Feb

11

Thao Love

By Rachel | Album Picks | 9 Comments 

I am kind of not in the best of moods this evening…The kind of mood where you don’t really want to come near me because I just might snap. Don’t know why really…I think part of it is the weather in California right now, sunshine has the opposite effect on me than most. It has been like 75 degrees here the last week and there hasn’t been a cloud in the sky…It just pisses me off to look outside and see a brown layer of smog in the horizon…It isn’t pretty it is just gross and puts me in a foul mood. So I decided to just come home and throw on my headphones and zone out.

I am listening to the new album from singer songwriter, Thao Nguyen. We Brave Bee Stings and All is her second album and it is really a solid delight. A 11 track album filled with singer songwriter pop songs with a little bit of a folk undertone, good stuff indeed. And she does a lovely job of putting a smile on my face. :-)

A couple of my favorite tracks…

mp3:  Beat (Health , Life, and Fire)

mp3:   Travel

Thao on myspace

We Brave Bee Stings and All 2008 (Kill Rock Stars)

Album available HERE and HERE

Feb

8

Scrabbel, Emily I

By Rachel | Music Mix Up | 8 Comments 

I thought I would post some new music today…And it being Friday and all I thought what better than to post this fun, happy new single from a little band called Scrabbel. Dan Lee and Becky Barron are the two members behind the music and I just love their fun energetic pop.

Hope everyone has an excellent Friday! Mine is much better now that my terrible headache went away.

mp3:  Emily, I

Scrabbel on myspace

Emily, I Single 2008 (Three Ring Records)

Available HERE

Feb

7

Paste Music Sampler Pick #2

By Rachel | Music Mix Up | 7 Comments 

I am kind of in a less is more mood this evening…Where you don’t feel like typing and you certainly can’t even fathom actually putting together constructive sentences…Do you ever find yourself in this place?

Paste Music Sampler Pick #2 from Paste Magazine issue 3/2008 is a bit of a dreamy pick, the kind of music I would want to accompany me while I was horseback riding on the sands of Bali or maybe something a little less dramatic…

mp3:  A & E

Goldfrapp on myspace

From their forthcoming album Seventh Tree

Album available February 25/26  Pre-Order

Feb

4

My Vote “Yes We Can” Video

By Rachel | News & Info. | 4 Comments 

I generally don’t get political here and I don’t really plan to sway the direction of the blog that way but tonight is a special night…The first election I voted in was the election of 2000…I had to do everything I could because I was so against Bush becoming our next President but unfortunately that was not the case and for the last 8 years I have been misrepresented!

Tomorrow I am voting in this country’s Super Tuesday primary elections and my vote will be for Barack Obama. My reasons behind my vote are simple, I want him to represent me and my country and I think he will be the best candidate to restore this nations wounds here and in the eye of the rest of the world.

I also wanted to share this very cool music video that Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas put together in support for Barack Obama.

Rock The Vote

Feb

2

Rewind #1: Owning Mahony

By Pip | Film Box | 3 Comments 

imdb / trailer

Hey folks, Pip here. I wanted to start up a series that visited films long since passed into the realm of DVD, but perhaps were missed by a great majority of people. We thought this would be good since sometimes I miss a film and need to tell people about it if it’s particularly worthy, as is the case with this one.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman (P.S.H.) can do no wrong. I even loved him when I first took notice of him back in Twister. He turned that movie into a sort of reverse-porno where instead of sex scenes you had tornadoes and fast forwarded through the tornadoes. So if you can do that, I assert you can do no wrong. As far as the film, it received almost no press when it came out and trying to search for reviews or other information is near-impossible. It was definitely swept under the rug. Why? I have no godly idea because it’s brilliant!

P.S.H., as in all of his films, completely transforms himself into the character and lives it. That said, it’s actually very painful watching Mahony do what he does. He is a loan officer with a Canadian bank that happens to have an extreme gambling addiction. He has the knowledge and the wherewithal to fuel it into an out of control spiral. I would equate watching this film to similar addiction films, a la Requiem for a Dream. It’s not the same millieu, but it feels almost as graphic only in a much different sense. It’s really hard to describe to tell you the truth.

The characters around P.S.H. are just as fleshed out and well acted. You have Minnie Driver playing his loving girlfriend, only she hardly plays the damsel in distress, nor his enabler. I found that very refreshing. You feel sorry for her because she loves him and wants to stand by him, but she’ll kick his ass before she sits and watches him burn in flames. John Hurt is always amazing and seems to have a long term working relationship with the director, Richard Kwietniowski.

This is based on a true story and adapted from a book detailing the case. In the end he defrauds the bank for an incredible amount of money, especially considering inflation adjusted for early 80’s dollars. Hoffman plays Mahony in such a heartbreakingly true way that I could barely watch. I wonder if he emulated the real man? Kwietniowski’s hand is amazing and I plan on catching up on the rest of his work. One doesn’t spew out a masterpiece like this without the history to back it up in most cases. Owning Mahony is probably difficult to find in a local rental store, but online it’s no problem to rent or buy. I would highly suggest it for an evening relaxed, hefty drama mixed in with yet another brilliant performance by my main man Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Jan

31

Cat Power, Jukebox

By Rachel | Album Picks | 14 Comments 

Well as you can see I was asked to remove the tracks that I hand picked from Jukebox. So I will comply…The problem is the promo tracks that they have so graciously allowed are not my favorite tracks from the album, although Metal Heart is an amazing song and one of my personal favs it was first found on Cat Power’s 1998 album, Moon Pix. Sigh…But I suppose it will have to do for all those who are not that familiar with Cat Power hopefully it will be enough to pull you in.

mp3: Metal Heart (Chan Marshall)


I can’t resist Cat Power (Chan Marshall), I love her, of course not in a romantic sense but in a sense that she can do no wrong in my eyes. Her voice just makes my heart beat the rhythm to her sultry sounding chords. Jukebox is her second album of covers, an album of classic songs of those who have influenced her the most over the years. Songs from the likes of Janis Joplin, Hank Williams, James Brown and Billie Holiday. This album is something to be heard indeed.A couple of my favorite tracks from the long awaited new album…

mp3: Silver Stallion *REMOVED (Lee Clayton) – Chan Marshall

mp3: Don’t Explain *REMOVED (Billie Holiday) – Chan Marshall

Jukebox 2008 (Matador Records)

Album available HERE and HERE

Jan

28

Sia Delights

By Rachel | Album Picks | 7 Comments 

It seems I am having some sort of female singer love fest here because I have been enjoying Sia’s new album, Some People Have Real Problems. An album filled with a lot more soul than her previous 2006 album, Colour The Small One and I must say I like what I hear, I mean it certainly won’t be my fav album of the year if you know what I mean…But it does have a few diamonds amongst the rough that we can all enjoy. Tickets for her North American tour are now on sale.

Kind of a short post tonight because I am dead tired and I couldn’t be more ready to get into my jam jams and snuggle away the evening and what perfect music to relax to…

mp3:   I Go To Sleep

mp3:   Beautiful Calm Driving

Sia on myspace

Some People Have Real Problems 2008

Album available HERE and HERE

 

Jan

26

The Battle of Land and Sea

By Rachel | Album Picks | 9 Comments 

I have been quite sick for the last few days, like where I have had a faucet for a nose and I have just wanted to rip my head off and roll it down the street! It has also been raining here for the last few days as well and that has been a real treat. Also, Puma my kitty love also seemed to be sick yesterday and I almost freaked out, she just seemed not herself like she couldn’t get comfortable and that is always hard to watch. But this morning she seems back to her perky self all bright eyed and bushy tailed. I breathe a sigh of relief…

And I do have new music for everyone!

So the last couple of days with the rain and sickness around here I have been enjoying the sounds of Portland Oregon’s own Sarah O’Shura who is the voice and soul behind The Battle of Land Sea. She creates whimsical psychedelic indie-folk where she takes you on a journey through misty lands of lush beauty and it is all quite enchanting indeed. Two of my favorite tracks:

mp3:  Saltwater Queen

mp3:  The Beautiful Ones

The Battle of Land and Sea on myspace

Self-Titled Album 2008 (notenuf Records)

Available HERE and HERE

Jan

23

Just Call it Fornication

By Pip | Film Box, Music Mix Up | 6 Comments 

Californication: imdb /season 1 preview

Hey folks, Pip here. Since Duchovny won a well deserved “Golden Globe Newsletter Award” for his role as Hank Moody, we thought a little shoe polishing was in order. This show is basically, in a nutshell, the whole reason to pay for Showtime when it was running, for season 1 has since finished. Granted, there are copious amounts of beautiful naked women gloriously sprawled about, but I’ll tell ya that’s like the number three reason to watch! Seriously!

All kidding aside (seriously guys, beautiful and naked) the show deserves all the praise it’s gotten to date including the Golden Globe. Duchovny is spot on perfect as the artist who had everything and lost it all and then some. His depressing adventures seem like he’s going through the motions of what a hugely successful author should be doing in the city of angels. He likes this place as much as I do, plastic smiles, sunshine, sports cars and all. Not only has his heart and soul been torn apart by Hollywood by way of a terrible silver screen adaptation of a seemingly glorious novel, but his other heart and soul has been ripped out because he’s just too damn smart for his own good.

Really this show is about Hank and the women, including of course the two closest to him, his ex-wife and his daughter. Most of the time there’s a new sex interest each episode, but it’s far from sexy when you get down to it. It’s similar to watching a train wreck, with a depressing factor of 5.0 on the Fujita Scale. Really, the entire time you see just how good a couple his ex-wife and he were once upon a time and how much you so desire them to get back together. At the same time, through a few flashbacks, you see what a clusterfuck Hank made of just about everything. He really does mess everything up mostly because his mouth works faster than his conscience, but that conscience has a heart of gold once you get passed the alcohol on his breath.

I have high hopes for Californication’s future and I hope it will not follow the path of most other series, but I can see that it may overstay its own welcome if it goes on for too terribly long. The first season was almost perfect enough to just let it lie as it is so everyone can bow out with grace and dignity. I hope one day I don’t regret that they ever made a second, or more seasons.


Hey everyone! Rachel here and I just wanted to add how much I love this show, it is seriously one of my favorite shows on television to date. I can’t wait ’till the second season which is set to premiere this summer. But not only is this show well written it also has a pretty cool soundtrack to accompany. And I thought I would share one of my favorite songs from Temptation Volume 1 a cover of Elton John’s, Rocket Man:

mp3: Rocket Man – My Morning Jacket

Temptation Volume 1 available on iTunes

Jan

22

Purr-Sip-Oh-Liss

By Pip | Film Box | 4 Comments 

Persepolis: imdb / trailer

Hey folks, Pip here. Sometimes even living near Hollywoodland doesn’t help when it comes to foreign films as it took all summer for this to reach us all the way from France. When I saw the trailer what seems like ages ago it definitely caught my attention and I wanted to see it really on the principle of it being so stylish (which I later found was the same as the graphic novel it’s based on), but I wasn’t absolutely sure if I’d like it, love it or meh it.

The story follows a great majority of a young girl’s life starting in her home of Tehran. She was born in 1969 which means she grew up in the 70’s, quite an interesting time and place to be a child. Seeing that world through the eyes of a child, and an incredibly whimsical one at that, was something to behold. The people we meet among her family and friends are basically happy and very nurturing.  Her family is incredibly important to her, and they are probably just like the people living in Iran today. Back in the 70’s, Iranians were proud of their country when compared to their neighbors. They were the progressive ones, they were the modern ones. Sure, the shah was a fairly brutal dictator disliked by most Iranians, but by in large people were free and most importantly they wanted more of it. This is probably what Iran would look like today, if it weren’t for those meddling kids! We see the fall of the shah and the hope from everyone that their lives and their country would improve. Knowing the history of the country did not make her transition into teenage years an easy thing to witness. It’s not something that changes overnight. We see one small thing after another be taken away until soon people are afraid to walk down the street. The dialogue that once ran freely among the people was winked out like a flame starved of oxygen.

The young girl sees a lot with her own eyes and feels the frustration from her liberal parents at what is happening all around them. Some of the things she says as a child got the theater laughing pretty hard. It was interesting to watch that sense of humor twist back on to itself transforming into sardonic sarcasm. Many times a film follows the rise and fall of a character, this film certainly has that, but our heroine I think more mirrors her society than anything. This truly is the rise and fall of Iran and it breaks everyone’s heart. Their home was taken out from under them and transformed into what it is now. It’s unfortunate that as of right now, Iran does not have a very happy ending in that things have not much improved. In the end she seems to give up having lived this long and wanting so much more out of life. Perhaps instead she should write some graphic novels after escaping her own home to France, then sell the rights to some really good film makers so that I could sit down somewhere in Hollywood and really love her life story. Honestly, I wouldn’t have changed a thing, no matter how bittersweet the tale really is.

I hope someday we can look back on this whole mess and release a nervous laugh while saying, “Thank God it turned out all right…”

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