"Zombieland" capsule review (warning: spoilers)

Highlight the grey (potential SPOILER) text to view it.

Clichéd zombie movie tropes + clichéd pop cultural tropes + soppy Michael Cera clone + overexposed celebrity actor cameo + zeitgeisterrific nod to currently-hip "indie" subculture + square miles of mugging and self-congratulation = big dull box-ticking overrated dud.

And hey, main character: if you're supposedly neurotic enough to have as many as 32 different rules for not being killed by zombies (that's just me inferring the total from the highest-numbered one) why miss out half of them yet feel the need to repeat other ones three times or more? Welcome to Zombieland, population: half thought-out.

At one point in this film, Bill Murray is asked if he has any career regrets. The smug, predictable, shooting-fish-in-a-barrel, circle-jerk-y answer? Garfield: The Movie. Really? Garfield? Not, say, pastel-tinged Orientalist snoozefest Lost in Translation or execrable sports-meets-product-placement headache Space Jam?

Objectively, Garfield (or its sequel, which Murray was also in, so he can't have hated the experience all that much) may indeed be the worst film Murray's been in. But what sticks in the craw with that line is its fourth-wall-breaking self-satisfaction and achingly safe obviousness, which sum up Zombieland perfectly. The whole film comes off as if the audience has been issued a crib-sheet of received cultural opinions in advance, and when the filmmakers flash up the relevant neon applause sign, we laugh/cry/opinion-form (delete as appropriate) on cue. They might as well have had the whole cast do a synchronised mug-to-camera to emphasis that Witty Banter™ is, in fact, in effect.


Upsides? The gore. There's shitloads of gore, sometimes quite inventive (is "goreography" a word? It is now), sometimes relentlessly horrible, generally pretty entertaining. There's some pretty good comic lines in about 5% of the script, too. If you can ignore the other 95% of the script, the actors and the general smug atmosphere, it's a reasonable gore film.

Since seeing this movie i've found out that the ersatz-Cera (apparently his name is Jesse Eisenberg) is going to be playing Mark Zuckerberg in the upcoming Sorkin-written/Fincher-helmed The Social Network (aka "The Facebook Movie"), so it remains to be seen if he's any better when not working from a script that's basically the equivalent of "The Zombieland Writers became a fan of Bruce Campbell and obvious meta-humour".

Very vague 30KB news

- We're working on a follow-up EP to 30,000 Leagues Under the Scene, to be released in the next couple of weeks;

- It's going to have either seven or eight tracks. One will be a Delusionists remix and another will feature Mr Benjamin Black from the said group;

- Production is divided between Crewdson, who did "Care Less" and "Crewd Sons (Ghost in the Machine)" off the first album, and also recorded the majority of said album, yer humble narrator, and, in the case of the said remix, the said Mr Black.


- In Bastards We Trust has been talked about as a name. Possibly in Latin, cuz we enjoy treading the line between pretentious and ludicrous for all we're worth.

- It will be freely downloadable from somewhere free on the internet, for free. Yes, FREE!

- Any or all of the above details are subject to change at the whim of our fickle personalities.

- Sports Night is one of the most criminally underrated TV series of all time. Total masterpiece. (Ignore the daft laugh track, it fades out by the middle of the first season anyway.)

[30,000 Leagues] Crewd Sons (Ghost in the Machine)

"we interrupt this programme..."

[adbuster keaton] wincing at the lack of principle. cut to a track of static snapping at commercial intervals. it's difficult, individuals lost well beneath the deck and i can't tell the fire for the CGI effect. freeze the eye instead, wire fed, sleeping in the lion's bed, i'm hopeful the doubting's less total than global, i'm vocal from mountain to molehill, the old news they told you just grew from a world of Chernobyls. next stop, watch dog, heard slow, sleep dream, and learn to get scared by the ghost in the machine. nothing seizes me, the blessing of the non-committed censorer pushing me higher with the cooling of the temperature. dementia breaks to figure these aches: is it wrong to dwell on that which has been built on mistakes? living this way, on hearsay how we stunted our fate to come triumphant on an ever-plundered bit rate. this day dismay strays from the movement of the rhythmless, drowns us all out with the proof of their grandiloquence, grimacing at costs of a flag they didn't hoist. seemingly incipience is lost without its voice. it's all so very off-the-levy breezy wayward heading. wear the brightest swooshes, still we can't see where we're treading; black spot lighting up my future, there's no way of telling if rebellion is instinctive or a lifestyle that they're selling.

[diss1] (...heeeey!) if i wake up again while i'm alive i want to organise a party like it's 2005. those were platinum days - i'm still paying off the interest of trying everything once but folk dance and incest. flavours i did ingest, distill and regurgitate, the have-a-go villain over rhythms that'll circulate, lyrics that'll perforate if need be. got y'screaming out "Dissonance!" like a detuned TV. and if i die before i wake, i wanna go back in time and be the first one to use that. but more likely back to square one in dark corners where miscreants gather to smoke reefer and chew fat. where's the truth at? not like anyone here will know. i last saw that shit like 6 years ago. really though, don't you make faces at this lyricist. i'll take you to the places where the eye meets the pyramid. rebellion into money, cheap at the price, blew the cash and the speakers on the thirty merchandise. now it's broken-down blown cones, holes in the ozone, extraterrestrials at the party better phone home.

"...and as result of that broadcast the crisis has deepened dramatically"

30KB Sting — Welcome to Nothing feat. Ava Leigh — Toleracist 2008 — Fuck 'em If They Can't Take a Joke feat. Ava Leigh — Care Less feat. Ava Leigh — NWW feat. Living Larceny — Beat the Rich — Meet Is What I Like to Eet — Carnival of Horrors — Dancehall feat. Ava Leigh — Crewd Sons (Ghost in the Machine)

[30,000 Leagues] Welcome to Nothing

[diss1] The hornets' nest stirred when they cut down the saviour. Buy now: apocalypse later. Apocryphal labours, favours returned, no rest for the wicked and weary. Faulty logic hara-kiris conspiracy theories. And Dr. Dre said... *something his ghostwriter thought of* (Straight outta composition? sort of.) Hold your position. You're sub-poena'd by put-you-out-of commission. Sharpshoot lyricism with military precision and execution. Classified level 3 intel. D-day landing smashing your splinter cell. i'm like hot gas compression how my flow's turbo. you a non-union equiv. like Señor Spielbergo. Heard you wanna quibble? That's comical like Bananaman. Soft fucker, you can get box-cutter'd by Nevada-tan fan club presidential assistant orderly - the gory story of Hikikomori. Lock lips w/fibre optics and a free flash screamer of your choice. Speed trials exceed pace of whoever's really racing the tortoise. But small voices, too, can shatter glass at the right pitch: that's why he legged it through the night after hitting the lightswitch.

[AcheZen Pains] Slipped and tripped from the pinnacle to land on his hands. Comprehend, don't understand: i'll be the nation's reprimand. Assured through lawless lands, hear me, and my ideology's more mental than any theory you can find in Scientology. Just try stopping me: i'm like a hearty-sized typhoon. You're more ridiculous than a student at Cromartie High School. i'm more effectual than respectable Hollywood special effects. Dionysian powers protecting me. Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets! Fool? hardly. Foolhardy words'll never take care of me. Passionately kiss yr ass goodbye cuz it says pull in case of emergency. No do-re-mi: i'm here to pierce the ears of peers. Go to sleep with bad thoughts and i wake up something fierce. Second guess i manifest the thoughts i'm writing as a cycle: force of an ouroboros meant you felt my reprisals. Sizeable slice, retire you twice, leachers 'n preachers of viable rights. Bleeping a future of fallen tonights. Welcome to nothing: walk into the light.

[welcome] to the way we on it
[to] contemporary supersonic
[nothing] not a hopeful sonnet,
scenes created just to bomb it

[welcome] to a true platonic
[to] toppin trivia delivered in song with
[nothing] style different shakin tectonics,
this be the imminent finish of the wrongest...

[Ava Leigh]
close to the woes, no right to belong

(facing a nation that's wasting)

heard you can't teach an old maestro a new song

stealing, thieving our freedoms, i'm seething venom

welcome to nothing, to nothing we're heading, yeah

Pripyat, Ukraine. PD photo by Wikipedia user Kadams1970

30KB Sting — Welcome to Nothing feat. Ava Leigh — Toleracist 2008 — Fuck 'em If They Can't Take a Joke feat. Ava Leigh — Care Less feat. Ava Leigh — NWW feat. Living Larceny — Beat the Rich — Meet Is What I Like to Eet — Carnival of Horrors — Dancehall feat. Ava Leigh — Crewd Sons (Ghost in the Machine)

Vice magazine photoshoot: Chloë Sevigny, 1994

"You got it buddy: the large print giveth and the small print taketh away" — Tom Waits

So the day after i take a side-swipe at Vice magazine they go and publish the best thing i see all day (applicable to quite a few days, actually).

It seems they're pretending it's 1994, for some odd reason (opportunity for lots of dramatic irony seems to be the main reason).

Anyway, this gives them cause to reprint a '94 photoshoot of gorgeous Chloë Sevigny¹ modelling stuff by X-Girl, Kim Gordon's fashion imprint, so even if i didn't love the nineties it'd have been worth it for that alone.

Chloë had made her first screen appearance two years earlier in Sonic Youth's "Sugar Kane" video, spraying champagne over a crowd in a X-Girl wedding dress, a manoeuvre which gets a nod in this very shoot.

Bonus Sonic Youth video

¹ If you know me, you probably also know i'm a hopeless Chloë Sevigny fanboy.

30KB 50 Cent remix (re-up)

Just re-upped the 30KB remix of 50 Cent (featuring 'Big Pete' Gabriel) from last year.

Perfect for anyone who likes awkward unwieldy mash-ups.


MP3: 50 Cent — "I Get Money (30KB Hammer Party edit)"

Weird BBC headlines #3: wtf does this even mean?

To be fair, it can't be easy to convey in only five words the idea of being able to 'implant' false negative experience in the brains of fruit flies by binding a chemical receptor to their individual neurons. As this headline aptly demonstrates.

[source]

Hip Hop Hypedog compilation Vol. 1 out now

Repost from HHHD.

DOWNLOAD:
SENDSPACE // RAPIDSHARE

HIP HOP HYPE DOG COMPILATION - Volume 1
Release: 15th October 2009
Graphics: Sam Wightwick

After four successful months here at Hip Hop Hype Dog we wanted to celebrate the music surrounding the art form, so getting in touch with a few rappers/producers, we've created a compilation you can download for free.

This exists to showcase the artists and to give the public a musical taster of what we've been publishing on the blog, and what's happening now. The Compilation features 28 tracks, mostly British and a small seasoning of American, that we feel represent the positive direction that Hip Hop music is heading at the moment.

Send this round to your friends and spread the vibe, bump it in your car, drop it at your house party, pass around the word of Hype Dog. Come check the site for daily updates on all spheres in Hip Hop, and keep informed on the ever growing world of www.hiphophypedog.blogspot.com

Feel free to click its sibling site www.ukhiphopmixtapes.blogspot.com, a huge up and coming resource for sharing UK mix tapes.

Bad name for a doctor's surgery.

The Kilmeny Group Practice, ladies 'n gentlemen.

report: "BNP to consider non-white members"

i find most "let's-all-mock-the-BNP" activities to be either sneering, nasty everybody-laugh-at-the-thicko-proles snobbery (hi, Vice magazine, you bunch of coked-up Shoreditch fauxhawks!)¹ or self-congratulatory empty bandwagonnery (you're not a racist? Wow, like, radical, man. Srsly, have a medal.)

But the news today that the party might have to reform their constitution to allow non-white members to join in line with anti-discrimination laws is sort of irresistible. If this does in fact go ahead, how great would it be for the BNP to be confronted with a sudden and massive groundswell of membership applications from blacks, Asians, and indeed any other ethnic minority they hate?

For one thing, a racist group that represented a full rainbow spectrum of the UK's various races would be completely meaningless, like those "I Hate Hip Hop!" groups on last.fm that get joined by loads of rap fans and consequently have their charts filled up with Kanye and Weezy every week. For another, you'd probably get rid of a lot of current BNP members through rage-induced spontaneous combustion.

It's probably no more effectual than ordering them pizzas they don't want, or 658 identikit punk bands all singing "fuck the BNP!" as if trying to defeat them through sheer tedium alone.

But i reckon it'd be a damn sight funnier.

¹ NB: aspiring writers! Please have more dignity than the people in this comments section.

Are these two paragraphs more hilarious or heart-breaking?

Discuss.

X Factor winner [Alexandra Burke] is keen to prove she's not one of the "puppets paid for by Simon Cowell" that Lily Allen referenced in her recent blog about illegal file-sharing.


...The new hairdo is part of a record company reimaging of the singer, described in their own PR material as "Alexandra Burke, version 2.0, 2009 remix".

[source]