Uhhh....... second chapter of the search for nice asian music. Furniture is a wonderful, wonderful indie "postrock" 5 piece band from Selangor, Malaysia. Yes, Malaysia. Dreamy, broken, childish, blossoming, cozy, tranquil, smiling, kissing, holding hands, hugs (multiple hugs)...... shoelaces, icecream, 80´s sony walkmen (the big yellow ones), flowers, milkshakes, and childrens chemical helicopters (the ones outside supermarkets you put money in to shake your kids around), are definently among the things i picture when listening to their soothing songs. Again, without saying too much... They did a great debut record entitled "Twillight chases the sun" with a lovely cover that has a nice cut for the yellow cd (on top of the dark blue/green background) which makes it look like the moon peeping out from the cover. Nice.... nice... nice. You should listen to them sometime. Visit them here :www.myspace.com/earsofa
So........... over the next few weeks im gonna post up some newer nice, lovely and interesting asian bands/artists in here. Maybe you like it/them, maybe you dont. Anyhow, without too much ado. This is Toe, a great japanese band ive fallen totally in love with. (not to be confused with the american band Toe).
A very nice band, that i would love to see live one day. Check out their site aswell, with tons o great pics amongst other things. www.toe.st/
Yeah. I just cant get enough of this one. It just seems to be an amazing pmp. Before i forget, last time i mentioned the q5 i forgot to state that it ofcourse, just like the Cowon A2 and other cowon devices, has a Usb host (cameras, phone, other players etc.). Anyhow, heres some more pics (courtesy of the Korean Cowon site). Notice the tiny D2 aswell (lying on top of the q5). The D2 which already is out in most of europe. Very nice device aswell. Oh well.... here some great pics to get you wound up. Please pay close attention to the amazing screen, which is obviously.... insanely contrast rich and viewable from even sharper angles (3rd last pic). Enjoy.
I posted about the Commodore Gravel media unit some time ago, and just thought i would follow up and post these pics to show you how things are coming along.... how good it looks etc. All 3 Gravel units (here only shown 2, c200 which is a smaller unit just for music, coming later) will be able to connect directly to commodores new massive media empire. Rumours are that you will be able to have individual storage space for your media at their site (perhaps along a profile or something, who knows. ;)). Gonna follow up on that later. In the meanwhile check this out, including the link to the official Gravel site.
So you dislike Will Ferrel? or.....You love him... think he´s funny..... dumb... or just boring? Well forget all that then, cause this is defienently not the same guy, or atleast thats what this fantastic movie made me realize. Dont judge a book by its cover..... A classic quote to go along the possible fact that this movie , might as well.... could have been... very much ignored for more than one reason. First one being: It looks like a dumb comedy on the poster. Two: It stars Will Ferrel, whos mostly known for ha ha comedies.... or well... only known for that kind of comedy. Three: Queen Latifa is in it, and alot of people (i think) swear to avoid her acting, or atleast her pressence which always brings to mind the tragic ghost of horrible "non-white" 90´s sitcoms like "living single", "Fresh prince of bel air" and more. Well, well, well.... nevermind all those horrific attributes. Cause this movie is absolutely wonderful, and it is a must see if you love quirky drama flicks with a romantic twist. If i had a scale to judge movies on, and the scales went up to 100 seagulls, this movie would get a solid 87 of them. Big thumbs up, you could say. (and Will Ferrel..... is just mindblowingly great.... unbelieveable, but true).
Well.... i must admit i keep on getting impressed by Korean company Cowon (Iaudio). Not only did they a year ago convince me to buy their A2 portable media player, which is the best electronic device i have ever owned.... But they leave me hanging on tight, giving me hope, that in the future this company will keep pleasing the curious crowds. Well, let me just tell you abit about my experiences with my A2. It keeps battery life, like a weasel holds its bite on predators... Ive transferred loads of unconverted/original sized movies on it, and it has never complained... ive slept with it, dropped it, recorded live music with... run visuals (videoprojections) from it, at liveshows/meeting etc.... yes.... and iver seriously never seen it skip during a movie... can you believe that... (I even use it 1,5 hour a day atleast)... Once again. I mean it when i say that it is the best electronic device ive ever owned. period.
Thats why im very excited about the touchscreen enabled Cowon q5 theyre putting out this upcoming fall. Heres some spec details: 5inch radiant screen (1 inch bigger than A2), video in 800x480, wifi, bluetooth, 40/60gb Harddrive, Fm radio, divx/xvid support (again) well.... even Gps capable. Thats alot of stuff, packed into 13.8cm (width), 8.8cm (height), 2cm (depth), neatly designed fullgrown mediaplayer. Seriously look at it, and think about those specs. Its wonderful, cant wait to see it in the wild
So its kinda big.... but small... but big... if you know what i mean. ;) PS: By the way see it action here (Cnet) : reviews.cnet.com
Nothing fancy today, updated a more refreshing the top grahpics for my blog. Dunno if you noticed... nothing much really, just put some circles and colors in there. Also i was bored the other day so started doing some cute things. A very minimalistic crying Jellyfish (not tears from a broken heart, but from biking against the wind.).... and also a whispering black cloud (whispering: Here it comes).
Swedish Pressbyrån (a national kiosk franchise) ran some tv ads, some months ago that were really great, both musically... and idea wise, very intrigueing, in regards of the "concept" and/or focus. One of the tv ads was about Houston (Texas, Usa) group Knittaplease, a group of very... very cool girls, who took their colorful knitting to the streets, graffiti style. Insanely inspiring, refreshing and brilliant i must say (i was blown away)... and for you who have never seen the Pressbyrån tv ad, or even heard of Knittaplease, here it is, along some follow up stuff about them. Check them out, theyre fantastic.
Yeah, once again its been a while since ive blogged my stuff around in here. Anyhow, i should really get my act together. In the meantime, heres yet another quite wonderful ad for nothing less than a nordic (swedish and norwegian atleast) creditcard company. The music and the storyline, are both really amazing. Great job.
When i saw this on tv, i was absolutely blown away..... a fantastic commercial, both visually and audio wise. What can i say... I dont really give a **** about cars, but this commercial. Wauv...
Ok, here i go... What happens when you take one of the biggest and fastest growing (semi intelligent) companies in the world, with a fantastic patented clickwheel which enabled their socalled Ipod to conquer the world..... and you have them remove and forget their fantastic patented clickwheel, let them take a "couple" of years for thinking, and let them "reinvent/re-promote" the phone? Well... good question. Basically you get - Nothing. But... you also get a chinese company called Meizu and their meizu M8. An asian company with a vision and a phone that is, more Iphone (and revolutionairy) than the actual Apple Iphone itself. Hmmmm.... sounds crazy, right? Well basically what Meizu have done with their concepts around the M8 phone was to say... Why not approach (ok ok, borrow/adapt/adopt) what apple claims is so great and new. Clone it! and improve the hell out of it, all... for an even cheaper price. Scary, but none the less plausible. The Meizu M8 delivers 3g capabilities and a front view camera (which the Apple phone does not) which automatically makes it appeal to more customers, a 1mp upgrade on the backside camera compared to the Iphone, twice the resolution on the screen, almost (720x480 pixels), and if that wasnt enough, they even adopted the "white" that apple threw away or prioritized away in the process. Last but not least Meizu reduced the size of their phone a tiny bit.......... Numb yet? Meizu m8
Ok. Let me just state, i do acknowledge to some extent that Meizu indeed are ripping apple more than a bit (on the material use). But seriously, can apple really expect to present a revolution thats not even a revolution (technologically that is). They threw away their prime values : the clickwheel from the Ipod, and they skipped their signature white. So what do they have left? Squares with round corners? Sorry Mr. jobs, you cant really patent that (yet). So... im intrigued to see the result of all this during a couple of months. A thing to remember in the meanwhile: Consumer products is all about capitalism, and capitalism is all about making money... so did anyone really expect a fair game here?
Meizu M8 To be honest, i really do think that the Meizu M8 is the "real" complete package, the whole hand, the extra milage, or whatever you could say. Facts are: Apple slept on the job (or atleast doze off), and abandoned their typical domain... They didnt create the revolution they promized.... and suddenly there was china.
In 2000 (or around that time) i saw Doug liman´s film GO, and loved it. A couple of days ago i saw yet another film entitled "GO" (2002), a japanese film directed by unknown (to me) director Isao Yukisada. I bought the film at sale for something like 3 euros, and it was part of a batch of films i bought solely on the fact i knew i had missed some movies over the years, and these movies i was gonna purchase were some movies i probably wouldnt give a chance when stressing around the videostore. Anyhow, to the film.
Not in a long time, have i been so pleasantly surprised, and convinced that theres more than a truckload of golden moments forgotten out there. GO has totally regained my faith not only in asian movies (that arent horror or anime), but movies in general. A wonderful film, that leaves no genre or style untouched. GO is foremost, as stated several times in the opening scenes of the movie (wink wink): A love story. Though a love story, thru violence, happiness, racial disputes, onto action, drama, comedy, noir and poetry.... hmmm.... its actually quite hard to describe. Let me just point out that this film doesnt leave any emotional or visual nooks undiscovered.
A love story... seen from the perspective of a troubled but quite conscious korean boy, born and raised in a straight thinking "robotic" japan, not only by the means of a strict korean school (in japan) but also thru the violent family ties upon his disciplinary father - an ex-boxing champion constantly trying to physically motivate him to live his life the right way. From here on, tragedy, weirdness and love consistantly weaves a breathtaking 2 hour experience around a sequence of golden moments. I was entrigued by the title of the film, so i tried google´ing the meaning of the word GO. A japanese wiki page on a boardgame called the same as the film, suggested that the word Go meant something like "game of surrounding" or "enclosing game". Thru another search i discovered that Go-con (japanese slang supposebly) means something like "Hanging out" (in a specific area). Interesting, and quite possibly a very wisely intended chosen title for the film.
Just thought i could do a quick post here..... Anyhow just wanted to show you, what is probably one of the best music videos ive ever seen. I have been in love with that video ever since the day it came out. The music and the video itself goes together so great, and the end of the video is so damn beautiful..... tricky, pretty and dead on.
Started watching the show Heroes today, and i must say.... already by the first episode, im pretty impressed....... And in order just to keep blogging (and getting back to the show) i just wanna say: !Hmmmmmm..... This is actually so good, it might end up getting cancelled!" (more about what i meant with that later). Ohhhh and one last thing..... dont you just hate (sorry, "Dislike") people that chew with their mouths open. Oh my god.... i freakin´ hate the noises people can bring on within their heads, rampaging thru their daily meals like semi paralyzed zombie idiots imitating washingmachines without even knowing it. Its mindblowing! Now.. close that damn mouth! You hear!? (its the 21st century dammit... and no! it doesnt taste better just because you have your mouth open). He....
Anyhow, wanna beat the noises? Watch some tv-shows. Check out Heroes: Here. (and for you europeans..... since its not out here yet, torrents is the way to go. Youre gonna end up buying the dvd anyway when it comes out). Peace out.
Since last year sometime, dear old Commodore have been working on something quite exciting.... Called the Commodore Gravel. A portable media player and wifi enabled "remote"/handheld advanced mediacenter if you must. Not just for the new home, but also for the media craving loonies on the go. The design aspect is great, the technological bar set high...... So look out microsoft, look out iriver and others out there..... this could be a somehow sweeter thing than previously expected, and h*** its freakin´ Commodore.
But..... You know.... they havent been too generous with info on how far they really are......... untill..... guess what? Just a couple of days ago this exciting new video popped up on youtube posted by the commodore bloggers. Hmmm... Check it out!
Sandisk, whom had great succes in 2006 with their wonderful Sansa e series dap (digital audio player), launched their new flash memory based video player - sansa view, at Ces last week..... And i must admit.... i really love it... and the fact that its an actual design object, flash based even...... Anyhow for you guys out there who hasnt seen it yet, heres some a previews of it!:
basically its an 8gb device updateable with 4gb cards (perhaps even 8gb cards very soon). So i guess you could assume that Sandisk definently will be in your "grill" in the future (if you understand how great, pretty and cheap their neat stuff is). 299$ for a device like the sansa view, is pretty favourable...... dont you think?..... Anyhow.....im looking forward to seing more from the sandisk dudes. Most definently.
Like any other semi "tech" geek ive been sitting in front of my comp following CES (Consumer electronics show) in Las vegas last week. Cowon, my favourite company when it comes to media players, showed some really nice stuff, so i am excited to see more from them. Anyhow.... i searched around alot of websites to find pics and news about various CES related things (especially Cowon), when i suddenly stumbled upon this strange Cowon device, which i assume is a mockup (fake) made/posted by a fan. Anyhow i really loved it, since it would be cool to see Cowon aim for the smaller designs aswell. They do have a new touchscreen player out called D2m though they lacked to reveal a real succesor to the popular Iaudio A2. So maybe this new mystical "fake", could inspire them to do a A2 mini. Anyhow heres the stuff:
More pics: here (David_in_asia2006 at Flickr). Interesting.
Being a huge "post-apocalyptic" soul myself (???), it rocks my world to see the brits (thru mexican/aussie director Alfonso Cuarón) at it again when it comes to the post-apocalypse. For some reason they seem to have the apocalypse nailed down, to a somewhat way more believeable and not ridicolous level, when they do their films. What is it that makes them just a little bit better at these films..... Why is Terry Gilliams Brazil and 12 monkeys, 2 of the best and most original sci-fi/p.a (post-apocalypse) films out there. What is it exactly that grows from the soil, or flows in the water in the UK that enables them to come up with such outrageous ideas and different storylines. What is it that makes it possible for Danny Boyle to pick up the Zombie genre in 2002 (a somewhat embarrassing and dangerous turf to muster) with his 28 days later, and actually doing, what he did so good. A original piece of film with a delicate "non-zombie but still zombie" twist...... Im having trouble figuring that out. Well i must admit, there is far between the real masterpieces, so hopefully Children of men will make it, and claim its rightfull territory. I definently advise people to go see it, whenever it might arrive to its respectable areas.
Stills from Children of men
Later this year (soon i hope) we will also witness the without a doubt far most ambitious work of Danny boyle, thru his socalled "Sunshine". Just like Children of men, a definite p.a theme is haunting the depths of this project, and just like 28 days later, with a far more experimental touch of advanced science and human hopelessness . I cannot wait to see this film....... And would dare bet my right arm, it will shake the very foundation of mainstream pre-determination.
stills from Sunshine by Danny Boyle: Danny Boyle at the set.
Looks to be a great year for people with dark eyes on our socalled fantastic future. Check out the respectible sites of each movie: children of men and Sunshine. There.... and there........ok.
Wauv im posting something...... Ehhh anyhoo. Im a huge fan of french designer philippe starck, and i used to be the proud owner of one his beautiful minimalist wristwatches (unfortunantly it got nicked). Anyhow..... It pleases my sad soul to see Korean company Iriver present yet another fantastic design item of theirs. This time presenting an updated version of their s10 player, available sometime soon. A wearable "dock"....bluetooth enabled (for headphones). Wauv, indeed.... nice.
The first s10 model.
The new one (and new accessory)
A phillippe Starck watch (thought you might wanna see that too) I dont think its a ripp off. But its definently the kind of minimalism i would wanna throw my consumptive spirit straight into. Iriver does it again..... fantastic little thing.
Time to get this blog running again, been sick for a while, havent had the chance to go online that much. Anyhow, good news.....
The market within portable music and media players keep exploding, evolving and luckely growing for the better. Doesnt really come as a surprise, but new times are ahead.
First of all Apple held their Showtime event last month and presented the new ipod nano, some updated ipod videos, some tv related stuff etc. Whats really interesting about that, is..... In my personal opinion? For the first time ever Apple have missed their window.... their new nanos are hidious minitaure clones of their previous mediocre semi scandal: the apple mini. The new nanos arent that fantastic (in my opinion), least of all pretty. Their Ipod video updates dont do much more either (not that they have to), the most exicting thing beeing gapless playback that lets you slide from one track right into the next without any annoying pauses..... pretty nice.... anyhow.... i guess it must be logical to assume that all the apple people are working hard on their Iphone and the "real" ipod video, so they dont have that much time impressing us too much just yet. Well to summ it all up: As in independence day (the movie, will smit etc.): these are the seconds in the movie where the shields are out on the motherships, and it is time for competitors/enemies to strike and move on in.
So who can really go in and turn the tables? Well...... within the next few blog posts im gonna show you some stuff that can create some stirr, and hopefully put some sort of damper on the current horrifying ipod regime.
The obvious suggestion, challenger no.1........ the player that quite possibly could ruin/begin it all.... the player that everyone is talking about..... The Microsoft Zune:
What really gives the Zune the extra edge is that it comes with wifi that enables you wirelessly share songs between users, and connects you to the zune market place. It has a huge blazing sharp screen...... and it looks freaking hot. Especially in brown. It comes in 30 and 60gb to begin with, and opening prices are suggested to be between 200-250$, probably closer to 200 than 250$. So if microsoft can pull of the same quality stunt as with the xbox..... well then you know whats gonna happen, right? The zune is set to launch november 14th.
Heres some neat video aswell: A commercial teaser, with some nice emotional music:
