Chance to Win My Boy Elvis Tickets & other: August 2008

Saturday, 23 August 2008

Mastamindz on front lines of rap

Some bands postpone gigs and rehearsals if their lead singer is fight a cold.

When Mastamindz can�t get together, it�s because their frontman is fight insurgents in Iraq.

Since the Rhode Island rap-hardcore rock candy band, which plays Harpers Ferry in Allston tomorrow, first formed in 2000, vocalist M-1 has worn out more than two days away from home. His last deployment was a 15-month tour in Iraq that all over last January.

�Soon after we started the band I had to go away to boot camp, so we�ve been through this all before,� M-1, a sergeant in the Rhode Island Army National Guard, said by telephone set from a base in East Greenwich. �They too know that I�m scheduled to go to Afghanistan in 2009, so we�ll be passing through it all over again.�

Though demanding, M-1�s military obligations receive never compromised the Mastamindz mission. When he�s overseas, his rhythm section - who go by Tim, Don and Russ - do more than just pen letters.

�The band was sending me beats the whole sentence so I could write lyrics,� M-1 aforesaid. �Being aside definitely makes me more serious. Whenever I get along back we have no problem knocking albums out.�

The latest Mastamindz recording, �Product of Your Environment,� was released last month. The group is also featured on the new Psychopathic Records compilation �Tunnel Runners,� which showcases the cult band Insane Clown Posse�s 14 favourite underground up-and-comers.

In addition to the goodly fan bag Mastamindz has at nursing home in Rhode Island - as well as the 7,000 people they entertain every year at Insane Clown Posse�s annual Gathering of the Juggalos - M-1 has found a large, mostly untapped demographic through and through his military service.

�I had Mastamindz CDs and DVDs sent to me the whole time I was there, and I was giving them to Iraqi kids world Health Organization would never hear us otherwise,� said M-1, who too answers to Matt Moreau. �I likewise sent U.S. soldiers from across the country habitation with resign CDs. That�s how we got so big nationwide.�

As a loyal gesture, M-1 welcomes all past and present military personnel to attend Mastamindz shows relinquish of bill. That said, don�t require him to drop militant neo-con banter on the crowd. M-1 stays more or less apolitical, in the main rhyming about social inequities, partying and growing up poor in Rhode Island.

�It�s not always in my music, simply I did live though this war, so I have opinions on it,� aforesaid M-1, world Health Organization wears a Pat Tillman football jersey onstage in honor of the NFL player killed by friendly fire piece serving in Afghanistan.

�War is bad, simply we�re soldiers who sign-language up to do that job,� he aforesaid. �I value that people care about us dying, but I want them to understand that the military is doing a good thing over there. Come on, we�ve always grown up knowing that the Middle East was a (messed up) place.�

Mastamindz, with Rehab, at Harpers Ferry, Allston, tomorrow. Tickets: $12 in advance, $15 day of show; 800-594-8499.

On A Mission: Vocalist M-1, center, with his Mastamindz mates, volition be deployed to Afghanistan next year.

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Wednesday, 13 August 2008

Green Arrow Plans Jail Break With Help From Joker, Lex Luthor In Upcoming Film

He's a DC Comics hero with nearly 70 years of backstory and mythology, a modern-day Robin Hood world Health Organization uses every tool in his armory to competitiveness for the little guys of Star City, just in the pantheon of great mirthful characters, Oliver Queen (a.k.a. the Green Arrow) ain't exactly the most well-known mask around.

Heck, he won't even be the most well known in his own picture show, scribe Justin Marks told MTV News.

"Oh, we've got Lex Luthor in at that place," Marks joyfully revealed. "I'm pretty sure Riddler gets his crack � Ed Nigma gets his moment."

Tentatively titled "Green Arrow: Escape From Super Max," Marks' take on the titular titan is unlike whatsoever superhero pic out thither in that it takes the familiar tropes of comic book films and mixes them with the long-established traditions of prison movies. In the plastic film, Queen is unjustly locked up in a federal penitentiary for meta-humans and forced to rely on a whole bevy of villains to make his escape � villains like Luthor, Icicle and regular the Joker.

(Want to know what they plan to do with Black Canary? Find knocked out over on the MTV Splash Page blog.)

But the best superhero of all in the Green Arrow prison moving-picture show? Would you believe it's the prison house itself?

"It's a very, very awesome prison. I majored in architecture in college, and design is how I actually started in. For 'Super Max,' design that prison, it had to be the kind of thing that was a reference in and of itself," Marks said. "We're in a world where instead of just now trying to contain a guy who's really big, you're trying to arrest a guy who toilet � in the casing of Icicle � world Health Organization can freeze things. What kind of a cell would a guy wish that indigence in order to have his powers neutralized? So to escape from Super Max they have got to go through the most elaborate heist we've ever seen, involving superpowers. Because the prison itself kind of has superpowers!"

It's a fitting tribute to a character that over the age has been more famed for his team-ups than for his individual adventures, Marks pointed out. Those team-ups admit characters like the Green Lantern in a legendary run in the '70s and Batman in Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns."

You can't find a much punter character, so, if you're DC and your goal is to produce cross-pollinating superhero movies like Marvel has done with "Iron Man" and "The Incredible Hulk."

"What we wanted to do, and I intend we'll continue to do as the studio continues to crowd the flick forward, is to be able to [put Queen] in the center of a much bigger existence," Marks aforesaid. "In the same direction that Marvel is starting to do, when you're in the [filmed] DC Universe [where] this world and this world and this populace � they all be in an interrelated network. It's the kind of thing that I think absolutely is about spelling out a couple different roads for a couple different characters."

That means Queen won't get a traditional origin story along the lines of Bruce Wayne or Peter Parker. But you wouldn't really want that at any rate, Marks asserted.

"By the time a pic like this comes out, we will all see origin stories. And mainstream audiences now are willing to suspend their incredulity to the point that we ass believe that a earth exists where superpowers exist and people dress up in costumes. So now what? Now what do we do? And I call this Superhero 2.0," Marks said. "We do parcel out with his origin � he's got a identical interesting beginning with a desert island and everything else � but we get to the heart and soul of Green Arrow non by screening where he starts just by push him into a tonality moment in his life where everything he has is missed, and he's got to earn it all back. I think for audiences it's sledding to be a great way to get to know a new character."

Queen himself is the "perfect hero" for this sort of reinvention, Marks aforesaid, as he's a B-level super without all the heavy baggage of Batman or Superman. More important, though, he's also a real guy, a mortal without whatever meta-human skills or weapons, a vigilante who gets by on nothing more than his preternatural intellect and guile. That already makes him less like the slaphappy Golden Age caricatures and more like the reinventions so many writers hold necessary these days.

"I see him as the Jason Bourne of superheroes, a guy world Health Organization exists with his have sort of set of tricks. And I think the departure between Ollie Queen and a guy like Bruce Wayne � they're both rich. They both have their things. But Batman is about his equipment and is about his theatricality and about his detective skills. And Green Arrow is a hombre who's truly just the sort of MacGyver type," Marks aforementioned. "In his hand, anything can be a weapon."

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