Archive for January, 2011

2010: A List of Movies.

I wasn’t planning on doing a movie list, but Joe here inspired me, so here it goes.  Like the music list, I’m doing every movie I saw this year.

First, here are the movies released this year that I still want to see

Dogtooth, Winter’s Bone, Enter the Void, and Valhalla Rising.

And now, the list.

19. The Social Network

18. Kick-Ass-Having already insulted these in my “ten things that sucked” post, I’ve got nothing new to add.

17.      Defendor- A more realistic look at “real world superheroes.”  This is the movie Kick-Ass claimed to be.  Woody Harrelson does a great job with the title character, but a bland story and a reliance on luck and coincidence make this one forgettable.

16.      The Book of Eli-I’m getting sick of muted color schemes.  This was an okay movie, but please, no more.  Denzel Washington is running on autopilot, but Gary Oldman is appropriately cartoonish and Tom Waits has a small role, so it aint all bad.  The fights and battles are all impressive too.

15.      Easy A-No, I didn’t see many movies this year, but this one had enough sexy-adults-as-teens to keep me interested.  (Even the ugly kids were rich and beautiful)  The story was surprisingly funny, and Stanley Tucci was outright hilarious as “wacky dad.” I still don’t get why everybody was so well off, though.

14.      Centurion-The characters were all interchangeable and there’s too much digital blood, but also a lot of stabbing and chopping of limbs.  The battles in this medieval adventure story are all impressive and the movie moves fast enough that it succeeds.  The outdoor scenery is all beautiful too, just don’t expect any depth.

13.      Tron: Legacy-Really boring and terribly paced, but in a good way.  It’s the best boring movie I saw this year.  It also had the best use of 3D I’ve seen since Beowulf.  The simple color scheme is lovely.  As a friend pointed out, the simplicity of red/black/blue make it easy to follow and keeps it believable.

12.      Greenberg-Greenberg’s a lot like the Social Network.  The protagonist is an unlikable, self-absorbed asshole, nothing of importance happens, and it ends just when things start to get interesting.  Being fictional, Greenberg at least has a glimmer of hope.  Ben Stiller turns in a cringe worthy performance as the title character.  He’s a middle aged carpenter, barely anybody can put up with him, and any windows of opportunity are closing fast.  I want Greenberg to succeed.  I want him to become a better person.

11.      127 Hours-127 Hours beats you over the head now and then, trying desperately to make you “get it.”  This only accounts for a few brief moments in the movie though.  When the majority of the thing takes place underneath a rock, those things really stand out.  James Franco is great as real life asshole Aron Ralston, and Boyle’s excessive style of filmmaking really lends itself to the arm chopping scene.  He should make more gory movies.  It’s easily his best movie, considering it’s the only one I’ve enjoyed all the way through.

10.      Cyrus-Like Seth Rogen before him, Jonah Hill got really fat to play his best role ever.  Hill is the creepy title character in this low key romantic comedy with John C Reilly and Marissa Tomei.  Cyrus is Tomei’s creepy adult son that still lives with her.  Cyrus is short and sweet, and it mocks trance music.  I’m down with that.

9.      Iron Man 2-Iron Man 2 learns from the mistakes of the first movie, and creates some nice new mistakes while it’s at it.  Instead of a thrown together shitty ending, we’re instead barraged with too much happening at the beginning and none of it making any sense, but once the movie’s finally found itself, it picks up a lot.  The second half is a blast, and frankly, that’s enough for me.

8.      Black Swan-A little too melodramatic and goofy for me, this tortured woman-child tale is still told engagingly, and Natalie Portman’s performance is damn good.  It’d be cooler if she really was a were-swan, but what I got was still a fun 90 minutes.

7.      Shutter Island-As far as spooky and creepy goes, I liked Shutter Island a lot more than Black Swan.  Shutter Island had atmosphere, it had scares, and it had a much less predictable plot.  Both movies made me feel like a lab rat in a maze, with the director shouting at me from a distance, telling me which way to go, and…  Man, I don’t know where I was going with that.  Fuck it.  Both the movies are good, but neither are truly incredible.  That’s the point I wanted to make.

6.      Inception-For the longest time, I wasn’t planning on doing a movies list because I simply had nothing new to say. That’s exactly how I feel about Inception.  I will say that it’s a good movie.

5.      I Love You Phillip Morris-Gay prison romance from the writers of Bad Santa.  They left Zwigoff out of this one and directed it themselves, and it’s every bit as good as their last one.  The movie’s hilarious, but it still has respect for its characters.

4.      Scott Pilgrim vs. the World-Of the three big comic book movies released this year, two of them missed the point of the original material.  Unlike Kick-Ass, Scott Pilgrim had the basic sense to change the point.  No longer does Scott Pilgrim suck and need to grow the hell up.  He just needs love and self respect to conquer all.  (Mostly love)  I could do without pointless text inserts, and a little breathing certainly wouldn’t hurt.  I never saw why Ramona would want Scott, but it looks great, the jokes are hilarious, it has a pro-rock and roll message, and the fight scenes are the best I’ve seen in a long, long time.  It’s an odd movie, always jumping around and throwing more and more bizarre special effects at the viewer.  I’m glad to see people are catching on to Speed Racer and using more abstract, colorful and cartoony digital effects.  Realism is overrated.  Go Scott Pilgrim go.

3.      True Grit-God, here’s another one I’ve got nothing interesting to say about.  Hmm, let me try.  Let me try…  Okay, I loved the Bear man-that scene when Rooster and Mattie are lost in a blizzard and they get advice from a crazy old trapper.  Beautiful.  The ending has also got to be the most intense, brutal, heroic ending of any movie I saw this year.  And uh, shit.  I guess that was all I had to say.

2.      The Fighter-David O’Russell makes magic with Marky Mark.  Marky plays Mickey, a real life boxer from Lowell, Massachusetts, where they smoke lots and lots of crack.  Apart from him and Amy Adams, the cast is all fairly hideous, even Batman looks like a monster.  It’s got crack smoking, it’s got cop punching, and damn, does it have some hideous looking people.  It reminded me a lot of The Wrestler, except this one’s better, and that’s without the benefit of Mickey Rourke.  I love The Fighter.

1.      Toy Story 3-Toy Story 3 was simply the best. That’s just the way it is.  Nothing new to say here.  Stay tuned for more engaging reviews of other movies.

0.      TRASH HUMPERS. I don’t mean this as an insult. It just wouldn’t be fair to the other movies to judge them against Trash Humpers.  It exists on an entirely different plane of criticism.

2011
01/27
CATEGORY
Movies
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2010: Music in Review Part 2

The saga continues.  Today, we complete the list with albums 15-1.  Hopefully, I’ll have completed my movies and comics lists by the end of next week.  Stay tuned!

15.      Forgiveness Rock Record-Broken Social Scene-It was a close call, but I think Broken Social Scene beat Arcade Fire in the melodramatic bombast Olympics.  Forgiveness Rock Record has the added advantage of kick-ass guitars.  This is indeed a rock record.  They win because they did have the decency to make album that rocked harder.  Forgiveness… also avoids a lot of the re-treaded feel of The Suburbs.  It’s not all new and exciting, but the old tricks feel less forced and the new tricks kick ass.

14.      Body Talk-Robyn-I’m a sucker for a good pop song.  Even this slick, futuristic synth pop stuff.  It seems to be the dominating style of music played these days, and it makes for some truly bizarre radio listening.  I no longer recognize these modern pop songs as songs, the structure is just so bizarre.  Nobody even seems to sing hooks anymore.  They just kind of drawl the title four to eight times.  It’s a weird pop world out there, and I’m getting lost.  Luckily Robyn was able to pull me back from the brink and into musical salvation!  Body Talk should be used in pop-star school.  This is what that synth-shit is supposed to sound like, so get it together, rest of the world.  It’s not that hard to make great songs, or at least it seems that way.  Robyn’s a good singer too, and she makes this brilliance sound easy.  It’s futuristic, but it’s still music.  For bonus points, “Call Your Girlfriend” even features an I-don’t-know-what solo.  It sounds like some sort of vocal manipulator, but I’ve got no idea what device is being played.  That’s exciting.

13.      Earl-Earl Sweatshirt-Last year, I called Freddie Gibbs the last true gangsta rapper.  That still holds true, even if he has been out-gangsta’d by a 16 year old kid.  Ya see, Earl Sweatshirt is beyond gangsta.  Most of these songs involve gangsta rap clichés taken beyond their extremes.  There’re a lot of songs here about murder, rape, theft, anal sex, etc.  It’s pretty ridiculous, but Earl’s smooth, low key delivery ground the songs in reality, and the beats by his brother Tyler the Creator are some of the best 8 bit synths I’ve heard since the first Crystal Castles album.  Earl’s a member of LA rap collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, which you may recognize from their ridiculous name.  The album is available for free on their website, so get out there and download that shit.

12.      Halycon Digest-Deerhunter-I wish I could rank this higher, but I haven’t heard the songs performed at ear-blistering volume.  Deerhunter rocks surprisingly hard live, and their albums don’t really do them justice.  I demand to hear these songs live, because Halycon Digest is Deerhunter’s tamest record yet.  Sure, it’s still #12 on the list, but it would probably be #1 if it rocked.  I’ll give credit where credit is due-Helicopter is the best slow song they’ve ever done.

11.      This is Happening-LCD Soundsystem-It’s not as good as their last album, but it comes pretty damn close.  Sure, it gets reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaally boring towards the end, but this is still a kick-ass album, and it’s got the best songs they’ve ever done.  Honestly, if this was a three song EP, it’d still be charting this high, as long as one of the songs was “All I Want”.  It’s also the album that gave me “Drunk Girls,” “One Touch,” and “Pow.”  Right on James Murphy.  There’s nothing terribly new or thrilling about LCD Soundsystem.  They play it safe, but they still come up with more imaginative stuff than  most people trying to be different.

10.      All Day-Girl Talk-Oh my god, he went and got himself an attention span.  All Day is the best Girl Talk album yet, a wholly realized piece-of-music that demands to be heard in full.  Instead of the flashes of brilliance I’ve been putting up with, it’s got actual momentum.  The music gets enough breathing room to accomplish something.  Apparently, it’s also his most mainstream album too.  I guess most of these samples are from a lot of recent hit songs.  Not that I can tell.  I thought Wacka Flocka Flame was a Pokémon until a month or two ago.

9.      Plastic Beach-Gorillaz-Plastic Beach is about as far removed from the first two Gorillaz records as those were from Blur.  It’s a new chapter in this ridiculous art project, but from the opening swells of “Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach” you can tell it’s going to be a good one.  Damon Albarn crafts a full, orchestral sound on this album, and relegates the guests to the background.  It’s a pop opus in the tradition of The Who or the Kinks, and damn is it good.

8.      /\/\ /\ Y /\ -M.I.A. (I liked it so much, I’m even going to spell it the stupid way.)-This album is really loud and dumb, but so is Black Sabbath and they fucking rule.  It doesn’t matter.  It’s still good.  MAYA’s a big mess but it probably benefits from it.  There’s some bizarre, ridiculous shit going on here. We’ve got Suicide samples, Sleigh Bells samples, paranoid sloganeering, and even some dubstep.  On top of that, I’d go so far as to call it good dubstep.  It’s like Sandinista except I don’t get bored quite so immediately.  The other difference being that Sandinista probably had something to say, whereas MAYA probably doesn’t.  I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to stop taking it seriously when she starts chanting “Google connected to the Government.”

7.      Cosmogramma-Flying Lotus-It’s about damn time.  We need more electronic musicians to structure their albums like instrumental rap albums.  And he’s still getting more done in 90 seconds than most technotrons do in ten minutes.  Really, was that so hard?

6.      Treats-Sleigh Bells-This album is a benchmark of loud.  Treats is designed with “obnoxious” in mind. It’s physically impossible for old people to like this.  How cool is that?  It’s noisy, abrasive, and catchy as fuck.  In a world where the Fleet Foxes are still allowed to exist, it’s nice knowing I’ve got Sleigh Bells on my side.  Besides, there’s a Chippy sample.

5.      Shut up Dude/Sit Down Man-Das Racist-Is it unfair to count two mixtapes as one album?  I need to quell this controversy, and quickly.  Let’s start with the bad then.  Despite a few incredible tunes, their first mixtape, Shut Up Dude, is mostly just incoherent babble that starts and stops in four minute intervals.  Sit Down Man is a vast improvement in the crafting of actual songs, but it also feels more reined-in.  There’s nothing quite as good as “Rainbow in the Dark” or “Ek Shaneesh.”  “Rapping 2 You” comes close.  Complaints aside, minor they may be, I’m glad somebody has finally gotten their act together enough to sound like the Beastie Boys-refreshingly different and actually good.  Das Racist is two New Yorkers, Heems and Kool AD.  Together, they combine powers to craft a hip-hop-hodge-podge of rhymes hilarious and insightful.  It’ll never catch on, but at least they’re trying.

4.      King of the Beach-Wavves-It was a rather bleak year for rock and roll.  Earlier, I might’ve complained that this was the best rock record I found, but looking back, I just feel grateful.  King of the Beach benefits from catchy songwriting and the tightest rhythm section around.  The teen angst oozes out of this disc and it benefits from it.  This is bratty fist-pumping music.  There’s nothing adult about it.  Stealing Stephen Pope and Billy Page from Jay Reatard, (It’s not like he was using them) Nathan Williams managed to make his punchiest, punkiest album yet.  Can’t wait for the next one.

3.      Crystal Castles-Crystal Castles-One of the most evil albums of the year.  It’s also one of my favorites.  They abandon most of the 8-bit sounds that were so prevalent on the first record, trading it in for some sort of electronic shoegaze.  They bring fuzz into the 21th century with a vengeance.  Alice Glass flexes her vocal chops for this, getting both believably intimate and surprisingly screechy, even for Crystal Castles.  They’ve polished every facet of their musical diamond, (sorry about that.  Had to indulge my inner Peter Travers) but it’s the evil songs that truly stand out.  They get more melodic, more abrasive, and they often do both at the same time.  Opening a track with a fifteen second fuzz drone?  Fuck yes.

2.      Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty-Big Boi-I always thought Big Boi was the better member of Outkast, and I think this proves it.  Goddamn, this guy can rap.  Apart from a T.I. collaboration, there’s little  not to love on Big Boi’s second masterpiece.  Big Boi treats his raps like an instrument, reinventing the rules of hip hop as he goes along.  The guests are all top-notch too.  (I’m just not into T.I.)  Gucci Mane, Yelawolf, even George Clinton turns in a decent verse!  Really, this thing redeems the entire South, it’s so good.  It’s an album of nonstop bangers, and that’s the way I like it.

And the number one record of 2010 is………

What else?

I’ve got nothing new to say about this, except that maybe my proposed title of “Fantasy Ass Job” is still better, so here’s some of the best hyperbole from other reviews- With My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West transgresses paradigms and defies the limitations of genre.  It’s a keen contender for the most ambitious LP in hip-hop history.  Fantasy will stand as an album that dares to push the entire medium of recorded music forward.   Its vibrantly aesthetic to the extremes with conceptual, avant-garde, cinematic beats to it.  An ornately orchestrated pop epic built on a classic hip-hop foundation.  Nobody else is making music this daring and weird.  Kanye’s man-myth dichotomy is at once modern and truly classic. Comparing him to other rappers is pointless.

In retrospect, I should’ve got the sources, but I’m not about to go find all of those again.

2011
01/21
CATEGORY
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2010 Music in Review

This is part 1 of my list.  This thing’s so big, I had to separate it into two posts! Instead of just listing the good albums, I decided to review every new album I heard in 2010.  So here’s albums 34-16.

 

34.      4×4=12-Deadmau5-Rave program Deadmau5 outdid himself with his most creative album title yet.  If only I could say the same about anything else.  4×4=12 is a groundbreaking work in predictability, even when he tries his hand at some obnoxious rave-rap and dubstep.  (How topical!)  Give it a spin if you’re looking for something to put you to sleep.

33.      Straight Killa No Filla-Freddie Gibbs.  Oh really?  Look, I know it’s just a mixtape, but so was The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs, and that was incredible.

32.      I Am Not A Human Being-Lil Wayne-Lil Wayne has no fucking taste.  All of these songs are lazy, the beats are uninspired, and the rhymes are just stupid.  “So smart she coulda’ gone to college?”  What the hell, Wayne?  I didn’t have the highest expectations for this record released from prison, and at least Drake isn’t on every song.  Unfortunately, Drake is on all of the good songs.  All three of them.  And they’re not even really good.  They just sound a little better than the fucking banal pop-rap production that dominates the record.  Seriously, it’s like he’s using the demo that came with his EZ-Synth Jambox.  Lil Wayne being in prison, there’s a lot of guest stars.  Because what else, Young Money goons are all over this thing, and Nicki Minaj doesn’t even have to decency to rap on it.  A half-hearted effort from everybody involved.

31.      Pink Friday-Nicki Minaj-Nicki Minaj fared a little bit better on her solo debut than anything else a Young Money Goon* did this year.  If only it were good!  She wastes most of the album singing, which she sucks at.  She still managed to get in a few decent songs.  I’m a fan of “Did it on Em” and the Kanye assisted “Blazin.”  “Roman’s Revenge” is the only other song worth checking, if only for the novelty of Eminem making animal noises while referring to himself as a dungeon dragon.

*. Is “young Money Goon” the official term, or should I not take Gudda Gudda so seriously?  Also, is  it Wu-Tang Clansmen?

30. Hurley-Weezer-Ugh.  They came so close!  Hurley’s the best album they’ve made since Maladroit, but it’s still not very good.  I can live with the weak lyrics, it’s the production that’s killing me.  This shit is so clean and shiny, it sounds instantly dated.  At least they stopped trying to reinvent themselves.

29.      OMG!-Rusko-Wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp Gucci Mane wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp.

28.      Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys-My Chemical Romance-Was The Black Parade a fluke, or am I just delusional?  The follow-up to that record I loved so much is overproduced and uninspired to its breaking point.  C’mon guys.  That over-the-top dour shit was what made you good.  This is a step backwards.

27.      Album of the Year-Black Milk-More like 27th best album of the year!  Ha ha!  There’s nothing bad about this record, there’s just nothing great about it.  It’s like Be with weaker beats.  I don’t care how good a rapper Black Milk is, he doesn’t make good songs.

26.      Trunk Music 0-60-Yelawolf Yelawolf isn’t incredible by any means.  Right now he just sounds like a white trash T.I.  But as we’ve learned from Rick Ross and T.I. himself, nobody starts out great anymore.  I’ll give him a few more years, see if this goes anywhere.  At the very least, he’s a big improvement on Asher Roth.  Good job, white rapper committee.

25.      Distant Relatives-Nas and Damien Marley-This was almost a good album, and then Damien Marley showed up.

24.      Pilot Talk-Curren$y-Curren$y’s come a long way since I first encountered him three years ago.  It’s now possible to understand what he’s saying, there’s some emotion in his voice, he’s classed up his production, and he’s upgraded the guest features to include Snoop Dogg, Mikey Rocks and Big KRIT.  Mos Def lends his voice for the chorus of the two best songs on the album, (“Breakfast” & Jay Electronica assisted “The Day”) The guests make for the highlights of the album, simply because Curren$y has the worst fucking hooks.  Curren$y’s a big fan of the Bobby Digital method, where you repeat the title of the song 8 to 44 times or spell a sentence.  If he could get it together and spend more than 20 seconds crafting the song, he’d be set.

23.      Tron: Legacy-Daft Punk-Will a new Daft Punk album ever come?  It seems unlikely after this excursion into the world of movie soundtracks.  It’s lacking in computer wizardry, and most of the songs all sound like typical blockbuster music, but there’s just barely enough to make it okay for a few listens.

22.      Wu-Massacre-Meth, Ghost & Rae-Actually, it’s mostly the cronies of Meth, Ghost, and Rae.  Sheek Louch, Sun God and more also-rans do the bulk of the work here.  It sounds more like a mixtape than an actual album.  Tired beats, tired rhymes. There’s still a few god ones, like “Miranda” and “Youngstown Heist.”  It’s not a crowning achievement for any of these guys, but coming out six months after the incredible Only Built 4 Cuban Links Pt 2 and the awful Ghostdeni Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City, it’s forgivable.  It’s not like I was that lacking in Wu-Tang.

21.      Swim-Caribou-This record might be in the top ten if I didn’t have to listen to the guy sing.  As is, it’s still a damn good collection of electronica.  It’s not as high-energy as I typically like my computer music, but at least it feels like he’s trying.  If Kid Cudi was good, this is what his beats might sound like.

20.      Congratulations-MGMT-One of the year’s most unexpected records, Congratulations is also one of the few albums of “neo-psychdelica” worth listening to.  It sounds a lot like early Bowie-Jangly guitars, lyrics about famous people and fantasy.  There’s nothing here even trying to be as good and catchy as “Kids” or “Time to Pretend,” but they at least made enough changes to their sound to keep it interesting.

19.      Sea of Cowards-The Dead Weather-Jack White takes over on the second Dead Weather album.  It reminds me of the second Raconteurs album.  It has little to say, but it rocks a lot harder and benefits from it.  It’s not as good as anything The White Stripes ever put out, but it’s the best non-White Stripes record Jack White’s made.

18.      The Monitor-Titus Andronicus- If Bright Eyes wasn’t afraid to rock, this is exactly what he’d sound like. If that statement doesn’t make you cringe, you’ll love this album.  It also features the best saxophone solo of the year.

17. The Archandroid-Janelle Monae-Not quite as groundbreaking and futuristic than everybody says it is, but it’s a contemporary R & B album, so “groundbreaking and futuristic” is a relative term.  What it is is a collection of great pop songs.  Monae can sing better than anybody else on this list, and she delivers her lines with such conviction that I forgot I was listening to a sci-fi pop-opera about robot spiders (or something.)

16. The Suburbs-Arcade Fire-I didn’t listen to much serious music this year.  Until this came out, none of the good stuff was that serious.  The Suburbs caught me off guard.  It’s a lyrical album that came out in the middle of a six month Phish binge.  (Well, really a one month Lightning Bolt/Daft Punk binge. Suddenly trapped with lyrics to scrutinize, I was lost.  The Suburbs has meaning and a message.  It’s also incredibly dense.  The music’s still great.  We’ve got some more Springsteen posturing, some radio pop, and mandatory stadium blaster, but they’ve expanded into some cool new territory too.  There’s a lot going on, and I may not like sitting through all of it, but I’m not going to hate for sheer ambition.  It’s a fine album.  I just wish somebody had the decency to make one that rocked harder than its predecessors.

2011
01/19
CATEGORY
Music
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Ten Things that Sucked in 2010

Don’t worry gang, I’ve got more lists on the way to commemorate things I did like, but first we’re going to warm up with the garbage pile.

10.      Dubstep-They (meaning the internet) keep calling dubstep the punk of electronic music.  At first I thought that meant it was noisier and rawer, but it actually means that it’s easier to do and is trashier than the regular stuff.  Besides, the bass is so heavy, you need 800$ speakers to even hear it properly.  Fuck that.  Not really seeing the punk connection.  It’s amazing how inescapable this shit has become.  Talking to somebody about dubstep recently, he kept calling it “wuamp-wuamp.”  It’s a dumb title, but it’s still more accurate.  “Dubstep” sounds too sophisticated for such stupid music.  Dumb isn’t necessarily bad, I just want them to admit it and stop taking themselves so damn seriously.

 

I don’t know man; maybe I just don’t understand this stuff.  Sure, they’re warping the sound, but it still sounds pleasant.  There’s not enough dissonance in most electronic music.  It’s cold and sterile.  Dubstep is only taking half-measures.  It does get dirty, but it’s not enough.  There’s still a lack of humanity.  The machines are doing the heavy lifting.  That’s what sucks about techno.  There’s nothing wrong with using robots, but there is something wrong with letting the robots do all of the work.   And all of them are so pretentious about it too.  Hey, look at me!  I invented my own genre!  I’m that different.”  Fuck you dude.  You’ve got all this technology at your disposal, and this is all you can do with it?  Dan Deacon doesn’t have a ridiculous sub-sub-subgenre next to his name on his Wikipedia page.  Y’know why?  Because Dan Deacon’s cool.  He doesn’t give a shit.  Electronic subgenres are fucking ridiculous.  It’s the trendiest shit and they’ve got a new one every month.  Stop trying to be different (because you’re not) and start trying to be good.

 

9.      Heavy Rain-The year’s most “revolutionary” (somebody must’ve said it) videogame isn’t really a game.  I thought Heavy Rain was going to be a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure type of game.  All you do is walk around, talk to people, collect clues and other shit like that.  The beginning is fun as you try to figure out how to play, but eventually, the ridiculous story becomes too absurd, the gameplay gets boring, and I realized that no matter what you do, the ending is always the same.  I had already seen a friend complete the game the proper way, so I was determined to have some fun with it.  Unfortunately, none of your actions have consequence.  The story progresses to the next scene regardless of how you play.  Even killing your characters doesn’t get anything done.  Heavy Rain isn’t a game, it just tricks you into thinking it is.  One more thing, for a game that prided itself on its realistic characters, I was a little appalled by the lone female character-a reporter who spends at least the first half of the game taking showers, being another character’s nurse, and making out with said character.  As soon as she starts doing some actual reporting, she gets date-raped.  Classy.

 

8.      Passion Pit-No band this year went from mildly amusing to fucking unbearable faster than these guys.  Catchy songs and good hooks can only take you so far before the unbearably effeminate voice of Michael Angelakos becomes the only thing I hear.  I was hoping they’d win me over when I saw them live at the Sasquatch music fest, but they only sounded worse than they did on the record and the excessive amount of douche bags kind of killed the atmosphere.  Living in dorms with a bunch of other buffoons, I had to hear “Sleepyhead” four times a day last semester, and I’m glad to be through with it.

7.      Blackest Night/Brightest Day

Geoff Johns is starting to piss me off.  Has he not been reading Batman?  Dan DiDio clearly does not give a shit what DC publishes as long as it sells.  Johns has been given a massive corner of the DCU to play with with these two crossover titles, and what has he done with it? One good Martian Manhunter story.  Blackest Night didn’t really matter.  After an incredible first two issues, the zombie comic became textbook dull as the story progressed.  In the end, nothing really mattered, and a bunch of C-List characters got resurrected, because, hey, there certainly aren’t a lot of good living characters to write about.  All of these resurrected people then went on their own sucky adventures in the immediate follow-up Brightest Day.  Brightest Day is an example of comic-fandom at its worst.  Hawk and Dove and company were never compelling characters to begin with, and the comic makes no attempts to improve most of its 30-man cast.  Move on already.  Let a dead dog lie.  Is Aquaman so beloved a property that he has to be revived every five years for another shitty adventure that still won’t work?  Get over it, people.  Most of the stories weren’t very interesting.  Some of them were just plain stupid.  Only the Marian Manhunter tale has any bite to it.  The comic isn’t over yet, but I gave up after issue 13 anyway.  Can Geoff Johns be trusted anymore?  Or is he just a bond company stooge dead-set on maintaining the status quo?

6.      Kick-Ass-The Movie, not the comic.  Hey, what if the Spider-Man movie was just about a crazy kid in a wetsuit getting the snot beat out of him?

Okay, sounds cool.

Yeah, and what if the Spider-Man movie had more swearing, and shitty action, and it was kind of gory?  What if Peter Parker wasn’t relatably pathetic, but obnoxiously pathetic?  What if the fight scenes all looked like shit?  What if, even though we took away all of the superpowers, the script still had leaps in logic that made Spider-Man 3 seem plausible?  What if, at the end, the hero defined by his incompetence straps on a jetpack with attached machine guns and saves the day?

Wait, what?

Fuck this movie.  People have been sucking its dick for how bold and innovative it was, even though it was just a terrible looking, juvenile rehash of comic book tropes with added swearing.  Kick-Ass’s big selling point is the real world setting, but they forego nearly everything that makes the real world matter.  At least discuss hospital bills or something, sheesh.

5.      Kid Cudi-Kid Cudi is bad for hip hop.  He doesn’t make my blood boil the way Drake does, but his own personal brand of arrogance is still obnoxious.  He’s that stoner kid in your high school English class who loooooooooooooooooves drawing attention to how weird and interesting he is.  His music does often forsake traditional rap structure, but I’m not about to congratulate him for just that.  Get some lyrics, Cudi.  Stop rhyming words with themselves, stop writing so many songs about weed, and stop assuming that just because you’re sad, you’re also deep.

5.      Shadowland-Brightest Day might’ve been a great exercise in treading water, but at least that’s to be expected from a DC event comic (Even one only starring C-listers.)  After two groundbreaking Daredevil runs by Brian Michael Bendis and Ed Brubaker, it looked like this one was going to be the craziest yet, but Andy Diggle gave up halfway through and decided to make a comic that reads exactly as you expect, only more boring.  Daredevil, now the leader of the ninja cult The Hand, has declared martial law in Hell’s Kitchen and builds the title fortress in the middle of town.  Has he finally lost it?  Has he gone too far?  Nah, don’t worry.  It was just a demon controlling him.  The comic flakes out in the character development, and nothing of importance happens.  Unable to come up with anything better than a reset, Andy Diggle proved that he was indeed a bond company stooge.  In the miniseries’ final issue, Iron Fist and Luke Cage deliver some meta-commentary on the comic.  Motioning towards Bullseye’s corpse, Luke says “Well, at least he’s still dead.” To which Iron Fist replies “Small consolation.”  Indeed.  What could’ve been a decent story got bloated into oblivion until it was just another big pile of nothing.

3.      The Lost Finale-What can I say about this that hasn’t already been said?  Even I got in on the action earlier this year, and anybody who cares about Lost already has their own opinion about the ending.  Regardless, the fact remains that they ended exactly how they said they wouldn’t, and wasted half of a season doing it.  Thanks for the memories, guys.

2.      Drake-There is only one logical explanation for Wheelchair Jimmy’s rap career. He and Lil Wayne are secret lovers, and Weezy ghost writes all of Drake’s good raps.  I’m not a homophobe man, I just call it like I see it.  But seriously, he doesn’t even have an original flow.  Listen to a Drake song.  Can’t you hear those rhymes coming out of Lil Wayne’s mouth?  Drake depresses me.  He’s a former child actor from a Canadian teen soap, he appears in Sprite commercials, he’s had it made for the majority of his young life, and nobody even bats an eye.  Given his circumstances, Drake should be a rapper with class, but god forbid anybody have some integrity.  He’s talking about the same stupid material shit all these young rappers like to rhyme about.  He’s just Lil Wayne-lite from Canada, and he’s got no taste in beats.  Fuck Drake.

1.      The Social Network-

Mark Zuckerberg is an asshole.  20 minutes later-Mark Zuckerberg is an asshole.  2 hours later-Mark Zuckerberg is an asshole.  I don’t care if he’s a real person, he’s still not interesting, and I want to punch him in the face.  Almost every single character in this movie is a rich douchebag, everybody wins in the end, and it doesn’t have anything insightful to say.  It left a bad taste in my mouth.  It’s like a 2 ½ hour episode of King of the Hill where every character is Peggy.  The Social Network is a movie we didn’t need.  It’s not a story worth telling.  Can’t we wait just a little bit longer, and see where this real-life drama develops?  I guess that’s the thing, though.  That’s all there is.  Everybody’s a rich asshole and that’s all they want to be.

 

This movie is boring.  Nothing ever really happens.   This shouldn’t be a problem for the guy who directed Zodiac, but it is.  There’s a few times when they pretend that something’s happening, like that idiotic rowing race,* but Fincher lets Aaron Sorkin’s script do the heavy lifting.  Every character talks in that stylized tone where they’ve always got something clever to say. It keeps things interesting for a bit, but it’s not enough to save the movie.  The characters are all kept at a distance.  It’s impossible to get inside anybody’s head.  We’re only given a chance to identify with one character, and he’s not even in it that often.  If the movie had been from Eduardo’s point-of-view, maybe we would’ve gotten a quality flick, but it seems doubtful.

 

Besides, what kind of loser makes a movie about Facebook instead of adapting Black Hole? Now Fincher’s next movie is going to be an American-ized adaptation of a best-seller that’s already been made into a movie.  I don’t want to say that that’s a Ron Howard move, but that’s a Ron Howard move.

 

I might be missing something, but I don’t care anymore.  I really hate this movie.

 

*A gold star for anybody who can tell why that scene matters.

2011
01/03
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