'District 9' Film Review

(Published with the Pitt News.)

Forget every bad demonstration of the science fiction genre that has ever crossed the big screen, because this science fiction film deserves a chance to be seen without prejudice.

“District 9” explores the idea of an alternate history, where alien spacecraft were unable to leave Earth after arriving for unknown reasons.

The aliens within the massive craft are eventually forced to move onto the ground in the South African community their ship hovers over.

On the ground, they are moved into ghetto like camps until they find themselves being forced to move due to the tensions they have caused in the town.

As this uncomfortably familiar idea plays on the screen through the portrayal of a documentary, one worker for the government accidently sprays himself with an alien liquid, beginning a horrific transformation.

The mutilation changes the tone of the film entirely from pseudo documentary to a thrilling and action packed flick as audiences follow this worker and trying to save himself.

“District 9” is directed by Neill Blomkamp and also backed up with producing from Peter Jackson, combining the minds of a man who has worked on science fiction projects before with a highly acclaimed force in the film industry.

The mixture is thrilling. The film effortlessly melds the action with the character, and the importance of image and detail with the strength of how it’s used.

The aliens look fairly believable and more importantly, “District 9” did not succumb to the challenge of making the flesh and blood characters less stunning than the animated.

Stylistically, the film begins with a very distant documentary feeling.

Its snapshots and switching between camera styles cut from person to person as each of the characters in their separate companies and fields speak about a certain topic.

It makes for a slow beginning, as the information needed to understand is provided through the mixture of a documentary and the crime fighting show “Cops”.

But soon enough, there is a character to love and pity, and the change from documentary to story is swift and clean.

By the end, it is a touching mixture of the two, with a tone that progressed and changed dramatically. The audience will have sat through heart wrenching actions, intriguing relationships and incredible action scenes.

But the most fascinating aspect to watch might not be the characters and instead might be the ability to create a clash between two societies and cultures, a clash perhaps not very different from a true event on Earth.

The vision of the interaction between people and alien is powerful and convincing, more so than most other movies that dared to take on the potentially cheesy aliens visiting Earth idea.

Through this interaction comes a glimpse of things we have and do deal with today.

Perhaps as audiences watch District 9 they too will see the parallels between our real history and this action packed alternative story.

The Clarks; Race the Ghost; Ricky Stein

(Published with the Pitt News.)

Race The Ghost
My First Crown
C+

Race The Ghost is anything but quiet – their sound is a loud, fast beat with a strong guitar leading them through every song that calls the album home.

The pop band might as well be a next door neighbor to a rock genre, because any little push would change its definition.

This album is the result of years of musical performance by its band, and it shows in their eight track release – even if the vocalist’s voice is a little too high pitched for all ears to tolerate. This basically makes Race The Ghost a family member of The Fray: a little bit faster and a little bit louder, but with a striking resemblance in the fact that the voice simply does not go with the music and is barely discernible half the time.

Other reviewers have hailed Race The Ghost; let’s just rest with the statement that it requires a certain taste.

*

Ricky Stein
Crazy Days
B

Is there a new Bruce Springsteen in town?

Maybe. Rookie hometown hero Ricky Stein’s debut album reveals that he may just be the next cart0crushing blue-collar hero.

Stein’s album, Crazy Days, has a sweet beat, with a perfect vocal pitch to match his old fashioned rock style.

Passion radiates from his voice on every note. With a musical genre label like “Americana” he’s bound to feel welcome among small town locals across the country.

It doesn’t matter whether he’s performing with his band or sitting alone with just his voice and an acoustic guitar to get through his performance. He’s got the charismas and talent to make it a show to enjoy.

“Is it love or is it magic? I guess it’s one and the same,” claims the opening chorus of Stein’s very first song. And this album very easily qualifies as a little bit of both with its good old day feel.

*

The Clarks
Restless Days
A-

Pittsburgh’s favorite hometown band, The Clarks, ahs done it again with its newest album, Restless Days.

This cream of the crop album is fast, upbeat and catchy, and has such a talented line up that it seems as if very little technology has been used to clean their songs up. The instruments and lyrics meld together effortlessly.

“Restless Days” has a solid tempo that stays consistent through each song once it begins.

That steady tempo holds out through the entire album, whether the lovely song is about catching the “Midnight Rose” instead of those old trains, or whether it picks up the pace to speed up the album.

But every song doesn’t sound the same as it walks its way through the friendships, lovers, faith, simple associations, and the strangers in ones life.

The Clarks runs its paces through all of its instruments, varying the level of rocking with the harmonics that make music so sweet.

Listeners will, at the minimum, find themselves slowing down to listen to the song before reaching their destination.

Poetry: Ancient Singer; Fall of Autumn; Native's Dances

All featured on the Teen Ink website.

Native's Dances

Backyard stretches out before me
And a low branch purrs to me, a siren
Offering a seat. I jump to it
And nearly tumble down from her hand.
The squirrels squawk angrily at me above
For taking their favorite perch.
In my ears, my iPod headphones
Pump out the beats of Arvel Bird,
His music speaking with a
Language of symbols I could read,
If I so desired. But
Right now, I sit, torn. I could
Jump to the lush ground to stomp my feet,
To throw my arms and swing my body
In a Native American dance of worship –
Or I could sit here, listening to him speak
With his drums and keyboard, observing
The creatures whose stories he tells
Pass me by on their way to their own
Homes.

*

Ancient Singer

For one night we decorated a stage. We were prudent in our arrangements. An archway carved from oak wood unburied from dumpsters was embellished with text last night. And lights were hooked to its uneven surface, becoming the lighted path in the garden that passing musicians can stare at and wander in for hours in the course of two minutes, as they remember all that has been sweet in one week.

We sat to rest. In our peripheral vision, we saw the chandeliers with fake candles that told as many lies as they told facts, as many myths as true tales passed down. But their words were elusive, and were lost in their false beauty, lacking solid elements to fuel any true flames high in the stage’s dark embrace.

The singer stepped out before our weary legs. She was ancient, and young. And instead of ignoring us, she knelt in an old-fashioned curtsey, a look of gratitude on her face and in her aging eyes. Eyes that contained an ocean of wonder that not even their owner could conquer.

She offered her hand as she spoke her name. I took it. I felt a rush of power in her body and I understood then how this frail creature could bring so many under her hypnotic spell. She was not from the world of the mundane.

In her world, trees walk and speak prophecies. Her world rises above our earth, and the trickling rain is warm and kind, like midsummer sun. The inane is the sensible and commonplace. Enigma’s are left in peace, and allowed to keep their comforting touch on our lives, to make us adventurous.

The ancient lady released my hand and moved to the others. I stood, almost empty, longing for an adventure that would almost bring answers, but that would never bring its last chapter to a close. I turned to our glowing archway, and walked through it tentatively, towards the ancient singer’s world.

*

Fall of Autumn

The dirt is pale beneath my callused feet
and the air stale within my tightening chest
as the trees drop their darkening leaves
upon my stuffy, unbalanced head.

Crunch...swish.
Crunch...swish.

The Crow screeches his familiar, menacing cackle
and yanks at his rusting shackles – metal slices
holding the world below within his grasp,
keeping his rubber ball within reach of black talons.

Crunch...swish.
Crunch...swish.

Night skies walk the ‘rubber ball’ as a black fox
stalking the noisy children as if they were
scurrying mice, squeaking, running for home
beneath a fall moon fleshed out by terror attacks.

Crunch...

One a year, there is a violent ‘Caw’, followed
by the fading of shuffling padded paws -
the biting, bitter cold wind begins his approach,
wailing forcefully in his generous warning.

Crow and Night disappear; he relinquishes
the shackles to their sister, the Blue Princess.
She then waves a barren stick; like magic attracts
like, dead winter branches create dead winter branches.

CD Review: Samantha Crain & The Midnight Shivers

Samantha Crain & The Midnight Shivers
“Songs In The Night” Review
Grade: B+

An upcoming album might be able to test the theory that songs are in fact musical poetry. Independent labelist and vocalist Samantha Crain has brought her wilderness-inspired music to meet a recording studio complete with fellow Midnight Shivers band members.

“Rising Sun” is a soft little acoustic entry into the album, where their vocalist shows off her vibrato scale with the words, “Look into my eyes/come and see the rising sun about/it’s about the break”. It holds a gorgeous little message.

From acoustic listeners entire indie pop, “Songs In The Night” is comforting and bouncy, and hosts lyrics begging to be memorized and recited in the car. Hopeful lines include, “This here, this is the advent candle/a hope to stay and hold the weight, a peace to make.”

And for those days that life just flat out sucks, “Get The Fever Out” will be there to chant a single line five times: “Make the bed take the pay cut, think of the good you’re doing”. Just expel that illness and live without it in your life, it says.

Don’t think that everything is fun and bouncy; songs like the oddly titled “Bananafish Revolution” and ballad “Scissor Tales” demand a serious attitude in salute to lyric brutality. The former follows the format of angst teen spirit, while the latter tells the sad tale of a relationship breaking down; “You cried in the backseat/One tear came down your cheek/It landed on my bare arm/and rolled down in defeat.”
“This is where the lone people sit/left in the desert to cry/broken glass and railroad ties/my heart all full of sighs.”

Most of the tracks are standard guitar, bass, and drum music sets that allow the vocalist to reign supreme on the album; so when “Bullfight”, subtitled “Change Your Mind”, introduces the whistling choir it’s a little different. This song is the standard abstract track on the album.

There’s a high probability “Calm Down” snuck a string instrument into its midst; but that’s only fitting, because this sweet little number has some of the most poetic lines to be found on the album, including the stanza, “When the lantern dies, chase your shadow all the way north/Hold down your fort and breath/know your maker and tie up your death/Calm down, you’re not going down.”

And then from the calm listeners advance to a happier place with “You Never Know” and its images of enjoying freedom among the carnival and waves of “highs and lows”; as with all other songs, it retains that element of realism that makes the song poetry.

The album is overall, gorgeously genuine. Brutal, honest, and descriptive, it is all the things indie folk pop should be. It won’t end with a bang, so dancers: grab a partner and slow waltz to the end.

Goddess of Yesterday (Book, Casual Review)

http://www.amazon.com/Goddess-Yesterday-Caroline-B-Cooney/dp/038573865X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249967461&sr=8-1

Mythology is alive and well, my friends. And it is the driving force behind one very entertaining book.

“Goddess of Yesterday” is a book by Caroline B. Cooney, based entirely within Greek mythology and bringing famous names such as Helen and the Battle of Troy to a new light. And all through the eyes of a young girl, scattered to the winds from one family to the next.

Main character Anaxandra is the daughter of a pirate, originally given as a sign of trust and eventually turned into an adoptive daughter. But with the strike of tragedy, she is moved from one place to the next, adored by many and loathed by the beautiful Helen.

Anaxandra watches betrayal, is taken to Troy, learns of love, and must survive through the politics of society while dealing with the fact that she has pretended to be who she is not – a potential for angering the gods of her time and bringing more misfortune upon herself.

The beauty of books like this is that even if adults want to read a book written from the eyes of (overall) a twelve year old, it has a wonderful style to it. It’s captivating. It’s fast paced and calls for a quick read itself. Time to give books a chance. If you feel the addiction to the glowing screen, Kindle calls your name.

Song Lines of the Week - "The Rose"

"It's the heart afraid of breaking
That never learns to dance
It's the dream afraid of waking
That never takes the chance

It's the one who won't be taken,
Who cannot seem to give
And the soul afraid of dying
That never learns to live."

Westlife - "The Rose"