I was just surfing around for new movies and came across one that interested me as a lover of music and music history: Cadillac Records. Check out the trailer.

I guess it was released on the 5th of this month and I’m actually really surprised I missed any news on this one (thanks to school probably, that or a crippling WoW addiction at the moment). Chronicling Chess Records it stars Adrian Brody as Leonard Chess, Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters, Mos Def as Chuck Berry, Eamonn Walker as Howlin’ Wolf, and Beyoncé Knowles (meh) as Etta James.

Holy fucking shit! This really looks great. I’m really not a fan of Beyoncé Knowles at all, but I’m willing to be optimistic with this one.

Chess Records began as a small store in Chicago called Aristocrat Records. Leonard Chess and his brother Phil bought out the company and renamed it Chess Records. Leonard and Phil would bring in artists they would find and have them sit in with their session musicians, many of them accomplished artists in their own right. Many of the above artists had recorded with Chess, blues musicians and even The Rolling Stones, from England, before they were the “bad boys” the bad version of The Beatles.

An amazing number of well known artists recorded with Chess in the 50′s and 60′s, among my favourites are Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, & Etta James. It was the home for the Chicago Blues, an electrified version of the Delta Blues.

I will be seeing this as soon as finals are over next week. I’m a gigantic music nerd, and Chess was around at the beginning of R&B music, back before it was overproduced tripe, back when it meant something to rise up from nothing and become something. Back when the music was… amazing.

-Tyler

With Dr. Horrible I wanted to wait until I had seen all three episodes before I said anything about the series – I imagine most people have already seen this, but if you have not do it now!

There’s also a primer comic introducing you to Captain Hammer on myspace of all places, written by Joss’ brother Zack and put out by Dark Horse. Read that as well.

Short review because I’m tired:

Let me just say that this is possibly the funniest, and saddest, musicals I have ever seen – the first two acts are extremely funny (I would say the bulk of the fun songs are in the second act) and the third has the darker sense of humor I relate to the 7th season of Buffy. Neil Patrick Harris is absolutely amazing as a super-villain and Felicia Day is amazingly expressive. Nathan Fillion also plays a awesome stupid/stuck-on-himself superhero.

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How great this mini-series was makes it more difficult to have to decide between it and the Ghostbusters panel on Friday at Comic-Con, sadly I think I’m going to have to go to the Ghostbusters panel – it’s the main reason I got everything set up for SDCC in the first place.

Hopefully there is a Dr. Horrible or Mutant Enemy booth and I will be able to get a copy of the DVD (signed by the main cast?) while at the con.

-Tyler

Dr. Horrible’s is a web series being developed by Joss Whedon (Buffy, Angel, Firefly) and starring Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser, M.D., Starship Troopers, How I Met Your Mother), Nathan Fillion (Buffy, Firefly, Slither), and Felicia Day (Buffy, The Guild, Hotel Erotica Cabo… sorry, Felicia, just kidding! She really needs to have that removed) in a musical style, sing-along… blog.

The music and singing, none of which is displayed in the trailer, is undoubtedly great. Why? Oh, I have to support my statements now? Crap, alright, does everyone remember the musical episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer? Joss Whedon is no slouch when it comes to music, and he tends to surround himself with people who can sing and are great at it – except Alyson Hannigan, apparently, but no worries, she’s still awesome all the same. I can only imagine Joss getting some of the best vocalists he could think of working with on a project that’s touting itself as a “sing-along blog”… so yeah, that good enough for you?

-Tyler

[From Teaser on Vimeo]

The show kicked off with a short introduction and went right into “Piece Of My Heart” (which is a little overplayed, but still fucking rocked.) There were two girls who played Janis Joplin, one was a narrator of her writing and the other was the singer – who also ended up helping out in the narration, and who also served as a visual show of the duality of Janis Joplin’s personality, she was the on stage personality. I wish I had found out the name of the singer because her voice was… amazing to say the least.

At a lot of the shows my buddy Kevin and I go to we end up being either the youngest or close to the youngest – we saw the Kingston Trio in Carmel-by-the-Sea a few years ago we were almost the youngest people in the crowd, save for a 7 year old that we were informed looked “none too happy to be there”, but because of that and a woman we met there (who ended up being the fiancée of one of the Trio) we got to meet the guys after the show. Of course, I really thought Janis was far from exclusive to the older crowd that these kind of events seem to generate. It was a very well put together show, with great narration and excellent singing.

Best musical I’ve ever seen.

-Tyler

Scarlett is okay looking, I enjoy looking at her. Hell, I wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating crackers, if you know what I mean, but I do believe she has no business singing. This glam, synth-pop shit (or whatever it is) that has been done to Wait’s music is… horrifying. I can’t say she’s got a horrible voice, but what the fuck have they done? Everyone remember her singing karaoke in ‘Lost in Translation’? I do, it wasn’t horrible. It was actually kind of cute and endearing.

I don’t outright hate this album, actually when I first heard about it I was kicking myself and trying to figure out how I would go about purchasing it (whether I’d go into a record store I never go to so as not to look like a complete douche to the people who have come to know and respect my taste in music)

Anyway, give it a listen for yourself and decide for yourself-

-Tyler

PS, I stole the imeem.com link from Wil Wheaton: In Exile.

NIN: The Slip

NIN’s first full free album, The Slip, was released a couple of days ago and I’m just getting around to listening to it for about the 3rd or 4th time so I figured I’d give it a short review.

Here goes, this is what I was expecting from Ghosts. Now, don’t get me wrong- I really enjoyed Ghosts I-IV, and I didn’t mind paying for $5 for II-IV. Hell, I wouldn’t have minded $15 or even $20 for Ghosts. It was just an instrumental album, which isn’t what I was looking for in the Ghosts release, however, it makes a wonderful background soundtrack for when I need to study.

When I hear about a new nine inch nails release I don’t expect an album like The Downward Spiral, or The Fragile, because I know Trent Reznor is a guy who likes to make something then to move on and not sit and dwell on the past. The guy has put out some amazing frickin’ albums, my favorite of which is The Fragile. I expect something innovative, original, and beautiful, from them every time the make a release- which I feel we got from BOTH Ghosts I-IV and The Slip.

-Tyler