Sad news: The music world mourns the loss of Ray Manzarek (74), founding Member and keyboarder of The Doors, White Zombie drummer Phil Buerstatte (44) and Uriah Heep bassist Trevor Bolder (63). R.I.P.!
German Hardrockers BERSERKER will donate 18.000€ to the Berlin cancer charity for children on May 25. November 2011 BERSERKER front man Schröder was diagnosed with cancer, now he is cancer-free. In 2012 the band collected money for this charity at their concerts and will also continue to do so in the future. Slayer´s Jeff Hanneman is dead: he passed away at about 11AM on May 2nd near his Southern California home because of liver failure due to an infection after a spider bite. R.I.P. Jeff!
The Siberian Jay music video "I´m Holding" featuring Mikko Sirén from Apocalyptica on drums - we reported about the videoshoot in our "1h with" Special - can be watched here: http://youtu.be/C-hSNurZVcs
Oh brother! In „Snow White & the Huntsman“ one can clearly see how to screw up a fairy tale with a falsely laid lead role, seemingly wrong director guidance and a totally wrong script. Rupert Sanders, who normally makes promotional films, made his debut in motion pictures and hopefully he will go back to the promos.
„Snow White & the Huntsman“ coarsely goes into the Grimm Brothers´ fairytale “Snow White”. Snow White´s evil stepmother (Charlize Theron) sucks out the life force out of young women to uphold her beauty. The magic mirror shows her that she can stay forever young through Snow White, so she sets her brother and the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) on her heels, as she escaped out of the dungeon and made her way with the help of magical animals into the enchanted forest. The sexy hunter goes against his employer and helps her to the castle of her childhood love, Prince William and his father. They, in turn, hear of the troubles and take their side. Meanwhile, the dwarves are on board too –played be HBO and Channel 4 actors, like Ian McShane (“Deadwood”) and Nick Frost (“Spaced”)- but their roles are rather indifferent and there are eight of them. Even as one of them dies, there is little to no impact as the roles are too weak to have made a bond to the audience.
Latest here does the script gallop through the whole story and there continuously come new characters, who have no real role to play, only to exit the stage immediately. In the process there are events from The Last Unicorn and other classics mixed in screwed up. It all feels like an adventure role game, like Baldur´s Gate. Also the special effects point in this direction. In a very Jean D´Arc fashion, Snow White reclaims her castle and kills her stepmother. In the end, Snow White is stuck in a love triangle between the Prince and Huntsman and it is left open as to whether or not she marries the prince and/or keeps the huntsman as a lover. However, at this point it is all the same to the audience as she didn´t breathe much life into the character. Were there really no other better and prettier candidates for this role? Charlize Theron must have tried to put in as much depth to the character to balance out the lifelessness and thus she overplayed her hand horribly. Chris Hemsworth is just sexy, but out of place in this role –hopefully we will see him again as “Thor” or a different god/hero. Sam Claflin´s role isn´t really thought through and doesn´t make much sense.
All in all, this film is a grand, picturesque pile of shit, where one hopes that the end is near halfway through the film. The two points go for the special effects and the visually stunning scenes. But this isn´t enough to make it worth of using 127 minutes of your lifetime.
