Dark Shadows

Rated PG-13

Tim Burton is one of the most recognizable directors of the past three decades. (Can you believe Pee Wee’s Big Adventure was released almost 30 years ago?) Not only does he look like he could have walked out of one of his own movies, but his filmmaking style is so distinct, it’s unmistakable. He’s practically become his own genre at this point. But is the shtick getting old?

Burton’s quirky, quasi-goth style would seem perfectly suited for a film adaptation of the camp classic, late-‘60s daytime TV show Dark Shadows. A sort of progenitor to True Blood, Dark Shadows presented vampires and other supernatural beings in a melodramatic soap opera format, with blood sucking Barnabas Collins as the show’s central feature.

In the Burton film, the director teams up once again with leading man Johnny Depp as the emotionally conflicted vampire Barnabas. The film opens in the mid-18th century, as the Collins family leaves Liverpool, England, to expand its fishing empire to the New World. The family settles in Maine and founds a town (Collinsport), and erects a lavish estate (Collinwood), as its home. The Collins family is much beloved by the townsfolk, but fickle Barnabas has run afoul with the wrong woman. Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green) is beautiful and borderline obsessed with Barnabas; he doesn’t seem to mind fooling around with her; but, as the saying goes, he’s just not that into her. When his affections turn toward Josette DuPres (Bella Heathcote), Angelique loses it. What’s worse, this woman scorned is also a powerful witch. Using magic, she kills Barnabas’ parents, causes Josette to take a plunge off a cliff and curses Barnabas to walk the Earth forever as a vampire.

That’s not enough for Angelique, however. She leads the town in a witch hunt against Collins, which leads to him being chained, stuffed in a coffin and buried. He remains that way for almost 200 years until construction in the Maine woods outside Collinsport disturbs him from his slumber. He finds himself in the ‘70s with his family’s name and wealth in the wane and his beloved Collinswood in disrepair.

The trailers for Dark Shadows had the film poised as a wacky dark comedy, but it seems to have a bit of an identity crisis. After the opening montage that spells out Barnabas’ past, the film focuses on Heathcote, now in the role of Victoria Winters, who is drawn to Collinswood in pursuit of a job as a governess. If anything, this is one of the most striking sections of the film–mainly because it’s decidedly un-Burton. As Winters rides the train through New England and eventually hitchhikes with a group of hippies, Dark Shadows takes on an almost bucolic quality. The scenery and setting speak for themselves, and a sense of a real time and place takes root.

However, once Winters makes it to Collinswood, it’s Burton full-bore–not that that’s a bad thing. The acting becomes big, the situations are over-the-top and the characters become caricatures. Green and Depp are up to the task. Green is deliciously evil as the film’s villain, who in ‘70s Collinsport has supplanted the Collinses as the top entrepreneur in the fishing business, and Depp alternates between gravely serious to ridiculous. Unfortunately, his funniest moments don’t manifest in dialogue but in his confused reactions to the strange modern world he’s awoken to. Helena Bonham Carter and Jackie Earle Haley also pitch in, but seem under-utilized. On the flipside, megastar Michelle Pfeiffer (Burton’s Catwoman in Batman Returns) is forgettable as matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard; and young rising star Chloe Grace Moretz sinks as Pfeiffer’s over-sexed teenage daughter Carolyn.

Most of Dark Shadows’ best moments occur between Depp and Green, especially a raucous supernatural love scene, but the script feels so fractured, it seems more like it’s jumping from moment to moment than telling a cohesive story. First it focuses on Barnabas’ relationship with Victoria, who seems to be the reincarnation of Josette; then jumps to the Collins family’s attempt to resurrect its fishing empire; then to the troubles young David Collins (Gulliver McGrath) is having with his father; then, back to Barnabas and Victoria, a thread that suffers from the two characters having very little screen time together. Perhaps this is the problem with adapting a series that lasted six seasons into one two-hour film. Unfortunately, the laughs aren’t big enough to cover up the sloppy storytelling.

I’m not ready to toss Burton’s shtick in a coffin and bury it–even though Dark Shadows doesn’t hit the mark, it’s still fun to look at–but it will certainly need some resurrecting after this one. Hopefully, the October release of the animated Frankenweenie will do just that.

Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers go viral for all the right reasons

Words by James Barone –

Much of how the music industry does business has changed, especially over the past decade, but some things remain the same. Perhaps labels aren’t the way to go anymore, and maybe artists are better off releasing EPs or singles as opposed to full-length albums. That’s really just window dressing. What matters is good voices and musicianship plus good songwriting usually equal good music. Unfortunately, another constant of the business seems to hold true: Good music doesn’t always equal success. If there really was a formula that guaranteed a hit, everyone would be using it. In most cases it’s just a matter of chance.

It was perhaps good fortune that Nicki Bluhm’s career in music began at all. Her now-husband Tim Bluhm, frontman for The Mother Hips, overheard her sing at a New Year’s Eve party, as the story goes, and encouraged her to start writing songs and perform live. Along with her band The Gramblers, Nicki released her first album, Toby’s Song, in 2009 and has since shared stages with notable rockers such as Phil Lesh, Bob Weir and Jackie Greene.

But despite all that, Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers recently had an unlikely breakthrough that brought their music to a wider audience. One of a series of videos called “The Van Sessions” the band posted to YouTube went viral. The video features the band singing as they drive between gigs, in this case a cover of Hall and Oates’ classic “I Can’t Go for That.” Posted March 23, 2012 the video currently has over 1.2 million hits, and when Submerge conducted a Google search for the song title, Nicki and the Gramblers’ video came up second only to the original.

“Subconsciously, I think we knew that it was good content to have, but again, you can never really premeditate or expect anything like that to happen,” Nicki says of the impetus to post the videos in a recent interview. “There are tons of people in the world who do really incredible stuff, and it doesn’t get any attention at all.

“For us, we’ve had way more triumphant moments, whether they’re at a show or in the studio or whatever, that people don’t really know or hear about, but for whatever reason, these videos in our van were the things that people like. There’s no way to know that. But what we do know, what we were doing was pure and fun and real.”

The video brought the band some much-deserved attention. Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers’ most recent album, 2011’s Driftwood, is a beautiful collection of country-fried pop-rock mixed with sun-baked soul–the kind of songs that seem as though they would be far more at home spinning on vinyl than queued up on Spotify. Nicki is happy to report that once the extra attention was turned her and her band’s way, she and the Gramblers were able to hold on to it.

“It was interesting to see something go viral,” she says. “Ultimately, you have all this attention that you weren’t expecting, and your goal is to direct it to your original music. I think we did. I think we managed to do that. I think people saw the video and got curious about who we were. A lot of people really did check out our original stuff and bought our records, and I hope that continues.”

As long as they keep putting out good music, it should. Nicki says that the band is currently hard at work on their third album, which should be out in early 2013. When we caught up with Nicki Bluhm, she was fresh back from a rehearsal where the band was revisiting some of their earlier material.

When you go back to the old stuff, do you feel the need to tinker with it a little bit or do you leave it as is?
A little bit of both actually. I know when I hear a song off a record, I really appreciate it being played the way I know it and not deviating from that. I guess just putting a little extra glitter on top is what we aim to do, so maybe we’ll add an extra harmony or maybe we’ll add a little extra instrumentation, but structurally we like to stick with how the song was originally written and arranged.

You said you’re working on some new songs…
We’re in the studio recording our third full-length album. We’ve been playing one song off of that. We’re just so excited to play some of the new songs. We definitely continuously work on the new songs. We’re trying to save a lot of them for the album release, because it’s a lot more fun when the album is fresh, but we can’t help it sometimes. They’ll slowly trickle into our set, I think, leading up to the third album’s release.

How long have you been in the studio working on the next record?
We’ve been in for a couple of months. We did a lot of it live, full band in the studio, which was really fun. And now we’re doing a lot of going back and listening. Initially we were planning a fall release, but now we’ve pushed it back to 2013 so we can really take our time and make sure we’re really happy with the way the songs turn out. We’re hoping to be done in the next couple months, but we’re still spending some time on it and giving it some extra love and care.

Did you start trying out different things than on your last album writing-wise?
I think so. Like Driftwood, there were multiple songwriters, so I’ll do a lot of the writing, and so will my husband Tim and Deren Ney, our lead guitar player, and our newest member of almost two years now, David Mulligan, will have a song on the new record. It’s really fun to have multiple songwriters. I think this album will be a little different, because we’re coming more at it as a band in the way that it was recorded–the nature of how the songs were arranged. We went in with skeletons of ideas, and we all helped arranged each other’s songs. There was a bit more of a group effort, I think, in this record as opposed to coming to the studio with a totally finished product and having other people play on it. We all put a little bit of our two cents in on each song.

Listening to Driftwood, it felt like a live album. It sounds like a band record as opposed to a producer’s record. Was a lot of that recorded live?
Honestly, I can’t even remember that well. I think it was probably a mix of both. But certainly, I think it was done a bit more piece by piece than the album we’re working on now. We always strive to have that live feel. None of us really like over-produced records. I think the best way to achieve that is to do stuff live, but certainly the current record was done more in that fashion than Driftwood. On Driftwood, there was a little bit less of the live happening, though, of course, there was some.

Do you go back and listen to your previous albums?
Typically, I don’t love to go back and listen to them. We obviously will reference them. Like today, we were referencing an old record of ours that we’re going to start playing again. It always feels so good. It had been a couple years since I’d listened to the recording and I’d finally listen back and laugh at it, or sometimes it just really warms me too. A lot of times I listen to live recordings and I’m like, “Oh God, I can’t believe this is in the world.” With a lot of the recordings from the studio, you go back and remember the time that you were doing it and what was going on in your life, and it can be very nostalgic, which is always really fun–or it can be really sad, or whatever it was that you were going through. But I don’t make a habit of it, but when I do I typically enjoy re-listening to the recorded songs.

Before you were talking about how you like having multiple songwriters. Do you write all the lyrics, or do the guys writing the songs chip in lyrics also?
Tim and I will co-write songs, but typically we’ll write our songs independently. One person will write the lyrics and melody. There are exceptions where Tim and I co-write, but for the most part, the songwriter does music and the lyrics.

When you’re writing your own lyrics, you know what place it comes from emotionally or mentally or whatever, but when you’re singing someone else’s lyrics, do you have to change your approach to how you connect with the words?
I think that because we all know each other so well, but I think we all come at the songwriting–and I obviously can’t speak for everybody else–but it feels like everyone comes from a place where they’re writing songs for the band. So, I’m not sure how personal the songs are to the writer, because they know that they’re writing songs that will be sung by me in this band, so they’re specifically crafted songs. I tend to relate to them all pretty closely. Daren will write songs sometimes from my perspective, so it’s almost like me singing this story of what he thinks about me. It’s all very intimate. We’re all very close…we’re family. If the song is written as a deep emotion for the writer, I feel like I know that person so well, I don’t really have to talk to them about it. I can feel and sense. I don’t know. All I can say is that we’re all really close, and the songs are vehicles for each other and this band, I think.

Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers will play Marilyn’s on K in Sacramento on June 1, 2012. Tickets are just $8 and the show will get underway at 8:30 p.m. For tickets, go to http://marilynsonk.com/ or http://www.nickibluhm.com/

The Five-Year Engagement

Rated R

There are other movies in theaters this weekend besides The Avengers. I was just as surprised to hear this as you probably are. Opening April 27, 2012 the latest Jason Segel comedy, The Five-Year Engagement, sneaked onto the big screen before Marvel’s Mightiest Heroes battled whatever big baddy they’re pitted against. The conflict here is a young couple trying to keep it together in a crazy, mixed-up world. That’s probably not as exciting as kicking super villain ass, but it’s probably more relatable to most of us mere mortals.

The Five-Year Engagement sees Segel teaming up once again with Nick Stoller, his partner on 2011’s fantastic The Muppets, who also directs this time around. The story is an intricate dissection of the romantic relationship between Tom Solomon (Segel) and Violet Barnes (Emily Blunt), who by all appearances seem perfect for one another. The two meet at a super hero-themed New Year’s Eve party (hey, they’re in right now), and after just one year together are engaged to be married. Soon thereafter, life throws the young lovebirds a curveball when Violet gets a dream job offer in the psychology department at the University of Michigan. Tom, a sous chef on the cusp of becoming a culinary superstar, decides to pack up his life in his beloved Bay Area and head to the Midwest with his fiancée.

The culture shock, harsh winters and Tom’s own feelings of being a failure quickly mount as Violet achieves success after success at her new gig, working under the guidance of handsome Welsh professor Winton Childs (Rhys Ifans). Tom works at the best sandwich shop in town, but still feels unfulfilled in his career. So, he dabbles in hunting and experimental facial hair, and the couple’s wedding date seems perpetually “to be announced.”

Through the course of his career, Segel as a screenwriter has proven adept at staying true to clichéd rom-com mode while still keeping things interesting. The Five-Year Engagement is no different in that regard. The writing is crisp–though the film, coming in at just a hair over two hours in length, perhaps a byproduct of its story spanning so much time, does seem to drag leading up to the climax. At times, it’s even poignant. As Tom and Violet’s relationship degrades, both romantic leads are shown for all their foibles. Fingers aren’t pointed, and neither character is fully demonized. Each misstep is just an example of life doing what it often does–destroying your best-laid plans and pointing you in an unexpected direction.

Even when poignancy does sneak into The Five-Year Engagement, it’s usually tongue-in-cheek. This is a rom-com that doesn’t skimp on the “com” side of things. The humor runs the gamut from lowbrow jerk-off humor as when Tom’s friend Alex (Chris Pratt) mimics masturbation during a heated kitchen scene using a carrot and cream sauce, to the awkwardly surreal, usually provided by the hilarious Brian Posehn, who stands out in a small supporting role as Tarquin, Tom’s co-worker at the sandwich shop. In one of the more memorable moments toward the end of the film, Blunt and co-star Alison Brie (Mad Men’s Trudy Campbell), who plays Victoria’s sister Suzie, have a serious heart-to-heart but do so in the voices of Cookie Monster and Elmo respectively. It’s a mixed bag of humor that’s sure to appeal to a wide range of audiences.

Like most rom-coms, The Five-Year Engagement flows from the hope all new relationships seem to bring through rocky ups and downs once the honeymoon phase has passed and sees our onscreen lovers come through the gauntlet in a happy ending, because, well, it’s a movie and that’s what’s supposed to happen. Still, it’s enough fun to make for an enjoyable date night.

Nadia Ali keeps dance floors grooving all across the globe

Nadia Ali lives the kind of life many of us dream of. She travels the world, works with some of the most heralded artists on the planet and, as if all that wasn’t enough, has made a name for herself and a successful career doing what she loves.

A quick glimpse of what the life of an internationally renowned (and coincidentally Grammy-nominated) singer/songwriter is like can be found on her Twitter feed. On April 29, 2012 after returning from performing in Miami, she wrote, “NYC. Home sweet home.” The very next day, she tweeted, “Lots of packing to do for my trip to LA tomorrow.” As the saying goes, there’s no rest for the weary.

“You know, the grass is always greener on the other side,” Ali tells Submerge. “I envy people who have very stable lifestyles where they just stay in one place, but there was a time where all I wanted to do was travel.”

As it turns out, the trip to Los Angeles has deeper ramifications than just a simple concert or brief vacation. It’s a move that may turn out to be permanent.

“This is my month to try out L.A,” she confides. “Based on what happens this month determines how quickly I move, or whether or not I move for sure, but so far it’s looking like it’s happening.”

“I’m kind of tired of New York,” Ali adds. “I’ve been there since I was 5 years old, and I’m over it.”

Born in Libya to Pakistani parents, Ali moved to New York City’s borough of Queens at an early age. When she was just 17, she was introduced to producer Markus Moser. The two formed electronic duo iiO, and in 2001 released the single “Rapture,” which thrust Ali into instant recognition and coaxed people onto dance floors worldwide. In 2005, Ali began pursuing a solo career and became a highly sought-after vocalist in the EDM world. In 2009, she released Embers, her solo debut. Lush and intoxicating, Embers blended pulsating digital beats with Ali’s deft songwriting skills, creating an album that would appeal to pop music lovers and dance music aficionados.

Currently, she’s embarked upon a North American tour that spans from now through the end of July. In the midst of that, she’s also working on her sophomore release, Phoenix, which is, as of now, without a solid release date. Ali filled us in on her upcoming album and also shed some light on her most recent collaboration with superstar electronica producer BT in the following interview.

You’re always being tapped to work with other artists, and in May you have a new single, “Must Be the Love,” with BT debuting. How did that come about?
I had been in touch with BT through Sultan and Ned Shepard. I had to ask BT a question about something business related, and we started talking. It was interesting because I’ve admired his music since I first started doing dance music. I think it was a few months later that I got an email from BT, and he said, “Would you like to try writing something to this track?” and of course I was all over it, because I had been a massive fan for such a long time. He’s a pioneer in electronic music. I wrote the song in Toronto, and that was it. I sent it over to him, and he loved it. He tweeted to his fans how much he was a fan and that he’s excited for the song. Very recently, Arty jumped on the track. It’s been good. I’m excited, because the song is very meaningful to me.

Meaningful in what way?
The original title of the song was “We Heal.” It’s all about how when we get into a really great relationship, our life changes for the better. The past wounds and the past scars that we have are healed by a new love. It has to do with love as a healing factor.

You said you wrote the track in Toronto, and Arty just recently hopped onto the song. Did you know Arty would be on the track? Do you think about that stuff when you write?
I had no idea that Arty was going to be on that collaboration. When I sent out the track to BT, I thought it was going to be just us. Actually, a year after we recorded it, or longer, I found out on YouTube that Arty was going to be on the track [laughs]. BT was like, “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you…” Arty’s super talented, so it’s cool.

Does that affect the way you write at all?
I never think about who’s going to produce it… Actually, that’s not true. When it was BT, I knew I had to bring something to the table that matched BT. I brought a meaningful song, because I think he’s a meaningful artist. I have other artists where I do fun pop songs, because I know it’s going to be a commercial song that they’re looking for. I think it just depends on the artist.

You’ve had Grammy nominations and have been at this for a while. It’s neat that it’s still a thrill for you to work with artists you admire.
Oh absolutely. I’m a very lucky girl. I’ve been in this career for 12 years. It’s been a good gig.

Other than collaborating with other artists, you’re working on your second solo album now. I know it’s still in its early phases, but how is the writing going on that for you?
Well, I’ve been writing tracks for it since I finished my first album, but the issue is, when you’re touring, how do you make time to continue recording? So that’s what I’m trying to work on right now. I’m being a lot more proactive about it now. That’s why I’m in Los Angeles. I feel like Los Angeles is giving me that new inspiration that I need, so I’m excited.

I was reading that the new album Phoenix is going to be a bit more dance-y than your first album Embers.
I’ve been doing dance music from the start of my career, but Embers was more of a self-indulgent album where I wanted to express myself as a singer/songwriter. I’ve done a lot of music since then, and I feel like my fan base is itching for a dance album, so I’m giving them what they want.

Before we were talking about the track you did with BT and how the lyrics were meaningful to you. When you write a dance track, does that change your mindset?
It really depends on the type of song the artist is looking for. I know some artists want a really catchy commercial song, and they don’t really care about lyrics or a message in songs, and some guys really care about the music in the song. I work accordingly. It’s really different for every situation, for every different producer.

You were talking about your touring schedule, and you’re pretty much on the road between now and the middle of the summer. How is it going so far and what can fans expect?
This tour, most of the dates are in the United States, but after that, I’m going to work on really developing my live show and bringing it to the next level. That’s a goal. You always want to put it out there, but until you get to that stage where you have time to do it, then you have a better picture of what’s going to realistically happen.

What kind of stuff are you looking to incorporate in the future?
I know it’s going to have a lot of LED screens, lots of lights. Lots of glitz and glam.

Nadia Ali will also be debuting some new tracks on her current tour, so Sacramento should make a point to go to District 30 on May 24, 2012. Also on-hand will be Trevor Simpson, and the event will be hosted by Midnite Events, AJ Memar and Stephanie Weaver. For more info, go to http://district30sacramento.com/, or call (916) 737-5770.

The Cabin in the Woods

Rated R

Before vampires sparkled, they were crawling out of a Hell Mouth and getting their asses slain by a buxom high school cheerleader with mystical powers. Those were simpler times. While Buffy the Vampire Slayer may not have been highbrow, it hinted at the promise of a young writer still cutting his teeth (pun intended) in the realms of horror, sci-fi and fantasy. Today, Joss Whedon is one of the most interesting creators those genres have to offer, and with his latest film (directed and co-written by Buffy/Lost alum Drew Goddard) Whedon’s place in the horror pantheon seems pretty well assured.

In the months leading up to The Cabin in the Woods, I was advised to go into the movie knowing as little about it as possible. Interesting, considering another film Goddard co-wrote–the mind-altering monster-eat-city flick Cloverfield–was as much about the wide-reaching alternate reality game strewn across the Internet as it was about the actual film. As it turned out, going into The Cabin in the Woods without any clear expectations–other that there would be some blood and gore and college-aged kids getting stalked in the woods–certainly enhanced my enjoyment.

The film starts not with the stereotypical group of kids, but with a group of apparent scientists scuttling around what appears to be a mysterious research facility. Our group of cookie cutter slasher flick protagonists do show up shortly thereafter, bearing all the established guises: There’s the squeaky clean heroine (Kristen Connolly), her promiscuous blonde best friend (Anna Hutchison), the brawny man’s man (Thor’s Chris Hemsworth), the somewhat nerdy nice guy (Jesse Williams) and the Shaggy-like stoner dude (Fran Kranz). They all pile in an MV and head to a cabin in the woods for what would seem to be a weekend of lakeside fun in the sun, but turns out to be a frightful bloodbath.

It’s basically every story of its ilk that you’ve seen since the first Friday the 13th movie, yet completely fresh and original. I’d tell you more, but it would kind of ruin the fun.

It’s actually difficult to write this review without giving too much away. Luckily, what makes The Cabin in the Woods so much fun is that it’s so keenly self-aware. The multitude of twists and turns in the plot certainly enhance the experience, but knowing them wouldn’t necessarily destroy your enjoyment of the film (a la anything M. Knight Shyamalan has ever done). The writing is clever, serving up just about every horror cliché you can think of and turning them into a good-humored slurry of blood and guts.

Unfortunately, its own cleverness is also its undoing. As the story of the five youths becomes a sort of play within the play, some of the horror of their situation is dampened as the plot’s slier elements begin to take precedent. The stakes of our heroes’ plight seem diminished. Also, The Cabin in the Woods seems to be making a valiant effort to make a point. Is it shining a light on the blood lust of moviegoers who have made the woeful schlock like the torture porn series Saw into a six-film franchise? Does it indict the audience for delighting in seeing young people shredded into lumps of goo by supernatural killers? I suppose it could, and perhaps it should, but if that’s what the film was striving for, it seems to back off and instead opts for a heavy-handed (literally) conclusion.

There’s plenty here to like, though. It’s smart, silly, sometimes scary (though not as much as I’d hoped), sexy and bloody. Film nerds will clamor to out-geek one another in picking out The Cabin in the Woods’ many well-placed horror pop culture references. Veteran actors Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford turn in memorable performances as key figures in the mysterious conspiracy that is at the heart of the film, combining sinister disregard with wonderfully dry humor. It may not be Whedon at his best, but it proves that he’s one of the most progressive voices in what is usually a very conservative genre.

Mux Mool’s Planet High School gets its point across without speaking

It may not be an easy task for a lyricist to pen a song that accurately depicts what he’s feeling at any given moment, but he has one important tool that an instrumental artist does not: words. Such was the dilemma electronic music auteur Mux Mool (aka Brian Lindgren) faced when he sat down to compose his latest album Planet High School, released Feb. 7, 2012, on Ghostly International.

In the following interview, Lindgren, who will make an appearance at this year’s Sacramento Electronic Music Festival, divulged details about his creative process while offering pointed social commentary and voicing his opinions on experiencing electronic music in the live setting.

I was checking out the “Cash for Gold” video, and I thought it was a really neat clip. Did you have a lot to do with the concept of it?
The reason why I think I’ve hesitated on music videos for so long was because I never wanted to do a music video with me looking really cool with really cool things–anything flashy or anything like that. I actually wrote the story to the music video–the screenplay and everything was based on. It was just about being yourself and sticking it to your boss.

Do you think cinematically when you write your music?
I just think I think cinematically story-wise. I think narratively as opposed to a random collection of things.

The album does have a bit of a funk feel to it. Is that indicative of the music you were listening to while you were creating it?
No, it just was funky. I was definitely not listening to any more or less funk than I was in the past year.

So your funk intake has remained consistent throughout your entire music career?
Yes, it’s been almost entirely the same.

The album just came out in February, but are you already looking at what’s next? Are you the kind of artist who’s constantly writing?
Yeah, it’s an ongoing process. It’s not really done in blocks. You just have to work when you feel like working, which is not always. Some people like to post that they work every single day and nonstop and all they do is work between flights and, “Oh my God, I’m on my way to a show and I’m working on a song,” and I don’t buy it for a second. Everybody has a limit where they’re like, “I don’t want to work on music. In fact, I don’t want to listen to music, and I don’t want to talk about music.” Everybody has that. I definitely have that. I definitely work quite a bit, every single day, but with these songs it was all in the moment when I started making them at least.

Is that “in the moment” process something you utilized just for Planet High School, or was that also the case with your previous album?
With the last album, the record label wasn’t sure what I was going to do career-wise, so they wanted as many songs as they could get. At the time, they wanted to grab everything, so Skulltaste had less focus in terms of an album, because I think maybe about 12, 13 of those songs could have been an album and seven of those were songs they just grabbed.

When you commented on people bragging about how they’re constantly working, it occurred to me that that may play into the idea of prolonged adolescence–sort of like the kid who’s too eager to answer questions in class.
There are some high-school-type social elements even among professional musicians… To me, there are these dudes who want to post, “Going into the studio!” every day, and it’s like, “Well, you’re a professional musician. That’s just your job.” It’s not like if you’re a janitor you’d post “Scrubbing toilets!” and everyone’s like, “Oh, dude, that’s dope. You’re scrubbing toilets.” It’s not all brag-able. It really isn’t.

Plus, all they seem to talk about is how much they’re working. To me, it seems like real-life experiences are the things that should inspire you to write songs. If your entire life experience is sitting in the studio behind a computer, it’s like, what is a computer song inspired by other computer songs? There’s just no feeling there.

When you’re out on the road, do those experiences fuel what you’re writing?
Yeah, because you’re seeing stuff, and you’re away from home. I saw this thing on Reddit the other day that I thought was really funny, because it was like, “Bus window is a first year philosophy class,” and it’s kind of true. Because as soon as you sit there and you’re by yourself, and you have nothing to do but look out the window and think about stuff, you start thinking some basic philosophical stuff. But when you do that forever, you do that for three years, and that’s every single day, you’re thinking about a lot of stuff for a lot of time.

Before you mentioned you wrote the story for your video. Do you often write stories and do those inform your songwriting?
I think the reason why I wanted to put the message behind the video, of just being yourself at all costs, it’s just more or less what I’ve had to go through in the past couple years, which is just being able to do music for a living, which is not always easy. It’s not always easy to convince people that it’s a viable career, but being myself has always been worth it, because that’s the message I’ve always agreed with.

Is it weird for you to hear yourself say that you’re a professional musician?
I don’t really tell people that. People I meet, I don’t really say that, because everybody’s a fucking DJ. Everybody is.

I’m the same way about telling people I write. I mean, I do, and I get paid for it, but the reaction is always weird.
Right, because they’re like, “Yeah, of course you are, dude.” And you’re like, “No really. I make money at it. It’s a job.” And they’re like, “Uh huh.”

Either that, or they think it’s more interesting than it actually is.
Oh yeah and that, too. That’s the other side of that. That’s when you play shows and people come up to you like, “Oh my God, that was so incredible,” and you’re like, “Calm down. I didn’t just cure cancer. I didn’t give your mom heart surgery or anything. I played with my computer in front of you. I’m glad you’re impressed, but let’s be realistic.”

You mention playing on your computer in front of people. How is it for you to connect with the audience? Do you sometimes have to be more physical to get people involved?
For me the show isn’t about what I’m doing physically. There are a lot of people who go out there with their sets pre-programmed, they press play, they tweak on filters for the next hour and a half and they dance around and throw their hands up during the exciting part of the song. They get a lot of credit, and they get really far that way, and I think that’s a fucking joke. I’m not a clown. I’m not up there to be a clown and choreograph the songs to whatever shitty dance I’m doing. I’m trying to create the mood, but I think about it in a more European style, which means the mood should be created by the songs I’m playing and the order I’m choosing to play them in and how those things are working. It’s definitely more of a listening experience. I don’t dance. I don’t jump. I don’t even make funny faces. At least, I try not to.

Mux Mool will be featured on day 2 (Friday, May 4) of the Sacramento Electronic Music Festival, which will take place at Harlow’s. The festival runs from May 3—5, 2012. For more information and to get a glimpse of the full lineup, go to http://sacelectronicmusicfest.com/

Planet of the Vampire Women

Not Rated

Anyone who’s stuck around through the credits of your run-of-the-mill Hollywood blockbuster knows that movies require the hard work of a lot of dedicated individuals. From actors to directors, caterers to key grips and so forth, it’s easy to see where a lot of the money from those astronomical budgets is going.

Small or even no-budget films aren’t any easier. They require just about as much work to get the job done. However, instead of relying on a vast team of trained professionals, a dedicated few are required to wear many hats. Such is the case with the Sacramento-based filmmakers behind Trash Film Orgy, headed by director/writer Darin Wood and his wife/producer/director of photography Christy Savage. The credits for TFO’s latest feature, Planet of the Vampire Women, which has just landed a U.S. DVD distribution deal through Seminal Films (international distribution is also being secured through ICAP Media), show a long list of names, but in this case don’t be surprised if you see the same name multiple times.

“I tell the guys this every time. I tell them this every month, and they’re like, ‘I don’t know how to do this, I don’t know how to do that.’ I’m like, we’re going to find out how to do it. I tell them, ‘You don’t understand–95 percent of the whole thing is creative problem solving,’” Wood says. “Just figuring out what the thing is and then options, maybe trial and error. It’s all about that.”

The result may fall short of a James Cameron opus, but what you get is something that feels handmade and personal. Most importantly, though their budgets might be small, TFO certainly does not skimp on the fun. As Savage puts it, “We’re of the mind that at this budget level, you can’t take yourself too seriously, because no one else is going to. At least if you give the people the fun and the silliness, they’re going to have a lot more fun with it than trying to do a $25,000 uber-serious movie. I mean, it worked for The Blair Witch Project, but it doesn’t work for most people.”

This ethos is readily apparent in Planet of the Vampire Women. The film originally premiered at the Crest Theatre in Sacramento on Aug. 31, 2011, but it will return to the venerable movie house on April 13, 2012 to celebrate its distribution deal and official DVD release, which is set for April 24, 2012.

The film opens at a multi-billion dollar space casino that is ransacked by a group of space pirates led by Captain Mickey “Trix” Richards (Paquita Estrada). The heist doesn’t go unnoticed, however, and the group is pursued by the ever-dutiful space marine-turned-cop Sergeant Val Falco (Jawara Duncan). The chase takes its toll as both pursuant and pursuer end up crashed on a deserted rock of a planet on the outskirts of the universe. To make matters worse, Captain Richards has become possessed; she is transformed from foxy inter-galactic plunderer into a vicious undead vixen who must feast on the blood of the living–you know, a vampire–unbeknownst to the unsuspecting crew.

Loyal crewmember Ginger Maldonado (Liesel Hanson) takes the reins, leading what’s left of the ragtag group on what turns out to be a futile expedition to find and rescue the missing Richards. As our heroes plunge forth into this extra-terrestrial heart of darkness, the plot begins to unfold, which involves a doomed race of parasitic beings fighting for survival and an effort to ensure that they don’t spread like a plague across the galaxies. Simple and effective, the story is B-movie gold, giving a wink and a nod to the great films of trash cinema past while casting itself as a new cult classic.

Planet of the Vampire Women’s most striking feature–other than the gratuitous blood and bare breasts–is its setting. Wood, Savage and co-producer Amy Slockbower have crafted an eye-catching world. From the gloriously gaudy interior of the casino to the surreal, cartoonish rock formations of the abandoned planet our protagonists have found themselves stranded upon, sets are cohesive and colorful, and the film’s plentiful CGI follows suit. While it may not look realistic per se, it meshes beautifully with the drugged-out look of the Vampire Women’s more conventional backdrops.

Computer graphics are something of a new feature in TFO’s bag of tricks. In fact, as Savage tells Submerge, Wood, putting his creative problem solving skills to the test, learned 3-D digital modeling on the job with help from students at Art Institute — Sacramento while making Planet of the Vampire Women.

“We knew it was going to be a space movie. There were spaceships and crap like that. We were going to do miniatures in the beginning,” Wood elaborates. “We were just going to buy a bunch of models and mash them all together, and make them look like something random, but I wasn’t going to get them to look the way I wanted them to look.”

Another feature that sets Vampire Women apart from TFO’s previous effort, Monster from Bikini Beach, is more coherent storytelling. Whereas the latter sometimes felt as if it was two movies in one–a story about a down-on-his-luck rogue cop entwined with local crime syndicates colliding with a Creature from the Black Lagoon-type tale–Vampire Women plows headlong into a straightforward story arc. While Bikini Beach wasn’t short on delightfully cheap thrills and snappy dialogue, TFO’s latest film feels more confident and ends up more thoroughly enjoyable. The snappy dialogue hasn’t suffered one bit, though, as evidenced in memorable lines such as “My bullshit meter is picking up huge readings of I don’t give a fuck.” Priceless!

The April 13 event at the Crest has implications beyond just a mere celebration. TFO will also unveil its Planet of the Vampire Women comic book, written by Wood and featuring the artistic talents of Paul Allen.

“[Allen] was at a screening of Planet of the Vampire Women, and he got really excited about it and went home and did some drawings over the next couple of days,” Wood says of the project’s beginnings. “It’s got this Ed Roth kind of style. He’s a really funky kind of artist. He kept saying, ‘We should do a comic book,’ but I was like, ‘We don’t really have any money. We just did the film. We don’t have the resources to do a comic book.’ I would see him at parties, and he would keep bugging me about it, but I never took him seriously.”

Eventually, Wood gave in to Allen’s tenacity to bring Vampire Women to the paneled page. Wood says the story of the book is a mix between a prequel and a sequel, following the exploits of pleasure-clone Astrid Corvain (played by Stephanie Hyden in the film).

“It was a lot of fun,” Wood enthuses. “I’ve never written a comic book before.”

Beyond that, the Vampire Women screening at the Crest will also serve as a fundraiser for TFO’s next movie. The film is untitled as of yet, but the working title is “Badass Monster Killer.”

“I’m hoping not to use that, but some days it grows on me,” Wood says of the name.

He describes the film as “A Blaxploitation take on a Lovecraftian world.” As a result, Wood says he’s also been throwing “Loveshaft” around as a possible title, but jokes that it sounds too much like a porno.

TFO has also set up a campaign on http://www.indiegogo.com/ to raise funds for their forthcoming production. A synopsis posted on the site reads as follows: “On the trashy side of Camaroville, there’s a mob turf war going down, but the new gang in town ain’t content with merely controlling the local dope and sex trade. They are also mixed up with dangerous black magic, intent on resurrecting hideous demon-gods who have waited centuries for the chance to eat all our souls and enslave mankind!”

Exclamation indeed!

See Planet of the Vampire Women in its newly remastered form at the Crest Theatre on Friday, April 13, 2012 at 10 p.m. Tickets are just $10 and can be purchased through http://www.tickets.com/index.html. Some official copies of the DVD will be for sale along with the Vampire Women comic book. If you’d like to donate more to the “Badass Monster Killer” fund, head to http://www.indiegogo.com/badass-monster-killer

When I was a teenager, I had designs on becoming a famous indie comic book creator. This, of course, was an impossible dream because there is no such thing as a famous indie comic book creator. I would have had a better shot aspiring to be a unicorn (that was my fallback option). I locked myself in my room and drew and drew and drew, because I figured that was the tough part. Anyone could write. In fact, I prove that every other week in this very space. I had a problem with art, though. While I loved drawing all the wicked-awesome characters I had in my head, I had trouble with stuff like tables and doors and just about every other everyday object you’d see. That shit is boring (especially when compared to drawing boobs), but so vital to creating a realistic comic book world. Also, hands are harder to draw than a motherfucker.

So drawing went by the wayside. All that money I spent on Bristol board and gummy erasers and fancy 2H pencils probably would have been better served going toward drugs or more cigarettes or something. Luckily for you, I stuck with writing.

But a couple weeks ago my love for drawing returned. A friend of mine had pointed out a new game she was playing on her iPhone. “Have you played Draw Something?” she asked in the same tone she used to introduced me to Words With Friends and Temple Run; a tone that suggested, “Welcome to what you’ll be doing most of your waking hours for the next five weeks.” Of course, I immediately hit the App Store.

I’m not sure what it is about these iPhone games that is so addictive. About a month ago, I dropped over $150 on Soul Calibur V and Final Fantasy XIII-2 Collector’s Edition (who really collects these fucking things?) and its corresponding Bible­-sized strategy guide to play on my fancypants Xbox 360. The Final Fantasy game has provided almost 70 hours of playtime, but I still don’t obsess over it like I do these ephemeral little game programs that have me hunched over my phone for hours at a time.

Angry Birds was my entry drug, as I think it was for most people, but then I moved on to Robot Unicorn Attack: Metal Edition, which I excelled at while sitting on the toilet. Those were great and all, but it got really bad when I got hooked on Words With Friends. I love me some Scrabble. Also, it’s one of the only things I’m really good at. It’s so rare that I get to show off, but WWF had given me a tool to flaunt my mad skillz to people around the country–while I was riding the bus home from work, or, you know, in the john.

I’m still on the Words With Friends trip, but it’s died down. Most of the people I know–my own sister in particular–refuse to play with me. I thought about letting her win, but really, that wouldn’t be doing her any good. No one likes to be patronized. Now I’m down to just a paltry four or five games, one of which is a deathmatch with my column brother Bocephus Chigger.

But Draw Something is an entirely different animal. It’s more about teamwork as opposed to racking up triples against your opponent. It’s like digital Pictionary, where you and a friend try to guess a word based on a picture you drew. It’s fun, and ridiculously addictive. Plus, you can accumulate coins to buy new colors!!! How cool is that?!

As it turns out, my years away from drawing in any serious capacity have left me quite rusty. Also, my thumbs are not nearly as nimble tools as a well sharpened pencil and a Rapidograph pen. I strain to move my ponderous digits over the iPhone’s smooth and frustratingly small screen; I scrawl semi-decipherable hieroglyphic clues that may pass as characters from our alphabet. It’s not pretty, but it gets the job done.

Originally, I set aside one slot of Draw Something time right before bedtime. This was easy when I had a manageable amount of games. But once I posted one of my masterpieces to Facebook, my number of games grew exponentially. I’m currently running 16 games with friends far and wide–a couple of whom I only vaguely remember. It may not seem like a lot, but this is ART. It takes time. Now if only I could get my thumbs to draw a decent pair of boobs.

Ozomatli unites cultures far and wide, and people young and old

Multi-tasking. It’s an ungodly buzz word that has more or less come to define our modern existence. Job titles now seem to be a never-ending string of hyphens or slashes; Web browsers allow for infinite tabs; that little waterfall thing in the upper-right corner of your Facebook page lets you know when one of your friends likes a photo of someone you’ve never even met. You’re busy. We know. So is Ulises Bella of Los Angeles-based band Ozomatli. When Submerge caught up with him, he and the band were hard at work on a variety of things.

Bella says the Ozokidz album is about 95 percent done, but still doesn’t have a firm release date, but it will be released on Hornblow Recordings/Megaforce/RED, which has also released They Might Be Giants’ children’s albums. In the following interview, Bella talks about some of Ozomatli’s interesting experiences working as U.S. State Department Cultural Ambassadors.

Speaking of your travels, you guys visited Nepal a while back. I’ve always wanted to visit there, and I’m not sure why. I think it was because of Raiders of the Lost Ark. What was that like, and were you exposed to any of the local music there?
Totally, and the crazy thing about Nepal is that it was one of our first trips as cultural ambassadors, right? We show up in Nepal, and it was completely coincidence, the day we get there is the day this huge religious festival called Shivaratri, which is all about Shiva and millions of motherfuckers from all over India and all over Nepal come to this temple to do offerings. The lines that go into these temples are miles long. Now the other thing that distinguishes this festival is that all kinds of cannabis use is legal for that day, so you see all these kids rolling up these monster spliffs, and you’re like, “Whoa, what’s going on here?”

And then, trip out on this. This is like some National Geographic shit. We were like, “Whoa, what a party!” It’s really psychedelic because there are all these speakers blaring these chants. It’s fucking bananas. Then we end up in this courtyard that the government set up for the sadhus, who are Hindu holy men. Now these cats basically renounce all material items and shit–loin cloths and dread locks, bro. They reserved this square strictly for them just to get high. You walk in there, and you’re tripping out, and they’re asking you to come in there and smoke. They’re like, “No, please, sit down.” They have these huge bowls of weed… It was quite a scene.

And when we were there, there was a cease fire between the Maoists and the government. I guess every other day in Nepal there are general strikes. We were really tripped out, like this is really an electric environment.

When we played the show, you know how there’s the railing between the crowd and the stage?

Yeah, where the photographers sometimes stand.
Exactly. Dude. The gate was about 100 feet away from the fucking stage. We were like, “Why is it so far away? How are we supposed to connect with this audience?” Then the dudes who are breaking it down are like, “Look, if for any reason the crowd doesn’t like you, or you have technical difficulties and you can’t get your shit together, they’re just going to start throwing rocks at you.”

I’d just gotten food poisoning, so at this point, I’m sick as a dog. I’m like, well, fuck it. Even if they throw shit at us, we’ve got to bring this barrier closer to us. This is just ridiculous. I think we got it 50 or 60 feet away from the stage, played the show, and it’s estimated over 10,000 people were at this show, and it was one of the largest congregations of people outside of strikes and politics and all that kind of shit that was going on. It went off really really well. It was old people, young people, all kinds of people.

The thing is, going into Nepal, I knew that maybe 10, 15 people tops knew who we were [laughs]… But it’s an amazing litmus test to see if your music stands on its own and can just communicate, because we just played, and people dug the music and reacted to it immediately. So it wasn’t the hype of Ozo, or our legacy or our reputation didn’t precede us.

How did you get involved with the cultural ambassadorship, because that’s a government appointment, isn’t it?
Basically what happened was this woman hit us up about it to renew it, and it was at first a big point of debate with us, because obviously there was a government connection, and we were still in the middle of the Bush administration, and it was like, how do we want the world to perceive us and how do we want the world to react to us? Will they think that we’re peddling bullshit, you know? So a big thing with us was that we were really sensitive about how we were portrayed, and we were really sensitive about local interests. A good example with that was Nepal, there was one person there who was like, “They’re always striking here. They’re shutting down their country. Maybe you can talk to the kids about how it’s not such a good idea.” Actually, I was kind of jealous of them, because they can hold the reins of power and immediately take control of society. I don’t even think that there’s been a general strike here in Los Angeles. There have been times when demonstrations have shut down the city, but I was of the mind that I envy these kids, that they’re able to organize like that and shut things down.

Well, you guys formed at a labor demonstration too, didn’t you?
Right. That was the other thing. We were like, “Are you sure you want this band to do this kind of work?” For me it was about creating our own story and creating our own connections. As much as we have stereotypes about these countries, they have stereotypes about Americans too, and why not break down these stereotypes and show we’re more the same than we are different–especially when it comes down to common people, working class people. The same shit some guy has to deal with in Egypt is probably the same shit some dude in the Midwest has to deal with.

It’s true. There are little differences, but the big things are the same. Everyone has to pay rent and make sure there’s food on the table for the kids and stuff like that.
Exactly. There are tons of things that divide us, whether it’s our governments, our religions, our outlooks on society, but when it comes down to it, everybody needs a place to stay, clean water, clean food, education. And that’s the thing in the United States that we take for granted.

Are you still in the position now?
It’s kind of died down. We did a lot of work for a while. We visited a lot of countries that a lot of bands have never been to, and I think we were just like, “We did this work, but now we’ve got to focus on some other shit real quick.”

Ozomatli will play Ace of Spades in Sacramento on April 6. Doors open at 7 p.m. and tickets are $20. They can be purchased through http://www.aceofspadessac.com/. For more info on all things Ozo, go to http://ozomatli.com/

John Carter
Walt Disney

Words by James Barone

It was a little hard to judge John Carter from its trailer–or its title. John Carter could be a tale about an idealistic lawyer, or a gritty New York City cop, or a surfer who shreds waves at Mavericks…or whatever, really. In the trailer, there were many instances of our shirtless hero (the title character played by Taylor Kitsch) in an alien land, hurling himself with supernatural prowess into hordes of CGI creatures. Conan in space? As it turned out, not quite.

The film actually starts in New York, 1881. Carter roguishly avoids a mysterious pursuer in a bowler hat and delivers a simple telegram to his nephew, author Edgar Rice Burroughs. He pleads with his nephew to visit right away, but when Burroughs arrives, he finds that Carter has passed away and has left him his considerable estate. More importantly, Carter left behind his journal, which is addressed to young Burroughs, that tells a fantastic tale.

The story jumps back 13 years. We’re in the Wild West, post-Civil War Arizona territory, a rough place for rough men. Carter, a highly decorated soldier for the Confederacy, has fallen on hard times (as his beard probably suggests). He’s a lost man without a home or a country and cares only for finding a fabled cave of gold somewhere in the mountains. After escaping capture by Union soldiers, who mean to enlist Carter’s skills and courage to battle Apaches, our cynical protagonist finds what he is looking for and a whole lot more.

A chance encounter with a Thern, a mysterious race of intergalactic space travelers, lands Carter in Barsoom, or Mars in our Earth parlance. There, he finds that the change in gravity has given him the ability to jump great distances and has granted him superhuman strength. He is captured by a race of four-armed beings known as Tharks, but after showing his skill in battle he is reluctantly welcomed as a full-fledged member of the fold. The aforementioned incident also introduces him to Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins), a Frank Frazetta-style goddess and red princess of Mars. Saving her from certain death, Carter is thrust into the center of yet another civil war between Thoris’ Helium and the predator city Zodanga.

What seemed like computer-addled fluff from the trailer (and there is plenty of that) belies what is actually a rich and exciting action/fantasy/science fiction film. Based on Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars (perhaps a more descriptive title), John Carter is a sprawling adventure story rife with dazzling feats of heroism and old-fashioned romance.

It starts with good villains. Mark Strong stars as the de facto Thern leader Matai Shang, a shape-shifting lurker who always seems to be in the right place at the right time. His motives are unclear, but he is cruel and precise in the execution of his master plan, which seems to be to install Sab Than (The Wire’s Dominic West), a blue Martian and brutish warmonger, as the planet’s overlord. Armed with a powerful, mystical Thern weapon, Than is set to lay waste to the planet, but that will only go so far as winning the loyalty of the people. He forces Thoris’ father to promise him her hand in marriage, uniting Helium and Zodanga by blood.

Thoris, a scientist and headstrong young woman, isn’t having it. That’s where our heroes come in. They’re impossibly perfect. Carter, reluctant to take on the mantle because he lost his wife and daughter in his own Civil War, eventually comes around thanks in no small part to his bourgeoning romance with Thoris. Though she often plays damsel in distress, Thoris too has her moments saving Carter on multiple occasions and generally kicking ass in swordfights.

This is the sort of grand story you’d expect from Disney and the man who brought us Tarzan. It’s got big battles, interesting characters and a love story that spans space and time. Really, it’s the sort of thing you go to the movies for, so don’t let the sub-par trailer dissuade you.