I haven’t posted here in a long while. Some people have noticed and emailed me about it. I’m going to be writing that wrong over at my new blog: naswho. Thanks for reading this one, if you did, and please go over there and follow me there.

Regards ‘n all that.
Nas Who!?

Successo Internazionale!

What’s more, Haezer is off and away on another European tour alongside Felix Cartal, Le Petit Polous and Cyberpunkers. He was already there earlier this year, and did a stint in Oz as well. This latest tour takes him through Belgium, Germany, Spain and, of course, Italy.

It’s no real surprise that Haezer’s on the up-and-away train. He does some awesome stuff and the locals go absolutely out their minds when he’s in town. Here’s to another local product aligning itself with the international scene of things. We’ll just have to hope future Haezer gigs don’t smell like Italians. Check more from him over here and here.

I bought my tickets before I’d even given the rest of the lineup a good look. When I finally did, I noticed that Rocking The Gardens would be providing me with the best of SA’s radio-friendly pop rock acts… and Tidal Waves. I wasn’t going to make it to Day Two, so this lineup was all I had to work with.

Speaking of the two day fest concept: When I attempted to buy my tickets at the local Levi’s store, I was informed by a store clerk that “they” only dropped off tickets for both days. So I couldn’t get my “Saturday Only” tickets there. This epic ball ache was, I presume, the work of the organizers, who may have felt they might not draw as epic a crowd on the Sunday as they did for Saturday, and so decided to force the hands of those who lacked either a credit card or the energy to find an alternative. Nice work, guys. Real smooth. Thankfully I rectified that (with somebody else’s credit card) and we were off!

I walked in halfway through the day, during Tidal Waves, and absorbed the usual laid back tunes they bring to the stage while preparing myself for party mode. The Dirty Skirts followed, providing everyone present with the sounds of their vocalist having a seizure on stage. Despite playing music I’m not the biggest fan of, Jesse Clegg did a pretty good job of sounding like he does on the recordings. Even if he’s not your cup of tea/coffee/beer, he’s at least not grating to the ears during his live act. Prime Circle followed, letting us in on another strong live performance to music that didn’t necessarily rock my garden. Then came Zebra & Giraffe. I stand by the fact that these guys make really fun pop music, the unfortunate side effect of which seems to be that they fail to be able to play it properly on stage. It’s disappointing to see the South African band that opened for The Killers (an extremely tight outfit on stage) still scratching at my ear area with their performances. I actually hope they improve considerably, so they can live up to their own hype a bit better.

The weirdest thing about the day’s lineup is the disparity in style and audience between NYPC and pretty much everybody else that played the event. It’s not to say that the organizers weren’t aiming for that diversity in the musical offerings, but the issue seemed more noticeable when you considered that a large chunk of the audience seemed to exit stage left after Zebra & Giraffe finished their run. Maybe this was fueled by worries about the impending rainstorm that never arrived, or maybe some people just had no idea who the last band on stage were. Did they think they’d get out while the going was average, rather than sample something they’d never heard before? The crowd that stayed behind was certainly dotted mostly with people who seemed to know what it was they were seeing/hearing. Anyway…

New Young Pony Club makes hot pop music that you can dance to. They did not disappoint to provide exactly that. At times the vocals seemed cloudy, like lead singer Tahita Bulmer was singing from somewhere underwater, although I think that had more to do with the sound engineer she spent the first few songs in constant sign language communication with, rather than a lack of talent. She displayed characteristic sex appeal, energy and foot-twisting moves during every song, slowing down only to throw a canned birthday message to someone in the audience. As far as I’m aware, South African crowds are notoriously self conscious in front of bands, and so it made for a slow start from the hivemind. Things picked up when the band played their big hit “Ice Cream“, and then pretty much never lost their pace till NYPC went off stage and left a bunch of people clapping “we want more” over and over for no one in particular.

Despite not returning to the stage for an encore, which would’ve been unnecessary fan service anyway, New Young Pony Club was still the belle of the ball. That really is what Rocking The Gardens felt like anyway: a well organized event with a dry turnout and lopsided atmosphere. Least we got another international act on one of our stages again. A good one at that. Too bad it took so long for the gardens to get rocked.

When taking any book and turning it into a film, moviemakers have to look at the actual events of the plot and then balance them against the intent of each event as it contributes to the story. Everyone involved in the process of discerning which of those is more important will have to balance the intentions of the film they want to make with the content from the source material.

Most fans find it difficult to pull themselves free of rage at the sight of anything that doesn’t fit with their own expectations and assumptions about the things they love. I’ve heard “Twi-hards”, “Harry Potheads” and comic geeks gripe equally about the film versions of their favourite literary heroes. I even know guys who disliked “The Dark Knight” because it didn’t feel “comic booky” enough. In the case of superheroes, this sort of thing can be overlooked, because filmmakers aren’t adapting strict comic plots as they appeared in any particular issues or volume of a comic. There is no Batman comic that is like Dark Knight in any way beyond its themes and characters. This means it’s even easier to reboot the superhero concept with a brand new cast and crew every few years.

On the other hand, Zack Snyder has pretty much taken “Watchmen” straight from the page to the screen. He was probably even hired because he’d done the same thing with Frank Miller’s comic “300”. Of course, the thing about Frank Miller comics is that, while they’re often very entertaining, they also aren’t particularly complex. Watchmen’s author, Alan Moore, however, is the portrait of obsessive compulsiveness and this book is considered one of the greatest achievements in the history of the comic book medium.

Like I said, adaptation is a sticky business, and when it comes down to it, I prefer a suitably distinct product that hits the high notes from the book but nails the thematic subtleties and complexities, rather than just regurgitating the plot scene for scene.

“Watchmen”, unfortunately, does the latter, spending more time recreating things in exacting detail that it does actually sewing them together. The book is executed in chapters that Snyder fails to merge organically into a cohesive whole. This leads to the inclusion of scenes such as the origin of Dr. Manhattan in stunningly laborious detail, dragging on like a mini-movie shoved right into the middle of the action.

The cast of Watchmen.

The distended, disconnected directing even extends to the cast, who stride theatrically about the sets reciting comic book dialogue at its most verbose. They’re an incredible assemblage of talent – Patrick Wilson and Billy Crudup deserve specific praise – but everything that happens to and around them seems eerily 2-dimensional and out of sync with the reality Snyder is trying to create. And when he does tend to focus his lens on something, it’s the incredible levels of violence and sex that make the book a ‘mature readers’ title rather than any of the subtext that make it a critical hit.

During the movie, the God figure, Dr. Manhattan, remarks coldly that there is nothing structurally different about a human body whether it is dead or alive. It’s too bad for Zack Snyder that the same can’t be said for a movie.

The Gist: “Watchmen” is like a hot ginger: visually stunning and entertaining, but utterly soulless. Its director has no intent except to flick the pages of a picture book so that the images move.

The Best: The opening titles to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A’Changin’” are visually amazing, proving that Snyder is best at style over substance.
The Worst: If the Dr. Manhattan origin sequence wasn’t so exquisitely acted and presented, it would’ve been the worst bit only because it slows the entire movie down. The clincher is most definitely the so-long-it-hurts sex scene to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”.
Rating (in erections): Half Mast

From their report:
“As broken on The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision blog, Warner Bros. Pictures has tapped director Zack Snyder to helm the next big screen installment of its “Superman” franchise. Snyder reportedly beat out a wide-ranging list of potential directors including Darren Aronofsky and Tony Scott.”

I suppose out of all those names being thrown around, Snyder was the most known contender when it came to comic book movies. Despite the fact that I didn’t find either “300″ or “Watchmen” to be all that great, a lot of people seemed to really like them. Especially people who, unlike me, aren’t already comic fans with their own expectations and opinions.

Of course, in some ways, both those books were unknown quantities among the general population, whereas everybody knows who Superman is. And even with script and production courtesy of the successful “Batman Begins” team of David S Goyer and Christopher Nolan, some people might still be weary of Snyder or, more importantly, nervous after Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns” from a couple of years ago. I know I am.

Either way, it looks like Warner Bros is finally starting to kick things into high gear with the DC Comics media franchises it’s been sitting on or misusing for decades now. Should be very interesting to see where things go next, especially with regards to their upcoming Wonder Woman project.