After a good few years of wanting to obtain my own domain, I’ve donned my big-boy blogging pants.
I’m going to be blogging from now on over at http://fluffrick.co.uk/ and I’m in the process of moving over my archive of posts, so if there’s something that you want to see over there, give me a holler and I’ll try and get it shifted over.
Follow me at the new blog, won’t you please – this one will remain as an archive for the time being…
Filed under Geekery
Jeff Hanneman of Slayer, who died on May 2nd 2013 at 49 years old.
Sad news this morning – Slayer’s long-time guitar player and songwriter Jeff Hanneman has passed away at the age of 49. The cause of death has been listed as liver failure, with many speculating that the guitarist’s brush with necrotizing fasciitis (following a spider bite) and the subsequent medication required to combat it will have played their part in his early passing. So serious was this injury that it essentially sidelined Hanneman, compelling him to withdraw from Slayer’s regular touring schedule, with Exodus’ Gary Holt substituting for him from 2011 on.
Though the band’s Kerry King has long been the visual lynch pin of the band, Hanneman’s writing and – crucially – face-melting riffs are a large part of what made the band one of the Thrash Metal scene’s Big Four. If you’re humming the rampaging chords from “Raining Blood” now, I can’t say as I blame you.
As my cable company have currently provided the 2010 Sofia Bulgaria show from the Big Four tour, replete with Slayer, I can think of no better way to remember the great guitarist’s blistering riffs and headbanging tunes.
RIP, Sir, RIP.
\M/
Oddly enough, I’ve never modelled…
Never underestimate the influence of your better half.
Mrs Rolling Eyeballs – for it is her work – has enlisted my help in spreading awareness of Me Made May (Yes, it’s the fifth month of the year already. Let’s try not to think about what this means for the increasing flow of sand cascading remorselessly through our personal egg timers and beckoning ever closer the dread fingers of Death…).
Mrs RE has been taking part in this celebration of upcycling, clothes fabrication and fashion-based frugality for a few years now and has been decent enough to make me clothes and accessories of a hand-made and artisan nature, so it seems only fair that I do my bit to show that you don’t have to buy expensive brand names and stoke the fires of globalisation.
Henceforth, for one month only, please expect a smattering of pictures of your humble blogger looking awkward and wondering why the camera appears to add not only ten pounds but a whole mess of existential angst to boot…
The garment depicted above is a baseball-style jersey, which comes replete with bespoke tag at the collar and is superbly comfy. There’s also lovely sewing details at the collar and cuffs which adds subtle visual interest. I really do like it – and you’ll be seeing similar entries rendered into being by my wife’s DIY sewing talents in posts to be named later…
Rest assured, would-be viewers of “Iron Man 3” , post-“Avengers” fatigue has not set in.
Rather than find ways to go bigger and invest millions of dollars on a futile, tail-chasing exercise in upping the intensity of the stunts and action, “Iron Man 3” refreshingly realises that less can be more and paces itself accordingly, finding time to fill the screen with both retina-dazzling sturm und drang and funnier, more low-key character moments for the cast.
This is, be under no illusions, quite the funniest “IM” movie so far – the quips, bits of business and situational absurdity are gloriously integrated into the film, balancing the tension and central mystery of the main plotline with moments which let just about every major cast member crack wise at least once or twice (even Tony Stark’s personal A.I. construct Jarvis gets a fantastic, scene-capping one-liner).
It wouldn’t do to spoil the plot for you too much, so let’s just say that the events of the battle of New York have taken a toll on Robert Downey Jnr’s Tony Stark and sent him into a spiral of stress, suit tinkering and general bubble-dwelling which sees him picking fights, seeing the trappings of his life stolen away from him and having to go back to his engineering roots to try to salvage something of value from the wreckage he finds himself wading through.
Going back to basics can be a risky strategy but it really pays here off for writer/director Shane Black and his cowriter, Drew Pearce. Stark’s gadgets and armour are the main attraction for some, but Black and Pearce choose crucially to focus on Downey Jnr’s quick wits and energy, making this the first “Iron Man” entry that I can recall where the hero spends more of his time out of the suit and employing his ingenuity to solve problems and save the day. Think the opening 30 minutes of the first movie – but this time, that’s the focus of what Stark has to do this time.
No bleeding-edge, gadget-strewn lab, adorable robot helpers or suit which can blast the bad guys into next week to make things easy – just a fast-talking, goatee-bearded Einstein with no filter between brain and mouth and an abiding desire to sort a particularly thorny terrorist issue who goes by the name The Mandarin. I particularly enjoyed a sequence during this stretch of the film where Stark has to use the supplies available at a Big Box DIY goods store to cobble together a suitable collection of toys for a smash-and-grab mission – it’s like “Mission: Impossible” if Adam and Jamie from “Mythbusters” were running IMF…
You’ve seen Ben Kingsley as the character if you’ve watched the trailers for the movie, but you probably don’t have any clue as to just how good the British actor is in this film – Kingsley gives a magnetic, compelling turn here and demands your attention whenever the plot compels him to appear on-screen. It’s best to approach the film on as much of a self-imposed media blackout as you can, so as to avoid some of the plot reveals and spoilers out there in the great digital aether – certainly, the Mandarin should be seen with as little foreknowledge as possible.
If there’s one member of the cast who didn’t register as well for me, it’s Guy Pearce – his mysterious Aldrich Killian is initially fascinating but soon becomes rather humdrum when his motivations are revealed. The script falters here a little, too, when dealing with Killian’s mysterious tech think tank, A.I.M. We veer away from a world where the technology is futuristic but somewhat believable to a world where characters are suddenly doing stuff which is more in the realm of sword-and-sorcery fantasy than the techno-thriller territory of the rest of the film. And as the film has established that there’s no Asgardian players on the field for this adventure, the disconnect is rather too abrupt.
It’s a minor misstep, though – the film barrels along with verve and that aforementioned embedded funny bone, even chucking in a world’s first, by buddying up Stark with a fatherless kid and making their relationship charming and enjoyable rather than Hollywood saccharine and unbearable. It all ends with a climax which draws a neat line under the trilogy and Tony Stark himself, allowing Marvel and Downey the freedom to whatever they want with the character – it might mean no more solo Stark movies, it could mean that we just see him in “The Avengers” sequel but it’s a great way to round things off and give both audience and actor a neat grace note for the character to (temporarily) ride off into the sunset…
“I’m very silently judging you”
Suddenly, “Nikita” seems very far away…or does it?
The Hollywood Reporter’s “Heat Vision” blog today reported on director Luc Besson’s next actioner, “Lucy”, which has a plotline so deranged as to makes Besson’s “Taken” series look like the work of Michael Haneke.
Johansson’s character is a drug mule whose exposure to the illicit substance she’s transporting turns her into a one woman take-down machine, impervious to pain and telekinetic to boot.
If you read that log line and said to yourself, “I’d sooner eat my crusty toenails in a sandwich than watch that”, I fully sympathise – but you’re reading the blog of the man who willingly exposes himself to “Resident Evil” movies and counts the “Underworld” franchise as one of his favourite movie jams.
Don’t Look Down…
Taste, or my lack of thereof, somewhat suggests that I’ll be turning out for this movie on opening weekend. I’m not sure when Besson went from the enfant not especially terrible of French cinema to the guy behind goofy actioners like “The Transporter” films or my favourite of his obscurities as a producer, “Yamakasi”, but I’m not about to deny that I love many of his – shall we say – more lightweight endeavours…
A hairy man sorts out his foes…
Screencaps? Faffing about with my video software? Must be summer movie trailer time.
Behold! It’s “Thor: The Dark World”, with a teaser glimpse for your perusal and edification!
Loki is Emo – confirmed…
Expect to see his Norse Godliness in modern-day London, hints at a romantic triangle, lots of action and a last-minute cameo appearance by Loki-chops, with Tom Hiddleston apparently channelling Dani Filth from CoF for reasons best known to the costume department. Me likey.
“Thor: The Dark World” opens in good, bad and indifferent cinemas on October 30th in the UK and on November 8th in the US.
Filed under Films, Geekery, Movie Trailer
So, when did Thor join Sabaton? Just wondering.
The second cinematic adventure for the exquisitely coiffured son of Odin will be with us in November, and to whet your proverbial whistle for Tuesday’s teaser trailer, here’s a Marvel-supplied poster of the Norse God bringing his own, oddly-accented brand of thunder and bad assery.
As the first “Thor” outing was probably my favourite of the stand-alone “Phase One” series of Marvel films, I’m truly on board for what the House of Ideas’ cinematic brains trust delivers with this movie, even if I’m going to miss original director Kenneth Branagh’s love of a ‘Dutch’ angle.
Still, most of the other principals are back, Christopher Eccleston is bringing his own brand of Mancunian melancholy to the villain role and it’s being helmed by a regular “Game of Thrones” director (I suspect that there’s rather less scope here, however, for non-stop pillaging, politicking and the other less salubrious fantasy stuff for which that HBO show is becoming increasingly famed…).
I expect good things…
Honestly, you go away for a couple of days – a work trip, not exactly exciting – and things get all confusing for any self-respecting member of the “Star Wars” generation. It’s as though you’ve been out of the game for a while and people get delusions of grandeur or something…
The sci-fi franchise’s new overlords, the Walt Disney Company, this week unleashed dark, Sithian portents of wholly predictable corporate malevolence by announcing that films seven, eight and nine in the new trilogy will open two years apart in 2015, 2017 and 2019 , with spin-off movies featuring “Star Wars” characters filling in the gaps between new instalments of the main saga (“Salacious Crumb – Lust for Glory” – make it so).
So, the House of Mouse is borrowing a note or two from the thus-far successful Marvel Studios play book and pitching their comic book movie business against the biggest name in cinematic sci-fi in a playground battle to win all of the marbles in the yard. Greedy, much?
I confess to be alarmed by the proposed timeline – is two years between movies really a realistic schedule which would allow for quality to be maintained? It doesn’t seem as though director J.J. Abrams could realistically turn around movies on this scale in that production line fashion – could any director keep to that kind of workload and deliver something which didn’t feel like a product tooled to meet a release date line in the sand?
Is the plan, then, to alternate directors on each Episode? Curiouser and curiouser…
Chi Cheng image via Deep Schismic at Flickr
In sad news, Deftones bass player Chi Cheng’s family have announced that the musician passed away on Saturday April 13th. He was 42 years old.
Cheng had been in a semi-comatose state since a car accident in November 2008, and had shown tentative responsiveness to stimuli in recent years, but never regained the ability to communicate with his family and carers. His recovery had been adversely affected by losing his medical insurance and by infections which required expensive hospital treatment – fans and band mates alike contributed to his ongoing medical costs via benefit gigs and the One Love For Chi website.
Deftones were a band who emerged with the Nu-Metal scene in the late nineties and early part of the 2000’s, but endured as many of their contemporaries drifted out of fashion in the post-Emo rock scene thanks to a sound which blended the best parts of punk, metal and experimental rock – I’ve always compared them more to Black Sabbath jamming Radiohead songs in Fugazi’s rehearsal space – and by refraining from adopting the loutish posturing which so blighted a lot of their contemporaries.
The band have continued to record and tour with bassist Sergio Vega (formerly of Quicksand), releasing the excellent “Koi No Yokan” album last autumn.
It hardly needs saying, but he will be missed – R.I.P. Chi.
Filed under Music
…in 2001.
Yep, after fearing it lost forever in the great house cleaning of aught-11, the redoubtable Mrs Rolling Eyeballs managed to unearth Nintendo’s happy purple Gamecube from it’s most recent resting place and reinstate it to our lovely CRT telly, where it belongs. The lesson to be drawn from this? Tidying is for suckers – don’t do it, kids.
That golden era of titles like “Burnout 2: Point of Impact”, “Metroid: Prime” and “Zoocube” is even now being relived, via the medium of extended controller cables and an in-the-mail memory card from those nice folks at a popular online retailer.
Given that our platform-owning overlords are now seemingly bent on making us pay and re-pay to enjoy titles from back in the day by removing backwards-compatibility from video games consoles, my next course of action is to head into town and pick up a PS2 to enjoy some of the earlier Sony titles I missed first time around (and so that Mrs Rolling Eyeballs can enjoy other iterations of her beloved, Criterion Games-developed “Burnout” franchise).
Retro? No, I just love the classics…
Fluffrick 