Now you See Jamie Cullum's Momentum and a bit of a rant at the end.

We're gonna do a music and movie review. One of which you probably have a desire to see and the other is from an artist you probably haven't even heard of. We'll hook you with the movie review of Now You See Me and then we'll move onto Jamie Cullum's latest album Momentum . Will finish with my point of view about discovering new music, movies, and books...It'll probably end with me hating hipsters. 

Now You See Me is a magic show movie in the lines of The Prestige and The Illusionist. The difference of course is setting more than anything. The cast was incredibly well picked and the writing, though not what may be considered the best, was performed well enough that it's okay. While most modern magicians aren't exactly...respected or taken seriously, they still are incredibly entertaining, (For my gamer friends this man is a modern magician too). 

Jesse Eisenberg again established himself as the face of my generation (It would be for a different blog about why, in case you aren't familiar with my generation's attitude towards authority). The guys is a great actor and for the most part, picks decent roles (but this wasn't one of them). It was especially nice to see him costar next to Woody Harrelson again, since the two of them made most of Zombieland awesome (Emma Stone I love, I would date with you). Isla Fisher and Dave Franco add their part to the movie (although Franco seems to have been given the part of "We're taking a risk on you so we won't give you a lot of lines, but we will have you be the actor in the only action scene) and they do a fine job. Mark Ruffalo plays what I consider to be the "pre-Hulk" version of Dr. Bruce Banner. He does a great job playing the FBI agent chasing the magical teevs. 

My big issue with the movie is the bread crumbs it drops can be a little obvious, but there are still some good twists in the flick. The roll of the dice give it a 7.5/10 (there are fractal dice mind you). It's entertaining and a fun watch. It isn't necessary a buy movie, but it would be a good idea to keep it around.

Jamie Cullum is hands down my favorite artist. Has been since his second album Twentysomething (you should get it maybe). It was a jazz album and it was perfect. His previous album The Pursuit  saw a departure from Jazz (at least a little bit) into a more poppy sound. It was still good and I play it whenever I have people in my car (I mean doesn't get much sexier than this) but I got a little distraught. There are more than plenty of piano pop Bands (the last one is the best in my opinion) and the last thing I want is to see a jazz artist become pop. He even has this song on his first album.
The next thing that kills me about he album is the repetitive lyrics. There are about 5 tracks on the 12 track album that do that or something very similar. Call me a dick or nitpicky, but I think that's lazy songwriting and I expect more.
Now, having said that, he nails the pop scene as good as Keane does. The album is pretty good and he does a bang up job on his cover of Pure Imagination from the real Willy Wonka movie.  The roll of the dice give the album a 7.5/10. The pop songs are good, but not great. The Jazz tracks are awesome, but the album itself is lacking some luster. 

So, I recently discovered Rare Earth. I found these classic rock/funk heroes via this youtube video (which should make you happy). I then found the music video for that song and found some of the comments interesting. So many of them were along the lines of "Thumbs up if you knew them before the Plants vs Zombies 2 trailer" or "I liked them before etc..". I've seen this kind of crap before on youtube and in personal conversations. Like, when I found Cage the Elephant because their song was used in the intro to Borderlands I went to the music video and saw similar comments "thumbs up if you liked them before Borderlands" or "2 bad pepl only knw thm cause Boarderlaunds". There are several bands I would never of had the pleasure of knowing had I not been so involved in Rock Band (when that was a thing) and again I see it. Who in the [various expletives] gives a flying [expletive] where we discovered music!? Is someone's joy for a song or artist(s) less than genuine if they found them through other media other than..however in the [expletives] you found them? Why is it that, particularly here in the States, we feel the need to shut our favorite artists in a closet once we discover them? It's infuriating! It just seems like such a hipster thing. I know Cake sang a little about it years ago (see what I did there?) but it seems like it has gotten worse. Should a fan of a band be happy that their band is getting a wider audience? I know I'm ecstatic when my younger brother (8-1/2 year difference) finds some of the same music I like, or having my nephew (6) ask to listen to Steam Powered Giraffe. Why in the hell does it matter where we find music? Isn't it just important that we find it and revel in the shared glory of common interest?