Ax’s lame movie recos and cool YT picks

Axtremus

Axtremus

Axtremus

2014 remake of RoboCop.
Better than the original, IMO.
More nuanced handling of “what’s man, what’s machine” and the political dimension of the RoboCop universe.

Link to video

Axtremus

Link to video

Simple, very nice melody.
The title suggests that it's written for the pipa (the instrument featured in the video), and it does sound fitting, but IMO hasn't fully taken advantage of the instrument. Many iconic, idiosyncratic techniques are left unused. In my estimation it requires only beginner/intermediate skill to play. In the video it's played in F-major/D-minor, but I would be tempted to play it in C-major/A-minor to try to get more resonance out of the instrument. In any case, I like the simplicity and I deem it a very beautiful melody.

George K · "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08

Nice video.

I believe you've posted videos of her before...

This instrument seems like a fancy ukulele - four strings, with almost all of the length fretted, so the vibrating part of the string is short, giving it an interesting sound.

Years ago, I had an album of koto and flute, which I enjoyed.

it requires only beginner/intermediate skill to play

Looking at the performance, it seems like something that even a geezer like me could learn fairly quickly.

But...yeah, nice melody.

In the video it's played in F-major/D-minor, but I would be tempted to play it in C-major/A-minor to try to get more resonance out of the instrument

Are you familiar with the pipa? Your comment seems to indicate that you are. Also, yeah, more resonance would be nice.

Axtremus

@George-K said in Ax’s lame movie recos and cool YT picks:

I believe you've posted videos of her before...

I do not recall, this may be the only video of her's that I pay attention to. :man-shrugging:

Are you familiar with the pipa? Your comment seems to indicate that you are. Also, yeah, more resonance would be nice.

Pipa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipa
It's the only plucked-string instrument I know of for which the standard technique is to pluck the string "outwards" by flicking the finger tips away from the palm -- finger nails only, no pick.
The standard tuning is A2 (110 Hz) -D3-E3-A3 (220 Hz).
I don't have a pipa with me to try it out, I just suspect that if I play this melody in C-major/A-minor, I can probably get resonance from both the A2 and E3 open strings; where as as played in F-major/D-minor in the video, the resonance would only come from the D3 open string and the upper harmonics of the A2 open string, I would lose the lower half of the harmonics from the A2 open string. The A3 string will be used to play the melody most of the time and cannot be counted on to provide resonance.

Axtremus

Another great animated feature from China.
This is the latest installment from the “Degenerates” franchise. The franchise started out as an original straight-to-Internet animated series, now graduated to a cinematic release. Fantastic work.
Story line, story telling, character development, emotional depth, action designs, everything is top notch (maybe except the ballade near the end, that song sounds a bit contrived to me).
That very slight, very nuanced smile at the 1:06:21 mark is a master stroke of animation.