“Archangel” is unquestionably the peak of Burial’s sophomore dubstep album Untrue. The track is a haphazard dirge, with a shuddering, jolting baseline under clipped vocals and melancholic instrumentation. It’s glass breaking gently underwater; it’s simultaneously sad but optimistic, heartfelt but detached. It’s a personal vision which makes it a particular challenge to cover, but Chet…
Once again I seem to have picked the wrong horse in Triple J’s Hottest 100: it seems inevitable that “Oblivion” is going to outperform “Genesis” by a significant margin, which is a shame as the latter is by far more interesting. “Genesis” feels unique; though it’s clearly the sum of familiar parts – a meandering,…
The Mist is a good movie that could have been great. The first element that lets it down was inescapable with its low budget: the special effects. The film is intended to be serious, meaningful and to capture real fear, and the acting and composition support this, but the creature special effects appear goofy and…
You pull the trigger and watch the white clouds flare with mute curiosity. You’ve done this before. Over pastoral fields in Western Russia, the urban maze of Steelport. But you were someone else then. Red reticules flash and quiver and you jolt from one target to another. You pull the trigger again. People – targets…
I recently saw someone complaining on Twitter about the use of “cerebral” as a polite way of dismissing music. I don’t agree with the complaint; for me, “cerebral” music is a good thing, music that requires effort to engage and understand, music that is challenging, rewarding and interesting. So “cerebral” isn’t at all synonymous with…
It’s no accident that the soundtrack of many scenes throughout the 3 hour running time of Short Cuts is jazz. Jazz is improvisational music, familiar elements constructed over a backbone that shifts and changes, reflecting life’s messiness. Short Cuts is the same, weaving plot elements and character archetypes you might recognise into an immense, organic…
Shame appears to establish Brandon (Michael Fassbender) as the suave gentleman that doesn’t exist outside of fiction, unflappable and exuding preternatural confidence. We soon find that this persona is a thin shell around a damaged core, and the film the same: beginning with confident, gliding cinematography that becomes gradually more erratic, disjointed. Shame isn’t a…
The appeal of the Scream films (well, the first two – Scream 3 was an abject failure) is their diversity. Each is a slasher, a whodunit and a satirical take on the horror genre; even if they fail in one, they normally manage to be entertaining in another. Scre4m fails as a slasher film –…
Sam Simmons’ new show, Problems, is Australia’s answer to Louie. Like Louie, Problems is a window into its creator’s psyche: meaning that the show is absurd, hilarious and fundamentally good-natured. It touches on Simmons’ love of “shitty trivia” and is weirdly obsessed with food (Episode one revolves around tacos while episode two features a sex…
The challenge of the Nightmare on Elm Street films is that they need to create fear in an environment where the normal rules don’t apply, which makes scares that would be shocking in a realistic context less effective. The second sequel answers this challenge by not trying to be a horror film; it’s more of…
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