For the third week in a row, I don’t have much time to write posts (although you’d never guess looking at the comment feed). The streets is tough - and covered with snow thanks to that motherfucker Jack Frost.
Anyway, the snow (and the exceedingly s l o w drive home today) got me thinking about Greg Rucka’s upcoming (Well, Sept 11 2009 isn’t exactly close, but whatever) arctic thriller Whiteout. The art was cool - if a little hard to see considering the format - and the story kept along at a decent clip. As I recall, the book was an engrossing read. Fast forward a couple years and BAM! it’s movie time. I hold to what I said a year ago in Podcast 007 and I am excited to see good a story reach the silver screen.
But Kate Beckinsdale in the lead? I’m not entirely sure about that casting choice - couldn’t they get Lena Headey? Lena has been utterly destroying tough girl roles lately in 300 and The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Interestingly, both are British, but Headey kicks much more ass.
All I have seen are a few production stills, and I haven’t been following the news - but I am kind of excited to see this. Superhero comics and movies are great, but when graphic fiction makes it to the screen because of their superior storytelling and concept alone, I think that is just the fucking coolest. Nick said it a few weeks back, comic books are the new spec scripts. So, maybe you should go out and pick up the trade paperback. I’m sure there are a million of them on the racks at B&N, right next to all the Watchmen and Sin City books. And if you like Whiteout, you may like Queen & Country (it’s a lot more involved though).
I’d like to start once again this week with something from several months ago, Portishead’s most recent album, Third. It is not my intention to write an album review here; rather, I’d like to point out something, which is obvious about it, that I find to be interesting, namely, its many tracks which straddle several genres of music. Now, I suppose it’s the case that genre-fusing is an aspect inherent to electronica music as a whole, so maybe it’s not that big a deal, but there are tracks on this disc that are incredibly solid examples of working up songs across several genres, while keeping the album itself a unified whole.
For example, the track 4, “The Rip,” a galloping Western. Sounds to me like a long version of any given Western TV show from yesteryear, but with just enough contemporary synth sounds to keep from being a mere exercise in retro-styled music. Again, I don’t want to go on and on about the music here; go listen to it, if you haven’t heard it already, it’s easy enough to hear. Another great example of what I’m talking about is the track 8, “Machine Gun,” aptly named for the rapid-fire sounds of its introduction. But this song sounds like it could have been lifted right out of Terminator (which, as you’ll recall from an earlier “Things it is Okay to Like” is one of Arnold’s finest movies). I’m actually a huge fan of the synth scores from the ‘70s into the mid-80s, and once this track switches into it’s final section with the epic melody rising up over the jarring underlying music, damn, it’s like the past’s future is here again. And finally, I’ll mention track 9, “Small” for its awesome organ-heavy stoner jams.
Continue reading ‘Culturology 005 - Here’s to Future Nostalgia!’
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