simple ipod pleasures, or, why my ipod makes me love trail of dead all the more
when i’m not stewing over the fact that compilation-only artists are included in my ipod’s Artists listing, i’m appreciating the fact that “…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead” (complete with new leading ellipses) is alphabetically superior to “The 5.6.7.8’s,” due to a little musicbrainz mp3-retagging action. this means that if i press the play button from the main menu, instead of a jap-grrl-rock “woo hoo, oo hoo hoo,” i am treated to conrad keely proclaiming “ok, this is a song about killing everybody, let’s all sing along now.” listening to any trail of dead track always makes me thirsty for more, so i took a gander over to my favorite trail of dead fansite to see what’s new.
what’s new is that worlds apart, their new album, is coming out january 25th, and it is starting to creep into the public spotlight. for those of you not familiar with the story, trail of dead, a break-stuff indie force, currently resides on interscope, a big label that one would think would have nothing to do with troublemakers such as them. (sidenote: interscope has clearly stolen user interface elements from warp records. or maybe interscope owns warp. they seem to own most everything else.) anyway, interscope also happens to house other lesser known bands like u2 and eminem, who both had albums coming out during trail of dead’s original release target month of october. result? we have to wait until january 25 to get the new trail of dead disc. or, you can go to a halloween live show, like i did. it was awesome. perusing trailofdead.org, i found a set list and set of pictures of the event, which brought back many good memories. i would direct link to the page, but sadly, trailofdead.org is in a weird, pseudo-frame / pseudo-flash format, and i don’t want to take the time to figure it out.
anyway, the dot org site pointed out that trail of dead is stuff magazine’s album of the month for january. hopefully, at least a few of the rest of you find that amusing. (note that kid dakota has also been reviewed over at stuff; apparently, someone over there is actually, you know, tuned in to music and not just the radio.) do you suppose, with big-label backing, that trail of dead will be the next modest mouse?
(sidenote: some of the more sycophantic among you may have noticed that i hadn’t posted in a while. some of you may have even said as much to me. well, for those “some,” now it’s your turn.)
closer
you can tell this movie is adapted from a play: only a play would have four people so intertwined and so eloquently brutal as the characters in this movie. but since it is a movie, the four people have beautiful shells to contrast their nasty innards. i nominate this movie for dialogue of the year.
equilibrium
one of the reviews of this movie on metacritic states the following:
Equilibrium is like a remake of “1984″ by someone who’s seen “The Matrix” 25 times while eating Twinkies and doing methamphetamines.
i don’t entirely agree with this statement. first, ray bradbury’s “fahrenheit 451″ shapes this movie as much as or more than 1984. second, though the shooutout-in-a-lobby is a direct and completely shameless rip-off of the matrix scene of the same name, the gun kata fight near the end of the flick is the coolest, jaw-droppingest fight scene i’ve seen in a very long time.
it is interesting to note that user reviews of this film (8.6 out of 10 at metacritic; 7.6 out of 10 at imdb) are much higher than the critical reviews (averaging 3.5 out of 10). though this movie is far from groundbreaking in its dystopian vision, it is very slick, and very fun to watch. who cares what the critics think?
