Now that the sequel is in theaters, I thought I should see the original since since a lot of people whose opinions I respect loved it. Maybe I had inflated expectations, but I wasn’t impressed. What it has going for it is a nice character build up in the first twenty minutes and an original fantasy-ish world that is gradually built up. Everyone seemed to rave about the action, but I found it to be sterile and dull. Its action sequences are a never ending flow of perfect head-shots and zero danger for John Wick. It was like watching a blase slacker staple gunning flyers up on every pole around campus. Pop, pop, pop… change camera angle… pop, pop, pop. Sigh.
A short book about a lesser known hero of the American revolution. As the captain of a Connecticut privateer vessel, Smedley captured a dozen or so prizes, ran aground, was captured twice and escaped from a British prison. It’s all pretty exciting stuff, but there aren’t too many first-hand accounts of the action so the book is a little sterile in its telling of the facts. I had to remind myself that this is straight up history and not an Aubry-Maturin novel. Even so, enjoyed the book for what it was.
Although this disc is part of the Crime box set, the music here is very much in the vein of Morricone’s giallo scores. There is a lots of dissonance and free form improvisation. The title track features Edda Dell’Orso and it serves to reel in the experimentation as it’s reprised over the course of the CD. Many years ago I used some of this music in my horror remix trailer for the film Junior High School.
Gli Intoccabili opens with the tense and pounding, “Ballad of Hank McCain.” It’s reprised three more times on the record and I love it every time. The song feels like a spaghetti western pop song alá “Lonesome Billy” or “Keep Your Hand on Your Gun” but with a mafioso vibe. Unfortunately, a huge chunk of the record after that gets way too mellow. We’re talking quiet dinner music mellow. I love lounge music but even I have my limits.
One of three discs included on the Crime box set of Poliziotteschi soundtracks. The highlight of the soundtrack is the nine minute long “Revolver.” A gritty, 70s cop show epic that is structured around a pounding piano melody that keeps building and building until the end. It’s repetitive and my family hates it when this one comes up on the shuffle, but I love it! There is more variety throughout the rest of the disc and it’s all book-ended with a couple of versions of the mellow title song, “Un Amico.”
The final CD from the Fear box set is pure experimental improvisation. There isn’t much method to this madness, just jazzy noise, bowed cymbals and the occasional distorted wah-wah guitar. This feels like an excerpt from the six CD set Sound Dimensions. It’s great as background filler, but don’t listen here if you want sweeping, epic Morricone melodies.
Mamet’s political coming out book doesn’t offer much new insight into conservatism. Instead it cribs a lot from Thomas Sowell and other prominent conservative thinkers. He even goes so far as to restate Sowell’s ideas of the “constrained vision” almost verbatim. Large sections of the book seem to be rooted in his defense of the state of Israel. If anything, what Mamet brings to the discussion is his colorful and often dense style of prose. Although I am on-board with most of his positions, I do have to concede that he does invoke straw man arguments to some degree when he targets his ire against liberals. And he also uses the phrase, “Which is to say…” a whole lot.
With the exception of the title song, “Ninna Nanna In Blu,” all of the tracks on this CD are solid Morricone thriller ambiance. Most of the experimental sounds are backed by jazzy, repeating bass riffs and brushed snare. Unlike his more avant-garde compositions, there are lots of recurring motifs and themes to hold everything together. There is something about the tone that’s very Scooby Doo mystery sounding. This would be great music for sneaking around a creepy old cemetery.
This was perhaps one of the first non-Spaghetti Western Morricone soundtrack that I discovered and it remains one of my favorites. The title track is a stirring, swelling masterpiece. The rest of the disc contains the type of experimental noise collages featured in most of Morricone’s giallo scores, but, in this case, they’re grounded and grooved out with rhythmic drums and funky bass lines. The style plays well with the film’s theme of killer hippies and drugged out parties. There is a lot of variety here and I would rank it as one of Morricone’s best, or, at the very least, the best example of his music in a thriller.
We never owned a Super Nintendo so I never got around to playing the 16-bit incarnation of Metroid. Well, thanks to the Wii Virtual Console I have finally crossed this one off my list. These days I am much more familiar with the 3-D versions of the game and, even though I played it back in the day, I don’t really have too much nostalgia for the NES version. There were some really frustrating moments of platforming incompetence on display as I made my way around the planet, but I eventually got the hang of the floaty physics and stuck it through all the way to the final boss battle.
The formula is well established: explore the world searching for upgrades and the more you discover the more areas will open up to you. There are monsters all around but killing them is usually a waste of time. You are rewarded for exploration not your extermination skills. That is until you meat one of the half a dozen or so bosses. The bosses are pretty rough but, in all honesty, the hardest part of the game is jumping out of sand pits. I hated that section the game. My final score was 64%, so I guess I missed a lot. However, I am not an OCD gamer so I doubt I will be going back to try for 100% completion… especially if that means more sand pits. Gawldamned SAND PITS!
