Dodgy Film Club: Birdemic - Shock and Terror

Blondie is actually laughing. There's nothing funny about your acting career going down the tubes, love.

Once you experience* the rollercoaster* journey* of human emotion that is The Room it’s very hard to find a film that is not only as dodgy and lolworthy but also takes itself seriously. After much searching and several slightly dodgy films, Bridemic: Shock and Terror was chosen. I'm still recovering.

 (*I’m thinking of becoming a scriptwriter for ‘reality tv talent shows, just getting the lingo down.)

This is a masterpiece in bad cinema. It seems the brains behind it (James Nguyen) is super concerned about global warming and decided the medium of film was the best way to get the message across. The, eh, plot is that after what feels like a lifetime of awkward converstaion between the characters, they are attacked by some eagles who are pissed off about oil prices. Or something. There are literally too many mistakes and terrible things to mention but they include:

• Awful acting without any emotion/dialogue read in monotone
• Terrible cuts that have clearly been recorded at different times, resulting in changes in sound quality/background noise 
• A news report that resembles a school project.
• Actually, all the ‘science’ and explanations are lol
• Shakey camera-work that ruins any small chance of getting ‘lost’ in the ‘story’ 
• Filer! Filler! Filler! WE GET IT, THEY’RE IN A RESTARAUNT.
• ‘A date without sex is a date wated’ *thrusting motion*
• Awkward gaps and pauses during the ‘phone calls’ that don’t sync up properly
• REALLY awkward pauses at the end of scenes that haven’t been edited out
• Extennnnded clapping. Srsly, go make a sandwich once they start clapping, it goes on for ages
• An Irish bar with that Irish form of Irish musical entertainment: a black soul singer, performing (miming) to a full band track by himself

This, can I just add, is all before the atrocity that are the birds appear in the film, looking like something out of DuckHunt and sounding like a mouse orgy as interpreted by angry dolphins. An as for the ‘attacks’, they really have to be seen to be believed. The characters flail at random (using their motel hangars at weapons...) and the digitally added 2D birds flap ineffectually somewhere around the general vicinity. And all of this because the birds are angry at global warming (or something).


The smell of hippy/film student off the film can be whiffed a mile away, from the clunky suggestions that hybrid cars are great dropped into the script with as much subtley as a petrol bomb, to the embarassing background soundtrack that is clearly a reworking of Imagine by John Lennon ‘written’ by some stoner who had his mind blown when he picked up his shitty acoustic and the ‘music, like, just came to him’ one evening. There’s also a treehugger who looooves trees and eventually leaves the scene when he hears a mountain lion. LOLWAT. Oh yeah, then there’s a forest fire for some reason.

Oh, and the guns do this.

After the birds arrive there are plenty of moments to make you ask HOW DID THIS GET MADE???? including:

• CGI fireballs that look like the ones from South Park
• The kamikaze fighter pilot sound some of the birds make
• The same footage of one bird being shot being used over and over and over again 
• Unlimited bullets!
• Where were they even driving to?
• A doctor scientist ornithologist giving a lecture
• The two kids pretty much being adopted, no questions asked

I guess James Nguyen has succeeded in creating awareness, through a massive lolfail. The film is meant to be a stark warning and the catlyst to the viewer asking themselves some stern questions about their carbon footprint.
The only questions I was left with was how this got made and how did he manage to get so many hotties involved!?

Srsly, there's so much lolgore and so bad it's funny stuff going on I can't even cover it. Watch it!

Have you listened to Farse?

Farse clearly had to rely on their music and not their looks/money.

Farse are one of a few bands that received solid rotation on that most joyous of tv stations, P-rock, before disapearing into relative obscurity. But they are still revered by those of us who bust them out on road trips and drinking sessions on the reg. Ska is a dangerous genre to attempt, especially by a group of white lads from the UK without a brass section. Farse however didn’t let this hold them back and wrote some of the best ska-punk singles of all time, brilliantly encapsulating the formula of major keys, backing/dual vox hooks, song structures that are along the lines of ‘so, then we’ll play the same chords but like, heavy, with distortion and stuff’, and a vocal style with more rolls than Galway deli counters go through in a week.

Their biggest hit (or at least my favourite song) is Hopskotch, a minute and a half of energy and hooks!

•  No idea of the lyrics..don't think there were any official lyrics..
• DEM rrrrolls!
• Such a DIY video, srsly, there's about 50 seconds of footage hacked together and copied/pasted
• Is Rasta dude at 00.27 in the band or not? He pops up a few times...
• And then it's over and I want moar!

And with wanting more of the same in mind, it's lucky that they stick tight to their forumula for most of their songs

•  How should we start it...another drum intro? deadly.
• 'hey how about you sing woahs instead of hah! at the end of my lines, and then we can sing back and over in the chorus, I mean it worked once..' 'sweet, yeah let's go with that.'
• DEM RRROLLLS. Best thing ever.
• 1.01 - harmonies, noice.
• Bass/drum bridge with scratching over it = nevar not cool!
• And back to the chorus, here we go again you say?
• MOAR.

This is more punk rock I guess...

• Srsly, you can't say they got attention for their looks..and is he wearing his own tshirt at 00.08
• Super DIY videos ftw, clearly an old house belonging to a relation...
• Yep I can confirm he's wearing a farse tshirt. Were they really that poor?
• 00.36 lololol
• I love that the one dude in the denim is clearly TRYING TO STAY TRUE to his metal/rock roots and probably joined just to be in a band.
•  Makes me nostalgic for the days of playing in a shitty room in a band made up of ppl who just wanted to be in a band tbh
• Wood pay top dollar for a farse t-shirt
• Drummer is pretty good I think?
• Dat miming to the outro, haha

I know they'll only appeal to a certain type of person who grew up not knowing that ppl who like ska aren't meant to like metal and you can't be punk without being super lame about politics and not having fun.

The awkward moment when Hot Water Music and your old band have the same album cover

Cut The Reins - Man Made Dust (2009)

Hot Water Music - Exister (2012)

Even with the shitty resolution anyone can see they're BASICALLY THE SAME PERSON.  Anyone know a good lawyer, lololol.

Band photos that make you lol: The Fab Five

I've been in a few bands since I started playing guitar and one of the most awkward things to get right is the band photo. For bands who want to MAKE IT it's a very important promo device. Some bands feel you need to dress a certain way to get certain fans (pretty true with da punx and m3talheadz) and that's before you decide on a location (gritty wall with graffiti, ruins, forest or big grassy field, lol). Then you need to figure out if it's going to be a 'fun' or 'srs' photo and you have to try really hard to make sure it doesn't look like you're trying really hard to be fun or srs. So you have to pose in a natural way.

Because to some extent I've been there, done that it's always fun to see band photos where something has gone terribly wrong. Or are just lol for whatever reason. I'm starting this series with an easy one, from the showband era. It doesn't require any further comment from me and shows how this issue has been a minefield for decades!

1 comment: DEM INCREDIBLE HULK-SIZED HANDS!!

Who is da best luv singer???

No Tupac or Atari Jaguar option?

Dodgy Film Club: Slashers

Srsly, what's this guy going to do, poke me to death? It could leave a splinter I guess. Still though, that's a minor inconvenience at worst..

This film has an amazing setup but while it’s worth a watch for the funny elements, unfortunately didn’t quite bring the lolgore it could have. A Japanese gameshow pits contestants against 3 ‘slashers’ on  a set that looks like a badly run lasertag course, and whoever is left alive at the end of an hour wins the cash! It includes a studio audience, smiley host, cheerleaders and some lad providing LIVE creepy music.

The contestants are pretty much the usual Racially Inclusive Survival Team(tm), in this case we have:

• Well built, angry african american man
• Political fembitch
• ‘foreign’ muscle man (read: fat mexican looking dude with canadian/russian/mexican accent depending on the scene)
• Dimwited aspiring actress slash model
• The athletic all action girl (who is actually the fattest out of the 3 wimmin)
• The calculating ‘college/business guy’

 The weirdest thing about this is the camera work, or maybe the quality of the camera. It has a really strange videogame look as if the people are too close to the screen and the sets look like they were made by schoolkids. There are times when characters bang against ‘stone walls’ that sound alarmingly like cardboard. Other things to look out for include:

• Completely unnatural dialogue
• Characters saying the situation is ‘crazy’
• Interchangable accents
• The bluntest stabbing weapons of all time and a WOODEN sword
• ‘windows’ that clearly have no glass in them
• A chainsaw that is never actually running
• Lots of partial nudity (“TAKE YOUR SHIRT OFF SO I CAN BANDAGE HER FACE!”)
• Blood squirting from somewhere other than the stab wound
• Awkward pauses while the show goes on an ad break that are actually pretty well done
• Convenient powercuts/camera panning when the special effects obviously weren’t available to show stabbing etc

All in all I could talk about how it provides an interesting social commentary yada yada but idk how srs it's meant to be.. I would say not to watch it in a house where you don't know your housemates that well as my friend did.. something about the japanese girls, the bad acting and one slasher being a pervert mean you might have to give explanations like 'not a porno' and 'still not a porno' everytime someone comes into the room.

Nostalgia vs. Reality: Kerrang 2

I'm a sucker for nostalgia. If I'm reminded of a certain album/song/game/whatever after  several years I get hit with several years of withdrawal symptoms and need my fix. It's why I have (fairly recently bought) Time Crisis guns for the ps2 in a drawer at home, guns that I will never use again but can't bring myself to throw away.

While looking through some cds in a second hand store (yes, i sometimes buy cds lol/in b4 cds r retro) and I found Kerrang 2 The Album with songs circa 2000-2002. Some bands I still listen to (Alkaline Trio, Blink 182) some bands are good for the lol/memories/occasional jammage (Slipknot, Limp Bizkit) and some were pretty much one hit wonders that I loved. It's these songs I'm going to concentrate on. Maybe I can cure myself of this nostalgia thing..

Papa Roach: Between Angels and Insects

The Nostalgia: FACT: This was one of the first songs I jammed in my first band. Papa Roach were a singles band, their albums kinda sucked but they could write a hit! I remember this song being HEAVY at the time.

 The Reality:

• No fuqs given if they stole it from Maiden, DAT RIFF!
• Jacoby Shaddix is still lol.
• Super jelly of their practice room.
• 00.27 OH MAN DAT CAMERA TRAVELLING INSIDE YOUR BODY THING, OLD SKOOL!!
• Missed a choreographed, synchronised headbang op though.
• Chorus riff is still HEAVY.
• Dem matching outfits. Dem moves.
• I've actually ripped off that slide on the high note down to slamming an open chord at about 1.27. Srs.
• The transition 'in' to the guitarist and 'out' again from 1.54 onwards haha, so close to being sweet, not quite there.
• Srsly wtf is he dancing like that for haha
• Slow mo of cymbal crash = never not cool. srs.
• Ahahaha dat snare roll.
• Don't remember the bass riff in the bridge, prob cos I was struggling with playing the challenging guitar riff

The verdict: Good for lols and a bit of nostalgia mosh, but I'll be putting this away for another while.

American Hi Fi - Flavour of the Weak

The Nostalgia: I remember this being one of the few 'proper' bands that you could actually hear on the radio so I was pretty into this song. I was just barely a teenager and the radio, mixtapes and music channels were still pretty much the only way of finding new music. Plus the taking down the crappy boyfriend of an unrequited love obviously would have appealed to me at that age. feelsbadman.jpg.

The Reality: 

•  Oh shit! They start the video with a Heavy Metal Parking Lot reference from 1986! Nostalgia within nostalgia..
• Remember when every music video had an intro/'story to tell' haaaa
• 00.44 The song finally gets going and it actually goes harder than I remember!
• 00.50 Ahhh there's the pop vox! And I somehow knew the singer was gonna be blond. 
• How can we make fun of them when they're doing a video making fun of others/themselves?? GENIUS.
• The stop/start thing in the chorus is a bit annoying but DAT HOOK.
• Had no idea he said 'nintendo' there.
• Radio Rock Solo!
• Ah the ol' pretty chorus into the 'heavy' chorus. Works a charm.

The Verdict: I will definetely listen to this song again maybe whilst driving or partying..

Static X - Black and White

The nostalgia: There isn't really that much. I only heard one or two SX songs and though I could see where they were coming from with their cuhrazy hairstyles etc I never took it beyond sort of liking them.

The Reality:

• Lol, that drum sound.
• Yo brahs, Korn want their riff back!
• 00.35 Srsly, that's a Korn song right?
• It's catchy but that's cos it's already a Korn song. KORN, MOTHERFUCKER. HAVE YOU HEARD THEM?
• No matter how cool Tripp is make out to be in this video all I can think about is how he is a convicted kiddyfiddler. Having 14 and 15 year old girls into your music is the dream but actually taking it further than that? Dude. The fuck?

The verdict: That band with the rapist? Ah no, I think I'll listen to Korn instead. Srsly, how is this not the same chorus?

Rita Mishears: Heaven is a Half-pipe by OPM

Meet Bigblast; ANOTHER French band with undecipherable lyrics who bring the jams

Srsly, what's going on in France? 2 of my favourite bands are already from there and now I've stumbled across Bigblast who combine lots of good elements like

• Melodic hardcore
• Female vox <3
• A name that is just terrible
• Undecipherable lyrics
• Silly accents
• A 'fun on tour' video 

They've just released a video for 'Tonight we own this place', which I'm guessing is about living for that moment you step on stage and all the travel is worth it. Maaan.

• Nice to see the chick singer helps with the gear, that's equality in hardcore. Srs.
• Nooo idea what the lyrics are, really.
• I really love the back and forth vocals, especially when the girl sings a line by herself with no music.
• 00.38 ZANY TOUR ANTICS
• The singer has the right mix of keeping it real and keeping it cute.
• 01.04 ZANY TOUR GUY STRIKES AGAIN. Also, 1.73 per litre? Oof.
• Hmm..these guys have defo been on tour
• If you want to know what gigs are like most of the time on tour with a DIY band pay attention to 2.34 - band rocking out, giving it their all. 5 ppl standing around at the front, half watching :(
• Alriiight they drink shots, maybe we should hang!

I've actually found a video with their lyrics..think it was better not knowing..

• 'keep direction, don't turn off'
• Loving all the lingo 'bros', 'sick' etc
• 'Nothing in stomach' lolololol
• 'we ain't no fan' lolwat?

I probably shouldn't be so harsh seeing as I was pretty bad at French but hey, what's the internet for if not making fun of things you like?

They're on the internet here -> Bigblast

Pop music I like: Songs w/rap verse and hooky chorus edition

***disclaimer: I have no clue as to what this genre is, or even if these songs belong to the same genre. All I know is, they are played in nightclubs/on the radio. I'm a complete genre fggt for music I know. Feel free to suggest what this music is/similar songs, thaaanks***

I've noticed lately that most of the songs I like on the radio or in the clizzub follow the same kind of song structure. Basically a simple hip hop/dance beat + rap verse + hook = WIN!

The formula can change slightly as seen in Breaking my Fall by Bressie, which I posted here a while ago, and it has since plagued the radio waves and wrecked heads across Ireland. But I digress.

Here's a song by example that illustrates my point.

• The riff could srsly be used in metalcore
• 00.52 Is that a FILTHY DROP?
• Dem lyrics. As bad/good as Chilli Peppers for just throwing in words that sound good.
• Needs to be covered by a pop punk band. Needs a pop punk jump at 2.20.
• Lol at them trying to come across as srs artists with the black and white vid/crowd/band footage. Y u no make fun alcohol video in tha club?

 Next up is Hangover by Taoi Cruz and ft Flo Rida. Don't know who Taoi Cruz is but ft Flo Rida is in a lot of songs I dig.

• Follows the intro riff and chorus sung over it formula.
• Ok, I'll get it out there now. It's obv but Taoi if u hungover, y u singing so well? y u no croakily asking shop assistants for sausage rolls and energy drinks/ordering takeaway food?
• 00.37 *gap* *snare hit* *riff* EVERY song should have a part like this. For the pop punk jumps.
• The pop industry is really scraping the barrell 4 lyrics. Ehh.. so there's a popular song about looking forward to a good night..a song about partying at present..a song about not wanting the party to be over..wat do? A song about the morning after. BOOM.
• Dat chorus doe. Damn.
• It sounds good I guess but I have NO IDEA what ft Flo Rida is on about. Champagne was in there?
• Rhyming 'Woah' with 'Sure' via 'Sho' = never not cool.

B.O.B. ft Rivers Cuomo - Magic

• Slightly different but at the same time - chorus at the start, then verse, repeat.
•  Dat Bob guy got flow, afaik.
• Mega lol at Rivers acting gangsta, esp. dropping the 'r' in 'floor'. Sure he probably gets the girls but I doubt he hits the flo and I doubt any snapping occurs.
• And srsly, what is he wearing. Did he think rappers still rep adidas?

So I think what I'm saying is - generic, formulaic pop music is great as long as it's the recipe that I like?

Twitter-sized Reviews: 21 Jump Street

21 Jump Street: Another decent, enjoyable (if slightly forgetable) comedy with Jonah Hill and The Human Neck (who was ok actually.) Some nice parody moments. 7/10

Jonah Hill: Slimmer, better hair, still ugly, still creeping on 18 year old characters.