Mars Volta - De-Loused In The Comatorium
(Universal)

After being repeatedly let down by a number of albums I had been anticipating this year, it’s a relief to finally hear an album that restores my enthusiasm and passion for music. I was starting to think I had become too jaded or too picky to get into any new records lately, but when an album is really great it just doesn’t matter how jaded you are — you stop and take notice.

Expectations were definitely high for this record; rebuilding from the break-up of the overly hyped yet ridiculously talented At The Drive-In can be no easy task, and yet The Mars Volta wasted no time releasing a stellar 3-song teaser EP last year promising that even more brilliance was still to come.

De-loused in the Comatorium proves without a doubt which members of ATDI possessed the highest levels of raw talent and creative genius… although it also proves which members probably have the highest levels of chemical supplements in their bloodstream too. Created as a concept album about a friend who tried to commit suicide and experienced weird visions, the record is all at once haunting, visceral and unpredictable. It threatens at any moment to tumble into chaos and incoherence, but in walking the line between sanity and lunacy it manages to explore a realm that has never been heard before. From one moment to the next, you can never be sure what is about to happen, but each song flows with an otherworldly underlying structure.

The musicians in this band play with amazing precision and instinct. The ecclectic guitar playing of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez moves from frantic math rock riffs to subtle harmonic accents. The drumming of Jon Theodore is tight and crisp, while the keyboard accompaniment and sound experimentation of both Isaiah Ikey Owens and the late Jeremy Ward enhance each song with an eerie atmosphere. Guest bassist Flea of course needs no introduction, and his personal style melds perfectly with the dub elements and rhythmic intensity of the Mars Volta. John Frusciante also plays guitar on a track as well.

The key to this album however, has got to be the vocal presence of Mr. Cedric Bixler. He steers clear of any screaming, and yet the astounding range and power of his voice is showcased here to extremes that make any At The Drive-In recording pale in comparison.

Although there are a number of longer songs with freestyle jam outs (Cicatriz ESP clocks in at over 12 minutes), I was quite pleasantly surprised at how energetic the album is on the whole. There are plenty of relaxed parts in each song, but there are no overly lengthy lulls that would potentially cause a listener to nod off. Personally I was on the edge of my seat for the entire duration, waiting to hear what would happen next.

In hindsight, the album is a logical progression from At The Drive-In but it is much more impressive than anything I could have ever imagined. If you are an At The Drive-In fan I can’t see how you wouldn’t enjoy this album. As much as I enjoy Sparta, this is the true follow up I was waiting for. I’m pretty sure you’ll hear plenty of people calling De-loused In The Comatorium “album of the year” in the coming months. As much as I hate to contribute to the hype machine myself, I’ve got to admit that this is probably my favourite album to come out so far this year. — Sean

Urban Goose Project - s/t
(Independent)

I can’t pinpoint exactly when it became hip for punk rock and indie rock bands to pick up an acoustic guitar, but I am pretty sure it was Dashboard Confessional who persuaded most people that unplugged music could still be full of energy and emotion. There have been a lot of bands that have since attempted to emulate the Dashboard stripped down sound, to the point where it is already being done far too frequently to be interesting or different anymore. The worst part is that many of the bands don’t even really understand what it was that made the first Dashboard Confessional record an instant classic. Even Chris Carabba himself seems to have lost touch with that original batch of songs and the intimate feel with which they were performed.

Listening to this debut EP from Toronto’s Urban Goose Project, there is no avoiding the fact that their music is heavily influenced by Dashboard Confessional. Fortunately, they really seem to have a grasp on what makes a song catchy and emotional without sounding too sappy or repetitive. The band is actually a duo, which may explain partially why they are able to play their songs without sounding cliched or redundant. There’s not enough members to have a drummer or full-time bass player, which is good because as Dashboard Confessional proved, acoustic music can sound a little dull and pretentious when a full band is involved. However, a second person helps to round out the sound by adding vocal harmonies, piano/keyboard and additional guitar parts. It’s also interesting to note that the guitars are not strictly acoustic, and the injection of electric guitar in just the right places also helps the Urban Goose Project to rise above the limitations of the acoustic format.

Lyrically the band has a penchant for the same introspective focus on relationships and personal stories that many emo bands do, but they don’t try to force the songs to have an emotional impact. They simply let the music speak for itself, which is definitely a sign of maturity for a band that is still young and full of potential growth.

I still can’t say that the album sounds all that original or groundbreaking, but it’s not half bad for what it is. The songwriting is pretty strong, and both Nick and Sam have great singing voices. With a little bit of exposure the Urban Goose Project could become something more than just a small indie band you read about in a zine. Worth a listen if you’re in the market for something honest and heartwarming. — Sean

Terminator 3
Directed by: Jonathan Mostow
Written by: John Brancato, Michael Ferris and Tedi Sarafian
Starring: Jackie Chan as the Terminator, Chris Tucker as John Connor

Arnold Schwarzenegger (whose last name means “black plowman” in English) has been in a slump for quite some time now. His last three movies, End of Days, The Sixth Man, and Collateral Damage, were all box office flops. Arnold seems to have turned his attention from making killer action movies to politics and making sure retarded kids exercise. Maybe Arnie is getting soft in his old age, or maybe the popularity of the circulating Arnold prank phone calls has tainted his image so much that people can no longer take him seriously, even more than before. Whatever the answer is, a true sign of his need for a hit is the fact that he agreed to another Terminator sequel WITHOUT the involvement of James Cameron in any way. Well I guess you could say “There is no fate but what we make for ourselves”.

T3 is, in my eyes, the unofficial third installment in the Terminator series. Directed by Jonathan Mostow (director, U-571) and written by John Brancato (writer, The Game), Michael Ferris (writer, The Game) and Tedi Sarafian. There is a certain group of directors that seem to be Hollywood’s cash grab elite, possessing no real originality or style. A good example of this would be the choice of Brett Ratner as director of Red Dragon. With only two movies under his belt, Rush Hour 2 and Double Take, both fish out of water action comedies, Ratner was placed alongside such greats as Ridley Scott, Jonathon Demme, and Michael Mann. Guys like this are brought in to pump out sequels and summer blockbusters with little experience (which I assume makes them an easy target for major studio manipulation). They just do what they must to create an accessible action blockbuster, and are fine with not creatively furthering the film past what the genre or audience calls for. This makes for pretty uninteresting stuff.

T3 basically follows the same plot as T2, only ten years down the road. Sarah Conner is dead, and John Connor is living as a drifter attempting to keep his identity a secret in order to avoid any further complications with robots from the future. Judgement Day passed the world by without incident, leaving John and his dying mother to think that they stopped the war of the machines, but “dey were wrong”. A new killing machine, the T-X, appears via time travel and has only one mission…..to kill John Connor of course. Not unlike the T-1000 in T2, The T-X is made of liquid metal, but in this case can take the form of complex machinery with small moving parts. And yes, the T-X takes the form of a woman! Yes, quite a turn of events.

Of course Arnold shows up like he has in both previous movies, completely naked and buff as shit. A similar scene as in T2 occurs when Arnold enters a bar to get some clothes. But this time, the bar turns out to be a men’s strip club full of biker women. Hilarity ensues as Arnold is mistaken for a stripper, and to top it all off, Macho Man is playing as this all goes down.

From then on, John Connor happens to meet up with grade school friend Kate Brewster (Claire Daines), who is apparently also on the T-X’s hit list as a future soldier and John Connor’s wife. From then on, the story is basically the T-X hunting the two as Arnold does anything to stop her. This leads to a fairly impressive chase sequences between a truck, a giant construction crane/truck, and a fire engine. It’s also revealed that the T-X has the ability to manipulate other machines, apparently with her mind? A fleet of unmanned police cars chase after John and Kate, all under the control of the T-X. If she has this power, why not simply control the vehicle which John and Kate are riding in? Although an earlier scene shows the T-X tinkering with the dashboard of a police car, it’s still unclear whether or not she previously rigged these vehicles to be under her control. Does it really matter in the end? No.

Basically, T3 is making a pretty ballsy claim. It’s saying that it deserves to be a part a story line which started with two solid films. This is where it fails miserably. On it’s own it’s an entertaining movie. But when placed along side the two films before it, it takes on a responsibility to maintain the story and quality that James Cameron provided before it. Any sort of ground Cameron made visually has been thrown out the window. The movie looks like every other action film. The cool blue and grey look of T2 is exchanged for a film that is lit as well as it has to be, no better. The effects are completely overdone. The T-X ends up looking less impressive and less realistic then the T-1000 that was created ten years ago. Arnold himself seems to be a tool for the writer’s to exploit his accent and tough guy image, getting cheap laughs by putting dumb words into the mouth of a foreign body builder (which I admit is entertaining, but would have been more appropriate in a different Arnold movie). Even the music in this movie was horrible. What was a cool, futuristic soundtrack, with pounding percussion and robotic rythms, has been replaced by a standard action movie orchestra. The Terminator theme wasn’t even heard until the end credits of the movie! As soon as I saw Arnold stand up naked in his time bubble, I expected the clanky terminator theme to kick in, but instead I got some ordinary string arrangement that just sucked my balls into oblivion like only the most powerful of black holes.

Overall, the franchise has taken a step down. The humour that was hinted at and used appropriately in T2 has now been bumped up to the next level, turning the Terminator into a fish out of water action/comedy. Any cool science fiction elements have been traded in for Arnold’s one liner’s, and any tricks that the mind of someone like James Cameron could have come up with have been replaced by the all to obvious idea of making the enemy a woman. T3 comes across as a well done fan film, and just doesn’t deserve to be a part of the Terminator film world. However, maybe if they re-cast and marketed the film for a new audience, it could’ve been great. — Jay C

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (LXG)
Directed by: Stephen Norrington
Written by: James Robinson (screenplay), based on graphic novel by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill
Starring: Sean Connery, Stuart Townsend, Peta Wilson, Jason Flemyng

To quote one of Sean Connery’s many corny one-liners in this movie, “I’m waiting to be impressed”. Like all of the many comic book adaptations that have emerged in the past couple of years, I went into this movie trying not to get my hopes up and basically expecting the worst. And for once I was NOT pleasantly surprised — I actually did get the worst. I guess I should have known there would be problems when they took a clever and original graphic novel written by Alan Moore and shortened the title to three simple letters to make it more marketable.

The idea behind the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a great one and it absolutely should have made for an exciting movie. Unfortunately, the big budget summer blockbuster crowd is not necessarily the most suitable audience. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was more of an underground comic book, and as such, it would make sense as more of an artful, underground movie. I mean, we’re talking about classic English literary characters that most teenagers are probably not even familiar with nowadays. Basically the idea is this: what if a number of the most famous fictional characters were not fictional at all, and they were recruited to form a team of adventurers to fight evil? Characters like Allen Quatermain (British adventurer/hunter), Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, Wilhelmina Murray (wife to Jonathan Harker, slayer of Count Dracula), Hawley Griffin (the Invisible Man from H.G. Wells’ novel of the same name), and Captain Nemo (captain of the Nautilus from Moby Dick).

LXG was directed by Stephen Norrington, best known for helming the first Blade movie. He did a good job with that movie, but here he tried to use an identical visual style and it doesn’t work. Everything is overly dark and murky, to the point where you often can’t even see what’s on screen. Add this to the fact that the action scenes were done with a lot of shaky camera work and quick cuts, and half the time you’re just guessing at what’s happening.

The special effects were questionable too, and it’s not so much that they looked bad, but just that they were very inconsistent and very conspicuous. Skinner (The Invisible Man) often has his white face paint done with CGI, so that parts of the face are transparent, while in other scenes it is just the actor Tony Curran wearing white makeup on his face… a very noticeable difference. As for Mr. Hyde, well normally I’m all for using a rubber suit instead of CGI, but he just looked cartoony, and his transformation scenes utilized more fast editing techniques to save from having an expensive morphing sequence of some sort.

I guess the most insulting part of this movie is the writing. To take something so brilliantly written and just throw it all away in favour of an idiotic, formulaic and confusing action movie is a damn shame. No doubt this is because they handed the project to a rookie screenwriter who has absolutely no credentials. (Ever heard of the 1995 film Cyber Bandits? Me neither.) He uses so many action/adventure cliches that it quickly grows annoying. The plot is convoluted and hard to follow. The pacing is all wrong too, with some parts overloading on action while the middle of the movie is extremely slow and tiresome as character development is forced upon us.

The only thing this movie has in common with the original graphic novel is the characters, and they even screwed that up by adding an American literary hero in order to give American audiences someone to root for. This was a stupid idea… the whole point of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic is that it takes place in Victorian Era England. What the hell does Tom Sawyer have to do with Victorian Era England? Not to mention his character adds the worst element of the story, the cheesy father/son relationship between him and Allen Quatermain.

I think the person I feel sorry for the most in this case is Sean Connery, especially considering he executive produced this project. He was hoping for a hit and something to revitalize his career, and instead he just ended up making people recall The Avengers flop he had a few years ago. I think Connery is another guy, like Schwarzenegger, who has reached a certain point in his career where everything he does seems like a spoof of himself. You just can’t take him seriously on screen and if someone hasn’t started using clips of his dialogue for prank phone calls, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.

This is one of those times where critics are almost unanimous in their scorn of a movie, and I really have to agree with them. For once, here is an open-ended comic book movie that I am pretty sure will not spawn a sequel. LXG is just plain bad. Even as a mindless popcorn movie, it fails miserably. Go spend your money on the graphic novel instead and experience this story the way it was originally intended. — Sean

Shaolin Soccer
Directed by: Stephen Chow
Written by: Stephen Chow, Kan-Cheung Tsang
Starring: Stephen Chow, Vicki Zhao, Man Tat Ng, Yin Tse

Watching a foreign movie is always an exciting adventure, offering a refreshing alternative to the cliches of North American (in particular Hollywood) film that really do grow tiresome after a while. This is exactly why everyone needs to brave a movie from outside the North American bubble every now and then, even if you are subtitle-phobic.

Shaolin Soccer is one such import that I think will please both casual viewers and fans of Hong Kong cinema alike. It was released last year in Hong Kong and smashed box office records over there, which prompted Miramax to pick up the North American distribution rights. It is now expected to hit theatres here very soon, although the movie will be dubbed and most likely edited to a certain extent in order to make it more “digestable” for the American public. I won’t get into a debate over which version of the film will be better… I’m sure you can guess my opinion on the matter, but at least this will give more people a chance to see it. Regardless, this is a review of the original version of the movie, as viewed on VCD (it’s also currently available on region-less DVD).

Although Shaolin Soccer is a foreign movie, it does play on an idea that we’ve seen time and again in Hollywood films. It’s the comedic feel-good fairytale story of an underdog sports team that rises against all odds to defeat their opponents (who are always evil in one way or another — in this case they are actually called Team Evil). So I guess you might be thinking of something along the lines of The Mighty Ducks, Like Mike, or my personal favourite, Air Bud, but as it turns out these are pretty far off base. Shaolin Soccer is not meant to be a kids’ movie; the jokes are more mature and there is a lot of visceral martial arts action that might be a bit violent for younger viewers as well. If anything, it’s a tongue-in-cheek spoof of these kinds of corny family movies.

“Golden Leg” Fung was a soccer star who missed a game-winning penalty kick in 1981, after which he was beaten up by an angry crowd and had his leg broken, ending his career. Fast-forward 20 years, and he is now ashamed to be the lowly janitor for Lung, the manager of a professional soccer team who gloats that he was the one who arranged Fung’s career-ending injury. Down on his luck, Fung meets up by chance with a Shaolin monk who is determined to find a way to introduce the beauty and practicality of Shaolin Kung Fu to the masses. Of course, he is sure that song and dance is the way to go, but Fung has a revelation and convinces him to form a soccer team instead. What follows is their quest for the championship trophy as these Shaolin monks use their mystical kung fu powers to kick ass on the soccer field and avenge Fung’s honour.

The movie is written by, directed by, and stars Stephen Chow, who is known as a god of Hong Kong comedies. Some of his previous movies include “From Beijing with Love” (a witty James Bond spoof), and “The God of Cookery” (about a TV chef cook-off). After seeing Shaolin Soccer I really want to see all of his other work as well. The clever humour is the thing that surprised me the most about Shaolin Soccer. Often foreign comedies do not translate well due to cultural differences, but I found this movie to be well-balanced and pretty damn funny. There was some silly slapstick stuff, some satire, and some stuff that was just completely over-the-top a la Naked Gun. There were some cultural inside jokes that I didn’t quite understand (often they were still amusing anyways), but there were also some apparent North American references as well, such as a brief Thriller-esque dance scene. Some of the best stuff comes during the outtakes at the end as well.

The other big reason to see this movie is for the action and special effects. Despite what you may expect, this movie had a fairly big budget and the FX are nothing to scoff at. This combined with some great martial arts choreography make for a visually overwhelming experience. Fans of The Matrix or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon will definitely not want to miss this.

The movie’s story is flimsy as hell, and the romantic subplot was awkward and ill-conceived, but in the end this is all irrelevant. Shaolin Soccer is hilarious and exciting, and that’s all it aims to be. Hong Kong movie fanboys will be all over this movie regardless, but I really think this is a movie for more than just the cult crowd. So track it down and watch it any way you can… but hey don’t blame me if the dubbing sucks! — Sean

28 Days Later
Directed by: Danny Boyle
Written by: Alex Garland
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson, Megan Burns

British Director Danny Boyle is slowly building up a filmography of original and evocative films; with movies like Shallow Grave, Trainspotting and The Beach behind him, you can now add 28 Days Later to this impressive list. What’s interesting is that while many directors establish a style and stick to it, Boyle’s movies are all across the board. 28 Days Later has been called a “zombie movie” and though it’s much more than a simple horror movie it’s certainly not what you might expect from the same guy who directed Trainspotting. It’s also not something you’d expect to hit theatres in the middle of the summer, in head-to-head competition with all of the big blockbusters… but it’s certainly a nice alternative to them. The movie has been out for a year in the U.K. already so it’s about damn time we got to see it this side of the Atlantic.

Boyle has again teamed up with writer Alex Garland (The Beach) to tell a near-apocalyptic story of a deadly virus that is accidentally unleashed on England… and within a month almost completely devastates the country. The virus, known as “Rage”, is released when a group of animal activists set some infected chimpanzees free. The virus is transmitted through blood and within 20 seconds of infection victims metamorphisize into psychotic killing machines. Jim (Cillian Murphy) is a bicycle courier who was hit by a car before the outbreak and wakes up from a coma 28 days later to find himself in a deserted hospital in a completely foreign world. As he explores he meets up with people from different backgrounds who are all banding together to avoid infection, working towards the singular goal of survival.

Boyle shot the movie on digital video to give it that gritty, documentary feel, but don’t go getting any ideas of the Blair Witch Project here. Although you’ve no doubt heard catch phrases saying the movie is “scary as hell” and that Boyle “re-invents horror”, I’d say 28 Days Later is more of a thriller than a horror movie. Yes there are zombies, yes there is blood and gore, but the movie focuses more on nail-biting tense moments than spine-tingling chills.

Some hardcore horror fans may be disappointed with this, but I think it is a strength of the film that it goes beyond the simple goal of trying to scare you. It’s a study in human nature. The visuals of a completely deserted city are very powerful, and the post-apocalyptic scenario is believable and completely involving. Although I enjoyed where the story goes, part of the fun is also in letting your mind run wild with possibilities of what really would happen in a situation like this. Everyone reacts differently under extreme situations. Some people adapt in amazing ways, some adapt in dispeccable ways… others don’t adapt at all.

Near the ending the movie takes a bit of a step backwards by devolving into something that resembles a predictable action movie. It’s still dark and gritty and suspenseful, but it was a little bit of a letdown considering how wide open the story was. Aside from this, the movie is stellar. A lot of elements in this movie have been done many times before, but not in quite the same way. 28 Days Later was a refreshing and engrossing experience, and it’s definitely one of the top movies of the year in my book. — Sean

American Mullet
Directed by: Jennifer Arnold

It’s pretty weird how something can look cool and fashionable in one time period, only to look hideously wrong 10 years later. Perhaps nowhere is this fact illustrated better than with the classic “short in the front, long in the back” hairstyle that was popularized back in the 80’s — the mullet. The interesting thing is that over 20 years later the mullet still endures, in spite of all the backlash it has received.

While there’s no debating the fact that it’s an unsavoury hairstyle, and that like many things from the 1980’s it’s a little bit outlandish, I’m kind of annoyed by the mullet backlash. I myself used to sport the mullet back in the day, and while I would not be tempted to grow one again, I have a great amount of respect for those who still do. There’s a fine line between having a sense of humour about things that are weird and outside the cultural norm, or on the other hand being derogatory and condescending to these “fringe” groups, if you will. I think that line gets crossed a little too often. Nowadays, you say the word “mullet” and it’s an automatic inside joke that the rest of the world understands with you… a shared high-five, that says “Hey, at least we’re not as stupid looking as those people”. Aside from that, I also find the inside joke is getting old.

So why then, would I suddenly find myself interested in a documentary entitled “American Mullet”? I’m not quite sure. Something about this movie beckoned to me. Perhaps it was the fact that the cover proclaimed it to be an official selection for both the USA Film Festival and the Alabama Mullet Film Festival, or perhaps it was the rating of M for “Excessive Mullet Content”. This movie certainly looked to be over the top, but it was a real documentary… not some Spinal Tap rip-off that plays on the 80’s metal spoof. As they say, reality is stranger than fiction. My only question was this: “How on earth could someone possibly fill up an entire movie about a hairstyle and keep it interesting?”

I’ve since learned that there’s more to the mullet than meets the eye. The filmmakers actually do a fair amount of research for this movie. They have their share of interviews with funny people (including an 80’s rocker who refuses to sell out, some motorcycle salesmen, a transgendered stripper, some uncompromising hairstylists, and a very unintimidating Native American for example), but they also dig deeper at the mullet from a cultural perspective, if you can believe it. They talk to some university researchers who have analyzed the hairstyle and why it is prominent in the lesbian world, and they talk to a guy who runs a mullet-related website that gets a crazy amount of traffic every day. They even talk to the Mexican community, a Billy Ray Cyrus impersonator, and some professional soccer players. The only thing missing is a segment on “Hockey Hair”, because we all know that hockey players are some of the most famous mullet wearers on earth. Perhaps they are saving that for the sequel, “Canadian Mullet”.

Throughout the movie they also have interspersed little clips of average people on the street giving their thoughts on the mullet. It’s not surprising how stereotypical the views tend to be, but American Mullet actually takes it upon itself to try and disprove some of these stereotypes. In the end you really do gain some respect for mullet wearers. It’s not just a movie out for a quick cash-in and cheap laugh, although there are plenty of laughs to be had as well. There are a few interview segments that drag on a little bit, but at 52 minutes running time the movie is probably just about the perfect length.

The DVD itself is a pretty cheap low budget affair, and the extras are rather uninteresting. A barber demonstrating how to cut the mullet, some clips from the race tracks, and … plus a couple web links. Yawn. There are some trailers for some other cool-looking indie films though.

I was prepared for the worst but I ended up being pleasantly surprised by American Mullet. I think it does the mullet justice and manages to cover the phenomenon from a lot of interesting angles while also keeping things light-hearted and entertaining. Does it really prove a point? I don’t think so. But I can’t say that it doesn’t live up to the title of “The Most Important Hair Documentary Ever Made.” — Sean