Hi- David Allen Jones aka Johnny Bacardi here, and I’m delighted to be back writing stuff n’ junk for you here at Popdose again.  Comics reviews will be forthcoming, but I also want to start a new column, in which I take a look at record releases of days gone by that may not have been received as, well…warmly as the releaser(s) intended, and in which I try (sometimes successfully, I think, and sometimes not so) to make a humble case for your reappraisal, or at least get across why I actually like those mostly scorned albums.

I’d also like to state, and probably not for the last time, that the whole “Nobody’s Favorite” thing is not my original idea; it’s been used by a couple of bloggers of my acquaintance before, most notably David Weiss and “Calamity” Jon Morris. But not for albums, and that’s where I’m planting my little flagpole. So let’s go.

Ringo the 4th is, I think it’s safe to say, nobody’s favorite Ringo album.

In the middle of the 70’s, no solo Fab was hotter on the charts than Richie, not even Sir Paul. 1971’s hit singles “It Don’t Come Easy” and “Back Off Boogaloo” set the table for the triumph that was 1973’s Ringo, a true all-star affair that had not only performances and songs by the other Lads (even 3 at once on “I’m the Greatest”, sparking reunion rumors anew), but guest perfs by Harry Nilsson, Marc Bolan, and members of the Band as well as production by Richard Perry at the peak of his creativity. He had three top 40 hits with the great “Photograph”, “Oh My My”, and “You’re Sixteen”.  The next year, the follow-up Goodnight Vienna (with much of Ringo’s cast returning, including Perry once again at the helm) was almost as good and spawned two more hits, “Only You” and “No No Song”. Then, his Apple contract expired as the whole Apple Records thing evaporated, he was signed by Arif Mardin for Atlantic Records, and despite the hitmaking Mardin producing (Perry apparently believing that guiding the music of the likes of Carly Simon and Leo Sayer was preferable) his first effort for that label, Ringo’s Rotogravure was a spectacular flop. The magic of ’71-’74 had disappeared and the more R&B-flavored album produced no hits, despite (somewhat lackluster) contributions from John, George, Paul, and Eric Clapton. At least it had nice packaging- the gatefold sleeve of that one is more fun than the music.

Undaunted, Ringo went back into the studio the next year, Mardin once more at the helm, and recorded an even more overt R&B-flavored set of songs with a strong Disco flavor, the Disco movement being in its full flower. No guest star cameos this time, no songs from his mates. Many of the songs were covers, but the six originals were co-writes credited to Starr and his partner Vini Poncia (who had co-written “Oh My My”). It was titled the way it was because, despite the fact that it was actually Ringo’s sixth solo record, he decided not to count the first two, the standards album Sentimental Journey and the Nashville-recorded country/western set Beaucoups of Blues, since the weren’t “rock records”. Despite the revisionist history, Ringo the 4th it didn’t sell and was critically drubbed- Robert Christgau, one of the few critics who chose to devote some time to reviewing it, dismissed it with a D grade.

Yep, another Ringo flop album, and he soon was dismissed from his Atlantic contract. In all fairness, this didn’t seem to bother our boy very much- this was at the height of his L.A. party animal phase, and he was always seen out and about and drinking copiously and generally loving life. But a funny thing happened, at least to this still rather ardent Beatle fan…while I took my time picking it up (I really hated Rotogravure) not getting it till sometime late in 1978, when I did get around to giving it a spin, I didn’t hate it, at all. In fact, I found myself kinda liking it.

So, what say we sit back and let me hold forth about this ugliest of ducklings, often cited as the album that killed Ringo’s career? Let’s go.

Side One.

Drowning in the Sea of Love. A Gamble/Huff hit song for Joe Simon in 1971. Backed by a surging, string-heavy, aggressive arrangement with tasteful guitar licks and Disco Dolly backing vocals (Bette Midler and Melissa Manchester were among the vocalists), Richie seems to be hanging on for dear life, bellowing out his vocals drunkenly (height of his boozing period, remember…but he sounds positively sober here compared to some of the other songs, more on that later) as the ladies coo “One time…two times…”. This probably should have been the lead single in the US, but it wasn’t; it was released to radio well after the record’s poor word of mouth had sunk it. A promo clip was filmed, who knows where it aired.

Tango All Night.  Written by Steve Hague and Tom Seufert, whoever they are, it’s pleasant and lighthearted but awfully bland; set at a disco shuffle tempo with a hint of salsa somewhere in the mix. Guess what Richie wants to do in this one.

Wings. The first of six Poncia/Starr originals, and the inexplicable first single release, it’s a plodding mid-tempo track with some chicken scratch guitar by Yoko’s ex-lover and ace session guitarist David Spinozza. Not about one of his former bandmates’ groups. It barely troubled the charts, but it’s not hard to sit through.

Gave It All Up. This one is actually a keeper- a slow-tempo reminisce about love won and lost, punctuated by Don Brooks’ folksy harmonica. Ringo’s woozy vocal is warm and likable, and I’d rank this with his best solo songs, if I was making a very long list.

Out on the Streets. This one’s a full-on disco boogie tune, with horns and more Disco Dolly BVs, in which Ringo tries to sound streetwise or something. It’s fast paced but ultimately boring,  plodding along until it expires. A rather generic track.

Side Two.

Can She Do It Like She Dances?. The album picks up considerably with this one, in my opinion one of the best on the album. It’s definitely set at a hi-hat heavy disco tempo, but the arrangement reminds me a lot of can-can dancing or something, appropriate given the subject matter, in which Ringo drunkenly (and I do mean drunkenly)  seems to slobber all over the mike as he wonders if the object of his affection can “do it” like she dances, knowwhatImean nudge nudge wink wink. I love the way Ringo sings “And she moved so tender-ly“, sounding guttural and horny as hell. Songwriting credit goes to another couple of old pros, Steve Duboff and Gerry Robinson, and no, I have no idea who they are/were either.

Sneaking Sally Through the Alley. The Allen Toussaint perennial gets a nicely funky disco-fied workout. It’s a great song, and Richie does it justice, I think. It’s a perfect song for his limited vocal range. No patch on Bob Palmer, but fun just the same.

Unfortunately, that’s where the album peaks. The last three songs are all Starr/Vini Poncidearo cowrites, and their most common feature is their utter lack of anything remarkable.

It’s No Secret. Pretty much a love song, punctuated with weird synth & string noises. Not unpleasant, but slick and forgettable, and not unlike a lot of songs that did get airplay at the time.

Gypsies in Flight. This one’s even more laid back and strives for a tropical feel with slide guitar and synthesizer keyboard. The melody is weak and Ringo’s vocal is aimless and drowsy-sounding. Good track to nod off in a hammock on the beach between two palm trees, I guess, but you can say that about a lot of songs.

Simple Love Song attempts to pick up the tempo and close the album on an upbeat note, but unfortunately it isn’t very strong melodically and just kinda disco boogies along until the needle hits the out groove. Ace guitarists and session guys Lon Van Eaton and Danny Kortchmar play on this, but you’d never know it.

After the failure of this record, Ringo wound up signing to a subsidiary of Columbia Records, Portrait, for the mostly-covers followup Bad Boy- but no one was having that one either. In spite of everything, however, Starr continued to record for many years after that, even up to present day, and revived his career at least on stage via his popular and lucrative “All-Starr Band” tours. A few interesting records came and went, most notably 1981’s Stop and Smell the Roses, released in the wake of the murder of John Lennon and an underrated record if ever there was one, and 1991’s multi-producer release Time Takes Time, which squandered the talents of the likes of uber-hot producer Jeff Lynne and Jellyfish’s Andy Sturmer on some very ordinary songs…but was still worth a listen. Of course, there was also the Threetle reunion and Beatles Anthology project; he also got some attention when his tribute song to George Harrison “Never Without You”, made some headlines in the early 00’s after his bandmate’s passing. These days, Starr still tours with the A-SB, bringing along a rotating cast of amazing musicians such as Ian Hunter, Todd Rundgren, and many others, and releases the occasional generic popsong album which a handful of fans dutifully buy. I even own a couple of them, obtained this way and that, but I couldn’t tell you what a single song sounds like on any of them. Ringo is thankfully still with us, and incredibly seems younger than other surviving bandmate McCartney. As he is so fond of saying at every opportunity, Peace and Love to him and to all of you for reading this.

It turns out there’s reason enough why the new album by Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie is not credited to Fleetwood Mac. It very well could have been. Both Mick Fleetwood and John McVie contribute. During Buckingham’s “producing mad scientist” years, around Tusk or thereabouts, it’s hard to believe these two founders didn’t find their drums and bass augmented, shall we say? Shiftier moves have been made than considering this a Mac album.

So why isn’t this a proper Mac release? First, that initially was the intention until Stevie Nicks was caught being Stevie Nicks. The momentum to continue recording as a full-blown reunion may have sputtered, but the momentum of the titular artists did not. That’s a good thing.

Good, but not great, is the best description for the record as a whole. Nothing on the album is going to survive nearly as well or as long as the stuff that emerged from Fleetwood Mac to Mirage, but while this disc is on, it is a reminder of how good (there’s that word again) Lindsey and Christine are together.

The source of the emotional confusion lies in the tribute-like nature of the songs herein. “Red Sun” demonstrates the same feel as found on “Think About Me,” and pointedly namedrops the earlier song to cement the connection. “In My World” brings back the computerized sex moans hook of “Big Love.” “Feel About You” wears the DNA of “Hold Me” on its sleeve, and “Carnival Begin” cops the loping rhythm of “I’m So Afraid.” Weirdly, the record’s primary focus seems to find the performers honoring themselves in backhanded fashion.

Yet I defy anyone to feel anything but joy at hearing McVie sing with such devotion through the piano ballad “Game of Pretend,” carrying lyrics — which, on paper, could read as utterly sappy and cringe-inducing — into a sense of purity that smothers any hint of jadedness. Buckingham’s choirs of intricate madness permeate the collection, and his severely underrated guitar chops often have the space to shine.

The secret weapon, as it has always been, is McVie. Back in those magical days, as that stalwart blues-rock staple was transforming into a textbook study of pop perfection, she had the hardest task of all: being the soft anchor that held down two of rock’s most eccentric personalities. Now, as then, she grounds Lindsey, even as he’s lifting her up. It’s a terrific balance that they have duplicated here.

But this is a duplication, an approximation that, even though it sounds terrific, doesn’t quite get the job done. These two individuals had to top their earlier selves, and maybe that’s an impossible task. Equally impossible would have been for the listener to lower their expectations. Taken for what it is, however, Buckingham McVie neatly strolls you down memory lane without actually trodding the same ground. I wasn’t blown away, but I was not necessarily disappointed. It’s not Fleetwood Mac, but it can be close enough.  

Don’t let the undercurrent of love and peace fool you. In Yes World, things are demonstrably “No.”

The blame, if we absolutely must assign it, falls on bassist Chris Squire’s shoulders for having the temerity to die. Being the keeper of the flame and the name, lo these many years, he had first right to use the intricate logo Roger Dean designed for the band so long ago.

Singer Jon Anderson, second in succession, hadn’t been with the group since the Symphonic Tour, a keyboard-free iteration which was developed after the release of the album Magnification. Other members of Yes’ first wave — Peter Banks, Tony Kaye, Tony O’Reilly –were either deceased or dispossessed. More well-known names to follow like Rick Wakeman, Bill Bruford, and Steve Howe did not have the ability to lay claim to the name unilaterally. Not like Jon Anderson.

Prior to Squire’s death, Yes released two albums. Fly From Here was a reunion of the Drama-era lineup with The Buggles (with Trevor Horn handling production), featuring for the first and last time vocalist Benoit David (not David Benoit, as is often reported. Hard to make this stuff up.) Heaven and Earth found a new, new vocalist in the form of another Jon: Jon Davison. It was produced by Roy Thomas Baker who also produced Anderson’s late-’80s solo record 3 Ships.

Another reunion of sorts occurred when Anderson joined forces with Wakeman and Trevor Rabin, the famed guitarist who brought the band to heights of popularity with Yes’ early-’80s albums, and they went on tour as ARW (or is it AWR).

Then there were the considerably frosty Rock and Roll Hall of Fame acceptance speeches, made memorable only by Wakeman’s wonderfully irreverent “ta’ hell with it” attitude throughout his speech. Apart from that, audiences were treated (?) to simulated camaraderie and injections of pomposity which may or may not have been attempts at humor. Scant days later, Anderson’s publicists announced that his faction would now be co-opting the Yes name, asserting that they were the rightful heirs.

Of course, Yes from Earth One objected.

If this all sounds similar to you — apart from the longstanding Yes pose of members being perpetually at each others’ throats — it does offer parallels to bands with contentious splits and reformations, some of which actually don’t have Steve Howe in them. The Yes/Emerson Lake and Palmer/Buggles/King Crimson supergroup Asia was, for a period of time, toplined by singer John Payne. Prior to that, founding member Howe left, then founding vocalist John Wetton left, leaving Geoff Downes and Carl Palmer as the caretakers of the enterprise. Then the original lineup came back for a reunion tour and Payne was ousted. Briefly Payne took Asia newbies Guthrie Govan and Jay Schellen with him to form GPS. It did not last.

Payne tried to reassert himself as the voice of Asia, seeing as how he actually held the position longer than Wetton did. Nostalgic fans, voting with their wallets, felt otherwise. Suddenly there were two: “Original Asia” and “Asia with John Payne.” The continent was unavailable for comment.

The poster children for internecine dysfunction are Queensryche which split, for a time, between Tate-filled and Tate-free varieties. Geoff Tate, longtime lead singer claimed the name. The rest of the band, now featuring Crimson Glory vocalist Todd LaTorre, said in essence, “We outnumber you.” After a release from the former and two from the latter, a judge gave the final ownership of the brand to the rest of the band. Tate renamed his group Operation: Mindcrime after one of Queensryche’s most popular releases. Both entities continue to struggle to regain the level of recognition they once had and, as perplexing as it may sound, reunion rumors swirl.

This leads us back to our warring proggers of Yes-terday. There is little question that, at some point, the two separatists will reemerge as one, either when it becomes financially beneficial to do so, or more cynically when someone else dies. In the meantime, the bands do damage to the brand that they have cultivated for decades, held aloft on a thin slipstream of high-mindedness, new age positivity, and the goodwill of a most tolerant fanbase. 

Something different than you’d find me reviewing is this new release from The A.V. Club, out of Chicago.  Understand, this is a project driven by bassist/composer Andrew Vogt (hence “The A.V. Club”), who understands the nuances of feel and groove as opposed to technical proficiency makes all the difference in the world.

When writing about instrumentals, it’s a bit more of a daunting task as you want to be able to convey a feeling since there isn’t any text to offer as a guide.  On this album, the overriding emotion is that of joy – simple, unabashed good feelings, which is what emerges from the eight tracks.  And, of course, there’s always the argument of style versus substance, which is a whole lot of nothing as with this congregation of very fine musicians do not let their skill overtake the vibe, which makes this such a pleasure to listen to.

“Steveland” gets the proceedings off to an upbeat start; smooth grooves kick in and take you on a breezy joyride; heavy rhythm and slick guitars carry this piece, reminding me of the jazz-funk I listened to as an early teen – keyboards and horns puncture the track and keep the vibe going.  (By the way, “vibe”, “groove” and “feel” will be used a lot here, probably!) “Fat Tuesday” rollicks along with what I immediately interpret as a very New Orleans good-time number; something you would hear as you sip a hurricane in a Chartres Street bar; “Pearofjax” is just tight, smooth jazz-funk that motors with a very ’70’s groove and “Yam Of Lotus” (with its humorous spoken-word opening) is a bit slower but blossoms into a very liquid and laid back – a bit of “space” soul.

All in all, this gathering of songs by Mr. Vogt and his cohorts is very fine; very finessed.  This could be a perfect summer soundtrack – especially since there are no vocals to distract.  Think of this as a musical companion to warm July nights; it isn’t hard to do.

RECOMMENDED

The A.V. Club’s self-titled album is currently available

www.vogtmusic.com

Crummy. Slummy. Bummy. The Mummy.

Franchise exhaustion continues with a desperate attempt to turn Universal’s beloved Golden Age of Hollywood monsters into supernaturally charged action figures for the less discerning members of the global audience, the same one that keeps turning out for more Resident Evil and Underworld sequels. If it were a January release throwaway cast with a TV star or two, it might be tolerable. But this is playing in the big leagues, with an upscale budget and production, and Tom Cruise in the lead. The studio’s intermittent revivals of its legacy, including Van Helsing (2004) and Dracula Untold (2014), have been woeful, and this is the most baffling of all, a first piece of a planned “Dark Universe” from a superhero-challenged company that is looking gloomy indeed.

Alien: Covenant was awful, but going in I gave it the benefit of the doubt. Watching Ridley Scott dig himself deeper into the Prometheus hole was, however, a miserable experience, and there was no audience for it beyond its first underwhelming weekend. Giving The Mummy a fair shake is difficult. The director, Alex Kurtzman, has penned and/or produced junk like the Transformers movies and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which lowers the tone. The concept, with a rakish Indiana Jones-type running afoul of the undead, is moldy: The prior Mummy cycle, with Brendan Fraser in just that part, ended not even ten years ago, and the new film simply repeats ideas from that trilogy, like having its villain metamorphose into a CGI sandstorm. And it stars Tom Cruise.

That shouldn’t be a liability. But at 55, Cruise is, as they say, too old for this shit. He gives a certain amount of value: As Nick Morton, a black marketer who hangs out in Mideast war zones waiting for artifacts to pop up, he still has that raffish smile, and he does, for reelz, a perilous zero gravity stunt on a crashing airplane. Because there’s so much CGI surrounding him, though, it looks like CGI, just one of the many ways this movie undercuts the Tom Cruise “brand.” That said, much of the blame for that diminishment is on him. With Jack Reacher stalled, he’s the Mission: Impossible guy, with sequels to Edge of Tomorrow and Top Gun also in the works, and not much else on his plate. This isn’t an interesting career, it’s arrested adolescence, Hollywood-style. He should be chasing after Oscars, not antiquities in the desert and fronting one of the more hopeless “world-building” origins stories. Leave that to, I don’t know, Channing Tatum, Zac Efron, someone else. Maybe the forthcoming Barry Seal biopic American Made, returning him to his 80s heyday, will break him out of this tomb.

Anyway–here we are with Nick, who with a team of disgruntled military types and his sidekick Chris (Jake Johnson) breaks into the wrong tomb, that of the princess Ahmanet (I’m going with that spelling, as the movie, fuzzy on basic details, gives at least one more). Passed over for tribal leadership once upon a millennium, Ahmanet killed her entire royal family, and was cursed with a heavily bandaged undeath. Freed by Morton’s feckless grave robbing, she finds in his dubious morality a kindred spirit, and possesses him in kind. This allows her to shed her rags for makeup that suggests a trick-or-treater’s interpretation of goth, as the none-too-fascinating central conflict emerges: Will Tom Cruise embrace his good side, or will Tom Cruise embrace his bad side? I’ll give you three guesses–you’ll get it in one.

With nothing much at stake emotionally, The Mummy (co-written by two scribes on Team Cruise, taking one for the boss, and Rachel Getting Married‘s Jenny Lumet of all people), the movie throws up diversionary tactics in the vain hope of holding our attention. (Being a 3D conversion, it should throw out a few, too, but it doesn’t. Not once. There’s no reason to add insult to injury by paying more money to see this thing.) Chris exits the movie early, but Nick can still communicate with him, so we have unfunny scenes modeled on the funny-creepy ones in a more up-to-date Universal classic, 1981’s An American Werewolf in London. 1932’s The Mummy, starring Boris Karloff, is a seriously strange and surprising movie, with an erotic undercurrent. Eighty-five years later, we have Ahmanet tickling Nick’s tummy with her tongue–mostly, though, she’s trussed up like a turkey, in captivity, and when Cruise turns the tables on her with his tongue (don’t ask, it’s a plot point) it gets kind of ugly, not sexy, in a 50 Shades of Mummification way. Guiding Nick on his journey into the unknown is Dr. Henry Jekyll, whose monster-collecting institute is a repository of evil, which he himself can barely contain. (He’s played, straight-facedly, by Russell Crowe, who will presumably be the Nick Fury of the Dark Universe.) In one scene, Nick and the nice, boring girl by his side, Jenny (Annabelle Wallis) swim away from crusader mummies. I can’t even with Tom Cruise swimming away from crusader mummies.

(And did I mention that Ahmanet metamorphoses into a CGI sandstorm? Oh, yeah, a few paragraphs ago–or was it in 1999, when mummy Arnold Vosloo did the same freaking thing? How short do they think our memories are?)

I could go on, but crummy-slummy-bummy is The Mummy in a nutshell. I’ll spare a kind word for Sofia Boutella, who despite the hindrances of the makeup and script and Tom Cruise’s tongue is fetching as Ahmanet. (Who is not the first female mummy to headline a movie–the Hammer horror Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb got there in 1971.) The Algerian-born actress, who has a role in the more promising Atomic Blonde later this summer, gets the one intentionally funny line in the movie. When Nick, trying to break her spell over him, reminds Ahmanet of her legacy of violence, she coos, “They were…different times.” May the movie gods deliver us from The Mummy.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 shows there’s life yet to some franchises, and Wonder Woman successfully reboots a beloved pop culture icon. Gal Gadot’s exciting debut as the character in the dire Batman v Superman was the only element that one had in its favor, and now Diana Prince has her own hit movie. It’s easily the best of the mostly squalid DC Universe pictures, if not quite good enough. Compared with their rivals in the better-ordered MCU these films are second-rate and dingy-looking, with lackluster digital effects. With the excellent Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) as its model, Wonder Woman can’t escape this legacy–the island scenes, which are at least colorful, are also very processed-looking, and the movie peaks with its “No Man’s Land” sequence, well before the main action is resolved in two more exhausting battles against good and evil, which are the norm for superhero movies. There’s a hand-me-down feeling to Wonder Woman.

But the director, Patty Jenkins, doesn’t undervalue her asset. The movie is admiring of Diana’s beauty, intellect, and fighting skills, and she’s probably too kind to the men in the movie, none of whom is sexist or lecherous, especially given the time period. (The storyline is put into motion by a single Great War-era photo–you’d think there would be more of an Amazon in everyone’s midst throughout 20th century history.) Problems of “representation”, the “male gaze,” etc., have crept into the critiques, and I will say the movie might have done more with its suffrage setting than mention the movement in passing. These films, however, aren’t made for special interests; they’re for one and all, and flaws aside I enjoyed the film, which showcases a performer who is well and truly a “wonder” in a degraded era for stars. Weaned on Studio Ghibli’s female-centric animated features, my kids are ready for Wonder Woman, and I’m grateful Jenkins and Co. didn’t bungle the job. What’s needed next is a movie that matches her capabilities.

Tweaked some things this week, starting with my insistence on being funny, because I’m just not that funny. So I’m letting the funny people be funny. This will make more sense about 29 seconds into the show.

Scotland rules the roost this week, represented by no less than five different artists (one of which came up with the title for this week’s show), and there is a cover of a sixth Scottish band by a UK band. There is also a block of early MTV songs, and I talk (too much, really) about interviews I’ve done, and interviews that I should have done when I had the chance.

I’m also thinking of designating the second-to-last song of each show as the Mellow Gold slot. This is not a joke. I am really excited about this.

Thank you, as always, for listening.

Where’s the fire? It’s at Well Go USA, which has “GIF”-ted us with a bit from its lastest action-packed Asian-packed flick, Sky on Fire. “Die Hard Whatever?” you may be thinking. Well, yes, but in typical Hong Kong fashion there’s a lot more going on besides. Ringo Lam (whose 1987 classic City on Fire inspired, or “inspired,” if you want to get up in Quentin Tarantino’s face about it, Reservoir Dogs five years later) directs a hard-hitting melodrama that pits a widowed security officer (Into the Badlands and Warcraft co-star Daniel Wu) at a medical research firm against criminals who have boosted cancer-curing stem cells. Or so it seems, as warring agendas are uncovered “first do no harm” goes right out the window. Lam, whose other credits include another scorching Chow Yun-Fat thriller, Full Contact (1992), and Jean-Claude Van Damme’s fine Maximum Risk (1996), has been off duty for stretches, and while this isn’t his best work it’s good to have him back in the driver’s seat when the film finally accelerates past some clumsy scene-setting.

Johnnie To, whose Drug War (2012) has become a cable staple of late, continues to crank out exciting, offbeat films. Three also has a medical setting, in this case, a hospital, where a bad guy (Wallace Chung) who’s deliberately shot himself waits for his cronies to bust him out. As the tension mounts, conflict simmers between the cop determined to bring the villain in (Louis Koo) and the surgeon equally obstinate about treating him. The slo-mo climax, a setpiece if there ever was one, resolves their fates in suitably spectacular fashion. “Master Director Johnnie To” (the shoe fits) and the main characters are feted in behind-the-scenes extras.

Chinese filmmakers use 3D more expressively, and excitingly, than anyone else, so it’s a shame that Sword Master is another disc missing a vital dimension in its domestic release. Director Derek Yee and producer Tsui Hark are dab hands at 3D, and I missed being beaten around the eyes. But: the disc does have a great DTS:X audio track to immerse the ears, and the image quality is up to the company’s usual high standards. The story (based on the 1977 hit Death Duel, which starred Yee) doesn’t quite hang together, as a motley group of characters crystallizes around a guilty swordsman who tired of the assassin’s life and is now a wandering vagrant. But story, and some oddball tonal shifts, are secondary to some over-the-top, CGI-laced fight sequences.

I didn’t know much about 2011’s “Mekong Massacre,” a notorious episode that erupted in Asia’s drug-producing “Golden Triangle” in 2011, and after watching the Chinese epic Operation Mekong I’m pretty sure I only got a partial view, favorable to China. Still, Dante Lam’s telling of the tale is relentless, as Chinese operatives take down, action scene by action scene, a dastardly Thai drug lord who dispatched thirteen Chinese fishermen caught up in a raid. Sordid scenes of degradation take a backseat to vengeance, with a carnage-wracked shopping mall shootout a highlight. The movie is way more Michael Bay than, say, Sam Fuller, but it has undeniable visceral appeal, and a good making-of details the whole bloody thing.

The most thoughtful film of the bunch is the Korean film Tunnel, a kind of echo to Billy Wilder’s acrid masterpiece Ace in the Hole (1951). Here a car salesman (Ha Jung-woo, of The Handmaiden) is stuck in a shoddily built tunnel that’s collapsed, as efforts to free him run afoul of bureaucratic bungling and media sensationalism. With only his daughter’s birthday cake to eat, our protagonist allies himself with a rescue worker, as his chance of survival dwindles. This is a familiar, evergreen story. But writer-director Seong-hun Kim (of the excellent A Hard Day) takes aim at local politics and hits his target, providing a fresh perspective, and Jung-woo is sympathetic in a much different part than the one he played in Park Chan-wook’s masterpiece.

I’m one of those people with a Fitbit addiction. I am obsessed with getting my 10,000 steps in. I love it, even if it lulled me into thinking I had 10,000 steps on Monday when I actually had 9,821. I was traveling that day and suspect that the synching was screwed up by changes in time zone. Nevertheless, my streak has reset.

My longest streak is 141 days, broken by a stomach thing that left me too weak to get out of bed one day. That’s probably the most weight loss I’ve had, too. I haven’t lost weight on the Fitbit, but my health is excellent (knock wood), and I’ll credit the nudge to exercise for that.

As for the 10,000-step standard, there’s not much scientific basis behind it, but it’s enough to represent some decent activity. Many new Fitbit users are surprised to find that a typical day of driving and desk-sitting leaves them at 2,000 or so steps, and that’s the point: to reach 10,000, you have to get in some activity. Some days, that will take intention.

In other words, the Fitbit is controversial, but so is just about everything concerning weight and health. I have no idea what the answer is – although I could find a peer-reviewed study that would agree with any position you want to take.

We’re a long way off from settled science, but what we do have is a ton of data uploaded by all of us Fitbit users. It’s fun to go through, too. I’m not sure Duluth, Minnesota is America’s Fittest City, but it’s interesting to compare the activity of those people actually using their Fitbits to such metrics as the incidence of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. What we don’t know is how Fitbit users compare to the general population. It’s a fun set of numbers, but it doesn’t tell us much without context.

And that’s the general problem of data analysis. The Fitbit is fun, and it may help researchers generate important insights about exercise and health, but for now, it’s a prop. It helps me, but it may not help you.

 

 

 

 

Brothers Prince upcoming self-titled debut E.P. is the creation of Oakland-raised identical twin brothers, Ambrose and Austin Prince. The songs were written and arranged in the East Bay and came together after a week-long recording session with Grammy-nominated producer James Krausse in Burbank, CA. With a couple of early morning surf sessions and a smattering of ping-pong breaks mixed in, the group recorded up to 10 hours a day to bring the project to life. Hand-clapped rhythms and group vocal parts that were created on the spot complement catchy melodies and playful, yet vulnerable lyrics on each of the E.P.’s three songs. The result is the organic soulful sound that their dedicated fan base has come to expect from Brothers Prince.

The EP is set to be released in August 2017 and the song “So Musical” will be featured in the film “Unleashed”, starring Kate Micucci and Sean Astin, coming out later this year.  So here now is the exclusive Popdose premiere of “Sun To Rise”.  This is a a truly perfect piece for the oncoming summer months.  Let yourself be lost in the groove.

http://brothersprince.com/#intro-section