The Genius Club

A motion-picture show about the world's superlative minds should include -- at the very least -- a modicum of intellectual discourse. What a disappointment then to have a bunch of dopes spitting out earnest soap opera dialogue. That's The Genius Club, a low-budget hopeful thriller that's anything merely smart.


In fact, writer-director Timothy Chey's failed feature sets up one implausible scenario after some other, on top side of uniformly unremarkable performing. What's leftfield to the story then? An ambitious concept that's flat from the first clich�d crease of narration.


It seems a madman (Tom Sizemore, playing to type) is holding Washington, D.C. hostage with a nuclear weapon he's ready to detonate. But if a small mathematical group of the country's highest IQs lav correctly answer high-minded questions posed by Crazy Guy, he'll call it off and spare half a million lives. So Homeland Security -- which appears to be three serious-looking college guys -- rounds up the smarties and hustles them to an empty storage warehouse in D.C. to play the game.


We've been duped. Instead of actually

New Girls Aloud album expected in November

Girls Aloud will exit their fifth studio album in November, according to a report today.

As well as organism busy on their stream tour of the UK, the girls have been in the studio working on the follow-up to Tangled Up, which was released at the end of last year.

According to The Sun, the group will freeing the album's first individual in October, before the LP itself is released the following month.

A origin told the newspaper: "The girls are really worked up about this one. They think it's their best album even. The lowest was their most successful so far and that has minded them the drive to keep going.

"They have got spent more time recording this unmatched than they have in the past because they want to get it right."



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Karo Bio Announces Successful Phase II Study With Eprotirome In Combination With Statin

�Karo Bio has successfully completed a 12 calendar week phase IIb study of eprotirome (KB2115) given to patients with dyslipidemia (elevated blood lipids). These patients were already on lipid-lowering medication treatment. Data show that eprotirome induced a statistically significant and clinically relevant lowering of serum LDL-cholesterol, triglycerides and lipoprotein (a) and was safe and well tolerated. The data indicate that eprotirome has the

Bob Marley and The Wailers

   
Artist: Bob Marley and The Wailers

   Genre(s): 
Reggae
   Reggae
   

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Discography:


   
 Jamaica Joint Jump Digipak

   Year: 2003   
Tracks: 19


   
 Greatest Hits At Studio One

   Year: 2003   
Tracks: 18


   
 Greatest Hits At 1 Studio

   Year: 2003   
Tracks: 18


   
 Natural Mystic

   Year: 2002   
Tracks: 16


   
 Shakedown Marley Remixed

   Year: 2001   
Tracks: 13


   
 Jungle Dub

   Year: 2000   
Tracks: 24


   
 Talkin' Blues [Remaster]

   Year: 1991   
Tracks: 24


   
 Rebel Music

   Year: 1986   
Tracks: 10


   
 Uprising

   Year: 1980   
Tracks: 10


   
 Survival

   Year: 1979   
Tracks: 10


   
 Babylon by Bus [live]

   Year: 1978   
Tracks: 13


   
 Exodus - Movement Of Jah People

   Year: 1977   
Tracks: 10


   
 Live!

   Year: 1975   
Tracks: 7


   
 Natty Dread

   Year: 1974   
Tracks: 9


   
 Burnin'

   Year: 1973   
Tracks: 10


   
 African Herbsman

   Year: 1973   
Tracks: 16


   
 Catch A Fire

   Year: 1971   
Tracks: 9


   
 Soul Rebels

   Year: 1970   
Tracks: 12

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'Hottie' could heat up 'Napoleon' fans

First-time filmmaker Seth Packard's teen comedy premiering at L.A. Film Festival, writes Martin A. Grove. Full story.

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Soprano, Contralto, Tenore, Basso, Chorus, Orchest

   
Artist: Soprano, Contralto, Tenore, Basso, Chorus, Orchest

   Genre(s): 
Classical
   

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Discography:


   
 Tantum ergo in E flat major, for 4 soloists, mixed chorus and orchestra, D 962

   Year: 1992   
Tracks: 1

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Steve Winwood, Nine Lives

There’s some good news and some bad news about the new album from Steve Winwood. The sleek production, laid-back grooves, deep-vein bass lines, sinuous percussion, and instantly singable tunes that have hallmarked his output since Arc Of A Diver in 1980 are all in place here. That’s the good news. If you’d like to hear Winwood’s undoubted talent break sweat a little, then it’s also the bad news.

Since reaching the platinum lined destination of 1986’s Back In The High Life there’s a sense in which Winwood has become something of a musical sleepwalker, content to languidly wander around his AOR / MOR surroundings rather than stretch and flex his muscles.

Of course his voice remains his greatest asset, possessing the apparent contradiction of being ostensibly thin and slight yet able to cut to the soul with telling effect. It’s this aspect of his work that has often carried material which would otherwise be anonymous and trivial in the hands of another artist.

I’m Not Drowning, a stripped-back blues shouter, limbers up nicely; Eric Clapton’s cameo kicks up the dust on Dirty City; Raging Sea (the second of three titles with aquatic allusions) surges with infectious licks, whilst Fly has a winsome charm that’s hard to resist.

Yet too often there’s a sense in which the individual components fail to connect effectively with each other, separated in a cloying sheen of too-glossy production.

Perhaps the worst offender is Other Shore. A bedrock of bongos, supple interleaving guitar and bass, and a wash of keyboards sway prettily behind a lyric that speaks of being free and the exhilaration of life and love. At around three minutes a sax solo gets all smoochy but the backing remains conspicuously unmoved by its ardent overtures and advances. It should be moving but isn’t.

The trouble with all of this is the album as a whole is taken at the kind of velocity that makes the queue in the post office on pension day look positively racy. Whilst there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this record one can’t help feel that like so many recent Winwood albums that it could have been so much better. Nice tunes, shame about the pace.