Music

This review is remorseful, mostly because the first two are awesome and should have had credit earlier.

Silversun Pickups – Swoon A-
Oh Silversun, people thought you were Smashing Pumpkins redux, and you still probably are. Such a big hit with ‘lazy eye’ last time around but this new cd is just solid, I’ve been playing it over and over and it has great tempo, good grooves, and I like the vocals. Big thumbs up.

Taken A–
with Liam Neeson, goons and girls.
Liam totally rocks. I love his attitude, I love all the oneliners, the plot works for me. Its just a solid surprise of an .. action/suspense? movie. Like a Bourne style, except older, and more parental urgency drama. Good stuff. I’ll probably watch it again, and I never watch movies twice.

Watchmen B++
with nobody famous, and a blue superguy
Quite a story packed into the screen. I appreciated a lot of it, while admittedly not knowing half of their names until near the end. The pacing was herky jerky which was part of the point of the movie. I liked the ending too, all in all, its a good experience, but really hard to categorize. More of a superhero drama than an action movie, although there is some good action stuff. Rorshach is easily one of the coolest characters ever, with the best voice to-boot.

Red Eye C+
with Rachel McAdams, Cillian
Oh Rachel of Canada, I’m glad you represent our country so well. Classy, pretty, and some strength too. This plot has no subplots really, or many major turning points. It could have been a tv episode of 24, so thumbs down on the writing. The rest was fine, forgettable. If it was starring a lightweight like Sarah Michelle Gellar or someone less respectable, it would have been a D easily.

American Gangster B
with Denzel, Crowe
Crowe likes the cop role, I sorta recently watched LA Confidential which is oddly similar, but much much older. American Gangster starts off slow, showing Denzel’s rise to the the top in an italian dominated world of organized crime, specifically drug dealing. He uses some unorthodox tactics, as well as some very solid principles he’s picked up from his mentor and dominates the game. Its kinda interesting to start, but I quit half way through and resumed the next day because it was getting long. The second half was a lot more exciting since you know the cops are going to catch up with him, you just have to find out how it goes down and what happens to this mess. I enjoyed the ending and it was paced much more like a drama than an action movie, which worked for me. Excellent character development, and plot. A really good movie for the patient.

Crank 2 D+
with Statham
I have never seen anything more explicit, I’m surprised they squeaked in with the 18A/R rating. The rest of the movie was entertainingly retarded and ludicrous electricity nonsense. Idk, a lot of stuff for the crowd that I’m not a part of, so I definitely don’t recommend it. I wasn’t bored though, so there’s that. The ‘scene’ in Watchmen has got _NOTHING_ on crank. Wow. A bad wow.

Fast & Furious C+
with Diesel, Walker, testosterone
Exactly what I expected, it was the proper sequel to F&F with articles (the first one). Good racing, sorta interesting plot, lots of macho bravado. It accomplished its goal.

Seven Pounds C++
with Fresh Prince, Miss Rosario
The other measurement movie, 12 grams had a hugely different feel, but there’s something… I wont go into it too much, but I’m glad I’ve seen them both. I feel they are worth watching but because seven pounds is odd, some will hate it, some will love it. I really liked the humanity, morality and purity of good characters. Some will gag since its hard to believe people act like this since it is not as gray as almost all modern movie characters are. Except is it gray? Large questions to be asked, I liked it quite a bit. Even some heart string tugging. But I cant recommend it to everyone.

Barcelona’s 102.5 B+
Awesome radio station. “Alternative” with like 1/3 english, good stuff. Dance pop rock mostly. The only down side was that one “song” i “liked” turned out to be jonas brothers. I hang my head.