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Reviews! Cabin Fever: A Review 15-Sep-2003    Lions Gate Films has a fun one for the end of summer horror movie crowd which does a good job of delivering a quality product. Cabin Fever, written, produced and directed by Eli Roth, is something of a departure from the his previous works. Five young college students head for the hills for a week after finals to blow off some steam partying and shooting squirrels. Instead, they encounter a flesh eating virus and quickly descend into all manner of documented psychologically paranoid behavior. Now, I likes me a good horror movie, I've even been known to like a few bad ones. It's my opinion that this one falls into the "good" arena. It's a perfectly acceptable one-off story with absolutely no need for a sequel or cable spin-off. The things this movie does well it does pretty darn well. You get to know the characters quickly, and the ugly personality traits usually kept hidden surface for all to see as the story moves along. Once we are introduced to the vector (infected hermit) for the bad guy (flesh eating virus causing extreme paranoia) it's all downhill. And it's a fun ride too. Don't get me wrong, there's no oscar material here, it's just a fun gory shock movie. I had fun watching it as did the other people in the theater, and it held my attention the whole way through. We all jumped when we were supposed to and the "Ewww"'s were coming from all directions. Sure parts had holes, some of the editing I questioned (lack of continuity in setting up the area at the beginning), but it was fun. Definitely not for everyone though. More reviews and general bashing can be found at the movie sites message board where even the director responds to folks. Review of Metallica's "St. Anger" 12-June-2003    The new Metallica album, "St. Anger" is out. I picked it up last night and am currently trying to give it a good listening to. I've not heard any of it played on the radio as I haven't been listening to any clearchannel lately (*cough*fvckers*). I've been pretty unhappy with Metallica offerings over the past several years, even totally ignoring the past couple to include the one with an orchestra... whatever. But, I caught a sideways comment in some article somewhere about them going old school on this one and that it was supposed to be pretty good, so, thinks me, I'll be the judge of that. First off, let me just say that Metallica has been trying for a long time to make anything anywhere near as good as "Ride the Lightning", their second album. Since that album, their best stuff has been covers. There were a couple good tunes on "Master of Puppets" (Battery, Damage Inc) but past that point it's all been, frankly, disappointing. For this lineup, we have the original Lars and James along with almost-as-original Kirk Hammett (he replaced Megadeth's Dave Mustaine dont'cha know). The new bassist, Robert Trujillo, comes over from those nice East L.A. boys we all know and love as Suicidal Tendencies to replace Jason Newstead (who came over from Flotsam and Jetsam). Of course, Robert didn't play the bass as recorded on the CD, that's Rob Rock the producer. On a side note, Jason's new band, the venerable Voivod, encourages downloads of their new tunes, unlike some other bands of whom we may have heard. Anywho, here I sit at work with this new collection of tracks rolling through my ears - ears which have been finely honed in the listening of Metal, both good and bad, at volumes both loud and louder. So, here we go. The first thing that I immediately notice, because it's such a stark difference, is that it sounds like Lars is beating on kettle drums. It's so stark it's distracting. Yay to Lars for his artistic creativity - boo to the band and producer for not beating any sense into him. If there was any original drumming to be heard on this album I probably wouldn't be as harsh, but that stupid "TANG!" that hangs in the air after every kettle drum hit is not only distracting but it sounds entirely out of place. James does a bunch of singing on this album. Kirk Hammett, I think, has the queen of all hippies for a wife. I'm pretty sure I heard that watching one of those VH-1 "Beind the Music" shows. He's been off on some creative artistic bent for the past several years and some of that seems to be less present here. Things may not be going well at home. Unfortunately, that's about the most positive thing I can say about any of the guitar work. He's playing the top of the neck and not getting very technical or exciting. I think that the guitar solo in Metal is dead - or at the most getting occasional checkups while on life support. I think the producer, Bob Rock, is getting ready to retire soon as well. Every song sounds pretty much the same - same pace, same sound, etc. Very good if you like the sound as a sleep inducer. Muddy, flat and monotone for the vast majority of the 11 tracks. I was wondering to myself if we were going to hear about a recall due to faulty mixing by the start of the second track. However, be careful - some tracks use more than two or three chords. It might catch you off guard and make you jerk awake in the middle of traffic. I'll bet you can pretty much guess how I'm going to summarize this one so I'll spare the pathos and just say: "Hopefully they'll do some more covers soon."