Flavours of the Month: May 2013...

LOOKS:

24 Season 7 - I've done seasons 1-through-6 twice-a-piece, but the last two seasons I've only done once. It's been three years since the show ended, and so I gave the seventh season a second spin - it's good to have another dose of the Jack Bauer Power Hour on the telly.

L.A. Confidential - I absolutely barged through the book, and as I like to do, if there's a film adaptation of the book I've just finished reading, I run off and watch the movie to compare. While "The Black Dahlia" was a pretty poor film adaptation, "L.A. Confidential" (while reorganising and dispensing with a lot of back-stories and side-plots) is a superb example of exactly how a film adaptation should be.

Click "READ MORE" below for the rest of the looks, sounds, vibes & flavours of my May 2013...

Alan Wake's American Nightmare - I don't have XBLA, nor a PC appropriate enough, so I've never been able to play it. Instead I watched a full play through on YouTube (much like I did with the two DLC episodes - for the same reasons as above). It's a damn shame that Alan Wake 2 is a no-go (as confirmed by Remedy just after the Xbox One reveal), but who knows ... they own the IP, so perhaps some day down the line we'll get to go back to Bright Falls.

Pete Holmes' Comedy - another round of You Made It Weird podcasts, and another trawl through YouTube for various chunks of his stand-up comedy, and a look at "Nice Try, The Devil". The man's hilarious!

Human Traffic - a second spin. I'd recently watched 24 Hour Party People and utterly failed to get on with the movie; I just couldn't get into it, or feel a part of this slice of time and culture that I was never a part of when it happened. On the other hand with Human Traffic, there's something that anyone can latch on to, and those who are unfamiliar with the late 90's chemical generation culture (such as myself) are kindly catered for. Well worth seeing if you haven't already ... for one thing, you'll find yourself going "Blimey! That's Andrew 'Rick Grimes' Lincoln in his 20s!"

Long Way Round - Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's epic once-in-a-lifetime journey around the world. If you've not seen it, then definitely check it out (I've lost count of how many times I've watched it).

Race To Dakar - Charley Boorman's dangerous adventure during the Dakar Rally.

The Lords of Salem - Rob Zombie's latest (and last?) horror flick. Review coming shortly.


SOUNDS:

Power Glove - again, not having XBLA means I couldn't enjoy playing Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon ... but I have been able to enjoy the soundtrack.

You Made It Weird Podcast

Sweet Leda "Lovely Molly" - as featured at the end of the low-fi ghostly chiller Lovely Molly.

The Rolling Stones "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" - is it a movie set in the 1960s/70s? Chances are this is on the soundtrack.

Link Wray "Rumble" - see above.

Apparat "Goodbye" - memorably used in episode 4x13 of Breaking Bad, as well as a superb fan-made montage of scenes from The Walking Dead (see a couple of posts back about YouTube finds).

Rob Zombie "Past, Present & Future"

Petri Alanko "Alan Wake Soundtrack" - I was listening to this superb soundtrack just before going to bed on the night that I had all those dreadful nightmares. Hmmm...

Airbourne "Black Dog Barking" - the new album from the hard-rocking quartet. Booze, chicks, cars, fast-times, catchy tunes and killer guitars that get you amped from 0-60 in a second flat.


VIBES & FLAVOURS:

"Life After Death" - a new educational DVD project is underway. Does what it says on the tin.

Nightmares - on the 20th I had a terrible series of nightmares one-after-another. Death, ghosts, demons, being haunted by malicious spirits to the point that I went insane and was committed to a terrifying asylum, deep-sleeping within the dream itself, an overwhelming sense of sedation and paralysis, and at one point screaming and pleading for release from the sheer despair of my own nightmare - at which point I woke up ... then I drifted off and had two more nightmares.

It felt like a deep sleep that night, but with such distress within the dream state, I didn't get any rest, and therefore I was exhausted the following day. I've rarely - if ever - had such a vivid and unrelenting series of nightmares in all my life. However, there was one time that I did have a torturous nightmare from which I burst awake - sitting bolt upright in bed - drenched in sweat and with my heart pounding so hard it genuinely felt like it was trying to escape my chest. Crazy stuff.

Gears of War 3 - a quick second run-through of the cracking trilogy-closer before I traded it in.