I’m tempted to start off the new year with the 15-minutes long dance mix of songs from the Lucky Star CDs, but instead I’ll be starting off with the song I was supposed to post a few weeks ago when my entry was eaten up by the void. The band is Crooked Still, and the song is their rendition of the traditional song “Ain’t No Grave Can Hold My Body Down”, shortened to simply “Ain’t No Grave”.
I found out about the band and this song through the TV-series True Blood, a series which has featured some really good pieces of music for its closing credits (not to mention the series’ great opening), where they played this particular song during the closing credits of the first season finale.
I’m not a big bluegrass fan, as much of it sounds the same and seems too cheerful (though my experience with the genre is pretty much limited to the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the Disney cover CD O Mickey, Where Art Thou?), but I love the deep bass and chugging cello sound of this rendition. The vocals are perhaps a bit too ethereal and forgetful for my liking, but they’re pleasant enough and get the job done.
I was working on the latest installment of Fidelity Wars this weekend, when suddenly my blog logs me out. None my work had been saved. I’m a busy man! I have things to write, games to complete, comic books to read, theories to refute, and YouTube videos to watch; I ain’t got time to re-write blog entries. Frustrated, I decided to postpone re-writing the entry and instead writing a different one for Christmas eve, featuring a Christmassy tune. Which just so happens to be this entry!
Disney has released a series of lullaby records descriptively enough going by variations on the title Disney’s Lullaby; there’s Disney’s Lullaby Album, Disney’s Lullaby Album Volume 2, Disney’s Princess Lullaby Album, and Disney’s Christmas Lullaby Album. They all feature instrumental renditions of classic Disney, pop, or traditional songs, all arranged by musician Fred Mollin. The pieces are mostly piano driven, but generally features several other (I think) acoustic instruments. As the title of the albums would suggest, they’re intended to be used as lullaby music, putting children to sleep, but they music is easily enjoyable as relaxing music by adults as well. (And there is, as previously mentioned, some children’s music out there which is genuinely good and transcends its intended audience.)
For Christmas eve I’ve of course chosen a track from the Christmas themed album from the Disney’s Lullaby series, namely “White Christmas”. This is a song I’ve never really been able to previously stand, as it’s sounded way too North American (and all Europeans loathe North America), with overall unappealing lyrics and melody. But, lo and behold, Fred Mollin has managed to make this tedious holiday standard into a beautiful and tender guitar driven piece of music!
This album is pretty good, and definitely recommended if you want some relaxing Christmas themed music to put on in the background while you’re decorating, baking, having Christmas dinner or other Christmassy gatherings, or are re-writing blog entries. God jul, everyone!
I have this perhaps slightly odd, slightly selfish tradition of buying myself gifts for my birthday (December 18th) and for Christmas (December 24th; we open our Christmas presents on Christmas eve here in Norway). This started as I was realizing that, being a young adult, my presents were growing increasingly boring, mostly consisting of money. Money is definitely useful, but it’s not very exciting (unless it’s a huge amount) nor something that can occupy and entertain you through the evening (again, unless it’s a huge amount).
So for this year I’d planned on giving myself the Garth Ennis Punisher Omnibus. Way back I was a regular subscriber to Ennis’s The Punisher, but due to monetary considerations I cancelled it. It was a fun series, and it had the best Spider-Man cameo I’ve seen to date. This hardcover collection of over 1,000 pages collects a considerable bulk of Ennis’s run on the series. It has a cover price of 100 USD but it has been going for about 60 USD on Amazon whenever I’ve checked. But now, it appears that it’s out of production; you can no longer order it directly through the Amazon store, and the resellers are charging as much as 130 USD for it in new condition (not including shipping).
So, that sucks. The collection was released late November 2008, and it seems odd that it’s now sold out and out of production, but maybe they only do limited printings of these Marvel Comics omnibuses. Now I’m not really sure what I’ll end up giving myself, and I have further data supporting my claim that you should “buy what you want now as it might be out of production and/or more expensive tomorrow.”
While on the topic of non-buyer’s remorse, I’ve been idly drooling over a Ron Spencer print of the Squirrel token he has done for the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering. His art style is usually very brutal and violent looking, so it seemed delightfully ironic to have a print by him of a cute squirrel to go next to my less cute Ron Spencer prints (of which I so far have three). However, when I recently went to check up on it (I tend to do that with items I want to buy but haven’t yet) I found that this particular print is no longer being sold at Ron Spencer’s eBay store. I could perhaps e-mail him and ask if he have any left, but I think the prints he has done are of a limited run.
A typical Ron Spencer drawing.
A slightly less typical Ron Spencer drawing.
And adding one further piece of data: some years ago the leading multimedia chain here in Norway, Platekompaniet, were selling the platinum DVD release of The Lion King for 60 NOK. I didn’t buy it because, well, I’d already seen it; plus, according to the review over at Ultimate Disney they had neglected to transfer some bonus material from the LaserDisc release and onto the DVD release, which just seems lazy, so I was somewhat hoping for a later super platinum release of the film. Now the platinum DVD is out of production, and I’d have to pay a heck of a lot more for a still sealed copy now, and if I’d want to see this great film again I’d have to get out my Norwegian-dubbed VHS copy – or my torrent software of choice. I’m sure they’ll re-release it in some years, probably making it a Blu-ray exclusive, so it’s not the worst item I’ve missed out on. But 60 NOK isn’t too much money, especially not for a Disney classic, and it would be nice to have it easily available for viewing.
Back in the day I tried to regularly follow (as well as tape) the cartoon show Teacher’s Pet, which used to air on the Disney Channel. So I guess I was a bit of a fan. In 2004 they released a feature film based off the series, simply entitled Teacher’s Pet. I never got to see it, but now and then I would look up the title at web shops to see if I could find it for a low price.
Well, I finally did a few weeks ago, finding it for 5.19 EUR (postage included) through a trade shop on play.com. So I ordered it, and eagerly awaited its arrival, keen to finally get to see it.
But when it arrived yesterday, I was appalled. Here’s what the front of the regular DVD edition of the film is supposed to look like, and how I expected the copy I’d ordered to look like also.
Nothing amazing, but nothing visually offensive either. But here’s what the actual copy I received looked like – both the front and the back.
They’d taken the original cover and given it a yellow blob frame, both shrinking and obscuring the original design. And they’d made the actual DVD cover’s plastic yellow, to boot. This looks ugly and it looks cheap, almost like some sort of bootleg. I’m guessing this is a re-release of the original DVD, and that some marketing buffon decided that they should give the new line of re-released DVDs matching yellow cover designs; I’ve seen at least one other Disney DVD out there with the same design.
I’m tempted to ask for my money back, but given postage and the fluctuating currency I’d most likely end up losing a bit of money. Not to mention the time and energy I’d need to expend in order to make it happen. Plus, I’d still be on the hunt for a cheap copy of this DVD, and I’d probably not feel safe ordering it from other online stores or sellers anymore, worrying that the copy I would receive would be of the ugly re-release with the yellow blob frame, and not the original. But do I really want to put this… thing… among my other DVDs?
A lose-lose situation for me, the consumer, and I now have the following dilemma on my hands: should I crack the plastic and try to be content with the ugly cover, or go through the fuss of trying to get my money back and not getting to see this film?
The apparently annual ten-day Oslo International Film Festival started last week, in which they basically import and show a lot of different films from different countries at a couple of cinemas in Oslo. Often independent, non-mainstream films you wouldn’t otherwise get to see up on the big screen here in Norway. Two films I wanted to see were showing back to back last Sunday, so I went to see them. I went by myself, as I hadn’t found any friends who could be interested in either of the films and who were available. I haven’t gone alone to the cinema since I managed to hunt down and see a screening of the original English language dub of Disney’s Brother Bear some years back. So a bit of a novel experience for me. Was also the first time I’d seen two films in a row at the cinema, further increasing the novelty factor of the whole affair.
When I got there I found out that I actually had to pay for a festival pass as well, and not just the tickets. The pass was needed to be allowed to buy the tickets, and it could also give me one free cup of coffee a day at select locations. I don’t drink coffee though, nor had I planned on seeing any other films that were showing, so I was almost tempted to go home. Each ticket cost 60 NOK, and the pass also cost 60 NOK. That’s a total of 180 NOK to see two films. It had gone from being affordable to slightly above average cinema price (which is about 80 NOK). Had I known about this in advance, I probably wouldn’t have gone to see the two films. 180 NOK is a lot of money. But I’d already used resources on actually getting there, so I paid and stayed to watch the two films.
The first film I saw was The Sword Of The Stranger, a samurai action-drama anime film. Definitely one of the better cinematic experiences I’ve had; I could really feel the adrenaline surging through me and my muscles tightening during the action scenes, so I genuinely felt as if I was on the edge of my seat. This was in large part due to the great music used during the action scenes. The animation ranged from excellent to not so excellent; some of the character animation in non-action scenes seemed choppy and some of the actual characters appeared a bit too simplisticly designed which didn’t always mesh that well with everything else on screen, but the action scenes and the backgrounds more than made up for these occasional shortcomings. It also had some likable characters, the odd touching moment and a decent (if somewhat convoluted) plot. It even had some great canine action, which I greatly appreciated. So it was very satisfying, even if it ultimately felt a bit plain as it didn’t really bring anything all that new to the table, just excelling in its execution as a quality anime samurai action romp. It should be applauded for its dynamic camera use though (if you can speak of camera use in normal animation these days), moving along with the action rather than just capturing it, which I can’t recall having seen in animation in quite this way before. Almost made me nauseous, but it only added to the feeling of excitement and suspense, if perhaps making me closer to actually falling off my seat. Highly recommended for anyone interested in animation or action.
Then I saw Wild Combination: A Portrait Of Arthur Russell, a documentary about gay musician Arthur Russell who unfortunately died of AIDS sometime in 1992. One of his songs was featured in Fidelity Wars #7. The actual director was actually there to actually present the film and to do some actual Q&A afterwards. That was a nice if a somewhat embarrassing surprise; I hadn’t seen it announced anywhere, and I think only three questions were asked. I tried to think of a good question, but was unable. Of course when I got home I finally thought of one: “Why did you call your documentary Wild Combination?” I’m genuinely curious as to why he did that. It’s the title of one of Arthur Russell’s perhaps best songs, but I’m sure that wasn’t the whole reasoning behind the name pick. Probably something to do with Arthur Russell being a combination of something and something.
The actual documentary was kind of… odd. Apparently the director was an experimental film maker and had initially wanted to use Arthur Russell’s music for some visual project, but then it turned into a more proper documentary. It was good though, just not what I had been expecting, and some of the sounds and images got stuck in the back of my brain afterwards. So perhaps the kind of work that will haunt you for a while afterwards. Recommended if you like his music.
The documentary is already out on DVD, so I should perhaps have saved my cinema money and bought that instead. I’m not sure if I’d want to re-watch it much, but it has some excellent looking extras, including two live performances by the man – hopefully his performance of “Love Comes Back” of which there was an excerpt from in the film, which was one of the scenes which haunted me afterwards – and a tribute performance by Joel Gibb – presumably of the film’s namesake song, “Wild Combination”, his version of which was featured on the tribute EP Four Songs By Arthur Russell. Perhaps I should add it to my wishlist this year. I should definitely add his folk-country CD Love Is Overtaking Me, which has some great songs on it.
I ordered the Lilo & Stitch special edition DVD from play.com to give to myself either on my birthday or for Christmas / Jul, but when it arrived in the mail I was taken aback by just how ugly the cover was. In most online shrunken down images it looks fine, but up close in real life… it doesn’t. I’ve been trying to find a good, big image of it online, but this was the best I found.
The horror... The ugly, ugly cover design horror...
The top of the cover looks decent. It has that airbrushed shine you find on most of the Disney DVDs. But the bottom half… It looks to me like it’s just a still from the film, though I could be wrong, not having seen the film for several years. But it looks grainy, and the colours look washed out, and to me it really screams out bootleg. It doesn’t mesh at all with the above image. And why are there two of Stitch on the cover? That’s an unusual practice, having the same character appear twice on a front cover, unless it is somehow necessary to reflect the content of the film. Which, in this case, it isn’t.
In short: What were they thinking?! Why couldn’t they have just gone with the top image and made a full cover out of it? Perhaps even going with the bottom image would have been better, as it would have at least scored a few more points on the consistency barometer and perhaps made for an overall better looking cover than slapping two images together in this way.
I’m tempted to try getting a refund, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the hassle nor if I would have the international online shopping laws on my side – can you demand a refund on something because it turns out to be uglier than you thought it would be? But then, I do really want to see this film again, and the extras are supposed to be decent on this special edition.
I really hate it when manufacturers make such ugly covers. There are a couple of other DVD I’ve been wanting to purchase, but which I haven’t due to awful cover designs. Had I known how ugly this would be I probably wouldn’t have ordered it.
