Cracked Actor: A Film About David Bowie

More Bowie: Check out this 1974 doc which inspired the director of The Man Who Fell to Earth to cast him as the main character. Bowie dove head first into the character and practically lived the role - the role which was partly inspired by him - which led to his so called Berlin period. It all starts here:

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Funky Monks Documentary

Watching this doc really took me back. The 90s man! This was one of my favourite albums back in the day.

I love the black and white film look. And any time I can see musicians working in the studio I'm hooked.

Genesis - Opening Night

Pretty cool Genesis doc. The album they're supporting on this tour is dreadful, however

How the Loudness War is crushing Dave Grohl’s analogue ambitions

[via Production Advice]

Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and Trent Reznor jam it out

Dave Grohl's Sound City Players Pound Out 'Mantra' in the Studio - Premiere

A sort of super group jamming out a song for the Sound City soundtrack. Pretty cool to see these guys play together, even if the song doesn't live up to a fanboy's dream of what it could be. Makes me even more excited for that new Queens record that's coming this year.

2013 Oscar noms are up

Whenever the Oscar nominees are announced, the first I thing I do is check the Best Song, Score and the sound editing/mixing categories. I guess I haven't been keeping up with my films this year cause I haven't seen any of these. Skyfall is at the top of my list though.

I figure Adele will take Best Song on the extensive marketing campaigns alone. When the song first debuted there were countless stories about how it was "the greatest Bond song ever", when that just isn't the case. It's good, but doubtful it's the best ever, and it's even harder to just make that statement before the song has even been released to the public.

As for the other categories, I have no idea whatsoever. Alexandre Desplat has done some good scores, so maybe his track record gets him the award this year.

I'd vote for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo soundtrack, but I'm heavily biased.

Eno by train

Seen on Brian Eno: The Man Who Fell to Earth 1971-1977, an album cover that I'm sure Adam would love:

[image via]

Monterey Pop Festival 1967

My friend Ian and I watched this Monterey Pop Festival doc the other night, and I was absolutely blown away. The performances are spectacular, and the film itself is great.

Some highlights for me were the Mamas and Papas, Simon & Garfunkel, and obviously Hendrix.

Get yourself some incense and a couple of pops and fire this one up, before the video is taken down:

Girl With the Dragon Tattoo opens today

I'm actually pretty excited about this one. The book was great, and so was the first movie. Of course, the big draw for me is the soundtrack, done by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. The movie was originally scheduled to come out Wednesday, but they bumped it up to a day early, I guess so it wouldn't compete with the Tintin flick.

I picked up the soundtrack recently, and the closing track is sort of curious. It's a cover of Bryan Ferry's "Is Your Love Strong Enough", which was from the movie Legend by How to Destroy Angels, which is basically the two guys who did the soundtrack plus Mr. Reznor's wife Mariqueen Mandig. I had never heard of Legend or that song before. Given the subject matter and story of the movie, it seems like this would be an odd choice for the closing credits, but I'll reserve judgement til I see it in context.

It's not a great song, but it is a great production and I've been listening to it quite a bit lately.

Also check out this great cover of Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" by Reznor and Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs:

The soundtrack album itself is interesting because its total running time is about three hours. I'll take a wild guess and suggest that the movie itself probably isn't that long. The physical version of the soundtrack album will be spread over three discs, but the download advance copy I have lays out the track sequence as 1 to 39, rather than 3 sets of 13. I like this, because it treats the entire thing as one whole piece of work, a sort of ambient rock opera. Of course, none of this lends itself to casual listening, but that's not really the point. I imagine the whole thing playing out as the Ghosts album set to the movie, which is just fine by me.

Girl With the Dragon Tattoo viral campaign

Kind of like the alternate reality game done by NIN for Year Zero... one of the pictures was found right near where I work, which is kinda spooky/cool.

What is Hidden In Snow

A look inside Trent Reznor's studio

Pretty intense setup he's rocking here, as he and his partner in crime Atticus Ross discuss The Social Network soundtrack:

Trent Reznor's Oscar-Nominated Score

[via Air Users Blog]

Social Network vs. Facebook

My brother Jon sends me this link on Facebook fact vs. fiction from G4TV.

When praising the film, the first thing the talking head mentions is the great soundtrack.

There's much more to it than that though... I mean, a Hollywood film that's largely dramatized and practically fictional? Pfft.

Time to remix Phoenix

The band takes the NIN/Radiohead route and releases the multitracks from their latest album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.

And speaking of NIN, Trent Reznor has just announced the release of The Social Network soundtrack (aka Facebook movie), coming out next week. Looks like the Ghosts experiment worked and he got the gig he was after - scoring a major motion picture.

More songs in trailers

According to the Google analytics, my most popular post continues to be the one where I mentioned the name of the song in the latest Terminator movie.

In an effort to pander to the almighty Google, I'm going to try more of posts like that.

So, just to let you know, the Gentlemen Broncos trailer features Zager and Evans' "In the Year 2525", and the Shout Out Louds' "The Comeback".

Rock docs

Trailer for a pretty wicked looking doc about the Muslim punk genre, 'Taqwacore'. The film premieres this weekend!



The director is the brother of one of the guys on the music podcast I've been working on.

Terminator trailer features NIN song

Terminator Salvation trailer

I have to admit I'm a little disappointed here... Nine Inch Nails' "The Day the World Went Away" featured in this Terminator trailer, not to mention a bit of a remix too. A couple pounding drums added to the end fading into the well known Terminator theme.

This reminds me of the time "Just Like You Imagined" was used in the trailer for 300.
So I guess overall it's nice to see The Fragile *sort of* get the acknowledgment it deserves as a truly cinematic album.

New Bond theme: average

Jack White & Alicia Keys - "Another Way to Die"



This video looks really cheap, and the song is mediocre at best. Hopefully it this isn't a sign of things to come from the new 007 flick. At least it's not as bad as Madonna's "Die Another Day" track, which is easily the worst Bond theme ever, though this one is no prize.

Stone's W a comedy?

Classic use of George Thorogood = comedic value?

I also saw a version of this trailer with Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime" highly featured, though I can't seem to find it online for some reason. I swear it was real! It was on CNN! Everything they run is real!

Battlestar Rocklactica

I recently caught up with the rest of the television viewing world and started watching Battlestar Galactica. Good show, lotta heart.

In the mini-series, I recognized a familiar face piloting one of the human ships... and my hunch was right, it was John Mann, lead singer of Spirit of the West. Hilarious. Apparently he's been in a bunch of things, and due to the reverse chronological format of imdb, I've learned he makes another appearance on the show. Oh, wait. Spoiler alert.

Iron man revolution

Tom Morello, the trail-blazing guitarist for Rage Against the Machine, appears in the new Iron Man film as an extra. Mr. Axis of Justice appears as a terrorist (or, 'insurgent', as imdb credits him), and is blown away while attacking the iron machine created by Tony Stark. No help from his rage here.

He also appears on the soundtrack with 'additional guitar', which would have been good to know going into the movie, not after. This is kind of like how Mike Patton did all the vampire/zombie voices in I Am the Legend of Bagger Vance.

Good to see Billy Corgan and Michael Stipe showed up to the premiere in rock solidarity, and nice to see the producers offering tickets to the personality-challenged.

Pretty good movie, though.