Jamie Foxx only achieves mediocrity with his release of his album Best Night of My Life on December 21. This release falls in the gray area on the spectrum of R&B albums. The whole album does not stand out as drastically different, yet only some songs fall into the same format of previous albums. Most likely, Foxx fans will only be compelled to give it a shoulder shrug after playing it.

“Winner” was released earlier this year and received a lot of radio play, making it the only song on the album sure to get your head bobbing. The song features T.I. and Justin Timberlake and was used during promotions for the 2010 NBA Playoffs. If it does not stand out as a lovable track then it is at least recognizable as a commercial hit.

Unfortunately the rest of the album has lackluster tracks that are quite forgettable after a first listen. The beginning songs feel more like a hip-hop album versus R&B and feature many rappers including Drake, Ludacris and Rick Ross. The last half of the album is mostly ballads with only Foxx singing on the tracks. Some songs deviate from the signature sensual style that Foxx has established with his last two albums, which works great for songs like “Winner,” but is unfortunate for “Freak.” “Freak” maintains Foxx’s voice and uses little auto-tune, but the techno-style beat of the track distracts from the lyrics. It stands out from the style of the rest of the album and might provoke a skip from Foxx fans.

Moving away from ballads and songs that prominently feature his voice, Foxx uses more auto-tune and up-tempo beats for many songs on this album. He begins the album with a cover of Natalie Cole’s “This Will Be.” While the song has an old school feel, Foxx quickly dissipates any hopes of a soulful album by auto-tuning his voice for the intro. He follows the intro with the track from which the album gets its name, “Best Night of My Life.” This track is more of an expected Foxx style and gives some familiarity to his fans.

His album Unpredictable still stands as his best release yet, with many popular singles including “Unpredictable” and “DJ Play a Love Song.” Foxx’s release of Intuition was disappointing, but the singles “Blame It” and “Just Like Me” carried the album and helped it to still get some positive attention.

Foxx has released “Fall For Your Type” featuring and written by Drake as his first single on the Best Night of My Life album. Some have already heard Drake’s unofficial version of the song, which Foxx used as a reference track. The single sounds like Drake’s signature style and has the unfortunate challenge of overcoming perceptions that Drake’s version is better than Foxx’s.

Best Night of My Life is a decent album but Foxx has not reached the bar that he set for himself with Unpredictable. If fans are looking for a classic Foxx R&B album then they may want to look elsewhere, but he may be attracting a new group of listeners with the variety of music styles present on this album.

It’s a sad day when the word “journalist” is no longer associated with Woodward and Bernstein and Edward R. Murrow, but rather Matt Drudge and Perez Hilton. Instead of viewing reporters as the defenders of the truth, they see gossip mongers and slime who will do anything for a story. Paramount’s new release, “The Soloist” tells the real-life story of Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez offers the one element journalists need to regain their good name: redemption.

“The Soloist” which is based of Lopez’s novel of the same name, is about a series of columns Lopez wrote in 2005 about a homeless man named Nathaniel Anthony Ayers. Lopez, played in the film by Robert Downey Jr., meets Ayers under a statue of Beethoven in Los Angeles; Ayers is playing a violin with only two strings. As Lopez soon finds out, Ayers was a musical prodigy who attended prestigious New York music academy Julliard before becoming schizophrenic.

Ayers, played by Jamie Foxx at his finest, is at first just a column for Lopez, but then becomes something more: a friend. Through his time spent with Ayers, Lopez continued on to launch a crusade against homelessness in L.A.’s Skid Row.

“The Soloist” is a wonderfully cohesive piece: the acting, cinematography and plot are all there. It’s an unbelievable real-life story brought to the big screen in an unbelievable, real-life way. Robert Downey Jr. is continuing his comeback following “Iron Man” and “Tropic Thunder” in 2008 and Jamie Foxx gave a beautiful performance that is sure to earn him another Oscar nod. The repeated, wide shots of L.A. show that, more than this is a story about Lopez or Ayers, it is a story about the city of Los Angeles.

The movie adaptation could have followed Lopez’s lead and picked up the fight against homelessness, but instead chose to chase after a medley of other causes instead; letting visuals of drug-riddled Skid Row during Lopez’s night spent on the streets with Ayers speak for themselves.

In a curious scene, a television is shown airing news footage of Hurricane Katrina, then the camera zooms back to reveal a woman ignoring the television to read Lopez’s column about Ayers. She proceeds to send her cello to Lopez as a gift for Ayers, but the scene felt like a criticism of the American public for caring more about fluff columns versus actual crises.

The sentiment was made clearer earlier in the film when a fellow L.A. Times reporter shared his aggravation that a deep investigative Page One story he wrote received almost no response, while a column Lopez wrote about a bicycle crash he was in led to worried fan mail about his safety. Lopez’s ex-wife Mary (Catherine Keener) echoed similar sentiments to Lopez when she said a story about him giving blood as a follow-up to his bicycle accident was sure to sell papers.

The criticism seemed to undermine the point of the film. Yes, it is entirely true that it is important for the American public to not ignore the larger issues at hand (i.e. the current economic state, the wars the United States is engaged in, the still struggling survivors of Hurricane Katrina) for the sake of a human interest piece. But the crux of “The Soloist” is the human interest piece and the good that it does for Ayers and the city of L.A., so the filmmaker’s criticism feels hypocritical.

Robert Downey Jr.’s loveable cynicism won him hearts and a comeback in 2008′s “Iron Man” but it works against him here. The Steve Lopez of the film is different than the Steve Lopez in real life. In the film he is a broken man: a divorcee who doesn’t talk to his son. His home is less of a home and more a pile of unpacked boxes. He is heartless and careless; telling his ex-wife he never loved anything the way Ayers loves music. Whoever made the decision to turn the happy, settled-in-his-life husband and father character of real-life Lopez into this unhappy creature did the film a disservice. Downey’s cynicism makes the implied transformation of Lopez through his experiences with Ayers seem too insincere, and the transition is far too insignificant a part of the movie.

One of the most beautiful shots in the film is when Ayers and Lopez are granted access to an orchestra rehearsal at Disney Hall. The orchestra starts playing Beethoven (Ayers’ favorite) and the camera zooms in close to Foxx’s face. His eyes close, and a myriad of colors dance across the screen for the rest of Beethoven’s symphony. The audience is seeing through the eyes of Ayers the way he views music. It is one of the most intimate moments experienced in cinema with a camera because the audience is at once one with the character.

The story of Lopez and Ayers’ relationship is truly beautiful, whether it be told through film, book or newspaper. But Ayers’ line in regards to his music, “Do you think I can be good again?”, resonates on so many levels deeper than the obvious. Do you think journalists can be good again? Do you think America can be good again? The film ends with hope and a simple answer: Yes.