It is Friday, which means review day. I'm gonna burn through as many things as I can think of, because it has been a while since I've reviewed anything. And I can think of a lot, because my brain is running at maximum velocity right now. Watch out!
Music!
Snow Patrol - Eyes Open
I never fully dug Snow Patrol. No actual reason, I just never quite caught on to their wavelength. This CD, however, is probably one my favorite things I've listened to all year long. It's ridiculously mainstream for all their indie cred, but I don't care. I like good music and this is good music. Lyrics are not the strongest in the world, but each song has a good hook to it, and a couple of the songs are outstanding. They played Chasing Cars on the season finale of Grey's Anatomy and it totally made me dissovle into a useless puddle. Highly recommended.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones
Considering Fever to Tell might actually by my favorite CD in the history of the world, I had intensely high hopes for this album. It's....not as good. Which sounds bad, but it shouldn't, because it's an excellent CD. There is almost none of the wailing, shrieking or feedbacking guitars that were so prevalent on FtT, instead there are actual songs and singing. Which is fine, y'know, if you're into that sort of thing. Independent of their last album, it's great, in comparison I am a little sad. Still recommended. Best song - Phenomena followed closely by Mysteries.
Bell X1 - Flock
The first of my imports. Bell X1 is an Irish band, and they sound like a cross between something like U2 and a crazy whiny emo band. Two things that I quite possibly dislike more than any other musical thing that is not Country. (Okay, that's a lie. I love whiny emo bands. I do hate U2, though.) But the combination is frickin' ridiculous. This album is just so slick. I cannot get enough of it. There is a rough edge to the lead voice that gives me shivers. (Also: Not on this CD, but you NEED to find and listen to it - their cover of Justin Timberlake's 'Like I Love You,' one of the best covers in the history of the world.)
Orson - Bright Idea
Hi, yeah, people who know me in the real worlds know that I will not shut up about this CD. So sorry people I know, but seriously, this album is so good it makes my teeth hurt. I will reveal nothing about how I may have come to be in possession of it since it does not come out until June 8th, but let us say that the insidious illegal supplier known as the Internet may have been...involved. Anyways, so this band feels like the summer immediately after I graduated from high school. Where me and my friends are just spinning our wheels before heading out to different corners of the world, staying up all night, running around doing stupid shit, being entirely inappropriate and full of big unrealistic dreams. Which is about as touchy-feely a description as Coffee-Addled Jason will ever come up with, but that doesn't make it any less real. I will pimp this album until the day I die. Download their single No Tomorrow and just try and tell me you aren't intrigued.
Gnarls Barkley- St. Elsewhere
A CD with 6 months of hype and the most overplayed yet still awesome single of the year (Crazy) has a whole lot to live up to. And scarily enough, it pretty much totally does. Ambitious is the word to use. Just jumps all over the place from catchy rock, to disco throwbacks, to serious blues numbers , and then throws in some very impressive rap just to even every track out. All that said, after a week I'm only still taken with three tracks: Gone, Daddy, Gone (the best thing on the CD), Smiley Faces (or as I call it - Kittens Yowling in Space), and Transformers (which is just sick in its complexity, not to mention very 80's cartoon-like). Not everyone's cup of tea, but, it is love to me.
Book!
Live Bait - P.J. Tracy
Okay, so last review time I had the first book in this series, Monkeewrench, which I dug. The second one is different but good. Better, actually. The focus shifts away from the interesting main characters, which seems like a horrible move, but the actual storyline that they are working with is just ace, so it completely works. It's a murder mystery that seems piled up and ridiculous, but then pays off so satsifactorily that I cannot complain at all. And you know I can complain about anything. Very well done. And the overall storyline begins to progress at a steady pace too, so it gets bonus points for a working universe of characters. Delicious pulp novel.
Movies!
Bee Season - #1: What the hell? #2: I really liked this. I mean, it's just so strange. Richard Gere is an annoying Jewish Mysticism professor, his son is a cellist with a lot of issues, his wife is insane and a klepto, and his daughter receives correct spellings for the bee by communing with God and the Word (which are one and the same in traditional Jewish lore). The whole movie sort of flails down its path, careening into the weirdest situations and scenes, but I liked the overall tone and its sort of open ended take on the faith issues. The little girl was excellent as well. Just, completely bizarre, though.
Date Movie - Lame. Lame lame lame. That said, I have a girl crush on Alyson Hannigan and there are worse ways to spend 72 minutes of your life. There are quite a few more better ways to spend them, though.
Over the Hedge - What a bizarre movie. Slickly produced, occassionally very funny, but just completely ill conceived at certain points. This is going to be one of those spoiler reviews, because my mind is just boggled: Why on earth should we be caring about either of the main characters? The raccoon is straight up manipulatively evil and has the most ridiculous quick and contrived change of heart in the end that I'm surprised the audience doesn't get whiplash. Then the turtle directly calls his so-called 'family' naive and stupid.
Wait. Looking that over, I can tell I'm a little too overly invested in what is completely a little kids' movie, but seriously. What's up with that?
Funny-ish, but unrecommended.
Transamerica - Felicity Huffman is amazing, let's get that out of the way right now. Also, I have an intense actual crush on Kevin Zegers, so that colors a lot of thinking as well. Great movie, great dialogue, intensely-intensely awkward scenes that almost made me physically ill. There is a scene in this movie that caused me to declare that I could think of nothing more traumatic in the entire world. Of course Frank was immediately able to correct me by thinking up something that was indeed quite a bit worse, but that's Frank for you - Always with the traumatic thinking. Anyways, really good, hilarious and touching a varying degrees and contains probably my favorite piece of dialogue in a movie this year:
Toby: "Yeah, I'd probably be, like, disemboweled by a ninja."
Bree: "You don't have to say "like". "Probably disemboweled by a ninja" is sufficient."
Aaand, the coffee is still keeping me going, I could do this all freaking day long. Wheeee!
Okay, I'll leave you to your Friday, just try to ignore my energetic humming over here.
1 comment:
I dont even want to tell you what Chasing Cars does to me. I think I described it as "an emo kids wet dream". Yea.
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