Hamlet 2

I completely forgot that I had watched Hamlet 2 last Friday until about 10 minutes ago. What I do remember is that I loved it and think it's one of the greatest movies ever made. Obviously I'm using hyperbole...but what's really funny about it is that during the course of a conversation I was having with a friend, somehow the idea of a sequel to Hamlet came up (I come up with lots of crazy and awesome ideas) and my friend goes, "Wait, I have it". I had no idea there was a titled Hamlet 2 with Coogan in it.

Here's the trailer:



Oh yeah...it's got a beautiful cameo in it.

Flying Car (Finally!)

January 11, 2009
World’s first flying car prepares for take-off

Mark Harris


Is it a car? Is it a plane? Actually it’s both. The first flying automobile, equally at home in the sky or on the road, is scheduled to take to the air next month.

If it survives its first test flight, the Terrafugia Transition, which can transform itself from a two-seater road car to a plane in 15 seconds, is expected to land in showrooms in about 18 months’ time.

Its manufacturer says it is easy to keep and run since it uses normal unleaded fuel and will fit into a garage.

Carl Dietrich, who runs the Massachusetts-based Terrafugia, said: “This is the first really integrated design where the wings fold up automatically and all the parts are in one vehicle.”

The Transition, developed by former Nasa engineers, is powered by the same 100bhp engine on the ground and in the air.

Terrafugia claims it will be able to fly up to 500 miles on a single tank of petrol at a cruising speed of 115mph. Up to now, however, it has been tested only on roads at up to 90mph.

Dietrich said he had already received 40 orders, despite an expected retail price of $200,000 (£132,000).

“For an airplane that’s very reasonable, but for a car that’s very much at the high end,” he conceded.

There are still one or two drawbacks. Getting insurance may be a little tricky and finding somewhere to take off may not be straightforward: the only place in the US in which it is legal to take off from a road is Alaska.

Dietrich is optimistic. He said: “In the long term we have the potential to make air travel practical for individuals at a price that would meet or beat driving, with huge time savings.”

Link to Article

Notorious

He don't need no introduction. The movie comes out next Friday, January 16.




Link to movie website here.

PSA: Blk|Market Membership pres: Craig Richards vs. Ivan Smagghe

I have a feeling this one's gonna be a doozy...

Grovesnor - Drive Your Car

First heard it on the Hot Chip Essential Mix from last year...liked it a lot then...and I'm liking the song a lot now.

The Slammin' Salmon

New movie by the Broken Lizard gang. It's about an owner of a Miami restaurant indebted to the mob who institutes a contest to see what waiter can earn the most money in one night.

Judging from the trailer, it has almost no potential.

The Slammin' Salmon Red Band Trailer

A New PBS Special Revisits the Stax/Volt Revue’s 1967 European Tour

By JON PARELES

Seeing the brash Southerners who forged Memphis soul music at Stax Records must have been a startling experience for audiences on the 1967 Stax/Volt Revue tour of Europe.

Dapper and raw, hard-working and audacious, rooted in gospel while exulting in sensuality, Stax stars like Otis Redding and Sam & Dave were song-and-dance men who knew how to bring audiences to their feet. Their band — Booker T. and the M.G.’s plus the Mar-Keys as the horn section — was racially integrated and musically unstoppable.

The black-and-white concert footage of “Sweet Soul Music: Stax Live in Europe 1967,” to be shown Monday at 8 p.m. on WLIW (Channel 21) and nationwide on PBS in March, is a chance to see Stax’s soul men at their youthful peak; Redding would die in a plane crash later in 1967. The concert also shows African-American culture raising a ruckus on staid foreign turf.

Stax Records did not choose timid singers. The tour lineup was all belters — Redding, Sam & Dave, Eddie Floyd and Arthur Conley — who bounced percussive phrases off the band’s unswerving beat. They were R&B troupers from an era when performers didn’t need to lip-sync when they danced. The Stax singers commanded the stage with moves no choreographer taught them, and they didn’t rest until their audience became an ecstatic congregation.

The revue was videotaped for television on April 7, 1967, in Oslo. (The PBS special is a shorter version of a DVD, “Stax/Volt Revue: Live in Norway 1967,” which is available from the Stax Museum in Memphis, staxmuseum.org.) The Norwegian audience, which gets generous camera time throughout, looks earnestly appreciative as Booker T. and the M.G.’s steam into “Green Onions,” with Steve Cropper flicking out vicious jabs of blues guitar. When the singers take over, they don’t settle for head-bobbing and hand-clapping as a response. One after another, they knock themselves out. Just about every song ratchets itself up, drops back down and then pushes toward a double-time gospelly surge over the top.

Mr. Conley praises fellow soul singers in “Sweet Soul Music,” twitching and hopping across the stage, insisting that the audience call out names like James Brown. Mr. Floyd, moving with a backwards, gliding step that looks oddly balletic, revs up the crowd during “Raise a Hand” until it swarms toward the stage, to be restrained by uniformed security guards. Mr. Floyd calls the men in uniform “soldiers on the front line” before inviting them to join in.

But they are only warm-ups for Sam & Dave and for Redding. Sam & Dave, flaunting the contrast and blend between Sam Moore’s pearly tenor and Dave Prater’s rugged baritone, volley vocal lines while they shimmy, twirl and strut all over the place. One well-chosen camera shot, amid the otherwise workmanlike direction of the old TV footage, shows the duo’s dancing feet alongside the synchronized steps of the Mar-Keys. During “Soothe Me,” even the TV crew succumbs to the frenzy; the camera starts swooping in and out, as if Sam & Dave were singing “Zoom Me.”

Redding would “slosh through puddles of Sam & Dave’s sweat to get out to the stage,” says the trumpeter Wayne Jackson in an on-screen interview, “and then he would add a gallon of his own sweat to the lake.” Redding arrives with a huge smile to sing about sorrow in “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song).” He sounds plaintive and then exultant in “My Girl,” accelerates into overdrive for “Shake,” matches Al Jackson’s rat-a-tat drumming with stamping footwork in “Satisfaction” and carries “Try a Little Tenderness” from bluesy concern to soul catharsis.

To the bewilderment of the M.C., Redding struts offstage and returns again and again and again, barking out the chorus while the band slams away and the crowd seizes the chance to rush the stage. Moments later the show is over, and the Norwegian audience decorously files out — wondering, perhaps, what had just hit it.


Link to Article

this makes me want to party...

Resident Advisor Podcast 121 - Lee Jones

One of my favorite mixes of the year...seriously musical and soulfully electronic.

From Resident Advisor:

Lee Jones crafts an understated mix of new and old on this week's RA podcast.

As the sole man behind Hefner and one half of My My, Lee Jones has had quite a career in electronic music already. But as he gets set for the release of his debut album under his own name, he seems to be feeling a bit pensive. How else do you explain away the slow and brooding start—and end—to his RA podcast? The end title to Cool Hand Luke? Consider these heart strings pulled.

Despite the moody bookends, Jones crafts a mix here that glides through modern minimalism with aplomb. Like his work with My My, this mix is understated, but the more you listen to it, the more you grow to hear the skill that guides it along its path. The same goes for that debut album, Electric Frank, which has been seeing tons of play at RA towers. You never seem to need to hear it, but everytime you put it on, it's mighty hard to think of any other album that you'd want to be listening to instead.

What have you been working on recently?

A bit of everything. New ideas for the next My My album, promotion for my album, preparations for my solo live tour, some music for a German television series and a few remixes including "Silver Screen" by Felix Da Housecat and Miss Kittin, in collaboration with M.A.N.D.Y.

Where and how was the mix recorded?

At home on my Macbook using Ableton Live.

Can you tell us a little about the mix?

I loosely tried to give the podcast a cinematic theme. It starts off with a mix of film soundtrack music with some edits or beats or very minimal tracks mixed in. Then it turns into a mix of new and old tracks which somehow have a cinematic feel, or are just plain funky.

How do you differentiate the work of Lee Jones and My My?

I don't really. My My tracks are done together with Nick Höppner, and stuff I do on my own comes out as Lee Jones. I guess I'm a bit more "experimental" on my own because there's no one else in the studio to approve or disapprove of what I'm doing. But there's no deliberate change of approach to producing. That approach changes with every new track I make, mostly because I'm still learning how to do it.

Will there ever be more Hefner material?

I feel stupid saying "yes, I am working on the second Hefner album, and hopefully it will be out next year" because I've been saying that for seven years. But, in fact, yes, I am working on the second Hefner album, and hopefully it will be out next year.

Tell us about the cover art to your album.

It was done by a dear friend of mine from University, Richard Wilkinson, who does illustrations for The Telegraph Magazine and tons of other stuff. His drawings are just remarkable. I gave him a carte blanche to do whatever he wanted after sending him a few tracks. I've no idea why he drew a zebra with red stripes, but it looks awesome.

What are you up to next?

Apart from a short break in November for recording new Hefner material, I'll be working with Nick on the new My My album and touring until the end of the year, a mixture of DJing, live gigs on my own, live My My gigs with Nick and DJing with Nick.

Tracklisting:

Kitty Bronx - Sacramento - Junior
Margaret Dygas - Sail Away
Jean-Michel Bernard - Golden the Pony Boy - Astralwerks
Acid Pauli (feat. Master Saphi Band) - Euphonium - Bar 25
Jon Brion - Phone Call - Hollywood Records
Oni Ayhun - OAR 1 - Oni Ayhun Records
Jay Haze - The Warmth
CSM - The Way - Reel Discs
Warbgasm - Influenza (Plasmik Deep Chord Remix) - Hypercolour
Untold - Kingdom - Hessle Audio
And.Id - Sand On The Floor - Mobilee
Plez - How Can You Stop - BBE
Nicone - Una Rossa (H.O.S.H. Remix) - Stil Vor Talent
Butch & Julie Marghilano - Last Tango (Daso & Pawas Remix) - Envy My Music
Sideshow - 'If Alone' Feat Paul St.Hilaire (Château Flight Dub Mix) - Aus
M.A.N.D.Y. - Superman (Reboot's 20 Cubans) - Get Physical Music
Toasty - Like Sun - Hotflush
Burak Sar - La Garua - Cécille Records
Minilogue - Snake Charmer - Wagon Repair
Patrice Bäumel - Roar - Get Physical Music
Lee Jones - Weisses Kanninchen - Aus
Gwen Maze - More Than Love (Anthony Collins Remix) - Supernature
Lalo Schifrin - End Title (Cool Hand Luke Soundtrack) - Dot Records

The Chemical Brothers - Chemical Beats (Dave Clarke Remix)

Dave Clarke was supposedly going to play in New York in January...too bad it's not happening.

Danny Howells Inteview from Resident Advisor

Intensive care: Danny Howells

Whether it be DJing, producing or mental nursing, Danny Howells puts the utmost care into whatever he does. Better, not bigger, is his mantra. RA's Todd L. Burns talks to the man to find out more.

A lot of people like to talk about nice guys in the electronic music business, but Danny Howells may just be the nicest. Howells was a nurse to the mentally ill—a career he gave up to pursuing DJing full-time after the success of his Global Underground Nubreed mix—and his essential goodness seems to endlessly radiate outward. Always mugging, always smiling, always having a great time, Howells would be the definition of a showman—if it didn't seem like he was already enthusiastic 24/7.

One of the reasons Howells seems relaxed is that he's recently taken a break from the DJ grind, focusing much of his energy on the production arena. It's the DJ's first extended foray into production and will see the light of day on his shiny new label, Dig Deeper. (You can hear some of those tracks on Howells' recent Renaissance - The Mix Collection double disc set.)

So will we see Howells giving up spinning entirely? Not quite. As RA's Todd L. Burns found out in a chat after his recent US tour, after 17 years behind the decks he's just gotten a bit pickier and his mind has started to wander to things like that career in mental nursing, Coldplay and REO Speedwagon.


You were recently in New York and played Love for the first time. How did you like it?

It was amazing. Every aspect from the opening DJ to the sound to the crowd. It was on a Thursday night, so there were a lot of people that I recognized. Sound-wise it was flawless. It was quite intimidating to DJ there, to be honest, as the slightest mistake is amplified. You hear every detail. It's interesting—you'll play your own productions on a system like that and you'll think, "Oh fuck, that sounds crap!" Or you play a piece of vinyl and an mp3 compressed at 320 kbps and you hear the difference immediately.

Traveling a lot, I tend to think that maybe my ears aren't working as well as they used to—because things don't sound good in clubs—but when you go to venues like that you realize that it's not your ears. It's that a lot of soundsystems really aren't up to scratch.

Speaking of your own productions, you spent a lot of time in the studio earlier this year. Are you happy with the results?

Absolutely. I just got off the phone a moment ago, as we had a remix done by Faze Action of one of the tracks and my computer isn't charged, so I was listening to the track over the phone and jumping around the room.

It's really exciting for me, because I've only released things very sporadically for years, but I really have been focusing on it for the last 16 months or so. I'm really pleased. There are about 15 tracks done, and out of those 15 there are about nine that I think I will release. Having this new label and being involved in all aspects of it from the design from choosing the release schedule to the remixes is really exciting. We've got Faze Action, a drum & bass guy and Future Beats Alliance all lined up for remixes.

It seems like you're covering a lot of bases with those remix choices.

Well, the label is called Dig Deeper—after my night of the same name—and I really want to reflect that. In a perfect world, a Dig Deeper night encompasses many styles of electronic music.

Starting a record label in 2008 seems like it flies in the face of everything that you should be doing from a business perspective.

[laughs] I've based my entire career on flying in the face of what I should be doing I think. But I'm not too worried about that. All I'm worried about is making sure that the quality of the releases is good. Obviously I'm not embarking on this completely solo. We have experienced label guys who are taking care of all the business things—which I don't know anything about—which leaves me completely free to make the music, make sure the artwork is good. The creative side.

It might be a bit of a weird time to launch a label, but the guys that I'm doing it with are very experienced and I think they got involved knowing that it was going to be a complete loss. I don't think anyone is going into it thinking that we're going to make money. It's just a way for me to have an outlet for the music—and to encourage me to make more.

I definitely don't think that I'm going to be traveling for five years or even three years from now the way I once did. I'll still be DJing, but I won't be running around the world like an 18 year-old because, well, I'm not 18 anymore. I'm 37 years old. And I really do see that right now that I want to be settled in at home and doing more production—no matter what kind of music it is. I think that the music will find its own path, and I'm sure I'll strike on something one day that I'm good at and that will open up for me. I'm very curious to see where it goes.

Is the DJing going to be like this year going forward, then? A little bit slower than in the past?

I think so. That's kind of how I've approached America, for instance, in the past few years. I'm not one of those competitive guys that set out to be big or a huge success. My focus is a bit different: I want to be better. I want to create quality music and quality sets and create something that I'm proud of, you know?

I just want to be happy. I don't feel the need to conquer those unheard of places in Middle America that mean nothing to me at all. I'm quite picky. I like doing the gigs that I know are going to work, as well as throwing in a handful of new places obviously. Being able to generate this much money or sell that many units isn't something that drives me. It's not rewarding for me to be dealing with numbers and things like that.

Do you think that's why it's taken so long for you to do another mix? It's been three years since your last one.

Yeah, I think so. I honestly never really enjoyed making them all that much anyway. Obviously I get really involved with it and really excited about it, but they're quite daunting, committing yourself to record.

The other thing is that the whole market for mixes changed in that particular time period. So the pressure was much less. I didn't have a manager or label telling me that I had to do one. It's quite nice having that breathing space actually.

Was that the case before? You had people telling you that you had to get something out mix-wise?

Yeah. The mix album market was very different and there were a lot of opportunities to be doing so—if you were willing to go along with that. At the time, I was much more keen to spend the time on a mix album than going into the studio. In the last couple of years my whole life has changed a lot. I moved in with my fiancée and moved away from Hastings, which had been a big part of my life. And it's taken time to reestablish myself in the studio, which is something that I'm at the first step on the ladder with.

Whereas, a few years ago, I would put out a mix album and then go around the world to promote it. The studio was the thing that you did when you had a bit of spare time between tours. Mix albums are kind of like…obviously you don't have complete control over what you do. You don't work for people who tell you what to do clearly, but at the same time you're a bit limited in that there is so much legal tape involved.

Certain labels are very, very fussy when it comes to licensing things—even today. To get your track on a compilation is a very good thing, in terms of promoting your label and producers, but you have a lot of labels out there that have sold a handful of copies of these releases that are stuck-up about letting people use their work. You almost have a better chance of licensing a Coldplay track than some underground house labels.

Changing gears, I was reading recently that you wanted to be a pilot when you grew up.

I did, yeah. It was like anything when you're young, when you have no idea what you want to do. That was the thing that I plumped for. And then I somehow fell into mental nursing.

Flying could be your second career after the DJing has died down.

I'd like to go back to my nursing career actually. I think about it a lot. And I think with a lot of people that do this type of work, there's always this fear of rejection or failure. There's so much focus on what people haven't got, as opposed to what they have got. So there's that fear of what happens when it's all over.

But realistically, I love the idea of my old job. Even though it's so different from what I do now, it's very rewarding in a different way. You are actually helping people and families to get their lives back together again in situations that are often uncontrollable. Even though I'm very successful in what I'm doing now, there's still a part of me that misses helping people in that sense.

How long did you do that for?

About nine years.

Were you DJing all during that time?

Yeah. I think I started nursing in 1990 and I got my first decks around 1991. It was quite crazy trying to combine those two jobs at the same time.

At what moment did you decide that you couldn't do both anymore?

It was funny, because the people at the nursing job were so compliant. They knew what I did, and they were very lenient with me. Over in the UK, you're dealing with a big organization because it's owned by the government, so it's not very flexible, but I was very fortunate. I went to my boss and said, "Look, I've landed a remix of Robbie Williams that I need to do in four days." And he said, "OK, phone in sick and we'll sort it out—but you'll need to do some overtime next week to make up for it."

It's funny that your boss didn't mention the remix…just that you had to come in to do overtime to make up for it.

[laughs] Yeah. Remixes and DJ gigs were really picking up at that time, but it was hard to leave for me financially just because things were so unstable. It was only after I had done Nubreed for Global Underground that I had to make a decision to do one or the other. And I realized that I could probably go back to nursing in the future, but that this opportunity with music was only once-in-a-lifetime. So I made that leap. Although I do remember going six months later to do some overtime because I had to pay the rent, and had no other way of doing it right then.

Looking forward to Winter Music Conference next year, what's the big track that you have planned for your '80s-themed Pop Tarts party?

[laughs] I was thinking about this just the other day. I can't quite remember what it was. Maybe something by REO Speedwagon? I think the Pop Tarts phenomenon has crept out. They don't normally book DJs at Glastonbury two years in a row, and I had bought tickets to go because I love it, but my agent talked to them and they agreed—if I played for free and played a '80s set. Which I was happy to do. [laughs] If there is no interest from regular clubs anymore, it's nice to know that I have a back-up career in mental nursing and '80s music.

Words / Todd L. Burns
Published / Mon, 08 Dec 2008

http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature-read.aspx?id=992


-----

His newest mix compilation, Renaissance: The Mix Collection, can be purchased here: Link.

Laurent Garnier - Interview

From YourNight.ie -- Techno luminary Laurent Garnier took a few mins out after wrapping up this year's D.E.A.F in The Village to have a chat with us about Ireland, DEAF and his new projects. Many Thanks to Donal Gorman for interview duties!
Also featuring some v.nice footage from the event!



Link to Video

Soulwax - Part of NYE Never Dies (Mixmag)

Download Link


01. The Chemical Brothers - Hey Boy Hey Girl (Soulwax Remix Edit)
02. Zombie Nation - Forza
03. Tame Impala - Half Full Glass Of Wine
04. Tiga - Mind Dimension 2 (Ghent Version)
05. Mr Oizo - Pourriture 7 (Soulwax Edit)
06. Esser - Headlock
07. In Flagranti - Business Acumen
08. Flairs - Truckers Delight
09. MGMT - Kids (Soulwax Remix)
10. Das Pop - Fool For Love
11. Eine Kleine Nacht Musik - Feuerprobe (Rory Phillips Remix)
12. Mickey Moonlight - Interplanetary Melodies
13. Late Of The Pier - Random Firl
14. Ali Renault - Our World Is


I don't know what it is, but some tracks just grab me by the balls and don't let fucking go. The Rory Phillips Remix is doing it to me right now.

You can download the track through this link.

Heroes of the Dancefloor release "Torch," All Proceeds to Benefit Homeless Families

What up...it's been awhile since I've last done anything with this blog. Here's a recap: I had a birthday that was bonkers a few weeks back. Went to Los Angeles for a few days and Palm Springs for some R&R during T'giving w/end and got back last night. Listening to Laurent Garnier's Raw Works that I picked up at Amoeba Music right now.

Anywho, the reason for this post is to let y'all know about this:

As we are approaching the holiday season, please consider purchasing or helping to promote the forthcoming CD from Heroes of the Dancefloor, "Torch," released on INgrooves November 24th. Fusing old, new, and swing jazz with soulful vocals and mixing hip hop and dub influences, there is a little something for everyone on this album. In addition, every dime made will be donated to two homeless charities in New York City: ‘Picture the Homeless’ and ‘Coalition for the Homeless’.

"Torch," is the second in a series by Heroes of the Dancefloor to benefit the homeless. The sophomore album follows up the acclaimed, "Momentum" which benefited two homeless charities in San Francisco. The next album will benefit the homeless of New Orleans.

When the founder of Heroes of the Dancefloor witnessed a very pregnant and crying woman on the streets begging for money, he knew he had to do something. With his music connections and shear compassion, he gathered an excellent group of artists willing to donate their time and art for this worthy cause.

According to the annual report by the Coalition on Homelessness "New York has reached a new record for the number of homeless families living in our shelters. In this year alone the number of people living in homeless shelters has increased by 11% and the number of children has increased by 18% to over 14,000.

Please sample the single (and free download for your readers) here

Additional press info here

MySpace

PLEASE CONSIDER HELPING TO PROMOTE THIS CD SO THAT WHEN YOUR READERS ARE THINKING ABOUT HOW THEY CAN HELP IN THE COMING COLD MONTHS, THEY WILL CONSIDER PURCHASING "TORCH." PLUS, IT'S JUST DAMN GOOD MUSIC.

Max Roach

I took a cab the other day, and the driver had a Jazz station playing on the radio. On it, a Max Roach diddly came on that blew my mind.

So in turn, here's some for you:





On a related drummer note, Mitch Mitchell died yesterday at the age of 61.

Slumdog Millionaire

"Slumdog Millionaire", a new film by Danny Boyle, the British director who brought us my favorite movie of all time, "Trainspotting", comes out today. It's been getting solid reviews across the board, and I'm quite anxious to see this in the theater.

Here's the NYTimes Review:

November 12, 2008
Orphan’s Lifeline Out of Hell Could Be a Game Show in Mumbai

By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: November 12, 2008

A gaudy, gorgeous rush of color, sound and motion, “Slumdog Millionaire,” the latest from the British shape-shifter Danny Boyle, doesn’t travel through the lower depths, it giddily bounces from one horror to the next. A modern fairy tale about a pauper angling to become a prince, this sensory blowout largely takes place amid the squalor of Mumbai, India, where lost children and dogs sift through trash so fetid you swear you can smell the discarded mango as well as its peel, or could if the film weren’t already hurtling through another picturesque gutter.

Mr. Boyle, who first stormed the British movie scene in the mid-1990s with flashy entertainments like “Shallow Grave” and “Trainspotting,” has a flair for the outré. Few other directors could turn a heroin addict rummaging inside a rank toilet bowl into a surrealistic underwater reverie, as he does in “Trainspotting,” and fewer still could do so while holding onto the character’s basic humanity. The addict, played by Ewan McGregor, emerges from his repulsive splish-splashing with a near-beatific smile (having successfully retrieved some pills), a terrible if darkly funny image that turns out to have been representative not just of Mr. Boyle’s bent humor but also of his worldview: better to swim than to sink.

Swimming comes naturally to Jamal (the British actor Dev Patel in his feature-film debut), who earns a living as a chai-wallah serving fragrant tea to call-center workers in Mumbai and who, after a series of alternating exhilarating and unnerving adventures, has landed in the hot seat on the television game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” Yet while the story opens with Jamal on the verge of grabbing the big prize, Simon Beaufoy’s cleverly kinked screenplay, adapted from a novel by Vikas Swarup, embraces a fluid view of time and space, effortlessly shuttling between the young contestant’s past and his present, his childhood spaces and grown-up times. Here, narrative doesn’t begin and end: it flows and eddies — just like life.

By all rights the texture of Jamal’s life should have been brutally coarsened by tragedy and poverty by the time he makes a grab for the television jackpot. But because “Slumdog Millionaire” is self-consciously (perhaps commercially) framed as a contemporary fairy tale cum love story, or because Mr. Boyle leans toward the sanguine, this proves to be one of the most upbeat stories about living in hell imaginable. It’s a life that begins in a vast, vibrant, sun-soaked, jampacked ghetto, a kaleidoscopic city of flimsy shacks and struggling humanity and takes an abrupt, cruel turn when Jamal (Ayush Mahesh Khedekar), then an exuberant 7, and his cagier brother, Salim (Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail), witness the murder of their mother (Sanchita Choudhary) by marauding fanatics armed with anti-Muslim epithets and clubs.

Cast into the larger, uncaring world along with another new orphan, a shy beauty named Latika (Rubina Ali plays the child, Freida Pinto the teenager), the three children make their way from one refuge to another before falling prey to a villain whose exploitation pushes the story to the edge of the unspeakable. Although there’s something undeniably fascinating, or at least watchable, about this ghastly interlude — the young actors are very appealing and sympathetic, and the images are invariably pleasing even when they shouldn’t be — it’s unsettling to watch these young characters and, by extension, the young nonprofessionals playing them enact such a pantomime. It doesn’t help even if you remember that Jamal makes it out alive long enough to have his 15 televised minutes.

It’s hard to hold onto any reservations in the face of Mr. Boyle’s resolutely upbeat pitch and seductive visual style. Beautifully shot with great sensitivity to color by the cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantel, in both film and digital video, “Slumdog Millionaire” makes for a better viewing experience than it does for a reflective one. It’s an undeniably attractive package, a seamless mixture of thrills and tears, armchair tourism (the Taj Mahal makes a guest appearance during a sprightly interlude) and crackerjack professionalism. Both the reliably great Irrfan Khan (“A Mighty Heart”), as a sadistic detective, and the Bollywood star Anil Kapoor, as the preening game-show host, run circles around the young Mr. Patel, an agreeable enough if vague centerpiece to all this coordinated, insistently happy chaos.

In the end, what gives me reluctant pause about this bright, cheery, hard-to-resist movie is that its joyfulness feels more like a filmmaker’s calculation than an honest cry from the heart about the human spirit (or, better yet, a moral tale). In the past Mr. Boyle has managed to wring giggles out of murder (“Shallow Grave”) and addiction (“Trainspotting”), and invest even the apocalypse with a certain joie de vivre (the excellent zombie flick “28 Days Later”). He’s a blithely glib entertainer who can dazzle you with technique and, on occasion, blindside you with emotion, as he does in his underrated children’s movie, “Millions.” He plucked my heartstrings in “Slumdog Millionaire” with well-practiced dexterity, coaxing laughter and sobs out of each sweet, sour and false note.

“Slumdog Millionaire” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian) for brutal violence.

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

Opens on Wednesday nationwide.

Directed by Danny Boyle; written by Simon Beaufoy, based on the novel “Q & A” by Vikas Swarup; director of photography, Anthony Dod Mantel; edited by Chris Dickens; music by A. R. Rahman; production designer, Mark Digby; produced by Christian Colson; released by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Running time: 2 hours.

WITH: Dev Patel (Jamal), Ayush Mahesh Khedekar (Youngest Jamal), Freida Pinto (Latika), Rubina Ali (Youngest Latika), Madhur Mittal (Salim), Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail (Youngest Salim), Sanchita Choudhary (Jamal’s Mother), Anil Kapoor (Prem) and Irrfan Khan (Police Inspector).

Momofuku Bakery & Milk Bar

Word 'round campfire (aka Eater.com), Momofuku Bakery & Milk Bar's opening is imminent. The menu is out for all to drool over.




Crack pie, eh??


Btw, Sac Sacs are good.




Momofuku Bakery & Milk Bar
207 2nd Avenue
New York, NY 10003
212-228-0031

KAWS exhibit @ GERING & LóPEZ GALLERY (NYC)

One of my favorite artists and clothing designer, Kaws, is currently having an exhibition of his works at the Gering & López Gallery.


Here's the press release from the gallery's website:

GERING & LóPEZ GALLERY is pleased to present the much anticipated solo exhibition of new work by Brooklyn-based artist KAWS. The artist sees his technique as a sieve of modern culture, filtering and re-contextualizing the images and information that he comes in contact with daily. Beginning as a graffiti artist in the 1990s, KAWS took an interventionist approach to the imagery on billboards and bus shelter advertisements, interweaving his own graphics. KAWS now uses the worldwide popularity of his familiar brand-like symbols to explore other methods of integrating his iconography into the global consumer culture.

This exhibition features the artist's most recent paintings and sculpture. Large-scale acrylic works on canvas incorporate his usual cast of characters set against abstract, chaotic scenes of geometric shapes. In this series, the subject is displaced and the focus is drawn to the bold coloration of the elements. In another group of monochromatic paintings, line work and treatment of the surface texture obscure the compositional focus leaving only the presence of the characters' emotive expressions in abstraction. Additionally, KAWS has produced a series of thirty-three uniquely painted life-size bronze sculptures of his own severed head. With this series, KAWS reinvents the age-old tradition of bronze casting by finishing the sculptures with playful candy coated colors. A sculpture entitled Chum stands as a larger-than-life rendition of a classic KAWS character.

Throughout his career, KAWS has explored different approaches to his artistic agenda. In 2006, he opened his own shop in Tokyo, OriginalFake, where new products release weekly in limited quantities. He has completed several collaborative design projects with such labels as Commes des Garçons, Marc Jacobs, Levi's, Nike, and A Bathing Ape. Through each of these ventures, KAWS has successfully blurred the line between fine art and mass-produced merchandise thus allowing his artistic vision to touch a far-reaching audience.

Born in 1974 in New Jersey, KAWS graduated with a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. He has had international solo exhibitions at several galleries including Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Miami, FL; Bape Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Colette, Paris, France; and the MU Art Foundation, Eindhoven, Netherlands. His work has also appeared in many group exhibitions such as Everything Else at Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York, NY; Ugly Winners at Galerie Du Juor Agnes B., Paris, France; and Beautiful Losers, a traveling exhibition that has been on view at Le Tri Postal, Lille, France; Palazzo Dell'Arte, Milan, Italy; the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; and the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH, among others. He was the winner of the 1998 Pernod Liquid Art Award and three monographs have been published about his work.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10am to 6pm. For further information please contact Lauren Cicione at 646.336.7183 or info@geringlopez.com.

KAWS Exhibition at the Gering & López Gallery
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday | 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
730 Fifth Avenue
Between 56th and 57th Streets
New York, NY 10019
p: 646.336.7183

Dave Clarke - No One's Driving

it's fucking friday...time to turn those subwoofers up...

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