It seems that the music industry has finally struck upon a solution that could save it. I wrote previously that it was becoming increasingly difficult (and soon would become next to impossible) to sell information but I had imagined that the alternative would be people taking to paying instead for an experience. This would take the form of live music, which is not something that can be downloaded fully in MP3 format, a hypothesis hardly debunked for me by the glorious experience I had at Reading last weekend and would have found impossible to recreate using even the most powerful of domestic sonic equipment.

However this suggestion is something else entirely: rather than paying to encounter the musician and witness them recreate songs you encountered in file format for free you will instead fund the existence of those files being brought about. Not the approach which I had anticipated, but one which seems likely to succeed to me. I had previously considered the similarities between the previous system of artistic patronage that funded the great masters and the situation which a recording artist who’s produce could be claimed for free would find themselves in. But this seems a direct descendant, although accessible to almost any: no doubt musicians who appealed to poorer internet denizens could still ensure that their records were produced, so long as their allure was wide enough. In this fashion the “support” shown by fans is not simply emotional but also financial. Those artists who are capable of obtaining a fanbase (or at least interest) will be the one’s who obtain success, thus meaning that the music industry will be willing to take greater risks.

The use of priority tickets suggests that my emphasis on the importance of live performance was not entirely void and it is unlikely that the limited editions obtainable by investors/fans shall be notable for anything save rarity in a format that will prove impossible to upload.

As such I find the conduct of the company behind this far more pleasing than that of the government, which has backed away from windfall taxes.
Predictable as this should have been from a New Labour government it remains a great pity. The profit made by private companies has been simply phenomenal, yet this has been accompanied (and assisted) by substantial increases in the cost of utilities, crippling many poorer families. To tax their vast wealth and return the portion of it taken to those who suffered in order to produce it, forced to feed the cartel that supply their basic need of shelter, is entirely apt.

If this is deemed a “Raid” being “Legalised” then so be it. The impoverished were raided too and this retribution will bring about their salvation.

After Doug’s reference to Dan’s Mises link I thought it timely to share with you this. For those who haven’t seen it already its Lenin losing it and calling The Dark Knight a “the most obviously fascist of films”. Despite the fact that Batman refuses to kill…

WALL-E is, above all else, a testament to the fact that Pixar have no reached the stage where they can do whatever they please and get away with it. Even a consideration of the films It’s half set on a post-apocalyptic Earth, half in some space-bound remnant of humanity space ship capitalist set up and both are excellent but conceptually dark surroundings. Earth has been choked to death by human waste, while the space dwellers live a hollow consumerist facsimile of actual life. Either is a surprising choice: after the carefree romp of Cars, during the publicity of which all questions concerning global warming were laughed off, the Earth that WALL-E inhabits is very clearly wrecked by unsustainable living. WALL-E is left in the futile role of trying to clean up the mess left by billions of careless, callous humans. Meanwhile the banal lifestyle offered to those living on the ship has led to everyone being scantily boned blobs who can not exist without their machinery. A machine tells them across vast screens that they should “Buy blue. Blue is the new red.” and at a flick of a switch their colours change. They are carried everywhere by floating pods, without which they are effectively cripples.

But the film by no means wallows in dystoptopianism. Indeed the mood is usually one of amusement in the face of adversity: the eponymous protagonist faces numerous mishaps throughout the film but, like his cockroach best friend, is nigh-on-invinsible and always endures the most humorous of slapstick calamities. More importantly still Wall-E breaks from his programming in delightful ways: he is instructed to compound all of the world’s rubbish into cubes (his name standing for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Axiom class), which he then stacks systematically. However he decides that a few select items are not rubbish at all, and retains them in his metal box home. This provides him with the remnants of human culture, ranging from light-bulbs to Christmas tree lighting. It is effectively V’s Shadow Gallery compiled by a naive robot with less to work with.

The film begins with WALL-E’s routine, him going about his affairs before being disturbed by the arrival of a new robot from space, named EVE. She is seeking out plantlife, but WALL-E has beaten her to it and when she discovers this and returns to her sender along with the bloom he is forced to pursue her on the grounds that he feels holding hands with her will complete him, inspired by a slock Hollywood film he once found. This, of course, makes perfect sense within the film and it is a testament to the power of Pixar that they managed to make a pair of characters who are only mildly more eloquent that Pokemon have the strongest chemistry I’ve seen on screen this year.

WALL-E infiltrates EVE’s spacestation home and then the two of them are forced to attempt to thwart a plan hatched by robots aboard the ship who do not want the vessel to return to Earth. It is at this stage that the first humans in the film appear and it is strange how harder they are to connect with than the robots. This is despite them being the only characters in the film that can actually properly converse (the robots that do speak use single word sentences, besides the ship’s auto-pilot). As you might imagine, this leads to linguistic silence in the majority of its scenes. Pixar manage to work around this constraint marvellously, using a machinistic mime. WALL-E communicates through his swivelling eye and occasionally his settings, compacting himself into a box when scared. EVE has fine voice acting that manages to draw rich feeling into her highly limited vocabulary, as well as having lit eyes that vary depending upon mood. All of the robots have a carefully crafted soundtrack that uses the apparently incidental whirr and buzz of motion and function to convey feeling. This led to its creator dubbing it “R2-D2 the Movie” and it certainly works as well as that would. Emotional attachment is formed despite the lack of speech, indeed the robots are characters far easier to empathise with than the humans. But then, while robots have become far more sophisticated than the ones we encounter today, humans have become far more simple: before knocked from their chairs by WALL-E a pair of residents failed to realise that the ship had a pool, the ship’s captain spends hours infront of the space-age equivalent of Wikipedia requesting it define phrases such as “Ho-down” and words such as “Soil”.

But the film’s attitude towards humanity is far from blank misanthropy. It is far more interesting than that. Humans live within a system which is based around a space-ship economy apparently devoid of money and based around ultra-sophisticated technology. This allows them to communicate with each other and obtain whatever they desire. It also renders them drones watched over by machines. There are also lots of ship robots, who are largely antagonists or light relief.

WALL-E is notable for the lack of pop-cultural emphasis. Unlike cinematic carrion such as Shrek 2 the importance of external references is highly limited: anyone watching will know what a light-bulb is and find it remarkable that it lights up when EVE holds it. If the blobs of huamnity plunging down the ship is not recognised as a reference to Titanic, or the music that quickly follows to Space Odyssey 2001, then it does not matter in the slightest. The scenes are still fine ones and those are the only occasions I can recall where any outside work was mentioned.

Instead the film is highly original and filled with ideas, a rich seam of enjoyable characters, events and goals appearing from nowhere. The closest Pixar film to it is Finding Nemo, which predictably shared a director, Andrew Stanton. He aimed to show that Pixar was capable of setting a film in space after the success of setting one in water but only a limited time is actually spent in Zero Gravity conditions here. That which is, though, is one of the most enjoyable scenes of the film: WALL-E and EVE travelling around and then into the ship, her using motors and he the propulsion of a fire extinguisher. Stanton is clearly a highly intelligent man and the quantity of thought given to his characters is considerable: WALL-E has such sentience solely because of the prolonged amount of time he has been engaged in a role. EVE is initially cold and dismissive of his affection (their early encounters involve a plasma rifle) because she has not had this history, and required interaction with him both to expand herself and come closer to him. Stanton even went to the measure of adding “Imperfections” into the film’s camerawork to make it seem closer to live action, something which I was unaware of when viewing but in hindsight was a complete success.

WALL-E has been labelled “Pixar’s Ninth consecutive wonder” and without having seen every one of their last films I can not comment. But it is certainly a superb piece which uses the restrictions it set itself to create a fresh and fascinating work. It defies description and I would urge anyone who has not yet seen it to do so and doubt that anyone who already has will require encouragement for a repeat viewing.

Time for another musical interlude, as I need to go and write Sunday’s post. So, we’ll begin with a little gloom:

Before moving onto what’s undisputedly the sound of an electronic orgy:

And finally:

And with that, good night. Normal service will resume on my part tomorrow.

I feel lazy at present. So, this post will act as a musical interlude. We open with the dark:

And move onto the slightly strange and fantastical:

And finally, an entirely superior remix of an otherwise cancerously irritating piece:

A proper bassline makes everything alright, you see.

Apparently:

The Tories had their own meeting between Obama and David Cameron, at which the senator was overheard congratulating Cameron on ‘all your success’. The two spent 20 minutes chatting about juggling fatherhood and politics and discussing Afghanistan and the economy. Cameron gave him a box of CDs including albums by the Smiths, Radiohead and Lily Allen.

This man’s sinister genius knows no bounds. Obama will listen to our powerful music output and have Cameron to thank for this exposure. Labour members, despair.

Or rather, The Dark Knight: A Review. In which there may be spoilers, so avoid if you’re interested in watching it uncorrupted.

Heath Ledger may well win an Oscar for his role as the Joker in the latest Batman film. And he may well be posthumously accused of winning that Oscar purely because of its posthumous nature. That’d be a shame - as he probably deserves it.

James made me promise not to include spoilers, so I won’t*. Suffice to say that Ledger’s performance dominates, from the enjoyably confused opening to the character’s eventual demise. From behind the smudged chalk mask which adds so much to the impression of mania comes sheer, random danger, almost throughout. It’s there in the movements, and in the voice. Ledger’s tongue lolls and flaps, barely able to stay inside the Joker’s mutilated lips. The body twitches in line with the character’s own mind, while limbs appear to have a mind of their own on occasion - look for an excited Joker, and they’ll be somewhere else. The voice, meanwhile, sums up the character itself; a low, unsteady croon skittering into gibberish in moments of excitement. Very dark, and very effective.

That’s not to say that the other performances are bad. They’re not; most involved either manage to pull of strong performances, or have roles so peripheral that it doesn’t hugely matter. Christian Bale follows his previous take on Batman well. Aaron Eckhart makes Harvey Dent so irritatingly perfect at first as to make Two-Face seem yet more vile. The rest of the cast - and the film in general - take Ledger’s dark lead, and work it into something worth sitting through. But Ledger’s Joker does set that tone, and so tends to dominate.

And, inevitably, there are problems. Some are mere irritances. Bale’s gravelly monotone when in Bat-mode pushes the stereotype a little too far, while at one point a defendent pulls a gun on the prosecuting attorney while in the dock. I’m happy to suspend disbelief for Batman, or the Joker, or anything that forwards the plot entertainingly - but sometime, it’s just not possible.

Other flaws are more serious. The film’s chaotic motif of fallen heroes and human fallibility should fascinate me; and yet it all felt a little tedious at times. Dent’s fall is done well, and the Joker’s psychotic tricks blur Batman’s lines of right and wrong enjoyably - but it happens to much. The film comes in at a very long 2 hours and 32 minutes and features dilemna after dilemna after dilemna for the forces of law and order. The moral mazes begin to feel forced, included for the sake of pushing character’s boundraries but failing to do so. And with that, the film drags at times. The contrast between the Joker’s capricious anarchism and Batman’s struggle with his conscience is compelling - but if it weren’t for the cracking action scenes that accompany each eruption of that contrast, they’d just get tiring.

Nonetheless, it’s a film worth seeing. Heath Ledger’s swansong as the Joker is superb, and the rest of the cast do enough to not look complete amateurs beside him. It might not be what the pre-release propaganda campaign hyped it to be, but it’s a fun little flick with lots of big explosions and dark plot hooks - enough to fill a long afternoon. And, probably enough for a sadly posthumous Oscar.

*(much)

As Douglas mentioned them I can’t resist posting moar:

It truly is remarkable that this sprawling mess of influences is possible, as well as entirely pleasing.

That memo I mentioned yesterday turns out to be even worse than suspected. To summarise; it gives the BPI the ability to monitor the internet activity of suspected filesharers. The BPI then passes their details onto ISPs, who first send threatening letters, before slowing and then cutting off internet connections.

That’s a scheme flawed on many levels. The BPI’s powers to monitor internet users and share their details forms an outright assault on their liberties; it’s in effect allowing a private organisation to police behaviour. Their solution, meanwhile, is simply draconian. The move targets suspects rather than the definitely guilty - sound familiar? It then seeks to disconnect them, and anyone else in the same household. That you might have fallen victim to malware or someone else in the house might have done the sharing doesn’t matter. You’re on the same ISP - so they assume you did it.

Nor will any of this actually work. Record companies seem completely blind to the motivation behind filesharing; its ease and speed. It’s the difference between pressing a button and a half-hour bus journey to the nearest music shop and back. That filesharing, much like borrowing a CD, allows consumers to sample entirely new realms of music before splashing out on several albums also gets ignored. Record companies claim filesharing eats into their profits - but it seems unlikely they’d sell as much as they did without this interaction between consumers.

Of course, this blinkered approach to filesharing could well be selective. As Billy Bragg points out, the internet benefits two main ends of the music industry; producers and consumers. Artists can connect directly to listeners through social networking and online stores - and cut out the middle-men of record companies. They’ll retain some power through the offer of improved marketing and better recording facilities, but the internet challenges their grip on the music industry as never before.

Take three examples, from the top and bottom of the scale in terms of size. At its largest extent, bands such as Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have bypassed those middle-men entirely, putting their music online and allowing downloaders to set the value. At the other end, and smashing the myth that the internet only benefits wealthy groups like Radiohead who’ve already made it, come whole genres which developed on and through the internet. Dubstep began in Croydonian basements and spread across the world through the power of filesharing, to the extent that one of its most inspired disciples hails from Japan. It’s only since that electronic rise that solid CDs have begun to appear on shop-shelves and the music made its way into meatspace.

So, when record companies attack filesharing as it is, it’s with a mind to maintaining their corporate power. That certainly looks to be the motive behind the rather measly carrot offered to consumers under the Memo; legal filesharing through passworded monopolies owned by the companies. They keep their cut, and artists and consumers get the same raw deal as before. And the internet loses its most powerful edge of being open to anyone with a connection. Hardly a move, then, born out of the concern for artists Undertones corporate frontman Feargal Sharkey so frequently whines.

This memo serves one purpose; to retain the iron grip of recording companies on the music industry. It fails to exploit the internet at its best, and so fails artists and fans. Do we really want that?