Posts Tagged ‘Review’
22
Jul
Posted by vagrantesque in Music. Tagged: al, Album, comedy, crimes, first, foil, mission, parody, polka, problems, Review, song, sports, statement, style, tacky, weird, word, world, yankovic. Leave a comment
Man, when was the last time I did an album review?
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Released: July 2014
Label: RCA Records
Genre: Comedy/Pop
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You’d better have some.
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TRACK LISTING
1. Handy
2. Lame Claim To Fame
3. Foil
4. Sports Song
5. Word Crimes
6. My Own Eyes
7. NOW That’s What I Call Polka!
8. Mission Statement
9. Inactive
10. First World Problems
11. Tacky
12. Jackson Park Express
Weird Al Yankovic is easily one of my favourite artists of all time, and his career has now lasted well over 30 years. The king of musical parody has always been most famous for his direct musical homages, which ape the exact melodies of relevant pop songs, but his astoundingly lengthy success can also be attributed to his underrated songwriting skills, both in his famous “style parodies” and his completely original tunes. This aspect was arguably in short supply on his last album, 2011’s Alpocalypse, which was also criticised for falling behind the rapidly accelerating pace of pop culture trends. I’m happy to say that Weird Al’s fresh album release, Mandatory Fun, has no such problems. Al’s shrewd choice of song topics, not to mention his clever promotion method of releasing eight music videos in eight days, has proved he is as adaptable as anyone, and that makes me rather happy.
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3
Jul
Posted by vagrantesque in Movies. Tagged: 2, dragon, fury, hiccup, how. to. train, Movie, night, Review, toothless, two, your. Leave a comment
My apologies for the lack of content lately. The FIFA World Cup is dominating pretty much all aspects of my life at present, including my sleeping patterns. But today is a rest day!
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Starring: Jay Baruchel, Cate Blanchett, Gerard Butler
Director: Dean DeBlois (Lilo & Stitch, How To Train Your Dragon)
Rating: PG
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It’s been a while since the first How To Train Your Dragon movie flew into cinemas and swept up the hearts of more than a few moviegoers. Though Dreamworks’ animated feature output had been inconsistent since the first Shrek, the fantastical 2010 coming-of-age tale about a social outcast who finds his purpose through a chance dragon meeting was a bona fide hit in more ways than one. It nailed the difficult balance of appealing to a wide range of audience tastes, with badass dragons on one hand and some tear-jerking moments built off strong characterisation rather than tacky manipulation on the other. It was a great film, and four years later the now-franchise has managed to top itself. How To Train Your Dragon 2 is just downright excellent.
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10
Jun
Posted by vagrantesque in Movies. Tagged: blunt, cruise, day, edge, emily, Film, groundhog, of, Review, time, tom, tomorrow, travel. Leave a comment
This one snuck up on me with next to no hype and that is so, so refreshing to me right now.
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Starring: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Brendan Gleeson
Director: Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Mr & Mrs Smith)
Rating: M
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I’m a big fan of the “time travel” sub-genre of science fiction, particularly lately. In the last half decade or so moviegoers have been treated to such quirky time travel tales as Source Code and Looper, each of which presented a cool twist on standard time travel tropes and benefitted immensely from the breathing room that comes with such an uncommonly used plot mechanic. The latest movie to join in the mind-snapping fun, Edge of Tomorrow, is better than either of them.
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26
May
Posted by vagrantesque in Movies. Tagged: 2014, blink, days, dinklage, Film, fox, future, magneto, marvel, Movie, mystique, of, past, Review, superhero, trask, wolverine, x, xavier, xmen. Leave a comment
Ooh boy, been waiting for this one for a while…
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Starring: Hugh Jackman, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender
Director: Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men)
Rating: M
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What’s this? A good multi-superhero movie that isn’t made by Marvel Studios?
As movie franchises go, the X-Men movies mean a lot to me. Not only do I remember where I was when I first saw X-Men III: The Last Stand in cinemas back in 2006, I also remember what I was wearing and who I was with. I was so damn excited for that movie and to see it play out as such a mess after the first two X-Men films had literally made me interested in comic book mythology was not the greatest feeling. Three years later the release of the underdone and just generally awful X-Men Origins: Wolverine meant the franchise was suddenly “only 50% good”, and while 2011’s X-Men First Class was a triumphant return to form with a fun political twist and last year’s The Wolverine didn’t suck, the franchise was still lagging far behind the efforts of Disney’s Marvel cinematic universe. And there was still that lingering bad taste in my mouth from 2006. Well, not anymore.
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21
May
Posted by vagrantesque in Movies. Tagged: 2014, bryan, cranston, edwards, Film, gareth, godzilla, gojira, Movie, muto, Review. Leave a comment
GOJIRA!!!
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Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Bryan Cranston
Director: Gareth Edwards (In the Shadow of the Moon, Monsters)
Rating: M
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I feel it’s worth mentioning for the sake of this review that I don’t really have any sort of connection to Godzilla in any of his various incarnations over the last half century or so – I didn’t even see the 1998 movie despite being a fresh-faced nine year old with plenty of similar interests at the time. My limited knowledge of the king of the monsters and his kaiju buddies comes from other forms of referential media, starting with that Season 2 South Park episode where Barbara Streisand reveals her true form and goes on a rampage. My exposure to this new Gareth Edwards take on the Godzilla mythos is limited to one trailer I saw last month in the cinema.
That being said, the 2014 Godzilla is pretty damn cool, and with some rebalances it could well have been one of my favourite movies of this year. It’s a shame that the film’s human elements aren’t more engaging.
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17
May
Posted by vagrantesque in K-Pop, Music. Tagged: b.a.p, bang, bap, big, concert, daehyun, himchan, jongup, kpop, list, mercy, no, one, Pop, Review, set, setlist, shot, top, warrior, yongguk, youngjae, zelo. Leave a comment
I’ve been both busy and ill this last week, which is never the best combo for this blog, but here we go now.
It was the experience I felt I had to have. After almost three years without such an opportunity, last weekend I finally made it to a full-on K-Pop concert (That incredible late 2011 K-Pop extravaganza came a few months before I cared). Though my enthusiasm for the genre probably peaked last year, when I came pretty damn close to attending a similar event before it fell through, I am by no means done with appreciating K-Pop and even if I was, I have bought so many albums and written so many words about it already that to move on without having seen it live in its purest form would have been a real shame.
Enter TS Entertainment and their always busy headline act, six-member male group B.A.P.
Also known as “A K-Pop World Tour That Actually Includes Australia – Wow.”
Sydney’s Big Top in Luna Park was packed for the May 10 performance event and there was a surprisingly decent contingent of older and male fans getting into the swing of things (I had expected an almost completely teenage fangirl demographic in the crowd and was happy to be proved wrong). As I mentioned in a K-Pop countdown two years ago, B.A.P’s musical output does tend to have a more universal appeal than most male K-Pop groups, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised.
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7
May
Posted by vagrantesque in Movies. Tagged: 2, amazing, Film, Man, Movie, Review, spider, spiderman, two. Leave a comment
Time to make good use of an extremely rare case where Australia gets a huge movie before the US does.
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Starring: Andrew Garfield, Jamie Foxx, Emma Stone
Director: Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer, The Amazing Spider-Man)
Rating: M
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I’m still questioning why the first Amazing Spider-Man had to play out the way it did in 2012. Sure, I get the business reasons behind Sony Pictures wanting to keep the Spider-Man license and thus needing to churn out another film within a certain number of years after the conclusion of the Sam Raimi trilogy of Spidey flicks. But I’m sure I don’t stand alone in the camp of people wondering why said situation had to mean a reboot functioning almost identically to the first 2002 Spider-Man. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 presents an opportunity for the aptly named Marc Webb and his gang to kick on, having established their groundwork, and show what sets this new version of Spider-Man apart from the mostly well-regarded Raimi movies. In this regard, ASM2 succeeds, which is great, but disappointingly it fails to learn from the mistakes that plagued Raimi‘s Spider-Man 3 – the one that had too many villains vying for attention. It’s just a wee bit over-indulgent.
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29
Apr
Posted by vagrantesque in Movies. Tagged: divergent, Film, Movie, Review, roth, shailene, veronica, woodley. 1 comment
Oh my word, it’s almost May. Do I have some things to catch up on.
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Starring: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Kate Winslet
Director: Neil Burger (The Illusionist, Limitless)
Rating: M
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Cynical mode activated. Here comes yet another Lionsgate young adult teen novel series stretched into more movies than is necessary for the sake of raking in extra money, following in the footsteps of Twilight and The Hunger Games. Brace yourselves, because Neil Burger‘s Divergent is a post-apocalyptic tale with a female protagonist, a radically restructured dystopian society with distinct costumes that indicate moral allegiance and a bit of romance thrown in. Now where have we seen that before?
Cynical mode deactivated. I was introduced to the Divergent saga (written by the surprisingly young Veronica Roth) much the same way as I was The Hunger Games – an interested sibling and the promise of a “next big thing”. Yes, in a way that makes me a part of Lionsgate’s ideal demographic, who still isn’t over the buzz generated by The Hunger Games – I mean, just look at the first Divergent trailer and compare it to any of the HG ones. But I am a notoriously appalling reader of fiction and yet I got through the first Divergent book relatively painlessly. Why? Because there is more to this series than a checklist of popular modern elements – its themes go deeper – or at least more intimate – than politics, into a more personal ideological space. Its futuristic Chicago is divided into five factions, each one requiring its members to adhere to a single prevailing virtue (Knowledge, courage, selflessness, kindness and honesty respectively). I’d easily recommend the book, for the most part, to anyone interested in its concept. The movie? Not quite as much. It’s certainly watchable, and it gets several things right, but it has issues.
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13
Apr
Posted by vagrantesque in Movies. Tagged: 2, action, america, Avengers, captain, evans, Film, marvel, Review, soldier, winter. 1 comment
What a time to go to the movies.
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Starring: Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L Jackson
Director: Anthony & Joe Russo (Welcome to Collinwood, You, Me & Dupree)
Rating: M
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My feelings on the first Captain America film were mixed. I thought it had an exciting and well-executed first half that unfortunately turned into a straightforward, by-the-numbers superhero baddie chase by the end. The film failed to make me care about the Captain the way I did about Iron Man or even Thor. The “straight man” shtick that has defined the character throughout his long existence just didn’t resonate with me in that first film, as cool as his promotional scenes/song were, though I know others might have felt differently. Once The Avengers came along, however, I understood his appeal. In the context of a rather dysfunctional superhero team, Cap’s level head and idealistic focus on what needed to be done made him a tangibly purposeful character who redeemed his allies just by being there. So writing him into the corruption-addled centre of what is essentially a 1970s-style political thriller, complete with Robert Redford, is actually a really good idea as it turns out.
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1
Apr
Posted by vagrantesque in Games, PS Vita, PS3. Tagged: 2, blitzball, fantasy, final, hd, PS, PS3, remaster, Review, tidus, Vita, x. 1 comment
I’ve been playing a whole lot of this one since it came out in Australia on March 20th.
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Platform: PS3, PSV
Developer: Square Enix
Rating: M
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X-2 is download-only on the Vita version, but you won’t be playing it anyway.
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Those Al Bhed bastards.
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They have the most annoying goalkeeper I have ever seen, ever, in anything. I just want to take his polygon-encrusted face and slam it into a locker until he decides never to play Blitzball again. Ugh. But the game from which he hails is great fun.
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Vagrant Rant 