Grade: B-
It is rare when I think a movie needs to be longer, especially during a season where it seems like most flicks average two and a half hours in length. However, “Charlie Wilson’s War” left me wanting more, and not in a good way. While it’s a good little 90-minute yarn, the movie screamed for a more fleshed-out perspective.
The tale of man how a politician of no importance helped drum up support for Afghanistan for a war that dealt the U.S.S.R. a humiliating defeat during some of the tensest times of the Cold War is inherently fascinating. Aaron Sorkin’s script is as sharp as one could expect; there’s a reason he made West Wing work in its early years and this material is very much within his comfort zone. Tom Hanks does an excellent job as the womanizing lout who also holds a great deal of moral conviction. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is the highlight of the film playing gruff and schlumpy CIA agent who’s a lot smarter than he looks; I wouldn’t expect anything less from Hoffman at this point. Julia Roberts isn’t really anything in this movie, but she’s not really given much to do, so I guess I can’t hold that against her.
For about an hour “Charlie Wilson’s War” is thoroughly entertaining. The presentation of the hoops, obstacles, and hostility that Wilson has to navigate in order to help the Afghanis fight the Russians is pretty fascinating. But once the set-up and the initial obstacles are overcome the movie goes into autopilot. The last 15 minutes seem a jumble of stock file footage of helicopters being shot down and troops marching across Afghanistan’s barren landscape. The movie also isn’t really successful when it tries to express the point that framing the conflict is religious terms is a dangerous and slippery slope, and could have been handled better.
But the real fault of the movie lies in the fact that it barely acknowledges, or at least rushes through, the point. As most should know, after the rebels drove out the Russian army, the country was extremely unstable. And the United States, figuring all the hard work was done, moved on to the next crisis instead of helping the country rebuild itself. This idea is given five, maybe ten minutes of screen time. The movie uses those five minutes to let Wilson off the hook for the chaos and years of civil war that followed the end of Russian occupation in 1989. It’s true that things got really bad in the region as Wilson’s political career was coming to an end, but the deterioration of the situation deserved to be addressed beyond a post-script quote by Wilson just before the credits roll.
The moral of “Charlie Wilson’s War” isn’t different than any movie to come out of Hollywood about wars the U.S. has fought post-Vietnam: If we’re going to get involved with in these country’s conflicts, we’ve got to do it for the right reasons and we’ve got to be prepared to help with the heavy-lifting when the fighting is over. I guess I can understand the reasoning behind focusing the film on doing what it took to drive the Russians out of the country, considering the story of the 15-year-old and the Zen Master (it makes sense if you’ve seen the movie), but the film should have more thoroughly-explored the lack of will for doing the heavy lifting.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Lupe Fiasco's "The Cool" review
Lupe Fiasco
The Cool
Grade: C+/B-
I still don’t see what’s the big deal about Lupe Fiasco. When people talk about him, he seems to inspire ridiculous praise or ridiculous hatred. He doesn’t merit either. Lupe’s a slightly above middle-of-the-road MC with a decent flow and some interesting concept songs who takes himself a tad too seriously.
I don’t like to sound like the crotchety sour-ass hip-hop head living in the past, but even 10 years ago this guy wouldn’t have distinguished himself from the hordes of other underground MCs trying to earn major label attention. Ironically, it’s only since both the mainstream and underground scenes have been dumbed down so much that Lupe is seen as a breath of fresh air. It follows that “The Cool,” Lupe’s second album in two years, doesn’t do that much distinguish itself from the other quality hip-hop releases of the year, both underground and mainstream.
To its credit, “The Cool” is never offensively bad: it’s just boring. Much of the album runs together, many of those songs sounding interchangeable. Lupe’s “Go Go Gadget Flow” (he even has a song about it) is interesting but nothing to crow about. He knows how to string together words and make them sound cool, but he lacks the mic presence and charisma to really make you care. His collaboration with Snoop Dogg, “Hi-Definition” is as boring as most Snoop collaborations these days, with Snoop phoning it in once again over a track that sounds like it was thrown away by will.i.am (it was actually produced by Aishux).
The album does contain good songs, such as “Paris, Tokyo” and “The Die.” “Gold Watch” shows he can still do straight braggadocio raps when needed, over crispy dumb and a chopped vocal sample. “Little Weapon” is poignant tale of how violence affects the reality of people across the globe, while “Fighters” contains a heartfelt dedication to Lupe’s deceased father. And, to his credit, “Hip-Hop Saved My Life” is about an accurate description of the life of a MySpace/mixtape rapper that has been recorded thus far. But these six songs don’t add up to make “The Cool” a good album, especially considering its bloated 70-minute length.
Lupe has conviction and he knows how to write a song about interesting topic, but that in itself isn’t enough to make “The Cool” to move beyond a decent listen into something truly memorable. I already feel like Talib Kweli already did this type of album, a “conscious” album with pop appeal, much better earlier this year with Eardrum. Lupe has to stop wanting to be the mainstream consciousness of hip-hop music and actually make a consistent album that can stand up to this ideal. Otherwise, despite his big dreams, he’ll be relegated to the middle of the pack.
The Cool
Grade: C+/B-
I still don’t see what’s the big deal about Lupe Fiasco. When people talk about him, he seems to inspire ridiculous praise or ridiculous hatred. He doesn’t merit either. Lupe’s a slightly above middle-of-the-road MC with a decent flow and some interesting concept songs who takes himself a tad too seriously.
I don’t like to sound like the crotchety sour-ass hip-hop head living in the past, but even 10 years ago this guy wouldn’t have distinguished himself from the hordes of other underground MCs trying to earn major label attention. Ironically, it’s only since both the mainstream and underground scenes have been dumbed down so much that Lupe is seen as a breath of fresh air. It follows that “The Cool,” Lupe’s second album in two years, doesn’t do that much distinguish itself from the other quality hip-hop releases of the year, both underground and mainstream.
To its credit, “The Cool” is never offensively bad: it’s just boring. Much of the album runs together, many of those songs sounding interchangeable. Lupe’s “Go Go Gadget Flow” (he even has a song about it) is interesting but nothing to crow about. He knows how to string together words and make them sound cool, but he lacks the mic presence and charisma to really make you care. His collaboration with Snoop Dogg, “Hi-Definition” is as boring as most Snoop collaborations these days, with Snoop phoning it in once again over a track that sounds like it was thrown away by will.i.am (it was actually produced by Aishux).
The album does contain good songs, such as “Paris, Tokyo” and “The Die.” “Gold Watch” shows he can still do straight braggadocio raps when needed, over crispy dumb and a chopped vocal sample. “Little Weapon” is poignant tale of how violence affects the reality of people across the globe, while “Fighters” contains a heartfelt dedication to Lupe’s deceased father. And, to his credit, “Hip-Hop Saved My Life” is about an accurate description of the life of a MySpace/mixtape rapper that has been recorded thus far. But these six songs don’t add up to make “The Cool” a good album, especially considering its bloated 70-minute length.
Lupe has conviction and he knows how to write a song about interesting topic, but that in itself isn’t enough to make “The Cool” to move beyond a decent listen into something truly memorable. I already feel like Talib Kweli already did this type of album, a “conscious” album with pop appeal, much better earlier this year with Eardrum. Lupe has to stop wanting to be the mainstream consciousness of hip-hop music and actually make a consistent album that can stand up to this ideal. Otherwise, despite his big dreams, he’ll be relegated to the middle of the pack.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
My very first blog
Greetings. This would be the first official blog entry of Hed Rush. I am Jesse Ducker, and I am of Oakland, California. Like anyone out there in massive blogosphere, I’ll use this space to riff on whatever the hell I feel like. Chances are it will center around my main interests: music, movies, sports (especially the Oakland A’s, Golden State Warriors, and the San Francisco 49ers), and TV (mostly The Wire). Possibly even comic books, which I’ll be sharing with the other blog I’m busy not contributing to, The Prep Time Posse (shout out to the crew at preptimeposse.blogspot.com). Also, given my rather large music collection and my all-consuming passion for music in general, I may also use this place to post up an mp3 or three. But that will happen once I figure out how to use my trusty new USB turntable. That could take a while.
I’ll keep the first riff music related. I was fortunate enough to get a new iPod as a gift; one those really cool 160 gig models with the brand new software and everything. I’m probably one of the few people that wouldn’t be able to fit their whole collection on one of those suckers, especially with the help of the aforementioned USB turntable. I tend to micromanage my iPods. I don’t just synch it up with the iTunes: I’m really selective about what albums go on it; I make a ridiculous amount of playlists centered around genre, style, era, and geographic location. All of this tomfoolery means that it takes me two or three days to set up the sucker before I’m ready to listen to it. And I’ve had to set up this iPod twice in a week span, since I was forced to zero it out last weekend based on my own stupidity. It’s a time-consuming pain in the ass.
So as I’m going through my iTunes, selecting what goes on the iPod, I begin to realize there’s a grip of albums on my hardrive I haven’t bothered to listen to yet. Obscure, out-of-print stuff I’ve found on other blogs and music boards and the like. Like two albums by Black Heat (sort of obscure ’70s funk group), another by the Terrorists (an early ’90s political gangsta rap group from Houston) and another by the Kings of Pressure (um, I’m not really sure who they are. Wait, discogs.com tells me they’re a late ’80s Long Island rap group with ties to the Public Enemy. Huh, who knew?). Some of these albums I downloaded a year ago and still haven’t gotten around to listening to. So I start to listen to 15 plus hours worth of music to see if it is indeed iPod worthy.
As I’m making my decisions (Black Heat makes the cut, the Terrorist don’t. Still haven’t finished the Kings of Pressure album), and I start thinking about the nature of free, downloaded music. For a little over a calendar year, I’ve been accumulating mass amounts of music from these various places, like probably 40 gigs worth (and that’s being conservative) of stuff that I: a) once owned on tape, but can’t listen to anymore, ’cause, you know, who listens to tapes? b) Didn’t buy when it came out for lack of the money, knowledge, interest, or inclination. However, it can be argued that if you can download any music you what whenever you want, does the music itself become devalued? Do those first two Black Heat albums I got for free mean less to me than the Lupe Fiasco CD I bought at Best Buy for $9.99, even though the Black Heat albums are better?
I’d like to think not. For the music love it me, it stands to reason that even if the music is free, I can appreciate its artistic value as much as its lack of cost. And a quick perusal of songs I’ve listened to the most on my iTunes show most of the songs in my Top 10 most listened to are ones I didn’t spend money on. But still, the out-of-print albums I get the most excited about finding are the ones I once owned, rather than The Terrorists.
I know I’ve expended a lot of words to come to the conclusion of “I don’t know,” but it’s not easy to evaluate how much a piece of digital music means to you. Maybe I wouldn’t let that Kings of Pressure sit unlistened to on my hardive if I’d spend some cash to get it. But maybe I’m not inclined to listen to it because I suspect it’s probably not that great and I’d rather listen to the Sugarman 3 album that I bought over the weekend.
In the meantime, I’m just going to find contentment by listening to the second Kwame album. Boy, did that guy love polka dots…
I’ll keep the first riff music related. I was fortunate enough to get a new iPod as a gift; one those really cool 160 gig models with the brand new software and everything. I’m probably one of the few people that wouldn’t be able to fit their whole collection on one of those suckers, especially with the help of the aforementioned USB turntable. I tend to micromanage my iPods. I don’t just synch it up with the iTunes: I’m really selective about what albums go on it; I make a ridiculous amount of playlists centered around genre, style, era, and geographic location. All of this tomfoolery means that it takes me two or three days to set up the sucker before I’m ready to listen to it. And I’ve had to set up this iPod twice in a week span, since I was forced to zero it out last weekend based on my own stupidity. It’s a time-consuming pain in the ass.
So as I’m going through my iTunes, selecting what goes on the iPod, I begin to realize there’s a grip of albums on my hardrive I haven’t bothered to listen to yet. Obscure, out-of-print stuff I’ve found on other blogs and music boards and the like. Like two albums by Black Heat (sort of obscure ’70s funk group), another by the Terrorists (an early ’90s political gangsta rap group from Houston) and another by the Kings of Pressure (um, I’m not really sure who they are. Wait, discogs.com tells me they’re a late ’80s Long Island rap group with ties to the Public Enemy. Huh, who knew?). Some of these albums I downloaded a year ago and still haven’t gotten around to listening to. So I start to listen to 15 plus hours worth of music to see if it is indeed iPod worthy.
As I’m making my decisions (Black Heat makes the cut, the Terrorist don’t. Still haven’t finished the Kings of Pressure album), and I start thinking about the nature of free, downloaded music. For a little over a calendar year, I’ve been accumulating mass amounts of music from these various places, like probably 40 gigs worth (and that’s being conservative) of stuff that I: a) once owned on tape, but can’t listen to anymore, ’cause, you know, who listens to tapes? b) Didn’t buy when it came out for lack of the money, knowledge, interest, or inclination. However, it can be argued that if you can download any music you what whenever you want, does the music itself become devalued? Do those first two Black Heat albums I got for free mean less to me than the Lupe Fiasco CD I bought at Best Buy for $9.99, even though the Black Heat albums are better?
I’d like to think not. For the music love it me, it stands to reason that even if the music is free, I can appreciate its artistic value as much as its lack of cost. And a quick perusal of songs I’ve listened to the most on my iTunes show most of the songs in my Top 10 most listened to are ones I didn’t spend money on. But still, the out-of-print albums I get the most excited about finding are the ones I once owned, rather than The Terrorists.
I know I’ve expended a lot of words to come to the conclusion of “I don’t know,” but it’s not easy to evaluate how much a piece of digital music means to you. Maybe I wouldn’t let that Kings of Pressure sit unlistened to on my hardive if I’d spend some cash to get it. But maybe I’m not inclined to listen to it because I suspect it’s probably not that great and I’d rather listen to the Sugarman 3 album that I bought over the weekend.
In the meantime, I’m just going to find contentment by listening to the second Kwame album. Boy, did that guy love polka dots…
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