Tekken

Yes, that video game adaptation.

John Foo as Jin Kazama is prety stiff. Cried with tears of joy at the opening match between Eddie Gordo (which are similar to the video game capoeira moves) and Raven but alas and alack, Eddie only fights in one match. John Foo does strike some poses reminiscent of the video game cover. The patricide angle is at least interesting. Good thing there is not much of plot development, and it's mostly brutal and violent fighting. Disappointed that Marshall Law is not a bad Bruce Lee rip-off like in the game and there is no King (the wrestler who wears a fake tiger's head). The girl playing Christie Monteiro actually has some moves, unlike the girl playing Sonja in Mortal Kombat. Pretty ok-ish but not up to par with Uwe Boll's viedogame movies (heh!).

The Essential Chieftains

Split into two discs/sides of the Chieftains - disc one is meditative traditional instrumentals, disc two being collaborations with all sorts of artistes, but primarily Irish ones. Disc one is quite soothing stuff, at least until the bodhran comes about - now that is a really heavy metal instrument if there ever was one. Problem is none of the instrumentals really stick to my mind, besides their taking on of the traditional Chinese tune "Full of Joy" - usually played at Chinese New Year anyway. I prefer the pub-like poppier take on Irish folk as the Dubliners rather than this purist stuff. Disc two is more diverse, and even singers I normally hate, like Sting, is bearable here. My favourite is Rick Skaggs' and their take on "Cotton-Eye Joe", shorn of the Eurodisco nightmare that was Rednex's version. Ok I guess, and definitely gets more pleasant with each listen.

The Essential Tito Puente

I'm not entirely new to his works, but I have to say that this is a more diverse compilation than the two cassette comps I have of him, which are mostly slow to mid-tempo "Mambo" numbers. Here, there are exhilirating, almost salsa-ish tunes, Cubop (Latin/jazz hybrid), straight jazz ("Birdland After Dark", "What is this Thing Called Love?", "Take the A Train" and "Malibu Beat"), an Oriental Chinese pentatonic-sounding piece ("Lotus Land") and my fave piece - the all-percussion African chant "Obatala Yeza". Nice starter to Puente, methinks, and sheds new light on him for me - I actually found my two cassette comps of him pretty boring, compared to later salsa by other people. This comp, however, could do with some post-60's material, such as his collaborations with Celia Cruz.

The Dave Clark Five - The Hits

Not as good as The Hollies as far as British Invasion groups go. Another problem is that the songs are soooooo energetic the DC5 might as well have all been high on amphetamines during recording. The early hits make early Beatles sound anaemic in comparison. Another good thing is that this is only a single disc, so there are very few duff tracks. My Hollies comp is a double disc and there was a lot of song-skipping by me with those two discs. The crap tracks are those "hippie" let's love one another-type tracks, thankfully of which there are only 3 of them. Not bad not bad.....

Saw these two recently:-

Clash of the Titans

More like Crap of the Titans. Millenias ago, long before they were Gods on Olympus, the Titans rules the Earth. When one of them had stomach upset, he went to the West Coast of the northern side of the American continent and took a huge crap on the place now known as Hollywood. Seriously, though, why bother with a remake when you can't add anything to the original? The original's stop-motion capture effects bedazzled and created a sense of wonderment. Here, it's just CGI overkill and the creatures aren't digitally drawn that creatively. Ralph Fiennes' raspy whisper as Hades is just comical and I LOL'ed several times. Liam Neeson looks like a displaced King Arthur without the regality. There's none of the random randiness of the Gods as in the original, and the deities' sexual misadventures are done for a purpose. A total waste of time. Good thing it's so short. Perseus gets it on with the immortal Io and not Princess Andromeda. And Medusa wears a bra. Sheesh!

I Love You Philip Morris

I read the iMdb message boards on this before watching this and am rather befuddled. Why is this labelled a "serious" movie and Carrey's performance here seen as "serious" by some of the posters there? This is a comedy as well, just lighter in tone. The homosexual overtones initially are meant to be gross-out funny although it does become quite well-drawn out and sensitively handled when Carrey meets Ewan MacGregor's titular character. It also takes forever to get going but once the romance is in place, it is quite funny to see how Carrey will do anything for love (and he'll do that as well). Carrey doesn't age well, though, looking pretty haggard and he might as well have AIDS in real life. He also looks uncomfortable in the more intimate gay scenes. Otherwise, pretty okay. And to answer iMdb's message board, Carrey had a serous role before in The Truman Show and he pulled it off pretty well.

Tangerine Dream - Dream Sequence - The Best of Tangerine Dream

Got this on a whimsy, really. Well, I like it. This one is all from the Virgin Years, which may not be that representative of them as it misses out the early Krautrock/psychedelia stuff. The songs are mostly hypnotic ambient synth-based tunes, and TD is the grandfather of trance, particularly Goan trance, as Kraftwerk was the grandfather of techno. The counter-melodies owe a lot to minimalist composers, and the pulses and arpeggiation sounds a bit Steve Reich-ish. The excerpts from the longer pieces usually just concentrate on the hooksy parts, such as those from Phaedra and Stratosfear, and you don't really get to hear the full progression of each song (both are over 20 minutes long and can't really fit here). They also obviously influenced Commodore 64 composers like Martin Galway, whose Parallax loader theme is a lot like Ricochet Pt. 2. Disc two, however, is a bit tepid, with Logos and Dominion being really ambling boring pieces.

Tangerine Dream - Phaedra

Their breaktrhough album. Probably something great in 1974 as nobody was doing this kind of music then, except for Kraftwerk which is a totally different ballgame entirely anyway, as this is mostly layered sequencers on top of a repeating "pulse" synth-throb. The frontispiece title track is very good. The other songs float by aimlessly, although they are not as bad as Autobahn's filler tracks.

The Undertones - Hypnotised

Just to complete my discography (I have the other three). The songwriting ain't as sharp as the debut, and the more "mature" songs here lack the depth of the next two albums. This is mostly a transitional album. Hard Luck, despite being a fond Gary Glitter tribute, doesn't rock as hard as its inspiration - the drumming is just not as good as the Burundi beats of the Glitterman. I love the singles though (My Perfect Cousin and Wednesday Week).