It’s an accomplishment in life when you can play more than one instrument. When you can play more than one at the same time, it’s amazing. WARNING: He does drop the “F-bomb” and “b*tches” a couple times in the video, so it’s probably NSFW.
I never put “Daft Punk” and “Nintendo DS” in the same sentence until now. The following video is thereminist action at its finest. Watching Randy George performing Daft Punk’s “Something About Us” on a Nintendo DS, theremin and keyboard really blows my mind…
Growing up, I was a huge Metallica fan. My love for their music started to fade a little with The Black Album and went entirely away when Load and ReLoad hit the scene. Some probably consider those albums as Metallica’s first steps to completely selling out and it’s hard to argue with them. The Napster debacle confirmed my belief that Metallica was dead and no longer cared about the music. They had basically become a corporate identity. Fortunately, I still had Kill ‘Em All, Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets and …And Justice for All to help me forget that the modern Metallica even existed.
Ever used a broom reenact yourself on stage as an 80’s Rocker with glittery wild hair and eye makeup? Me neither! But, if your a Wii owner playing your ‘Air Guitar” will be soo ancient. Nintendo’s newest “fad” will be Wii Music. With Nintendo’s announcement of Wii Motion Plus, they’re promising more accuracy on their Wii-motes. Check out this chick jam to a very unknown song. Man, she can play the crap out of it though!
This may surprise some of you, but we love more than just video games on Kezins. It seems everyone on the web publishes their iPod playlist, so we decided to let our readers know what music we are listening to. The first list is Will’s favorite 20 songs. We’ll be publishing lists from the other writers (possible some from other sites too) in the near future. I currently have over 12,000 songs on my iPod plus all the stacks of CDs, so it wasn’t easy figuring out what my favorites were. Nirvana and The Killers are probably my two favorite bands of all-time, but I decided to only post one song per artist. Feel free to comment on my picks or list your favorites below, but no Coldplay bashing!
MTV’s The American Mall is out this week and proves that even though it’s a musical from the giant that popularized music videos, it doesn’t mean they can produce a great movie. TAM revolves around a couple of aspiring songwriters who happen to live out their lives in a mall, fully going after the upper-teen crowd.
The problem is that even their focus group might be put off by this shoddy production with talented (albeit unknown) actors, ridiculous sayings, and forgettable songs. It tries to feed off of the popularity of Disney’s High School Musical, but is sub par in comparison.
An average mall as the main, and only, setting further cements its inferiority to Disney’s for-kids musical. It could’ve been an interesting setting, but it becomes tiresome to see store after store that only serve to market different products (i.e. Rock Band) and bolster brand identity (cough, Sears, cough). A mash up reminiscent of Kiss meeting Six Flags, but to worse results.
Besides the generic setting, unlike a good musical, the story bits and musical performances in TAM are integrated poorly, one cuts into the other abruptly every time; seamless transitions were clearly not the goal for The American Mall.
From what it seems, in-sync choreography was not a central focus of the film either as the timing is clearly off every time a song is performed. The actors look dazed and confused while they prance around for every song break, indicating that little time and effort went into rehearsing for the final cut.
Poor choreography might have deserved a pass if the songs were good but, besides the few that standout, prove to be forgettable titles. “Dreaming Wide Awake,” “New You,” and “Sorry’s Not Enough,” are about the only redeemable songs from The American Mall. So much so, that the first song mentioned is actually performed three times during the film.
It’s a shame that the most important part of the film, music, is botched because the actors actually pull off strong performances regardless of the tepid story. TAM is full of sexy, energetic leads that would’ve worked wonders if they had better source material.
RANDOM MOVIE COUNTS:
- “Backspace” Annoyingly Used as a Word: 2
- Shameless “Rock Band,” the game, Plugs: 6
- Signs of the Declining State of Sears: 3
- iPod Worthy Songs: 3 out of 10 Mediocre “Songs”
Nina Dobrev, as Ally, puts on a charismatic performance that brings light to every interaction she has with the rest of the cast. The movie shows glimmers of hope every time she’s confronted with the mall owner’s fiery redhead daughter, Madison, as their arguments are rightly heated and believable.
While the movie’s titular “American mall” might bring in the teenage girl in all of us to watch, the single setting actually becomes one of its biggest crutches being that there’s no variety and all the backgrounds look the same. There are a few good scenes and a couple of great songs littered throughout (sometimes times three), but are scatter shot and not enough to carry an otherwise typical musical about people trying to “make it.” If you missed the premiere presentation on MTV and want to see it, don’t bother looking for it on DVD…this reeks of “Generic Brand.”
DVD Release: August 12, 2008
[Editor’s Note: Walking down the aisles of your favorite retailer you’ll see movies that you’ve never heard of. Even if you’d like to know how they fare no one cares enough to review them! That’s where “Movie Watch” comes in…oh, and we’ll try to cover movies on Xbox Live from time to time. Because if you’re gonna spend those confusing Microsoft points on something other than games, it better be worth it, right?]
More Movie Watch:
Starship Troopers 3: Marauder
Batman - Gotham Knight
Like a Dragon (Ryu Ga Gotoku)
Raising Jeffrey Dahmer
Witness Rialto, CA’s evolving art and music community in the embedded videos below. The documentary was filmed a couple of months ago by Electric Gentlephones’s bassist, Louie Recinos, and edited into a short documentary.
Vesuvius Records has been working hard to get little ol’ Rialto on the entertainment map, a town historically known for the now non-existent orange groves. We’re about an hour away from Los Angeles but local bands have come out to support their hometown, opting out of Hollywood’s “big time” allure and growing the scene where they’re actually from.
Check out some of the movement’s shakers and musicians below and let us know what you think!
Part 1
Part 2
What the hell is ‘Cheetah Girls: Passport to Stardom’?. I’m sure anyone reading this article will probably wonder the same thing. Don’t worry. I asked myself the exact same thing when I heard about the new Nintendo DS game hitting shelves tomorrow. I assumed it had something to do with singing, dancing and fashion accessories and was somehow right.
The game will include various songs from the Cheetah Girls movies. Of course I’ve never watched any of them, so really can only go on what I was able to dig up with my Google-fu skills. According to Wikipedia, the game will include the following features:
Play as Aqua, Chanel, and Dorinda as they dazzle fans worldwide with their music and dance coreography. Explore 9 different locations as you perform in three international cities- New York, Barcelona and Mumbai! Use your Nintendo DS stylus to compete in a series of dance-offs to 10 Cheetah Girls hit songs! Includes new music from The Cheetah Girls: One World Disney Channel Original Movie. Includes DGamer- the new online community exclusively for Disney gamers.
Unfortunately there really aren’t any other games of note coming out this weekend. It’s been a rather slow week in games anyway. The only game of note coming out in the near future is Madden 09 on Tuesday.
“Tune Racer”? Audiosurf on consoles? Metal Gear Solid or Half-Life? We talk to Audiosurf creator Dylan Fitterer about what spawned Audiosurf, why interactivity is so beautiful and ask why cutscenes are still around in the industry.
What was your main inspiration for the concept of the game? What made you want to do it?
Well, it mostly just sort of grew out of other things I was trying. The idea stuck around because I loved the concept of a music visualizer that was worth giving your whole attention to for an entire album. One where you could really focus on the music and the experience instead of just having it on in the background.
Back when Audiosurf was Tune Racer (an early prototype) there was very little gameplay. It was then a big challenge to come up with a game that enhanced the musical experience instead of just getting in the
way.
Yes, but gameplay evokes different emotions than music. That’s part of the reason they go together so well.
Playing a little MGS2 was enough to convince me that I didn’t need any more of that. It’s surprising to me that cinema games are still popular at all. I expected them to die with 7th Guest. Comparing that to Half Life 2 (one of my favorite games) is completely unfair 
Yes, but to me this question is too broad. Can games evoke emotions in players? Yes. Can creators express themselves through games? Yes. Can playing a game change how you look at a real-life situation? Yes.
I think that’s already happening and will continue as our populations shift to younger generations. Also, maybe we’ll find better ways to overlap the skills you learn in games with the skills you need everyday.
Yes, I think there’s some interesting possibilities there for manual edits to generated rides. The more players can make the experience their own the better.
It does take a lot of time so it can be hard to keep up, but it’s well worth it. There’s no better way to stay in touch with what players want. I’ve even learned new strategies from the players who outscore me.
I don’t see growth in casual games as detrimental to core games. It’s just growth for games. It turns out there’s a lot of people who like to play games, but have no interest in combat, camera control, cinematics, or framerates. I doubt casual games will ever be as large on XBLA or PSN as they are on PC. Strictly casual players probably have a PC for other reasons, but why would they have a console?
Have you been in talks with Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo to bring Audiosurf to consoles? Why would/wouldn’t it work on consoles?
Consoles are definitely a possibility, but as music platforms they’re not as strong as PC.
Is there a sequel planned?
We’ll see. I’m open to a lot of possibilities and am taking some time to experiment.
I’ve got a lot of ideas. The ones where I can mentally see the finished game aren’t very interesting to me though. I’d rather start on something that seems to have promise and eventually find the fun.
Team Fortress 2: Accessibility to get you going and depth to keep you there. I didn’t think any game would get me interested in playing a shooter with random people again, but it did.
Heroscape: A tabletop wargame with simple rules, custom armies, and high amounts of both skill and luck. Everybody has a good time whenever we play.
Name a couple of your favorite songs to play Audiosurf to.
Now That’s Sacred: Jack Conte
Sunspots: Nine Inch Nails
Galvanize: The Chemical Brothers
Eternal Life: Jeff Buckley
Title - Rock Band
Release Date - June 22, 2008
Platform - Nintendo Wii
Developer - Harmonix Music Systems
Publisher - MTV Games
Distributor - EA Distribution
Rating - “T” for Teen
I have been a huge Rock Band fan since the day it originally came out. Rock Band is the primary reason I completely lost interest in Guitar Hero actually. It took them long enough, but they finally released Rock Band for the Wii. If you currently own a PS3 or Xbox 360, there’s not a single reason in the world to purchase Rock Band for the Wii. While it’s still a good game on the Wii, it has been stripped down to function properly and you will notice a huge difference between this version and the PS3/360 version.
Gameplay Gameplay has been stripped down considerably for this version. One serious change is the fact that there’s no Band World Tour mode. With the Wii version, you are basically playing with a straightforward song progression style, much like music games of the past. The fun of downloading songs is also gone with this version. Continue reading »
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