New Shit Tuesday

Tuesday's the day when stores begin selling the new DVDs and CDs each week. Here's what's new today:

CDs:

Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero - The long-awaited... ok, short-awaited by NIN standards, follow-up to With Teeth is a sci-fi concept album that is a throwback of sorts to NIN's early days.

VERDICT: Buy it.


Avril Lavigne - The Best Damn Thing - Cuz, like, this is totally what punk rock sounds like. Like, totally. Expect more pop music hiding behind dark eye shadow and the phoniest attitude ever to be pushed on the masses.

VERDICT: Avoid it.



DVDs:

The Last King Of Scotland - Forrest Whitaker easily won Best Actor for his role as Idi Amin in this movie. Aside from his character, however, the rest of the movie is hit or miss. James McAvoy provides a solid performance, but the story glazes over a lot of Amin's history in order to tell a more plausible story... than what really happened.

VERDICT: Rent it. ASAP.


Notes On A Scandal - I haven't seen this movie yet, but it's gotten a lot of acclaim for it's powerhouse performances by Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett. I can only assume it's pretty good.

VERDICT: Rent it. ASAP.


Smokin' Aces - I haven't seen this one yet either. It looks like it could go either way, really. A friend of mine told me it was pretty good and he's extremely picky, so I'll give it a chance.

VERDICT: Rent it. No rush.


Freedom Writers - Hillary Swank needs a more consistent agent. Sure, she has two Oscars, but other than those roles, she has a track record almost as bad as Halle Berry or Mira Sorvino. This movie looks like yet another retread in the "Dangerous Minds" / "Stand And Deliver" genre. I'm sure it's an alright movie, but like so many other genre pictures (for example all the damn sports movies that come out each year), this movie doesn't interest me in the least.

VERDICT: Skip it.


So there you have it, Nine Inch Nails and a couple of Oscar favorites you might have missed in theaters. Not bad for one week, but not great.