Catching Up

Yesterday evening, I headed downtown (if there is such a thing as 'downtown' in Bruges as it's only e schorte groat) to see this film 'Winter's Bone' at the Lumière. If I hadn't turned my head to the right as I was walking by Bar des Amis, a mere 100 meter from my destination, there would've been a review of the film in this space.

Fortunately, as there's been waaay to much movie stuff on this blog the past week, I did look to the right, only to see four of my old high-school pals (Mitch, Friggyman, Kathleen and Evy) waving at me from their table in the BDA.

Now I may be the biggest movie geek you'll ever meet, but I will never, and I repeat NEVER, walk past a table des amis just to watch a film - there's just no way. So I diverged from the planned route, made my way through the crowd at Bar des Amis and sat my ass down to have a drink with my friends.

Mitch, Friggyman, Kathleen, Evy and me go way back, probably to 1999. Back then, we were all sixteen and, apart from Friggyman, we enjoyed our first brushes with the good life. I remember some boozywoozy nights at the premises next to the Vlissinghe bar (the infamous Renier residence) and I don't think any of us will ever forget those nights at the Charlie's with our South-African guests.

Anyway, we stayed in touch over the years, first via weekly get-togethers at Joey's (another bar in Bruges). The contacts were less frequent the last five years, apart from the odd metalfest, housewarming or birthday bash, so it was good to see them again on this odd Sunday night - a time of week where you wouldn't expect to bump into each other and have some drinks.

One beer turned into a couple of Duvels, and by the time it was midnight, Friggyman and the girls were gone and it was just Mitchman and I. We weren't ready to throw in the towel just yet, though, so on we went, to have a last call at the Crash, Bruges' resident metal pub.

Being as metal minded as we are, Mitchman and me didn't pay its vapid beer, its run-down interior and its funny crowd (and by 'funny' I don't mean 'haha funny') much mind; we just enjoyed the music.

We were lucky enough to have Pieter as our bartender, because Pieter's a real music connoisseur. We don't have to ask him to play some Rage Against The Machine or Queens Of The Stone Age tunes, that's pretty standard at the Crash when Pieter's behind the counter. He might jump in with some Metallica or Volbeat, or maybe even some Nirvana - it's all good.

So by the time I normally would've reviewed 'Winter's Bone' on this website, I stumbled out of the Crash.

The blissful feeling that got a hold of me after listening to aforementioned jams more than made up for the lack of sleep which manifested itself this morning, after an all too short night's rest.

Meh: I'll sleep when I'm dead!

Happy trails!

DM

BY THE WAY

Did you notice how fast January went by? I'm still recovering from New Year's Eve...

The Darjeeling Limited ****

Woke up today around nine, with no hangover. Such is very rarily the case on a Sunday morning, so I soon became restless. 'What to do?', I asketh myself. As I don't need much to have a good time - out here in West-Flanders we say 'He can amuse himself with a straw' ('Je kut em bezigoeden met e rietje') - I loaded a recently purchased copy of 'The Darjeeling Limited' into the dvd player.

Now, each generation of movie geeks has its own hero director. In the sixties, cinephiles idolized Alfred Hitchcock. In the seventies, they deified Stanley Kubrick (don't remember how N. last pronounced his name, but it was funny). In the eighties, they revered Steven Spielberg. The nineties and noughties were James Cameron's terrain. (Sorry, Michael Mann and David Fincher.)

Even though I find myself hooked to the work of Darren Aronovsky, the Coen Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino; I'm actually most attracted to Wes Anderson's stylish tableaux vivants: 'The Royal Tenenbaums', 'The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou', 'The Fantastic Mr. Fox' and aforementioned 'The Darjeeling Limited'. In my opinion each of these are works of art.

Not only are these films rich in story (the scenarios often revolving around fraught family relations); they are also beautifully made with the utmost attention to detail (I bought the dvd's so that I could press 'pause' from time to time, to admire the images, as each frame could be a painting in itself) and the actors who play in them seem to be born for their roles.

'The Darjeeling Limited' is another one of those vintage 'Wes Andersons'. It's about three brothers (played by Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody) who, after their father's death, go on a spiritual journey through India.

Most of the 'action' (might be an ill-chosen term as 'The Darjeeling Limited' tells a very quaint, still story) takes place on a train which is called The Darjeeling Limited and carries them through the vast Indian outback; sometimes halting for a visit to a temple or stopping altogether because it got lost.

Trains getting lost and not being to locate themselves might sound insane in the real world, but in Wes Anderson's universe it's actually quite normal.

The same goes for the characters: at first, they seem normal people, but the more Anderson peels back the layers (and there are many), you see that they are indeed a bit loony. The insanity generally stems from top-loaded family issues - divorces and the resulting fear of being left behind or being afraid to commit to others, difficult brother-sister relationships and so on.

(Come to think of it; I'd say my family could provide Anderson with some great fodder for a new film. My aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and even grandparents each have their own character, with the necessary electricity - and sometimes nuclear meltdowns - as a result. Let's just say our family gatherings are never boring. My uncle Bart, who's a writer and whose stories remind me of Andersons work in all of its aesthetic and detail, even used the matter as inspiration for a book - and a good one at that.)

The great thing about the quaint little Wes Anderson stories, with its colorful characters alternately hating, loving, fighting and caressing each other, is that they sometimes sidestep into crazy sequences, either in strong dialogue (like when Gene Hackman picked a fight with Danny Glover in 'The Royal Tenenbaums', saying: 'You heard me Coltrane. You wanna talk some jive?') or rumble-tumble action (cars crashing into houses, people getting stabbed in cold blood, islands being violently invaded). Those sequences breathe some air into the emotion-laden movies.

(I'm just rambling on about Wes Andersons style while I should actually be talking about 'The Darjeeling Limited'. Scuzzi.)

The things that make 'The Darjeeling Limited' another 'Wes Anderson' to remember are the images, which were shot on a moving train (very difficult to do as there's practically no place to work), the acting (both Wilson and Brody deliver highflying turns, and I loved the Bill Murray cameo as well) and the story (which revolves around the fact that you may not have been able to choose your family, but they're nonetheless the most important people in your life).

"I love you all, but right now I'm gonna mase you!", Schwartzmans character yells at one point in the movie, before spraying mase into his fighting brothers's eyes, and I think that line says it all: 'The Darjeeling Limited' tackles subjects which normally make you teary-eyed, but the director never lets the movie slip into ill-advised melodrama by providing the necessary humor and action.

What can I say: It's a must-see.

BEFORE I HEAD OUT TO READ SOME MAGAZINES...

... I want you to take a look at the sidebar, where Annelie's and Bakerman's blogs have been removed (that's what you get when you don't actually post on your blog) and have been replaced with the websites of both Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone - the fourth and third best magazines in the world, respectively. They're worth a sneak peek.

POST SCRIPTUM

Tonight Hollywood pats itself on the back with the Screen Guild Awards, where actors 'honor their fellow actors'. Curious to see who wins out.

Ferrari's Weapon of Choice for the New F1 Season

(I was gonna write something about Margot's birthday bash of yesterday evening in Brussels, but seeing as though the birthday girl in question wasn't really in the party mood after the necessary celebrations of the night before, and I was a wee bit moody after an afternoon in which I needed all the focus I had - and from which many good things will come, as well as for me as for this blog; you just wait - the whole party idea didn't really pan out. So I just decided to write something about the new Ferrari, which was unveiled last Friday.)

So I guess it's just me and all three of you. (Hello Canada! US! Brazil, you too!) It's a beauty, innit - the F150, I mean?

But apparently, the car which will take the start at the Bahrain Grand Prix, come March 13th, will look completely different than the one you see here. (Welcome to modern F1, folks...) At least that's what Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali and chief designer Nicolas Tombazis told the BBC:

"The car you will see at the first race will be completely different from the car you will see in Valencia. (...) This car is just the first step; the entire body will be changed. We will have changes visually and also in performance for our first race."

According to the BBC, the name of the car is a reference to 'the 150th anniversary of the reunification of Italy'. Next week, on February 1st, the 1st test will take place in Valencia - a test where all F1 teams get the chance of running their new cars.

Ahhh, I can already smell the sweet scent of burning rubber and V8 exhaust fumes in the air - like spring, the new F1 season is upon us. Only 41 days left!

The Way Back ***

It's almost twelve o'clock on a Friday night and I'm not in some dingy bar singing along to 'Ein Knallrotes Gummiboot'. Actually, I'm doing quite the contrary: I'm at my desk typing away on this blog - whát is my problem?!

Some might say that hanging out at dingy bars, singing along to silly schlager music is my problem, others could point at this blog and mumble the word: 'Problem.'

They'd probably mutter it in some silly Russian accent, the same way they do in the movie 'Eastern Promises'. There's something about those Eastern-European characters in Hollywood movies that makes 'em speak like sixteen-year olds with a swollen tongue, like they just drank their first wodka.

'The Way Back', Peter 'Dead Poet's Society' Weir's new film (Weir also made 'The Truman Show'), is another example of a movie with Eastern-European characters speaking English with a bad accent. (At least these Russians don't roll around naked in a steamhouse, like they do in 'Eastern Promises'.)

I didn't think the heavy accents weren't that much of a problem in this film, as opposed to the Girl Who Shall Henceforth Be Known As N., who sat next to me. Luckily, that was the only time during the movie N. wiggled around on her seat, firing criticism at the actors. (In fact, she loved the film - and N. isn't normally the one to be pleased easily. But passons.)

(I could write a book about N., but I suggest we proceed with reviewing this film. It's waaaay too late to start writing a book.)

'The Way Back' tells the true story of this group of men who escape from the Gulag - the working camps in the Siberian outback where Joseph Stalin and his Soviet regime sent 'the unwilling' to die from starvation, before, during and after World-War II. (These 'unwilling' being the state's literati; engineers, lawyers, artists and so on who wouldn't comply with the Communist ideas and were thus seen as 'enemies of the state'.)

The journey of this motley crew, comprising of The Elder Statesman (Ed Harris), The Young Idealist (Jim Sturgess), The Rugged Crook (Colin Farrell), The Sensitive Artist (Alexandru Potocean) and some bleaker hangers-on, only begins after they find their way out of the camp - if they make it out at all.

...

Okay, so they get out of the camp - if not 'The Way Back' would be a short-film. But after escaping, they must find a way to survive through the bone-crunching cold of the Siberian woods, the blistering heat of the Mongolian desert, and then once again the cold of the Himalaya, on their way to The Promised Land: India.

Now, there's always a risk involved when you film a story which stretches out over thousands of kilometers in a timeframe of several months - you risk losing the voltage, the pressure of the story.

I've gotta say that I normally don't like those kind of stories (with the exception of 'Forrest Gump'). The movies I like best happen within the frame of a few days, with only a limited number of actors interacting on a certain number of locations.

I loved the first part of the movie, which took place in some god-forlorn Gulag camp. After that, the DNA of the film gets stretched to a maximum, with its storyline sometimes skipping a few days and with alternate sidestories getting cut short. About halfway, I was starting to feel uneasy about this.

But the two things that won me over in 'The Way Back' were 1. The honesty and warmth of the characters and of their interaction with the group (that's a typical Peter Weir trademark you'll find in the characters of 'Dead Poet's Society' and 'The Truman Show' as well) and 2. The wonderful feeling you get by watching the characters travel through the most breathtaking landscapes you'll ever see on the big screen.

Watching 'The Way Back', even though it hardly depicts a walk in the park and the characters do suffer deeply, makes you feel like travelling. I'm sure N. felt the same way about it.  She probably would even give this film four stars. I'm sticking with three.

N., don't give me that look. It's MY blog!!

Your 2011 NBA All-Star Game Starters

In a little over three week’s time, in the penultimate weekend of February, the city of Los Angeles will once more be the focal point of the basketball world. Not because the Lakers have a big game that weekend, and don’t even get me started on the Clippers’ Blake Griffin.

It’s because that weekend, the NBA’s most popular players will take on each other in the annual All-Star Game.

These players get voted into the starting line-up or onto the bench of either the east-coast or the west-coast team, depending on where they play. (For example: a New York Knicks player will play for the East, while an LA Laker suits up for the West.)

Let’s see who gets the privilege of starting for the West in the most spectacular game this side of an NBA Finals Game Seven:

WEST

Center: Yao Ming (Rockets)
Power forward: Kevin Durant (Thunder)
Small forward: Carmelo Anthony (Nuggets)
Shooting guard: Kobe Bryant (Lakers)
Point guard: Chris Paul (Hornets)

Yao Ming?? Seriously?? This is what you get when you let the Chinese people vote – to them it doesn’t matter that Ming hardly played this season (hell, I don’t think the Rockets even need him anymore); they just want to see their man in the game.

I’d take Marcus Camby over the Giant Chinese Bean-Pole any day. Granted, Camby’s in the twilight of a career that wasn’t even that spectacular to begin with, but I still cherish the memories of him energizing the amazing ’99 Knicks during his injury- and foul-prone tenure at the City of Bright Lights’ basketball team. Camby put every ounce of his personality and flair into his often spectacular game back then. Consider me a fan for life.

You won’t hear me complaining about Durant, Anthony, Bryant (13th selection with 2.380.016 votes; Bryants the leading vote-getter) and Paul though: that’s a nasty-lookin’ team right there.

Let’s take a look at the Eastern high-flyers:

EAST

Center: Dwight Howard (Magic)
Power forward: Amar’e Stoudemire (Knicks)
Small forward: LeBron James (Heat)
Shooting guard: Dwyane Wade (Heat)
Point guard: Derrick Rose (Bulls)

As a Knicks guy, I’m proud to see Amar’e in the starting line-up. But even if I hadn’t been a New York fan, I’d still have appreciated his name on this list of elite players: Stoudemire’s rescuscitated a franchise that had been sleepwalking for the past decade. He's reinstalled some much-needed confidence in the NBA’s most valuable team. And I’m sure he’ll kill on the Staples Center court too, come February.

Don’t get me started on the Heat guys though – I respect their ability to put the ball in the hole, but there’s this nagging too-much, too-soon feeling that creeps up to me when I think about the hyped-to-a-crisp Miami team. I think the ‘Heatles’, plain and square, suck.

Don’t get me wrong: I think both James and Wade are great players; it’s just that I don’t like their jock-style swagger. I’d haven taken the rock-solid Paul Pierce over James and – of course – the Knicks’ point guard Raymond Felton over Wade.

It’s good to see Rose out there though, along with Howard.

In the end, it doesn’t matter one bit what anyone thinks about aforementioned ten players – what does count is the certainty that they’ll put up one hell of a show on February 20th.

BE SURE TO TAKE A LOOK AT THIS

SLAM writer Tzvi Twersky lived the dream yesterday, having been invited by Jordan Brand to try out their brand-new Jordan 2011 sneaker. On the Madison Square Garden hardwood. As LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and the rest of the Miami Heat sat courtside. (Now that’s what I call 'pressure'! 'Pressure'!)

Come Oscar Time

It ain’t always easy being a movie geek in Belgium. Come Oscar time, there’s this sense of frustration that takes a hold of us when we see the list of nominations: half of them are still weeks away from their Belgian release date and some of them don’t even make it to our cinema circuit.

Take this year’s list for Best Motion Picture: only five out of the ten got screening time around these parts – with ‘The Kids Are All Right’ only playing in a limited number of cinemas. ‘Black Swan’ (Feb. 23rd), ‘The Fighter’ (March 9th), ‘The King’s Speech’ (Feb. 23rd), ‘127 Hours’ (Feb. 16th) and ‘True Grit’ (Feb. 16th) are all slated for a future release.

I know, I know, the studios can’t give every movie the same worldwide release date as some marketing budgets are more limited than others, plus they have to see whether an American movie will ring bells with the European audience and so on. But still: just once, I’d like to know what I’m talking about when I put my Oscar predictions on the table.

With that out of the way, let’s get to it.

BEST MOTION PICTURE

This year’s Best Picture draft is a pretty strong one. Don’t think there’s one film lover out there that’s not dying to see movies like ‘The Fighter’, ‘Black Swan’ and ‘True Grit’, all of which have been proclaimed as ‘masterpieces’ in the specialized (and privileged) press.

‘Inception’ and ‘Toy Story 3’ aren’t too bad, and I’ve yet to see ‘Winter’s Bone’ (probably on Sunday), but I think it’ll be one of the others that wins out. Probably either ‘The Social Network’ or ‘The King’s Speech’.

ACTOR / ACTRESS PERFORMANCES

You must watch this Vanity Fair gallery of ‘True Contenders’ – aptly described as ‘an exclusive gallery of nominees set to fight (Bale), flit (Portman), stammer (Firth), and saw (Franco) their way to Oscar glory.’ Good stuff.

Judging from the hype surrounding Colin Firth’s performance in ‘The King’s Speech’ (he’s got a Golden Globe for Best Performance to back up that hype), I think it’s safe to say Firth’s got a fair chance of winning the ultimate award in Movieland.

On the actress side of things, I’d put my money on Natalie Portman (‘The Swan’) for the Leading Role award.

BEST ANIMATED PICTURE / DOCUMENTARY

There’s not much left for me to say anything about the other categories, except for the Best Animated Picture and Best Documentary. I found ‘How To Train Your Dragon’ very entertaining in the former, while I also thoroughly enjoyed ‘Exit Through The Gift Shop’ (‘the Banksy documentary’) in the latter.

Roight, I’m leaving you to it.

For now.

One Is None

If you've followed this blog for the past two weeks (and I'm very pleased to say there are more and more of 'you' each day), you probably know by now that I like to indulge myself with a beer from time to time.

Yesterday evening was one of those times. Along with me mates Da Boy Tommy, Bens Tiller and Ece, I went to this bar in Ghent called De Dulle Griet - 'The Angry Lady', for those of you who don't understand Dutch.

Before I go on, I must give you some background on the pubcrawl habits myself and me mates foster (pun not intended). About each week, we get together to have a brew, and we choose the locations to do so very carefully.

Very rarely you'll find us in some trendy lounge bar, sipping away at a Mojito as Kruder & Dorfmeister or Yonderboi tunes play in the background - NO: we're those guys you'll find singing along to 'Ein Knallrotes Gummiboot' in a dingy bar, run by an old lady with fewer teeth in her mouth than she has customers. More often than not, you'll see us initiating a 'farandoleke' and maybe even an 'avalanche'.

I dunno, there's something disarmingly honest about those run-down places where you'll find only the 'lowest' (at least by popular standards) denominator of the population: people who've had their share of life's struggles and frequent the bar to escape the drag of daily life.

The most interesting people you'll ever meet are not to be found at da club where everyone is mostly staring at each other instead of talking and 'looking cool' is the main occupation. No: they're right there, at that pub around the corner where you see the same people sitting behind the counter as you pass by, day in, day out.

Take the 'Monopole' near the station in Ghent. Now that's a réal old people's bar, with an interior that probably hasn't changed since the 60's: glass-in-lead windows, brownish mirrors against the wall, old, wooden tables with plastic covers, all lit by the brightest and coldest TL-light.

We've been going there for a couple of months now, and during that time we got to know it's most colorful punter: Fons Sijmons, ex-bassplayer in one of the best Flemish poprock bands ever (The Scabs). Fons is by far the most legendary figure the Belgian rock'n'roll scene has ever seen. And he's got a bevy of nicknames to prove it: 'Rampenfons' (it's funnier in Dutch), 'Disaster-Inducing Fons' and so on.

Apparently, Fons once achieved the remarkable feat of preparing a bath for one of his fellow bandmates or one of the roadies of the Scabs crew, which resulted in a flooding of the hotel lobby where he stayed.

Nowadays, The Scabs still play, but Fons isn't there anymore. Drug issues and legal problems got the better of him and he spends most of his days at the Monopole. (His daughter 'Reena Riot' incidentally, does a real good job as a singer-songwriter. If only her dad would follow her lead and crawl back onto the stage.)

Long story short: those kind of slouchy bars are our favourites, as the elevators of the people, who frequent them, don't go all the way to the top anymore; the conversations to be had there are honest and real; there's lots of space to hang out or sit; plus most of the time they've got those old jukeboxes which warrant great background music.

I must say, however, that De Dulle Griet in Ghent, though very old (it's got its name from a big-a$$ cannon which was built in the 15th century; the inn came shortly after), is not a slouchy establishment. It's beautifully decorated with old artefacts (flags, tin cups, standards, gramophones, paintings) and the service is splendid.

The main reason to go to De Dulle Griet - if you really need one - is because they've got a very special kind of beer: the Max. The Max ain't special because of its taste (it's a typical Belgian brew), but because of the way it's presented.

A Max comes in a 1,2 liter glass of about 30 cm in height. While the beer goes out for a mere €9,40, the glass itself costs around 90 euro. Because De Dulle Griet has had problems with tourists running off with their Max glasses, they now oblige people to relinquish one shoe when they order the beer. The shoe then gets hoisted to the ceiling in a metal basket.

What can I say, it's a special experience, drinking this Max beer. The fun begins even before you put the glass to your lips, because your shoe gets taken away from you.

So yesterday, that was a good start to our evening. We continued our pubcrawl - after first having made fun of some tap dancers, who were practicing in a showroom next to a bar - at café Jos. Next up was the Porter's House, where Bens and me kicked Da Boy Tommy's and Ece's a$$ in table soccer, and after that DBT (who's also known as 'MLP' - 'Monsieur Le Président') and yours truly had a final beer at the Cuba Libre before we hit the road.

And if you'll excuse me now, I'm off to the Charlie Rockets, out here in Bruges, to teach me ole mate (and birthday pal) Laurens a thing or two about pool.

Happy Trails!

DM

Tron: Legacy **

"Baby be a simple, kind of man
Oh, won't you do this for me, son
If you can?"

I'd like to believe I'm a simple man. I'm polite, well-mannered and most of the time, aside from the odd night out, I keep to myself.

After a hectic day at work, it's also very simple for me to relax. I go to the cinema, grab a couple of beers and lean back in one of those cosy multiplex seats to watch a dumb movie. The train of my thoughts then comes to a screeching halt - I love it.

And let there be no doubt about it: 'Tron: Legacy' is one of those dumb-a$$ Hollywood movies which cost a mint and suck a lot - though you shouldn't let that fact get into the way of enjoying every damn second of it.

It's flashy, fast and well-produced. In other words: it's everything the original 'Tron' (1982) is not. I watched that movie a couple of years ago and I can't recall anything from that experience apart from the fact that we rrrreally enjoyed the old-school special effects used in the film.

In short, 'Tron' was born after animator Steven Lisberger saw the arcade game 'Pong' for the first time (that was 1976), and the visual effects don't really encompass that play of lines against a black background, with people acting in front of that background. In fact, most of the 'effects' in 'Tron' were achieved through 'backlit animation', a common technique back in the seventies, with disco and neon and that being all the rage back then.

(Weird fun facts: 1. There's only fifteen minutes of computer-generated action in 'Tron', which was made with a computer housing a 2 MB working memory and a 330 MB storage space; 2. 'Tron' cost 17 million dollars to make and 'grossed' 33 million dollars worldwide as the game accompanying the film outgrossed the movie; 3. Most of the live action was filmed in black and white and was later colored in by a team of 500 animators. Thank you, Wikipedia.)

'Tron' was a revolutionary in more than one way - along with the original 'Star Wars' movies it paved the way for the 3D-extravaganzas we get in our multiplexes today.

Which means it's also responsible for 'Tron: Legacy'. Should we really be happy about that? Depends on what you're expecting when you buy a ticket to see the film. If you're out for two hours of unparrallelled 3D-action, the breathtaking Olivia Wilde and some brooding, futuristic Daft Punk tunes; you'll have a ball.

On the other hand: if you expect to be entertained by ways of such things as 'a plot' and 'dialogue', it's safe to say you'll probably start wincing in your seat after half an hour.

I'm a simple man who got out of it what he wanted, so I'll give it two stars.

ANOTHER SUBJECT I'D LIKE TO TOUCH ON TODAY

The second 'low-tech broadcast' by the Ageing Alternative Icon who goes by the name of Henry Rollins: it's good, though listening to tunes by The Buzzcocks, Misfits, Black Flag and the Damned got me more riled up than I should've been after a looooong day at work.

Nonetheless: I enjoyed songs such as 'Casper The Homosexual-Friendly Ghost' by The Wesley Willis Fiasco and 'Loner With A Boner' by Black Randy & The Metrosquad (incidentally, that title would be a good name for this blog).

Anyway, as Rollins aka the Chief Fanatic points out, it's a show "in which we explore and indeed peel back the layers". If you don't like what you hear, you'll find that the music will stop once you press that button which says 'STOP'. The Low-Tech Broadcasts are there to take you on a journey through Underground Alternative Music.

I find the recurring Bill Hicks fragments quite amusing as well (on the Americans providing Iran with WMD's, then fighting them because they accuse them of possessing WMD's: (imitating George Bush's voice:) "We know they've got those weapons... We just looked at the receipt! Just waiting for that check to clear and we're ready to go in there!"), and the fact Rollins played 'Break 'Em Off Some' by Cypress Hill was a nice coincidence as I had just downloaded the entire CH back catalogue.

BEFORE I GO

I'd like to welcome another blog to my Links section: Storm. Storm and me go way back to the 'ancient' Molbardinho Chatblogs - so here's to a good ole cybertastic reunion.

Happy trails,
DM

The Day The Earth Stood Still

There are those moments that'll stay with you forever. Of all the seconds that came before that instant when you heard the news or experienced something, and all of the seconds that came after it, you'll remember that one, single split-second when the earth stood still, as if it had just happened - what the weather was like, who was there with you and what you were doing.

Nothing would ever be the same again. There's the time before what had happened, and the time afterwards. Pre-9/11 and post-9/11. Pre-birth of my sister and post-birth of my sister. That kind of thing. Pre-formation of the Belgian gov - eeeeer, no.

All of this to say: everybody's got those moments, and they're different to each one of us. I'm sure most of you don't remember where you were or what you were doing when you heard that the legendary F1 driver Ayrton Senna had gone.

I remember it like it was yesterday: on May 1st, 1994, on a beautiful spring afternoon, eleven days before my 11th birthday, I was standing on the bridge over the pond in the garden of my parent's house when my dad came out and told me the news.

We had been watching a couple of hours earlier when Senna, leading the pack in the seventh lap of the Italian Grand Prix, shunted straight into the wall at the Tamburello corner - that same infamous corner where the likes of Nelson Piquet and Gerhard Berger had crashed and walked away.

It was immediately clear that something had gone wrong. There was no fire, the monocoque of Senna's Williams seemed intact and no other cars were involved... it was just that the man with the yellow helmet didn't move.

Back in those days, with helmets not being resistant to 800°C heat and with cars not being quite as strong as the carbon-fibre fortresses they are now, drivers not moving after a heavy impact was an ominous sign. My dad, who was (and still is) a diehard Senna devotee, now says he immediately knew that things would never be the same again. His passion for F1, which had started some twenty-odd years earlier, died that very instant.

My passion for Formula One was only burgeoning, though I felt tears well up when I realised Senna was gone as I had grown fond of him the couple of years that came before - especially as I watch my father jump for joy each time the Brazilian took home his McLaren in first position.

(I still, to this day, envy Dad as he had been able to obtain a paddock pass back in 1990 for the Belgian Grand Prix. He pretended to be a camera man, carrying with him  the Sony HI8 he normally used to make family clips - which was enough for the FIA officials to let him wander around in the Francorchamps pit straight from garage to garage, even talking to Jean Alesi and Thierry Boutsen. (Again: things were different in F1 back then.) He can still recall the moment when he was on the inside of the La Source hairpin when Senna came thundering down the main straight. Dad says he stared straight into the Brazilian's eyes when he slowed down and curled around La Source. Damn.)

So anyway, the reason I felt like digging all of this up is because of a beautiful article I read today in F1 Racing (the world's second best magazine next to SLAM). It's written by Matt James and it tells the story of how erstwhile Williams team manager Ian Harrison experienced the 1994 season, including that fatal 1st of May when one of the most charismatic sports icons ever passed away.

It's a special story because never before has the modal F1 fan gotten such a close insight into the day that changed his favorite sport forever. Numerous documentaries have been made, countless words have been written and too many people have vented their take on things - but up till now (at least until this much-anticipated documentary sees the light of day), no-one has taken me this close to that first day of May '94 as Ian Harrison did.

An excerpt from this journalistic masterpiece reads as follows: "I remember looking at it (Senna's crash; DM) and after probably about ten seconds I just started saying: 'Move, move.' We'd seen Ayrton twitch inside the car and that represented movement. So there was hope. Initially. (...) Then there was nothing. It just stopped. It became obvious that there was a bit of an issue but nobody knew how serious it was."

Not only do you get a testament of the aftermath of the crash unfolding through the eyes of a Williams insider by reading this story; it also tells you how much Formula One has developed since then. In 1994, pitstops were just being re-introduced, as was the use of the Safety Car. Pre-race meetings were a lot more simple than they are today and strategy was much more of a Fingerspitzengefühl affair than it is today.

In the end, Harrison is adamant: "It happened because it was one of the first times a Safety Car was used; the tyre pressures were low, the car was running low anyway and it was full of fuel. If you looked at the in-car footage from Schumacher's Benetton you could see the car was bottoming out really bad from the restart. It was probably a combination of all those things that caused the shunt. I'm not an engineer but I think the thing bottomed out and Ayrton lost the front end."

He goes on to proclaim that Senna probably would've won the 1994 World Championship. Sadly, we'll never know. And I'm pretty sure that aye lot of F1 fans don't know who was World Champion that year, having stopped entirely watching Formula One post-Senna's death...

A Slow Burner

Yesterday, mere hours after having watched quite a weighty film (see below), I picked up my friend Reinhilde and drove all the way to Brussels to attend a housewarming party, thrown by Piman da Himp and Katrien.

(Nevermind that they settled into the house several months ago; any reason to party is a good reason. Who needs reasons to party anyway? I, for one, don't. I just do.)

The party could be described as, if you're familiar with festive vernacular, a 'slow burner' - starting off calm but culminating in chaos, anarchy and boobies. This was in no small part the merit of the music on my iPod (ranging from Milk Inc. over Tiga to Zangeres Zonder Naam), but the party also featured a great mix of pretty people and tasty beverages.

Have you ever, by any chance, seen the 'Party In Your Stomach' clip on YouTube? If you haven't, please click this link.

"Who always shows up at the end of the party", Jim Breuer asks, and he continues to answer his own question: "Tequila. And tequila doesn't show up alone - there's always eight or nine of 'em lined up. Like an idiot, your stomach lets in one shot of tequila, and then he sneaks in all of his friends when nobody's watching."

That's exactly how things went yesterday, and the situation derailed shortly afterwards - to the extent that Piman and Katrien must've thought they ended up somewhere in 80's Beirut when they entered their living room this morning...

When overseeing the ravages, the memories must've come back quickly: the dirty dancing, the wrapping with kitchen paper, the French kissing (though I had sadly already left the building at that point) and the tequila grimacing.

It was that kind of party which you talk about weeks on afterwards, and certain elements of the evening seem to come back out of thin air to those who were lucky enough to attend the event. That's the kind of party you want, 'slow burner' or otherwise.

BY THE WAY

A week after my main man Bakerman travelled off to Thailand, my favourite lighthouse girl, who goes by the name of Annelie, leaves for Sweden. You can follow the incredible adventures she'll undoubtedly experience via this link. (Though I have no idea why she chose the obscure 'Weebly' as her blogging interface.)

Anyway: godspeed, Annelie!

Have a good week, everyone.

Waltz With Bashir ***

Yesterday, after coming home from swimming at the Jan Guilini pool in Bruges and reading the newspaper and drinking coffee at the local Pain Quotidien, I found out, to my great dismay, that my Telenet Digicorder apparatus hadn't recorded the Denver Nuggets / LA Lakers game on Prime Sport - the sole Belgian channel that broadcasts NBA games.

Our (my housemate Jerre and me) two-week tryout subscription to the digital channel had expired, so that was kind of a bummer.

I had to look for an alternative, and scanning through the recordings on the Digicorder, I stumbled upon 'Waltz With Bashir' - a film that I had meant to watch for a long time; I just didn't get to it.

Probably because it looked like a risky film: an animation pic about mass slaughter in Lebanese refugee camps at the beginning of the 80's? That kind of movie can make or break your evening.

Well yesterday, although I was deeply moved by it's shocking ways, 'Waltz With Bashir' made my afternoon. It's not a movie you must watch to feel happy: it's themes are loss of innocence, losing your loved ones and the fact that you can't escape your past - you can try to forget but the memories will haunt you in your dreams.

That's exactly how the film kicks off: Israeli director Ari Folman keeps having this dream about 26 dogs chasing him. There are always 26 of them, and he doesn't understand why this nightmare deprives him of his sleep night in, night out.

The recurring dream may stem from his experiences as a soldier in the First Lebanon War in 1982, when Israeli forces invaded Lebanon to eradicate the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) of Yasser Arafat (remember him?). Apparently, Folman had pushed away the memories to the awful things he saw to that extent that they had been practically erased.

In 'Waltz With Bashir', he attempts to reconstruct what happened to him by interviewing his fellow privates, who had been at his side during battle.

Not only is the film beautifully made (each frame is hand-crafted and not rotoscoped like they did with 'A Scanner Darkly'), scored with catchy contemporary music (such as 'Enola Gay' performed by OMD); it also touches on deep-human subjects which will leave even the most arduent cynist catching his breath.

The images are very atmospheric, bathed in deep-brown and fresh-green, and they radiate a constant feeling of threat.

The film touches on the very sensitive topic which is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but still manages to strike a thoughtful tone, without picking sides too much (which is a feat in itself). In the end, 'Waltz With Bashir' shows the agony of war and how people, who have no quarry with anybody, end up in terrible situations. It shows how they try to stay human in a world filled with death and destruction.

Especially the final act, which focuses on the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, left a deep impression on me. The atrocities, committed by the Christian Phalangist death squadrons, are shown in a veiled way - though the last images; real news images which were made days after the bloodbath took place, leave no doubts that this was one of mankind's darkest hours.

(Normally I'd be at the demonstration in Brussels today, to protest against the fact that Belgium still - 224 days and counting; we're headed to an world record - has no government, but after seeing the images of the mangled-up bodies at Sabra and Shatila I just thought to myself 'Why even bother. I'm not gonna spend my time giving a signal to those no-good politicians that they just have to do their jobs and get on with it'.)

After seeing 'Waltz With Bashir', everything seems trivial. The movie makes you think, and that's probably one of it's most important merits. We should never forget what happened out there, back in 1982.

Arbeid Adelt! @ 4AD Diksmuide - January 21st 2010 **

I'm one of those live-music freaks who'll travel to the other end of the world - or the country, in my case (if I had the cash it'd be the world) - to see some obscure band perform, often in the tiniest of venues.

A few years back, I went to see Mudvayne at the Biebop in god-forlorn Vosselaar; I went to Eindhoven (Holland), Nürnberg (Germany), Lille (France) and even Luxemburg to catch shows of Sepultura, Kid Rock, The Roots and Machine Head.

Yesterday evening marked another one of those instants. Benjamin and me Beamed all our way to Diksmuide, in the deepest of West-Flanders where the poppies still grow in between World-War 1-trenches, to see Arbeid Adelt! perform at the 4AD.

The frontman of Arbeid Adelt, a new-wave band that was in it's prime around '81, '82 (as the Neue Deutsche Welle reached it's climax) but carried on through the early Nineties, is Marcel Vanthilt, a Belgian television personality.

(Pour la petite histoire: Vanthilt used to be an MTV presenter during the eighties and even managed to get a role as an extra in 'Friends' - in this clip, you see him behind the green column in Central Perk. It's the guy with the glasses.)

Their concert at the tiny 4AD was a tryout for a full-on, sold-out gig in two week's time at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels. It seems like Arbeid Adelt can still count on a quite the fanbase which they built primarily on two great songs: 'De Dag Dat Het Zonlicht Niet Meer Scheen' ('The Day The Sun Stopped Shining') and 'Lekker Westers' ('Nice And Western').

Describing the Arbeid Adelt! 'sound' as purely 'new wave' would wrong the band, as their '80s style also has plenty of pop, ska and rock elements. Also, Marcel & co's on-stage theatrics make for plenty of entertainment, even though the bulk of their songs hardly match the catchiness of 'De Dag Dat Het Zonlicht Niet Meer Scheen'.

Yesterday, it seemed to me that both band and 'crowd' (if you could consider the 50-odd people attending a 'crowd') enjoyed each other's company, so I guess Arbeid Adelt! earned themselves a two-star quotation. Which means they're ready to rock the AB.

Kerrang! Legends Presents: The Story of Nu-Metal

"I did it all for the nookie!
The nookie!
So you can take that cookie!"

I remember it like it happened yesterday: the first time I listened to Korn and Limp Bizkit. I was sitting in my parents' car as we were driving towards Disneyland in Paris, when I played the cd's me ole pal Tom (aka Mister Three) had copied for me. It was October 1998 and singles off of 'Follow The Leader' and 'Significant Other' were all the rage in hit charts worldwide.

Those albums would go on to cement their place in my Personal Album Top Twenty, but at first I didn't really like their sound. I was used to Metallica's smooth metal style, as opposed to the detuned guitars and distorted vocals of Korn and Limp Bizkit.

But their music - called 'nu-metal' - grew on me, to the extent that they changed my musical spectrum forever. The step from Korn to the likes of Deftones, System Of A Down, Slipknot, Mudvayne and (hed)P.E. was a small one, and it didn't take me long either to start dressing up like the guys in those 'nu-metal' bands: baggy jeans, T-shirts, a cap and sneakers were my teenage dresscode.

I also remember the joy, somewhere around January 2000, after I heard the news that Korn were coming to town. Their gig, at the Brussels venue of Forest National, on May 24th, was my first live show ever. P.O.D. opened for them, and that marked the first time I got into a mosh pit - it was an eye-opening experience as I had never felt such energy in such a confined space.

Korn were amazing as well: singer Jon Davis headbanging like a madman and screaming his heart out, guitarists Head and Munky bending deep over their instruments; shredding away, bass player Fieldy juggling over the stage like a pimped-out gangster, and David Silveria banging on his drums like there would be no tomorrow.

(The next time I would experience such a Eureka, 'I was born to dance to this type of music' type of moment, was four years later, when Sick Of It All beat the Groezrock Festival to a bloody pulp.)

Limp Bizkit and Slipknot conquered Belgium that same year at the Pukkelpop festival, with Amen, Mudvayne, (hed)P.E., Papa Roach, Sepultura and Slipknot (again; I've seen 'em about eight times by now) rounding out the nu-metal extravaganza in 2001 at Earect in Torhout.

Those were the bands I grew up with, the bands that shaped me into the person I am today. I loved the blend they brought to the table (in equal, lesser or more measure) of stomping drums, hiphop-style grooves and vocals, bruising, detuned metal riffs and clusterbomb-style climaxes. So it was good to see that Kerrang! recently did a Legends issue on nu-metal.

To me, Kerrang! has always been the No. 1 rock and metal magazine out there. Not only because of their unparallelled access to the people in the business, which make for fascinating backstage stories; also because of their good taste in music and because of the proficient pens of their writers.

And I must say: those writers put all their wit, savvy and guts into this Legends issue. If you were a Limp Bizkit fan around '98, '99, and you loved the same bands that I did during those days, you'll devour every syllable of this publication. I can honestly say it's one of the best magazines I've read all my life.

If you're just getting into the likes of Slipknot, Deftones, System Of A Down et cetera, you'll like it as well because who knows? You might get to know some other, similar bands you might like.

Everything's in there: from the roots of nu-metal (coming from Aerosmith and Run-DMC performing 'Walk This Way'; then onto Faith No More and Rage Against The Machine), over insight interviews with the bands that propelled the genre to mainstream status, to an overview of the best songs that came out of the movement.

'Rollin''! 'One Step Closer!' 'Last Resort'! 'Smooth Criminal'! 'Freak On A Leash'! 'Break Stuff'! 'Chop Suey!' 'Stupify'! 'Wait And Bleed'! People in their fourties and fifties get a hard-on when they hear Beatles songs, or the Rolling Stones, or even Dire Straits - but to me, hearing 'Bartender' by (hed)P.E. sends me on a trip down memory lane.

(The only things that are missing, at least to me, are stories on Mudvayne - their 'LD50' album is one of my all-time favourites - and Amen - their frontman Casey Chaos was undoubtedly the most undaunted microphone abuser ever.)

I think good music journalism reignites your passion for a band, an album or an entire genre by infecting you with sheer enthousiasm. And that's exactly what the people over at Kerrang! have done for me and nu-metal with this magazine.

Hats off to them - and if you'll excuse me now; I'm off blasting some Deftones through the speakers.

The Glimmers - Whomp That Sucker ***

Hello?

Is there anybody out there?

Just nod if you can hear me?

Guess I'll just have to suck it up and keep going.

Today I'd like to let you in on a little secret: recently, I've purchased a compact disc. That's right, a "cd". Remember those? They come in square plastic boxes and if you put them into the "cd loader" of your "stereo system", music comes out.

As a teenager, I spent pretty much all of my hard-earned dough on cd's. I remember buying the first one of what turned into a 300+ collection: it was a compilation disc out of this GB department store called 'Rap All Over', back in '95. Dunno why I picked a that cd as I wasn't really into rap music - probably because it had a Shaquille O'Neal song on it ('Biological Didn't Bother') and as a burgeoning, NBA-deprived basketball fan I was instantly magnetized by anything that had to do with American b-ball stars.

(Other acts on the 'Rap All Over' disc included Easy-E, Skee-Lo, KRS-One, Onyx, Too $hort and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony - back in '95, West-Coast rap was in full swing.)

If only the MP3 format had come earlier... I'd have spent my hard-earned cash on more interesting stuff that doesn't take as much space as cd's do. Now, each time I have to move, I gotta drag two giant boxes of cd's with me. (Though the cd stacks do make for nice wall decoration.)

Anyway, suffice it to say that I embraced the MP3's from the get-go.

The Glimmers I got to know as a 21-year old student, still greener behind the ears than Cee-Lo. My buddy Jailhouse Joe invited me to this media party at the Culture Club (a trendy nightclub in Ghent), a celebration of the fifth anniversary of this men's magazine called Ché.

There was an open bar, we took pictures of us with various girls who had graced the covers of the magazines and made the dancefloor our stompin' ground on beautiful beats, provided by The Glimmers. Back then, it was the best night of my life and it still holds a very steady place in my top ten of unforgettable nights out.

It's a difficult task to describe the style of The Glimmers (a duo consisting of Ghent dj's called Mo & Benoelie, both products of the legendary Eskimo Records scene which bloomed in the early nineties and which spawned such events as I Love Techno).

I'd call it 'acid disco' - it's got elements of dancepunk, electro and house, but the music has a rock song vibe, supported by a funky disco beat. I love to go nuts on the dancefloor and I used to be a junglehead, going apes**t on drum 'n' bass, but no other dancefloor genre gets me to bust moves like acid disco does.

As The Glimmers, even after 25 years of dj'ing, are still very underground, there's hardly a way of finding their stuff on the 'net. But they do still make cd's - their music's got an old-school vibe to it and it's only fitting that you have to go to a record store and buy Glimmer beats on a compact disc.

Apparently, 'Whomp That Sucker' is their third outing after a disc which they only distributed at the gigs they did, plus a 'DJ Kicks' compilation. The title and the cover concept is taken from The Sparks' eponymous '81 release.

The title track is vintage Glimmers, but the other tracks also make for grrrreat dancefloor fodder. It's one of those records you spin just before you go out clubbing. I could dance to this all night long - and sometimes I do, when the Kitsch Club in Knokke ask Mo & Benoelie over.

Last time though, sometime in October or November, the club was half empty. However, that gave me the chance to chat to the guys. And they're really nice fellas. They could make easy money spinning and making crowdpleasers, but they stick to their own style and that earned them a lot of respect in the worldwide club scene.

On the other hand: it's sad to see how little respect Belgians have for homegrown talent. We take our heroes for granted - be it in sports, art, science, music or any other field. Guys like The Glimmers play for sold-out venues when they go to Miami or Ibiza; out here they end up playing a Swedish House Mafia track to get at least a little bit of movement on the dancefloor. Meh.

So next time you happen to wander past the Music Mania record store in Ghent, or any record store in Antwerp or Brussels not called 'Free Record Shop', pop in and ask for The Glimmers. You'll be greeted with a broad smile and a pat on the shoulder.

Next thing you know, sitting down in your car or your living room, a broad smile will appear on your own face after having inserted the 'Whomp That Sucker' disc into your stereo system and having pressed 'PLAY'.

"It's time to dance, it's time to dance! Dance sucka!"

BEFORE I FORGET

As I write this, my dear friend Bakerman is on his way to Thailand. He'll roam there for a couple of months, fishing for sea needles from a canoe, spending time talking to stones, and when he's had enough of that, he'll travel on to Australia. I'd be surprised if he'll come back without plans to stay down under - if he comes back at all. Anyhoo; I made a blog for him called Bakerman's Talk, but it'd surprise me as well if he actually gets to posting anything on the damn thing. Be as it may: I wish him good health and lots of fun.

Uncle Henry

As the Truck & Transport fair came to a halt today, so did my time at the 89th Brussels Motor Salon. I must say: I had a good time, met some really nice people and generally enjoyed the hours I spent at the desk by reading newspapers and magazines. I'll come back to one of those magazines in just a few days.

Before we get to that, it's time for something completely different than trucks, cars, newspapers or magazines - I'm here to talk about an 'ageing alternative icon' in the form of the one and only Henry Rollins. Rollins is one of my personal heroes.

This former front man of the legendary 80's hardcore band Black Flag and 90's rock outfit Rollins Band (the picture you see above this post is taken from the legendary video for 'Liar', which was directed by rock photographer and 'Control' and 'The American' director Anton Corbijn) now travels the world, either as a spoken-word artist or just as a world citizen, thirsty for knowledge and experience in countries his American countrymen would never follow him.

Yes: this is the American nutcase who flew off to Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and the likes, right after his country's administration branded those states as the 'Axis of Evil' - and lived to tell the tale.

He tours the world with those tales, and I've been lucky enough to catch a couple of his shows on more than one occasion: from Antwerp over Ghent to Brussels. Last time I went to see Rollins was at the Pukkelpop festival, last summer.

Rollins is a no-nonsense, down-to-earth and fear-no-one fellow, who prides himself on an unquenchable lust for life which doesn't leave him off the hook for one second. He is very opinionated and has the ability to elaborate eloquently on various political, philosophical and just plain daily-life subjects.

Most of the time the diary entrances on his website (the so-called 'Dispatches') start off with 'Man, I've slept like two hours the past eight days but it was totally worth it', having jeopardized his life by walking onto the streets of Karachi, Baghdad, Pyongyang or some other god-forgotten hellhole.

"Yup, people warned me not to go out there, being American and especially carrying tattoos like mine, but once you get there and don't act too conspicuously, it turns out the people are really friendly and there's no imminent danger involved."

This is the guy who once described himself as follows: "If you could think of a stove where the pivot light is always on, always ready to light all four burners? That is me, all the time. I'm always ready to go there."

Though aforementioned quote - which I identify with a great deal - might not paint a pretty picture of the man; I love his hardcore disposition in life which causes his non-stop sleep deprivation but which also leads him to live a fascinating life, experiencing things and getting to know other people, discovering stuff and living his short time on earth to the fullest.

This was something I mentioned to him in a mail I sent after having downloaded and listened to one of his 'broadcasts' he normally does on the KRCW radio. He made one on Christmas Eve while his technicians were at their respective families and put them into a Yousendit file, free for download.

He then asked to mail him if you had enjoyed the broadcast, to see how far it got. So I did, and whaddya know: Uncle Henry (as me and fellow Rollins fan Benjamin like to call him) answered right back:

"Dieter, hey. Thanks for checking and for checking those shows. I will make another one of those lo-tech shows soon. Thanks for listening. Henry"

It freaked the hell out of me to see the name 'Henry Rollins' pop up in my inbox - I'll never delete that mail.
 
I wish I had the man's writing talent as there are so much more dimensions to Henry Rollins than the ones I mentioned this post, but I hope all this whets your appetite a lil' bit - at least enough to YouTube the man and check out what he has to say. You won't regret it.
 
THIS JUST IN
 
Rollins posted a second low-tech broadcast.
 
MOMENT OF THE DAY
 
This morning, accelerating up the highway to Brussels, listening to Jamiroquai's 'Travelling Without Moving'. A title which, incidentally, pretty much sums up the entire Belgian traffic situation.

The Green Hornet **

Another loooooong day at the Brussels Motor Salon has left me brain-dead, though I shall attempt to write at least one coherent sentence in this 'Green Hornet' review. That is, if I manage to stay awake long enough to get to it.

Right, so, 'The Green Hornet'. Media magnate cum superhero-at-night Britt Reid with his trusty ninja sidekick Kato: their adventures aren't really known on the European continent (at least not to people who don't regularly frequent comic book stores) as they're primarily part of American lore.

I've read in Total Film that this superhero duo stems from a 30's radio show, then went on to gain popularity through a 60's television series (with the inimitable Bruce Lee as Kato) and was about to be remade during the 90's with George Clooney and Jason Scott Lee.

Until now, though, Hollywood hadn't been able to bring 'The Green Hornet' to the big screen.

It took the unlikely writer duo of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (who got to know each other on the editorial staff of the US 'Ali G' show and then puked up a slew of - at least in my humble opinion - mediocre 'comedies' such as 'Superbad', 'Knocked Up', 'Funny People' and 'Pineapple Express') to bring the project back to life.

I'm glad to say 'The Green Hornet' is aye lot better than 'Superbad' and 'Knocked Up', which I thought were pretty unfunny. (Rogen seems to think he's pretty funny in those movies, and there's something irritating about the guy's intonation and timbre which makes the chills run down my spine.)

Maybe I should first elaborate on what the movie's actually about, so here it goes, real quick: a no-good heir to a media magnate, Britt Reid (played by Rogen), plans to fight crime in the city of Los Angeles. He conjures an alter ego in the form of The Green Hornet, a superhero who cleans the LA streets at night. All this with his trusty sidekick Kato (a very good Jay Chou), an expert in martial arts and a supremely skilled car tuner.

Contrary to the protagonist in most superhero movies, the main character in 'The Green Hornet' is a washed-out douchebag who'd get his a** kicked by his grandmother. So it's kind of funny to see him stumble onto the LA crime scene, which in this film is dominated by this Chudnovsky fellar (supremely embodied by Christoph 'Hans Landa' Waltz), only to f**k up so bad that each time out, he needs his sidekick to bail him out.

Don't expect grand cinema when you go to see this film; indeed: you'll probably have forgotten what the movie was about by the time you reach the exit doors.

What will have stuck with you will be the mesmerizingly photographed action (the crew used a total of 29 1965 Chrysler Imperials to make this film; only three survived the shoot), a surprise turn by Jay Chou and dead-on performances by Waltz and Cameron Diaz. And a great soundtrack (Rolling Stones, White Stripes, David Bowie, Sam Cooke, Johnny Cash) to boot.

Still can't stand that Rogen guy, though...

Icebear, oh Icebear

And just like that, the weekend was over again. Not that mine lasted the usual two days - I had to work at the Brussels Motor Salon again today. This after a most memorable Saturday...

Things started off in minor though: along with lifeguard friends Steve-O, Ducktales and Bakerman, I attended the funeral of the father of a good friend of ours. The man had gone way before his time, at only 53 years of age. We didn't know him, but we hope to have supported Justine and her brother Nicolas a little bit by showing them our sympathies.

It had been a long time since I attended a church service - be it on a regular Sunday, a wedding or a funeral - and it didn't take me long before I remembered why I generally stay away from Catholic rituals. With all do respect to the people who find peace and comfort in prayers, sermons and chants, but I do not, not for one bit, connect with ramblings about Jesus and his father. So I kind of sat through the initial part of the funeral.

The testimonies did strike a chord though: it was moving to hear the memories people had of the deceased. And when a Raymond van het Groenewoud song played, I actually had to fight some tears.

After the funeral service, Bakerman and me popped down to Zeebrugge, a port town right next to Knokke-Heist, where we enjoyed a meal at The Boat House. The Boat House is run by 'Schele Moens' ('Cross-eyed Moens'), an ex-fisherman who spent well over thirty years of his life out on the sea. We always crack up when we hear his fisherman's banter, delivered in a juicy West-Flemish dialect.

(I got to know my buddy Bakerman at the lifeguard service in Knokke-Heist. He's kind of like the night mayor of the town, having had a very popular bar there for about seven years. Bakerman knows every living soul in both Zeebrugge and Knokke-Heist, and I thoroughly enjoy my nights out with him because you meet a whole bunch of new people each and every time.)

After dinner, which consisted of cod with potatoes for Bakerman and shrimp croquettes for me, we headed out to the magnificent surf club Surfer's Paradise - a beautiful wooden house in the middle of the dunes, near the Dutch border.

As beautiful as the surfer's lodge looks from the outside; wait till you see what it hides in the inside.

(The guy who runs the place, Frank, used to be a famous wind surfer, back in the eighties. Frank competed on European level, then went on to introduce kitesurfing in Belgium at the beginning of the nineties and ultimately founded Surfer's Paradise.)

During his many surf trips around the world, he brought home a fine collection of souvenirs, which he used to decorate his clubhouse. The walls and ceiling of Surfer's Paradise are littered with Hawaiian oars, exotic fish and Australian roadsigns - but my favourite item remains the drawing Keith Haring once made for the club, back in the eighties when he came to Knokke for work.

(On this picture, you see a container which Haring painted for Surfer's Paradise. It has become a precious art object since then.)

It's a magical place and if you ever get the chance, don't miss out on a visit.

Anyway, that's where Bakerman and me, plus some other lifeguards, get together during the wintertime to take a weekly dive into the freezing sea. It's a ritual called 'icebearing'. It sounds and looks crazy, and it undoubtedly is, but the rush you get by throwing yourself into ice-cold water is amazing.

I have no idea what the long-term consequences of limbs and joints making sudden contact with freezing water, but I do know that my body pleasantly tingles afterwards, every time out. Plus, it's a chance to run over the beach, screaming and yelling and getting rid of most of the past week's stress. It's a catharsis.

After our weekly icebear session and a drink at the bar, plus a rendez-vous at the Belle Vue in Duinbergen where we played some pool, we attended the annual New Year's Party Knokke mayor Leopold Lippens throws for the people who work at the municipality.

Functionaries, they're called, and us, lifeguards, were invited as well. Which was nice.

We tipped over a number of Brugse Zot beers (literal translation 'Bruges Madman'), got together with some colleagues we hadn't seen since the summertime and then continued the festivities at bar Dino's, the Sapinière and ultimately the legendary Kitsch Club at the Casino.

I think I can say I lived every damn second of that Saturday to the fullest and I'm even happier to state that I don't regret a single one of 'em.

Though when my alarm clock sounded off this morning, at 7 am, I did realize that I could've used a little more than the mere three hours of sleep that I managed to get in...

Right, this should do for now - catch you guys tomorrow with my 'Green Hornet' review.

Between Angels and Suzuki Girls

Howdy. How's it hangin'? (I'm really asking myself this question, as I'm probably the only one who has actually visited this site. Meh.)

I must say, I feel rather goatish after having spent a large chunk of my day at the 89th Salon in Brussels, where all sorts of car, van and motorcycle manufacturers present their latest models. And models: that's what it's all about at the Salon.

Take the ones you see on top of this page - the Suzuki girls aka Agent Kitties from Hell. I turned blood-red when I saw them for the first time this morning, draping themselves on the hood of the latest Swift. The Dodge Damsels weren't too bad either, wearing leather kneeboots that ended right where their miniskirts began. Amazing.

I was at the Salon in my capacity as editor of a transportation magazine. For most of the time, it's a 8h/day desk job, scouring through press files looking for the amount of horsepower Scania put in their newest R-series long-haulage trucks - but just now and then I get to do something really cool.

For example: I visited the aforementioned truck brand at their facilities in Sweden, where I visited an icehockey game and got to drive a 60-ton road monster through the pinewoods (without actually carrying the appropriate license). Mercedes-Benz invited me to Hamburg (Germany) to navigate a Vito van through the town's gianormous port - their PR girls were really nice, too. I'm still hoping for Volkswagen to give me a drive in the Dakar Rally, but I imagine that's just a matter of time.

Now, I wouldn't exactly qualify visiting the Press Day at the Salon, collecting press releases, loading up on a mixture of coffee, champagne and grub and talking to corporate hotshots as 'really cool', but it definitely beats a day at the office. Plus, being around Suzuki Bad Kitties from Hell and kinky Dodge Damsels isn't too bad, either.

So I had a good time today. The night before was pretty sweet as well: I got an invite to the informal launch of Land Rover's new Evoque, which took place at the trendy K-Nal club downtown Brussels. The guys that organized the event also run the Kitsch Club in Knokke (a Belgian coastal town where I'm also a lifeguard during the summer), so they asked me over.

I gladly accepted the invite, enjoyed some whisky-cola's, digged the jams Monsieur Moustache and especially The Aikiu (YouTube those guys) were spinning and got blinded by the über-hipness of the Brussels party crowd.

(One word of advice though: if you see the band name 'Mustang' pop up - run. Mustang - the name sounds preposterous after you've seen them play - are a mediocre, four-piece pop group fronted by hoity-toity singer who'd fit right in with the Von Trapp family. I'm just glad they didn't do an encore.)

Roight, I'm out. I'm gonna enjoy the €34 worth of magazines I bought yesterday at Waterstone's: the new Vanity Fair, a nü-metal special by Kerrang! and the latest issues of both Total Film and Empire - I'm a magazine nut, me.

Catch y'all (me) tomorrow.

Somewhere ****

Basically, Sofia Coppola's new movie 'Somewhere' shows everything that I find so appealing about Los Angeles and Hollywood - and it does a fine job at that. I'm simply fascinated by the City Of Angels: not only because of its supreme basketball team, but also by its broad lanes going nowhere and everywhere ('Mulholland Drive', check), by the bright night city lights that you see in 'Collateral', by the odd people that wander around on its sun-bleached sidewalks (if you haven't seen 'The Big Lebowski', do it now), and just by the sheer mystery the place that seems to unite so many extremities in a city that's not even a real city, breathes from every pore.

Okay, maybe I'm just a hopeless movie buff who's mislead by so many great 'LA Movies' - besides the aforementioned I also devoured 'Point Blank', 'Heat' and. 'Greenberg'. 'Somewhere' now adds an accolade to the 'LA Movie' genre.

There's something about Sofia Coppola's movies (I get the same with Wes Anderson's films) that sets them apart from the rest of the pack. They're not always the fastest ('Virgin Suicides'), the flashiest ('Lost In Translation') or even the best ones out there ('Marie Antoinette'), but their look and feel appeal to me in a way that no other movie ever could. They depict normal people, living their lives, but somehow, through beautiful storytelling, photography and scoring, those lives become special.

'Somewhere' is no different. It tells the story of the hard-living Hollywood moviestar Johnny Marco (who could've known that Stephen Dorff can actually act?) who lives at the mythical Chateau Marmont hotel, spending his days inviting strippers to his apartment and driving around in his Ferrari. Then he gets to spend some time with his 11-year old daughter Cleo (a wonderfully natural Elle Fanning, younger sister of Dakota), which somehow brings him back to his senses.

Just being with his daughter - taking her to skating class, playing Guitar Hero (great to hear some Police music on the big screen), going on a field trip to Milan, enjoying dinner with her - takes him out of the rat race that had gotten the better of him. He then suffers a breakdown and decides to turn his life around.

'Somewhere' is beautifully photographed by D.O.P. Harris Savides ('Greenberg', 'Zodiac', 'American Gangster', even 'The Game' back in 1993), who put together still frames wherein the actors do their thing. The movie's scored by French pop group Phoenix. Just like Air did with 'The Virgin Suicides' and Kevin Shields did with 'Lost In Translation', the music makes the images bathe in thin air and makes the movements and expressions of the actors wonderfully light and slightly unearthly.

Add Coppola's knack for sublimating the smaller things in life and putting them on the forefront, thus creating a wonderful story about simple delights and emotions, and you got yourself a winner.

SOME THINGS I LIKED ABOUT 'SOMEWHERE':

- The sound of a Ferrari, which is featured throughout the movie;

- The opening scene, where beautiful blonde twins perform a breathtaking pole dance to the tune of The Foo Fighters' 'My Hero';

- Stephen Dorff wearing a Black Flag shirt when he gets the head cast at the SFX-department;

- Father and daughter playing Guitar Hero to The Police's 'So Lonely'.

SOME THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE SO MUCH:

Chris Pontius really should stick to getting hurt in 'Jackass', because he looks hopelessly out of place in this film - even next to 11-year old Elle Fanning.

Back to the Future

(I somehow posted this on the wrong blog yesterday. Guess I lost my blogging touch the past few years... Here it goes again.)

Back in the day, when I was a student of journalism, I used to run a daily blog. As ‘studying’ wasn’t very high on my list of priorities, that website was my main point of focus. I just threw it all on there: the music I listened to, the movies I watched, how I enjoyed playing basketball - and yes: even the amount of beers I had the other day. Most of the time these rants were accompanied by the necessary photo material.

The number of visitors to the original blog, which carried the same name you see on top of this page, grew steadily over the three years I kept it. That number wasn’t all that bad, considering I wrote in ‘freaky-deaky Dutch’ (quoting Dr. Evil in ‘Goldmember’ here) and blogs weren’t that popular in Flanders back then. My friends checked in regularly, enjoying a good read about the night before, in which they often had participated.

Things got a bit out of hand though: after the summer of ‘05 - in which I had a blast at the beach of Harendijke (near Blankenberge, a town on the Belgian east coast) having spent my summer there as a lifeguard - I kind of spilled the beans on the good times me and my friends Tommy, Benjamin, Pieter and others (we now call ourselves the BBC - ‘Belgian Beach Club’ :-) had had out there.

Which turned out to be just a wee bit too good of a time for the people running the lifeguard service. Back in ‘06, WikiLeaks probably wasn’t even on line yet, but some photos (and especially videos) were leaked to the ones in charge - who subsequently banned us from ever being beach lifeguards again. All because of my urge to share my adventures with the internet crowd.

Things turned out fine though: the next summer I got a job as an intern at a premier Flemish entertainment magazine called Focus Knack. The subsequent summer, after apologizing to the same people who had put my name on the ‘Black List of Lifeguards’, I was allowed to wear the lifeguard uniform once more. Even though I’m crawling towards 30, I’m STILL a damn beach lifeguard - I just can’t help myself.

But all this is beside the point I’m trying to make with this post which, I guess, is: I’m going to try and bring it back to those early blogging days. I’d like to recapture that joy of posting stuff and getting a reaction or two. And if it helps me sharpen my pen, hey, you won’t hear me complain.

So consider me re-connected with the blogosphere (which is now deemed irrelevant thanks to the ‘tweeping’ community, though I could care less as Twitter is not really my cup of tea) and do check back for future posts.

DM