Wednesday 10 June 2009

The Kills


The Kills is an indie rock band formed by American vocalist and guitarist Alison Mosshart & British guitarist Jamie Hince. Their three albums, Keep On Your Mean Side, No Wow and Midnight Boom, have gathered much critical praise(Actually, I don't know their last albums).

Keep on your mean side

Their first album wa similar in style to the EP, veering from the Velvets-esque stomp of "Wait" to the noisy, dirty garage punk blues of "Fuck the People" (this song is rumoured to be a reference/homage to the French convicted criminal Florence Rey) and dark psychedelia of "Kissy Kissy". The record was well received by the music press, though the White Stripes comparisons would not go away.

My favourite song from them


Maintaining an anti-careerist, anti-music industry attitude, the band rarely granted interviews. Rather, they got the music press to come to them with their minimalist yet powerful live shows (which also included the drum machine), the pair maintaining an air of tension by subverting the expected role of stage performer. Mosshart chain-smoked while singing, rarely speaking to the audience, whilst Hince violently ripped blues riffs from his instrument. At a New York City show following the ban on public smoking, Mosshart went on stage with three bottles of water, lit up a cigarette and proceeded to smoke constantly from the first song to the last note of the set.



No wow:

Featuring an artier, less "guitar rock" sound, the record embraced post punk influences and sounded even more stripped down than Keep on Your Mean Side. Originally written to be performed on a Moog, the band was forced to change directions and record it primarily using a guitar as its central instrument after Hince's Moog broke and couldn't be repaired before entering the studio. A 40-minute DVD documentary was included with a limited number of copies and features interview, performance and on the road footage shot on tour.


The first single, "The Good Ones", from No Wow, was released on 7 February 2005 and reached number 23 in the UK singles charts.

Since No Wow, the band released a 3th studio album called Midnight Boom. I don't know that album at all, sorry gents....

Friday 5 June 2009

Delicatessen - Jeunet & Caro


Delicatessen (1991) is a French black comedy film, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, starring Dominique Pinon and Karin Viard. It is set in a post-apocalyptic apartment building in a France of an ambiguous time period. The story focuses on the tenants of the apartment building and their desperate bids to survive. Among these characters is a newly arrived tenant, who arrives to replace a tenant whose reason for departure is initially unclear. The butcher, Clapet, is the leader of the apartment who strives to keep control and balance in the apartment.

It is largely a character-based film, with much of the interest being gained from each tenants own particular idiosyncrasies and their relationship to each other.

Trailer


Plot:
Delicatessen begins in a dilapidated apartment building in rural post-apocalyptic 1950s France. Food is in short supply, with grain used as currency and animal populations dwindling, having been hunted to extinction. At the foot of the apartment building is a butcher's shop, run by the landlord, Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus), who posts job opportunities in the "Hard Times" paper as means to lure victims to the building, whom he murders and butchers as a cheap source of meat that he sells to his tenants.

Following the "departure" of the last worker, unemployed circus clown Louison (Dominique Pinon) arrives to dance and fly around for the vacant position. During his routine maintenance, he gradually befriends Julie Clapet (Marie-Laure Dougnac), which slowly blossoms into a romantic relationship. Aware of her father's motives and Louison's imminent death, Julie descends into the sewers to make contact with the feared Troglodistes, a vegetarian sub-group of French rebels, whom she convinces to help rescue Louison.

The full movie is available on Dailymotion :

Thursday 4 June 2009

Babel____González Iñárritu - Blanchett - Brad Pitt


Babel is a 2006 film, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and written by Guillermo Arriaga, starring an ensemble cast. The multi-narrative drama completes González Iñárritu's Death Trilogy, which also consists of Amores perros and 21 Grams.

Babel invents multiple stories taking place in Morocco, Japan, Mexico and the United States. It was an international co-production among production companies based in France, Mexico and the US. The film was first screened at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, and was later shown to audiences at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Zagreb Film Festival. It opened in selected cities in the United States on October 27, 2006, and went into wide release on November 10, 2006. On January 15, 2007, it won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Drama. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and two nominations for Best Supporting Actress and won one for Best Original Score.

Wednesday 3 June 2009

Girls in Hawaii


Girls in Hawaii is a Belgian indie pop band. They started getting famous in 2001.

In 2000, Antoine Wielemans and Lionel Vancauwenberghe began recording songs on an 8 track-recorder, and a few months later they formed the band by recruiting their brothers: Denis Wielemans and Brice Vancauwenberghe, and two friends: Christophe Léonard and Daniel Offermann.



Girls in Hawaii's first release was Found in the Ground: The Winter EP in early 2003, after which the band toured through Belgium and France. In the meantime, they started recording what would become their first LP.

From Here To There was released in November 2003 in Belgium and in early 2004 in Europe. It was well-received across Europe, where the band went on a promotional tour, through Belgium, France, Italy, Germany and Spain. The record was later released in Japan, and in October 2005 China Shop Music released it in the United States. The band started a short tour of the West Coast of the United States in April 2006.





Their second full-length album, Plan Your Escape was released in February 2008 in Europe. It was recorded in old houses in the forests of Ardennes by producer Jean Lamoot (who has worked with French artists such as Noir Désir and Alain Bashung). The album, more complex and eclectic than the previous, contains twelve songs, among them, the first single which is called This Farm Will End Up In Fire. The band has toured Europe promoting the album during 2008.



First single from the 2nd album released in 2008