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Music Reviews

Kanye explores his beautiful dark twisted fantasy

Kanye West is the Angelina Jolie of hip-hop — his personal life overpowers his career. But unlike the actress — who tries to ignore the whole Brad-Pitt-plus-six-kids thing by playing secret agent, assassin, or 1920s housewife — the rapper actively brings his public persona to work.

Clearly the creation of the man behind such tweets as “If baroque and mod had a car crash… what would that ambulance look like?” and “I love me”, ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’ amounts to West jumping up and down on a table, shouting: “Yes, I’m a crazy douchebag. But I’ve got feelings too.”

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Music Reviews

Sun sets on Linkin Park

The warning signs were there.

“We realised it doesn’t matter what the songs sound like — if it comes from us, it’s Linkin Park,” singer Chester Bennington told Rolling Stone back in August.

Then the winning entry in the remix-the-album’s-first-single competition sounded better than the original song.

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Music Reviews

Brandon Flowers goes it alone

In the video for his debut solo single, an increasingly battered Brandon Flowers is rescued time and again by an ass-kicking Charlize Theron. But his increasingly sheepish look every time she blasts through the door is even more telling.

It’s your first clue the 29-year-old singer has some issues with going it alone. Your second? His admission to feeling “a little bit naked” without the other members of the band he fronted to fame.

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Music Reviews

Arno Carstens grows up on stage

When Arno Carstens steps out on the stage, alone, and starts performing ‘Bubblegum On My Boots’ as an acoustic ballad, the message is clear: he’s grown up.

Not that the Springbok Nude Girl has lost his edge – witness the distortion-drenched finale, the bottle of Jager at his feet, the burning ‘Blue Eyes’ lit up by former partner in crime Theo Crous. He’s simply matured into an articulate singer-songwriter.

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Movies Reviews

Sherlock Holmes gets a kick up the arse

SHERLOCK HOLMES [US / BR / GER 2009] ROBERT DOWNEY JR as Sherlock Holmes, JUDE LAW as Dr John Watson

Everything you know is wrong. Sherlock Holmes doesn’t own a deerstalker hat. Or puff one of those calabash pipes. And never in four novels and 56 short stories does he actually say: “Elementary, my dear Watson.”

In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s writings, he’s a tortured neurotic reclusive coke-head martial artist. And, after almost 200 film appearances as a stuffy bore, that’s who finally shows up here.

Robert Downey Jr brings the quirks. Guy Ritchie supplies the grit. Together the star and director give the detective a much needed kick up the arse. Reimagining the super sleuth as reluctant superhero (a la Batman, Spider Man, Superman, and, yes, Ironman) their ‘Sherlock Holmes’ trades tweed for TNT.

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Movies Reviews

‘Up’ truly soars

Cranky septuagenarian widowers are supposed to play bowls on Wednesday afternoons, drive as slowly as they speak, and send handwritten letters to the local community newspaper complaining about the quality of the toilet paper in shopping mall restrooms.

They’re not expected to tie thousands of helium balloons to their house and float off to the untamed jungles of South America, encountering chocolate-loving oversized birds and talking dogs on arrival.

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Movies Reviews

‘Public Enemies’ takes a hit

John Dillinger: legendary Depression-era outlaw, audacious bank robber, cavalier jailbreaker, hero of the common people, and — in Michael Mann’s ‘Public Enemies’ — speed dating pioneer.

“I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars, and you,” he tells a hard-to-get Billie Frechette when she first catches his eye. “What else do you need to know?”

Not much, reckons Mann.

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Music Reviews

Dave Matthews Band sip ‘Big Whiskey’

The Dave Matthews Band’s seventh studio outing, ‘Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King’, smoulders into life with an impassioned sax solo — only fitting, really, for an album dedicated to the man playing with such fire in his belly.

Yes, the memory of Leroi Moore, who died suddenly last year, looms large over the album named after him. Quite appropriately then it’s a focused, no-nonsense affair — like the man himself.

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Movies Reviews

‘The Half-Blood Prince’ raises the stakes

HP6-VFX-00423r DANIEL RADCLIFFE as Harry Potter and MICHAEL GAMBON as Professor Albus Dumbledore in Warner Bros. PicturesÕ fantasy adventure ÒHarry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince."

There’s an odd hint of familiarity as two figures – cloaks flapping the wind – stand on a rocky outcrop, the camera swooping over the waves towards them. Moments later, inside a cave, the wizened old man bellows a spell, his flowing white hair and matching beard silhouetted against a sea of flames. And when a mass of pale, skeletal figures with big eyes creep up from the water (is that you Gollum?), it’s clear that ‘The Half-Blood Prince’ has ‘Lord Of The Rings’-scale ambitions.

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Music Reviews

‘Who do you trust?’ demand Cassette

“What was it that you slipped inside my drink?/ Maybe poison?” Jon Savage demands on the enigmatic fist-pumper ‘Who Do You Trust’.

No need to be so paranoid, man. His group’s second album – a quietly confident collection of steroid-enhanced stadium rockers, sleek pop anthems, and genuinely heartfelt ballads – is what few others achieve: intelligent, adventurous and damn near impossible to get out of your head.

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