For your reading pleasure, here are a couple mini reviews on the good and the bad that I've seen or heard lately. Try and enjoy.
The Arcade Fire - "Neon Bible" - Mega wow. It took me a few listens to really get into The Arcade Fire's follow up to "Funeral," but hot diggity damn, it's solid. It's a little more morose than their last outing, which is odd, since they wrote "Funeral" while they all had family members dropping dead like flies, but it is what it is. As much as I hate to admit it, the best track on here is a revamped version of "No Cars Go," from their early self-titled EP. I never cared much for the song... until now. Now it lights up my soul. It's an overdrive-fantasy-turn-it-up-to-11-sends-shivers-down-your-spine-while-driving-80-down-the-highway-in-a-snowstorm kinda song. Or so I think. Another great track? "Black Waves/Bad Vibrations." 9 out of 10.
"Idiocracy" - I knew this movie was probably going to be labeled under my "dumb but fun" category, but I guess I secretly was still hoping for more. I mean, what a premise with great potential - an average joe is frozen for 500 years and wakes up in a future where humanity has devolved into a bunch of retarded simpletons (my apologies to those of you who hated that use of the word retarded, but I couldn't think of a better one at the moment). But the high concept took the low road and was disappointingly sophomoric. But still a little fun. 4 out of 10.
"Marie Antoinette" - Another letdown, possibly more so than Idiocracy, if only for my higher expectations. I was a huuuuuuuuuuuuge fan of "Lost in Translation" and a big fan of "The Virgin Suicides," and I was pretty confident that director Sofia Coppola was going to go three-for-three here. Not so. The flick was aesthetically pleasing, and well deserving of its Costume Design Oscar, but that's about as far as my praise goes. My problem was, I didn't learn a damn thing about WHO Marie Antoinette was. I kept waiting to love her or hate her, but by the end of the movie, I was totally indifferent. I didn't even see her as flawed, with good and bad traits. She was just bland. It'd be easy to blame Kirsten Dunst (and I do, a little, for not even trying to fake an accent), but overall, Coppola's focus on the feel and looks left content and character out in the cold with the angry French mob. 5 out of 10.
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