Culture Greyhound

Music, Movies, Television, etc. Pop culture reviews for the short-attention-span Internet age.

Battles – Gloss Drop

While not nearly as interesting overall as the breakthrough Mirrored, the follow-up is a solid, energetic, easy progression from Battles’ previous work.  Now without their standout member Tyondai Braxton, the group has started from scratch, rising to the challenge of delivering a strong follow-up to one of the most acclaimed albums of the past ten years, and without the guy who was considered the bread and butter.  Battles have created a more accessible album, albeit not without a bit of filler here and there, but one that pairs up nicely, incorporating older Battles sounds with the driving punch of their breakout material.

Rating: 7

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Music, Movies, Television, etc. Pop culture reviews for the short-attention-span Internet age.

The Lonely Island – Turtleneck and Chain

SNL’s Digital Shorts peeps are back with a sharper, funnier, and musically more enjoying album than Incredibad, if that was even possible.  While there were many highlights and instant classics on the trio’s fake-rap debut, there was a strange amount of filler.  But Turtleneck and Chain sums things up in less than forty minutes with all gold, save for a weak Santigold track near the end.  Duets from Akon, Snoop Dogg, and the one and only Michael Bolton (best song on the album for sure) keep things fresh and funny.  Bonus points for the album cover.

Rating: 8

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Today a guest post from my sis Emily, who examines the work of Paul Giamatti, including his new film Win Win.

Paul Giamatti has always been a favorite of mine and with a new film coming out called Win Win, I wanted to do a special write up about his films. Hilarious and heartwarming, the new film make me laugh out loud. A broke lawyer in New Jersey, Mike (Paul Giamatti) becomes the guardian of an old man in order to receive some extra money every month. When the old man’s grandson shows up, Mike has no choice but to take him in until his mother gets out of rehab. The film has a great ensemble cast and everyone is funny. The actors do a great job of transitioning the feel of the film from a comedy to an intense drama when it needs to be. The grandson, played by Alex Shaffer, does an especially good job of this. This being his breakout role, I was very impressed with his ability to make the switch. Although it is easy to tell which he is better at. Giamatti is solid the entire film and when a scene is lagging, he picks it up quickly and carries the rest of the cast with him.

In a strange, dark comedy, Paul Giamatti is excellent. The film, Cold Souls, is unique and funny with some of my favorite Giamatti scenes. He plays himself, an actor who is having difficulty separating himself from the play he is starring in. So he visits a clinic and has his soul extracted from his brain and stored in a facility. With some of his best monologues and incredible facial expressions, Giamatti delivers an amazing performance. People assume portraying yourself in a film would be easy, and he makes it look that way, but he also made sure the character was more intriguing than your average person. It wouldn’t surprise me if Giamatti turned out to be that interesting of a person.

In Sideways, a more well-known comedy, Giamatti provides the hopeless middle-aged man needed for the lead. Depressed, and trying to make sure his friend has a good time on a road trip to wine country, Miles and his friend Jack rediscover themselves. Finding yourself in the middle of your lifetime is not filmed as often as a coming of age story about teens. Sideways makes you laugh about it, and at the same time hope you don’t end up like that. Giamatti tends to choose these types of comedies because he performs well and it is never ordinary. This film is a great representation of Giamatti’s acting style and I love and respect what he does as an actor.

This go-around is a very special Paragraph Reviews from my dear Hollywood-intern sister Emily, who exclusively screened and reviewed three documentaries for Culture Greyhound.

Burning Down The House: The Story of CBGB

A documentary on the life of CBGB, this film speaks also of the culture at the time and the passion people have for music of their generation. Like most musical documentaries, the impact is not as strong unless you are familiar with the music. However, everyone can relate to what a father figure the club owner, Hilly Krystal, was, and how he impacted the lives of teens in New York for over thirty years. The film itself is well organized, with plenty of footage. Band performances, interviews with New York citizens, and band interviews all help piece together the history of the club. Interviews with the employees and Hilly himself tell the story of exactly what the club was about and what it went through to try and stay open. By the end, I had goose bumps watching Patti Smith start crying at the end of her set the last night CBGB was open. It is a real-life underdog story, and it represents one of the most important times in music history.

Grade: A-

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Music, Movies, Television, etc. Pop culture reviews for the short-attention-span Internet age.

Blue Valentine (2010)

It truly is a crime Gosling was robbed of a Best Actor nomination this year, as he and Michelle Williams both deliver mesmerizing performances.  Blue Valentine all by itself is a powerful film, a realistic portrayal of an unfortunately true-all-the-time tale of a couple filled with circumstance and rejection, a marriage falling apart, and a family just beginning to break.  The romance scenes are particularly intense and shot well, and the getting-to-know-you dialogues between Williams and Gosling sell the movie for me.

Rating: 8

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Music, Movies, Television, etc. Pop culture reviews for the short-attention-span Internet age.
Enter the Void (2010)

A POV story all the way through, this fascinating film captures the effect of a life’s end through the eyes of a floating spirit over the drug-infested underground of modern day Tokyo.  Everything is spellbinding; the movie itself feels like a giant chemically-induced trip.  Essentially the slow-moving dialogue, drugged-out sequences, and afterlife transitions cause your brain to turn completely off.  Yet the protagonist’s journey is a compelling one, and the characters are well developed in the 130 minute running time.  A splendid mindfuck.

Rating: 8

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Music, Movies, Television, etc. Pop culture reviews for the short-attention-span Internet age.

Boardwalk Empire – Season 1

Since major plot points are more or less developed thanks to American history, the real joy of Boardwalk Empire is subtle character development.  Buscemi leads a stellar supporting cast throughout 1920’s Atlantic City, at the beginning of the passage of Prohibition and the dawn of woman suffrage.  The slow transformation of Nucky Thompson from a shady politician to a full-on killer is made slowly and surely, just as Jimmy predicted in the pilot it would.  Meanwhile, characters like Agent Van Alden and Margaret Schroeder and their subtle mutations into insanity and independence, respectively, make this show evenly paced and yet captivating week by week.  And the violence is pretty awesome too.

Rating: 8

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Music, Movies, Television, etc. Pop culture reviews for the short-attention-span Internet age.

Love and Other Drugs

Watch the two-minute green band trailer and you know exactly how this movie goes, more or less.  Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway fall in love, separate, and get back together again.  Welcome to the standard rom-com formula, unchanged since the beginning of time.  That’s not to say the movie isn’t enjoyable (up until the trite ending, which everyone sees a mile away); there is great chemistry between Gyllenhaal’s take on a career-minded, smart-ass, sweet-talking med salesman and Hathaway’s sarcastic, quasi-misanthropic, surprisingly charming twenty-something with Parkinson’s.  Add a dash of breasts, a ton of male ass, and many many boner jokes (the character is selling Viagra, after all), and you’ve got a decent date movie, even if the first third (which is mainly focused on career moves and less on romance) is more interesting than the eye-roll-worthy rest.

Rating: 6

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Music, Movies, Television, etc. Pop culture reviews for the short-attention-span Internet age.

Daft Punk – Tron Legacy Soundtrack

When I heard back in February Daft Punk were doing the music for Tron, I was immediately excited – new Daft Punk? Awesome!  In retrospect I don’t know why I thought producing a score for a Disney sci-fi film would sound anything like Discovery, and inevitably it doesn’t.  That doesn’t mean this hour-long soundtrack doesn’t have its moments – the sound is great, the French duo’s first stab at composing orchestral tunes is to be applauded, and the combination of strings with Daft Punk’s trademark house crescendo is simultaneously creepy and, well, cinematic.  And there are even a couple bangers hidden in here too, reminiscent  of the good ol’ Daft Punk.  There just aren’t enough for my tastes.  In the end, it’s just a film score.

Rating: 6

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Music, Movies, Television, etc.  Pop culture reviews for the short-attention-span Internet age.

Nicki Minaj – Pink Friday

Call it a case of the hype machine, but upon several initial listens, it would seem Nicki gave away her best verses to other people’s songs.  Certainly we are asking too much if we expected the album to be more “Roman’s Revenge” and less “Your Love” – and that is something (albeit a disappointing fact) that I’m willing to overlook.  The production is slick, the melodies are catchy, and Minaj has a great singing voice.  So what if the finished product is a little too soft R&B and less manic schizo rapping?  Nicki has many faces; the first impression was obviously just one of many styles.  But the rhymes on this album do not live up to Minaj’s past work on tracks by Diddy, Trey Songz, Kanye, etc.  The cadence is samey, the words are lazily repetitive, the dead air is filled by stuttering, and the unwritten law of rap is violated many times (the one that says you can’t rhyme a word with the same word….it’s the same word).  Pink Friday will be a moderate success, but it’s not strong enough of a debut to give Nicki the promotion from “featured” to “standalone” artist.

Rating: 6

Two more after the jump…

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