MGMT is awesome. "Electric Feel" is probably my favorite song from the CD Oracular Spectacular (followed by "Kids"). Additionally, I was addicted to Justice for a short time after SXSW. You can ask my roommates. So you can imagine how excited I was when I found out that Justice had remixed "Electric Feel". It's duo on duo action and the result sounds very much like a Justice song. They made the pitch of the vocals a little higher and added a variety of electronica sounds that are prevalent in "cross". Both of these groups are blowing up right now... so download the MGMT - Electric Feel (Justice Remix) and be snobby about it.
Justice side-by-side with MGMT... just like at Playboy's SXSW party
I do find it hilarious that both groups have ambiguous names. Is it em-gee-em-tee? Is it "management"? We work with their PR team for Rock the Rabbit. I've asked them which is correct ... and they don't even know. Then for Justice... "just-iss" or "joo-stees"? They ARE French. In any case, Rolling Stone says "management" and Wikipedia says "joo-stees". Fuck that though -- I'm going with "em-gee-em-tee" and "just-iss".
Last week, the roommates and I ended up watching Surviving The Game. I can't remember if we DVR'd it or if we watched it as it came on -- but we watched it wire-to-wire.
My first thought when watching it was: "How did they trick all of these guys into being in this movie?" The cast includes Rutger Hauer, John C. McGinley, Gary Busey, and Ice-T (pre-badass-actor-stage). Rutger Hauer plays one of the cheesiest characters of all time. The basic story is that Ice T plays a homeless guy they recruit to be the target of human hunt. Rutger Hauer is the brains of the operation and once they get Mr. T to the cabin in the woods, he's MERCILESS with the overt-foreshadowing. It's almost laughable as during the dinner scene when Hauer tells him to "savor the meal" and when Gary Busey lets him know that you "can steal the pig's soul by looking into its eyes".
No matter what experience you hope to draw from Surviving the Game, you will be entertained. There are many moments of high tension -- like when Ice T tries to shoot his assailants with a shotgun from 200 yards away. But the best moment, BY FAR, has to be the story of Prince Henry Stout.
While we were watching this part, we couldn't really decide how much of this Busey ad-libbed. This short clip (thanks for sending, Brad) definitely challenges The Wicker Man in terms of pure insanity. It barely beats out the scene where Busey tackles Ice-T and tries to kill him.
Clearly, this was during Gary Busey's hey-day. Surviving The Game was in the middle of his Under Siege-Surviving The Game-Black Sheep-Drop Zone streak. It's unfortunate that his niche, crazy cocaine-fueled diatribes, also sparked his downfall. Hey, at least his career didn't tank as badly as his son's after Tomcats.
UPDATE: Alex found a transcript of an interview with Busey where he talks about the "Prince Henry Stout" story. Unsurprisingly, most of the speech was ad-libbed. Busey is god. He was on the I Love Money Casting Special and one guy said to him "I want to be on the A-List like you used to be!" Gary Busy was on the A-List?
Gary: That is not in the film. What's the other character you said? Surviving the Game! That was fantastic and when it came time to do the story about how I got into this game of surviving the game, the line was about three inches long. I told the director, Ernest Dickerson, I said, "Ernest, this is not enough tell the people why I'm here. Can I enlarge this?" And he said, "Yes you can." And I said, "You have just watered my garden! Thank you." So out came the story about me fighting Prince Henry Stout, the bulldog—life and death. And all that was improv. It's used in film studies now at colleges and universities to talk about the power of improvisation and spontaneity. And here is the key to spontaneity. This is a quote. Spontaneity comes from an invisible idea that is there before the creation begins—end quote. We all have it. We all have it in us, this a natural gift.
