First off I was bored. And not in the “this is a little dry I hope it picks up soon way”, but in the “dear god why won’t this movie end” way. And I was bored almost from the get-go. It’s not that it slowed down, it never sped up.

Second, the characters were extremely unlikeable to me. Vain, worthless people going about their hipster business.

Third, the story was cribbed and modified from kungfu movies and anime. Not a crime in itself, but it seemed more like ripoff than homage. This may be more the comic’s fault, but it seemed to me like wannabe anime. It may’ve worked much better as an anime flick, come to think of it.

Fourth, many of the visuals were just copied out of video games from the past 20 years, again looking like ripoff rather than homage. The effects were good, and I’d like to see them used in similar ways in other films (Brandon Routh’s eyes were rad, for example. Nice point of detail), but the overall visual effect was boring. Busy, but boring.

Fifth: YES I GET IT I PLAY VIDEO GAMES TOO

Scott Pilgrim is basically a relationship dramedy with an 8bit patina slathered across it, and the emotional conflicts amplified to gonzo physical combat (shit, even the fight choreography was cliched!). The only reason I was interested in it was because Edgar Wright directed it. My initial response to SP was flat, but when I heard EW was directing, I thought maybe he’d do something rad with it, but it was pretty much what I expected from some other jackoff director.

Have you ever seen Spaced? It’s the show Wright and Simon Pegg did on BBC back in the early 00s. It was charmingly low budget and it made reference to lot’s of pop culture. When they copied a scene from a movie, but were making gun noises with their mouths and pointed fingers, it was appealing and fun. In Scott Pilgrim, Wright does the same sort of thing, but throws money and special effects at it instead of charm and ingenuity.

I could digress into almost every detail of the movie and tell you why I didn’t like it, but that wouldn’t really be productive. I think I’ve gotten my point across.

In the end, Scott Pilgrim was a victim of it’s budget. Oh, *and* it’s story. You can’t cure boring with CGI. There was nothing new in the movie, just a ton of preexisting ideas lashed together. It looked like a music video, but in a bad way.

Oh, and the music sucked. It sounded like someone (possibly Beck) doing a bad Beck impression. Again, nothing new. A rehashed retread. But it’s a movie about a fictional great band. You never get good music from that. (for example Spinal Tap, a movie about a fictional TERRIBLE band, has great music)

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Firstly, Avatar gave me a big, blue boner. I can’t wait to see the Na’vi cosplayers at Comic Con this year. Though there won’t be maybe people who can pull off anything but “chubby Na’vi”. Those CGI fuckers had like 0% body fat.

The fact that I felt conflicted about Avatar is probably a good thing. I can’t just unqualifiedly say that I liked it. There was a ton that I did like; it looked lush and deep, and I wasn’t thinking “okay this is real, this is CGI”. It was extremely immersive and visually enjoyable. The technology and characters were like a pastiche of earlier James Cameron films, (Carter Burke! As easy to loathe today as he was in the 80s!) but that’s not a bad thing.  And the 3D was the least bad, most unobtrusive of any I’ve ever seen.  It seemed to push back the background rather than pulling out the foreground, deepening scenes instead of smacking you in the face with protruberances.

However, the story was simplistic, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Not every movie can or should be Fight Club or a Shyamalamamamanian piece or something like that. In fact, the simple story seems to be making a comeback lately, possibly as a reaction to the “what a tweest!” mentality that has been entrenched in Hollywood for the past decade or two.

Also, the message of environmental harmony and whatnot, whilst being a message I agree with, was brandished like a club and the audience was beaten severely about the head and neck with it. On the one hand this is bad. I can imagine the reaction of right-wing punditry shitting on Avatar as a product of liberal, hate-America-first Hollywood. It’ll turn some folks off. On the other hand, it strikes me as good. Hopefully, a fucking ton of little kids who might miss a more subtle message will be enthralled by Avatar and grow into adults with a deeply ingrained sense of anti-imperialism.

I realize that I liked just about everything about the movie. However it didn’t grab me by my viscera. It didn’t make me believe in the world. When the bad guys took down the Na’vi treehouse, yeah, there was an emotional response, a bit… like the way I feel when I see that video of the US soldier in the Iraq throwing a puppy off a cliff; ashamed of people in general. But when I was a kid I really REALLY got into this stuff. Now, I’m older and I can’t enjoy it the same way. So I guess my discontentment with the film is mostly within myself. Also, it concerns me a bit that our society (America, the West, Humanity in general) can empathize more with the big blue aliens on the screen in front of them than they can with real people half way around the world. But , if Avatar can kindle that empathy in a generation of children, that’d be damn good thing.

Avatar on IMDB

Addendum: I’ve now seen Avatar a second time, and it holds up, and in fact it even got better.  I was past all my expectations about what the movie would be and was able to immerse in the film (with the help of some herbal refreshment) and enjoy the Avatarness in all it’s glory.  My previous criticism still applies, but it’s extremely enjoyable as a moviegoing experience.  All around pretty enthralling, tho I still can’t get totally invested, with childlike fascination.  Which is good, because I’m an adult now, and I don’t want to wind up like the guy on the right in the picture above…

Also, I’m fairly certain I saw some blue nip-slips, but the Na’vi look so realistic that it’d feel tawdry to go on about it.

<Ahem>.

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The Oscar winner doing some publicity.

Starring Megan Fox, a front runner for Pot Pinup of the Year, Jennifer’s Body appears on the surface to be a straight forward film. It is situated between Jawbreaker, Carrie, Heathers, Scream and a whole host of edgy teen morgue comedies. But this one has an acclaimed writer!

As anything with Megan Fox, it is impossible to ignore her off screen antics and persona when watching her on film. In a recent New York Times article she said that her persona has been created as an offering for sacrifice. She talks of the characters she inhabits for the purposes of interviews. It is a fascinating article. Unfortunately, she hasn’t figured out how to translate that to her paying gigs. In Jennifer’s Body she has many more lines than she is used to, and sadly, it shows.

Before we crucify a whole film on Megan Fox’s malformed thumbs, we should sit down, bud up and take it all in. As I mentioned, the fascinating part of horror films to me and my high mind is the over arching metaphors uncovered in the carnage. The genre, along with scifi, is fertile for social commentary and dark revelations. I tried. I tried very hard, but Ms. Cody wasn’t willing to meet me half way. While the movie is a crafted teenie film with sexual themes, the only one that popped out was a possible conflicted relationship between the writer and her own womanhood. Every month raw sexual power is renewed in a sacrifice of blood. Both alluring and powerful, the socially integrated and less confident alter-ego struggles with her relationship to the bombshell man eater. In the end, these two are unable to coexist. This menstrual meditation still felt somewhat hollow.

The relationship between these poles, sex and responsibility, is the best fleshed out portion of the movie. When Jennifer’s friend, Amanda Seyfried, uncovers the demonic transgressions of her best friend, she is honestly conflicted. If you spin it together into some Fight Club-esque slurry (i.e. they are the same entity) it becomes more compelling. Joined together they create a moral quandary for the responsible psyche vs. the raw sexual power women posses, but the simplicity strains when set in a feature film.

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Archeology might posit that the delayed transition from child to adult was commensurate with the development of mind and culture. (Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised to find the shift fell from an early hominid penchant for the sticky icky.)

Kristen Stewart ('Em' in Adventureland) reenacts the early hominid breakthrough.

It is no accident that these personal stories resonate so frequently across boundaries, or that when we find a story close to our own, we cherish it with warm devotion. Either way, these tales have the deck stacked in their favor.

Adventureland is a softer side of the Superbad coin. Written and directed by Superbad’s Greg Mottola, it is set in a non-desrcript Pittsburgh and follows some 20-somethings through the summer of ’87 at the eponymous ramshackle amusement park. It never strays far from the script, but it also never drops sincerity.

James just graduated from college and has his eyes on the standard issue backpack trip through Europe followed by a stint in Ivy League grad school. Monkey wrench! His parents can’t finance his faux intellectual hipster lifestyle. James rolls home, tail between his legs and, like many modern sagas, find himself without sail or rudder.

Older tales would feature the youth confronted with trials and ordeals. Hercules, Theseus, or Galahad testing their strength and moral character. In the more recent era of The Graduate, Rushmore and The Goonies these tales shape a new ordeal. Reconciliation and putting aside childish things. Acknowledgement of the fucked up state of society, but a willingness to find a place in the world.

All of the characters, including the adults, in Adventureland are pulsating with this revelation. Like The Graduate, profession, future, romance and self are all at stake. Without a Minotaur what beast should we slay? Without a ritual, what tells a boy he is a man? It is almost post-modern. A self realization of an enmity in our social makeup towards passage, blessed or profane, becomes its own prize.

In the film, as in life, moments of separation and clarity are catalyzed by the green. As much of the characters’ lives are sprinkled with weed, so to is the essence of the film. In the same way Dazed and Confused introduced the concept “be a lot cooler if you did”, Advetureland puts the theory to practice. An affected deification of Lou Reed, with the proper mental alterations, becomes genuine as you are swept away in a Velvet haze. My own formative summer fits its teeth cogs right into the story. I get where they are coming from. The fellowship from a shared joint passed out of the screen.

For the level headed, it is another, if less zany, coming of age story from the Superbad guy. For the high minded, it is Greg Mottola’s sincere take on coming of age. One that finds roots in a little indica.

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I was intrigued, but the fine print sold it. Presented by David Fincher and Spike Jonze. From past experience, I knew that these two make movies (Fight Club and Being John Malkovich, respectively) that tickle the high minded. Directed by Tarsem, who previosly had done ‘The Cell’, this film promised some serious eye candy and that was enough for me.

Set in a hospital in Los Angeles circa 1915, The Fall tells the story of a young girl with a broken arm and another patient spinning yarns, to which the girl becomes enthralled. The Fall, essentially, is an exploration of shared hallucinations. The relationship between the story teller and the audience. How can the story manipulate. In the first order we can easily see how a story works from mouth to ear. His words vibrating into her mind and transforming into wonder. And this is the masterful moment of the film. That wonder captured with the fidelity of the young girls imagination.

With our belief in reality suspended, we too inhabit this incoherent juvenile fantasy replete with mythological transferences of the world we have yet to comprehend. While the psychological frame might be a bit flimsy, the imagery is certainly not. The film oscillates between the hospital and the fantasy epic. Just like the little girl, I find myself longing for more of the fantasy, just to see what it will look like. Shot across 18 countries and a wardrobe of increasingly bombastic costumes, the imaginary allegory is scintillating.

The only flaw is in the second order of the shared hallucination. The effect of the follower on the priest. The fantasy is tailored for the congregation. In this case, the solitary girl. As we move along, the act of telling the story and manipulating her mind creates a reverberation that strikes back at the teller. While the cycle does complete, it comes across without the sincerity we found in the first charming acts of the film.

From this audience member, I felt wholly like a member of the clandestine fellowship bringing the story to life, but as the film tried to incorporate deeper themes, it outstretched the skill of its makers. Where the first 3/4 of the film showed impeccable taste, the climax was strained and oddly bland.

With the right frame of mind, I strongly recommend The Fall for marinauts looking for some eye candy somewhere between The Princess Bride and Terry Gilliam’s more whimsical fare. If you are a stickler for crushingly real despair and could care less for arresting imagery, walk on down the aisle and find another box cover.

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Halloween is just around the corner, so we see several films dogging in on the holiday spirit. Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant, Saw VI, Antichrist, and Stan Helsing.

The Vampire’s Assistant appears to have some style (and an impressive cast), but the story of a 14 year old stumbling into a carnival of circus freaks doesn’t appear to tickle the silly bone. The visuals doo look striking, but early word is it takes itself too seriously. I would save my shake.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Saw VI – I trust you already know if this is a film you want to watch, although I’m sure if you want VI to be your first in the series, you won’t be missing that much.

Stan Helsing comes straight from the Scary Movie folk. I’m certain it will be another hokey spoof. While excruciating to most, spoof lovers might want to toke up, but keep those expectations 6 ft. under.

Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist is getting reviews proclaiming it gruesome, beautiful, genius, shocking  and a film that should never have been made. I love the sound of that, but it might be too heavy for the light headed, but if you like your horro films slow, bloody and with a heavy dose of psycholigical destruction, you might want to subject yourself to this indie flick, just make certain you have your shrink’s number close by.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But it isn’t all doom and gloom this weekend. Hillary Swank plays one of the great inspirational women in history, Amelia Earhart. Well, it does kind of end badly, I’m guessing, but that hasn’t stopped the early buzz from being terrible. Amelia sounds like a definite pass.

From the PG set we have Osamu Tezuka’s ur-Manga Astro Boy in CGI animated feature glory. Unfortunately this one gets the dreaded praise “an entertaining film that should satisfy both adults and children”. Time may show this to be a psychedelic smorgasbord, but I am skeptical.

My personal roll of the dice for this weekend’s blazer is a documentary called Act of God. It ‘examines the effects of lightning strikes beyond just the physical.’ The hair on my arms is standing on end already.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Filled with the hipster trailer and marketing push, I’m fired up and ready to go. As the smoke clears, the credits roll. Every studio and production title screen has a hand drawn ‘MAX’ somewhere on it. Cute, but a bit forced. He goads his older sisters friends into a snow ball fight. They take it too far and his sister ignores him. His single mother ignores him for work (he thinks). Ignores him for the wine sipping suitor. It is a bit much.

In his landmark work, ‘Understanding Comics’, Scott McCloud discusses iconography and specificity. Iconic figures in illustrations lack detail. It allows the viewer to transfer their own experience onto that image. More detail is added to make a person or item special. Think of Winnie the Pooh. Pooh has almost no detail, but the trees in the background show the lines in the bark and leaves on the branches. Pooh bear can be anyone… even you. The Hundred Acre Wood, however, are a very specific place. The effect is fantasy teleportation. You imagine the inner life of the characters, but you do so in the distant refuge of Christopher Robbins.

Notice the lack of detail in Pooh's face compared with the bark and leaves of the tree.

In the book and the movie, Max (played by Max Records) wears a disguise. The purpose of a disguise is to obscure true identity. Spike Jonze short circuits the grid by placing Max in a set of circumstances that steer away from empathy by using logic. The movie shifts away from the universal of the book towards a very personal film about one boy in a stale cliche household.

Once we leave suburbia and move to Where The Wild Things Are, Jonze becomes much more comfortable. Some rumpus is had and there are striking scenes. The looks is often just short of spectacular. The creatures are a hybrid of college mascots on acid and computer generated faces. The eerie expressiveness of the faces paired with the clumsiness of their movement splits that hallucinogenic hair. The beasts’ social structure and personalities are obtusely discernible. Do they represent people in Max’s life? Are they components of Max’s psyche? As the THC tries to tie it together, nothing seems to stick. It doesn’t add up, and it isn’t supposed to.

And the music. I and a huge Yeah Yeah Yeahs fan, but that did get old, especially with the spectacular Arcade Fire trailer. The trailer showed magic where the feature showed fancy. Maybe it is a case of unrealistic expectations. I think, instead, we see a film that tamed the wild and pulled away from the human. It makes me want to watch the trailer again.

Click here to view the embedded video.

High cinema increases empathy, and that strongly helps Where the Wild Things Are. Jonze has brought a film to the screen that is truly his and he should be proud of it, but it falls short of being a Max for everyone…. ROAR!

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Okay, full disclosure… I play in a zombie themed rock band. I’ve been on zombie walks. I watched Night of the Living Dead when I was 11 and my mom got us our fist VCR… so I’m a bit of a zombie enthusiast I guess. But I didn’t enjoy Zombieland for the zombies. They weren’t zombies in the Romeroean sense. They weren’t what zombie purists would call “real” zombies. They are infected like in 28 Days Later. Which is okay. It’s not really important to the story what kind of zombie they are. The zombies are really only a motivational McGuffin.

Zombieland revels in humanity after it’s fall. It has a subversive undercurrent in a similar vein to Fight Club. It has a joyous nihilistic tone that says it’s okay to “enjoy the little things” as the world collapses around you. Discordian humor served with abandon.
Zombieland is about a geek who, faced with the end of the world, falls back on his his habitual obsessiveness and finds it a winning survival strategy. He meets another survivor and they meet some chicks, and they all move along the road to nowhere together. They’re all aware that the world is pretty much over, but they continue like people would, for no other reason than that that is what people do. They make things okay by keepin’ on. There is an unexplored implication that there are plenty of other survivors in the world, isolated though they may be, just waiting to meet up. Zombieland is ripe for a sequel, but doesn’t require it. It sets up a zombie apocalypse with people living inside of it.

And those people kill zombies.

But this isn’t a gore movie. There is some ooze and gooze, but it’s not the focus; there’s comedic zombie abuse, an incredibly well done cameo. Zombieland manages to be entertaining, while carrying it’s undercurrent of anarchism and conveys a conceptual payload without getting all preachy and boring. It manages to cut a line between fun and stupid without being annoying.

It’s funny, it’s violent, and it makes me feel good about the world. It’s all fucked up, but it’s okay to have a good time.

Zombieland on IMDB

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Before the first frame goes, my expectations are for a boundary blurring, social mores testing, artsy flick. When I see that lineup coming, I reach straight for the glassware. Soderberg, more than any other filmmaker, has a knack for using budgets to make the right films. They aren’t always superb films, but you rarely feel that a few million more would have made it any better, or that he is flaunting excess in front of you.

Roll Tape. And…. Action!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Smooth. Shiny. Hair set tightly by a professional. Someone whose familiarity with the craft shows in its practice through gradual numbness to the performance. That’s not High Class, though. High Class is when the effortless whim floats elegantly masquerading as joy, not banality. And when, if ever, it is genuine, it can be very compelling.

After the first collection of scenes, time comes into focus. It is sometime when the economic cracks were showing in the pillars on Wall Street. Right around the time when McCain suspended his campaign to single-handedly fix it. Ahead in the polls at the time, this perceived erratic naiveté, dropped him behind, and he would never recover.

Not knowing then what we know how, it was a time of crossroads. ‘Yes, we can’ was still chanted with the fervency of someone that ‘might not’. And this dialog is everywhere in the film. At points, it gets distracting.

The lo-fi, often hand-held, camera still catches excess. Chelsea (Sasha Grey’s stretch role as a young woman trading in the carnal) specializes in providing a ‘girlfriend experience’ or GFE. It is code in the escort world for a call girl that pretends to enjoy your company, go on dates, talk with you, and admire you… for a hefty fee. Through the voyeur’s lens, we peek at these Don John’s of capitalism, purchasing their own romances. A socio-economic enclave doused in money doesn’t seem shocking today. The fact that they use their wealth to purchase the best trim they can afford, even less so.

That plot can only go so far. But, there is a lot more. A boyfriend, who is a personal trainer. He strokes fat cat egos in creepy parallel to the sex trade. There is arc and fall. Tension and toil. And, it is enough to keep the movie together for its sub 90 minute run time. And, while Ms. Grey’s acting isn’t sending agent’s scurrying to her door, it fits in with the film.

The real gambit of the film is its timing and self conscious focus on the banking crisis. Decades from now people will be watching this movie to get a sense of what the world was like and what people were thinking as the economy unraveled and John McCain and Barack Obama sat in a dead heat. Well short of preachy, this still gets a bit redundant when the ganja has you tuned in already. Even the social commentary about the servant class of prostitutes and personal trainers lacks nuance.

The one element that did work for the high mind was this purple nurple of reality. Knowing that the lead actress is portraying a character with so many similarities to her own life blurs the line. Is it exploitation for Soderberg to pluck her from the San Fernando Valley and use her sordid past to sell a movie? Is it helping or enabling? Is it respectful or degrading? Maybe these are the questions we are supposed to ask when the lights come up.

Sasha has six more films to be released this year.Her next five films will be adult films. Then she is back in indie films. The credits read ‘mini-mart clerk #2’ (I did not just make that up).

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"The conversation has changed, lets yap about that" - What We Talkin About?

Following in the footsteps (a little too closely at times) of the great Hip Hop storytelling heavyweights and fellow NY natives Slick Rick and Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z the Renegade has been obsessed with being the Ruler since before he could write. To the core, the streets of Brooklyn trained Jigga to be a hustler, meaning he’ll make it to the top, no matter the expense. This versatile hustle is crucial to Hov’s leadership because a leader is one who must continually change the path and form of the vehicle which they command. Since his debut, young Hov has had Reasonable Doubt about the direction of Hip Hop, but he knows all too well how to play the game. So, Jay set up The Blueprint for us to follow and now, Hip Hop plays according to the rules written (or rather dictated) by the “New King of New York.”

Since the new millennium, we’ve seen a major shortage of conscious and even creative lyricism, lost to the simplicity of R&B and Pop. But the Camel has survived this growing drought and now, in our time of need, Hov has returned to resurrect Hip Hop through verbal brutality and lyrical superiority. Preaching progression and reinvention, the third installment of The Blueprint is drawn up with the usual Jigga direction, motivation, and commitment that could spark a revolution and enough fire to spark an L. Although, some Hip Hop heads might not like the wrap Jay has this revolution dressed in, since at least half of the album suggests we’re rollin to the club.

The Roc Nation founder sparks this reconstructive blaze the same way any revolutionary would, by questioning the current order and standards; asking “What We Talkin About?” Denouncing fraudulence, gossip, and underestimation, Jay pleads for lyrical sophistication. ‘‘What We Talkin About?’ being the opening track on the album, it’s meant to introduce the themes throughout, showcasing brutal honesty and insistent growth. The epic futuristic production by Kanye West and NO ID sets the stage for a revolutionary masterpiece.

Jay-Z then mercilessly begins his wreckage with the single ‘D.O.A. (Death Of Auto-Tune)’, where he declares war upon everything from “ringtone raps” to catchy hooks. Jigga always believed that the battle, the “beef”, the competition was the heart of Hip Hop, which clearly explains why he takes such a bold stance against his peers, including a member of his own circle, Mr. West. Although, Kanye clearly had just as big of a hand in drawing up the third Blueprint as he did in the first, so no worries there, as long the money’s rollin in. What I love about this song, other than its production and its blatant stance against Auto-Tune, is that Jay calls for artists to return substance and re-establish Hip Hop’s place in mainstream music through words instead of melodies. But when you tear down so many concepts that superstars today have built their following upon, it’s difficult to find someone competent to rebuild, much less ‘Run This Town’ of Hip Hop

The Crew

The Blueprint

The Roc

Hov takes the flag and claims the land as property of Roc Nation. Along with fellow generals, Rihanna and Kanye West, Jay-Z marches in and announces the union’s platform. The production as a whole seems to suggest a Roc Nation call to arms. Taking a stand against the lies, the Roc intends to fight for true emotion in Hip Hop rather than buying into commercial manipulation. It’s time we get our hands dirty. “Get y’all black tees on, all black everything.” The production, along with the ‘California Love’-esque apocalyptic video gives the song a powerful presence.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Mr. Carter knows how vital an asset a loyal crew is in the music industry, which is why he usually works with artists that are in his inner circle at the time. As a result, The Blueprint 3 is filled with friends from Def Jam; giving Jeezy almost an entire song, ‘Real As It Gets’ and Rihanna a feature on the hit single, former Roc-a-fella teammate; Kanye West ,as well as new G.O.O.D. Music star Kid Cudi (making his debut this week), and introducing on the song ‘A Star Is Born’; NC native and newest artist signed to Jay-Z’s new 360° entertainment company Roc Nation, J. Cole.

The Dynasty

‘D.O.A.’ was used to bring in fans who were tired of the Pop-ish hooks and ‘Run This Town’ was used to show those new fans that Jay-Z knows how to handle the revolution. Then, we start to flip through the album and, before even half of the blunt is ash, realize that it’s not so much a revolution against the Dance/Club music as much as it is a compromise between the growing trend of Techno in Hip Hop and the “classic” sans-melody Hip Hop. By the time we get to songs like “Off That” and “On To The Next One”, we still get the feel of a progressive drive in the lyrics but all production turns Electronic and falls a little flat. Jay starts simply making club music, luckily without trying to sing any hooks himself. He makes the intelligent move instead and allows instead up-and-coming Dance/Techno/R&B artists like Mr.Hudson to sing them. This is an important lesson for anyone in music; stick to what you’re good at and leave the rest to the professionals. Although, it weakens the cause against the use of Auto-Tune and Dance/Club hooks as a crutch in future Pop Hip Hop. As the imposed Blueprint, I feel like it’s missing the direction for future generations away from the easy way out rather than descriptions of easy street. At least we get some decent work from decent new (Drake) and a couple of old (Pharrell) artists, but the second half of the album could’ve used a little bit more substance.

Speaking of substance, we hear a lot more marijuana references from Jay-Z this time around, which is interesting because normally he steers clear of the Blazin Path, at least when working, in order to focus. There’s a clear step towards the “high life”; the more successful that Hovie gets, the more he’s able to relax and roll up. I figure I might as well do the same. Usually, when listening to an album from high on Cloud 9, I can get into the head of the artist and feel the words as if they’re coming from my own soul. When I arrive in the sky at midnight on September 11, 2009, I feel like Jay-Z, without even hitting the blunt, is already chilling the re, ready and waiting to spit all 8 million stories. At this point, Hov’s persona has literally breached the atmosphere and I’m up here just visiting to hear him speak. Sometimes, Jay gets so descriptive and in-depth with his stories that I drift off and begin to see the world through the eyes of a rising Hip Hop mogul; looking down at the world, trying to give the people a game plan.

Overall, The Blueprint 3 seeks to disassemble the standards of success in music today and reconstruct the approach to Hip Hop tomorrow. Hov builds the structure for the future upon honor, gratitude, and forward movement, all in the name of Hip Hop. It’s a live fire of potential revolution that I think could catch on, depending how deep people have gotten into this Auto-Tune trend. What most need to realize if they speak out against this album for being too similar to the style The Blueprint 3 seems to be condemning, is that he’s not attempting to discredit the trend completely, but rather give it a new direction. This album should give hope to up-and-coming artists, because it shows the Hip Hop can still have a place in popular music. Until the next generation of Hip Hop grasps the new Blueprint, Hov will be kickin back with his queen, Beyonce, cigar in hand, watchin over his empire.

"This is Roc Nation, pledge your allegiance." - Run This Town

“High-end” tracks:

‘Thank You’ : A feel-good party song you can bob your head to with a blunt in your mouth.

‘Off That’ : A futuristic soar through Jay’s ambition.

‘Venus vs. Mars’ : The punch-lines alone make it worth the listen.

‘Already Home’ : A personal favorite about success and being a grateful member of “the high life”.

‘Young Forever’ : Young Hov paints a picture of a dream-like paradise through living in the moment.

Buy The Blueprint 3 on Amazon.com!

Peace
- Fully

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