Buzzards and Dreadful Crows

Finally, some time to breathe. After spending the last 6 ou 7 weeks in a peep-hope every day, since early morning to late night and with no time to sleep or eating right, I find myself now in a short term peace. Only exams left to do now, which means I can start and stop work whenever I actually want!

... it feels awesome.

And these are good days, especially because... the new Mars Volta album is out! Yes, and it's fuckin' great. "The Bedlam In Goliath" is one hell of an album, I know for sure I'll keep on listening to it over and over again as I did with the previous ones. And I've discovered a great 70's stoner rock band some time ago, called "Pentagram". It's a lot like Witchcraft, and I'm eager to find more stuff from those guys.

And I'm re-watching Band Of Brothers, the best war-series related ever made in history. Only two episodes left to finish it but.. it will be worth it. They're great. And I'm also re-watching good old Twin Peaks again, in good company.

A lot of work is coming again, very soon, both related and non related to University. But I don't really care, I want to make the most of these days and also do whatever the hell pleases me.

Taking both my camera and my girlfriend out, sometime, are priorities. A lot of music and movies are next on the list. Maybe even travelling, if the time is right. Who knows what 2008 might bring.

Out of Control

Those idiots!

I've been waiting for Control to premiere for quite some months now, and it was scheduled for Novemeber 15th. And it did premiere that day... on only 3 fuckin' movie rooms in the entire country! Two in Lisbon, one in Porto. What a nerve, they keep releasing awful movies all the time, everywhere, for a long time, and when it comes to something not so much known for the masses, they just throw it at the corner. I hate the way the portuguese movie industry works, this is not the first time something like this happens.

Hopefuly I'm going to watch it next week, if it's still there.

Deliveries: part II

My god, I can only update this at weekends! College is being quite time consuming, I barely have time for myself, so the blog doesn't really have a word in this. The sad thing is, during the week I have a lot of ideas and cool stuff I want to share here in this blog, but I always forget them...

Well, first things first. The band that's going to introduce the The Cure concert has been announced! They are 65daysofstatic, a nice post-rock band from England which has been raising a big legion of fans for the last couple of years. I only listened to a full album of them yesterday, and I enjoyed it. Yes, they seem somewhat of a Godspeed You! Black Emperor rip off, but still they sound pretty good. And post-rock bands are always wonderful to be seen live, so I'm looking forward to it.

As for new albums, I've been listening to "No Fighting In The War Room", from Harrisons... but it's disappointing. I'll probably even delete it soon. "Dying To Say This To You" from The Sounds has a few good songs, including the so much acclaimed single "Painted By Numbers", and it's recommended for the grrrlriot new-aged fans. I'm currently trying to get albums from Meat Puppets, Yes, and The Replacements, three bands I listened to some tracks during this week and loved them. Can't wait to get the full business!

As for the video industry, I discovered one marvellous piece of stop-motion art, which was even about to get into the Oscar Nonimees! Unfortunately, and I still don't know why, it was rejected. It's funny, bloody, both beautiful and ugly, and it's a somewhat different approach to this kind of art. Highly recommended, it plays for less that 10 minutes and you can watch it here:



As for cinema, I watched the new Planet Terror, which is... amazing! In a very stupid way. The movie managed to compile all of the greatest action movies clichés and punchlines, and mix them with a really rotten kind of horror. A pure bloodfeast, but quite hilarious at the same time. I had a great time watching it, but you really need to be open minded about the whole concept. The role Tarantino played is small but freaking delicious!
I also wached The Messengers... which is the worst horror (horror? where?) movie I've seen in a long time.
The Devil's Rejects is another Rob Zombie movie - and the guy really knows how to build some characters. The plot is weak, but it works well enough to get your attention through all of it.

And for the first time, technology news! My laptop is an authentic oven nowadays, I can almost fry an egg on the top of that thing. On a regular basis, my processor's temperature gets about 79ºC, sometimes almost 90ºC during intense use. So I decided to give a try to Cooler Master Infinite, a very light base support for the laptop... and guess what, 18ºC less! Talk about keeping the technology fresh, it really works. And it's so light, I can carry it around with my laptop as well. It's relatively cheap and it works greatly, not to mention it's really pretty.

I guess that's it for the week.
And I'm listening to Velvet Underground!

Movie update!

My cinema sessions have decreased lately, mostly because of the money and time shortage. Time and Money, actually two of my favorite songs from Pink Floyd. I bet they didn't go to the movies a lot too. They couldn't, must have been quite sad.

The last movie I saw was Goya's Ghosts. I got really curious about this movie ever since I found out Francisco Goya's paintings, which are the most both bizarre and horrific... a third classifier would be "magnificent". A truly remarkable and surrealistic vision about the Spanish Inquisition, quite surprising especially for it's own time.

The movie features Stellan Skarsgård as Goya, Javier Bardem as an odd brother (Lorenzo), and the beautiful Natalie Portman as Inês / Alicia (she plays two roles). The main plot begins in a very simple way. Inês becomes an inspirational Muse to Goya, who keeps relating her to an Angel. She represents the state of the art of pureness to Goya. But, the inquisition soon declares Inês to be a heretic, against the wishes and fights of both Goya and her family. But the film is not a story of love... in fact, the sequences are as real as they can get. The plot develops mainly around these three main characters, and Goya does not get a major part of the plot here, like one would think.
Goya's Ghosts is not meant to be told, but to be seen. There is much beauty in all the scenes, as they're easily pictured as paintings. It's harsh like life sometimes is, so justice doesn't play a particular role here. You can find more information about the movie here.

Movies

I've been going to the movies a lot lately, mostly because I'm bored most of the times. Just like I am bored right now, so that's why I'm making this blog entry ;D.

The Simpsons - Not just a long episode of the series, it managed to really become a "movie"! Extremely funny since the very beggining to the very end, it didn't dissapoint at all. One of the greatest animations I've seen, for sure. You can really tell that all the jokes have been given a lot of thought, and they work really damn well. It was a really good surprise, highly recommended.

Hostile 2 - Blargh. Haven't seen such a bad movie in a long time. I honestly thought Hostel was different from the other terror movies, but I didn't see the first one. It's bloody awful! I bet it's the same story as the first one, only with different characters. A lot of hot chicks, summer vacations, they die, yada yada, it would be a nice horror movie in 1990. Fuckin bad movie, it was a waste of money.

Evan Almighty - I really enjoyed Bruce Almighty a few years ago, Carrey did a great job in it. It wasn't a superb movie and definitely not the best movie of the year, but I liked it. And since I've come to love Steve Carell, I was excited about this sequel! The director was the same, so I was expecting more of Bruce Almighty with Carell's charisma. Well, I was wrong. The movie is actually quite poor. Steve does a good job, the man is impossible not to adore. But the plot is weak, the funny parts are rather rare and frankly, rather poor also. It's more of a family movie than the typical comedy, so I'm sure it's gonna be a good movie when you're watching it on TV with your family...

Disturbia - After I saw the trailer I got really curious, it didn't seem like the typical teenage horror movie (*points to Hostel 2 review....*) and I enjoyed the boys' work in Transformers. First of all the movie is quite long, which wouldn't really be a bad thing... if, some action actually happened in the first 2/3 of the movie. 75% of the film is mostly talking and get-to-know-us scenes, which, altough not boring, are not what you expected and paid for! Only the last half hour is in fact, what you want to see. And even that is not so "disturbia" after all... you expected more by the end of it, but in general it's not a bad movie, I actually enjoyed it.

Die Hard 4 - Terrible plot! Must be the worst freakin excuse for a plot I've ever seen in a Die Hard! Remeber "Hackers"? How easy it was to hack whatever you want, from wherever you want, and causing pure chaos just like that? Die Hard 4 has the same premiss. Only we're not in the 90's! Despite that, the action scenes are good, which make the movie worth seeing for the fans. The humour is weak for a Die Hard, and it's ridicusly exagerated. For the fans, only.

Ratatouille - A lot of paint over this animation for the last months. Every single review was good for this latest Pixar animation, and of course I got curious. The movie is about a rat with excellent cooking skills, who wants to practice his art in a restaurant in Paris. And believe it or not, this actually works... greatly. I've never seen such a convincing animation before. You get to watch it mainly in a first person (first rat, actually) style, which makes you really get inside the story. You ARE the rat! It's a wonderful movie, full of rich humourous scenes which makes you eager for the next one. Not only I laughed a lot, but I also smiled a lot like all those children in the room. One hell of an experience, without a doubt one of the best animation movies this year, if not the best.

Shrek III - Just another Shrek. (I'm lazy now. Bye)