This is me and my friends in 1984… in my mind.

My mom pointed out this video to me, since she knows I love Footloose:

I know that seems weird, but I really do like this movie. It’s even in my top 20, I believe. It just captures a big snapshot of my youth, despite the fact that nothing in the movie actually happened during my own particular youth. Playing chicken on a tractor? Fighting a local law prohibiting dancing? Crossing the state line to go to a bar and dance with some rednecks? Angry warehouse dancing? I can’t say I enjoyed any of those activities, but for some reason, the movie always makes me nostalgic. And with great music and dancing, how can you say no:

Anyone else out there like Footloose as much as I do? I know I’m not alone. I can’t be.

You must respect the “Balloon View Cam.” You simply must!

Ryan here. I’ve not watched many movies lately because Angela and I have gotten into some TV shows on Netflix and other “resources” lately. One that we watched a LOT of in the last few months was The Office.

I know that the show just finished, and that you’ve probably formed an opinion about it one way or the other. But you should check it out again, since it has moments when it’s one of the funniest shows out there.

I really liked the British original series of the same name, so I was initially skeptical 9 or so years ago when they made an American version. Why mess with something that was so great, right? Well, they did mess with it, but they tweaked it in a way that really gave the American version its own flare. It was less mean-hearted, and a bit more on the absurd side, which played well with me. They also fleshed out the supporting characters a lot more, although they had around 15 times more episodes in which to do so.

It’s a shame this painting didn’t show up in the conference room until the final episode.

Anyhow, I keep meaning to write reviews of movies here, but that’s hard when you’re not watching movies. So I thought I’d check in and see what everyone else was up to. Have you seen anything good lately?

This is a long overdue review of one of the best albums (and Djake’s favorite album) of the year so far. Vampire Weekend’s tertiary album, Modern Vampires of the City, may well be this group’s finest. I can only describe it as being nostalgic; upon first listen it already sounds like your favorite album. What I mean by that is, although it is not my favorite album of the year (that coveted title goes to Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories), it merely sounds like it. It’s as if someone took one of your old favorite albums and made it better…but without ruining it.

There are many reasons Modern Vampires sounds like a old friend. The album borrows ideas from other genres and even some of their previous releases. “Obvious Bicycle” takes its beat from the song “Keep Cool Babylon” by Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus.

“Unbelievers” is so Buddy Holly. “Diane Young” is Buddy Holly-ish too. Not to mention, this song has some super cool voice manipulation going on.

Listen, it’s cool!

I listened to an Ezra Koenig interview and read about the effect. It’s called formant shifting. It’s basically a type of sound editing that has the same effect as changing the size of your vocal tract. The bigger you are (usually) the longer your vocal tract is, and the deeper your voice is. The smaller you are, the shorter it is and the higher your voice is. It would be like having Andre the Giant and a pre-pubescent boy singing with Ezra Koenig. They could be singing the same notes, but if Andre sings, it’s going to sound a lot deeper just based on the proportions of his vocal tract.

“Step” uses another outside source as it’s backbone: the tune “Step to My Girl” by Souls of Mischief. Also, I’m convinced that the chord progression is the same as Pachelbel’s Canon and Gigue in D (aka. the song played at every wedding).

In “Don’t Lie” there’s a brief moment of baroque pop in the background (around 0:54 in the video) that is reminiscent of “M97″ from their self-titled album.

Koenig utilizes his versatility in “Finger Back” by implementing some falsetto in the style of Contra.

“Worship You” apparently began as a Celtic-type song.

Now we come to “Ya Hey”, the veritable climax of the album. This song is addictive. The title’s meaning becomes more clear upon hearing the skewed voices in the chorus. “Ya hey” becomes “yahweh”. Of course, the story in the song is familiar if you listen to the lyrics: “through the fire and through the flames / you won’t even say your name / only ‘I Am that I Am'”. The parable of the burning bush has never sounded cooler.

The final track of the album, “Hudson”, has aspects of trip-hop à la Massive Attack or Portishead.

Some might view this familiarity as a bad thing; unoriginal. To that I say, nothing is really “original”. Borrowing and sampling in music has been going on FOREVER! During the Renaissance, composers frequently used pre-existing hymns or chant melodies in their music. Brahms uses a theme from a Bach cantata in the final movement of his fourth symphony. Percy Grainger traveled around England to record people singing folk songs on wax cylinders, which he then adapted and integrated into his compositions. There are countless examples of this! I’m tired of the pretentious whining about the merit of a musician based on “originality”. Everybody borrows from everybody else; a musician’s merit is not based on whether or not they borrow ideas from other musician, but how well they do it and how well they make it their own. Modern Vampires nails it.

(I must thank Djake for bringing so much of this to my attention!)

Movie pairing: Forgetting Sarah Marshall (I think they actually drink this beer in the movie. In Hawaii even.). Mahalo.

Since Phil has been so generous to help contribute to the welfare of Cinematic Attic, buying it’s authors beer, I have decided to start a beer page. Whenever I try a new beer (that Phil buys for me), I’ll quickly review it and also give it a movie-pairing. Then, you comment if you’ve ever tried the beer or have something to say about my suggested movie-pairing. You can find the link to the Beer Page at the top of the main Cinematic Attic page where it says “Beer”. Be sure to periodically check the “Quotes” and “Movie Log” pages too as I don’t think it shows down at the bottom if there has been a new post on those pages as it does our regular posts.

Any Cinematic Attic writer is welcome to contribute to the page. Mi casa, tu post! All you have to do is put “beer” in the Categories section.

Well, as they say in Russian, “За здоровье”! Or just “cheers” in American…

This little doc about a dive recording studio in the San Fernando Valley is an entertaining look into one of Rocks hidden gems.  Featuring and directed by one of the best drummers out there, Dave Grohl, who gives an insiders view of this little known rock mecca.  After hearing that the place where Nirvana laid down the tracks for Nevermind was/went out of business, Dave sets out to pay homage to the prolific studio.  Turns out hundreds upon thousands of gold/platinum/titanium records were cut in this scuzzy studio.

The business really got its start when the various members of Fleetwood Mac met up and joined forces for their self titled debut.  They may have put Sound City on the map but I personally can’t stand that band and yet I still enjoyed the movie.  Plus, I grudgingly have to say, Stevie was actually funny during her interview until she started caterwauling.

Did you know “they” screwed up the “code” when they started digitizing music?  Well, that’s what Neil Young had to say; and he is joined by a super group of rock musicians like: Trent Reznor, Tom Petty, Josh Homme, and Rick Rubin.  All there to sing their praises of the smelly yet acoustically superb studio and the beauty of recording the old timey way (Trent is kinda the exception to the rule here).

Looks like a Mentos parody is about to break out.

The second half of the documentary stops looking at the history and starts focusing on the sound board.  Not to sound ignorant (maybe Paul can educate me on this one) but isn’t a sound board a glorified equalizer?  To Grohl’s surprise and benefit, the recording equipment didn’t end up in the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame when Sound City went under so he bought it.  To buck the trend of digital recording, he and his famous compatriots record some jam sessions with the analog equipment to fill out the running time.

If you consider yourself a rocker, and you don’t have to rock too terribly hard considering Barry Manilow and Rick Springfield are featured in this flick, then you should check out this fun film.  Don’t let those softies dissuade you if you do rock hard because there are some true icons that show up to demonstrate how easy it is to rock out with some old school components.

]]> http://cinematicattic.com/?feed=rss2&p=941 5 http://cinematicattic.com/?p=2396 http://cinematicattic.com/?p=2396#comments Sat, 11 May 2013 22:34:08 +0000 http://cinematicattic.com/?p=2396 Continue reading →]]> Deuce: Sitz! No one can comment on Cinematic Attic unless they have a WordPress account!
Sitz: You’re crapping with me, right?!
Deuce: No, man, seriously.
Sitz: We gotta do something…now!
Deuce: No, YOU gotta do something, ’cause I’m too lazy, ok? [click]
Sitz: Wait! Deuce! …Deuce?

This was an actual transcription of a conversation between these two gentlemen on a cold, stormy night last week. Well, Sitz fixed Cinematic Attic so that anyone can comment! You just type in your comment, your name, and your email. Don’t worry, you won’t receive any extra emails and your email address isn’t posted. So, get commenting! Make some dialogue! Even if it’s on a really old post, we’ll read it and probably comment back! It’ll be fun, ok?! You owe it to yourself and to us that if you read our posts you should comment. We can’t read your mind, ok? For your health!

We were celebrating May the 4th, National Star Wars Day, so the movie was Return of the Jedi. I have had tested the projector both inside and outside once before, but it was during this official test-run that I learned that even though the system isn’t perfect, the whole experience is completely worth it.

My father-in-law loaned me an old tripod screen of his to use. I had considered using a sheet or something similar, but the screen, I found, allows for a better picture. The projector is probably the cheapest money could buy. A “good” projector probably is about ten times as expensive as mine. I’ll be perfectly honest, the picture is a little fuzzy and it’s difficult to see details. Black and white movies are the best, and that might be the majority of the movies I choose to watch outside this summer. Just think, though, it’ll be like stepping back in time to the days of noir detective films, sci-fi, or western flicks of the 50s! The size of the screen is about the same size as my widescreen tv downstairs, but you can sit fairly far away and still see really well. Having great picture quality is not my priority here, though. The projector is just a vessel to be able to get a movie outside in the first place.

The sound quality is better than the picture. I have a Sony iPod dock that has output capability. The projector has it’s own speaker, which projects a more muffled, tinny sound. The dock provides a more focused sound, if that makes any sense. It’s good sound, the only problem is that a person who sits in a direct line of the dock speaker will experience a higher volume than someone sitting off to the side. Remember here, folks, I’m trying to make a drive-in experience, not an indoor theatre experience. I’m not striving for perfection. I want to be a bit sensitive to my neighbors, too, however. The people who live east of us have air conditioning and keep their windows closed most of the time. The college kids who live west of us mostly keep their windows closed, too. I’ll probably have to do the gentlemanly thing and go talk to them first and let them know ahead of time. If you’re looking to be impressed by the sound, don’t expect it in my backyard.

Doesn’t look very romantic? Wait until the lights dim…

Now I’m going to tell you about the best part about watching a movie outside. Ready? Drum roll, please… You’re watching a movie outside.. Watching a movie! Outside. Outside! When we watched Return of the Jedi, Sam was laying on the swing, Djake and I each on our own chair, all of us with comfy blankets wrapped around us. Popcorn. Good popcorn. During the Jabba palace scene I cracked open a cold one, looked up toward the star-stuffed sky, smiled, winked at Djake (I think I even gave him “the shooter”), raised my bottle in salute to, well, myself really, celebrating the fact that the air I was breathing while I was enjoying this cinematic epic film was fresh and not circulated air. I think I actually heard an owl hoot on some high perch a few cotton trees away. While Luke was telling his father he wouldn’t fight him, throwing his light saber aside, I swear I saw a shooting star stream across the eastern sky. Once the opening crawl dissipated at the beginning, giving away to that great shot of the Imperial Shuttle cruising by, I no longer thought about the picture or the sound quality. I was in movie watching bliss.

Well, what this means for you is that I plan on watching a lot of movies in the backyard this summer, and you’re invited. Before I screen anything, I’ll post an advertisement on Cinematic Attic. If you’re interested, RSVP in the comment section of the post and I’ll send you directions to the house (just post your email and I’ll get back to you). Any reader of Cinematic Attic is invited! I just need to know how much popcorn to tell Sam to make (she makes the best popcorn!!) and how much beer/sodapop to chill. Keep checking Cinematic Attic for the advertisement of the first showing. Probably will be mid-June or so.

I’ll leave you with a non-related Joe Bob Briggs quote… “If you hate what you’re seeing, you call it sex and violence. If you like it, you call it “romance and adventure.”” Check it out!

Happy Star Wars Day, everybody! Be sure to enjoy a Star Wars movie or two, or three… or six if you’re into that. Other activities you might think about to help you in the celebration:
1) Pull the ears off a Gundark.
2) Drink blue milk.
3) Head on over to your nearest Tosche Station and pick up some power converters.
4) Stand on your head and float a rock with your mind.
5) Enjoy a good ol’ fashioned game of Dejarik. Just remember, though, to let the wookie win.
6) Adopt an Ewok. If you’re on a budget, a Jawa.
7) Watch old Kessel Run highlights. Remember when Han did it in under 12 parsecs?
8) Go downtown and join the picketers for the “Han Shot First” campaign.
9) During the fireworks display, drum on those old Stormtrooper helmets that are just taking up room in your closet.
10) Kiss your sister.

Enjoy

DEUCE: All I knew was that Life of Pi was a book, written recently, that was about a boy in a lifeboat, on the ocean…with a tiger. That was it. And, essentially, in the movie at least, that really is it. When people would talk about Life of Pi or I would come across it somehow, and though it did have quite a bit of it, I always envisioned a story laced in fantasy and philosophy. The story in the movie, at least, exhibits more realism and less metaphor (except for the end — Holy cow!!), which I previously thought I’d be encountering. I was expecting the main drive of the story to involve deep, thought-provoking meaning-of-life conversations between human and tiger. Shows you how much I really knew about this… [tag!]

SITZMAN: I was glad that Deuce asked me to do a tag-team review on this movie, since it gave me a chance to revisit the book, too. I had read the book about 8 years or so ago, right around the time it came out. I think I may have even read it twice. And I’d seen the movie, too, but I also re-watched it specially for this review. Not that I’m complaining, though: if need be, you can get through both on a long, boring Sunday afternoon, like I did. But right away, I’ll build up suspense and not indicate which was better: the book, or the movie. [tag!]

DEUCE: So, I knew Life of Pi existed and, to prove it, Djake saw it and reported back to me. He told me it was really, really good, and the cgi on the tiger was really, really good, too. Yeah, I’ll get around to seeing it, I thought. It’ll be on Redbox soon. Well, it was soon, and I got a text from Redbox giving me a code for a free rental. We took advantage.

“Let’s watch it on the downstairs tv,” Sam suggested. I’m glad she did so. The visuals and sound were perfect. If we would’ve watched it on the upstairs system (normal tube tv with tv-speaker sound, and old dvd player), I wonder what I would’ve missed, because Djake was right — the special effects were astounding. Probably more than astounding, actually. I’d go as far to say that Life of Pi has the best cgi of any film. Yup. I’m pretty sure the actor who played Pi was in front of a green screen quite a bit, but it looked SO real, and the attention to detail really, really… REALLY paid off here. I don’t think that was a real tiger, but it looked so, SO real. [tag!]

Nope! That tiger’s fake.

SITZMAN: Actually, Deuce is completely right. I feel like a bit of a dumbass admitting this, but I didn’t actually know that tiger was CGI. Considering that my dad does dental work on tigers (this is true), that may make me sound especially like a dumbass, but let me defend myself a bit. I said I didn’t know it was CGI, but that’s because I didn’t think about it. And to me, that’s a testament to how well the movie was done: It was so masterfully blended that you didn’t even notice where human stopped and computer began. But the ability to animate animals to such a precise and complete degree really astounded me. [tag in, Deuce, help me!]

DEUCE: The story in Life of Pi has so many layers. However, when watching the film, familiar thoughts and emotions came back from when I was, and still am, interested in lost-at-sea non-fiction books. This was probably the main reason why I liked the film so much. I enjoyed the film pretty much on that one degree alone: it was essentially a shipwreck story. Many people can attribute their enjoyment of the film to many, many other qualities, but mine doesn’t go too deep. I don’t want to pull away from my thoughts about the movie here, but I want to use this space to share my favorite lost-at-sea books (hey, come on! It’s very rare I talk about books, so I’m just gonna endulge myself and plug away here):
1) Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World by Joan Druett: A group of four sailers are stuck on an island for almost two years and plan a harrowing journey back to New Zealand, 285 miles to the north.
2) Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Lillenbrand: American bomber pilot (and Olympian) Louis Zamperini’s plane gets shot down over the Pacific. He survives with a couple of his co-pilots. He endures 47 days on a raft on the ocean fighting sharks, thirst, and starvation only to be captured by the Japanese and tortured everyday for another three years in prisoner camps.
3) In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick: Many people say this is the story that Herman Melville got his ideas for Moby Dick.
4) Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea by Steven Callahan: Sailing by himself in the Atlantic, Callahan’s boat has an accident and he has just seconds to grab what he can into an air raft and hope for the best.
5) In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors by Doug Stanton: Remember in Jaws when Robert Shaw tells the story of when, during WWII, his ship is sunk by a Japanese torpedo and hundreds of sailors float in the open ocean for days drowning or getting eaten by sharks, ending his shocking story by saying “We delivered the bomb”? This is that story. [tag]

A double serving of Pi. And yes, I should be slapped for that pun.

SITZMAN: Since we’re getting bookish now, I’ll get into the real question I’ve been dealing with a lot this year in my book and movie projects: can the movie ever be better than the book? In this case, you may even be able to argue “yes,” but with a few qualifications. The main reason I’d be inclined to say the movie is better is because so much about the story is so visual. Yann Martel is a very good descriptive author, but you can only describe clouds and water in so many ways before your brain shuts off and fills in a mental stock image of both. The movie makes all of that jump out and amplifies it in a wonderful way. That goes also for elements like the animals (which, again, I can’t believe computers these days can do that kind of stuff) and boat descriptions (which, to be honest, I don’t really give too much of a shit about–if I read the words “aft” or “gunwhale” more than once, my eyes simply glaze over, but if I can actually see Pi moving about the boat, that’s much better since I don’t have to care what the different parts are called).

Of course, there is always more story in a book, and this is certainly true with Life of Pi. I think the first 30 or 40 percent of the book dealt mainly with Pi’s life in India and his various religions, and the part on the boat comes quite a bit later and seems to almost be a completely different short story. I liked the religious exploration aspect that was more prevalent in the book, but the movie did do justice to it, while blending it a bit more with the boat story. I think Deuce is about to wrap up his thoughts, but if you stick around afterwards, I’ll give you a few of my favorite quotes from the book. [tag!]

DEUCE: Well, in the end, Life of Pi is my second favorite film of 2012 (behind Django Unchained). The end left me wanting to watch the movie over again, multiple times, so I’m definitely going to purchase it on Blu-Ray someday soon. 17/17 on the Sitz scale. [tag]

SITZMAN: I’m not sure I can give it a 17/17, but it’d be pretty close. The main reason is I think I just got over-saturated with Life of Pi in the last few days, and its “re-watchability” declines a slight bit if you’ve already seen and read the story a few times. But only a slight bit, because there’s so much to see. I’d give the movie a 15/17 and the book a 14/17, but I’d increase each a point or so in a few months, probably.

Anyhow, here are my two favorite quotes from the book, for any of you who’ve made it this far:

1. (There is a lot in the book that talks about how zoos are actually not so bad; I’m not sure how to square this with a lot of what humanity in general thinks about zoos, but it is interesting fodder for thought or debate. In any case, here he’s been talking about how many animals are actually more comfortable in zoos): “If you went to a home, kicked down the front door, chased the people who lived there out into the street and said, ‘Go! You are free! Free as a bird! Go! Go!’–do you think they would shout and dance for joy? The wouldn’t. Birds are not free. The people you’ve just evicted would sputter, ‘With what right do you throw us out? This is our home. We own it. We have lived here for years. We’re calling the police, you scoundrel.'”

2. (I wanted a quote that was representative of the role religion played in the book. But I forgot to mark one, so I’ll have to go with this completely different one instead): “I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he’s not careful.”

So, that’s it for our joint review–thanks for reading!

Doo-doo, doo-doo, doo!