Ningen-Isu (The Human Chair) is a criminally underrated doom metal band from Aomori in Japan. The tight trio has a very dynamical sound that also ventures into the heavy metal and progressive rock genres here and there. Imagine a mixture of Black Sabbath and Rush with a very own sound and a constantly high quality as the band’s discography doesn’t feature one single disappointment. The heart and soul of the band are guitarist and singer Wajima Shinji and bassist and singer Suzuki Kenichi who are both original band members and active since 1987. The trio is completed by drummer Nakajima Nobu who calls the band his some since 2004 and who is the fourth drummer of the otherwise perfectly stable line-up. The chemistry between the three band members is really stunning. There are no parts that sound boring or out of place even though a lot of tracks feel spontaneous and fresh as if they were recorded in jam sessions. The band has released a total of seventeen studio albums starting with “Ningen Shikkaku” (“No Longer Human”) in 1990 and their last record “Mandoro” (“Ten Thousand Hanging Lanterns”) was released in August 2013. The title of their latest output is a synonym for the full moon and the absolutely amazing cover artwork underlines this fact. As of May 2014, the perseverant band is already working on a follow-up.

The band opens its latest masterpiece with the short but very engaging “Shigan Goeika” (“Song In Praise Of The Buddha Of This Life”) that opens with some spiritual percussion before engaging riffs and hypnotizing vocals set in that could come straight from old Black Sabbath. After a few seconds, you are already nodding along and shaking your legs to this track. The gloomy sing along vocals are simplistic but extremely effective from an atmospheric point of view and apart of that quite catchy.

After the record’s shortest song follows the epic of the album entitled “Kuroyuri Nikki” (“Black Lily Diary”) which is a heavy doom metal anthem with thundering riffs, an apocalyptically pumping bass guitar, a tight drumming and dramatic vocals. The chorus is extremely catchy and won’t get out of your mind anytime soon. My favourite passage is though the slightly destructive instrumental part that reminds me of the heaviest songs of King Crimson like “21st Century Schizoid Man” which is one of my favourite songs ever.

“Jigoku Hen” (“Changes In Hell”) surprises with versatile and deep vocals and comes around as an engaging mid tempo stomper with a few psychedelic elements such as the hysterical laughter in the middle part. The instrumental work is out of this world again. The destructive bass guitar sound runs everything down, the riffs are precise and effective and the few short solo parts are ecstatic without sounding like wankery. They are always short and concise. “Jigoku Den” indeed has a hellish atmosphere and feels like a Black Sabbathian drug trip.

“Sakura Ranman” (“Cherry Blossoms In Full Glory”) is a mid-tempo stomper with perfectly chosen engaging riffs. The middle part surprises with a few folk sounds and the use of traditional Japanese instruments without letting go off the tight riffs. The guitar solo in this song is seriously one of the coolest I have ever heard of. It sounds a little bit like traditional Japanese music but still contemporary and tight. This amazing track which is maybe my personal favourite on the album ends with fast drumming and a very tight instrumental part that almost sounds like thrash metal. The combination of traditional Japanese folklore, classic doom metal and a few more modern heavy or thrash metal parts sounds perfectly balanced on this track.

“Neputa No Mandoriko“ is a quite short song with an energizing punk vibe, fast buildups and galloping riffs that convinces with hysterical and intriguingly menacing vocals and a few dynamical background screams here and there. I imagine that this kind of wild song must work extremely well in concert. The guitar solo in here is quite close to the amazing one in the previous song. Tight heaviness meets a few wisely used psychedelic sound collages here and there. This track is another instant album highlight and band classic. It represents perfectly what the band stands for in barely three minutes.

Every single song on “Mandoro” really deserves a detailed description. I simply chose these five tracks because they are the first songs on the album and represent the band sound very well. I could randomly chosen any other five songs and I would have been as enthusiastic about them. This album never ever falls off the edge and always remains excellent. I simply don’t want to write a book here. To keep it short, the chemistry between the band members, their tight sound without any lengths and the few well employed surprises in form of bass and guitar solos, dynamical pace changes and psychedelic sound collages are the three winning elements that make this band stand out. This record never gets boring and is constantly addicting with a running time of almost sixty-three minutes. Even in an extremely abundant and strong discography as Ningen-Isu’s, their seventeenth full length effort must be cited as one of the highlights. If you have never heard of this band before, I can absolutely recommend you this album to start with. If you care for doom metal, heavy metal and tight progressive rock, I would be surprised if you didn’t like this masterpiece. This is definitely one of the best albums

"City Under Siege" is an entertaining but sometimes strange mixture of a fantasy movie and an action-thriller with romantic elements as well as with slapstick influences and a more serious criticism of modern mass media.

The movie portrays the story of the clumsy orphan Sunny who is working as a clown at his uncle's circus. His deceased father was a knife throwing master but Sunny is a charming loser who gets bullied by his more talented cousins who are also working at the circus. One day, his cousins want to explore a strange cave in the forest, used by the Japanese army when they occupied China. There are rumours of some precious gold hidden in the depths of the cave. Sunny overhears the plan and spies on his cousins but he gets discovered and caught. His cousins force the young adult to be the leader of the pack and look for the gold with them. The group finds several capsules indeed and force Sunny to open them. The first one is filled with gold and the leader of the cousins decides to separate the gold and to kill the unpleasant privy Sunny. He sends one of the cousins to strangle Sunny and push him into the abyss. Meanwhile the greedy leader opens another capsule but this one is filled with a strange gas that everyone present in the cave breathes in. Sunny manages to push his opponent into the abyss who dies there and to flee from his evil cousins. On their way out of the cave Sunny and his cousins get separated but they are mad at each other and bound to meet again. The strange gas soon transforms all of them. Sunny suddenly gets very fat as he runs across newscaster Angel who has a flat tire. They help each other and Sunny gets back to his uncle's warehouse. The next morning, he lost all of his fat and seems to be completely normal again. He soon realizes that he has changed though. All of his senses are sharpened and he soon uses them to save a kidnapped female police officer in front of newscaster Sunny who just got replaced by a younger and more beautiful woman at her agency. Both take advantage of the situation. Sunny becomes a beloved superstar and Angel his ambitious manager. Meanwhile, his evil cousins also transformed but in a different way. They also got sharpened senses but their skin bloated and they look like ugly mutants. Even kidnapped scientists can't heal them and believe that Sunny's metabolism must work differently from theirs. The evil cousins use their sharpened senses to commit crimes like robbing out banks and transporters. They are also jealous of Sunny's popularity and want to get his blood that might or might not be filled with antibodies that could heal the mutants. The police can't mess with them as injuries only seem to make These mutants stronger and more invulnerable. Even two mutant hunters who are supposed to get married soon can only kill one of them. They soon realize that they need the help of Sunny and Angel to set a trap and kill the pitiless mutants. The two men and women join their forces in a risky attempt to save Hongkong from its mutant siege.

This fantasy-action movie has several convincing but also a few negative aspects. Let's start with the shallow aspects to end the review on a positive note. First of all, the mixture of genres in this movie is a little bit weird. The movie is sometimes too humorous to build up true tension. On the other side, some parts of it are too sad to make this a light-hearted film. I feel that the omission of the few slapstick elements would have improved the movie as the final result would have been much more mature. Due to the weird potpourri of genres, the movie undeniably has a few lengths. Some parts are dedicated to some character development but it feels a little bit forced as the different characters are sometimes wooden and stereotypical. They made me think of cheap rip-off versions of American superheroes and supervillains from Marvel for example.

The actresses and actors were of a good average quality overall but as the script focused on fighting scenes and was inspired by several superhero movies they probably did the best they could out of it. Main actor Aaron Kwok incarnated a sympathetic loser who became a hero, the charming Qi Shu really carried the movie as ambitious newscaster with a tender side and Zhang Jingchu was also convincing as emotional and smart female demon hunter. I wish some of the other characters had been a Little bit more profound though.

The special effects, fighting scenes and CGI effects are of a good but not excellent quality and can be cited as positive aspects of this film. Especially the villains look really ugly and could also be shown in an American movie. The fighting scenes finally had a more Asian feeling to it with a few influences from classic Easterns. Especially the fighting scenes in the uncle's warehourse, the television studio and in Angel's apartment were well done and can be cited as highlights of the movie.

If you happen to be a fan of diversified superhero movies or more contemporary Hongkong action cinema, you should appreciate the movie for what it is. It's entertaining and some efforts were put into it but neither the effects nor the script offer anything revolutionary after all. All in all, it's a movie inspired by many Hollywood movies that should also please to a larger Western audience while fans of classic Asian action and fantasy cinema might surprisingly not like this film as much.

Earendel – Earendel

July 8, 2014 in Reviews by Sebastian Kluth

Greetings,

this is just a short message to inform you that I have finally uploaded all the exercises that I had prepared for my high school Groups over the past School year (grades seven to nine or secondary 1 to 3, regular and enriched programs). I decided not to upload a few other documents that I had also worked out with other teachers. There are also a few fables, fairy tales, short stories etc. that I didn't upload due to copyright issues. All you can find on this blog had been created by me. You can find by now all my documents in the "school" section of my blog.

Over the school year, I had been working with the following material as well:

Secondary I:

http://www.cheneliere.ca/6731-livre-snapshot-cycle-one-year-one-.html

http://www.amazon.ca/Night-Homework-Zombies-Scott-Nickel/dp/1598891723/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404912112&sr=1-1&keywords=Night+of+the+homework+zombies

http://www.amazon.ca/Monster-Lake-Lobo-Scott-Nickel/dp/1598898922/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404912133&sr=1-1&keywords=The+monster+from+lake+Lobo

http://www.amazon.ca/Attack-Mutant-Lunch-Lady-Brainstorm/dp/1434205010/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404912150&sr=1-3&keywords=mutant+lunch+lady

Secondary 2:

http://www.cheneliere.ca/6734-livre-snapshot-cycle-one-year-two-.html

http://www.amazon.ca/Dracula-Headwords-Oxford-Bookworms-Library-ebook/dp/B00BHZHD20/ref=sr_1_54?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404912050&sr=1-54&keywords=Bram+Stoker+Dracula

Secondary 3:

http://www.amazon.ca/Gary-Paulsen-Hatchet-Reprint/dp/B00IBPHM4I/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404912087&sr=1-12&keywords=Gary+Paulsen+Hatchet

Maybe these information may help you to get some inspiration, no matter if you are a teacher, a parent, a student or just somebody who is curious about discovering English as a second language classes at French Canadian public high schools.

I will work on many more exercises over the next school year, this time at a private high school with many interesting and modern technical dimensions. I will keep you updated about my work a few months from here.

Have a nice day and a nice summer break,

Sebastian Kluth 

Russian history of the 20th century.docx

Working on George Orwell's Animal Farm.docx

Conspiracy theories from all around the world.docx

Working on your novels.docx

Newspaper article assignment.docx

Short story assignment.docx

Incredible survival stories.docx

Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, Quiz 1, Chapters 1 to 8.docx

Hatchet Reading log - chapters 11-19.docx

Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, Quiz 2, Chapter 9 to 19.docx

Vocabulary test on Gary Paulsen's Hatchet.docx

A cry in the wild: a movie adaption of Gary Paulsen's Hatchet.docx

How to write a movie review.docx

Survival stories - diary entries - clean copies.docx

Preparing a plan for a speech.docx