the fretless bass reviews: All you need is love Quannapowitt playhouse

I had an awesome weekend. Three plays in as many days. The most important of which I feel is the original play that I saw in a room that was more suited for storage than theater (That's how you can tell it's indy.... indy? ). Anyway All You Need is Love is an original play written by the director, a Mr. James. J. Girgenti, and Composed, or in this case, rearranged by Mr. Mario Cruz. It is the story of the life of the director, focusing on his relationship with his mother, which as any man will tell you, is a pretty freakin' important relationship.

The play is told through Beatles songs that have been rearranged to suit the mood of the number. Now normally, when I hear a musical has been constructed by pre-written music, my first reaction is to start making hurtful jokes about the songs for my review. Because that usually doesn't work very well. When you have to base a plot around pre-existing songs that often have little or no relationship in content, it tends to get pretty haywire and out of control. AYNiL is an exception, a glorious, angelic exception that has re-defined the style for me.

You see, AYNiL was good, not just kinda good, like the infrequent SNL, but really good, as in I would buy you a ticket if I had the funds.

First of all, it's impressive, they rearranged almost every song they used to fit moods perfectly in ways I never would have done. "I Want to Hold Your Hand," for instance, it's a happy song, about a guy who is excited to be in love. In the play, they slowed it down and made it about a man comforting his dying mother.

Second, it was really entertaining, it was fun to watch, and probably fun to be in. One of my favorite parts of the show was "When I'm Sixty Four." That was just the young main character playing with his friends while the parents interjected lines like, "Play nice!"

Finally, it made me cry. I'm not ashamed of it, take any man that had a good relationship with his mother and stick 'em in that room for the last ten minutes, and you'll have an ocean in his lap before long. Not in a very long time have my emotions been so thoroughly manipulated.

You may notice that the picture in the upper left hand corner is not of the subject matter as it usually is, but of Anne Hathaway in a tuxedo, that's because this play is not heavily publicized, and may well not run again in a very long time, so see it, Google "Quannapowitt Playhouse" before 10/16 or you'll miss out on the play of a lifetime.

Let's start the platinum age!

There's no denying it, Thor was a good movie.

Now that my opinion is out of the way, I'm going to tell you why, and relate it to all superhero movies. I can guarantee you that you didn't think I would think of this.

Because I didn't, I'm basing this review off of something that a guy named Moviebob said, except he related Thor to Transformers, but I said, "Why not relate Thor to its genre?" So that's what you're getting. I also encourage you to check out Moviebob's "The Big Picture" on The Escapist.

Thor was campy, maybe not Adam West/Batman-campy, but it was certainly more lighthearted than any movie Wolverine has been in. Thor wasn't trying to be gritty and real, it was just about some super-powered dudes having a punch-out in New Mexico, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Recently, there's been some kind of idea going around the super hero genre that movies need to have some level of what most would call "grit." Not real grit, otherwise they would need to sell toothpaste at my local AMC, but grit as in the hero can't go five minutes without saying "shit," or having a shot of Dack Janiels.

Thor was something else entirely, it was just a bunch of super-powered dudes, having a punch out in New Mexico. This is what the comics industry got started on, when the Silver Age started booming, all comics were just like the Thor movie was, except all the super-powered dudes were having thier punch-outs in New York. But then the 90's came and went (thank God), and now the children of the Silver Age are my Dad. Now that comics are more or less on their feet again, I believe that the writers of the comics and movies think they still need to play to the same audience, and thus, the comics have grown up with the readers. (See above image.) I don't think this is right.

Instead of making every superhero movie a chronicle of the human struggle, or about a middle aged man battling alcoholism, or having comics be overly violent and gory, they should be targeted towards the youth of today.

Marketing to a new generation would get said generation into comics, and perhaps even start another great age, all they need to do is relaunch all the series like DC just did, and make the comics less about Wolverine's lovers, and more about a bunch of super-powered dudes having a punch-out in New Mexico.

I'm not saying gritty realism is bad, I just think that there needs to be a balance, and right now, the scales are tipped. Thor exposed us to what we've been missing, and I say we run into that light full force.

So to sum up, Thor was awesome because it showed us what super heroes once were and hopefully will be again.

The Fretless Bass Reviews: Game of Thrones season one

Game of Thrones is fabulous, not for a long time has TV seen a fantasy show so vivid, real, and most of all, believable.

Fantasy is a popular genre, as a result, a lot of people write it, so it's hard to be better than everyone else when all anyone's really doing is ripping off The Lord of The Rings anyway. So George RR Martin decides that he's going to rip off Lord of The Rings like thousands of other writers of fantasy worlds, but he does it better. What he does is he tells each chapter through the eyes of one of a few characters, and as a result, they become real people, real believable people.

The TV show is good for the same reason the books are, there's nothing special or interesting about the world Martin has created, nothing at all, it's not nearly as interesting as Middle Earth, or Dune, but the characters are fiercely developed and I feel like I know most of them personally.

The show follows the Family Stark of Winterfell, wardens of the north and keepers of the great wall that protects the seven kingdoms from the snow zombies beyond. When the old "hand" of the king dies under mysterious circumstances, Eddard Stark is called upon to replace him. Thus the family is thrown into the middle of a massive conspiracy, and they must fight to protect each other, and the king's peace. There's also a couple of scenes that would be classified by a bible group as porn, so don't watch it with your mum like I did.

The show is much more complicated then that, but if I went into detail, then this article would be so long your goldfish attention span would short-circuit.

To close off, Game of Thrones impressed me, both the book and the TV series, and I believe with all my heart that everyone should read and watch, also the theme rules, here it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yydcG9woWA

The Fretless Bass Reviews: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Real fans just call it Rise. As you can see by the poster on the left, This is the planet of the apes, Earth, and in a way, it always has been. Planet of the Apes has had five movies, a reboot, a live action TV series, a cartoon series, several comic book series, some novels, and now we have Rise. If I do say so myself, it is a worthy addition to a series that has defined sci-fi over the last forty years.

Rise depicts an alternate beginning to the rise of the apes and downfall of the humans. If you go on the first five movies, then the human society fell after an ape slave uprising. This movie comes at the rise and fall of the two species differently.

In a nutshell, the plot follows a scientist who is developing the cure to Alzheimer's disease, and tests his virus on a chimp he names Caesar. This chimp starts a revolution and enhances every ape in San Francisco and brings them to the redwood forrest. However, in their haste to make enough money to buy a fleet of private yachts, the corporate executives fail to realize that when humans are exposed to the virus, they die.

This is different from the fall of the humans as depicted in the original movies, in those, humanity wiped itself out via World War III, this movie would replace the latter with a deadly plague that makes humans die and apes as smart as humans.

This movie is not a remake, if anything, it's one big memorial to a series as ground-breaking as Planet of the Apes. The sheer amount of quotes and references to the original is staggering. They gave the big one to Tom Felton, (guess what it was in the comments, you get it right, you're a true fan) who appears to have been type cast, because many of his lines could have come right out of the mouth of his more famous persona. They also paid homage to the big man himself, Charlton Heston, by having clips from some of his other movies like, "The Agony and the Ecstasy."

The plot of the movie is very well laid out. Caesar lives with the humans for a while, then in a primate home and sees humanity's capacity for good and evil. He uses his smarts to break out and show the law enforcement what for, and has a cathartic moment with his human father figure. At the very end of the movie, we see a pilot who was infected with the virus that made Caesar smart deliver the disease to Great Britain, where it spreads to the rest of the world. At the end of the film, the camera is circling a globe that is not longer controlled by humanity, at the end of this film, all you can see is the Planet of the Apes.

The Fretless Bass Reviews: The best of Foreigner

I've always been interested in Foreigner, but only just recently have I maned up and bought a five dollar best of album, and my mind got blown.

Hands down Cold as Ice and Jukebox Hero are the two best songs. I admire the band's ability to fuse rhythmic piano parts with hard rock guitar lines. unlike bands like Aerosmith and The Rolling Stones, who base their songs off of one guitar or bass riff, Foreigner bases their songs off of a piano riff, and it's good to hear the keyboard getting it's due awesome in a world currently dominated by bass beats.

The band is obviously influenced by blues music, as heard very plainly in "Women." If I had to guess, I would say the Doors also impacted the band's sound, because like the doors, they often use a quickly repeating guitar line during the refrain.

Foreigner also makes good use of the rhythm guitar, see "Hot Blooded." Two guitars has never hurt a band.

All this banter is just making the article longer so I feel like I've looked into the origins of the band deeper than I have, Essentially, if you don't know what Foreigner is, you should buy an album right away, because they rock.

Why Planet of the apes is horrifying and excellent.

So I'm excited for Rise, if you're a true Planet of the Apes fan, that's all you call it, Rise. This movie will fall in the continuity of the other five movies and depict the initial beginning of the super intelligent apes.

A friend of my father's said that Planet of the Apes was popular when he was a kid because it was one of the only sci-fi things they had, but I beg to differ. Planet of the Apes was and is popular because it horrifies and intrigues due to cultural establishments.

To understand why Planet of the Apes is popular, we need to go back to the late 1400's. Why are the late 1400's important to Planet of the Apes? I'm getting to it. The grinding stone and the printing press were both invented in that period, and that's important because then serfs didn't have to work as hard, because the grinding stone did their work for them, so many of them ran away and eventually became the middle class. With the printing press, they could formulate and spread their ideas. In other words, a group of people was created that had nothing better to do than learn about and criticize the world around them. This is what the layman calls the Renaissance.

During the Renaissance, four values arose among western civilization, the most important one was humanism. Humanism, put simply is the belief that humans are the cat's pajama's and the bee's knees and anything that says otherwise gets made into coats and furniture.

Whether you know it or not, humanism and the other Renaissance values still have an astronomical effect on modern culture, so people still think that nothing can beat them. A perfect example of humanism in culture is Independence Day.

So when Planet of the Apes came out, suddenly people were exposed to humans being turned in to slaves and pets, and apes, a species we thought we had mastered, dominate them. People, thinking this was impossible, were intrigued by the concept, went to the movie, then were horrified by the startling possibility.

So there you have it, we have Guttenburg and Martin Luther to thank for Planet of the Apes.

The Fretless Bass Reviews: Captain America: The First Avenger

Let's start this review by saying this is my 50th post on my blog! (party horn noise) This is exciting, but there's really no way to make the review more exciting except mentioning that in the beginning.

Captain America is the last Marvel installment before the Avengers movie in 2012 (appocageddon can wait until after that and the Dark Knight Rises.) Needless to say, it had to be darn good to build up psych. It pulled it off fabulously.

The story is set in the final years of World War Two, Democracy was on the way up, Hitler had a fire under his ass, and more Americans were enlisting than ever; except Steve Rogers, who's five feet tall, and has breathing issues. A German-American doctor gives him a chance to enlist and makes him the first test subject of the super soldier serum, which grants him peak physical and mental ability.

As far as story goes, it's above par for the super hero course. After his injection of the serum, you would think they would send Cap right to Adolph Hitler's front door to roundhouse kick his face with the power of democracy. Instead, they make him a show-boy that sells war bonds, until he disobeys orders so that he might free P.O.W's. The best thing I have to say for this movie is that it pulls off a full blown musical number in the war bond selling scene. That's right, a superhero movie had a musical number.

The real gem in the movie is all the easter eggs they throw in to appease the fans like me and my dad. It would be too difficult to name them all, but if you read Cap's wiki before watching, it would make watching more entertaining.

The other interesting thing they did was how they handled Buckey. In the comics, he was Cap's pre-teen sidekick, but that wouldn't fly in the gritty realism of spandex/leather clad World War Two, so they made him Rogers' best friend who was, until the experiment, always tougher and stronger than Steve. Throughout the movie, an envious dynamic develops between the characters, which I'm sure will come back to haunt Cap when Buckey returns as Winter Soldier (LOOK IT UP!).

I would like to take this time to talk about how the movie is in 3D. You will recall from previous posts that I think 3D is unnecessary to make movies good, and Captain America proves it. This movie would have been unaffected by being in 2D, I stopped noticing the 3D after a while, and it added nothing to the experience. Maybe 3D draws in a specific crowd, but if I were marketing movies, that's the crowd I would want to keep as far away from my movies as possible, mostly because of the smell and noise because that crowd is made up of ten year old children, and Avatar fans.

At the end of the day, (literally, I'm writing this at 9:40) Captain America is worth seeing, and worth buying on DVD, and that's just about the highest praise you can give a movie.