Splendiferous local artist Kate Cox will be showing works from her series of found and modified paintings in Cafe Pyrus (just across the street from the bus station) starting on Tuesday the 13th.
Stop by, grab a drink, and check out some of her seriously cool pieces. It'll be on display until October, and if you miss it, a terrible fate will befall you and your family.
Horses chased by flying saucers! Dragons perched atop lighthouses! Environment-suited children playing ice hockey at your grand-dad's cabin! Wonders and horrors await you!
Check out Kate's blog for more information on her ongoing project!
The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra will be performing Debussy's Nocturnes and finishing off with Holst's great cosmic work tonight, Friday the 27th, and Saturday the 28th at 8pm. At Centre in the Square. Tickets range from $19 to $75, so if you've got some cash to throw down you better do so.
To anyone reading this, should I die in battle or of a broken heart, I would like Holst's Mars, Bringer of War to be played at my funeral. Timed well, so that when my pyre is shoveled onto a catapult and fired onto a fierce ship I can sail burning and gloriously out to sea:
Oh, the pre-concert talk begins at 7 if you'd like some background info on the pieces being performed.
Videos posted won't show on facebook. Originally posted on my blog, qfaq.blogspot.com.
I miss playing video games in a vibrant, sociable setting. Outside of house. Something downtown, something plugged in, so to speak.
What I don't miss are the obnoxious children. I was one of them. I don't imagine they miss me either.
Well in Brisbane, Australia, truly now a land of wonder, you can go to a nifty bar, buy a beer with ageable people, and sit down to some good ol' vidya game. Either with friends or with random 8-bit bretheren you didn't know you had.
I like video gamey in-jokes, so a place called "The Mana Bar" pretty much makes my eyes sweat, my knees palpitate, and my thumbs hiccup with the promise of point-related ecstasy.
And Yahtzee, famed video game reviewer, hangs out there. Jeez. Check out the opening day vid:
If any wealthy-savvy-foolish-business-types from Waterloo Region are reading this, please blow all of your money on a venture like this so I can go to it for a month or two. Which is the time it'll take to regret your choice and realise you're broke because we don't really have the population base to make a Mana Bar work here.
Videos posted won't show on facebook. Originally posted on my blog, qfaq.blogspot.com.
In my online travels today I came across this wicked 2010 gallery show filled with artwork inspired by the inimitable He-Man. There's a long post filled with some great imagery to be found at this link. There's something I find really compelling about artwork made through the regurgitation of cartoon imagery, especially from a terrible cartoon. He-Man was sold to us, most of us bought it, and now we seem to be trying to give it some kind importance. Judging by the gallery show, that manifests sometimes as the attachment of dignity through some kind of poetic understanding, the stripping of dignity like the above piece, or simply the urge to see these oddly beloved characters actually drawn well for a change. The animators of the original show certainly didn't give a shit.
The show included an amazing piece from one of my fave artists: Skinner. You might recall my admiration from one of my first blogposts. Behold!
Skinner's 'He Who Walks The Path Of Titans, Knows Not What Faith Will Bring'
Came across these instructions when I listened to Funkadelic's Maggot Brain on youtube. You can do an interesting overlay by playing Infected Mushroom's Heavyweight at the same time. By all means listen to both tracks individually first if you've got some minutes to spend.
Here's what you do with the following two youtube vids:
1 - Put Heavyweight at 25% volume and leave Maggot Brain at 100% volume. Maggot Brain's the first vid.
2 - Start Heavyweight. When the first noise sounds (about 1 second into it), hit play on Maggot Brain.
3 - Trip out in some rave-like fashion.
Sir Christopher Lee, who seems to have traced his family tree back to Charlemagne, has decided to make a metal record based on the life of his ancient ancestor. It'll be a rock opera, and he'll be singing the part of Charlemagne. He's currently 88.
Lee's actually done a bit of metal work before, lending his resonant voice to the songs of power metal colossuses like Manowar and Rhapsody. In a vlog he posted, he describes his surprise over his burgeoning interest in metal of the symphonic variety, which is a breed of metal in which you 'can actually hear what's being said,' he puts it with a slight scowl. Symphonic metal, which is basically power metal drowned in orchestral bombasticism and melodrama, is about as cheesy as music can get.
Here's a sample:
Did you hear his fell voice on the wind? Gandalf my old friend, this should be an album to remember.
Just in case you haven't already seen this particular bollywood wonder, here's a video with superman and spidergirl, in love and dancing through the sky.
Some clever young evil scientist built himself a solar deathray that ups the solar heat we receive on earth 5000 times onto a single spot. Yep. Check out the vid:
The best part is knowing that the ray device was lost in a building fire.
This movie has a fair bit of charm. Also, it's awful. But it seems to believe in itself, which leads me to enjoyment. I wish Rifftrax would cover it.
This is a film that's from the 80s and doesn't let you forget that at any point during its runtime. Pluses include a decent amount of rubbery monster gore and unexpectedly violent murders. Minuses mostly being lukewarm sex scenes you wish would go somewhere, and characters you don't care about. And there's quite a few more characters than there really needs to be. You can't shake the feeling that you're watching a TV pilot. I couldn't get Forever Knight out of my head.
Character rundown is as follows: Vlad Tepes with a British accent, a real estate agent named Kate, her asshole friend who thinks she's his girlfriend, another friend, that friend's aloof boyfriend, and then a monster vampire with a mullet. Oh and two cops that come and go just so someone can say something like 'Wow, who could have done this?'
Kate's friend who thinks he's her boyfriend is especially entertaining for being so utterly unlikable and getting rewarded for it. He's a total dickhead of a shallow and controlling jerk who, sadly, pretty much becomes the hero of the film by figuring out who VLAD TEPES is once he finds a book on VLAD TEPES' shelf called VLAD TEPES, and it's about the history of VLAD FUCKING TEPES. He promptly reads Bram Stoker's Dracula to learn how to kill vampires, of course. This is why To Die For is Bram Stoker's To Die For.
Mullet vampire is pretty awesome. His curly mulleted hair, his superbly 80s outfit, his lame shades, and his penchant for smoking makes him so. My favourite moment comes when mullet vampire dramatically tosses away a cigarette to pursue a murder victim, and by the time he enters the room she's walked into maybe 20 seconds later, he's apparently lit up another one because he's just so cool. I guess if you're immortal, addiction can get pretty bad.
Have a sultry trailer!
As the film went on I realised that I wasn't at all interested in the main characters. I wanted more of the cops. Every time they came on, I hoped beyond hope that they'd stay on the screen. I don't care about British Vlad Tepes. I wanted the adventures of Grizzled Veteran Black Cop and White Trash Rocker Cop! Kicking ass. Taking names. Getting shit done. Lt. Williams and Detective Bocco, writing your tombstone.
It's sad that I fixated on the barest, most non-character characters in the film because it was more interesting than vampires.
So: Certainly one of the most 80s films I've ever seen. After seeing it, I had the weird, atavistic urge to write a screenplay around the two cops, who, having seen the darkness lurking in the black of the shadows in the night time, have pledged themselves to the solving of paranormal crimes.
Also, here's a music video someone made with clips from the movie. This is someone's favourite film. She ignored the cops:
Thought I'd pass this Cracked.com link on. A friend posted it upon bookface and it was of the amusement. In it, it describes how farseeing Donald Duck is. You will not believe the wonders within.
Post-apocalyptic wasteland U.S.A, taken over by the Russians! Vegas is one of the only cities left standing, and if you want to make it anywhere, it'll have to be there. But it's tough to get in. Tougher to survive the walk. Our stoic hero is a rockabilly guitar-picker who's decided to make for his fame and fortune.
Packing little beyond his guitar, a torn umbrella to shield himself from the hot desert sun, and a fucking samurai sword to defend himself against Russian raiders, he sets out across the arid land. Oh, and Death is literally after him. Death and a bunch of his evil henchmen. This is a winning concept, but the ultimate result is a little on the underwhelming side. I found myself bored more than once, which usually means that I need a gang to watch the movie with, and some sake.
If you can set up that kind of situation, also be prepared for wretched acting, camp dialogue, breakout gypsy-punk sequences, and sword duels that sometimes manage to be pretty stylish.
So: Could have been the best movie ever, but doesn't get too far along that track.
Called Legacy to force some kind of dignity onto the project, Disney honestly will not give up on this franchise until people accept it and acknowledge that Disney was right all along, and that Tron is actually really cool.
If I can be outrageously generalising for this one, critics almost unanimously write that Tron: Legacy is pointlessly thin. Thin on plot, thin on character, thin on cultural significance. And half of them end off their reviews by saying that they thought it was pretty cool.
That's pretty much what we've got on our hands with this one - a movie that doesn't go very far to inspire or engage or even give you any thrills you haven't seen before in some shape or form, but is pretty cool, dude. It has its moments of "that technology is absolutely impossible" ridiculousness, and dramatic scenes that try too hard and mostly fall flat, but the overwhelming buzzy neon electro-music-video vibe, when combined with the full might of Daft Punk's original soundtrack, cannot be stopped.
Olivia Wilde is good, and her character is certainly the most fun to root for and watch at work. And I don't mean to say that it's because of eye-candy; her costume is strangely modest, given the norm in this sort of flick. I was very surprised to find that her role was refreshingly unsexualised. There's a shade of sexual tension, but her tender fascination with the boring lead male is understandable, given that he's the son of the dude that created her people's universe, and indeed just arrived from beyond it.
They've made Jeff Bridges look 20 years younger for some scenes through the magic of our favourite strategy: CGI. While awkward at points, it can be overlooked once everybody's in the electro-world. In the digital environment, a slightly rubbery face kind of suits Jeff Bridges.
The 3d effects, surprisingly, don't try to slap you in the face with cheap pop-outs, but stays pretty low key and keeps to background atmosphere. The decision to keep most of 3d stuff for the 'in the computer' environment is a smart one, and works to make the 3d tech an aesthetic choice rather than just a barefaced gimmick.
So: One of the coolest Daft Punk videos I've seen.
1 - Put Heavyweight at 25% volume and leave Maggot Brain at 100% volume. Maggot Brain's the first vid.
2 - Start Heavyweight. When the first noise sounds (about 1 second into it), hit play on Maggot Brain.
3 - Trip out in some rave-like fashion.