review: "the saboteur" (pc) (2009)

Set GTA in Nazi-occupied Paris, with classier art direction, much tighter combat controls (including R6:Vegas-style duck-and-cover aiming!) and a "nudity on/off" switch... and you've got a killer effin' game.

Complaints: I would have preferred shorter cutscenes, as usual, and a couple sections that had a whiff of "we ran out of time"-ness (like the burning zeppelin setpiece you magically survive without explanation or effort).

But overall it's great fun and I'm surprised this wasn't a top ten hit last year. The gaming press fails us again.

rating: :)

PS - Fee~eelin' Good :)

Japan Blocks the Young

NYTimes.com:

TOKYO — Kenichi Horie was a promising auto engineer, exactly the sort of youthful talent Japan needs to maintain its edge over hungry Korean and Chinese rivals. As a worker in his early 30s at a major carmaker, Mr. Horie won praise for his design work on advanced biofuel systems.

But like many young Japanese, he was a so-called irregular worker, kept on a temporary staff contract with little of the job security and half the salary of the “regular” employees, most of them workers in their late 40s or older. After more than a decade of trying to gain regular status, Mr. Horie finally quit — not just the temporary jobs, but Japan altogether.

He moved to Taiwan two years ago to study Chinese.

“Japanese companies are wasting the young generations to protect older workers,” said Mr. Horie, now 36. “In Japan, they closed the doors on me. In Taiwan, they tell me I have a perfect résumé.”

As this fading economic superpower rapidly grays, it desperately needs to increase productivity and unleash the entrepreneurial energies of its shrinking number of younger people. But Japan seems to be doing just the opposite. This has contributed to weak growth and mounting pension obligations, major reasons Standard & Poor’s downgraded Japan’s sovereign debt rating on Thursday.

“There is a feeling among young generations that no matter how hard we try, we can’t get ahead,” said Shigeyuki Jo, 36, co-author of “The Truth of Generational Inequalities.” “Every avenue seems to be blocked, like we’re butting our heads against a wall.”

An aging population is clogging the nation’s economy with the vested interests of older generations, young people and social experts warn, making an already hierarchical society even more rigid and conservative. The result is that Japan is holding back and marginalizing its youth at a time when it actually needs them to help create the new products, companies and industries that a mature economy requires to grow.

Last year, 45 percent of those ages 15 to 24 in the work force held irregular jobs, up from 17.2 percent in 1988 and as much as twice the rate among workers in older age groups, who cling tenaciously to the old ways.

Time for a Senior Citizen Battle Royale!

review: VA | "crush! 90's v-rock best hit cover songs" (part 2 of 2)

V.A.
crush! 90's v-rock best hit cover songs
2011

Daizystripper - "With You" (La'Cryma Christi cover)
Singer sounds like Toshi on helium. Song is too sweet, and the performance even sweeter, as if to encapsulate all that is wrong with VK. :(

12012 - "Winter Again" (Glay cover)
Would it kill them to have one hummable, memorable part? It sounds like half the band is missing, too, very sterile and empty. :(

Ando - "Romance" (Penicillin cover)
Hits a nice sharky, palm-muted stride at 1:15 and 2:30 and 3:20... but I can't believe how interchangeable and disposable so many of this compilation album's choruses are, it's embarrassing! These are supposed to be different bands playing different "hits" by other different bands, isn't it!?!? :\

Mix Speaker's, Inc. - "S.O.S. Romantic" (Cascade)
Well, at least it stands out from the rest of the pack, the verses inching towards Aural Vampire territory! :\

Lost Ash - "Endless Love" (D-Shade cover)
Few bands scream "used bin detritus" than D-Shade, so I dunno if Lost Ash managed to salvage some good from the song or if it was always there, but this track is the one I like the most among the tracks I'll never play again. :\

Merry - "Schwein no Isu" (Dir en grey cover)
It's helpful to recall Kyo (Dir en grey) is sempai to Gara (Merry), but even without that connection this song would still rock. Merry does a great job of mildly reinterpreting this Dir en grey classic, capturing the spookiness in the heaviness without overshooting the target and landing in ridicu-land. It might even be better than the original: fuller, more confident, more resonant. WOW. :)

Duel Jewel - "Jupiter" (Buck-Tick cover)
If you can stay awake til the sol (3/5ths it to the 5 minute song), you'll be rewarded with a sonorous, Jupiter-sized soundscape. :\

Dog in the Parallel World Orchestra - "Yume Yori Sutekina" (Raphael cover)
I really dig Raphael, but this unimaginative photocopy sounds almost as old and indie-ized as the 1998-ish original, just without Yuki and Kazuki's charms, and burdened by the weight of idiotic band moniker. :\

Yoshiki Convinces EMI that He Can Actually Do Something on Schedule

BLABBERMOUTH:

X Japan and EMI Music have signed an exclusive three-year manufacturing and distribution agreement that will have EMI Label Services handle the band's releases in North America. The first release will be the track "Jade" on March 15, followed by the band's as yet untitled American debut set for a late summer 2011 release.

Half of the songs will be culled from some of the band's gold and platinum Japanese singles; the other half are brand-new songs, and an estimated 95% of the lyrics are being sung in English.

"Some of the songs on this new album were originally written with Japanese lyrics," Yoshiki explained, "so translating them into English has been challenging. For some reason, English needs more words, so I ended up re-writing many of the lyrics but kept the same message."

thx Darkshadow!

There was a songwriter named Yoshiki
Who released every song twenty timeski
In LA he was signed
With the same songs in mind
But the English required him to squeeze in extra syllables, shimatta!

Mt. Jackson

After making the giant snowball, we went home, slept, went out at 8pm for sushi' and on the way home, Jack -- on his own -- walked up to two cute/dolled-up 16-year-old-ish girls on the sidewalk and gave one a high five and they were all AWWWWW and he was all "You know it" as he strutted away.

It was pretty badass til he turned around and waved bai-bai, even though that earned him a "Bye!" from the blonde girl he high-fived...

review: VA | "crush! 90's v-rock best hit cover songs" (part 1 of 2)

V.A.
crush! 90's v-rock best hit cover songs
2011

Heidi - "Pink Spider" (hide cover)
When the "misses" the doo-doo-doo-da-doom @ :10, it sounds like they're absolutely going to fuck up one of my favorite j-rock songs ever (should I upload the video of my band covering it at Cooper Union in NYC again!?)... but by :25 it's clear the drums are going in a cool new direction and the suspension @ :30 seals the deal, this is gonna be cool... But the intro overpromises! In the end it's just a straight-up copy with mild changes here and there. :\

Doreimidan - "Machi" (??? cover)
This has gotta be a Glay cover, right? Those chorus riffs and vocal lines are SO GLAY.) I kinda like the innocent fun of the solo section. But the song is too easily digestable. :\

Buglug - "Melty Love" (Shazna cover)
In 2003 or so, Rob from Secret Secret asked me to play guitar for him for a couple Tokyo gigs, and prior to one show we went CD shopping and there was a box of thirty or forty used Gold Sun and Silver Moon discs priced at ten cents each and he was like "awesome!" and I was like "you're not gonna... no...!" and he bought several, and somehow convinced me to buy one too! Back at home, I don't the disc ever touched my player. And when we packed to move back to New York a few years later, I ended up throwing it away. And listening to Buglug's cover of "Melty Love" now, I SEE MY THINKING ALL THOSE MANY YEARS AGO WAS CORRECT. Worst track on the disc. :(

NoGoD - "Sanbun no ichi..." (Siam Shade cover)
Siam Shade never did it for me, and it would take a lot more rewrites than Nogod did for this track to make me like it. There's no darkness! Like ginger ale without any whiskey. :(

D - "Gekka no Yasoukyoku" (Malice Mizer cover)
This *is* tho one we heard last month, and Malice Mizer originally, right? I think I like it (did I before?) ... D's style of playing meshes well with MM's style of songwriting. The production feels a little crowded, however, but I like how it feels familiar. :)

Lolita 23ku - "Storm" (Luna Sea cover)
Loli23 tried to update a new classic, but failed. The ProTools'd "your CD/mp3 player is broken"-style cuts in the intro and pre-solo are the worst kind of distracting. The vocals aren't half bad tho, that's a surprise. Nailed Sugi's solo too. I'm impressed but will never play this again, it's like The Polar Express of cover songs, Uncanny Valley in full effect! :\

Matenrou Opera - "Kurenai" (X Japan cover)
Better piano than the original (the little flourishes). GAH but orchestral keyboards RUIN THE SONG! That should be guitar up front you cunts! CUNTS!!! :(

part 2 of 2 tomorrow.

review: dir en grey | “lotus” pv (2011)

It's not the most original or exciting PV ever, but it's got a few arresting images:

thx baruga!

The band pretty much stands in a circle playing and/or emoting while various effects do their work, and the chick from the CD cover floats around for some connective visual branding. Then she apparently dessicates herself. (Low humidity?)

rating: :/

review: dir en grey | "lotus" (2011)

dir en grey
lotus
2011

"Lotus" conjures up that "Drain Away"/"Kasumi" phase they went through in good ol' 2003 (though I don't recall the vocals being as obnoxiously double-tracked as they are now). I dig how the song doesn't wear out its welcome either -- if anything, the quick finish is an "oh, you're leaving already?" moment that makes the song a little more cherishable.

"Obscure (2011)" is unnecessary. It doesn't add anything to, or improve upon, the original, and doesn't stand on its own legs as a new object either. What is the point?

And "Reiketsu Nariseba (live)" is a little too guttural and moronic compared to previous live incarnations of the song -- the versions appearing on Proof and Feast are more listenable and negate the need for this isolated CD-single b-side.

Kaoru (g), Shinya (d), Kyo (v), Toshiya (b) & Die (g)
have been at this for 14 years next week.

I mean, if you're gonna do a live track, do one that we don't have four other copies of already.

(A quick perusal of my 554 Deg songs indicates that that would be tricky -- they've released at least one if not FOUR or FIVE live versions of almost every song they've got... but I see no live versions of "Toriko", "Fatal Believer", "Rotting Root", "Pink Killer" or ... um, "Lotus". Or "Audrey"! [Really, there's no CD or DVD with a complete "Audrey" on it!?!])

A lot of those songs don't deserve to be played live, but, hey, redo THEM then!

rating: :/

Okay.

I only post this out of habit

Meh. (It's the tripled Kyo vocal that's wearing me out.)

Vidoll Disbanding

Vidoll is calling it quits!

♣ SЯ: (via MusicJapan+):

Still, they claim it to be a "positive break-up" and that they want their fans to watch over each member from here on.

In a "NicoNicoDouga" comment and on Twitter, the members are planning to comment on their plans and the break-up.

thx cliff (& karl)!

The tweets:

Jui's tweet:

I got a solo career I ain't worryin' none.

Shun's tweet:

Thought we had it *nailed* after @YoshikiOfficial intro'd us at J-Rock Rev, WHAT HAPPND!?

Giru's tweet:

shoulda stuck with Lilith, way funner. :(

Rame's tweet:

In line at Starbucks fuckin' slooooooooow glad we broke up finally got my porn directing career to focus on anywho PEACEOWT

Tero's tweet:

at practice studio. where is everybody?!

This former member also had something to say...

Yukine's tweet:

Glad I bailed when I did! Graduating with a law degree in March! Engaged too!

金色アゲハ蝶 :: ROCK & READ #033 the GazettE - Ruki Interview [Translation 1/4]

金色アゲハ蝶 :: ROCK & READ #033 the GazettE - Ruki Interview [Translation 1/4]:

Ruki [Yeah. In December 2005 we have been making our major debut with a single release through King Records (Note: Single release of “Cassis” in Dec. 2005) and the year after, in May 2006, we have held our finale of "Nameless Liberty Six Guns" at Nippon Budokan. But frankly, we didn't sell it out. In September 2005, we had held the final of our tour "[gama] the underground cockroach" at the Tokyo International Forum Hall A, which we didn't sell out either. Yet, without selling out the International Forum, the performance at Nippon Budokan had been announced. At that time, somehow on the side, it felt like: "will this be OK?" Moving to Budokan without selling out the International Forum first. However, I think this kind of priming is very important for a band. If things weren't like that, the band wouldn't develop further. It would always remain lukewarm, just spoiling us and not lead to growth. We'd be stuffed with self-confidence, yet that doesn't mean we'd be having this kind of conviction. I think that the things we do have meaning to them. Therefore we did Budokan. And as expected we didn't sell it out. However, from the time we did Nippon Budokan onwards, in about 2006, the people we were able to mobilize were starting to increase and step by step the people who started to know the GazettE became more and more. The fans that accepted us increased and there was a time, when we got this kind of response. There were more and more people, at the same time who said that they had been having prejudice at first and that there had been a misapprehension. And I thought: "Wow, how can they tell these kind of thing from the appearance alone?"]

-- What kind of people have been saying these things?

Ruki [As we dealt with making a record within the fields of a major (record company) the people to which our contact expanded newly, like the people from the agency, those people as our new points of contact. The (people) from Core magazine (Note: Visual-kei specialized magazine), those magazines, who had been publishing us ever since, never said these kind of things. However while those people have judged us also by our sound, the people from general magazines and those people who dealt with us when we started to sell and popularity began to increase, (have been saying things like that). This is certainly the way these people had been looking at us. Thinking about it like that it is kind of depressing. Well, this is still an unchanging story about magazines. Frankly, these things have been said by people who are involved with music and such. I would hope that these kind of people wouldn't judge us just by what they see. Being told that, they are having prejudice, yet think that the Gazette is different from other Visual-kei bands is also absolutely nothing happy. I just think: "What's with this kind of saying things?" It is often said like that. It was depressing. We are not at an age where you can get us to do things by saying nice stuff and praise us like that. Because in the end we do feel the real intentions behind the words of these people.]

-- I see. So this is how "Hyena" came to be.

Ruki [That is it. As long as we sell they'll be all over us, yet as soon as we don't they'd drop us at an instance. That's what we see. Therefore we will keep to ourselves sternly and we can only continue to do what we believe in. I think we can only protect ourselves like that. Probably, now, as we are about to perform at Tokyo Dome, the people to gather around us will become more, yet, we will stay calm about that. In that sense, it also seems that with doing Tokyo Dome, the line between artists/musicians and entertainers is vanishing. However, I don't like it, when that's the only thing. We are first and foremost a band, not entertainers. We are not intending to become part of the trend. Just previously, Visual-kei had been in a sort of boom phase, and I really hated it. I disliked being put into that. Visual-kei isn't a trend; it has been there for a long time already. I didn't want it to be a boom. Therefore we did things not to be put togther with that. And as we did something that isn't meant to be a boom and yet becomes one anyway, we had to get out of this forcefully. Like: "Isn't this kind of different?"]

thx azu!

I couldn't make it through the whole interview so if anything cooler pops up, please post it.

But I'll say this: Ruki seems smarter than he used to.

Phase faith - "Come or we quit!" and the economics of ticket selling

♣ SЯ:

"phase faith will disband after their one-man live at HOLIDAY SHINJUKU at 2011/04/02 if no. of attendants at that live is below 200"

thx Ratheden!

I like how typing the whole word "number" was deemed to troublesome, and how attendants ("ushers, clerks, servers") and attendees ("persons at an event") are pretty different (almost opposite, in fact!) terms...

"Fans, bring your butlers to hold your loli-umbrellas!"

...but forget the linguistic nazism, let's talk turkey: is this actually gonna work?

It sorta reminds me of web services that charge each customer a tenth of a penny more than the previous customer, so that early adopters get for $.01 what late adopters end up paying $200 for.

THAT kind of economic trick, where risk and reward dance so exquisitely, is pretty effin' neat.

But saying "200 fans or else"? It's too binary. And petulant!

So sell tickets for $.01 at first (fan dedication reward!), then cross your fingers that some hype ensues and people get into the "$100!?! I don't wanna be left out or get stuck paying $200 so I better get in on this thing now!" mindset.

I could actually envision a time when most tickets are sold this way, actually!

Any econ majors out there know what this theory/effect thing is called? I bet there's some nice charts of it somewhere, if only one knew what search terms to type...

D's The King of Blackness PV

I am the King of Blackness
I scare the clouds away!
I eat mud for breakfast!
I hide behind your drapes!
I know German! And Fronch!
Parle vous ein berliner!
I cackle in the general direction of
Your ridiculous translation!

~Slightly~ different than most of their previous output, and not terrible, but... the world has moved on, D. What sounded cool in '05 is not sounding so cool in 2011.

AK-47 = "Automatic Kalishnikov, 1947 model"

from CJ Chivers' recently published The Gun, the story of the AK-47:

For people who study the universe of disorder, automatic Kalashnikovs serve as reasonably reliable units of measure. Arms-control specialists and students of conflict look to the price of Kalashnikov assault rifles in a nation's open-market arms bazaars to determine both the degree to which destabilized lands are awash in small arms and the state of risk.

When prices rise, public anxiety is considered high. When they sink, the decline can indicate a conflict is ebbing. Because there is no surer sign that a country has gone sour than the appearance of Kalashnikovs in the public’s grip, they can also function as an informal social indicator, providing another sort of graduated scale.

Informative and VERY well written so far.

The Argument Against Headphones... IS DUMB

NYTimes.com:

Headphones were invented a century ago -- the brainchild of Nathaniel Baldwin, a tinkerer from Utah who grew frustrated when he couldn’t hear Mormon sermons over the noise of the crowds at the vast Salt Lake Tabernacle.

When the Navy put in an order for 100 such Baldy Phones in 1910, Baldwin abandoned his kitchen workbench, hastily opened a factory and built the prosperous Baldwin Radio Company. His innovations were the basis of "sound powered" telephones, or phones that required no electricity, which were used during World War II.

Workers and soldiers have long used them to mute the din of machinery or artillery while receiving one-way orders from someone with a microphone.

From the beginning, it seems, headphones have been a technology of submission (to commands) and denial (of commotion).

When World War II ended, submission-and-denial was exactly what returning veterans craved when they found themselves surrounded by the clamor and demands of the open-plan family rooms of the postwar suburbs. By then, they knew what device provided it.

In the ’50s, John C. Koss invented a set of stereo headphones designed explicitly for personal music consumption. In that decade, according to Keir Keightley, a professor of media studies at the University of Western Ontario, middle-class men began shutting out their families with giant headphones and hi-fi equipment.

The article than goes on to describe how terrible and isolating and antisocial it is to wear headphones and recommends using them less. A FUCK-KING RETARDED suggestion for a New York City newspaper to fuck-king make! Like I want to HEAR other people and their shitty Kanye and Arcade Fire and sirens and arguments and hawkers and Barney!?!

An Exclusive Interview with Activision's "Call of Duty: Black Ops"

Jrocknyc: Thanks for coming!

Call of Duty: Black Ops: GRAAAAAHH MY INTRO IS BOMBARDING YOU WITH COLORS AND SMASH CUTS AND NOISY EFFECTS AND YELLING TO GET YOUR ATTENTION DO I HAVE IT!!?!!!?!!

J: Christ. [turns things down]

CoDBO: And now I'm delivering lots of exposition and framing the plot for all the two-year-olds with no conception of how stories are told via an interminably long cutscene! Left click to skip!

J: left click left click left click

CoDBO: And now another cutscene and this time you can't skip it! OMG It's JFK!!!!!!!!

J: Can we skip to the rocket level because that's when I realized I hadn't had ANY FUN and uninstalled you.

CoDBO: But JFK!!!!! Castro too!!! And his human shield/whore!

J: Yes. Russian rocket level please.

CoDBO: Fine. So follow follow follow this guy in what is basically a cutscene again but you ~can~ turn your head slightly if you wish. This will go on for several minutes, and you won't miss a thing if you wanna go pee or anything. Oh no sorry my bad you need to be here to hold down the forward button.

J: Leftclickleftclickleftclick Why is this here?!?!

CoDBO: I have no faith in players' ability to navigate a sparsely patrolled field full of cover towards a giant rocket in the near distance. Or to know enough to duck when trucks brimming with enemy soldiers drive by. Or really to make ANY decisions.

J: Yes, true.

CoDBO: It could be worse!

J: And you make it even worse when you throw us into bullet-time and take away our weapon of choice away at unpredictable times! All of a sudden I fall down and its slo-mo-taimu and I've got a revolver or knife equipped instead of the gun I'm used to!?! God damn.

CoDBO: I think it makes finale-like bits more ~exciting~ and finale-like. And since it's so cheap and easy to do, so I do it like twice per map!

J: It's fun to confound your players, yay! You know' Half-Life 2 does right all the stuff you do wrong. Literally EVERY THING, with a space in the middle for emphatic clarity.

CoDBO: Ah, but having the NPCs tell you what to shoot, where to shoot, and when to shoot sure is helpful!

J: It takes all the life out of everything you cock! I'm completely uninvested. It's a step up from bored-at-3am channelsurfing!

CoDBO: But you enjoy watching the NPCs fight each other, right? While you remain stuck behind a knee-high gate you can't jump til another NPC opens it for you?

J: No.

CoDBO: Well then you can just quit the game then! First hit escape, then choose quit, then watch an ad or whatevethefuck that unescapable video is I don't even know, then choose quit again on the next screen, then ARE YOU SURE? Then you can play multiplayer!

J: I already set up my keybindings in singleplayer; do they carry ov--

CoDBO: No, you have to set them up again.

rating: :(

Misa Digital Kitara

Engadget:

"There are two main modes of operation: a string mode, as seen above, and a ball mode allowing for even more adjustability."

black plastic model - $849
aluminum unibody - $2899

What I like about it is NO BUZZING!

And no tuning and all the other degradations that goes along with physical objects that require precision measurements.

Anyone who has tried to fix the action ... or even TUNE ... an Floyd Rose axe ("Whoops you turned the little screw 1/100th of a millimeter too far, try again!") is a potential customer for this.

Seems like the kind of thing Jun from Pierrot would love.

How to make money in the music industry

Slate:

Analysts and executives have long lamented that the music industry is dying. That is not quite true—it is the record business that is clearly done for.

According to Billboard Boxscore, between 2000 and 2009, DMB sold more tickets to its shows than any other band on the planet, moving a staggering 11,230,696 tickets. (No other band sold more than 10 million tickets in the same time period.) In the aughts, DMB grossed more than $500 million from touring alone.

It keeps ticket prices low in comparison with other big shows, an average of $58.79 compared with, say, $91.56 for arena-rockers Aerosmith. It offers a high proportion of plum tickets to fan-club members and offers them tons of freebies and special deals online.

If that sounds familiar—not the music, the strategy—it's because DMB is pulling an old trick, one pioneered by the Grateful Dead, a band beloved of business school professors and folk-lovers alike. As described in the delightful Marketing Lessons From the Grateful Dead, the famed jam band produced only a few well-known albums and songs. But they toured constantly—playing about 200 shows a year from 1965 to 1995. And they courted their fans, treating the concert like a service rather than a commodity, and their fans like members of a community rather purchasers of a product. Lo and behold, the Dead became one of the most successful bands of all time.

~ 

In the past 10 years, as record sales have collapsed, the touring business has tripled in size to nearly $5 billion a year in total revenue. (That's mostly due to higher ticket prices, rather than more people attending more concerts.) The year 2010 proved somewhat lackluster: According to Pollstar, the top 50 tours netted $2.9 billion worldwide in ticket sales, down 12 percent from 2009.

Hmm.

review: matenrou opera | "abyss" (2010)

matenrou opera

abyss

2010

I dunno, it feels like they're forcing it.

"Independent" has some cool riffs and melodies but it's like they sped it up by 10%, then "Mou" tries to overwhelm you with GRANDIOSITY (orchestral keys and echo all over) and it sounds cool enough, esp. from 3:20 to the end, but once it's over, you feel no compulsion to go back and listen again

"Frill" executes its swingin' vibe with precision (this is a backhanded compliment), "Coal Tar" is a weak spacewar opera ballad, "Double Clutch" is a b-side.


On the upside, "Futari" is a pleasant walk in the park, with an enveloping vocal melody and classy, skillful acoustic guitar, a lighters cellphones-in-the-air sort of song designed to make you weep. It segues smoothly into the very, very Yngwie-esque instrumental ballad "Finale" -- you can taste the scallops! -- and then the mini-album is done and you're sort of like, oh... and ready for something more human, more organic, less calculated and precise...so you spin The Pretty Reckless' "My Medicine" for the 20th time...

rating: :\

review: scott pilgrim vs the world (2010)

"He punched the highlights OUT OF HER HAIR!"

"I don't know the meaning of the word."

"You cocky cock!"

 I liked it.

The editing (especially in the early scenes) was clever at keeping the viewer pleasantly off-balance; the central actors/characters/romances were strong enough to support the story; and the fight scenes were surprisingly competent (who would have thought ANY amount of Hollywood magic could've made a fight scene between Michael Cera and Jason Schwartzman NOT resemble pancakes dangling from fishing poles?!?!)

I thought it was pretty smart about a lot of things (the dialog, the on-screen text, the timing, framing, etc.), and annoying only marginally when the waves of winky graphics and cuteness overflowed the cups that held them.

If I had to make a complaint, it would only be in regards to the overuse of the too-indie main band's crappy music (holy neverending opening credits, batman).

Also, I'm still not a Michael Cera fan and I look forward to the world growing as tired of his mumbly schtick as I have. (Based on this film's disappointing box office, that time may be now)...

rating: :)