I'm a horror fan. I may be 44 now, but I have a large, soft and squishy spot for a good horror movie or novel. I grew up with the 1970's and 80's American horror genre and all its hits and misses. And that's why the current state of affairs in the said movie genre revolts me.
Everything started go wrong when a long and creepy silence in the field was broken by the Texas Chainsaw remake by that German music video hack whose name I refuse to even mention. Everything that was brilliant in Tobe Hooper's original - the insane humour, the cinema verite style, the sharply observed culture, the gritty atmosphere and the minimal amount of blood shown on screen - was gone and replaced by... well, lots of bad backlighting and violence so sickening that even my old "just throw another bucket in" gorehound self wanted to take a shower afterward.
The TCM made buckets of money and sealed the fate of the American horror film for years to come. What's come out of the fright factory since? Remakes: The Fog, Halloween, Romero's zombies, My Bloody Valentine, F13th and now Elm Street for chrissakes. And they are now re-doing Poltergeist? Have mercy: they must not know what they do. If they do know, forget the mercy bit.
It seems the industry has clean surrendered to the stupid disease that's plaguing the early 21st century. I loved horror 30 years ago because of the attitude, because of the romeros and cronenbergs and dantes and carpenters and hoopers and all the others who had a knack for telling a damn scary story and embellishing it with their very own indivudal garnishes. The brainless and idealess situation on show today is much more chilling and desperation-inducing than the bleakest Cronenbergian fable.
Well, at least Mr. King is still alive and well, likewise Mr. Barker and Mr. Gaiman. What the hell - reading beats movies anytime, anyway. Let me just grab that book - and sweet dreams to you, too ;-)
2010-06-16
Oh, Lord!
Classical musicians almost never reveal ambitions for working in the rock music idiom (some of them may actually harbor secret wishes in that direction but they keep them closeted). The reverse is much more common - unfortunately. Evidence has shown that the demands of orchestral music are simply beyond the average or even above-the-standard rocker. Zappa was a singular exception, but then his entire band work can be seen more as compositions for an electric ensemble rather than rock or pop songs.
Having said that, I must mention Karl Jenkins (ex-Soft Machine) and Tony Banks of Genesis as pleasant surprises. Jenkins' by now large body of work in the Adiemus project and as a solo composer may irritate many with its user-friendly blend of the sacred, the ethnic and the romantic, but I find it competent at worst and downright inspired/inspiring at best. Banks has only one orchestral work, Seven, under his belt so far, but it's good enough to mark him as a composer worth keeping tuned into. It may be blatantly neo-Elgarian, British post-pastoral and whatever, but it's also gorgeous and movingly sincere.
But the one (ex-)rocker who has really impressed me lately is Jon Lord, the former keyboard player with Deep Purple and Whitesnake. I was aware he has a classical education in music, but the sheer quality of his orchestral work took me totally by surprise. So far I've listened to three of his classical albums: Durham Concerto, To Notice Such Things and Beyond the Notes. All three are full of very well composed neo-classical, shamelessly romantic music that is richer than Jenkins' and more skilled than Banks' outings. There is more where those three came from and I'm looking forward to hearing them as well.
I can't but recommend you give Lord's orchestral work a try. His music communicates well, satisfies artistically and comes with enough emotion to keep you trapped. It is a wonderful breach of the "rockers should stick to rock" law and Lord should indeed be praised :)
Having said that, I must mention Karl Jenkins (ex-Soft Machine) and Tony Banks of Genesis as pleasant surprises. Jenkins' by now large body of work in the Adiemus project and as a solo composer may irritate many with its user-friendly blend of the sacred, the ethnic and the romantic, but I find it competent at worst and downright inspired/inspiring at best. Banks has only one orchestral work, Seven, under his belt so far, but it's good enough to mark him as a composer worth keeping tuned into. It may be blatantly neo-Elgarian, British post-pastoral and whatever, but it's also gorgeous and movingly sincere.
I can't but recommend you give Lord's orchestral work a try. His music communicates well, satisfies artistically and comes with enough emotion to keep you trapped. It is a wonderful breach of the "rockers should stick to rock" law and Lord should indeed be praised :)
2010-06-10
The punkest attitude of 1976
It's hilarious how misleading the conventional pop music history can be. Any journalist or rock historian would tell you that the dominant middle finger in the punk year of 1976 was raised by the Sex Pistols who came out of nowhere, shocked the UK and pretty much vanished within a year, leaving behind a huge myth, energized youth, a very rich manager and a few dead bodies. Malcolm McLaren may have steered the Sex Pistols from one scandal and record company disaster to another, but he was actually playing it safe, being fully aware that each piece of negative PR would in the long run fatten his, and the band's, wallet.
The brand new documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage puts things into correct perspective and reveals the three then long-haired Canadians the true anarchists of 1976. There's a wonderful sequence in the film, detailing the sudden rise the band enjoyed with Fly By Night and the subsequent nosedive of Caress of Steel less than a year later, in 1975. When going in to record their 4th album, both the record company and even their loyal manager Ray Danniels demanded they go for "more commercial sound, singles and short songs."
Their response was basically "f*** them all". As they say in the interviews made for the film, they decided to do the record 100% their way, go for their own vision one last time, and when the album bombs in the charts and Mercury Records fires them, they can go back to their boring old jobs proud, not having given in one inch.
The album was, of course, 2112, and as Neil Peart says in the movie, "it was carte blanche for us after that - no one could come up to us and say we should do something differently."
In the official truths of rock, Rush have been considered the polite, reclusive conservatives and Sex Pistols the anarchists and DIY flagbearers. Like many other official truths, this one should just leave. And do see the movie: even if you didn't care for the band, their story is unique and well worth telling the world.
Their response was basically "f*** them all". As they say in the interviews made for the film, they decided to do the record 100% their way, go for their own vision one last time, and when the album bombs in the charts and Mercury Records fires them, they can go back to their boring old jobs proud, not having given in one inch.
The album was, of course, 2112, and as Neil Peart says in the movie, "it was carte blanche for us after that - no one could come up to us and say we should do something differently."
In the official truths of rock, Rush have been considered the polite, reclusive conservatives and Sex Pistols the anarchists and DIY flagbearers. Like many other official truths, this one should just leave. And do see the movie: even if you didn't care for the band, their story is unique and well worth telling the world.
2010-06-08
War stories
For some reason, I missed out on both previous times when Band of Brothers was shown on Finnish television. Fortunately, they recently did a second rerun and I finally managed to record the whole series. I've been watching it these last few weeks at a leisurely pace, admiring the top-class writing, acting and direction. It certainly deserves all the recognition and awards that were rained on it when it premiered in 2001 (- it's been nine &#¤ing years?! Tempus does indeed fugit, it seems....)
Totally by coincidence, I've simultaneously been reading The Civil War, Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns' book version of their PBS documentary series, so I've spent an undue amount of time on two bloody frontlines, in two time periods, with ordinary American soldiers in the center of the picture.
It must be said that I have enjoyed both the series and the book immensely. Being a totally non-violent person, the graphic depictions of what the realities of war mean to individual humans, hold a certain mystery and dark charm for me. It's a world I probably could not endure for a minute before cracking (or who knows - sometimes we become different people in extreme situations), and certainly one I wish to avoid as completely as possible.
But I am not immune to the bravery, personal loss, honest sacrifice and whatever human experiences and qualities come into sharp focus in a time of war. There is no underestimating the endless repercussions and formative effects war casts on a society for generations, and that's why it is necessary to try, even if incompletely, to understand it. Books and cinematic representations cannot be the real thing, but perhaps they can articulate something essential about the experience.
Two things strike me about both Band of Brothers and The Civil War: the almost complete absence of women and the fact that the soldiers getting blown apart, shot in the brain and crushed under tanks didn't seem to have much of an idea why they were being butchered.
That war has been and is mainly a male business is kind of obvious, but somehow I feel women would be much more active and visible in a major conflict today - at least in the Western world. The total exclusion of women from the war theatre even in WWII - not to mention the American civil war - is striking. World has changed; if it hadn't, I probably wouldn't notice a thing like this.
In The Civil War, an Union officer asks a Confederate soldier why he's fighting. "Because you are here", is the only reply he can give. In Band of Brothers, Hitler is mentioned the first time in episode 7/10, and even then only in a humourous aside. The E Company never talks the meaning of this war, everything is about clearing the next objective.
I'm not saying these individual works of dramatised reality and non-fiction lay bare some inner truth of warfare. But I do believe wars usually arise out of complicated political and ideological conflicts and dead ends that a layman has little or know precise understanding of. Consequently, wars are fought and body counts increased by men whose main reason for killing and getting killed is "because you're here" - and sometimes not even that. In most cases, it's not the soldier whose goals fighting is meant to achieve. Those who gain from the slaughter are never seen on a battlefield.
Totally by coincidence, I've simultaneously been reading The Civil War, Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns' book version of their PBS documentary series, so I've spent an undue amount of time on two bloody frontlines, in two time periods, with ordinary American soldiers in the center of the picture.
It must be said that I have enjoyed both the series and the book immensely. Being a totally non-violent person, the graphic depictions of what the realities of war mean to individual humans, hold a certain mystery and dark charm for me. It's a world I probably could not endure for a minute before cracking (or who knows - sometimes we become different people in extreme situations), and certainly one I wish to avoid as completely as possible.
But I am not immune to the bravery, personal loss, honest sacrifice and whatever human experiences and qualities come into sharp focus in a time of war. There is no underestimating the endless repercussions and formative effects war casts on a society for generations, and that's why it is necessary to try, even if incompletely, to understand it. Books and cinematic representations cannot be the real thing, but perhaps they can articulate something essential about the experience.
Two things strike me about both Band of Brothers and The Civil War: the almost complete absence of women and the fact that the soldiers getting blown apart, shot in the brain and crushed under tanks didn't seem to have much of an idea why they were being butchered.
That war has been and is mainly a male business is kind of obvious, but somehow I feel women would be much more active and visible in a major conflict today - at least in the Western world. The total exclusion of women from the war theatre even in WWII - not to mention the American civil war - is striking. World has changed; if it hadn't, I probably wouldn't notice a thing like this.
In The Civil War, an Union officer asks a Confederate soldier why he's fighting. "Because you are here", is the only reply he can give. In Band of Brothers, Hitler is mentioned the first time in episode 7/10, and even then only in a humourous aside. The E Company never talks the meaning of this war, everything is about clearing the next objective.
I'm not saying these individual works of dramatised reality and non-fiction lay bare some inner truth of warfare. But I do believe wars usually arise out of complicated political and ideological conflicts and dead ends that a layman has little or know precise understanding of. Consequently, wars are fought and body counts increased by men whose main reason for killing and getting killed is "because you're here" - and sometimes not even that. In most cases, it's not the soldier whose goals fighting is meant to achieve. Those who gain from the slaughter are never seen on a battlefield.
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