A Muse Retrospective - Part 1: Overture

So, let’s break up the monotony a bit and talk about something other than films for a change. That’s something I bet you thought I’d never say (or type, but whatever). Obviously this is a film blog, and the vast majority of stuff I talk about on here will be film-related, as that is the area I have the most to say about. But today, I feel like talking about music. Specifically, one of my favourite bands; Muse.

For those who are blissfully unaware of what they are missing, Muse are a three piece alternative rock band from England who released their first album in 1999, and started to become more popular in the mid 2000’s, before becoming a tad mainstream in the past few years, with the help of the London Olympics. They’re well known for their fusion of traditional rock tunes with more symphonic piano pieces as well as frontman Matthew Bellamy’s unique and unmistakable vocals. They’re also the first band I ever really got into, and were my first step into my casual interest in music.

With their seventh album Drones being released earlier this year, I think it’s time for a bit of a retrospective on their discographic history thus far. Although keep in mind I’m not quite as in tune with the music lingo as I am with films, so you’ll have to excuse the slightly more generalised approach to these reviews. That being said, let’s get cracking!

Muse made their debut in 1999 with Showbiz, named after one of the best tracks of the album. Looking at the album cover, we see a woman in white walking around some alien planet thing. I’m not really quite sure of the meaning of this or how it ties into the album, but hey, its nice imagery, and the deep blues and blacks definitely fit in with album’s melancholic tone. When placing the Muse albums in order of excellence, Showbiz is the one no one seems to know what to do with. It’s definitely not the worst, but not really their best either, although this is still a great album. Sunburn and Muscle Museum are the popular songs, and while they’re good, I still stand by Uno and Showbiz being the two best songs on the album, and even now, two of their best songs ever. The rest of the album ranges from very good to pretty good or quite good to serviceable, depending on my mood. Cave, Escape and Unintended are other noteworthy songs, whilst Falling Down brings up the rear. It’s not awful, I’m just not a massive fan, and it takes a little too long to get to the climax of the song. I don’t really give albums ratings, but for the sake of this retrospective, I’m going to make an exception. Showbiz gets four stars (out of five, for simplicity)

In the space odyssey year of 2001, Muse started breaking the ice a bit more with their acclaimed follow-up, Origin of Symmetry. Many fans consider this their best album. Ehhhhh, I’m not too sure. Don’t get me wrong, this is one of their best, and makes up part of the superstar trio along with Absolution and Black Holes & Revelations, but I’m not sure if it represents their best work. Let’s have a look. The album cover shows a field of tuning forks growing out of the ground against an orange sky. Well, they look like rugby posts, frankly, but I think tuning forks is what they were going for. But it’s iconic, simple and memorable. Like Dark Side of the Moon’s prism, although not quite as easy to draw all over your textbook (I drew many-a-prism throughout GCSE English). Anyway, this album went for more of a space-y experimental approach, and it works pretty well. It certainly has a unique sound, and you can always detect that style when you hear B-sides recorded around this time (which, by the way, tend to be much underappreciated). The album definitely has a very strong start, with the phenomenal New Born and is followed by several other great songs, including the popular Plug In Baby and fan favourites such as Hyper Music and the heavy guitar-gasm Citizen Erased. My personal favourites from the album are these four essential classics, but other notable songs include Space Dementia, a haunting yet elegant piano-based piece, and Bliss, a much lighter and pop-y track. While the songs succeeding the landmark Citizen Erased aren’t bad, per se, they are a bit of a falter. Screenager never really gelled with me, and while I once used to love Dark Shines and Megalomania, the former started to fall out with me, suffering slightly from Falling Down’s syndrome of taking too long to get really good, while Megalomania became unimpressive after I discovered Ruled By Secrecy from their next album Absolution, which I feel is a much better and more epic version of the same kind of sound. However, there are still no particularly bad songs on the album, and it’s still a pleasure to listen to all the way through, and I can see why people place it as their favourite. I’ll give it four stars. Heck, how about four and a half.

On to their third and probably best album (again, my opinion), Absolution. With the release of this album, Muse had made a name for itself, and the Absolution Tour’s success proved just how popular they’d become. For their third outing, Muse went all-out and decided to do a thematic album about the apocalypse. Moving on from the more experimental and space-y sound of before, their music came a little closer to more traditional rock with heavy guitar riffs such as in Stockholm Syndrome and Hysteria, while still preserving and upgrading their symphonic sound, with use of a full orchestra in Blackout.

Album cover? Love it. I am a big fan of Storm Thorgerson’s work, and would love to be able to

produce images half as good as some of his album covers, so there may be a bit of personal bias here, but I think this is probably the best Muse album cover so far. The image depicts the shadows of people falling to Earth. Or are they ascending? Is this the rapture? Or are angels falling from the heavens? If they are angels, then where are their wings and robes as depicted in religious artwork? Could this be a damning of contemporary religious imagery while still implying some kind of higher power? Why do they all look featureless and identical? It’s this ambiguity that draws me to this cover, and all the questions it raises make it even more fascinating. Despite being a film studies student, I’m generally not a massive fan of over-analysing media like this, but I can’t help but marvel at the mystery of this image and what its true meaning is.

Let’s get on to the songs. This was the first Muse album to use short transitional tracks, namely Intro and Interlude, making complete playthroughs of the album feel more like a whole. Consequently, this feels like the first album that really works (thematically, anyway) when played all the way through, and if I’m going to listen to any Muse album in that way, this is certainly a top pick. I’m going to break the mould a bit here and not automatically default to Times is Running Out or Hysteria as my favourite songs of the album. Yes, of course they’re great songs, and are highlights, but Absolution’s best has to go to Thoughts of a Dying Atheist. Sporting some absolutely cracking guitar work, mixed with the emotional vigour and desperation of a man on the brink of death makes for a compelling listen. Obvious favourites include other heavies such as the aforementioned Time is Running Out and Hysteria, as well as Stockholm Syndrome and The Small Print, but I’m also a big fan of the slower, more emotional tracks such as Blackout, Endlessly, Falling Away with You and the previously discussed power-house, Ruled By Secrecy. Again, there aren’t really any bad songs on the album, and even the lesser songs I’m about to list are all still great tracks, but if I had to pick, Apocalypse Please, Sing for Absolution and Butterflies and Hurricanes bring up the rear. It’s not really their fault, blame the Shuffle feature on iTunes; it always seems to play these tracks, and they’re unfortunately not good enough to hold up to as many listens as I’ve been subjected to. Thanks, Apple. Regardless, this is still a great album, and it’s clear why this was the one to cement their popularity. Five stars.

Okay, so this went on way longer than I intended, so I think I’m going to split this into a three-part post. Stay tuned for Part 2, where I’ll be discussing Black Holes & Revelations, The Resistance and The 2^nd Law. See you then!

Footnote: Damn, this post has been ready for ages and I somehow forgot to post it. Well here it is, a little later than intended but oh well. Once again, this year I will be posting on New Year's Eve, so stick around for that. Hope you're all having a great Christmas, and I'll see you on Thursday.

Spectre (2015) – A Ghost of its Predecessors

So Spectre has been running for about a week now and has already surpassed Skyfall’s opening weekend, but despite its success it seems to have divided opinion somewhat. With Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and Skyfall, everyone was pretty much in agreement that they were fantastic, bad and great respectively, but now we are at an impasse, and there doesn't seem to be any real consensus as to whether Spectre is good or not. Of course, being British, I have seen the new Bond and so while it’s still hot in our minds, I've decided to summarise my general thoughts on the film and the things I picked up on; my first actual film review, if you like. I'm going to try and keep it somewhat short, so without further ado, let’s proceed.

First let’s establish, I enjoyed Spectre. As an action blockbuster, it’s a solid ride and hits all the marks you’d expect; expensive cars being trashed, attractive women, explosions etc. Compared to other blockbusters like Transformers, for example, this is an engaging and competent thriller. Then again, anything looks engaging and competent when compared to Transformers. Even Alien Resurrection looks competent compared to Transformers, but now we’re getting off topic. Spectre only really falters when you start to look at it as a Bond film, and particularly as a successor to the previously mentioned Casino Royale and Skyfall.

Here’s the problem; Casino Royale and Skyfall set the bar so high for the Bond series, that Spectre had an uphill struggle from the beginning. Compare it to those two films, especially Casino Royale, and of course it’s going to look disappointing; Casino Royale was and still is one of the best thrillers of the 2000s, and it came at a time when the Bond series was in dire need of some defibrillation. While Brosnan’s Bonds were good, and helped transition the classic Bond to a more modern audience, the series was approaching its 40^th anniversary, and the franchise was starting to grow tired. With the rise of more modern spy thrillers like The Bourne Identity, audiences were hankering after something darker, with more realistic violence and less comical villains. Casino Royale was exactly what we all wanted and so it was a major hit. But here’s the thing; Spectre is the fourth entry in this revival series, and so by now we’re expecting a dark, gritty Bond and what’s more we want it to reach the same level, if not surpass its earlier entries. So of course it’s going to seem disappointing when you hold it to those lofty expectations, but if you watch it with a fresh mind, it’s still the same Daniel Craig Bond and it’s still just as dark as ever.

That’s not to say Spectre isn't flawed; of course it’s flawed, that’s why I'm writing a post about it. Primarily, Spectre contains a lot of action set pieces, but the overarching story is loose, at best. The tighter focus and relatively simple plot of Casino Royale aren't present here, and the story sprawls both geographically and narratively. Bond’s in Mexico taking out some dude, then he’s in England where M tells him off, then suddenly he’s off to Italy where he discovers SPECTRE, then he’s off to some other dude who tells him to go to Austria so he goes to Austria and so on, and that’s not even half way through the film. I won’t go into too much plot detail because spoilers, but it really could do with a bit of a trim. It doesn't help that each of these location’s sequences are so brief it feels like we’re watching a best-bits compilation.

Then there’s the gender politics. While I am of course a supporter of equality, it’s rare for me to actually discuss it just because I find it ridiculous that we still have to discuss racism and sexism to the extent that we do. How come we’re creating supercomputers, exploring space, writing messages for extra-terrestrial life and progressively curing cancer yet we still can’t even treat each other right? Regardless, I feel something needs to be said about Spectre. It’s odd that Bond exists so prominently in our modern society whilst still being so old-fashioned in its masculinity. Bond is pretty much about fast cars, hot women and violence, and always has been, but today it seems really out of place. When we had Dame Judi Dench as M, even though Bond was still up to his usual tricks, the gender politics seemed slightly more evened out, and even Vesper from Casino Royale had a substantial role in the plot and Bond’s own character arc. But now we have a male M again, Bond’s questionable attitude to women seems more noticeable. He appears to have his way with three different women throughout the film: one in the opening sequence (supposedly, at least: we never see for sure), a widow of a dude he killed, which seemed very off, almost borderline rape, and the main Bond girl, Swan, who looks about half his age, if that. I'm not sure what to really say about it; it’s such an integral part of the Bond formula that it feels almost wrong to take it out, but it seems really unnatural and backwards in today’s society, especially as this is definitely a more modern interpretation of Bond. Not to mention (Spoilers) the climax of the film is literally Swan tied up and gagged in a building rigged to explode with a countdown timer. (End of Spoilers) Seriously.

And of course, we get the Aston Martin. After all the build-up and release of the new DB10, which was made pretty much for the film, you’d expect a lot from it. It does get a car chase, even with some gadgetry which greatly pleased my inner child, but it’s over so quickly; (Spoilers if you care about cars) Bond just dumps the car in the river after the brief chase and that’s it. Finished. This film, that was supposed to act as the main advertisement for the car, gives it barely fifteen minutes of screen time before trashing it. As a lover of Aston Martins, it was quite a disappointing dismissal of such a great looking car. And I'm really not comfortable with this trend of destroying the Aston Martin; it happened in Casino Royale and Skyfall as well, and I still find the DB5 being wrecked more emotional than M’s death. But then I'm weird like that. (End of Car Spoilers)

Lastly, the violence. It is a grittier more violent imagining of Bond as previously discussed, and now we've secured the 12A rating as a default, the violence wants to stretch its arms a bit, which I fully endorse. And some moments, such as Bond’s torture scene are particularly hard to watch, and Blofeld’s scarred eye looks fantastic. But there’s one particular moment that stands out as not quite hitting the mark. At the SPECTRE meeting, some unfortunate man gets his eyes gouged by a large burly black dude. Of course. However, this act is pathetically tame, to a nearly humorous degree. It probably doesn't help that I saw a similar act in Game of Thrones earlier that week (yes, I'm a little behind; cut me some slack) which was, of course, much more graphic. Just a decent sound effect or two would have helped. Especially thinking of a similar scene in Blade Runner; it’s not on screen particularly (unless you’re watching The Final Cut) but there’s enough information and sound effects to be suitably graphic without being as excessive as Game of Thrones. Maybe they tried to make it worse but were threatened with the 15 rating. Either way, it looks a bit pants as it is, and I can’t help but find it slightly comical, which I'm pretty sure isn't what they were going for.

Well, that about sums up all my main observations. It’s pretty safe to assume anything I didn't mention was generally sound (a good rule of thumb with my discussions). Overall, it’s definitely worth seeing, especially if you’re a fan of Bond, but don’t go in expecting Casino Royale. However, judging by the pattern that’s emerging, the next film (also to be Craig’s last) looks like it’s going to be fantastic, so let’s hope 2018’s entry really delivers. Okay, I think I've definitely exceeded what can be considered a ‘short’ review so we’ll close here for today. Besides, I've got some albums to revisit…

Spectre - 2015 – Sam Mendes - English

Score:   7

Recommendation: Medium

EDIT:  Oh yes, forgot to mention; the new theme song. While it has a decent tune and lyrics, it’s sung awfully. I don’t know who this Sam Smith guy is, but his ‘balls trapped in a vice’ singing style really doesn't do it for me, especially for a Bond song, which generally have deeper vocals. Get Adele back, she actually did it pretty well.

Summer Updates 2015

I'm back. As you may have seen, yesterday I managed to get my Metropolis post up after a week or so of trying to tweak it before forgetting about it for many months only to remember it, finish it off and post it all yesterday.

A lot of things happened in that four month stretch of inactivity, most notably my AS exams and the preparation for them, which I believe is a good enough excuse for my lack of posts (or, at least, it’s the best excuse you’re getting). But now I'm on my summer holiday, slumped in my chair failing to be a productive member of society, I'm going to try and get back on the horse and crack out a few more posts before I go back to college in September and, undoubtedly, get snowed under by the workload.

So, what do you guys have to look forward to? First thing, and probably the most exciting: Films! No, not just films I'm going to talk about on here, but actual films I've made! Yep, this year marks the first time I've actually managed to finish a video project that I can refer to as a film with a straight face, and there are plenty more to come. Here’s a quick run-through of what to expect:

•  Rapid Vengeance – The second film by me and my partner-in-crime Andrew, made last month in only three weeks for the end of our AS Film Studies. This has already been posted on Vimeo for all to see! (Link on the sidebar or click here)
• Maxwell – Me and Andrew’s first film, made for our Film Studies coursework between November 2014 and March 2015. Since it’s coursework, I can’t really post this until after results day, but you can expect this on Vimeo mid-to-late August.
• Specimen 23 – A short stop motion film I'm about to start work on. I've finally got a few technical difficulties ironed out, so hopefully I’ll start work on this within the next few days, and have it uploaded sometime in August.
• ‘Departure’ [Currently unnamed short film] – A quick little live action summer project I plan to make. I can’t say yet how long it will take or when we’ll start production, but it’s unlikely you’ll see this before September.

I’ll be making short notices on here to let you know when each of these have been uploaded, with appropriate links for you to follow as well.

Secondly, I’ll also be trying to make a few more blog posts, of course. I must admit, when I first started this blog, I already had a couple of ideas in mind of subjects to talk about, but unfortunately that idea backlog sort of dried up with the release of the Metropolis post yesterday. However, I'm definitely going to try and come up with some more interesting things to talk to you guys about, although forgive me if some of the new posts don’t reach the essay-size of previous posts, especially 2000 word epics like Michael. But I’ll definitely try to get a few up here before I go back in September.

Well, that's about it for today. Remember to check out Rapid Vengeance, follow my Vimeo for more films, and stay tuned here for more of my mildly cynical ramblings. Until next time.