I was just recently looking up information on a movie that is scheduled to come out in 2011 called Never Say Never.  Based on the title, I assumed it was going to be some kind of remake or reboot of the pseudo-Bond film Never Say Never Again from 1983.  Oh boy, was I ever wrong.  Turns out it is a film about the life a career of Justin Bieber.  You know, the seventeen year old pop singer with a music career spanning an entire less than two years?

Honestly, the only things I knew about this kid before writing this article what that he was a singer and that he was popular with squealing pre-teen girls.  The mind- boggling bit about this film is that it is a documentary/biopic about his life and career.  There are only two reasons I can think of for making a biographical film about a boy this early in his life.  Either he has some sort of terminal illness that he hasn’t told anyone about yet and is not long for this world, or the producers and promoters in charge of this project realize that he is a flash-in-the-pan pop star and need to make a movie quick before his marketability is lost and Bieber fades into obscurity and alcoholism.  Don’t believe me?  Well, the movie is also coming out in ‘Real D’ 3D for no other reason than to insure that all the kiddies (excuse me, all the parents of the kiddies) will have to pay $12.00 a pop to watch this pointless fiasco.  No, this venture doesn’t have the stink of “Cash Grab” radiating from it at all.  Honestly, what has he done his life that so damn amazing that it must be captured for ever and always in movie form?  Pop singers like him have been chewed up by the recording industry and spat out like cheap bubble gum for decades.  He never had to cut off his own arm with a pocket knife to escape from a canyon like Aron Ralston.  He’s no Charlie Wilson, or Julia Childs even.  I will concede that, through the tiny amount of research that I have done, Justin looks like a gifted musician with a lot of potential.  Hell, at some point in the future he may become the greatest singer/songwriter in the history of mankind, or he could discover the cure for AIDS or male-pattern baldness. (anything is possible)  But, at this point in his career, he’s just a mouthpiece for a record label that’s squeezing as much money as possible out of excitable tweens with horribly bad taste in music.  The only thing that’s even remotely different from the legions of garish pop musicians that have come before is that he was discovered on You Tube.  Seriously, that’s it.  If you’re so much of a sheep that you’re excited about seeing this film (in unnecessary 3D, no less) then you diverse to be separated from your money, but anyone that can think for himself or herself is going to stay far, far away from this trite piece of trash, and rightfully so.

Despite having owned the soundtrack for over ten years, I finally sat down last weekend to experience David Lynch‘s extremely batshit crazy film Lost Highway. As much as I would love to do a random review, or even a Mini Scum review of it, the fact that I did not understand a lick of it makes that rather hard to do. So, while I ponder a second viewing to see if that might clear things up a bit, I figure I can at least talk about just one of the awesome aspects of it that I can get: the music.

One moment you are listening to David Bowie’s I’m Deranged (a song that bookends both the album and the film) and then tracks from fairly popular for the time alternative/metal bands like NIN, Smashing Pumpkins, and Rammstein. All of this is intertwined with tracks from Angelo Badalamenti‘s score and oddly, Lou Reed’s This Magic Moment. This selection of songs really have no business flowing together but oddly enough they do in context of the rest of the film as they match the film’s frenetic and non-sequitur nature. So while I can’t really form an opinion on the movie itself, other than it was “interesting,” the soundtrack is superb even with random bits of Robert Loggia‘s dialog in it.

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