It Came From Ohio! Pere Ubu

By Tim Murr

My friend Jase told me and he heard it from Black Francis via Twitter who retweeted from @Ubuprojex: “I quit music. Goodbye.”—David Thomas

“There goes another one,” I thought. Another favorite band gone. We’re also talking about a trailblazing band that has been around almost 40 years and have recorded two of their finest albums in the last couple of years. To have them just break up now, so unceremoniously, would be quite a loss for rock and roll.

Well, false alarm apparently. Thomas had a “fit of frustration,” but no, Ubu was still going.

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Music Review: The Copper Gamins, Los Niños de Cobre

By Chelsea Spear

Critics sometimes use the phrase “more fun to talk about than to listen to” when describing an album that plays with new ideas and approaches to music. The inverse—that an album is more fun to listen to than to review or discuss—doesn’t come up as frequently. Los Niños de Cobre is an album that would live up to the inverse of that phrase. The qualities that make it compulsively listenable—its straightforward simplicity and the band members’ passion and skill—also make it an elusive subject for review. The Copper Gamins have created an album that makes an ideal soundtrack to long walks in the early-morning magic hour and humid, sleepless nights. When I listen to it, I feel as though I’m under a spell, but finding words to match the shimmering music on this disc is like chasing balls of mercury with my bare hands.

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Music Review: Various Artists, Loose Lips Might Sink Ships—Greasy Instrumental Magic From The Vault Of Lux And Ivy

By Melissa Bratcher

If you were to give Quentin Tarantino a copy of Loose Lips Might Sink Ships—Greasy Instrumental Magic From The Vault Of Lux And Ivy, he could probably pull a movie out of it, or the soundtrack to one at the very least. It’s a tidy, brief collection of pockets of unheralded instrumental awesome, and it may as well have been subtitled “All your guitar vs. sax needs are covered here.” Like it says on the tin, these are tracks culled from Lux Interior’s Purple Knife Show and they cover the gamut of early rock with twangy guitars, dirty sax, and surfy beats.

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Why Ben Affleck As Batman Doesn’t Matter

By Paul Casey

Ben Affleck is Batman. Commence some teeth gnashing about how he lacks the essential nature of the character, followed by oppositionist chatter in favor. Here’s the thing, though: it doesn’t matter one bit who you cast in this Superman/Batman crossover. You can have Michael Keaton return to play an elderly and run down Frank Miller-style Bruce Wayne, or convince Christian Bale to lose all of his sense and diminish the great work he did with Christopher Nolan. You can give George Clooney another shot unhampered by a bad movie, or you can agree that Michael Fassbender is amazing in everything and just hire him. Superman/Batman remains an inherently bad idea, regardless of how it is executed and there are decades worth of comic books that confirm it.

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Assemblog: August 23, 2013

The Assemblog is on hiatus this week as I’m busy with this year’s FanExpo. But you can still check out all the new stuff on Popshifter this week:

Paul has written a touching article on why “Morphine” is Michael Jackson’s most personal song; I fall in love with the new White Lies album Big TV, describe No One Lives as “bloody good fun,” give my Top Ten picks for this year’s FanExpo Canada; and LabSplice has some advice for M. Night Shyamalan and Neill Blomkamp.

—Less Lee Moore, Managing Editor

From M. Night To Elysium (And Maybe Back Again)

By LabSplice

Everyone needs help. Even Sharlto Copley in a mecha-suit.

At the turn of the century, Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas were working on a long-awaited sequel to the Indiana Jones trilogy and in search of a writer. One of the names on their list was M. Night Shyamalan, the celebrated writer-director of The Sixth Sense and an emerging talent who was already receiving praise as the next Spielberg in Hollywood. Fans were excited at the chance to see Shyamalan bring his vision to the Indiana Jones universe; unfortunately, due to conflicts with his production schedule, Shyamalan was forced to turn down the opportunity, and the script was passed along. Since then, Shyamalan has worked solely on his own projects, working double duty on all of his films as both writer and director.

A few months ago, news broke that Elysium director Neill Blomkamp had turned down the opportunity to direct a new Star Wars film. Fans of the franchise were understandably upset; the original Star Wars films depict a universe full of secondhand spaceships and repurposed technology, an obvious influence on Blomkamp’s production design in both District 9 and Elysium. Blomkamp, recently named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine, was an emerging talent and a good aesthetic fit for the Star Wars universe. Still, Blomkamp turned the opportunity down, citing his desire to direct his own material as his motivating factor, and people were quick to praise the director for developing original science fiction stories.

It seems like the perfect anecdote for a summer dominated by comic book adaptations and sequels: talented director reaches the heights of fame and is offered a chance to participate in a blockbuster movie franchise, only to turn it down in favor of original material. Unfortunately, we all know the path Shyamalan would take with his original creations. His films, so promising to begin with, have been let down by the absurd liberties he takes as a writer—and Blomkamp appears poised to make these same mistakes all over again.

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FanExpo Canada 2013: Top Ten Picks

By Less Lee Moore

The Cybertronic Spree
Photo © Paul Hillier Photography

FanExpo Canada 2013 runs from Thursday, August 22 through Sunday, August 25 this year. The annual four-day event is crammed with stuff to do and see across multiple fandoms, like anime, comics, gaming, horror, science fiction, and now, sports. It can be a little overwhelming to plan out your days.

My favorite part of FanExpo is always Rue Morgue’s Festival of Fear, but with so much to choose from, there’s always a bit of crossover. I’ve come up with my Top Ten Picks of this year’s FanExpo, which I think will satisfy all of your fandom-related urges.

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DVD Review: No One Lives

By Less Lee Moore

It’s surprising that horror movies and wrestling haven’t combined forces until recently, seeing as there is such a crossover between fanbases. No One Lives, a WWE Studios production, premiered at TIFF’s infamous Midnight Madness program last year and is now available on home video.

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Music Review: White Lies, Big TV

By Less Lee Moore

The critical and commercial success of White Lies over the last few years should come as no surprise to those who’ve followed the band’s career closely. For their newest album, Big TV, White Lies are once again working with Ed Buller, who produced their debut To Lose My Life . . . The production on Big TV is more restrained than it was on Ritual, but that only allows the songs to shine more brilliantly. It feels like both a blending of the band’s first two albums and a further development of the band’s signature sound.

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Why “Morphine” Is Michael Jackson’s Most Personal Song

By Paul Casey

Blood on the Dance Floor was released in 1997, two years after HIStory. It was marketed, in part, as a remix album, with the subtitle being HIStory in the Mix. It contained five new songs, and would result in videos and the full-on Michael Jackson short film treatment. This seemed slightly confusing at the time. Such a lavish production for something that seemed like a beefed up B-sides collection was odd to younger Paul, especially seeing as nothing quite as involved had been done for the songs on HIStory.

It took a long time to appreciate that the songs on Blood on the Dance Floor were not just a ploy to make the remixes seem like better value, but a unified collection of songs as important as any Michael Jackson would release in the 1990s. Paranoia became a major theme in MJ’s music from Thriller on, and while his fear of the media was well founded, the songs which expressed his fear of the world outside rarely felt connected with the singer’s reality. You would have tracks that would act as a musical retort, full of confidence and bravado that would show Michael at his very best.

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