Multimedia Wrap Up (Week 48, 2013)

This weekly post serves as a way to communicate to you everything I watched, listened to or played that I want you to know about. Be it an awesome movie, a great song, a terrible game or the best episode of a TV-show I’ve ever seen; they will all be posted in the Multimedia Wrap Up.

Family Guy S12E06 – “Life of Brian”
Before the start of this television-season, I read an interview with Seth MacFarlane in which he revealed he would kill off one of the characters of Family Guy during the season. I had forgotten about that interview, until halfway this episode. If you’ve been living under a rock, or if you are generally not interested in Family Guy (in which case, you might as well skip ahead), you might not know who he decided to kill off. In any case, there’s going to be spoilers from now on. Ready? Okay, go. The character killed off is Brian, the family dog. The rest of the episode is spent on the introduction of Vinnie, the new Italian-American resident dog. I have no idea whether or not the death of Brian is definitive, since MacFarlane has previously proven with American Dad he can revive certain characters without any consideration towards the continuity of the storyline presented. Tonight, the next episode will air, which will undoubtedly clear up a lot of confusion among fans.

Caspian – Hymn for the Greatest Generation EP (2013)
I’ve been listening to Caspian more and more the last few months. Whether it’s ‘The Four Trees’ (2007), ‘Tertia’ (2009) or ‘Waking Season’ (2012), every album is great on its own. Imagine my surprise to see the band has released new stuff just a few weeks ago. True, it’s just an EP and not a full album, but it’s great to hear something new for a change. The EP consists of three new songs, a demo, and two remixes to older songs. One of these remixes is a remix of ‘Porcellous’ from the 2012 album Waking Season, one of my all-time favourite songs of theirs. It takes the song and turns it down a notch, which I think doesn’t do the song real justice. It was better left untouched. The other remixed song is ‘Halls of Summer’, originally from the same album. It is basically the same song, with some added electronic effects and beats. I have less problem with that, but it won’t beat the original. The demo is a distorted early version of ‘High Lonesome’, which lacks polish but is nice in its raw pureness. The three new songs are of the level I’ve come to expect from Caspian, they’re great. It’s a great EP for the new stuff, but I’d rather have six new songs than three new songs and three rather unimpressive re-imaginations of older work. But I guess that’s what EP’s are for. Still, great to have new Caspian songs, and for those three songs alone, this EP is worth it. You can listen to the full (!) EP here, on the band’s Bandcamp page.

The Flu (“Gamgi”), 2013
Damn, do Koreans know how to tell a story. They’ve proven it with Oldboy, and they’ve proven it again with this movie. Due to Thanksgiving in the US, there was a lack of TV-shows to watch the last few days, so I decided to watch a movie. I looked at the latest releases, and this was the only one with a decent IMDb rating. This action-drama is centered around a disease making its rounds in Bundang, however, it won’t be until after at least a third of the movie the disease really starts spreading. The first third is instead focused on introducing the characters and their personalities and motives. This part of the movie is kept light by a very good performance of a 6-year old child-actress as the daughter of the protagonist’s love interest. The second third of the movie is spent on dealing with the disease, and the last third is spent on the chaos and misery these measures bring forth. Woven through this excellent representation of the ‘rule of thirds’ are the personal struggles of the three main characters: the protagonist, his love interest, and the daughter. Though this love story is predictable from the moment the movie starts, the overall backdrop to which this all takes place makes up for it. Sure, the special effects are not up to Hollywood standard, but it doesn’t rely on them too heavily to make it a distraction. The stereotypical blood-thirsty representation of Americans in the movie is hilarious and borders on Japanese video game territory. All in all, a good movie: great story, good acting, some moral dilemma’s… All in all: this is the movie ‘Contagion’ should have been.

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2 Responses

  1. Mario Roberto Hernandez says:

    Interesting!

    You have a wonderfull site! Many congratulations for all your ACC creation an in general to have a gret place over the Internet.

    Thanks a lot for all!

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