12.20.2011

A review of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' "The Girl With The DragonTattoo" score


While it isn’t quite Option 30’s cover of “Der Kommissar”, I’ve decided to review Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score for “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” anyway.
The temperature is lowered a hundred degrees the second we hear the hollow wind at the start of the album. It doesn’t get much warmer. Yes, there’s sunlight to contrast the icy, creeping dark, and, sometimes it serves to warm us, but, more often than not, it’s cold sunlight, too far away to do more than hurt our eyes.
Practically every track has a wash of sound or some sort of distorted warble, sometimes they detract, like in “One Particular Moment”, but, in almost every other case, it adds tension, distress and, most importantly, cold.
I’ve discovered how Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross managed to get such a desolate, cold feeling on the majority of this album: the use of instrumentation (the hammered dulcimer is a simple, beautiful instrument, but they make it chilly and unnerving by doing something that sounds like hooking one up to an old modem receiving an error message) and scant vocals of Mariqueen Maandig, plus the keys and pitches at which things are played.
Most everything sounds just a little wrong.
Very alienating and cold.
 David Fincher now has his very own Ghosts.


Disc 1

  1. Immigrant Song – After the empty howling of the frozen North wind sweeps down upon you, the drums kick in, their surface crusted with ice that’s shattered with each blow and yet reforms almost as fast as it’s being destroyed. The vocals, like a frozen blade slash across your face and, just as you’re certain you’ll be lost forever under the huge, apocalyptic avalanche of ice and sound at the end, it’s finished, you’re finished…and the album, the thirty-nine track, two hour and fifty three minute score has just begun. 
  2. She Reminds Me Of You – There’s something predatory about this. The wailing, lost moan speaks of things vast and beautiful and dangerous, like a moonlit plain, pocked with holes covered in snow, waiting to break your ankle and strand you there to die of exposure.
  3. People Lie All The Time – A diseased thrum pervades this piece like blows sounding on a massive, stone door. The scrambling, wavering strings serve as a warning: don’t open this door. A huge note at the end signifies that we’re too late, the door was opened and everything is undone. There’s a stunning sense of finality to this, even though it’s only the third track on the album.
  4. Pinned and Mounted – This track goes to a few different places; none of them places you’d want to go. A piping organ towards the end creeps up on you like something small and deadly, a psychotic child with a knife.
  5. Perihelion – One of the most disturbing tracks on the album. It opens like a glowing, infected eye, spilling its poisoned light on fields of atrocities. Towards the end, when that rusted, metallic cry comes in and then the half digital, half demonic chattering madness…it’s hard to keep listening, an aurora borealis over Hell. This is a strong argument for Trent and Atticus to score a horror movie.
  6. What If We Could? – Could this be the only warm track on the entire album? The only piece that isn’t comprised of icicles in the dark and shallow pools of gray water covered by particle-thin sheets of frost? For a moment, for this moment, everything’s okay, everything’s going to work out. There’s hope. A sad hope, but that still counts. Then the light at the end of the tunnel turns red…
  7. With The Flies – Some tracks on the album work when placed next to one another, but none as much as “What If We Could?” and “With The Flies”, if only for the juxtaposition. The creeping terror inherent here is just so unsettling.  Both the title and the content indicate something horrible has taken place. This and “Perihelion” are both reminiscent of Akira Yamaoka’s work on the Silent Hill video game series.
  8. Hidden In Snow – The background is tar and the hammered dulcimer is insects trapped and dying on its surface. Listen to this on the right set of speakers and the pervasive bass will alter your brainwave patterns. There is a sickness here.  
  9. A Thousand Details – A bit reminiscent of “Driver Down” from the “Lost Highway” soundtrack, there’s a wonderful sense of desperation, of pursuit taking place within this track. Feel that crunchy guitar. This one is all about disaster, explosions and the motherfucking end of days.
  10. One Particular Moment – Out of the wailing, teeth-gritting void comes some of the most beautiful piano on the album. Eventually, some simple, effective strings are added and the melody emerges from the cloud of dissonance like the sun on a cold day. Only for a moment though, before it’s swallowed up by a huge wave of fuzzed out synth. At the very end though, if you listen closely, after the wave has receded, you can still hear the ghost of that melody, floating off into nothing.
  11. I Can’t Take It Anymore – Mariqueen’s gauzy vocalizations add to the cold of an already frigid piece.
  12. How Brittle The Bones – On a disc of dynamic, fluid, interesting tracks, this one stands out by not standing out. A simple, dull interlude.
  13. Please Take Your Hand Away – This is both reassuring and unsettling. The big, slightly blurred piano offers solemnity and resolve, but everything else around it is jittery, unsure of itself. Something about those tumbling, falling notes at the end sound like giving up in a state of confusion. This is a great ending to the first act of Reznor and Ross’ latest opus.

Disc 2

  1. Cut Into Pieces – Brings you right back in. It’s sharp and uncomfortable, more technological that anything we’ve seen so far. The ending is zombie crickets and cell phone interference
  2. The Splinter – A lot like “How Brittle The Bones” as far as it’s unimpressive.
  3. An Itch – Everything happening in this track is great. The sound of sound itself tearing that pings back and forth, the paranoid pacing, the slightly detuned piano which runs throughout…one of the best tracks on the album.
  4. Hypomania – Some thing is following you down a dark, wet tunnel. Something lumbering, inexorable. You run because you’re terrified, but it doesn’t have to because there’s only one exit and it’s standing between you and it. At the end of the piece, you face a bricked-over doorway and feel hot breath on your neck…
  5. Under The Midnight Sun – Something broken stumbling across vast, empty, freezing tundra. You can actually feel the wind when you listen to this. The end is pure Silent Hill, as the limping thing returns to its lair and dies.
  6. Aphelion – This begins with the sounds of space rushing at you, but not empty space. There’s something there, waiting. Then a small, insistent melody. Delicate. Too delicate for a place like this. Suddenly, the space is shut out and you’re confronted with the melody, but just for a moment. There’s a music box buried under ashes somewhere in the wasteland...
  7. You’re Here – A juxtaposition of high, fragile sounds and a heavy, thudding bass beat. There isn’t enough development for this to become interesting.
  8. The Same As The Others – The high, lonely squeal off to the right combined with the deep, cavernous rumbling is pure Yamaoka. The melody has a ponderous, lost feel to it, also very Silent Hill.
  9. A Pause For Reflection – The skittering, sparkling, dancing hammered dulcimer (like light) is given form by the simply thudding and depth by the roaring ocean in the background. When that glacial background comes forward and the rest recedes, something interesting happens. This is a track that goes from small to large, shallow to deep; like a body of water. A body of water under a sheet of ice.
  10. While Waiting – Mariqueen Maandig’s voice works wonderfully paired up with the bells on this. The track is short, but it accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish: it tells of the deep, rising, of something under the sun-dappled surface of the water, something old, something hungry.
  11. The Seconds Drag – One of the most straightforward and literal tracks on the album. A clock ticks as, well, the seconds drag. More percussive than most. Eventually, there’s some light programming that weaves into the ticking, but, in the end, the title says it all.
  12. Later Into The Night – Plodding and deliberate. The use of a simple, repeated melody really you to feel the passage of time. There’s a sense of maybe you’re closer to the machinery than you should be. Broken jack-in-the-box. All this, but it feels a bit thin, like something’s missing.
  13. Parallel Timeline With Alternate Outcome – The name is more interesting than the music, but just barely. One of the most varied tracks on the album, starting and ending in totally different places. It’s restful at first, warm, everything bad is happening on the outside, in the cold. This is like walking through a forest, beautiful yet eerie, then finding a body…first a cloud of flies, then a bloodstained shoe, then a second shoe with a foot still inside it… then a whole pile of bodies. The end guitar is fucking terrifying. Another great end to an act.

Disc 3

  1. Another Way Of Caring – This is a rape carnival. Plinking, wandering notes taken right from a child’s nightmare meander throughout this along with big, disharmonious strings and creepy, out of tune piano, scaring the shit out of anyone happening by. Welcome to the final act/disc…we’re having some problems.   
  2. A Viable Construct – More tech sounding than most of what we’ve heard thus far. Somehow feels reminiscent of ‘The Terminator’…
  3. Revealed In The Thaw – The last patch of warmth on a very cold, very bleak journey. We’re not quite safe yet. Maybe we’ve found a place to catch our breath, but that incessant thudding let’s us know it isn’t over yet, there’s still something outside…and we’ll have to face it before all this is over.
  4. Millennia – The passage of time as seen from a great height.
  5. We Could Wait Forever – Another tech-heavy track, one with a lot of error messages. One can envision a large, rubbery tube leading into a room full of malfunctioning mainframes. Perhaps there was a Freon leak, because everything is tinted blue.
  6. Oraculum – Does Industrial Bhangra make sense? This is the most energetic (and longest) track on the album and is so disparate from anything else…I have no idea where it’s coming from or where it’s going…but I’m willing to bet they serve couscous there. One can almost dance to this, if there tried hard enough.
  7. Great Bird Of Prey – After the most energetic track, we now have the most literal. One can actually hear majestic, deadly birds circling high in the air… And just as things start to sound like they’re getting typical around the end…the track explodes.
  8. The Heretics – Yet another techy track on a disc full of techy tracks. I can’t help but think of “Ringfinger” when I hear this. This would be the most interesting piece on someone else’s project, but on this album, among the others jewels found here, it’s merely good. You can really feel the space that Reznor and Ross talked about in this track.
  9. A Pair Of Doves - Just as airy and graceful as the title denotes…but short. An interlude almost.
  10. Infiltrator – Here’s another electronic track. There’s a great, loose bolt sound in this. It creates a sense of “if we keep going at this speed, something is going to fall apart”.
  11. The Sound Of Forgetting – The sound of someone slamming a tool against the obdurate past. The sound of forgetting, not forgiving. The high notes alleviate some of the guilt and pain, but nothing can erase it.
  12. Of Secrets – To end the album, which is comprised mostly of odd, obsolete, frozen instruments, there’s hardly any instrumentation at all, just a rising and falling of static; building to a climax, then pulling back, like a frozen sea, only to rise and rise and rise until…nothing. A simple and amazing ending to one of the most incredible sonic sojourns you’ll ever take.
  13. Is Your Love Strong Enough? – A coda.

12.19.2011

The Truth Is Out There...In Your Mom's Vagina

12.19.12
4:46 pm
 
A few days ago, I watched the last Fincher film I’ll watch for a while (unless I remember to watch the one about Buttons and Brad Pitt), Zodiac.
Below are my smattering of notes…
 
It’s shot beautifully, as all his stuff. Every scene is massively detailed.
If awards were given for how good a film looks, hen clap for this one, but, after a serial killer movie like Se7en, is there really any point to keep making them?
 
Mark Ruffalo is excellent, loved every minute of him (but I still don’t love him for Bruce Banner).
His back and forth with Anthony Edwards (NNNNNEEEERRRRRDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!) is great and as natural as Fincher could have dreamed.
 
Chloë Sevigny looks (relatively) normal for once…but she’s still kind of a bitch.
 
And Charles Fleischer is astounding. I’d never want to be in a basement (even such a well-lit and set-dressed basement as this one) with him.
He’s terrifying.
But I’d still rather hang out with this creepy Charlie Fleischer than the one from his weird ass talk show.
Hyperactive little spaz.
 
You can feel the passage of time like a mofo in this movie.
From 1968 to 1991, you feel it.
Crazy…
 
In the end though, true stories that have no real ending aren’t my favorites.
Even with Donovan on the soundtrack.
 
I’ve also been rewatching X-Files and some diamonds have revealed themselves…either because of their awesomeness or their outright oddness.
 
First off, there was an episode in the second season called “3”, which is kind of like a Brett Easton Ellis homage.
It features Mulder having sex with some kind of vampire chick for no real reason while fires rage in the hills of Los Angels.
Scully gets abducted for six measly months and Mulder gets all existential and nilistic…
Very odd episode…
 
Then there is the classic, “Irresistable”, which introduced Donnie Pfaster, the “escalating fetishist” who starts off cutting the hair of a dead teenage girl, then digging up graves and taking hair, fingernails and occasionally a finger and then picking up prostitutes in order to kill them simply to obtain their hair and nails. This actor, Nick Chinlund, is PERFECT for the role and reminds me a bit of Crispin (Hellion) Glover, but less theatrically creepy and more death-sex-fetishist-next-door creepy.
You know.
Scully is so vulnerable in this…it’s heartbreaking to see her so scared.
 
Then there’s the episode I watched just today.
It’s called “Humbug” and it’s Chris Carter’s love letter to sideshows, starring Jim Rose, The Enigma, the midget from Twin Peaks and a whle bunch of other awesome actors.
The whole thing is tongue in cheek and funny as hell.
And there is some sort of aborted looking monkey monster.
Which is good.
 
And, finally, I returned to Bang studios downtown this morning for my second Speakaboos recording in as many weeks.
I was another slew of characters; a fox (a Paul Lind fox which is like a regular fox but more sassy), three different pigs, a newt, another monkey, two different narrators, Old MacDonald, the Speakaboos dragon and…more.
As for before, it was exhausting and the most fun I’ve had in a booth in a while AND I’m coming back in January!
WOO!!!
SPEAKABOOS!!!!
And, you know what’s supergreat about this?
Speakaboos is about teaching kids to read, so, in the end, I’m helping kids be less stupid.
And that is all I’ve ever wanted to do, make people a little less stupid.
Merry Christmas, future.
You’re welcome.

12.13.2011

A review of David Fincher's "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"

Last night, a few friends and I were lucky enough to get into the Mouth Taped Shut New York screening of David Fincher’s “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”.
And here’s how it went.

Note: I’m going to try and not lean on “here’s how this one was different from/better than the original film/the book, but it’ll happen from time to time.
Also, there are lots of spoilers, so, be warned.

After a little more than an hour out in the cold, we were ushered into the theater, stripped of our cell phones and given a free Dragon Tattoo poster (the same one that was going for fifteen or twenty dollars at the Hard X Mouth Taped Shut events…which were kind of pointless, by the way).
Right around ten o’clock, a man showed up and told us to look on the back of seats for an “X”, and that whoever was in or closest to that seat would get a free “razor blade” Dragon Tattoo poster…signed by Trent Reznor.
I was not that person.

Then the lights dimmed and, after a short scene introducing Henrik Vanger, Dectective Morell and a pressed flower in a picture frame…the title sequence began.
A few days ago a “mysterious video” was posted on Pitchfork that served as a sort of music video for Karen O., Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ cover of “Immigrant Song”; it turns out this was merely a blurred glimpse at the full, mind-blowing title sequence for the film.
I won’t spoil it for you, I’ll simply say everything is made of technology and tar and hands and nightmares and your head will explode after watching it.
While it isn’t as pivotal to the plot as the opening sequences of Fincher’s other films such as “Fight Club”, in which the viewer is taken from the part of “Jack’s” brain where Tyler Durden exists, to the opening shot of the film or “Se7en”, in which the viewer sees John Doe and the creation of his notebooks, it’s certainly just as visually stunning, if not more so.
The images in it and their thematic relation to the film almost make it seem more like the opening credits to one of the recent Bond film (there’s even Daniel Craig).

After this intro, the film begins.

On the whole, the film has an excellent flow to it; introducing both main characters, disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist and anti-social hacker/master researcher Lisbeth Salander, then slowly bringing them together about halfway through the film in a wonderfully awkward scene involving lesbianism. While Daniel Craig delivers a rock solid performance as the harried, world weary Blomkvist, Rooney Mara’s Lisbeth Salander is the obvious star here. From the first time you see her hollow, hungry face, you really can’t take your eyes off her. You’ll notice something new about her, some little detail, every time you see her. She manages to steal just about every scene she’s in, sometimes merely by being there, silently staring with her huge, angry eyes. That is, by the way, not a slight to the rest of the cast, more a credit to Mara’s screen presence.
Christopher Plummer’s Henrik Vanger is replete with aged, brittle dignity, Stellan Skarsgård’s Martin Vanger is polite and charming, even when he’s psychotic and brutal (his “conversation” with Blomkvist in the exceptionally designed kill room hidden beneath his home is bone-chilling…and he doesn’t raise his voice once. It also brings up some interesting, baffling questions regarding human nature) and Yorick van Wageningen as Nils Bjurman…well, I hope this fat, scummy fuck enjoys typecasting, because he is perfect in this role, so much so that the first time he appears on screen, the entire audience bristled with discomfort and disgust, and when Lisbeth hits him with her taser at the top of her revenge scene, the audience cheered. Maybe he and Dylan Baker (the pedophile/psychiatrist from 1998’s Happiness) can start a We're-So-Good-At-Playing-Horrific-Inhuman-Mosters-On-Film-That-You’ll-Never-See-Us-As-Anything-Else-Ever-Again Club…the first rule of which is you don’t talk about it…
The plethora of awful-yet-necessary research scenes from the book are present and accounted for, given more screen time than one would think to give to characters staring at books and computers, but they’re actually made bearable (not quite enjoyable, but bearable) by the accompanying music and cinematography. As I always say, if you must have a library research scene, make sure it’s scored by Trent Reznor and directed by David Fincher.

Not everything about the movie was great though…
After reading a few interviews with Fincher and his production team, I’d have thought that Sweden and its cold, desolate environs would have played more of a character in the film, but I was a bit let down to find that wasn’t the case. Remember when Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman walked into the Gluttony crime scene in “Se7en”? Remember how the lighting was practically a character in the room with them? I never really got a sense of that in Dragon Tattoo. The whole thing was shot beautifully, but, aside from a few moments here and there (Bjurman’s bound foot, passing in front of the light during Lisbeth’s revenge scene, that first shot of Henrik’s massive mansion sliding towards the viewer like a predator), nothing took my breath away.

I will say that the score lowered the temperature of the whole film by about fifty degrees. Reznor and Ross spoke about “experimenting with space” this time around, but, more than space, I think they’ve harnessed the ability to actually lower the temperature of the listener. Almost every one of the thirty-nine tracks on the score has an inescapably chilly feel to it, whether it’s the dynamic, crashing “A Thousand Details” or the Akira Yamaoka-esque “With The Files”, you can feel a bitter wind blowing while you listen to their compositions.
Unlike they’re work on “The Social Network” score, this time around, the music fits the subject matter perfectly. Don’t get me wrong, the “Social Network” score was groundbreaking, “The Social Network” was excellent, but the “Social Network” score in “The Social Network”? Honestly, it never worked for me.
Let me put it another way: I could picture different, more typical music behind “The Social Network” (more along the lines of that Elvis Costello song originally slated for the opening scene), but I cannot imagine “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” without the Reznor/Ross score. It is married to the film and vice versa.
Basically, David Fincher commissioned Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to make a “Ghosts I-IV” just for him, “Ghosts V-VIII”, if you will (“But, Trent, could you use a hammered dulcimer rather than a marimba?”).
The only downside to the music was that Fincher didn’t use nearly enough of it.
Admittedly, I didn’t have the cue list and the liner notes with me at the screening, but I’ve been listening to nothing but the score for the past five days and I could have sworn they didn’t use more than a quarter of it. Some of my favorite tracks (“A Thousand Details”, “An Itch”, “Hypomania”, “Parallel Timelines With Alternate Outcomes”) weren’t used at all, while several tracks (“Hidden In Snow”, “Under The Midnight Sun”, “She Reminds Me Of You”) were used more than once (or twice, in some scenes).
In the end though, what they did use and where they chose to use it, for the most part, worked perfectly.
I’m very much looking forward to a commentary track with Reznor and Ross when this is released on disc.

Two more tiny things before I wrap this up: first, there’s a nice little nod to Nine Inch Nails when Lisbeth first visits Plague, and, second, this movie has some of the best cat acting I’ve seen in a while, since “Cat’s Eye” perhaps…

Overall, this movie is complex and beautiful, and the interactions between Fincher’s Salander and Blomkvist work for me more than Niels Arden Oplev’s (there’s a cute moment when Lisbeth tells Mikael in her solemn, little voice to “put your hand back inside my shirt”), plus, Fincher gets the ending from the book perfectly.
And I’m a huge Nine Inch Nails fan who hasn’t missed an update to Comes Forth In The Thaw since it popped up about a month and a half ago.
At its heart, this is a bigger, slicker version of the Swedish film from two years ago, give or take several million dollars.
I’m not going to say “Noomi who?” when it comes to her portrayal of Lisbeth, but Rooney Mara is pretty incredible in this.
Fincher focuses more on the characters while Oplev focuses more on the world of the characters.
Bottom line? Although this movie is truly excellent, I don’t see the need for it.
Yes, I’m glad for nearly three hours of new music from one of my favorite artists.
Yes, I’m glad David Fincher is getting some well earned love from the critics.
Yes, I’m not a huge fan of movies with subtitles (not a comment on foreign films, they’re distracting is all).
But this movie didn’t need to be remade, just as a lot of people don’t think “Let The Right One In” needed to be remade.

All that said, this is just my opinion.
If you want to see it, go see it.
If you’re incensed it exists, don’t go see it.
But, here are some facts: because of this remake, David Fincher gets more freedom in the studio system, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are going to create more insane, landmark score work and people who would never in their lives think to read a book about Swedish finance, hacking and misogyny are going to be exposed to something that isn’t fucking Twilight.
People, this is a win.

12.09.2011

Things.

12.9.12
3:55 pm
 
Things and stuff, actually.
 
This…has been a very long week.
Very.
TWO reasons.
First, the impending release of nearly three hours of new music from one of my favorite artists, which made the minutes pass like hours, and second, the fact that my Speakaboos booking (which I found out about last week) was scheduled from 9 am to 11 am this morning.
And this wasn’t a job where I could gruff my way through like Harley-Davidson or Comcast, a job in which my thick, sleepy voice was just what the client ordered; I was to voice nine separate characters with varying tones, timbres and ranges.
It was actually to be a challenge.
So, since last Sunday, I’ve been going to sleep and waking up an hour earlier every day this week.
I must say, it has been quite a harrowing experience; in some ways good (the massive amounts of time I have before going to work- I did laundry!) and in some ways bad (the pervasive feeling that I was slowly losing my god damn mind as the people around me were turning into tentacular abominations).
It’s certainly helped me to understand why so many of you folks that work a 9 to 5 every day of every week are such blistering assholes.
Sorry, such high-strung, blistering assholes.
I also understand why you all drink so much coffee.
Because you’re weak.
Anyway, this recording was excellent, one of the best I’ve had in a while.
Unlike the well-paying but overall unexciting/undemanding Comcast/Cablevision stuff, this was fun as hell. I gave these characters character, some inspired by my favorites voice actors over the years, some pure me.
Pure. Throbbing. Me.
The segments I worked on (Humpty Dumpty- the egg creature, not the lead singer of Digital Underground, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Chicken Little, The Three Little Pigs, Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star, and the Tortoise and the Hare) should be on the Speakaboos website (www.speakaboos.com) in about a month or so.
I’ll be sure to keep you posted.
 
In honor of my weird week of fucked up sleep, I decided to rewatch the X-Files…all 202 episodes (and two movies).
Jenna was right, some of these first season episodes are GARBAGE*.
But Mulder and Scully are just so cute!
And, is it weird that Scully carrying a Walther is arousing?
Something about a hot redhead carrying James Bond’s trademark gun…I don’t know…gets my pickle tickled.
But I digress…sexily.
I’m not sure if I’m going to (be able to) keep up this new sleeping/waking regimen, but we’ll see.
Another thing it’s allowed me to accomplish and a big pebble in the “Pros” jar, is work on some music for a project I’m calling “the Tucker EP”.
Basically, it’s music (all instrumental and created under my ‘pseudonymous’ moniker, no diarrhea here) inspired by Phil’s books.
Aside from the Grind Show theme, nothing else is completed, but I have a few sketches.
Between ProTools and my newly acquired Kaoss pad (thanks again, Will), well, like He-Man, I have the power.
The power to make some badass, creepy drones.
HEAVY DROP!
DUB STEP!!!
GLASS KNIVES!!!!!!
If I do end up getting an iPad, I think I’ll have enough tools to build something interesting.
I just have to stop trying to emulate Trent fucking Reznor.
I’ve finally found a down side to listening to Nine Inch Nails for all these years:  I’m thinking/composing like him, but with the scantest fraction of the tools/talent at his disposal.
Mm.
Who knows, I have like, three friends who know NIN, so maybe it’s not such a problem.
We’ll find out when the lawsuits start rolling in.
 
Tomorrow evening, I will be in attendance at Kaitlyn’s birthday party and, before that, some event relating in some way to the new Dragon Tattoo movie. It’s called Hard X Mouth Taped Shut and I’m not 100% what it is.
But they have some cool looking t-shirts and I want one.
 
God I’m exhausted…
 
All right, no more finger talk.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
* Their homage to Carpenter’s “The Thing” was pretty great though.

12.02.2011

The World Of Froud

12.2.11
7:46 pm

Last night, thanks to my lovely taking an amazing puppet/creature crafting class with Wendy and Brian Froud (check out her Facebook for picture of the thing she made, it's astounding), her and I were invited to the opening of the World of Froud exhibit at the Animazing Gallery downtown.
Some highlights included seeing several of Brian's original character sketches from Labyrinth as well as a slew of goblin and faerie paintings and sculptures by Wendy, Brian and Toby (who played Toby AKA the Babe with the Power in Labyrinth and has since become an INCREDIBLE sculptor), participating in an auction run by Lolly Lardpop for a one-of-a-kind Brian Froud painting (Chris and I capped our bidding at $3500 and missed out by $250...we're still kind of fifty/fifty about not getting it...), and then, because of our high bidding, spending the rest of the evening as VIPs of sorts, getting to hang out and talk with Heather Henson (Jim Henson's daughter who sounds a hell of a lot like Sarah Vowell but without her inherent darkness), writer Ellen Kushner and the one and only Brian Froud.
I had a conversation with Brian Froud, the guy from whose imagination most of the creatures from Labyrinth sprang.
I am now cooler.
It was a wonderful, magical evening.

In far more mundane news, I have continued my Fincher Fest, watching Panic Room two nights ago and Fight Club last night.
Panic Room is much better than I remembered it being and I think I figured out why I had such a problem with it when I saw it in theaters, oh, nine years ago.
Thing is, Fight Club desensitized me.
That movie was as mind blowing as anything Chris Nolan has ever done, even more so, and the fact that the next movie after it was shot (primarily) in one room in one house with a cast of less than ten people...well, it just didn't stack up.
But, seeing it now, as an adult and more of a film person (?), I was able to get a lot more of the nuance, the back and forth between Jodie Foster and Kristen Stewart (excellent casting, by the way, they look like mother and daughter), the schizophrenic hysterics of Jared Leto's Junior and the evil of Dwight Yoakam's Raoul.
Obviously, still not as great as Fight Club, but a very good, very well-made film.

Fight Club, of course, is still as excellent as always.
The perfect blend of dark humor, intense action and ridiculous visual effects.
I'm upgrading to Blu Ray as soon as I get the chance.
Also, I remember hearing this on the commentary with Fincher, Pitt and Norton when I watched it with their commentary years ago and it came back to me: despite all the madness and chaos and anarchic overtones of Fight Club, only ONE person is actually killed by violence in the entire movie.
Another person is shot, but that's all.
Compare that to your typical action hero bloodbath and complaining about Fight Club suddenly seems a bit pointless, eh, right-wing fuckos?
Do you mind if I call you fuckos?
Thanks.

Anyway, planning on taking in Se7en for the umpteenth time this weekend and maybe Get Low, which has finally made its way to my home after months of blockage due to me not watching Re-Animator and the HBO Angels In America mini-series.
Next week should herald the arrival of both Zodiac and The Something Something Something Of Benjamin Button, which I hear was also pretty awesome.

I received my script for next Friday's Speakaboos session; I shall play six characters and all of them will sound drastically different.
THIS is why I'm doing this, for projects like THIS.
Teaching kids to read and talking in funny voices.
You know, I had a good feeling when I walked out of that audition, but didn't hear anything so I just chalked it up to fools not understanding my genius (a problem I face, literally, every hour of every day...and that includes the ten or so during which I am sleeping), but then I got the booking and realized that they were all probably still unconscious from the exposure to my genius and quickly forgave them.
I am kind and ridiculously talented.
Also modest.
I am hugely modest.
And well hung.
Have I mentioned that recently?
Well, either way.
I am.
Huge.

Since about midnight last night, I have been absorbing the six track sampler released in advance of the full Dragon Tattoo score (digital release on the 9th, physical release on the 27th) and have been experiencing a sort of aural word association with some of the tracks:

Hidden In Snow - Aphex Twin's Drukqs (specifically the stuff with the hammered dulcimer)
People Lie All The Time - Saul William's Skin Of A Drum
What If We Could? - No association, just caught up in how beautiful and sad it is
Oraculum - How To Destroy Angels' The Believers
Please Take Your Hand Away - No association as this was one of the Comes Forth In The Thaw tracks
Under The Midnight Sun - Bowie's The Motel (specifically the slide guitar from the end)

At this moment, with seven of the thirty-nine* tracks revealed (the full Karen O. "Immigrant Song" cover is available for a buck on iTunes), it seems as if, while the Swarmatron was Reznor and Ross' weapon of choice on The Social Network score, the hammered dulcimer is the selection for TGWTDT.
Quite frankly, I'm going to need some psychotically explosive guitar like that in the more exciting bits of the 8-minute trailer you can find streaming out there now.
Then we'll talk...
 
Oh, and, finally, you might have noticed that this is going up between the hours of 3pm and 11pm, my standard working hours...well, that's because we just got us a motherloving computer with the motherloving internet here at the Hospital.**
But, there are quite a few administrative restrictions...chiefly enforced by Barracuda.
Anyone know a way to get past it?
I'm quickly becoming a detractor of said program and, as a result, the fish which shares its name.
Will, could you drop Mr. Doom a line and help a brother out?
If you do, you won't just be helping me, you'll be helping yourself find out more about Shock G.
That's a promise.

All right.
Weekend time.

*Read as "thirty-holy-fucking-shit-nine"

**And don't worry, I'm utterly disintegrating the cookies/cache file/temporary internet files and everything else that could expose my three dozen searches for variations on the "clowns fucking dolphins" motif...hey, a new computer demands a new desktop background, right?