocean's 13.
However, oddly enough, it appears that great pains have been taken to correct some mistakes from the original DVD pressing - for example, the wires that were painfully visible on the spacepods as they flew through the city, shooting anything that moved, are now merficully gone, perhaps removed by the original theatrical production team. It's a shame that the BD production team couldn't pay as close attention to detail.

At the time, these were groundbreaking special effects.

The Audio
Audio comes courtesy of a DTS HD ES 6.1 track. There's also a standard Dolby Digital EX 5.1 track, but I stuck with the next-gen format. Overall the sound is not excellent and in some cases terribly disappointing, but again it shows grand improvement over the original DVD. Treble is muffled throughout the entire movie; gunfire is lifeless and dim, and laser fire is weak. The bass, particularly in the LFE channel, is similarly crushed and in some cases actually suffered minor reverb.
However, the movement through the sound field was well done, and the movie used the surround channels to great effect. Crowd noise swallows the listener, as does the amazing wind from a sandstorm. Dialog is front-and-center, as it should be, and vocals are easy to understand and unhindered by sound effects.

The spacepods, with wires mercifully removed.

The Disc
Considering the fact that Lionsgate used only a BD25 to store this movie, the compression is understandable. Not forgivable, but understandable. This being an early entrant into the blu-ray race, Lionsgate offers a truly bizarre TUTORIAL in the paltry "extra features" on how to use the disc, the main menu, and the pop-up navigation display. This tutorial is narrated by what sounds like the main villain in the movie and the vocals are distored as such; an incredibly bizarre experience.
Also, in what appears to be a deliberate-yet-frustrating move, the discmakes saw fit to bury the subtitle track. The way the movie plays by default is to have no subtitles of any kind, which is great when you're watching the scenes that are in English; however, when the movie takes us to Egypt or an alien world, we have no idea what's going on. The first English subtitle track subtitles everything, even the regular English words. Also no good. If you want to just have the Egyptian and alien languages subtitled, you have to skip ahead to the subtitle track marked as English3. This is something that should come by default and is a ridiculous task to perform every time the viewer would put in the disc. (For the record, the subtitle appears layered over the picture, instead of underneath the frame.)

First contact.

Overall
As a personal note, I've had an interesting history with this movie. I saw Stargate way back in the day, at a crappy theater in a mall that no longer exists; in fact, this was one of my first experiences going to see a movie without one of my parents there. When I bought my first DVD player for about $350 (if I remember correctly, this was circa 1999 or so, when DVD was still really getting started - AND IT STILL RUNS), this was one of the first movies that I purchased, along with The Matrix. In fact, my DVD of this movie is so old that halfway through the movie I have to take the disc out, flip it over, and put it back in the player. What I suppose I'm trying to say is that for any criticism I have here, it's done out of love for this quasi-cult classic. I'm overjoyed that it's made the transition to HD, but I wish it could have been done better.
For all its flaws, both as a movie and as a BD release, this movie is still awesome. This latest presentation is by far the best it's ever had, and for that reason and for that reason alone is worth a purchase (I personally got this for $12 in the bargain bin at my local big-box electronics store). This is NOT a movie that you would use to show off the capabilities of your system, and should only be viewed by those who understand that technical quality does not an entertaining movie make.

(All images borrowed with respect from blu-ray.com)

Taken: A Review

To my memory, Taken is the only movie I have ever seen out of spite. I had seen the trailer for this movie over a year ago and I was totally psyched. It was released in Europe last autumn, and then that was it. I was genuinely concerned that it wouldn't get a release in America at all, and that saddened me. Obviously, though, it really did get a release, and thus began my odyssey. Prior to actually viewing this movie I had attempted to see it three times - the first time was on opening night and it was sold out, the second was a week later and it was still sold out, and the third time I was just too late. So, finally, I went out on a Saturday afternoon and caught the matinee (packed theater, even a month after the release), and I'm very glad I did.
Liam Neeson stars as some kind of retired CIA special-ops counterterrorist who is trying to make amends with his estranged wife (the beautiful Famke Janssen) and daughter. This utility daughter Kim, played by Maggie Grace, goes on a trip to Europe with her friend, played by the ultra-bangable Katie Cassidy, and both are immediately kidnapped. Our boy Liam, pulling all the strings he has on The Continent, goes on a murderous rampage to find his daughter.
Neeson is an extraordinarily capable actor and he lends a sense of humanity and empathy to this killing machine father character, and the viewer is genuinely engaged in his welfare and the success of his mission. Basically everyone else in the movie is a waste, but really, this is Neeson's movie and that's the way it should be.
Previously, there were only two names on my badass list - Sean Connery in Outland and Clint Eastwood in his life (and special mention to Harrison Ford in Air Force One) and this movie has now entered Liam Neeson in that esteemed group. The action in this movie is rather deliberate - by which I mean that if you were to take any single action scene and compare it to something from the new Bond movies or the Bourne movies, they're not particularly impressive; however, Neeson's excellent abilities to pull the viewer into the action, and the circumstances of the story (written by Luc Besson and Robert Kamen) make the action seem better than it actually might seem in a different context.
If there were any criticisms that I could make of this movie, it's that it's an exceeding linear story. There is very little suspense or buildup here, in that we know that Neeson will lay waste to all he touches. In that respect, you could take Liam Neeson out of this and put Arnold Schwarzenegger in there and call it Commando, or replace Neeson with John Cena and call it The Marine. I would have very much appreciated a better buildup to the exciting moments, instead of having a simple set-up in the first 20 minutes and then a blaze of glory for the last 70.
However, these are small nitpicks. Taken as a whole, this movie is incredibly entertaining. Once you get past the setup, the last 75 percent of Taken is thoroughly entertaining in every sense of the word.

The Brighton Port Authority: A Review

Quite a while ago I stumbled across a video on some news aggregation page - I think it was Digg - that had a bunch of naked people with bars over their interesting parts dancing around and making simple shapes with said bars. I thought it was interesting - not the video, mind you, but the song - and I made it a point to remember it for as long as I could before I forgot about it again.
Flash to several months later, and I heard the song again, this time on the local alternative station, 102.7, which nowadays is really the only radio station worth listening to. Anyway, I finally had a name for the track - "Toe Jam" - but I couldn't find any information on the artist except that the vocals were done by David Byrne and Dizzee Rascall. Eventually I managed to track down the artist - The Brighton Port Authority, or BPA.
The BPA is a collaboration between two producers, one of whom being Norman Cook of Fatboy Slim fame, and the other being Simon Thornton, being someone I never heard of before. The schtick here is that the BPA project, titled here as I Think We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat, was "found" on some reel-to-reel tapes from "mysterious recording sessions" held back in the '70s.
Anyway, the album proper came out Tuesday. At the warehouse where I work we got a grand total of two copies to put out on the sales floor, and I snatched one for myself.

The Music
Ostensibly, you'd figure that a side project from the Fatboy Slim producer would be pretty dancy, and with this project you'd be at once wrong and right. Cook pulls way back out of the house music he's known for, and instead gives up some rather catchy pop-oriented, pop-structured, candylike gems that one could possibly dance to, if in the proper state of mind. The album kicks off with an amazing cover of Monochrome Set's "He's Frank (Slight Return)," featuring the one and only Iggy Pop on vocals. Yet another in a long line of Pop's collaborations (Death in Vegas, Teddybears, White Zombie, and Praxis come immediately to mind but I'm sure there are more), this one is short, sweet, to the point, and catchy as hell. "Island," featuring Justin Robertson, is a lower-key groove, as is "Jumps the Fence." Without a doubt, though, one of the best tracks on here is "Seattle," which features the gorgeous Emma Lee-Moss ("Emma the Great") on vocals. Emma's singing is absolutely amazing - she has a very clear, controlled voice, and immediate comparisons to Elizabeth Fraser's work with Massive Attack spring to mind. As an aside, this track features one of the most brutal bass drops I've ever heard outside of Nine Inch Nails' "Burn." (Oddly enough, the video doesn't have that part in it.) Of course there's "Toe Jam," and another favorite is Cagedbaby's "Superlover."
Overall, there are a good handful of totally solid songs here, with maybe an equal number of pretty decent tracks. Of course, in a project this based on collaboration there will be some stinkers, and luckily they are few and far between. For example, "Dirty Sheets," with Pete York, is just plain annoying, as is "Should I Stay or Should I Blow." "Superman," featuring producer Thornton on vocals, is flat and lacks anything to hold one's interest. However, that's the extent of the picking.

The Quality
I'll make this part quick. The sound quality here is excellent, which totally blows away the myth that this was recorded on reel-to-reel in teh '70s. It's loud, clear and not the least bit distorted. Of course, it's mastered at incredibly high volume, and I guess we're just going to have to get used to every CD being louder than the last one, but at least the sound here is well-preserved. Cook, experienced producer he is, has employed some kind of anti-peaking software, and despite the fact that this CD is compressed to within an inch of its life, and it's loud, loud, loud, the frequencies between the deepest bass and the shrillest treble are well-separated and not muddy or clipped out at all. Vocals are clear and well-presented. Of course, the bass notes are monstrous and hit my sub with sperm-killing, bone-pulping detonations.
If I had any complaint about this, it's that there is very little dynamic range - that is, there are no soft spots on the CD. It's all loud, all the time. Of course, the dance-pop genre doesn't lend itself natively to much sonic variation anyway, but still, there could be a break or two between songs. I'm just saying.

Overall, this is a very catch piece of ear-candy. If you like dance, or really catchy pop, or light electronic music, I'd recommend this for you. One thing to watch out for - the Japanese import version has two extra songs, but I can't find any samples or streaming versions anywhere. Good luck.

Downloading Nancy: Lamest Movie Title Evar

Anyway, this movie trailer is over three full minutes long and I still don't really know what happens. However, I have been able to determine that it involves kinky, broken-glass sex, and I submit that that is all they needed to tell me to get my ten dollars.

Mary and Max

Ok. This looks cute. Plus, Philip Seymour Hoffman does one of the voices.

Vampire Weekend: Bits and Pieces

I have stated - rather publicly, in fact, on my Twitter - that I just don't "get" Vampire Weekend. I don't mean to say that I find their music offensive, or even bad - it's just something around which I cannot wrap my head. Their music is somewhere between Paul Simon, the Talking Heads and maybe the Strokes, and it's in that nebulous cloud of pretentious nerd-core that I get lost.
As with any album, their songs have ups and downs; for example, I cannot f-ing stand the song "Oxford Comma" for any number of reasons. Conversely, I really, really like the Chromeo Remix of their song "The Kids Don't Stand a Chance."  There are songs on their debut CD that, at least on their surface, I find enjoyable. To wit, below is the video for their song "A-Punk," probably, for me, the most accessible song on their album.

This video has that visual effect where they record it really slowly and the play it back at regular speed, so everyone's motions are very quick and jerky. I actually really, really like this video. It's fun and playful and has a few pretentiously neat ideas and reminds me of - natch - the older music videos from the mid-eighties, particularly Talking Heads and Paul Simon. Go figure. Also, I'm a sucker for bands doing their own choreography.

Seed of Filth Looks Good

This is the new video for Six Feet Under's new song, "Seed of Filth," from their new album, Death Rituals. This is a pretty cool song, in that it has only two chords and features Chris Barnes growling so low as to be completely unintelligible; lets face it, nobody's going to accuse SFU of being overly technical. However, if death metal isn't your thing, you can put the song on mute while you watch the video:

This video has a really interesting look (particularly if you go to the Youtube page and watch it in High Quality). I really like the whole deep-supersaturated-colors-on-a-black-background thing. There are subtle reflections of light on isolated points - say, the guitarists fingernails or the various trappings on the drums - that really stand out as small bits of brightness in a darker field.
The contrast, too, is used to great effect. There are multiple shots of red layered with green, and blue layered with yellow and orange. The clash between them creates a very stark image that stands out well. Speaking of stark, the only true white parts of the video are of the band members' eyes and teeth, which stand out very clearly against the deep fields of color with which the director washed everything - for an example of this, check out 1:52 to 1:58.
The last thing to notice is the use of focus and depth of field. In what appears to be a very close relative to tilt-shift photography, the director has literally blurred out everything on the screen except what he wants you to look at - be it the drummer's arm or the guitarist's finger or the singer's face. It creates at once a feeling of intense focus and also heavy claustrophobia.

Whether or not you like the actual music, the video itself is a rather interesting and - for a death metal band, anyway - showcases some surprisingly high-quality production values.

Last Chance Harvey: A Review

I went to go see Last Chance Harvey on a bitter cold Saturday afternoon. Despite the weather, the matinee time slot, and the relative dearth of publicity (that I've seen, anyway), the theater I saw it in was packed. Not super-jammed, but full enough that I had to look for a seat that wasn't sandwiched between two other people. I will specifically note, also, that I was by far the youngest person in the room.

Starring Dustin Hoffman as Harvey Shine and Emma Thompson as Kate Walker, Last Chance Harvey is a movie that explores love and romance in a time of loneliness and disappointment. Harvey is a New York City ad-jingle writer who travels to London to see his estranged daughter married off, while his ex-wife's new man steps in to take his spot in the wedding. Kate, who is some sort of customer service manager for the airline, is struggling to emotionally support her depressed shut-in mother while trying to maintain some kind of normal social life. It's late in life for them both, they've both had life dump on them, and we follow their journey for some kind of relief from their loneliness. This journey, which could be dreary or depressing in any other movie, is handled here with humor, grace and, above all, hope, and Last Chance Harvey ends up being absolutely lovely.

I'll tell you right now that the first half of the movie is rocky - not in that it's a badly-made movie, but in that we are basically exposed to a litany of terrible things that happen to Harvey. In fact, that's a theme that's kept up through the movie; Harvey is pretty much a walking damage case. However, once the two meet, things slowly, slowly begin to coalesce. The really fantastic thing is that it's not a formulaic love story; there are real obstacles and frustrations along the way, and reactions to these stumbling blocks aren't predictable or hackneyed at all.

The material is excellent, but the acting by Hoffman and Thompson is enthralling. Admittedly Hoffman is an unusual romantic lead - frumpy, stumbling, and quite a bit shorter than Thompson, but he is very easy to identify with. Harvey is wounded and tired, but not blatantly so, and we believe every second thanks to Hoffman's understated, subtle performance. Despite the fact that Harvey's kind of a loser - maybe because of that - we really root for the guy, and Hoffman's portrayal is spot-on. Indeed, he delivers a monologue during the course of the movie that had me misting up.

Of course, Thompson excels in every scene. I've made no secret that I believe her to be one of the most beautiful, graceful, and intelligent actresses on either side of the pond (I've felt so since I saw her way back in Much Ado About Nothing), and here she is able to exude a fragile, tentative hope that makes her all the more amazing. As Kate, she is able to convey a great deal of emotion with seemingly little effort. Her performance, like that of Hoffman, is subtle and amazing.

Last Chance Harvey is that rarest breed of all: a romantic movie that steers wide of being mushy or saccharine, while being thoroughly entertaining from beginning to end. This may actually be one of the best modern-day romantic comedies I've ever seen; I'd easily put it up with The Princess Bride and Stranger Than Fiction.