The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Rated PG-13 { 3.5 of 5 stars }

You can’t toss a dead cat without hitting a movie based on a Marvel Comics character nowadays. I’m not complaining, mind you. I’ll go see just about any superhero movie they toss out there. I saw Green Lantern. Twice. (And yes, I know that’s DC.) But Spider-Man will always hold a special place in my heart. He was my first favorite superhero, perhaps because I was a nerdy kid who got bullied by the other kids and couldn’t get the girl, and I saw something I could relate to in the science-minded photography geek, Peter Parker (Spidey’s alter-ego), who got bit by a radioactive spider and instead of just getting a really bad rash, was imbued with superpowers that allowed him to not only stand up against his tormentors but stand up for truth, justice and the American way.

Fun fact: This is the fifth Spider-Man movie since the dawn of the new millennium. Five! That’s a kind of run that would make Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees jealous.

But on to the movie: in this sequel to 2012’s reboot of the franchise, The Amazing Spider-Man, Andrew Garfield is once again behind the mask as everyone’s favorite web-slinger. With a few years of crime-fighting under his belt, he’s more show-y and wise-cracking than ever. In an elaborate opening action sequence, Spidey swings high above the streets of New York City in pursuit of Aleksei Sytsevich (an almost unrecognizable Paul Giamatti), a Russian mobster who has hijacked an Oscorp tractor-trailer carrying vials of plutonium. Though the police are hot on Sytsevich’s tail, they’re having a difficult time corralling the mad Russian crook…of course, that’s where your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man comes in.

This sequence is awe-inspiring. As Spidey soars from building to building in a succession of acrobatic flips, the scene below is pure chaos: gunshots flare, cars collide into one another, etc. The dichotomy of the almost serene shots of Spider-Man gracefully gliding along, intermingled with the severe road rage on street-level, is a real treat for the eye. The intercutting of Peter Parker’s personal life in this opening scene just sweetens the pot. It’s graduation day, and Peter, as he’s clinging to the grill of a police truck, answers a call from Gwen Stacy (wonderfully portrayed once again by Emma Stone), who is about to deliver her valedictorian address.

It’s Peter’s tightrope walk between his life as a young man with a family and friends that he cares deeply about and his life as a super-powered masked crusader that makes him such a compelling character. Whereas Batman, say, no longer has a “real life,” and only uses his persona as Bruce Wayne to further his crime-fighting career, Spider-Man actively lives his “normal life,” which is why his stakes seem a lot higher.

This was brought beautifully to the foreground in the first film in this series, and it’s continued here in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. A lot of time is allocated to building the relationships between Parker and the people in his life—his Aunt May (Sally Field) who raised him, his childhood friend Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan), his dead father Richard Parker (Campbell Scott) and even Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx), a man whose life Spidey saves in the pursuit of Sytsevich—but mostly his relationship with Stacy. Unfortunately, it feels as if there’s very little Spidey time with all this character building. Luckily, this is offset by Garfield and Stone’s wonderful banter and chemistry. They make a sweet, funny and perfect onscreen couple…the kind if you saw on the street, you’d secretly despise.

Dillon becomes the main villain, Electro, after an accident at Oscorp turns him into a being of pure electricity. Though the effects are good, the character design seems a bit too reminiscent of The Watchmen’s Dr. Manhattan. Still, Foxx is a fine actor and though he looks like a blue ball of lightning much of the film, he seems to take his role very seriously, portraying a man who’s been powerless for much of his life and is suddenly given the strength of a god.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ends on a low note, Empire Strikes Back style, and sets up perfectly for the third film in the series, due out in another couple of years, which should be much more of a balls-out bust-‘em-up. The action scenes, when there are some, are very exciting, but they seem too far between. However, this is a nice character-driven story that portrays Spidey for what he is…a hero of the people.

Composer Danny Cocke gets to work on scoring his first feature film and prepares to release a new album of trailer music

For some, getting to the cinema early for the trailers is just as important as seeing the feature presentation. Who can blame them? The trailers are often more exciting than the actual movies they’re meant to market. Trailers fuse all the best parts of the movie into an endorphin-drenched nugget of excitement, loaded with quick cuts, epic voice-overs and even more epic music. Los Angeles (by way of Sacramento) composer Danny Cocke handles the latter. Though just eight years ago, his music career and his life were in serious jeopardy.

In 2011, Cocke released From the Blue, an album of short but dramatic tracks, through L.A.-based licensing and publishing company RipTide Music. At the time, Cocke admits he was “dirt broke.” Much of From the Blue was even recorded in his old bedroom at his parents’ house.

“I was recording bands at the same time just to pay the bills, and all of a sudden it was the first Thor TV spot, and then Conan…Captain America, Green Lantern, and then I got called into custom score the first The Amazing Spider-Man trailer where they actually gave me picture–where he was in first-person running across the roof,” Cocke says. “I was a huge Marvel fan as a kid… It was totally surreal. I did not expect that level of explosion.”

Portions of Cocke’s music have also been used to promote what will likely be the biggest movie of the year, The Avengers. A full track from From the Blue, “World Collapsing,” was used in the trailer of the recently opened fairy tale adventure flick, Snow White and the Huntsman. Having a full song used throughout the entirety of a trailer is a rarity, according to Cocke.

“It was like, ‘What the hell?!’” he says of his reaction to the news.

Cocke says it’s a rush each time he hears something he wrote in a trailer, even though at this point it’s happening a lot more often. “They Came from the Blue,” another track off From the Blue, was placed in about a dozen trailers, he reports.

“Some of my composer buddies are like, ‘Knock it off!’” Cocke says.

Currently, he is poised to release another album’s worth of trailer music, this time through Position Music, titled The Verge of Total Chaos. The album is scheduled for a July 3 release, but Cocke has already started releasing tracks to his SoundCloud page. He also just started working on scoring his first feature film, The Devil’s in the Details, starring Goodfellas’ Ray Liotta.

His career is on the upswing, but just eight years ago, it almost ended before it really began. Cocke was diagnosed with stage IV testicular cancer, which he managed to fight off after a tough struggle. When Submerge spoke to him, it was the day after his eighth anniversary of his diagnosis, and today he stands cancer-free.

When we caught up with Cocke, he was enjoying some time away from Los Angeles back home in Sacramento. He admits that the concrete jungle of L.A. does wear on him. “There’s a hum of constant sound and lack of nature,” he says. “After about two months, I start going crazy.”

However, luckily for him, his work affords him the chance to leave town often, not that it’s a complete vacation. Cocke enjoys home cooking, creatively speaking, and still composes in his old bedroom at his parents’ house while he’s in Sacramento. We open the following interview talking about his process for scoring The Devil’s in the Details before discussing his latest album and his battle with cancer.

When you did From the Blue, it was an album’s worth of music, do you also approach a film score as if it was an album since it’s about the same length of music?
It’s a very different approach. It’s cool because I’ve slowly built up experience. Last summer, I helped out this bigger composer Paul Haslinger on Death Race 2. He gave me about 10 minutes of scenes to write music for. It was basically ghost writing. [It’s credited as if] everything was composed by him, but 10 minutes of it was me. And then I had two short films that I did, and then I had a bigger scale short film last summer, and then I just finished a 30-minute film that’s being used as a pitch, and that’s crazy looking. It’s like The Dark Knight meets The Bourne Ultimatum. It’s incredible. I had to do 30 minutes worth of music in two and a half weeks. It’s a lot different approach. My album was 30 minutes of music that took six months. Also, though, I’m doing whatever I want with the album. With scoring, everything has to be really tailored to picture, and each scene really dictates what you’re doing.

Have you started work on the Ray Liotta movie?
June 1, 2012, I move into a house just for the summer, down in L.A., in the valley, and that week I get reel one and sit down with the director and start spotting out the cues. It’s all got to be done on Aug. 10, 2012, too, so it’s about 100 minutes of music in two and a half months. It’s going to be crazy.

Do they breakdown the plot for you or anything like that, or will you be going into that June 1 session totally blind so to speak?
Well, I read the script beforehand–quite a while ago, actually, like last year. And I know the director pretty well, so he’s always telling me what his vision is. I just try to get in sync with what they’re seeing and imagining. With film score, there’s such a heavy reference on other film scores, so it’s like, “OK, in this scene I want The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s score meets these horror films…” So you have all this really nice reference so you’re not shooting in the dark. So it’s like, “OK, I’m just going to do my version of that.” Set up that kind of a palette, I guess.

Do you have an inkling of what you’d like to do with the film as of now?
I haven’t started making sounds yet. It will discover itself, but I have an idea. The way the movie goes, you don’t know what’s going on. It’s very peaceful, and then all of a sudden, the guy gets held hostage. And from then on it’s super tense. It’s going to be two parts, so there’s going to be some serene music to start off, and then the nastiest, on-edge music. It’ll be fun. I’ll start creating sounds and playing stuff over the picture and seeing what’s working. Creating orchestral elements that don’t sound mocked up is going to be the challenge, making them sound somewhat real.

You’re working on a new album of trailer music, The Verge of Total Chaos…
It’s just now finished. I was actually done with it at the end of March, but the mixer was busy on a film, but he just turned in the last mix. We’re just starting to release stuff online–one track here or there. All the trailer companies have eight of them, but they’ll have all 12 by Tuesday, and they’re already getting cut into a ton of stuff. Then it will come out on iTunes in a few weeks.

With From the Blue you said you didn’t have any expectations, but with The Verge of Total Chaos, you’ve already made a name for yourself. Your music is being used in a lot of trailers for blockbuster movies. With this album, did you, say, have films in mind that you knew were coming out that you thought the music you were making would fit in with?
I didn’t. I attacked it more from a musician’s standpoint. I did a lot of rock songs on From the Blue, and one or two of them got placed. I realized that this hybrid orchestral sound was what was working, what they were looking for, and all the editors responded saying that too. They love the old traditional stuff mixed with this new edgy stuff. But I kind of really wanted to expand on melodies and huge epicness, so a lot of the tracks have a really orchestral, epic feel. The other half is sound design-like, straight up electronic alien robot demons [laughs]. It’s always a risk each time. I just put it out and hope for the best.

Eight years ago yesterday, you were diagnosed with stage IV testicular cancer. When you were diagnosed, how did you react? Did you think, “This is it?”
Well, the first 30 seconds were a shock. I definitely had a panic attack. I’ve had panic attacks my whole life, and surprisingly at that moment after, I was super calm. Something otherworldly told me that there was going to be a lot more, and this wasn’t it. Then it was just going one day at a time. But if I had to go back and do it again, I would do it again–even lose all the hair and throw up every day for six months and get cut open–just to be who I am now. I ended up volunteering in a hospital for a couple of years after and helping other cancer patients. It was such an intense spiritual feeling of helping, and sometimes they wouldn’t make it and it was very heavy too. But it gives you such an appreciation of life. I think I put it all into music in a way that I never would have done.

Did you write a lot of music during that time?
Right before it, my band, we were signed. We were at Nine Inch Nails’ Danny Lohner’s house, and it was just like the most epic, exciting time. We were right on the verge of potentially having a really great band career, which at the time was a dream come true. I’m thankful now. I’m so much happier I’m composing. I’m glad I’m not in a band and touring and doing things like that. That was the biggest frustration. It wasn’t even chemo and all these cancer treatments, it’s that I lost the momentum of the band.

I tried to keep it up as best I could. I actually spent so much time learning even more computer production during that time, because I’d be in my parents’ house. I didn’t really have energy to go down into the band room and practice music live, so I’d just be working on the computer. Definitely after that, six months after treatment and I was in remission, I dove into music like crazy.

The Verge of Total Chaos will be available through iTunes and http://positionmusic.com/. In the meantime, you can hear songs from the album at http://soundcloud.com/dannycocke (or, just go to a movie, because you’re bound to hear something he did in a trailer). You can learn more about Danny Cocke at http://Dannycocke.com or at http://www.facebook.com/dannycocke.

Boy Meeting World, Making Great Music

At 21 years old, rapper Fashawn has the maturity and foresight of men many moons his elder. The Fresno native grew up fast and, using hip-hop as a tool, persevered as one of the genre’s youngest and most promising talents. With his debut album, the aptly titled Boy Meets World, Fashawn paints a candid picture of life as an adolescent coming into his own, making sense of relationships and the experiences that are transforming him into the artist we hear through our speakers. He writes from an autobiographical point of view, and it shows with his ability to evoke a broad range of human emotions through his stories. As the listener you see his vision, and feel his joy and pain.

Fresh off a tour with Ghostface Killah, Fashawn along with producer Exile is back on the road for the annual How the Grouch Stole Christmas showcase, which features the Living Legend and show founder The Grouch and Oakland’s shining star Mistah FAB. It’s an amazing lineup unmatched by any tour of note this year, so take advantage of everything each artist has to offer and enjoy a good hip-hop show.
 
It’s been a big year for you with your debut dropping, and then The Antidote mixtape with Alchemist. How much of it was planned? And were you surprised by how successful this year was for you?
I would say that most of it wasn’t planned. The stuff with Alchemist, that wasn’t planned at all. That came up from just me hanging with Evidence, and at the time he took me on the Rock the Bells tour. I had the chance to stay at Alchemist’s crib, and from that we started building in the studio and making records. That came out by accident you could say. Just me hanging with Evidence and going to Europe and all that, this time last year I wouldn’t have pictured this. As far as Boy Meets World, we’ve been planning that for a while now. We started recording this album in like early 2008, and we got the label situation around February and we’ve just been going hard ever since.

You mentioned that the album has been planned for a while. Has the Boy Meets World title and concept always been the vision?
Yeah, I said to myself a while ago that if I were to drop an official debut album, that’s how I want to start things off. I think it was a perfect time. I turned 21 the day before my album dropped, and it was just the right time for everything. I had the concept in my head before I even went across the world and saw all these places.

There are points on the album where you talk about how you’ve been rhyming since you were 9.
Yeah, just having fun. I didn’t really start writing rhymes until I was 12. I’ve been in the studio since I was 12 and dropped my first mixtape then.

How did everything you’ve done up to Boy Meets World differ from what you had been doing?
On the mixptapes, it was just me going hard and just spitting the craziest rhymes I could think of. Just trying to find my voice and the direction I want to go. On Boy Meets World, I found my voice. The records on the mixtapes were just me spazzing out, but on the album you hear the concepts and all that. The songs were really produced; you know, Exile really did his thing and made sure everything was precise.

In terms of the music that Exile brought forth, what did he bring out of you? How do you think the direction of the album would have differed if it were a bunch of producers contributing a few beats?
I think if I were to have gotten like Alchemist and 9th Wonder joints on there, the vibe would have been a lot different. With Exile, we have certain chemistry and through the whole record you can feel that. It’s one story, kind of like a score to a movie. I don’t think I could have got that if I worked with a bunch of producers.

This is a very personal album, is there one song that you feel represents you best and why?
I would say “Boy Meets World,” which is like the 10-minute opus at the very end of the album. It’s really just explaining my story from day one to now, from being a young kid with dreams of rhyming to actually growing up and being a man and realizing those dreams. All the experiences I’ve had”¦ “Boy Meets World,” that sums me up right there.

Does all this seem surreal to you at this point? Or in your eyes is this reward for all your hard work?
Nah, it’s very surreal. I’m very lucky to have a great team around me that works really hard. I have a strong work ethic, but it’s a blessing to have the feedback we’re having. You can’t plan that feedback; that’s just something that falls into your lap.

Can you talk about some of pressures that come with the acclaim?
I guess just people calling your album a classic and asking for a second—that’s the only pressure. I don’t know; I’m just enjoying what I’m doing. I love going out every night and doing shows, and promoting my ideas and my music. I heard Lil Wayne say, “What’s life without pressure? Pressure can either make a diamond or shatter things to sand.” I feel like a diamond right now.

When you’re writing for the next album, do the accolades and people calling your debut a classic affect you or motivate you?
I’m already going in different direction creatively. I don’t know, I don’t think it affects me. I think I established myself and who I am with Boy Meets World, just bringing the audience into my life. By doing that with my first album, I feel like I can take my audience wherever I like from the club to the library.

One of my favorite songs on the album is “When She Calls.” The storytelling on that one is crazy, I was wondering if it is rooted in someone you know or is any of it autobiographical?
It’s not autobiographical. When you listen to it, you hear the story through the guy’s eyes, and the second verse is watching the story unfold through someone else’s eyes. And the third verse is what if it never happened. The story was inspired by a friend of mine who killed himself over a girl who didn’t even”¦ I just wanted to show how intense love can be. It was one of the hardest songs to write for the album, actually it was the last song I wrote and recorded. It was a story that people could relate to. It’s a dark subject, but these things happen all the time so I felt the need to talk about it.

To wrap it up, what’s next for Fashawn?
I’m working with a new mixtape with Green Lantern, which should be out soon. I’m constantly in the studio, always working.

Fashawn played the Empire Events Center on Dec. 12 as part of the How the Grouch Stole Christmas tour with The Grouch, Mistan FAB and Exile.