Justin came to 350 to show us his new Keep Watch tat watchin’ his back. Welcome to the club!

Rip: A Remix Manifesto is a recent movie addressing the fad of the Mash-Up. For the uninformed, a Mash-Up consists of unifying parts from different tracks to make a new one i.e. a beat from one and a vocal sample or full part from another track.

While it’s initial focus is the Mash-Up and the legality of this technique, that only serves as a pill for the bigger question about what a copyright means for artistic expression in the digital age.

You can download and watch the film at a “pay what you want price” off Rip’s website.

This is a bit of an odd Digging For Fire because well I’d like to think Saturation is hardly obscure to most people. I was originally contemplating throwing up Urge Overkill’s Steve Albini produced debut EP Strange, I… but I then noticed that their 1993 major label debut Saturation is out of print. An injustice worthy of a Digging For Fire way more so than Strange, I…

I’m sure anyone who spent anytime in the 90s listening to the radio or watching MTV is familiar with this album’s two singles “Sister Havana” & “Positive Bleeding” and if those don’t ring a bell, at the very least you must recognize Urge Overkill for their cover of “Girl You’ll be a Woman Soon” from Pulp Fiction. But before their brief 15 minutes of mainstream fame, Urge Overkill were one of Chicago’s, Nay the country’s best Indie Rock bands of the 80s

Coming up from the same scene that produced the likes of Big Black & The Jesus Lizard, Early Urge Overkill spent two albums curbing their sloppy assault before producing a masterpiece by the name of Supersonic Storybook for Touch & Go. By then their cocky lounge lizard swagger was unmistakable. At that point Urge Overkill were fully infusing their indie rock with some serious soul and power-pop against their already rich and noisy storytelling. Following Supersonic Storybook, UO released the Stull EP which featured their cover of “Girl You’ll Be a Woman Soon” and signed on with Geffen soon after.

While ridiculously slick,  Saturation had all of the very same ingredients that made  Supersonic Storybook and Stull so compelling. The major difference was that this time the album was wrapped up in a nice little bow for commercial radio. And while some saw Saturation as “selling-out”, to think that just meant you didn’t really know the band all that well. If there was any band out there begging, kicking and screaming for this sort of polished touch-up as the missing ingredient to not only their sound but image it was Urge Overkill. And boy did they took full advantage of the opportunity in crafting this little bit of ear candy.

As I mentioned, Saturation drew two minor radio hits and in 1994 with the release of Pulp Fiction the album received a double-shot of attention because of “Girl You’ll Be a Woman Soon”.  Unfortunately they never parlayed that attention into joining the ranks of  90′s Alterna-juggernauts. In 1995 they released their final album Exit the Dragon and amongst rumors of infighting and drug abuse, they called it quits soon after.

Sadly Saturation has never really been stamped as a bonafied classic of the 90′s Alternative era, but it is. In a time when most bands making the jump were only good for one or two radio hits and an album full of filler, Urge Overkill stayed true to themselves and delivered one of the most solid and satisfying albums of not only their career but the decade. If you haven’t ever, now’s a good time as any to get familiar with it.

Urge Overkill – Saturation

!!!MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD – THIS MEANS YOU!!!

With his World War II period piece, Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino retains his indulgent signature style – sans pop culture references – and pulls off one of the greatest scenes of wish-fulfillment in movie history. Everything you’d expect from a Tarantino movie is here: lengthy dialogue scenes, aesthetic violence, womens feet, creative use of language, and Harvey Keitel (he’s uncredited, but I’ll eat my shoe if that wasn’t him on the radio with Pitt). But Tarantino managed to do something else that, for me, he’s never really achieved before (besides not making a cameo in his own movie). He created a scene of  purely visual, cinematic gold. The kind of scene blurbed about in film study books. In future courses, professors might mention the climax of Basterds alongside the Odessa Steps scene in Battleship Potemkin, the Train Station Steps scene in The Untouchables, and the Courtroom Steps scene in Bananas. I guarantee they won’t, steps aren’t involved, but the scene is academia all the same and a testament that Tarantino is capable of truly shocking us with more than gore and Uma Thurman’s Skeletor Feet.

My focusing on this particular scene is not meant to take away from the rest of the movie. As a whole, it’s better than most shit that came out this summer. Austrian actor Christoph Waltz is perfect as Hans Landa, the “Jew Hunter” who comes off as charming despite his murderous occupation. This relatively unknown and inexperienced Austrian manages to out-act everyone in the movie, including lead Brad Pitt, who plays the Foghorn Leghorn leader of the Basterds, Aldo Raine. The whole theater cheered for Eli Roth, as Bostonian slugger Donny “The Jew Bear” Donowitz, when, after bashing the head of an SS officer in with a bat, plays announcer and shouts out Fenway and Lansdowne. (I’m sure being in MA had nothing to do with that.) The pace of the movie felt clunkly in places and the potential suspense in major scenes is never fully realized, but I just want to talk about the climax so…

I assume if you read this far you saw the movie, so I’m not going to write a synopsis of the climax. So, dear readers, what did you think of this scene? Tarantino boldly flips history, puts the Nazis in an oven, and kills Hitler. I’m sure this fantasy has been done before in alternate history comics and novels, but the difference here is that it’s not an alternate history; Tarantino doesn’t ask “Well, what if Hitler and his minions were killed in ’44, ending the war then and there?” Hitler just gets shot in the face 5,000 times by Donowitz, the Nazi leaders burn, and the movie ends shortly after with Raine getting in the final line: “This might be my masterpiece” – a playful bit of self-indulgence by Tarantino. As the theater burns with the Nazi heads inside, as Basterds Donowitz and Zimmerman (Michael Bacall) stand in a balcony mowing them down, the vengeful spirit of Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent – see below – she looks like a more attractive Juliet from Lost) is projected onto the smoke, triumphantly laughing at her orchestration from beyond the grave. It’s a vision of Nazi-Hell on Earth. And it’s beautiful.

A lot of critics are saying how this movie is a meditation on evil; examining what people are capable of. But that’s just academic jerking off. Thin Red Line this is not. I never questioned if what the Basterds were doing was “ethical.” Like Raine says in the movie, the Nazis have no humanity. They don’t deserve mercy, scalp the shit out of them. I know that, despite what their personal beliefs were, German men didn’t really have a choice but to enlist (see: the current Pope was in the Hitler Youth), but this is fiction and all Nazis are scum. Something tells me Tarintino isn’t a pacifist philosopher challenging his audience to take a look at themselves in the proverbial mirror. I thought the movie had more to do with the role of movies/propaganda than anything else. The movie within the movie, “A Nation’s Pride,” acts as a Triumph of the Will and examines how the Nazi image was presented to the public. But what if, in the end, Tarantino just wanted to make a movie where Hitler and the Nazis get theirs in the most satisfying way imaginable? Well then mission accomplished, amen.

Retro Grade – Moda

The Bloody Beetroots – House N° 84

Major Lazer – Hold The Line (DZ Remix)

Bonus:
Jahdan Blakkamore – Bazooka Shoot (mixed by DJ Rupture & Matt Shadetek)

Yesterday was Avatar Day and I was one of the several thousand people who got to see a special 16 minute preview for James Cameron’s “game-changing” movie, Avatar. We haven’t talked about it on the Bloglin before, but unless you haven’t been on the innenet for the past few months, you’ve probably heard about it. In case you haven’t:

In the future, Jake, a paraplegic war veteran, is brought to another planet, Pandora, which is inhabited by the Na’vi, a humanoid race with their own language and culture. Those from Earth find themselves at odds with each other and the local culture. (source)

It sounds like a cross between Last of the Mohicans and John Carter of Mars. Apparently, Cameron first came up with this unoriginal plot 14 years ago, but production didn’t begin until four years ago, after Cameron and Co. developed new filmmaking technology adequate to achieve the visions in his head. (Sounds a little reminiscent of Mr. Lucas and the prequels, no?)

So did the Avatar Day footage deliver the goods? Yes. Well, maybe, to a degree. Viscerally, I’ve never experienced anything like it before. I couldn’t give less of a shit about 3D, honestly, but Cameron’s new approach to it – using “3D virtual cameras, which would produce stereoscopic 3D images simulating human sight” (source) – is brilliant. Thematically, it’s garbage. Shove the plot up your titanic asshole, Cameron. I just want to be immersed in an alien world with gnarly monsters and scenery that has my jaw hitting the floor. Because the footage had that; the flora and fauna of Pandora fucking glow off the screen. Granted, the Na’vi look wicked stupid, like they were pulled from a Nickelodeon show, but luckily they’re not the only beings on Pandora.

The only problem I had was that objects in the foreground tended to get blurry to a degree of making them hard to look at. At first I thought it was because I had my prescription glasses on underneath the IMAX 3D glasses, but my buddy Chris confirmed that they are in fact that blurry. I’m sure it’s just some technical thing that’s unavoidable and composing scenes for 3D has got to be painstaking, but I hope they can tweak it a little bit by the movie’s release date, December 18. But seriously, the plot sucks, the dialogue sucks, the Na’vi suck, but for 16 minutes, I was on an alien planet. And that’s all I want out of Avatar.

Sure they’re considerably older and puffier (OK well not Scott Thompson), but if you were fortunate enough to see them on tour the couple of times they toured in the past few years there’s little doubt that Kids In the Hall still have all of their comedic chemistry.

Word from Variety is that come January the Kids will be back with Death Comes to Town a brand new 8-part comedy/murder mystery. The bad news? It’s only airing in Canada so the rest of us will have to resort to either torrents or the DVDs. Either way, it’s  great bit of news. This is better than Seinfeld reuniting on Curb Your Enthusiasm… OK, OK as good.

And now I’ll leave you with one of my favorite KITH sketches, “Sausages”.

I hope that most of you know who Henry Chalfant is, but if not, don’t sweat it, cause this right here is the solution to that. Hip Hop, the United States, and Planet Earth as a whole owe a great deal to the man. He was one of graffiti’s–and Hip Hop’s–earliest advocates. In a time when the culture wasn’t really codified yet, Henry did heaps to contribute to mainstream America’s recognition of graffiti and Hip Hop’s relevance. In a time when most adults were arresting, harassing, or generally shitting on Hip Hop’s first activists Henry was supporting, and encouraging them. Along with Tony Silver Henry Chalfant produced Style Wars for PBS. Style Wars is undeniably one of the greatest pieces of United States cinema. In addition to his filmic contributions Henry also helped breakdancers, emcees, DJs, and writers gain access to some of Manhattan’s cultural outlets.

Someone hipped me to the fact that his film Flyin’ Cut Sleeves was recently released on DVD. I haven’t seen it yet, so I can’t speak to what actually goes on in the film, but I’m sure it’s worth checking out. Apparently it is a documentary that Henry made with his friend Rita Fecher. It depicts the lives of people who were involved in the early street clubs that gave birth to Hip Hop. Get on that. Get knowledged.

b/w *BONUS BEAT*

If the history of Hip Hop is of any interest to you definitely check out David Toop’s Rap Attack and Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop.