Sons of Cream @ Transilvania Blues Nights !

Kofi Baker, Malcolm Bruce & Rob Johnson = Sons of Cream

www.sonsofcream.com

as in Kofi Baker's Cream Faith @ Transilvania Blues !

https://www.facebook.com/events/7519749308092259

În premieră și exclusivitate în România ! 

Bilete pe iabilet.ro și pe rockstadt.ro

Vineri 1 martie 2014, ora 20.00 @Rockstadt, Brașov !

B. There and Let There B. Blues !!!

Am pus aici un articol depre Ginger Baker scris la moartea sa in octombrie 2019 si ramas nepublicat pina acum.

https://aldmovieland.blogspot.com/2019/10/ginger-baker-rip.html

*****

Cream a fost primul super-grup din istoria rockului, în componența de trio: Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, și a activat doar 3 ani (1966-1968). Astăzi este considerată deopotrivă de critici și de fani “cea mai bună trupă din lume”.

Kofi Baker este fiul lui Ginger Baker, toboșar virtuoz, la fel ca tatăl său. Kofi Baker's Cream Faith îi include pe Malcolm Bruce, fiul lui Jack Bruce, basistul grupului Cream și BBM, iar chitarist este Rob Johnson, al cărui unchi a fost tot Ginger Baker. Trupa cântă muzica legendarelor Cream și Blind Faith, și e un soi de “afacere de familie”, o moștenire Live, nu numai pentru nostalgici, ci și pentru viitorii fani, o muzică nemuritoare, „The Sunshine of Our Love”.

Un concert-eveniment marca Transilvania Blues Nights.
Sponsori: Butan Gas, BCR, Miele Brasov, Aro Palace, Bit Datamining, CenterLine, Tehnic Mihor, Bistro AHA, Coliba Haiducilor. 

Bilete: 100 lei pret pre-sale pana pe data de 29 februarie, 130 lei in ziua concertului.
https://rockstadt.ro/event/3137/

Powered by Rock FM, Zile și Nopți
 Open door: 16:00
 Concert: 20:00

The Zone of Interest (2023)

I was expecting Jonathan Glazer's fourth feature with much anticipation. He doesn't make a a lot of films, four in over 20 years...the 1st one, Sexy Beast (2000) stuck with me from the first frame, Birth (2004) so and so and last one ten years ago , Under the Skin (2013) was an UFO of the foremost cinematic kind (in my Top of 2014 films and soundtracks). So, when I first about the plot of his new film that took ten years to make, The Zone of Interest, the fact that is shot in German and on location in Poland's Auschwitz-Birkenau made me want to see it more than any film in last year's Festival de Cannes. I am now totally convinced it should've won Palme d'Or more and much more than Anatomy of a Fall, which is for me one of the most overrated films of 2023. Zone won Cannes' Prix du Jury in 2023, the FIPRESCI prize and two tech awards, Johnnie Burn for the sound and Mica Levi for the music (the Cannes soundtrack award). 

The Zone of Interest is loosely based by the Martin Amis book, but it takes just the plot idea from there. Beyond that it went into a deconstruction of the Evil as banality, and offers a very different view of the Holocaust from the Inside Out.

One of last year's best and most powerful films (also in cinematic language) , where what you hear is more important than what you see-and go and see it in a cinema, it plays now near you.

Will definetly win the Oscar for the best foreign film and sound, it's nominated for 5 categories including best film and best direction. More than Nolan and Scorsese Glazer's direction is topnotch, original, artful, an observational film, experimental, in many ways avant-garde. 

                                        thermal b & w photography sequences

Billy Joel - Turn the Lights Back On (2024, SOTD)

 Turn the Lights Back On marks Billy Joel's first original song in 17 years !!!

more info here

and an explanation with Billy J. on Howard Stern's show here. He brings up Edith Piaf's "Je ne regrette Rien", well...i agrre with Howard on this...

Lyrics: 

Please open the door
Nothing is different, we've been here before
Pacing these halls
Trying to talk over the silence
And pride sticks out its tongue
Laughs at the portrait that we've become
Stuck in a frame, unable to change
I was wrong

I'm late, but I'm here right now
Though I used to be romantic
I forgot somehow
Time can make you blind
But I see you now
As we're laying in the darkness
Did I wait too long
To turn the lights back on?

Here, stuck on a hill
Outsiders inside the home that we built
The cold settles in
It's been a long winter of indifference
And maybe you love me, maybe you don't
Maybe you'll learn to, and maybe you won't
You've had enough, but I won't give up
On you

I'm late, but I'm here right now
And I'm tryin' to find the magic
That we lost somehow
Maybe I was blind
But I see you now
As we're laying in the darkness
Did I wait too long
To turn the lights back on?

I'm late, but I'm here right now
Is there still time for forgiveness?
Won't you tell me how?
I can't read your mind
But I see you now
As we're layin' in the darkness
Did I wait too long
To turn the lights back on?

I'm here right now
Yes, I'm here right now
Looking for forgiveness
I can see as we're laying in the darkness
Yeah, as we're laying in the darkness
Did I wait too long
To turn the lights back on?

Poor Things (2023)

Poor Things by Yorgos Lanthimos won the Golden Lion in Venice, all top awards around (just now Five BAFTA's) and is nominated for 11 Oscars. It's amazing for a film like this, a one-of-a kind extravaganza with no limits. Gun blazing sort of cinema, risque acting from the top three actors, Emma Stone (she will win an Oscar, her second  for this, no doubt), an epic makeup-ed Scottish accented Willem Dafoe and an incredibly funny offbeat Marc Ruffalo (an uncanny Nae Girimea impersonation ;), career best of going against type.

Mixed feelings, and would've been even better if I didn't find out about the book, by Scottish writer Alasdair Grey. The book was published in 1992 and the author died in 2019. He sold the rights to the book to Yorgos Lanthimos in 2009. There are huge huge differences from the book in the film and Tony McNamara script relocated it from  Glasgow to London, and got rid of on the recent different timeline hooks. The book is told by different characters, through letters and it's supposed to be a found true story. Also at a running time of 2h21, it's at least a half-an-hour too indulgent longeur. Things begin to be too repetitive, esp. in the Paris episode.  There is a fish, aquatic-like theme that runs along the whole film, a dark humour surreal atmosphere and a manifesto of Shock & Panic cinema. 

Impecable tech credits, brilliant cinematography (by Robbie Ryan who did The Favourite too, in Technicolor, black and white, with grand angular, fisheyed lenses, 16 mm, etc), gorgeous set and production design, costumes and great music (pop musician Jerskin Fendrix' debut score), with a very original sound, also because its his first and Lanthimos' first film with an original film score.

Shot in Budapest at the Korda Studios for  a mere 35 million $. I mean, really, it looks alike a much more expensive picture.

Great title lettering inspired by Pablo Ferro. Via Kubrick maybe (dr. Strangelove), he is Lanthimos most revered mentor. Early Tim Burton, Elephant Man, Young Frankenstein, Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula, Fellini's E la Nave Va. I saw some Jodorowski in the Belle du Jour chapter, some Quay Bros. on the fisheye and iris black and whites. The fillmakers acknowledge Roy Andresson also as an inspiration and the primary Technicolors of Powell & Pressburger's Black Narcissus. I'll add some Hammer color too.

Il sol dell'avvenire/A Brighter Tomorrow (2023)

Il sol dell'avvenire/A Brighter Tomorrow, in Romanian Un viitor luminos (cum numai Partidul stie sa prezica ;), the title is of course Ironic. I mean, Nanni Moretti (now 70!!!) is a leftie and a socialist but this is his Nuit Americaine, or 8 1/2, a Meta film, with most of the fun from him in many years. Reminded my of his earlier films, Palombella Rossa (1989) and Caro Diario (1993). It was much funnier and warmer than his big Cannes fares (he has a Directing award for Caro diario and a Palme D'or for La Stanza di Figlio-2001). Habemus Papam (2011) was also funny, but here's there's a lot of more things Cinema to be enjoyed. Of course his new film was part of the official competition in 2023's Cannes Fest.

It's about a director in a very long mislife and creative crisis, making a film no one would like to see, about the events in Hungary 1956 seen through the eyes of the Italian Communist party. The title comes from a resistance song from WW2, "Fischia il vento". Add to that the circus of Federico F., plus the songs and musical fantasies, and some woodyallenesque soliloquies plus psychotherapy, life lamentations and narcissism to the max. The soundtrack is great, features belli canzoni, from Joe Dassin to Franco Battiato (Voglio vederdi danzare), Aretha Franklin  with "Think" from The Blues Brothers, Faure & Beethoven, and Fabrizio de Andre (La canzone dell'amore perduta). Featuring classic Moretti collaborators, Margherita Buy, Polish director and actor Jerzy Stuhr and a premiere, Mathieu Amalric as the fou producer. And surely Moretti as Giovanni, the tormented director. 

It's Moretti meets Fellini with bits of Demy (Lola and la Dolce Vita are even on the screen).

It's almost a miracle this film is in cinemas, very limited release. The scene with Netflix must be seen to be believed. It's like that, really, the WTF...

American Star (2024)

Ian Mc Shane. Impeccable Actor. Unbelievable, the man is 81. And he looks at least 20 years younger in American Star, an existential hitman thriller drama about aging and solitude. And nostalgia. And loyalty, maybe most of all.

Takes a movie for me to find about about the real crash of the luxury ocean liner, American Star (SS America), on Fuerteventura, Canary Islands. And it's metaphor on top of the title of the film.

The director. Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego I know from El Rey de la Montana (2007), film that I liked and was about to present when we did he little experiment called Bohemian Mondays/ aldmovielight at The Light cinema (then), in 2010, in Rahova, Bucharest. I think I translated the whole film, luckily there were very few lines of dialogue on that one.

Anyway, Gallego went on to the US to do Apollo 18 (a horror spoof/mockumentary), Open Grave and The Hollow Point. And now this, American Star, which I really liked. Mostly because McShane is mesmerizing. And the island. And it has a slow pace, a dreamlike quality. Arthouse European thriller. Would've loved to see it in a cinema.

7 of out 10/ 3 1/2 out of 5

LMA Alice @76 !

“I know you’re looking for a real good time. So, let me introduce you to a friend of mine. I’m Alice.

I’m the Master of Madness; the Sultan of Surprise…so don’t be afraid, just look into my eyes.”

Vincent Damon Furnier aka Alice, the Coop, is 76 today ! La multi ani, hope to see ya again soon ! 

Just mentioned him on Wayne Kramer's obit cos Wayne played and contributed with songs on Alice's album Detroit Stories (2021). Like this one:

Go Man Go

Also on the album is Sister Anne, the MC5 song, composed by Fred "Sonic" Smith. 

Alice's albums, esp. the ones I'm day and date with, the last 20+ years (mostly from The Last Temptation -1994, his return to form, onward) are always on my Top albums of that year. And last year it was ROAD, a great Meta Alice album about the Life on the Road. 

RIP Wayne Kramer

One of the greatest musicians and guitarists, gone but not forgotten? Unfortunately not many know his name and work today.

A musician's musician, Wayne Kramer was one of the founders of MC5, a very ephemeral but iconic group, proto-punk, and more political than the whole rock scene of the day. They put out three albums forever to "Kick Out The Jams". That was the title of their first, a live album in 1969. Then Back in the USA and Hight Time, 1970 and 1971. They disbanded in 1972.

Kramer was radical, he was political, a leftie of course, he became a junkie, did time in jail for selling drugs, converted, played free jazz, punk, put very deep meaningful lyrics to rock and roll. His solo work I love most, from The Hard Stuff  to Dangerous Madness, Citizen Wayne and Adult World. 

He played last on Alice Cooper's album, Detroit Stories. He was planning for an album of new music, produced by Bob Ezrin. Wayne Kramer was 75. LLMF...

Auto-biography here.

                     "Wayne S. Kramer 'PEACE BE WITH YOU' April 30, 1948 – February 2, 2024."^[

 "His band the MC5 basically invented punk rock music... Wayne came through personal trials of fire with drugs and jail time and emerged a transformed soul who went on to save countless lives through his tireless acts of service." (Tom Morello) 

RIP Carl Weathers

 Apollo Creed died. Actually Creed died in Rocky IV. But the amn who made him legend, Carl Weathers died Thursday, he was 76. He was last in The Mandalorian series. He was great also in Predator. 

obit in Variety.