No Country For Old Men - Movie Review

Going back to Drama, the Coen Brothers did a wonderful job of adapting Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. This mondern day western story deals with one man's struggle over taking drug money from a bloodbath scene in the middle of the desert and dealing with the consequences of it. Josh Brolin plays Llewelyn Moss the cowboy out hunting in the back country who comes across the blood mess of a drug deal gone wrong. He comes across a big bag full money and decides to take off with it. Afterwards, he goes back and when he does, he's hunted down and knows that sooner or later he will be found.

Tommy Lee Jones plays Sheriff Bell, who deals with murders and follows the trail of blood as the bad man, Javier Bardem leaves people dead left and right looking to find the money.

It was quite a bloody film, but what else would you expect from a Coen Brothers film. Lots of violence and brutality, but overall still a good story and one that will certainly pick up a couple of awards this year. It certainly keeps you going as you watch this and wonder, will he get away.

I'd certainly catch this one in the theater.

Kurt Cobain: About A Son - Movie Review

Director A.J. Shnack put together a pretty interesting film pulling together scenes from all over Washington relating to the life of Kurt Cobain, Nirvana's front man. The documentary style film takes audio from 25 interviews that Cobain did with Michael Azerrad for his book Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana.

Cobain tells stories of his life all the way back from his childhood, through high school and on to his days with Nirvana and his relationship with Coutney Love. Shnack put together a great flow of images, music and Cobain's stories.

This will be out on DVD February 19th, 2008 you can pick it up at Amazon.com for about $14.00.

The soundtrack really fits well in the film. They play everything from CCR, Iggy Pop, Bad Brains all the way to Arlo Gutherie and David Bowie. It was quite enjoyable and would be worth pick the soundtrack up as well.

I wasn't exactly sure what to expect when going to see this one, but it was well worth it. It's one of those films that you should sit down, turn off the lights and have a glass of good scotch ready. Put yourself in the right mood.

The Heavy Circles - CD Review

Edie Brickell and Harper Simon team up to create The Heavy Circles. The new CD, self titled will be out on 02/12/2008.

The cd consists of 10 fantastics songs that Edie and Harper teamed up to put together. This cd is a real mix of different styles of music ranging from rock to reggae with a little tast of everything inbetween. From what started out as an invite to jam turned into a great set of songs that are far different than what we have heard from Edie in the past.

Here is the track listing:

Henri 2:48
Better 3:10
Ready to Play 3:45
Confused 3:58
Easier 4:31
Maximo 3:08
Wait & Wait 4:15
Need a Friend 3:06
Dynamite Child 1:46
Oh Darlin 3:52

Henri starts us out with a nice melodic tone, very different from anything else on the cd, has a little bit of a middle eastern tone to it. It's a wonderful song to kick it off. Then we jump into Better which has a nice pace to it and with a more pop like sound makes you want to jump up and down throughout it.

Ready to Play is a good follow to Better. It has a good rockin' beat and takes you right into a dramatic piece Confused. Going to the mellow side we move to Easier and Maximo, both are brilliant pieces of work. Both have a nice feel and a great mix to them. Moving on to Wait & Wait we get a little bit of a still mellow, but more electronic feel.

Need a Friend gets you hopping with some reggae beats jumping you into Dynamite Child which has a great beat and really rocks. The final number Oh Darlin' back to the electronic side is a great way to finish the cd off.

Edie sounds absolutely fantastic and Harper really did a wonderful job of producing this and working with Bryce Goggin to put the cd together. Harper put together an all star line-up of musicians together to help with this cd. Sean Lennon, Money Mark, Martha Wainwright, Yuka Honda to name a few helped with various tracks on the cd. Goggin was used to record Edie Brickell and New Bohemians 2006 cd Stranger Things, which if you don't have is also well worth picking up.

There is one song Hands On that didn't make the final cd, but is available through iTunes. I think it's as good if not better than every song on the new cd and is worth going out and picking up. The guitar work is fantastic and Edie's voice just keeps you hypnotized.

Two other known tracks that didn't make the cd, but have been heard at Eddie's MySpace page at www.myspace.com/brickellephant also at http://www.ediebrickell.com/ are Superpowers and Long Line. Keep an eye out on Edie's site as well as http://www.theheavycircles.com/. Superpowers is unlike anything I've heard Edie do before, it's really rockin'. Long Line is a nice pop like song, upbeat with good lyrics.

You can pick up a download of Henri at muruch's Heavy Circles CD Review if you'd like to hear it before it comes out. I still recommend buying the cd regardless of downloading this fantastic song.

This one is well worth getting off your ass on February 12th and going out to pick up or just sit on your computer and order from somewhere like http://www.amazon.com/. You won't regret getting this one trust me.

Here's a free download of Henri.mp3

Just right click and "save as" Enjoy!

JUNO - Movie & Soundtrack Review

Saw the movie Juno last night. This is the one about the 16 year old girl - Juno who gets pregnantand now has to deal with the reality of either keeping the baby, having an abortion or giving it up for adoption. This film written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman is fantastic. They picked a great cast for this film Juno is played by Ellen Page who does a great job playing the role of a 16 year old girl who just got knocked up. She has a lot of great one liners and really does a wonderful job. Her boyfriend/Father of her child Paulie Bleeker is played by Michael Cera, who has been know for his roles in both Superbad and the TV show Arrested Development. Michael does a great job as well playing the dorky boy who really has no clue what all this means and never really comes to grips with it. Juno also has a friend Leah who is pretty funny as well. Leah is played by Olivia Thirlby. Juno's parents played by Allison Janey and JK Simons are your typical disfuntional family that really aren't too suprised at all that's going on. JK Simons really plays a sweet father in this one.

Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner play the potential candidates to be the parents of Juno's baby. Garner plays a cautious, but excited potential mother, who won't believe it until the baby is in her hands. Jason Bateman is sort of lost in his role not sure if he wants the responsibility and not sure if he wants to grow up.

Without giving much away, this is a wonderful film about Juno coming to terms with the pregnancy, her relationship with Bleeker, her disfunctional family and life in general. That's a lot for a 16 year old to take. you really will enjoy this film.

Now onto the sountrack. It's really an awesome sountrack with a lot of different artists playing on it including a song sung by Juno & Bleeker. There are a bunch of songs by Kimya Dawson who has a different way of singing, but it's quite refreshing. Cat Power, Buddy Holly, Mott the Hoople & Velvet Underground are just a few of the artists on this sondtrack. It's really awesome and well worth picking up.

Who knows what we will review next, but tune in and find out.

Into The Wild - Movie & Sountrack Review

So I finally had the opportunity to see the long awaited film based on Jon Krakauer's book Into The Wild. Sean Penn has been trying to make the book into a movie for about ten years and finally was given the rights to do so.

The story goes that Jon Krakauer would only allow the story to be made into a movie with the permission of the McCandless family. So After hearing Sean Penn out and holding him off over the years for various reasons, the movie was made.

I read this book back in 1996 or 1997. I was really intrgued by how they were able to trace Chris's footsteps all across the US for two years leading up to his death in the Alaskan wilderness.
This was originally a story written for Outside Magazine and from that article, many people from all over the US who had encountered Chris, came forward with their little stories of of he was a part of their lives. This is what allowed Krakauer to take the magazine article and make it into a book.

Ok there's my little history of what happend over the course of history from the time of the article to the movie. So now let's review the movie and the soundtrack.

The movie starts off with Chris making his way "Into the Wild". From there it will jump back and forth telling the tale of his life and showing his time alone in the wilderness of Alaska. A lot of the the story was able to be told because of the people who surrounded him. As for the time in Alaska, there were several journals found and well as lists through the time and pictures to trace back what his life was like.

I really enjoyed the film and thought that Penn did a great job of putting it all together and keeping you interested in the 2 1/2 hour movie. Part of what really made the movie was the scenary, long shots and the soundtrack. Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam took on composing the sountrack to the film.

The movie is composed of several songs 11 which make up the soundtrack.

Setting Forth
No Ceiling
Far Behind
Rise
Long Nights
Toulumne
Hard Sun
The Wolf
End of the Road
Society
Guarenteed

All songs written and recorded by Eddie Vedder.

It certaily is a change from the rockin' sound of Pearl Jam, but it fits really well into the movie. Eddie obviously had seen the movie and wrote the songs to fit each part. Very mellow, but fantastic to hear Eddie's voice in a nice raw format like this. He really did a great job.

The movie kept it's pace and kept it interesting, the soundtrack was awesome as well. I would highly recommend seeing this one, you will enjoy it.

Cheers!

Has It Been a Year Since My Last Post?

Wow it's been exactly a year since I last posted anything on my Blog. We will just have to do something about that and get it kick started again for 2008.

Plenty to talk about and add from this past year.

So We will get back to it tonight!

Cheers!

Dave P.