Forgiveness Rock Record

More like Forgive This Boring Record. Sorry BSS. Forget about how your past two records were amazing achievements in the art of building huge walls of noise and infectious pop that coalesced into beautiful music. Changing the formula is fine by me. I encourage it. The real bummer here is that the new one fails to satisfy even a base level of enjoyment I need while listening to music. It just doesn't sound fun, barring a couple of tracks. I was bored listening to it.

Movie catch up:

Un Prophete, Jacques Audiard (2010)

A prison drama thinly disguising a mob epic. For the most part it works, except for when Audiard sometimes indulges these ridiculous visual flourishes. I felt this had a lot in common with last year's similarly cold mob film Gomorra. I'm finding that the cold, distant, impartial stance these films are taking is not drawing me in as much as I feel I should be. Un Prophete is definitely the better film, though. It offers a more centralized story with a strong main character. 7.4


Vincere, Marco Bellocchio (2010)

A stunning film about Benito Mussolini's secret mistress with whom he had a son. When he returned from war, a decorated hero with a new wife, he forced his former flame into an asylum. The asylum takes up most of the second half of the film, but the first half dazzles with vibrant colors and beautiful cinematography as Bellocchio tells a beautiful story of a young woman falling for a fiercely passionate and handsome young man. It really is too bad that the second half can't maintain the first's spirit, but the film is never less than good. And the all leads to a powerful ending. Giovanna Mezzogiorno gives a brutally intimate and revealing performance. 8.2


And a movie I've seen a billion times, Albert Moyle's 1995 classic Empire Records. I watched the Remix Super Fan Blah Blah Whatever edition for the first time. It adds 15 minutes to a 90 minute movie, while cutting about portions of subplots, adds more overwrought music cues, and obviously redubs a significant amount of dialogue. All the new audio is inserted with the care of a toaster, often having different background presence and being significantly louder than the original soundtrack. I know producers like money, but whatever superfans a movie like Empire Records could have would most likely have shelled out the 20 bucks for a new dvd edition without any "improvements". It's not like I have any real love for the movie, but my group of friends did throw it on all the time in high school and it holds a minor sentimental value to me. And i don't love for any decent/good movie to be worsened.