Wow. It's been a pretty fucking crazy year. I'm not really sure how to sum it all up in one blog post. But I guess if there's ever a time to try it's now, as there's currently one hour and forty-three minutes left of '08.
A lot of huge stuff happened in my life in 2008, outside of the usual movies/music/games. I'll go through the media stuff later, but, like a famous prince, my life kind of got flipped-turned upside down this year, and we did some things in one year that some people don't do in a lifetime, let alone one year. First of all, buying our first house. That was a pretty huge step, but we managed to get an awesome home for a fraction of the price it would cost in a lot of other places, and all we had to do was move to Wales, which isn't so bad at all.
The reason we bought the house is probably the biggest thing to happen to us this year, and really, most years; the birth of my son, Logan. If you sat me down like three years ago and told me by this time I'd be A: married; B: owning my own home; and C: having a child, I would think you would have some sort of brain disease. Yet, it happened. Logan is awesome, and I wouldn't change what we have for the world, no matter what hardships we have gone through/will go through.
But yes, as well, there have been a ton of good movies/albums/games around. It's been a crazy year, what with the return of Batman, Indiana Jones, and Metallica. Celebrities have continued to have public meltdowns (Amy Winehouse, I'm looking at you) to show us how much better off we unwashed masses are, and the credit crunch/recession has ensured us that we can no longer have spontaneous trips to Woolies. My football team, a.k.a. Newcastle United, is on the brink of relegation instead of revolution, and is once again trying my patience in supporting them. But there's been some good things, people. Good things.
MOVIES
Well, the long-awaited return of Indiana Jones to the big screen didn't go entirely as planned. I liked INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL okay, and it didn't enrage my wrath the way it has done with a lot of geeks, but a combination of poor marketing and poor scriptwriting made it damn sure that this was certainly not the year of Indy. Not helping his cause was IRON MAN, which I am actually going to watch tonight (late starter as always), which was commercially and critically lauded, but everything was blown out of the water by near-TITANIC beater THE DARK KNIGHT, which, by the way, is a fucking amazing picture as you should already know. Heath Ledger is sadly no longer with us, but jesus, what a performance to leave as his last. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN showed me that the Coen Brothers can do amazing things when they want to, and that Javier Bardem is one scary motherfucker. I was also surprised (pleasantly) by the very good KUNG FU PANDA, which chalks up as the first Dreamworks CG animation I have actually even gone so far as to like. Well done.
MUSIC
I suppose the big story is the return of two fallen giants of hard rock/metal to the scene, each with varying efforts. Metallica's DEATH MAGNETIC showed us you can go home again, but you must have Rick Rubin by your side. However, it was by no means a MASTER OF PUPPETS or ...AND JUSTICE FOR ALL beater. Guns 'N' Roses (well, Axl Rose) finally brought us CHINESE DEMOCRACY, and for all its fanfare and years of anticipation, it's just not very good at all. I have a feeling Axl pricked off all of the good musicians before they had actually finished tracks, and just filled in the blanks using ProTools and Adobe Soundtrack. Still, the surprise of the year for me comes twofold: first from Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, who convinced me there is good UK hip-hop outside of the utter gash that is The Streets with ANGELS, while the best record comes in the form of Those Dancing Days and their enchanting debut IN THEIR SPACE HERO SUITS. A bunch of teenage Swedish girls singing doo-wop tunes with 80s pop influences? Yes man, yes!
GAMES
There have been some pretty awesome games this year. LEFT 4 DEAD is the zombie-massacreing game George Romero never made, FIFA 09 is finally a PES beater, LEGO INDIANA JONES was more fun than the film, STAR WARS: THE FORCE UNLEASHED was frustrating, but still a hell of a good play, and GEARS OF WAR 2 was a huge disappointment. But we got a 90s throwback in the form of the blister-forming SUPER STREET FIGHTER II HD REMIX. My thumb still hasn't recovered.
On to 2009!
I was about to write a huge rant about football, but then I thought, the one or two people who read my blog don't really like football, and since one of those is my wife, who has already experienced my rants today, it's probably not the wisest idea to carry on. But I don't have much else to write about. I did add my portfolio blog to the links though.
Labels: UpdatesWe're no longer heading out for new year's, so I'm no longer working on the Wolverine claws. For now. The line-up for the party looks terrible, which is the main reason why we're not going. I appreciate people love anime, and anime-themed J-pop, but aside from the odd Shonen Knife song, I don't. At all. So we figured it's not our scene and will instead get ridiculously drunk at home instead.
Christmas was nice. I'm not done completely, as my father is in Spain over Christmas, so we're doing my side of the family in January. But I got some neat stuff including (no order of preference): FIFA 09 for the 360; a cool Cylon figurine; a really nice (and posh) Rega record player; and a bit of cash. So good, so far. And no Star Wars stuff yet (this is a record, surely). However, I am considering giving my nephew a bunch of my SW figures and keeping the insanely cool TRANSFORMERS ANIMATED Grimlock the other half bought for him. So cool.
My creativity is blank right now, so far that the closest thing to writing something of note that I can achieve is this blog post. It doesn't help that I have manflu, and a general aversion to the holiday period, so I'm not in the best of moods. Also, Rainbow Six Vegas is kicking my ass.
However, I do have one cause to celebrate, and I am currently listening to it. I speak of the soundtrack to BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, the best cartoon that has ever been produced that doesn't feature a smart-talking alcoholic robot, and it's beautiful. It's an achievement, especially in today's credit crunch-fuelled climate where decent film score releases seem to be getting rarer, that this has been produced at all. Although I suppose Batman is in the public eye, what with THE DARK KNIGHT getting rave reviews across the board and making an obscene amount of cash.
The release itself is by La-La-Land Records, and is limited to 3000 copies. A very limited amount of those (I think about two-fifty) are signed by Lolita Ritmanis and Michael McCustion, the two composers of whose work appears on the album are still alive (Shirley Walker RIP), and luckily I managed to snag a signed copy. I dig the way LLL does this, by sending a sealed copy of the CD itself, but with a duplicate booklet signed by the composers. It's cool, thoughtful, and means I can read the excellent liner notes without chancing tearing the booklet on the jewel case, which can happen if you're not too careful.
The music is incredible, and it's amazing that this was written for a Saturday morning cartoon show. Danny Elfman's theme from the 1989 BATMAN opened the show for most of its run, and that arrangement is presented here, and I think it works better than the film's equivalent cue. The theme also shows up occasionally in the score, but is usually superceded by Walker's own fantastic theme, which was also used for BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM - THE ANIMATED MOVIE. The scoring here is so unique, and while it ranges from really dark, film noir mood music ("Two-Face"), to madcap Looney Tunes-style carnival sounds ("Christmas With The Joker"), it always remains fresh and interesting. Also, Walker's theme is just amazing.
I never felt the composers really got Batman 100% in the films. The 60s show, that was just camp all the way through, Elfman and Goldenthal's music for the Keaton-era films was pretty great, but never felt that interesting to listen to (although I prefer Goldenthal's, theme aside). And Zimmer and Newton Howard's music for Nolan's films works a lot of the time, but could probably do with some better thematic development. And it certainly wouldn't hurt to give Batman a proper theme at some point. Nolan et al may be going for an ultra-realistic vision of Gotham City, but at the end of the day, it's still an operatic story with larger-than-life characters and overtones, and some actual themes wouldn't be that out of place.
(Wow, I managed to get through the whole post without referring to something as Bat-something. Incredible.)
BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES - ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK FROM THE WB TELEVISION SERIES
I think Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' must be one of the most covered songs ever. It's a great track, even if the arrangement is dead cheesy, and Cohen's subwoofer-murdering voice just makes it. However, the best version - universally acknowledged, this is - was Jeff Buckley's cover from Grace. Buckley took it to a different level, changed some of the verses and lyrics around, and transformed it to this work of perfect art, along the same lines as Hendrix did with Dylan's 'All Along The Watchtower', and to a lesser extent, Slayer did with 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida'. Rufus Wainwright's version - as heard in SHREK - is alright, but nothing compared to Buckley's.
Why am I talking about this? You see, in England there's this TV show called The X-Factor. Basically, a bunch of singing hopefuls go on there and audition, and if they get through to the final and win, they get a £1m record contract. A bit like American Idol for the yanks out there. In any case, it's terrible viewing (although occasionally watchable in a car-crash kind of way), the smarmy judges are horribly mean to most of the contestants, and in the process, thousands of great songs are murdered by people "interpreting" them. Oh, and the public votes for the winner, which is never a good thing.
The latest winner is someone called Alexandra Burke, who I suppose has a perfectly decent voice, even if she does just sound like a knock-off Whitney. But her winning song was a cover of 'Hallelujah', which has now winged its way to being the fastest download ever. And here comes my point: this is a fairly decent singer making money - and the access to make more music on a regular basis - through a soulless rendition of a great, great song. If you ask the average person on the street, they'll go 'Jeff who?' but if you mention the song, they'll no doubt go into hysterics about how great a singer Alexandra is, already up there with the greats like Westlife, Girls Aloud and S Club 7. Grr. This just makes me a tad angry. Why can't they fuck up bad songs? Why can't the world's fastest selling download be a shit cover of 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'?
I'm sitting here patiently waiting for the X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE trailer to come online. It's currently in theaters with THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (sorry, not interested at all), and there are a couple of Youtube bootlegs, but I'm going to wait for the proper HD version. Wolverine has always been vying for the title of favourite superhero with Batman since I was a kid, so it's good to see him get his own movie.
Of course, the previous X-MEN films were pretty heavily focused on Wolverine anyway. I always liked the films because - despite the importance of Logan - they did well showing the X-Men working as a team. At least most of the time. I like the first flick a lot, it's not incredible, but it's thoughtful, and I'll forgive the slightly dull action scenes for the actual time spent on the characters, which is rare (or was rare in 2000) for a film like this. For example, the opening scene with Magneto. Genius.
X2 is just a brilliant ride. Jackman is intense, Brian Cox as Stryker was amazing, and Alan Cumming (i.e. the Scottish comedian and GOLDENEYE computer nerd) was a revelation as Nightcrawler. The action was finally as good as the character work, and it all came together brilliantly. THE LAST STAND... well, it's not great. I love the concept - the idea of a cure - but it just didn't come together. Angel was woefully underused, and should have been much more at the forefront. Then again, I'm not a big fan of Ben Foster as an actor, so I'm not sure how much I'd have enjoyed it. Beast was great, as was Kitty Pryde, and some of the action scenes at the end really paid off with the X-Men fighting as a team.
However, some of the character stuff was really off. Rogue taking the cure... well, that's a straight betrayal of her character from the comics and a really idiotic lesson to give on behalf of a franchise that has its roots in educating the masses. The fact that she's accepted back after being "cured" undoes all the great work the series has done in parallelling the "fantasy" stories with real-world social issues. Killing Xavier was pointless, and doesn't even work for shock value because of how badly the scene was done. Magneto being cured was the same... especially since both essentially came back in their own special ways at the end.
Jean... wow. The whole telepathic block thing, it's intriguing, but I don't think it's something Xavier would do, and just seems unnecessary. The first films worked it fine - she's powerful, she's then more powerful after the end of the first film (referenced in X2), and her powers have broken out. The whole thing was done so mundanely, that it had no emotion to it whatsoever. It was like "Oh... she killed Cyclops. Oh... she killed Xavier. Oh... Wolverine killed her." Still, if they make another X-Men movie, I'm sure she'll be back.