Psychological thrillers

Psychological thrillers are one of my favourite movie genres, they're usually well written and sometimes even attempts to trick the audience with false leads. It might cause the audience to strain a few brain cells but that's a good thing isn't it? This is also why these movies are often fun to talk about with your friends, people tend to look at different things in these movies, so it's interesting to see how some people might have gotten very different image of the film than you.

Here's a few very interesting movies:

Beautiful Mind (2001), The Machinist (2004), Old Boy (2003), Memento (2000)

I've been looking for another movie similar to the ones above, any recommendations?

3D movies

As I mentioned some weeks ago, that I'll go to see two more recent movies this month. The first one was True Grit, and for the second one I decided to wait for this new 3D movie, Sanctum. I hadn't seen a 3D movie before, so that's pretty much why I chose it.

So.. How was the 3d? At first it looked a bit strange to me, it took like 20 minutes for my eyes to get fully used to the 3D picture. The 3D glasses weren't very comfortable either. There were some cool effects, but sometimes it looked like there were multiple 2-dimensional layers in a 3d space, it's a little difficult to explain. Another thing which I found a bit annoying was the objects placed very "near" in the corners of the screen, such as tree branches or computer screens. They were annoying because they were blurry. I guess it's are supposed to create some sort of 3d impression, but they often cover like 1/4th of the screen and you can't focus your eyes on these objects, because they're intentionally blurred.

Overall I think the 3D was "ok", some effects were really cool, but there were so many distracting details which you don't have to worry about in a normal film. And the 3D video quality didn't look as high as you could expect. So while the 3D techniques are still under developement, I'd probably watch ordinary films rather than 3D.


I also made a short review of Sanctum. But to avoid too long posts, I'll post it separately later on.

Cheers.

Lyrics and music

A few days ago I had an interesting conversation with one friend of mine. We mostly talked about some bands we like to listen to, the lyrics of their songs and what kind of live shows they do.

At some point one of my friend's other friend joined us while we were discussing about some band's lyrics. He soon declares that in his opinion the melodies and talented playing are far more important than the lyrics of the songs. Kind of an interesting point of view I must say, but also a bit funny. Atleast we had a nice discussion about it, and he did have a few good points to back up his opinion.

I think it is understandable, kind of, since we were talking about metal music, where you often have to look up the lyrics yourself from the album booklet or from the internet. Because, tbh, most of the time your ears/mind can't extract the words from the vocalist's performance.

Anyways, the funny thing was, that the person I was talking with only knew the names of the songs of a certain artist, but had no idea what the songs were about. I was a bit amazed of this, because I've usually kept the lyrics as one of the main reasons to like or dislike a band/song. I mean, if the lyrics were really something close to utter bs, it immediately decreases my interest towards the band. Ofcourse this is a rather extreme example and it doesn't apply in all cases, but you get the idea. Atleast I would find it a little strange to cheer for a band that praises something in its songs I fully disagree with.

In the end, I think we managed to convince him to take a closer look to the lyrics of the bands. I hope so. Not necessarily memorize all the lyrics, but atleast to get a faint idea what the songs are about. 

Recent movies

I happened to get two movie tickets to the local movie theater. I couldn't decide which movies I should go to see and the tickets expire at the end of the month, so there aren't so many movies to pick from. I was also thinking of writing a short post of them.

Here's some of the movies they're playing this month. I haven't seen any of them, which ones would you recommend?

Another Year
The Rite
The King's Speech
Black Swan
True Grit

Memorable songs of the 80's

I'll come up with more movie reviews once I get some time to write them. Writing them has actually turned out being a quite time consuming process.

Anyway, I happened to hear a Blue Oyster Cult song on the radio today, I had almost totally forgotten about this awesome band! Because of this, I got a suddent urge to dig up some other classics which I haven't listened for a long time. Here's Veteran of the psychic wars!

The second pick is a bit late, but in memory of Gary Moore (1952-2011), Victims of the future (live).

And the last but definitely not the least, Def Leppard - Coming Under Fire!

Movies in general

I had to drive my car a fairly long trip this weekend, while driving I was thinking, what are the things that make a movie good? Is it the plot? Directing, editing, CG or other screen work? Famous actor or actress? Is it enough that the movie is "just" entertaining, or does it have to have some kind of a deeper thought in it? The list goes on forever.

What kind of features do you like in movies?

To be a good song

What makes one band better than another? Most answers are something like "this band has this awesome guitarist/drummer". In some cases ones liking of a certain artist might only depend on these over complex guitar riffs in their songs. I'm not saying it is a bad thing to be skilled playing an instrument, it's a good feature in a bands music. But the difficult guitar riffs itself doesn't make a good song. A very simple tone might sound spectacular if the performance is set right. Yet a very difficult and complex one might sound just horrible.

Oh, and ridiculously fast guitar shred or drum blasting doesn't fit in the definition of "skill".

Not to mention instrumental solos in songs. It seems it has became some sort of a standard for every damn song to have a guitar solo. Sometimes a solo might be a good way to identify or promote a certain song, but having a solo in every song on an album is overdoing it. Very often I've come across an album where the solos doesn't have any variety, causing all the songs remind each other and making the whole album repeatitive and boring. Even worse when the solo doesn't fit the actual song at all! Completely ruined.

tldr: fast guitar shred nonsense ≠ good music, and solos must fit in the actual song!

Today I happened to visit a (metal) music related forum. I couldn't read more than a few topics before I had to close the browser to avoid losing my mind. The first topic I opened was about defining one bands music into some sub-sub-sub category of metal music, and even arguing why it does/doesn't belong there. I mean, having one word + "metal" is still tolerable definition, if you really have to use something else than just the word "metal". But having every single aspect of the bands music and objects that appear in their promo pictures to include the name of the "genre", is just stupid.