Category: Reviews (Page 3 of 9)

Season Two finished airing here in the States a couple of weeks ago, so I feel it may be time for me to offer a review. I’m a long-time Dr Who fan (not fanatic) and I was happy to see the series finally resurrected – wait, maybe that should be “regenerated” – after such a long hiatus. It seemed we weren’t going to see the series broadcast here so I ended up buying the UK boxed set and watching it on our region-free DVD player.

Series One was great. Christopher Eccleston was a “fantastic” Doctor – he had me convinced from the first episode. (Also my affection for the show may have been boosted by the fact that the enemy-du-jour was the Autons, who I remember fondly from the first Pertwee episode “Spearhead from Space” which is also the first Dr Who series I actually remember in any detail.)

I liked the fact that there were hints and references to the classic series even while the producers were ostensibly defining a new canon, in which any particular established fact about the Doctor could be revised to suit the new series. Take the Dalek episode for example. Awesome. Loved it.

Things got a bit shakey plot-wise during the final episode but I didn’t let that detract from my enjoyment of the whole.

Season Two was broadcast here on the SciFi channel this fall. With Series Two, everything “went pants”. For a start, the music was just annoying. Horrible. Over-the-top crap. Continuous, underlying yet too loud, swelling orchestral scores are simply and completely the wrong direction for a Doctor Who series. -10 points for that.

Mainly, though, I have a big problem with David Tennant, playing the role of the Doctor’s 2nd (10th?) incarnation. I’m sure he’s a competent actor but the Doctor he ain’t. Perhaps it’s because he is the first actor to play the Doctor as someone obviously physically younger than me (which just feels wrong) but mostly his attempts to play flippant and goofy are just… disturbing. Apparently Mr Tennant is a fan of the classic series. Perhaps he is too much of a fan. It’s like he studied Tom Baker’s playbook but didn’t understand his character at all.

I thought it was way too soon to off Eccleston’s Doctor after just one series but now I think a fatal accident can’t happen too soon to the 10th Doctor. I’d gladly trade one Time Lord regeneration for a chance to see Bill Nighy in the role.

Oh – and Ian McShane for The Master! Sign the petition.

Last night we went to see “(The Original Members of) Asia” at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay.

I was looking forward to this one. We left work early-ish and parked and at about 5:30 pm once again there was no queue for the buffet. I’m telling you, every time we go there there’s no queue – except when we’re with someone, and we’ve told them not to expect a wait on line… Unfortunately neither of us enjoyed the buffet as much as usual. For me it was probably the raw garlic clove I chewed up early on. I thought it was roasted, but mastication had well and truly taken place before my brain got the message: crunchy? I should have spat it out (there was no chance of grossing out any of the other patrons – at least any more than they already were. Eating crab *is* messy, OK? The damn things don’t like being eaten, they fight back) but like an idiot I thought I should swallow. What can I say? I try to be tidy.

Anyway, it burned all the way down. Perhaps it wasn’t garlic. Or maybe garlic is now toxic, for me. I have no idea. The burning was soon replaced by a powerful need to throw up. Dinner not going well, then.

L suggested getting some bread to settle the stomach, which was a great idea. Perhaps it was that, perhaps it was the walk to the bread station, either way when I got back I felt better.

None of the other dishes at the buffet appealed after that. The coffee there is always good though. And they had biscotti… What could be bad!

Ok, so this is supposed to be a concert review…

The HOB was close to sold out, which was fun. From what I’ve been hearing, most of their dates are selling out, but then they are touring smaller venues to “test the waters” and it’s always more fun to play to a full house. (In Vegas especially. Ho ho. Is Poker joke, dontcha know.)

We were sitting way up at the back, almost at the lounge level. There were a lot of hard-core fans around us, which was fun. We had a great view down onto the stage.

The original line-up of Asia was (and is now, I guess) Steve Howe on guitar (formerly of Yes at the time), John Wetton on bass and vocals (formerly of Roxy Music, King Crimson, U.K., and the occasional solo album), Geoff Downes on keys (formerly of The Buggles, and Yes also, briefly), and Carl Palmer on Drums (from ELP of course).

That’s a pretty stellar line up of prog-rock royalty, and in 1982 it was a given that I’d like the album – Roger Dean cover and all – but I don’t think it was guaranteed that the rest of the western music-buying world would also seem to like it. A #1 album and all that. Kind of embarrassing for the Yes/ELP fanbase, heh. That kind of mega-success pretty much blew the band apart during the tour behind the hastily recorded second album in 1983. The band has limped along in various incarnations since then with Geoff Downes holding down the keyboard position.

So 23 years later, who can blame them for burying hatchets and putting a tour together. I feel kind of sad for the other guys who were in Asia up until now – apparently they are salvaging the music they were working on for the next Asia album and doing their own thing. I’d be pretty bitter if I were them.

On to the performance itself, which was awesome, considering their age and that they hadn’t been playing together regularly since 1983. “25th Anniversary Tour”, well that’s stretching it. It’s only their third year playing as a band. </snark>

No really, it was awesome. They played every track from their first eponymous album from 1982, every track a winner in my book. Some tasteful acoustic renditions of selected tracks from album #2, and four “surprise” tracks, one each from previous bands that each of the guys had been members of. I kind of wish I hadn’t been reading the reviews of previous concerts, because they weren’t surprises to me.

“Fanfare for the Common Man” was ripping. Mr Howe added some very tasty licks to the conventional trio arrangement. I thought at first Geoff was using a sampled GX1 patch because it sounded so like the “real” thing, but I think it was just a really closely programmed patch – sounded great except that he didn’t seem to have the top octave and some of the chords at the upper end were inverted or something.

“In the Court of the Crimson King” was an odd choice but it seemed to go over ok, the audience chanting along to the Ahhhhhhhh Ahhhh-a-ahhhh bit (if you know the song…)

“Roundabout” was a brave choice, I think, but again they pulled it off in my opinion. Palmer was great, nice drumming. Lisa said she missed Chris Squire’s bass and yeah, I kinda agree.

Finally, “Video Killed the Radio Star” seems bizzare, but… again, this really rocked. Cool. Geoff donned the trademark silver jacket and shades that were iconic of The Buggles. I bet it wasn’t the same jacket, though, because Mr Downes is looking portly these days.

Throughout the entire evening, Carl Palmer really pounded out the rhythm. That man is a machine, and he gets better with age. He did a nice, concise drum solo of the kind that we’d seen earlier in the year on his solo tour, although I think this one was better.

Steve Howe played with more energy and animism than I’ve ever seen. Bouncing around, kick and ducking and jumping around. He pulled off all the guitar parts from the album with ease, no shortcuts that I could see. Very impressive. He stuck to the bare mimimum of guitars, using a Gibson Artist model (with symmetrical scratch plates) which as far as I know he has not played in public anywhere since 1983. He had several of these back then, deliberately sticking with the one guitar model for Asia, rather than the arsenal of different axes he brings to Yes concerts.

Geoff Downes reproduced the necessary tones from a line-up of 6 keyboards, mostly Roland gear I think. At least one V-Synth for sure. And I think there was a VP-550 as well, because as well as Vocoding, he seemed to be reinforcing his backing vocals nicely, in a natural and non-vocoding fashion. Other reviewers have said there were backing tapes being used for vox, but I don’t think so. The only time maybe was during “Only Time Will Tell” which kind of had John Wetton singing two parts which isn’t really possible without sample triggering at least.

John Wetton was in fine voice. He usually sings flat (at least on most of the live albums I’ve heard on which he is featured) but not tonight. Yes, he’s matured and deepened with time, but he can still sing. His bass playing was disappointing though. He’s know for a distinctive and powerful bass style but I really couldn’t hear it.

Nonetheless, a really good show. I would see it again if it comes through town again. Future plans for the group have not been revealed, although I heard a radio interview where someone called in to complain that they weren’t hitting Northern California on this tour, and one of them, I think Steve, said that next year they’d be sure to cover more ground. He sounded quite clear and positive. I guess YES aren’t getting back together anytime soon then.

Still, with these guys clearly anything can happen.

A quick google search seems to reveal that I am the only person to observe that the track Lust on Magenta’s album Seven quotes from Mike Oldfield’s Hergest Ridge Part 1 at 11’41”. Nicely done, too.

We saw the Carl Palmer Band at the House of Blues in town last month.

When we got to the venue (it’s inside the Mandalay Bay casino) we found that they’d closed down the balcony due to lack of ticket sales, and we’d have to sit down in the floor seating area. Kind of sad about the ticket sales, but we still found good seats and the rest of the seats did slowly fill up. For a while I thought it was going to look embarrassingly sparsely populated. I think they grab people off the casino floor and “comp” them in if it looks too bad.

We sat and listened to the entirety of the “Pictures at an Exhibition” album piped in over the PA while we waited for the show to start. I was a little nervous… there was NO WAY the CP band could live up to the energy of that album, seems to me setting up your audience for a disappointment.

Eventually the house lights dimmed, and the offstage announcer did his thing, the curtains opened, and YIKES they are flippin’ loud. Arghhh. Break out the earplugs. This is painful.

Sound mix not so good, even with the ‘plugs. Bass tends to be muddy. Drums are coming through loud and clear though. What are they playing? _The_Barbarian_? Cool!

OK, so we have Carl Palmer (performing on a stool) like a machine, he’s got a cut-down kit with him – just one gong. Seems to be able to get the right sounds out of it, though.

He’s ably backed up by a Stuart Clayton on six-string bass, competent skill set there! Some tasty licks coming out of that side of the stage.

Oh, and there was some dick on a guitar as well. I’m not going to look up his name. I’m sorry but he really sucked. I may be an Emerson fan, and I may prefer to see the music performed on keyboards, and I give kudos points to Carl for going out on a limb and trying something new. But in my opinion, it mostly didn’t work. And the places where it didn’t work were usually the fault of the guitarist.

What did work:

_Canario_ from *cough*Love Beach*cough*. This was originally a guitar piece before Emerson got his hands on it and I think it shows, because this was actually very good.

_Tocatta_ from Brain Salad Surgery. This was also very good. Maybe because it is almost totally percussion and electric guitar in the first place?

I liked the rendition of Tarkus only in that the bass player tapped out the bass line with both hands, like I used to do on the Stick. heh. Only way to do it properly, in my opinion.

Stuart’s bass solo was very pleasant, quoting from two other talented bass players: a rendition of Sting’s “Shape of my heart” for solo bass which worked very well, and a slapping good time a’la Mark King.

Carl Palmer’s drum solo in the middle of Fanfare was excellent. Completely different from his usual thing, I was happy to hear. Lot’s of quiet, tricky percussion things, including bouncing one drumstick back and forth on a cymbal by hitting it with the other drumstick. (It was an intimate venue, so that sort of thing worked.)

What didn’t work:

The dick’s guitar solo. He is has no soul. And mediocre talent.

I thought _Hoedown_ would work in his favor, but noooo. Even *I* can sustain a note and lean on the wah-wah pedal and pull faces and go wowowow with my mouth. You know what? I don’t.

_Trilogy_. What a mess. Points for trying though.
_Enemy God_. Ugh.
_Romeo and Juliet_. Make it stop.

And now I’m trying to remember what else they played and I’m drawing a blank! _Tank_ I think, _LA_Nights_, and _Bullfrog_, and something that Carl called “a Jazz number” but played at 200 bpm and 120 db so I couldn’t be sure of that.

Carl kept coming out from behind his kit and talking to the audience between numbers which was nice if a little rehearsed and unnatural in places. At one point near the end he said how he’d be “back with the band in September” and I yelled out, “Bring Emerson with you” which got some laughs. (I’m surprised anyone could still hear.)

Actually I think he will be back with the ASIA re-union rather than the CP Band but that’s ok by me, I’m looking forward to it.

There are some pictures from the Vegas date here:
http://www.carlpalmer.com/NATour02.html.
None of the audience, though, maybe that’s just as well considering how few of us there were!

Editor’s Note, August 2020: I was way too harsh on the guitarist. Sorry, man. In the years since, the CP Band has become better at what they do and I have respect for whomever is playing the 6-string in that group.

I was holding off listening to Kate Bush‘s latest album, for the longest time. This was for two reasons:

• People were saying it was really good, even though her last album was 12 years ago and not that good, in my opinion. I didn’t want to be disappointed.
• If it was as good as people were saying, then it would probably have the unfortunate side-effect of popping any creative bubble of my own (as in, “I’m not worthy to even blow raspberries where other people can hear them”) and I’ve been on a roll lately and didn’t want to upset it.

Today I heard the second disk of Aerial. It’s really, really good. A return to form. I’ll just have to live with the consequences, dammit.

Wow. King Kong is a misfire of Lucasian proportions.

The CGI animation of Kong is wonderous to watch, and Andy Serkis should get an Oscar for his role as Lumpy the Cook because he won’t get one for being Kong. For sure, Kong the CGI character wouldn’t have been believable without Serkis and his 132 facial sensors.

But, PJ, just because you were remaking a film originally shot in 1933, and setting it in 1933, doesn’t mean you should infuse it with 1933 sensibilities!

And it is way too long. I think someone other than PJ should have edited the film. Assuming anyone actually edited it. Kong is at least 1 hour too long. It didn’t need so many dinos, or bugs, or action sequences, or vestigial characters. (What’s up with Jimmy, for example?) Was PJ showing off, and justifying it by calling it a “tribute”? That’s what it felt like, in places.

L said that she felt that the film made it clear that mentally Kong is not an adult, and as such, the entire movie is an ongoing documentary of abuse of a 2-year old child. I see what she means. (After all, where is Kong’s “wedding tackle”? Clearly he’s pre-pubescent.)

This film just wasn’t *enjoyable* to watch. And that’s why King Kong (2005) is a tragedy.

We paid our Serenity Tax again this weekend. What a great movie. It just gets better and better, and I leave the theater wanting to see it all over again.  This is a great film to see with fans. The cynics among you will say that, at this point, the hard core fans are the only people still going to see the film.

Well, Serenity is down to showing in just two or three theaters in our small, out-of-the-way home town, but the showing we went to (4:20 pm on Sunday) was about half full, and maybe a third of those attending and not already seen the film. I know this because I asked them before the movie started.

Also, right at the end of the credits, you can hear a version of the original “FireFly” series theme that is really good, played mostly on solo guitar. A nice bonus for the fans.

I’m a fan so unfortunately you can’t take this review at its face value. Serenity rocks! Go see it. You’ll enjoy it. We saw it this evening at the Crossroads Cinema in Redmond with Walt, Sherri, Richard and (absent) Tracy. I’m sure Richard will take Tracy to see it later on in the week.

You want more information? Ok. It’s a character-driven space western. With flawed heroes, and bad guys with one or two admirable qualities. It has funny and witty dialog, and assumes you don’t need everything explained for you. It’s detailed.

It’s not high drama, it’s good fun. It’s really better if you don’t know more than that, going in, I think. Of course if you’re a fan and know its heritage then, like me, you already saw it this weekend.

Wow. I mean, Wow. If you had asked me if Spielberg could actually pull off the task of translating H.G. Wells’ beloved 1898 novel onto celluloid and into the present day, I would have replied that it was an almost impossible task and he was bound to fail. Doubly so if Tom Cruise was involved.

Ask me again, for in my opinion Spielberg has done the impossible and created a perfect film – almost. Alas, I must subtract 2 points from a possible 10, but as I shall describe below, it is his own damn fault, and not that of the source material.

Indeed, he has followed the original story of the novel much more closely than I would have believed possible. Kudos to him – he makes it work. I have read some reviews from numbskulls who have clearly not read Wells’ novel, to whom I say, sod off. You have no right complaining about the ending, or even the basic narrative. Read the book, then decide if you must that you don’t like it. But don’t dis Steven S. for accurately following the master story-teller.

Now, about the Cruise thing. Spielberg gets around the fact that Cruise – an over-rated actor if you ask me – is really only capable of playing a wanker, by casting him as: a wanker. Not suprisingly, it works. Cruise gives up a really good performance. Good one, Steven.

The war machines are unbelievably bad-ass. Industrial Light and Magic deserve many, many oscars for this, but I suppose they will have to make do with the one that I think they are almost guaranteed to receive for this outstanding work. I want to see the movie again, several times, purely to see the tripods unleash a metric square kilometer of whup-ass on Newark.

I LOVED THIS FILM.

So where do I subtract points? It’s hard to say without possible spoilers, so STOP READING NOW if you haven’t see the film and want to remain a virgin. (By the way – I do not consider it to be a spoiler that this movie is about an invasion of alien war machines that throw a party to which humans are not invited.)

I feel compelled to subtract points for the following things:

There’s a part in the film where we are shown the really stupid way the alien intelligences presumably arrive on earth. If I recall correctly, this mechanism is shown, and described as though it were true and reasonable. But it’s a really crap theory. It would have been fine if the woman describing the scenes on the videotape had made it clear that she was conjecturing about what they might be looking at. Let me say again: No explanation should have been presented as “gospel” as to how the aliens arrived on Earth. The humans in the film didn’t know; and had no way of knowing. But instead, it is presented to the audience as though this was actually how the aliens had arrived. It didn’t have to be that way. Spielberg could have fixed this by making sure that it was clear to us – the audience – that the people in the film didn’t know what they were looking at, and the theory was being presented by a character who clearly didn’t know what she was seeing. The explanation she gave was really stupid. It would have been fine for us – the audience – to not know how the aliens arrived either.

If I were editing the film, I would have completely removed the scene (about 1 minute long) to avoid the whole issue.

At one point the flesh-and-blood aliens actually show up and personally, I thought it was silly and unnecessary. It’s only a couple of minutes long, and again, the scene should have ended up on the cutting room floor.

But the worst thing is completely Spielberg’s fault. Rather than tell what what is wrong with the last (but one) scene, let me instead describe to you the scene as I would have written it:

Ray Ferrier and daughter walk along the deserted Boston suburban street, towards his ex-wife’s mother’s house. They walk up to the house, and knock on the door. It opens. The only remaining living occupants are the ex-wife, and the mother. Her father, her second husband Tim are both dead (because during the beginning days of the invasion they almost certainly would have gone out to see what was going on and been killed along with everyone else). The daughter and ex-wife cling to each other. The matriarchal mother (who earlier in the film, we are given to understand probably detests Ray for what he supposedly put her daughter through) – embraces Ray with uncharacteristic emotion because he is all that is left. His sins are forgiven because he survived and protected her granddaughter.

Y’see, I think that is a little more likely that what Spielberg filmed.

8 out of 10.

The Rising Sun restaurant emerged from the ashes of an Italian buffet about two years ago, taking the form of a nice family Japanese sushi joint. We ate there a couple of times either side of seeing a movie at the Regal Village Square 18 picture theater. They had good dinner combo deals… your standard neighborhood sushi joint.

About 6 months ago, it once again underwent a change of management, with a completely different and more expensive looking menu. Normally when this happens, I have sighed at the loss of yet another friendly affordable sushi venue, and changed my plans for the evening. Fortunately, a couple of weeks ago, when faced with this sudden case of confounded expectations, I was with some guests from out-of-town and – having promised them sushi – really didn’t want to disappoint them. I explained that I could no longer vouch for the experience, and put it to a vote. We agreed: we’d take the risk.

I’m very glad we did.

Don’t waste your money on the usual sashimi and ngiri choices because that’s not really what they are about. You can get those elsewhere. Instead, go for the special rolls. There’s a large number of options and they are all delicious.

Yes, it’s more expensive. We won’t be idly dropping in on a whim. But the food is worth it. It’s creative, it’s tasty, and in my opinion it competes with the out-of-this-world creations of Nobu and frankly that’s saying something. (I also enjoyed the bottle of chilled, unfiltered saki we had with the meal and I’m sure that last time I tasted that was at Nobu.)

I highly recommend this restaurant for special occasions and the odd treat. I can’t afford to go there every week but I’d like to.