Gratuitous World

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Posts Tagged ‘pitchfork’

Transformers’ Brain Trust Can’t Handle Divergent Opinions On Moderately Accessible Female Musician

Posted by Matt on October 21, 2011

BOOM!

I was reading Pitchfork’s review of the new Feist album in order to formulate an original opinion. Then a link caught my eye.

This is (by far) the best nugget I’ve taken from the site.

Shia LaBeouf learned how to play with others on action-movie sets, which may help explain why he’s often ready for a fight. One scrape last October during the filming of “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center pitted the young actor against director Michael Bay over a song.

With military and NASA personnel watching, Bay and his leading man were shooting an emotional sequence from the script’s third act on a shuttle launchpad at Cape Canaveral. To put himself in a somber frame of mind, LaBeouf plugged his iPod into some speakers and started playing a wistful ballad, Feist’s “Brandy Alexander.”

“Yeah, it’s a little feminine, but it touches me,” LaBeouf says, starting to pepper his recollection with more expletives than are allowed in the PG-13 film. “I feel something when I hear it. … But Mike doesn’t want to listen to ‘Brandy Alexander’ under the rocket with 50 military dudes around.”

Bay unplugged the actor’s iPod, LaBeouf says, and replaced it with his own, cueing up the propulsive, orchestral “The Dark Knight” score. “I take him aside, I’m like, ‘Mike, this is the most important moment in the movie for me. The crux of my whole character, my whole arc. That doesn’t work for me, dude.’ … Now it’s two dudes ready to kill each other. … Spit’s flying.” According to LaBeouf, Bay left the set with the NASA/military entourage, and his director of photography finished shooting the sequence without him. (Bay declined to be interviewed for this piece.)

After much deliberation, 2 armored truck explosions, and a Red Bull/vodka-induced LaBeouf temper tantrum, the 2 douchebags settled on that Aerosmith song from Armageddon.

After working on three “Transformers” movies together, the 25-year-old actor says, Bay is “sort of my big brother. …We’re both very game, very passionate people. Sometimes it’s not actor-director. Sometimes it’s two dudes yelling over explosions. Sometimes it doesn’t sound like the friendliest conversation. But we love each other.”

The greatest love story Bay has produced.

As for Feist, the new album is pretty good. Graveyard is a beautiful song. I’d give it about a 7.8. Nahhh, 7.7.

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Pitchfork Reviews The Cheap Bottle Of Wine I Drank Last Night – 2007 Vinos Piñol Ludovicus

Posted by Matt on October 19, 2009

Mas o Menos

Mas o Menos

 
2007 Vinos Piñol Ludovicus – 5.9
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Ludovicus nearly attains a balance of cohesion and chaos. Taking less risks than its predecessor, it still offers the same tattered simplicity and battered delivery that create such warmly imperfect aromas.
 
  
 
 While it is clear that, as Ludovicus tames and grooms its unruly aesthetic, it does not attempt to achieve the clarity of, for example, Imogen Heap.
 
 
 It’s hard not to feel the vineyard’s dry winds of irony in latter tastes of the bottle.  While manifesting in linear paths that never venture far from poignance, one can’t help view this bottle as fostering a sense of resignation.

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Pitchfork Reviews the Cheap Bottle of Wine I Drank Last Night – Blackstone Pinot Noir 2007

Posted by Matt on May 9, 2009

ellusive, yet vibrant...

ellusive, yet vibrant...

Blackstone Winery:  2007 Pinot Noir – 7.3

For its price, this bottle contains more interesting complications than I am capable of harnessing in the limited space provided.  Despite the cloudy threads that crisscross this vintage, Blackstone sends out some supremely positive vibes. The first two glasses stand out as impressive tangents that skillfully mediate the rest of the bottle’s oldtime tannins.

Drinking this wine is not unlike taking a lazy, yet unpredictable river jaunt with Dennis Hopper’s character in Apocalypse Now.

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