Right on the front page of their Myspace, The Wellingtons establish one important fact: Life is too short to listen to bad power pop. And they're right, it is. So you should definitely check out The Wellingtons, because they indeed play good power pop. Their music is very reminiscent of an era gone by; the late fifties, early sixties, perhaps. The thing is, they've gone and taken it apart piece by piece, tweaked it in some places, took out what they didn't want, and put it back together. What they ended up with is an album of finely crafted and noticeably honed pop music that is solidly catchy and accessible through and through.
Though the album is called Heading North for the Winter, it reminds me more of a sixties beach party, where everybody is surfing in the fashionable swimwear of the moment. The best part is, it's just as fun as one. The members of The Wellingtons obviously have great pop sensibilities, because pretty much every song is radio friendly, and most of them are catchy enough to be a hit.
I like that they use a good variety of instruments, too. They have a keyboard player that doubles as a piano player, and there are various songs on which they use horns, and even one song with a music box-esque effect that serves as a sort of overture for the song, introducing you to the wonderful upcoming melodies that are about to ask your eardrums if they may have this dance.
The lyrics are mostly about girls and the like, or perhaps boys, depending on who in the band writes the songs. But this is not a band that's attempting to break the boundaries of music as we know it. This is a band that is dedicated to fun, and it really shines through in their music. You'd probably have a great time if you got to hang out with these people.
The Wellingtons play some seriously catchy power pop. They're a rather bouncy band, which is great, cause those are declining in number and quality quickly. Heading North for the Winter has an insane amount of hooks and each song seems catchier than the last. If you're wondering exactly what they sound like, the best comparison I can think of is The Pink Spiders + Houston Calls x The Beatles = The Wellingtons. Do yourself a favor and open your ears for them, because, as they've so correctly established, life's too short to listen to bad power pop!
6/7
11.25.2008
Skate It
Skate brought skateboarding games back from the depths of the ridiculous and the unrealistic that the Tony Hawk games damned them to. That's kinda funny; Tony Hawk has been working all these years to make skateboarding a valid sport, bring it positively into the social consciousness, only to ruin it all with a few poor sequels. Anyway, Skate It is the game Skate ported to the Nintendo Wii and DS, and I'll be reviewing the DS version.
First of all, I'll admit it: this game has DS graphics. Second, that doesn't bother me at all. If it bothers you, maybe branch out to the Wii version. Now, that being said, I think it's safe to say that the graphics don't alter or lessen the experience very much. My motto is, and has always been, gameplay over graphics. So as long as this port has the gameplay, then to hell with the graphics. Game could look like Pitfall for the Atari and I wouldn't care, as long as it played well.
So does it play well? Hell yes it does. The controls are handled with the stylus. On the touch screen of the DS, you'll find a diagonal skateboard. This is how you initiate the tricks. To push, you hold the stylus on the touch screen to the right of the actual board, OR, you get smart and change the controls, because it can be kinda buggy. I changed mine to holding up on the D-pad, which still allows you to steer perfectly. So onto tricks. I don't wanna go through all of them, but I'll give you a basic idea of what to do. Use the stylus to slide across the board on the bottom of the screen, and you will perform a trick. Slide it straight up and you'll perform an ollie, the basic jump. Slide it up and off either side, you'll have done either a kickflip, or a heelflip. Pretty simple. The only problem is accuracy. It's not terribly inaccurate, but sometimes when you try to do just an ollie, it'll end up as something else. Unless you have time to physically take your attention away from the situation at hand to watch yourself draw a straight line across the board, at certain times it can be hard to do just a plain ollie. This goes for most of the other tricks, however the shapes you draw for other tricks leave more room for error than a straight line does. Now, I'm not saying that the game is bad or that it doesn't work, it's just sometimes you'll end up doing a trick you didn't mean to. Aside from that, hold your stylus on the board and you'll crouch. Drag and hold from the tail of the board back and you'll manual: do the opposite for a nose manual. You can also hold L or R to do a grab trick.
The physics in the game are actually pretty good. It's pretty easy to get air if you do it right, and grinds latch on rather well. The engine that runs the game really gets the job done. The challenges are just that: challenging. And there are tons of them to keep you entertained for weeks. The replay value of this game is really high, also, because you can go back and do whatever tricks on whatever obstacle you'd like. It's really fun to try and pull sick lines like you see in Video Daze and The Reason and all those other classic skate videos. It's not as detailed or innovative as Skate was, but it's definitely a solid port to the DS.
5/7
First of all, I'll admit it: this game has DS graphics. Second, that doesn't bother me at all. If it bothers you, maybe branch out to the Wii version. Now, that being said, I think it's safe to say that the graphics don't alter or lessen the experience very much. My motto is, and has always been, gameplay over graphics. So as long as this port has the gameplay, then to hell with the graphics. Game could look like Pitfall for the Atari and I wouldn't care, as long as it played well.
So does it play well? Hell yes it does. The controls are handled with the stylus. On the touch screen of the DS, you'll find a diagonal skateboard. This is how you initiate the tricks. To push, you hold the stylus on the touch screen to the right of the actual board, OR, you get smart and change the controls, because it can be kinda buggy. I changed mine to holding up on the D-pad, which still allows you to steer perfectly. So onto tricks. I don't wanna go through all of them, but I'll give you a basic idea of what to do. Use the stylus to slide across the board on the bottom of the screen, and you will perform a trick. Slide it straight up and you'll perform an ollie, the basic jump. Slide it up and off either side, you'll have done either a kickflip, or a heelflip. Pretty simple. The only problem is accuracy. It's not terribly inaccurate, but sometimes when you try to do just an ollie, it'll end up as something else. Unless you have time to physically take your attention away from the situation at hand to watch yourself draw a straight line across the board, at certain times it can be hard to do just a plain ollie. This goes for most of the other tricks, however the shapes you draw for other tricks leave more room for error than a straight line does. Now, I'm not saying that the game is bad or that it doesn't work, it's just sometimes you'll end up doing a trick you didn't mean to. Aside from that, hold your stylus on the board and you'll crouch. Drag and hold from the tail of the board back and you'll manual: do the opposite for a nose manual. You can also hold L or R to do a grab trick.
The physics in the game are actually pretty good. It's pretty easy to get air if you do it right, and grinds latch on rather well. The engine that runs the game really gets the job done. The challenges are just that: challenging. And there are tons of them to keep you entertained for weeks. The replay value of this game is really high, also, because you can go back and do whatever tricks on whatever obstacle you'd like. It's really fun to try and pull sick lines like you see in Video Daze and The Reason and all those other classic skate videos. It's not as detailed or innovative as Skate was, but it's definitely a solid port to the DS.
5/7
11.24.2008
Kanye West - 808s & Heartbreak
Auto-tune. Either you love it or you hate it, and chances are you hate it. Not Kanye West, though. He likes it enough to have used it on every single song on his new album, 808s & Heartbreak. And, having heard that, chances are you'll probably skip out on buying Kanye's newest album. That's why I'm here: to convince you how foolish that would be.
There's a lot of backstory to this album, so I suppose that's a good place to start. This album is much darker than West's previous releases, and that's due to a bunch of factors, namely the death of his mother last year, and the cancellation of his engagement to then-fianceé Alexis Phifer. Also, all the beats on the album were created with the Roland TR-808 drum machine in order to evoke specific emotions and take a "minimal but functional" approach to the songs. So the basic concept behind this album is literally expressed in the title: 808s & Heartbreak.
That being said, I have to point out that Kanye absolutely nailed it. This is an album full of truly unique, catchy, and memorable songs. I found it seriously impressive that Kanye could go out of his comfort zone in so many ways and come back stronger than ever. Each song is totally different from the rest. The opening track, "Say You Will", is a plaintive, lengthy song. I love the minor to major key change he throws in a few times, but half the song is just the beat, and when the song comes in at over 6 minutes, that might be a little too much. But the album doesn't suffer from it. In fact, it pushes forward, giving it a bit more gas, ending up at "Welcome To Heartbreak", which sounds nothing like a Kanye West song, which is something you're gonna have to get used to quickly on this album. It's got a nifty piano line coupled with a simple beat, with Kid Cudi adding a catchy chorus. "Heartless" is the first real single aside from "Love Lockdown", and it's a great song. Just to recap: it's a straight up radio single, the singer uses auto-tune, it's about being heart broken because of a girl, and it's STILL a good song. Well, at least until it saturates every nook and cranny of the club and mainstream radio scenes. But it's great right now! "Amazing" is one of the darker tracks, one that conjures images of ghetto cowboys idly ambling along a lonely trail. Young Jeezy contributes a verse, but it's nothing special. "Love Lockdown" is a song that mostly everyone knows by now, and for good reason. Even over a month later, it's still fresh and fits perfectly with the rest of the album. "Paranoid" is one of my favorites on 808s, and is closer in style and substance to what Kanye usually does; it resembles hip hop more than the rest, played over what sounds like a remixed 80s pop song. This brings us to "RoboCop", my current favorite. It starts out with a badass beat, leading you to believe it might be some sort of hardcore hip hop song, but then the strings come in, bringing Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" to mind, until you realize Kanye did it better. This song is boundlessly catchy, and the lush instrumentation in the chorus and the way he uses RoboCop sounds in the post-chorus make this song a serious standout. "Street Lights" is a slower, hopeful song where Kanye claims "I know my destination, I'm just not there." This is followed by "Bad News", which is seemingly a sort of interlude song, but valuable all the same. Lil' Wayne makes a guest appearance in "See You In My Nightmares", which puts Young Jeezy's verse earlier to shame. "Coldest Winter", a touching song in which he reminisces about his mother, closes out the actual album. There is one more song, however, but it's a live recording from Singapore, entitled "Pinocchio Story." It's a freestyle from that concert that was included because Beyoncé Knowles convinced Kanye to include it. It's good, but it does not need to be there, and the album would've concluded so perfectly after "Coldest Winter", but when you're Beyoncé and you're famous and you've never done anything good before, why start now?
If you're still hung up on the auto-tune aspect, don't be. After a song or two, you won't even notice. West noted that certain parts of them album are auto-tuned to represent heartbreak. Most of the songs aren't very heavily auto-tuned, anyway. It's a minor issue, especially when compared to the album as a whole.
So let's get one thing straight. This isn't hip hop, rap, or anything like it. It seems that 'pop' really is the best word to describe it. Since he's not rapping on most tracks, it forces Kanye to use his voice in more and different ways, especially as far as singing goes. His singing on this album is top notch, and the amount of vocal, musical, and atmospheric hooks Kanye has produced on 808s & Heartbreak is absolutely outstanding. Upon first listen, about half the songs are memorable. Upon second listen, every single one of them is. It baffles my mind how Kanye, by effectively limiting his resources, managed to make something so unique, creative, and diverse. In fact, I think it's fair to say that Kanye pushes himself harder on this album, in terms of music, lyrics, vocals, creativity, and hooks, than on any of his previous efforts. It solidifies and furthers his status as a trend setter, and shows how unequivocally unmatched Kanye is, as far as progressiveness goes, in his genre.
7/7
There's a lot of backstory to this album, so I suppose that's a good place to start. This album is much darker than West's previous releases, and that's due to a bunch of factors, namely the death of his mother last year, and the cancellation of his engagement to then-fianceé Alexis Phifer. Also, all the beats on the album were created with the Roland TR-808 drum machine in order to evoke specific emotions and take a "minimal but functional" approach to the songs. So the basic concept behind this album is literally expressed in the title: 808s & Heartbreak.
That being said, I have to point out that Kanye absolutely nailed it. This is an album full of truly unique, catchy, and memorable songs. I found it seriously impressive that Kanye could go out of his comfort zone in so many ways and come back stronger than ever. Each song is totally different from the rest. The opening track, "Say You Will", is a plaintive, lengthy song. I love the minor to major key change he throws in a few times, but half the song is just the beat, and when the song comes in at over 6 minutes, that might be a little too much. But the album doesn't suffer from it. In fact, it pushes forward, giving it a bit more gas, ending up at "Welcome To Heartbreak", which sounds nothing like a Kanye West song, which is something you're gonna have to get used to quickly on this album. It's got a nifty piano line coupled with a simple beat, with Kid Cudi adding a catchy chorus. "Heartless" is the first real single aside from "Love Lockdown", and it's a great song. Just to recap: it's a straight up radio single, the singer uses auto-tune, it's about being heart broken because of a girl, and it's STILL a good song. Well, at least until it saturates every nook and cranny of the club and mainstream radio scenes. But it's great right now! "Amazing" is one of the darker tracks, one that conjures images of ghetto cowboys idly ambling along a lonely trail. Young Jeezy contributes a verse, but it's nothing special. "Love Lockdown" is a song that mostly everyone knows by now, and for good reason. Even over a month later, it's still fresh and fits perfectly with the rest of the album. "Paranoid" is one of my favorites on 808s, and is closer in style and substance to what Kanye usually does; it resembles hip hop more than the rest, played over what sounds like a remixed 80s pop song. This brings us to "RoboCop", my current favorite. It starts out with a badass beat, leading you to believe it might be some sort of hardcore hip hop song, but then the strings come in, bringing Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" to mind, until you realize Kanye did it better. This song is boundlessly catchy, and the lush instrumentation in the chorus and the way he uses RoboCop sounds in the post-chorus make this song a serious standout. "Street Lights" is a slower, hopeful song where Kanye claims "I know my destination, I'm just not there." This is followed by "Bad News", which is seemingly a sort of interlude song, but valuable all the same. Lil' Wayne makes a guest appearance in "See You In My Nightmares", which puts Young Jeezy's verse earlier to shame. "Coldest Winter", a touching song in which he reminisces about his mother, closes out the actual album. There is one more song, however, but it's a live recording from Singapore, entitled "Pinocchio Story." It's a freestyle from that concert that was included because Beyoncé Knowles convinced Kanye to include it. It's good, but it does not need to be there, and the album would've concluded so perfectly after "Coldest Winter", but when you're Beyoncé and you're famous and you've never done anything good before, why start now?
If you're still hung up on the auto-tune aspect, don't be. After a song or two, you won't even notice. West noted that certain parts of them album are auto-tuned to represent heartbreak. Most of the songs aren't very heavily auto-tuned, anyway. It's a minor issue, especially when compared to the album as a whole.
So let's get one thing straight. This isn't hip hop, rap, or anything like it. It seems that 'pop' really is the best word to describe it. Since he's not rapping on most tracks, it forces Kanye to use his voice in more and different ways, especially as far as singing goes. His singing on this album is top notch, and the amount of vocal, musical, and atmospheric hooks Kanye has produced on 808s & Heartbreak is absolutely outstanding. Upon first listen, about half the songs are memorable. Upon second listen, every single one of them is. It baffles my mind how Kanye, by effectively limiting his resources, managed to make something so unique, creative, and diverse. In fact, I think it's fair to say that Kanye pushes himself harder on this album, in terms of music, lyrics, vocals, creativity, and hooks, than on any of his previous efforts. It solidifies and furthers his status as a trend setter, and shows how unequivocally unmatched Kanye is, as far as progressiveness goes, in his genre.
7/7
11.20.2008
The Sarah Silverman Program (S02E15)
Honestly, I have no idea what to say about this episode of The Sarah Silverman Program. There were so damn many absurd things that happened in this episode, it's hard to begin to remember them. I guess the right place to start is to tell you that, for some reason, Sarah Silverman is pregnant. She can't be bothered to know who the father is though, she doesn't keep track of everything that goes in and out of her body. They showed some episode continuity by having her call up God, expecting him to be the father, but he never replies unfortunately.
So she has a Baby Shower. Steve lets Brian know he's about to birth a brown baby himself, noting he has to go home to do it because 'not an away game' situation. As he's taking a large crap, he poops out his back. Brian comes in to try and help him, and in the process throws his back out too, leaving two grown men, one half naked, lying in the floor in the bathroom. Even though we know they're "gay", this scene is almost unbearably awkward.
The funniest part in the episode, I think, was when Sarah's maid, Dora, dresses up like the Chris Farley SNL character, Matt Foley, and does her impression of him. Pretty much any mention of Chris Foley will get a laugh out of me, and this one was no exception.
Sarah eventually decides that she's going to put the baby up for adoption, so she has a bunch of people over at her house. Her sister Laura lets her know that she and Jay want to adopt the baby, but after considering this, she tells them to join the rest of the hopefuls. To decide once and for all who gets the baby, Sarah decides there's no better option than a go-kart race. Which is true. Sarah herself wins the race, in part because her water breaks and it makes everyone else spin out.
After heading to the hospital, the doctor tells her he's retiring tomorrow and moving to Boca Raton, only to get his face melted off by what begins to come out of Sarah: a winged gargoyle-like beast, whom she decides to name Seth.
This episode was really hit or miss. I only laughed a few times, specifically at the Zach Braff burp joke, when Jay leaves the race on his go-kart, and when Sarah describes why she doesn't like Chinese food: "it hits my stomach, and it says "this isn't cereal, it's too rich." If you're into the more ridiculous episodes of the Sarah Silverman Program, this one's for you. If not, there are a few chuckle-worthy moments.
3/7
So she has a Baby Shower. Steve lets Brian know he's about to birth a brown baby himself, noting he has to go home to do it because 'not an away game' situation. As he's taking a large crap, he poops out his back. Brian comes in to try and help him, and in the process throws his back out too, leaving two grown men, one half naked, lying in the floor in the bathroom. Even though we know they're "gay", this scene is almost unbearably awkward.
The funniest part in the episode, I think, was when Sarah's maid, Dora, dresses up like the Chris Farley SNL character, Matt Foley, and does her impression of him. Pretty much any mention of Chris Foley will get a laugh out of me, and this one was no exception.
Sarah eventually decides that she's going to put the baby up for adoption, so she has a bunch of people over at her house. Her sister Laura lets her know that she and Jay want to adopt the baby, but after considering this, she tells them to join the rest of the hopefuls. To decide once and for all who gets the baby, Sarah decides there's no better option than a go-kart race. Which is true. Sarah herself wins the race, in part because her water breaks and it makes everyone else spin out.
After heading to the hospital, the doctor tells her he's retiring tomorrow and moving to Boca Raton, only to get his face melted off by what begins to come out of Sarah: a winged gargoyle-like beast, whom she decides to name Seth.
This episode was really hit or miss. I only laughed a few times, specifically at the Zach Braff burp joke, when Jay leaves the race on his go-kart, and when Sarah describes why she doesn't like Chinese food: "it hits my stomach, and it says "this isn't cereal, it's too rich." If you're into the more ridiculous episodes of the Sarah Silverman Program, this one's for you. If not, there are a few chuckle-worthy moments.
3/7
11.14.2008
Watching the Detectives
Paul Soter, congratulations, because not only are you a member of a comedy troupe that has made multiple hilarious movies that have already become cult classics, but you have written and directed a movie that made me feel like a movie hasn't been able to in quite a long time. It's a fleeting feeling that makes colors look slightly brighter, allows you to tune out the person that just cut you off, and makes apples taste juicier and crunchier than ever. It's a feeling called happiness. Pure and simple, nothing more, nothing less. That's not to say that I'm some dark, depressed dude who rarely sees the light of day. It's just that this movie did everything right.
Watching the Detectives is a romantic comedy at heart. However, I hate to call it that because that creates all sorts of stigmas for all sorts of people. It's about a guy named Neil (Cillian Murphy) who works at a floundering movie-rental store, and mysterious a girl named Violet (Lucy Liu) who turns his world upside down. Sound generic, cliché even? Indeed it does, and for Watching the Detectives to still come out nearly flawless is a true feat.
The romance is adequately covered; Lucy Liu's character is the kind of girl that every man would like to meet: bubbly but not annoyingly so, spontaneous and adventurous, enigmatic, cute, and charming. And Cillian Murphy's character, who is predictable but not quite boring, eats it up like a death-row inmate sitting in front of his last meal. They get into all sorts of escapades together like a modern day, sexy Bonnie and Clyde. While you're watching you actually can feel the connection quickly forming between the two. The comedy is fantastic, too. The best part about it is that it strays so far away from what is currently considered "comedy": there is no BS slapstick, no lame one-liners, no irrelevant references to pop culture. It relies on situation irony and mundane actions and events that you won't know are funny until you're actually laughing at them, like when Neil is running the bases at his softball game, bawling like a little girl.
The real beef of this movie lies in analysis. The entire movie analyzes different aspects of life, love, and chance. The characters actually have intelligent, relatively deep conversations about these things. And I know some people will be immediately turned off by that notion, but Soter manages never to make it sound preachy or uninteresting. There's that old saying, "Opposites attract." That's great and true, but this movie looks at it more as "opposites are never as opposite as you think they are." It's hard to sum it up. Watch and you'll understand.
Paul Soter has crafted a winner of a movie. I was engaged the entire time, I never heard a single line that didn't work, and everything that happened in the movie felt natural and right. Soter's inspiration comes from films of the past, an element that is featured largely in the movie. Perhaps it's this interest in cinema of the past that allows him to write from a different perspective than other current filmmakers. That and the fact that he's inherently very funny. In fact, if you've seen him in any of his other movies, especially Super Troopers, chances are you'll be able to extract any line that anybody in the movie says and mentally hear and see it coming straight from him. Watching the Detectives is oozing with personality, and every character is consistent. It's a fun movie that manages to never hit up the cheese dip, and it will leave you satisfied and happy. It even has a perfect emotional climax, a cathartic scene that fully and adequately explains Liu's character's motives, but not in a lame or overtly obvious way. Plus, I always disliked Lucy Liu, but this movie has totally won me over for her. To wrap up a tangled and messy conclusion, it's almost like a smart Garden State for adults, not embarrassingly hip, confused teenagers.
7/7
Watching the Detectives is a romantic comedy at heart. However, I hate to call it that because that creates all sorts of stigmas for all sorts of people. It's about a guy named Neil (Cillian Murphy) who works at a floundering movie-rental store, and mysterious a girl named Violet (Lucy Liu) who turns his world upside down. Sound generic, cliché even? Indeed it does, and for Watching the Detectives to still come out nearly flawless is a true feat.
The romance is adequately covered; Lucy Liu's character is the kind of girl that every man would like to meet: bubbly but not annoyingly so, spontaneous and adventurous, enigmatic, cute, and charming. And Cillian Murphy's character, who is predictable but not quite boring, eats it up like a death-row inmate sitting in front of his last meal. They get into all sorts of escapades together like a modern day, sexy Bonnie and Clyde. While you're watching you actually can feel the connection quickly forming between the two. The comedy is fantastic, too. The best part about it is that it strays so far away from what is currently considered "comedy": there is no BS slapstick, no lame one-liners, no irrelevant references to pop culture. It relies on situation irony and mundane actions and events that you won't know are funny until you're actually laughing at them, like when Neil is running the bases at his softball game, bawling like a little girl.
The real beef of this movie lies in analysis. The entire movie analyzes different aspects of life, love, and chance. The characters actually have intelligent, relatively deep conversations about these things. And I know some people will be immediately turned off by that notion, but Soter manages never to make it sound preachy or uninteresting. There's that old saying, "Opposites attract." That's great and true, but this movie looks at it more as "opposites are never as opposite as you think they are." It's hard to sum it up. Watch and you'll understand.
Paul Soter has crafted a winner of a movie. I was engaged the entire time, I never heard a single line that didn't work, and everything that happened in the movie felt natural and right. Soter's inspiration comes from films of the past, an element that is featured largely in the movie. Perhaps it's this interest in cinema of the past that allows him to write from a different perspective than other current filmmakers. That and the fact that he's inherently very funny. In fact, if you've seen him in any of his other movies, especially Super Troopers, chances are you'll be able to extract any line that anybody in the movie says and mentally hear and see it coming straight from him. Watching the Detectives is oozing with personality, and every character is consistent. It's a fun movie that manages to never hit up the cheese dip, and it will leave you satisfied and happy. It even has a perfect emotional climax, a cathartic scene that fully and adequately explains Liu's character's motives, but not in a lame or overtly obvious way. Plus, I always disliked Lucy Liu, but this movie has totally won me over for her. To wrap up a tangled and messy conclusion, it's almost like a smart Garden State for adults, not embarrassingly hip, confused teenagers.
7/7
11.13.2008
Baby Mama
For a long time, I didn't think Tina Fey was funny. At all. When she first started doing Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live some years ago, I thought for sure it was the end. Of Weekend Update. So I stopped watching it. Problem solved. 'Til Tina's spot-on Palin impression that took the country by storm. Now that the election is over and stuff is calming down, I figured I'd give Fey another try and check out her movie, Baby Mama.
The first thing about the movie I noticed is that it seemed like Fey just saw Knocked Up and realized that babies could get laughs, so they tossed a bunch of them in the beginning. In fact, if I had to mathematically break down this movie, it'd probably look like this: Knocked Up + Wedding Crashers + chick flick = Baby Mama. It's basically an Apatow production for women.
As far as the humor goes, it's there, but it's not the main attraction. Tina Fey is the straight man and Amy Poehler is the funny man, it's as simple as that. Poehler delivers most of the jokes, and is the rest of them. In fact, I'd say that Poehler put in the best performance of all the characters in Baby Mama. She was the funniest, the most dynamic, AND in the movie she actually grew up and matured, something I've always wanted to see happen to Amy Poehler, on screen or off. Fey seemed like she was basically herself with a bossy hat on, and her character never really changed at all, even at the end of the movie she seemed like she had just fallen back into place where she used to be with a few situational details modified. Greg Kinnear played the same role he plays in half of his movies, but that was fine with me. Steve Martin basically played Kevin Nealon's role in Grandma's Boy. The side characters were pretty mundane and under-developed, but I guess that's why they're side characters.
When you take off all the bells and whistles, Baby Mama is a typical chick flick dramedy -- two people get close, one person messes it up, sad music montage leads to a happy ending in a convenient twist of circumstance. Is it worth watching? Yes. Tina Fey put together an entertaining cast of actors and characters to back her up. Is it funny enough to be called a comedy? It's debatable, but Poehler and Romany Malco definitely get some good laughs. Did it make me like Tina Fey any more than previously? I'd say so.
4/7
The first thing about the movie I noticed is that it seemed like Fey just saw Knocked Up and realized that babies could get laughs, so they tossed a bunch of them in the beginning. In fact, if I had to mathematically break down this movie, it'd probably look like this: Knocked Up + Wedding Crashers + chick flick = Baby Mama. It's basically an Apatow production for women.
As far as the humor goes, it's there, but it's not the main attraction. Tina Fey is the straight man and Amy Poehler is the funny man, it's as simple as that. Poehler delivers most of the jokes, and is the rest of them. In fact, I'd say that Poehler put in the best performance of all the characters in Baby Mama. She was the funniest, the most dynamic, AND in the movie she actually grew up and matured, something I've always wanted to see happen to Amy Poehler, on screen or off. Fey seemed like she was basically herself with a bossy hat on, and her character never really changed at all, even at the end of the movie she seemed like she had just fallen back into place where she used to be with a few situational details modified. Greg Kinnear played the same role he plays in half of his movies, but that was fine with me. Steve Martin basically played Kevin Nealon's role in Grandma's Boy. The side characters were pretty mundane and under-developed, but I guess that's why they're side characters.
When you take off all the bells and whistles, Baby Mama is a typical chick flick dramedy -- two people get close, one person messes it up, sad music montage leads to a happy ending in a convenient twist of circumstance. Is it worth watching? Yes. Tina Fey put together an entertaining cast of actors and characters to back her up. Is it funny enough to be called a comedy? It's debatable, but Poehler and Romany Malco definitely get some good laughs. Did it make me like Tina Fey any more than previously? I'd say so.
4/7
Chocolate News (S01E03)
It makes sense that Chocolate News, being rather chocolatey, would be at its best with Obama on the verge of winning the presidency. There's just so much damn material! And they definitely took advantage of it. So lets jump right in.
DAG always starts the show by pleading with somebody to "Please, do not lose yo damn mind!" This week, it was addressed to Black people in general. He claimed that it was critical that they "tone down the coon-age" until Obama wins the White House, and it seems to have worked. It was a particularly good bit, especially the part about the sacrifices that DAG himself is making, notably the bit about what he'd say if he got in an accident with a White person and it WASN'T his fault: "I'm not gonna yell, scream, or even honk my horn, I'm gonna get out, laugh at the dents, and say "Chet, it happens all the time. Hope and Change!" He also points out that a few famous Black people need to change their ways; for example, Steve Harvey - stop wearing Steve Harvey suits:
The first actual skit was one of the funniest of any so far, I think. It detailed the life of a 55 year-old, married man with two kids, Robert Rhonstein. He is also a wigger. Apparently, some people just don't grow out of it, so they took Robert to the De-Negrofication Institute, a "rehabilitation facility dedicated to deprogramming wiggers everywhere." This whole skit was hilarious, from when he's being forced to listen to White people music, to my favorite part of the episode, where DAG is trying to teach him how to talk normally. The guy they got to play the wigger makes the whole skit work by looking and sounding absurdly funny.
The next, almost equally funny, skit is a report on the first African-American porn star, Licorice Stick. After some personal accounts about Licorice Stick from some old friends, they show a video from 1979 of Stick himself, going through some of the moves he made up. The list goes on forever, and that's about how long you'll laugh at it. Some of the names are absolutely brilliant. The Itchy Spider?! There are so many I want to say, but I don't wanna spoil them.
The last skit of the show pulls back the curtain on a little-known affliction called Fat Black Momma Syndrome, or FBMS for short. Why would a man want to be a Fat Black Momma? Respect. A Fat, Black Momma garners some r-e-s-p-e-c-t like nobody else. Take this scene for example: an average Black father trying to get his children off the TV has no effect, but when he drops a wig on his head and yells "Y'all kids betta turn that TV off 'fore I hit you in the head with my house shoe!", they listen immediately!
This is a top-notch example of how good Chocolate News can be. Almost every joke and skit in this episode is high-quality and original, it's mildly satirical, and it kept me laughing the whole time. Even the correspondents on the show are pretty funny, or, at the very least none of them are terrible. If the show can stay at this level, I'll be surprised, but it'll truly deserve a permanent spot on Comedy Central.
6/7
DAG always starts the show by pleading with somebody to "Please, do not lose yo damn mind!" This week, it was addressed to Black people in general. He claimed that it was critical that they "tone down the coon-age" until Obama wins the White House, and it seems to have worked. It was a particularly good bit, especially the part about the sacrifices that DAG himself is making, notably the bit about what he'd say if he got in an accident with a White person and it WASN'T his fault: "I'm not gonna yell, scream, or even honk my horn, I'm gonna get out, laugh at the dents, and say "Chet, it happens all the time. Hope and Change!" He also points out that a few famous Black people need to change their ways; for example, Steve Harvey - stop wearing Steve Harvey suits:
The first actual skit was one of the funniest of any so far, I think. It detailed the life of a 55 year-old, married man with two kids, Robert Rhonstein. He is also a wigger. Apparently, some people just don't grow out of it, so they took Robert to the De-Negrofication Institute, a "rehabilitation facility dedicated to deprogramming wiggers everywhere." This whole skit was hilarious, from when he's being forced to listen to White people music, to my favorite part of the episode, where DAG is trying to teach him how to talk normally. The guy they got to play the wigger makes the whole skit work by looking and sounding absurdly funny.
The next, almost equally funny, skit is a report on the first African-American porn star, Licorice Stick. After some personal accounts about Licorice Stick from some old friends, they show a video from 1979 of Stick himself, going through some of the moves he made up. The list goes on forever, and that's about how long you'll laugh at it. Some of the names are absolutely brilliant. The Itchy Spider?! There are so many I want to say, but I don't wanna spoil them.
The last skit of the show pulls back the curtain on a little-known affliction called Fat Black Momma Syndrome, or FBMS for short. Why would a man want to be a Fat Black Momma? Respect. A Fat, Black Momma garners some r-e-s-p-e-c-t like nobody else. Take this scene for example: an average Black father trying to get his children off the TV has no effect, but when he drops a wig on his head and yells "Y'all kids betta turn that TV off 'fore I hit you in the head with my house shoe!", they listen immediately!
This is a top-notch example of how good Chocolate News can be. Almost every joke and skit in this episode is high-quality and original, it's mildly satirical, and it kept me laughing the whole time. Even the correspondents on the show are pretty funny, or, at the very least none of them are terrible. If the show can stay at this level, I'll be surprised, but it'll truly deserve a permanent spot on Comedy Central.
6/7
11.11.2008
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia is the next adventure in the growing line of Castlevania DS games. It takes place after Symphony of the Night, the Order of Ecclesia is trying put together a plan to take out Dracula, who has been terrorizing people for centuries. You play as Shanoa, a woman chosen by Ecclesia's leader, Barlowe, to host "Dominus", a three-piece magical glyph, which I'll talk more about later. Apparently Barlowe told Shanoa's friend, Albus, that he would actually be the vessel through which Dominus defeats Dracula, so while the ritual is being performed on Shanoa, Albus runs up and ruins everything. After stealing the glyphs and disappearing, Shanoa has no choice but to find him and get them back, thus the motivation for the gameplay.
The story is actually pretty cool. There are some nice plot twists, and there's even an alternate ending, which is the first I've ever seen on a DS game. The gameplay is pretty simple - X, Y, and R buttons all perform attacks, or "glyphs". Glyphs are magic or weapons or both absorbed by Shanoa by standing under them and holding the Up button. Apart from having multiple glyphs to use, you can set multiple glyph groups that you can switch back and forth from. All this is to fight various ghouls, monsters, and freaks, just like in pretty much every Castlevania. Killing enemies will then level you up, increasing your attack and defense and everything else. The game has many classic RPG elements to it, even though it's considered a "Castleroid" game -- meaning it incorporates gameplay features first used by Super Metroid, such as non-linear exploration, the ability to unlock new areas by finding items, and side-scrolling.
The game itself is actually pretty damn hard. I found myself dying multiple times before I even got to the first save point, which was a pretty frustrating ordeal. If you don't get stuck on the same part a bunch of times, though, you'll probably have the motivation to keep going. It's not impossible or anything. The gameplay is seriously enhanced in this game; it's smoother, there are better fighting combos, the story is captivating, and the game is just more fun in general than most of the older ones. On top of that, the artwork is totally revamped, going from more of an anime-style to a sort of traditional gothic animation. Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia is the first canonical Castlevania to feature a female lead character, so enjoy it, fanboys.
5/7
The story is actually pretty cool. There are some nice plot twists, and there's even an alternate ending, which is the first I've ever seen on a DS game. The gameplay is pretty simple - X, Y, and R buttons all perform attacks, or "glyphs". Glyphs are magic or weapons or both absorbed by Shanoa by standing under them and holding the Up button. Apart from having multiple glyphs to use, you can set multiple glyph groups that you can switch back and forth from. All this is to fight various ghouls, monsters, and freaks, just like in pretty much every Castlevania. Killing enemies will then level you up, increasing your attack and defense and everything else. The game has many classic RPG elements to it, even though it's considered a "Castleroid" game -- meaning it incorporates gameplay features first used by Super Metroid, such as non-linear exploration, the ability to unlock new areas by finding items, and side-scrolling.
The game itself is actually pretty damn hard. I found myself dying multiple times before I even got to the first save point, which was a pretty frustrating ordeal. If you don't get stuck on the same part a bunch of times, though, you'll probably have the motivation to keep going. It's not impossible or anything. The gameplay is seriously enhanced in this game; it's smoother, there are better fighting combos, the story is captivating, and the game is just more fun in general than most of the older ones. On top of that, the artwork is totally revamped, going from more of an anime-style to a sort of traditional gothic animation. Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia is the first canonical Castlevania to feature a female lead character, so enjoy it, fanboys.
5/7
11.10.2008
Kaki King - Dreaming of Revenge
First of all, if you don't know who Kaki King is, HA HA! Second, you're about to know who she is, because her most recent album, Dreaming of Revenge, is pretty much a masterpiece. It was released in March of this year and somehow, regrettably, it slipped under my radar until now. Kaki King has been getting lots of publicity recently; she had a few songs on the Into The Wild soundtrack, she wrote some music for August Rush as well as serving as a hand-double for the guitar playing scenes, and she was even in a duet with Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters for a song on their newest album. She's come a long way from when I saw her in an edition of Guitar World magazine a few years ago, featuring her as an up-and-coming guitar hero.
Her playing style is unique, to say the least. I'm sure you've seen a few of those guys on TV or wherever, those people that play "slap guitar", if you will; they pluck pop the strings and create rhythms by slapping their guitar while playing to create some sort of tribal, primitive, melodic music that astounds everybody in the room because they've never heard anything like it. Kaki King is that times ten. Her music started out completely instrumental, just her and a guitar making crazy sounds. Since then, however, it's grown and evolved into something bigger, more encompassing. On her third album, ...Until We Felt Red, she finally introduced the world to her singing voice, which had been unnecessarily neglected on her first two albums, because it's as lovely as the music she creates. On Dreaming of Revenge, she utilizes her voice far more than on any previous release, as well as opening her music up to many other sources of inspiration and variety. For instance, she returns to her original instrument, the drums, on this album in a big way. She's listed as contributing "guitar (electric/acoustic), slide guitar, bass, drums, piano, other randomly weird instruments, tears" to the album, so obviously she's opened up her repertoire quite a bit. And it's as impressive as it sounds; she's seemingly a master at each of these instruments, demonstrating definitive dexterity and deftness all over the carefully crafted songs included on Dreaming of Revenge. All of these newfound options combine to create the most coherent, catchy, diverse, atmospheric, and most of all, accessible, Kaki King album to date.
The album kicks off with "Bone Chaos In the Castle", which opens the album with a classic style Kaki King guitar riff, but quickly makes way for drums and, gasp, an actual individual melody! An item that most older Kaki King songs lacked, because the melodies were built-in to the rhythm. This song, in my opinion, is a great representation of Kaki King in general. It presents both the acoustic, hammer-on pull-off style of music that she broke into the scene with, as well as the additional melodies and drums and ambient noise that characterizes some of her newer music, as if to say "Hey there, nice to meet you, here are both of my musical sides, get used to 'em." This tune gives way to "Life Being What It Is", a personal song that King refers to as a breakup song. Tender and sweeping, this finger-picked lament is probably my current favorite on the album, possibly because it's one of Kaki's most straightforward songs to date -- mostly just her guitar and her voice, with some accompanying strings to help with the mood. Speaking of the mood, this song is so intimate that while listening you really get the sense that the music is really an accurate reflection of her mental state and her very being, creating a sort of super empathy, thus accomplishing the very intent of music at its core. "Sad American", one of my other favorites on the album, is the third song, either lightly brooding or darkly contemplating with a satisfying hook. It's a very ambient and atmospheric song. "Pull Me Out Alive" throws you at the beginning because, in the midst of these hyper creative songs, it sounds like she's pulling a page out of the nineties and employing this cliché, staccato method of singing while playing muted power chords, but the chorus makes up for it, and in the rest of the verses, that notion is shattered completely.
"Montreal" is an interesting song because the entire thing is based on the opening guitar riff, which provides the skeleton and foundation of the song. You might think a song with the same guitar riff playing the whole time would be the opposite of fascinating, but I'll let you experience it for yourself. In my opinion it provides an underlying structure for the song, which allows the rest of the instruments in the song to experiment and be a bit more free. "Open Mouth" is a dreamscape-esque song, which halfway turns a bit darker, aided by rapid violin and a more menacing, minor-key chord progression. "So Much For So Little" catches your attention within moments of beginning due to the syncopated and offbeat rhythm, as well as how the guitar affects it, securing its spot as one of the most entertaining songs on Dreaming of Revenge. "Saving Days In a Frozen Head" is another heavy-hearted, vocal-oriented song, and this one specifically so, because there are so many layers of her voice, which makes this a standout track. The next song, "Air and Kilometers", is a punchy, choppy, syncopated guitar-centric track that relies on strings to keep it lifted. After listening to the existentially titled "Can Anyone Who Has Heard This Music Really Be A Bad Person?", I find myself asking the same thing. Kaki seriously rocks out on the drums in this song. It's moody and intimidating, just like a woman. The closing tune, entitled "2 O'Clock", is another hushed, intimate song with regretful, melancholy lyrics until about halfway through, when Kaki sings more boldly than she ever has before.
Simply put, Dreaming of Revenge is Kaki King's best, most creative, most accessible, catchiest, most melodic and emotional album to date, by leaps and bounds. I was going to say that Kaki King knows guitar like the back of her hand, but at this point I think it'd be a crime to not replace "guitar" with "music". The amount of instruments and the proportion of music she played to the total music on the album is simply astounding. Especially the drums; her style is so fluid and she's so adaptable, I was unbelievably impressed. She crafts such interesting, smart chord progressions that she manages to make all of her songs sound new - hardly one of them sounds like something you've heard before; or if it does, she goes out of her way to change that pretty quickly. Kaki said on this album she wanted to concentrate more on creating hooks and melodies, and she has inarguably and applaudably accomplished that goal -- there's not a song on this album without at least ONE moment that will stay with you. In a recent interview, she said she feels like she's writing pop songs. In some ways she is, but she's writing on multiple levels, which is a sign of a competent musician. It has always been clear that she is an incredible musician, but now I think it might be safe to say that she's a musical genius. It's obvious that she truly puts tons of time and effort into her music from the macro scale, where the songs in general are amazing, to the micro scale, on which she adds tons of little parts that enhance the music in small but important ways, like harmonics, ghost notes, atmospherics, slide guitar. In an interview, Kaki King said, “I want people to listen to it and think, ‘This sounds like something completely new, but it also sounds like something Kaki King would do’". It's hard to believe how accurate that statement really is; I've rarely listened to an artist more self-aware and embodied by his/her music. If you're a fan, check this out NOW. If you don't know her, check it out even sooner.
7/7
Her playing style is unique, to say the least. I'm sure you've seen a few of those guys on TV or wherever, those people that play "slap guitar", if you will; they pluck pop the strings and create rhythms by slapping their guitar while playing to create some sort of tribal, primitive, melodic music that astounds everybody in the room because they've never heard anything like it. Kaki King is that times ten. Her music started out completely instrumental, just her and a guitar making crazy sounds. Since then, however, it's grown and evolved into something bigger, more encompassing. On her third album, ...Until We Felt Red, she finally introduced the world to her singing voice, which had been unnecessarily neglected on her first two albums, because it's as lovely as the music she creates. On Dreaming of Revenge, she utilizes her voice far more than on any previous release, as well as opening her music up to many other sources of inspiration and variety. For instance, she returns to her original instrument, the drums, on this album in a big way. She's listed as contributing "guitar (electric/acoustic), slide guitar, bass, drums, piano, other randomly weird instruments, tears" to the album, so obviously she's opened up her repertoire quite a bit. And it's as impressive as it sounds; she's seemingly a master at each of these instruments, demonstrating definitive dexterity and deftness all over the carefully crafted songs included on Dreaming of Revenge. All of these newfound options combine to create the most coherent, catchy, diverse, atmospheric, and most of all, accessible, Kaki King album to date.
The album kicks off with "Bone Chaos In the Castle", which opens the album with a classic style Kaki King guitar riff, but quickly makes way for drums and, gasp, an actual individual melody! An item that most older Kaki King songs lacked, because the melodies were built-in to the rhythm. This song, in my opinion, is a great representation of Kaki King in general. It presents both the acoustic, hammer-on pull-off style of music that she broke into the scene with, as well as the additional melodies and drums and ambient noise that characterizes some of her newer music, as if to say "Hey there, nice to meet you, here are both of my musical sides, get used to 'em." This tune gives way to "Life Being What It Is", a personal song that King refers to as a breakup song. Tender and sweeping, this finger-picked lament is probably my current favorite on the album, possibly because it's one of Kaki's most straightforward songs to date -- mostly just her guitar and her voice, with some accompanying strings to help with the mood. Speaking of the mood, this song is so intimate that while listening you really get the sense that the music is really an accurate reflection of her mental state and her very being, creating a sort of super empathy, thus accomplishing the very intent of music at its core. "Sad American", one of my other favorites on the album, is the third song, either lightly brooding or darkly contemplating with a satisfying hook. It's a very ambient and atmospheric song. "Pull Me Out Alive" throws you at the beginning because, in the midst of these hyper creative songs, it sounds like she's pulling a page out of the nineties and employing this cliché, staccato method of singing while playing muted power chords, but the chorus makes up for it, and in the rest of the verses, that notion is shattered completely.
"Montreal" is an interesting song because the entire thing is based on the opening guitar riff, which provides the skeleton and foundation of the song. You might think a song with the same guitar riff playing the whole time would be the opposite of fascinating, but I'll let you experience it for yourself. In my opinion it provides an underlying structure for the song, which allows the rest of the instruments in the song to experiment and be a bit more free. "Open Mouth" is a dreamscape-esque song, which halfway turns a bit darker, aided by rapid violin and a more menacing, minor-key chord progression. "So Much For So Little" catches your attention within moments of beginning due to the syncopated and offbeat rhythm, as well as how the guitar affects it, securing its spot as one of the most entertaining songs on Dreaming of Revenge. "Saving Days In a Frozen Head" is another heavy-hearted, vocal-oriented song, and this one specifically so, because there are so many layers of her voice, which makes this a standout track. The next song, "Air and Kilometers", is a punchy, choppy, syncopated guitar-centric track that relies on strings to keep it lifted. After listening to the existentially titled "Can Anyone Who Has Heard This Music Really Be A Bad Person?", I find myself asking the same thing. Kaki seriously rocks out on the drums in this song. It's moody and intimidating, just like a woman. The closing tune, entitled "2 O'Clock", is another hushed, intimate song with regretful, melancholy lyrics until about halfway through, when Kaki sings more boldly than she ever has before.
Simply put, Dreaming of Revenge is Kaki King's best, most creative, most accessible, catchiest, most melodic and emotional album to date, by leaps and bounds. I was going to say that Kaki King knows guitar like the back of her hand, but at this point I think it'd be a crime to not replace "guitar" with "music". The amount of instruments and the proportion of music she played to the total music on the album is simply astounding. Especially the drums; her style is so fluid and she's so adaptable, I was unbelievably impressed. She crafts such interesting, smart chord progressions that she manages to make all of her songs sound new - hardly one of them sounds like something you've heard before; or if it does, she goes out of her way to change that pretty quickly. Kaki said on this album she wanted to concentrate more on creating hooks and melodies, and she has inarguably and applaudably accomplished that goal -- there's not a song on this album without at least ONE moment that will stay with you. In a recent interview, she said she feels like she's writing pop songs. In some ways she is, but she's writing on multiple levels, which is a sign of a competent musician. It has always been clear that she is an incredible musician, but now I think it might be safe to say that she's a musical genius. It's obvious that she truly puts tons of time and effort into her music from the macro scale, where the songs in general are amazing, to the micro scale, on which she adds tons of little parts that enhance the music in small but important ways, like harmonics, ghost notes, atmospherics, slide guitar. In an interview, Kaki King said, “I want people to listen to it and think, ‘This sounds like something completely new, but it also sounds like something Kaki King would do’". It's hard to believe how accurate that statement really is; I've rarely listened to an artist more self-aware and embodied by his/her music. If you're a fan, check this out NOW. If you don't know her, check it out even sooner.
7/7
11.06.2008
Houston Calls - The End of an Error
Houston Calls used to be a ska band called Face First. That's how I know about them, that's why I like them. When they first split up and became Houston Calls, they put out a four song sampler with some of the best pop punk songs I've heard in a while. Needless to say, it was exciting; I thought I'd found a new favorite band (this was when I was like... sixteen). Then they started putting out songs in their finished quality, the songs that would actually be on their full length release, what became A Collection of Short Stories. I'm not sure how, but the band had transformed completely from what they started as, in a very short amount of time. Seriously, they managed to take a fast paced, slightly edgy sounding pop punk song and make it into an unbelievable piano-based pop song. The rest of their songs got a similar treatment.
That's why, when I found out Houston Calls' new album was to be called The End of an Error, I once again got excited. Hoping that they'd realized what wimps they'd become on the last album, I ventured into the first song, Modest Manifesto. It was a faster song, more rough sounding, like early Houston Calls. It was great. The lyrics were slightly juvenile, but if that's the cost of having songs with some semblance of testosterone, so be it, I thought. Even the second song, "Life Won't Wait" (Rancid? what?) sounded alright, really radio-friendly, but nothing as lame as the final version of A Line in the Sand (the aforementioned transformed punk song -- I don't mean to rant but it's literally so bad. It's like they gave the song a sex change). So that's great and all, it's a bouncy pop punk song, also filling the role of their first single. The lyrics weren't even that bad: "Life won't wait for me to get back on both my feet again; it just might sucker me into the new, and flip the switch on everything I do." Yeah, it's all been said before, but they found a slightly new way to say it. The next song, A Shot in the Dark came on and I felt absolutely nothing for it. Still don't. It's about at this point that the album loses most of its solidity. The next few songs are almost nothing but cliché, mostly unoriginal pop punk songs.
This is the one area that The End of an Error fails even harder than the first. While the first was full of wussified (replace that w with a p for what I actually think) songs, at the very least the songs were relatively original. They had interesting hooks that actually kept you wanting to listen. Many of the songs on this album I listened to multiple times trying desperately to grasp onto anything great, but I was left with nothing to hold on to. For example, the song Things Are Happening is a basic pop rock song, with a two second long piano part registering as the only unique part of a boring song. Stay With Me Tonight is more of a tender piano song, but instead of going all the way piano, they half-assed it and made it a tender pop-punk song with guitar and drums. I Fancy Abroad has a clever title and little more. Nagoya is actually one of the better songs on the album; the main guitar part is a trade-off between the two players, one playing the lower, power chords while the other plays the higher pitch, lead chords, and they alternate. The chorus is huge, with tons of people singing some of the parts, and it's actually pretty catchy. After that comes Behind The Gun, another piano-based rock song. Nothing new, nothing good. Abandone is the last good song on the album, rocking a drum 'n bass rhythm with some standard claps in there for good measure. The last two songs are You Can't Simi, and The Oaks On Prince Street. I don't know what Simi is, unless they're just making fun of Japanese people, but again, the song isn't as clever as the title. The final song, The Oaks On Prince Street, in no way lives up to its position. It's a decent song, slightly catchy, a bit less formulaic sounding, but it's nothing overly special. In fact, The Oaks On Prince Street is almost a metaphor for the entire album: it starts out promising and slow, gets loud and faster, then dies back down again and never reaches its full potential.
So a lackluster sophomore effort for Houston Calls solidifies the fact that they can't decide who they are or what they should be. It almost lacks more personality than their debut. I understand that they want to be a modern, new-wavy pop punk band, but when you only have ONE song with a synth in it (Abandone) when you started out as a synth-rock band, you're not doing that well. Entirely too much piano, not enough synth. The production is a bit slick, but it's not as bad as on A Collection of Short Stores. And I was a fool for thinking that not every song would be about a girl this time around. As much as I will probably always love this band, the music is really for like, 15 year olds at this point. The messages are mostly hackneyed and over-pondered at my age, and the music didn't keep my attention very well.
3/7
That's why, when I found out Houston Calls' new album was to be called The End of an Error, I once again got excited. Hoping that they'd realized what wimps they'd become on the last album, I ventured into the first song, Modest Manifesto. It was a faster song, more rough sounding, like early Houston Calls. It was great. The lyrics were slightly juvenile, but if that's the cost of having songs with some semblance of testosterone, so be it, I thought. Even the second song, "Life Won't Wait" (Rancid? what?) sounded alright, really radio-friendly, but nothing as lame as the final version of A Line in the Sand (the aforementioned transformed punk song -- I don't mean to rant but it's literally so bad. It's like they gave the song a sex change). So that's great and all, it's a bouncy pop punk song, also filling the role of their first single. The lyrics weren't even that bad: "Life won't wait for me to get back on both my feet again; it just might sucker me into the new, and flip the switch on everything I do." Yeah, it's all been said before, but they found a slightly new way to say it. The next song, A Shot in the Dark came on and I felt absolutely nothing for it. Still don't. It's about at this point that the album loses most of its solidity. The next few songs are almost nothing but cliché, mostly unoriginal pop punk songs.
This is the one area that The End of an Error fails even harder than the first. While the first was full of wussified (replace that w with a p for what I actually think) songs, at the very least the songs were relatively original. They had interesting hooks that actually kept you wanting to listen. Many of the songs on this album I listened to multiple times trying desperately to grasp onto anything great, but I was left with nothing to hold on to. For example, the song Things Are Happening is a basic pop rock song, with a two second long piano part registering as the only unique part of a boring song. Stay With Me Tonight is more of a tender piano song, but instead of going all the way piano, they half-assed it and made it a tender pop-punk song with guitar and drums. I Fancy Abroad has a clever title and little more. Nagoya is actually one of the better songs on the album; the main guitar part is a trade-off between the two players, one playing the lower, power chords while the other plays the higher pitch, lead chords, and they alternate. The chorus is huge, with tons of people singing some of the parts, and it's actually pretty catchy. After that comes Behind The Gun, another piano-based rock song. Nothing new, nothing good. Abandone is the last good song on the album, rocking a drum 'n bass rhythm with some standard claps in there for good measure. The last two songs are You Can't Simi, and The Oaks On Prince Street. I don't know what Simi is, unless they're just making fun of Japanese people, but again, the song isn't as clever as the title. The final song, The Oaks On Prince Street, in no way lives up to its position. It's a decent song, slightly catchy, a bit less formulaic sounding, but it's nothing overly special. In fact, The Oaks On Prince Street is almost a metaphor for the entire album: it starts out promising and slow, gets loud and faster, then dies back down again and never reaches its full potential.
So a lackluster sophomore effort for Houston Calls solidifies the fact that they can't decide who they are or what they should be. It almost lacks more personality than their debut. I understand that they want to be a modern, new-wavy pop punk band, but when you only have ONE song with a synth in it (Abandone) when you started out as a synth-rock band, you're not doing that well. Entirely too much piano, not enough synth. The production is a bit slick, but it's not as bad as on A Collection of Short Stores. And I was a fool for thinking that not every song would be about a girl this time around. As much as I will probably always love this band, the music is really for like, 15 year olds at this point. The messages are mostly hackneyed and over-pondered at my age, and the music didn't keep my attention very well.
3/7
11.04.2008
Chocolate News (S01E02)
To start out this review, I want to point out how great the Chocolate News logo is. After the title hits the background, a bunch of shiny little diamonds cover the word News, which I find absolutely hilarious.
Anyway, after viewing the second episode of this show, I feel like my hopes are beginning to be realized. This episode was easily as funny as the first, and it felt more concrete in its format; Chocolate News is becoming more of its own show, rather than mirroring its predecessors.
The first skit is about the economy. It looks at it from the view of a small, urban gang, the Black Guerilla family, which consists of three ganstas (one of which is David Alan Grier) and a crackwhore. They proceed to let us know how they can't service their neighborhood with the beatings and robbery that we would normally be blessed with because of the state of the economy. They don't have the money to pay for gas, basically, even resorting to doing drive-by's by bicycle! After, an economist informs us that "when crime is down, so is the economy." He uses the example of "psycho mike", who gets shot in the head. The funeral home, florist, police, etc. all will not get paid if psycho mike is not killed. So basically, there's your economic relief plan: rob and main people.
As lacking in funny as it sounds when I write it, it's pretty entertaining coming from David Alan Grier and co. So far, Chocolate News has been pretty good at coming up with decent comedic topics and ideas. Then again, it's only episode two. A hilarious, surprising surprise in this episode was when Niecy Nash, aka Raineesha Williams on Reno 911, showed up playing a parent of a little-league baseball player in the second skit. Man, I love that woman. The second skit details Thelonius Brown's institute to help little black children excel in baseball, through his controversial new method entitled ROIDS (Reinforcement, Optimism, Initiative, Dedication, and Support). Basically, he pumps little children full of steroids and throws them on the playing field. The funny part comes when you see little Troy, one of the outpatients of this institute. However, I think the funniest part is with Candelabra Effervescence, the transgender in the beauty pageant. The talent show section gets me every time.
Overall, the show is falling in place nicely I think. They're smart about the type of comedy that they use on Chocolate News, because it's funny and mainstream enough for the national white audience to grab ahold of it, and it's also got an underlying appeal to African-Americans not only in the issues it deals with, but in the spirit of the humor of the show. Without sounding racist, it's comedy that white people will laugh at, but black people will jump up and down and clap at and love. Also, if I make this sound like some sort of super black power show, it's not. It's as self-deprecating as it is self-appreciating. Last, if there's anybody who can continue to carry a show like this while keeping the high quality of the content, it's David Alan Grier. Earlier I remarked on how he could never really escape himself while portraying other characters, but now I really think that's a big part of why the producers chose him. He's very endearing, and he has enough charisma to perform this show to an audience of one and still sell it perfectly if he wanted.
5/7
Anyway, after viewing the second episode of this show, I feel like my hopes are beginning to be realized. This episode was easily as funny as the first, and it felt more concrete in its format; Chocolate News is becoming more of its own show, rather than mirroring its predecessors.
The first skit is about the economy. It looks at it from the view of a small, urban gang, the Black Guerilla family, which consists of three ganstas (one of which is David Alan Grier) and a crackwhore. They proceed to let us know how they can't service their neighborhood with the beatings and robbery that we would normally be blessed with because of the state of the economy. They don't have the money to pay for gas, basically, even resorting to doing drive-by's by bicycle! After, an economist informs us that "when crime is down, so is the economy." He uses the example of "psycho mike", who gets shot in the head. The funeral home, florist, police, etc. all will not get paid if psycho mike is not killed. So basically, there's your economic relief plan: rob and main people.
As lacking in funny as it sounds when I write it, it's pretty entertaining coming from David Alan Grier and co. So far, Chocolate News has been pretty good at coming up with decent comedic topics and ideas. Then again, it's only episode two. A hilarious, surprising surprise in this episode was when Niecy Nash, aka Raineesha Williams on Reno 911, showed up playing a parent of a little-league baseball player in the second skit. Man, I love that woman. The second skit details Thelonius Brown's institute to help little black children excel in baseball, through his controversial new method entitled ROIDS (Reinforcement, Optimism, Initiative, Dedication, and Support). Basically, he pumps little children full of steroids and throws them on the playing field. The funny part comes when you see little Troy, one of the outpatients of this institute. However, I think the funniest part is with Candelabra Effervescence, the transgender in the beauty pageant. The talent show section gets me every time.
Overall, the show is falling in place nicely I think. They're smart about the type of comedy that they use on Chocolate News, because it's funny and mainstream enough for the national white audience to grab ahold of it, and it's also got an underlying appeal to African-Americans not only in the issues it deals with, but in the spirit of the humor of the show. Without sounding racist, it's comedy that white people will laugh at, but black people will jump up and down and clap at and love. Also, if I make this sound like some sort of super black power show, it's not. It's as self-deprecating as it is self-appreciating. Last, if there's anybody who can continue to carry a show like this while keeping the high quality of the content, it's David Alan Grier. Earlier I remarked on how he could never really escape himself while portraying other characters, but now I really think that's a big part of why the producers chose him. He's very endearing, and he has enough charisma to perform this show to an audience of one and still sell it perfectly if he wanted.
5/7
11.03.2008
The Sarah Silverman Program (S02E13)
The Sarah Silverman Program has never been known for its strikingly coherent narrative. And it still isn't. And it's probably never going to be. But this week's episode did feel slightly more like a full, thought out (in a loose sense of the term) story than a plot derived from two or three jokes. I do have to stress the word 'slightly', too. Full-blown plot or half-baked story, I care not as long as it's still funny. And by God it was this week.
And yes, I know you're not supposed to start a sentence with "and".
Sarah finds herself underwater in a dream, her body modified to match that of a Mermaid. After singing a song with some fish and deciding it's cold underwater, she hustles over to a geothermal vent, spewing heated water, and sits on it to warm up, only to find herself in bed. Only problem is the bed is wet too. It seems that she's gone back to her old childhood habit of wetting the bed.
Meanwhile, Laura and Jay are out driving and discussing their vacation plans. They get a call from Sarah telling them that she's had an accident, so they haul ass over to her house expecting something terrible to have happened. When they get there, Sarah is sitting coolly on the couch, directing them to the bedroom, in which Jay finds a wet bed. Not the kind of accident that they'd been expecting, apparently.
Brian and Steve are, you guessed, fighting about something again in this week's episode. The fact that they're gay but they're also strangely not gay detracts from the viewers' ability to distinguish them as a couple, effectively making them seem way more married and annoying than they should be. Their arguments are always about stupid stuff though, so it's hard to take them too seriously. This time the argument is about Brian's beard, which has grown enormous, probably over a foot and a half long. Which is seriously commendable. Anyway, they're going to the mall to get their "ironic christmas pictures" taken, but Steve thinks that Brian's beard pushes the jokes a little bit over the edge. Brian obviously disagrees. They go to the mall to get the pictures, and Brian trips on the escalator, effectively catching his beard in the mechanism that keeps it moving. Steve slams the stop button, and who other than ADAM CAROLLA to come offer advice and support. He shows up sporting a wonderful mustache-less beard, informing Steve that a beard is a precious thing, each beard is unique, like a snowflake made of human hair. When the rescue op comes to a stand-still, the rest of the bearded workers come to remedy the situation.
Sarah ends up meeting a little girl with a bed wetting problem in the grocery store who gives her some valuable advice with which to battle her current affliction: ice cream, jelly beans, and no sleep. This is then turned into an awesome, catchy song about dry sheets, ice cream, and jelly beans being three of their favorite things. Damn, this song will be with me for days. In the end, Sarah doesn't actually solve her bed wetting problem, she just shoots Jay's turtle, Toot, because her lack of sleep convinces her that he's talking to her, attempting to convince her to take over the world. All in all, there weren't too many jokes in this episode, and the humor is more based on the situations. Adam Carolla was an unbelievable highlight to the episode that pushed the episode over the edge. In actuality, he's probably the only reason I'm giving this episode a seven, because he's just too damn awesome. One more thing I'd like to touch upon, that the brilliant Sarah Silverman does a good job bringing up at the end of this episode is the word milk. The word milk, and how some people tend to say it more like "melk" rather than with the I sound. Me and Sarah don't like it. Quit it.
7/7
And yes, I know you're not supposed to start a sentence with "and".
Sarah finds herself underwater in a dream, her body modified to match that of a Mermaid. After singing a song with some fish and deciding it's cold underwater, she hustles over to a geothermal vent, spewing heated water, and sits on it to warm up, only to find herself in bed. Only problem is the bed is wet too. It seems that she's gone back to her old childhood habit of wetting the bed.
Meanwhile, Laura and Jay are out driving and discussing their vacation plans. They get a call from Sarah telling them that she's had an accident, so they haul ass over to her house expecting something terrible to have happened. When they get there, Sarah is sitting coolly on the couch, directing them to the bedroom, in which Jay finds a wet bed. Not the kind of accident that they'd been expecting, apparently.
Brian and Steve are, you guessed, fighting about something again in this week's episode. The fact that they're gay but they're also strangely not gay detracts from the viewers' ability to distinguish them as a couple, effectively making them seem way more married and annoying than they should be. Their arguments are always about stupid stuff though, so it's hard to take them too seriously. This time the argument is about Brian's beard, which has grown enormous, probably over a foot and a half long. Which is seriously commendable. Anyway, they're going to the mall to get their "ironic christmas pictures" taken, but Steve thinks that Brian's beard pushes the jokes a little bit over the edge. Brian obviously disagrees. They go to the mall to get the pictures, and Brian trips on the escalator, effectively catching his beard in the mechanism that keeps it moving. Steve slams the stop button, and who other than ADAM CAROLLA to come offer advice and support. He shows up sporting a wonderful mustache-less beard, informing Steve that a beard is a precious thing, each beard is unique, like a snowflake made of human hair. When the rescue op comes to a stand-still, the rest of the bearded workers come to remedy the situation.
Sarah ends up meeting a little girl with a bed wetting problem in the grocery store who gives her some valuable advice with which to battle her current affliction: ice cream, jelly beans, and no sleep. This is then turned into an awesome, catchy song about dry sheets, ice cream, and jelly beans being three of their favorite things. Damn, this song will be with me for days. In the end, Sarah doesn't actually solve her bed wetting problem, she just shoots Jay's turtle, Toot, because her lack of sleep convinces her that he's talking to her, attempting to convince her to take over the world. All in all, there weren't too many jokes in this episode, and the humor is more based on the situations. Adam Carolla was an unbelievable highlight to the episode that pushed the episode over the edge. In actuality, he's probably the only reason I'm giving this episode a seven, because he's just too damn awesome. One more thing I'd like to touch upon, that the brilliant Sarah Silverman does a good job bringing up at the end of this episode is the word milk. The word milk, and how some people tend to say it more like "melk" rather than with the I sound. Me and Sarah don't like it. Quit it.
7/7
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