Listen to David Bowie's New CD free & prior to release

In an unprecedented move, Itunes are presently steaming on demand,  Bowie's new, and might I say best in years, album The Next Day prior to its official release. And whats more for free. I wouldn't normally encourage Itunes with free advertising but in this case... To listen log into the Itunes store on whatever device you normally use (or go here if you don't) and it will appear on the homepage. Or alternatively simply click THIS LINK. Hear it 8 days before its official release.

New Short Film From David Bowie

Well, some might call it a music video but Bowie has been at this for far to long to throw out anything so "crass". And given his latest set of videos seem to be ruthlessly ridiculing the odd rumours about him that have circulated since his "retirement" 10 years ago... The video to the new single "The Stars (are out tonight)" proves no different. While the music shows a more than solid return to form. Musically closer perhaps to Outside then his previously released single which lay closer to the rather maudlin "Hours", the video features British actor Tilda Swinton, directed with Floria Sigismondi's usual flair for "jittery camera work" and cinematography by Jeff Cronenweth (Fight Club, The Social Network, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Hitchcock - one of the only good things about Hitchcock its worth noting).

Is it also satirizing the blog Tilda Stardust which attempts to "prove" that bowie and Swinton are one and the same? Perhaps, but given Bowie's strange sense of humor - and that the fact that the blog looks like a number of others that have appeared over that years regarding Bowie whose author seems suspiciously familiar - I would hate to guess. Although interested readers might want to investigate the "Nate Tate Affair"

Oops! @Twitter And the Silent Years of Slapstick

Well now. Isn't that embarrassing. Sorry, just found out the follow me twitter button was not working. Fixed now though

Review. Django Unchained: Nietzsche's Siegfried Not Wagner's?

4 Out Of 5 Stars

"Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain? The ability to suffer is a small matter: in that line, weak women and even slaves often attain masterliness. But not to perish from internal distress and doubt when one inflicts great suffering and hears the cry of it — that is great, that belongs to greatness." Nietzsche: The Gay Science

"Moreover, Africans faced punishments designed not to only correct but also to degrade and humiliate. William Byrd, Virginia planter and a sophisticated colonial gentleman, noted, without embarrassment, in his diary how he forced a slave bed-wetter to drink a “pint of piss”: The Routledge History Of Slavery

It is nearly impossible to discuss Django Unchained without discussing Richard Wagner's Ring cycle of dramas and Siegfried in particular. How could it not be when both Tarantino and Christoph Waltz have discussed the influence of Wagner's work on Tarantino's newest movie - especially so in the German media. Add to this  that Django is searching for his wife Broomhilde (Brunnhilde) and the clear links between certain characters and those found in Wagner's dramas. However, like everything that Tarintino "steals" from, he manipulates them for his own purposes - while often doing little more than nodding at the original. And I don't just mean the written narrative here but all of the narrative structures at a film makers disposable: sound, music, dialogue, mise-en-scene, titles,  costumes, framing,  etc. Indeed, one feels sometimes that perhaps this alteration of the original source allows him to add a further narrative message - even if one needs to be familiar with the source to see how he does this and perhaps what he he might be trying to say. This would be no different in the manner that he adapts Wagner's work then he does that of  the other two main pieces of source material: Sergio Corbucci's original Django and Pietro Francisci's Hercules Unchained. However, I think that Tarantino's distortion of Wagner's Siegfried (Django) is so important in this movie that it needs far more attention than has been provided by those perhaps less familiar with the source. But don't worry, we will keep things simple. Don't I always?

Review: Cloud Atlas. Time Becomes Space

"But life is short, and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth". (Arthur Schopenhauer, 1818).

"O Brahmana, it is just like a mountain river, flowing far and swift, taking everything along with it; there is no moment, no instant, no second when it stops flowing, but it goes on flowing and continuing. So Brahmana, is human life, like a mountain river". (Buddha)
 
"Here time becomes space" (Parsifal, Richard Wagner) 

Anyone with even the fainest knowledge of film history - or those that have actually experienced some of it - will note an interesting phenomenon: often the movies that have gone on to be considered both "classics" and redefined or influenced future cinema in someway, were either, (and frequently both on initial release) box office or critical failures. At the same time, there were a small, but not always un-influential group of critics who seem to see something else in such film and praise them greatly. This often leads to the strange phenomenon of such movies appearing simultaneously on "best" and "worst" movie of the year lists. Such movies have included, although many younger readers might find it hard to believe: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner (the back tracking by critics over these two movies in particular over the years has been amusing to behold) and even Citizen Kane. Cloud Atlas, has so far shown an initial pattern very similar to these landmark movies.

Lets look for example at a small section of the critical response:

Even as I was watching Cloud Atlas the first time, I knew I would need to see it again. Now that I've seen it the second time, I know I'd like to see it a third time ... I think you will want to see this daring and visionary film ... I was never, ever bored by Cloud Atlas. On my second viewing, I gave up any attempt to work out the logical connections between the segments, stories and characters. Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times

"Finally, what sinks "Cloud Atlas" is not the largeness of its ambitions but the lack of skill it displays in terms of writing, directing and acting". Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times

Some will balk at its excesses, but breathtaking action, profound emotion and a dark sense of fun make this the most ambitious, original movie event in years. Hannah McGill The List

The best thing about Cloud Atlas is that it could, and should, turn into a properly divisive film... but one has to ask: does it allow for immersion? Even as we applaud the dramatic machinery, are we being kept emotionally at bay? Anthony Lane New Yorker

It's funny, violent and prodigiously romantic; it has immense heart and more gorgeous cinematic moments than I can describe. Andrew O'Hehir Salon.com

And on it goes, with negatives making up the majority of reviews (a score of 66% on Rotten Tomatoes if such things influence your film viewing).

I am about to step out on a limb here, I can hear the branch cracking as I balance precariously on the end, but I will predict the same amount of back peddling from those so dismissive of Cloud Atlas as I saw from the same critics around other movies already mentioned.

Oscars 2013 - The Winners

Best supporting actor
Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

Watch Now: Prometheus: The Directors Cut

Well, OK perhaps not quite, but you might as well have a look while your here? Right? Oh, go on.