MGMT – Flash Delirium

Not sure what to think of this new offering from MGMT.  I don’t want to join the masses out there saying they’re trying to fit too many influences and styles into one song, but they’re definitely not wrong.  I’m used to dancing away to most songs on their last album, and this one really wouldn’t work too well at a dance party.  Unless we were all on drugs I guess.  Judge for yourself, but this left me quite underwhelmed.  It’ll be near impossible to top Oracular Spectacular, but there better be at least a few songs that can rival “Kids” or “Time to Pretend” and not all be psychedelic stuff, or this blogger won’t be very happy.

Download the mp3 at their official site.

Best Actor

Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart – WINNER
George Clooney, Up In The Air
Colin Firth, A Single Man
Morgan Freeman, Invictus
Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker

The dude finally gets his long deserved Oscar.  Good for him.

Best Actress

Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side – WINNER
Helen Mirren, The Last Station
Carey Mulligan, An Education
Gabourey Sidibe, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia

Couldn’t believe this one.  Blindside was good for a feel-good sports movie, but best actress of the year?  I imagine the other nominees felt more than a bit offended by this result.

Best Picture

Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
The Hurt Locker – WINNER
An Education
Inglourious Basterds
Precious
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air

Loved The Hurt Locker, so I’m happy it won.  I need to catch up on all the other nominees, specifically An Education and A Serious Man, but I also thought UP in the Air was pretty dang good and right up there with The Hurt Locker.

Best Supporting Actor

Matt Damon, Invictus
Woody Harrelson, The Messenger
Christopher Plummer, The Last Station
Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds – WINNER

No contest here.  If you’ve seen Inglorious Basterds, then you’ll know what I’m talking about.  The man jumped fluently from language to language throughout the film like it was nothing.  Definitely a treat to watch his performance.

Best Supporting Actress

Penélope Cruz, Nine
Vera Farmiga, Up In The Air
Maggie Gyllenhaal, Crazy Heart
Anna Kendrick, Up In The Air
Mo’Nique, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire - WINNER

Either from Up in the Air would have made me happy.  Oh well.

Best Director

James Cameron, Avatar
Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker – WINNER
Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Lee Daniels, Precious
Jason Reitman, Up in the Air

Bigelow vs. Cameron.  Cameron has to win for involvement in the film’s direction, as it was years in the making, but I’m glad Bigelow won for a great film.  First woman director to ever win.

Best Original Screenplay

The Hurt Locker – WINNER
Inglourious Basterds
The Messenger
A Serious Man
Up

Best Adapted Screenplay

District 9
An Education
In the Loop
Precious – WINNER
Up in the Air

Best Animated Film

Coraline
Fanatastic Mr. Fox
The Princess and the Frog
The Secret of Kells
Up – WINNER

Will Pixar ever lose?  I really enjoyed Coraline though.

Best Foreign Language Film

Ajami
El Secreto de Sus Ojos – WINNER
The Milk of Sorrow
Un Prophète
The White Ribbon

The White Ribbon won the Palm d’Or at Cannes, and Un Prophéte was really good.  Need to see the winning film before I make judgements, but it seems this was the big surprise early on.

Best Art Direction

Avatar – WINNER
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Nine
Sherlock Holmes
The Young Victoria

Cinematography

Avatar – WINNER
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
The White Ribbon

Editing

Avatar
District 9
The Hurt Locker – WINNER
Inglourious Basterds
Precious

Sound Mixing

Avatar
The Hurt Locker – WINNER
Inglourious Basterds
Star Trek
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Sound Editing

Avatar
The Hurt Locker – WINNER
Inglourious Basterds
Star Trek
Up

Original Score

Avatar
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Hurt Locker
Sherlock Holmes
Up – WINNER

Original Song

“Almost There” from The Princess and the Frog
“Down in New Orleans” from The Princess and the Frog
“Loin de Paname” from Paris 36
“Take It All” from Nine
“The Weary Kind” from Crazy Heart – WINNER

Costume

Bright Star
Coco before Chanel
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Nine
The Young Victoria – WINNER

Documentary Feature

Burma VJ
The Cove – WINNER
Food, Inc.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Which Way Home

Still need to see this, but according to Kellen, my best friend/movie guru, it’s fantastic and heartbreaking.

Documentary (short subject)

China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province
The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner
he Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
Music by Prudence – WINNER
Rabbit à la Berlin

Did you see the acceptance speech.  I guess the director came up to talk, and the producer jumped up and did a Kanye to his speech, since they’ve had a long going dispute about who originally came up with the idea for the documentary.

Makeup

Il Divo
Star Trek – WINNER
The Young Victoria

Animated Short Film

French Roast
Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty
The Lady and the Reaper
Logorama – WINNER
A Matter of Loaf and Death

Here’s the link to the whole short over at tv shack, definitely worth watching.

Live Action Short Film

The Door
Instead of Abracadabra
Kavi
Miracle Fish
The New Tenants – WINNER

Visual Effects

Avatar – WINNER
District 9
Star Trek

Iron Man 2 Trailer 2

1. Rogue Wave – Good Morning (The Future) [mp3]
   
2. The Morning Benders – Promises [mp3]
   
3. Frightened Rabbit – Swim Until You Can’t See Land [mp3]
   
4. Broken Bells – Vaporize [mp3]
   
5. Tuung – Hustle [mp3]
   
6. Lightspeed Champion – The Big Guns of Highsmith [mp3]
   
7. Final Fantasy – Tryst With Mephistopheles [mp3]
   
8. Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beck – Me and Jane Doe [mp3]
   
9. Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore – Only a Song [mp3]
   
10. Four Tet – Angel Echoes [mp3]
    
11. Emancipator – Ares [mp3]
    

www.ld417.org

Let’s start there.  You remember Lemondrop Records right?  The record label Chuck and I started two years ago and had pretty good success getting local bands out to our Springfield community.  But with two guys, you can only really do so much.  Chuck then brought the idea up of focusing on furthering both arts and music in our community from a grassroots level, going strictly local, rather than trying to make money by promoting bands and their music to Springfield and surrounding areas, which had begun to stall out.  The resulting efforts of us pursuing this new direction was turning Lemondrop Records into simply Lemondrop, a non-profit art and music resource that brought all the brightest and best people we’d worked with freelance style over the years, in house, working as a unit towards our new mission, and acting as a central collective bridging the gap between artists, musicians, and the community.  To keep this brief, I’ll point you to two links that sum up our mission and what we think the future holds for us better than I could write here…

About Lemondrop

The Lemondrop Art Directory (what we feel will be our eventual future, and will represent the culmination of all our non-profit plans in one place)

Now that you’ve read the basic idea of what we are and where we’re going, let me tell you a bit about what we’ve been up to since the switch.  Last summer we had the great fortune to meet a donor who loved our vision with Lemondrop Records, and wanted to help us get this next venture truly underway.  With his help, we got a window front space on Commercial Street, a budding art street, and we’ve been throwing art gallery shows in conjunction with Springfield’s 1st Friday art walks.  From there, we brought in Ben the Builder as we’ve dubbed him and a stage was soon built in record time.  We threw our first huge show as an experiment to see if we had the chops to not only book an out of town band, but get people to show up.  We brought in Big Gigantic, a fantastic show by the way, and saw nearly 70 people travel from St. Louis and Columbia, nearly three hour drives, to catch the show, and a packed house full of locals, officially selling our little space out in our first try.  I was amazed, and we knew after that show we could pull off a Lemondrop concert series.

We took a Christmas break, and after a slight complication with our space and getting it back up and running after delays due to city regulations needing to be met, we’re back in business.  This Saturday we’ve got Mac Lethal over at the High Life, followed by D.J.P. and our Lemondrop DJ’s the following Thursday for Lemondrop Night at the same venue.  But what I’m beyond excited about, and what should excite most my readers since I’ve written about him multiple times here on the Perch, is we’ve got Emancipator coming to the Lemondrop space March 18th.

That’s right, Emancipator.  The guy who brought you one of my favorite instrumental tracks in “Anthem” [mp3]

That’s the sweet show poster.  If you can make it out to that show, we’d love to have you.  And you know it’ll be an amazing show.

Basically, that’s the jist of the new Lemondrop.  Non-profit art collective aimed at furthering and nurturing local art culture here in Springfield while providing a means for bands and artists to get their music and art to the community, and vice versa.  Sorry I’ve been lacking on the Perch side of things, but I’m back and 2010 should be one hell of a year.  Thanks for sticking with me and I’ll keep you updated on all things Lemondrop, as well as keep my music ramblings coming as frequently as possible.

-Kevin

P.S.  If you’re interested, here’s a couple things we’re getting off the ground under the Lemondrop Umbrella…

Ruby Jewel – “Music Inspiring Change”
Another non-profit (something we’re all about these days), that is basically a place where we bring bands and non-profit organizations together to create synergy and promote a healthy working relationship between the two.  Non-profit Org’s sift through our database of songs, usually singles OK’d by the bands for free use, that fit whatever use the Organization may need (commercials, theme songs, causes, etc.).  The end result, we think at least, will be a place that provides a service no one has yet to give, which is helping ease the complications for Non-profits that arise from getting and using songs by bringing bands together who are OK with having their song used by the non-profit for free, and who in turn help these bands get more exposure.  Get it?  Yeah, we don’t really either, but we’ll figure it out over time as it evolves. (bands and Org’s added as I snatch them up)

Music Revolt – Down with major labels and that sort of stuff.  Podcasts every week (drinking of a six pack each show manditory), news and updates on everyday corruption by the major labels and what we can do about it, along with all sorts of other stuff we haven’t thought of yet.  Should be fun and you should definitely join our revolution.  (site not quite done yet, but you can still listen to our podcasts while we get the kinks ironed out and the site official launched)

Official Site / Myspace

Playing CD’s and DVD’s?  No cd or dvd drive, so that’s a big no.  From what I’ve gathered, and I’m no one to talk to about technology by the way, so take all my rambling with a grain of salt, it seems they’ll need to change and add a lot before the Ipad makes any serious waves like the Iphone did.  Of course, Apple is undoubtedly targeting the average consumer who could care less about all the missing laptop features and want to be seen with the next coolest Apple device.  In this case an Ipod Touch the size of your head.

Perch Verdict:
I think I’ll save my $500 until they come out with pants with really, really big pockets.  Anyone sense a JNCO comeback?

Frantic Steve Jobs Stays Up All Night Designing Apple Tablet

(Original article here)
CUPERTINO, CA—Claiming that he completely forgot about the much-hyped electronic device until the last minute, a frantic Steve Jobs reportedly stayed up all night Tuesday in a desperate effort to design Apple’s new tablet computer. “Come on, Steve, just think—think, dammit—you’re running out of time,” the exhausted CEO said as he glued nine separate iPhones to the back of a plastic cafeteria tray. “Okay, yeah, this will work. This will definitely work. Just need to write ‘tablet’ on this little strip of masking tape here and I’m golden. Oh, come on, you piece of shit! Just stick already!” Middle-of-the-night sources reported that Jobs then began work on double-spacing his Keynote presentation and increasing the font size to make it appear longer

I love Manchester Orchestra, and have just now started getting into Kevin Devine’s music.  His tunes are proving to be great as well, but I found a cover project over at Spinner randomly today that had them cover each others’ songs.  Both covers are great, and whenever something strikes my fancy, you know I’ll be sharing it on here.  So, check out the covers below and enjoy.

Manchester Orchestra – “I Could Be With Anyone” [mp3]

Kevin Devine – “The Only One” [mp3]

Kevin Devine – Official Site / Myspace
Manchester Orchestra – Official Site / Myspace