Why So Blu?

Encapsulated Movie Reviews – Two New Indie Titles

Getting down to the end of the year cinematic nitty gritty, I seemed to have let a couple of flicks slip through the cracks last week.  (I do try, but I’m only one guy!)  So to rectify the movie misplacement here’s a quick version of Encapsulated Movie Reviews with a duo that includes a doc on drum machine significance and a horror outing in love with haunted houses – check out the critical skinny on 808 and Abattoir below!

808
(iTunes)

 

This documentary that focuses on the Roland TR-808 Drum Machine is a wonderful time capsule for those of us that grew up with 80’s music.  Far from just a standard machine, the unheard of sounds that came out of the 808 started a whole new movement of music and is covered here in full delicious detail.  From hip-hop (love the Strafe song Set It Off I remember first hearing in the Jim Belushi flick The Principal!) to rap (The Beastie Boys album Licensed to Ill is a love letter to the 808!) and even career reinventions (Marvin Gaye kept the love going with Sexual Healing!) there’s a firm dissection of the influence of the now rare Japanese machine.  Plus with candid chatter with the likes of fans Phil Collins, The Beastie Boys, Rick Rubin and even the creator himself, 808 is not unlike the machine it features – interestingly intricate.

ABATTOIR
(Momentum Pictures)

Even coming from a comic book series, I was very confused as to what famed Saw II Director Darren Lynn Bousman was going for with his latest outing Abattoir.  The film starts as almost an homage to the Raymond Chandler novels with dudes and dames (leading lady Jessica Lowndes rocks the past cinematic femme fatal look!) and then seems to abandon it for a weird ho-hum tale about small town secrets.  Plus the film has a finale that by itself is a wondrous piece of horror hubris, but comes so late in the game and after a long boring road travelled that it’s effect is less than spectacular.  A series of missed movie opportunities, the nerve wracking needed ebb and flow of Abattoir is altogether absent.