ATMOSPHERE “When Life Gives You Lemons ...”

Slug was the rare rapper who delved into his failings and insecurities when he and his partner, the producer Ant (short for Anthony Davis), started Atmosphere in the 1990s in Minneapolis. For a while Atmosphere was tagged as emo rap. Now that Slug (whose real name is Sean Daley) is in his 30s and Atmosphere has a loyal audience, he has almost — not quite — run out of confessions.

On “When Life Gives You Lemons ...,” Atmosphere’s fifth retail album — it released a free downloadable collection on Christmas, still available from rhymesayers.com — Slug mostly looks at other people’s lives: a bunch of losers, or at best strugglers, who get his hard-nosed sympathy. There are waitresses, prostitutes, a homeless man, drunks, addicts, a faded rock star and some unsuitable parents.

The words are upfront, with a naturalistic delivery that sometimes recalls Kanye West. These are storytelling songs, not club tracks, moving at midtempos and often easing back toward ballads. Ant’s lean, varied productions often use just one vamp per song, which might be a buzzing synthesizer riff, some gospel-soul piano chords, soul-band horns or, in “Guarantees,” which is a portrait of a working stiff, a singer-songwriter’s lone guitar. A few songs have melodic choruses that Slug sings modestly, but effectively.

Slug himself is still in a few songs: “Yesterday,” which sounds as if it’s about an ex-girlfriend until its last few rhymes, and “Me,” a warning to prospective hookups over a hint of bossa nova. And in “You,” after sympathizing with a waitress who is constantly fending off unwanted advances, he can’t resist flirting himself. He doesn’t judge other people harshly — he’s been seeing his own flaws for far too long.

Bittersweet World by ASHLEE SIMPSON

Cast as the daring rock rebel in the Simpson family reality-show empire, Ashlee Simpson is hardly less plastic than her nice-girl sister, Jessica. Her debacle of a “Saturday Night Live” appearance exposed her as a lip-syncher, and when she’s not singing about her rocker-girl independence, she’s working on Broadway. Lately, she and her fiancé, Pete Wentz, of Fall Out Boy, have been teasing the tabloid media by refusing to confirm or deny pregnancy rumors.

But for Ms. Simpson as a pop contender, none of that matters. On her third album, “Bittersweet World,” the defiant pose — “I just wanna color outside the lines,” she pouts in “Rule Breaker,” sounding about as dangerous as an unruly kindergartner — gives her fertile songwriting territory.

Ms. Simpson is smart enough to work with expert hitmakers, among them the producers Chad Hugo from the Neptunes (his partner, Pharrell Williams, has been working with Madonna) and Timbaland (who squeezed Madonna and Ms. Simpson into his schedule). And she’s shameless enough to mimic Gwen Stefani, Avril Lavigne, Madonna and 1980s hits from Toni Basil, Tom Tom Club and Missing Persons. The shamelessness pays off in songs with crisp beats, teen-seeking choruses and cheerfully obvious lyrics.

“Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)” and “Ragdoll,” her collaborations with the Brooklyn electro up-and-comer Santogold, are perky, syncopated staccato complaints. “No Time for Tears” segues spooky Eurythmics verses into a pop-punk chorus. Ms. Simpson ricochets from vampy self-esteem (“Hot Stuff,” “Boys”) to postbreakup sulking (“Little Miss Obsessive”) to generically sincere protestations that “it’s not easy bein’ me.” It couldn’t be more calculated, but that doesn’t prevent it from being catchy, too.

Review: Forgetting Sarah Marshall - The Funniest moVie I've Seen On tHe Year?

I never saw this one coming. Sure, I knew what it was and I went in hoping for the best, but never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that this film would have been as funny as it is. One look at the trailer and you know everything you think you need to know. It’s effectively an old-school '80s comedy: nerdy guy gets dumped by his TV star girlfriend and ends up at a tropical resort where she and her new beau, a moronic English rock star, are vacationing. Enter the new love interest. Insert raunchy joke. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Right?

Wrong. To say that this is the funniest movie I’ve seen this year does it a disservice. It is the funniest movie I’ve seen since Superbad, and actually, I’m pretty convinced it was actually funnier than that. Forgetting Sarah Marshall is an uproarious, sidesplitting comedy that will have you laughing so hard that you will miss the next joke or bit of dialogue. There’s no avoiding that. The audience reaction was almost deafening. And it has all the makings of a modern comedy classic -- a stand-on-your-feet-and-cheer comedy that fires on all cylinders from beginning to end.

Is it raunchy? Oh yeah. Very. But oddly enough, it is raunchy in a very realistic way. This isn’t filled with needless excuses to show women topless (or like Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, bottomless). In fact, it’s a film full of male nudity. Hell, at this point I’m pretty sure I could draw writer and star Jason Segel’s (How I Met your Mother, Knocked Up) member from memory alone. And as unpleasant as that may sound, each time we catch him naked is pretty damned funny. But the comedy isn’t quite over the top. It’s actually fairly grounded -- more about laughing at those stupid, quiet, humiliating moments we all share than it is about putting the hero in ridiculous situations. Filled with lovable, silly, but very human characters, Forgetting Sarah Marshall gets its laughs from its wit and wry humor rather than token gags and fart jokes.

But what works best about it is its heart. At its core, this is a film about how hard it is to break up and find yourself again. And when it completely unfolds, and each character is laid bare, you realize that it isn’t a film about two-dimensional characters thrown on a tropical island for comedic effect. It's about how a relationship can fail on both sides and what it takes to learn and grow from the failure of that relationship. Everyone is complicit in the demise of each relationship and the film takes the time and care to spell that out. While it is equally busy making you laugh your ass off.

Jason Segel is a talent to be reckoned with, a new emerging comedy voice who was both equally fantastic as the romantic/comic lead as he was as the film's screenwriter. Likewise, first-time director Nicholas Stoller proved that he made the right transition from his own writing career and displayed his talent for getting into a joke and getting out before it ever got old. The comedy is so fast and furious in this that not a single joke is left to linger, not a single moment feels wasted.

The film also proves to be a star-making vehicle for both Kristin Bell (Veronica Mars) and Mila Kunis (That 70’s Show). I wasn’t a fan of either of these girls going in, having not been a fan of either of their television shows. But by the time the credits rolled I was in love with both. Not only are both incredibly beautiful, but this film is complicated enough to let them be more than just pretty faces and allows for a wide range of emotion and comic delivery. As much as Sarah Marshall (Bell) is somewhat of an antagonist in the film, by the end you really feel for her and her situation. Kunis, on the other hand, while getting seemingly less to do, really shines and is allowed to shed the bitchy, self-absorbed, bubble headed character she became famous for and plays a very sweet, adorable and vulnerable love interest. Expect to hear a lot more out of these girls once this movie finally breaks.

It would not surprise me if this turned out to be the funniest film of the year, and if every other comedy to come out proved to be half as funny as this then we should consider ourselves very, very lucky.

you MUst WActh IT!!!!!!!!!

Review: Rambo APPEar AGain!!!

I don't know how you could purchase a ticket to Rambo and not know what you are getting in to. I mean, it's Rambo. If you're expecting some sort of actual narrative or decent dialogue you're barking up the wrong tree. But if you want to watch John frickin' Rambo do his thing, with plenty of killing and gunplay in the mix... well, you're going to be a happy camper here.

Burma is the locale for the fourth edition of the Rambo saga. For the sake of simplicity let's call the Burma bad guys the "bad guys" and the Burma good guys the "Karen Rebels." The Karen Rebels are actually a real deal rebel group. You can Google them and read all about them; so Sly isn't just making this stuff up as he goes along. However, the main point of placing Rambo in Burma is to give him that handy jungle locale and plenty of baddies to "interact" with. It all kicks off when missionaries enlist Rambo's help in going upriver to deliver medicine and bibles to the rebels. But something goes wrong. DEAD WRONG.

Sorry, that just felt right. Anyway, Rambo faces off against a few hundred bad dudes - I'm not going to ruin that for you. Sly looks older, yeah, but still super juiced up and in better shape than 99.9% of the humans in the world. What I'm saying here is that he pulls it off. He has a giant head and he doesn't talk much but he's still completely and utterly badass.

If this movie has problems they are based on the genre alone. Americans (and the world) are tending towards more complex stories and Rambo and his outlook are anything but sophisticated. You cheer for Rambo to slaughter the bad guys en masse because they are pure evil. This is a purely visceral experience and it's only in cold retrospect that you'll question what it is about a headshot that pleases you so.

Perhaps it was nostalgia, perhaps it was low expectations - but whatever the case I found Rambo entertaining. If you didn't like the first three, or if you hate action flicks, or if you think Sly is too old for this sort of stuff than you should skip it. Everyone else... lock n' load.