[<<] 1992 [>>]
Related: 1990s
Films: Bitter Moon (1992) - Damage (1992) - Man Bites Dog (1992) - Tokyo Decadence (1992)
Books: Mondo 2000 (book anthology)
C'est Arrivé Pres de Chez Vous/Man Bites Dog (1992) - Rémy Belvaux André Bonzel, ... [Amazon.com]
Larry Levan [...]
Two months before his death in 1992, he went on a tour of Japan with Francois Kevorkian, who remembered it like this: "Larry went into a set of Philadelphia classics which was just so poignant, so emotional because the message of all the songs said he was really hurting. We all felt it at the time, but I think he pretty much knew he was dying and all the songs he played were so deeply related to how life goes. He played Jean Carne's 'Time Waits For No One' and the Trammps 'Where Do We Go From Here,' and I realised that this was one of the best moments of greatness that I had ever witnessed in my life. It was so obvious, so grand, such a drama to it, that you just knew." -- source unknownHouse Singles
- Aly-Us - Follow Me
- Chez Damier - Can You Feel It
- Lil' Louis - New Dance Beat
- Madonna - Erotica( MAW dub)
- The Nightcrawlers - 'Push The Feeling On'
- Murk - Some Lovin'
- Jam and Spoon - Stella
- Sueno Latino - Sueno Latino (E2-E4 reinterpretation)
- Felix - Don't You Want Me
- Disco Elements - Vol 1
- Tito Puente - Ran Kan Kan
- Mr Fingers - Closer
- Robert Owens - I’ll be your friend
- Jovonn - Show U Love
- Bas Noir - Shoe-B-Doo (Ben's Jazzy mix)
- Mr. Fingers - Closer
- Mass Order - Lift Every Voice (Take Me Away)
- Innerzone Orechestra - Bug in the Bassbin
- Cajmere feat. Dajae - Brighter Days http://www.discogs.com/release/40885
CDs
- Hip-Hop From The Top: Part 1 - Various Artists [1 CD, Amazon US]
1. Skanless Hip-Hop from the Top Mega-Mix 2. Rapper's Delight - The Sugarhill Gang 3. Breaks - Kurtis Blow 4. Sucker D.J.'s (I Will Survive) - Dimples D. 5. Request Line - Rock Master Scott and the Dynamic Three 6. What People Do for Money - Divine Sounds 7. Adventures of Super Rhyme - Jimmy Spicer 8. King of the Beat - Pumpkin 9. Message - Duke Bootee 10. Friends - Whodini 11. One for the Treble - Davy DMX 12. Pure - Captain Rock [...] - What's the 411? - Mary J. Blige [1 CD, Amazon US]
Tracklisting: 1. Leave a Message - Tony Dofat 2. Reminisce 3. Real Love 4. You Remind Me 5. Intro Talk - Tony Dofat 6. Sweet Thing - Tony Dofat 7. Love No Limit 8. I Don't Want to Do Anything 9. Slow Down 10. My Love 11. Changes I've Been Going Through 12. What's the 411?Mary J. Blige's debut album, What's the 411?, was a revolution in disguise. Like her new jack predecessors, Blige combined R&B with hip-hop, but unlike Guy and Bobby Brown, her music was more seductive and sly. More importantly, she sounds grittier and more real than most new jack swingers or female R&B vocalists. Blige can slip between singing and rapping with ease, which is partially the reason why What's the 411? is so successful. It doesn't hurt that her collaborators, from Grand Puba to Sean "Puffy" Combs, help construct backing tracks that are both melodic, relentlessly funky, and sexy. With producers Dave Hall, Mark Morales, and Mark Rooney, and the stylish touches that they added to Blige's unique vocal style created a stunning album that bridged the gap between R&B and rap in a way that no female singer had before. "Your Remind Me," "Reminisce," "Love No Limit," and the huge hit "Real Love," and the Rufus/Chaka Khan cover "Sweet Thing," make What's The 411 a for sure '90s classic. Cazual90222 for amazon.com [...]
- Lil' Louis - Journey with the Lonely[1CD, Amazon US]
It would take a great album from the nineties to make this Hall of Fame, but Journey With the Lonely deserves it 'classic' status despite being barely 5 years old. By all accounts it wasn't a commercial success - so often the case with truly great works, but it gained Lil Louis great respect outside of the House music fraternity previously familiar with his genius on tracks such as French Kiss/Music Takes U Away/Frequency/ Videoclash, etc. Journey... travels from the superbly produced garage of Club Lonely through to highly original House/R&B hybrids and finishes with the albums best tracks; Thief with its jazz-cool swing, double-bass and sax solo to the gorgeous ballad Share. A modern classic that was criminally under-rated when it came out and which apart from LPs from Blaze and Larry Heard is one of the - all too few - truly great albums to come from the House/Techno generation of producers. -- Kirk Degiorgio - Original Salsoul Classics: The 20th Anniversary [Amazon US]
no liner notes
1. Bottle - Joe Bataan 2. Dr. Love - First Choice 3. Hit and Run - Loleatta Holloway 4. My Love Is Free - Double Exposure 5. Love Thang - First Choice 6. I Got My Mind Made Up - Instant Funk 7. Runaway - The Salsoul Orchestra 8. Checking You Out - Aurra 9. Moment of My Life - Inner Life 10. Just as Long as I Got You - Love Committee Disc: 2 1. Ten Percent - Double Exposure 2. Love Sensation - Loleatta Holloway 3. Let No Man Put Asunder - First Choice 4. Call Me - Skyy 5. Dreamin' - Loleatta Holloway 6. Ooh I Love It (Love Break) - The Salsoul Orchestra 7. Beat Goes On - Ripple 8. Ain't No Mountain High Enough - Inner Life 9. This Will Be a Night to Remember - Eddie Holman 10. Magic Bird of Fire - The Salsoul Orchestra - Street Jams: Electric Funk, Vol. 1 [Amazon US]
1. Skanless Electric Funk Mega-Mix - Juice 2. Planet Rock - Afrika Bambaataa/The Soul Sonic Force 3. Electric Kingdom - Twilight 22 4. Play At Your Own Risk - Planet Patrol 5. Mirda Rock - Reggie Griffin/Technofunk 6. Who Are You Stealin' From - Guru 7. Al-Naafiysh (The Soul) - Hashim 8. Clear - Cybotron 9. Release Yourself - Aleem 10. Rockit - Herbie Hancock 11. Megamix II: Why Is It Fresh? - D.ST. 12. Jam On Revenge (The Wikki-Wikki Song) - Newcleus 13. Crazy Cuts - Grandmixer D.ST. [...]
More films
- Minbo (1992) - Juzo Itami [Amazon US]
Who says filmmaking isn't dangerous? Writer-director Juzo Itami (Tampopo) found out the hard way. After the premiere of his 1992 film, Minbo, he was attacked and seriously injured by a knife-wielding yakuza (Japanese mobster).Given the subject matter of Minbo, it's not surprising. This overly long film (123 minutes) paints an unflattering picture of the intimidation techniques of the Japanese mafia. They bully their way along a thin line that divides civil from criminal offense so they cannot be easily arrested, prosecuted, and jailed. One can only assume that Itami must have gotten pretty close to the truth or he wouldn't have been attacked.
Nobuko Miyamato (Itami's wife) plays minbo specialist Mahiru Inoue, a woman with a very personal reason for hating the yakuza. Tough on the outside but compassionate on the inside, she is employed to help the staff of the Hotel Europa rid themselves of a yakuza infestation so that they can host more respectable guests. It's an uphill battle for the large cast, and the story suffers along the way from Itami's characteristic meandering.
Instead of trying to cover the shortest distance between two points, Itami bounces after too many characters and weakens the impact of the story as a whole. Nobuko Miyamoto's performance is really terrific and she makes up for a lot, but it's too bad there's not more of her and a lot less of Yakuza 101. --Luanne Brown for Amazon.com
- Braindead aka Dead Alive (1992) - Peter Jackson [Amazon US]
If you're not a connoisseur of graphic horror and gruesome gore, you'd better steer clear of this wicked 1992 horror-comedy from the demented mind and delirious camera of New Zealand-born writer-director Peter Jackson. However, if nonstop mayhem and extreme violence are your idea of great entertainment, you're sure to appreciate Jackson's gleefully inventive approach to a story that can judiciously be described as sick, twisted, and totally outrageous. The movie's central character is a poor schmuck named Lionel who's practically enslaved to his domineering mother. But when ol' Mum gets bitten by a rare and poisonous rat monkey from Skull Island and is turned into a flesh-eating zombie, Lionel has the unfortunate task of keeping Mama happy while fending off all the other zombies that result from her voracious feeding frenzies. If you've read this far, you'll either be crying out for censorship or eagerly awaiting your first viewing (or second, or third...) of this wildly clever and audaciously uninhibited movie. And while director Jackson would later achieve critical success with his fact-based drama Heavenly Creatures, his talent is readily evident in this earlier effort. If you find this kind of thing even remotely appealing, consider Dead Alive a must-see movie. --Jeff Shannon for amazon.com - Bob Roberts (1992) - Tim Robbins [Amazon US]
Written and directed by actor Tim Robbins (who also plays the title role), this 1992 mock documentary about an upstart candidate for the U.S. Senate is smart, funny, and scarily prescient in its foreshadowing of the Republican revolution of 1994. Bob Roberts is a folksinger with a difference: He offers tunes that protest welfare chiselers, liberal whining, and the like. As the filmmakers follow his campaign, Robbins gives needle-sharp insight into the way candidates manipulate the media. While the film follows Roberts's campaign, it also covers a fringe journalist (Giancarlo Esposito), who may have dug up the kind of dirt to push Roberts's campaign off the rails. Robbins captures the chilly insincerity of this right-wing populist and fills his cast with terrific supporting players, including Alan Rickman as the campaign's shadowy financier and Susan Sarandon and Peter Gallagher as a pair of airhead TV news anchors. --Marshall Fine - Unforgiven (1992) - Clint Eastwood [ 1DVD, Amazon US]
Winner of four Academy Awards, including best picture, director, supporting actor, and best editing, Clint Eastwood's 1992 masterpiece stands as one of the greatest and most thematically compelling Westerns ever made. "The movie summarized everything I feel about the Western," said Eastwood at the time of the film's release. "The moral is the concern with gunplay." To illustrate that theme, Eastwood stars as a retired, once-ruthless killer-turned-gentle-widower and hog farmer. He accepts one last bounty-hunter mission--to find the men who brutalized a prostitute--to help support his two motherless children. Joined by his former partner (Morgan Freeman) and a cocky greenhorn (Jaimz Woolvett), he takes on a corrupt sheriff (Oscar winner Gene Hackman) in a showdown that makes the viewer feel the full impact of violence and its corruption of the soul. Dedicated to Eastwood's mentors Sergio Leone and Don Siegel and featuring a colorful role for Richard Harris, it's arguably Eastwood's crowning directorial achievement. The digital video disc offers standard and widescreen formats and a remastered soundtrack. --Jeff Shannon for amazon.com - Careful (1992) - Guy Maddin [Amazon.com]
Watching Guy Maddin's Careful is like stepping into a mutating time warp of cinema history, where German alpine dramas of the 1920s are gene-spliced with Daliesque surrealism, Murnau's silent melodrama, and--in an uncannily precise act of stylistic homage--the hypnotically skewed universe of German Expressionism. Filmed in gloriously filtered colors that cross Maxfield Parrish with Peter Max, this stylistic hybrid virtually defies description and must be seen to be truly appreciated. Suffice it to say, the fictional mountain village of Tolzbad--where silence is golden, and extreme measures are taken to avoid a sound-induced avalanche--is one of the strangest and most outrageously amusing locations in the history of film. You think that's an exaggeration? If anything, it's an understatement. --Jeff Shannon for amazon.com
- Reservoir Dogs (1992) - Quentin Tarantino [Amazon US]
Quentin Tarantino came out of nowhere (i.e., a video store in Manhattan Beach, California) and turned Hollywood on its ear in 1992 with his explosive first feature, Reservoir Dogs. Like Tarantino's mainstream breakthrough Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs has an unconventional structure, cleverly shuffling back and forth in time to reveal details about the characters, experienced criminals who know next to nothing about each other. Joe (Lawrence Tierney) has assembled them to pull off a simple heist, and has gruffly assigned them color-coded aliases (Mr. Orange, Mr. Pink, Mr. White) to conceal their identities from being known even to each other. But something has gone wrong, and the plan has blown up in their faces. One by one, the surviving robbers find their way back to their prearranged warehouse hideout. There, they try to piece together the chronology of this bloody fiasco--and to identify the traitor among them who tipped off the police. Pressure mounts, blood flows, accusations and bullets fly. In the combustible atmosphere these men are forced to confront life-and-death questions of trust, loyalty, professionalism, deception, and betrayal. As many critics have observed, it is a movie about "honor among thieves" (just as Pulp Fiction is about redemption, and Jackie Brown is about survival). Along with everything else, the movie provides a showcase for a terrific ensemble of actors: Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, Michael Madsen, Christopher Penn, and Tarantino himself, offering a fervent dissection of Madonna's "Like a Virgin" over breakfast. Reservoir Dogs is violent (though the violence is implied rather than explicit), clever, gabby, harrowing, funny, suspenseful, and even--in the end--unexpectedly moving. (Don't forget that "Super Sounds of the Seventies" soundtrack, either.) Reservoir Dogs deserves just as much acclaim and attention as its follow-up, Pulp Fiction, would receive two years later. --Jim Emerson for Amazon.com [this movie is very derivative; Postmodernism: Quentin Tarantino might make a new movie which is just a lot of scenes copied from old movies --jahsonic]
Books
- Snow Crash (1992)- Neal Stephenson [1 book, Amazon US]
From the opening line of his breakthrough cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson plunges the reader into a not-too-distant future. It is a world where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the United States exists as a patchwork of corporate-franchise city-states, and the Internet--incarnate as the Metaverse--looks something like last year's hype would lead you to believe it should. Enter Hiro Protagonist--hacker, samurai swordsman, and pizza-delivery driver. When his best friend fries his brain on a new designer drug called Snow Crash and his beautiful, brainy ex-girlfriend asks for his help, what's a guy with a name like that to do? He rushes to the rescue. A breakneck-paced 21st-century novel, Snow Crash interweaves everything from Sumerian myth to visions of a postmodern civilization on the brink of collapse. Faster than the speed of television and a whole lot more fun, Snow Crash is the portrayal of a future that is bizarre enough to be plausible. amazon.com editorial review [...] - Men, Women, and Chain Saws (1992) - Carol J. Clover [Amazon US]
Before Men, Women, and Chain Saws, most film critics assumed that horror (especially slasher) films entail a male viewer sadistically watching the plight of a female victim. Carol Clover argues convincingly that both male and female viewers not only identify with the victim, but experience, through the actions of the "final girl," a climactic moment of female power. As the Boston Globe writes, Men, Women, and Chain Saws "challenges simplistic assumptions about the relationship between gender and culture... [Clover] suggests that the 'low tradition' in horror movies possesses positive subversive potential, a space to explore gender ambiguity and transgress traditional boundaries of masculinity and femininity." Be forewarned, though: Clover addresses an academic audience, so her language can be heavy going. -- via Amazon.com