audio review : Me And My Bitch ( song ) … The Notorious BIG

The Me in the title refers to Biggie, but clips of a casual conversation between Puff Daddy and his Bitch is a nice touch if only because those bits, played during the breaks, add to a simple hook that wouldn’t sound so underdeveloped if it had a girl singing something sweet in the background.

Not that such a feature would make this anything close to a traditional love song. The string loop sounds nice, but the Notorious one is too thuggish for that. “When the time is right, the wine is right, I treat you right,” he tells the object of his affection, “You talk slick, I beat you right.” How romantic.

my rating : 3 of 5

1994

video review : Non-Stop

video review : Non-Stop

It’s not Speed on a plane despite the clunky title. It’s not that entertaining. The suspense level of the plot, which puts a US Air Marshal on a plane full of passengers that include a terrorist whose get-rich-quick plan threatens the life of everyone on board, is brought down by its own ridiculous implausibilities. This is a by-the-numbers action flick you’ll have to suspend your belief thousands of feet to fully enjoy.

my rating : 3 of 5

2014

audio review : Mary Jane Holland ( song ) … Lady Gaga

The title is Holland but the chorus says “Hollands”. One spelling is the last name of a girl who I think is supposed to stand as a metaphor for marijuana, but which is it? That distinction, without an explanation from the artist, comes across as a glaring mistake. Not that the song would be something special otherwise.

It’s a noisy party in The Netherlands, but the only fun parts for me are the aforementioned chorus sections, which come after a bridge that sounds more like a chorus than the chorus. The aesthetic high can be heard in the final forty seconds; especially when the music subsides and a woozy Gaga goes, “Hoo-hoooo!”

my rating : 3 of 5

2013

audio review : Artpop ( album ) ... Lady Gaga

audio review : Jewels N Drugs ( song ) … Lady Gaga ( featuring TI + Too Short + Twista )

Structurally this one is a bit of a mess. There are two hooks; the second and best of which doesn’t come until after the halfway point. “We know how to make that money,” Gaga sings, so she doesn’t want yours. She has her own Jewels too. What she wants is your Drugs and your “love”; the former of which she can buy with all the money she has and the latter of which is an irrelevant subject nothing else in the song deals with.

The Too Short feature is surprising. As long as he’s been rapping, I don’t think he’s ever been featured on a song by an artist this popular before. There should only be one verse by one rapper though; of the three, I’d pick TI; and his verse should come not at the beginning but about where Too Short’s is. Three rappers with little to no association with each other only crowd the song in an awkward trap remix sort of way.

my rating : 3 of 5

2013

audio review : Artpop ( album ) ... Lady Gaga

video review : Her

video review : Her

The Her of this heterosexual love tale is a futuristic computer operating system that communicates verbally like a real, albeit invisible, woman. Her voice is raspy and slightly annoying; imagine Scarlett Johansson without the looks; but her personality is decidedly charming. That a man, especially a lonely divorcee named Theodore, could find himself romantically intrigued by her is the believable part. That he’d turn down immediate sex from two real (attractive) women for the sake of his relationship with her stretches the believability factor quite thin. She doesn’t even have a pussy. He has to imagine one while masturbating to the sound of her groaning.

A relationship is supposed to be about more than the physical stuff, of course; I guess that’s the point; but the physical stuff is important, as even the computer girl, named Samantha, acknowledges. She’s mostly jokey and easy-going but seems to suffer from the Pinocchio complex of wanting desperately to experience life as a real (physical) human-being. But human-beings fall out of love; a fact Theodore knows all too well. Whether or not that also goes for operating systems programmed to learn and evolve is anyone’s guess. It’s a chance Theodore is willing to take. If that all seems silly, it is. Her is a silly concept movie that only occasionally arouses real emotion.

my rating : 3 of 5

2013

video review : The Departed

video review : The Departed

Under the wing of crime boss Frank Costello, Colin Sullivan manages to infiltrate the Massachusetts police force as an informant for the Irish Mob. At the same time, the police manage to plant an undercover rookie in with Costello’s crew to bust him from the inside. It’s when the two rats start tailing each other that the plot starts to captivate.

my rating : 4 of 5

2006

audio review : Act Like You Know ( album ) … MC Lyte

audio review : Act Like You Know ( album ) ... MC Lyte

This album begins on an awkward note. The first song is a Love song that has little do with the concept of the album, but MC Lyte is nearly forgiven as she goes on to cover an impressive assortment of social themes over funky hip-hop beats. Her raps aren’t as impressive as she seems to think, but her Georgie story, about a friend who kills himself in a drunk-driving accident, is touching.

my rating : 3 of 5

1991

audio review : Love Marriage And Divorce ( album ) … Toni Braxton + Babyface

audio review : Love Marriage And Divorce ( album ) ... Toni Braxton + Babyface

The narrative of Toni Braxton as an anonymous wife and Babyface as an anonymous husband flows well until song number seven. He’s supposed to have left her for another woman by then, a woman she hopes gives him an STD, so it’s unlikely either would be so eager to Take It Back so soon. By the next song, they’re officially Reunited, back in “love”, only to split-up again. “I’d Rather Be Broke than be with you,” she says, as if a pussy-whipped fool like Babyface would’ve been smart enough to a demand a prenup. But this time she means it. In fact, she gets pleasure out of introducing her new “friend” to him. This love story ends in divorce.

The two get near-equal croon time, but Braxton has two solo songs compare to Babyface’s one. They also share compositional credit, but the music for every song is produced by Babyface. That last fact, along with the fact that his music sounds about the same as it did when they first started making music together a little over twenty years ago, gives the album a consistent sound. This is contemporary soul music, the smooth syrupy kind real-life romantics sop with their morning pancakes. The vocals rarely match the music on an aesthetic level, but, considering the American divorce rate, it’s an album a lot of people can relate to.

my rating : 3 of 5

2014

video review : Prisoners

video review : Prisoners

The premise is engaging. Two kids go missing during a Thanksgiving dinner. The fear is a kidnapping with the probability of the girls being raped and killed. Such an outcome could make for a poignant movie, but director Denis Villeneuve would rather cater to the morals of its audience thus realism is overshadowed by silly unlikelihoods. The actions of Keller Dover; the father of one of the girls; are particularly outrageous.

my rating : 3 of 5

2013

video review : Captain Phillips

video review : Captain Phillips

It’s Tom Hanks versus a gang of gun-toting Somalians in Captain Phillips, a movie based on the Maersk Alabama hijacking of 2009. The pirates are ugly and annoying, but director Paul Greengrass does a notable job of keeping his audience on its toes.

Suspense arises eighteen minutes in and doesn’t let up from there, though the plot takes a turn near the halfway point. Richard Phillips, portrayed here as a hero, wrote a book about the incident but the true story probably isn’t nearly as epic as this.

my rating : 4 of 5

2013

audio review : Does Life Exist On This Planet ( song ) … Bass 305

You wouldn’t know it’s about Venus unless you knew about the movie the vocal samples come from. “No observation from orbit can let us know the answer to the most important question we’ve come to ask,” says Faith Domergue as Marsha Evans. It’s Voyage To The Prehistoric Planet, a science fiction flick old enough to imagine man landing on Venus by the year 2020, and it’s somehow landed onto a Bass 305 song.

How, or why, that happened probably has a lot to do with its obscurity. Having no idea where the samples come from, let alone what movie, gives the song a curious mystique. It’s the music though, led by a Heavenly chorus section featuring what sounds like a male angel singing, that is profound. The breakdowns preceding it are sort of annoying, so the song isn’t perfect, but it’s the best Bass 305 song so far.

my rating : 5 of 5

1994

audio review : Virtual Bass ( album ) ... Bass 305 audio review : a DM Records compilation : Bass Explosion [ Volume Three ]

video review : Ride Along

video review : Ride Along

Ice Cube is cool as detective James Payton, but it’s pseudo partner Ben Barber, played by Kevin Hart, who steals the show. He’s funnier here than he is as an on-stage comedian, so, in a movie with such a hackneyed plot, the jokes are the driving force. This is essentially a loose parody of Training Day, a fact the script is clever enough to acknowledge.

my rating : 3 of 5

2014