“I know my name is pain.”

“You ever heard the story of Mr. Faded Glory?”

You know, music isn’t always about bushy beards and big, bad riffs, as much as I make it out to be.  I mean, those things are great, and generally essential, but sometimes I enjoy — as I’m sure we all do — the deep, personal, and emotional connection with music as well. No other music I’ve ever heard (save for maybe Jeff Buckley) affects me as emotionally as Andrew Wood’s does.

Wood, an early purveyor of Seattle’s grunge rock scene and undoubtedly its biggest personality, died in March of 1990 from complications of a drug overdose at the age of 24, just as his band, Mother Love Bone, was about to release their debut full-length, Apple, and have a profound influence on a scene that would blow up into an industry and change the musical landscape in the decade that followed. But this story, a 10-year project for director Scot Barbour, tells of Wood’s years before his death, and shows us a man many of us never knew existed. Wood grew up in an abusive, dysfunctional household and used humor, drugs, and his alter ego, Landrew the Lovechild, to cover up the pain. His penchant for being the center of attention manifested itself in Landrew, the ghost-faced entity and lead singer of Wood’s first band, Malfunkshun, who would come down from Olympus to preach love rock to the people. His love rock was truly something special.

Malfunkshun, set against the backdrop of an emerging Seattle scene that included bands like Malfunkshun, Soundgarden, Green River, the Melvins, U-Men, and Skin Yard, features interviews with friends, family, band mates, industry heads, and even Wood’s rehab therapist, includes lots of old photos and rare live footage of Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone, incorporates colourful animated sequences that turns Wood’s life and music into a seemingly appropriate abstract kaleidoscope, and plenty of footage of Wood himself, including an interview in his room — dubbed Landrew’s Lovenest — where he’s clutching a stuffed toy frog, as if it was his childhood innocence, and hamming it up. Malfunkshun also comes with two bonus audio discs, Malfunkshun’s Return to Olympus and Melodies and Dreams, a solo album of material — music and interviews with himself — recorded to tape in the Lovenest. This disc alone, which also includes a rare song recorded by Chris Cornell and Wood when they lived together, is worth your money.

Truthfully, I wasn’t old enough to appreciate Wood’s impact at the time, but I’ve since come to revel in his music and appreciate his legacy. This film allows me the ability to feel and understand what it was like for him and the scene he helped create back then, and I come out of it a bigger fan of love rock than ever before.

Check out the trailer for Malfunkshun: The Andrew Wood Story!

First movie round-up of the year. Let’s blast through it!

Valhalla Rising

When I rented this movie, it came with a warning from the clerk. She said that people had been complaining about the lack of dialogue. I thanked her for the warning, but assured her that I would go ahead and rent the movie anyway because I only care about Viking blood. Lots and lots of Viking blood. So, to put your mind at ease, there is a good amount of dialogue and there’s even more Viking blood. It’s definitely slow in parts, but it’s beautifully shot, and its story about a mute, one-eyed Viking slave fleeing his captors and making a journey through the fog to the Holy Land is pretty awesome. Highly recommended.

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First, I want to apologize for the lack of posts lately. The laptop has been suffering some major issues and so I’ve been without a full-time computer for about a week now, but a new one has been procured, so we should be getting back on track here real soon. I’ve got plenty of new stuff to throw your way. Anyway, I manged to watch some movies during all that non-computer time, so here you go…

Frozen

The idea behind Frozen, the 2010 horror movie about three skiers stuck on a chair lift high above a mountain side, kind of reminds me of the old Mitch Hedberg joke about the above-ground swimming pool commercial, and how it can only be 30 seconds long because that’s the most amount of time you can depict having fun in an above-ground swimming pool. I didn’t think it would be possible to squeeze a whole movie’s worth of scares out of such an above-ground premise (and it wasn’t, really), but Frozen does manage to push your anxiety meter well into the red simply because it thrives on a totally reasonable, palpable fear. That being said, it’s not hard to predict what lies ahead for our stranded skiers (i.e. finding a way down, frostbite, etc.), who don’t seem to be taking their survival very seriously (do up your coat, idiot!), and you have to be able to handle the kind of dialogue that evolves from a stranded situation, such as blaming, arguing, crying, and reminiscing. However, the circling, hungry wolves were an excellent touch.

Check out the trailer for Frozen!

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