När syskonen Emma och Noah hittar några mystiska föremål på semstern anar de inte att det ska innebära att de dras in i ett äventyr som involverar hela mänsklighetens fortlevnad. Bland föremålen finns mjukiskaninen Mimzy som verkar ge barnen nya förmågor. Föräldrarna fattar ingenting och snart är även regeringen involverad.

En helt okej familjefilm som lite äldre barn nog uppskattar och går även att ses av vuxna med hyfsad behållning. Lite fånigt blir det stundtals även om det mesta köps på grund av gullighetsfaktorn. Dock länge sen man såg amerikanska säkerhetsmyndighetssnubbar framställas så sympatiskt – kanske det mest orealistiska i hela filmen(?).

Betyg: 2

Tamanho: 315Mb
Áudio: Português
Legenda: Não Disponível
Formato: RMVB
Gênero: Aventura

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We’re watching the series Heroes on DVD, knowing from experience that science fiction for some reason crosses over well from child to teen to adult, and hoping this will help bring the Captain into a place he has something to discuss with his peers. The whole family has really gotten into it, as we draw to a close of the first season, and get ready to rent the truncated second before the series begins again in late September.

The show is reminiscent of The 4400, one of the few shows we’ve watched in recent years (so of course it was canceled), in that ordinary people are suddenly gifted with extraordinary powers, and must come to grips with those and the implications of their subsequent actions. We also enjoyed The Last Mimzy, the story of a couple of children who find an artifact from the future and are thereby given certain abilities to be able to save a world.

What has always puzzled the Cabana Boy and me in these tales is the horror that parents/adults display when confronted with the fact that their offspring/friend can now stop time, or light fires with his fingertip, or build marvelous engineering feats of creation. The reaction is almost uniformly, “Stop that! Don’t be different!”

Overall, we agreed immediately that if someone we knew, child or adult, came to us and said, “Guess what! I can read minds!” Or “I have telekinesis!” or “I can see all the way to the Moon!” we would be astonished and in awe, rather than condemning them. It would be fun to explore the possibilities of their power, learn the extent of what they could do, and when it needed to be controlled, at least to my mind. But then we both grew up steeped in the traditions of science fiction, so we’re used to strange things.

The other lesson it shows is that what’s valuable is often not distinguishable at the outset and is usually discounted or even pushed away by the mainstream if it’s not in a form they want to accept. The Japanese character Hiro Nakamura is a perfect example of this. He’s convinced he’s been chosen to save the world. He leaves his job, deserts his family, leaves everything behind to follow his determination/ obsession/ perseveration to complete this mission. He’s not shy about telling people what he’s up to, and they look at him as odd, even crazy. But he knows there’s something inside him that will get him where he needs to go, if he follows the steps of the hero’s journey.

Maybe it’s the same journey as our kids with autism. They have special gifts–hold the firestarting, please, at least for our impulsive boys!– they have odd methods, they live outside the box; people think they’re crazy, sometimes. Only when those gifts are fully developed will we be able to see how they can –dare we say it? Save the world? Let’s hope so.

I suppose you could say I’ve been “Experimenting with cinema” as of late. And by that I would mean “I’ve been taking risks and just watching shit I wouldn’t normally watch”.

So the other day, I took risk number one…

Risk Number 1: The Last Mimzy

Oh boy… Where do I even begin with this? Tell you what I’ll sum it up. Two kids from Seattle find a Bunny/Robot thing from the future that gives them psychic powers in order to try and save a the Earth… IN THE FUTURE. Throw in some tibetan lore, a Science teachers dreams, some floating stones, a slug like “Generator” and Alice and Wonderland references and you have, “The Last Mimzy”. It was…. Strange. A slightly surreal experience. Enjoyable? Yea why not. It certainly wasn’t dire but then again it wasn’t anything groundbreaking. I enjoyed it for what it was, an ambitious take on the sci-fi genre for children. Should you watch it? Depends. If your into this kinda thing, then try it, but get ready for some bad acting, shaky narrative’s and a hell of a lot of weird.

Risk Number 2: Superhero Movie

I want to clear something up instantly  before I start. We get tickets for free, me and my girlfriend that is, until next march. Therefore, we go to the cinema quite a lot. Already we’ve been to see the quite controversial “Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, the surprisingly quite god “What happens in Vegas”  and a repeat of  ”Superbad”. Bearing in mind we’d seen “The Last Mimzy” the day before, we decided this. We would go to the cinema, and watch whatever was on because we took a risk with “The Last Mimzy” and enjoyed it. So there we were, staring at the listings and we could have went to see “The Happening”, “Wanted” or “Adulthood” but for some reason we didn’t want to. We just went “You know what, I don’t wanna see any of them. Hey! That Superhero thing looks alright!”. Biggest mistake ever. Before the movie even started some chavs decided it would be funny to drop a stinkbomb and run around the room for a bit. They got thrown out, and Goddamn it I wish I had been too. This movie is diabolical. The worst thing is, it’s basically the first “Spiderman” movie re-acted out so it has a very decent narrative running throughout. I can actually sit here and say, if they kept the narrative in and just repeated it I would have enjoyed it more. At some points I was even begging for them to not ruin the scene with some crude jokes or really un-funny actions. There were some good Actors in there. Drake whatshisface from “Drake and Josh” which I hate but hey, he’s a good actor and Leslie Neilson, one of my all time favorite actors since I first saw “The Naked Gun“. As for the rest however, well look on the poster. Pamela Anderson is literally in it for a minute, the wolverine guy is in it for 30 seconds, the Storm character is in it for around 10, the Human Torch is in one scene… that’s around three minutes long and the Professor Xavier character is in bits, so overall has around ten minutes of screen time. Overall, this movie was dire. A literal waste of my time. I enjoyed around 2% of this movies content and even then it was something I’d seen before, or half arsed remarks about popular culture. All in all, It’s just “Scary Movie” with superheroes. And that’s not a good thing. Unless your twelve. 

So, today we’ve decided to go back to the cinema and see the preview of “Hancock”. Apparently it’s not too good, but I don’t believe it! I mean come on, Will Smith’s never been in anything bad!

!!!THIS BLOG CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!

“The Last Mimzy” gets a half a star, out of a possible 5 star rating in the Shotgun movie scale!

I am so SICK and TIRED of evil coming into this world through small, defenseless, and cuddly looking stuffed animals!

What is it with Satan and these innocent looking toys?

I’ll tell you what it is, it’s called, “the indoctrination of children into a Satanic worldview!”

“Now wait a minute Shotgun,” you may be thinking, “this is just an innocent kids movie.”

Well, if you think that, then you’re blind to the efforts of Hollywood to indoctrinate children, this movie being one of the more recent examples!

I realize that “The Last Mimzy” has been out for awhile, and my review of it is well past due, but for those of you who have not yet seen it, I’ll give you a brief rundown of the plot, and then point out some of the more blatantly biased and even satanic doctrines that are taught.

Noah, and his kid sister Emma are forced to give up their daily routine of video games and violin playing, to travel to the family cottage with their mom, (for vacation.) Their dad cant go, because he’s a workaholic, who (like all modern dads) just doesn’t “get” it, (although to be fair, he does seemingly understand some of what his son Noah is going through in school.)

While playing on the beach, Noah and his sister find a strange box full of weird objects. Upon further inspection, Emma eventually tickles the box just right, and it coughs up “Mimzy,” a toy stuffed rabbit, that is ohhhh so adorable, and has the added feature of being able to communicate. (Only to Emma though!)

Eventually the kids realize that these objects in the weird box have some sort of purpose, and after playing around with them, the two children experience extra high brain activity, and are even granted special powers.

So, we got Mimzy chatting away with Emma, and telling her God only knows what, while Noah is busy being the young scientist, and experimenting with the objects, (which eventually wins him first place in his schools science fair,) all this behind the backs of their parents, who eventually begin to realize that something is up.

Noah’s science teacher gets involved in the plot, when, after an atheistic indoctrination session…I mean, a science class, he finds Noah doodling what appears to be an ancient Tibetan “mondollah.”

The science teacher, and his spaced out girlfriend, (who prays to Buddha) decide to confront Noah’s parents after having matched his doodle of the mondoallah with some ancient Tibetan one that claims to be a design that holds the key to other worlds. They insist on examining Noah’s palm to see if he is the fulfillment of some Tibetan teaching. He wasn’t. Although, his little sister, (with a death grip on Mimzy) insisted on having HER palm read to, and… wouldn’t you know it? The spaced out teachers girlfriend identifies her as the chosen child.

Noah’s mom is freaked, and after an embarrassing incident with the babysitter, (who saw Emma “materialize” her own hand,) she decides to seek help. Noah meanwhile, figures out that one of the objects in the weird box, when combined with another object, come together to form….(not captain planet,) but a power generator, which subsequently knocks out the power to the entire state of Washington.

At this point, Hollywood couldn’t resist slipping in a few left wing political jabs, so after the power outage, Mr. Michael Clarke Duncan officially enters the plot. (You may remember him from movies like “Green Mile,” an “Dare Devil.” Needless to say, when a large black man, followed by a few truck loads of federal agents come knocking on your door, Mimzy or no Mimzy, you better open up!

The humble, innocent, white, middle class family is arrested under the authority of the Patriot Act, and are hauled out of their home! (I can only imagine what the neighbors were thinking!)

After analysis, it turns out that Mimzy is a real fine piece of artificial intelligence, (with an Intel processor) sent back into the past, to gather something, (we don’t know what, even though the thing can talk) only to travel BACK through time to the future to save humanity.

Noah and Emma, using their powers, escape, and get ol’ Mimzy back to the future, with a little help from the Science teacher and his spaced out girlfriend, (just in the nick of time!)

What exactly is my problem with all this?

Well, during the scene where Noah is caught doodling in science class, we are brought into the story, just in time to here the teacher giving the following lecture:

“Genetic code controls all living things. We now believe that genes don’t just control the way we look, but also how we think, how we act, and how we feel. So, when people mess with mother nature. Look OUT! Because pollutants can change us. Not just chemical and biological ones. Cultural ones as well. Perfectly good DNA becomes a bunch of useless junk carried from generation to generation.

Little Wendy then asks…”why don’t they do something to stop it?”

“THEY, is all of us!”

This exchange sets the theme for the entire movie. For those of you who don’t realize it, this science teacher is teaching Richard Dawkins’ “Meme Theory.”

What follows is a brief description of Dawkins’ “Meme Theory” and its implications:

Recently…a highly promising theory has emerged from the realm of biology to explain the fact – known for quite some time now – that some people are willing to die for their religious convictions. It can easily be demonstrated that people are not born with a religious conviction and that it is not part of their genetic heritage or genome. The term “mass hysteria” is reminiscent of a contagious disease. Religious convictions are in fact contagious; however, they are not caused by pathogenic microorganisms but are passed from person to person by the process of cultural transfer. In his book “The Selfish Gene” published in 1976, Richard Dawkins proposed the term “meme”. An enthusiastic proponent of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, Dawkins applies this theory to human culture as well (Dawkins 1996, p. 306). Dawkins describes genes as replicators; the most important property of genes, according to Dawkins, is that they can be copied. As a counterpart to the genetic replicator, Dawkins proposes a “cultural replicator.” The latter replicators are stored in the human brain and passed from brain to brain by a process “which can be described as imitation in the broadest sense of the word” (Dawkins 1996, p. 309). In his search for a name for this new type of replicator, therefore, Dawkins went back to the Greek root of the word imitation, from which he derived the word “mimem”. To underscore the parallelism with the term “gene”, Dawkins shortened “mimem” to “meme”. The word “meme” has since been included in the Oxford English Dictionary, where it is defined as “An element of a culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, especially imitation” (Blackmore 1999, S. 43). (Fundamentals of Meme Theory, http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:NwgBKQxg3KkJ:www.orn.mpg.de/~knauer/salwiczek/MemEngl.doc+Dawkins+meme+theory&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us )

Notice where I have bolded the phrase, “Religious convictions are in fact contagious.“

It is this “meme theory” that the Science teacher was teaching to his class in “The Last Mimzy.” This highly implies that what Mimzy’s future was in danger of, was not just some environmental problem, but rather, environmental problems, caused by bad ideas that had propagated throughout mankind, and was causing the destruction of the future world.

Why did Mimzy “choose” Emma? Maybe it has something to do with the way Emma suddenly stopped eating hamburgers when her brother rudely proclaimed that she was eating another life form! Also, Emma loved Mimzy, and she loved life! Her one little tear that fell onto Mimzy’s belly button, apparently contained whatever it was that Mimzy needed in order to cure the future!

So, to sum it all up!

We can see that, although the meme that was destroying the future was never explicitly stated, we can be relatively certain what lines of thought it was NOT. The Science teacher and his spaced out girlfriend, were apparently close to attaining enlightenment, so we can be sure that whatever path they were heading down was the right one!

Will New Age ideas, (mixed with eastern mysticism, and science based on Atheistic presuppositions) save our future?

Mimzy says so, and that’s good enough for me! How about you?

P.S.

With the stab at the Bush administration, and the downplaying of traditional values in place of a subjective love and fuzzy feelingism, I’ll give 100 shotgun cool points to whoever can tell me what idea they think Mimzy’s future was suffering from.

Während ich gerade Filme für meine Goodbye-URU Video am rendern war, erinnerte ich mich auf einmal daran, dass ich doch in der bluewin-tv Zeitschrift von irgend einem Film gelesen habe, welchen ich unbedingt schauen wollte. Durch’s Heft blätternd fielen mir durchaus einige Filme auf, die ich unbedingt mal ausleihen wollte, aber den einen, den ich meinte, fand ich irgendwie nicht.
Doch auf einmal stolperte ich darüber: The last Mimzy – GENAU! Der war’s ja. Ich abonnierte ihn gleich und begann zu schauen…

Emma und ihr Bruder finden im Wasser ein “Dingsbums”. Sie nehmen es mit nach Hause und darin sind lauter wunderliche Dinge. Fliegende Steine, ein grünes Crack-Dingsbums und natürlich das Mimzy (Auch bekannt als der Jö-Effekt Quotenhase). Erfreut an all dem Krimskrams spielen die Kinder natürlich damit und finden alsbald heraus, dass man mit diesen Dingen ganz verschiedene wunderliche Dinge machen kann. Auch auf die Charaktere der Kinder hat das ganze auswirkungen. So ist emma immer mehr auf den Hasen fixiert und entwickelt übersinnliche Kräfte, während ihr Bruder zum Physikgenie wird. Die Eltern merken das natürlich und sind der ganzen sache immer weniger Geheuer. Als es schon nicht mehr schlimmer werden kann, kreutzt das FBI im Haus der Familie auf und alle werden verhaftet.

Ich mag den Film.
Auch wenn die Story zum teil ein bisschen absurd schnell voranschreitet, so ist der Film doch zumindest sehr abwechslungsreich. Es ist weder Mystery. noch sci-fi geschweige den ein Thriller – Der Film ist, was er ist, und zwar ein Familienfilm. Und ich finde, das hat er gut erreicht.

Die Story ist einerseits für Kinder einfach zu verstehen und andererseits nicht all zu seicht für die erwachsenen. Dass jedoch für nicht-kinder keine Spannung aufkommt (ausser man lässt sich darauf ein), muss bei dieser Art Film erwartet werden, denn ich gehe davon aus, dass der Film in den Augen von Kindern TOTAL Spannend ist.

Für witzigen Charme sorgen auch eine esoterik tussi mit ihrem chemielehrer boyfriend. Die Effekte sind grösstenteils auch gut gelungen und auch die Schauspieler haben – abgesehen von einigen cast-fehlgriffen und einigen anderen patzern – eine gute Arbeit getan.

Und zuletzt kriegt der Film für mich noch einen Bonus für den Jö-Effekt. Der Hase und das Mädchen sind einfach zu Süss um den Film nicht zu mögen. Und da ich noch weiss, wie ich als Kind drauf war, weiss ich ganz genau, dass ich den Film mehr als nur geliebt hätte.

Nicht der beste Film den ich je gesehen habe, aber auf jeden fall einen, den ich in’s Herz schliesse. Und so wunderbar jööööööööö – ich könnt’ heulen

greeez

By chance, I saw a bit of the making of the film The Last Mimzy. Within seconds, I immediately thought of one of my favorite short stories”Mimsy Were the Borogoves” which was written by Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore. The story first appeared in John Campbell’s classic science fiction magazine Astounding way before my time (1943). The reference to the Mimsy (or Mimzy in the movie version) is from the poem about the Jabberwocky in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.

Whenever a film is made from a story or book I like, I always have a mix of feelings. One feeling is hope-hope that they will do what Peter Jackson did with the Lord of the Rings (stick to a brilliant story) or what was done with P. K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?(create a brilliant interpretation, Blade Runner, of a brilliant book). The other feeling is worry-worry that the movie will thoroughly desecrate the original as was done with A Wizard of Earthsea. In the case of Mimzy, it seems that the story was desecrated.

Hollywood writers often have two amazing knacks. One is for finding great stories. The other is for managing to write a screenplay from such a story that manages to leave out exactly what made the story great in the first place. To use an analogy, it is like a person who eats an amazing meal. Then, when he goes to cook the meal himself, he leaves out the critical ingredient and thus ruins the meal. This shows that while a person can have good taste, this does not make them a good cook (or a good writer).

The movie does follow some aspects of the story-a box of toys is sent back from the future and the toys (which are educational) transform the minds of two children. In the movie, the toys are sent back intentionally in order to save the future. Apparently, humans have wrecked the environment and need DNA from the past to fix the future. The toys are intended to enable that to happen. In the story, a scientist is working on a time machine and sends back whatever happened to be at hand-in this case a box of toys his child had outgrown.

In the movie, the children develop amazing mental powers. The same occurs in the story, but in the story the changes are somewhat frightening. The children become quite different from normal human beings. Not in a monstrous way, but in a way that distances them from their parents and the rest of humanity.

In the movie, the last Mimzy (a nanotech rabbit that is supposed to gather the human DNA) makes it back to the future with the DNA, despite the efforts of the government to interfere (sort of like in ET). In the short story, the children learn how to change dimensions and they leave the earth and their parents behind.

The short story has a great deal of depth to it and manages to invoke sadness. In addition to being excellent science fiction it also serves as a wonderful metaphor for how children grow not only up but away and the loss parents often feel. It also makes an interesting commentary on the possible development of the human race and how that might play out-thus nicely setting the stage for other classics in the same theme, such as the masterful Childhood’s End.

The mistake Hollywood so often makes is that the sense the greatness of a story, but do not seem to grasp what truly makes the story great. Hence, they create inferior works that serve to merely mock the original.

In the case of Mimzy, they tried to change the central meaning of the story-perhaps to cash in on the whole environmental craze. By doing this, they left behind the heart of the story. Naturally, a story will not survive the loss of its heart.

Flojito, muy flojito arranca el año. Que nadie espere regalos anticipados de Reyes en la gran pantalla. Porque esto, que no es gran cosa, es lo que hay:

-Viaje a Darjeeling: planteada como viaje en busca de experiencias espirituales, revitalización de la relación de tres hermanos tras la muerte del padre, choque de culturas en una India recorrida a golpe de ferrocarril… desprende un tufillo pretencioso, el mismo que rodea a su director, Wes Anderson, y que hace dudar a la hora de asistir a las peripecias de Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody y compañía.

-This is England: más al norte, pero sin cruzar el charco, proponen esta interesante cinta ambientada en la Inglaterra post-Malvinas que se centra en la frustrada existencia de un chaval que también ha perdido al padre y que encuentra refugio en un semillero de skin heads; por la Gran Bretaña ya ven en el crío (Thomas Turgoose) a la nueva esperanza de su cine (sorry por el rico pero limitado aprendiz de mago Daniel Radcliffe).

-Interview: Steve Buscemi, fiable puntal del cine indie, delante y detrás de las cámaras en el remake de una peculiar propuesta del difunto Theo Van Gogh, pivotada sobre una entrevista de un periodista de vuelta de todo a una actriz insoportable; insoportable se antoja aguantar hora y media de toma y daca, por mucho que ella sea Sienna Miller.

-Halloween: El origen: el señor Rob Zombie empeñado en resucitar clásicos del género de terror; totalmente prescindible.

-Across the universe: lo que faltaba por ver, un musical inspirado en un buen chorro de canciones de los Beatles (!); cuesta recomendarlo incluso a fans de la banda de Liverpool, no vaya a ser que se ofendan.

-Mimzy, más allá de la imaginación: auténtica ida de olla sobre unos niños que encuentran una caja con objetos que los dotan de inteligencia y son guiados por un (en apariencia) conejo de peluche, el tal Mimzy, en pos de una importante misión… el que no se haya perdido a estas alturas, que vaya a verla.

My best friend and I watched “the last mimzy” for the first time last night. It was fabulous! And the story line was completely a possibility in my reality. When did I first start thinking that we had special powers available to our mind? “Fire Starter” came out in 1984. This movie showed me a child who could, amongst other things, start fires with her mind. I’m sure I knew then, it was certainly possible to start fires with your mind. I know that anything is possible. With training, we are amazing beings.

Believing in yourself, then know that it will happen. My mother-in-law always says. “Good waiters, make good tips”. I was very good as a waitress in my youth, damn good. As an adult, however, (I’m not as good of a waiter). I am often less patient than I would like to be all of the time.

In a mimzycal world, things happen because you have given thought to them. In my world, I do believe everything happens for a reason. There are no accidents. Sometimes, the reasons aren’t always obvious to me right away. Hell, some of those reasons are still unclear to me. But since Fire Starter, I have looked at things with more of an open mind and attitude. Infinite possibilities, the world id full of them. I am going forward knowing that there are many choices. Let us create miracles.

Quise ver esta película en el cine pero salió en muy pocas salas y por muy poco tiempo. Ahora acabo de rentarla y me ha parecido una buena película, no excelente, pero aceptable. Tiene esa temática ligeramente de búsqueda científica, ciencia ficción y futurismo.

La historia se centra en Noah y Emma, dos hermanos que encuentran en el mar una caja que ha sido enviada del futuro. A partir del contacto con el contenido de la caja, los niños comienzan a desarrollar una inteligencia superior y habilidades sorprendentes. Emma encuentra en la caja un conejo de peluche con apariencia de conejo que le habla y le dice que se llama mimzy. Sus cambios no pasarán desapercibidos a sus padres, el maestro de Noah y el propio FBI. Cuando el FBI examina a mimzy, descubren en su interior tecnología humana muy avanzada. En realidad mimzy es una inteligencia artificial que morirá a menos que Emma y Noah la ayuden a regresar al futuro (esto ya me recuerda a ET); sin embargo dicha misión conseguirá algo aún mayor: solucionar una catástrofe que ocurrirá en el futuro y que amenaza con acabar con la humanidad (aqui ya me suena a Terminator).

Por cierto, Lewis Carroll, el autor de “Alicia en el país de las maravillas” inventó la palabra “mimzy” en un poema llamado Jabberwocky. La palabra es la unión de otras dos: “miserable” (miserable, infeliz) y “flimsy” (delicado, frágil). Lo de “last mimzy” tiene que ver con el hecho de que se trata del último conejito (o IA) que se ha enviado del futuro y por tanto es la única esperanza de salvar a la humanidad en el futuro.

Algunas cosas que me gustaron ha sido la actuación de los niños, en especial de Rhiannon Leigh Wryn como Emma. También el tema de las mandalas que son diagramas o representaciones simbólicas supuestamente del universo y de origen hindú y budista. Es curioso encontrar que Brian Greene, fisico famoso por defender la teoría de cuerdas, hace un cameo en la película. En la película se afirma que no se puede enviar seres humanos en el tiempo, razón por la que envían IAs y aunque no explican los motivos, yo siempre he creído lo mismo pues aunque matemáticamente y teóricamente dichos viajes tiempo-espaciales son posibles, la cantidad de complejidades (o paradojas) y problemas que suscitan me hacen pensar que podemos considerarlos imposibles para fines prácticos y realistas.

Una película entretenida para todos aquellos que disfruten de estos géneros

You might as well disregard all that other shit you heard anywhere about “American Gangster” and people getting previews of it cuz it’s pretty much all wrong. Jay-Z had preview for it Oct. 5 and “No Hook” IS on it so all the track lists, all the reviews of shit is pretty much that (Shit, that is). Here’s whats really good with it.

BY THE WAY: He played the shit outta MIMS saying:

“When the guy says ‘I could make a mil’ saying nothing on the track,’ you know you’ve reached a bad place.”

Too bad MIMS aint even move a mil. Try 271,000..The Last MIMzy needs to go to bed.

Jay-Z presented his nearly-completed tenth album, American Gangster, Friday evening for a small gathering of media at Manhattan’s Roc The Mic Studios. Inspired by the forthcoming Denzel Washington drama of the same name, the album – a crisper, more focused effort than his previous album, last year’s somewhat maligned Kingdom Come – is a cinematic work, told with a loose narrative that follows the rise and subsequent fall of a New York drug lord. “It plays like a cautionary tale,” he said. “But it’s not me. I made it. I’m a bad motherfucker.”

Working with producers like Bad Boy’s Hit Men team, Jermaine Dupri and longtime collaborator Just Blaze, Gangster is lush with a live band sound that echoes the deep soul and funk sounds of the film, as on the electrifying banger “Roc Boys” and fierce lyrical workout “No Hook.” Jay-Z spoke about acquiring tracks from Diddy’s long-dormant crew of hitmakers. “He just had ‘em, he didn’t have anyone to give ‘em to,” he said, as a loop of the film played in the background on a PlayStation 2. Other standouts include DJ Toomp’s booming “Say Hello to the Bad Guy,” the No ID-helmed “Success” – which may feature former rival Nas – and the rescued “Ignorant Shit,” originally recorded during the sessions for 2003’s The Black Album (Roc-A-Fella). “Ignorant Shit” has been updated to include a verse from Roc-A-Fella’s Beanie Sigel. It also now cannily addresses the controversy surrounding deposed shock rock Don Imus earlier this year. Nas, Sigel, R&B crooner Bilal (featured on the late album track “Fallen”) and Pharrell (on lead single “Blue Magic”) are the only guests.

Talking at length about the album’s creation, Def Jam’s reigning President and CEO said it took less than three weeks to record American Gangster. “I like the challenge of it,” he said. “You could make 100 classic albums in a row and someone [else] could make one hot song and people compare you. This is the only sport like that.”

Initially brought to his attention by Universal’s noted soundtrack executive Kathy Nelson, American Gangster depicts the true story of Frank Lucas, a Harlem drug kingpin who amassed a $250 million empire in less than 10 years in the 1970s. Referencing Lucas’ reserved, all-business attitude, Jay-Z often echoes the aspirational themes of the film, as on “No Hook,” which finds him snarling, “Fuck rich, let’s get wealthy.”
by Sean Fennessy, Vibe