Ted Movie Review
The surprises continue with the acting with Mark Wahlberg proving himself particularly adept at this style of raunchy comedy and his rapid-fire white-trash name recital is one of the film’s most laugh out loud moments. Ted, the CGI created teddy bear voiced by MacFarlane himself also defies simple categorization by being both offensive and inviting at the same time.
Elsewhere taste is stretched to the absolute limit and this nothing off limits approach is refreshing in its disregard to ...
Tedeschi Trucks Band – Made Up Mind Album Review
With the amazing talent pool in the Tedeschi Trucks Band, one could be forgiven for thinking it would result in music aimed squarely at fellow musicians. Made Up Mind sidesteps this concern most spectacularly.
It’s an earthy workout with band co-leader Susan Tedeschi delivering just the right amount of grits and gravy in her vocals while husband and Allman Brothers Band alumni Derek Trucks spits fire when it’s completely appropriate while laying out and comping extremely tasty fills ...
Senna Movie Review
His career also ran parallel to the dawn of the new media age pertaining to live sport, so his life was very well documented visually, so well in fact that the film is built entirely from actual footage from his career, while a large part of the film’s dialogue comes from Senna himself.
It’s a masterful job of blending archival footage, spoken snippets from Ayrton himself and comments from some media experts that knew him well. There is also family footage that nicely places the ...
Yagull – Films Album Review
This sunny Sunday morning that perfect aural pleasure is Films by Yagull. The group, the project of composer/guitarist Sasha Markovic blends beautiful acoustic instrumentation with forward thinking arrangements and playing.
Don’t let the acoustic tag impact your mindset on this either, for there is as much power in these grooves as a Marshall stack on 11, it’s just more cerebral and only slightly less physical. There is also a superb use of space that allows the listeners to add ...
Bridesmaids Movie Review
Directed by TV actor/director Paul Feig and produced in part by Judd Apatow, Bridesmaids tries to deliver a raucous ride and succeeds for the most part. The cast is excellent and building a film around Kristen Wiig (who is also one of the film’s writers) is never a bad thing as she is a comic heavyweight, it’s just that it’s not always believable seeing women act as stupid and self-involved as men.
This out of character activity leads to some very funny moments but a lot of the ...
The American Movie Review
The story revolves around a hit man played with icy cool by George Clooney who is on the lame after the tables have been turned on him and he finds himself an intended target for termination. He hides out in a small Italian town that seems familiar to him and pretends to have a somewhat normal life.
Unfortunately this normalcy is only applicable to someone with no discernable job but lots of money and one whose only real human contact is with a priest with a secret and with a hooker with ...
Safe House Movie Review
He's too... nice. Even when he's playing a bad guy he's almost impossible to dislike, and that's why I dislike him. And his films are usually vehicles to show us how nice he is (even when he's a bad guy). So I was expecting very little from Safe House, which is what makes it so surprising.
The first indicator that Safe House may not be as asinine as it first appears is the impressive cast that also includes Ryan Reynolds, Brendan Gleeson, Vera Farmiga, Sam Shepard and Robert Patrick. ...
RED 2 Movie Review
Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Brian Cox, Mary-Louise Parker and Bruce Willis reprise their roles from the previous film and this time they're joined by Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Asian action star, Byung-hun Lee. As the central and most-grounded character, Willis is almost boring; instead the flash and colour is supplied by the peripheral characters and, as before, Mary-Louise Parker remains the heart and soul of the film
The plot? It has something to do with a weapon of ...
Sufjan Stevens – The Age Of Adz Music Review
Gone now are most of the comforting folk music embellishments and in their place are foundations of electronically and synthetically created backing tracks. Opening track Futile Devices eases the listener into this new world with remnants of past sounds but from then on it’s a brave new world.
Lacking the sanctuary of warm acoustic backdrops, Sufjan weaves vocals into these eclectic mixes to surround the listener with a human element so not all is zeros and ones. Using this approach ...
The Dark Knight Rises Movie Review
The Dark Knight Rises sees Ra's al Ghul's League of Shadows try yet again to wipe Gotham City off the map with yet another device developed by Wayne Enterprises. The problem is, we've been here before. The films plot amounts to a rehash of ideas from Batman Begins, even the leader of the bad guys is (again) not who he appears to be.
While the ‘Ra's al Ghul’ storyline was an interesting one in the context of Batman's origin, it made for a relatively weak finale to Batman Begins and ...
