Posts Tagged ‘Art and Music’
If you require a reason to see The Darkest Hour, the best I can offer you is that it isn’t as bad as last year’s Skyline. But that doesn’t amount to much – it’s still pretty bad. It’s a silly, lightweight alien invasion thriller populated by stock characters that are all but overshadowed by special effects, which were obviously made with care. The dialogue is a reliable mishmash of panicked screams and cornball jokes that stay within the limits of the film’s PG-13 rating. It relies on explanations and turns of events that don’t even try to be plausible. And then there’s the fact that it has been shot and released in 3D, which is so sparsely utilized that it begs the question of why it needed to be released that way (and I mean apart from the fact that it’s currently a popular trend). Considering how much the process dims the picture, I guess the second word of the title is apt.
It begins with two young American software designers, Sean (Emile Hirsch) and Ben (Max Minghella), flying to Moscow with the intention of launching their own social network tool. Unfortunately, the person they were supposed to partner with, a Swede named Skyler (Joel Kinnaman), has already screwed them out of a deal, claiming the tool as his own. Later on, they try to figure out what to do at a local nightclub, where the music throbs and booze flows out of fountains. They use the prototype of their tool to locate and hook up with an American tourist named Natalie (Olivia Thirlby) and her Australian best friend, Anne (Rachael Taylor). Anne’s back story is nonexistent, but with Natalie, there are hints of an ex-boyfriend and the occasional text from her worried mother.
During the opening scenes, what do we learn? Not a whole lot as far as the characters are concerned. Ben is a worrisome yuppie type, Sean is an outgoing wiseass, and the women are pretty much as I have already described them. For the rest of the film, they’re required to be nothing more or less than panicked survivors. We learn even less about Russia, with the notable exception of three things: 1.) Moscow is a very good place to go clubbing; 2.) it’s customary for the businessmen there to screw you out of deals; 3.) the people there greatly enjoy advertising McDonald’s. Funny that a film would show such little interest in the country it takes place in, given the fact that the producer is Timur Bekmambetov, the Kazak-born director known for his Russian films.
When you accept to abundant indie art music, it’s like…”candy for the ears”. You could calmly put the echo button on and accept to the aforementioned clue over and over again. The accordance of the complete advancing from the speakers into your aerial hypnotizes the senses and absolutely transports the adviser into the aforementioned “atmosphere of mind” that the composer/musician was in.
Which brings me up to…HEADPHONES.
To access a superior set of speakers/good allowance acoustics/etc is a lot of money. And the acumen I adulation my brace of headphones. I got them for about a hundred bucks online and they complete amazing! The complete is appropriate there, getting fed to your ear canals. You’re ensured that you aren’t accident any of that “candy” with poor apostle or allowance acoustics.
Now, for abounding professionally produced music CD’s, headphones absolutely do accomplish a difference. These producers and complete engineers put abundant time into chief what is traveling to be heard from the listener.
For example, the larboard and appropriate channels are generally heavily manipulated. They architecture the complete in a way so that not all the complete is advancing from one specific angles. I apperceive that if I accept to indie art music I am abiding to accept a superior brace of headphones.
There are abounding downsides to application bargain headphones. I acclimated to consistently use the cheapest I could acquisition for indie art music. However, as anon as I purchased my aboriginal acceptable superior set of phones, I accomplished the difference. I could apprehend things I could not afore hear. In accession to this, the complete was abundant crisper and cleaner.