It is time for yet another Porocrom post. To those of you who said that this site is dead, we can only say “shut up, it’s not dead, it’s only dying”. This time, the amazing review will concern the movie 300. The review is brought to you by Dark Tranquillity’s Ex Nihilo and a watchplate. So, 300. Granted, I haven’t actually seen the movie, but hey, this is the internet, you’re what you say you are, so fuck if I’m not going to write a review. While I’m at it, I am a movie critic and a historian who specialises in ancient Sparta.

Before watching the movie, I constantly heard all kinds of criticism about it, so you can imagine that I was more than a little curious to see if it would be justified or not. The Iranians were like “Persians are portrayed as goddamn fairies”. Goddamn fairies were like “man, those spartans are hot”. Spartans were like “Dude, what the fuck, ancient spartans were actually wearing armor, but who the fuck cares, those spartans are hot. Plus the Persians are kinda gay, are we sure they actually wanted to make war, not love?”. I’ll let you know when I do watch it, but in the mean time, I can tell you one thing. That movie is so fucking unrealistic. Seriously. For one, spartans weren’t all ripped. There’s not one spartan with a pot belly in that movie, or even one whose abs’ indentations are less than two inches deep. I happen to know for a fact that in the original battle there was one guy who liked to have one beer too many occasionally, but they still kept him around as a human shield or for fetching the drinks.

Also, what the fuck is up with the sun? The colors are all wrong. Have you ever seen the sky being that red? We are forced to conclude by the cinematography that ancient sparta’s atmosphere was part methane, either because of the flatulence all those beans caused or because of the fact that the movie actually takes place on Mars.

Shit, there are so many things wrong with the movie, I don’t know where to begin. Fuck, I bet those guys weren’t even 300. I bet they just said that to sound cool. “Hey, we’re 300 and we killed like, a million persians! Of course, we’re all dead, so, come to think of it, there’s really noone to tell you this, but it’s still cool as fuck. Also, the previous sentence contains profanity unbecoming a spartan”.

While I’m at it, I should warn you about some other unrealistic movies. For example, Terminator 2. God that movie sucked. Remember the scene where the Governator is on the motorcycle (by the way, on the high-def version you can clearly see it’s not the Governator, but I digress)? Remember how he like, twirls his gun like a well built, masculine cheerleader twirling a baton to reload it? THAT SHIT NEVER HAPPENS IN REAL LIFE. I got a sawed-off shotgun and tried to reload it like that, and I fucking shot myself in the face! Twice! It’s impossible for that to happen, yet I don’t see the persians or the Terminators complaining about that. You know why? Because the Terminator minority is misrepresented in the world, but that’s a whole other post.

So, 300. I have another bone to pick with the movie, which is that the music playing in the background (on the trailer, anyway) is totally out of place. No spartan would be playing that music in the background, alternative rock wasn’t invented until a few millennia later. The movie is just rife with inaccuracies. Also, if Ephialtes was born in sparta, they’d have thrown his ass down a cliff, not given him a lollipop and a bullshit excuse. “Aww, U R 2 KEWT, but ur 2 short 4 hold teh shield, sorri ^_^”. Fuck that.

That movie totally pissed me off. I should probably watch Harry Potter or something to cool off. Harry Potter contains no inaccuracies whatsoever, by the way. That is all.

A few years ago, a movie called Saw came out, and stupid viewers the world over watched it and cried in unison “Wow, that was so unexpected. I just came in my pants”. If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s about some guy killing people by putting them in situation where escape is hard (such as trapping a guy in a device that will crush his face and putting the key behind his eye or some shit), and enjoys watching what they do.

So, these two dudes wake up in a room with a corpse one day, and try to escape. After many trials and tribulations, it is revealed that the murderer was a patient of one of the two dudes, and we see him in the movie for two fucking seconds. Literally, he’s lying in a bed during a scene, he doesn’t even have a line. In the end, the dead body with the bashed head that has been in the room for the last two hours stands up and it is revealed that hey, that’s no dead body, it’s the murderer. This is the point where people go “wow, I did not see that coming”.

A good movie surprise must consist of two elements: Giving you hints all over the place, and the outcome still being totally unexpected. Sixth sense was a good surprise. Saw excels in the second element, but only because it fails miserably in the first. It’s very fucking easy to do something unexpected when you haven’t shown anything relating to it during the whole fucking movie. A dead guy gets up, and whoop-de-doo, nobody expects it. Of course you don’t expect it, you idiot, it wasn’t hinted at at all! Would you still think the movie rocked if the murderer came out a flowerpot?

I am thinking of making a movie as well, and since audiences are so easy, it will be an instant hit. It’ll feature gory murders and major plot holes, but in the end some dude will come in and be like “I did all the murders because I am going to die some day and I wanted you all to die before me! Also, I am responsible for all the plot holes, and I have been hiding in this flowerpot for the entire movie! How obvious was that?!”. I can see it now, it will be the highest grossing movie of all time. Noone will expect the ending, even though the killer will have been right there under their noses the entire time. Maybe I’ll add a flowerpot watermark on the lower right corner of the screen, too, thus making it the only movie ever that featured the killer in every single scene with no one being any the wiser. It’s brilliant, brilliant!

So yeah, there’s this dismembered dude in the middle of the room for some twelve hours, and neither of the characters notices he’s alive. No “Hey, this guy’s breathing”, no “Who farted? It was you, wasn’t it? Well, it wasn’t me, so it’s either you or the dead guy! Oh, wait…”, no nothing. And in the end the guy just gets up and is like “Hello gentlemen, I am really alive, my severed head was really just makeup, how good am I, huh”!

I am in awe of how stupid people can be while thinking they’re Sherlock Holmes. “Wow, how could I have missed that? He was there the entire time, and I am very very good at spotting these hints, therefore my hat’s off to the writers”. Nobody considers that the reason they might not have expected the dead guy to be the killer is that the guy is fucking dead!

Please, please, if you have seen this movie and think it is the best thing since anal sex with a young Thai boy, please comment here and tell me why you find it so brilliant, I am very much interested in hearing your opinions (so I can mock you afterwards for being an idiot).

Hi…

I’m that guy.

You don’t know me, but you’d definitely recognize me if you saw me.

I’m the guy who always pukes first at the party and forces his friends to look after him so he doesn’t die.

I’m the guy who starts shit with random guys at bars, just to see the reaction.

I’m checking out your girlfriend, even though I know you guys are still together.

I’m the guy who swoops IN on your girlfriend at the first sign of trouble between the two of you.

I’m the guy standing on the wall by the dance floor waiting for your friend to leave you long enough for me to start anonymously grind on you.

I’m the guy who thinks that if he buys those girls drinks, they will go home and sleep with him, and who will get mad if they don’t.

I’m the guy who keeps feeding that girl drinks until she DOES go home with him, even though I’m aware of the fact that if she was sober, I’d have no chance.

I’m the guy who gets drunk at the classy party/wedding/bar mitzvah/funeral

I’m the guy who cock-blocks his own wingman while the wingman is talking to a really cute girl.

I’m the guy who deserts his wingman when he sees a really cute girl.

I’m the guy who will go/has gone after your little sister.

I’m the guy wearing one Lacoste shirt underneath another Lacoste shirt so I have more than one collar to pop.

I’m the guy who is the first to make racist jokes in mixed company.

I’m the guy who tells his female friend he’s in love with her, then spends the rest of the night trying to pick up random tail.

I’m the guy who sends drunk e-mails late at night that are in NO way appropriate.

I’m the guy who screams ‘WHOOOOO!’ at really inappropriate times.

See, I knew you knew me.

If you have a ‘That Guy’ statement, put it in the comments.

It is not often I get to hang out with a particular friend of mine. She is a very cool person, with a great taste in music and with a lot of great ideas. Very rarely has she ever even hinted at letting me down. However, let’s call you Carlita… I hate you forever now.

For those of you who don’t live in the Waterloo region, you are mostly safe. However, for the rest of you, and I want to be 100% clear about this, The Starlight Lounge in Waterloo sucks so much, I’m surprised the town isn’t concave.

So I suppose you’ll be wanting the story. I was supposed to meet Carlita at 10:30 at the aforementioned Tower of Babylame. Knowing her to be in possession of functioning ovaries, I arranged myself so that I would arrive there at 11. I climbed the stairs, somewhat troubled by the pounding bass lines descending from the lounge above. I walked through the doors, and this is what I saw.

The Decor

The place was clearly decorated by an opium addict who lives and dies by the maxim “Everything cheap and 20 years old is automatically cool”. There were cheap pop-art posters advertising shows that have either already happened or are fictional by bands with names like “The Runnerups” and “Maggie’s Ovarian Cyst” and “I Left My Wallet At Home Can You Please Lend Me Some Money So I Can Buy A Razor And Kill Myself?”. The place was kept in almost complete darkness, which I can only assume was done to disguise what the rest of the place looked like. An orange disco ball and some multicolored pot lights provided only enough illumination for a person to recognize their cocaine balloon from their heroin baggie. Short red leather couches and sofas bordered the room, centred in a completely vacant dance floor. Small wonder when you consider…

The Music

I try to be open-minded about music, because it is a reflection of the creator’s world view and like food or visual art, it is in the eye of the beholder. That being said, house music licks my ball. The DJ spinning the records was almost comical if the whole scene hadn’t been so sad. Picture Marge Simpson, then turn her head upside down. This guy had a beard that would make the wisest kung-fu master in the most stereotypical Chinese movie jealous. He made the guys from ZZ Top look prepubescent. What was the most incredible is that he was really into the ‘music’, bobbing his head and making odd hand gestures. I’m not sure how anyone can listen to house music, since all of the songs are virutally identical. And yes, I realize that this is a claim commonly made about hip-hop, but really people… any idiot can listen to three hip-hop tracks and discern them. House music is completely beat-driven, and the composers have only figured out how to use one of the pre-set beats on their Casio™ synthesizers. I saw a screen running something, which is when I started watching

The Movie

I must admit, this was the first time I’ve ever seen a bar show a film in the background. I was almost impressed, until I actually saw what was playing. This guy gets hit with a pie, then he trashes the roadside pie stand, and his friends break some stuff. Then some girl wearing leather pulls out a molotov cocktail and blows up someone’s van. The guys walk around the corner, when these two 12 year-old black kids with automatic weapons start shooting at them. So they duck into a nearby bakery, go to some lockers, grab their own automatic weapons and take to the streets. A lot of shooting ensues, seemingly between a gang of hippies and a tough-as-nails chick gang (with a station wagon converted into a tank).

(I just want to interject that I am not making up or exaggerating anything in this recounting.)

It’s time for one of the female gang members to undergo her initiation by murdering the last member of the male gang. She has him cornered at the bottom of a stairwell, but can’t bring herself to pull the trigger. Luckily a chick with a metal eyepatch and a belly-topper is there to finish the job. Back at their hideout, the women’s gang celebrates their triumphant rise above male tyranny by… BAKING A CAKE. At this point I had to leave.

The only way the Starlight could have been any worse is if I had to pay money to get in. Oh wait, there is a $3 cover. Never mind, zero redeeming features. The phrase ‘powerfully lame’ kept flitting through my mind. To paraphrase a friend of mine, I imagine that the Starlight is what hell must be like, only with louder music. Some day lingustic scientists will invent a word capable of encapsulating how terrible that bar is. Until then, I advise you hide under your bed, read your dictionary, and don’t trust anyone with a metal eyepatch.

I’ve wanted to do a BIL on this band, but they’ve only produced two albums, so I feel it might be a bit premature. Instead, I’m going to review their latest album.

Billy Talent: Billy Talent II

This album was released in June of 2006, the long-anticipated sequel to 2003’s Billy Talent.

Track Listing

1. Devil in a Midnight Mass (released as a single)

• Relative rating: 3/13
• Star rating:

“Devil in a midnight mass, he preyed behind stained glass/A memory of Sunday class resurrected from the past.”

This first offering from this album (to both the album owner and the radio listener) shows a darker side to the band that wasn’t fully explored on their first album. The song is an obvious reference to the many recent cases of child abuse perpetrated by priests in the Catholic church. Musically this is a hard-rockin’ song that really doesn’t give the listener any breaks, a somewhat fitting motif considering the subject matter of the song.

2. Red Flag (released as a single)

• Relative rating: 1/13
• Star rating:

“Cast off the crutch that kills the pain, the red flag waving never meant the same/The kids of tomorrow don’t need today when they live in the sins of yesterday”

I’m really not sure how I feel about this song. It’s definitely my least favourite from the album: rather simplistic and almost Sum41-esque in its style. The lyrics aren’t bad, but it strikes me a bit too much like a Linkin Park or Simple Plan attempt to resonate with a marginalized teen audience with bulging pockets. It’s still Billy Talent, and that redeems this song.

3. This Suffering

• Relative rating: 8/13
• Star rating:

“Like a target drawn across my chest, she’s a bullet in Russian roulette”
This song has an almost melancholy feel, despite being a hard-rockin’ face-bangin’ anthem. I really like the echo effects in the first couple lines of each verse. This song begins to scratch the surface of some of the depth that is seen more clearly in subsequent tracks on this album. For this album, it’s a middle-of-the-road type of song, somewhat forgettable, but it’s still a great song on its own.

4. Worker Bees

• Relative rating: 12/13
• Star rating:

“We take our orders given by the queen, we’re not the killers we’re the worker bees”

Wow… that’s all I can say listening to this song. The metaphor contained in this song is one of the best I’ve heard from a punk rock band, a genre dominated (in my experience) by overbearing symbolism. This song is definitely the most intelligent on the album, as it takes a song that sounds like a war anthem and overlays a strong anti-war satirical portrayal of grunt soldiers as worker bees. I hope Bush plays this one for the troops… If you have ANY opinion on the U.S. involvement in the middle-east, give this song a listen.

5. Pins and Needles

• Relative rating: 13/13
• Star rating

“Never understood how she could mean so little to so many, why does she mean everything to me?”

This has quickly become one of my favourite songs of all time. If we can ignore the lyrics for just a moment, this song is the most musically poignant and powerful song on this album. The guitar line that runs behind this track gives it a certain level of sophistication, but it’s the tune that makes this song stand out the most. Deeply passionate and emotionally raw, this track is easily the standard by which all other Billy Talent can be judged. Have a listen and see if you agree. The only bone I have to pick with this song is that it is TOO SHORT. I have to listen to it 2 or 3 times before I am satisfied.

6. Fallen Leaves (released as single)

• Relative rating: 9/13
• Star rating:

“In a crooked little town they were lost and never found, fallen leaves on the ground”

Again, because this is such a great album, some of the middling songs are easily overlooked. This song, like most of the others on this album, discusses a serious social topic. In this case, drug use and addiction in urban youth. There’s really nothing particular to SAY about this song… except that it is also good.

7. Where is the Line?

• Relative rating: 2/13
• Star rating:

“Urban Hipster, the new gangster… fronting by the club/New wave mannequins packing haircuts, instead of packing guns”

It’s about friggin’ TIME those hipsters drew some ire from the mainstream. If you don’t know what a hipster is, go read http://www.catandgirl.com. This is a biting rebuke to anyone who has snobbed someone over not having the right shoes or listening to the wrong music. Not one of my favourites musically, but still a great song lyrically.

8. Covered in Cowardice

• Relative rating: 6/13
• Star rating:

“Twisted tongues will place you in their category. Face to face you’ll hear them tell a different story”

Yet another legitimately good but overshadowed song on this album. These relative ratings are difficult to do on an album like this, because even the worst song on this album is a decent song on its own. This song is an attack of hypocrisy, admonishing the listener to “beware the voice without a face”. This song shows a decent amount of musical contrast, and the lyrics are tight.

9. Surrender

• Relative Rating: 4/13
• Star rating:

“She reads a book from across the street, waiting for someone she’ll never meet. Talk over coffee for an hour or two, wonders why I’m always in a good mood”

I never really got into this song. It’s another melancholy ballad-type, but it doesn’t resonate as strongly with me as Pins and Needles. Lyrically and musically somewhat straightforward, this song just doesn’t stand out for me compared to the rest of this album.

10. The Navy Song

• Relative Rating: 11/13
• Star Rating:

“Time, rolling along with the waves a thousand miles away, holding you close in the rain, seems just like yesterday…”

This song is commonly mislabeled as ‘In the Fall’ but it’s actually called ‘The Navy Song’. I’ll give you all a second to go change your downloaded mp3s… okay done? Good.

This song is somewhat related to ‘Worker Bees’ except without the metaphor. The song is sung from the point of view of a navy recruit, shipping out for the first time. It’s a tragic song, but powerful and well-written. The band has managed once again to take a hard-rock approach to a song and temper it with underlying softness that sets up a great contrast and makes for a good song.

11. Perfect World

• Relative Rating: 5/13
• Star Rating:

“All we shared was a mattress and a lie and an address…”

I guess every album needs a ‘I’m glad we broke up’ song. It’s not the greatest song on the record, really straightforward and forgettable. Once again there isn’t a whole lot to say about this track… except that nobody should use “Control Alt Deleted” as a song lyric.

12. Sympathy

• Relative Rating: 7/13
• Star Rating:

“A slap in the face, and I can’t erase these things that you say, don’t make it all okay it’s not okay”

Despite its lower rating, this is actually a decent song. The content is innovative: a request that a person not be overly sympathetic. Maybe it’s only because I agree with the subject matter that I like this song, but it’s a pretty decent track. Apparently this song was written about Stephen Harper. Way to stick it to that helmet-haired weirdo.

13. Burn the Evidence

• Relative Rating: 10/13
• Star Rating:

“In a garage beside a house there is a luxury sedan, and for his next monthly installment he’s gonna go out with a bang…”

Out of all the songs on the album, this is probably the best to end it with. It’s a strong offering that alternates between a softer side and a very fast-paced, hard and edgy sound. This song, surprisingly, talks about the pain of forced retirement and depression in the newly-unemployed. I’ve seen bands discuss subjects relevant to groups younger than themselves, but rarely have I ever seen songs written for older people.

Overall impression

I’ve used the term ‘album’ a few times in this review, and I feel like I am not being accurate: this is really a collection of songs. There’s not really a unifying theme or any attempt to create mood or feeling in the song mixture. It’s really more accurate to call this a record rather than an album.

The album is actually very aptly titled. Billy Talent II seems like the other half of Billy Talent. The two albums complement each other quite well, and are idiomatically very similar. Without being repetitive, the second album almost seems like a continuation of the first. One thing you will notice that is strikingly different is that Ben Kowalewicz doesn’t scream as much. Instead of using it as the focus of songs (i.e. ‘Line and Sinker’) it is now used sparingly as an effect to add intensity. Another thing even casual listeners will notice is that there is a lot more depth to these songs. They show internal contrast and thematic changes. That being said, there’s not a lot of differences between each song (at least musically speaking). The middle songs are essentially interchangable to the casual listener, as most use the same guitar effects and musical arc.

Overall, this is a collection of good songs. Nothing on this album scores below a 3 out of 5, and a number of them score 4.5 or 5. The band has shown its willingness to develop its sound, and I hope that translates into a more album-like album.

I give this album 3.5 out of 5 stars.

To buy or not to buy?

This is an album worth having almost for the art alone. If you liked Billy Talent (the first album) you should go out and buy this album. It’s got everything you liked about the first one, with some more mature touches and great songs. If you haven’t heard the first album, you should go buy this album. Billy Talent is a great band, and this is a great bunch of songs by them. If you didn’t like the first album, then this one is probably not for you. I’m glad I bought it… even though I lost it shortly afterwards