Terpentintollwut

Some absolute cunt came into my garden and cut off this tree! I don't even know who it was!

You gotta lean the keyboard against the monitor in an upright position

I recently re-discovered ICO, never finished it for some reason, although I loved it. Maybe this time.

I had a chat the other day with a guy from Mexico (I think, I forgot) and he kept telling me how much he liked the United States when he was there, then he went on about how "the blacks there are different to the blacks here" (in Germany), but wasn't really able to explain to me what he meant by that. Eventually he started singing praises for his host family who were "real whites" as he put it, and I still didn't get what he was on about and thought he was making a joke. Friends told me later how much they disliked the guy because of his constant racist remarks and I felt like an idiot.

Even though I am on the exact same page and totally agree with Lump, Lyst, Candiru and Bordie, it's nice to see how this discussion is going rather maturely despite totally opposite viewpoints. It seems the opinion on the quality of an album is mostly just a matter of ones personal impression of the "artistic integrity" involved in the making. The question is ... is there someone who "got it right" or is this just a manifestation of different views on music and life in general, hence utterly subjective? I'm not sure. But still agree with the guys I mentioned.

I came here to be a spoilsport and say that I find T.H. hasn't aged well at all. The longer the break I take from it, the less I think of it the next time round. I've never really "enjoyed" the album in the first place, but I gave it a chance to grow on me, which it did, for a little bit. I guess it was mostly the BoC-Withdrawal speaking, I really wanted it to be good, but I think at this point it's safe to say that IMO it is their weakest release by far. It's also really the only album by them that from start to finish sounds like the kind of music that was made because someone wanted to make it, not because someone HAD to make it., if you know what I mean. And they have mentioned in interviews how they were going through "darker times" around the time Geogaddi was produced, which is a state of mind that I think either purposely and/or involuntarily found its way into the music they created then. Maybe T.H. is the result of them literary having "not much to say" at the moment. Could also be the reason for their total abscence in the years before. Which is fine really, it's a legitimate development, they're people, not the mystical figures some fans want them to be. Of course I'd never have said that before hearing T.H. as I am way too curious a person for that type of thing, but having properly digested T.H., I'd even go so far and say I kind of wish they didn't release that album in the first place. I can't imagine them being satisfied with the way it sounds. Then again, I reckon they're the type of artists who are never 100% satisfied with what they created, which is honorable. But some part of them must have told them, this isn't on the same level as some shit we did years ago. So I hope they wait until they're actually inspired until the next release, even if it takes them 20 years. And cut down all the marketing shenanigans and fan service. Just make the type of music you want to make. Maybe I'm completely off with my estimation and they are high-fiving each other about Tomorrow's Harvest every morning, but somehow I don't see that being the case. I mean, listen to Happy Cycling (MHTRT Version), that shit was raw and inspired, not polished and hollow. Okay watmm I'm out again for a bit. See you in some weeks probably!

I get THIS as an ad for Telecom, biggest phone company in the country - they can't be serious? Did Aphex hack Facebook-Ads as part of the campaign or what?

Oh man, we are oddly similar in a way. I thought this when reading your posts in the ganja thread and now you have the same nostalgic way of retelling your memories. I mean, I'm a 2 meter German dude, but still. Needless to say I also did that impression of the RDJ album at the same age (although later, I didn't consciously witness it being released). I would totally meet up with you, should I ever be in Tokyo. My friend (the non-BoC-fan-friend) keeps telling me how much fun it would be to be in Tokyo as a blond German guy, but then again, I'm not really interested in Japan or Japanese culture at all, ironically. So: Syro!

looks like the stencils were legit after all

Burger-People who also love habaneros and chili products, you have to get this sauce, it's fantastic: not as hot as most of Blairs Death Sauces but the flavor ...

All my lols at Snowpiercer aside - I thought it really was a terrible film. The set design was beautiful, very well done, so definite credit to those people. Not so much to the visual fx team, the cgi was rather outdated, but personally I do not mind that when more important things are done right - writing, acting, pacing, characters. I can watch a Lexx episode and take it seriously because they knew how to build up some tension even with Tomb Raider I style computer graphics. But Snowpiercer ... The setting and general idea is fine for a sci fi movie, although absolutely illogical as many have pointed out, but I think it is based on a comic book, so the filmmakers are not to credit for that. The writing and proceeding of the story we see in the film is a disaster, the actors are all shit (except Tilda Swindon who happens to be in this film because ... ?! - and not even she is doing an above-average job, also her scenes seem like she thought it was a dark comedy or something). Chris Evans I only knew from Sunshine where he's doing a superior job, all other films starring him are apparently some shit I don't watch like Transmorphozords or Fastastic Explosion League 3D.... which makes me think I'm not really the target audience for Snowpiercer either. But I'm still going to keep bashing it for insulting my intelligence. Every single action sequence seems to have been ripped straight off some other movie that was successful at some point in time. Like "Remember that cool bit from that one movie? Let's put that in also, even though we don't know how" ... I saw bits from The Matrix, then I believe that ear-ringing temporary deafness bit from Saving Private Ryan was in there, then another bit from some fighting sequence in Blade or something. But it looks like the early afternoon television version of a rip-off, not the "I see this at the cinema"-version. If they had at least done it right ... the story and limited set could have been a great place for creativity, like they used that one single room in Cube for a whole 90 minutes. But I never ever had a feeling of "wow they're moving on to the next section of the train", it was all fluent, but in a terrible, oblivious way. I'm usually not the kind of person who points out logical mistakes in a film, I mostly don't care when it serves the purpose of telling an exciting story, but Snowpiercing was almost insultingly stupid at times. Cannibalism is not worse than eating bugs because that's gross and what Asians do? Fuck off. Really, this film was one of the worst I've seen in recent history in comparison to its general rating. Positive reviews my ass - shit writing, shit pacing, shit characters nobody cares about, stupidity all over the place, shit predictable ending, shit movie all together.

Fell asleep last night, gonna finish Snowpiercer now .... I don't know why.

I saw the first hour-or-so of Snowpiercer, only to see what all the fuss was about, and

I thought it was nice! good use of it imo. yeah yeah the film had a good music selection throughout! I just laughed because I never imagined this Tommib track to be the soundtrack to a situation like the one from scene its used in! This probably only makes sense to German people: Stromberg: Der Film - This is the movie-version of the German "ripoff" of Ricky Gervais' The Office, the amazing thing is that it is superior to the original because it employed great actors to play more realistic characters, and Stromberg (the boss) is some kind of mix between Hitler and Larry David. Super hilarious show that I loved (I've seen The Office and I hate most German comedy, but this time they got it right), and the movie was pretty solid too. A little more over the top than the series, unrealistic, but the storyline was great and some scenes were brilliance, so it shall be forgiven.

Lost in Translation - never seen it before, A+ movie. LoL @ Squarepusher track in the film too

Not so much an ongoing problem but a both very annoying and somewhat funny thing that happened last Thursday. I went to Berlin with a friend last week for Eddie Izzard's show (which was hilarious!), but BEFORE the show, something incredibly enraging happened: This was at the "Imperial Club", some nice-ish rather small bar/club type location in the basement of another club, your typical stand-up-comedy setting. Before the show, there was some music playing in the background, colored lights on, a bar, people talking. Me and my two friends got there about 45 minutes early, took seats in row 6-or-so, as the front was already taken. And I began to tell them a funny story while we waited, some rubbish about those old Cam-Rip SVCD bootlegs of popular films where you get people's silhouettes in the foreground - it was rubbish, really, but I told it in such a way that my friends were listening eagerly throughout, laughing. Right before I got to the actual conclusion of my story - the guy in the row before us - mid-20s, blond, possibly dyed, with an undercut, button-down shirt and a semi-transparent purple neckerchief - turned around and said: "EXCUSE ME COULD YOU PLEASE NOT TALK SO LOUDLY, ME AND MY GIRLFRIEND DIDN'T COME HERE TO LISTEN TO SOMEBODY TELL RANDOM STORIES ABOUT SOMETHING!" He kind of looked like this: Me and my friends just kind of stared at him with the exact same expression, a bit like this: ... for about 10 seconds. I was both furious that he had ruined my punchline and amazed at the same time, especially amazed regarding the irony that someone said they "didn't come here to listen to random stories" at an EDDIE IZZARD SHOW. When I caught my breath, the first thing I said to him, holding my ticket, was "Ohh .... I'm sorry ... mine says >comedy<, what does yours say?" - to which his girlfriend - anorexic blondie with high voice and tiny nose - replied: "You were being very loud, he is right! Please don't be so loud!" Like I said, EVERYONE was talking, this was half an hour before the show, music on, and I wasn't even being loud in the first place! These guys wouldn't even have been able to hear me, had they been sitting a single row further to the front. I was kind of lost for words at this point, so I said "What is this, what's with this situation and people like you, I gotta get outta here - " and went outside with my friends who were both laughing furiously at this point, but I was still quiet in disbelief. We returned to the same seats later to watch the show, I couldn't help but stare at the odd couple throughout. They were only laughing at the jokes that were somewhat-funny and remained quiet at the ones that had everyone freaking out. At one point, Izzard made a Monty Python reference, leading to them looking at each other and shrugging shoulders. The dude's laugh sounded a bit like that Austin Powers Supervillain in the beginning ("A-haaa .... a-haadeli-haaa!"), later it morphed into this chimp-like inhaling-noise as he was trying to catch his breath. His girl's laugh was a kind of inwards body-spasm accompanied by a short "Tchiihi." and a hand before her mouth every time, like she was apologizing for laughing or existing or both. I wasn't exactly sober anymore at this point (I had been throughout my "confrontation" with them though!), and I knew I was kind of ruining the show for myself by paying so much attention to these two people instead of just watching the damn show, but I had developed this thought in my head that I wanted to help them, and I got obsessed with the idea that I needed to give the dude the "advice" that they could get rid of all their problems if the dude would "fuck his girl up her ass just once" - I ended up not telling them though. Probably for the better. Might have ended in a fight or an extremely awkward threesome. /WATMM night out.

yeah that's a rubbish movie. very good concept, 26 short films, each by a different director, all themed around death - could have been brilliant, only problem is that about 22 of these directors did a terrible job. very disappointing.

Oh I forgot to mention I saw Shame as well. Didn't like it so much. The story was nicely told, also nice camera and so on. The acting seemed alright too. But overall, I felt it was a little pointless. I finished the movie and didn't know what the movie was trying to tell me. It seemed a little too well-behaved and very tame, considering its topic. I don't mean I need to see graphic sex scenes or anything, but I mean, the guy watches a lot of porn and is a bit fucked up, but ... that's not like THAT bad is it? I guess Shame might push some buttons for a lot of people, all the others I saw it with liked it (but they were mostly gay guys drooling over Fassbender, sooo ... ) Shame succeeded at what it was going for, but I just couldn't relate. For me, American Psycho is like a much better, more cynical yet also more relevant version of Shame. And yeah Hunger, I saw that one after Shame also. It was very hard to watch for me due to the realistic portrayal of violence and its consequences. But nonetheless, I liked it much better than Shame. Oh and ew, another one I absolute HATED was The Master. Nicely shot but what the fuck kind of storytelling is this. I saw the whole thing and it seemed utterly pointless, I took away nothing from that movie. Then again I already disliked There Will Be Blood ... I dunno about this guy, I don't get him.

^ is that a good or a bad thing? Will do! Saw it last night. The 80s style was fun to watch. Nice-ish build-up, even though the acting wasn't all that great. The actual payoff I found it rather silly and unimaginative though. It's nice to see there's still new directors out there who obviously prefer creepy over gore, but Ti West's films always come along as driving themselves into dead-ends, and also a little soulless. He could dare more and not have a traditional horror film cliché in the end but something unexpected and messed up. I like how he takes enough time to set the mood though. The house was genuinely creepy - before the big reveal that is.

Will do!

Still playing The Last Of Us. The actual gameplay is pretty sweet, I like how the game is a little bit difficult at times and doesn't give you constant check-points and auto-saves. Games are supposed to provide at least a bit of a challenge imo. I'd have removed this "X-Ray-Hearing"-ability for that reason, or reduced it to actually hearing the sounds of the infected with no visual aid. This ability makes me feel a little overpowered. Re-introducing a health-bar and medi packs is a good idea. Auto-healing is just lame. This provides for some actually tense moments where you're actually afraid of dying, which hasn't really happened in a game since 1999 or so (exaggeration). The controls (especially weapon selecting and so on) are a little awkward. I like how everything is revolving around the backpack, but some of the buttons they assigned to the individual moves are a bit questionable and not very intuitive. While I like some aspects of this game to bits, I'm feeling like the main characters are really these right-wing wankers and I'm supposed to be okay with them murdering mostly innocent (non-infected) human beings on the fly with no emotional reaction... I am amazed how real the violence feels in this game, although I wish it was going somewhere, plot-wise, and is going to backfire on them eventually... But I'm beginning to fear that I'm simply supposed to find it "cool" or "badass" ... like another game sponsored by the NRA or something. Also the story is as cliché as it gets and I really don't care about any of these dickheads. The "forced harshness" also reminds me of The Walking Dead (TV-Series) and it's already silly there. All in all, despite its glitchy nature, Walking Dead (the game) is far superior to TLOU imo. Would be awesome of Telltame Games & Naughty Dog would shake hands, put their differences behind them and produce the ultimate game with great graphics and controls as well as characters that aren't walking clichées and/or neo nazis. Never gonna happen though, probably for the better.

^can't edit (why?) I saw this one too a while back since someone had recommended Ti West (why?) - it sucked. You didn't miss much. But apparently, this style of zzzzzzz-pacing is called "Slow Burn" but it actually is quite the opposite of zzzzzzzz IF DONE WELL (see: Entrance) I like the concept of building up tension all the way through and not have much happening until the very end. Although it does heighten expectations quite a bit and the pay-off needs to deliver big time, unlike The Innkeepers which was just unfocused and lame all the way through. Does anyone have a recommendation for a good Slow Burn type film...?

Not sure whether I've made a post about some of these before but ... Der Siebente Kontinent (The Seventh Continent) - Seen it before, but Haneke delivers as always. Another one of his flawless mindfuck films. Easily 10/10 Disconnect - Very good recent drama about how social media and internet ruins people's lives, pretty much. Very emotional without being cheesy. Also well written and acted. Event Horizon - Hadn't seen it before. I guess you could say it hasn't aged well, but being completely honest, you have to admit that this film sucks regardless of its release time period. The song used on the end credits is especially cringeworthy. Yeah, I didn't like her part either. Thought it was rather poorly acted. Strangely, she's an amazing actress otherwise. Her performance on In Treatment is class: (it's more obvious in some of the later episodes but I can't find a clip and won't spoil it anyways as it's a very good series, season 1 especially)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxyoEPE8uy4 352 views