Tag: frogs

2019’s Best Movie: Sorry We Missed You

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

Yeah, I know, continuing my proud tradition of naming the year’s best movie alongside the albums of the year countdown. ‘Under the Skin‘ was named 2014’s movie of the year, but the award went unclaimed in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and indeed every year before 2014. However, the (latest) masterpiece by Ken Loach, ‘Sorry We Missed You,’ was such a powerful piece that inspired such painful bolts of recognition and sheer fucking anger that I had to make space in 2019 to talk about it.

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Oh, and by the way, this isn’t going to be one of those “Ooooooh, look at the camera angles! isn’t the mise en scène lovely?! Hints of Akira Kurosawa’s vagina dentata, perhaps??” reviews, as I have no interest in actually talking about the movie. Instead, these is mainly going to be a thousand words or so of me ranting about the twisted nature of capitalism in 2019. Like I said, it’s gonna be a lot of fun.

Continue reading “2019’s Best Movie: Sorry We Missed You” →

2 Bon Iver: 22, A Million

~ Lex Leeson ~ 6 Comments

Let’s get the important stuff out of the way first: I’ve always pronounced it ‘Bon Ivor’

+43

Because of this I set up a Google Alert to tell me when somebody finally made a ‘Bon Iver the Engine’ meme, as I truly believed that such a witty reference to both an ultra hipster musical act and an old children’s’ show would truly bring the world together in these troubled times

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No, but apparently he’s one of those ultra-hipster tossers who chooses to pretentiously pronounce his name the way it’s spelled, so the reference is lost

-3

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Continue reading “2 Bon Iver: 22, A Million” →

42 Alicia Keys: HERE

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

Don’t you hate it when people ask you what ‘kind of music’ you like?

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It’s awful to think that some people (most people??) only like a certain genre or style, which the question covertly supports

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HERE

Be very wary of people who quickly answer the question with a definitive variety of music, increasing your wariness exponentially the more specific the genre they name. If they say they like ‘dance’, ‘classical’ or ‘indie’ music, then they are merely extremely boring people who only really interact with music when they want to escape all ties to consciousness, relax in their study while planning further expansions of their plantation, or just want to really magnify their dullness, respectively

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However, if they get more detailed, and say they only like metal music made by Brummies without the full collection of fingers, or rock music containing no more than three chords made by two men in denim jackets with mullets, or by a band from Glastonbury with a strongly simian frontman singing songs about touching things, then they’re absolutely thinking of a specific artist and a specific time when they first heard their music and are cursed to spend the rest of their life searching in vain for that specific moment in their life when they were last happy

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Continue reading “42 Alicia Keys: HERE” →

55 D.D Dumbo: Utopia Defeated

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

dumbo

That film was sixty four minutes long. Sixty four minutes!!

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Back in 1941, film makers knew how long a film was meant to last, there was no scene in ‘Dumbo’ where Timothy Q.Mouse had a bath in a fucking magic pool and screamed as he was tortured visions of the Olsen twins exploded into magical CGI confetti as Robert Downey Jnr made some tortured pun about cheese or some shit, in order to expand on the Dumbo Cinematic Universe (DCU®). Boom, there’s your fucking film, now fuck off home. Life was great in 1941

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Continue reading “55 D.D Dumbo: Utopia Defeated” →

103 Lady Gaga: Joanne

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

The Ga has managed to avoid me thus far. When she first arrived and was at her successful and cultural highpoint, I was in my mid 20s and so obviously far too cool to really like her, and she was just far too big a deal to like ironically, as my overwhelming snarky self-satisfaction would have been lost in the midst of all those pathetic genuine fans

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Plus…

…

…

…she was a bit crap, wasn’t she? I mean, come on

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She was an absolutely brilliant pop star, exhibiting shades of both Bowie’s artistic mindedness and Prince’s

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delight in using both sexuality and fashion to subvert and offend, and the world needs pop stars who are willing to shock the order by stroking their genitals across the dead body of Kermit the Frog while projectile vomiting raw meet <I can’t find the incident to which you are referring, can you please clarify?- Ed>

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Oh, and for prior services to fashion Googoo gets

8 Prince Points

But, yeah, songs like the dull electronica of Poker Face or the shameless pandering of Born This way were always several shades less interesting and experimental than the person from whence they came

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So, maybe I’m too late, and the Gagoo I discover is producing significantly better music, but the terms of the agreement she made with God unfortunately means she is now about 12.5% as interesting as she used to be

-9

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That atrocious lyric is slightly redeemed by the chorus though, which is the inaugural recipient of my

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award, which awards a singer finding new and exciting way to work their mouth around a lyric:

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Metacritic: +67

Length 45 minutes +1

Number of AMAZING songs: 1 (+10)

Best Lyric: ‘She’s stacking money, money everywhere she goes/You know, pesos out of Mexico/De uno, commas and them decimals/She don’t gotta give it up, she professional’ +1

Is the last song just the first track but played on Ukulele? No -1

Total 66

Images stolen from:

http://gagadaily.com/forums/topic/243627-has-gaga-ever-lip-synced/

http://www.animalplanet.com/pets/healthy-pets/what-does-it-mean-when-your-cat-licks-you/

http://www.istockphoto.com/gb/illustrations/vomit?excludenudity=true&sort=mostpopular&mediatype=illustration&phrase=vomit

http://www.wwe.com/superstars/razor-ramon/razor-ramon-photos#fid-26074025

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/entertainment/music/Lady-Gaga-Beyonce-Premiere-Tarantino-Inspired-Telephone-Video-87444397.html

http://gagadaily.com/forums/topic/201964-joanne-album-cover-meltdowns-go-in-here/?page=3

107 Sleigh Bells: Jessica Rabbit

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

Capturing lightning in a bottle is difficult enough to do in the first place

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I mean, how would you even go about doing that? Are you climbing trees in a thunderstorm with an empty jam jar with a magnet inside?

-3

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Perhaps more difficult though, is perfectly capturing frogs in a box

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A box full of frogs sounds insane to the uneducated ear, yet if done right such madness can be absolutely exquisite. Already on this list Childish Gambino has attempted the first frog boxing of this career but fell short of majesty and Primal Scream have tried and failed to recapture the glorious frog boxing that they stumbled upon with their glorious ‘Xtrmntr’ album, an album that’s a perfect example of how fantastic capturing frogs in boxes can sound when it is done right

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Such success is extremely rare, which makes the fact that The Sleighbos managed to achieve it on their debut album ‘Treats’

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in 2010, an astonishing album of which the inclusion of Rill Rill on some recent advert for bubble gum tampons, or some shit, has provided near constant recent reminders of its genius

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I used to be dead against artists selling money for adverts, because that’s the opinion you’re supposed to have, until a friend pointed out that if I had ever illegally downloaded an album then I had absolutely no right to complain. I quickly realised that I had succumbed to the horrible Millenial idea that everything should be provided to me without me exerting any effort or money and that artist should produce work solely for the privilege of pleasing my fat ugly ginger self, and felt ashamed

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The fact that I parted with ten pounds of my heard earned Employment and Support Allowance for Sleigh-Sleigh’s

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fourth album <you said that with such confidence, is it actually true??- Ed> such a crushing disappointment

-3

It definitely resembles Him enough to win

5 Prince Points,

but unfortunately it sounds more like the stuff He came out with in the mid-90s by when insanely prolific recording and releasing had left Him closer to artistically spent

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It’s far from a bad album, and has more fabulous songs than many releases (cough) this year, but the glorious insanity that once came naturally to them now sounds contrived and forced. The production can’t decide if it’s a dance album or 80s rock pastiche, and many songs are almost turned legitimately bad by the horrendous idea to add crunching rock guitar riffs to their unbroken sound, which strikes me as a last minute addition to the record and may well be the worst decision of 2016

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Metacritic: +72

Length 43 minutes… +3

Best Lyric: ‘Big homie better grow up/Me and my whoadies ’bout to stroll up/I see them boppers in the corner/They sneaking out the back door’ +1

Is the last song just the first track but played on Ukelele? No -1

Total 53

images stolen from:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/jessica-rabbit/id1147786245

http://www.npr.org/artists/126668015/sleigh-bells

http://www.npr.org/artists/126668015/sleigh-bells

https://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/how-photograph-lightning-summer

http://sam-birch.com/portfolio/older-works/