Fidelis! Fidelis!

The Favorite Album Game: Part 1

2009-10-13T21:58:00.000-07:00

Hello, again. Fidelis here, ready and willing to tell you all about some of my favorite albums. You're going to read this and you're going to love it.

Let's start with one you don't know about.

Thanksgiving | Welcome Nowhere (2004)
"I want to be welcome."

About a year ago I was having what I liked to call sleeping problems, though I probably should have named them "lack of sleep from the cushion under my back being a dirty apartment floor because I just had to pursue my dream" problems. I was in a brand new city, with a brand new recession about to hit and a brand new high of job losses, my laptop and some really nice headphones I got for cheap off of amazon a couple months prior. In truth, I'm lucky I found Adrian Orange little gem of an album. Thanksgiving's Welcome Nowhere quickly became my closest friend. The album opens as cold and uninviting as songs can go, but it's opening lyric is one of wishing to be welcomed. Here was someone else just looking for a friend.

"I'm gonna spend the coldest night under a waterfall
and watch the white water roll off me."

The album itself is one that is still shrouded in mystery for me. Every time I listen, I'm overwhelmed by the sense of propriety between the microphone and the artist. Here the singer seems to lay out his deepest thoughts and admiration, but still gives off no clue what he might actually be sensing. From the get go, there's a resonating sense that what you're listening to will never be duplicated, no matter who tries.

"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid."

Welcome Nowhere is the bedroom artists swan song. It actually sounds good; produced to the perfect point of letting the music talk for it self and not detract because of ever present lo-fi nature. It feels as if you're walking next to just another guy singing into a microphone, but this time it's actually worth lending your ear: the words from the troubadour actually have meaning again!

"Come gather round grains of sand on the shore.
Get in my shoes and socks and never leave.
I've spent the night before this ocean,
And now my heart beats with the waves."

Links:
Learn About The Band
Give it a try
Give it a buy

Movie Reviews: Inglourious Basterds (2009)

2009-08-23T22:40:00.000-07:00

If you don't know who Quentin Tarantino is by now, then you most likely haven't seen one of the greatest movies ever made, (seriously, one of the greatest movies ever made) and if you haven't seen that movie, then shame on you. I just canceled our Titan's tickets because I can't be friends with you anymore until you see it, and here I was all ready to share those overpriced nachos with you. Thanks, friend.

Set in a World War II that doesn't actually exist, Inglourious Basterds is a vibrant work of fiction birthed from the mind of a very deranged, but very awesome man (skip to the 2:50 mark. seriously, he's awesome). Each character is bizarre and beautifully acted, from hack director Eli Roth, to the most engaging Nazi you've never met. Who, by the way, is so good, that if he isn't up for an Oscar based on his performance, I'll be very, very angry.

The biggest initial shock of the film has to be how fantastic Brad Pitt actually is. From the early trailers, I was not very excited about having to hear the sequel to The Terrible Case of Brad Pitt's Accent's for another two and a half hours. In truth, I was dreading it. Mmm, there's nothing like the sound of vocal cords strained against the larynx to produce forced voice modulation. The interesting thing is, Pitt is absolutely wonderful in the movie. He manages to wrangle each scene he's in by the throat and steal it away from his likewise fantastically acted rag-tag team of Nazi mutilators and German's waiting to be mutilated. My biggest gripe of the film actually turned out to be that there wasn't enough Pitt and his Basterds; they're easily the best part of the entire movie. Which, by the way, is bloody brilliant. It's one part gut wrenching, scalp tingling, plasma boiling action, two parts overindulgent, dull and maniacal, with a slight tinge of comedy.

Sadly, like all of Tarantino's films, this bloated calf of a movie slightly teeters on the edge of occasional boredom. Though, it's really one of Tarantino's staples: forced boredom used as a ploy to lull one into a state of cinema bliss so that only the most gruesome of plot twists could permeate your comfort bubble. The problem is that some of these lulls are slightly dull and uninteresting. It's easy to find yourself flipping the phone open to catch the time.

Be warned: don't check the time. You might end up missing some of the best cinematic magic this year is going to offer. For each little breath that is forced down your throat, the wind is going to be knocked from your sails in the scene's impending resolution; each of which is more gut wrenching than the last and still not as shocking as the next. It's the single most unpleasant chess match of give and take you'll ever enjoy sitting through.

Inglourious Basterds is not Tarantino's best, or even close to it, but it is one of the finer releases of this year. It's a powerful mock up of the war film genre in the best of ways; it's bloodier than all of them, it's longer than the majority of them, and it's brilliant like the best of them.

Basterd's get's a solid goseeitorI'llfindyouandcarveaIHATEGOODMOVIESinto
yourforeheadwithmyplasticlightsaber.

That's a 4 or 5 out of 5 or something like that.

Links:
Trailer #1
Trailer #2
Interviews: IN OTHER LANGUAGES! HOW MODERN!

Track Reviews: Two by The Antlers

2009-08-19T15:37:00.001-07:00

The Antlers - Two

It's not very often that any singular song can move every particle of hair on your body. Sadly, it's more common that when such a song exists, not many people hear of it. Get it? Hear of it? Oh, the cleverness of me!

Before I start telling you what to think about this song, do me a favor and have yourself a listen. On your first listen through, one of two things will most likely happen. You will either get a little bored and pissed at the inability to understand what the hell main vocalist Peter Silberman is even saying, or your entire body will be overwhelmed at the inescapable emotion portrayed through each bleeding layer of the track in question.

My first time through, I was hooked. In fact, the soft and uttered breathings of the vocals only helped to pull me in to something that was more than I bargained for. I was just on the hunt for some great music that I could dance to, be thrilled to, kick back to, and here I stumbled upon a beautiful yearning that cut as deep as the lyrics intended. I kept leaning forward in my chair, trying to force the lead singer to sing louder, to be more clear, because I had to know what he was saying.

A lot of the times what the singer is saying is not worth actually knowing. The good thing is, this song is lyrically exceptional. Check them out for yourself. Here are some of my favorites.

". . . Something in my throat made my next words shake,
and something in the wires made the light bulbs break.
There was glass inside my feet and raining down from the ceiling,
it opened up the scars that had just finished healing."

" . . . Daddy was an asshole, he fucked you up,
built the gears in your head, now he greases them up.
And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating.
"Eighty-seven pounds!" and this all bares repeating."

" . . . Two silver rings on our fingers in a hurry,
two people talking inside your brain,
two people believing that I'm the one to blame,
two different voices coming out of your mouth,
while I'm too cold to care and too sick to shout."

Let's play a game: listen to the song again while reading the lyrics at the same time. After which, come back here and answer the following question.

Did you:
A) Immediately fall in love with the song and are now cursing me because it won't get out of your head.
B) Feel more tinglings down your spine than if Catherine Zeta Jones herself was giving you a lap dance while showering you with hundred dollar bills.
C) Feel no emotion except for a slight headache, though that's not really an emotion, and this song is boring and sucks and he sings too high and isn't as good as writing as Taylor Swift and did I mention the song sucks?

If you chose A, B or anything close, we are now friends. If C was your choice, that means that you probably need to make eternal amends with God A.S.A.P. because you will soon be with him after you turn your radio on and religiously listen to The Black Eyed Pea's "I Gotta Feeling" and Drake's "Best I Ever Had" until your eardrums burst into a bloody mess and you choke in your own pool of red and white blood cells.

But don't fret C's, there is hope. Well, not . . . really, I just like to pretend I'm an optimist.

Rating:
Fantastico!

Links:
The Antler's Myspace
The Antler's Twitter
Buy the Album Hospice (WHICH YOU SHOULD)

White Girls 2: Blaxploitation Buddies!

2009-08-17T20:14:00.001-07:00

So, in a fantastic piece of news I'm sure will please all, it turns out all of our favorite movie is getting a sequel. That's right, WHITE GIRLS 2: Blaxploitation Buddies!

Everyone's favorite filmmakers, the Way-too-cool-to-make-real-movies-an Brothers, are apparently in the works with sony to develop another hilarious, completely non-racist or sexist movie.

Fun fact: White Chicks made over $100 million dollars worldwide! Isn't that exciting? It's much nicer to see a real piece of art like White Chicks to make so much money when trash movies like Serenity can barely make back their budget. Take that Browncoats and thank you Alliance America! You're the best.

The Links:
Source

District 9: Hello, Beautiful.

2009-08-16T03:46:00.001-07:00

Where to begin, eh? Just from the trailer I had a feeling that I would enjoy this movie, but upon my initial viewing I hadn't a clue that I would love this movie; that I would want to inexplicably cuddle with this grotesque and violent creature of a movie by a warmed fireside, sipping tea and sensing the sweet smell of the roasted guts bursting from one of those alien laser guns. I want one.

The movie is visually delectable. It's the kind of treat where you find yourself licking your fingers after every scene, still going back in to that bag of sour gummy worms even though your tongue is raw and peeling while you know you can't take anymore, but you just have to. The WETA team have created such a visual masterpiece, I'm not too sure if I've ever seen anything like it. The truth is, every shot of the film looks so oddly familiar and grounded in its own false reality, I can't remember if I just didn't notice a gigantic spaceship overhead like the sky was playing pinch the mole, or if I was watching a movie. Then came the walking out of the theater and being disappointed that there wasn't a looming UFO in the sky outside. Sad day. (And on a side note, it boggles my mind that such a beautiful, effects heavy movie had a $30 million dollar budget, while movies like Julie and Julia was $40 million and Funny People was $75 million.)

The story itself isn't the most engaging, but how it's told is simply superb. It's a fantastic example of an artist doing exceptional work with the money given. It's not that it hasn't been covered before, it's that director and writer Neill Blomkamp has woven together a 112 minute thrill ride from his original short film Alive in Joburg that is sure to dazzle and hook even the hardest of alien racists. Now, I'm no alien loving hippie or anything, but the characters, human and nonhuman, are so engaging and heartfelt, even the shmuck protagonist is accessible. But hey, who hasn't murdered hundreds of crops of alien babies in their lifetime?

Look, these are just words to you. See the damn movie. Don't want to? What's wrong with you? The movie has mech warriors. And blood. And guts. And f-bombs. And racism. And refrences of interspecies copulation. You know you want it.

I give it 5/5 exploding alien baby pods.

Links:
Trailer
Rotten Tomatoes
A fantastic review of the film

Welcome.

2009-08-16T03:33:00.000-07:00

Hello. This is my blog. Enjoy.