Boys...Yum: Jennifer's Body

Jennifer's Body is about Megan Fox and how she gains demonic powers and eats teenage boys to stay strong. Sounds rad, right? It is. It's very funny, somewhat scary, and (!) heartbreaking. The MVP is writer Diablo Cody, whose wittiness is all over the movie from start to finish, and many of the lines ("Do you want to be famous like those Maroon 5 guys?") had me LOLing. This could have been another boring slasher movie, but the writing adds a self-awareness to it that made me chuckle. When Megan Fox levitates, it's not "OHMIGOD SHE'S IN THE AIR!!" Instead, it's something like "Oh God, she's levitating. Is there anything she can't do? Yawn." The creators know that this type of movie is absurd, and they're admitting it, and I'm totally buying it. The filmmaking was pretty sleek as well, and there's one scene involving Fox swimming nude in a lake that comes to mind as being, uh, really well done. Did I mention Megan Fox yet? She pretty much owns her role as a super bitch and probably should've been in Mean Girls.
In terms of the deeper stuff, Jennifer's Body has some of that as well. It's a movie about the power of influence, about how girlfriends influence each other and how girls influence boys. I think it's important for young guys to see that while the girl you're fooling around with probably won't eat your flesh, she might give you an STD or she might get preggers.
Jennifer's Body is wildly entertaining, and will be enjoyed best at the theater with a large tub of popcorn on your lap.

Kid Cudi: Man on the Moon

Maybe it's because "Day N Nite" is a pretty rad song or that Kanye West had a hand in its production or that the respectable groups Ratatat and MGMT guest on it or that Kid Cudi is being portrayed as a "sensitive" hip-hop artist by the media. Even after all of that, it was probably the cover art. At any rate, I bought Man on the Moon: The End of the Day, the debut album from Cleveland's Kid Cudi. While it's certainly not game-changing, it does offer some very unique sounds, and many of the tracks sound like denser, spacier verisions of songs on Kanye's 808s and Heartbreak. I would like this album even more if Cudi was a more literate rapper. Allow me to list some choice lyrical samples:
1. From "Soundtrack 2 My Life"-as i grew to be a teen/i disguised myself had the lowest self esteem/especially with the girls/tried every sport just to impress the girls

Is he serious? The world only needs one Rivers Cuomo, and he wore out his welcome like ten years ago.

2. From "Enter Galactic"-i want to kiss you on your space below your navel-ette/the place that you keep neat/so moist like/a towelette

My word that is horrendous.

3. "Make Her Say," which features Common and Kanye, is about a blowjob and samples Lady Gaga's "Poker Face." Poke her face. Get it? Like a blowjob. And is it Kosher to sample a song that's still on the charts? I feel as though current songs shouldn't be sampled.

There's still enough good tracks to make this worth listening to, though. "Cudi Zone" is my favorite because it's about feeling euphoria and has strings. Can't really beat that. "Day N Nite" is obviously pretty good, and the two tracks with Ratatat are good because they have that signature Nintendo-guitar sound that's on all Ratatat songs. I love that sound.

If you like both the poppier side of hip-hop and futurisic beats and don't mind average lyrics, you'll enjoy this album. I'm interested to see what he puts out next, because apparently this is the first in a trilogy or something.