Sluncho's Rest Of '09

Best reissue (music): Philip Glass - Koyaanisqatsi (Complete Original Soundtrack)

The score to Koyaanisqatsi has long suffered in home releases. The original 1988 pressing lacks a ton of material, the 1998 re-recording is far too different sounding from the version used in the film for the tastes of many and until this May a complete unabridged version was never available anywhere. Seven missing tracks are added to this release, laid out in the order they appear in the film. "The Grid" is split into two tracks, a short introduction and then the bulk of the song, which is strange but the entire piece is present so it's arguably better than the truncated version that appeared on the original release. The instrumentation is from the first recording sessions, and the remaster job is impeccable, with warm, rich tones and the natural feeling lost in the re-recording left perfectly intact. The restored pieces provide some of the film's best musical cues a venue to be heard outside the motion picture, the wonderful "Resource" and the ominous "Microchip" being definite highlights. By far the best currently existing option to hear this music, and worth upgrading from previous versions for.


Best reissue (film): Bad Lieutenant (1992)


Probably spat out again in a shrewd attempt to drum up some attention for this year's bizarre remake/sequel/spin-off/who the fuck knows directed by the absolutely insane Werner Herzog, Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant was easily the most unexpected DVD release of the year in my books. The film has a long and nasty history on video, being slashed apart for a Blockbuster-friendly release that quickly usurped the uncut version on store shelves, losing some of the excellent rap featured on the original soundtrack and in general just getting slapdash, lazy releases with little to merit the purchase. Here Lionsgate gives the film its first proper release in nine years, brandishing an attractive slipcase, a brand new retrospective documentary on the film's production and Ferrara's own wonderfully strange director's commentary. There's not much done to alter the transfer, although it already had pretty solid audio and video in the first place so that's not really worth griping about. You can find it at a relatively low price in most stores, and it's the original NC-17 cut, so if you're eager to see Harvey Keitel at his most disgusting and/or a good but flawed flick from one of America's most off-the-wall directors, this is the best way to go about it.


Best band nobody has ever heard of: Clown Core

Without a doubt the fucking strangest thing in noise rock these days, Clown Core is an anonymous two-man act wherein clowns in coveralls play what can only be described as Naked City with a wee bit less blistering speed and a lot more makeup. The saxophone/drums duo are pretty capable musicians, fusing heavy metal, jazz and circus music into a style that I can't imagine there being an audience for but is still quite impressive. For an internet joke band, their song craft and technical prowess is admirable, and the fact it's two guys dressed up as clowns adds to the strange glee.

You can check them out here.


The only thing on TV holding me back from digging up Philo T. Farnsworth and atomizing his bones: The Venture Bros.

Boy, I really showed up late to this party. Venture Bros. was one of those shows on the Adult Swim block I made a conscious effort to avoid for the longest time. Like Tom Goes to the Mayor, I dismissed the series as self-indulgent hipster dross for trendier than thou types. Until this October, I did not watch an episode of the series at all past "A Very Venture Christmas" (which aired five fucking years ago). WHAT WAS I THINKING? Seriously, goddamn.

Now before I get too preachy here, I have to note this is pretty esoteric material here. Unless you know both your classic cartoons and your alternative music history, there's really not gonna be much for you here past some violence and bad words. The show also adheres to very strict continuity, so you're going to want to watch this stuff in order lest you be totally lost. If you can get past these stumbling blocks, you're in for a real treat. The series is arguably the best looker on Adult Swim with enough of a budget to afford rather good traditional animation instead of the low-budget Flash work in the block's other shows. They can also afford the services of the brilliant J.G. Thirlwell to score the series, and it represents some of his greatest works since the 80s. Also commendable in the audio department is the fact there's only about five consistent voice actors on staff for a show with a cast well into the dozens and it doesn't devolve into a festival same-y voices like similarly understaffed shows. Some scenes have an actor conversing with themself two or three times over and it still sounds natural.

If you're disappointed that modern animated series don't make enough jokes about Station to Station or Lydia Lunch, or you're a junkie for the comics and cartoons of yesteryear, you're doing yourself a massive disservice if you're not already watching this show.


The videogame I was least expecting to enjoy but ended up having a blast with: Modern Warfare 2

As a kid, World War II shooters were pretty much my favourite kind of game. I owned so many Medal of Honours that it's ridiculous and still got excited every time a new one came out. 2003's Call of Duty changed stuff up a ton and transcended the MoH franchise in terms of gameplay, so I became a dedicated follower of that franchise. Then they lost me big time. 2007's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare packed an entertaining campaign mode, but it was a meagre three hours or so of material and far too simple to really merit playing more than once. The multiplayer similarly got very tiresome and overall it really felt that aside from the graphics things hadn't gone very far since the first game. A spin-off set back in good ol' WWII popped up a year later from a different dev team, and it provided mild entertainment for a while but still felt unsatisfying.

So Modern Warfare 2 drops this year and sells like five million copies in a single day, and I couldn't give less of a shit if I tried. It just looks like a retread of the same boring crap that ruined the first one for me. But I'm at a loss, pretty much all the games I've been interested in playing these last few months have been delayed till 2010 or are otherwise inaccessible, so I rent this in desperation with much cynicism in my heart. Then 10 hours later I turn off my console and force myself to sleep with visions of massive, burning battlefields dancing in my head. The game's not a revolution that will change the FPS genre, but it's a breath of fresh air after the genre's complete stagnation on consoles in the past three years. The singleplayer is still easy and still pretty linear, but the experience is longer this time around and the set pieces are so unbelievably well crafted that I honestly can't complain too much about the lack of freedom. Hans Zimmer's bombastic, triumphant score goes along way towards aiding this, as does the surprising return of some breakout cast members from the last game. No spoilers, if you're into shooters and haven't played this yet you deserve to go into it knowing nothing.

The multiplayer even improved, with a great leveling system that's a lot more user-friendly than the old one and a shitload of weapon customization options that allows for a rather robust, player-oriented experience. The matchmaking system leaves a bit to be desired, but most servers are very stable and there's a minimal amount of annoying glitches. I've only rented the game and I've had it a mere three days, but I've already logged nearly as many hours into it as a I have my copy of Left 4 Dead (which I have had since launch last year). Infinity Ward aren't the saviours of videogames, but they know how to make a nice addictive shoot-em-up.


Most surprising year-end announcement: The Maxx and Daria hit DVD

The 90s was by far the greatest decade for North American animation. Sure, most enthusiasts of conventional cartooning like to push the 40s and 50s, and the nostalgia geeks always jump for the 80s, but the 90s is where cartoons evolved beyond merely being something for or directed to children and narrative replaced the importance of visuals. The now widely reviled MTV was home to many of these excellent and challenging new series, with the bizarre anti-humour of Beavis and Butt-head somehow breaking the mainstream, and the now legendary Liquid Television giving amateur directors a chance to have their creations broadcast to a wide audience. From these two shows spun off two more brilliant series. Liquid Television bore Oddities, which combined an ongoing version of former one-time cartoon The Head with an ambitious interpretation of one of the most esoteric, deeply cerebral and audience-unfriendly comics ever, Sam Kieth's The Maxx. Years later, after Beavis and Butt-head finished, one of its writers, Greg Eichler (who also story editor on The Maxx) gave the world Daria (quite possibly the single most 90s animated series there has ever been, with its plotting focused almost entirely Gen X angst and the music of the decade).

These two shows meant the world to me growing up, The Maxx was a refreshing change up from the usual superhero fare with a pathetic, childish homeless man donning tights to fight a villain who is alternately despicable and sardonically charming (who also serves as the series' narrator, voiced by the sadly gone Barry Stigler) and Daria was so much different compared to other "high school dilemma" series both traditional and animated in that it relied heavily on real-world culture instead of lawyer-friendly analogues for actual bands and television series, and that it portrayed its characters with significant good and bad qualities instead of having everyone be purely one-dimensional. They were both drowning in style, too, with The Maxx often aping Kieth's artwork panel for panel (right down to focusing on minor background details like a penny rolling across the ground instead of a person being attacked during action sequences, something you'd never see in any other superhero show) and Daria replaces the intentionally hard-looking aesthetic of the Beavis and Butt-head universe with very sharp, colourful designs.

Sadly, The Maxx died off after 13 episodes (not too surprising given how aggressively weird it is) and Daria has been hacked apart by musical clearance issues and censorship in its re-airings, so nobody was expecting these relics of a bygone era ever available on home video past the VHS era, but MTV managed to surprise us here. There's strings attached, naturally. The Maxx won't be available in stores, instead being made to order by Amazon's on-demand DVD service, and while Daria is much more likely to see a proper release it will almost definitely lose some if not most of its licensed soundtrack due to lapses in copyrights and home video release clauses, but whatever is missing is small potatoes in lieu of losing these brilliant shows entirely.