My Chemical Romance have been going strong since the day they came together in 2001, and have been gaining a worldwide reputation ever since. Although not always a good reputation, the New Jersey band have never been deterred from doing what they do and love best, which is making music that stands out from the crowd and makes a statement. Danger Days: The True Lives of The Fabulous Killjoys marks the fifth studio album from My Chemical Romance, and it truly is unlike anything the band have produced before and shows that they are indeed shedding their skin of old and emerging with something literally a lot more bright and colourful.
The previous album from My Chemical Romance, The Black Parade, was the first concept album from the band and was met with a very mixed reception from audiences and critics alike...
To read the rest of this review, and many other great articles, head over to http://mydifferenttake.wordpress.com/ - It's better than sitting at home with a cold!
Showing posts with label Reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reviews. Show all posts
Friday, 26 November 2010
Thursday, 18 November 2010
Deftones & Coheed And Cambria @ Southampton Guildhall, 15/11/10
The temperature outside the Southampton Guildhall this evening is rapidly dropping to near freezing whilst people are still queuing to get in through the doors. Luckily, the atmosphere on the inside is much less frosty. In fact, it’s positively electric with excitement and anticipation of the show ahead once the crowd starts culminating in the main room. The DJ is spinning tunes for the eager crowd, and to get everyone ready and fired up (and to generate a little heat to the cavernous room as well) Slayer is belted out through the PA system as a level of decibels normally equalled only by the performing bands! It does well to get the crowds warmed up and ready for the proceeding show, though, as when the lights dim at around 7:30 for New Jersey prog-prodigies Coheed And Cambria, the frontline of the crowd bellow out battle cries like there’s no tomorrow.
Coheed And Cambria take to the stage under a camouflage of strobe lights and spacey, atmospheric sound effects reflective of the kind of progressive rock/metal blends and sci-fi fiction that have given them their devoted fan base. When they introduce their set with the equally entrancing In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, it becomes clear that Coheed And Cambria know who they are playing to tonight...
Read the rest of this review, and many more awesome things, at http://mydifferenttake.wordpress.com/ - It's officially 100% better than watching paint dry!
Coheed And Cambria take to the stage under a camouflage of strobe lights and spacey, atmospheric sound effects reflective of the kind of progressive rock/metal blends and sci-fi fiction that have given them their devoted fan base. When they introduce their set with the equally entrancing In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, it becomes clear that Coheed And Cambria know who they are playing to tonight...
Read the rest of this review, and many more awesome things, at http://mydifferenttake.wordpress.com/ - It's officially 100% better than watching paint dry!
The Gaslight Anthem @ Southampton Guildhall, 22/10/10
In this current economical climate, a lot of people are beginning to struggle for the things they want or need. A lot of people are tightening their budgets and doing more things on the cheap. So it’s pretty reassuring to know that if you’re a music fan, you can still get a fantastic show for what you pay for entry nowadays! Tonight’s show at Southampton Guildhall involves an unlikely audience of all kinds of ages, all kinds of tastes and all kinds of fashions. All to see The Gaslight Anthem, the New Jersey blues-punkers who made it out of their city and have become a sensation over the last couple of years thanks to their own mix of old school sounds mixed with modern song writing and performances.
First up on tonight’s bill, though, is Sharks who appear on stage without any kind of announcement and catch the Guildhall audience a little off guard. Straight away they kick the evening off with an acapella introduction to their grimy, gritty Welsh punk with a good measure snarl to boot...
Read the rest of this review, and many more awesome things, at http://mydifferenttake.wordpress.com/ - Or would you rather go outside and play games? Yeah, thought not...
First up on tonight’s bill, though, is Sharks who appear on stage without any kind of announcement and catch the Guildhall audience a little off guard. Straight away they kick the evening off with an acapella introduction to their grimy, gritty Welsh punk with a good measure snarl to boot...
Read the rest of this review, and many more awesome things, at http://mydifferenttake.wordpress.com/ - Or would you rather go outside and play games? Yeah, thought not...
The Social Network (Contains Spoilers)
I think by this point it’s pretty safe to say that David Fincher is a dude who really knows what he’s doing. He may not have as many Oscars as Scorsese, as many classics as Spielberg or as much money as Cameron, but his repertoire shows that he definitely has it together and is more than capable of creating pieces of cinema that are sure to make heads turn. Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac – all of these have been incredibly tense and very intellectually challenging films, and The Social Network is no exception to this. Ironically enough, after seeing The Social Network I honestly couldn’t wait to write a blog about it and express my opinions of it on a public medium!
The Social Network, I personally think, is one of the most intellectually entertaining films not just of this year, but of recent years as well. Pair that with the fact that, at its centre point, it is a piece about one of the most used, talked about and potentially dangerous inventions of recent years and you have a film that is GOING to cause a stir, no matter what! The partly true, partly fictional story of the Harvard University based creators of the social networking site Facebook (which you’d be hard-pressed to find someone NOT on it now!) sees Jesse Eisenberg playing the role of Mark Zuckerberg, the main geek-brained creator of the infamous networking website. Eisenberg does a fantastic job playing Mark as he is able to deliver all his lines with such a straight face and blank attitude that it’s both believable and ironic in equal measures – believable because Eisenberg delivers all the computer jargon with such conviction you’d think he graduated from MIT, and ironic in the way that someone with such a lack of social interaction skills and emotional depth could create the world’s largest and most famous social networking site. But that’s the irony of the situation to begin with, really – the fact that The Social Network starts with a five minute scene of Mark basically ruining a date by gradually insulting his date more and more because his mind obviously operates on different levels from normal humans goes to show just how socially awkward and emotionally blind Eisenberg’s Mark is. Also, as a side note, that first scene of the film where the awkwardly sarcastic Mark and his date Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) are sat around a table was probably the hardest part of the film to write! From this early point, it’s clearly established that Mark is not just socially blind, but more a borderline Asperger’s patient, which is again why it’s ironic he managed to create Facebook.
Whilst Eisenberg does an amazing job as the sarcastically smarter-than-thou Mark, it’s Andrew Garfield who truly shines through as Mark’s roommate and co-founder of Facebook, Eduardo Saverin. Garfield is genuinely an amazing actor in The Social Network, providing the other half of the entire story that makes up the script of the film. Saverin is the more socially aware, richer go-getter of the two founders which is what starts to provide Eisenberg’s Mark with the conflicts he faces, as for someone so socially unaware, he’s friends with someone who is more popular, has more money and can intellectually keep up with Mark. The scene where Garfield truly steals the show is at the point where Saverin is given further contracts to sign and realises exactly what his shares in Facebook are after a corporate investment and, even though you don’t feel as much of a connection to this jealous and somewhat spiteful portrayal of Eduardo Saverin, you can’t help but feel bad for how shunned and cast out he gets.
This is not to say that Saverin was the “bad guy” in any of this, and that’s part of the beauty of The Social Network – there are no clearly defined “good” or “bad” characters. Each of the characters is right or wrong about different things in equal measures – at the point where Saverin wants to monetise Facebook through advertising, Eisenberg’s Mark doesn’t want to. He wants to “not stop the party before 11” as the parallel goes. BUT, as it now turns out, Facebook ended up charging for advertising on their spaces and that is now why Facebook is worth so much money, and has made billionaires of Saverin and Zuckerberg. So in the end, neither of them are exactly right or wrong, which is what makes their characters so compelling throughout the entire film.
Justin Timberlake is a bit questionable in the role of Sean Parker, and I’m having a hard time making my mind up about him. On the one hand, I think Timberlake is doing a good job for himself in becoming a legitimate actor as well as singer, and I think the Social Network will work well for him as a stepping stone to further good roles. However, his particular role in this film I found a little hard to accept as it progressed. At the start of the film, Timberlake obviously does a good job of becoming the Napster Mastermind Sean Parker – a cocky rich guy who dropped out of school, managed to screw around in the Music industry and has gotten plenty of fame and fortune because of it. Let’s face it; of course Justin Timberlake would be good at playing that role… But as the film went on, and the character of Sean Parker had to become gradually more genuine and less of a “mogul” type, Timberlake became a little less believable in his character, and that’s where he started to falter. So to begin with, Timberlake’s character works well and drives the storyline, but towards the end he starts to become less of a steering wheel and more of a regular cog in the works. But he still makes for an interesting character, and I think that Timberlake might actually have some kind of possible career in film ahead of him.
One aspect of The Social Network that was interesting, and in fact of many of Fincher’s films, is the way in which the story is told. The Social Network isn’t exactly told in a series of flashbacks as the film actually starts back before Zuckerberg created Facebook or even his first attempt at an internet-wide practical joke of Facemash, but more with cut-aways to the legal proceedings that followed after Facebook became something bigger than any of its creators. At the end of the film, the storylines catch up to each other and come to one, single conclusion as the story of the creation of Facebook meets with the courtroom drama that ensued after it. In this way, the delivery of the information that drives the story is evenly spread out, and in some places even comical with the way that it is cut together to tell the story of certain incidents in Facebook’s creation. What is also interesting about this form of storytelling is that it keeps you guessing as to how they all got to that point – at one part towards the end, you get the sense that Saverin and Zuckerberg are almost at a point of an understanding again before everything gets far worse, but the point is that it keeps you guessing at times, and that’s what gives The Social Network’s story its edge.
I should also say that the film’s soundtrack is worth a mention at this point. The soundtrack to The Social Network has been written and put together entirely by Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor and legendary rock producer Atticus Ross, so it would definitely make for an interesting listen if you know your music history AND enjoy using Facebook as well, considering that two veritable legends of modern rock music have come together to create this soundtrack.
One thing that The Social Network does make very clear is, ironically enough, the dangers of using Facebook. It’s actually quoted in the film “It’s addictive. I’m on it like, 5 times a day!” and about how “the internet isn’t writing in pencil, it’s in pen” and it’s repeatedly referenced at how just using Facebook is all about putting all of your personal details up on a public forum for anyone you know to access. It’s been recently stated by Eric Schmidt, boss of Google.com, about how the dangers of using Facebook and other social networking sites won’t be apparent for a while, but will still be there all the same. Schmidt anticipates that the current generation of Facebook users won’t be worried about identity theft, but more about how to escape the online identity they’ve been creating for themselves all this time. He states “Young people may one day have to change their names in order to escape their previous online activity” and that could end up being very true, and The Social Network does a good job of beginning to subliminally imply this.
Ultimately, there is very little to fault The Social Network on, except for one small part where in one scene they have Prince Albert played by someone who is CLEARLY American and looks nothing like Prince Albert at all. That detail aside, The Social Network is an awesome film with great characters and brilliant casting all round, and I think it has easily made its way into my Top Films of the Year. It will also be interesting to see how Fincher tackles the re-make of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo next year with Rooney Mara from this film becoming Lisbeth Salander. I’m giving The Social Network 8 out of 10 for sheer impressiveness and intelligence, and I think everyone should make an effort to catch it in cinemas!
Read many other awesome articles like this at http://mydifferenttake.wordpress.com/ - It's way better than doing nothing at all!
The Social Network, I personally think, is one of the most intellectually entertaining films not just of this year, but of recent years as well. Pair that with the fact that, at its centre point, it is a piece about one of the most used, talked about and potentially dangerous inventions of recent years and you have a film that is GOING to cause a stir, no matter what! The partly true, partly fictional story of the Harvard University based creators of the social networking site Facebook (which you’d be hard-pressed to find someone NOT on it now!) sees Jesse Eisenberg playing the role of Mark Zuckerberg, the main geek-brained creator of the infamous networking website. Eisenberg does a fantastic job playing Mark as he is able to deliver all his lines with such a straight face and blank attitude that it’s both believable and ironic in equal measures – believable because Eisenberg delivers all the computer jargon with such conviction you’d think he graduated from MIT, and ironic in the way that someone with such a lack of social interaction skills and emotional depth could create the world’s largest and most famous social networking site. But that’s the irony of the situation to begin with, really – the fact that The Social Network starts with a five minute scene of Mark basically ruining a date by gradually insulting his date more and more because his mind obviously operates on different levels from normal humans goes to show just how socially awkward and emotionally blind Eisenberg’s Mark is. Also, as a side note, that first scene of the film where the awkwardly sarcastic Mark and his date Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) are sat around a table was probably the hardest part of the film to write! From this early point, it’s clearly established that Mark is not just socially blind, but more a borderline Asperger’s patient, which is again why it’s ironic he managed to create Facebook.
Whilst Eisenberg does an amazing job as the sarcastically smarter-than-thou Mark, it’s Andrew Garfield who truly shines through as Mark’s roommate and co-founder of Facebook, Eduardo Saverin. Garfield is genuinely an amazing actor in The Social Network, providing the other half of the entire story that makes up the script of the film. Saverin is the more socially aware, richer go-getter of the two founders which is what starts to provide Eisenberg’s Mark with the conflicts he faces, as for someone so socially unaware, he’s friends with someone who is more popular, has more money and can intellectually keep up with Mark. The scene where Garfield truly steals the show is at the point where Saverin is given further contracts to sign and realises exactly what his shares in Facebook are after a corporate investment and, even though you don’t feel as much of a connection to this jealous and somewhat spiteful portrayal of Eduardo Saverin, you can’t help but feel bad for how shunned and cast out he gets.
This is not to say that Saverin was the “bad guy” in any of this, and that’s part of the beauty of The Social Network – there are no clearly defined “good” or “bad” characters. Each of the characters is right or wrong about different things in equal measures – at the point where Saverin wants to monetise Facebook through advertising, Eisenberg’s Mark doesn’t want to. He wants to “not stop the party before 11” as the parallel goes. BUT, as it now turns out, Facebook ended up charging for advertising on their spaces and that is now why Facebook is worth so much money, and has made billionaires of Saverin and Zuckerberg. So in the end, neither of them are exactly right or wrong, which is what makes their characters so compelling throughout the entire film.
Justin Timberlake is a bit questionable in the role of Sean Parker, and I’m having a hard time making my mind up about him. On the one hand, I think Timberlake is doing a good job for himself in becoming a legitimate actor as well as singer, and I think the Social Network will work well for him as a stepping stone to further good roles. However, his particular role in this film I found a little hard to accept as it progressed. At the start of the film, Timberlake obviously does a good job of becoming the Napster Mastermind Sean Parker – a cocky rich guy who dropped out of school, managed to screw around in the Music industry and has gotten plenty of fame and fortune because of it. Let’s face it; of course Justin Timberlake would be good at playing that role… But as the film went on, and the character of Sean Parker had to become gradually more genuine and less of a “mogul” type, Timberlake became a little less believable in his character, and that’s where he started to falter. So to begin with, Timberlake’s character works well and drives the storyline, but towards the end he starts to become less of a steering wheel and more of a regular cog in the works. But he still makes for an interesting character, and I think that Timberlake might actually have some kind of possible career in film ahead of him.
One aspect of The Social Network that was interesting, and in fact of many of Fincher’s films, is the way in which the story is told. The Social Network isn’t exactly told in a series of flashbacks as the film actually starts back before Zuckerberg created Facebook or even his first attempt at an internet-wide practical joke of Facemash, but more with cut-aways to the legal proceedings that followed after Facebook became something bigger than any of its creators. At the end of the film, the storylines catch up to each other and come to one, single conclusion as the story of the creation of Facebook meets with the courtroom drama that ensued after it. In this way, the delivery of the information that drives the story is evenly spread out, and in some places even comical with the way that it is cut together to tell the story of certain incidents in Facebook’s creation. What is also interesting about this form of storytelling is that it keeps you guessing as to how they all got to that point – at one part towards the end, you get the sense that Saverin and Zuckerberg are almost at a point of an understanding again before everything gets far worse, but the point is that it keeps you guessing at times, and that’s what gives The Social Network’s story its edge.
I should also say that the film’s soundtrack is worth a mention at this point. The soundtrack to The Social Network has been written and put together entirely by Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor and legendary rock producer Atticus Ross, so it would definitely make for an interesting listen if you know your music history AND enjoy using Facebook as well, considering that two veritable legends of modern rock music have come together to create this soundtrack.
One thing that The Social Network does make very clear is, ironically enough, the dangers of using Facebook. It’s actually quoted in the film “It’s addictive. I’m on it like, 5 times a day!” and about how “the internet isn’t writing in pencil, it’s in pen” and it’s repeatedly referenced at how just using Facebook is all about putting all of your personal details up on a public forum for anyone you know to access. It’s been recently stated by Eric Schmidt, boss of Google.com, about how the dangers of using Facebook and other social networking sites won’t be apparent for a while, but will still be there all the same. Schmidt anticipates that the current generation of Facebook users won’t be worried about identity theft, but more about how to escape the online identity they’ve been creating for themselves all this time. He states “Young people may one day have to change their names in order to escape their previous online activity” and that could end up being very true, and The Social Network does a good job of beginning to subliminally imply this.
Ultimately, there is very little to fault The Social Network on, except for one small part where in one scene they have Prince Albert played by someone who is CLEARLY American and looks nothing like Prince Albert at all. That detail aside, The Social Network is an awesome film with great characters and brilliant casting all round, and I think it has easily made its way into my Top Films of the Year. It will also be interesting to see how Fincher tackles the re-make of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo next year with Rooney Mara from this film becoming Lisbeth Salander. I’m giving The Social Network 8 out of 10 for sheer impressiveness and intelligence, and I think everyone should make an effort to catch it in cinemas!
Read many other awesome articles like this at http://mydifferenttake.wordpress.com/ - It's way better than doing nothing at all!
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