Good ambient Music

As I blogged about my tunes and putting them up on myspace I thought I would mention what motivated me to start making some music again. My blog entry is here if you fancy listening to any the tunes I made

http://hoskysvoyage.blogspot.com/2006/08/hoskinator-tunes-are-out-there.html

I have recently to some really good ambient music

Global Communications started it all off and their album 76.14 (I think) and then I brought Substrata Vol.2

Then recently I brought Boards of Canada The Campfire Headphase

and finally I have brought a couple of Banco De Gaia albums Big Men Cry and Last Train to Lhasa.

It was good finding these artists because alot of the ambient music I had found before was a bit more poppy/dancy. Which is okay but sometimes I wanted a bit more chilled out, especially for when I am listening to music at work.

Check out the chooons. If anyone has any good suggestions for ambient music in similar vain to the music mentioned please leave a comment pointing me in the right direction.

Snakes on a plane

ohh man how much do I want to see this film

I am a big fan of cheesy horror films like Wasp Woman, attack of the killer shrews , boggy creak.

This sounds like something similar. The plot is pure genius, an assassin has to kill someone on a plan so he drops a crate of killer snakes onto the plane. I think the film also deals with people who scared of flying, small spaces and snakes.

I just love saying

Snakes on a plane

Also the king of cool Samuel L Jackson is in it but unfortunately he doesn't say "in France they call them Le Snakes on a plane"

I am in the process of trying to convince my girlfriend that it would be good fun to go and watch the film to which the cheeky minx replied, you never want to see my films and you say they are naff and rubbish. Yes my dear but your horrible films are naff and rubbish in a worse way, they don't know it and they are being serious. My girlfriend once made me watch coyote ugly, what a cheesy film, that is bordering on funny because it is so rubbish.

if anyone has seen Snakes on a plane please leave a comment to tell me what you thought of it.

imdb hasn't got anything, apart from one bloke who's review is quite amusing but I'm not sure if he knows it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417148/

my favorite bit of the review is this

"Plot is pretty thin, something generic about a kid (Nathan Phillips) who witnessed a mob murder and has to be transported to L.A. to testify in court, but I doubt anyone will mind. We know the basic story. There is a plane in the air that has both venomous snakes and Samuel L. Jackson on board. Samuel L. Jackson defeat snakes in a number of thoroughly awesome ways, which I will not reveal as to not diminish their awesomeness, and simultaneously deals with whiny, stereotypical frightened passengers. Trust me though, seeing the snakes rampaging through the plane and wreaking havoc on said stereotypical passengers is indeed sweet."


I will not reveal as to not diminish their awesomeness. Come on guys and girls any review which has that in it must be one bloody good film.

Hoskinator tunes are out there

I have been known to dabble in a bit of music making from time to time and if anyone is interested I have created a myspace link

http://www.myspace.com/hoskinator

They aren't that good and they are in the ambient rambling style but they are worth a listen, go on treat yourself.

I have to admit the tune slow down is certainly my favorite

Working Repeated - The start

I was bored today because I know I should be revising for my SCJP exam and my Xbox is busted so I am here larking around on the computer (forbidden blogging).

Anyway I thought I would write a rubbish story, so be prepared to be amazed at my awful english, terrible spelling and the worst grammer you will ever likely to see by an adult. I don't know why I writing this because i doubt anyone is actually reading this apart from my Mum (Hi Mum).

Anyway here is the first page, I am planning to link the story together with links but I don't know if it will work and I will probably become bored with it. If you have any comments please leave them, even if it's just to take the piss.

Here it is

I wake slowly, a distant noise is growing in decibels, relentlessly getting louder, louder, the same three tones puncture the air

beep, beep, beep

again, louder

beep, beep, beep

again

beep, beep, beep

Why does the noise cease getting louder, perhaps it’s conserving it’s energy? What would I do if were an alarm clock, I would do my job to the best of my ability, I would ring loudly but not to loudly, the perfect days work for an alarm clock is to slowly caress it’s owner into waking, slowly nudge your tired owner into the land of the leaving.

I glance over at the clock, the digits 7.00 brightly shine, boldly telling the time to all who looked in it’s direction. I closed my eyes, savouring the precious seconds of half slumber, neither awake nor asleep but a perfect balance between. I opened one eye, still 7.00, Yes a few more seconds of bliss.

I could feel the slow evaporation of my relaxed state of mind and body slowly ebbing away, tension is inevitably seeping into my skin

If I look again will it still be 7.00

I let a sigh out, open my eyes and there it is staring back at me, a sign and a sign in bold red digital letters. Its message is clear and absolute, no rest for the wicked, no time to layabout here, no sirree, seize the day Master – Carpe Diem Sire, get out bed you lazy fucker. It says 7.01, it can mean only one thing, it’s time I shock my lazy bones out of bed and initiated the waking up routine.

Tideland - Gilliam back

I was reading the guardian and it had an article with Terry Gilliam from Monty Python fame, although I like him more for his films which I love like

Brazil
12 Monkeys
The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen

etc

His latest film looks like some right crazy shit. It has a scene where a child of 12 is looking after her dad and is giving him a shot of heroin, a disturbing image.

The new film is called

Tideland

and he has had a 12 million pound budget and Gilliam should make good use of that to create some twisted landscapes. I didn't like his last film that much the Brothers Grimm but I like the actual story is just that he couldn't really pull it off because it was financed by Hollywood so they insisted on certain actors and certain story lines etc.

Gilliam also is a big fan of Don Quixote. I have read the book and even though it was bloody tough going I did enjoy it and I enjoyed the madness of it, delicious. Because I read the massive book of Don Quixote I brought the film which was pretty boring but my mate saw that I had brought a new film and watched it and was bored out of his mind, ho ho ho how I laughed.

It sounds like the film must be nearly finished or quite a bit done so this will be something to look forward to. I would link to the guardian for you but I don't know if I can be bothered. Oh I've got myself interested now

Here is the rough plot from the guardian film website

after her mother dies from a heroin overdose, Jeliza-Rose is taken from the big city to a rural farmhouse by her father. As she tries to settle into a new life in a house her father had purchased for his now-deceased mother, Jeliza-Rose\'s attempts to deal with what\'s happened result in increasingly odd behavior, as she begins to communicate mainly with her bodiless Barbie doll heads and Dell, a neighborhood woman who always wears a beekeeper\'s veil.

here is the imdb link, it has a really good review here

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0410764/

I have just brought the book because it sounds good, so there

The BBC tribe show is fantastic

I watched the Tribe last night. The basic premise of the show is one English chap goes and joins various tribes in Ethiopia and around that region. To join a tribe for a week he has to usually undertake some kind o initiation.

Yesterdays he was joining the tribe of Dassanech, Omo Valley,Ethiopia. Most of the tribe are herders but there are some of them go and hunt crocodiles in shallow water armed with only a home made harpoon.

It was a fascinating program and I'm glad to say he website to accompany it is also pretty good and has 3 full episodes and some interviews along with lots of other information about the tribes he has stayed with.

The only downside is that I watched the last of the series but hopefully it will be repeated so I will be able to watch them all.

It was quite heart warming to see how generous and heart warming the people from the tribe where, especially the mum figure. Although they were very poor and hardly had anything they were always keen to look after Bruce (the presenter). Bruce said that he was amazed by the generosity of the these poor people and it seems stranger that people in the western world are becoming the opposite of that. Perhaps it may be something to do with possessions and money, everyone seems to be very concerned with wealth in England, I attribute the violence and aggressive hostile attitude to this, people wanted more wealth like they see on TV all the time. I don't really know and I'm talking shit here but it was fascinating watching the generosity of a small very poor tribe and comparing to England.

In the tribe they also have female circumcision, where they chop off the woman's clit, holy moly what's that all about. According to the episode it's a big part of the Ethiopians culture, I can't really imagine what it does, what's the point but Bruce wasn't keen on it either.

The other interesting bit about the show is Bruce gets stuck in trying the food, helping/hindering in the croc hunts/fetching water (3 mile trek). The leave in the subtitles and you can hear the children and others saying, look he's getting the water himself, look he is eating the crocodile just like we do hhahahaa.

It must be very odd if someone totally alien came into your work/town and leaved with you for a bit, perhaps an alien will come down and live with us for a week.

here's the link to the BBC site

http://www.bbc.co.uk/tribe/

go check it out

Wolf Creek review

Holy cow I just watched Wolf Creek and that is one scary movie. It's a small Aussie outback movie and it brings a real sense of horror.

like all good horrors, you have the calm before the storm as you slowly build up the characters and it this bit is filmed in what I would call a classic aussie style, very light hearted and good honest characters mucking about, laughing and taking the piss out of each other.

What I liked from the first part of the film was the rough almost gonzo style of the film quality, it made you feel like you were there and it added a personal touch to the film. The dialogue and acting is great from the main cast to all the rough edged locals.

Are fool hardy youngsters head off to walk called Wolf Creek. When things go wrong I can't help thinking if they had gone to goat creek or something similar it wouldn't have ended so badly.

I won't ruin it for people who haven't seen it but if anyone who has seen it and want to leave some comments and start a discussion then I would be up for it.

The villian in the piece is fantastic bumbling local and he carried real menace, I was scared for the people.

Imdb only gave it 6.2 out of 10 but because of its extreme nature and the fact not everyone likes horror films I think this is a pretty good showing and gives you a sense of the quality of the film. I don't personally take to much notice about the number rating of sites like this, I usually like to read the comments and then you can see what the viewer/reviewer is like whilst reading their comments.

The fact that this was based on a true story made it even scarier but after you had seen it. I am still buzzing from the film, it was one of the best horror films I have seen and well worth checking out if you like horror and don't mind a bit of gore.

I think what pushes the film above your average horrror is that it wasn't done in America and it didn't have to tick all the American horror boxes (good looking girl, minor teen famous actors).

I never expected this day to come

An interesting turn of events has happen to me. My girlfriend who is baffled about "blogging" and who often tells her mates whislt on the phone that her boyfriend is "writing on his little nerdy blog". Well she is at the same stage of her internet evolution e.g. she has a hotmail account, goggles things, buys stuff of Amazon etc.

My Mother on the other hand has branched out, not only has she left a comment or two on my blog but has started up a blog of her own, called

http://old-gits-wife.blogspot.com/

she was discussing today what she should put in the blog. Initially she was going to put humorous comments and a sort of diary of her everyday life. I think she has changed her mind slightly. My Mother said that after reading a few other blogs she found blogs that just talked about their life bloody boring. So she is going to break it up a bit with some facts. She might include some data about the weather temperature because she has got into a habit of checking the temperature all round the world and bringing it up into conversation. This has it's benefits because it means I don't have to look, the disadvantages are that it can be a tad boring sometimes but then again us Brits do like to talk about the weather, although I did think it was tradionally our own weather.

So there you go, what is the world coming to when your mum is blogging as well. I suppose in the future whole families will have blogs. Soon I imagine we will hear around the dinner table, Mum tell her she keeps blogging nasty things about it.

Anyway I thought I would give my Mum's blog a bit of advertising and give her a link on my blog and it's not to bad.

Pink Floyd - are they spinal tap turned up to 11

I saw this blog Old Gits Wife: Sid Barrett and I thought I would write about it. I have to admit I have mixed feelings about Pink Floyd. On the one hand their albums,

Dark side of the moon
Wish you were here
The Wall

are brilliant and what's more because they were older I brought the albums for about 5 quid each. On the other hand all of their other material is not as good, in fact it's pretty rubbish and boring. Anything before Dark side of the moon isn't as polished and sounds very odd, especially the totally overatted stuff with Sid Barrett in. Piper at the gates of dawn sounds like spinal tap, muttering odd lyrics which I do not think are inspired they are just a brain dump from some guy spaced out of his mind.

Anything after the Wall is self indulgent that it only has 1 maybe 2 good songs on an album.

The three albums I like are fantastic, classic albums that will be liked for the next 100 years and more, the other albums I would just give a miss.

This bloke sums it up pretty well

http://timedoor.textdriven.com/index.php?id=19

and he also links to 4 songs from Piper at the gates of dawn so check it out if you fancy hearing Sid Barrett. When i saw the songs on here, I thought they seemed familiar, it turned out that I actually own the album, it's that good I forgot.

here is a link to some Sid Barrett solo material as well

http://www.funtimeok.com/?p=358

I might not have like Sid's work that much but you have to doff your cap, at least he was an interesting chap and he did start up Pink Floyd. If anyone knows please leave a comment stating how pink floyd got their name.

Superman returns - well he can go back go there

I watched the new Superman movie and found it massively boring. Firstly I don't really think films should be 2 and half hours long in the cinema, if the film is that long they should go back to the script and cut out all the nonsense don't need. I suppose that is what you would done in the good old days but these days they should cut out some of the soap emotional waft.

I don't really like all the stuff about showing characters are sensitive souls, you should be able to that and push the script along. Thinking back to the old Superman films they didn't have much of this stuff.

Special effects seemed to have taken over films these days. Like pirates of the Caribbean (and many others) there are bits just to show off some special effects. The problem is special effects are a bit like fire works, everyone has seen them and I for one are quite bored of them. Special effects just thrown in are doubly boring. To be honest people don't really care about the quality of the special effects, by stepping into the cinema we have already agreed to leave reality at the door. Think back to films like ghostbusters and the Skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts, the special effects are rubbish by today's standards but who cares the quality of them isn't really important, its the part they play in the film. When you see Jason fighting some skeletons you are thinking bloody hell this boy is in a bit of a tight spot.

Another comment I have about the special effects in this Superman film is they are tremendously boring. Basically someone is in trouble, falling/car trapped /plan about to crash and you know that Superman is going to save them, he pops up, a bit of a struggle and saves them, boom, bam, boring. In the old supermans he was pulling some moves, like freezing lakes and melting them to put out fires, flying round the world backwards to turn back time. At least they were interesting and you wondered how Superman was going to save them.

Finally the plot seems so much a second rate citizen and unimportant to the movie that it appears and then ends quickly, no warning, no twists, no real motivation, not really a very good plan and in the end I couldn't really give a monkeys what happened I was just hoping that it would finally end.