Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
EAT YOUR OWN SPACESHIP, 17 Nov 2008
Firstly i need to hold my hands up and say that the Flaming Lips are just about my favorite band, so i think this review will be a little over generous to their latest project.
Essentially Wayne Coyne's pet project for the last decade, Christmas On Mars finally gets its release, and i for one am relieved because it will hopefully mean the band will shift focus and release a new album, and then tour it, which lets face it is all that fans like myself really want from the band.
What fans do get is a well conceived package of music and a slightly offbeat science fiction movie that is equally full of the bands trademark,oddness and optimism, whilst maintaining the independence of spirit that the Flaming Lips guard so lovingly.The Fearless Freaks or UFO's At The Zoo this ain't, but it is made with sincerity and is the culmination of many years work for Coyne and the band.
On some levels Christmas On Mars is a homage to b'movie sci fi that appeared to have a major significance in the Coyne household, and is an attempt to write a movie based on a mythical story from Waynes childhood.However, this is not a great movie, merely a chance to lay to rest a major artistic ghost from Wayne Coynes past.The influence of John Carpenters "Dark Star " should also be mentioned, as the same sense claustrophobic boredom is evident in Christmas On Mars.
The soundtrack is welcome if only for some new Flaming Lips music, and although mainly instrumental, its debt to the film scores of Vangelis is notable,and does its job in complimenting the visuals.
Christmas On Mars is not a concert movie, or a documentary, but it adequately perpetuates the Flaming Lips reputation as true musical mavericks.Nothing more, nothing less.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
suprisingly good, 16 Dec 2008
My partner brought this home on recommendation to see what this sounded like. I had never heard anything by The Flaming Lips before but even on 1st play of the CD I liked it. The music is instrumental, strange and haunting and I found myself playing this a few times. At first I had no interest in seeing the film but curiosity got the better of me. It too certainly is quite strange but being no stranger to strange films, I quite enjoyed it, shoddily made or not. The photography is grainy black and white and the storyline whilst very adult in context, has a child-like quality running through. If David Lynch and Sci-Fi is your bag you will probably like this.
Sorry this is not an in-depth review, rather my first impressions of a work new to me, which I thought was good and which I would want to watch again. Overall, I actually felt that the film complemented the music rather than the music being a soundtrack to the film. A surreal tongue-in-cheek Christmas story for grown-ups.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An unusual experiment..., 9 Dec 2008
Oklahomas craziest export finally release the seven-years-in-the-making "Christmas On Mars". The long feted, made-in-the-back-garden, black and white, budget basement Sci-Fi 'epic' evokes the spirit of an ancient age. In many ways, this 90 minute miserablist Sci-Fi sketch resembles a cross between a depressed Plan 9 From Outer Space, and Dark Star. The plot is minimalist, the acting is appalling, the production values cheap. The plot is suggestive, operating on an emotional and thematic level as opposed to anything logical or development-driven, connecting a set of vague vignettes to create an impressionistic whole. Overall, it's neither as convulted, pretentious, or expensive as 'Southland Tales', but as a film it's nothing amazing. Then again, it's not as rubbish as any of The Beatles movies, either.
Face it, if this hadn't been the brainchild of the band it would have sunk without trace and consumed the weekends of a pretentious nutter for years to be forgotten about. As it stands, though, "Christmas On Mars" gains an exposure by association and not on it's own merits.
Victoria Beckham writes piss-poor books. Well, I say writes, but you can't be a writer if you've never read anything longer than a newspaper article about yourself. Russell Crowe and Steven Seagal have their own, crap, bands. Oh, and one of The Rolling Stonesis a painter. It is this - diversification, if I were using 'management' speak - that devlues the work : it gains an access because of who, and not what, the work is.
"Christmas On Mars" is an OK film, at best, destined for obscurity were it made by anyone else. It's obviously the vanity project, a work of passion, a labour of love, but it isn't very good really. It's nowhere near The F'Lips "Battlefield Earth" or "The Clown Who Cried". But it isn't anything great either.
On a musical front, the soundtrack album (handily enough, the film is packaged on DVD with a CD of the soundtrack) is an interesting, leftfield direction. Eschewing The F'Lips vocal stylings of pounding, humanitarian, space indie-rock, the soundtrack resembles a set of instrumental Pink Floyd outtakes.
One of their ancient B-sides was called "Galactic Melancholy", which is exactly what this album is - a short, 32 minute, set of evocative sound, made of sweeping, unusual string movements, tinkles and atmospheres, all combined together to form one cohesive piece divided into twelve parts. Astute fans of the F'Lips will recognise at least two songs from old b-sides several years ago, albeit retitled. "Syrtis Major" reappears here as "Space Bible With Volume Lumps", whilst "Protonilus Death March" is reworked and renamed. (If you never bough F'Lips singles years ago, this is all irrelevant!)
Don't go into this expecting another Flaming Lips album of cosmic space rock - instead, it is a relatively short soundtrack of instrumental soundscapes and recurrent themes that makes for an experimental accompaniment to a dull commute or a clifftop walk. As a listening experience, it is challenging. I can't help but feel that, with 45 minutes of unused space on the disc, that the soundtrack feels scant and small. Especially when a couple of songs originally planned for the soundtrack and released as such years ago are ommitted in favour of silence. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I think the band may have been better served by creating a longer, and more diverse set of material.
Overall, "Christmas on Mars" is a brave but not entirely successful experiment that challenges one preconceptions, and provides excellent value for money if you purchase the film and soundtrack set. It is another interesting step on their journey, and one can hope that the trend set by the band for a prolific and intruiging period is maintained by wherever they go next.
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