The elements had to smack somebody sometime, so thanks to a fever of 103, Brandt had to bow out of Saturday's drum recording, which effectively killed that. Learning of this only 10 minutes before I was leaving for the session, I was left with a blank day. Now normally I would be a happy lad about a day of hooky, but when one is focused on the initial plan and its killed at the last minute, cranky F comes to the forefront.
However, I got caught up on some reading (new issue of Tape Op, thanks to Irene for that subscription, and Kris Needs' new Primal Scream bio, which is excellent), and wandered about a bit. I stumbled across the new Industrial Nation. Now honestly, I dont like anything industrial any more and I dont think one feature (or the musicians) in the magazine remotely interest me (Give me Al over Ronan any day), I was happy to find both of my bands were reviewed quite favorably. I'm sure these reviews will be quoted quite freely on the respective band sites. This helped the mood somewhat, as did the back cover Underground Inc ad that had Chemlab on it.
Also, arriving on my door that day was the debut album from the french band COLDER, who Irene suggested to me after reading that they were compared to a pop Joy Division and Suicide. Well, that merited a looksee. I'm happy to report the album, AGAIN, is very enjoyable. It's not so much songs as it is moods. The man behind colder is a French-Asian dude who is also a multimedia artist, and Colder is both a film and music project. The package I got had a CD with music and then the accompanying DVD of short films to go with the music. I think the only reason it's musically compared to Joy Divsion is that some of the drum programming is very Stephen Morris like. Plus the artwork is very JD. Cool stuff.
With Irene out running yesterday morning, I popped in my long-awaited copy of the Thai movie ONG BAK, which has been making waves in the Martial Arts Movie circles for some time for it's frighteningly real use of Thai boxing moves in a Martial Arts Movie setting. The star, who is also the co-writer of the film, Phanom Yeerum had been described to me as someone who could fight like Bruce Lee and fly like Jackie Chan. Now, you know I don't accept shit like that lightly, so I went out of my way to check this movie out. Needless to say, the movie itself is totally underwhelming and cliche, but the fighting is the scariest I have ever seen on film. Ever. Thai boxing is an exceptionally brutal sport and this film captures that brutality in a way that makes you scream with delight while also cringing for the life of Phanom Yeerum as well as his poor stuntmen. It was scary good. The DVD bonus of watching them put these fights together is even scarier and better than the fights in the movie!! And yes he can flip and fly like Jackie and fight like Bruce, though he lacks the charisma of both. However, this dude is probably in a shit mood after being kicked in the head so many times. He's basically the ECW version of Kung Fu.
To me, the key will be to bring Phanom Yeerum to Hong Kong and put in a movie where an experience director and fight chroegographer can maximize that potential in a well made movie.If that happens and it works, the new era of fight cinema starts with this guy.
F
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