sci fi

REVIEW: Star Wars: The Force Awakens soundtrack [spoiler free]

NEW RELEASE – SPOILER FREE

Scan_20160103 (8)STAR WARS: The Force Awakens original motion picture soundtrack (2015 Lucasfilm/Disney)

After seeing The Force Awakens on December 18, my radio pal Rob Daniels who had not seen it yet asked me, “How was it, seeing a Star Wars movie without the 20th Century Fox logo and fanfare at the start?”

It was strange.  Not unexpected of course; we all know the reason there is an Episode VII today is because Lucasfilm sold Star Wars to Disney.  The old 20th Century Fox fanfare does not commence the soundtrack, which instead begins with the main Star Wars title theme.  This quiets and slows, as the covert start to the movie begins.

“The Scavenger” introduces the character of Rey.  Add this to yet another intriguing piece of character music from the mind of John Williams.  “The Scavenger” is unlike any of the other Star Wars cues; it’s brand new, just like the character of Rey.  I get goosebumps hearing it again, such is the power and identity of the score.  It also has the tone to connect this new chapter to the other instalments of the saga.  This is only a brief respite.  Much like the movie itself, the action resumes shortly.  The title “I Can Fly Anything” suggests you should fasten your seatbelts for this cue!*  Williams allows you to close your eyes and picture the flurry yourself.  He always has; that’s his magic.  As kids, we would drop the needle on the soundtrack to The Empire Strikes Back while navigating an asteroid field with our Kenner Millenium Falcons.  Or, you would flip the pages of your Marvel Star Wars comic movie adaptations, while listening to those records.  The experience still works today.  Through the drama and occasional quiet moments of reflection, you will notice callbacks to cues from the classic trilogy — “The Falcon”, or “Han and Leia” for example.  These pieces of music are warmly remembered.

When the soundtrack to The Phantom Menace was released in 1999, the track “Duel of the Fates” became a bit of a hit single.  There is no “Duel of the Fates” here, but “Rey’s Theme” serves well as the memorable track this time out.  With more subtlety (and perhaps even femininity?), “Rey’s Theme” is a new kind of Star Wars music.  I have high hopes that the character and story arc will unfold in a way just as emotional and satisfying as her theme music.  Star Wars deserves to have characters that you can invest your emotions in.  With the prequel trilogy, I could never feel much for Anakin Skywalker.  You always knew that no matter what happened in the prequels, he’s just going to end up in the black suit and blowing up Aldaraan.  Rey’s future is unwritten.  Having a strong theme will help her character going forward.

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Vintage Star Wars fun can be had on the tension-packed tracks “The Rathtars!”, and “Kylo Ren Arrives”.  Somber beauty is “The Starkiller”, ironic considering the scene in question.  For deeper listening, check out the tracks “Maz’s Counsel” and “Snoke”.  Perhaps there are musical clues buried in these pieces to help us identify who some of these characters may be?

The soundtrack is a wild ride like the movie from which it came, picking up suspense as it nears the end.  The less said about the last few tracks on the CD the better, except to mention that Williams continues to forge new ground for Star Wars right to the finale.  With passion and precision, every track is the perfect accompaniment.

My only disappointment, although not unexpected since this is only a single CD release, is that some music is naturally omitted.  The one track I wish was available is the neat rasta-space-blues song playing when our heroes arrives at Maz Kanata’s tavern.  It’s the “Cantina Band” or “Lapti Nek” of the movie, but it’s not on the CD.  There are whispers that a 2 CD deluxe edition is forthcoming this year.

5/5 stars

* The Millenium Falcon has seatbelts, but the USS Enterprise does not.  Discuss!

MOVIE REVIEW: Star Wars: The Force Awakens [Spoiler-free]

NEW RELEASE – SPOILER FREE ZONE!

Star_Wars_The_Force_Awakens_Theatrical_PosterSTAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015)

Directed by JJ Abrams

“Faster, more intense!”

15 minutes ago, I was sitting in my theater seats.  That’s how fresh this review is!

As mentioned in this morning’s post, Star Wars Episode VII is the movie I really wanted to see, ever since 1983.  We didn’t care about backstory, we didn’t want to see prequels.  All we cared about was “What happens next?  What happens to Han, Luke and Leia?”  That’s one reason Timothy Zahn’s written sequel, the “Thrawn Trilogy”, was so well received by fans worldwide.  But that’s just a book — what really happens after the second Death Star is destroyed?

Now I know, and I am not disappointed.

Director JJ Abrams has re-captured the magic.  The lived-in universe is back.  The wooden, stiff dialogue and exposition are gone.  The new quartet of leads (Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, and especially the impressive Daisy Ridley) are everything we wanted out of a new generation of Star Wars heroes and villains.  They will now join the pantheon of characters that live on in our hearts.  The camaraderie and friendships that were never believable in the prequels have finally come back to life.  Without the misguided hands of George Lucas at the tiller, the Star Wars sequel trilogy has begun anew, with life.

Rey is a scavenger on the desert planet of Jakku.  The parallel here to Tattooine is unmistakable and obviously intentional, but Jakku has its own charm by being strewn with original trilogy space junk.  In fact, the whole movie is littered with original trilogy callbacks, from certain objects on a familiar starship, to the overall look and deco of the universe.  The galaxy has seen a lot of wear and tear, but a new threat called the First Order has risen, and wants to see the end of the New Republic.  The Republic (which we don’t get to see much of), is defended by a secret organization much like the rebels, called the Resistance.  They are led by General Leia Organa, continuing on doing what she knows how to do best.  How does Rey fit in?  When a droid carrying a secret message for the Resistance (sound familiar?) and an ex-stormtrooper fall into her life, it will never be the same again.


Uber-fans will like to know that there are some shots and lines in the trailers that are different in the movie.

The new characters serve the archetypes that worked in classic Star Wars movies.  You have an orphan on the desert world, a hotshot pilot (or perhaps two), and the cute but witty little droid who helps out at all the right moments, but mostly needs rescuing.  Original?  Not hardly.  The original trilogy, with its familiar set pieces and dialogue, are omnipresent.  Fans have set the bar much lower since the prequels, and a group of re-tread heroes will have the fans satiated.  Then we have the villain, Kylo Ren, the enforcer of the First Order, and face of the Disney marketing campaign.  Much has been made of Ren’s wimpy voice, but in full theater sound it works much better.  Adam Driver, an extremely talented and distinguished looking actor, fit the role like a glove.  His epic temper tantrums rival those of his idol, Lord Vader himself.

But don’t worry.  There aren’t any dreadful “Noooooooooo’s” or lines about sand being course and getting everywhere.  There aren’t wishy-washy speeches about love, although Finn and Rey have a bond that could develop into romance later on.  Writer Lawrence Kasdan, who worked on the classic trilogy and knew where Lucas wanted to take this thing, helped tremendously.  From opening crawl to final scene, this feels right.

In many respects, The Force Awakens is Han Solo’s movie.  When he and Chewbacca hook up with our new heroes (in a totally believable way), he takes over the lead and drives the plot forward.  Harrison Ford seems to have turned his “Han Solo” knob up to 11.  The older, wiser and sadder man has seen it all, now.  As another character once said, “It’s not the age, it’s the mileage”.  Solo and Chewie’s presence make the whole thing really feel like Star Wars.

My biggest concern going into this was that a Star Wars sequel trilogy would not feel like it was part of the whole; it would feel tacked on to the end.  That is not the case.  While George Lucas had nothing to do with the film, it does carry his wish that a new Star Wars trilogy would focus on a new generation of heroes, while remaining a story about the Skywalker family.  JJ Abrams has done that, in an appropriate and lively way.  The new Star Wars is the most exciting in many years, and what it lacks in originality it makes up in spirit.  I can’t wait to see where it goes next.

My only serious beef is about this new superweapon the First Order have.  Superweapons are a part of Star Wars, and always require blowing up.  This one made no sense at all, especially how it was visually depicted.  We need Neil DeGrasse Tyson to do a pop-up video and tell us just how stupid that thing is.  If you thought the “red matter” and destruction of Vulcan sucked in Star Trek, wait until you see this stupid thing.  Just pretend it makes sense and watch the pretty starship dogfights.

Oh, and Luke Skywalker?  Some will be disappointed, but those who love Star Wars will have the same goosebumps that I did.  Mark Hamill is the man.  Luke is back, looking weary but powerful and wise.  There are a lot of loose ends to tie up.  Get ready, galaxy.

4/5 stars

Don’t forget to tune in tonight at midnight (ET) for Rob Daniels’ Visions In Sound, when he and I will be playing the brand-new Star Wars soundtrack composed by John Williams!  Tune in locally on your FM dial to CKWR 98.5, or elsewhere, just click “listen live” via their website!  The show runs from midnight to 2 am (ET).  Coffee?

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EDIT: Stream the whole show here!

REVIEW: William Shatner – Seeking Major Tom (2011)

Scan_20150828 (5)WILLIAM SHATNER – Seeking Major Tom (2011 Cleopatra)

Why?  Why do I keep doing this to myself?  I spend hard-earned money on something I knew would be shit.  I knew it!  Didn’t I?

The hype was palpable in the air.  Two of my favourite worlds collided — heavy metal and Star Trek.  Captain James T. fucking Kirk, doing sci-fi rock classics, with luminaries of the art such as Ritchie fucking Blackmore, Zakk fucking Wylde, Dave fucking Davies and many, many more.  It’s almost as if it was a compulsory purchase.

I…wished I had…resisted.  (notice the Shatner-like pauses?)

You know how many times I have listened to Seeking Major Tom?  Once.

Let’s go in for round two.  Let’s see what happens.

Did I mention this is a double album?  This is a double album.  The original versions of a lot of these songs are deeply ingrained in our hearts and memories.  “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Learning to Fly”, “Iron Man”.  I have a lot of feelings invested into these songs, and deep respect for every musician playing on the album.  There is even a mini Ozzy Osbourne band reunion on Iron Man, as Zakk Wylde and Mike Inez reteam once again.

Shatner first teams up with Nick Lalensi of the Strokes for “Major Tom (Coming Home)”, and musically it’s perfect, and very Strokes-like…Bill’s vocals take some getting used to.  Not bad though!  He’s not attempting to sing, it’s a spoken word performance.  It’s performing the lyrics as if it was poetry.  For “Major Tom”, it actually works kinda brilliantly.  The original “Space Oddity” is next, and this one features one Ritchie Blackmore and his lovely wife, Candice Night.  Candice adds melody enough with her backing vocals, and Bill makes his style work on the song.  Blackmore is the real star here, and it is too bad his electric guitar is low in the mix.  He takes a solo where there would normally be saxophone.

I’m actually surprised by how listenable this is!  Bill manages to evoke emotion with his monotone, which is remarkable to me.

I’m not familiar with the U2 song “In a Little While” at all.  The space connection here is that astronaut Frank De Winne once read the lyrics live from the International Space Station, beaming his vocals to a U2 concert, recorded for the DVD U2360° at the Rose Bowl.  Bill is joined by an unlikely guest, Lyle Lovett, but once again I am surprised by how well this works.  Lyle’s still got it, I’ll tell you that much!  This segues into a reprise of “Space Oddity”, and then the Steve Miller favourite “Space Cowboy”.  Brad Paisley and Steve Miller himself (he still plays brilliantly)  join Bill on this one, which…well, it crashes and burns in the atmosphere.  Bill takes on the persona of a drunken cowboy (?) and it’s just a bit too weird.

“Space Oddity” returns once again, but this time, we’re going “Space Trucking” with Ian Paice and Johnny Winter…acoustically.  “Come on!  Come on, let’s go Space Truckin’!” invites Bill, coming across more as a creepy old guy than the kind of person who drives a space truck you’d feel comfortable jumping into.  Just wait until he screams, “Yeah, yeah yeah yeah!”  No, no, no, no.  “Rocket Man” (Elton John), featuring progressive rock veteran Steve Hillage, works much better.  Hillage creates sounds similar to the “space whale” call from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.  Bill’s interpretations of old classics work better when he’s not hamming it up.  Much like his acting.  And ham it up is exactly (predictably) what he did with “She Blinded Me With Science”, featuring Bootsy Collins.   Since the original is so goofy, this works plenty well.  Reggae veteran Toots Hibbert lends some credibility to the Police classic, “Walking on the Moon”.  This is pretty good too!  The ever-excellent Peter Frampton drops by for “Spirit in the Sky”, a song I usually find irresistible due to the vocal melody.  Unfortunately that melody has been gutted, and without it, there’s not much left in terms of a song.

The first (and last) time I listened to this album, I remember being repulsed by “Bohemian Rhapsody”.  You can picture it, can’t you?  It’s terrible.  “I’m just a poor boy,” whimpers Bill, and it’s awful.  “Mama,” he cries, and I’m crying too.

Thankfully, Hawkwind’s “Silver Machine” (with Wayne Kramer and Carmine Appice) is a lot better than that.  It actually rocks pretty heavy, and Bill finds the right tone for his vocals, no problem.  This is noisy goodness and quite possibly the best track on the disc.  A segue back into “Major Tom (Coming Home)” leads into a Sheryl Crow original called “Mrs. Major Tom”.  This is a very nice piano based ballad, showcasing Sheryl’s powerful pipes.  It’s a sequel of sorts to “Coming Home”, about what happens if he doesn’t come home.  Bill doesn’t even appear on this one, strangely enough!  It closes the first disc on a somber but very classy note.

I don’t know where Bill heard The Tea Party, but that’s who he’s covering on “Empty Glass”, featuring Michael Schenker.  This track was from The Tea Party’s final album before breakup, Seven Circles, which I own but can’t remember at all.   I should revisit it soon, because “Empty Glass” (which references Major Tom, a Starman, ground control, and Diamond Dogs) is damn good and heavy.  “Lost in the Stars” is from the 1949 musical of the same time.  The dusky, sparse piano accompanies Bill’s deep speaking voice perfectly.  Still mellow but in tune with the Pink Floyd original is “Learning to Fly”.  The only thing wrong with this version is that there is nobody who sounds like David Gilmour, and his guitar hook is such an important part of the original classic.  Bill sounds perfectly at home, and the musical background is sturdy enough.

The Kinks’ Dave Davies helps Shatner out on guitar, for the Byrds’ “Mr. Spaceman”.  It has that campy feel that doesn’t particularly work well.  It’s amusing, but a novelty.  “Twilight Zone” by Golden Earring (known for that chorus of “When the bullet hits the bone), rocks.  Warren Haynes from the Allman’s kicks every ass in the room on his extended guitar solo.  There is then a Shatner original called “Struggle”, written with his producer Adam Hamilton (ex L.A. Guns).   This soft dramatic piece seems vaguely familiar, like a U2 outtake, and is very good in fact.

Winding things down, Sabbath’s “Iron Man” featuring Ozzy’s old band members Zakk Wylde and Mike Inez is an easy one to screw up, and Shatner does so gloriously.  He sounds appropriately Dalek-like on the opening line, “I am Iron Man!” but he attempts to sing the song.  I repeat: he attempts to sing the song “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath.  This goes about as well as you would expect.  Zakk backing him on lead vocals only creates an irritating cacophony.  The album ends on a very different note:  “Planet Earth” by Duran Duran.  Not having any particular attachment to the original, I quite liked this one.  Hamilton plays some killer disco bass on it.  It sounds like “I Was Made For Lovin’ You”.

Going into this for the second time, I fully expected the album to suck again.  The truth is, it doesn’t.  It sure didn’t click with me the first time, but it is truly not a bad album.  Metallica made a double album with vocals like this once; I think it was called Lulu.  From this two disc set, you could extract one good solid CD of enjoyable William Shatner interpretations.  So, given that:

2.5/5 stars

Part 209: The Phantom Menace

 

RECORD STORE TALES Part 209:  The Phanton Menace

Some at the record store made fun of me for being such a serious Star Wars fan.  I’m not a hard core fanboy; I don’t go to conventions or follow the books and TV shows, but I am pretty dedicated to the films.  I booked May 19, 1999 off work well in advance to see The Phantom Menace on opening day.

I’m not going to turn this story into a review for Phantom Menace.  That movie’s been reviewed by thousands of people and I’m not interested in contributing to the background noise.  The only thing you need to really agree with me on is that there was a tremendous excitement for Phantom Menace back in 1999.  I had been dreaming of what might happen before and after the Holy Trilogy since I was 5 years old.  My sister was only a baby when the first Star Wars came out, but she did get to see Empire in the theaters.  She is a slightly bigger fan than I am, but she doesn’t follow the expanded universe or any of that stuff.

We both booked the day off work and planned to go together.  Our strategy was this:  Since we knew that the theaters would be absolutely packed for the midnight opening, we picked an out of the way (but still THX) theater that had a noon showing. So, all we had to do was wait an extra 12 hours (at home), and we’d get in no problem!

We showed up at the theater and were, like, seventh in line.  No sweat.  Soon we had our seats in a sparsely seated theater.  Then the trailers (something called Titan AE, which inspired a heckle of “What the hell was that?” from the audience).  Then the Fox fanfare, the Lucasfilm logo and finally…”A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away….”

136 minutes later (we stayed for the credits of course) we were pretty satisfied with the movie.  Keep in mind that fast shit had been whizzing in front of our faces for over two hours.  There were things that didn’t make sense, there were things we didn’t like much (the kid, Jar Jar) but we kept telling ourselves the same thing.

“Yeah, but it’s the first chapter.  The next one will be where it really starts.”

As we were talking about it, I said, “Wanna see it again?  It went so fast there was a ton of stuff I’m sure I missed.”

“Sure!” she answered.  “Yeah!”

We went back out to the ticket counter.  There were a few people in line, but not many.  “Two for Star Wars, please,” I said as I approached the counter.

“Didn’t you just come out of Star Wars?” she said with that snooty tone.

“Yep.  We liked it,” I answered.

“And you want to see it again?”  We did.

We went back in.  The second time lacked a bit of the awe.  This time, I paid more attention to the details.  Questions came to my mind.  “If Yoda is the Jedi Master that instructed Obi-Wan, then why is Liam Neeson training him?”  Stuff like that.

I still remember that on the way home, we stopped at the HMV store, and I bought Ed Hunter by Iron Maiden.  When we got home, we were still excited about the movie, telling Mom and Dad all the details.  My dad was skeptical.

“Does it have the emotion of the first one?  Does it have the feeling?” he inquired.

“Well…no not exactly,” I rationalized.  “This is just the first chapter.  The next one will be where it really starts.”

My dad was onto something.

The hilarious Red Letter Media review

I also distinctly remember watching Phantom Menace again with Tom and a franchise owner, on VHS, shortly after it came out.

In 2005 I first met the girl who would later become my wife, but she had never seen Star Wars.  I was really excited to be the guy that got to watch Star Wars with her for the first time.  For some stupid reason that to this day I will never understand, I decided to start her off with Episode I:  The Phantom Menace.  Bad idea.

“That stupid fucking dino-guy” is what she named Jar-Jar Binks.  She hated it.  (She liked Episode III though.)  Then, her dad (rest his soul) decided that he wanted to see the Star Wars prequels too.  One Saturday night I went over there with my DVD copy of Phanton Menace in hand.  And so it was that Jen had to see Phantom Menace not once, but twice.

We’ll be married five years this August, more awesomer than ever, so “that stupid fucking dino-guy” couldn’t have been all that  bad, right?

NEXT TIME ON RECORD STORE TALES…

LeBrain on the radio!