hmvblogs - blogs by hmv

'never travel far..

Maybe it’s that I found the idea so underwhelming, but seeing Big Star once again last night turned out to maybe be the best time I’d seen them yet. Always a favoutite of music critics & few others, I spotted a surprising clutch of celebrities (Matt Berry, Stewart Lee & er Paul from EMI) and there were an even more surprising amount of fashion guys channelling Chris Bell through their ironic facial hair. Still the current Big Star were on top form & played a mostly great set. When the majority of the audience sang along to ‘Thirteen’ I couldn’t help smiling. If you’ve not heard them before, I urge you to check out their first three classic albums, & with the first two selling at £3.99 at the moment you really can't go wrong.

woods walks on water!

Everyone seems to have read about the viral campaign EA have put together for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09, which is out today. They've basically come up with a 'video response' to a glitch in last year's iteration, in which Tiger plays a shot in the game whilst standing on water.

Apparently it's no glitch. In fact, according to EA, "he's just that good". In case you haven't already seen it, here's the vid in full...

Happy Friday, everyone - have a good weekend! x

Little bit of samba in your life

SEGA have just sent me a cool mini game for Samba de Amigo, to tie in with the release of the new Wii game out in a few weeks. Remember the original Dreamcast game? It was one of the first ‘rhythm-action’ games on consoles, and is still a fan favourite.

The Wii game basically involves you shaking the controls in the required direction, and generally dancing around like a monkey, which we loved when we played it at SEGA’s office a few months ago (even though it was 10am)! Anyway, here’s the mini-game for you to try out for yourself – have fun!

Just in case you’re almost as slow as I am, the controls (which took me about 10 minutes to work out) are W, D and C for the left hand side, and O, J and N for the right.

couldn't have tried harder if i'd tried

The last week's been pretty good for music for me, starting last Wednesday with the insanely underrated Dan Sartain rocking the Luminaire. Dan looks (and sounds) like he should be in a David Lynch film. Perfect venue for him too, shame he didn't play longer.
Got a day in at Reading festival on Friday & caught up with loads of friends in the guest area while we should have been watching bands. Still caught quite a bit - Queens Of The Stone Age, Dan Le Sac, Rage & Does It Offend You in particular.
Sunday saw Radioactive Man djing & was pleasantly surprised to find he'd picked up his rock records for the occasion. AC/DC et al on a Sunday night - much better than Metallica down the road.

back to school notebook from hell

I spent a good part of Saturday watching the amazing anime series Death Note . Volume 1 has been sitting on my DVD shelf for weeks, still sealed (and I'm still confused as to how it got there!?!). So I thought I might as well at least open it up and watch one episode. After 30 minutes I was blown away by the plot. So I decided to watch the next one...then the next...and another, until the first volume had come to an end. I've now noticed there's a feature movie that's available too...that's me sorted for this weekend!

Colin Farrell i take it all back...

I've never been Colin Farrell's biggest fan, but have to say In Bruges is one of the best films i've seen this year, and Farrell along with side-kick Brendon Gleeson is excellent. It's a dark movie, quite violent but very funny in places with some great lines, and Ralph Feinnes steales the show late on. I wasn't that particularly bothered about this film when it came out, but highly recommend it now.

eye popingly pretty game footage

One nice bit of footage to come out of Leipzig this week has been some gameplay taken from the opening of the new PoP game (aka Prince of Persia - now laugh at the title of this post). Made by the same 'multi cultural team of various religious faiths and beliefs' who bought us Assassin's Creed (and built on the same game engine), PoP is out later this year, and is looking, well, beautiful.

One of the new features in this one is that the Prince is helped through the game by a female accomplice known as Elika, and judging by the above video, she seems to be far more helpful than Yorda could have ever dreamed of being to Ico. Looking good...

start getting excited about Mirror's Edge

I've been going on about Mirror's Edge a lot lately, and thanks to some footage that just came out of Leipzig's Games Convention this morning, I've now got some video evidence to show you about why you should be getting excited about the game yourself.

Remember, the following is all in-game footage. Enjoy...

absolutely amazing!!!

I watched an advance copy of the special edition of Ron Fricke's Baraka last night and have to say i am genuinely in awe of his achievement. I'd been waiting to see it for a while, since watching the last 20 minutes of it at a friend of a friend's in Berlin earlier in the year. The film is a wordless montage showing various wonders, civilisations, rituals and traditions from 24 countries (on 6 continents) around the world, exploring nature, the human condition, spirituality and the infinite. Apart from the breathtaking cinematography, what i enjoyed about this film is that although it is edited to make its point, the lack of narration allows you to make up your own mind about what that point is. Fricke's other works as cinematographer include the brilliant Koyaanisqatsi and Chronos, which are also definite must watch films, but this is my favourite. The special edition comes with a bonus documentary about the making of the film which i might just watch when i get home tonight... It's also coming out on Blu-Ray for the first time in November, which i imagine will be an even more visually impressive experience. See this film!

Future Of The Left - Water Rats

Last night I finally got the chance to see Future Of The Left live. Curses has been a constant soundtrack to my drunken bus journey's, and my determined gate as I ponder the different ways to kill other Londoners for about, ooh 12 months now. So it was with a mix of anticipation and childlike enthusiasm that I barged my way to the front of Water Rats to catch a glimpse of the Welsh three piece. However, when 'the kids' started rocking out I was swiftly demoted to a position more befitting my age.

Usually when you go to a gig with such high expectations, you're left sorely disappointed and deflated a bit like the feeling after a one night stand with a super model (not that I'd know but I've been told). However, not on this occasion. They were so good I made stains. From one grumbling assault to the next FOTL slayed us all.

Not only were the tunes filled with the venom and viciousness of a sack full of cobras, but the between song banter almost made me wet myself with laughter. Topics that were covered included the Olympics (Britain are only good at middle class events where you have to be able to afford the equipment), an audience member (threatened with assault) and most prominently Reverend And The Makers (makers of what? Awful music that's what). No more has anyone hated a band since I decided that if disease could hold a guitar it would be renamed The Feeling! Anyhow, I digress.

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littlebigplanet gets a release date!

The massively anticipated PS3 title LittleBigPlanet has finally been given a release date! The cute and crazy game, which will be mostly powered by user-generated content, will be yours to play and love on October 29th, which is a Wednesday (which is strange, seeing as most games come out on a Friday).

LittleBigPlanet is dangerously cute and cuddly, and allows you to build your own game levels using a highly intuitive in-game creator, share them with your friends, and get big love from the PlayStation community - what more could you want?! Anyway, it's pretty much the game that every PS3 owner is waiting for, and it's been made by Media Molecule, who are British developer (us Brits seem to be good at everything at the moment!)

DJ Shadow on the ps3

The turntablist provides an excellent remix for the game "Uncharted - Drakes Fortune".