They were never more than guests, and the band has broken up between that album (and it's tour) and now, so that doesn't really reflect poorly on Albarn or Hewitt. It's just kind of how the band is designed.

GB&Q always felt like a fun proof-of-concept but needed another step forward. I'd love to hear another one.

"…Or take over a space-jail, give those robo-COs hell." - Deltrun the Jewels

Hong Kong is gorgeous, and not sure why it didn't make the core album. It has a large prominence in the concert DVD they put out so they're clealry fond of it.

The titles themselves sell the "Travel diary" narrative behind it. Totally sounds like things inspired by stuff you'd see out the side of your tour bus.

I've always had hard opinions on which of theirs was the best, and for years it was Demon Days. Now, it's Plastic Beach.

It more or less is, but there's a song called Hillbilly Man I'm partial to that's a proper Gorillaz track. There are probably a few more in there, but that's the one that struck me as a fully drawn effort.

That explains why I was always more of a Blur guy - when I was 15 I was too fat to take my shirt off in public.

The last album had Lou Reed, De La Soul, Gruff Rhys Bobby Womack, Little Dragon, etc. Part of the concept is being a roving line-up of performers.

Selling it as a Die Antwoord movie is actually kind of awesome.

Vern did! I missed that. I love Vern, and how he interprets his films through a very specific scope. He also will throw down for important things like film's internal logic, and a movie's right to be unrealistic fantasy.

I didn't mean to be caddy, I apologize. I think we agree that it's absurd - I just think of that as a positive.

Counterpoint: I loved the movie and thought she was the only glaringly bad thing in it.

It's fantastic.

That is a movie wherein I spent the first 30 minutes saying, "Why didn't anyone tell me this fucking thing existed? It's incredible!" and the last 30 just lamenting how much the ball was dropped. It begins like one of those M83 music videos mashed with Cronenberg, and it ends like a movie some dude shot with his drunk…

I actually prefer the theatrical on subsequent viewings, but yeah, you should see the Director's Cut at least once.

I'm in that fanbase.

As someone who really liked Elysium and followed the few, few reviews that said it was a fun bit of techno-action (though very shallow, of course), I've even passed on Chappie because I have not read one single goddamn defense of the thing anywhere and I have Tarkovsky's The Mirror sitting on top of my playstation…

At what point did you think this movie was supposed to resemble reality 1:1? Absurdity is its bread & butter. The car-fucking was it sending up a flare to tell you as much.

Weirdly enough, the novel has a few action sequences that aren't in the book. Usually when someone writes an adaptation of a ponderous, philosophical work, that's ALL they mine.