The Spark
11
Enter tainment
Hot Show Features Smoldering Scenes
Review of Burn Notice
The lighter side of espionage has pretty much put to the side and left alone.
Something about 9/11, secret c.i.a. prisons and the poisoning of former K.G.B.
agents in Europe has made the basis
for the standard on spy shows on TV
and movies today. The USA Network’s
new series is a cheerful, smart and
funny drama, mixed with plenty of action about an American spy who gets
kicked out of the system, and dumped
in the city of Miami. He has no credit
cards, no cash, and no connections
to anybody he knew in the business.
In the premiere a wisecracking agent
for hire named Michael Westen, played
by Jeffrey Donovan, recounts his covert
intelligence work in a cool, sarcastic guy.
“Know what it’s like being a spy?” he
asks. “It’s like sitting in your dentist’s
reception area 24 hours a day. You read
magazines, sip coffee and every so often
someone tries to kill you.” Michael is in
the middle of a secret operation in Nigeria, were warlords to lay off an oil field,
when his employers inform
him
that he has a “burn notice” in his file and is
blacklisted. Michael
doesn’t know why
he is under a burn
notice, but it could
be that he is just
too sensitive for
the job, but either
way he is burned
and doesn’t have
a clue as to why.
He ends up in his hometown, Miami,
bruised, confused, and with those frozen
back accounts, he is desperate to clear his
name and get back into the undercover
game of being a spy. For one thing he
wants to get away from his overbearing
m o t h e r,
Madeline, played by actress Sharron Gless.
The spy ends up having to do private detective work to until
he can find the person who burned him.
Relying on the
slick tradecraft
he learned in
covert
ops
to solve domestic crimes
for
friends
and strangers
he meets along the way. not only does
he have issues with his mother, but
an ex-girlfriend, Fiona, played by Ga-
briella Anwar, a former operative for
the I.R.A., shows up and also smothers him with expectations and drama
that Michael is forced to deal with.
The show takes its name from an intelligence term for agents or sources
that are marked as unreliable and blackballed, which in simpler terms means
that cant be trusted so they are no longer in the spy game. Michael has a soft
spot for children, yet he is so emotionally distracted that he cannot maintain
a relationship. His trigger-happy ex-girlfriend Fiona expects more from Michael
then he can seem to handle, because
eventually they get involved again but
trying to maintain a broken relationship
and working together shows how hard
it can be to execute jobs smoothly. This
is an explosive new TV serious that is
sure to keep you coming back for more.
Prop it or Drop It - Current Music Reviews
2010 is a new year and full of new
music of all varieties. This year’s new
albums feature new and award-wining
artists of 2009.
New pop country star, Taylor
Swift, swept away four
Grammys this year for
best country song,
best country album,
best country vocal
performance, and album of the year, at the 52nd
annual awards show.
Only being 20 years old, this country star’s new album, fearless, has been
topped on the Billboard 200 for 11 nonconsecutive weeks; there hasn’t been an
album at No.1 since 2000.
Swift also set a record on the Hot 100
by a female artist at the same time with
eight singles from the re-release of Fearless album, namely five debut new songs
in the top 30. Fearless was named top
selling album of 2009 in the U.S. with
more than 3.2 million copies sold, so this
album is definitely a good choice for a
solid record.
If you’re not exactly into the new
country pop sound coming from artistslike Taylor Swift, then maybe
new rock from Jacksonville’s own Shinedown
is more your taste.
Jumping off their debut
album, Leave a Whisper,
came classic hits, such as,
“45” and the re-make of the popular Lynyrd Skynryd’s, “simple Man.”
Shinedown’s latest album, “Sound
of Madness,” is a great example of new
rock music, with a singer who has his
own unique sound to the twist of the
alternative hard rock sound. Their first
hit single of this album, “Devour” was
Shinedown’s second song to reach number 1 on the active rock charts. Following
were more hits, such as “Second Chance,
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Sound of Madness”, and “If You Only
Knew”
This album is the perfect cure for
breaking free of that new age pop music
that drives you insane while you’re driving home from school or work.
Now if you’re looking for something
a little bit different then the rest, then a
good choice would be none
other than Lil Wayne’s
newly released rock album, the Rebirth.
Having just been
released this year, Lil
Wayne’s new album has already
had two hit singles, “Prom Queen” and
“On Fire”
Lil Wayne currently is one of the top
rappers in the game, with countless classics and new hits and collaborations all
over the air waves with various artists.
MTV has listed Lil Wayne as No.2 on
their list of top MCs today.
Just for the anticipation of this album,
Lil Wayne was featured on the cover of
Rolling Stone.
As a warning, the new Asher Roth album, Asleep in The Bread Isle, I would
recommend staying away from because
it promised to be a good, all night party
music kind of album, but came out as
mostly boring and dull. The album really failed to bring the hits after the success of there hit single “I love
college’
If classic rock is more
your style, you would think
that Bon Jove’s new album,
The circle, would be just the
sound you’re looking for. Unfortunately,
their return to the rock in roll charts
was a bomb, showing how generic Bon
Jovi has become. Where this 1980’s rock
band was famous for there metal-pop
hits, now has sadly become a bunch of
adults playing that contemporary boring
same old sound.
So from all variations of music, you
now have some pre insight to what some
new albums have to offer.
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