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
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