Hipster Trapeze

What Dreams May Come Review

2016-01-20T09:44:00.002-08:00

What Dreams May Come is a kind of surreal supernatural fantasy drama film released in 1998 directed by Vincent Ward starring Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Annabella Sciorra about a man named Chris Nielson who dies and his journey through the afterlife and him being a ghost watching how his wife gets on after he dies. Before he died his children died and his wife is left alone and so she kills herself and is sent to limbo and the film follows this story and him trying to save her soul from limbo and reuniting with his already dead family. It centers around both heaven and hell but paints a picture of these places in its own imaginitive way which I really like about this film. The effects are done really nicely to help you get immersed in this world of the afterlife which I think alot of people will find really fascinating.

Watching this movie I actually got creepy chills especially towards the end and in the beginning after he dies and is haunting his wife it was kind of creepy to watch her go through that but the main character Chris you can also identify with that he doesn't want to be forgotten by his life partner Annie. It has a dreaminess to it with the soundtrack and just the fact that he's in the afterlife it plays out like a dreamscape the way they did it you almost feel like you're in a dream yourself which makes this film really stand out amongst other films.

There's a really big surprise at the end that makes sitting through the whole thing really worth while to find out this surprise towards the ending. It's kind of slow moving that's why I say this some people might get bored of it if they have a short attention span but if you're enjoying the story you should stick through it because it gets more strange and there's a big surprise at the end about the characters. I think going into this movie viewing it as a piece of art you should contemplate death and the afterlife and what it means to you and what you're beliefs are about the afterlife and then look at their portrayal of the afterlife. It's pretty philosophical looking at what awareness is and what existence is and what it would be like to be in limbo not knowing who you are or where you are dwelling on your life and really getting lost in yourself but knowing if you have people who love you you can get through anything. It's a metaphor for life and if this idea of the afterlife exists then it can only help you through its wisdom by you seeing this character go through limbo and death and having a loving husband risking his own sanity to help her through her current state of circumstances and also the kids being there and already being adjusted to being dead. It really makes you think doesn't it and I think it's a healthy contemplation and visitation with death while it gets dark at times there's also a lot of serenity portrayed in this vision of death.

I feel this is an important piece of film both as a work of art and as an awakening to a vision of what death is like. That's what is so great about storytelling and film is you get to use it as a way to gain knowledge and wisdom about anything and everything. We can never truly know what the afterlife will be like but if you've seen what dreams may come then you at least have something to go on and can be prepared for it. You can get perspective on what it would be like to haunt someone as a ghost or be haunted by a ghost if you haven't had any experiences like that before. If you subscribe to abrahamic religious views on the afterlife with heaven and hell then this gives you something within your world view to prepare you for that. It shows you the life of a family who all end up dying like we all die but that they can help each other still even in the afterlife as a family you know. It's a great film and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in death. I personally have my own relationship with the idea of death and the afterlife and I think i handle it a bit better than most people do. When someone dies i'm not grieving for very long I accept death. Sure I'll miss their physical presence in my life and that's a sad thought but you also have to understand that we all go through this rite of passage and you can't dwell on the past for your own sanity's sake. Some people might think i'm cold for not feeling that sorry for people dealing with the death of a loved one when they are stuck in the past dwelling on memories and not letting that person move on with their existence or nonexistence. I feel sorry for people struggling through that awareness and i'm willing to help them accept the inevitability of death but logically speaking it is just that inevitable and there's no use trying to fight it because you won't win. All you can do is move on with your own life and accept that it's happened. That's about all I have for this one hope you gained something from it if you yourself are dealing with death and if you're just looking for something artistic to watch this is a good one to try. Ciao!

Youtube Trailer
Youtube Movie
IMDB
Rotten Tomatoes
Amazon Listing

Obscure Genres: Vaporwave

2016-01-20T08:36:00.001-08:00

Vaporwave is another one of those satirical subgenres born on the internet that really only people on the internet hear about and have a small community for. It has a strong emphasis on the arts aesthetic and less so on the music but with vaporwave I think more people into this subculture do actually listen to the music and are more involved in making the music of the genre.

The aesthetic is that 90s nostalgic aesthetic with a specific color palette and key items that make it vaporwave. With vaporwave what you tend to see is roman statues, windows 95, nihilistic comments done in japanese, glitch art, tropical settings and certain beverages like fiji water, arizona tea and sizzurp of all things. I'm not going to lie with vaporwave aesthetic art you do see mention of drug abuse like sizzurp aka lean or purple drank which is promethazine with codeine mixed with sprite and jolly ranchers, xanax pills, marijuana and sometimes over the counter cough syrups like nyquil. Why is this so? Well I think it has to do with the music which I will get into now:

Vaporwave music is a satire on contemporary consumerist society (whenever I say that to people they call me a hipster =/) and an avenue for nostalgia through sampling 80s and 90s pop, rnb, smooth jazz and muzak or easy listening/elevator music. Its a form of plunderphonics which if you don't know is essentially when you use audio piracy to revision a track making simple edits to make it something new. With Vaporwave what you're looking to do is get a deep vocal sound by slowing down the speed and make it really low fidelity with reverb and phaser or echo effects to get that vaporwave sound. Listen to some vaporwave and you'll understand what i'm talking about. I feel like for it to have a really vaporwave sound it has to have a drone in the background and with applying those effects you can attain that and also get a kind of lighter grainier sound that seems to resemble vapor.

The name vaporwave doesn't actually constitute that vapor sound though the name comes from vaporware which is when a business puts adverts out about an upcoming product that may seem too good to be true and ends up being too good to be true they never release it but get all this attention for that product. It's nonexistent. I think that's where the nihilism came from with vaporwave because we know nihilism is the philosophy of life being meaningless all religions being false just your life being a big pile of nothing but that doesn't mean its a bad thing because if you know your life is meaningless then you can make the best of it by having fun or wearing your "yoloswagg" as it were lol. So we have the vapor in vaporware and wave actually being a marxist term to describe something that perpetuates itself and is meaningless in its philosophy giving it even more nihilist swag.

All in all classic vaporwave is uninspired in its creation making use of its source content as a crutch for whether the song is good or not by itself but focusing on the vibe by the artist making the edit to whether its good vaporwave or not. There are of course subgenres within vaporwave like vaportrap for example that still has that vaporwave vibe and those iconic synths that really bring vaporwave to a new level as an artform to progress the genre which I believe is why this genre didn't die out fast like some other genres because there is room to explore with vaporwave and the vaporwave community welcomes that. One thing I really enjoy about this genre is the satire on consumerist society the nihilism in it (I'm not a nihilist myself but I enjoy nihilistic remarks) the fact that you can make a vaporwave track in around a minutes time and the fact that alot of the big vaporwave lp releases are released on cassette tape <3

Here comes the time where I share some videos to help you explore vaporwave for yourself giving you some examples and some interesting videos on the subject to help you grasp it.

How to Make Vaporwave by Frank Jav Cee

Vaporwave: A Brief History by Wolfenstein OS X

V A P O R W A V E L P ' S playlist by myself

Key artists:

-Ramona Andra Xavier aka vektroid aka VectorFray aka vektordrum aka Macintosh Plus, New Dreams Ltd, PrismCorp Virtual Enterprises, Laserdisc Visions, 情報デスクVIRTUAL, and dstnt
-Saint Pepsi
-Oneohtrix point never aka chuck person
James Ferraro
Blank Banshee
T E L E P A T H
Internet Club

More Things to Check out:

Most Famous Record Label: http://dreamcatalogue.net/
The Archive of the Vaporwave Library Project: https://web.archive.org/web/20150219214318/http://vaporwave.me/
The Vaporwave Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vaporwave/

Labyrinth Review

2016-01-20T07:24:00.001-08:00

I've probably seen this at least 500 times not even kidding. You know how people have movies they watch on a regular basis like going to sleep or while cleaning or doing work etc. This is one of those movies for me, that and the dark crystal. Those old Jim Henson fantasy films are among the best fantasy films of all time and I'm not the only one who thinks so. Labyrinth is a timeless classic that just can't be missed. If you haven't seen this yet then well you need to.. like right now if you can afford to.

Not to be confused with Pan's Labyrinth, Labyrinth is a 1986 British American film directed by Jim Henson, executive produced by George Lucas, and based upon conceptual designs by Brian Froud. The film stars David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King and Jennifer Connelly as Sarah the one trapped in the labyrinth. So it's a movie about a girl who gets her baby brother kidnapped by goblins and she has to go to the goblin kingdom to get him back even though she doesn't like him very much she feels obligated to because he's her little brother.

People at its korny and has bad acting. Maybe the korny bit sometimes but I don't think the acting is that bad. I think some people confuse the two sometimes though. It's kid friendly and I would say pagan friendly as well. Sure it is part musical with the whole David Bowie thing but that doesn't overtake the film. I wouldn't say it's purely a musical, I'd say it's a fantasy film with a couple musical numbers.

There's alot of cool little puzzles in the movie that are solved for you. It's definitely an adventure film not much suspense or thrill. There is a few action scenes that keep you entertained but there are some real slow parts you may think are kind of boring. You just have to get past those parts really. All over its an enjoyable experience with fantastic creations you'll never forget. It's pretty immersive. It's easy to get lost in the story, in the labyrinth and you do feel like you've just been on an amazing journey to the goblin kingdom after its over and done with and you'll want to go there again and again or at least that was my experience and I've never met a person who didn't like this movie and lots of people will get a good kick of nostalgia when you mention something from this movie. So join the club watch labyrinth it's really good classic fantasy. And one thing I want to point out is this is the earliest instance I know of hearing the word "hogwarts" nothing wrong with that, just saying though. ;)

The Dark Crystal Review

2016-01-20T07:24:00.000-08:00

I've seen this 500 times at least just like labyrinth. Guess I'm a sucker for classic fantasy, go figure. I really love the dark crystal it has alot of special meaning to me. I've watched it many times and have searched for metaphorical meaning in it like the olde bardic tradition of studying a story for insight and I think there's alot to offer with this tale. It gives it alot of replay value to see new meaning in the events. This movie is filled with mystery and magick.

The Dark Crystal is a 1982 British American fantasy film directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz and stars Stephen Garlick, Lisa Maxwell, Billie Whitelaw and Percy Edwards. It's a tale of ancient magic and good vs evil set in the form of an adventure of the last of a dying race of elf-like humanoids called gelfling. the main character is a gelfling who is prophesized to be the one who can return balance to their world after the evil race of vulture people called the skeksis take over the world ruling with the power of the dark crystal. They find out about the prophesy and kill all of the gelfling minus 2 who escaped and we're raised by different races of people one with small gnome like forest dwellers and one with a bizarre race of druidic wizard creatures that look like lizard/tortoise humanoid type things. As you can tell it's very nature and ancient pagan based with alot of fantastical creatures based loosely on real animals but the creatures in the dark crystal are definitely unique only minor things are relatable to reality most of the creatures are completely imagined to create the world of the dark crystal.

Most all the creatures are puppets or animatronics, some are people dressed in costumes. For this reason some of the movement like speaking and walking make it quite obvious this is only a puppet the movement looks very fake and lifeless at certain moments while at others look real as ever. It can be slightly inconsistent they may have had difficulties or puppeteers that weren't as experienced as others which is a Shame because the creatures and the story is so incredible that the technological inferiority of the time makes the quality of the film suffer but there is still a unique charm to those old puppet fantasy films. It's the viewers decision whether the fact that this is pretty much an all puppet movie is a hinderence to it or not. All in all the story and the aesthetic of the world and the creatures that inhabit is just superb. It's one of the best fantasy films of all time. It progresses just fine there's a balance of dialogue and action and it's all filled with great mysticism that makes it very very special indeed.

Malice in Wonderland Review

2016-01-20T07:23:00.000-08:00

Like I may have mentioned before I love anything alice in wonderland I have an affinity for it and search for great media related to the story because I just think it's so awesome it can't be missed. Malice in Wonderland is no exception. This is an excellent film. It's a little strange but that's what I love about it. It stays true to the oddness that is Lewis Carol's Alice in Wonderland (the books mind you) while making it fresh and modern; abstract and artistic.

Malice in Wonderland is a 2009 British fantasy adventure film directed by Simon Fellows, written by Jayson Rothwell and starring Maggie Grace, Danny Dyer, Matt King and Nathaniel Parker. The story is based on alice in wonderland but set in an urban London ghetto with the queen of hearts being a mob boss and the white rabbit being a taxi driver and alice gets lost in this underground world of drugs and prostitution trying to find her memory after getting hit by the white rabbits cab after running away searching for her real mother. It's a bit more complicated than that but that's the gist of things and boy is it wild. The things they come up with for this film while still keeping it wonderland is phenomenal. Any fan of wonderland with an appreciation for the surreal and creative rendition will love this as much as I do.

The Alice character is beautiful and charming which she should be because she's the main character. Whitey is a funny cockney cab driver that helps alice through wonderland making it really surreal but totally true to the white rabbit character and the more the story develops the more you feel for him and want him to succeed. You can't have a book based alice film without the duchess and her peppered soup and this film doesn't let you down the duchess character is great I loved it. The caterpillar is a drug dealer and helps alice get to the duchess in this movie which isn't really what I was expecting but I did enjoy that short scene with him in it really puts you in that world of urban wonderland, not the best way they could've done it but it ended up working and I wasn't disappointed moreso wished there was more. I won't go through every character the last I'll say is everyone's favorite the mad hatter is played by a female freightline dispatcher with a small diner set as the headquarters for an underground prostitution ring definitely not what I saw coming but it's surely creative use of the character and trust be it does work to the films benefit. It's the most thrilling and suspenseful part of the movie and they still made it work to the classic wonderland tales well while at the same time but being a copy of the original.

All around this is just a great movie any alice fan will be proud to own and even if you just like artistic, dramatic, fantasy or adventure films this fits the bill in those categories as well. It really is an obscure gem and is worth the search for it.

Oh My Goth! Comic Books...

2015-09-03T22:41:00.000-07:00

There are some fantastically gothic comic books out there but they are quite obscure and can be hard to find. Here is my list of gothic comic books I think anyone with an inkling for the dark and macabre will enjoy. This isn't a complete list by no means but these are some of the greats and most people have never even heard of them even when you go to a comic book store that has a goth section alot of these they don't even have so you'll have to go searching for them. Amazon is usually a good place to go or the publisher or authors own website they usually sell their own comic books there.

Lenore

Johnny the Homicidal Maniac

Squee

Gris Grimly's Frankenstein

Courtney Crumrin

Gloomcookie

Sullengrey

Eldritch!

Emily the Strange

Sandman

Bear

I feel sick

Nightmares & Fairy Tales

Serenity Rose

Ghost World Review

2015-08-19T22:17:00.001-07:00

Ghost world is an obscure indie coming of age drama film about these two girls who are best friends in high school and how they get along after high school. They go through their differences especially when they older man gets involved with one of them and they grow farther apart but in the end they remain best friends.

Being 22 going on 23 here in the next month I can relate to movies like this. I have it on vhs and have seen it a couple times but I just revisited it looming through my vhs collection and put it on again. This one is a strange one for me. I had seen it numerous times at the video store, websites and later on at thrift stores but didn't actually see it for a good while. Rosy watching it again as an adult with a job and an apartment and having dealt with flying the nest more recently I can relate to this movie even more than any pervious time I've seen it.

Things like your first time in an adult store, finding an apartment, worrying about what the hell are you going to do with the rest of your life, disappointment after disappointment, relationships. This is a tough time for most when you're still growing up and all of a sudden the flow of your life that you've dealt with most of your life just abruptly stops and now you're in trouble. In this movie the main character has more going for her. She has an older man willing to be let her move in and be with her, she has her best friend willing to let her move on with her and she has her father letting her stay with him. I didn't have all that and I know a good number of people who didn't either so some may look at this film and think she doesn't know the half of it but as I always say just because someone has it better than the worst doesn't mean they aren't suffering. This movie illustrates that point very well.

This is one of those drama films that ate really down to earth, tells it like it is and lets you experience and identify with the character and you meditate on your own life, revisit memories think of things you could've done or can still do to improve your life or help another's. The progression of the story is fine and the ending is abstract and artistic. It's not so much particular dialogue or even events that matter with a movie like this it's more of the whole experience of coming of age in general. It sounds kind of weird saying what happens in the movie isn't as important as what the movie means as a whole but that's how I feel about it. It's one of those movies you would suggest to a stranger in their 20s you start talking to at a college or a book store or an art gallery who starts telling you their own tragic life story and how lost they feel. This movie may help them gain perspective into their situation and promote brainstorming on new patterns on development in their lives.

All in all its a good down to earth indie drama that can help and heal certain people in certain circumstances. There aren't many like this out there and I'm glad it's there because I think it has some good potential.

Windows 10 Hacks and Traps

2015-08-14T02:03:00.003-07:00

Windows 10 became available July 29th 2015 and currently if you already have windows 7 and up you can get an upgrade to the Windows 10 Operating System for free. Of course since its a new WinOS release there's going to be bugs and zero days for well.. days. A lot of security features no one pays attention to and that can be a bad thing. This is the age of blind consent to any Terms of Service Agreement imaginable doesn't matter what it is it's an instant agree for anyone and everyone. In their defense everyone knows Windows 10 is going to be standard soon all the laptops are going to come with it Windows 7 is old hat now and XP is just unheard of nowadays.

Windows 10 has the same kind of simplistic aesthetic like Windows 8 but the start screen is optional now and they have more of a classical start menu that actually encompasses what's in the start screen and you can reize and customize it and it looks pretty nice actually. No more having to go to the corner of the screen and waiting a sec so you can reboot your computer or do a search the power options are in the start menu like before windows 8 and they automatically put the search bar right next to the start menu icon at the bottom left corner.

Win10 Desktop and Start Menu

Cortana. Cortana is like an AI robot assistant that comes standard in windows 10 now and not gonna lie I don't very much like it. Remember the MCP (Master Control Program) from that 80's hacker movie Tron? It's not exactly as bad as that but to even use Cortana you have to agree with her knowing your location, knowing where you live, what sites you go to, what your handwriting looks like, how you talk, your credit card numbers, all your passwords including wifi key, lots of stuff. She wants to know all this so she can "help personalize your experience." If you use the new Internet Explorer Browser called Microsoft Edge, Cortana is also monitoring all of that traffic. Apparently she can also look on the web and find events you might like. So if you want a robot that Microsoft gives to you that needs to know every gritty detail go ahead and use it i'm sure it has some use to anyone using it but I just like my privacy too much to agree to that. In fact...

You should take a look at the privacy settings and adjust those to your liking because Microsoft gathers all kinds of data and shares it with "Microsoft Partners". Microsoft even said even with the privacy settings disabling something they said they are still getting that information from you... One key thing is to not use a Microsoft email because I read that with the email, which is required for the in built app store which is like a Linux distro repository, they are collecting metadata from you that they can trace back to your identity and you agree to it by having that Microsoft email linked to your computer. If you already did it and you don't want it on anymore you can go to your account settings and take it off. It's basically reduce your functionality for your privacy or give up your privacy for increased functionality. No one is saying Microsoft is using this maliciously or that their partners are using it maliciously but it is a security risk you take nonetheless.

The MCP from Tron

There's this new thing called "WiFi Sense"it's not completely insecure but it is a potential hazard to your digital self. Zero Day Exploits are always going to exist and this "WiFi Sense" gives your wifi passwords to other people and will automatically connect you to networks they know about from crowdsourcing. Things like public free wifi networks that everyone warns you about not connecting to... yea with WiFi Sense on it's going to automatically connect you to it because it wants you to have internet access. If you have msn, outlook even facebook friends with it in it can give all those people your internet password to their computer and connect them to your network and vise versa of course. So if you don't want that shady random person who added you on facebook on your network but you want your bestie since kindergarten on your network just give your bestie access yourself don't have WiFi Sense give it automatically. I think you do have to configure it to give passwords but if you enable it for one you are enabling it for all and who knows who can hack into your WiFi Sense and get into your network or worse be able to access all the networks you can access like all your friends around town. It's a disaster waiting to happen if the wrong person gets access so I would suggest just not using it.

Wi-Fi Sense

Ok that was kind of paranoid web user status right there i'll scare you again in a minute but let's talk about something that is actually cool about windows 10. [Win Key+G]. Know what that does? Turns on the built in DVR and Game Bar. Yeah it has like a built in Fraps and just like with Fraps it will record any program not just games... but... it doesn't record the whole screen :( You cant record things like the desktop or windows explorer but all your games and various software applications you should be able to record just fine. All the recordings you can access through the native xbox app or navigate to Videos\Captures in the file explorer for your account to access those video files. which are saved to mp4 or png if it's a screenshot. I say game bar because it puts up a little bar and you press record and stuff and it's called the game bar. You don't have to click the game bar though you can use shortcuts and if you play PC games you know its better for your recordings to just use the shortcut instead of showing mouse strokes and such so you can alternatively use [Win Key+Alt+R] to start and stop recording and [Win Key+Alt+T] to hide or show the timer and those are reprogrammable so if you don't wanna use that you don't have to. For Example let's say you are using a USB NES Controller to record your speedrun of Wizards & Warriors or something and you don't wanna get up and press the key combination you wanna bind it to the select button or something you are more than welcome to do that. Also to take a screenshot the shortcut is [Win Key+Alt+Print]. I haven't done extensive testing on this feature so I'm not sure if its a ghetto method for copying a video like a livestream of your favorite WoW PvP live streamer or something but I suppose in theory it would work. I believe you can connect it to your xbox one as well if you have one.

Game DVR Settings

Let's say you are satisfied with it and you wanna clean up things a bit in the memory department, Windows 10 doesn't completely delete your old OS it keeps it just in case in memory and you can actually go get something like 10 gigs by deleting your old OS you have no plan on reverting back to. It's stored in this directory called Windows.old but windows won't let you remove most of it just deleting the folder can't do it that way k. You need to do it in Disk Cleanup which you can search for or you can search for "Free up disk space" because Windows 10 knows more lax speech now which is also another neat feature doesn't just take specific commands typed exactly how it wants you to. So free up that C:/ Drive and go to clean up system files and look for "Previous Windows installation(s) which should look something like 3-30GB of memory something like that and that will delete the old operating system version. If you think you might fuck something up and want to go back to windows 8 don't do this but if you don't give a fuck all yolo status it'll free up some memory for yuh.

Disk Cleanup

What else can you do? Theres a "Print to PDF" feature that lets you well print stuff to a pdf document instead of a printer which can come in real handy in a bunch of situations. An easy use for this is basically like a file type conversion for a document. Let's say you write a novel or an ebook guide for something you can easily write it up put all your fab pix in it or whatever then print to pdf and upload it somewhere. You can even sell it yourself on Ebay or something if you wanted to. You can go to Settings > System > Battery Saver and it has a built in battery saver mode that was developed for Mobile devices but can be used on your Windows 10 Computer now for when you're out and about.
You can create virtual desktops not like a personalized desktop for each but to open up a new workspace is probably a better term they should've used i'd say because it's just a copy of your desktop but no programs running. This new workspace is useful for lets say you want one desktop to have League of Legends running and another desktop that has a bunch of browser tabs open so you can look at different builds for different characters but you don't want to muck about minimizing LoL to open up the browser which can make a black screen for a minute. or maybe you are doing your homework and playing video games at the same time you can switch over to your homework when you hear your parents footsteps and they won't see the video game open at the bottom and you can switch back to it when they leave (provided they aren't checking whether you have multiple desktops activated. Also note that good ole [Alt+Tab] will cycle through every program running even on other desktops so you can easily switch between desktops. You can create a new virtual desktop using the [Win Key+Ctrl+D] to create a new desktop and [Win Key+Ctrl+F4] to close the virtual desktop. I have not tested what it would be like to write a little program probably in VBScript using the SendKeys Method that loops creating a new virtual desktop with the key shortcut as a denial of service attack but that's something that could potentially happen once people start writing all kinds of windows 10 compatible malware. =/

Speaking of which there are some neat tweaks you can make to Command Prompt now! It looks just like it always has but there is more setting tweaks. The most important naturally is that you can use [Ctrl+C] and [Ctrl+V] to copy and paste into the command line now which for some reason you couldn't previously do like go figure. I suppose it was a security measure to thwart script kiddies but you can use a batch file to much more devastating degree so it just made things difficult in the interpreter for no good reason but now you can enable that in the Experimental Tab on the Command Prompt Properties. Just make sure "Enable new Ctrl key shortcuts" is checked. You can easily copy paste results on the command prompt as well by highlighting it and Ctrl+C/V instead of looking at it and writing it in notepad or saving a txt document with the data makes certain things easier like copy pasting your public ipv4/6 address. Sometimes in fact you need to copy the results of a command to write a new command and this makes that a breeze now when before that was a straight bitch doing a lot of the time. There's a setting for word wrapping as well which is nice. One of the most important things if you're going to messing in the command prompt is to make sure you have your privileges elevated in that console otherwise a lot of things won't work and there's ways of doing that.

Enable new Ctrl key shortcuts

Simplest way is to just do [Ctrl+X] then Command Prompt (Admin). If you want to start an elevated command prompt in a certain directory you can Hold Shift and Right Click a folder to open command prompt in that folder. You can also do a search for cmd and do [Ctrl+Shift+Enter] and that will prompt to open with admin privs provided you have it. And because we are so awesome at computers we need GodMode on Windows 10 now. So go ahead on your desktop or whatever and make a new folder and name it GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} You can change "GodMode" to whatever you want but make sure its got that dot and that gobbledegook after it with squiggly brackets and have some fun but be careful if you fuck something up it's totally your fault yo.

GodMode

Blue is the Warmest Color Review

2015-08-13T23:44:00.000-07:00

Oh man this movie. This one made me tear up a little bit at the end. It's an indie french drama film about a bi sexual school girl who falls in love with a blue haired tomboy. It's basically about her love life. The French title for this film is actually La Vie d'Adèle Chapitres 1 & 2 which translates in English to The Life of Adèle Chapters 1 & 2. Adèle is the main character the school girl. They describe this movie as an LGBT coming of age romance drama which explains it perfectly. She wanted to be a teacher so she becomes a teacher and moves in with her girlfriend who is an artist. They have their ups and downs and there's a couple amateur lesbian sex scenes in this one so just keep that in mind on who you watch it with. The ending is sad but I don't want to give away any spoilers so go check it out for yourself.

The movie came out in 2013 and was written, produced, and directed by Abdellatif Kechiche and stars Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos. I'm not really one for chick flicks but I did watch this one because the title interested me. I already knew it was a lesbian romance movie but yeah the title is what drew me into watching it. It is in French with subtitles as well just so you know. It moves fairly slowly but not too slow to make you bored of it which is a good thing because to be honest I usually get bored quick with korny romance scenes but this movie did it well. There were a couple times with no music which is an indicator that what the character is saying will be important and it creates tension and when you see the leads school friends and they do that you know they are going to say something nasty or nosey which makes you either listen closely for the drama or makes you hate those characters which leads you to be more empathic with the main character which is great for a drama film so they knew what they were doing.

Artistic indie films especially french ones (imho) seem to have a lot of meaningful symbolism like a good painting does that gives this some good replay value as you can come back to it from time to time and see a new meaning in the film which all great art does. Things like them mentioning Pablo Picasso who had his "blue period", the lighting being blue in the gay bar where Adèle meets Emma and Emma changing her hair color from blue to blonde towards the end of the film when the relationship starts to wane from its peak or the fact that they frequently have them eating a simple spaghetti when they have an enjoyable get-together be it with the art friends or with Adèle's parents. The blue I would believe is symbolic of something like the English title is a riddle to be solved. But art is always in the eye of the beholder so the things I mention you may not agree with and you may have your own opinion on what it means and that's what makes it so great I think.

I encourage you to watch this and find out for yourself what you think of the film. This is a gem of a film. Even if I don't like chick flicks I can appreciate what they did with this one it's like 3 hours long and if I can easily get through it I bet you can. ;)

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Obscure Genres : Witchhouse

2015-08-12T16:56:00.001-07:00

Witch House as the name would suggest is occult themed electronic music. It's dark and kind of mellow while having a hint of horror to it most of the time not always though. It also goes by the names drag, rapegaze and haunted house. Haunted House is my favorite name for it I think thats clever and punny but I call it Witch House 98% of the time. There is also an aesthetic and a fashion that is pretty interesting. The dress is kind of like goth meets punk meets the occult. To dress witch house you would dress goth lots of black and white with occult symbols but it takes more of a playful punk direction by doing things like "Cat Magick" and have a cat with an upside down pentacle and an upside down cross on its third eye like its poking fun at christians who think those are demonic or satanic exclusive symbols. For real pagan witches it might seem a bit offensive at time but most of the time it's not as offensive as that. There are a bunch of retailers you can find on etsy and instagram (I see alot on instagram) Here's what it looks like:

Contrary to the name though this music isnt actually house music in the slightest. its alot of screwey hip hop beats with like distorted industrial noises and distorted synth leads, drum machines and strange experimental sounds and vocal samples. To make it you want to go for dark and ethereal think of a ghost talking through the white noise on an old tv with hip hop or trap type beats with a slow tempo. The white noise sounding bassline is a staple for alot of the witch house tracks but so is chiptune and more contemporary synths.

The witch house aesthetic of writing uses alot of unicode symbols like triangles, omega symbols, random foreign special characters even ogham and futhark runes are common. It's like using 13375p34k but with unicode instead of numbers. They say to do this to thwart search engines so it's harder to find witch house on the internet to keep it an underground movement so hope I don't get in trouble with the witch house police for making a blog post about it lol but this isn't a popular blog so I think it should be fine. ;)

They say it was created as a joke to describe a certain groups (shams) production sound but music journalists got ahold of it and it kind of stuck and is here to stay. There really isn't any set defining sound that says if you don't use this sound its not witch house its more of a vibe that makes something witch house, a little confusing. Of course you should have those elements like the gritty distorted sounds the hip hop drums, dense reverb, synthpop melodies to create that vibe but no particular one thing makes it witch house. Even some witch house mixtapes have things that you might say don't even classify as "witchhousey" but still make it in and help that witch house vibe keep flowing which is the most important part of the genre.

To get into Witch House I would check out the reddit page and check out those artists and i'll also have a good witch house playlist here as well. Salem has a bunch of mixtapes up for free as well but I don't think they are that great. I also made a mixtape i'll put up here.

My Witchhouse Mixtapes:

Ƒ⨹ѪїȽĬϪᏒ ຣρīƦį♰ by Catapilla on Mixcloud

ʤѦ☨Ƕ-Ⴌჰ⨹Ϸ Ħ△ШЖ ѪФ†Ҥ by Catapilla on Mixcloud

ਹǗӍΔŊڸᶅ by Catapilla on Mixcloud

Top Artists

Salem
oOoOO
White Ring
Purity Ring
Balam Acab
Crim3s
Grimes
Crystal Castles
Ritualz
Holy Other

XXYYXX

Retro Gaming

2015-08-12T14:53:00.000-07:00

Mostly all retro gaming nowadays is done via emulation of consoles. You can go to any retro gaming story there's usually always one around that you can go to to pick up an old nes you can go online and find them on ebay and amazon but because emulation is a free method and is easiest to get it's taken over as a staple for retro gaming plus the fact that you don't have to blow on any cartridges to get it to work.

Arcade Emulation

There is, however, a physical console for retro gaming that actually uses emulation and can be hacked called the Hyperkin Retron 5 (Amazon Listing Here). That isnt the only model but that is the most common. It basically has a bunch of slots for cartridges and itll crack the rom and put it on the system and run it through the onboard emulator. It's pretty cool actually and it comes with its own controller that will work on all the consoles you can play on it and its wireless via bluetooth communication. It costs around $150 and can play NES, SNES, Super Famicom, Sega Genesis, Mega Drive, Famicom, Gameboy, Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance Games all on one thing. The controller as i've seen is kind of shit but it also has ports for you to put in the original controllers and even cross compatible as in you can use an snes controller on an nes game etc. It also has filters to change the graphic appearance of any game which is a real plus like you can make old skool games look really high definition with it. The thing about it though is they kinda illegally stole peoples emulators to make profit off of it so idk how long this will be available if they get in trouble and have to take it down. Here are some images of what the thing looks like:

The black one with the controller

The white one with a Ogre Battle inserted

The GUI inside the Unit

Here is the hack for playing downloaded roms on the retron 5 without having a physical cartridge for it that I found on reddit:

Find an IPS ROM-patching program that can create patches. I used SamIPS2. Mac users can run this in Wine.
Click "Make IPS" tab
For current file, find the game ROM you would like to play on your Retron, like Sonic and Knuckles + Sonic 3.
For original file, put the ROM of a game you own. So basically, find the title of a game you have lying around, like Shaq-Fu. Find a ROM that matches that title, put it here.
Under "IPS file," you can name something whatever you want here, just use the .ips extension. For instance, Sonic-Knuckles-Sonic-3.ips.
Click "Create Patch."
You now have an IPS patch file. Load it onto your SD card, place the aforementioned game you had lying around into your cartridge slot and select that patch from your SD card.
Start the game. You'll be playing Sonic and Knuckles + Sonic 3, but Shaq-Fu will be in your cart slot. Not too shabby.
Note: You need "Patch expects header" selected for SNES; Sega, GBA, GB, GBC have all been tested and don't need Patch expects header selected. Downloading some NES ROMs now to check that part out, but I'm assuming NES/Fami/SMS will work the same as the other systems.

So that's how you can play it easily on your TV with specialized hardware for retro gaming. The next is going to be more ghetto and that's emulation on your computer. So this can actually be very handy for retro gaming because you can find roms available for free online you just have to google for "[console] roms" and find single file downloads or zips or even torrent the entire library for the console on bit torrent.

Emulator Zone is probably the most popular for the subject and has a large list of both emulator software and roms indexed on the site but they don't have everything and don't always give the best advice. The Old Computer is a good source for your emulation needs as well. Emulators are like virtual machines for different operating systems but instead of sandboxing windows 95 your'e putting up an NES or an Atari what have you. It's not only good for those old systems there is also emulators for things like psp or xbox360 etc except those aren't the most viable emulators to run because they eat up alot of cpu and if you don't have a beefy computer you probably won't be able to run those games very well (the lag is real). One of the coolest ideas for this is to find an old tower computer and get a 32bit emulator and put it on the tower and just use the old computer as a gaming console like a ghetto retron 5. I've seen hak5 years ago make one with one of those joystick controllers for the computer and just made the emulator run straight away in full screen mode and bound the keys to it to make it like an arcade machine. They built a frame and everything for it and just used the old computer moniter as the screen. It was very cool. You can do the same kinda thing if you want but you'll have to buy USB controllers which you can find easily on amazon and you can hook it up to your tv via a coverter or if you have one even use your regular computer have the games on there and plug it into the tv with an hdmi cable most computers have that and bada bing bada boom you got your old skool gaming built in.

Another thing that you can do it put it all on your phone. Get an SD card with all your roms on it or just use the memory in the phone doesn't matter and get emulators on the play store or what have you. Most of them are free but there are a couple really good ones you can buy for like 5 bucks (you can always get a refund and keep the file but that's illegal) Why would you want to do this on your smart phone? Well I wouldn't really say put anything higher than n64 for 3d graphics on your phone because the more buttons it has the less actual control you have over the game. Old systems like nes had an a/b button select/start button and directionals, that's it. That can easily be played with the touch screen and now you have a mobile nes you can use anywhere you want. Another thing is those handheld consoles like gameboy and ds are meant for mobility and you can easily play those on your phone and it's kind of better than the original like the gba that didnt have an lcd screen so you had to be in the sun to see what you were doing but on the phone it's not like that and you won't hurt your fingers spamming the buttons. The only bad thing is about that is if your game needs a bumper you won't be able to easily play those games because the bumper is on the screen and not sideways like real bumpers are.

NES Emulator on Android

Search emulator zone and old school computer or the pirate bay for those emulators they are really easy to install and get going just need a repertoire of games to play pretty much every emulator will have it as file > load as how to open the game then you may want to check the key configuration to see which keys on the keyboard to press or to map your usb controller to the emulator. I don't think there is a real need to recommend any emulators right now because they all work pretty much just make sure to do a virus scan before you use anything. Maybe later ill make a top list of emulators later but putting this here would make this post too long. Bonne Chance!

Monkeybone Review

2015-08-12T12:18:00.000-07:00

Monkeybone is a trippy dark comedy directed by Henry Selick starring Brendan Fraser, Bridget Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, Rose McGowan, David Foley, Giancarlo Esposito, Megan Mullally, Lisa Zane, Chris Kattan, and an uncredited Thomas Haden Church. Some of the scenes are kinda lame and boring in this one but for the most part its dark trippy and awesome.

The movie is about this comic artist who created this character monkeybone and its kind of his alter ego for his perverted excentric self and he gets into an accident and goes into a coma and in that coma he goes to this dreamscape place for people who are in comas and meets monkeybone and its all about his experiences in the coma and trying to get out of the coma to get back to his normal life meeting strange characters along the way.

There's alot of great comedy some of it cliche and lame but most of it is really cool. Its like really artistic and is like what an artists mind would look like. Some of the effects like the costumes and the animation are low quality and simplistic but they make it look really cool and artistic. The music is kinda mediocre. The characters they come up with are amazing. It's all very dark and bizzarre and that's what I love about it. It does have replay value everytie you want to go see something bizarre and cool but not scary you should watch this movie for sure.

Trick r' Treat Review

2015-08-12T11:57:00.001-07:00

Trick r' Treat is a Horror Anthology Film based on a comic book of the same name. There are 4 halloween relayed tales and that all end up being interrelated in the end. Things you were wondering where that came from or things you might've overlooked all come together in the end. Each tale is really exciting and the aesthetic is just perfect for halloween. This is one of my favorite movies tbh but I really love halloween and I really love horror anthologies.

The film stars Dylan Baker, Brian Cox and Anna Paquin, is directed by Michael Dougherty and was released in 2007. So I think this is the best halloween movie nothing can top this for live action horror about halloween. I would say if you watch anything on halloween it would be this and maybe nightmare before christmas. It really captures the classic kids trick or treating getup but makes it more dark and spooky than what small kids will actually wear which is like spiderman and disney princesses this shows kids dressed in vampire masks and witch outfits a more like mid 1900s approach that really looks badass in my opinion. The girl who dresses as a witch even talks about samhain which is the original name for the holiday which is a major plus and theres even some great morbid endings to the tales that you'll be all fuuccck that's awesome.

There are some cliche teenager movie moments to it but alot of great horror to it as well that is something you might see stephen king or edgar allan poe do. Standard horror movie music but that's quite common. I wouldn't get the soundtrack myself but if you like that kinda thing go ahead. The shots are great. The costumes are great. All around this is a really great horror anthology I think everyone should own. It should be a staple for every halloween night cuddle up and watch some movies occasionally handing out candy to trick or treaters.

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A Cat in Paris Review

2015-08-12T01:08:00.003-07:00

So It's a movie about a cat in paris... shocking I know but this cat lives a double life with a little girl by day and a cat burglar by night. A Cat in Paris (Une vie de chat) is a french film that came out in 2010 is directed by Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli and stars Dominique Blanc, Bruno Salomone, Jean Benguigui, Bernadette, Lafont, Oriane Zani and Bernard Bouillon.

Now this movie is really artistic but the art is simplistic and abstract looks very french. There's also a kind of archetype for the French cat burglar you know even running around the concrete jungle is called Parkour and started in France. This movie is about that archetype. I'd say the main character is the actual cat though which is a given from the title I know so it's about the cats double life and how they intersect. The little girl gets kidnapped and the burglar rescues her and they know each other from the cat. Lots of parallels with the characters like it's a small world. They all live closer to each other and the crime boss has multiple links to both main characters but you'll have to watch it yourself to find the parallels.

It's not very long only an hour long the art is simple but enjoyable. There is an English dub and it's pretty good actually. There's a romantic happy ending a good amount of action on the main night scene for the film and it leads up to it fairly quickly enough time to get to know each of the characters then it all comes together in one hectic night.

I feel it's one of those movies you'd see advertised at an art college or an inner city community center in a big town you know. That's not a bad thing though its a nice little movie. The fact that it's only an hour long means it's as something you'll enjoy for that hour then you've seen it your done with it. It's not a movie I would spend too much money on doesn't have much replay value but is something I would suggest seeing at least once. I think thru should play it at like an art museum like one of those let's all watch an artsy movie on the projector at the art museum kind of things I think that would be very successful. That is it for this review.

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Daft Punk Interstella 5555 Review

2015-08-11T22:47:00.004-07:00

I remember when I first heard about this I thought it was a huge conspiracy lol. I've loved daft punk since the very first time hearing them which was one more time in a car ride to elementary school and I loved the whole vibe of it and it was easy to get the lyrics and I sang along straight away and i'm not the kind of guy to sing let alone around others but daft punk had me from day one and

I listened to every song I could get my hands on when I started going on youtube and saw the music videos for the songs in the discovery album and I thought they all had the blue aliens with the blonde hair or things that looked like them and it wasn't til a while later that I found out that the reason I kept seeing interstalla 5555 in all the videos that were anime was because they actually made a whole anime movie out of their discovery album and I was like wow.

I don't know a single other artist that made a whole anime out of one of their albums which makes this unique and very avant garde. So as you guessed it this is an anime about blue aliens played to daft punk songs. If you don't already know daft punk is actually a french house music group that started in the 90s and is still going strong today. They are the techno guys who wear the robot helmets and this whole movie is house and breakbeat style music from france. It's a silent film in that its all just music no scripting but still tells a good story.

Before I go any further this was produced by Daft Punk (Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo), Cédric Hervet and Emmanuel de Buretel along with Toei Animation, under the supervision of Leiji Matsumoto. It was released in 2003 and its japanese name is インターステラ5555 Intāsutera Fō Faibu, "Four Five". The name is a bit strange the full english title is Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem. That's what the 5555 is its the S's in the title using 13375p34k. It is also dubbed the title "The animated House Musical" as you'll be able to see in the image.

The story of the film is about this space rock band that are blue aliens with blonde hair right and they get kidnapped and made into humans to be the next hit band on earth but is controlled by this evil guy who like does this weird occult ritual thing you'll just have to see it but they kind of regain themselves and try to escape to freedom and go back being blue alien dudes from outer space and stuff. Nice little story great use of colors true to raver culture, lovely music you can just chill to this anime its really a cool experience if you like house music and anime its just great. A real gem of a film i'm really glad daft punk made it. If you can get the bluray I would get the bluray to see it in that higher quality it enhances the experience and make sure you got a decent sound system with a subwoofer to get that nice bass going on with the house music and if you have a decent sized tv all the better and that will make the best of this special film. If not its whatever its still great but blu ray etc makes this even better.

If you don't like house music or anime or colorful things you might not enjoy this as much. Because of the fact that there is no dialogue minimal sound effects and all music and anime it makes it different to most other films so if you have a really short attention span and need multiple lanes of stimulus to stay entertained you might not be able to get through this one either. The people who watch this have to be the ones who wanna see how the story plays out and enjoy the music that's being played. You have to have an open mind or you will think this is boring and dismiss it, i've seen it happen. Some love it some don't care for it. You be the judge the film is available for free on youtube right now and has been like that for a while now not sure if the link I put up will stay up forever or if things with copyright change but I do know that daft punk has a more relaxed view on piracy. In fact their latest album at the time of posting this: Random Access Memories got leaked months before release and was already on youtube and torrent sites before it even came out anywhere and daft punk I guess figured it would happen and wasn't bothered by it it still sold well of course because it's daft punk <3. So there you go that's my review.

and if you were wondering this is what the discovery album cover looks like:

Horsehead Review

2015-08-11T21:53:00.000-07:00

K This is Horsehead O.o. It's a French Psychological Thriller/Horror/Mystery Film released in 2014. It was directed by Romain Basset and stars Lilly-Fleur Pointeaux, Catriona MacColl, Murray Head. This movie is one of those really out there films that takes at least a million watches to fully understand whats even happening lol. It's about this girl who goes to visit her mother because her aunt died and they want her there for the funeral and what not. Now shes got big problems with her mom because she refuses to tell her who her biological father is and is a straight bitchy stuck up woman right. She wouldn't even tell her how her aunt died straight away but turns out... well I won't spoil it for you. The main character works in the science field studying lucid dreaming as a form of therapy and is an avid lucid dreamer.

The movie is about her dream walking travels all shaman status finding out things that happened in the dream world with a wolf spirit guide and everything always being chased by death which appears as the horse headed guy. So shes unraveling the mysteries of her family thats the mystery part. It is obviously horror because of all the scary things with the horse guy and another guy but that you'll have to see yourself and I say psyche thriller because it deals alot with the mind and lucid dreaming and it isn't always apparent straight away whether shes dreaming or not or whats going on in the dream because dreams can be very abstract you know so that's another thing you gotta unravel yourself while watching the movie. Movies like this always challenge you like a riddle to figure out whats even going on let alone the task of completing the puzzle of the plot putting all the events together you know then at the end culminating but yet not explaining everything and possibly you even overlooked something thinking about something else and that gives this movie alot of replay value. You can watch this again and again to try to figure out more of whats going on.

I have to say some of the shots are fantastically done like way cool. The music in the movie is all of the dark ambient variety, lots of sub bass tones and strange soundscapes to create that kind of horrifying atmosphere while showing you dark and grotesque scenes and trippy dreamscapes. There is one thing though about the dreams that I didn't much like which was the fact most of the dreams she wakes up in she wakes up in her bed which from my experience you never become conscious in your dreams waking up out of your bed its usually somewhere else and you just think your'e awake yet you don't realize you just kinda popped up somewhere with no recollection before that moment. Perhaps that's just me but yeah I didn't think that was very realistic to lucid dreaming but I can understand they did that for the effect of the shot which looks great and also attempts to fool you at whether she is waking up for real or not but still that is my opinion on that.

To wrap up this is a great psychological thriller, a scary trippy gorey movie that doesn't overdo the gore but uses it to great use to make it even scarier not something to watch alone at midnight. There is some sex in it mostly her bathing which isn't as sexual but there is a weird incest part that was kinda like yuck but it's all to add to the experience of horsehead you know. So if you like weird horror films this is definitely a must. Very true to some other great french horror films iv'e seen that's for sure. Aight get outta hurr and go watch it already!

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Neco Z Alenky Review

2015-08-11T17:18:00.000-07:00

This is an odd one. Neco Z Alenky (Something from Alice) is a 1988 Czech Rendition of Alice in Wonderland written and directed by Jan Švankmajer with little Alice being played by Kristýna Kohoutová. Now I don't know if I would show a child this movie because they might get scared when they see that alice turns into a creepy porcelain doll or that when she gets stuck in the white rabbits house he tries to saw off her arm and then sends skeletons of animals to eat her... That's whats in this movie. It definitely is bizarre and a it morbid. There isn't really any music in it just loud sound effects that seem a little too over-the-top and overdone.

Alices voice is used for all the other characters that have voices as if shes narrating her own story and when she personally talks its usually a close up of her lips which is kind of weird. The effects to create the animals movement is stop motion with animal skeletons and taxidermied animals. Maybe a child wouldn't notice any of this stuff and just dismiss it and watch the movie but only a really small child I would think. Most others would probably think it was creepy and scary and most people probably wont enjoy this stop motion film made with a bunch of dead animals and a little russian girl but teens and adults with an inkling towards the macabre will probably think this is badass. Its a really bizarre movie that probably only goths and weirdos will love. I wouldn't watch it with family members or lovers unless they like that sort of thing because they might think you're crazy for even knowing about this movie. Just tell them some guy on the internet showed it to you and they might be a bit more sympathetic lol.

Maybe in the late 80s stuff like this in eastern europe might have been more accepted and commonplace but today its taboo and will give negative connotations to it but its a unique film and it stays more true to the book than most other alice in wonderland remakes but also fills in those parts from the book with weird happenings and it will probably scare if not creep out a good ammount of people in todays times young and old. I would recommend watching this while going to bed. It's a more slow moving peaceful chaos type of movie.

Be Kind Rewind Review

2015-08-11T16:21:00.001-07:00

Be Kind Rewind is a little dramatic comedy film from 2008 written and directed by Michel Gondry starring Jack Black, Mos Def, Melonie Diaz, Danny Glover, Mia Farrow and Sigourney Weaver. It's a quaint movie about a small time video rental store in the town of Passaic, New Jersey and their struggles living in a poor area trying to get by and the people in that town.

Mos Def plays what I would say the leading character is with jack black supporting the role as mos defs friend in the movie and it goes through their struggles trying to save the video store both while the owner is there and while he is away. All the VHS Tapes get ruined and they make their own homemade bootleg versions of the entire video collection at the store and it gets a little out of hand. By the end of the movie you're going to have sympathy for the characters and the Be Kind Rewind Video Store and even the town passaic, new jersey and its history. It tugs at the heartstrings like you experiences their hardship and are rewarded with a happy ending. Its one of those kind of movies but the humour strewn throughout the film are really interesting and creative and close to reality. Its like you're in a ghetto town video store with some dorky fellows who were the geeks in school and never really had any success but they get by and have a humble existence.

Each event in the film is engaging it makes you want to see what happens next and you have the feeling like "oh my gawd i can't believe they did that lol" and you wanna see the consequences. It makes for good drama and the things that are so dramatic that they do are silly and just wonderfully dorky. Makes you really like the characters by how silly they are. Everyone loves a silly goose and we all know jack black is a big silly goose. It's definitely classic jack black comedy with a touching story.

Give it a try.. if you can find it. Not the easiest one to find but you know amazon is always a good place to get it but I wouldn't check your local video store that deals in new and used movies because it can be a hard one to find; very hipster they've probably never heard of it lol.

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Fantastic Mr. Fox Review

2015-08-11T15:28:00.000-07:00

Fantastic Mr. Fox is a stop motion animation comedy film made in 2009 based on the book of the same name by Roald Dahl the author of such things as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach and The Witches among other classics. Great author of childrens books I loved them when I was a kid and they make great family films. This one can be seen as a kids movie but this more is more of an adult movie in my opinion. It was directed by Wes Anderson and I read that it was his first animated film and first film adaptation. It stars George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Michael Gambon, and Owen Wilson.

So I think this film is very avant garde indeed. The animation with the humanoid bodies and the animal heads has been done before but the art is very "indie culture" and I think that kind of urban millenial artist type aesthetic is protrayed excellently in this film. Its intellectual its very adult in its humour like you see alot in 90s media but relatively safe for kids to watch. It pokes fun at things like having family members staying at your place and the kid gets jealous, midlife crisis where you buy extravagant things to make your ego satisfied the realty business stuff like that. Things adults willl understand that kids wont but kids can still find things they like about the film too.

The plot of the story is about the self proclaimed "Fantastic Mr. Fox" who was a thieving fox played by George Clooney who you may know from the oceans 11, 12, 13 etc thief movies. He has a girlfriend whos eggo goes preggo so she tells him to settle down and stop being a thief and so he starts a family and everything then moves to a new place and gets the urge to start stealing again and the whole thing goes by the actions of his last thief job and the consequences therein. All the characters are lovable they all have something unique and interesting about their character. The voice acting may seem a bit strange at first but the more you watch it the more you can see it was planned that was and is actually very good and very smart in how the actors read their lines in conjuction with the animation it all melds for a soup of lovable dorky characters. They took the original story but they definitely made it new and creative and its own kind of thing not like most other film adaptations. You will either love the creativity and artistic drive in this films making or you'll think its like an indie comedy disguised as fantastic mr fox and won't like it so much. This is one of those movies that creates its own slang terms and in my experience any media like that is always going to be cherished by certain dorky people who like to use dry humour to make their friends laugh in a dorky way and this gives you fuel to do that. I won't spoil it for you you'll just have to see.

All around this movie is unique and artistic and a joy to behold. Yoou have to pay attention to get the little jokes though you can't half watch it half check your smartphone or you'll miss all the little jokes that make this a gem of a film. The animation is interesting you can tell its cheap stop motion right away but they made that a quality about the film to be enjoyed. The choppy parts of the animation they make use of that in a creative way which is very avant garde you don't really see creative uses of a smaller budget stop animation film like this movie has.

And thats my review I think everyone should see this movie at least once and if you liked it you should go out and buy it because its a fun artistic movie with lots of quality humour and there is some pretty good music in it too.

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Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Review

2015-08-11T14:18:00.000-07:00

I love this movie to bits. As you can imagine from the title "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" it's a science fiction comedy film and its definitely one of the best if not the best of the genre. Its based off the book of the same name written by douglas adams which is part of a whole series the books are: "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", "Life, The Universe and Everything", "So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish" and "Mostly Harmless". This Movie makes use of bits of all the books but focuses on the main story from the book of the same name. I imagine they didn't get a contract to make all the books into seperate films so to do it any justice they had to make due and do the best they could. You have to give them credit for that. If you have never read the books and like scifi comedy you will definitely like this one if you read all the books you'll get all the little things they put in the movie but might be a tad disappointed they didn't do more.

The film came out in 2005 its "British-American" directed by Garth Jennings and stars Martin Freeman, Sam Rockwell, Mos Def and the lovely Zooey Deschanel. The story is about Arthur Dent a human whos planet gets destroyed by aliens but is rescued by this journalist for this repository of knowledge the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy and his adventures in space and on other planets that have shocking parallels with things he experienced while on earth. Throughout the film you get snippets of entries in the guide which was fun to watch when you see the guidebook you know theres going to be some silly story going on to describe an alien race or how to react to an event. The whole thing has a fun whimsical attitude about it. Its intellectual humour any geek can appreciate.

I do have to say the beginning may confuse some. It starts out with the video resolution being small like a home video on a bad digital camera then the screen gets bigger to the normal widescreen or full screen version we are used to seeing. The pan out shows you that they made it small on porpoise but you might not enjoy the beginning bit for that reason. The rest of the movie is engaging and interesting. Theres always a new creative gag happening which makes this movie such a treat to watch all throughout. The slower parts you may find boring but those are few. There is action, adventure, romance, comedy all things that make a movie easy to watch for either gender. I really like this movie alot its an instant cult classic for scifi just like the fifth element is and if you like scifi comedy like I do this is a must have for your collection. I'll even go as far as to say it can even help you cheer up on a bad day.

That is my review have at it give it a try go buy it on amazon do the things.

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Obscure Genres : Seapunk

2015-08-11T01:25:00.000-07:00

Seapunk is sooooo bizarre. Its a strange subculture that started on the internet as a joke by some people who had a case of 90s internet culture nostalgia but the label stuck and it started this little subculture. Most people will say its not even the seapunk music thats that important its more about the fashion and the art which I think is true. The music isn't really that great you can tell it was meant as a joke and the art too but the art has weird horribly rendered 3d graphics in neon colors it just makes you go wtf am I even looking at right now O.o and it draws your attention and you forget all about the seapunk music that goes with it lol. I have to admit I actually really like the creativity put into the art and fashion of seapunk sure its all teal and seafoam green and hot pink or pastel colors but its kind of interesting and it looks kinda good if slightly bizarre. Most people don't know don't care and can't even comprehend what seapunkers are even doing its so different than mainstream culture its not even funny. like seriously.

A journalist once said seapunk music was "a style of music that incorporates bits of 90s house, the past 15 years or so of pop and R&B, and the latest in southern trap rap—all overlaid with a twinkly, narcotic energy that recalls new-age music and chopped and screwed hip-hop mix tapes in roughly equal measure."

If you listen to the music you will notice its got like a faster break beat or hip hop beat and like chiptune or trancey riffs and oftimes the weirdest vocal samples to make it random and a tad comical. There are a couple influences not every ones going to be the same but you definitely hear alot of those 2 things the faster breakbeat drums and chiptunes. Top Sea Punk Artists are Azealia Banks, Blank Banshee, Kreayshawn, Fire For Effect, Merman, Zombelle, Slava, Unicorn Kid, Baby Tap, Ideal Corpus and Splash Club 7

Being that this subculture is so underground and pretty much only on the internet thats where you are going to find the clothes and the media. KnowYourMeme which is a good database of good knowledge on internet culture has a page about seapunk [here] that has some good information and videos on it and [this] is the Tumblr Tag where most of the whole movement of seapunk takes place.

The seapunk clothing retailers are few most of them are home made and sold on etsy

http://www.incontrolclothing.com/
http://www.mainframe.im/
http://ninjacosmico.com/shop/

Some honorable etsy mentions:

Some fun parody videos on how to seapunk:

Some of my favorite seapunk digital art images:

Obscure Genres : Psytrance

2015-08-11T00:35:00.000-07:00

Psy Trance. Some people can't stand it and some people really have a strong connection to it. Psychedelic Music has always been a bit weird and has a bad rap with the mainstream crowd. "Only druggies listen to that stuff" you know. While it is psychedelic in nature and i'm sure people on drugs like that type of music that doesn't mean you should dismiss it as only for druggies or to be heard on drugs. This music has its own subculture just like most subgenres do. It has its own art style, fashion, sound and community. Psy Trance is said "by the psytrance ravers" to be the last true subculture left. Usually only psytrance ravers know about psytrance raves that go on and keep it close knit because they don't need bad vibes or narks crowding around them. These are the still happening forest raves and illegal warehouse raves and psy trance rave promoters put on the best theatrics out of any other style rave in the scene. Its psytrance and its colorful and theres lots of lights and lasers and pretty pictures and good art.

Psy Trance started out in Goa, India in the 90s. It was meant to bring more spirituality to dance music. The music has a steady progressive rhythm with a fruity kick and fast bassline with seemingly random outer space inspired acid squelches and trance synths. It can seem kinda weird and it might be kinda weird but it does work and when you listen to it you can see what the initial idea was for the music. The put an image in your mind of what the music is like to me is its like a dance party right normal 4 on the floor beat but its deep and kinda strange its fast yet still a calm steady rhythm and you are flying through outer space and see the occasional shooting star or meteor and less frequent but still see nebulas and you know space dust and what not lol. Its like flying through space in my mind. Its all very outer spacey to me. All the basslines sound pretty similar with a trancey riff and some space samples. An hour long mix can go by like that. That kind of the point of the trance thing though.

Ancient Shamans and even Shamans today use a 4-7 beats per second rhythm a fast rhythm to induce a trance state so they can go visit the spirit world and this music recreates that atmosphere while giving you uplifting progressive melodies to heighten your experience with it. You can lose your self very easy listening to psytrance. I could easily dance 10 hours straight and not even realize its been 10 hours if its psy trance i'm not even kidding. Non stop dancing all through the night no problem. Its a good genre to rave to and to study or work to imo because of the trance state it can put you in. Its a very special and unique type of electronic and it deserves its praise. My father first got me into psytrance with artists like GMS and IM so its always going to have a special place in my heart. The Ravers are really nice sometimes theyre tripped out space cadets on drugs but alot of the time they are kind of new agey nice people who are partial to dance music.

Here are the Top Artists to get you into Psy Trance:
Growling Mad Scientists
Infected Mushroom
Astral Projection
1200 Micrograms
Shpongle
Hallucinogen
Astrix
Vibasphere

I think to listen and download these you have to make an account on the website which is a drag but I promise it is worth it these mixes are bomb!

Mothership by Alecsey
Star Burst by Outrunner
General Psy Trance search on House-Mixes

Obscure Genres : Dungeon

2015-08-10T23:05:00.001-07:00

"The Dungeon Sound" is a subgenre of dubstep which is a subgenre of electronic music. Dubstep started in the 90s it's a mix of hip hop style beats (the step) and deep often wobbly basslines (the dub). Now the dungeon sound or dungeon sound dubstep or dungeon dubstep or just dungeon is defined as deep dark dubstep very very low bass with dark gritty soundscape and morbid vocals. It's really slow and most of it sounds like just that with deep wobbles mixed in with a deep bass and a slow minimal dubstep beat.

I've been listening to this since soon after I got into dubstep from an indie blog of a London underground dj who invited a guest to make a mix for his blog and then another person also made a mix and these two mixes were dungeon sound and I really liked it so I started researching and got into it and I even have my own 2 hour long dungeon mixtape:

Black Widow by Catapilla on Mixcloud

Last.fm doesn't have a listing for top dungeon artists but dubstep forum does so here it is artists like: Kryptic Minds, SP:MC, LX One, J:Kenzo, DJ Madd, Lurka, TMSV, Benton, Icicle, Ben Verse, Sleeper, District, V.I.V.E.K., Antics, Subreachers, Thelem, Triky. This is the forum thread dedicated to this style music right [here]. The original mix I heard the author took it down maybe I can reload it later somewhere but the 2nd mix I heard is [here].

Playing with Cards

2015-08-10T02:09:00.001-07:00

I have an affinity for playing cards. I think the whole aesthetic is cool and I have a small collection of decks that I'll be showing you.

First of let's go through some uses for playing cards. Let's go back in time a bit. Playing cards origins mankind doesn't actually know the true origin of them but our farthest back records go to chinese stone plaques being the first deck of cards then it was later developed to bet more hand held and was spread by traveling soldiers. There's been a bunch of different versions of the suits. We currently use a medieval french deck (being of mostly french heritage myself I think that's pretty cool).

A little known fact is that the playing card deck we are all familiar with is essentially a more simplified version of the tarot. We don't even know which one came first do your guess is as good as mine the only difference is that tarot used major and minor arcana to separate the trumps from the minor suit cards and has a name for each major trump while regular playing cards is just the complete minor arcana cards using different names for the face cards.

You can use either style decks to play games like black jack, crazy eights , go fish etc. or you can get specialized decks made up of certain cards for certain card games like wizard adds a card called the wizard and pinochle uses 4 sets of 9-A I believe. So stuff like that. Then there's card magic tricks that can be easy to learn but difficult to master. I know a couple and tbh the sneaky moves don't always go so well but most of the time I can fool them and they always have a smile on their face all excited so it's a good thing to learn a couple card tricks imho.

You can learn cardistry which goes along with the whole stage magic thing. Basically it's handling the cards a fancy way like not everyone card shuffle the deck in one hand or make a triforce in your hands in 2 seconds with the cards that's cardistry. It also is easy to learn but hard to master because this takes muscle memory and finesse to accomplish I can do a handful of tricks I've showed people. Some can do it too right away some drop the cards everytime. It takes practice. The last main use for cards is naturally divination the term is "cartomancy" there's a system of corresponding meanings for every card and ofttimes even whether it's upside down or right side up and the meanings can be the same or different depending on the deck because the idea is that there are certain spiritual forces governing the response of the cards dealt. That's why psychics keep them in black velvet bags that protect from Spirits, light protection and psychic candles and such. I personally use the standard meanings for all the cards no matter which deck it is regardless if its playing cards or tarot Cuz the playing cards have a corresponding tarot card so I use that meaning. There is a standard meaning that most decks used that comes from the most popular deck the Rider-Waite deck. Most commercial tarot decks are more themed artistic recreations of that deck but it's not always the case.

Here are my decks tarot first then playing decks: [will do after work]

Deviant Moon Tarot

The Tarot of Vampyres

Tarot of the Zirkus Mägi

The Ultimate Deck

Ask Alexander Deck

Hi My Name Is Mark Deck

Bicycle Sideshow Freaks Decck

Tim Burtons Playing Cards

Obscure Genres : Dark Cabaret

2015-08-10T01:52:00.001-07:00

Dark Cabaret Music is essentially like Gothic or dark circus and cabaret music. The aesthetic is important to the genre is really is just goth meets Cirque Couture. They say it is inspired by Weimar Era Cabaret, Burlesque and Vaudeville. The idea you wanna go for with dark cabaret is like a poor traveling circus who is out casted and can only get gigs in bad parts of town. The whole goth thing fits right in and you ofttimes find dark cabaret songs talking about grotesque or tragic events. Storytelling is a big part of the music you wanna tell a chilling tale about be able to act it out like theater but dark theater accompanied by music.

There dark cabaret fashion is excellent it's my favorite thing and I try to incorporate Cirque into my daily dress because I'm avid about the circus and goth and dark cabaret I feel right at home with. The dress is goth + circus like I mentioned before. The music you hear circus waltzes, cabaret songs and polka rock type stuff it's never really electronic music it's real classical instruments you would find in a circus or gypsy band. The most popular artist has got to be dresden dolls which are wonderful but I personally think circus contraption is my favorite group. They do a whole live circus show using their songs and the albums are amazing.

Top Artists:

Voltaire

The Tiger Lillies

Vermillion Lies

The Dresden Dolls

Evelyn Evelyn

Beat Circus

Circus Contraption