It’s really not easy to find new music. I’ve developed a bit of a method – I load up my favourite artists in the Last.fm player, and see which other artists pop up. Or head on over to Pandora to do the same. Or go to AllMusic.com and check out the ’similar artists’ listed under the names of my favourites.
But these methods of mine are not exactly efficient. And frankly, they rely too heavily on what other people consider to be ’similar’. Recommendations are similar – they’re great, and very useful, but unless you’ve got friends with really good taste [;p] then it’s really a case of hit-or-miss.
This frustrates me, so every once in a while I’ll go trawling across the net in search of new music. I’ve found that another interesting way to discover artists is to head to the forums of some of your favourite artists. It was at the Damien Rice fan site, Eskimo Friends, that I struck gold today. Mmm. Musical gold. One of the topics in the forum linked me to a blog which had a whole bunch of links to various Ray LaMontagne live recordings. Mmm. Musical gold.
Incidentally, that blog led me to find another music blog, with more musical goodness to be found for download. Both of these blogs are treasure troves of new artists for me to feast my ears on.
I’m curious – how do you find new music? What are your methods for discovery?
Ha. Like I said, I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately. I’m on holidays and bored brainless, so is it any wonder? Hehe. Here’s the last batch of 8, which will bring me roughly up to date with all that I’ve seen in the last few weeks.
The New World – this is one of those movies that I watched over the space of quite some time. It’s a reeeally slow movie, and I was just not in the mood for it, so I stopped watching half way through and left it for another time. ‘Another time’ just happened to be about two months later. Heh. Oops. Anyway, despite how very slow it is, it’s actually a rather beautiful movie. I didn’t think I’d like it, but was pleasantly surprised. I’m not one to be into chick flicks or romance, but this had a lovely depiction of love. If I had to class it in a genre, that would be it: this is a ‘love movie’. It loses points for being so slow, but gets a 7.5/10 from me.
Magnolia – Ok, I have a confession to make. I tend to rate movies by how much of an impression they leave me with. I prefer movies with impact, whatever form that may come in. I like the movies that last in my mind and give me something to mull over. This one.. well, it fell short. I can’t pick any actual flaws in it, but it’s just an anti-climax. Perhaps this is because I’d seen Crash before Magnolia, so there was no novelty to the structure. I don’t know. It was just not very impressive. 7/10.
V for Vendetta – this is one of those films which you either love or hate, I think. I might write more about it later, but the short version is that I loved it. It was ‘Politics 101′ for the mainstream teen target audience. Or like a modern-day 1984 with Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving. And by the way, Hugo Weaving’s delivery is great. I’ll be watching out for him with a keen eye now. 9/10.
Apocalypse Now – one word: overrated. I know, I know. It’s a brilliant classic, an important movie and all that. Yeah and despite all that, it’s still overrated. It was not nearly as good as I expected it to be. 7/10.
A Beautiful Mind – sappy, simplistic, cliched.. and yet quite entertaining. I really enjoyed Russell Crowe’s performance in this. Does that make me a bad person? Haha. 7/10.
Big Fish – in hindsight, this reminds me a bit of A Cock and Bull Story [which I reviewed here] because of the ‘movie-in-a-movie’ feel – the dual layers. Big Fish did a better job of it, by far, but I’m still not sure I enjoy this format. It was a very entertaining movie, though, and a lot of fun to watch. I think it’s accurately described as a ‘fairytale for adults’. 8/10.
Blade Runner – this is another case of having seen the movie too late for it to really have an impact on me. I’ve seen too many sci-fi movies to be impressed with Blade Runner. Kudos for having done it first, but it was lost on me. Having said that, though, I really liked the sets and cinematography, J.F. Sebastian’s house and dolls in particular. I wish I could take a walk through it, or at least see it all in much higher resolution.. good stuff! 8.5/10, for doing it first.
Dogville – wow. I loved the theatrical feel to this one. It really placed the focus on the people and what was happening with them, rather than getting bogged down with the ‘pretty’ images. The themes are a bit ambiguous, but this is one of those movies that has stayed in my mind for a long, long time after I’d watched it. Besides that, it was also surprisingly enjoyable to watch. 8.5/10.
The Descent – it was like rubbing rusty nails on my eyeballs. Except even that still does not convey just how horrible this movie was. It was cheeeeese to the max. Urgh. I’m not one for ’scary’ movies anyway, but this was bad. The best bits were when they were getting killed, because at least then I didn’t have to put up with their wooden acting and their forced dialogue. It doesn’t take a genius to know how to scream convincingly, ya know? Seriously, don’t waste your time. 3/10.
Kaedrin has a completely different take on The Descent. Check it out for a more.. balanced perspective.
Reservoir Dogs – I’d seen this once before, but I wanted to go back and see it again. I’m glad I did! This is a witty movie, and one of my absolute favourite aspects of it is the theatrical feel to it. Above all, this was really enjoyable to watch. Michael Madsen looked good, too. The last 15 years has really taken a toll on the poor guy. 8.5/10 for the movie.
The Jacket – recommended to me by a friend, and he was right; this was a cool movie. My lasting impression of it is that it’s like The Machinist: a movie which I really enjoyed, but which I’d hesitate to recommend to others. I loved it. I sat enthralled. Oh, and it has Adrien Brody in it! 8.5/10.
Jakob the Liar – a Robin Williams movie where he puts on a fake sounding Polish accent to play the part of a man named Jakob. This is set in the Polish ghettos during WWII. It was mediocre: nothing great, nothing crappy. Just your run-of-the-mill, middle-of-the-road feel-good movie. 6/10.
True Romance – talk about overrated! Um, perhaps I’d just heard too much about this movie, but it really was nothing special. I don’t get the fascination with it. It drags a bit, too. 6/10.
The Village – again, this was a rewatch. And like with Reservoir Dogs, I’m glad I went there for the second look. I think this has got to be one of the most underrated movies ever, and it’s all their own fault! Before the release, The Village was marketed as a thriller/horror type of movie.. and that’s really not what it’s about. I’m sure the genre-bending doesn’t make it easy to promote, but they shot themselves in the foot with the promotion of The Village. It’s a great movie, though, and has some really nice allegorical parallels to teach. Quite interesting and enjoyable once you get past the fact that it’s not meant to be a horror, and just go along for the ride. 8.5/10.
Following – a black and white, low-budget British film which is a perfect example of a case where the screenplay makes the movie, and a large budget and special effects are unnecessary. Good stuff, though it was really slow in the middle. It picked up, though, and the ending is a twist and a half. 7.5/10.
Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story – This is a movie about people making a movie based on a book which is called ‘unfilmable’. They move back and forth between the ‘film world’ and the ‘real world’. The ‘film world’ is rather entertaining, but, rather unfortunately, they don’t spend nearly as much time on it as I’d have liked. It’s frustrating, because it would have been great to see the ‘film world’ as a proper film. The movie was still funny, and if you can get past how strangely documentary-like it is, then you might enjoy it. I’m still not sure if I did. For now, a tentative 7/10.
More again to come later. I’ve been watching a whole lot of films. Heh.
Lost In Translation – surprisingly good. After getting to know the characters a bit in the beginning, I was expecting them to pour out their hearts to each other then jump into bed together. Don’t you know? Anonymous sex is the answer to everything! [At least, that's what Hollywood has us to believe.] Not this time. I was very pleased. It ended up being a brilliant movie about friendship and love. I really enjoyed it, and for that it gets an 8.5/10.
Underworld – this movie was truly bad. It started off promisingly, but then quickly lost momentum and picked up it’s cheesiness and tackiness. It didn’t bother to explain key concepts, and it was quite obvious in it’s use of ‘big’ music to set up important scenes. There was no subtlety there at all. Boom. In your face. Well boing flip Underworld, you get a 5/10.
Lucky Number Slevin – preconceptions; they can ruin a good movie. Not so in this case though. I’d vaguely heard what this movie was about, and so assumed it to be just-another-action-movie. Wrong. It was actually somewhat better than that – partly due to the interesting plot, but mostly because of the funny characters. I really liked Lucy Liu’s character. Cheesy, maybe, but she was so damn cute. :D 8/10 for the movie. 9/10 for her character. Heh.
The Pianist – yes, it has taken me this long to see this movie. Yes, I realise that this is quite odd. Here’s another factlet for you; I still haven’t seen Pulp Fiction. Hehe. Anyway, The Pianist. Good movie, but was that ever in any doubt? I haven’t seen all too many WWII movies, but I liked the fact that the whole movie surrounded the story of just one person and his family, his struggles, his survival. A must-watch. 9/10.
Man on the Moon – interesting movie, this one. It was a ‘comedy’, but I wouldn’t call it one. I quite enjoyed this movie, but mostly for the character development. It was a character study with humour thrown in. I’m not sure it’d be as funny if you hadn’t connected to the characters. I did, so enjoyed it. 7.5/10.
Over The Hedge – I don’t think it’s entirely fair for me to review this one, because I think I’m just well and truly over animated movies. This one had some great themes of the food we humans eat, the urbanisation of our forest areas etc. It also had some cute and funny characters. But despite all that I was still bored during the entire duration of the movie. It just didn’t come together for me. It wasn’t cute and funny, it was annoying and force-fed it’s message to the audience. Perhaps I need to be a few years younger to enjoy it. 5/10.
More to come soon.
