Blunderbuss indeed

Jack White's first solo album Blunderbuss will drop this Tuesday. When it does, it will annihilate all other new rock music (already released and forthcoming) this year. Don't care that I haven't heard and will not listen to every single rock record released this year. I stubbornly stand by my unreasonable statement. Get ready for White's 2012 domination.

And catch White's Unstaged, a Gary Oldman directed digital concert, live on April 27th. See full post

Bon Iver Rocks Prospect Park

Those of us fortunate enough to see Bon Iver in concert, at Prospect Park Bandshell, understand that we experienced pure musical magic. The concert was a part of the Celebrate Brooklyn! series and it was my first official show there (because watching Andrew Bird for one song, from outside the gates, hardly seems to count). And it was my favorite show I've experienced since I moved to New York a year ago.



Both Bon Iver albums are subtly beautiful. You listen and gladly invite the glorious melancholy to creep into your skin. The albums are subtly epic--audio masterpieces that don't require loudly ampliefied instruments or insanely catchy beats to make you feel the grandeur. Their concert at Prospect Park, however, really felt epic in a more traditional or obvious sense. I was surprised to feel so physically energized by the sound. Without even realizing it till the end, I found myself on my feet the whole show. I was ecstaticly bouncing around and clapping when they played "Calgary" and "Flume" back-to-back. And I was immesurably happy when they did two encores that included "Skinny Love", "Wolves", and a cover of Bjork's "Who Is It" (from her album Medulla).

Bon Iver is even more magical live. You really hear the entire band and all the instrumental contributions because you get to see and feel their energy in person. Justin Vernon's voice is that uniquely, painfully wonderful. And Vernon was the sweetest, humblest lead singer, constantly thanking the audience for coming out to Bon Iver's biggest headlining show. But it's really us, the audience, that have to thank him, the rest of the band, and the New York weather Gods for giving us such an unforgettable Summer evening. It truly was one of my favorite concert experiences.



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Edgar Wright Burrows Deep Into Scott Pilgrim [Seewhatididthere?]

A bunch of journalists recently had a lovely chat with Edgar Wright, the director of Scott Pilgrim, (and also director of one of my top 5 TV shows of all time, Spaced and top 10 movies of all time, Shaun of the Dead, lalala, I love him), opening today, in which he touched on his Comic-Con experience, why there was never a doubt that all seven exes had to be in Scott Pilgrim, and why the American Spaced pilot just didn't work. While we were unable to attend the roundtables at the last minute, the amazing Todd Gilchrist of Cinematical fame was nice enough to share his audio so we could transcribe some of the magic that transpired.

On Comic-Con,

It was my fifth Comic-Con and it was probably the most bananas. We showed the film three times over the weekend and it was very sweet, it became sort of like a theatrical residency. And the cast -- some of whom like Michael Cera, had not seen it yet, watched for the first time on Thursday night with the Comic-Con fans -- they all came back every night to watch it and, you know, I came back, so I watched it twice over the weekend.

And the audience reaction surpassed even the love Wright & the cast felt for the film. Though Wright experienced what a Comic-Con screening could do when he brought Shaun of the Dead in 2004, which resulted in "...the best screenings we ever had of Shaun...", the insanity of Scott Pilgrim was a whole other ballgame.

It was great on the first night, then kind of got bigger on the subsequent nights…It wasn't the first time I'd seen it with an audience, ‘cause we went through the test screening process, so I've watched it about five times with an audience, you know, like completely cold, so I knew where all the big laughs were already, but then people just responded very warmly throughout, and it was just very gratifying. [P]eople clapped frequently, and I think it says everything about the film that on the first night, they clapped at Scott and Ramona kissing, but they also clapped when Scott head-butted a man to death. [Laughter] That probably says everything about the film: kissing gets applause and so does head-butting..

One of the defining elements of the film is the influence it draws from video games, which is something that also made the comics stand out. On that influence,

Well, it's in the comics, we took it a little bit further.

Before the comic book movies started to really score in the late 90s, there was a thing in the 80s, where the best comic book movies were not based on comics. Like Robocop is an amazing comic book film which isn't a comic and yet it was leagues ahead of comic book adaptations. It always amused me -- not to mention any names -- but the general consensus was that a lot of video game adaptations as films were not very good or haven't been. Not many people can honestly argue that there have been that many great video game films yet. [... W]hen people make like, Tomb Raider or Prince of Persia or Resident Evil, they leave out the most famous part of video games, which is the graphics and the most fun aspects of it and stuff. I guess the only film that did that for a little bit was Doom -- it at least had that point of view sequence. But I thought, well this is the perfect kind of license to take the parts of video games, the parts of video game adaptations that they always kind of leave on the floor, and have a ball with it.

Bryan Lee O Malley had this great quote about Scott Pilgrim being the hero of the movie inside his own head and I think the film is exactly that, it's like Scott Pilgrim's daydream [... H]e's like a fantacist and you're watching his version of events. It kind of explains the level of reality. You're seeing the film through Scott Pilgrim's eyes and it's kind of governed by the pop culture that he consumes.

On whether he plays video games himself and much much more after the jump!

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