I've been deliberately avoiding Sia for a long time.Because:
1. Breathe Me played a huge part in making the very last moments of Six Feet Under what it was,but the song has been whored out to countless commercials/shows.
2. Her performances/vids are built on gimmicks,in this area she is worse than Katy Perry.
3. The album cover (left) is the worst album cover I've ever seen in my whole life.
Its like on some level she's purposely making us hate her,as if her whole shtick is about looking hedious and brain-damaged.But 2 weeks ago I was passed a copy,and it turned to be vv good.
1. Jamie Oliver has a new magazine.The feel of it,I mean the physical sensation of the pages on my fingers-is damn near surreal.Its dumb but I'm very particular about the type of paper mags use,their size (not too much a fan of their content,but V and W mags' oversized layouts and large leafy pages make for comfortable browsing),and the thickness of it (of course mags like Nylon and Yen appear to pose just the right weight,too bad more than half of that is advertisment guff).I don't know why,but I get very anal about how some things are presented and unless every piece of detail fits in the whole picture I don't feel good buying it.
2. I would buy anything Nigella endorses.
3. My indie gig partner J,on the tram ride back from watching the Duke Spirit-noticed that I was singing bits of Lady Gaga's The Fame.I've spent countless hours with J,but she always held this icy exterior-and our shameless professing to love Lady Gaga (beyond the normal indie stuff we spend hours chatting about),finally broke down a wall.
4. Spent the whole Saturday at M,now its night and I can't think of a more satisfying option than getting a takeout for The Vicar of Dibley & Iron Chef.Both are on the same slot,but the remote control guessing game has become second nature to me.
5. When the Duke Spirit were playing Wooden Heart on their encore,these 3 bogan fuckers were busy sharing anecdotes right behind me and the unstable part of me slipped out without thought,turned back and yelled Shut the Fuck Up at the top of my voice.It doesn't seem logic,or necessary-but at that moment,to listen to the song played live was All I Desperately Wanted.
6. What Women Want is on for the 2000th time this year.I'm not complaining,Mel Gibson is damn charming in this and every movie Marisa Tomei plays the difficult,ungettable chick I'm swooning inside.And of course Bette Midler is a fucking hoot.
7. John Mayer has a Twitter addiction?Who cares,make a new album already.
8. Its official.Noone in Australia watches Lost.But heck if you saw this week's episide-SPOILER: SAYID KILLS KID BEN.This,to non-fans of Lost I can't quite explain why,is a complete Braingasm/Mindquake.And of course Big Love's grand moment-ROMAN DIES (coincidentally,in the same ep he kisses Bill in a frenzied I am the One True Prophet moment).If this had happened one season ago,I would've been relieved-the guy is dangerous to everyone including himself-but Roman's death marks a new opening for his son Albie,who would literally do anything without the slightest touch of consideration for anyone else-to satisfy his greed.Sidenote,Margine & Nikki have been excellent this season-I smell a spinoff.
9. Love of my life Jeans,I WILL FIND YOU TOMORROW.
1. I've been writing these really long posts-mostly about the general despair of life,the last being a long,overly me-oriented short about how much of a stranger I feel sometimes but how I believe,these extreme feelings of isolation and loneliness I experience occasionally: will and have inspired me to take it out on art,be it photographs,words,the possibilities are endless really.But I never get around to pressing the 'publish' button,instead what I do is take a photo or find something online that mirrors what I feel,to try and capture as much as I can of these complicated emotions and mold it all into one image-to a certain extent art is a medium,not the message,and I believe there are stronger ways than words to convey the contents of my mind and heart.Store this also under Reason No. 2431 why I love photography so damn much-it allows me to speak when I am utterly speechless.
2. The new YYYs album isn't exactly out yet (I went around hunting for it yesterday,to no avail) but I downloaded a copy of it (usually this comes quite naturally to me,but for a band I love too much I feel a tad guilty,and promise to buy a copy of the album when it arrives in stores).If Fever to Tell was their letting loose and stepping over lines,and Show your Bones a more grounded and more consistent record-It's Blitz! is totally different,full of wonderful synthy ballads that has a smooth,easy complexity to it.Its a new,more evolved sound definitely,and of course I first took this not too kindly at first-but Karen O's presence on the record is unmistakable,they flirt with but don't go overboard with a bit of jazz and electro-and as a whole the album's a really solid,satisfying package.Highlights: Soft shock,Heads will Roll & Hysteric.
3. Saw Kings of Leon at Sound Relief last Saturday (got a free ticket that morning,saw Jet,thatgabriellachick,and the KOL then bailed for a meeting)-I was wholly and deeply and extremely disappointed.They came on,looking bored as hell (they were meant to be the highlight of the day-long event,everyone came just for them and the were advertised front and centre as Melbourne's big "International Artist" for the event-Sydney had Coldplay-sidenote) and played four songs.On Call,Use Somebody,Reverie (I think),and some other stupid song from their new album (which I've chosen to completely ignore,to me that horrid album never existed).No Knocked up (which is fine really,the song's 8 minutes long and the crowd would've been restless),no My Party or Charmer or Taper Jean Girl or any of the good songs from their previous records-I don't know what they've become,now clad in shiny ornaments and Vampire Weekend cardigans and doing Creed-like videos for song titles like "Sex on Fire" (oh.god) they've become fucking sellouts who barely know how to play a live gig.The only playing 4 songs part was sure disappointing,but I was in a forgiving mood and wouldn't care if they played covers alone-because despite the band's big soul-selling downfall into mainstream mediocrity I still do like Caleb's voice and believe that the band can redeem themselves in the future-but they played like they were winging it,like their fans didn't even matter,without the slightest bit of bother,and it was this that made the crowd tired and frustrated (standing in the on-off rain for near 4 hours clad in $4 raincoats that might as well have been made out of air,plus thatgabriellachick nearly put everyone to sleep before the KOLs came on-the things we endured for them),I felt shortchanged but as I said,I'm willing to put the new album and this bad experience behind-because everytime I hear Razz,Velvet Snow,soft,Milk,the Bucket or any of their older songs I know that this is just a phase the band's going through,and once they've accumulated enough wealth and MTV Artist of the Month titles cease compromising and finally get on to producing something more worthy.
EW has a new Grizzly Bear track ('Cheerleader') and its quite stellar. flow sweetly,hang heavy
Fresh out of a 9.20 Watchmen screening.This review will run as it pleases with little consideration if any of the ranting makes sense or not,and will potentially contain spoilers.
Things I liked about it.Having read the graphic novel in its entirety merely two days ago,I still have a pretty clear memory of it.Not to say I understood it,or you know,loved it to bits or anything,just that I can recall.And the film is pretty much a straight-up adaptation,nearly panel to panel and is almost too neatly and perfectly fixed in its compulsive commitment to detail.Nearly all of the film's dialogue is a direct lift,and the film's plot is decisively true to the book (with few harmless additions).Patrick Wilson has a paunch as Nite-Owl,young and old Rorschach has orange hair and dirty freckles,Moloch is thrown into a fridge,Jon speaks monotonously,close to nothing is compromised.This slavish loyalty to its source is where the film finds all its best strengths-the graphic novel,I feel,was built on a very solid story that must've been carefully thought out and perfected before a single line or sketch made the page-as a result the film has an equally firm grip on its story,was visually very powerful and the cautiousness in selecting to include which scenes meant that any bit of trimming would've created loopholes,so the 3 hour running time feels utterly innocuous.To me at least,I heard plenty grumbling on the way out the cinema about how it ran too long.Time was given to the side characters and they were slightly tweaked with or ommited completely (Tales of the Black Freighter will appear as a separate project starring Gerard Butler),I love how they made the psychiatrist less gullable and showed glimpses of parents and old lovers,all these things somehow layered into a story was light and fluid despite the weight of all those details.The sequence over the opening credits did an excellent job of summarising what was about to come ahead.Jackie Earle Haley gives Rorschach a new complexity I never imagined possible,and his character's unmasking was the biggest highlight for me.The ending of the graphic novel which I didn't like,was made tolerable thanks to a bit of argument and conflict,hence disposing the novel's "Everything's Ok,let's shut up" attitude in its conclusion.
Things I didn't like.Matthew Goode's meant to play the smartest man on Earth and a physically undefiable character,but he looks like a wimp and speaks like a librarian.The action didn't really do it for me,everytime someone launched a punch there was an artificial KAPOW BAM PRAK (EXCLAMATION MARKS ! ! !) sound that made it puckish and fake,all this stupid American wannabe-kungfu made more irritating with constant slow-mo and showy violence (bone-cracking noises as joints snapped open+gushing of blood all around) it all seemed so damn tactless.I didn't like the choice of songs,Hallelujah for the creepily-porny Nite Owl-Silk Spectre sex scene was almost criminally cheesy,and too often the grandiose sound of pianos or violins rose to occasion that after a point it lost its effect.One major problem was that I don't think I would've understood much anything if I hadn't read the novel beforehand,so many terms and names were thrown around and taken for granted and there would've been a whole list of What was that and Why did this happen-and I would'nt have been able to appreciated the film's attention to detail and 3 hours of not getting it would've definitely been troubling.In a way this was also good thing,it wasn't self indulgently announcing this and that and explaining every single bit,that would've been hell.The prosthetic face objects and muddy make-up,and the loud song played at the end.The cast,as a team-were most of the time expresionless or defacating emotions as if being ruled by a diagram,and Mars looked like a 2-D computer game.
So.I would say it was a positive experience as a whole,and definitely something you watch in a theatre.
Molly the giraffe was born at Southwick's Zoo in Mendon, MA two days ago. She couldn't nurse, as her mother wasn't producing milk, and even after being fed cow milk she was weak and had trouble standing. The staff at Southwick's rushed her to the Tufts University Cummings School for Veterinary Medicine in North Grafton. As a tipster notes, "this tall tale has a happy ending."
1. With the film coming out soon (which I'm highly anticipating),I dropped by Borders and spent a very long time there reading the Watchmen graphic novel.I was really blown away,I'm def no comic geek but the ones I've read range from petty and kiddish to fairly readable but the genre so far hasn't earn much of my respect.But Watchmen had meaty characters,fluid dialogue and some nice,quotable one-liners (my fave was Rorschach's "Don't you see,I'm not locked up in here with you.You're locked up in here with me"-something he says to fend off prisonmates,the guy's a total psycho).I liked the colors (the darkened bar scenes were so vivid and full of detail),and though there was ample violence and running around it didn't have much action and the ending earns a low score from me (I won't spoil anything,but they seemed a lot like cowardly terrorists to me),the graphic novel carried a lot of emotional weight and managed to even develop some very interesting and sympathetic side characters,and was on a whole extremely ambitious and imaginative-you could tell a LOT of effort was put into it,and I have a feeling that the film will pull off the difficult feat of capturing some of that magic.
It's Madness! Even more V Festival sideshows have been announced this morning, with The Human League, Madness [pictured], M83 and Louis XIV among the new acts to be confirmed for club shows.
Liveguide announced yesterday that The Do would be doing sideshows, but news has emerged that the French duo will in fact be playing a double headliner with fellow Frenchy M83. Similarly, Louis XIV will join The Kills for their previously announced sideshows.
Most excitingly, Madness will be playing sideshows in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Hobart, while The Human League will appear in Sydney and Melbourne.
For full details on V Festival sideshows, including how to get tickets, click here.
I've been deliberately avoiding Sia for a long time.Because:
