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Here’s a track from UNKLE’s upcoming album, End Titles…Stories for Film. It’s a re-working of instrumental track “Chemistry” from their previous album, and now features Josh Homme of Queens Of The Stone Age on vocals.

Thanks to Pitchfork for the embed.

I grew up reading C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles Of Naria and was, like everybody else, greatly looking forward to the “good” big-screen adaptations. I really enjoyed The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and had high hopes for Prince Caspian. Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed with it.

It was a huge production and it looked amazing. The battle scenes were awesome - but they also took up the majority of the screen time, which is one of the films biggest problems. The novel is full of story and character, but the filmmakers seemed to have traded in plot and character development for really cool looking creatures. Even though I know the story very well, I wasn’t at all convinced while watching it on the big screen. I also felt that Peter and Susan (William Moseley and Anna Popplewell) had become worse actors - perhaps it’s a good thing that their characters are basically finished with.

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It felt to me like they thought that since the story is simpler, it could be breezed over. For example, I generally don’t care to see a big huge battle if I haven’t been presented with any real reasons to care about which side wins. Of course I’m not saying that they made me feel ambiguous - the Narnians are obviously the ones that I am supposed to want to win - I just feel like the filmmakers took that fact for granted. But if I was only looking for a big, loud, violent (but relatively bloodless) and huge-scaled battle/adventure film, it did the trick.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - based on the novel by C.S. Lewis; Screenplay by Andrew Adamson & Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely; directed by Andrew Adamson.

The Signal is a pretty cool movie that I’ve been reading about for a few months. It’s a horror/zombie movie and what’s interesting is that it’s split up into three parts, each written/directed by a different person. The zombies concept was kinda cool, but it’s probably not entirely accurate to call them that, since they aren’t simply undead. After receiving some kind of “signal” either through the television, cell phone or radio, people are infected with a murderous rage that actually seems rational to them at the time.

Each third is clearly marked but I kinda wish it hadn’t been as I was looking forward to trying to figure out where each section began. Even with the sectioning, though, the different writing and directing styles are pretty obvious. The first third is a bit spooky, the second part is in a small setting and dialogue-heavy (and funny!), and the final section is a bit bigger as it climaxes and concludes the film.

This one is definitely worth watching and was great for me because I love zombie movies as well as non-conventional filmmaking styles. The story concept isn’t super brilliant, but the three writer/director thing really makes this an interesting and enjoyable watch. Lots of blood and guts doesn’t hurt, either!

I’ve been listening to some great new records lately. Here is some information about a few of them:

Grand Archives - The Grand Archives (2008) (US) (myspace)

Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid (2008) (UK) (myspace)

The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia (2008) (US) (myspace)

Portishead - Third (2008) (UK) (myspace)

The Envy Corps - The Envy Corps (2008) (US) (myspace)

Radiohead is having a contest to remix the song “Nude” from In Rainbows and are posting the top 10 remixes here.

I went to see Cloverfield (written by Drew Goddard; directed by Mat Reeves) on opening night with Colin, Ian and Steve. I’d been looking forward to it since I saw the vague but extremely exciting teaser months and months ago, in front of Transformers (which was a terrrrrrrible movie). Although I followed a bit of the relatively elusive online marketing campaigns (such as Slusho and 1-18-08), I managed to steer clear of anything that would ruin it for me.

I did, however, read a couple of spoiler-free reviews over at Twitch and I’m glad I did. I didn’t know what I would see, and after reading the reviews I realized that I shouldn’t go in expecting a full-out “monster movie“. Yes, there’s a big monster (and friends) invading New York, but we all knew that already. What I was glad to know in advance was that this is not simply a story about the monster.

I gotta say, I loved this movie. It was a lot of fun and a great 85 minutes of entertainment. Lots of bangs and creatures and running around and things blowing up and blood and long shots and improvised-style acting… plus it was nice and noisy. Sure, it was a bit cheesy at times, and the handheld-camcorder type of filming has been done before, but I think they did an amazing job. I was alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) gripping the armrests and getting goosebumps! I loved the crazy-shakey-handheld-”camcorder” camera work and the CGI was great. (As far as the camera goes, here’s a little post about it.) I have a strong stomach so I was fine, but some people were clearly uncomfortable with the jerky camera movements.

It’s been a while since I’ve been so hyped for a movie and not have it disappoint me. It was damn cool.

Here’s an interview with director Matt Reeves. It’s got a fair bit of interesting stuff in it. And here’s one of many Cloverfield blogs.

My friend Vicente and I went to check out Irish singer-songwriter Fionn Regan. It was a great show, except for the annoying girl who kept asking me to move over, but who was talking continuously through each song.