Browsing the archives for the Reviews category

Animated Horror

4 Comments
10 Jan, 2010
Bren
Arts, Film

I’m a big fan of animation, as readers of this blog will already know. I’m particularly fond of animated horror, which seems to me to touch a deeper place in the psyche than the generic stuff. It also tends to concentrate less on gore and more on scaring you to the depths of your self. Last year’s Coraline was a great example of this – the best I’ve ever seen of a full-length animated horror film but I thought I’d share a few less well-known ones here.

I here present to you three of my favourite animated shorts. First, a CGI short called Alma, is also newest, with a nice innocent opening, and an ending as dark as it is inevitable. (Thanks to Dee for finding this for me.)

Incidentally, this video may answer some questions for anyone who’s curious as to where I’ve been lately.

Second up is The Cat With Hands, a creepy, stylish little gothic story I first came upon through Neil Gaiman’s blog.

Last, and by far my favourite, is another stylised gothic short, The Sandman. This stop-motion animation I first saw flicking through channels when I was about eleven or twelve, and is the only film to have ever cost me sleep (and quite a lot of it at that). It took me years to track it down, having been desperate to see it again, but I never forgot the last scene, which plays over the closing credits. Many thanks to Paddy, who unwittingly found this for me.

http://www.brendanfinan.com/wordpress/?p=270

Beethoven: The Complete Symphonies – The Academy of Ancient Music, Cristopher Hogwood

2 Comments
7 Oct, 2009
Bren
Arts, Music, Reviews

Much to my surprise recently, my list of unlistened-to podcasts jumped from about four to sixteen. On investigation, I discovered that the concert podcast Beethoven | Deutsche Welle – unupdated since about this time last year, suddenly released a glut of new episodes. Many treasures were to be found, including a series of concerts called ‘The Path to Democracy’, incorporating just about every style of music you can think of.

What led me (in my usual roundabout way of being led anywhere) to write this review, though, was the last nine episodes: interpretations by Estonian conductor Paavo Jarvi of Beethoven’s nine symphonies. Only one movement of each is included, but it was more than enough to spur me to dig out my favourite set of them.

That set, as you’ve probably guessed, is the one mentioned above: the complete symphonies recorded by the Academy of Ancient Music, conducted by Cristopher Hogwood. As it turns out, I had forgotten two things: the first is how much I love Beethoven’s symphonies. During my forty-minute walk home from work, I listened through number five (the timing was just about perfect), and was unable to keep the tears from my eyes in the first movement, or the glee from my face in the fourth. Yes, I must have looked pretty strange, but it’s pretty late when I’m walking home, and I don’t think too many people saw me.

The second is how much I love this particular recording of Beethoven’s symphonies. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a puritan or stickler for “correct” performance – I couldn’t like Glenn Gould as much as I do if I were – but I do admit a fondness for period instruments, and particularly for period orchestras. Throughout this recording, the AAM are on top form. The relatively small size of this orchestra compared to modern ensembles means that they are capable of a nimbleness and clarity that you don’t get with bigger groups, but in the slow sections as well the playing is delicate and measured.

The use of natural brass instruments also means the playing is more dissonant than we expect from modern orchestras. This affects the music throughout, but is most striking in rendering the opening of the fourth movement of the ninth symphony – that famous towering dissonance – as startling as it must have been at the première in 1824.

Some of the symphonies feature passages under slight alteration (according to the latest research), so there are surprises in store even for people very familiar with the symphonies. Either way, whether you’ve heard them once or a thousand times, go and buy this set. Today.

If you’ve never heard them, then buy it faster.

iTunes, Amazon US, Amazon UK.

http://www.brendanfinan.com/wordpress/?p=233

Diablo Swing Orchestra: The Butcher’s Ballroom

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7 Sep, 2009
Bren
Music, Reviews

I never really, officially, stopped listening to heavy metal, at least not on purpose. I kind of drifted away from it as I guess a lot of people do. I’m fairly sure that there are a lot of people I know who will think I’ve never listened to “proper” metal, but it doesn’t really matter. I try to listen to good music and never mind the genre.

“Never mind the genre” is actually a very good way to introduce this album. While it is largely a metal album, it incorporates elements of swing, opera, flamenco, free jazz, electronica and pretty much anything else you care to mention.The instrumental line-up is also bewilderingly eclectic, incorporating the typical metal core of guitars and drums with an operatic lead vocalist, but also featuring at various points trumpet, saxophone, acoustic guitar, string quartet, flute, piano and didgeridoo. Yes, didgeridoo.

The first track, the wonderfully-titled Balrog Boogie, begins with a typical, fairly straightforward jazz rhythm on cymbal, followed by an equally typical jazzy riff, but played on fairly atypical bass guitar. Guitars, saxophones, cello and metally growling follow, and this sets the tone for the rest of the album.

Though such a wide range of styles could be in danger of becoming unwieldy, it generally feels like clever, involved metal more than anything else. The structures, breaks and most of the riffs are very metal, albeit coloured by the other genres. The two “softer” tracks (one is a piano solo, and the other – remarkably – a song for soprano and flamenco guitar) are placed at appropriate points in the album to relieve the assault of sound.

But it gets even better – the album is available for free, from Jamendo. While I know it won’t be for everyone, I really think, especially if you’re into rock music, that this album will be well worth the download.

In short, this is one of the most surprising albums I’ve ever heard. The band seem almost determined to show their incorporation of a staggeringly wide variety of styles, within the overall metal genre. I won’t spoil any of the surprises, but suffice it to say that the album is well worth it, especially at the price.

Download it from here. (I found this album on the excellent blog Free Albums Galore.)

http://www.brendanfinan.com/wordpress/?p=214

On Pixar and Saleability

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16 Aug, 2009
Bren
Arts, Film

I came across an article today, essentially saying that Pixar’s films are successful, but not commercially viable enough to make theme park rides out of. This is not the first time this year that a story like concerning Pixar this has emerged: after the screening of their new film, Up, at Cannes this year, Wall Street condemned Pixar for not being more mainstream in order to fight recession.

Yes, it’s true that Pixar are a very good money-making brand, but this is surely largely due to their being the (as far as I’m concerned) only major film studio in the US to show consistent integrity and dedication to quality. Every Pixar film to date, with the possible exception of Cars, has been a masterpiece, and Pixar will be remembered for making them as fondly in sixty years as Disney are for their films of the early twentieth century. But what analysts don’t seem to realise is that it is because of Pixar’s creativity and integrity that their films are so good, and it is because they’re so good that they’re so successful. The minute they become the kind of studio that churns out attempts at box office ’smashes’, they will lose that. They will also lose the faith that their fans have in them to always make a great film. Disney, Pixar’s parent company, should know this better than anyone.

Though they regularly come under fire for it, Disney are wise to leave Pixar largely to their own devices. As long as they do so, Pixar will continue to make money for the company, and get the great PR that comes with working with a company that hasn’t yet turned out anything of inferior quality. It also means that Disney can keep hold of its claim to have produced nearly all of the great American animated films. (Apart from the amazing The Iron Giant, I cannot think of a single great American animated film to have come from any other studio.)

I must say, I am a little concerned about Pixar’s next two films: both are sequels. That said, I was wrong about Toy Story 2, and I can’t imagine Pixar would have gone ahead with Toy Story 3 or Cars 2 if they hadn’t thought they would make them good films. But the reason I love Pixar (and the animation company apparently beloved of Pixar, Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli) is because of their ability to create new worlds, populate them, and use them to tell entertaining stories with interesting characters. It just feels to me like a shame that we won’t be seeing any new Pixar worlds for at least another couple of years.

That said, I still have Up to look forward to.

http://www.brendanfinan.com/wordpress/?p=187

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas – Flagstad, Schwarzkopf, Hemsley; The Mermaid Singers and Orchestra, Jones

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6 Aug, 2009
Bren
Music, Reviews

There are a few pieces that remind us why we love music: those pieces which, with their beauty or power, hold us enraptured, and at the end leave us gasping with the core of the piece burned permanently into our mind. The pieces are different for everyone. For me, they include the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, Prokofiev’s Toccata, Schubert’s Erlkönig and Der Leiermann (here recorded in the wrong key, but never mind) and Mahler’s eighth symphony (which I won’t link to here as it’s much too long).

But few pieces have shaken me as much to the core as Dido’s lament, When I am laid in earth, from this opera. Purcell captured perfectly her despair and beautiful sadness in his setting of the text, and when her voice soars over the softly accompanying orchestra with the words “Remember me, but, ah, forget my fate” you know you always will. You can’t help it. I first heard it at a recital in college, in a white chapel during a concert of early music, and I felt that just for a moment I was living in another world.

I say all this to establish my love for this piece which existed long before I managed to get a recording of it, and also to show that I had a very specific idea in my mind how it should sound. And because I think I’m about to commit heresy. A few years later I picked it up on CD, trusting the EMI Classics label on which I had bought several excellent recordings. Reading the liner notes got me more excited – this had been the last performance of Wagnerian soprano Kirsten Flagstad, and the company with which she performed it went to extraordinary lengths to get her and to keep her happy.

But actually listening to the CD, I am sorry to say, elicited some disappointment. Don’t get me wrong – the musicians were fabulous, and so were (to my mind) most of the singers. But I found Flagstad’s voice to be much too heavy, too broad and too powerful for a part that I felt should be performed with lightness and vulnerability. And yes, her tone was perfect and even and finely controlled throughout, and her performance marked all of the boxes in terms of technique. But it felt too much to me like she was singing the wrong part, like Judi Dench playing a part written for Angelina Jolie.

That said, the rest of the performances were just what I wanted. I am not familiar with the singers – I have never been an opera buff – nor with the orchestra, but their performances are some of the finest I have heard in terms of their musicality and dramaticism. The orchestra performs with all the strange delicate energy I love in baroque music, Aeneas shows strength and dignity, the sorceress deviousness and the chorus a grand eloquence.

Generally speaking, it’s a recommended recording. Highly recommended, if you don’t have my specific history with the piece.

But Flagstad’s Dido just isn’t a Dido I like.

And aside from that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?

http://www.brendanfinan.com/wordpress/?p=159

Battlestar Galactica

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4 Jun, 2009
Bren
Reviews, Television

I have finally watched this show to its end.

People had been telling me how good it was for years, but I generally didn’t have the time to get into it, and I figured – you know, how good could it be?

Then I saw Carnivále. What an excellent show. Properly written 1930s, dustbowl-era dialogue, a wide variety of characters, all with large personal arcs to go through, photography that nearly made me weep at the beauty of it all, as well as a healthy flavour of prophecy and doom. If you haven’t seen it, buy the DVDs. I promise you won’t regret it.

It was cancelled. As favourite shows of mine tend to be. It was cancelled after two seasons.

But then I discovered that its second-in-command, Ronald D. Moore, had actually left the show after its first (and stronger) season, to work on Battlestar Galactica. Suddenly, I was very interested.

I have since, of course, bought the DVDs and torn through them at a speed that would make an FTL jump look slow. *cough* If you’ll pardon the sci-fi metaphor.

The story is one which starts with a genocide. The Cylons (evil robots from space) destroy the humans’ home planets, and then relentlessly pursue the remaining 50,000 or so humans across the galaxy.

But, of course, this is the 21st century, and we expect a bit more from our TV shows these days. So now some of the evil robots look like people, the ship on which our characters live is a junky heap of metal, and personal, social and governmental complications make up most of the plot.

It is the characters that make Battlestar Galactica. The primary cast is simply enormous – and takes in everyone from the struggling head-of-state (formerly secretary of education, but the highest-ranking surviving member of the governemnt) to the oil-handed deck engineers. Each one – and this is what’s really impressive about the show – is drawn with care, and has their own distinctive personality and voice. We are presented with flawed people making difficult choices and, while they don’t always make the right decision, we can always understand what leads them to act the way they do.

The show, though it does have an involving and involved plot, is largely one of allegory. Clear references to the Iraq war, Abu Ghraib, torture, homosexuality, suicide bombing and religious fundamentalism and conflict act as themes throughout the series. They are never dealt with lightly, though. The show doesn’t moralise. To a large extent it presents us these issues from an angle we won’t have seen them from before, but still allows us to make our own choice on the issues.

We also see the enemy three-dimensionalised. Yes, they have different customs and cultures; yes, they have this weird, monotheistic religion (wow!) – and even, yes, they practically wiped out our entire species, but they are seen as redeemable. Even likeable.

I read an article in the Guardian a couple of months ago, saying that the biggest problem with this show is that you want to tell people about it so that they’ll watch the show – but you’re afraid to tell them too much because it will spoil it. That’s why I’m not saying anything about the plot here. But the show avoids the trap many television shows fall into: it doesn’t have a status quo. The plot is labyrinthine and continuous, and nearly never settles down to tell single-episode stories (though the tone can still be intimate when the plot demands it).

So what we’re dealing with is a multi-faceted, layered, complex science fiction drama action politics show with interesting characters and a long, compelling plot arc. A show that shows us the good and bad sides of humanity, and never flinches from either one. We’re living in an era of good TV, and this is still a show that stands out. In short, it’s a show you should watch.

http://www.brendanfinan.com/wordpress/?p=75

Secrets and Mysteries

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1 Jun, 2009
Bren
Film, Reviews

I can’t help thinking it’s a sad indicator of the state of the film industry that my two favourite films so far this year have been children’s films. (Though I do agree with some people’s suggestion that 90% of material produced in any medium is probably dross, with film you’re talking about budgets similar to those of small nations, and I think a little more care should be taken.)

The first of these films I saw was the Irish animation The Secret of Kells. Gorgeously presented in old-school, hand drawn animation, this film told the story of a young boy working at a monastery in Kells, taken under wing by an older monk who convinces him to help make the Book of Kells – a bible beautiful enough to be worthy of god’s word. Naturally, as it’s Irish Christianity we’re dealing with, there’s a good deal of fairy-taling and magic woven into the plot, too.

The second was the children’s horror Coraline, from Henry Selick. This stop-motion animation tells the story of a smart-alec young girl who finds a magical door which leads to a fantasy world. This world seems an improvement on her own in many ways, but the facade crumbles and leads to some truly terrifying moments – terrifying in the way I’ve found only children’s horror can really be.

I enjoy films (or any art form) that exploit their medium’s strengths, and both these films do so wonderfully. The Secret of Kells, set in medieval Ireland, uses the artistic style of that time as a basis for its own drawings. This is established right from the outset, with the opening ‘aeriel’ shot which shows the monastery from directly above, but with the tower shown as though pointed north rather than up. These little effects continue throughout the film, and always delight – from the group of monks who move en masse, to the use of the full width of the cinema screen to create tapestry-like panoramas. Coraline uses 3-d effects quite frequently, without over-doing them, and the fact of its stop-motion animation helps give it a weight and realism more than you get with computer animation (Pixar excepted) while also keeping its distance from reality through the ‘cartoonish’ style of its characters.

Unlike most ‘adult’ films these days, neither of these films is afraid to take risks. Coraline’s proxy mother is as terrifying a figure as any evil stepmother from Grimm’s tales, and we see the Vikings in the Secret of Kells as a merciless invading force. Neither film is short on scares, but then children’s fiction – the really popular, important stuff – never has been.

Incidentally, both these films had superb soundtracks – Secret of Kells by the innovative trad group Kíla, and Coraline by the French film composer Bruno Coulais.

Edit: Since writing this, I’ve discovered that Coulais in fact wrote the score for both films, but The Secret of Kells partly in collaboration with Kíla, who performed most of it.

http://www.brendanfinan.com/wordpress/?p=59