Beach Boys' and Ramones' influence on SpongeBob

I remember going to see The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie a few years ago when it came out at the cinema, and it struck me how many great songs there were in the movie. A song called "The Best Day Ever" by SpongeBob & The Hi-Seas (sung by SpongeBob's voice actor Tom Kenny) is one of them, and listening back to it recently I realised how much it sounded like the whole of Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys. So doing a bit of research I found out that the song was co-written and produced by Andy Paley, someone who has indeed worked with Brian Wilson in the past, and you can definitely see Wilson's influence in this song.



After being released on the movie soundtrack, the track also became part of another SpongeBob release, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Best Day Ever, and Brian Wilson himself was actually involved in this album, recording all the backing vocals on a track called "Doin’ the Krabby Patty". Paley phoned him up to take part and he apparently agreed because he has two daughters who are big SpongeBob fans, so Tom Kenny went to pick him up in his car.

Tommy Ramone shows up on the album as well, playing drums on a Ramonescore track called "Ridin' The Hook". Amazing.

My reaction to Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie

I bought the DVD ages ago, but the other night I got round to watching Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie. This one is different to the live-action Street Fighter film released in the same year (1994), which I haven't seen, but I'm informed the animated film is much better. I was actually hoping for the film to be viewable in Japanese for a bit of language practice, but there was no option for that, so I watched it in English.

The movie centres around the characters of Ken and Ryu, but more so Ryu, who is wandering the globe in search of worthy opponents to spar with. However, Ryu is being trailed by the Shadowlaw, a crime organisation run by Bison, who wants to capture Ryu and turn him into a Shadowlaw henchman. The storyline's pretty predictable overall, but all the other main characters from the games make an appearance, leading to some interesting fight scenes. Some characters play larger roles than others though - I was disappointed to see that my childhood character of choice, Dhalsim was hardly involved in the film at all.

The animation quality varied throughout, but the film looked fairly good for the most part. And the soundtrack was interesting, composed mainly of hard rock/grunge type stuff, some of the tracks being supplied by bands such as Korn and Alice in Chains - I guess that's what was in fashion at the time. I was also surprised to hear the DVD menu audio was all songs by The Mad Capsule Markets.

I get the impression this was a pretty big film when it was originally released, probably more so in Japan than in the West. In fact, some of the new characters and storylines from the film eventually made their way into the Street Fighter games, and I'd recommend this film for anyone who's a fan of the games. It's nothing amazing, and a lot like most other anime action films, but it's still enjoyable to see all the characters from the games duking it out and stuff.

I really wanna play some Street Fighter II now actually - hado-ken!

Neuromancer film

I just came across this piece of news about a film adaptation of William Gibson's cyberpunk novel Neuromancer. I recently read Neuromancer for the first time and it was quite unlike any other book I've ever read, largely due to its unique narrative style, which I found really hard to follow. Gibson doesn't paint a full picture of what's happening in his story, rather he prefers to give you bits and pieces, and expects the reader to fill in the blanks. And while this makes the story quite exciting and fast-paced at times, I found it frustrating for the most part, especially when I'd leave a few days in between reading, so the story and situations weren't always fresh in my mind. It'd be interesting to hear what anyone else who's read the story has to say about this.

Saying all that though, the story itself and all the technological implications of the book were intriguing, and to say it was written in 1984 the book was quite a visionary work in regard to computers and 'cyberspace'. So I found myself wishing that the story was a film, as then I wouldn't have had any difficultly understanding and visualising what was going on. I'll be on the lookout for this film.

My reactions to The Dark Knight

So I'm going to have to agree with everyone else and say that the The Dark Knight is AMAZING. I went to see it on Friday night, and although I don't go to the cinema all that often, it has to be one of the best new films I've seen in years.

I'd been hearing very good things about it from all my friends, but I still entered the cinema with a degree of scepticism. By the end of the film though, I had no doubt in my mind that The Dark Knight is a top quality film, setting itself apart from all the other action movie and blockbuster trash that's being made these days. The other day I was trying to come up with a recent 'great' movie and couldn't really think of one, but after seeing The Dark Knight, I believe it is such a film, one that will go down as an important film of our time.

There are a few different sub-plots and themes involved, but the main storyline focuses on the battle between the Joker and Batman, the Joker committing numerous murders in an attempt to force Batman to step down as Gotham City's crime fighting vigilante. And the Joker was the best part of the film for me - a thoroughly interesting character, with methods and schemes that are always really intriguing and unpredictable, almost turning being a criminal into an art form. His plans eventually come to involve the whole population of Gotham too, creating massive, involving moral dilemmas, and really getting you thinking.

Heath Ledger's Joker is a different character to the one played by Jack Nicholson in the 1989 Batman. He's less off-the-wall crazy, and more powerfully evil, but surprisingly, you find yourself empathising with him at times. And I found it interesting that during the film the Joker basically admits he has no real reason for doing what he's doing, other than to cause general anarchy and mayhem, which I appreciated, as it made the film seem more 'real'. Instead of just presenting him as a comic book super-villain, the Joker did actually feel grounded in reality, as did the rest of the film; whereas some other comic book movies struggle to fully integrate their characters into the real world, I found The Dark Knight did this very well.

There are a couple of awesome scenes from the film which stick out in my mind, but the most memorable is one where the Joker is skipping away from a hospital which is about to blow up in a nurse's uniform. It's darkly funny and striking, and I bet it'll become one of those iconic film scenes in years to come.

And I think I'll end there. I won't talk about the rest of the story, as I'd probably give too much away for anyone who hasn't seen this yet, and you DO need to see this. I've heard there's going to be another sequel too, which I'm already looking forward to.

Nova drum sticks

So the other day the time came for me to buy some new drum sticks. I probably buy about 4 pairs every 7 or 8 months due to breakage, and now I think about it I've probably spent quite a lot of money on sticks over the years - something I wouldn't be doing if I played guitar or another instrument. And for what they are, I think drum sticks are a bit overpriced really, so I'm always looking for the cheapest way of buying them.

The sticks I usually get these days are Vic Firth American Classic 5BN sticks. I used to buy Pro-Mark because one of my favourite drummers endorsed them, but they would break really easily, so I switched to Vic Firth, and they last nearly twice as long I'd say. I used to play 2BNs as well, but they were just a bit too bulky, and 5BNs are a good average sized stick, so allow you quite a bit of flexibility in regard to different styles of playing.

Last time I bought my sticks I got a really good bulk deal on eBay, but I couldn't find any such deal this time, so I just went to an online shop I've used before. Here though I found a brand of sticks called Nova, who I'd heard of before, but never bought, and they were nearly half the price of the Vic Firths. Although there's not much information about the brand online, I did a bit of research and found that they are actually made by Vic Firth using the same wood as their other sticks, but Nova sticks are made out of wood that has slight imperfections and can't be used for their top-line range. They're still weight-matched and stuff though, and at £4.95 instead of £7.95 I thought I'd give them a go. I mean how much can an imperfection in the wood really affect your playing? I'm more bothered about how long they last. And the sticks came this morning, so once I've had a go with them I'll post a bit of a review online.

I'll also post a review or something of the new Batman film soon, which seems to be absolutely everywhere I look at the moment. Hopefully gonna see it sometime this week.

Still ill

And the illness continues. I feel better today though, but still not good enough to leave the house. I think I'll just sit around and watch TV some more. Yesterday I watched some Freaks and Geeks (I'm going through the whole series for a second time), Grease (this was the first time I'd seen it all the way through, it was OK, too many songs), The Squid and the Whale (that was depressing) and the last in the current series of Scrubs (wasn't that funny). Today I'll watch some more Freaks and Geeks, some Peep Show, and then hope that there's something good on TV.

Illness

I'm ill with a cold (in the middle of summer!), and it's a pretty bad one. I haven't been able to leave the house for the past two days and I've had to cancel stuff I had planned, which is annoying - illness is so inconvenient. But after two days with a cold, I should be getting better by tomorrow, right?

I've just been eating, drinking and watching TV and films - loads of Peep Show, Friends and some Ali G, and The Graduate and American Graffiti.

I did have some good news today though. And some bad news actually. The bad news was that I'm not getting a scholarship from Kobe University next year, which is a bummer, but the good news is that my student loan for the next academic year comes in August. I was planning on it coming in October, which meant I was considering getting a summer job to pay off my overdraft and tide me over for my first few weeks in Japan. But now it's coming in August I don't have to worry about all that. I celebrated by plunging further into my overdraft with an Amazon spending spree.

Weird weather

The weather's been crazy recently. It's warm and sunny one moment, then raining really heavily the next. I think it even hailed yesterday. I do hope we start to get some prolonged sunshine sometime soon, but the forecast for the next few days doesn't look too promising. When we do get some nice weather though there's this massive area of hills and fields near my parents' house that I'd like to explore. I meant to do it last summer, but never got round to it. Maybe this year.

I got my phone back again the other day. Dial-a-Phone said they'd send us a new one, but they haven't - it's just my old one repaired. But as long as it doesn't break again I'll be happy, and it seems to be OK so far.

I got an email from StarWars.com today telling me that they've just redesigned their website, partly in preparation for the new TV series and movie based around the Clone Wars.

I used to be really, really into Star Wars, and I especially remember one summer only 3 years ago when I spent a lot of time on the message boards, debating about everything Star Wars related. I remember I knew so much about Star Wars, but I bet I've forgotten it all now 'cos I just haven't been paying attention to it recently. I suppose not that much has been happening, but I was surprised to see that The Clone Wars movie comes out in just over a month's time. I knew they were making a TV series about the Clone Wars, but I didn't know they were making a film. I'm not excited for it or anything though. I find the whole Clone Wars storyline pretty boring - just a load of politics. And they already made a cartoon series about it all. That was OK actually, but wasn't that enough? Also, the new TV series and movie are both fully computer animated, which isn't very fun, and then combine that with the fact that Lucas hasn't really produced anything that decent since 1983. I am looking forward to the live-action TV series they're making though. That should be good, although we're gonna have to wait at least a couple years more for that.

Finally, I just released the newest Gamewave Podcast episode. We recorded it using a Talkboy, and I'm guessing we're the first people to ever do that. Check it out at gamewavepodcast.com.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

I recently watched a really great documentary called The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. I heard about the film through a podcast I listen to, and the hosts agreed that it was one of the best films made last year so I decided to check it out.

Set within the world of competitive gaming, the documentary follows two players of Donkey Kong, Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell. Mitchell is recognised as one of the best competitive gamers of all time, and when the film begins he holds the world record at Donkey Kong. Wiebe is a relative newcomer to the scene, but quickly becomes well-known through his attempts to break Mitchell's record.

I won't spoil the movie, but it's a thoroughly interesting watch as you get to see inside the politics of competitive gaming and all the personalities involved. And all this competition is set against the day-to-day lives of Wiebe and Mitchell, school teacher and restaurant chain owner respectively. It's such a great story that it's often hard to believe it's real life, and I thoroughly recommend the film if you're into video games at all.

Also, the DVD contains a few chiptunes from some artists that I play on my podcast, as well as a fun little animation by Gabe Swarr, who I know is a listener of the podcast too.

The return of old-style props in movie making

I read this article about CGI in the Guardian the other day, and thought it was good.

I'm so tired of CGI in films - it really can spoil a movie for me. Take Star Wars for instance - I think CGI was one of the big reasons that the prequels felt more lifeless and generally not as good as the originals.

In the article, a guy called Rob Burman makes a couple of interesting points. First, real props add to the physical reality of a film, as actors can react naturally to them, and they just look less 'shiny' and more real, because they are. But also, anything that is 'too CGI' and unbelievable can actually take you out of the movie, which surely defeats some of the point of using it? As Burman says: "It can look utterly believable, but if what you're watching is beyond possibility, it's hard to suspend your disbelief." As movie-goers, we can now usually tell when something is computer-generated, and if it isn't physically there, the scene just seems less real.

And for me, believability and realism is very important, as I love to get lost in films, but that doesn't tend to happen very much these days. So many films of the past would possess nothing of the charm they do if they'd been made with CGI, and so I really hope that real props start to make a comeback sometime soon.

The Goonies

During a rare period of free time yesterday I managed to catch The Goonies, as it was showing on Five. And although of course I'd seen it before, I realised how much of a masterpiece in nearly every way this film is.

And how badass is this song? We need more music like this.

Two films I wanna see

There are two new films that I really wanna see. The first is Drillbit Taylor and the second is Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and the main reason is that they are both connected to my favourite TV series of all time: Freaks and Geeks.

If you've never seen Freaks and Geeks, do yourself a serious favour and check it out. It's a really funny and engrossing high school comedy set in 80s America, and if you're anything like me I'm quite sure you'll love it. There were only 18 episodes made before it was mysteriously cancelled, but the whole series is TV gold - everything about it is awesome.

In fact, I love this show so much that I try to check out anything that's made by the same people, and both Drillbit Taylor and Forgetting Sarah Marshall are produced by Judd Apatow, the guy who produced Freaks and Geeks, as well as The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad. And Forgetting Sarah Marshall was written by and stars Jason Segel, who played my favourite character in Freaks and Geeks - it was actually quite weird to see his face on an advert on the side of a tram as I was walking through town the other day.

Freaks and Geeks was a starting point for Segel, as well as Seth Rogen, both of whom are now writing their own films and seem to be doing quite well.

And I really like the stuff made by all these guys because it tends to be about the freaks and the geeks - those who might not be typically popular or socially respected, - making it easy for a lot of people to really relate to. And I know it's not like they're the only people doing that, but they often do it an extremely entertaining way.

I'll probably post up some kind of review or something when I get to see these.

Check out a cool teaser blog here, "written by Peter Bretter", the star of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and an interesting article on Judd Apatow by The New York Times.

The Transformers: The Movie - my review

Last night I watched The Transformers: The Movie, which is different to Transformers, which I talked about here. The Transformers: The Movie is the animated film released in 1986, and I picked it up a while ago from Tesco really cheaply, but only just got round to watching it. Well, I did try to watch it a few weeks ago, but the first couple of minutes turned me off. Let me explain.

This is probably one of the worst films I have ever seen.

I'll start with the visuals. The first thing you notice is the really low frame rate, which, when combined with the poor animation, makes it quite hard to tell what's actually happening on screen. There are some points in the movie when things look good, but these are few and far between and don't last long - the majority of the film looks terrible.

Next, the storyline is generic and dull, and quite hard to follow. Much like the recent live action movie, it feels like you're simply watching a series of big fights, with no real idea of what's going on. A lot of things happen that don't really make sense, and there's just a general feeling of confusion. Like when the Autobots suddenly make friends with the natives of the planet Junk and everyone starts dancing - it took me a moment there to figure out exactly what was happening. After a while I just stopped taking this movie seriously.

The script here is very poor, basically 85 minutes of bad one-liners. And the dialogue is so hard to make out that I couldn't understand what was being said much of the time. The voices were really quiet and heavily synthesised, which makes them sound kinda cool, but hard to decipher.

Also, I couldn't really tell the difference between the characters visually, or remember their names well. (As a side-note, the villain in this movie, Unicron, bears a huge resemblance to Galactus from the Silver Surfer)

However, I did actually really enjoy the music in this movie. Throughout much of the film there's a cool, synthy, hard rock soundtrack pumping in the background (just about every cartoon from this era seemed to have this musical style - it's so awesome). Sometimes instrumental, and sometimes with lyrics, the music here is great. There's even a song by "Weird Al" Yankovic! In fact, I might get the soundtrack because I enjoyed it so much.

I missed out on Transformers altogether as a kid, which may have affected my experience, but overall this movie is extremely bad. Yes, it was aimed primarily at kids, but can even they enjoy something as poor as this?

I do have to say though that I am now quite intrigued by the Transformers toy line. As a toy they are a really, really great concept, and I might actually look into getting my hands on some. I remember Beast Wars from when I was younger, but they weren't as cool, and were really complicated to transform, so didn't really work.

So, in conclusion, The Transformers: The Movie is not that great of an actual film at all, but it's kinda interesting, so you might wanna check it out anyway. And do excuse me as I go and search for some Dinobots on eBay...

Drew Struzan

They just released a new poster for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which is coming out this summer. I'm looking forward to this as I really enjoy Indiana Jones films, and this one stars Shia LaBeouf, who I've liked ever since Even Stevens.

The guy who drew this poster is Drew Struzan, and he's done awesome artwork for some of my all-time favourite movies, including Back To The Future III, Zathura, E.T., Blade Runner and Star Wars (he seems to have a thing for drawing Harrison Ford I guess). In fact, I have all 6 posters he drew for the respective Star Wars films. I'd stick them up in my new bedroom, but there isn't enough wall space.

Live-action Akira?

This could either be really cool or really stupid. Probably the latter. One part of me thinks it could be a good movie, but then another part of me gets annoyed that things like this can't be left alone, and that the film's going to be set in New Manhattan and the actors are gonna be all white guys.

Reel Big Fish, Streetlight Manifesto and Sonic Boom Six tonight at Corporation. Should be sweet, mainly Streetlight Manifesto (they are awesome).

忙しさ

The past few days have been pretty crazy. Rather than just relaxing for a while before starting university again tomorrow I've had a load of things to do.

For a variety of reasons I didn't get to see MxPx the other night, which sucked. I did get to see the new version of Blade Runner at the Showroom though, which was wholly awesome. I hadn't seen any other versions of Blade Runner previously, and it was quite cryptic, but very interesting. I think I'm gonna try and now read the novel it was based on - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.

Guitar Hero

My brother got Guitar Hero II for his Xbox 360 for Christmas. Loads of people had recommended the game and although I didn't think I'd like it, I really do. It's fairly easy to pick up, but not so easy that it isn't a challenge, and it feels great when you nail a solo. I often play air guitar along to music when no-one's around and I did used to play guitar in a band a while back, but none of that really helps here. Although I hadn't actually heard most of them before playing, the songs are great, and my personal favourites are YYZ and Killing In The Name. Definitely check the game out if you get the chance.

Do you remember the song from the opening credits of National Lampoon's Vacation, Holiday Road? Check out this cover version by a band called matt pond PA which I found today.

Speed Racer

This film looks pretty awesome. I never watched the 60s anime, but the film reminds me of F-Zero with all the racing and bright lights.

Christmas Day

So it's Christmas Day. I wasn't really excited at all this year, and it feels better that way actually 'cos there's less of an anti-climax.

I ended up receiving mostly money, which is good, but I also got a cool book kinda thing from my sister. It's called the Star Wars Vault and it charts the history of Star Wars with pieces of replicated memorabilia like cinema tickets and original sketches attached to the pages. It's quite fun - like a Star Wars Jolly Postman.

Totally unrelatedly, I discovered an awesome cover version of The Police's Message in a Bottle by Matisyahu. Check it out while you can on his MySpace page.

This Is England

I went to see the film This Is England last Friday. I'd been wanting to see it ever since it came out, and as they were showing it at my university union for only £1.80 I decided to go along. It was one of the best films I've seen in a while; probably the best British film I've ever seen.

The film was set in the 80s, and as well as using 80s fashion, housing, cars etc. there was a slight grain to the film, which made it feel authenticly 20 years old. The acting was realistic too - something I really enjoy in film. I love films like this, or TV programs like The Office, where it just feels like things aren't scripted - it really helps immerse you. I also enjoyed the elements of ska music and the exploration of the skinhead movement. I find it interesting how this culture is split so markedly over issues like nationalism and immigration. Definitely check it out if you get the chance.

While checking out my web stats I came across a site called Technorati. I'd heard about it before but never visited. It basically indexes blogs, allowing you to search through them and see responses and popularity for certain blogs. This blog is on there, and it's always nicely narcissistic/strange to find sites like this that hold information about you.

The other day I read about Radiohead and their new album. Radiohead are one of those bands that a lot of people seem to like, but that I've never really checked out properly, and the stuff I have heard isn't that interesting. They've set up a site though where you can download their new album In Rainbows before it's released as a CD, and the twist is that you can set the price of the download, even download it for free. It's quite a novel concept, and I doubt that Radiohead will end up making much money through this venture, but it's great to see such a massive band circumventing the music industry in this way (I didn't actually download the album, as you had to sign up for an account or something).