Saturday 6 September 2008

Burning once again...

If I'm not careful this is going to become a habit. I'm once again burning music for my MP3 player, mainly CDs I've just bought this time, which I hate doing cause I'd like to listen to the actual CD before the MP3, but at the moment I'm just not doing enough writing to get through all these CDs.

Special mentions today go to Along Came A Spider by Alice Cooper. This is a cool record. A lot better than his last outing Dirty Diamonds. With this one, Alice Cooper has returned to the concept album, which in this case is the diary of 'The Spider', a serial killer. Its good old dark and twisted stuff, just where Alice belongs.

Another album of interest, Deep Blue: Chaos from Darkism by Balzac, a Japanese punk band inspired by The Misfits. I came across this band from The Misfits website, they recorded a split single with each other entitled The Day The Earth Caught on Fire. As with the few Japanese bands I listen to I have now idea what they are singing, unless its in English, but you can't help singing along, especially with all the whoa's. Good stuff.

The rest is the usual stuff from within my CD collection, but I'll leave this short review with She & Him. This is the work of M Ward and actress Zooey Deschanel. Each track is different so I can't really label it nicely.

I can't really review music, mainly because it's all subjective. Even more so than films. So these CD reviews end here. This blog has basically turned into a massive mess of me talking rubbish. So to bring it back someway back on track, using notes from the last update.

Why are all the best horror films of recent years foreign. Naturally we have to excuse the British film industry as horror does not mean romantic comedies or period pieces with Keira Knightly. But even American horror isn't good. Their problem is they seem too hung up on wither gore or slasher films. Granted the main reason to see a slasher film is the gore but I'm separating the two.
Gore wise they continue to churn out Saw films. Now in the grand scene of things, the original Saw was a low budget, clever film. Yes it had the nasty elements but when I originally saw (ha ha ha) it I would never have thought a sequel would be made. And as usual the Law of Diminishing Returns prevails. Although they do have nice touches by the ends of each sequel, the bulk is mainly more of the same.
Slasher wise, Hatchet was an attempt to revive the horror icon. I think they were intending to start some kind of franchise but it just wasn't very good. The only English language film in recent years I can remember actually scaring me was Fragile, and that was directed by the Spanish Jaume Balagueró, and his films continue to be freaky. Take [REC] for example. This film also had its scary moments, and guess what. Hollywood has remade it, and I can easily predict, people will go in droves to see it, and it wont be as good as its Spanish original.

Unfortunately I'm going to have to cut this short, despite really combining two entries into one. I think I'm off to see The Strangers, which despite what people tell me, looks exactly like French film Them (Ils). I have tried to remain open minded about this but I think I'm going to need some convincing.

By the way, this was all brought on by The Orphanage. Not as jam packed with scares as expected, but due to subject matter and the odd creepy moment has convinced me that if I ever need a good scare again, I'll need my reading glasses.

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