Bloc Party: Trying to be heroic in an age of modernity

October 20, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Bloc Party

 

Silent Alarm (2005) – 3 1/2 stars

A Weekend in the City (2007) – 4 1/2 stars

Intimacy (2008) – 4 stars

Bloc Party exploded right out of the gate in 2005 as one of the most acclaimed bands in this decade’s post-punk revival phase.  Their debut album, Silent Alarm, managed the tricky feat of garnering both critical and commercial praise, placing them at the top of the ranks that included Franz Ferdinand, Interpol, The Arctic Monkeys, and others.  Headed by frontman Kele Okereke’s engaging voice and atypical deftness with wordplay, this multi-national band transcends their new-wave and post-punk influences to create a sound thoroughly 21st century.

Indeed, they sound fresh, edgy, and modern on Alarm.  The wonderfully vibrant opening duo of “Like Eating Glass” and “Helicopter” captivate from the start, Matt Tong’s staccato drumming propelling the first and Russell Lissack’s stuttering, descending guitar line the second.  Yet several songs on the album titillate with untapped potential; overall, the ballads (“This Modern Love,” “Compliments”) fare better than the rockers, which tend to meander as the album progresses.  Future efforts would be enhanced by Okereke’s improving lyrics and a more focused attention to songcraft.  

Sophomore effort A Weekend in the City diverged from Silent Alarm and didn’t impress critics.  Never mind that, for it’s a soaring, incredibly atmospheric, often soothing work that proves BP aren’t just concerned with lighting up a club.  The instruments less spiky and more haunting, the production beautifully dense and lush, the vocals lovelier, Weekend makes it hard to think of Bloc Party as a post-punk revivalist band at all.  Swirling, heavenly choruses on songs like “Waiting for the 7:18” and “The Prayer” ensnare the listener, and the band pulls back for a couple of magnificent, wintry interludes on the closing duo of “Sunday” and “SRXT.”   

Frontman Kele Okereke provides touching vocals in “On” and contributes fine lyrics throughout.  His overall theme addresses various aspects of modern-day life in London, though most of his thoughts, including those on irrational bigotry in the fiery “Hunting for Witches,” could apply on this side of the ocean.  “Uniform” has an inconsistent hold on melody, but Okereke quietly singing “There was a sense of disappointing as we left the mall / All the young people looked the same” more than makes up for that.  His concerns aren’t always rock staples—the outstanding duo of “Kreuzberg” and “I Still Remember” address, respectively, dissatisfaction with commitment-free relationships and what is likely a homosexual connection—and he hammers home the unconventional motifs with unconventionally intelligent lyrics, completing the puzzle.

Last year’s Intimacy neither re-writes Weekend nor bows to critics by returning to the sound of the debut.  Indeed, it feels independent, as though it could have come out at any time.  Several tracks are among their heaviest, while they also make room for brooding dirges.  From tracks three through nine, the powerful, odd-numbered rockers easily outpace the sparse, even-numbered ballads.   The album’s difficult to get into at first, but it hits spectacular peaks: sharp, sexy come-ons meld with the sharp, sexy riff in “Halo”; “One Month Off” sizzles with righteous vigor; “Talons” whips up a frenzied, apocalyptic sound perfectly at home with the lyrics fascinated with the menacing (“I didn’t think I’d catch fire when I held my hand to the flame”); and the majestic and ravishing “Ion Square” marries an insistent, orchestral beat to Okereke’s demand for commitment in a relationship. 

Sounding both beaten-down and optimistic, he concedes that “the hunger of those early years will never return,” but that doesn’t make him want to run out to the next parcel of grass.  When the excitement has dimmed, when you’re too old for clubs and unable to see someone for the first time again, Kele says, it’s still not worth giving up.  “Let’s stay in, let the sofa be our car / let’s stay in, let the TV be our stars” he cries during the almost painfully emotional climax.  The drop into the second chorus at the end is so mind-bogglingly good that it elevates the entire album, making the song their finest hour and a perfect conclusion to an entire effort devoted to relationships.  These boys have been more accessible, but rarely so intense.

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Veronica Mars Season 1: Greatest Pilot Ever, Great Serial Mystery

October 14, 2009 By 1 Comment

For this post, I wanted to try something new for the site: Discussing some TV. I know our tagline is (edit: was) movies and music, but TV is really an offshoot of film, and, in many ways, I think the serialized, episodic medium begets more interesting discussion.

Here, I discuss the first season of Veronica Mars, which I just recently finished viewing on DVD. The first half of this post is spoiler-free. In the second half, I openly evaluate details of the conclusion of the season with spoilers. Since this is a mystery show, I suggest you avoid the second half if you’re considering ever watching this show.

Pilot rating: 4 stars (out of four)

Season rating: 3.5 stars (out of four)

What makes a pilot episode of a TV series a good one?

To me, there’s just one obvious criterion: It has to make me want to keep watching the show. In that regards, Veronica Mars is easily the best pilot I’ve ever seen. It’s so full of intrigue, sparkles with such wit, and sets up such dramatic plot arcs that I didn’t hesitate for a second to press play on episode two.

What’s impressive about the pilot is that it piles on one layer of dread after another, and yet is ultimately memorable for the dignity it gives its characters. Even as the flashbacks about breakup, abandonment, rape, and murder pile on, the show refocuses on the powerful bond between Veronica and her father. The gripping final narration of the pilot puts emphasis on the characters not just as plot devices but as compelling people.

The pilot displays, in full force, the strengths of the show: great acting, a diverse cast, techno-noir visuals, Bogart-meets-Buffy heroine, and a razor-sharp wit. Even amidst the darkness of the plot, the pilot radiates with energy and polish. To see ideas so fully formed in the opening episode of a complex TV show is surely a mark that the series is headed in a good direction.

But therein lies the problem — also, the fun — of mystery stories: Almost always, the intrigue and the set-up is more interesting than the actual solution. And it’s true in the first season of Veronica Mars. There really was no way the show could match the fever pitch of intrigue in the pilot for an entire 22-episode season.

Miraculously, there are no bad episodes in the entire season, though some are admittedly better than others. The show’s decision to split each episode about 75%-25% between the mystery of the week and the serial mystery pays off well. We get a constant progression in the recurring plots that drew us to the show, but it’s not played out to a level that gets tiring.

The solutions of the big mysteries set up in the pilot generally do not disappoint, either. You can rest assured that there is a satisfying — though not perception-shattering — conclusion on its way.

It’s hard to go into too much description of plots or characters without giving any spoilers, but I will say that Logan develops from pretty generic into one of the most complicated characters on the show. His development is impressive, but he’s not the best character on the show.

Excepting the Kristen Bell-portrayed title character, the award for best character and acting goes to Keith Mars, Veronica’s dad, played by Enrico Colantoni, who steals every scene he’s in with a believable balance of protective father and detached professionalism. Also, virtually every scene with Francis Capra’s Weevil is a great one. Though IMDB says he’s seen in every episode (I can’t remember him in a few), I think he’s underutilized.

Duncan Kane, played by Teddy Dunn, is inconsistent and imperceptible, but I think that’s part of the point of the character. Still, I found it difficult to really empathize and connect with him except for in a few scenes and episodes.

Really, though, the show belongs Ms. Bell and her heroine. The mysteries that Veronica solves are, for the most part, interesting not only because they’re well-constructed whodunits but because they’re as much about Veronica figuring herself out than they are figuring the culprit out.

We’re shown from the start that she’s a hard-nosed snark with a very quick tongue, but the character wouldn’t work if we didn’t see the undercurrent of a normal teenage girl in her. She flirts and wants to be adored. She takes on bigger problems than she can handle. She trusts her gut when she shouldn’t and needs others to bail her out. She’s manipulative and vengeful and overly dramatic — but sympathetic. Veronica Mars is an adolescent even if her problems are a bit bigger than a normal teen’s.

Bell captures all of this effortlessly. She’s cheerleader-beautiful, but plays Veronica as bitter and strange enough that you can see why she’d be an outcast. When the moments call for it, she can drop her cold exterior and demonstrate her inner marshmallow quite convincingly.

Yet, the character can be a bit much. I really think she’s a bit too manipulative. She could’ve been ruthless and tortured, but less over-the-edge flawed. The amount of ‘favors’ she extracts from friends and lies she tells her dad made it hard for me to always root for her.

Also, I know she’s a sleuth prodigy and all, but sometimes she pieces together and pulls off just a bit too much. If we could see her occasionally fail to figure it all out, it would pay great dividends on making her believable and pitiable, I think.

The show’s flaws fall outside of the Veronica character, as well. As much as I love the writing and the plots, sometimes I feel like they’re just a bit too twisty and and edgy for their own good. Sometimes, more than shock me, the big revelation just induced eye-rolls. Student-teacher affair? Scientology-like cult? Some of it feels a bit tired and too ripped-from-the-headlines.

Something that might date the series a little bit and turn off old-fashioned mystery fans is the show’s heavy use of technology: texting, cell phones, the Internet, online databases, webcams, and more are all staples as clues. While this personally didn’t bother me, the portrayal of technology is distractingly inaccurate at times.

But, these flaws are absolutely overpowered by such a vibrant cast and plot and writing that I have to whole-heartedly endorse the first season of Veronica Mars. It brilliantly weaves plots together and manages to pull out surprising conclusions nearly every time, all the while sparkling with wit and energy. Give the incredible pilot a go and you won’t look back.

From here on out, I discuss the first season of Veronica Mars with full spoilers for everything that happens in the first season’s episodes, up to and including the end of the season. Remember that this is a mystery show, so I suggest not continuing unless you’ve seen the first season.

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Green Day – 21st Century Breakdown (2009): The music, if not the message, still inspires hope

October 13, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Rating: 4 stars (out of five)

Green Day offer up 21st Century Breakdown having done their fair share of conquering in both this and the previous century.  They dominated the alternative landscape of the post-Nirvana 90s (breakout album Dookie dropped just weeks before Kurt Cobain’s suicide) and then shocked the world with 2004’s concept album American Idiot, wherein Billie Joe Armstrong silenced those critics who assumed he couldn’t write about anything besides masturbation and boredom by tapping into Bush-era dissatisfaction.

Breakdown, arriving five years later, continues the concept album theme, even though there’s a new president and a little more optimism within the country.  But enough of that—what’s really worth paying attention to is the band.  The majority of these songs, especially the rockers, sound epic and alive, bursting with blood and vigor; Billie Joe sings with conviction, and the band sounds fuller than ever.  Though most of the slow songs sag (the flaccid “Last Night on Earth,” whiny “Restless Heart Syndrome,” and well-sung but cliché-ridden “21 Guns”), overall there’s a strong success rate among these 18 tracks.  Standout “The Static Age” has a perfect ear for tension/release.  “Before the Lobotomy” is filled with juicy melodies (and seems to give a shout-out to “Basket Case” with the line “I’m not stoned, I’m just fucked up.”)  Lead single “Know Your Enemy” is propelled by a heavy yet ferociously catchy, foot-stomping chorus and a titanic drum lead-in from the bridge.  The band hits remarkable peaks in the soaring bridges of “Little Girl,” “Static,” and “Guns” that elevate each track.

As is usual for Green Day albums, 21st Century Breakdown is long–too long–though the difference here is that the length allows for more diversity, making room for extended piano intros on songs like “Viva La Gloria,” a Middle Eastern-vibe on the groovy “Peacemaker,” and Queen-style drama on the title track, “Lobotomy,” and others.  “Last Night on Earth,” as Rolling Stone noted, sounds like Air Supply (not that this works), and of course several tunes invoke past, Dookie-esque grandeur.  Thankfully, the sonic doodling doesn’t sound forced; it just feels like the band, with little left to prove to the pop-punk audience, wants to experiment with new material to see what sticks.

What’s perhaps most notable about the musical variation is the way the individual songs themselves often contain distinct sections.  Sometimes this works—“Christian’s Inferno” opens with a thick, industrial-sounding drum intro before giving way to a purely Green Day chorus—but most of the best songs here (“Static,” “Little Girl,” “Murder City”) tell us that Green Day is better off keeping the sonic changes within songs to a minimum.  The title track starts off magnificently—you’d be hard-pressed to deny the power of Billie Joe’s line “My generation’s a zero / I never made it as a working class hero”—but after the second chorus devolves into an amelodic mess.  And, conversely, both “Gloria” and “Lobotomy” could stand to have their first segments cut; the latter is especially invigorating once it gets going, but that takes far too long.

Even though old target George Bush can no longer be used as a piñata, Armstrong hasn’t exactly embraced Obama-style optimism.  The conceptual theme this time traces two lovers, Christian and Gloria, as they make their way through this age with confusion, anger, fear, and some resolve.  Billie Joe skewers a few obvious targets (religious hypocrisy) and some less-obvious ones (prescription drug reliance) in his quest to find something truly meaningful.  There’s certainly no mistaking his feelings when he yelps, “Violence is the enemy / So give me, give me revolution!”  There are few great insights in the lyrics, but it’s nice to see that he’s continued to branch out a little, and despite an over-reliance on simplicity, he occasionally finds a nugget: “Do you know what’s worth fighting for / When it’s not worth dying for?”; “The traces of blood always follow you home / Like the mascara tears of your getaway.”

One wonders, however, whether his now ever-present world-weariness drags down his otherwise great sing-along choruses on tracks like “Century” and “Static.”  He’s flirting with Bono syndrome—sometimes, you just want him to forget about the world’s problems and sing about something enjoyable, relieving the ambivalent feelings that are engendered by energetic but polemic songs.

That feeling of slight hesitation getting in the way of a full-fledged adoration of the record has company.  Simmering gently below the visceral excitement that a listen provides is the desire to make tiny tweaks all over the place.  Man, if they just killed “Song of the Century” and “Last Night on Earth,” you think, how much better would this flow?  Why couldn’t “Breakdown” have kept going the way it started, “Lobotomy” have opened right at the 1:20 mark?  Why couldn’t Billie Joe have gone a little easy on the clichés in “Guns” and really made it a doozy?

If all that happened, then you’d have a stupendous album.  But that’s sort of always been Green Day’s M.O.  Their albums are typically overly long and sprawling, cathartic, flawed, and usually highly enjoyable.  21st Century Breakdown offers up more of the same.

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Jimmy Tamborello: Credit Where Credit Is Due

October 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

How many diehard synthpop fans do you think live in Canada?  Maybe enough to crowd one Toronto club, plus a few enlightened Inuits and a caribou.  Yet this half-frozen nation has given birth to perhaps the genre’s greatest Myspace-to-riches story in Valerie Poxleitner, known to her friends and fans as Lights.

At least, riches seem certain as she now releases her first LP, The Listening.  The number of plays she enjoys on a daily basis give public approbation to her Juno Award and the various other acclaims she has racked up prior to pressing a record.

Beating The Listening to stores by a full month is Ocean Eyes, the major-label debut of Owl City (nee Adam Young).  Born even further from the equator in the little town of Owatonna, MN, Young has experienced similar popularity and growth in response to self-sustained synthpop efforts.  The two are seen by many as each other’s other-gendered counterpart.

Rumors of varying integrity have labeled Lights and Owl City friends, collaborators, sweethearts, and doppelgangers.  What we know is that their homegrown brand of electronic melodies with softened, bubble-pop percussion and smooth, coasting vocals is catching on with the kids in every neighborhood.

As far as anyone seems to remember, the last softcore electronic artist to break into the mainstream so summa cum laude was The Postal Service.  While their only LP, Give Up, was reported by Sub Pop to be the label’s most successful release since Bleach (it has since been surpassed by Flight of the Conchords), a single supporting tour is all the wake it generated.  Some chatter has ensued, but passing years show further Postal Service tours and recordings to be dreams without wings.

There’s your overview.  Here’s my problem.

Our generation has never had a mainstream affinity for the buzzes and whirs and padsynth drums of adventurous electronic artists.  Naturally, the three crooners – or perhaps cooers – to break through are extensively sized up against each other.  But as adorable as Lights and Owl City are, they are not The Postal Service.

The Postal Service is commonly referred to as a side project of Ben Gibbard, the face of indie wunderband Death Cab for Cutie.  Despite the public’s impression, Gibbard is not Death Cab’s heart, soul, and guiding light.  In particular, guitarist-cum-producer Chris Walla plays a large part in their writing process.  And despite the fact that you hear Gibbard’s crystal pipes on every track of Give Up, it was not a solo effort.  As educated as he is in sonic development, Gibbard does not have the right skill set to take a chisel to a synthesizer and carve out such an wondrously glitchy album.

The first Postal Service song was released two years before Give Up hit the shelves on an album called Life Is Full of Possibilities.  If you’re confused, check Wikipedia, I’ll wait.  Make sure you catch the artist name painted across the ambulance on the cover.  That’s the guy who wrote all the other songs on Life Is Full of Possibilities, so we’ve got good reason to interpolate that Dntel is also responsible for – did you catch it, next to Ben Gibbard’s name? – (This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan.

Dntel is mastermind Jimmy Tamborello, a synthhead who sprang out of California in the early 1990′s.  Under that primary penname and a few others, Tamborello has accrued critical acclaim and a handful of adherents by spinning out imaginative records loaded with electronica candy.  His style is of his own design.

Through a serendipity of geographical coincidence, Gibbard got an invite from Tamborello to lay down vocals over a tune he had crafted.  While Dntel had collaborated with many others before, Gibbard’s cachet with hipsters and the approachable style that later took Death Cab to more widespread fame gave The Dream of Evan and Chan unprecedented motility.  The pair hardly hesitated before plunging into a more extensive tag-team project.

First, Tamborello built a full album of instrumental material from the ground up.  He put the tracks on tapes and shipped them to the great state of Washington, where Gibbard tagged in.  The bespectacled twenty-something was given free rein to reorganize the beats as necessary while he plotted lyrical melodies overtop.  From there, extra hands came into play: significantly, Chris Walla appeared on one of the finalized songs playing piano and handled the whole recording process at his Hall of Justice studio.  Female vocals were courtesy of Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis and little-known indie songstress Jen Wood.

You might glean from the above that Ben Gibbard acted in a greater capacity than any other single contributer to shape Give Up.  I won’t press the issue because it doesn’t matter whether you’re right or wrong.  Tamborello’s brilliant work is central to the spirit and polish of the album and his part in the partnership is chronically downplayed.

Returning to Lights and Owl City, take a test drive on each of their lead singles – Saviour and Fireflies, respectively.  Then play Such Great Heights, the first Postal Service single.  If you focus on the voices, you’ll notice that Adam Young and Ben Gibbard sound remarkably alike, while Valerie Poxleitner manipulates her vox with a touch of artifice.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

If you focus on the electronics underneath, you might come to see why I feel Tamborello dominates the newcomers.  His choice of sounds shows a greater willingness to take chances and a greater depth of experience from chances taken over an inventive career.  Subtly, he employs irregular three-measure phrases throughout Such Great Heights, even overlaying them with standard four-measure phrases in other instruments to create a drawn out polyrhythmic effect.

Dntel provided the fundaments of The Postal Service, and his influence on Give Up is still the element that sets that landmark album apart from young imitators.  Over time, I’m sure Lights and Owl City will grow their talents.  They may exchange their in-your-face rocktronica choruses for more adventuresome techniques, or they may diverge from Dntel-style beats rather than aspiring to them.  But at the moment, there is no comparison.

In closing: The Postal Service was Dntel’s side project.  His idea, his beats, his project.

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Ursa Major was released in August, 2009

September 17, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I have no right to review Slippery When Wet.  I can’t break down Born to Run.  To me, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Pet Sounds are beyond approach.  I lack the bona fides to critique such eternal landmarks, not least of all because I wasn’t there to experience them.  Awareness of the musical zeitgeist of a decade is no substitute for being a part of a movement.  I want to be there when the next album that defines its time drops.  Maybe, I thought, maybe Ursa Major will be that album.

This was wishful thinking from the start.  Third Eye Blind already had their breakout.  The self-titled debut sent fully a third of its tracks coasting into the Top 20, including Semi-Charmed Life, the No. 1 hit famous for the shock it creates when your sing-along is shattered by the realization of what the verses are describing.  Still, the six-year hiatus that followed their third release (throughout which there were no signs of a break-up) served to infuse the band with mystery and hype.  Maybe, I thought, maybe Ursa Major will be that album.

Available only by digital download, the Red Star EP heralded a return to the band’s true form.  Then a new website appeared, 3eb.com, that put community interaction at the forefront.  The fan-centric aesthetic and an “Assembly” full of blogs, along with claims from frontman Stephan Jenkins that the upcoming album would be their most political yet, steered the hype away from melody.  Why would a band whose cornerstone was a song with overlooked lyrics and a hook for the ages predicate their overdue return to the limelight on opinion and activism?  New grounds trembled in anticipation of breaking.  Maybe…

“I want a riot, yeah!”

The rallying cry of the lead-off track has my fist in the air!  The guitars are surging back with familiar energy.  The pitch is rising, so I crank the volume and get caught up in the rasp of passion in Stephan’s voice:

“Yes I am dying to be freaked!”

Yes, I am d– wait, what?

Instantly I’m back in 1997 reliving the shock.  So, what kind of riot was he talking about?  A quick check of the lyric liner tells me the whole song is open to at least two interpretations: grassroots firepower or a plea for sex.  Alright, Stephan Jenkins, you got me.

But the music goes on.  Brand-new hooks revive with full confidence the old Third Eye Blind swagger.  Rolling snares and bam-bam rhythms lead you in and carry you like a wave from verse to verse.  The slurred lilt of the vocals are so instantaneously familiar that I had little trouble singing along not just on the first listen, but even at the first iteration of a chorus.  Then again, I was a pretty big fan.

Weren’t we all?  Who among us, born on the far side of the great divide that is the year 1990, wouldn’t hop on board at the first chord of Jumper?  Thank your lucky red stars, because fully a third of Ursa Major could have coasted into the Top 20 at the end of the last millenium.  Not to delude you; without the full promotional force of a major label (they recorded on their own as Mega Collider Records), these singles won’t see multi-platinum sales.  Besides, kids today are much more taken by their angry Seethers and their dreamy Jason Mrazs.

But the punchline is missing.  The melodies are what we all want, but this was supposed to be an intellectual firestarter!  Members of the Assembly may dissent, but what I heard was less a call to action and more what I’ll label “forward-dating.”

Through lyrics that remain as fluid and deft as ever, Stephan Jenkins has attempted to emphasize that he is here and now.  Explicit references to online dating, flat screen tv, and mp3 players appear distinctly unromantic amidst the surrounding metaphors and emotional outpours.  An entire song about “trying to flip butch chicks” and (elsewhere) an isolated mention of “Africa where life is cheap” might equally elicit groans from apathetics who find vocal activists oppressive.  Opening the cd case, you run into an advertisement for Third Eye Blind ringtones before you find the cd itself.  But all of these prove to the listener when Ursa Major was written.  Right now.

The Assembly – in fact, the overall intent and form of 3eb.com – now makes perfect sense.  Third Eye Blind is not retrieving the roots of political rock and roll by emerging from their hiatus reborn as Bob Dylan in three persons.  Instead, they’re eschewing the traditional way in which musicians relate to the public.  This record wants to kick off a new era; not of what music is, but of how it is communicated.

Thoroughly modern issues feature alongside buzzwords that are neutral but strictly contemporary in order to engage the listener.  We are meant to feel that Ursa Major is our album.  And to leave posterity with no doubt as to the exact date of its release, Jenkins sings: “Wanna be hustler school M.I.A. / Make a paper plane and then you fly away,” a shout out to last year’s multi-platinum single.  He even slips in “I’m your mega collider” which, as I mentioned, is the band’s invented label.

Finally, notice that the website tries to use open membership and encourage blogging and forum posts in order to hand over the reins of Third Eye Blind’s web presence to the fans.  This is our album, because the focal points of our daily lives make guest appearances in the songs.  This is our website, because we provide 95% of the content, unedited.  This is our time, defined.

Maybe, I thought.

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Cruel Intentions: Actually, they’re too nice

September 14, 2009 By 3 Comments

To commemorate the return of “Gossip Girl” tonight, let’s revisit a well-known but flawed 1999 movie that should be required watching for anyone who likes Josh Schwartz’s show…

Cruel Intentions

Rating: two stars (out of four)

Watching Cruel Intentions today, in 2009, it was almost impossible not to think of “Gossip Girl,” the popular TV show that relishes the lascivious, mischievous, and devious exploits of uber-rich, uber-preppy high school students living on the Upper East Side of New York City.  The teenagers in this movie, backed with the both comforting and numbing knowledge that their careers and financial situations lack any semblance of uncertainty, introduce excitement into their lives with beguiling games to lure members of the opposite sex, snarling plots to humiliate enemies, and discreetly mentioned but explicitly realized sexual exploration.  Sound familiar?

Indeed, now I won’t be able to watch this movie again without seeing Chuck as Sebastian and Blair as Kathryn.  And my moderate knowledge of contemporary teenage dramas makes it easy for me to buy the capacity of these individuals to engage in such elaborate schemes, most of which are underpinned by the goal of enhancing their popularity.  Cruel Intentionsis based off Choderlos de Laclos’ novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses (which has been translated into film an astonishing four times), and some reviewers couldn’t buy the shift of the characters’ situations.  James Berardinelli wrote that, “What works with mature individuals in 1782 France seems false when applied to high school kids in 1999 America.”

Perhaps because of “Gossip Girl” and “The O.C.,” not to mention films like Thirteenpresenting young people growing old quite fast, and a sprinkling of my own experience thrown in, I wholeheartedly disagree with the above statement—it now seems more natural than ever for this kind of plot to be attributed to teenagers rather than old-fashioned Frenchmen.  That said…there wasn’t much more about the film that I could throw myself into.  This particular nefarious plot allows Sebastian (Ryan Phillipe), his school’s reigning Don Juan, and his stepsister Kathryn (Sarah Michelle Gellar, from TV’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and most teenage boys’ fantasies) to work for and against each other at the same time (these things get complicated).

Kathryn, irritated that her ex-boyfriend preferred the nubile and naïve young Cecile (Selma Blair), solicits Sebastian to work his magic on her and help ruin her reputation.  He complies, but he’s more interested in a greater challenge—deflowering (the back cover of the DVD actually uses that word) Annette (Reese Witherspoon).  Annette, who conveniently happens to be the daughter of the school’s new headmaster and is thus moving to town, wrote an article for a teen magazine extolling the virtues of virginity before marriage; this, combined with her looks, makes her irresistible to Sebastian.

Kathryn wants his car if he can’t seduce her; if he can, he gets Kathryn herself.  So there’s a bit of Clueless (with half-sibling relationships seemingly avoiding the stigma of incest) sprinkled over the “Gossip Girl” undertones. (The GG episode wherein Blair asks Chuck to seduce Vanessa with the promise of herself later bears a particularly uncanny resemblance.) Unfortunately, Cruel Intentions has little of the charm and zest of Clueless or the damn-the-stiffs embrace of decadence of “Gossip Girl.”  It’s too somber, too watered-down and safe, and, ultimately, too bland.

This is the kind of movie that should be described as a “doozy,” that should be full of delicious lines and lively acting and come-on-that’s-impossible-but-really-fun-to-watch plot twists.  But unlike “Gossip Girl,” Cruel Intentions doesn’t really seem to cherish its characters, faults and all—it makes noise about embracing them, but it’s really just disguising a morality play, and that’s no good here.  The heart of the matter is revealed by director Roger Kumble in the DVD’s special features, where he explains that he wanted to show nudity around Sebastian to illustrate his nature but cut the scene for fear of us not buying Sebastian’s eventual transformation into a PG-acceptable sweetheart—a direction that, I think, misses the heart of the story.

Elsewhere, we don’t see enough evidence of Sebastian and Annette melting away each other’s icy exteriors, and thus the central romance, vital to the film’s success, doesn’t resonate.  When Sebastian is fretting over his possible missed opportunity, or Annette is flashing back towards previous cutesy scenes, we aren’t emotionally engaged.  That’s not necessarily a knock on the actors, but rather on the script, which tries to fit too much into a 95-minute movie (would another few scenes have killed us?) and doesn’t allow for much character development.  There’s nothing embarrassing, but no dialogue, characters, or scenes really convince us that they’re worthy of our attention.

Brotherly love in New York City.

Brotherly love in New York City.

Phillippe is alright as Sebastian, although I got the feeling that, as the charming playboy, he was too dour—like the film, he doesn’t seem exhilarated by his character’s nature (compare with the wonderfully slimy Ed Westwick as “Gossip Girl’s” Chuck, who oozes an irrational fascination with both himself and his lifestyle).  Gellar too is relatively acceptable as Kathryn (though, again, she lacks Leighton Meester’s zest for bitchiness), as is Witherspoon (who looks more attractive than in anything else I can recall).  But too much credibility is lost with the insipid script, not to mention the ending, wherein both the moral lesson and the death are unnecessary.

One of the film’s best scenes features Kathryn lying on top of Sebastian and shamelessly teasing him, with no intentions of following through, to encourage him to keep his end of the bargain up (in more ways than one)—just the kind of devilishly entertaining moments we needed more of.  There’s another moment where Kathryn teaches Cecile how to French kiss, and by the end, the latter looks like she desperately wants more…and so do we.

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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009): It wasn’t half as good as it could’ve been

September 14, 2009 By 1 Comment

Rating: 2 stars (out of 4)

I didn’t like the sixth Harry Potter movie. I really expected to; I’m an apologist for the series, and David Yates’ effort before this was my favorite yet. Unfortunately, Half Blood Prince let me down. I’m here to tell you why it got way too much positive press from critics and viewers everywhere.

But before I start ripping into it, let me compliment the parts of the movie I loved:  its incredible – almost naturalistic – visual style, the best acting in the series yet, and a surprising amount of comedy. It’s easily the funniest Harry Potter yet. And the movie, at its core, is an interesting story that I’m very attached to. Overall, though, there’s just too little payoff to make this a rewarding film.

On to the complaints…

Like Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, it took a second viewing for me to really decide how I felt about this Harry Potter movie. This time, though, the result was less favorable.

Most of my complaints stem from two major problems: The film doesn’t take the time to 1) understand evil or 2) give us much meaningful romantic payoff. I’ll discuss these two complaints separately.

Side note: Notice how I work hard to separate my feelings from the book and the movie; I’m attempting to avoid an error often made by those evaluating adaptations. I expect the film to be “different” from the book, I just hope it will turn into a compelling film.

Major complaint 1: The movie doesn’t care about its bad guys.

One reason I like the fifth movie so much is we really get a sense of what makes the two bad guys (Umbridge, Voldy) tick, and we can compare this to our heroes. Voldemort is attempting to take over Harry’s mind, Umbridge is villifying everything Harry loves, and it forces Harry to question what the line between good and bad really is.

But in the sixth movie, we’re not given much insight into the villains, even with a few revelations at the end. Why is Draco skulking around and plotting bad things? Why are the Death Eaters flying around blowing stuff up? What are their goals and their motivations? Nothing gave me a good grasp on the danger the characters were in.

There was ripe potential for the film to dig deep into the mind of Voldmort for the heroes (and viewers). The writers could easily have developed great insight into Voldemort’s descent and compared it to the decisions the current Hogwarts students had to make, but it’s not there. Chalk it up as a missed opportunity. The professors just keep saying “he was a kid here like you students, but he turned EVIL.” Fine, then. Show us how or why, make us care and compare it to the characters we know and love after 14 hrs of movies.

What bothers me is how much emphasis was placed on the love triangles. It’s not that the characters’ raging hormones and love triangles aren’t compelling. It’s just that they’re not nearly as compelling as the over-riding saga and rising villain which are given a short deal here. Love is a big part of these characters’ lives, but what makes this series special is its balance between the conflict in the characters’ relationships and the conflict in the overall saga, good vs. evil.

Major complaint 2: The romances are pathetic and overcooked.

The Harry-Ginny romance doesn’t seem to happen for much of a reason. Sure, Harry lists some of the things he likes about her at one point, but we’re never given a reason to feel their pull together. You never feel them really growing towards each other except for a few nice moments. Nothing substantial.

Compare that to how excellently Order of the Phoenix portrayed the rise and fall of the Harry-Cho romance, and it makes this one feel a bit empty. I’m hoping the seventh/eighth films dig into it a bit more and really makes me care about the two as a couple. Because, for now, I feel like the filmmakers are telling me to want them together without really giving me a reason.

The Ron and Hermione situation is treated more organically, but the execution is bungled. There’s just too much, with not enough payoff. The bickering drags on and on. You’d think with all of the setup this movie and the last, there’d be a big payoff scene or something, especially after the last two movie had so much build up to it. I guess this is a romantic cliffhanger and we’ll get a good moment later. I still wish there was a bit more resolution this movie.

Here’s hoping Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is rights these wrongs.

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U2 – How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004): I prefer the U2 that drops bombs

September 12, 2009 By 1 Comment

Today marks the beginning of the second leg of U2′s 360° Tour and the tour’s first shows in America.  In honor of such an occasion, let’s examine U2′s biggest hiccup and an effort from a band who will be opening for several shows of this leg, Muse.

HTDAAB: Not even the cover art inspires hope.
HTDAAB: Not even the cover art inspires hope.

 

Rating: 2 1/2 stars (out of five)

Having successfully entered their third decade together with 2000’s acclaimed All That You Can’t Leave Behind, U2 may have been forgiven for thinking they didn’t have any challenges left.  Having already changed up their sound enough times to stay relevant and popular for over 20 years, they’d silenced the Pop naysayers and once more inserted themselves into the national consciousness.

Such contentment, indeed, may be responsible for the limpness of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.  Despite arriving after what was to date the longest layoff of the band’s career, Bomb represents the most uninspired, superficial, and, quite frankly, boring record they’ve ever made.  They’ve lost both the interesting sound of their past and the songs themselves (ATYCLB at least had the latter).  The unfair reaction to Pop has apparently compelled U2 to distance themselves from their experimental 90s as much as possible, but in the process they’ve forgotten what made them great.  AllMusic Guide hit the nail on the head in saying, “They’ve overcorrected for their perceived sins, scaling back their sound so far that they have shed the murky sense of mystery that gave The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree an otherworldly allure.”   

The sound on Bomb, thus, invokes generic, meat-and-potatoes rock that has never, ever been U2’s specialty.  Producer Steve Lillywhite was behind the boards for the taut and fierce War, but now that they don’t write songs with the passion of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” or “Like a Song…” the straight-ahead production doesn’t serve them well.  The songs need the post-punk influences evident on Boy, the wintry atmospherics of The Unforgettable Fire, the wide-open desert feel of The Joshua Tree, or the danceable but dark stylings of Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Pop.  They don’t do meat-and-potatoes well, at least not anymore.  The Edge isn’t captivating enough, nor is Bono, who’s voice has never sounded worse and yet is placed too far forward in the mix.

Meanwhile, the rhythm section is relegated to the distant back, as Lillywhite and the band have apparently forgotten that most of U2’s best songs feature memorable contributions from bassist Adam Clayton and/or drummer Larry Mullen Jr.  At the end of the first verse of “Miracle Drug,” you can feel the rhythm section trying to kick in, but they’re buried too deeply in the mix that you can hardly hear them over Bono’s cries.

Yet, as ATYCLB proved, sonic innovation is not a pre-requisite for a successful album, but this collection of tracks is without question the weakest U2 has ever put forth.  The songs lack heart and energy, relying on recycled sounds and those repetitive bridge solos.  “A Man and a Woman” informs us—in case anyone was still straddling that fence—that U2 should never attempt an R&B crossover.  Everyone sloughs his way through the turgid “Love and Peace”; and “One Step Closer” and “Yahweh” have neither the lyrics nor the melody to justify their instrumental minimalism.  

Our esteemed frontman, for his part, does little to quell concern (at least in myself) that his ever-increasing amounts of public activism have degraded the band’s music.  The band has acknowledged that Bono’s studio time has decreased over the past few years; and although they claim that his absence isn’t a problem, he—not the Edge or anyone else—is the band’s heart and soul.  Without him in top form, little else matters.      

None of this is to say that Bomb is unlistenable.  Indeed, the feeling provoked by a casual listen easily supersedes the lingering, unpleasant aftertaste.  “City of Blinding Lights” is so far and away the standout that it feels as though it belongs on different album, a gorgeous, elegiac song the likes of which they’ve never written before.  “Miracle,” about a paraplegic former high school classmate of the band who was able to write poems with the help of drugs, features similarly pretty chiming guitars and an ecstatic-sounding bridge.  Yet, besides “City,” all the pleasures here are moderate—“Vertigo” may get your toe tapping, but its best environment remains that fantastic 30-second iPod commercial; “Crumbs From Your Table” pleasantly meanders; and “Original of the Species” has the album’s prettiest melody but suffers from its words. 

Indeed, though I would take stronger melodies for a start, Bono’s lyrics unquestionably dampen the album, as he spits out lines that make you want to tear your hair out.  The subtlety and genuine emotion from earlier in his career have been completely wiped away.  Nonsense lyrics are fine on “Vertigo,” but by the time you’ve heard “Freedom has a scent / Like the top of a newborn baby’s head,” or “Some things you shouldn’t get too good at / Like smiling, crying, or celebrity,” or found Bono trying to rhyme choice and tortoise, romance and distance, you’ll want out.  (What, exactly, would be wrong with being too good at smiling?)  13 years ago, he wrote on “So Cruel,” “I gave you everything you wanted / It wasn’t what you wanted.”  Now, he writes “I’ll give you everything you want / Except the thing that you want.”  The first is poignant; the second, faux profound and merely contradictory.
 
The most surprising misfire, however, is “Sometimes You Can’t Make it On Your Own,” the ballad written in memorial of Bono’s late father that took up the most studio time and garnered the most hype.  For Bono, and some fans, it was the heart of the album, but it’s remarkably uninviting.  Their love songs now all sound too calculated and safe, lacking the quality lyrics and/or musical elements necessary to ensnare the listener.  It’s hard to say whether U2 will ever find that part of themselves again.  One can only hope they haven’t completely lost the desire to be different—an ambition that took them to the top in the first place.

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Muse – Absolution (2003): I still feel dirty

September 12, 2009 By 1 Comment

absolution 

Rating: 2 1/2 stars (out of five)

You can’t read eight words on Allmusic’s biography of Muse without reaching the word Radiohead; and given lead singer Matthew Bellamy’s obvious love for Thom Yorke, that’s not a surprise.  Musically, though, Absolution, the band’s third album, doesn’t really resemble any Radiohead discs.  There are hints of The Bends here, but with its dark stylings and heavy dose of drama, Absolution reminded me more of Placebo.  The problem, though, is that Muse, a relatively unknown band quickly gaining in prominence, sounds like Radiohead- and Placebo-lite, without the skill to transcend their influences. 

Absolution is filled with Bellamy’s paranoid and stark observations about the future of the world lined up next to the band’s oppressive sound.  The two forces fit each other, there’s no doubt about that, but the combination just doesn’t work.  This is largely because the music, and the production, sounds horribly claustrophobic.  The songs are not allowed to breathe whatsoever, and by mid-way through the album, the listener craves a break.  More talented bands and producers have created albums that are depressive and/or haunting, to be sure, but here Muse miss that target and end up sounding swampy and muddled.  The production further becomes a problem because there is very little melody anywhere to be found here; these two facts leave Muse playing intense but indistinctive and sludgy rock.

Fans of alternative rock may find enough to like here, especially on “Time is Running Out” and “Falling Away With You,” but repeated listens reveal too many imperfections in the songs and the lyrics.  Tracks like “Stockholm Syndrome” arrest attention on first listens, but after a while they don’t seem to hold together, simply fading away into irrelevance in the listener’s mind.  “Blackout” sounds appealing at first, but by the end of the song, Bellamy’s words starts to grate.  He moans uber-pessimistic lines like “This love’s too good to last” without ever really telling us why.  “I’m too old to change”—really?

Elsewhere, he rants that “This is the end of the world!” and “The end is all I can see,” which represent the tone of the entire album, but none of it registers much of an emotional impact.  As “Blackout” makes clear, Bellamy doesn’t take the next step of telling us why he’s so paranoid, what makes him so pessimistic, what perspective he can offer us besides apocalyptic visions.  He also slips up lyrically on “Falling Away,” where a multitude of absolutist clichés (“I’ll love whatever you become”; “I know I won’t forget a thing”; “All of the hopes we cherished fade”) de-mystify an otherwise stately song.

“Time is Running Out” deserves keeping around, possessing both a melody and a skillful build of tension.  The mischievous lyrics—easily the album’s best—express that undeniable but often unexplainable interest in unstable relationships (“You’re something beautiful, a contradiction / I wanna play the game, I want the friction”). They’re less successful at relating to the album’s overall theme (as expressed in the song’s chorus and title) that we’re all doomed, as Bellamy likely wanted them to, but they work in the four engrossing minutes of the song.

But ultimately, Absolution, despite being just 12 earnest songs (two brief Morning Glory-style instrumentals not included), feels overwhelmingly long, a fact traceable to the oppressive sound and unmemorable songs.  Rolling Stone’s Album Guide describes an album by Scott Walker as “top-heavy with pretentious abstraction, self-consciously difficult and often actively unpleasant,” which sums up my feelings on Absolution pretty much to a T.  In small doses, Muse’s music works better, but they have a long way to go before an entire album is worth listening to.

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Yes Man (2008): It gets a no

September 10, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Rating: 2 stars (out of 4)

It’s easy to write Yes Man off as “Liar Liar 2″ as so many critics have. But Yes Man, a zany Jim Carrey movie about a man who can’t say no, has a more true and powerful center. Moreso than other high-concept Carrey comedies — Liar Liar, Me Myself and Irene, The Mask, Bruce Almighty — Yes Man contains a relevant, powerful truth at its core: Life is best experienced proactively.

That’s why I wanted to like Yes Man as I was watching it. Certainly, Yes Man is probably a notch or two above the disaster that most newspapers and magazines have it pegged as. But it misses out on greatness, and even goodness, because the film is so poorly executed.

The biggest flaw is that there’s not much to Carrey’s character. I felt no connection with him. I didn’t believe his despair at the beginning, didn’t feel his newfound passion in the middle, and didn’t taste any redemption in the end. Why are he and Bradley Cooper’s character best friends? I see no reason for that relationship other than every main character of a romantic comedy needs a best friend.

As he said yes to anything and everything, I felt like I was watching him read a script, not act. It’s partially his fault, partially the script’s fault. It’s frustrating because I believe this movie could have been so good if the film-makers had just let us feel Carrey’s journey a bit more. Even if Carrey had put a bit more thought into his words and a bit more hurt on his face, I might have been sucked in more.

Another big problem is that the movie doesn’t trust its viewer to think at all. It seems forced to point out everything. Right, we know Carrey would never have met Zooey Deschanel if he hadn’t started saying yes. You already made that pretty obvious, Yes Man, you don’t need to make that point the crux of the climactic speech.

A few of the jokes are really lame, too. The terribly uncomfortable dentures scene should never have been filmed, let alone made it past the editing room. There’s way too much of Rhys Derby’s boss/dorky friend character, who gets old fast.

Easily the best character in the movie is Zooey Deschanel’s. We know from an early encounter that she’s destined to be Carrey’s romantic foil, but she has vivacity in the face of predictability. The spontaneity and adventure-driven life this movie endorses is so much better embodied by her than Carrey, even after Carrey’s transformation.

All in all, I tolerated Yes Man. I didn’t love it, only barely liked it at places, and recognize that it’s far from a great movie. But at times, it’s a fun ride. The best portion is the frenzied second act when we get one set up and payoff after another. It’s the funniest and richest part of the movie. Plus, Carrey and Deschanel play off each other pretty well for the better portion of the movie even though Carrey’s character is underwritten. It’s an uplifting, simple, fun romantic comedy.

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