Douglas Laman Gets A Tune Up (Entry #9): The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance

DOUGLAS LAMAN GETS A TUNE-UP

ENTRY #9:  The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance

Douglas Laman Gets A Tune-Up is a series of essays wherein Douglas Laman listens to an album of music he's never fully listened to before (though he may have heard one or two songs from it) and writes up his brief thoughts on it.

For so many years, My Chemical Romance was a source of pointless ridicule from myself. Even though I had had no exposure to their music, I made them the butt of so many of my own jokes that degraded the band and their work simply because my younger brother was fixated on this band to a major degree back on his middle school days. Thus, the anti-MCR jokes, like the years in a Smash Mouth song, started coming and didn't stop coming despite me, again, having no actual experience with their music. For that, I truly apologize to the band and its assorted members, who, though not above any form of criticism, deserved to have criticism stemming from someone who had actually listened to their music.

The Prestige Is Magic, You Knoooooow....Never Believe It's Not So!

In between creating two different Batman movies that revolutionized how we would forever see the character, director Christopher Nolan managed to also churn out a thriller entirely centered on magicians entitled The Prestige. A Fall 2006 drama starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, it did not receive the massive box office intakes Nolan's directorial efforts now make without even blinking, instead ranking as the 61st biggest movie of 2006, winding up narrowly behind Final Destination 3 and the 2006 remake of The Omen. Of course, people have been talking about and enjoying The Prestige long after those horror films have faded from the public's memory and now upon seeing The Prestige for myself, it's easy to see why it's garnered such acclaim over the past decade.