Harmony of Heroes: Donkey Kong

You can download this massive album here. As it is fan work and therefore free, I have no problem recommending that you search the track names on YouTube if you can't download them.

Previous post: the Mario tracks

Continuing our dive into Nintendo fan music, the next section of Harmony of Heroes adapts the wonderful music of the Donkey Kong series -- mostly the Donkey Kong Country games -- with one glaring exception at the end.

12. Jungle Swing (Stephan Wells, featuring Camoshark)
If you know the Donkey Kong Country BGM at all, the opening to this track is filled with teasing anticipation. When the main theme finally hits, it feels fantastic.

A combination of live instruments (or at least a very convincing combination of live samples) and a broad assortment of sound effects make this an incredibly fun track, especially in the second half that includes a lot of free-styling guitar and brass.

13. Rhythm of the Kong (Sean Haeberman)
True to its title, this track is filled to bursting with percussion, mostly playing around with the Map theme (parts of which are also present in the previous track). Compared with Jungle Swing, there are a lot of deeper colours in the drums that give it a more masculine feel, despite the flighty melody.

14. A K.Rool Pub Crawl (Sebastian Mårtensson, featuring Christopher Woo)
Moving on to Donkey Kong Country 2, this is another program piece beginning with a pirate, probably K.Rool himself, walking into a bar (ouch!). The entertainment for the evening begins with a surprisingly warm rendition of Ship Deck 2.

I absolutely love folksy pirate songs so this one gets me pretty well. It even manages to make K.Rool's boss battle theme sound less menacing, and that's not a small task.

15. Rush of the Rainforest (Buoy)
Propulsive and adventurous, this track takes the hands-down best BGM from DKC2 (that would be Stickerbush Symphony) as its source. The track actually turns it into a sort of video game level of its own, complete with A B A structure, a little insert of the DKC theme when it hits it stride, and then some very welcome freestyling in the last third.

16. Kong Kollektive (Sebastian Mårtensson, featuring Harmony of Heroes)
...
Can't I just listen to some more of Rush of the Rainforest?
...
Oh, alright. This is a re-imagining of the DK Rap from Donkey Kong 64, and if I give them their dues, it could be a lot worse. The artists clearly love this track (honestly or ironically, it's up to you) so there's nothing that needs aggressive criticism. I'm just glad I don't have to listen to it again after this.


Well, the Donkey Kong tracks started wonderful and ended in a weird place. That's okay, because coming up next time is over an hour of The Legend of Zelda music. Yummy ...

The Great Cow Race Ch2: The Cave

Synopsis
After the encounter with the bee, Fone Bone discovers what Phoney has been up to all this time and chides him for his schemes. Fone is convinced that Phoney had something to do with the attack on the farm by the Rat Creatures, but Phoney promises that he is innocent, something that's rather hard to believe.

That night, Thorn has another dream, this time of a cave filled with dragons. She remembers that she drew the very map that led the Bones to The Valley in the first place, but decides not to share her concerns with Gran'ma, so that she doesn't throw off her game before the Great Cow Race.

Pros
This is an incredibly well written chapter, showcasing the personalities of all three Bones and diving into Thorn's (possibly imaginary, but that's pretty unbelievable) backstory in Deren Gard. The pages are divided equally into three scenes: the first with Fone and Phoney arguing about the latter's terrible get-rich-quick schemes, then a little bit later with Phoney as the "mystery cow".

The second scene then shows Thorn as a very young girl being led far away -- we soon find they're going to Deren Gard, the home of a motley assortment of multicoloured dragons.

Although Thorn is being kept safe in her dream, she wakes up and treats the memory with fear; telling Bone that she wished she could leave. She even drew the map so that it might lead someone to save her. This third scene is filled with great midnight lighting and a sense of something big and/or horrible on the horizon. When Thorn decides not to talk about it with Gran'ma, we can see the idea of dragons existing still weighs heavily on her, and she doesn't want the same concern affecting Gran.

Cons
None, really. Despite not having a lot of action, this is an exemplary chapter of Bone that conjures fun, seriousness, mystery and warmth all in equal measure.

This chapter's lesson
A small one but a good one: in the first scene of this chapter, Jeff Smith is using classic filmic blocking to separate and rejoin each of the three Bones in order to draw reader attention to different sides of the conversation and interpersonal conflict.

At first, Phoney is haggling with one of the farmers, reminding the reader of his plan to fix the Cow Race. When Fone arrives and is suspicious, Phoney leaves his betting stand and the "camera" moves to hold Fone and he in the frame as they argue. When Smiley as the mystery-cow comes into frame, Phoney then takes him aside, and the "camera" moves again, keeping him and Smiley as the two central figures and leaving Fone off in the background.

After the banter between the two about the cow suit, Fone re-enters the frame and our attention returns to Phoney and he having their argument about Phoney's schemes. At the end of the scene, Smiley then re-asserts himself with a message for Phoney, who then exits to the right.

Rather than make the reader focus on three characters for the entire duration of the scene, Smith figuratively juggles our attention with most of the dialogues happening between only two of the three characters. It's simple movie-making stuff, but it's really cool to see it used like this in a comic book.

Review: Eye in the Sky

"Never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war." 
-- Lieutenant General Frank Benson (Alan Rickman)

As a fan of epic fantasy stories, the son of an army officer, and a Christian, the role of war has been an issue I've had to grapple with my entire life. Sure, people around the world are conflicted on the morality of war, but just as many -- if not more -- see violence as a necessary evil in the pursuit of the greater good.

Eye in the Sky, from South African director Gavin Hood, does an exemplary job of presenting a clash of ideologies. Multiple viewpoints on conflict, casualties, collateral damage and politics are brought forward and substantiated, but none are presented as the definitive answer to the questions raised in war. This is cemented in the film's ending: rather than follow Hollywood formula and create a "new stability" (that is, a final way of solving the conflict of the story), Eye in the Sky leaves the audience hanging, because the ideological conflicts within this thriller haven't been solved.

Of course, these debates would be pointless if we had no dramatic buy-in, and the good news is that Eye in the Sky is also a tremendous story, well told. In any other decade, it would be a visionary science-fiction yarn, similar in dramatic scope and "big ideas" to the book behind Hood's previous film, Ender's Game. Today, with the exception of some visual shorthand for the benefit of the audience, it is instead a very contemporary story dealing with real world issues and realistic technology.

Taking place all around the world, Eye in the Sky centres on a mission to capture Al-Shabaab extremists in Nairobi, Kenya. Colonel Katherine Powell (played by Helen Mirren) commands from Northwood Headquarters in England; pilot Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) in Nevada flies a drone as the titular "eye in the sky"; and Jama Farah (Barkhad Abdi) works on the ground in Nairobi for undercover surveillance, among dozens of other characters including the late Alan Rickman's Lieutenant General who supervises the mission from London.

At first, the expansive stage and large cast feels very Steven-Soderbergh-ian, particularly like Contagion. As the situation on the ground develops, the protagonists are forced to make more and more difficult decisions. Discussions about ethics, politics and the chain of command are so tense that it begins to feel more like 12 Angry Men.

One could be concerned that as a thriller the story gets bogged down in these politics and turns into the dreaded "people talk in rooms" kind of drama that bad imitators of 12 Angry Men might produce -- but the quality of acting and firm grasp of visual storytelling is actually more comparable to sci-fi anime like Ghost in the Shell. This is probably not an accidental similarity as Japanese movies have explored drones and the dehumanisation of war for decades. For the same reason, Eye in the Sky comes in highly recommended to fans of Metal Gear Solid.

The movie is not, however, easily recommended to audiences seeking escapism, and nor should it be. The aforementioned open ending is going to be a turn-off if one expects a perfect resolution, but that is part of the point. Eye in the Sky is solid, thrilling entertainment with an effective original score to boot, but like some of the best science fiction it is equally interested in exploring questions of humanity and ethics that might not have definitive answers. It just so happens to be less science fiction and more science fact.

For accomplishing everything it set out to do, Eye in the Sky gets 5 / 5 stars.