ONCE I THOUGHT I KNEW, EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO KNOW, ABOUT YOU

- I don't have a whole lot to say about the movie of Angels & Demons except that it's a decent, semi-grown up summer thriller that's a lot better than the Da Vinci Code movie. Basically, it captures the book very well (despite a few minor additions and omissions), for better or worse. This means that all the pros (the fun, connect-the-dots plotting, the enjoyably twisty narrative, the genuine suspense, the good pacing) and all the cons (the barely-there characters, the illogical situations, the hackneyed attempts at social commentary, the flat self-seriousness) from the book are present. Though, in the movie's favour, you don't have to deal with Dan Brown's clunky prose style while watching it. Tom Hanks (with a much, much better haircut and a thankful lack of double chin) is a good fit for Langdon, even if his academic asshole routine gets grating at a certain point, and Ewan McGregor is nicely hammy as the interim pope. All of the other actors really make no impression one way or the other, staying out of the way of the plot; that's a good thing. Ron Howard's direction is his usual clean-but-sterile craftsmanship (he does do a lot of spin-the-camera-around-the-actors shots, though, for some reason) but that's not really a negative; flashy direction wouldn't benefit here (see the sequences in Da Vinci which attempted to illustrate Langdon's claustrophobia for proof). It is a bit long (and there's some besides-the-point padding in the middle) but not so much so that I was actively annoyed. All in all, it's worth seeing once but I wouldn't (and didn't) pay full price for a ticket.

- I'll keep my thoughts on Relapse, the new Eminem album, to point form, as it doesn't deserve much more:

- Production, mostly by Dr. Dre, is fine but leans really hard on those cold-steel percussion figures and chunky synth runs that he's been dealing in since "In Da Club" hit it big. It works on "Old Time's Sake", possibly because that song features Dre, but nowhere else. The big departures from this formula do work: "Bagpipes From Baghdad" is mediocre but through no fault of its snake-charmer beat, "Underground" has a clumsy rhythm but a moody ambiance and "Deja Vu" has a dusty guitar-and-drums musical makeup that feels very 90's New York rap.

- Em sounds really tired and bored, for the most part. There's no joy to his voice; when he makes the jokes that should be gleefully offensive pranksterism, they sound like he's just going through the motions because people expect it of him.

- Evidence of this; there are two songs on here where the whole joke is "I am a rapist" and neither are remotely funny or even really offensive in a way other than, "man, that sucks".

- However, when he does get fired up, he proves that he can still rap. "Insane" hearkens back to his Slim Shady LP days, in both rapping and lyrics, "Deja Vu" (the best song on the album) is a brilliantly self-effacing account of his troubles in the past four years, "3 A.M." is a lame horrorcore throwback that's redeemed only though delivery and "Must Be The Ganja" grinds a tired lyrical concept but Em, surprisingly, makes it work.

- The skits are, predictably, awful.

- "Beautiful" samples a goddamn Queen + Paul Rodgers track; that's all I have to say about that.

- Overall, better than Encore but nowhere near as good as it needs to be to get me to truly care about Eminem again

I'll post later in the week about the new Green Day album, the 24 and Lost season finales and Terminator Salvation. But, for now, in order, here's my thoughts: Pretty good, weird/confusing in a bad way, weird/confusing in a good way and overly grim but still well-done.

BUT, COME JULY, WE'LL RIDE THE FERRIS WHEEL

- 24 is back to its old tricks after one episode of genuine emotional resonance. In one sense, that's good because this episode had a lot more action than last week and more insanity than you can shake a stick at (list of that in a sec) but, on the other hand, I would say that last week's episode was legitimately good; this week is only good in the sense that 24 always is. That is to say, it's a really stupid show that takes itself completely seriously and that's why it's great. Anyway, the important stuff:

- Jack convulsing on the floor was a thing of genius and beauty, his facial expressions especially.
- Jon Voight was no slouch in Cage-level freakouts either, his big moment being after he threw that guy off the balcony.
- Speaking of which, that was nuts.
- It seems like Jack is the new Bill/George and Tony is the new Jack. I'm not sure how to feel about this development.
- The president is all like "ABORT THE MISSION" and the generals are all like "WTF, mate?".
- Both the president's daughter and Jon Voight are masters of the cell-phone camera.
- Speaking of that, Voight may as well have been like "I got pics, son!" when he was showing the president the bio-weapon missiles.
- I like that he also has basically no motivation whatsoever for being the crazy, evil fuck he is
- The lack of Janeane Garafalo in these newer episodes is distressing, she was here for a bit as imitation-Chloe helping Tony hack a keycard-reader but that's not nearly enough.
- So, the question remains, are they actually gonna kill Jack? If so, that's pretty crazy, I guess the show would end up being "The Renne & Tony Hour" at that point.

- Lost was pretty great last night. Not as good as the other Ben-centric episodes but still great nonetheless. That we're finally getting some answers as to the conflict between Ben and Widmore is great but what I was most surprised at was that the episode actually made me feel somewhat sympathetic towards Ben. I like Ben as a character because he's such a master manipulator (though, we're beginning to see that may just be a facade that's starting to crumble) but his basic appeal is that, to be frank, he's a dick to pretty much everyone. That said, "Dead Is Dead" showed that he has a heart (and a soft streak a mile wide when kids are involved) beneath all that calculation. We got some mythology that will get the message board people chattering away (what do those symbols on the smoke monster's lair mean, exactly?) but, more importantly, we developed characters and had a good story. I'm not sure what I thought of the scene with Penny and Desmond at the docks, though. On the one hand, it would have been a cool twist to kill her, on the other, it's a cool twist that would have ripped my heart out (especially since I watched 'The Constant" on DVD on Tuesday). Anyway, next week's episode appears to focus on Miles, who I'd like to learn more about, so, I'm looking forward to it.

- This new Eminem song is sort of confusing to me. I hate the chorus and the tone he's rapping in is dangerously close to the overly-goofy one used on Encore's "funny" tracks but he's rattling off pop-culture stabs at an impressive clip and some of the stabs are actually worthy as stand-alone punchlines (I liked the bit about Ellen Degeneres which segues into a bit about Sarah Palin). It's no "My Name Is" (the jokes are too tame, for one thing and these super up-to-the-minute references are bound to get old pretty quick) but it's also no "Just Lose It" (there's only two lines of juvenile fart-humour type-stuff which aren't too bad, actually). Also, the video's pretty funny, if really similar to earlier videos of his and I like that he's willing to mock his own image in the media (the bit about those photos of him in an Alf shirt that got out a few months back is pretty great). Overall, decent (and way better than that "Crack A Bottle" mess) but I'm still not holding out that much hope for Relapse. Funny thing is, if he just plugged the lyrics from this freestyle into an actual song, it'd actually be better than his past, say, 4 singles.