Wednesday, 9 July 2008

Dolly Parton Set For Glastonbury

Glastonbury revellers who feel they are doing nine to five shifts traipsing through the mud are in for a treat as Dolly Parton will play the festival tomorrow.


Senior sources are refusing to officially confirm the arrival of the legendary country star, but Gigwise has been assured it is “99% certain she will be here.”


The Pyramid Stage is her likely destination, with a slot before Goldfrapp being touted as a possibility.


There have already been numerous secret shows at the festival, with Franz Ferdinand playing yesterday and a special Last Shadow Puppets gig expected later this evening.


Stay tuned to Gigwise for more news from the site.




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Top 10 TV picks: July 1-7

Television critic Philip Wakefield chooses the 10 best shows on the box this week, for Tuesday, July 1 to Monday, July 7.

1. Burying Brian: Premiere of a Kiwi black comedy that was the first NZ drama to be made in high definition. Ironically, TV One won’t broadcast in HD until the start of next month’s Olympic Games.
TV One, 8.30pm Wednesday.

2. Brotherhood: With Underbelly gone, this Boston gangster drama is now the best crime show on TV. A pity it clashes with two of the week’s other best dramas, The Tudors and Mad Men, but at least there’s an overnight re-run at 2.15am.
The Box, 8.30pm Sunday.

3. Inside New Zealand: Life, Death and a Lung Transplant: Rachel Jean, who produced The Market and Ride With the Devil, documents her husband’s five-year ordeal of becoming the country’s 96th lung transplant recipient.
TV3, 9.30pm Thursday.

4. Doctor Who: Voyage of the Damned: Prime uses the 2007 Christmas special to launch the fourth series of the new-look Time Lord on a new night, as the lead-in to its fab Mad Men. It opens where the third series ended, with the TARDIS in a Titanic struggle, and guests stars Kylie Minogue.
Prime, 7pm Sunday.

5. Amazing Extraordinary Friends: New adventures of the Kiwi superheroes hit that is being spun off into a digital drama that will screen as “mini-sodes” on websites like tvnz.co.nz and bebo.
TV2, 4pm Saturday.

6. Real Life: Obedient Wives: Documentary about devoted housewives and subservience in suburbia.
TV One, 9.30pm Wednesday.

7. How to Have Sex After Marriage: New British documentary series that’s about more about self-improvement than kiss-and-tell. The first beneficiaries clearly knew what was expected of them, quipped The Daily Telegraph: "To exaggerate their problems at the start and to be completely cured at the end."
TV One, 9.30pm Tuesday.

8. Scrubs: This once cutting-edge, now middling sitcom scrubs up for its truncated seventh season. Lamented USA Today of the premiere: "Makes you think six really would have been enough."
TV2, 8pm Wednesday.

9. My Name Is Earl: Like Scrubs, Earl’s not the pearl it used to be but the third-season finale will be worth a look when Billie steals Earl’s list and starts undoing his good deeds.
TV3, 8pm Sunday.

10. The Late Show With David Letterman: Guests include Morgan Freeman (Tuesday), Julia Roberts (Wednesday), Jack Black (Thursday), Adam Sandler (Friday) and Sarah Jessica Parker (Monday).
Prime, post-11pm weeknights.





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Macabre

Macabre   
Artist: Macabre

   Genre(s): 
Metal: Death,Black
   Musical
   Rock
   Metal
   



Discography:


Murder Metal   
 Murder Metal

   Year: 2003   
Tracks: 13


Sinister Slaughter   
 Sinister Slaughter

   Year: 2002   
Tracks: 21


Behind the Wall of Sleep   
 Behind the Wall of Sleep

   Year: 2002   
Tracks: 4


Gloom   
 Gloom

   Year: 2001   
Tracks: 27


Dahmer   
 Dahmer

   Year: 2000   
Tracks: 26


Gloom+6 Bonus Tracks   
 Gloom+6 Bonus Tracks

   Year: 1989   
Tracks: 27




This lasting Chicago threesome became a cult deary among death metal fans with their perverse themes that inspire scarcely virtually as practically schoolboyish giggling as they do cushion. Though Macabre was one of the first-class honours degree bands to always experiment with the themes and songwriting that would eventually turn widely known as death metal, the mathematical group remained primarily an metro set. In the early '90s they garnered considerable acclaim from the death metal biotic community for their Sinister Slaughter record album, and in 2000 they sparked stake with a concept album based on Jeffrey Dahmer. Yet for the almost part, despite their role as a pioneering band, Macabre ne'er attained the recognition they were perhaps due, almost likely because of their often-satirical coming. Forming in 1985, before expiry metal and grindcore even existed, Macabre -- Nefarious (bass/vocals), Corporate Death (guitar/vocals), and Dennis the Menace (drums) -- quickly highly-developed a undermentioned with their extreme profound metal, which they eventually dubbed "dispatch metallic element." The group's starting time firing, Depressed Reality, in the beginning came out in 1987 and was followed a year afterwards by Crap List Demo, which contained both studio and alive tracks. Then in 1989, the mathematical group first-class honours degree began attaining global herald with Gloominess, an album that had replete European distribution thanks to its firing on Vinyl Solutions (the record album was first-class honours degree released as a rent CD with the Black Reality LP in 1990 and was later remastered, repackaged, and re-released in 1998 by Decomposed Records). The medicine that had in the beginning appeared on the Dickhead List Demo record in 1988 was then re-released with a limited edition of only 666 copies by Germany's Gore Records, following the stake sparked by Sombreness. Macabre then released the Dark Stalker 7" on high profile U.S. label Relapse and signed to another high profile destruction metal judge, Nuclear Blast, in 1992, which light-emitting diode to the release of their most-recognized and well-known acquittance to day of the month, Sinister Slaughter (an album basing each of its songs on different psychopaths). Following the spat of Sinister Slaughter, the group toured the world for most of 1994 and released the Behind the Wall of Sleep EP in 1995. After a few days of off-and-on activity without any releases where the stripe experimented with satiric "unplugged" shows, Macabre returned in 1999 with the Unabomber EP on Decomposed Records, which featured alternate versions of tracks from their then-unreleased Dahmer album, along with some out of print tracks from the Unappeasable Reality album. Then in 2000, seven-spot days after the success of Minacious Slaughter, Nuclear Blast re-released the classic album with the Behind the Wall of Sleep EP as bonus tracks, and the group in the end unveiled their long-awaited Dahmer record album, featuring production by well-thought-of producer Neil Kernon. Given the album's grammy-winning manufacturer and the ambitious status as a conception record album that virtually seems to toy care a musical, Dahmer once again sparked pursuit in the band.





Webber Finds West End Star In Prenger

Live: The Vans Warped Tour

The Los Angeles hard-core quintet the Bronx had an interesting take on the potential of punk rock during the Vans Warped Tour's kickoff show Friday at the Pomona Fairplex. "There is no revolution," howled singer Matt Caughthran during the track "Heart Attack American" in a ferocious early afternoon set.

The Vans Warped Tour, the longest-running traveling music fest going today, has never really been about bona fide upheaval -- see the corporate sponsorship in the festival's title. Still, the nihilism of Caughthran's lyric seemed oddly apropos for this 13th installment, where technical problems, murderous heat and the lack of any fresh headliner took the moxie out of the teen-heavy punker audience. Plenty of young side-stage acts were worth the gas prices to go there, but if this year's attendance figures were telling (down to 16,000 from 20,000 last year), it might behoove Warped's bookers to rethink what constitutes punk rock's elite in 2008.

The stalwart Hermosa Beach skate-punk quartet Pennywise, a late addition to this year's Warped, was the day's ostensible headliner. The 20-year-old combo's breed of galloping, hyper-masculine metallic punk was a defining sound of the Warped Tour's nascent years, and its recent album "Reason to Believe" might be its most high-profile record yet (and its first for MySpace Records). But the band's vintage-leaning set and pointed criticism of the sound techs from onstage were, warranted or not, certainly derailing for the day's biggest act. Any Warped veteran has probably seen Pennywise before, and its Warped set didn't leave much reason to try again.




















Pennywise wasn't alone in technical snafus. The inaugural Warped set of the L.A.-based Say Anything, one of contemporary emo's leading lights, was hobbled by mix problems that left singer-songwriter Max Bemis with little recourse other than to grab a guitar and try to scrape together a solo show. He apologized profusely, but the bombastic nakedness of songs such as "Baby Girl, I'm a Blur" and "Walk Through Hell" was, in a weird way, only aided by his desperation to finish the show alone. Most of his fans were probably more excited to get a rare solo set anyhow.

The headliners' problems meant that there was plenty of leeway for newer acts to have breakout sets. This year's Warped had the unlikely distinction of sporting an artist, Katy Perry, with a current No. 2 pop single in "I Kissed a Girl." Her sassy electro-pop seemed an improbable fit for a punk-leaning tour, but her wink-nudge charisma won over skeptics of her hit song's maniacally "Girls Gone Wild"-pandering lyrics. The similarly auspicious set of the Malibu rapper Shwayze proved that the Warped Tour need not shy away from the Billboard charts in finding compelling, reinventing acts in the future.

The spunky all-girl Japanese ska group Oreskaband and the smarmy rap duo 3 Oh! 3 were worthy diversions as well, but Warped's kick-in-the-teeth spirit wasn't entirely absent. The Gainesville, Fla., folk-punk quartet Against Me! proved that despite a recent (and controversial) move to a major label, they're the current flag-bearers for righteous punk anger. Songs such as "White People for Peace" indicted themselves as much as the Bush administration for current military misadventures, and the merciless self-doubt of the band's recent album "New Wave" was offset by the sheer vigor of frontman Tom Gabel's toothy, gut-wrenching delivery.

Atlanta metal-core quintet Norma Jean also made a convincing case for rock's potency, as the riffs from its forthcoming album, "The Anti-Mother," lived up to singer Cory Brandan's claim that it's "so heavy, it'll make you want to punch a dolphin in the blowhole."

Warped's best moments weren't quite enough to balance the wheel-spinning of the festival's goals in 2008, though. It's a shame, because Caughthran's blood-curdling yelp was almost enough to convince the crowd otherwise. Eclectic pop has a welcome place on the Warped Tour. Too bad that revolution doesn't seem to as well.

august.brown@latimes.com

Arcadia

Arcadia   
Artist: Arcadia

   Genre(s): 
New Age
   Rock
   



Discography:


Elements   
 Elements

   Year: 1997   
Tracks: 4


So Red The Rose   
 So Red The Rose

   Year: 1985   
Tracks: 9




 






Batman: Gotham Knight - 7/8/2008

Admit it: You love to see Batman bleed. It's his vulnerability that makes him so much more interesting than the Man of Steel. But we don't see quite enough blood in the Batman movies or kiddy cartoons. Thanks to Japanese anime, we finally get to watch the masked vigilante bleed profusely from gunshots and stab wounds (about as much as you'd expect from a man with no super powers).



This would've been bloody marvelous had two-thirds of the animated anthology Batman: Gotham Knight not stunk. Made to promote the summer's most hotly anticipated film The Dark Knight, the anime-style anthology isn't so much a segue between Christopher Nolan's first and second Batman films as it is a PG-13 revamp of the old animated series. Gotham Knight consists of six 15-minute short films -- each by a different director, writer, and illustrator. But as intriguing as it sounds to have so many brains devoted to this project, only two of the directors do justice to the Batman legend.



An anime rendition of Batman is a nice treat, but the last thing we want to see is Bruce Wayne looking like the typical anime hunk with long, streaming hair and glassy eyes. This is how director Hiroshi Morioka depicts Bruce in Field Test, at least. The man's supposed to be a tortured, ninja-trained billionaire -- not a Pok�mon master, dammit. Then, Lucius Fox engineers a special bullet-deflecting piece of armor for Batman, essentially making him invincible. Where's the fun in that?



The other big letdown is the second short, Crossfire. Commissioner Gordon directs two detectives to escort a prisoner nabbed by Batman to jail. In the car, the two detectives argue over whether Batman is a vigilante. Here's an excerpt from the script:



Detective #1: He's a vigilante.

Detective #2: He's not.

Detective #1: (More angrily) He's a vigilante, Anna!

Detective #2: He's not!



I think we've found the modern Shakespeare.



Not much happens in the fifth short, In Darkness Dwells. Croc and the Scarecrow make appearances, but their roles are so minor they could have been replaced with any other Batman villain and it wouldn't have made a difference.



The first short, Have I Got a Story For You, involves multiple kids recounting their Batman sightings -- each description being wildly different from the other. This makes for entertaining visuals -- a robotic Batman, a demonic Batman, and so on -- but ultimately it adds up to nothing.



The best short by far is Working Through Pain from director Toshiyuki Kubooka. Suffering from a seemingly critical gunshot wound, Batman attempts to crawl out of a sewer alive. As he struggles, we see a series of flashbacks to when Bruce visited an Indian woman named Cassandra, who taught him secret techniques on becoming insusceptible to pain. We've never seen this fascinating tale before on screen, and Kubooka and crew do a stellar job.



Deadshot is the final (and only other good) chapter. The animation in this segment is the most elegant and impressive. The story focuses on Batman's pursuit of the assassin Deadshot, who uses a high-tech, laser-guided sniper rifle to pick off his victims. It's an exciting game of cat and mouse that's worthy of concluding the anthology.



So two out of the six films are good. One can't help but think of Four Rooms, the film by four directors who each made a chapter. The segments by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez were hysterically great, but the other two chapters by Allison Anders and Alexandre Rockwell were horrendously awful. I guess that's what the skip button was made for on the DVD remote.

See Also

Choenyi

Choenyi   
Artist: Choenyi

   Genre(s): 
Techno
   



Discography:


Defervescence   
 Defervescence

   Year: 2007   
Tracks: 11




 






Lindsay Lohan - Lohan Turns 22 In Style


LINDSAY LOHAN celebrated her 22nd birthday party with a 1980s-themed prom night party in Hollywood on Wednesday (02Jul08).

The Mean Girls star took over Teddy's at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where Nicole Richie's former fiance DJ-AM played host.

Insiders claim Lohan wore a slip dress for a family dinner before the party and then changed into a Bradley Bayou frock.

At the stroke of midnight, the actress was presented with a birthday cake featuring the face of her heroine Marilyn Monroe.

Then, Lohan's best friend - and reported girlfriend - Samantha Ronson took over the DJ booth from DJ-AM and played records until the party finished at just after 1am.

According to Eonline.com, guests included Joel and Benji Madden, David Spade and Rod Stewart's son Sean.





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