[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDI4mcnW9fs&hl=en&fs=1&]
(via GRANDGOOD)
Sep 292009
Sep 112009
Thanks to Sonny Balboa for finding this one… I don’t understand what they’re saying, but this here is still one of the best rap videos, ever…
Mafia K’1 Fry – Pour Ceux
Talking about great videos beyond språkförbristningen (aka the barriers of Babel), check out these clips with Brazil’s best. A dope beat, dope deliveries, powerful visuals… sometimes that’s all that’s needed…
Racionais MC’s – Vida Loka (parte 2)
Racionais MC’s – Diário De Um Detento
Sabotage – Respeito É Pra Quem Tem
Jun 172009
I dedicate this song to Mariana. The discussion is over now, I assume.
Bring me a Jorge Ben song that rivals the naked heart and soul of Eu Amo Voce, and we can talk about it.
You can’t find one? Is that so? Really? And why?
Because a song like that doesn’t exist. Sim gatinha, Jorge Ben is mad talented… but please, he doesn’t even reach the shoulders of Mr. Tim Maia. The man towers over his competitors. He is the best of Brazil, ever.
And this is the end of that.
“Que beleza é sentir a natureza
Ter certeza pr’onde vai
E de onde vem
Que beleza é vir da pureza
E sem medo distinguir
O Maia e o Ben“
May 112009
Song of the day. Jorge Ben on a beautiful, cosmic, Phil Spector trip.
“There are days, when I awake thinking… wanting to know… where our impulse to explore space comes from…“
May 032009
In Última Parada 174 Brazilian veteran director Bruno Baretto tackles the explosive tale of homeless Sandro who one day will take a bus full of people hostage in central Rio de Janeiro, a theme already explored in José Padilha’s brilliant documentary Ônibus 174.
While far from as thrilling and orignal as recent Brazilian masterpieces City Of God or Padilha’s Tropa de Elite, it’s a well executed project and has some great scenes, including a very tense opening (and the actor that portrays Sandro looks like a young Will Smith, which is a bonus).
(Fresh Prince in Rio de Janeiro.)
You get a much clearer view of the social situation for the very poor in Padilha’s documentary, but retelling the story here, in a more easily acessed format, focusing more on a traditional, character-driven structure, also fills a purpose. The story deserves retelling, not just the story about Sandro’s path through poverty and crime and prison and cocaine to a violent but strangely communicative death, but the story about police that kills street kids like their were cock roaches (and the middle class that applauds them for doing so, the interviews with random people in the street about the Candelaria incident being the most shocking part in Padilha’s documentary).
Apr 262009
Brytburken is sending good vibrations to the best of Brazilian Reggae… A TROPA!
Apr 262009
Play this on the high volume. It’s time to clean up your head for the new week.
Jorge Ben, one of the great geniuses of Brazilian music.
Saw this guy live in the center of São Paulo together with another 100,000 people. He pumped out his hot buttered samba for some three hours, calling up girls from the crowd to dance around on stage during a climatic medley that ended with a stunning tribute to his protector… São Jorge. The sixty-six year old musician made it well worth missing Afrika Bambaataa, who played at the same time, but on the other side of the city center.
Racionais MC’s – Jorge Da Capadócia
Feb 232009
… it’s just that mainstream or big underground New York acts aren’t dominating the scene like they did in the eighties and nineties. And full lenghts from Raekwon, Saigon and Cormega doesn’t seem to be happening right at this moment.
Right at this moment, you need to check for rap music that makes you listen on repeat in other places.
BLVD ST is a good place to start, ’cause it’s all about southern hiphop, new and classic. If you, like me, until quite recently only knew about the biggest Southern names like Geto Boys, Outkast, Goodie Mod, it’s a mine of gold. If you don’t know about rappers like 6 Two, or K-Rino, or Attitude, or Marcus – get familiar.
Two songs that are on repeat these days:
Playboy Tre – Bleachers.
Attitude & Jackie Chain – Money.
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This talk with Pimp C here… one of the best interviews I have ever read.
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If you can take the language barrier: Brazilian rap.
Go find something with Rappin Hood, Sabotagem, MV Bill, or the mighty Racionais MC’s.
More has to be written about this at a later date.
Feb 042009
Sensationalism has its place. ANSWER Me! and the infamous Mondo film-series are examples when artists concentrate on the gory and extreme parts of reality without turning away, and do it with artistic rigour. That redeems them.
It is harder to forgive the sensationalism of a film like Send A Bullet, not only because the themes are randomly thrown together and distorted through a clueless North American, upper class-perspective, but firstly because the director literary gorges himself on all the sleaze and gore of Brazilian reality while at the same time making a grand display of holding his nose. Kind of a double standard going on here. “Oh, this is terrible! But let’s loop the industrial slaughter of frogs and kidnappers cutting off ears again since we were to lazy to film any relevant material.” Also, it resembles the Mondo-series not only in its random structure and obsession with violence and misery, but in that it does not mind staging scenes when reality just isn’t juicy enough. The kids playing kidnappers in the end? He instructed them to do that.
In Send A Bullet (a pointless film needs an equally pointless title) North Americans living in São Paulo complain that they have to ride around in the city in bulletproof cars and helicopters for fear of being robbed and kidnapped. Especially funny is the part where the interviewee mentions that his robber stopped by the sidewalk after taking his money and counting it, as if he were without fear of the law. Why not move back to your own country then, one asks oneself, preferably to Washington D.C., where the murder rate doubles that of São Paulo’s and the criminals surely are polite and professional?
Why not watch amazing documentaries about Brazil such as Ônibus 174 or Beyond Citizen Kane (torrent) (google video) instead?
“Please”, whispers director Jason Kohn, “‘Send A Bullet’ into my head before I make more lame ass documentaries!”
Jun 232008
Thanks fucking God that some fresh new flesh and blood has been pumped into brazilian cinema in recent years… making a Hollywood-feature about finding meaning and a sense of direction in your own life, that would be entering onto a mine field of clichées and studio-dictated storytelling-tricks…
Last year brazilian director Beto Brant followed up his feverous social thriller O Invasor (The Trespasser) with Cão Sem Dono, a slow-moving, psychological drama with convincing characters. I just saw this film, and while it does not really drop any bombs on us, artistically or socially (like O Invasor did; and let us not even talk about the nuclear-explosive-type-level of City Of God or Tropa de Elite), it is a bit much saying that it is all about “romantic, ‘f**k-the-world, no-one-understands-me’ self-pitying monophony” , since it is exactly a such life-Geist that the film is trying to undermine, and overcome.
Other brazilian films to watch are the gritty Cidade Baixa, the low key police film Achados e Perdidos, and the extreme, low budget, family-drama Contra Todos.
Bicho de Sete Cabeças tells us the medicated hell of Brazilian mental institutions. Carandiru is a funny, warm, and shocking episode-like account of some inmates at the infamous Brazilian prison, where 111 men were killed in a 1992-riot.
O Homem da Capa Preta, the biographical feature of the renegade working class-politician and Brazilian congressman Tenório Cavalcanti, is the shit. It reminds me of Scarface… the same kind of myth-making storytelling, and the same verbal violence and unstoppable, iron-hard motivation that pedals the main character through the story (although with a distinctly different dream in their eyes), the same high density of hot scenes, the same dramatic duels and shoot outs, the same underdog, outsider perspectives, the same dope eighties music and far-out camera work. All of the movies mentioned are good quick looks into Brazilian society, but especially this one gives you a very nice introduction to the extremes of Brazilian politics.
- Say hello… to my little friend!