Category Archives: Entertainment

Elissa’s New Music Video Copies a Dalida Movie?

A little more than 12 hours after the release of the music video for her song “Te3ebt Mennak,” the source material behind Elissa’s new music video has been revealed.

The director is Salim el Turk, the man who gave Elissa her previous music video around which similar accusations were made.

The copying is obviously not Elissa’s fault. No one expects her to be familiar with such things. Her director, on the other hand, seems to like getting “inspired” quite often. Or is it the Samsung effect?

Of course, he also gave the world “My Last Valentine in Beirut.” Enough said? That movie is horrible.

This is Elissa’s new music video of a song that I actually like for a change:

And this is the scene that was copied almost to the frame, from an Italian miniseries that aired in 2005 called Dalida:

I think we can safely say this is more than close ideas.

We’re The Millers (2013) – Movie Review

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I’ve finally found a funny movie this year! While this isn’t absolute movie brilliance as I’m sure no one really expects it to be, it has enough hearty laughs and fun scenes to be worth a trip to a theatre near you if you want to watch something along such lines.

David Clark (Jason Sudeikis) is a drug dealer working in Denver who finds himself in trouble as his stash and money are stolen by a local gang. He is then coerced by his local drug lord Brad Gurdlinger (Ed Helms) to pick up a “little” marijuana from Mexico under the name of a Mexican drug lord for which he’ll get paid $100,000. In order to get past border control easily, David devises a plan that involves hiring a stripper named Sarah (Jennifer Aniston) and two local kids, a runaway teenage girl (Emma Roberts) and a virgin teenage boy (Will Poulter) to play a fake family called the “Millers.”

The movie’s greatest asset is the ease with which its cast work together. All four main actors play off each other with ease and charm. The movie may be a tinge too long but it’s carried by the cast and there are enough funny moments and memorable scenes here to keep you going. Make sure you stick through the credits for one of the movie’s best scenes though, especially for fans of the TV show Friends.

Of course, the way the plot unravels is predictable. Don’t get your hopes up for an out-of-the-box resolution. We’re The Millers may not be the risky comedy type that is expected out of comedies these days, but at least it’s funny – it is a typical Hollywood comedy but in a year that has not seen any decent comedies, it’s somewhat refreshing for the Millers to finally show up.

3.5/5 

The Civil Wars (Album Review) – The Civil Wars

The Civil WarsIt’s a civil war on the new self-titled The Civil Wars album. If only all civil wars were similar.

The folk duo, which announced they were going on hiatus for “internal discord and irreconcilable differences of ambition” back in October, barely managed to finish their sophomore album which might be their last. This album was brewed in the midst of their turmoil. Can such tension translate into excellent music, the likes of which is present in their first album Barton Hollow, in a band that relies heavily on harmonies to stand out?

The truth is that The Civil Wars is even better than Barton Hollow.

From the cover of billowing smoke to Joy Williams spewing “I wish I’d never ever seen your face” on the album’s opening song “The One That Got Away,” a song that departs from their relatively acoustic style, you know you’re in for one musical ride. On Same Old Same Old, the duo examines a struggling relationship whose components don’t want to let go. “Do I love you? I still do. And I’m going to till I’m gone. But if you think that I can stay in this same old same old, well, I don’t,” they sing together on one of the album’s highlight songs.

My favorite song on the album, Dust to Dust, about the loneliness that we all experience doesn’t have the dramatic music you’d expect such a topic to require. It is subdued, relying more on what these two vocalists can do together to convey the story they want to tell. The harmonies the duo create on this track may sound secondary but it’s beyond essential for the mood it creates for the song.  “It’s not your eyes, it’s not what you say. It’s not your laughter that gave you away. You’re just lonely, you’ve been lonely too long. All your acting, your thin disguise, all your perfectly delivered lines. They don’t fool me, you’ve been lonely too long. Let me in the walls you’ve built around. We can light a match and burn them down. Let me hold your hands and dance round and round the flames in front of us, dust to dust.”

Eavesdrop, the album’s possibly most commercial song, is about dealing with pain, even if through a simple hug. “I can’t pull you closer than this. It’s just you and the moon on my skin. Don’t say that it’s over… let’s let the stars watch, let them stare. Let the winds eavesdrop, I don’t care. For all that we’ve got, don’t let go. Just hold me.”

The album has two covers. One of Etta James’ Tell Mama and the other of Smashing Pumpkins’ Disarm. The Civil Wars completely unravels both songs and create their own version out of them. They make the lyrics and the story more prominent in both by toning down the music and making the vocals stand out more. D’Arline is a song that sounds gritty simply because it was recorded on an iPhone and included on the album as is. You can hear the background noise of a suburb on it as The Civil Wars flawlessly deliver the song.

Sacred Heart, a French song they wrote in Paris, is as surprising as it is interesting. With near-impeccable enunciation, the duo tell the story of a lover waiting for her significant other who may not show up while she remembers all the promises in the name of love on her way to the Sacred Heart. “Tu prends peut-être du retard. Tu as peut-être raté ton train. Tu ne peux peut-être pas me pardonner. Les ombres grandissent et les foules s’effacent. Je vais t’attendre là, viendras-tu pour moi? Je vais t’attendre là, seulement toi.”

The Civil Wars is intense. It’s also beautiful. This might be the band’s last album, a tragedy if it turns out to be true because this piece of music proves exactly how brilliantly this duo can do music. The band won’t even be performing these songs live. If you’ve ever seen their live performances, you’d know they are even better than they are recorded. Such an album creates a multitude of “if only” scenarios. With it heading to #1 status in the United States in a few days, the duo would have reached higher levels of success and fame with this work if only had they stayed on speaking terms. Add this album to your list of must-have music for 2013. It doesn’t matter if you like folk or alternative-tinged music, there’s something here which will bring forth the civil war in you.

Grade: A

Must download: The One That Got Away, Same Old Same Old, Dust to Dust. 

The Wolverine (2013) – Movie Review

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In a summer of superhero movies overload, it is a shame that none of them has managed to really cause a dent or become relevant enough to stay in the collective conscience of moviegoers, Iron Man 3 was disappointing.
Man of Steel was all kinds of meh. Add The Wolverine to the growing list.

You might need mutant powers to follow-up with the timeline of all these X-men movies. The Wolverine happens after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand. It has very few elements that relate it to X-Men Origins: Wolverine. And quite frankly, I just don’t get the infatuation with this X-man, out of them all, to give him movie after movie. Yet again, the only reason The Wolverine was made is apparently to draw in some serious cash. The good thing is that unlike other superhero movies, Wolverine has been played by only one actor – Hugh Jackman – who has gotten his character down to a science.

The script, which I bet was written in less time than it has taken me to write this review, starts with Logan flashing back to surviving the Nagazaki atomic bomb and saving a young Japanese man in the process. Flash forward to present time and Logan is trotting it in some woods, trying to stay away from civilization until he is sought out by a Japanese woman who wants to take him back to the man he saved those many years ago, now the head of Japan’s leading corporation and dying of cancer. That man, Yashida, offers Logan something he had been seeking for a long time: a way to die.

The cast, most of which is Japanese, does a good job. But that’s not saying much because the material they’re given is dismal at best. There are too many villains. None of them is memorable enough. Even the big bad villain reveal, aimed to be shocking, comes off on the cooler side of tepid, predictable, boring, uneventful. None of the characters are engrossing. They are all there to advance a movie that’s seemingly going nowhere interesting.

Despite some strong scenes interspersed here and there, The Wolverine comes off on the weaker side in the X-men series. For a casual viewer, the movie might prove entertaining and different enough (it takes place in Japan, not New York) to watch. But for those who had high hopes that this would be their movie of the summer or at least keep up the momentum that X-Men: Origins started, be ready for one big fest of claws coming out, the big bad guys panicking and you yawning.

2/5

Pacific Rim (2013) – Movie Review

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As shocking as it may be, this summer has finally found a movie worthy of being deemed the “it” blockbuster of the year in the form of Pacific Rim.

First things first, I feel I must commend the movie’s distributors for taking a risk and releasing it simultaneously with international markets despite the date coinciding with the Muslim month of Ramadan. This isn’t a movie you’d want to wait to see.

It is the near future and Earth is being attacked by huge monsters called Kaiju which are emanating from an abyss in the Pacific Ocean. Humankind realizes their current weapons are insufficient to combat the Kaijus so they devise a new defense system in the form of the Jaegers, which are driven by two human pilots who share brain function in order to do so. But there’s a twist. Soon enough, the Kaijus start learning the fighting ways of the Jaegers and humankind starts losing its only hope in defense as the threat of an apocalypse draws nearer.

Bolstered by a thrilling opening scene that might as well be the climax of other movies, Pacific Rim sets a breakneck pace from the get-go. This isn’t a movie that is only about breaking metal and firearms. While the action scenes are numerous and sufficiently exhilarating, they also happen to the backdrop of a plot that is interesting and not a complete rehash of other similar movies. Sure, Hollywood has overdone apocalypses. But it was rarely as entertaining as what Pacific Rim presents.

Directed and written by Guillermo Del Toro, the movie carries the touches of a director you’d never think would do such a movie. And it shows. In fact, Guillermo Del Toro just showed that movies about robots and monsters can, in fact, be something more than what we’ve all associated them with.

Pacific Rim isn’t a Michael Bay movie, both literally and figuratively. For many, that is enough reason to give it a shot. But I found Pacific Rim to be one of the movies that have entertained me the most this past year, something that was very pleasantly surprising given I wasn’t expecting it. I guess that’s what happens when the only aspect of similar movies have all been brainless. Underneath the facade of crunching steel and atomic bombs, Pacific Rim has charm and brains. Go watch it.

4/5