Author: David Medsker (Page 34 of 59)

Friday Video – Foxy Shazam, “I Like It”

January 27, 2012 / David Medsker

Click here to listen to Foxy Shazam’s The Church of Rock and Roll on Spotify

All right, so there is no video to speak of here – all you see is a cover of the single. But we had to highlight this track because it’s AWESOME, a surefire Single of the Year candidate…if we still made lists like that.

The first single from their new album The Church of Rock and Roll, “I Like It” isn’t the biggest sounding Foxy Shazam song ever recorded (though not by much), but it sums up their passions and goals better than pretty much anything they’ve done up to this point. Big, Queen-like harmonies: check. Slightly off-kilter arrangement: check. Swagger: check. Sex: checkmate. Good luck getting that so-simple-it’s-brilliant chorus of “You’ve got the biggest black ass I’ve ever seen / And I like it, I like it” out of your heads between now and Monday morning. The one question is: how on earth are these guys from Cincinnati? They arrested two guys in Cincy for holding hands once.

Music, Videos

Foxy Shazam Friday Videos Happy Hour I Like It The Church of Rock and Roll video of the week

Blu-ray Review: Dream House

January 26, 2012 / David Medsker

Months before its late-September release date, we received notification that “Dream House” would be screened in our area. And then, at the last minute, the screening was pulled. The screening for a movie that starred Daniel Craig, Rachael Weisz, and Naomi Watts…was pulled. That is not a good sign, to say the least. It speaks to a sudden lack of confidence in your product, and the studio has gone into damage control mode in order to preserve whatever box office potential it may still have.

Good call, as it turns out, though that’s not to say that “Dream House” didn’t have a wealth of promise. Will Atenton (Craig) quits his job to spend more time with his wife (Weisz) and kids while writing the Great American Novel, but almost as soon as he’s home, his family is threatened by a mysterious stalker. His neighbor Ann (Watts) is sympathetic, but she’s the only one. Once Will discovers that a mass murder took place in his house, he decides to find out more about the crime in question, only to discover that the trail leads directly back to him.

That’s a pretty damn good setup – the only question is where you go from there, and that is where “Dream House” loses its way. There are a myriad of paths the story could have taken, but damned if they didn’t take the simplest option available. Seriously, the explanation for why things went down the way they did is just head-slappingly dumb, and it kills us that we cannot explain why. Add just one more layer to the story, and this could be one of those “Jacob’s Ladder”-type movies where you never really know what is real and what is fantasy. Instead, they took the easy way out. Sometimes it’s better to keep it simple. This, however, is not one of those times, not when you begin the movie by pulling the wool over the audience’s eyes. If your movie is high-concept, then see it through to the very end.

Anyone who grew up watching M. Night Shyamalan movies – and are therefore always on the look for the hook or the twist – will not miss the clues in “Dream House,” which form a veritable trail of bread crumbs. Hopefully the three leads will make another movie down the road, because goodness knows that under better circumstances, they could create something special. (Universal 2012)

Click to buy “Dream House” from Amazon

Movies

Daniel Craig Dream House Naomi Watts Rachael Weisz

DVD Review: Queen: Days of Our Lives

January 25, 2012 / David Medsker

The big selling point of “Days of Our Lives,” the exhaustive two-hour BBC documentary on epic rock quartet Queen, is the material culled from the band’s very early days and their very last days. There are live performances from Smile, the group guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor formed before Queen, and some video of future singer Fredde Mercury singing “Big Spender.” The later footage, shot on the sets of the last music videos Mercury would perform, his body slowly but surely being ravaged by AIDS, are at once heart-warming and devastating. Mercury was positively gaunt, yet he gathered every ounce of will he could muster to go out fighting.

May and Taylor are wonderfully candid in their interviews, as are fellow managers, producers, roadies, and side men they recruited. (They even brought in Ultravox’s Midge Ure to talk about the band’s legendary performance at Live Aid.) Everyone has good stories to tell, and there are no attempts at revisionist history. If an album didn’t work – say, 1982’s Hot Space – they own up to it, and May is the first to admit that some bad business decisions early on led rendered them financially destitute for years, and it was out of desperation from that that they made A Night at the Opera. Best of all, each album is given an equal amount of coverage, with the exception of the soundtrack to “Flash Gordon,” of which the title track is played but never discussed.

The one unfortunate aspect of “Days of Our Lives” is that bassist John Deacon did not come back to do an interview, so the producers were forced to rely on archive interview footage for half the band. Yes, he’s retired from performing, but this seems like as good an occasion as any to put the Queen hat back on for a day and talk shop. It’s a small quibble, though, because the documentary hits all of the highlights of a truly remarkable career…with one small exception: there is no mention of the “Bohemian Rhapsody” scene from “Wayne’s World.” We would have loved to see them talk about that. (Eagle Vision 2012)

Click to buy “Queen: Days of Our Lives” from Amazon

Music, Videos

BBC documentary Days of Our Lives Freddie Mercury Queen

Friday Video – Hard-Fi, “Suburban Knights”

January 20, 2012 / David Medsker

Click here to listen to Hard-Fi’s Stars of CCTV on Spotify

We would not bank on this, but we’re fairly positive that one time, while watching a New York Jets game, we heard this song in the background leading up to the kickoff following a Jets score. Which, if true, is awesome on a number of levels. One, because we love that mile-wide “Heeeeeey, Oooooooooh, Ahhhhhhh” hook in the chorus. Two, because it’s called “Suburban Knights,” and the New York Jets play their games in New Jersey. Those jokes just write themselves.

Hard-Fi lead singer and principal songwriter Richard Archer is a funny bloke. We spoken with him three times, and each time he seemed to be talking faster than he had the previous time, which is pretty impressive considering that he talked really fast the first time we spoke. (Eventually, we got playback equipment that allowed us to slow the tape down. Man, what a godsend that was.) Sadly, the band’s most recent album, 2011’s Killer Sounds, is import-only, a growing trend with UK acts (Kaiser Chiefs, The Feeling). Luckily for us, it’s available on Spotify. Seriously, how did we live without Spotify?

Speaking of which, yes, the above Spotify link does not point to the album that features “Suburban Knights.” There is a reason for that – Stars of CCTV is better. It also features a nifty cover of the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.” Dig in.

Music, Videos

Friday Videos Happy Hour Hard-Fi Once Upon a Time in the West Richard Archer Suburban Knights video of the week

Friday Video – Diamond, “Sunburn”

January 13, 2012 / David Medsker

Click here to listen to Diamond’s Don’t Lose Your Cool on Spotify

Man, is this a nice breath of fresh air – high-energy pop rock without the snark.

This Baltimore/Chicago quartet has surely run into dozens of comparisons to Weezer and Jimmy Eat World, and they are both apt and fair, but there’s something different here; the vocals aren’t pinched. There is an effortlessness in singer Justin Gilman’s voice that Rivers Cuomo will never know, and the hooks are gargantuan. Between this and the upcoming album from Cheap Girls, 2012 is already off to a good start for pop that rocks, and thank goodness. We were running out of patience for all of those hipster folkie outfits with a full-time ukulele player.