Posts Tagged ‘Music’

• Footloose (2011) [Movie Review]

  Date: 2012.04.14 | Posted by Jeff | Category: Movies / TV / Books | Response: 1

  Movie: Footloose (2011)
  Genre: Comedy, Drama, Music
  Target Audience: Teenagers & fans of musicals

  Quick Summary: Ren, a kid from the city who loves dancing, comes to a small down named Bomont. Due to a Reverend’s son dying 3 years prior while returning from a party; all dancing, drinking, drugs, and loud music are forbidden within city limits.

  Involvement difficulty: This was an simple movie to sit down and understand. There weren’t any difficult underlying tones and it was easy to enjoy the movie.

  Character Development: There wasn’t an extreme amount of character development in this movie, but more of a few simply changing how they acted. The overly-cautious Reverend learned to trust in young people a little and his daughter (Ren’s target of affection) stopped acting like a harlot. Oh, and Willard learned to dance.

  Setting: This movie takes place in a small down of Bomont, in the southern United States. Though what city doesn’t matter, it’s the atmosphere of the city that makes this movie actually work. The city is represented as being fairly cut off and ‘set in their ways’ compared to some larger cities. They’re also very heavily influenced by the Church, failing to abide by any form of antidisestablishmentarianism (the separation of Church and State).

  Plot advancement: When the plot starts going dancing and most forms of ‘fun’ become outlawed to ‘protect the children’. Once those kids become teenagers they start rebelling, dancing where their parents can’t see them. There are those also participating in drinking and drugs, but most just dance. The teenagers are clearly unhappy with the anti-dancing laws, but haven’t got the backbone to change it. Ren comes in and becomes that backbone, showing that there are good people out there that just want to dance. Though showing of good morals, Ren convinces the Reverend and the rest of the older townsfolk that the teenagers can prove trustworthy given the chance.

  Originality: This is a remake of Footloose from 1984. As far as remakes go, I guess it was all right. However, I’m a little bothered with the way they merged the two. This movie was ‘updated’ to take place in the current time, but most of the character interactions that take place are unrealistic for the current time. Take the racial factors into consideration for example; The black guy works in a cotton factory outside of town. Aside from Ren, there was no other white people working there. Not only that, there were no other mention of anybody else that works out of town except the black guy. And the football team (with exception of two): All black. But the city counsel, the church congregation, and any other figures of authority were almost entirely white.

  Aside from that, the idea that everybody has Internet, cell phones and iPods but still are listening to the songs like I Need A Hero, Let’s Hear it for the Boy, and Footloose seems a little off. Don’t get me wrong, I’d complain if those staple songs weren’t in the movie but it still seems strange.

  I did find that this version was much less clear-cut on what each side was standing for. In the original version, it was irrational fear of the parents versus the freedom of the teenagers to make their own mistakes. In this version I felt they tried to do the same, but I didn’t get that vibe. Honestly for a larger part of the movie I was on the Reverend’s side. Kids dance these days like they’re having intercourse with clothes on, compared to the dancing of the 80s where it was just energy, footwork, skills and being able to actually dance. This version therefore felt like it was the Reverend trying to protect the kids from acting like floozies. The movie did clean itself up later, but at the beginning it was very vague.

  Oh, and there was more dancing in this one, which was one of my biggest complaints from the 1984 version.

  Extras: Willard was funny, which is a requirement. I thought the Willard from the first version was just as good. He is by far my favorite character. Whoever chose him for this part did a fantastic job. Seeing him learn to dance gave me a goofy smile.

  Wasted Time /VS/ Hooked Time: I felt that the move was fluent. Though I’ll admit I liked the original more solely because the actions fit the time, this movie seemed to have fewer ‘dead’ parts.

  Pros: This was a fun, and fairly light-hearted movie. I still like the songs, and the dancing was pretty good. Except Ren, he just came off as a ‘Nancy-boy’.
  WOW-factor(s): None.
  Can-be-Improved: I felt Ariel, the Rev.’s daughter, was poorly cast. She was a good actress, but appeared as though she was in her early 20s instead of being a high school kid like the rest of the cast. This made it seem a little bit creepy given that Ren looked like he was about 15.

  Rating: 7.5/10 Cowboy Hats.

  Summation: Overall I liked this movie. I’m actually a little torn about if I liked it more than the first one. Watch it I felt that they made a movie based on Footloose 1984, then cherry-picked the key and memorable moments from the 1984 version so they could call it ‘Footloose’. There is more music and dancing in this one, and less teen angst which I think would be vital in any sort of a remake of a music-themed movie. I think I’d have enjoyed it better if they had remade it as if it took place in the correct era. None the less, it was worth a watch.

• Cubed Music Player [App]

  Date: 2010.04.07 | Posted by Jeff | Category: Gadgets & Mobile | Response: 0

  Myself, like 99.9% of all Android users, are disappointed and honestly hate the lack of originality and horrible sorting in the default stock music player in Android 2.0. Well maybe not hate, but I wouldn’t say that I’d vote for it any any contests anytime soon. I want it to be not only functional, but pretty as well. Cubed ( “3″ ) does that and not only makes it look easy but actually makes using it easy.

  What Cubed (formerly known as Rock On) does is takes your entire library, downloads the Album covers for it and turns it into a giant…well cube. You can then spin in horizontally to pick the artist by letter, or flick it vertically to just let it spin through them all the albums. Tapping on the facing cube will list you the songs from that artist, on that album. It’s pretty sweet, has no lag while flicking and is fun to just spin the cube around.

  This app features all the required functions: Next, back, random, repeat. It also throws in themes (effects to the cover art) and three different sized widgets that all show cover art. They also have a ‘concert’ app attached, though it doesn’t seem to work too well in my location.

  Pros:
  • Better interface than stock app
  • Album covers easily downloaded
  • Fun to play around with
  • Supports search
  • Good Widgets

  

  Cons:
  • Can’t spin cube from widget
  • Did mess up on some of the album covers
  • Auto-flip back to current song if you pause too long while browsing albums

  I’ve yet to find something that can compare in quality, and I think that it holds a lot of promise as it progresses through it’s beta. For anybody who uses their music player on a regular basis, Cubed is my suggestion for your music app.

• Games: Battle of the Bands

  Date: 2009.01.15 | Posted by Jeff | Category: Gaming | Response: 0

  As promised last week, today we’re going to take a look at
  Battle of the Bands for the Nintendo Wii, made by THQ.

  At first glance, this game looks like it can be a lot of fun. Well, it can once you get past the lack of content in the game itself. Lets have a look at some of what the game has to offer:
  - A decent variety of songs (of course, no where near some of the more costlier games on the market)
  - The joy of rhythm based games without the need to have any extras hanging around
  - A quirky variation to the plain old ‘hit the notes and you win’ formula

  
  Battle of the Bands offers some classic favorite songs such as Black Betty and Jungle Boogie; mixed in with some fun songs like Feel Good Inc. by the Gorillaz and Blitzkrieg Bop by the Ramones. Though the songs are few, they’re good to play.

  Unlike some of the other rhythm games, Battle of the Bands uses only the wiimote to hit notes (left/right/down/stab/shake). It’s a fun concept, though a little tiring on the wrist at first on some of the higher difficulty levels. Also, if the wiimote is tilted it often doesn’t hit the note. Once you get used to this though, it’s a fantastic workout for your wrist.

  Above all else what makes this game worth playing is the presentation itself. The game is one big battle, so you’re always in a versus mode against either an AI or a Player. Each band gets to choose a style of music, for example country and hip-hop. While playing, if the country team is in the lead the song which they’re playing will be done in a ‘country version’ (IE redneck accent and banjos). As the teams battle, the song jumps between the two bands’ type. It’s a riot when the types are conflicting as they switch seamlessly.

  
  Another cooky part of this game is that you can attack the opposing player. Teams get the option of 3 weapons to use, all with different steak counts. Once a team has a streak to the length of the weapon, it will fire causing the other player to miss a beat if not blocked (hitting B). It’s quite off tilt to have a battle of the bands where you can shoot lightning at the drummer on the other team, but a blast none the less.

  Overall, I can understand why this game is so cheap (I got it for $15) because though the concept of it is amazing, the final execution of it is lacking. If they had access to a larger library, or even if they had more modes or unlockable content it may have made it a little more interesting. For what the game is though, it was worth the cash and I’d suggest it to any music lover out there if not only for the music player feature that allows you to switch between styles without having to actually play the game.

• Mix Turtle

  Date: 2008.08.04 | Posted by Jeff | Category: Geeking | Response: 0

  Mix Turtle is everything I want in a music site: Music. You can search for a song, artist or album and it will bring up a list and let you listen to them without any need to download. It also supports playlists. Oh, and it has a big turtle smoking an undefined substance with green smoke coming off it. Need I say more?

  I <3 Mix Turtle

• Bands that suck

  Date: 2004.01.06 | Posted by Jeff | Category: Ze Authors | Response: 0

  Today was the first day back to school after the break, it sucked; not because something bad happened, but because it’s school in general. I have to write a test tomarrow at noon, which means no lunch, that does suck, but oh well.

  I have nothing else interesting to talk about today, so I’m going to talk about, as the title says, bands that suck.
  First off is Metallica. I hate Metallica because: A) They are uptight pricks who are only in the music industry for money, as was demonstrated with the first run of Napster. B) They don’t have an lyrics that appeal to me. Though I really am pissed about the Napster thing, I was an origional Napster junkie.
  Second on my list: Insane Clown Posse. If these guys were simply a band doing what they do, that would be fine, but they keep talking about how ‘Independant’ they are. I’m sorry but going into WCW wrestling for 6 months doesn’t make you independant, it makes you a tool looking for publicity. Not only that, but they have been signed with multiple big named record lables, if they were truely independant they would have signed with smaller lables.
  Finally, Nirvana will end this post. Everybody seems to think they’re “the greatest band ever”, but why? The tunes to their songs are the same power cords repeating, the lyrics are foolish and they can’t sing; they just scream.

  So yeah, that’s all I have to say at this moment about bands who suck and my boring life. That is all.