I think enough time has passed, enough reviews have been written, and the verdict should now be delivered by the jury. No need to stand, you can enjoy this while sitting.
First of all, it would be prudent to gather the charges here and present them in a nutshell, so we can see if there's indeed truthfullness in them.
The Strokes are being charged by many a folk, for:
-Being unoriginal
-Shamelessly copying bands from 30 years ago (with Velvet Underground being the obvious one)

-Making one song and then changing it slightly around to have a total of eleven
-Being yet another concocted band of the music industry
-Being 80% image, 15% marketing, 5% music
-Doing what countless bands have done before in a mediocre way
-Adding nothing new to their genre of music except 4 pairs of stoned-washed jeans
-Meaningless lyrics
-Sinking the rock ship further down the abyss
-Being untalented musicians with connections
-Being spectacularly overrated

Incredibly, all the above charges hold more than their fair share of truth and accuracy. And it doesnt even take too much of an experienced listener to attest to all this. Anyone with a general knowledge of music (especially rock, of course) can easily see the Strokes for what they are, and i think, the term that would best describe them would be : terribly unoriginal.

Yes, there are those who would say "hey, you can be unoriginal and still be good!". That's true and should be taken into consideration. But the Strokes, are not good either which, in turn, borders the edges of a musical crime. Which, in turn again, wouldnt be all that bad had it not been for all the media bombardment about the "next big thing". This stinks with despair of course, because if they need to shove something so "done before 10.000 better" down our throats then rock as a scene must really be on its dying legs (i hope this proves to be wrong, but i'm not optimistic).

This is actually what annoys me most about the Strokes. Not that they are simply very mediocre, but all the hype that surrounds them. And, while this may not be their fault (the hype part), by now I have developed giant defenses against things being shoved down my throat. Mostly like everyone else, i've been victimised like that in the past and have learned my lessons all too well to fall for such cheap gimmicks again.
I advise you to do the same.
In a note of further justice, i'll say this: it is obvious that not only at this point, but since decades now, a lot of copying has been occuring, and after all, musicians are always going to "use" formulas others used to express themselves. Interpol, for example, are a band of a myriad influences without being a mere carbon copy of others. But this is 2003, and with rock nearing half a century of intense history, anybody who just ruminates the past while offering nothing new should expect to be torched.
The sales numbers (for this or any other group) are to me totally besides the point. As the saying goes "every minute a sucker is born", plus, you cant expect the younger audience not to fall for this if noone actually reveals to them that what the Strokes do is nothing more than rumination.
In the meantime, i think I'll settle in and wait for the "next big thing" which is yet to arrive. Something tells me it's gonna take quite a while.

At present, the only thing i could think of that would be unfunnier than this sorry excuse for a comedy is that Jack Nicholson has reduced himself to this. If it weren't for his past we'd be talking guaranteed career suicide, Hugh Grant style.

"Anger management" is actually incredibly accurate in its title, as any viewer with a functioning cerebrum will testify: if you (for whatever reason) do sit through this film you will definately not get up in a calm mood. If you paid to see it you will need some money management therapy too. And if you rented it throw in some time management for desert.

Dont worry, no spoilers ahead, because there's no need to go over the plot for such a waste of celluloid.
I'll keep it to the extreme basics here: a totally silly, seriously unfunny film, with Nicholson playing the shrink of a guy who needs anger management. The plot could have easily been written by a 1000 monkeys typing away randomly at typewriters.
There is (i hear) an attempt at humor in this film. If this holds true (i didnt discover any such success in it) then i must be totally lacking at humor. But hey, what do i know, i thought "A fish called Wanda" was funny, but obviously there must be a new frequency of humor around that I'm not catching on to.
Avoid it is if there's no tomorrow.
Give it as birthday present to someone you genuingly dislike.
Make an activist-group against unfunny films purporting to be comedies.
Write a letter to your local congreesman and complain.
Do something.
But do not waste your valuable remaining time from what's stolen from you every day on this.

To begin with, I'm amazed that some reviewers claim that with THIS album Metallica are over. Not exactly folks. Metallica have been over for quite some time, namely, since at least 3-4 albums now. Some people will claim that ever after the "Black album" Metallica have not offered anything memorable. But this would be a pointless debate simply because it would be missing the forest in favor of the tree.

That Metallica have since long become a stadium-rock cash machine, and that they are securing themselves the role of the Rolling Stones for metal fans is not obvious only for the musically challenged. Chances are that Metallica will be around in 10 years time as well "rocking" away with the same old tired riffs, the same old act, the same ole-same ole. But the cash machine will still be happily klinging.

But more to this album: to me, the clues, begin already with the title (not that other clues were lacking of course). "St.Anger"? I mean, could there be a more obvious way to manufacture an album about "anger"? Besides, exactly what about could Metallica be angry? That the home-cinemas in their villas have poor sound quality? This isnt even funny any more..
I could understand them being depressed. But angry? Sorry, but i aint buying.
Musically speaking, if you have, oh, lets say, the last 3 Metallica albums (my condolances) then i would be puzzled if you think you "need" this one too. There is absolutely nothing new in it nor was there expected to be. It's the Metallica recipe of old re-used, re-hashed, replayed till you cry. The same riffs, the same vocals the same pseudo-angry lyrics, the same set-ups.
It's almost an instrument of torture really and on recent media revelations that the military has been using music as torture, i couldnt think of a more fitting apparatus:
-"Tell us the names or we'll play you the last 6 Metallica albums non-stop"!!!!!
-"Oh no, not that please, anything but that!!!!"

It's that bad. It's that boring. It's that uninspired and pointless. The fact that Metallica will keep their sales high and their stadia packed is totally besides the point. Anybody with a passing knowledge of the machinations of the music industry knows the explanation to such sad phenomena.
Save your hard earned dough for other stuff. As well as your time.

For all the positives i want to point out about "Puppy" I'd like to start out with the only negative and get it out of the way.
Exactly because this happens to be one seriously good electronic release you expect the whole package to be good. It's sort of like being served a great dish and your cutlery isn't up to par. Or like being shown a great film when the picture isnt sharp. All metaphors considered, what the heck was the idea behind this lame cover depicting a styrofoam puppy sitting on a beach???? Surely someone (anyone for that matter) could've thought of something light years better than that? Or, to be more accurate, something more fitting with the concept of the music???

Oh well, on to what matters most, the music itself then.
Fluke are no beginners in the electronica field. Indeed, with more than 6 albums alerady behind them they are actually seasoned veterans with more than one line-up change and during that period they've seen their "scene" change and develop like no other musical genre has in recent times.
But with "Puppy" Fluke prove in an overwhelming way that not only they are keeping up but they do so with the very best of them.
"Puppy" is a multidimensional album, one that takes the band further than their previous house-specialised endeavours. And that's a good thing because, in my opinion, it adds more credence to their name and shows that their quality has more depth than initially assumed.
This an LP that keeps taking swift turns in direction in almost every song. Yes the house elements are there but this time Fluke show they can pull off some superb atmospheric masterpieces, which, more often than not, are dark and ominous.
So much so that in certain tracks they are almost unrecognisable and i obviously mean this in a complementary way.
Everything about their music this time around is more inventive, more full in ideas, more diverse, more bombastic, you get the picture. This can become very interesting then because "Puppy" can prove to be Fluke's breakthrough album to a much wider audience, which is a rarity when you achieve something like that not with your 1st or 3rd album but with your 7th.
Whichever the case, I listen to basically everything coming out from that field, and i can easily claim that "Puppy" is at the very top of the list for best electronic releases of the year.
The dark side that Fluke expose in this LP seems to be the element that can elevate them to greatness. Darkness seems to fit them like a glove. As does the atmosphere but this they've had in the past.
If you're watching the recent booming electronica you need to give this an ear or two. Especially if big names (like Massive Attack or Moloko) haven't been satisfying you recently.
Goes to show, that on occasion, veterans still have the stuff that turns heads around.

By now, anyone with even a passing interest in thrillers-horror films knows he/she HAS to see the opening sequence of "Ghost ship". Too bad there isnt a special DVD release containing ONLY that sequence because the rest of this flick is extremely forgettable.
"Ghost ship" has a great setting (..alarmingly haunted and abandoned ship) and it could have been overall great had that premise been used adequately in better hands: notably, a scriptwriter and a director. But instead it sinks before it ever leaves the harbor.
The attempted story goes very summarily like this: an abandoned cruiser re-appears about 40 years and a crew of salvagers set off to retrieve the gold rumoured to be on it only to discover that the ship holds a deadly and haunting secret within it.
Like i said above, this all sounds well and good if not very promising but only on paper. Because, what goes on on the screen is a grand cinematic failure.
Aside of the opening scene where the entirety of the passengers are slashed into oblivion with one big swift cut, "Ghost ship" is ridden with bad acting, cheap thrills and even cheaper scares which might scare a teenager at best, and a story so full of holes it would make swiss cheese look terribly compact.
The biggest mystery in this film is why an actor of the caliber of Gabriel Byrne agreed to play in this disaster.
Buy the film poster but avoid the film at all costs.

Amazon has this rather inflexible rating system, otherwise this LP would get 2.5 stars. For those curious about the title of this review here goes:
we all remember how Fear Factory struggled for 5 albums to create singlehandedly what was supposed to be "cybermetal" and, well, failed. The difference here is that Static-X already have a tremendous album under their belts in "Wisconsin Death Trip" whereas Fear Factory do not. Why am I drawing parallels then to begin with?
Static-X have taken on an experiment in "Shadow Zone" that could've produced some amzing results. Had it worked that is. Incorporating trancy and techno beats with monstrous riffs is what Static-X have attempted and while they did have such elements in their first 2 albums, they were either more subtle or not as emphatic. It is obvious in "Shadow Zone" that the band are trying to introduce a change of direction of sorts.
I do think, and i know I'm not alone in this thought that the overall result sounds more like a mess with (albeit) very good intentions than anything else.
To me, the course of this band has been somewhat peculiar.
They started off with their spectacular debut album, went on with a less than impressive "Machine" which basically rehashed the ideas of their 1st LP in an unconvincing manner and now this.

"Shadow Zone" would not have been a bad album circa 1995. But we've seen this experiment before and, frankly, it didnt rock our world back then just like it isnt now.
This can be easily misunderstood though. In Static-x's dense soundscapes more dense beatscapes can actually mess up the sum of what you got more than clarify it. Because that's exactly what the problem is with "Shadow Zone". It sounds like a sonic assault that you cant define. Undefinable sound is not usually praised. I'm not saying that this can not work. It can. But you have to somehow compromise some other levels of the intensity of your music for this to be good. Or you have to be more creative with the beats.
I think that in this (meanwhile) giant bandwagon that takes the dozens of hopeless nu-metal bands (all with one recipe) there is no room for Static-X. Why? Because they are simply better than that lot and the evidence is all there and thumping in "Wisconsin Death Trip". I actually appreciate them trying to do something different but i think it simply did not work.
I'll keep the faith for now though.

After having heard this album countless times, and after having heard countless albums in general as record store worker, i'm convinced that Henry Rollins is the victim of his very own reputation in regard to "Come in and Burn".
Rollins is one of the sacred icons of hardcore because of his Black Flag past but of certain solo albums of his as well.
But this is exactly the catch: "Come in and Burn" is not your expected Rollins LP, indeed it's more a metal LP than a harcore one and a stunning one at that.

Rollins is blessed to have a great band behind him here, that delivers incredible recipes for agression and anger and does so in a very innovative way. There are songs here that will easily ignite any moshpit, songs that will move even the most snobby metal fans. "End of something" and "All i want" are easily two of the best songs Rollins has ever sung and "On my way to the cage" is a cue for great metal songs. "Thursday afternoon", "Spilling over the side" and "Saying Goodbye again" are great introspective songs that lack nothing in feeling and intensity.
Did i say intensity? I definately think that this album happens to eb one of the most intense of the 90s. As far as I'm concerned one of the intense period.
Rollins is at his songwritting best if not at his most mature both as a songwriter and performer (I've seen Rollins in 3-4 different tours and he was easily on top of his game while touring "Come in and burn").
One thing that is also certain is that in previous albums (as well as following albums) there wasnt much balance in Rollins's albums. He's always had the ability to write great songs ("Liar" being the overwhelming evidence) but he's also written many indifferent songs that have spoiled the goods overall.
Not so in "Come in burn". This is through and through intense, great and stomping, like a bus going 100m/h with the breaks out of order.
If you do own this album and you've somehow forgotten it on your shelf go and rediscover it. Chances are you'll be puzzled at yourself that you've left it there gathering dust. If you dont own it you are seriously missing out on a fantastic rock album.
A masterpiece.

"Wrong turn" might not be cutting any new ground in its genre but it succeeds in what it wants to achieve as a film. Being a film that actually pays tribute to classics such as the "Texas chainsaw massacre", "The hills have eyes" or the 70s cult film "Deliverance" it will be inevitably compared to these and it will stand very well.

With the "familiar" theme of inbred humanoid-monstroid incest products living in the "woods" who hunt down a company of unfortunate teens who happen to be lost in "their" forest with the intent to use them as body parts for their gruesome collection, "Wrong Turn" is both edgy and entertaining with more emphasis on the latter.

It doesnt degenerate in an unwilling parody nor does it become a joke of itself because it's paced very well (the director rarely pulls the foot off the gas pedal) and because the cliches are actually working in favor of the film.

As the inbreds pursue their victims through the forest the characters that "fall" first happen (...) to be the most annoying. But the game is set before that when the lost teens find temporary refuge in the bizzarohouse of the inbreds and while hiding in there they witness mutilations, human parts in the fridge, and the brutal chopping-up of one of their own.

Where "Wrong turn" succeeds most is at the combination of humor with gore. It's not exactly simple to maintain a balance between these two but the film does walk the rope succesfully.
For fans of this genre this is more than a welcome addition.
Edgy, fun, pacey, and not cheesy it's a cool option for those Saturday night horror-video sessions with pizza.

I have completed the awesome feat of actually watching "Fear and loathing in Las Vegas" through and I have conducted a major scientific analysis on this flick. I consulted my neighbors who all happen to be highly esteemed scientists and they provided me with some interesting opinions about what this film might be about. I have to add at this point, that i live in an apartment building inhabited only by sociologists, psychologists, ornithologists and marxists, and i often discuss with them matters of art that seem to escape me. These are the conclusions I gathered from my discussion with them:

1. "Fear and loathing.." actually DOES have a plot. The fact that a spectacularly overwhelming majority of the audience failed to see the plot is besides the point. The same amount of people also failed to understand Einstein's theory. Be careful though. This does in no respect mean that "Fear and loathing..." is an ingenius film much the same as Einstein couldnt direct a film even though he might've been a genius. Get it? Me neither..

2."Fear and loathing..." has as much of a plot as all David Lynch's films do together. To anyone disputing this or needing it to be explained i recommend the highly succesful detox programm called "Watch Fear and Loathing again. And Again. Part II".

3. "Fear and loathing.." is a state of the art...art film, which actually is filmed real time by a director seriously suspended in between reality scapes and played by actors who are actually beyond tripped out with the purpose of providing us with a complex and therefore difficult to understand map with the limits of the human mind. It could have been French.

4. "Fear and Loathing..." is NOT a film. It is actually part of a secret government programm aimed at discouraging our youth in experimenting with a plethora of different drugs simoultaneously. Judging from the reviews here though the programm has failed. Your tax dollars at work once again.

5. "Fear and Loathing..." will be undisputably understood when Part Two is released (Fear and Loathing in Modevideo) which is due for release in 50 years time. Those alive till then will be awed at the cosmogonic meaning of this film and will ultimately understand how silly they were when they were young and missed the idea because of their naivity.

6. "Fear and Loathing" is actually an alien film recovered during a UFO crash in South Siberia. The original has -of course- been kept from the public eye and this an adaptation providing us with a glipse into the alien mindset. Did you notice the scene at the beginning with the reptiles at the bar. Well, WINK! Do we have to spell it out for ya????

I do admit that the aforementioned analysis theses are somewhat contradicting. But, I must also admit that i consider myself to be intellectually inadequate to pinpoint which one comes closest to the truth. I think that in reality we all are.
This is a film to be treasured for the ages. And, to be incomprehended for an equal amount of time. Peace...

By now, "Irreversible" is building a massive reputation for being a ultraviolent film and on this feature alone it's becoming one of the most known indie films of the year.
The question whether it deserves this reputation in this respect should be answered with a thunderous yes. "Irreversible" is a film filmed backwards. It begins with a disturbing murder in an S§M club, continues with the frantic search by a small mob for the person who gets killed and proceeds with probably the most unsubtle rape scene ever recorded on celluloid.
But this french film actually has more things going for it. The camera work (far from the "dramamine" metaphors that others see) is brilliant. Photography and camera work go hand-in-hand as they build a dark doomy environ where the whole story keeps settling in geometrically. The cast is exceptionally picked as the actors come across perfectly as the everyday characters involved in a sudden nightmare.

I personally dont understand why the graphic violence annoys certain people. The violence depicted in this film is but a mere fraction compared to the real, daily violence going on in the real world, and in most cases not far (if not right in) from our own neighborhoods. The bombardment -for example- of civilians is not "annoying" because the media try hard to hide it from the public but this film is? Lets be serious.
Back to the film, i loved the way the landscape brightens as the film progresses to its end (which is of course the beginning) and as the colors open up as from a dommy eternal sunset to a colorful dawn, obviously the directors intent to emphasize contrast.

The only minus in my opinion, was that the "end" was basically an anticlimax and for this it loses in my view a couple of stars. On one hand this is understandable keeping in mind that the rest of the film is super intimidating, but nevertheless, a different idea should've been used to climax the pivot of the story. It wasnt easy but the fact that it was predictable spoils an otherwise very good film.
A disturbingly unsubtle addition to dark cinema.