Music Reviews:
Metallica
White Stripes
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Album: St. Anger
Band: Metallica
CrazySlip's rating:
Grrman666' rating:
A welcome razor edge has been thrust into the gasping corpse of the current metal regime. James Hetfield, Kirk Hammet, and Lars Ulrich have finally gotten their hands dirty and unearthed their roots, while introducing the solid Dog Town bass work of veteran Robert Trujillo (formerly of Suicidal Tendencies and Ozzy Osbourne). The sleeping beast of thrash metal has been reawakened by St. Anger; like the resurrection of a fallen warrior, this album roars with the intensity of a runaway tank on a gridlocked freeway; leaving a path of smoldering destruction in its wake.
Internal crisis takes many forms. It has been six years since Metallica’s last album Reload was released and the time passed has done this band some good. It seems that ‘change’ has played a starring role in the recent return of metal's most adored rock gods. Apart from obvious changes to the line up is the sharing of song writing duties. Previously, Hetfield reserved the power of the pen for himself, yet after months of voluntary rehab he returned to Metallica willing to share lyrical responsibility with his bandmates. After climbing down from the crow’s nest, it seems it was time to plot a new course and set a new direction. Maybe the hair grew back a little bit or maybe they are just a little bit older and all the wiser.
It appears sobriety has helped clean the salt from some of Hetfield's old wounds. This album rages with the intensity of an adolescent firestorm exorcising the lurking demons that wreak havoc on the mind of a man who is finally coming to terms with issues he previously drowned with heavy doses of Jack Daniel's; the magic cure-all elixir of fame. James exposes a core of confusion and a voice for the disenfranchised youth in all of us. “INVISIBLE KID/ GOT A PLACE OF HIS OWN/ WHERE HE’LL NEVER BE KNOWN/ INWARD HE’S GROWN”. Questioning the ever-manifesting world around him, we see the essence of a 'maybe’ logician; there are no lines drawn in the sand nor are there crutching dogmas of dubious support; we find a man who has recovered a long buried sense of individuality, purpose, and wonder.
This record itself leaves the line at full throttle and rarely takes a breath. Ulrich’s machine gun style double bass hammers with fury on the title track, while dipping into a psuedo Native American stomp on "Some Kind of Monster” which guides us through a sea of blazing and bleeding guitars. Speed metal mayhem wages a war on the establishment in this rant against ailing systems of control, while power anthems like "Dirty Window" rage with a spit-flying mosh pit vitality that hits you like an elbow to the face but keeps you coming back for more.
Though this album makes its mark, as a timely driven come back, it’s far from perfect. Longtime fans may long for the melodious classical undertones that served brilliantly to juxtapose the rough aggression of earlier works like ‘Master of Puppets and And Justice for All. Likewise, you will find no endearing power ballads like "One" or "Unforgiven," yet the sheer rocking momentum behind St. Anger is enough to carry one through to the last track without hesitation or much complaint.
Kirk Hammets guitar tones are powerful and relentless, minus any spotlight noodling. Hetfield unexpectedly breaks from the polished post Black album vocals, revisiting familiar gritty tones a la Garage Days, while pushing himself in intensity and self-reflection. Lars destroys the kit on most tracks; thundering out rhythms and avoiding cliché drum solos. And Robert Trujillo is definitely not a wallflower in this latest effort, with assurance he comes through as a solid foundation for the benchmark energy and passion that is pure, no bullshit, Metallica
Moive= Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
CrazySlip's Rating:
Grrman666's rating:
In the dawning days of science fiction, there was a chasm between the concept-oriented authors and those who churned out space opera. John W. Campbell Jr.'s Astounding Science Fiction, later renamed Analog to make the point clear, was the home of the brainy stuff. Bug-eyed monsters chased heroines in aluminum brassieres on the covers of Amazing, Imagination and Thrilling Wonder Stories.
The first two Terminator movies, especially the second, belonged to Campbell's tradition of S-F ideas. They played elegantly with the paradoxes of time travel, in films where the action scenes were necessary to the convoluted plot. There was actual poignancy in the dilemma of John Connor, responsible for a world that did not even yet exist. The robot Terminator, reprogrammed by Connor, provided an opportunity to exploit Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.
But that was an age ago, in 1991. "T-2" was there at the birth of computer-generated special effects, and achieved remarkable visuals, especially in the plastic nature of the Terminator played by Robert Patrick, who was made of an infinitely changeable substance that could reconstitute itself from droplets. Now we are in the latter days of CGI, when the process is used not to augment action scenes, but essentially to create them. And every week brings a new blockbuster and its $50 million-plus gross, so that audiences don't so much eagerly anticipate the latest extravaganza as walk in with a show-me attitude.
"Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" is made in the spirit of these slick new action thrillers, and abandons its own tradition to provide wall-to-wall action in what is essentially one long chase and fight, punctuated by comic, campy or simplistic dialogue. This is not your older brother's Terminator. It's in the tradition of Thrilling Wonder Stories; "T2" descended from Campbell's Analog. The time-based paradoxes are used arbitrarily and sometimes confusingly, and lead to an enormous question at the end: How, if that is what happens, are the computer-based machines of the near future created?
Perhaps because the plot is thinner and more superficial, the characters don't have the same impact, either. Nick Stahl plays John Connor, savior of mankind, in the role created by the edgier, more troubled Edward Furlong. Stahl seems more like a hero than a victim of fate, and although he tells us at the outset he lives "off the grid" and feels "the weight of the future bearing down on me," he seems more like an all-purpose action figure than a man who really (like Furlong) feels trapped by an impenetrable destiny.
Early in the film, he meets a veterinarian named Kate Brewster (Claire Danes), and after they find they're on the same hit list from the killers of the future, they team up to fight back and save the planet. They are pursued by a new-model Terminator named T-X, sometimes called the Terminatrix, and played by the ice-eyed Kristanna Loken. I know these characters are supposed to be black-faced and impassive, but somehow Robert Patrick's evil Terminator was ominous and threatening, and Loken's model is more like the mannequin who keeps on coming; significantly, she first appears in the present after materializing in a Beverly Hills shop window. The movie doesn't lavish on her the astonishing shape-shifting qualities of her predecessor.
To protect John and Kate, Terminator T-101 arrives from the future, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has embodied this series from the very first. The strange thing is, this is not the same Terminator he played in "T2." "Don't you remember me?" asks Connor. But "hasta la vista, baby" doesn't ring a bell. T-101 does however inexplicably remember some old Schwarzenegger movies, and at one point intones, "She'll be back."
The movie has several highly evolved action set pieces, as we expect, and there's a running gag involving the cumbersome vehicles that are used. The Terminatrix commandeers a huge self-powered construction crane to mow down rows of cars and buildings, a fire truck is used at another point, and after Kate, John and the Terminator visit the burial vault of John's mother, a hearse is put into play--at one point, in a development that is becoming a cliche, getting its top sheared off as it races under a truck trailer, so that it becomes a convertible hearse. (Why do movies love convertibles? Because you can see the characters.)
Kate's father is a high-up muckety-muck whose job is a cover for top-secret security work, and that becomes important when the three heroes discover that a nuclear holocaust will begin at 6:18 p.m. Can they get to the nation's underground weapons control facility in time to disarm the war? The chase leads to a genuinely creative development, when a particle accelerator is used to create a magnetic field so powerful it immobilizes the Terminatrix. And the facility itself is fascinating, not only for reasons I must not divulge, but because, I am told, it was filmed on location in an actual federal underground control center, now decommissioned, near Greenbrier, W.Va.
The ending must remain for you to discover, but I will say it seems perfunctory--more like a plot development than a denouement in the history of humanity. The movie cares so exclusively about its handful of characters that what happens to them is of supreme importance, and the planet is merely a backdrop.
Is "Terminator 3" a skillful piece of work? Indeed. Will it entertain the Friday night action crowd? You bet. Does it tease and intrigue us like the earlier films did? Not really. Among recent sci-fi pictures, "Hulk" is in the tradition of science fiction that concerns ideas and personalities, and "Terminator 3" is dumbed down for the multiplex hordes.
Album: Elephant
Band: The White Stripes
The White Stripes sudden rise to fame with their third album, White Blood Cells over the past two years put them as the most critically-acclaimed of the new "the" band movement, as well as the most popular. While The Strokes saw their sun rise and set fairly quickly, The Stripes took years of work and fanbase-building before they finally broke. And, as rumors of their fourth album, Elephant began to surface ("Meg's going to sing!" / "Jacks' going to have a guitar solo!" / "Holly Golightly's guesting!"), it became evident that, should Elephant outperform White Blood Cells sonically, it would be the album to solidify Jack and Meg Whites' position in rock history.
Thankfully, Elephant has succeeded in surpassing White Blood Cells (and basically everything else they, and just about everything anyone else in recent history has done). And, while Elephant isn't a departure from The White Stripes' tried and true "guitar and drum" minimalist blues / garage rock formula, it is a nearly perfect end result.
The album's opener and first single, "Seven Nation Army" starts things out well enough with a simple bass line from Jack and a steady drum beat from Meg. But what's most notable here, and throughout the album (even more than usual), is Jack's songwriting. There's a bit of innocence underlying just about everything he says, as well as how he says it, but there's also a harsh sting of reality in this innocence. Again, rather than falling prey to the tired rock and roll cliche's of "rocking out and getting wasted" found so often in similar-sounding acts, The White Stripes stretch into the underpinnings of simple love and emotion.
Then again, Elephant couldn't quite be considered a step forward for the band if it were simply a rehash of past glories. And even though "Hypnotise" follows unbelievably closely in the footsteps of "Fell In Love With a Girl," there is something different going on here. "In the Cold Cold Night," for example, we find Meg's meekish voice at the forefront; her first turn at vocals, although not groundbreaking, is just as necessary here as a bit of a balancer than anything else. Not to mention there's something quite sweet about the moment.
The album's highest point, however, is the extensive rocker (7+ minutes) of "Ball and Biscuit." It's The White Stripes at their rock-iest, and features some of the gnarliest guitar work Jack's ever done. With its classic blues feel, and overt sexual overtones, it's as raw and gritty as the band gets and it's at this point that you feel you can just about reach out and grab the music as it crashes through your speakers.
Still, many positive words have been spoken about Elephant. So much praise has been poured on to it, that there's a definite risk of backlash from those who may feel a bit misled. To read reviews elsewhere, one may think this is the end all, be all, album of the year. And this is where I have to disagree. While Elephant is truly an amazing album, and transcends simple categorization of The White Stripes as "one of those 'the' bands," I can't help but feel the heapings of praise have been a bit too much. In fact, I can't help but feel the majority of the critical praise lies in the fact that many critics have been using Elephant as an excuse to say once and for all, "I told you so!"
There's a bit of a gimmick to The White Stripes, and all the pilings of critical praise aren't going to make up for the fact that eventually Elephant, like White Blood Cells can get to feel a bit boring and repetive. Not to say Elephant is undeserving of praise, but you'll not find me saying The White Stripes are the only band that matters right now
