Drive…

January 23, 2012 at 10:37 · Filed under movies ·Tagged , , ,

Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011) is a simple movie. IMDB summarizes it as ‘A Hollywood stunt performer who moonlights as a wheelman discovers that a contract has been put on him after a heist gone wrong’. The difference is how to tell that story in a way that you engage with it and don’t fall on the typical action movie (as intended to be at the beginning with Hugh Jackman as the main character, hopefully it turned out to be an ‘indie’ production). Drive is a cool movie.

Drive movie poster

Drive

The casting is really good, the two main characters are played by Ryan Gosling (‘Crazy, Stupid, Love’, the recommandable ‘Blue Valentine’ or the quirky ‘Lars and the real girl’) and Carey Mulligan (‘An Education’ and the awesome episode of Dr. Who ‘Blink’), it is one of the reasons that makes the movie different (those two in an action movie?!) and also that the acting is brilliant, it has to be because in a movie with not so many dialogues it’s when the expressions of the actors has to be enough in some situations and they really pull it off.

One of the other reasons is the music, it suits perfectly to the driving scenes at night around Los Angeles with that mix of synth-pop. Also the awesome song of College (‘… a real human being and a real hero…’) at two points of the movie that make a perfect match, it’s just the perfect topping.

All the movie has that feeling of 80′s movie where there was a hero who always tried to do the right to achieve his goal (a girl, revenge, etc.), that atmosphere suits the movie perfectly. Everything looks shiny, everything looks cool. As example we can see Ryan Gosling jacket’s, only one guy can wear and don’t feel ridiculous about it, it’s just in concordance with the movie. A perfect mix with the result of one of the best movies of the past year.

Jacket

The famous jacket

If there are sometimes when you want to drive around listening cool music with a cool jacket and try to fight for what you believe then Drive is the right movie for you and it was certainly the right for me too.

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Into the wild…

December 27, 2011 at 12:08 · Filed under movies

Into the wild (Sean Penn, 2007) is a movie based on the travels of Christopher McCandless (aka Alexander Supertramp) from 1990 to 1992 around the US and his ‘Alaskan Odyssey’. It’s based on a true story when Christopher after finishing college decides to give his life-time savings to Oxfam and depart to the road with just the minimun and some books. He doesn’t inform anyone, takes life as it comes and working in any job in order to subsist.

Into the wild

Theatrical poster

The movie starts with Christopher getting to Alaska as part of his Alaskan odyssey, from that point we see flashbacks, narrated by his sister: how did he get to Alaska, his motivations, the people who inspired him, the people who met along the way, his early trips around the US, etc. The movie has a good rhythm, separates the story in chapters and its 140 minutes long are gone really fast. It’s also important to highlight that even the topic of the movie could fall in old cliches, but it always dodge these and present a nice story without judging.

Chris McCandless

Chris McCandless himself

The locations of the movie are one of the best parts and most of the landscapes are breathtaking, it goes all the spectrum: from the dessert to the mountains of Alaska. The music, mainly folk song, are a really good companion for the images.

I guess the movie has quite an inspiring subtext and in these modern days where everyone thinks it’s too hard to live without the actual commodities, it can be refreshing this point of view where we just need to open our eyes and try to go into the wild to see that other life is possible.

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Kick me…

December 16, 2011 at 13:35 · Filed under books ·Tagged , ,

‘Kick me’ (Three Rivers Press, 2002) written by Paul Feig is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. It narrates the adventures of Paul Feig as an adolescent through primary school to the prom dance at high school.

Cover of the book

Cover of the book

Paul Feig is one my personal heroes (Woody Allen is another one!), he created one of the most underrated TV shows ever, ‘Freaks and Geeks’ (definitely worth to watch its only 19 episodes) and he directed a vast number of episodes of shows that I love like ‘The Office’ (US version), ‘Arrested Development’, ‘Weeds’, ‘Parks and Recreations’, ‘Bored to Death’ or even ‘Mad men’.

The book is autobiographical and even his ‘minor celebrity’ status, he doesn’t doubt about writing embarrassing stories. One of my favorites is how he discovered how to masturbate titled’ The Rope Feeling’, it’s such an innocent story and funny that when you finished it there’s no way he made that up. And that’s one of the highlights of the book, the stories are just his experiences, he is not trying to put some glamour in his early days just stories that make your day.

After this book he also wrote ‘Superstud: Or How I Became a 24-Year-Old Virgin’ that is about the time he moves to college until he loses his virginity. I will try to write something about it too because it’s as good as this one.

You can find ‘Kick me’ in amazon and it’s available for Kindle for less than 10€.

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Submarine OST…

December 12, 2011 at 12:50 · Filed under music ·Tagged , , ,

As I advanced in the previous post, time to talk about the soundtrack of Submarine: 6 songs which sound as good as the movie is but just under 20 minutes, an afternoon delight for those autumn evenings that you just need a nice cup of tea!

Cover of the EP

Cover of the EP

Submarine EP (Domino Records, 2011) is the first recording that Alex Turner (frontman of the famous The Arctic Monkeys and The Last Shadow Puppets) releases on his own name. It’s the perfect match for the movie and it’s also a magnificent collection of acoustic songs. All of them sound melancholic, like old days slipping away so fast that you don’t have other choice to stop for a moment and sit to remember them.

At the end, what it’s important: the songs, and here we can find great songs about love. One of my favorites ‘Glass in the park’ has really touching verses like “And when you say that you need me tonight/I can’t keep my feelings in disguise /The white parts of my eyeballs illuminate “, the voice of Alex Turner sounds true to it and it seems that everything is in its place. ‘It’s hard to get around the wind’ is also an instant classic and sounds like an atemporal classic pop song. Alex Turned did his homework right and I hope he releases more records like this one.

If after all the things I wrote it’s not enough to convince you, why don’t you give it a chance and listen to it. You can find it in Spotify here.

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Submarine…

December 8, 2011 at 20:32 · Filed under movies ·Tagged , ,

Submarine (Richard Ayoade, 2010) is the debut film of Richard Ayoade in the director’s chair, and it can’t get better than this. He is also known by his acting on ‘The IT Crowd‘ as Moss or on ‘Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace‘ as Dean Learner, so certainly we could bet our money in everything he is involved.

Submarine cover

The cover of the DVD

The movie is set in 1986 and follows the life of a 15 year-old boy called Oliver Tate. As you can presume we could find the same topics as any teen comedy movie out there and we do, but fortunately we found ourselves with a clever story that presents the same topics with a great package! There is a girl, love and the classic tough relationships between parents and son. We also have some side stories that enriches the whole movie like the marital crisis or the whole new age guru, everything really enjoyable. In a little bit more than 1h30m we are part of  a story that is really worthy.

We could say that some stylistic decisions of the movie, the primary colors used and some presentations of the character owe quite much to Wes Anderson movies, I love Wes Anderson so for me it’s not a problem, I guess is also hard to be truly original in your debut or maybe it’s some kind of decision to approach more easily their audience target.

I forgot to talk about one thing that I really like about the movie: the soundtrack. It was composed by Alex Turner, the frontman of The Arctic Monkeys and I will write a post in the next few days about it, so stay tuned!

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Carcassonne…

November 29, 2011 at 16:36 · Filed under board games ·Tagged ,

Carcassonne (Hans im Glück, 2000) is a strategic board game designed by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede. It’s one of the most popular games in the BGG ranking and the first game that caught my eye when I started playing euro games.

The rules are simple and can be summarize in one sentence: ‘Draw a tile and place it wherever you can’, of course it’s not that easy  but what I’m trying to focus is on the low-barrier for new players. After a few turns people would start to define their strategy and have fun. Easy to play, hard to master. There’s a lot of ways to get points: you can focus on big cites, placing your meeples on fields or maybe trying to ruin the plans for the other players!

A meeple in carcassonne

A meeple in Carcassonne

The number of player is 2 to 5, it’s recommandable with any combination, but if you’re looking for something more strategic I recommend to play it just with 2, it isn’t too random and you can plan a strategy for the long term. Nonetheless Carcassonne is always fun to play, the duration of the games is around 45 minutes and I can guarantee you that you will repeat after the first play.

Furthermore, it has a version for iOS (iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad) which is totally worth it, even it doesn’t include any expansions (Carcassone has at least 7 differente expansions) and the price tag, 9.99$, could be a little bit high for some people, but it has multiplayer (internet and local) and the artwork looks beautiful. Pick it up and tell me what you think!

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Twerps…

November 28, 2011 at 13:55 · Filed under music ·Tagged , ,

Twerps (Chapter Music/Underwater Peoples, 2011) is the first album of Twerps, an australian band that has been playing on my speakers these days. A mix of 90′s lo-fi indie that sounds just great.

Twerps

Cover of the album

One of the things that strike me the most of this album, it’s the lyrics, they are simple (in a good way!) and express most of the basics feelings (love, friendship, growing up, etc) in a cool way. The song ‘Who are you’ an ode to friendship (“We’ll get drunk/ we’ll get stoned/ We’ll get high/ We’ll get…”), a love song ‘Bring me down’ that only needs a guitar to be an instan classic of the genre, or a more catchy song like ‘Anything new’ (nice riff!). As you can see, even there are different themes the album doesn’t sound too disperse or without coherence, everything is in its right place.

Someone described them on last.fm as the perfect blend of Beat Happening and Galaxie 500, I couldn’t agree more and I think sometimes you just need a good collection of songs to appreciate honest music.

Sadly we only can find an EP on Spotify and not the album, but I guess you can find it through other ways (remember to pay for it if you liked it!).

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Non si paga, non si paga!…

November 24, 2011 at 16:10 · Filed under books ·Tagged ,

‘Non si paga, non si paga!’ (1974) is a little play written by Dario Fo, Italian satirist, playwright, theater director, actor, composer and winner of the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1997, so we are talking about a genius, a man who does everything and does it right, like the book I’ll review today.

Dario Fo is known by his activism and his close ties to communists parties in Italy and it can be easily seen how that influences the book. The story starts when two women come back from looting a supermarket during a crazy women’s riot. They are worried about what would say to their husbands, who work in a factory where the things are not going so well either. I won’t say anything more because it’s more fun to read it but I’ll say some things that happen in the book: crazy pregnancies, miracles, soups made of birds feed and law officers trying to put some sense into it.

As you can deduce from the paragraph above, this is mainly a comedy play, but also it leads to deep themes like economy, social justice and a bunch of themes that can be applied to the famous economical climate we are living in. Even it’s a play I read it as a book (it would be a good idea that they start to play it again in theaters!) and even it’s not the same I think it’s interesting anyways to read it and try to figure it out how would it work in a stage.

I think it’s a timeless book and all the things that are written on it will be always part of our lives, the fight against unfair situations, etc. and can be really educative. If you haven’t read it what are you are waiting for? Go and educate yourself!

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Homeland…

November 21, 2011 at 14:07 · Filed under tv

Homeland (Showtime, 2011) is the best new TV show of this season in my humble opinion, it has everything that makes a great series: brilliant casting, perfect performances, good music and a story that challenges the viewer and gets you hooked for the next episode.

Promo of Homeland

The two main characters

The show is a political thriller that involves a lot of psychological content between the two main characters: Carrie Mathison and Sargent Nicholas Brody. Carrie is a bi-polar CIA operations officer that works to prevent things like 9/11 from happening again and Sgt. Brody who returns home after being imprisoned in Iraq for 8 years. The twist is that Carrie thinks that Sgt. Brody has been turned into a terrorist working for Al-Qaeda.

The series is always trying to challenge the beliefs of the viewer, it doen’t say anything it just presents the facts and you have to connect the dots. Apart from the main story there are other interesting lines (love, adolescence problems, adultery, terrorist couples, etc.) that just add enough to make a really interesting TV show and worth to watch it. What I really like also it’s the initial credits, they are just pure magic, a mix of Carrie’s childhood: images of previous attacks to the US and jazz music that shows perfectly the personality of Carrie.

The best way to trust me it’s to start watching the show! So far there are 8 episodes out there (the season will have 12) and a second season has been already confirmed.

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The binding of Isaac…

November 19, 2011 at 13:23 · Filed under videogames

The Binding of Isaac (Steam, 2011) is a video game from Edmun McMillen, one of the creators of the successful, incredibly hard and rewarding ‘Super Meat Boy’.

As you can see from the name, the game story is related to the sacrifice of Isaac’s son asked by God himself (later Isaac found it was just a joke from God and a test, not the best moment of God in my opinion) but in this case the game is set nowadays, when Isaac’s mom goes crazy after long hours standing in front of the television watching Christian programmes, and starts hearing a voice from God itself telling her to kill her son, quickly Isaac hides from Mom in his room,  then he founds a trap that leads to a crazy basement and that’s when our adventure begins.

First level of The Binding of Isaac

First level of The Binding of Isaac

We have to guide Isaac across 6 stages, each one with a final boss including Mom herself for the last one, and each stage is divided in rooms that are filled with normal monsters or other stuff, in the end we just have to find the boss room, beat it and then go to the next stage.

The gameplay is a mix of roguelike and a 2d shooter where you shoot your own tears, how cool is that?. Each time you play, the 6 stages are created randomly, so every time you play the rooms are different, you fight different monsters, find different items and if you succeed in killing Mom, a different ending every time. To help you in this enormous task you can collect coins, which are indispensable to buy new items or for using in some of the slot machines lying around there, keys, to open doors and chests, and bombs.

Oh yeah!

Fighting the bad guys in The Binding of Isaac

I think it’s a great game, so far I’ve played around 100 times, beat once Mom and had great fun. One of the best things it’s the duration of the game, you can easily beat the game in 30 minutes so it’s perfect for filling long coffee breaks in front of the computer, also it’s incredibly simple at the beginning but as you start going through stages you find always something new that helps you the next time you play and gives depth to your later gameplay where you have to stop and think if it’s a good idea to go to the other room and find God knows what. You can also unlock new characters if you achieved certain goals in your playthrough, and the amount of items is really large, after my 100 plays I found maybe 80%. But the best thing is not what I told you before, it’s the price! It only costs 4.99€  at Steam, so buy it and start playing immediately in your Mac or PC, you won’t regret it!

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