Cursed Records: Walls Don't Exist

Everyone's got their break-up songs. Those joints that you sit in a dark room with, playing over and over while you drink and/or sob for hours at a stretch. To a certain extent those sessions are cathartic and kind of necessary to get over whatever mess brought you to that point in the first place. Then, there's what Kieron Gillen referred in the second issue of his music-as-magic mini-series Phonogram: The Singles Club (the follow-up to excellent Phonogram: Rue Britannia, with Jamie McKelvie on the artwork) as cursed songs:

"A curse record is the opposite. A curse song will, in a real way, open old wounds, tearing the stitches you're trying to make hold. A curse song should be avoided at all costs. I have friends who, suffering through the virulent stages of the curse, abandon entire bands or even genres of music due to the associated poison."

The concept is one that I'd never really thought of before. Never really thought that there was a difference between the standard break-up joint and its more toxic cousin, I just avoided them both outright because both were immediately unpleasant to deal with, even if one was supposed to be healthy. After reading the story "Wine And Bed And More And Again" in which a character is "cursed" by a song, I instantly knew that I didn't just have a curse song, I have a whole album. So what'd I do? I went and dug it up.

Walls Don't Exist is a beautifully put together instrumental album by Afrobeat and Hip Hop artist, Wale Oyejide, recorded under the moniker of Science Fiction. It follows a narrative of 'boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-better', and while that certainly sounds like fodder the former, I suppose my reaction to it as a whole really brings into sharp focus just how personal the latter is.

The whole album is admittedly a pretty painful experience for me, but I regularly recommend it to people as example of just how beautiful and powerful a musical form Hip Hop can be. I guess this is just another, less positive facet of that power showing itself.

I'll share the joints that hit me the hardest, from the 'boy-meets' and 'boy-looses' sections respectively, and as always I recommend picking it up if you can find it(from what I understand, it's out of print, so if people ask nice I might post it up). Just don't ask me to listen to it with you:

Science Fiction - This Is Where I Landed When I Fell For You


Science Fiction - Losing You Is What Drowning Feels Like

My Thoughts on Watchmen or What Kind of Fan Are You?

So Watchmen, if you're a fan of genre films is a definite must see. It is an ambitious piece of cinema that does not compromise what it wants to do for its entire running time. While it's not perfect, in terms of its recreation of the book there are some deviations, and there are flaws (the tone of the film jumps around a bit, and I still haven't decided if it worked for me) but it's a better viewing experience for it. It's one of the first, if not the first comic book adaptations that works because less because of slavish devotion to what's on the page (but to be clear, it's pretty damned tight to the page) and more because of another quality that it shares with the original book: it invites discussion. Within five minutes after leaving the theater, the friends I watched it with were already talking about the purpose behind the level of gore and the way the fight scenes were filmed (My take: Given the very adult themes examined, and the meta nature of the source material? All the exaggerated bits of violence are "grown-up" version of the campy onomatopoeia that was in the old Batman TV show, or in comics. It wasn't a cool way to show violence, but rather, an in film context way to remind the viewer that this is a comic book.). That barely cracks the surface of the sort of conversations we got into afterwards.

Now I said that this is a must see for genre film fans. I didn't say comic book fans, because there are two sorts of us. There's the fan that's excited at the prospect of comic book properties being treated with the respect they deserve. Then there's the sort that aren't happy with anything but complete carbon-copy translation, and even then they are prepared to hate it before they've seen one frame. In the weeks leading up to the film I heard plenty of comic book fans voice their displeasure with the film, from the fairly standard jabs at Zach Snyder's use of the speed-cranking slow-mo technique (which, while it shows up, is restrained and works for what it's there for) and the lack of a certain cephalopod. Then there was word from "fans" who had apparently gotten to see early screenings of the film, claiming that the principal cast couldn't act. Now that the movie is actually out I've heard plenty of intelligent discussion about it, both positive and negative, but there are still comic book fans who're bound and determined to hate on the flick just because it exists. These fans, even in the face of being able to discuss their fandom in an way that doesn't patronize or disrespect the material are unable to accept the idea of what is precious to them being delivered to people outside of their niche group.

Depending on what sort of comic book fan you are, you may not want to see Watchmen. As for myself, I'm glad that I saw it because even I didn't like it I would have had a lot to talk about. Regardless of where you fall in your opinion on the movie, you can't deny that a lot of care and thought went into it being made. If you're like me, I'm pretty sure you'll feel like that alone deserve at least a look. So, what kind of fan are you?

Comic Book flicks are a lot like Westerns were back in the day...

...and they're likely due for a bust, just like Westerns were. I just hope that Watchmen is more The Wild Bunch than Heaven's Gate. This is where I'll be in about three hours:

I'll give my thoughts on Sunday.

Ed Brubaker and his Angel of Death

Recently one of the scribes over at The Smoking Section wrote a piece expressing his love for the Bendis/Maleev run of Daredevil (as collected in the Bendis Omnibus available at this link) and I chimed in at the comment section, basically saying that the follow up run by Ed Brubaker was no joke. That led to me going back and re-reading all his stuff that I have. Brubaker's work, from Sleeper, to his work on Captain America is infused with a pulpy crime-fiction sensibility that aids the storytelling instead of seeming tacked on. Rather than shoehorning superheroes into a grim and gritty setting where they don't belong, his writing creates a space where these superheroes and the rest of the world's reactions to them are believable. He allows his influences to come out full bore with his incredible crime fiction series Criminal, where each issue is like watching a good piece of film noir (not a coincidence, considering that the backmatter for the issues consists of essays about film noir, crime novels and other influences to the series). Given how much his work is influenced by film noir and crime fiction, I'd always thought it'd be great to see him either adapt his work for the screen or write something completely original as a movie. Presenting: Angel of Death.

I'd heard about this project back during San Diego's Comic-Con in an article from Comic Book Resources and have been intrigued ever since. Starring Zoë Bell as a hitwoman who takes revenge for her various victims after a dramatic head injury, it seemed right up my alley, and the trailer's got me even more excited. Peep it:

From Crackle: Angel Of Death: Coming soon to Crackle

I usually have trouble keeping up with web series (or TV series at all, word to the season's worth of The Middleman unwatched on my DVR), but I'm definitely going to be keeping eyes peeled for this joint when it drops in February.

Nerd Life: Music and Gaming

I have tons of interests, most of them nerdy and the common thread is that I try to involve music in every single one of them. As a writer I tend to create to certain pieces of music, even going so far as to match scenes to single songs (I had to turn off Last.Fm for a couple of days last week, on account of the replay of a particular Queens of the Stone Age track).

When I played video games back in the day, I used to make my own soundtracks for them. The first couple of Tony Hawk games were pretty decent, but when I got tired of the in-game music I put together my own playlist full of Hieroglyphics, El-P, and The Clash. Nowadays I tend to gravitate toward games that already have pretty dope soundtracks built in, or that cater to the music nerd (see: GTA, Rock Band).

Some of my favorite comics have a relationship with music whether it's direct (Jim Mahfood's Grrl Scouts mentions a lot of music, and Mahfood himself did the comic book companion to Murs and Slug's 2nd outing as Felt.), conceptual (Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan's Demo reads like a mixtape, and I'd be shocked if that was coincidental) or a combination of the two (the outstanding Phonogram by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie takes place in a world where music is magic. They're currently continuing the awesomeness in a second series entitled The Singles Club. Click the link for a preview.

My love for all sorts of different music really comes out where you let me loose in one of my favorite nerdy pursuits, role-playing games. That's right. Dungeons & Dragons, polyhedral dice, bunch of geeks in a basement eatin' snacks and playing pretend. I been that. In fact I still be that, so to speak. My initial involvement with this sort of gaming came through White Wolf's World of Darkness series, mainly because their liberal use of music as inspirational material for all their games. From that introduction, music's always been apart of the proceedings. I've set games to mood music, played characters that're musicians and even written articles on how to best integrate Hip Hop into games ('cause once nu-metal started to get popular with the World of Darkness crowd, I needed something as an antidote). Music's always been apart of my gaming, and whenever I'm about to start a game that I'm playing in, I try to make a mixtape to go along with the character I've created for the game.

Which brings us to the point of tonight's post. In January I'll be playing in a Dungeons and Dragons game, and like usual I made a mixtape for the character. Without getting into all the messy technical details about what the character is, he's a young man who is abducted by a violent group of cultists. After being captive for a while and subjected to all kinds of wild torture, one of his captors develop a bit of Lima Syndrome. Eventually, he gets his Stockholm on. This does not end well. Once we start the game, I'll be picking up with the character once he's freed from captivity.

Here's the tape, entitled A Declaration of Declaration. It features Portishead, Blueprint, DJ Signify, Blonde Redhead and others. It's essentially the soundtrack of his backstory. Enjoy it as a testament to my geekiness, or if nothing else a collection of dope tunes.

Friday Night Films

Gonna be pretty lazy with the film news this week, so pardon the kid. Some follow-up about the Oldboy remake that Stephen Spielberg and Will Smith are looking to put together. One of the writers from I Am Legend, Mark Protosevitch, has signed on to pen the film, and in the cop out portion of the news, Will Smith told Film School Rejects that the rights that Spielberg acquired were for the original Oldboy manga and not the Chan Wook Park film. So no need to worry about Smith and Spielberg having to go anyplace outside of their respective comfort zones, but it's a cop out as most people who know about the manga (and I'm willing to bet this includes Smith and Spielberg) were brought to it from the movie. So you know the movie's going to be in mind when they undertake this.

The Playlist (a really cool blog where they focus on movies from a music standpoint, particularly the involvement of music supervisors on a film) reports that X-Men: First Class is going ahead, written by Josh Schwartz, a writer responsible for Gossip Girl and The O.C.. Ladies and gentlemen, I can't and I won't stand for this. I'm not a huge stan for the X-Men, as a fictional universe it's got plenty of problems, and if this were called X-Men: Year One, Young X-Men or something else original, I wouldn't bat an eye. The problem is that they're taking the name for the movie from one of the comic books that actually get the X-Men concept right.

Written by Jeff Parker, the stories all center around all the OG members of the X-Men in their first years as a team. It cuts out all of the fat out, the super complicated plotlines, the contrived angst and just concentrates on fun stories. Gets the whole growing up different thing down, with a lot of classic comic book action (in a good way). I know it's early, but I have a feeling we're going get a lot crappy music, pretty white kids with problems and lukewarm super-power effects. Kinda like a movie that's dropping this weekend that I'll get into in a second. Anyhow, go cop the First Class books at your earliest convenience, 'cause not only do you get great stories up front, you also get adorable backup features by folks like Colleen Coover. As an example, here's Marvel Girl dealing with some baby ducks:
Click for full size.

If the movie contains this, I take back everything I said.

If you haven't already seen them, there's some nice trailers out this week: The Wrestler, Coraline to name a couple. Two more caught my eye this week: The Wilson Yip helmed Ip Man a bio-pic about the man that trained Bruce Lee in Wing Chun. Donnie Yen stars in the lead.


The second is for a Blaxploitation homage/spoof called Black Dynamite. There's really nothing I can say that the trailer doesn't do perfectly. Go here to peep the NSFW trailer, and to learn more about the film. The one-sheets in particular are pitch perfect.

Huh. Not quite as lazy as I'd planned. Well, now I'll leave you with what is the first installment in a series: Why 'Let the Right One In' kicks 'Twilight' in the Teeth.

When sunlight hits vampires in Twilight, this happens.


When sunglight hits vampires in Let The Right One In, this happens.


Have a good weekend, folks.

One out of three means...tolerable?

Djimon Hounsou's going to be the voice of T'Challa, otherwise known as the Black Panther in BET's upcoming animated series of the same name, based on the Marvel Comics character. That's cool. There's still two pretty big problems with it though:

1) It's on BET.

2) The show's based on Reginald Hudlin's run, who brought all the respect and entertainment to title that he regularly does to the airwaves in his role as President of Entertainment for BET. Go ahead and flip over to BET for a second to see what I mean. I'll wait for you.

Ah well. Hopefully I'll be proved wrong about it, and it'll be great but you know the drill. Us geeks'll watch just so we can sound smarter about it when we trash it:
Djimon Hounsou Roars as the Black Panther