The Stone Roses were a fairly important band in the UK, but I didn’t know much about except for hearing the song “Love Spreads” on WHFS and on 120 Minutes. I’ll admit it didn’t catch me 11 years ago, but it popped up on the radio when I was driving home in the rain late last week and I cranked up the factory stereo as loud as it would go. This was a pretty unapologetically rockin song. The first minute or so is all instrumental. Instead of lyrics, it was all a showcase for John Squire’s guitar. The lyrics have some vague biblical symbolism, but it was all filling out the structure of great music as far as I’m concerned. It seems to end and turn into a different song at least twice and keeps the listening experience fresh.
Its a shame this wasn’t a bigger hit, it would enjoy regular rotation as a classic cut on more radio stations.
Wikipedia entry

Back in June, I wrote an article for the Baltimore City Paper about the first five chapters of R. Kelly’s “Trapped In The Closet,” shortly after the 5th chapter had been leaked on the eve of the release of the otherwise underwhelming TP3: Reloaded album, which also included a DVD of the video for all five chapters. At the time, there had been no official word about any future chapters, and I was pretty unsatisfied with the apparent final chapter’s conclusion. But of course, the week the article ran, the news was announced that the R. was working on a whole bunch of new chapters, and while I had a little egg on my face, I was mainly excited about the continuation of the whole pulpy saga.

Earlier this month, a DVD of the first 12 chapters of “Trapped In The Closet” was released in stores, including 7 new chapters, a behind the scenes featurette, and a bizarre commentary track by a cigar-chomping R. In recent years, much of the praise for R. Kelly’s music has been either ironic or squeamishly tentative, hanging on the question of whether, by enjoying his over-the-top music and public persona, we are laughing at or with him. If nothing else, this DVD should firmly establish the answer to that question as the latter. Throughout the behind the scenes footage, he’s grinning and laughing at the bizarre plot twists of his own creation, and even singing upbeat party versions of “Trapped In The Closet” to himself.

And then, there’s the new chapters 6-12, which (SPOILERS AHEAD) feature: a midget, a spatula, and a white woman voiced with a ridiculous trailer trash accent by R. himself. The genuine tension and drama of the early chapters was what drew me in to begin with, and I was initially a little turned off as the cliffhangers became sillier and more contrived. But by the later chapters, the dude is clearly just having a lot of fun with it, and I’m along for the ride. The seemingly arbitrary coincidences that are revealed at the end of Chapter 5 deepen and begin to add up to their own circular logic. As he continues to add characters to the story, he keeps coming back to the other ones and tying them together in ways you’d never anticipate. When he returns to Rufus, Chuck and Cathy in Chapter 12, it’s a jarring but perfect capper to the insanity that takes place among the other characters. It’s also, strangely, completely different from the chapter that R. performed at this year’s MTV VMA’s, which concluded with Rufus dumping Chuck and going back to his wife, although it remains to be seen whether that chapter does occur somewhere after 12. But I’ll keep looking forward to every new installment that he sends our way.

Even if his music may never be what it was, Master P can still make moves. Hopefully he can do this right and create a major independent force in the rap game, similar to how the whole No limit explosion began. Lord knows there are a lot of rappers who could use the push. I can’t say I’m excited about it’s first three releases, but maybe he’ll be inspired to work with his former beats by the pound production team.

The Fellowship is everywhere! Look at the cast list for return of the king and click on any of their names. Pretty much all of them are working. In the past month I’ve seen Boromir, Frodo, and even Aragorn himself in movies. Samwise and Merry seem to be doing pretty well on TV too. And Of course demand for esteemed Gandalf and Gimli hasn’t dwindled yet either.
This is the biggest troop of actors to spill onto the silver screen from a single project since Boogie Nights when Don Cheadle, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore, and John C Reilly started popping up in every goddamn movie you saw.
Now I won’t dismiss the cinematic contributions of Zoolander and Old School, lending the Wilson Brothers, Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell, and Ben Stiller to a seemingly endless parade of screwball comedies… but the Fellowship Of The Ring are hitting thrillers, dramas, horror, and comedy. Doesn’t Viggo have a band too? They’ll end up in musicals before long too.

Barry Levinson‘s career has been pretty spotty for a director of his stature, but he never seems to falter when he sticks to painting on the pallette he knows best: Baltimore in the 50’s and early 60’s, the city he grew up in during the era of his youth. From his debut, 1982’s Diner, to 1999’s Liberty Heights, it’s a subject he keeps returning to. Where those flicks carried sentimental, autobiographical touches and centered on young guys, roughly the same age Levinson was at the time, Tin Men is about two middle-aged aluminum siding salesmen, played by Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito, who never knew each other professionally until a fender bender set off a venemous personal feud.

DeVito doesn’t play against type, as essentially a more sympathetic variation on Louie DePalma, but Dreyfuss manages to cut a dashing figure in contrast to his usual anxious, nasal screen presence as the younger, single tin man. Eventually, their comic back-and-forth of revenge and oneupsmanship escalates to the point that he steals DeVito’s wife and the story takes a slightly more serious, emotional turn, although the transition feels natural and not jarring or an unwelcome downer. As the battle of wills becomes a love triangle, the laughs come more from the supporting cast, including John Mahoney. In a way, movies like this (and Barton Fink and Say Anything) are a cruel reminder of the streak of great supporting roles Mahoney had before sinking a decade into one monotonous role on “Frasier” brought him to greater fame but effectively stalled his big screen career.

As a Baltimore resident, I’ll always watch these movies partly just for the scenery and how it’s used. And the thing about Baltimore that Levinson’s period films always underline for me is that in a lot of neighborhoods on the North side, all you have to do to convincingly set the clock back 20-50 years is park a bunch of classic cars on the street. Nothing else has really changed on a lot of those blocks lined with rowhouses. Really, the only thing that takes me a little out of the story and jolts me back to 1987 is the presence of the Fine Young Cannibals in multiple club scenes. “Good Thing” was a jam, though.

Latino Review has handed down a Five Star Rating to the Halo Movie Script!
This comes directly from a critic who has not played the games, but did enough research on the back story to see if the movie fits. Obviously, it looks like we’re in for a fast paced Covenant War unlike anything we’ve ever seen in film or games if this review is to be beleived.

I’ll admit that even though I like the Halo story, its second to the action. Garland (28 Days Later) was hand picked for this project because the Covenant are religious radicals not far off in behavior from the rage zombies. And without having to factor in stuff like player difficulty and whether the processor can handle “X” many troops on screen at once, the Halo flick will likely amp up every major event from the first game. We’re even going to be given battle scene with an entire Spartan army (I’m sure we’ll all be looking for Spartan 458)! And thats the first scene in the movie!
Obviously, even though it’ll be taking the game’s story and the review only covers the first act, spoilers follow so read at your own risk.

Removing Sony’s CD ‘rootkit’ kills Windows | The Register
Congratulations, assholes.

Jodie Foster is a newly single mom trapped in a confined space trying to protect her daughter from an unseen madman.
I’m talking about Flight Plan not Panic Room! This one is totally on a plane!
It wasn’t a terrible movie, but if Foster is only going to do one script every 3 years, she could’ve picked one that wasn’t so like the last. It was worth watching for a moment when the oxygen masks dropped in the plane and a random woman screamed as she realized that the rubber band on hers was broken and she couldn’t put it on. Can’t be sure if that was funny on purpose, but I laughed hard.
I don’t think its any kind of spoiler if I say that the villain on the flight is not one of the Arabs. Honestly, Hollywood can’t make an Arab bad guy on a plane now. I was kept guessing until the story revealed itself, which I’ll give them credit for. I don’t usually figure stuff out early but given Foster was set up as delusional early on, any clues from her perspective were kinda written off as bogus.