Life After Beth follows in the footsteps of Warm Bodies, being a romantic zombie comedy. When Beth dies, Zach is devastated and goes into serious grieving. When Beth rises from the dead, Zach sees it as his chance to do and say all the stuff he was too shy to go for the first time around. The critical reviews look pretty good on this one, and the fact that it is opening in theaters nationwide two weeks after it stormed through Sundance is a good indication that it is something special. The Girl at the End of the World just came out, about a couple in a long distance relationship, until a disaster knocks out all technology. They have to travel across the planet to be together, just in time for the end of the world. It isn’t in a movie theater, though, it is being released as a digital download; but I thought it was a great title and wanted to mention it.
How can 2NE1, the band who did so many amazing songs and my favorite Korean Girl Group, have any doubts about themselves? But apparently they do, as the interview released earlier this week indicates. Of course, this amazing foursome also put out the song UGLY, which I assumed was a diatribe against the advertising companies who spend millions of dollars every week to convince women they will never be attractive if they don’t buy their sponsor’s products. But perhaps I misunderstood what was going on in that song; or perhaps this is all a ploy to get more votes in the current World Music Awards competition, for which they have been nominated in 4 categories including Best Band, Best Song, and Best Live Show. Or maybe they just want to sell more tickets for their AON World Tour. I don’t really care which choice turns out to be the real one, as long as they keep generating more incredible music for us to enjoy!
I was watching the epic fantasy The Gu Family Book, about a nine tailed fox guardian spirit who falls in love with a human and fathers a demi-god with her before tragedy strikes. That tragedy kills her, turns him into a thousand-year demon, and leaves the child to be raised by a human family who have no concept of what he is. I was watching it off of my local independent outlet which included programming from the Korean language channel MBC by having my DVR set to record a two hour block of time Monday through Friday on that channel number. It had to be set that way because the program guide information submitted to TV Guide by the local re-broadcaster bore no resemblance to reality, so timed recording was the only option.
I managed to record and watch the first 22 episodes, then my cable company changed the programming of my set top box to “improve” it’s ability to locate shows by title or actors when running a search. In the process they broke the DVR function so it could no longer do recording by time blocks but only by program names as listed in the TV Guide service or in one of their online streaming affiliates. Not only have I never seen how that show ended, having lost the final two episodes of the series, but I have also lost all the shows they ran after that, as well as shows off of another 7 channels that also are rather slipshod in updating their TV Guide listings. It looks like I am finally getting some relief from this issue from two separate quarters. First off, as you can see from the embedded trailer, NBC/Universal will be releasing the series to DVD in 3 months or so, allowing me to add it to my permanent collection. Of course, since I can not speak or read Korean I am a bit unclear on whether it will be released in the US or only in Asia, but one can hope. I consider this show to be the best epic fantasy out of Korea for 2013 that I have found so far, so I will certainly be picking it up. More immediately, this series and a whole lot of other Korean TV Dramas are available for streaming on the MBC Hulu Plus channel, so I can finally see how the story ended.
Now if only my cable company would fix its broken set top boxes to give me back the ability to record program blocks by time and channel. If they don’t solve it soon, I guess I will have to buy a TIVO box, which does have that ability, and give my cable company back their broken DVR.
I recently featured the band Tommy Heavenly6, the punk offering from Tomoko “Tommy” Kawase, this time I am doing Tommy February6, still very rocking but leaning towards trance/electronica. The woman doing the vocals is amazing in any language, and she jumps back and forth between Japanese and English quite a bit. The first track is Runaway, and isn’t the song you were expecting by that title; the second tune is Sugar ♥ Me, while the third is Hot Chocolat.
Classic Rockabilly with a modern Japanese band, or maybe that is Punk, or perhaps Ska. Or something else; it gets hard to tell after a certain point, but they certainly play with enthusiasm. Myself, I suspect they might be channeling The Ramon’s and the Fine Young Cannibals by way of Chuck Berry and The Beatles. Whatever they are doing, I like it, and hope they do a lot more of it.
The band is called Tommy Heavenly6, and the first track is called Ruby Eyes, while the second one is Monochrome Rainbow, one of the best Oxymoron titles I have heard in a while. They are doing straight ahead rock and roll, and they sound quite tasty. The singer, Tomoko Kawase, started in 1995 and spun herself off in 3 different genres. She does most of her work as the band The Brilliant Green, an Alt-Rock group, while Tommy Heavenly6 is her punk leaning music and Tommy February6 is where her Synth/Trance offerings live. I love her music, it is amazing.