American Tragedy (5/5)

In 2008 Hollywood Undead released their first studio album, Swan Songs, and, given that prior to Swan Songs they were heard only on the indie music scene of myspace, the album was a tremendous success. Swan Songs was a beautiful blend of rap and rock that earned HU a hell of a reputation with some even claiming they would dethrone the long standing kings of rap/metal, Linkin Park.

Swan Songs was clever, smooth, snarky, deep and catchy  as hell so when the band kicked Deuce, one of the founders of the band, out and announced their second album American Tragedy many fans were left worrying if the boys could repeat  the kind of magic they achieved on Swan Songs. Last Friday when the band began streaming American Tragedy on their myspace page we discovered the answer was a resounding no. It seems Charlie Scene, Johnny 3 Tears, Funny Man, J-Dog, Da Kurlzz, and new member Danny Boy were not content with simply producing an album that was as good as their last, they wanted to blow Swan Songs out of the water and, astoundingly, they succeeded. American Tragedy is far more sophisticated and complicated than Swan Songs and, while it maintains that same unmistakable HU sound established on Swan Songs, the difference in detail and quality between the two albums is like that between a Honda and a Lamborghini. American Tragedy is even braver than Swan Songs; while all the tracks on Swan Songs were fantastic they were all very similar, all the same very specific genre. American Tragedy, on the other hand, delves into multiple different subgenres of rock and rap and even goes reggae on one song. More importantly, HU pulls off all these genres flawlessly while maintaining one cohesive sound and theme that pulls the whole album together.

Honestly, I could go on for pages about Johnny’s emotional lyrics, Charlie’s wit, Funny’s flow, Danny’s choruses, J-dog’s verses, or whatever the hell it is that Da Kurlzz does, and how much I love the lot of them, but I’ll just leave it at this: if you have any respect for rap, hedonism, nihilism, and sex, drugs, and rock & roll give Swan Songs and American Tragedy a listen.

Hollywood Undead Official Site 

American Tragedy on iTunes 

Vices & Virtues (3.5/5)

Vices & Virtues is the nervously awaited third studio album from Panic At the Disco. I say nervously because their last album, Pretty. Odd. , not only lived up to its name but caused quite a controversy amongst their fans, with some of them abandoning the band forever. You see Panic’s first album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, was a fantastically bizarre combination of alternative rock, baroque pop, with a bit of punk and techno thrown in; it was a also a smashing success. Panic’s unusual musical choices and clever lyrics put their first single “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” in the top 40 in the US almost overnight, and the rest of the album went over just about as well.

On Pretty. Odd., however, Panic did a complete 180 stylistically: they kept the baroque but ditched everything else. Instead of punk guitars and drums, Pretty. Odd. featured a much lighter Beatles-esc tone, which didn’t go over well with many of their fans. I personally liked Pretty. Odd., the more I listened to it the more I found myself missing the sound of A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out; doing The Beatles’ style is difficult, nay impossible, and I feel like Panic tried a little too hard to achieve that sound and lost their sound in that effort.

Now don’t get me wrong I still really like Pretty. Odd., but I am glad to say that Vices & Virtues marks the return of the edgy, strange, and dark Panic At the Disco we all fell in love with back in 2005. This new album isn’t nearly quite cynical and snarky as Fever and it still has traces of Pretty. Odd. in it, really the key difference is this: if you played a song from Pretty. Odd. for a Panic fan back in ’07, aside from Brendon Urie’s distinct voice, they wouldn’t have recognized it while Vices & Virtues is unmistakably Panic At the Disco. That being said, I love Panic At the Disco and so I love this album, just like Fever, its lovely little piece of musical candy with poppy and catchy outside and a hard alt rock center. If you loved Fever, even if you hated Pretty. Odd., chances are you’ll love Vices & Virtues as well.

Project 1 Website

Hatshepsut

Repo! the Genetic Opera (3.5/5)

Repo! The Genetic Opera was started as a stage play written by Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich around 1998; the original play took place in the same world as Repo! but told the story of the Graverobber (played by Zdunich) who produces and sells a street version of Zydrate, a powerful pain killer. Zdunich appears in Repo! as the Graverobber, though in the film the character takes on the role of a narrator. The play eventually evolved a short film directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, who then went on to direct the feature length film. Even though Repo! came out less than 5 years ago, was shot in 3 days, and had an 8.5 million budget, it has become a cult phenomenon and has already started being shown at special midnight live shows, similar to the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Repo! is a musical that takes place in the not so distant future. A few decades before the beginning of the film an epidemic of organ failures kills millions and creates a market for the commercial sale of organs by the massive corporation GeneCo. Naturally, most people cannot afford to buy organs so GeneCo institutes organ financing and turns surgery into a fashion statement which leads to a large portion of the population falling into debt. Using his political power and popularity GeneCo’s founder, Rotti Largo (Paul Sorvino), convinces congress to legalize organ repossession! That’s right, fall behind on your liver payments and the repo man will hunt you down and cut it right out of you; if you survive the repossession, good for you, if not, too damn bad!

Repo! follows the story of a 17 year old girl named Shiloh (Alexa Vega) who, due to a mysterious blood disease that supposedly killed her mother, is held prisoner in her own home by her overprotective father (Anthony Stewart Head) who is also a brilliant doctor and, secretly, a repo man. Shiloh’s father, Nathan, and dead mother, Marni, are both connected to Rotti Largo, his three deviant children (Bill Mosely, Nivek Ogre, and Paris Hilton), and Blind Mag (Sarah Brightman), a singer employed by GeneCo. When the film begins Rotti Largo, “the man who cured the globe”, has ironically been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Faced with his own impending death, Rotti must decide who will inherit GeneCo and disappointed with his own children he toys with the idea of leaving the company to Shiloh. Of course, everyone in this film has a hidden agenda and Rotti’s seemingly generous proposition comes with a few unsavory conditions that will endanger Shiloh, her father, and their already rocky relationship.

The premise of Repo! is creative and unique, or it was until Repo Men ripped it off, and is so simultaneously gory, cartoony, catchy, and bizarre that it doesn’t really have a proper genre. In fact the only movie I can compare it too is the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Repo!, therefore, typically only appeals to the kind of odd, morally ambiguous, and slightly insane kind of freaks that dress up every Halloween to go to a cheap theater to hurl toast and rice at the screen while loudly accusing Susan Sarandon of being a slut and Barry Bostwick of being an asshole, i.e. me.

I won’t lie, Repo! could have better lyrics, less melodrama, and a better script, but, just like Rocky Horror, Repo!’s flaws are part of what makes it lovable. Ultimately, Repo! is very difficult to rate because it’s one of those love it or hate it kind of movies; if you love Rocky Horror, I’d give Repo! a try, but if you are uncomfortable with the idea of Tim Curry parading around in a corset, fishnets, and heels, Repo! is probably not for you.

Repo! the Genetic Opera IMDb page 

Daybreakers (3.5/5)

Daybreakers is a 2009 vampire themed action horror starring Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, and Claudia Karvan. Now I know what you’re thinking, ‘Twilight has forever ruined vampires for me, they are so overdone’, and in general I agree, but I have to make an exception for this movie; it doesn’t conform to any of the traditional vampire story lines and really the vampires are more a vessel for a delivering a plot line more befitting an action movie than anything else.

According to the mythos of Daybreakers, in the year 2009 a mysterious plague spread throughout the world transforming most its population into vampires. Over the following years, society adapted to the change by making their cities, cars and homes vampire friendly, i.e. sun proof, and hunting down, capturing, and farming any remaining humans for blood to be sold to the public. The movie itself is set ten years after the plague in 2019 when the world is undergoing a widespread blood shortage causing vampires to starve and devolve into primitive, mutated, violent creatures known as sub-siders who attack and feed off other vampires. The largest blood-farming corporation, Bromley Marks, employs hematologists, including our hero Edward Dalton (Hawke), to find a blood substitute before both humans and vampires die out completely. Just as the sub-sider problem turns into an epidemic Edward encounters two humans, Audrey Bennet (Karvan) and Lionel “Elvis” Cormac (Dafoe), who claim to have found a cure to vampirism. Naturally, this being Hollywood, the Bromley Marks has ulterior motives that aren’t in humanities best interest and therefore, with the help of the military, attempt to hunt down Ed and his human friends and violent, bloody wackiness ensues.

Daybreakers is a visually appealing film with an imaginative premise and plot-line the runs the gambit from action to dystopian “Big Brother” futurism to zombie-esque horror all with a couple decent plot twists thrown in. if one wished to look hard at the film they might find a few inaccuracies like the unrealistic amount of blood spatter the film makers manage to get out of one exploding corpse, but, honestly, if you’re the sort of person who is going to take serious issue with the realism of a vampire movie you should probably stop reading this right now and go get a life. Ultimately Daybreakers is a fun, clever, and largely unappreciated little action horror film and if you like gratuitous violence, spontaneous human (or in this case, vampire) combustion, and blood-suckers you, like me, will love this movie.

Daybreakers IMDb page 

Romeo & Juliet (yeah its a play and i'm breaking the rules already, sue me) 1/5

Note: I realize this is kind of a long review, but count yourselves lucky, this is an abridged version my original was nearly 5 pages long. Also this gets a 1 star out of 5 simply because I couldn’t find a JPEG online for 0 stars.

I hate Romeo & Juliet, I know I’m one of about five people in the country I who feel this way, but seriously the thing is just a steaming pile of crap! Now don’t get me wrong I love Shakespeare, Hamlet is probably the best tragedy of all time, but I honestly believe he was higher than a 60s Berkeley student when he wrote Romeo & Juliet. Furthermore, the play’s plot is the kind angsty teen drama bull one would expect from Stephanie Meyers, not the “Immortal Bard”

First on my list of things I hate about Romeo & Juliet is its complete lack of realism. Let’s look at the major plot defects: first we have two idiotic 13 year old kids who think hormones and teenage angst is equivalent to love, a tragic ending caused by a monk and a plague placed with the kind of convenience one usually only see in 90s sitcoms, and, to top it all off, the Capulets and Montagues, who have loathed each other for generations, suddenly decide to be friends in a bull-shit kum ba yah ending that even Disney wouldn’t expect their audience to swallow.

Problem number two, in any Shakespeare play the audience can predict by the end of the first act if it’s a comedy or a tragedy because Shakespeare has a strict storytelling pattern;  Romeo & Juliet, however, breaks the pattern. Judging by the first two and half acts Romeo & Juliet should be a comedy, but just as the audience is preparing for a lovely ending where in everyone gets married and lives happily ever after, the play takes a hard left turn into death-ville.

Finally, Romeo & Juliet is Shakespeare’s most famous play which is an insult to all his other actually good plays. The fact that every American school kid is forced to read Romeo & Juliet is most likely directly responsible for America’s lack of interest in Shakespeare; honestly, if I hadn’t already seen and read several other Shakespeare plays before reading Romeo & Juliet, I would’ve written off good old Billy completely. So boys and girls if you haven’t read Edward & Be—I mean Romeo & Juliet yet, don’t and if you have, try to erase it from your memory and replace it with The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, or one of Shakespeare’s other actually decent plays.

So I Married an Axe Murderer (1/5)

Awhile ago i was severely bored and couldn't sleep so I watched 'So I Married an Axe Murderer' (1993) on Netflix, a decision which i deeply regret. 'So I Married an Axe Murderer' is a 90's comedy, and I use the term comedy very liberally here, starring Mike Meyers; the basic premise is that Meyers' character starts dating a butcher, played by Nancy Travis, and begins to suspect that she is a serial killer known for marrying men and then killing them on their honeymoons. It's actually not a half bad premise and could have been a decent movie Meyers, however, seems bent on turning what should have been a dark comedy into an immature, childish, slapstick level disaster.
Now don't get me wrong, I love some good slapstick, but it simply doesn't belong in this sort of movie and even if you were to transpose Meyers' performance to a kids movie where it belongs it would still be mediocre at best. Even worse than the comedy, again used liberally, itself is the fact that every time he tells a joke, Meyers gets this idiotic look on his face and goes in cartoon voice as if to say "I just told a joke, can ya tell?! Do ya get it?!?! Man I'm wacky!!" (at this point the audience slit their own wrists just to be free of this moron). Believe it or not folks this movie gets worse, yes still worse than all the other crap Meyers insists on doing, he also *dramatic pause* performs poetry. It's not even like Poe or Frost or someone good, no he reads his own bullshit 90's coffeehouse poetry complete with a jazz band in background, which is all about whatever girl just dumped him and what a bitch she is. It's just god-awful.
If any comedian with a little more restraint and talent than Meyers had played this part, 'So I Married an Axe Murderer' might have been a half way decent little comedy, but due to Mike Meyers and his bash-the-audience-over-the-head comedic style, this movie is nothing short of mild torture.

IMDb Page