Hypnagogic States

Every month from May to August The Cure released a new single on the 13th. The Singles were The Only One, Freak Show, Sleep When I'm Dead and The Perfect Boy. Now I wrote my thoughts on The Only One  back in May when it was released but I didn't get round to writing anything about the other songs. All were a good listen but it was The Perfect Boy that made me wish it was the 29th of October so I could hear the new album (Dream 4:13).

In September they released an E.P., Hypnagogic States which includes remixes of all four singles and one mash up, as it were, by 65DaysofStatic - a band who have already reserved £8 of my first pay packet to buy an album. 

I'm not usually a big fan of remix albums as remixes seldom live up to the original. Hynagogic States is like that in a way. A little of their Cure-ness is lost in the translation but overall they are all still great songs. The Perfect Boy would still be amazing if Robert Smith sang it over the sound of tortured kittens.

The final mash up track, Exploding Head Syndrome, is slightly different. At 21 minutes long it almost feels like Godspeed You Black Emperor if they went a bit disco. As it bears so little resemblance to the original material, Exploding Head Syndrome holds up as its own piece. I would expect little else from one of my future favourite bands.

Not bad for £3.99.

1001 Movies

A few years ago my girlfriend received a booked called 1001 Movies to See Before You Die. Due to Jordan's love of ticking things off lists, we decided that it would be fun to tick off the films that we have seen and work our way through the book. To be honest, we haven't been the dedicated high brow film watchers that we hoped but we have managed to watch a fair few. 

Some time last week we decided to make a concerted effort to work our way through the list. We have also set up a spreadsheet to mark off each film so we get a running total... it also makes searching for a film on there much easier.

So this week I have watched...

Roman Holiday 

Annie Hall 

The Great Escape 

Wolf Man 

Notorious 

Easy Rider 

Grave of the Fireflies 

Things to Come 

Frankenstein 

The Maltese Falcon

The Great Train Robbery 

Only Angels Have Wings 

Rabbit-Proof Fence 

Muriel's Wedding

There was, I'm sure, one other film on that list but I cannot for the life of me remember what film I watched before The Maltese Falcon. I suppose that says something about how much I enjoyed The Maltese Falcon... good ol' Bogie.

For any one curious about what's included the 2008 list can be found here.

3x3 Eyes

As I have mentioned many times before I grew up watching Japanese animation. Not the nice Studio Ghibli stuff, but the fairly mature films and series. One of these series was a four parter called 3x3 Eyes. It followed the story of a teenager who meets up with the last of a race of triclopse who is on a quest to become human. The fourth episode ends with a fairly exciting cliff hanger. This being the early-to-mid 90s there was no (for me) internet in which to discover that this was in fact based on a manga series and there was lots more to the story. 

After rediscovering, and subsequently watching, many of my old anime videos I realised that there were probably more episodes available. I managed to grab the last part of the series a few months ago but never got round to watching it due to travelling. Well, today I sat and watched a couple of episodes today and it feels so odd continuing the story about thirteen years on.

A similar thing happened recently with the release of an updated Guyver series that was much closer to the original manga and expanded on many story elements that were left out of the early 90s series. 

On a side note, it seems very odd that Hollywood haven't tried to remake any of the high profile anime. I'm surprised we haven't seen a live action Akira starring Leonardo Dicaprio as Kaneda yet... oh dear... after writing that I did a search on IMDb and found this. 

I despair, I really do.

What next? Ghost in the Shell with Keira Knightly as the Major and Orlando Bloom as Batou?

Buy me one of these

Remote controlled zombie robot... need I say more?

Last.fm

Now I know I'm late again on this one but I've just started using Last.fm. For anyone who hasn't heard of it, it's a music recommendation site where you type in (or import from iTunes) a list of your favourite bands and it recommends music to you based on this information. You can also just search for music like (insert band name) and it'll play you a seemingly never ending playlist of songs from bands in the same genre. You are also given the option to add songs as they play to your 'love this' list or banned list.

At the moment I'm listening to music like Mogwai and I've already made a list of bands I need to buy albums from. Some highlights are Mono and This Will Destroy You. I wasn't aware of the fact that there are so many good instrumental post rock bands around. I'm very picky about vocalists in bands and I often finding myself liking the music and hating the voice - these bands do away with that problem which is probably why I pretty much like them all. 

Finished promo

Here is the finished promo that I have been working on. 

I was supposed to have an interview today for a runners job at a post production company but the northern line was broken. I've managed to reschedule it for tomorrow but I'm a little worried that I may have blown it... I'll have to give myself two hours to get in rather than just one...

Skelebones

On Wednesday mornings we have to vacate the house as the cleaner comes and (strangely enough) cleans. This usually includes breakfast out and then a fair amount of time killing until we can return at 12 o'clock. Today Jordan and I decided to head over to the Skeletons of London exhibit at the Wellcome Collection in Euston.

It was fairly odd experience staring at long dead bodies and reading about their lives - most of which included a good deal of rickets, gout and dental problems. There were even a few that were excavated from a similar area that all exhibited signs of facial damage thought to be caused to drunken behaviour. Not much has changed in London in 200 years then.

The skeletons' ages range from about 1900 years old to about 150. They are in various states of wholeness... some only having a few limbs and about 2 ribs and others only missing the tips of their fingers. One even had had a craniotomy which gave us the opportunity to peak inside the cavity... spooky.

All in all, a very fun and interested hour or so was spent staring at these skinless fellows.  Not bad for a free exhibition.

Google ranking

After changing my sub heading on this blog to something containing my full name, I now actually come up on the first page of Google results when you type in my name. I have always been a little miffed that my name didn't link to me in any way on the net but now it does.

My internet pseudonym Louisblack (one word) however reveals my many little homes around the web. In the top five results we have my Flickr, my Macrumors profile, my Myspace and my Youtube profile. Stupid Austinist.com and their tags. I could have been five for five there as my now defunct Livejournal page is hanging around at result number seven.

Editing

In my post from last week I wrote about how I had managed to get some unpaid work editing a band promotional video. Well sadly hat project fell through due to my camera being unable to transfer HD footage into Final Cut Pro. 

This week, however, I was given some SD footage to use for a different band. I spent a day or so playing with the footage and sent it off to my contact who is organising these promotions. Apparently it was the best he's seen so far. I've sent it over to the visual effect guy who will add a few touches here and there and hopefully I will have the final piece by Monday or so.

In the mean time, here is my edit of the footage. In classic Youtube fashion the quality is terrible but you get the idea. I will upload the final version when I have it. The band is called Kojo (there is no link because apparently they are revamping their Myspace at the moment).

Fun with British Gas

Good ol' British Gas. This rather astonishing bill came through the door today. It is, of course, wrong. Just like every other bill we have recieved from this awful company. Jordan is currently waiting for them to call us back so we can get this stupid mess sorted out. They are two hours late in calling.

I think I can safely say that British Gas has outdone NTL in complete idiocy and I am often known for complaining about my year using NTL Internet and dealing with their customer service.