tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24385658087903716542024-03-18T20:40:50.763-06:00Diversion 2.0What to do when you're not doing anything.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.comBlogger164125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-42669610139470228482013-01-14T23:30:00.001-07:002013-01-14T23:33:11.351-07:00C'mon, Disney, you know how to do this<span style="font-size: 85%;"><i>WARNING: This week, I get into some really, really indignant Nerd on the Internet tones. Like, guest star on The Big Bang Theory bad. Still, it felt good to write, so I'm posting it anyway. Push up your glasses and check your pocket protectors—we're talking shop with Disney 3D rereleases!</i></span><br />
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We like the Disney thing here at Diversion 2.0. There's my substantially incomplete series on the entire Disney canon, obsession with Disney games, and my super gross Word document detailing every Disney Blu-ray that has come out and speculating which movies will release next in hi-def and when. Disney is my jam. So when Disney makes knuckle-headed moves with their theatrical distribution wing, I can't help but wince. Imagine your niece, an eight-year-old precocious little squirt, who likes to loudly blow bubbles with her milk in public places, except now she's doing it onstage at the school talent show, and she actually isn't blowing bubbles very with this time around.<br />
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It's like that.<br />
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Disney, having hastily green-lit shiny new 3D conversions of their popular films after The Lion King's rerelease made nearly $100 million last year theatrically, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-disney-cancels-little-mermaid-3d-pirates-5-2015-20130114,0,6139988.story">backed out of their commitment to reissue The Little Mermaid</a> in theaters this September. Their strategy just wasn't working. Every subsequent rerelease made less and less money: Beauty and the Beast snagged $47 million, Finding Nemo barely made $41 million, and Monsters Inc. is limping its way past $30 million. Once thought a sure source for quick cash—do a quick conversion for a couple million, rerelease, and your coffers will fill themselves—Disney's plan to reap the benefits of old releases tanked.<br />
My take: no duh.<br />
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A quick aside: I love the idea of rereleasing old Disney classics theatrically. Enjoying quality animation with an audience is a much different experience from enjoying it by myself, and basking in the picture quality and surround sound of a good theater setup never gets old. This idea can work.<br />
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In fact, it already <i>has</i> worked. Before home video became a thing, Disney would bring their old-school hits back into theaters every seven or so years. "For a new generation," or something like that; and that is why seemingly every man and woman raised in the United States has seen at least one "classic" Disney film (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Peter Pan, etc.) during their childhood. Disney was in the nostalgia business, and business was great.<br />
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With the advent of home video, though, the strategy became redundant. Why go through the trouble of carting around prints of The Aristocats to Hank's Cineplex and Bowling Alley in Ronan when you could put it in every Target, Shopko, and grocery store in the country? The theatrical rerelease thing died down in 1996 or so (I remember seeing Oliver & Company in theaters, and I don't remember much old Disney in theaters beyond that), and hasn't been a thing since.<br />
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Until last year, when Disney decided to flank The Lion King's 3D Blu-ray release by a two week "special engagement" in theaters. After it opened at number one with $30 million, though, Disney decided maybe it would try this theatrical rerelease thing again, and announced it would convert several of its films into 3D and put them back into theaters. Easy money, right?<br />
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You have to do it right, though.<br />
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Personally, I think Disney bungled it the moment they decided that Pixar movies would be the crux of their 3D rerelease strategy. Not that I don't love Pixar; they're an exceptional studio, and I actively love a good chunk of their filmography. That said, their decision to use Pixar films runs contra to their most important weapon in reissuing content: the Vault. <br />
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The Vault, as you probably know, is Disney's self-enforced moratorium. It's a place where Disney puts their most precious cargo, keeping it from the unwashed masses until, out of the blue, they decide to put it back on the market for a limited time. Then moms and dads who grew up on Bambi and The Jungle Book buy it because, hey, my kid can watch it to, and the scarcity drives demand; instead of a steady trickle of sales over several years, it's a huge shotgun blast of sales over the course of a year and a half before, wuh-oh, it's gone again.<br />
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I have no numbers to back this up, by the way. I'm going off of speculation, that law of Supply and Demand that I hear about, and the idea that, surely, if Warner Bros. wants to copy the whole Vault thing with the Harry Potter series of movies, it must work, even a little.<br />
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Anyway, the Vault. When it rereleased films theatrically before home video, Disney took their prints of Alice in Wonderland and Fantasia and threw them in a Vault until the time was ripe to bring 'em back out. That's the basis for the modern Vault system that Disney uses for its home video. It works. Why else would they do it for over fifty years (1944 saw Disney rerelease Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, mostly because the Disney studio was broke as hell during all of World War II and they needed cash)?<br />
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Pixar, to my knowledge, is not at the behest of the Vault. If I wanted to, I'm pretty sure I could waltz over to Kmart and pick up A Bug's Life on DVD for the sheer, unadulterated hell of it. I can't do that with, say, Aladdin. If there's no scarcity involved with finding the movie, why should I treat a rerelease like a big deal? Yeah, I can see it on a huge screen, but is that worth taking myself, my (hypothetical) wife, and our two (hypothetical) kids all the way to the theater, paying $11.50 a pop to get in, shelling out even more for concessions, and finagling with those damn 3D glasses? No thanks. I'll watch that at home.<br />
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By using the Vault, by creative scarcity, you're heading me off, making sure that I <i>can't</i> watch it at home. If I don't have a copy, you're forcing me to play your game and see it in the theater. When $30.15 million worth of audience members went and saw The Lion King in theaters during its opening week, they didn't go because wow! it's in 3D. They went because they hadn't seen The Lion King since 2002, when it was last on DVD, and wanted to watch it. If they could have bought The Lion King at any old time they were at Sam's Club, they wouldn't have bothered.<br />
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This is the problem with the movies Disney picked to rerelease. Beauty and the Beast had been out on Blu-ray since Fall 2010 when it hit theaters in January 2012, and both Finding Nemo and Monster's Inc. have been readily available at any time since they day they first hit home video. These are films that the kids have likely had on repeat in the DVD player, and who wants to put up with the time and expense to hear Nemo say "Touch the butt" for the thirty-sixth time?<br />
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Incidentally, I feel the exact same way about every 3D rerelease that whiffed at the box office this year, with the exception of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, because that was just asking for it. <br />
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The worst part—the worst part—is that, at the end of three seen-it-before releases, Disney had promised The Little Mermaid, a film that went in the Vault in January of 2009 and one that I've been waiting to see again with bated breath. It's a smashing picture, and one of those movies for audiences to actually rediscover, instead of simply rewatch. But no: Disney mismanaged their money-printing rerelease strategy spectacularly, and then got gun shy before they even got to the best part. I've been picturing myself in the theater, blown back in my seat when Ariel sings "Part of that World," for a year and a half. Now, nothing. <br />
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Yes, yes; what an awful first-world problem for me. I'll do just fine in picking up The Little Mermaid on Blu-ray when it drops, and enjoy the rest of Disney's suite of franchise pictures, tent poles, and whatever else they decide to release under the Dreamworks banner (I'm hoping for Lincoln 2!). Life goes on. <br />
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I'm not mad, really, at Disney. Just disappointed.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-14129792800169592962012-11-25T12:29:00.000-07:002012-11-25T12:29:46.930-07:0020¢ worth of advice about Star Wars: Episode VIIWhen you're ill, you start to think about what matters most. Star Wars, for instance.<br />
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I've spent most of the past four days in bed, days I could have spent doing productive things like playing video games endlessly, or writing any number of movies blogs, or (more likely) getting drunk with my friends in town for the holidays. But no. I've been sequestered to my room, surrounded by Gatorade bottles filled with water, blankets of every sort, and a growing frustration at my own frail mortality. That is not the point of this entry, but I thought I'd vent a bit; I've been in here a while.<br />
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What I have been doing while recuperating is watch the original Star Wars trilogy. Specifically, Star Wars the way I grew up watching them: on VHS in full screen—there's something about the warm, soft picture that comes from magnetic tape that penetrates my deepest comfort sensors and makes me feel good inside. That, and there's no "Jedi Rocks." <br />
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Anyway, since I've had adequate time to contemplate on why these three films work so well, I thought I'd chime in on what I would do with the three upcoming Star Wars flicks that Disney has so earnestly told its investors are in pre-production. Certainly, we've had enough of these lately, but I haven't made any lists yet, dammit! Besides, I need to get in the habit of writing for fun, even if my opinion is redundant, and though I may have recently crawled out of the nadir of the sickest I've ever been in my life, writing a list about Star Wars sounds pretty damn fun about now.<br />
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<b>Ten bits of unsolicited advice regarding Star Wars: Episode VII</b><br />
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1. Star Wars is a Saturday afternoon serial<br />
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Something easy to lose sight of amidst the constant blitz of Star Wars media—comics, TV series, novels, oh my!—is how Star Wars got started. As I understand it, and I could be wrong, Lucas wanted to make an homage to old sci-fi movie serials like Flash Gordon. That's where the Episode VII's construction needs to start. Elemental conflicts. Good vs. evil. Heroes getting out of scrapes. Villains concocting fiendish plots. If it takes more than three good, long sentences to abridge the story structure, start again. A simpler machine is a better machine when it comes to great myth (which is also what Star Wars is based on).<br />
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2. Great characters are key<br />
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Just because the conflict is simple doesn't mean the characters are allowed to be shallow. Look at Luke and his arc: farm boy who undergoes a hero's journey in the first film, undergoes trials and hardship during the second, then comes into his own in the third. How about Han: do-anything mercenary who learns to value the loyalty of friendship in the first film, then love in the second, then personal responsibility in the third. Now let's think about Anakin in the last two prequels: evil kid who doesn't bother pretending he'll become evil later acts sullen until he eventually goes full-tilt evil. Simple stories, rich characters, this is the stuff that myths are made of.<br />
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3. Practical makes perfect<br />
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If there's anything the Lord of the Rings trilogy should have taught special effect artists everywhere, it's that practical effects married with CG age much better than pure CG. Hell, I sometimes cite Episode I as my favorite of the prequels because it "feels" so much like the first three, and most of it comes from using practical sets, effects, and generally not being so CG-drunk as Revenge of the Sith. I'm serious, build those six-foot scale models of Star Destroyers, film sets on locations that look like real places, use stunt doubles and not CG replicas for the more intense stunt work. It will look better and feel more like Star Wars, guaranteed.<br />
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4. Quip it, good<br />
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Like I said, it's a Saturday afternoon serial. Junk is supposed to be popcorn magic, and the best popcorn films generally have a modicum of humor, or at least good quotes, sprinkled throughout. It doesn't have to be quite as Waka Waka as Return of the Jedi, but certainly more than either Attack of the Clones (where it was obvious where the quips *should* have been) or Revenge of the Sith (which was deliberately dark, often at the expense of being a Star Wars picture). "Laugh it up, fuzzball." "This will be a day long-remembered." "I am a Jedi, like my father before me." All more memorable than the anonymous screenwriting of the prequels; if you want me to recall your film fondly, make me talk its language.<br />
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5. Sounds good to me<br />
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Please, please, please keep John Williams and Ben Burtt for your sound design. I can't imagine why either wouldn't acquiesce to continue work on arguably their most esteemed series to date, but, seriously, give them as many cement mixers full of money as they require to get them to stay onboard.<br />
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6. Short, sweet<br />
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Both Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back squeak by at just a hair over two hours. Return of the Jedi is about two hours and fifteen minutes, but just about everyone admits it's the weakest of the trio. Both The Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith hover near two hours and twenty minutes, which still feels bloated even in today's post-Dark Knight blockbuster landscape. Remember, Star Wars is a Saturday afternoon serial! Get us into the theater, then give us *just* enough space opera before kicking us out, the better to hop back in line and see it again.<br />
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7. Don't adapt it from the EU<br />
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Maybe take bits and pieces from the various books, TV series, video games, etcetera ad infinitum? Either way, there's a brave new world waiting to be explored by some intrepid young screenwriter out there, one that shouldn't be constricted by pre-existing fiction. <br />
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Okay, just straight-up take Thrawn. I don't mind. But that's all.<br />
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8. Visit new places<br />
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This kinda goes with my previous point, but please don't retread old areas for nostalgia rush. How many damn times do I need to see Tatooine before I've had my fill? The same goes for Hoth, Endor, Mustafar, Courescant (especially Courescant!), everything. Show me some exotic planet whose life only dwells in subterranean mines, or one consisting entirely of mountain ranges. And while you're at it, I'd like to introduce you to the Bridgers…<br />
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9. Remember when aliens didn't speak English?<br />
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This is a small touch, but an important one when dealing with alien life. Personally, I liked it when I had to read Greedo's speech from subtitles, and that I couldn't understand what Jabba had to say; they sounded more menacing that way. It's what makes the galaxy feel more unexplored, more adventurous. Besides, what's the point of being fluent in over six million forms of communication if everyone talks the same lingo?<br />
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10. Make it Star Wars<br />
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Every blockbuster series released since 1977 (hmmm) has wanted to be Star Wars. Episode VII has the unique privilege of actually *being* Star Wars. Don't chase trends. Don't mimic other films. Learn from The Avengers, from Lord of the Rings, hell, from Skyfall, but remember your heritage: a Saturday serial as conceived by one of the wunderkinds of New Hollywood (and Star Wars is every inch a film a part of the New Hollywood movement it so swiftly snuffed out). Be exciting, be thoughtful, be an elegant film from a more civilized age. Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-8888381167191583182012-10-15T02:06:00.000-06:002012-10-15T02:06:05.040-06:00Ocean's Six Iranian Hostages -- Argo (2012)<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e1/Argo2012Poster.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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Let's not bury the lede: <i>Argo</i> is a terrific, airtight political thriller, and a work of cinematic craftsmanship that will likely be among this year's best-of discussions. That is all you need to know before going to see it, and I advise you to do so knowing as little as possible about <i>Argo</i> other than it's a tremendous picture.<br />
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<i>Argo</i> is also hilariously funny, ranging from darkly comic to laugh-out-loud, and none of it subtracting from <i>Argo</i>'s intensity when the time comes to get serious. It's a movie for grown-ups who may want to take a short hiatus from superhero pictures and animated flicks about sassy talking animals—challenging without being alienating, rarely over-explaining unless it is absolutely necessary, and about grown-ups dealing with grown-up issues in grown-up ways. That is also all you need to know before going to see it, so please, for pity's sake, go and see the movie and then come back and read this review. I went into <i>Argo</i> popsicle-cold and loved the hell out of it, and part of my enjoyment stemmed from the surprise in where the movie headed. Go see it. Now.<br />
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Seriously, go. I'll be here when you get back.<br />
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…<br />
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Alright, hopefully you're just returning from a matinee of <i>Argo</i> and are ready for this <strong>spoiler-filled</strong> discussion. <br />
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Here's the secret that made <i>Argo</i> so much fun to watch unfold: <i>Argo</i> is a film about how six American hostages escape from the Iranian hostage crisis by posing as a film crew scouting for a shitty-looking <i>Star Wars</i> ripoff. Imagine if Seal Team Six gained access to the Bin Laden compound by claiming they were in a damn Ed Wood picture and you're part of the way there. Once you realize that this most serious of problems is being solved by such an unorthodox plan, <i>Argo</i> turns into a joyride of subverted expectations and familiar thrills, especially because <i>Argo</i> does such a good job of establishing the stakes of what will happen if the operation fails.<br />
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<i>Argo</i> follows Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck), C.I.A. extraction specialist who is called in to consult on rescuing six American embassy workers who are holed up in the Canadian ambassador's house. Mendez and his boss (Brian Cranston) are stuck until Mendez is hit with an idea while watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes with his ten-year-old son (Aidan Sussman): pretend the hostages are location-scouting for a science-fiction movie and fly them out through the airport. This includes hiring make-up artist John Chambers (John Goodman) and director Ken Taylor (Alan Arkin) as consultants to help produce the fake movie, and cooperating with the Canadian ambassador (Victor Garber). <br />
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My favorite thing about <i>Argo</i> is how, deep down, it's a heist movie in disguise. Just as Inception was a heist picture disguised as mind-screw science fiction, so, too, is <i>Argo</i> a heist picture disguised as a period political thriller, operating under many of the genre's rules even as it doesn't adhere to them all the way. Consider: our protagonist (Mendez) needs to assemble a team (O'Donnell, Chambers, Siegel, etc.) in order to infiltrate an impenetrable zone (Iran) and walk out with valuable c<i>Argo</i> in-hand (six American hostages), after which they formulate a plan (pose as a crew scouting for a movie) and execute said plan, dealing with any unexpected snags along the way. It's The Italian Job, except substitute gold bullion for sympathetic human beings.<br />
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What fascinates me about <i>Argo</i> is how disparate the tone ranges during its scant two-hour runtime. It boils down to juxtaposition and balance between the darkly comic, nail-biting tension, and just enough belly chuckles. Consider the first scene showing a rioting crowd outside of the US Embassy, burning American flags and chanting angrily. Inside the embassy, a desk worker peeps under the blinds and idly remarks how it seems like there were more of them yesterday, relieving the pressure before it buckled under its own weight and setting up a precedent for subverting viewing expectation.<br />
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In fact, <i>Argo</i>'s chief appeal, other than watching Mendez and his team narrowly avoiding all kinds of mortal peril, is how it consistently subverts itself. The very first image in <i>Argo</i> is the Warner Bros. logo, the 1970's one with three dots that shape a "W," while splotches of damage to the movie's negatives mark up the edges. Wait, negative damage, in a digital theater? And while <i>Argo</i> doesn't carry the ruse the whole time à la <i>Grindhouse</i>, it keeps the viewer off-guard through such an atypical opening, a feeling exacerbated by a short Iranian history lesson conveyed through a mixture of archival news footage and film storyboards. Yes, film storyboards.<br />
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The only way a film with as many spinning emotional plates as <i>Argo</i> could work is with phenomenally canny editing, and William Goldenberg performs admirably, balancing <i>Argo</i>'s most stressful and light moments. Goldenberg's editing is primarily responsible for <i>Argo</i>'s best scene, which crosscuts between treatment of Iranian political prisoners and an in-costume <i>Argo</i> table read, juxtaposing the fake glamorous Hollywood veneer with the real-world political climate and somehow not feeling incredibly inappropriate. Goldenberg's work on <i>Argo</i> ought to be crowning work in a prestigious caree—wait, this guy cut <i>Transformers: Dark of the Moon</i> and <i>Kangaroo Jack</i>? Cripes, I guess some days you got it and some days you don’t.<br />
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Three times makes tradition, and <i>Argo</i> has Affleck scoring a solid hat trick of critically-praised movies for grown-ups, after 2007's Gone Baby Gone and 2010's The Town. Affleck wears many hats during <i>Argo</i>, directing tense scenes where the six American hostages are hiding in broad daylight among scads of murderous rioters shot like any modern political thriller, and short humorous breaks on Hollywood acting like Hollywood, complete with '70s-looking camera movements and shot composition. During the last half hour, Affleck goes for broke and ratchets down the tension, reminiscent of Spielberg's work on <i>Munich</i>, and reminding me how few quality thrillers are released today. For his tonal juggling act, I would love to see Affleck given a Best Direction nomination.<br />
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The only parts that give me pause are the small army of interim scenes where we visit the Canadian embassy and endlessly watch the sequestered six pace about and worry about how they will likely die rather than evacuate. Eventually, Mendez joins the rest of the crew and kicks the plot into high gear, but the first 45 of <i>Argo</i>'s fleet-footed 120 minutes are much rockier than the proceeding 75.<br />
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<i>Argo</i> is a perfect October film, low-key enough for the mid-fall season while stoking enough interest for awards attention. Also, in this day of tenuous relations in the Middle East, it's nice to have a reminder that US Foreign Policy has been much worse. <i>Argo</i> is my surprise film of the fall, and I'm excited to see where the conversation around it leads come Oscar season.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-24851490716665252522012-08-18T11:10:00.000-06:002012-08-18T12:31:19.923-06:00Track Talk - "The Show" by Lenka, performed by Kerris Dorsey<blockquote>I'm just a little bit caught in the middle<br />
Life is a maze and love is a riddle<br />
I don't know where to go, can't do it alone<br />
I've tried, but I don't know why</blockquote><br />
The other day I decided to watch <i>Moneyball </i>again – stemming from a conversation about how Clint Eastwood's upcoming <i>Trouble with the Curve </i>looks like a Bizarro-world version of the film – and discovered that the film holds up well. Damn well, considering I know where the story is supposed to go and why Jonah Hill got his Oscar nomination and how Aaron Sorkin's dialogue rolls off of Brad Pitt's tongue like boulders after Indiana Jones… actually, I think I've just described why it holds up so well. <i>Q.E.D.</i><br />
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Anyway, one part I didn't remember, and the part that cat-in-horror-picture jumped out at me, was when Billy Bean's daughter Casey plays him a song in the middle of a guitar store, and that same song plays near the end during an extended shot when Billy decides whether to leave Oakland or to stay with the A's. The song is Lenka's "The Show," and in the film it is performed by actress and singer Kerris Dorsey. I've been obsessed with the song for the past few days, and on this fine Saturday morning (afternoon to you on the East coast!) I want to write about it.<br />
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"The Show" belongs in the lilting camp of indie-pop, a genre I try to avoid because I don't like when I can hear a singer audibly smirking during his or her performance. That was mean; let's it try again. "The Show" is indie-pop, a genre I generally don't care for. What's different about "The Show," what separates it from so many other indie-pop songs my former college roommate used to listen to, is that it has an honest-to-blog<a title="Let this be the first and last time I ever use that twee bit of nonsense." style="color: #bb3300; text-decoration: none;">*</a> melody and said melody is really damn catchy. Moreover, the lyrics are fun and earnest; they're phonetically playful without sounding overly clever (listen to the small internal rhyme of "little" and "middle" during the chorus) and straightforward enough for a curmudgeon like me to get behind. It's like someone took everything I didn't like about <i>Juno</i>'s soundtrack and corrected to fit my taste.<br />
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Even better than Lenka's version is Dorsey's cover, which was recorded for the movie's soundtrack and can (read: should) be purchased on iTunes right this very second. Lenka's original take on the song is full of large, bombastic sections of horns, strings, and other instruments that all sound, for my ears, too large for tiny song like "The Show;" perhaps it fits if you take the title literally and imagine a sort of Ziegfeld's Follies-esque stage performance – the bridge conjured images of a velvet curtain and balancing elephant in my head, but I don't expect everyone who hears horn-pop to get knee-jerk images of the circus. <br />
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Dorsey, though… ah, now we have something. Dorsey nails the small, anxious emotions suggested by the lyrics, and the intimacy afforded by an acoustic guitar turns the song into a sort of confession set to music – a way to express and deal with insecurity, rather than a gaudy, showy number. Her voice is timid but strong, and comes from genuine place of diffidence, selling the experience and making everything sound so personal, inviting us to share with what she's feeling. I get the sense that she just wants to enjoy the show in front of her, rather than be the show itself, and it's this difference by degrees that makes Dorsey – only twelve when this song was produced! – an essential part of why "The Show" works as well as it does.<br />
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"The Show" is, really, an anti-Andrew song; intimate, sparse, and bloody acoustic pop. Still, I'm not going to fight when I like something so damn much, and I do enjoy "The Show" an awful lot.<br />
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<iframe width="400" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/BTHeZyOL0aw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-63948489431249856112012-07-22T09:29:00.000-06:002012-07-24T12:00:20.101-06:00I Am Batman -- The Dark Knight Rises (2012)<img src="http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/4594/thedarkknightrises.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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First things first: <i>The Dark Knight Rises</i> isn't as good as <i>The Dark Knight</i>. It contains fewer exciting setpieces and laugh lines, the middle part sags like udders on a cow, and not one soul electrifies the proceedings like Heath Ledger as the Joker. That said, lesser Nolan Batman is still Nolan Batman, and <i>The Dark Knight Rises</i>, for its flaws, clenches the crown of crown of 2012's best blockbuster, and I'm already making plans to see it again.<br />
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Reasonably non-spoiler plot synopsis: in the eight years that have passed since Harvey Dent died at the end of <i>The Dark Knight</i>, Gotham City enacted radical new laws that effectively cleaned the streets of organized crime. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has holed up in Wayne Manor as a recluse, despite the pressings of his butler Alfred (Michael Caine) to go outside every once in a while. Gotham slips back into the throes of chaos, though, when mercenary and all-around unpleasant guy Bane (Tom Hardy) shows up in town and commandeers a fusion reactor from Wayne Industries CEO Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) and board chairman Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) with the intent to turn it into a nuclear bomb. At the urging of Gotham cop John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Wayne must take up his mantel as Batman and fight back against Bane, who holds the city hostage with his makeshift WMD, while also contending with master thief Selena Kyle (Anne Hathaway).<br />
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What follows is 164 minutes of grim desperation punctuated by brief character moments, exposition, and fleet scenes of action that are over far too quickly. If <i>The Dark Knight</i> wallowed in bleak nihilism, <i>The Dark Knight Rises</i> submerges itself, holds its breath, and has you hold the stopwatch. Carefree entertainment it isn't, and only a rousing climax in the last forty-five minutes and perfect ending (yeah, I said it) save it from being pure misanthropy. <br />
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Not to say it isn't fun in places. Batman's newest toy, a hovering battle vehicle that looks like a cross between a harrier and a Maine lobster, zips around lighting up baddies and obstacles, while the Batpod makes a welcome, heavily-armed return. Hathaway's Selena Kyle purrs and snarls sarcastically, and watching her play as a wild card among two opposing sides gave me much joy. Also, the climax I mentioned in the previous paragraph is one of the highlights of the trilogy, providing action-packed thrills and emotional closure for fans who have followed Nolan's Caped Crusader since 2005's <i> Batman Begins</i>.<br />
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In fact, <i>The Dark Knight Rises</i> ties in with the first film in several important ways, referencing events and supporting characters with frequency. It feels more like and extension of <i>Batman Begins</i> than a sequel to The Dark Knight, though with more continuity in the story (e.g. no random turns to zombie film-making). Though not my favorite film in the saga, I'm glad <i>The Dark Knight Rises</i> ties into both films so well, making them all an essential and tightly-packed trilogy.<br />
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Bale is the strongest he's ever been in any of the Batman films, exuding shades of fatigue, hurt, and mingled amusement unseen by Bruce Wayne thus far. Caine steps up and makes an even bigger emotional impression as Alfred, though he disappears far sooner than I would have liked. Oldman also sits out for an extended length and is given less to do, nodding and acting knowledgeable but always keeping us at arm's length. For my money, the newcomers all give the best performances: Gordon-Levitt's dogged, honest turn as John Blake holds down the fort while Batman is offscreen, Cotillard's enigmatic charm still carries volumes - even if her performance is, beat for beat, Mal from <i>Inception</i> - and Hardy's Bane more closely matches the comic book's take on the character--intelligent, powerful, and not to be trifled with under any circumstances. Also, Hathaway, but we already gushed about her.<br />
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Stepping up the apocalyptic stakes are composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, who lend gravitas to the score by adding a Gothic-sounding choir to several choice moments. Though the chugging, one-note motif used for Bane never caught my ears the way past themes have, I appreciate the heightened stakes reflected in the score.<br />
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Regular Nolan editor Lee Smith, having hit his stride with Inception's cross-cutting uber-climax, scales his ambition back for <i>The Dark Knight Rises</i>, generally focusing on one scene at a time, though when he does get his plates spinning in time for the endgame, the result is a tense, epic-length juggling act between three different plots as they all come to a head. Not quite as dreamily-presented as past projects, but still exciting even during moments absent of action.<br />
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On his absolute best behavior is regular Nolan cinematographer Wally Pfister, who photographs more and more varied settings than either of the previous films, and makes my favorite Pretty Cinematography shortcut (falling snow) look absolutely gobsmacking. Down in the dumps though <i>The Dark Knight Rises</i> may be, it never looks less than smashing.<br />
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<i>The Dark Knight Rises</i> isn't a watershed moment in cinema the way it's been built up to be, but it is absolutely good enough to wrap up one of the most acclaimed film series in the last decade or so. See it once to watch how it ends, then see it again to drink in the small details and widgets of a dense, rewarding <i>auteur</i> picture disguised as a summer tentpole.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-88512837276682397082012-07-19T20:22:00.000-06:002012-07-22T09:24:35.502-06:00I Am the Night -- The Dark Knight (2008)<img src="http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/5345/thedarkknightk.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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<i>The Dark Knight</i> might be, minute for minute, the most depressing, unsettling film I own on home video, but I rarely notice unless I'm actively looking for it. Shocking for a film whose primary antagonist likes to express himself through wanton acts of violence and nihilism, and whose closing scene of child peril and emotional wreckage is some of the rawest footage I've seen in a major studio film intent on making money.<br />
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With all of the dark and moody trappings, why do I, heavy-handed purveyor of escapist feel-good cinema, enjoy <i>The Dark Knight</i> so much? Tonal balance, friend. For as bleak as it gets - and make no mistake, it becomes very dire in places - there are small splashes of comic relief, a tossed-off line or an unexpected bit of comic violence (one of the only times outside of a Tom and Jerry cartoon I praise comic violence), which lessens the tension and makes the rest of its bleakness much more palatable. Throw in several exciting setpieces, and it’s easy to forget how grim <i>The Dark Knight</i> becomes. Spoonful of sugar, and all that.<br />
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It’s hard to talk about <i>The Dark Knight</i> without making comparisons to <i>Batman Begins</i> (or vice versa, depending on the order you first saw them). I won’t labor heavily on them, but I do want to toss off a few reasons why I prefer <i>The Dark Knight</i>. Aside from its surer balance of tone, the action scenes feel bigger and more satisfying (the truck chase is one of my favorite bits of action in recent movies) and the more grounded Gotham City is easier for me to wrap my head around. <i>The Dark Knight</i> also functions as a stand-alone narrative, and though I like the bits in <i>Batman Begins</i> where Bruce Wayne iterates on the Batman persona, I’m always grateful in a super hero movie when I don’t have to sit through an origin story, especially one as well-known as Batman’s. <i>Batman Begins</i> also lacks a big bad, a problem <i>The Dark Knight</i> does not have by any stretch of imagination.<br />
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For all conversations about <i>The Dark Knight</i> eventually turn to the Joker. I’ve seen <i>The Dark Knight</i> around eight or so times since 2008, and each time Heath Ledger’s smacking, mincing, casually-psychotic performance as the Joker blows me right on my ass. Ledger disappears inside of the Joker, distorting his voice, hunching his shoulders, and acting like the most charismatic bastard ever capable of murdering civilians. His hair is mankey and his white makeup is frequently unkempt; he looks the part of a so-called “agent of chaos,” and his raggamuffin appearance makes it even more unsettling when he starts killing people. Alternately dangerous and horrifyingly funny (sometimes at once, like his magic trick), Joker is the biggest example of why <i>The Dark Knight</i> works as well as it does. Mark Hamill’s Joker is more fun as well as frequently threatening, but Ledger is one memorable mofo, and <i>The Dark Knight</i> would be a lesser film if he were absent.<br />
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Not that Christian Bale and co. have been slouching since the previous film. Granted, Bale doesn’t portray as many sides of Bruce Wayne as he does in <i>Batman Begins</i>, but his fake playboy persona is even funnier in his pushy, clueless mannerisms and his straight non-Batman Bruce feels more lived-in and natural. Oldman’s tension with Batman as Commissioner Gordon grows slowly over the course of <i>The Dark Knight</i>, and he’s given more to do and more chances to perform. Michael Caine’s Alfred and Morgan Freeman’s Lucius Fox hold steady with typically great character work, and Maggie Gyllenhaal replaces Katie Holmes in much bouncier, sassier tones. Nearing Heath Ledger’s level is Aaron Eckhart as fallen D.A. Harvey Dent, whose journey from Gotham’s white knight to the villain Two-Face is made more painful by Eckhart’s convincing turn as both a classy, nice guy and angry, vengeful killer with an Anton Chigurh-esque penchant for coin-tosses. If I had one minor complaint, it’s that Eric Roberts’ Sal Maroni fails to make me forget about Tom Wilkinson, but actors that are Tom Wilkinson are much rarer than those that aren’t, so I’m hardly bothered by the change-up.<br />
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Even more than <i>Batman Begins</i>, Hans Zimmer and James Howard Newton outdo themselves with the soundtrack for <i>The Dark Knight</i>. In addition to Batman's previous theme, which carries over from <i>Batman Begins</i> with no decrease in its heroic glory, the pair introduces Joker's... well, the word "theme" implies a piece of music that can be hummed, and there is no merrily whistling Zimmer's razorblade-on-piano wire motif from when The Joker is onscreen. Like the character himself, the low, scraping din is noncompliant with the rest of the surrounding score, and creates an unease that meshes perfectly with Joker's dangerous, unorthodox effect on Gotham City.<br />
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Added to cinematographer Wally Pfister's box of tools is the IMAX camera. Every establish shot and most of the important action setpieces appear with heightened clarity and a changed aspect ratio, and the result adds not only better picture quality, but also to the sense of scale and scope in <i>The Dark Knight</i>. The picture at times is HUGE, and give the movie a greater heft, especially during the scenes in Hong Kong and on the ending ferry when the aspect ratio keeps changing.<br />
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Editing keeps the kinetic, discontinuous style from <i>Batman Begins</i>, and now it, too, has new tricks. Ramping up the tension are three sequences that cross-cut between two or more separate, parallel conflicts, and watching each section tighten and build to a head gives <i>The Dark Knight</i> a more active, grander feel, though the emotional build-up watching so many conflicts causes <i>The Dark Knight</i> to feel every minute of its runtime, while <i>Batman Begins</i> flies on by. Still, the three-way conflicts all feel so active and busy with incident that <i>The Dark Knight</i> never overstays its welcome.<br />
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A quick word on the dialogue. I recognize that <i>The Dark Knight</i> contains more self-referential, self-consciously “profound” dialogue, and that I should, by merit of its own awareness of how “profound” it is, spit on every “He is the hero we deserve” turn of phrase it throws at me. Eff that. Like the editing and score, it adds to the heightened reality and grandiosity of <i>The Dark Knight</i> while never jumping ship of posturing. My favorite passage of dialogue, which took me more than a few viewings to first notice?<br />
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<blockquote>Dent: “You’ve known Rachel her whole life?”<br />
Alfred: “Oh, not yet, sir.”</blockquote><br />
GUESS WHAT GUY YOU WILL HAVE BY THE END OF ACT II<br />
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<i>The Dark Knight</i> is the best film based on a comic book of all time, and one hell of an act for any summer tentpole to top (including, from what I’ve read so far, <i>The Dark Knight Rises</i>). Both exciting to the more lizard-like portions of my brain and imbued with heavy, thoughtful ideas, <i>The Dark Knight</i> operates as both blockbuster entertainment and art house reflection, and how many movies can claim that, ever?<br />Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-3034557838380963132012-07-18T17:02:00.000-06:002012-07-22T09:24:52.454-06:00I Am Vengeance -- Batman Begins (2005)<img src="http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/5232/batmanbeginsposter.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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I want to get something out of the way before I start in earnest: <i>Batman Begins</i> is a film whose appeal, while not eluding me per se, is diminished compared to the gobs of unfettered praise and nice words it has been steeped in since 2005. I like it, and I enjoyed it more so than ever during my most recent viewing, but I don't think it's a film I'd casually pick to watch on a night off the way I would, say, <i>The Dark Knight</i>. For my tastes, it's humorless and lacks excitement, requiring a bit more investment to "get" anything out of it than my favorite films, which doesn't jive well with my escapism-based film-watching habits--consider this my acquiescence to being a total wuss.<br />
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Now that I've said my piece, we can talk about what <i>Batman Begins</i> does right, for it does an awful lot of things right. Made during a time when super hero films weren't known for their quality or depth, even in post-<i>Spider-Man</i> 2005, <i>Batman Begins</i> not only treats each member of its large and distinguished cast with respect, but also (and you'll excuse the implicit smacks of superiority I'm radiating) like actual movie characters. Actual movie characters from an actual good movie. Toss away the cape and cowl, and you have a character study about a man's search for identity after a childhood trauma, and the lengths he goes to find and maintain that identity. It's methodical, serious, and as concerned with probing character questions as it is with inventing new, explosive set pieces; here is a film where Batman first appears no less than an hour into its 140 minute runtime, and we don't mind at all.<br />
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First a bit of plot, because maybe you haven’t seen it in a few years. <i>Batman Begins</i> tells how Bruce Wayne, billionaire playboy and Gotham’s “favorite son,” becomes a symbol for justice in an effort to save his home city from tearing itself apart by crime and corruption. <i>Batman Begins</i> can be broken into three delineable sections: Bruce Wayne’s travels and early childhood trauma, Bruce Wayne “builds” the Batman persona, and Batman’s shift from fighting organized crime to repelling the League of Shadows. The middle “learning” section is the most satisfying, showing Wayne iterating on crime fighting methods and learning as he goes. It’s also the most “realistic,” showing Batman taking on the mob before things go off the rails in the third act, but the tendency towards realism suits <i>Batman Begins</i>, more so than Cillian Murphy arbitrarily riding a horse, anyway.<br />
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One of the most fascinating things about <i>Batman Begins</i> is how it takes all of Batman's well-known gimmicks (bat costume, utility belt, creed not to kill people) and makes them all traceable parts of the character, and their presence in <i>Batman Begins</i> is not just justified but necessary. Bruce Wayne dresses as a bat not to obscure his identity, but because he wants to be an Idea in the minds of criminals as much as he wants to be a solution to Gotham's civic ails. Like I said earlier: respect. Show me all of the scenes of a hero sewing his super suit that you want, but I need to know why he puts it on in the first place, and Bruce Wayne decision to strap on a cape and cowl feels as natural as Rocky's decision to get in the ring with Apollo Creed.<br />
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Part of this credit must go to Christian Bale, who juggles no less than four personas of Bruce Wayne over the course of <i>Batman Begins</i>, all of them distinct and convincing. My favorite contrast is during the first forty five minutes, which crosscuts between hardened Bruce Wayne training with the League of Shadows and bitter twentysomething Bruce Wayne contemplating killing his parents’ murderer. Small moments of regret and pain are sprinkled liberally throughout Wayne’s time onscreen, helping add to Batman’s plausibility.<br />
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Bale is one of many strong performances by a distinguished cast of big names and bit parts. Reliable standbys like Michael Caine, Tom Wilkinson, and Morgan Freeman all paint their characters in large, comic book-y strokes (I love Wilkinson’s choice to play Falcone as a 1930’s mob boss), while Gary Oldman’s weary, idealistic portrayal of Gotham’s only honest cop helps ground Batman’s existence and necessity in Gotham. The best in show, though, goes to Cillian Murphy as Dr. Nathan Crane; strung-out, uptight, and always radiating the sensation that he might go for your neck at any moment--and that’s before he takes his glasses off. Murphy’s Crane is off-kilter, unsettling menace, and it’s a damn shame that <i>Batman Begins</i> disposes of him so early into its climax.<br />
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<i>Batman Begins</i> builds a solid thematic groundwork, arguably the hardest part of a comic book film, leaving the rest of its filmmaking bits to fall neatly into place. In particular, I am a fan of the editing, which eschews straight continuity for internal rhythm. Watch how the cuts interact with the the emotional beats and how each shot seems to start and stop during a moment of climax ("quitting while it's ahead," I called it in my head). Combined with the use of establish shots as action cuts (notice how the camera never stays stationary when shooting wide shots of locations), Nolan and editor Lee Smith give <i>Batman Begins</i> a momentum that makes its 140 minutes seem as fleet as a Bugs Bunny short.<br />
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I think I like the editing so much because of it works with the music. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard's horn-and-cello theme used for Batman operates much like Christian Bale's Batman: subdued and somber with a touch of heroic bravado, with a small nod to Danny Elfman’s work on the previous Batman films without outright quoting from it.<br />
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I do have a few gripes, though. I've never cared for the way Gotham is portrayed in <i>Batman Begins</i>; its opulent high-rises living so close to the glorified shantytown of the Narrows strikes me as a bit too fantastical, and though its Urban Hellhole motif is a feature and not a bug, I find it repelling and not much fun to look at. Speaking of fantastical, I always wonder how the microwave weapon stolen by Ra's al Ghul is supposed to vaporize all nearby water while leaving nearby human beings (which, I gather, are anywhere from 50-65% water) unscathed. Lastly, I always get a bit twitchy during the last half-hour, mostly because the carefully constructed reality of Gotham is thrown out the window in favor of zombie-film sensibility.<br />
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Still, it’s the first film to nail why Batman picks up his uniform and fights crime, and it takes no emotional shortcuts getting there. <i>Batman Begins</i> is a film I appreciate more as a piece of craftsmanship than I do a transporting piece of fiction, but what fine craftsmanship it is.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-83798291830497576732012-06-12T23:59:00.000-06:002012-06-13T00:00:13.136-06:00Bella Swan and Thor's Excellent Adventure -- Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)<div style="text-align: center;">
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As a rabid Disney-phile, I've been eying both of 2012's adaptiation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. February's <i>Mirror, Mirror</i> was a light, comic affair meant for families, but June has brought us <i>Snow White and the Huntsman</i>, an epic, badass tale for a generations raised on the <i>Lord of the Rings</i> films and currently steeped in HBO's <i>Game of Thrones</i>. Take heart, though, for <i>Snow White and the Huntsman</i> isn't nearly as derivative as the previous sentence implies, and for that reason, perhaps that reason alone, I actually took a liking to it.<br />
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<i>Snow White and the Huntsman</i>'s narrative is one of much happenstance and small incident. Plot points occur in bits and spurts, and characters are introduced and then dropped with little introduction or explanation. The whole mess of the story boils down to this: the evil Queen Ravenna (Charlieze Theoron) wants Snow White's heart because it will give her immortality. She hires the Huntsman to retrieve Snow White, who has fled into the aptly-named Dark Forest, but the pair soon team up and evade the Queen's guard led by her brother Finn Sam Spruell). Snow White finds her way to a sympathetic Duke's castle with the help of up-to-eight dwarves, and there she learns that she is the only one who can defeat the Queen because, I dunno, she's the chosen one who can bring balance to The Force or something. <br />
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It's a bit of a mouthful, but most of it clips by reasonably quickly, with a few odd dips here and there. What strikes me is how <i>Snow White and the Huntsman</i> uses the Brothers Grimm fairy tale as a framework for a new story, rather than a series of self-consciously deliberate "twists" a la nearly every fairy tale rework since Edward Everett Horton started narrating them on <i>Rocky and Bullwinkle</i>. Queen Ravenna was burned before by men because of her beauty, and so she desires to be fairest so that she can stay powerful. The dwarves are a part of a larger race of miners who have long-since gone away, subsisting as thieves and victims of the Queen's rule. The apple, cleverly, is addressed in the film almost right away before being tucked into a place in the narrative where it acts as a surprise, rather than an inevitability.<br />
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</i><i> I saw </i>Snow White and the Huntsman<i> with a friend for matinee price, which diminished my expectations enough to walk away reasonably entertained.</i></div>
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Story isn't a strong reason to see <i>Snow White and the Huntsman</i>, though. The real incentive is the incredible production design by Dominic Watkins. One part huge vistas and jaw-dropping wide shots of impossible moors and enormous mountains, one part drafty castles, muddy villages, and cold, shining steel. It somehow glamorizes the nasty, unpleasant bits of living in a time before central heating while still emphasizing how awesome it is to ride horseback and whack stuff with a sword. Ornate, impractical costume design meets grounded realism and exceptional world-building. <br />
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It's for this reason that <i>Snow White and the Huntsman</i> reminds me the most of <i>Tron Legacy</i>. It's a "pretty decent" movie with a suspect story and weak characters all propped up by awesome-looking visuals and kinetic action. Brother, when it connects, which it does more often than not, it's a grand slam.<br />
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Feel free to use that one in the advertisements, Universal.<br />
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<i>The deliberate alterations made to the Snow White yarn are inspired, for the most part, like the humanoid mirror.</i></div>
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Acting is neatly divided in two. Steward and Hemsworth both play withdrawn, contemporary-ish fantasy types (Hemsworth at time seems to be reprising Thor with a Scottish brogue in lieu of a Mid-Atlantic accent), while Theoron and Spruell chew the scenery with great bulging eyes and foaming mouths. Theoron in particular reaches for great, operatic heights of expression in the most Tim Curry-esque fashion, and though it's embarrassing as it is effective, I can't pretend it doesn't create an impression. The dwarves, played by a game troupe of British heavy-hitters lead by Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, and Ray Winstone, adhere closely to the "dwarves are the comic relief" school of fantasy acting, and don't have much to do for well over half of the runtime, but are pleasant to watch in the usual ways one expects from classically trained English actors asked to pad the ranks with their mere screen presence ("The Hogwarts Faculty Role," I call it in my head).<br />
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As a side note, I have seen a few criticisms that <i>Snow White and the Huntsman</i> employs full-sized actors for the dwarves instead of, you know, actual dwarf actors. Regrettable, but I was amused by McShane and crew all the same, and besides, casting Peter Dinklage in a movie with as many bases for comparison to <i>Game of Thrones</i> might have been cutting it a little close.<br />
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<i>They do their damndest, but the dwarves don't have much to work with between their truncated screen time and the fact that there are up-to-eight of them.</i></div>
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<i>Snow White and the Huntsman</i> eventually devolves into yet another series epic medieval battles so often on-hand since Peter Jackson showed everyone how it was done ten years ago, but on a pleasantly small scale. Rather than greedily staging the dual between armies of thousands, the ending conflict is comprised of maybe a few hundred soldiers between the two sides, and the lowered stakes actually helped me invest myself further in the proceedings. The unfortunately hectic editing sometimes gets in the way of gawping at the costumes and scenery, but I found myself resistant to the noise and bluster, and actually enjoyed the chaotic spectacle. <br />
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This is the best level on which to watch <i>Snow White and the Huntsman</i>: an exhibition in stylistic excess as applied to a fairly tale nearly everyone already knows. The narrative, on the other hand, doesn't offer much, though I did find it gratifying that Snow White drove so much of the plot in her own story. <i>Snow White and the Huntsman</i> is not without its flaws, but its visual appeal is so great that I already want to see it again. We'll see if I can keep the first burning long enough for it to release on Blu-ray.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-4968953254810338932012-05-24T15:14:00.000-06:002012-05-24T15:14:47.125-06:00Yet another project: Andrew + Jordyn Watch the Best Picture Winners<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY8HtaJ5r3_YhKnGvL9alTI32kH0o_dfKfGcRYNGZT3pd9qaA4PjUclY21Zv5Jtlk8KgJ_khLr8a4WAJfCoViEBODCmTGW-yn3SvI6aod-ThuImT-54-oY52ASHB1pYoi83RHJe7EMQYw/s720/background+try.png" width="400"/><br />
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I’ve started a new blog. Well, I didn’t start it and it’s not truly my blog, but the gist is that I’ve started writing in another location on the internet. The story goes like this: my good friend Jordyn has been watching and writing about the films that have won the Academy Award for Best Picture for several weeks now. After a long, convoluted conversation spanning two or three different social networks, she has invited me onboard the BP train, and we have started a blog to commemorate it.<br />
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You may remember, if you are a longtime reader, that Jordyn and I have attempted to do a crossover blog before and how it resulted in Bluthanized, a blog where we analyzed the cinematic works of animator/director Don Bluth. You may also remember how we stalled out shortly after watching <i>Thumbelina</i>, and how its lain dormant for the last two years, waiting fruitlessly for our joint review of <i>A Troll in Central Park</i>. With that ten-film failure behind us, we can move on to bigger and better things, like an 84-entry retrospective on the Best Picture winners! Hell, it’ll probably be 85 by the time we’re done.<br />
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I digress. You all should stop by and give us encouraging words or, if you’re more the Statler and Waldorf-type, heckles. I’ll be posting my main thoughts on Diversion 2.0, but Jordyn and I will be hashing out a back-and-forth discussion on the main blog, so it will be worth your while to follow both. Besides, you’ll want to be around for when our tastes inevitably diverge and we start fightin’. <br />
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The new blog is called <a href="http://aandjwatchthebpws.blogspot.com/">Andrew + Jordyn Watch the Best Picture Winners</a>, a wonderfully self-explanatory title if I've ever heard one before; just like <i>Zach and Miri Make a Porno</i>, there is no possible way to misconstrue what will happen. Besides, we're basically The Avengers of Blogger, so there's nothing wrong with stunting the talent involved in our little project. We look forward to your readership and, as discussed, heckles. Cheers!Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-57381296939458391892012-05-12T20:04:00.002-06:002012-05-12T20:04:59.673-06:00Testermix - Spring '12We're grinding through the year pretty quickly, aren't we? Why, it feels like just the other day that I promised you all that you'd be getting Testermixes left and right! Crazy, huh?! At any rate, we're back on track now, and while you gear up for my half-finished write-up on my Summer mix from last year, let's burn away the last few weeks of school (for sub-collegiate folks, anyway) with this year's Spring mix.<br />
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<h3>1) Pretty Lights - "Hot Like Dimes"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/6885/prettylightsspillingove.jpg" alt="" align="left" />The electric boogaloo continues, but at least it's not more dubstep. Well, not quite anyway. Combining the huge bass hits and drops of big-beat electronic music with the soulful swagger of hip hop, Pretty Lights is the audio equivalent of DJ Shadow and Joe Boyd Vigil spending a night together drinking Grey Goose and Chuck Norrises and then decided to cut an album. "Hot Like Dimes" is my favorite out of what I've heard so far, sounding cocky and powerful with its driving guitar line and bubbly synth. <br />
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<h3>2) Lupe Fiasco - "I Don't Want to Care Right Now"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/6619/lupefiascolasers.png" alt="" align="left" />I like Lupe Fiasco, though his albums can be pretty tricky to listen to; they're often weighed down by over-indulgent runtimes (<i>Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor</i>), heavy-handed themes and lyrics (<i>Lasers</i>), or both (<i>Lupe Fiasco's The Cool</i>), making casual spins infrequent for me. Still, a few tracks from <i>Lasers</i> are pretty easy to listen to, and "I Don't Want to Care Right Now" is one of my favorites.<br />
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Confession time: you know how folks on the internet make continuous peanut gallery comments about how Auto-Tune is Destroying Music As We Know It™? Well, I am a member of the Auto-Tune-liking populous that convinces record producers to add the effect to so many songs nowadays. I am, in short, part of the problem. At any rate, it's this affection for the robot voice that endears me to so much "I Don't Want to Care Right Now"; I think it adds a spacy quality to the song, blending well with the electronic vibe from the rest of the production. Lupe's verses in this one are fun, battle-rhyme fare, which gel much better with me than ham-fisted polictical messages.<br />
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<h3>3) Four Year Strong - "Fairweather Fan"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img804.imageshack.us/img804/1480/fouryearstronginsomeway.jpg" alt="" align="left" />Four Year Strong’s third album, <i>In Some Way, Shape Or Form</i>, dropped a little less than two years after their previous one, <i>Enemy of the World</i>. I Sometimes wonder if the band should have taken a break somewhere between the two releases because <i>man</i> do they sound tired on <i>In Some Way</i>. The melodies sound better, granted, but every song exudes less energy than on any of their other records. Every song, that is, except for "Fairweather Fan."<br />
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"Fairweather" has everything I like about Four Year Stong crammed into the same place: half-times, double-times, gang vocals, and lots of double-bass pedal. The melody is easy and unforced, making it a welcome departure from <i>Enemy of the World</i>'s screech-y flailing, and they even have a short reference to one of their earlier records, which is a gesture I greatly appreciate. Time will tell if the group continues on the slightly-mellower path taken for most of <i>In Some Way</i>, or if they’ll come back swinging with more songs like "Fairweather Fan."<br />
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<h3>4) deadmau5 - "Moar Ghosts 'n' Stuff"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/6957/deadmau5lackofabetterna.jpg" alt="" align="left" />What a self-explanatory song. Remember "Ghosts 'n' Stuff," that song from my Spring '11 mix with all the organs? It's like that, but moar, er, more! I'm still pretty crazy about "Ghosts 'n' Stuff" even after listening to it for the better part of a year, and "Moar" does a good job of calling to mind that song while still doing its own thing. Admittedly, it does this by teasing at the four chord organ part from "Ghosts" throughout the song, but absence makes the heart etc. I've also grown to appreciate the main synth part, which sounded before like tuneless noodling and now sounds like... fun tuneless noodling! <br />
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<h3>5) Maroon 5 feat. Christina Agulara - "Moves Like Jagger"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/4650/maroon5moveslikejaggerf.jpg" alt="" align="left" />Loyal followers will know that I'm not always punctual with my pop music selections, and am prone to discovering songs six to eight months past their sell-by date. Case in point! Remember when everyone was going nuts over this song last summer? Flash forward to March of the following year where we see Andrew at a bar, nursing four-to-seven rum and cokes and looking up in surprise at the song coming from the dance floor. "What is this song with the whistling and the bass?" he wonders aloud. "It's kinda catchy." <br />
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Turns out I could stand to have a bit more cultural awareness.<br />
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At any rate, "Moves Like Jagger." Maroon 5 has never quite been on my to-do list, with "Harder to Breathe" being their only song to make me sit up and take notice of them. "Moves" sounds pretty divorced from their usual pop-rock catalog of music and goes straight for the nightclub jugular with pulsing bass hits, off-time synth straight out of "Alejandro," and that cheery whistling earworm that must be one of the most devious things in '10's pop music. Christina Agulara's vocals don't wow me, but she does give the track a touch of feminine perspective, and the idea of both singers bantering back and forth is fun.<br />
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Come to think of it, that describes "Moves Like Jagger" exactly: fun, and that's why it's on my newest mix.<br />
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<h3>6) The Cab - "One of THOSE Nights"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/4067/thecabwhisperwar.jpg" alt="" align="left" />Once upon a time, a young college student was flailing about in his dorm room for more untested bands to discover. After searching through Myspace and iTunes for far longer than he should have, he finally wound up on the webpage of his old favorite record label, Fueled By Ramen. There, he found a few songs from a new band he could get excited about, and promptly put one of the songs on his Winter mix once he discovered it was on <i>Rock Band</i> (drink), and the second one he put away for a rainy day.<br />
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Later, he realized the band wasn't really his style, and promptly stopped paying attention to them.<br />
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The first song from that fairy tale was "Bounce," a pop-punk-by-way-of-NSYNC track that was a HELL of a lot of fun to play on drums, and "One of THOSE Nights" (stupid, stupid ironic capitalization) was the other. For my money, the chorus for "Bounce" is catchier, but I love the energy for this song, which has a nice verse counter-melody (you don't see those terribly often) and some reverb-heavy snare hits. Also, if you want to appreciate how far ahead of the game Patrick Stump's vocal talents are, listen to the way he sings the song's chorus and how much more compelling it sounds than the actual band that wrote it.<br />
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<h3>7) Quietdrive - "Lie to Me"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/5765/quietdriveupordown.jpg" alt="" align="left" />I'm a bit torn on this song. On one hard, it's a fantastic throwback to the catchy, urgent pop-punk that Quietdrive made for one album (and one album only) on their debut record. On the other, it's perhaps the only song that sounds like it on their whole new CD, <i>Up or Down</i>. The song's title is pretty fitting for the album, now that I think about it. Bitterness aside, "Lie to Me" is hooky and sweet, with soaring vocals, boisterous power chords, and energy to spare.<br />
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<h3>8) Blue Öyster Cult - "Don't Fear the Reaper"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/5330/blueoystercult.jpg" alt="" align="left" />Good ol' classic rock radio. I played this song on <i>Rock Band</i> a fair few times in college (drink), but I think I needed <i>exactly</i> the right moment on <i>exactly</i> the right sunny day to make me fall for it.<br />
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If you didn't grow up listening to "Don't Fear the Reaper" blaring from your uncle's CD player, you've probably seen <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0uvVZg4Tw4">a certain Saturday Night Live sketch</a> that added to the song's infamy. As such, you're likely familiar with the main guitar riff and Eric Bloom's mellow, carrying vocals, along with the weird, ethereal breakdown during the middle that sounds nothing like the rest of the song. It's an old staple, but sometimes songs are staples for a reason. <br />
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It could probably use more cowbell, though.<br />
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<h3>9) The Eagles - "One of These Nights"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/4492/theeagles.jpg" alt="" align="left" />Being a Montana boy, I've listened to my fair share of country, and one of my favorite country bands is The Eagles. They have a soft, acoustic sensibility that gels well with their straight-up rock material, and that variability makes them a great band for most occasions. "One of These Nights" combines the two elements for a slinky, sexy piece of western rock, perfect for night drives or, say, sitting around with friends. In a van. Just enjoy the damn guitar solo, okay?<br />
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<h3>10) Darren Korb - "Spike in the Rail"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/8950/bastionsoundtrack.jpg" alt="" align="left" />Turns out that I like video game music. Last summer, Supergiant Games' <i>Bastion</i> wowed me with its super-saturated art direction, minimalistic storytelling, and fun action-RPG gameplay, but its best aspect by a walk was its soundtrack, a combination of bluesy, Old West guitars and electronic percussion. Of the 22 songs available for download on iTunes, "Spike in the Rail" best demonstrates what the soundtrack is capable of: it has the biggest beats, the twangiest guitar, and the damndest finger-tapping melody to ever come out of an XBLA game. <br />
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<h3>11) Black Eyed Peas - "Rock Your Body"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/8692/blackeyedpeastheend.jpg" alt="" align="left" />Some songs sound better after two or three cocktails. "Rock Your Body" took anywhere from 9 - 25, but it still does what all good club songs hope to: worm its way inside your head and convert you to its insidious ways with a catchy, oft-repeated phrase. That phrase in this case being, of course, "Yvan eht Nioj." Aside from the auto-tune chipmunk voice, the pulsing, spacy beat gives the song a hypnotic momentum, and the Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock sample warms my heart, even as I watch will.i.am's habit of copy-paste beat-appropriating working its way into a gallop.<br />
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<h3>12) Silverstein - "Apologize"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/2653/punkgoespop2.jpg" alt="" align="left" />Kids today love posturing and irony, and Fearless Records' <i>Punk Goes...</i> compilations have capitalized on this trend since the mid-2000s. The series has since denigrated into Melodic Hardcore Versions Of Top 40 Songs Vol. 4, but Silverstein's cover of OneRepublic's "Apologize" actually hones in on the emotional center of the original, and is, for my money, one of the best songs across the whole catalog. Granted, it descends into unclean vocals near the latter half, but they sound earned rather than gimmicky and the dour instrumentation approaches something like catharsis for this angsty twentysomething. Plus, the key of this version appeals to me more than the original's, so there's that.<br />
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<h3>13) The Offspring - "All I Want"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/1157/theoffspringixnayontheh.jpg" alt="" align="left" />YAH YAH YAH YAH YAH.<br />
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Sometimes I like my punk rock poppy and full of hand claps. Other times I like it thrash-y, and "All I Want" is a satisfying way to get my fill of double-time drums and vaguely rebellious lyrics. I originally discovered this song through the Dreamcast game <i>Crazy Taxi</i>, which I spent entirely too much time playing at various Target kiosks across Montana, and it showed me that a) video games besides <i>Tony Hawk's Pro Skater</i> can have good "real music" soundtracks, and b) The Offspring made songs before "Pretty Fly For A White Guy." Who knew?<br />
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<h3>14) Baracka Flacka Flame - "Run the Military"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/4274/barackaflackaflamerunth.jpg" alt="" align="left" />You may remember that for last year's spring mix I included a song from everyone's favorite emcee-slash-US president (well, after Rappin' Ronnie Reagan). Perhaps I'm hoping to make it a tradition, because here I am, one year later, still listening to Baracka Flacka Flame. Rather than a parody like last time, though, "Run the Military" is a true blue original, and sports killer production work in the form of a bombastic, Southern-fried beat that tips, swaggers, and doubles down with thirty-second note hi-hats during the chorus. <br />
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The lyrics are pretty damn funny as well, using gangsta rap vernacular to reference President Obama's current political activities ("Catch me in that White House flexin' / I ain't even stressin' over re-election") and dropping disses during the second verse ("Herman Cain is a lame he should stay up out my lane / You a lil' road block like Palin and McCain"). Hopefully Baracka is working on something for election season in November, because I am prepared to buy the hell out of whatever this guy puts out next.<br />
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<h3>15) Ellie Goulding - "Lights (Bassnecter Remix)"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/6814/elliegouldinglights.jpg" alt="" align="left" />I've seen the name "Ellie Goulding" tossed around on Twitter for a good few months now (a side-effect of following white college girls), but it took another fateful trip to the bar in order for me to actually hear one of her songs<a title="I'm finding more and more these days that music discovery works best over cocktails." style="color: #bb3300; text-decoration: none;">*</a>. Goulding’s voice carries a rather unique timbre, occupying a much higher register than other singers in pop music, and her vocals stand out in such a way that they practically pop off the track, drawing attention to the odd, haunting quality of the chorus. The ominous-sounding bass line gives the track a further feeling of unease, and the remix’s heightened pace makes the song sound urgent. <br />
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<h3>16) There For Tomorrow - "The Joyride"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/6853/therefortomorrowtheverg.jpg" alt="" align="left" />More Warped Tour-ready pop punk! Actually, in this case, I did get this song from a Warped Tour compilation, but that's neither here nor there. Truthfully, there's not much that's special about "The Joyride," at least in the sense that There For Tomorrow sounds an awful lot like other drop-D-using emo groups, but dammit I do like a good hook. "The Joyride" includes few new ideas, outside a few bits like the echoing part during the bridge, but it's sweet and satisfying in an empty calorie sort of way, like a Fruit by the Foot. An angsty, moody Fruit by the Foot.<br />
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<h3>17) Tonight Alive - "Starlight"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/7065/tonightalivewhatareyous.jpg" alt="" align="left" />More Warped Tou—aw, screw it. And yes, I did actually find out about these guys from the Warped Tour website. I’m going to see them, you’re going to judge me, and I’m not going to care.<br />
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Anyway, Tonight Alive. Ever since I discovered Paramore at my local Hastings in 2005, I’ve been enamored by female-fronted pop punk groups, and Hey Monday turned my passing fancy into a mega-crush. Tonight Alive isn’t perfect (the lead singer’s vowel-pronunciation becomes suspect at times, likely because the band is Australian), but they have energy to burn, and I firmly believe that more pop punk groups should incorporate double-bass as part of their sound. "Starlight" is lead single-y to a fault, but it brims with drum fills and punchy guitar lines, and the main chorus is damn catchy. See the above entry about its nutritional value as music; I eat this junk all the time.<br />
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<h3>18) La Roux - "Bulletproof"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/640/larouxf.jpg" alt="" align="left" />In truth, this is more of a summer '10 song, but I've been playing it enough on <i>Dance Central 2</i> lately to merit its inclusion here. Honestly, there's not much about this song I can recap; it has a fun, bouncy melody and a set of whoop-ing synthesizers that are very imitable in an annoying sort of way. Instead, I'll think about the dance moves during the chorus that involve spreading out my arms like an airplane, tucking them back into my chest, than twisting my waist around and pretending like my arm is a piston. Mmmm, good times.<br />
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<h3>19) Hot Chelle Rae - "I Like It Like That"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/696/hotchelleraewhatever.jpg" alt="" align="left" />I like to include at least one "why the hell is this song here" entry on each mix, and this one's right up there with putting The Ready Set on my Fall '10 mix. This song is, honestly, a collection of dirty tricks designed to manipulate me into liking it it, rather than a song that I actually respect and enjoy all the way through. There are so many little things about this song that bug the crap out of me ("Missed. My. Ride. Home. / Lost. My. i. Phone.", "If the cops roll up (*fake crowd vocals* 'So what?!')", the <i>entire</i> New Boyz section), but then then bleeding chorus starts and the "Oh-oh"s kick in and then I'm singing along like an idiot. It's a sensation of being played and being aware of said playing: I know what's going on and why, but I can't help but go along with it anyway.<br />
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<h3>20) Journey - "Faithfully"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/3371/journeyfrontiers.jpg" alt="" align="left" />I thank my lucky stars every day that my friends are more musically-cultured than I am, by which I mean that a good chunk of bros and bro-ettes all listen to classic rock. Seriously, betweeen these guys and <i>Rock Band</i> (drink), it's a revolving door of music that's ready-made awesome. Speaking of songs that would go well on the old R to the B, "Faithfully" is an exceptional rock ballad, and represents all kinds of serenading possibilities for anyone of any gender. Throw in heart-melting keyboard part and a face-melting guitar solo and you have a song that's ready for spontaneous lovin' break-outs. Also, Steve Perry. Seriously, you guys, Steve Perry.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-75208935361311128412012-02-12T10:24:00.001-07:002012-02-13T18:45:32.822-07:00Testermix - Spring '11The early portions of 2011 threw several hard-and-fast changes at me, causing me to spend longer than usual tweaking this mix; I had a tough time finding exactly what I was doing in life, let alone on my iPod. Fortunately, I was able to steady myself enough to knock out a decent collection of tunes that covered the usual bases: a little classic rock here, a little ducklips music there, and a whole heaping helping of songs I play on <i>Rock Band</i>. <br />
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In fact, I'm going to resume my earlier Diversion 2.0 drinking game: drink every time <i>Rock Band</i> is overtly mentioned. Don't worry, I'll help keep track. Also, drink for the mention in the previous paragraph. The game starts NOW.<br />
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<h3>1) Blue Öyster Cult - "Burnin' For You"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/5330/blueoystercult.jpg" alt="" align="left" />When assembling these mixes, I generally compile a big ol' song pool out of whatever I'm listening to, and choose the songs that sound best together. Sometimes, if a song is cut, I try to sneak it into the next season's mix, to see if it would "fit" better with the other tracks. "Burnin' For You" is a prime example of this. I'd been trying to slot it in since at least Fall '10, and finally found it a comfortable place in this mix.<br />
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I like "Burnin' For You" for most of the same reasons I like "Ridin' The Storm Out" by REO Speedwagon, which is fitting because I used to get them confused with each other. Like "Ridin'," "Burnin'" is in a pleasant, easy-going key, and both get a chance to show off several guitar-gymnastic solos. The main difference between the two is that of intensity—"Ridin'" attacks the track with its constant bass drum back-beat, while "Burnin'" drifts by like the countryside during a lazy afternoon drive. Great melody, great song, and a great potential candidate for <i>Rock Band</i>.<br />
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Drink.<br />
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<h3>2) New Found Glory - "All Downhill From Here"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/9533/newfoundglory.jpg" alt="" align="left" />Ever since I put Story of the Year into the previous mix, I've started integrating songs from my high school years into my tracklists. Warped Tour staples New Found Glory made a big impression of me back during my sophomore year (the time when I was just starting to drink the Teen Angst Kool-Aid), and "All Downhill From Here" was one of my favorites, mostly because of its monstrous opening riff. The trippy music video is neither here nor there, but "All Downhill From Here" reminds me of driving my crappy Nissan Sentra to my friend's house in Amsterdam, hopped up on energy drinks and excited to talk obsessively about Magic: The Gathering and Alternative Press. Fortunately, I've since grown up and matured, and learned not to read AP under any circumstances.<br />
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<h3>3) ZZ Top - "La Grange"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/3566/zztop.jpg" alt="" align="left" />When I was a kid, I think I used to get this song confused with Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky." I was an idiot as a child. Anyway, there's an astronomically high chance you've already heard this song's main riff, which is good because there's not much else to "La Grange" besides it and some show-offy guitar work. That's far from a complaint, however, as both said riff and guitar work are fantastic. <br />
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"La Grange" begins quietly, with a snare-rim percussion rhythm setting the tempo and the lead guitar playing a understated version of the main riff. After the lead singer warbles a few bars of the melody, though, a huge-sounding fill throws the rest of the track into high gear, with the off-time guitars and galloping bass pedal driving the experience. From its down-tempo beginning to its kinetic main section, "La Grange" is my song of choice if I were to be involved in a car chase.<br />
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<h3>4) Dev - "Bass Down Low (Featuring The Cataracs)"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/260/devi.jpg" alt="" align="left" />My love affair with Ke$ha is well-documented (and I like her music, too!), so what's to stop another ign'ant, duck lips'n white girl from invading my playlist? To be fair, Dev does sound different from her music-best-enjoyed-trashed sistren, as she's even more production-focused than nearly any other mainstream singer. Good thing, too, because The Cataracs are easily the best weapon up Dev's sleeve; they sampled her on Far East Movement's "Like a G6," propelling her into the spotlight, and provided the production work on all of her new album, <i>The Night the Sun Came Up</i>.<br />
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The main reason I like "Bass Down Low" is because its siren-sampling beat reminds me of a song from <i>SSX 3</i> by Overseer called "Screw Up." I also dig the bending, 808-sounding synth that backs the chorus. Dev's lyrics are a shallow and anti-clever in the way the Ke$ha's usually aren't, but when the production is as stellar as it is on "Bass," silly things like lyrics don't bother me.<br />
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<h3>5) The Romantics - "What I Like About You"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/3187/theromantics.jpg" alt="" align="left" />Honestly, I don't have much to say on this song, other than that I've wanted to put it in a mix for some time but kept forgetting. Most of my memories of this song come from a compilation album my friend Luke and I used to listen to while playing Super Nintendo, and it's stuck with me for all of that time. Cheery chords, hand claps, and boy-likes-girl lyrics—what's not to like?<br />
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<h3>6) Mountain - "Mississippi Queen"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/2674/mountainl.jpg" alt="" align="left" />Like most near-ubiquitous classic rock songs, I first heard "Mississippi Queen" in a music game (<i>Guitar Hero III</i>, in this case), and played it enough to learn to appreciate the song's subtleties. "Mississippi Queen" is also featured in an episode of <i>The Simpsons</i>, which all but cemented its spot in my pantheon of Testermix songs.<br />
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"Mississippi Queen" has perhaps one of the greasiest-sounding guitar part in all of music, and is completely and totally awesome because of it. Seriously, everything about the main riff is unmixed, nasty-sounding, and completely unrefined, which gives "Mississippi Queen" indelible personality. I'm also a fan of the snare triplets that play during the back parts of the verse.<br />
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Drink. Well, half-drink; Harmonix didn't make <i>Guitar Hero III</i>.<br />
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<h3>7) Deadmau5 - "Ghosts 'n' Stuff (Featuring Rob Swire)"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img813.imageshack.us/img813/2998/deadmau5z.jpg" alt="" align="left" />Last year, for Christmas, I became partially obsessed with <i>DJ Hero 2</i>'s setlist, with its cavalcade of song mash-ups and remixes. Highlights included Lady Gaga's "Love Game" vs. Kanye West's "Heartless," PCD's "Doncha" vs. Pitbull's "I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)," and Iyaz's "Replay" vs. Rihanna's "Rude Boy." Amid the torrent of familiar-sounding mash-ups, there was a remix of Lady Gaga's "Just Dance," which combined it with some organ-sounding song by Canadian DJ Deadmau5. One day, out of curiosity, I looked this organ-sounding song up on YouTube, just to see what it was like, and I've been obsessed with it ever since.<br />
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Honestly, it's the organs that get me. It's a simple, four-chord hook, but for reasons inexplicable to me it toggles some hidden joy button in my brain, and I'm powerless to resist. I went with the three-minute single version for this mix; Rob Swire's vocals give the song more direction, and the protracted running time is more conducive to cramming other songs onto the mix.<br />
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<h3>8) Quietdrive - "Way Out"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/9484/quietdrive.png" alt="" align="left" />A small bit of trivia about how I assemble these mixes: generally, if an artist worked before, then dammit they'll work again! Case in point: "Way Out," which came of the thought process, "I put a Quietdrive song on the Winter '10 mix, so why not put them on this one?"<br />
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It's not like they don't deserve it, though. Quietdrive has been one of my favorite pop-punk bands since 2007, and if I decided to commemorate their new album by slapping a song on my personal mix series, then so be it. "Way Out" is a bit slower than most of my preferred pop-punk, but the less-aggressive tempo helps give the mix variety, and I like how the drums give the chorus an insistent, intense feeling.<br />
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<h3>9) The Police - "Roxanne"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/7673/thepolicef.jpg" alt="" align="left" />Forget that <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx5H-49dgvo">tango one</a> (you hear me, Kailey? Forget it!). The original Police version is where it's at, at least for my tastes. Yes, Sting's pained, lovesick lyrics carry over well to Baz Luhrmann's esteemed jukebox musical, but the <i>Moulin Rouge!</i> version lacks the best part of the song: the chorus. That wonderful soaring, harmonizing, bass-drum-driving chorus. It's literally the reason I listen to the song, and any version lacking it is woefully incomplete.<br />
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Oddly, the live versions of this song I've heard from Sting's solo career also lack the chorus. Whatever; it's his song, after all, and he can tweak with it as he sees fit.<br />
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<h3>10) Judas Priest - "You've Got Another Thing Comin'"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/4630/judaspriestv.jpg" alt="" align="left" />Get out your hip flasks, because here's drink #3. I played the hell out of this song on the original <i>Guitar Hero</i> during my freshman year of college, and did so again during my junior year in <i>Rock Band</i>, but on drums this time. I'm not sure if Judas Priest's brand of 80's epic metal is quite up my alley, but far be it for me to take away from this weighty, powerful-sounding track.<br />
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Every note, every beat, every word sung (yelled?) feel as heavy as the Iron Boots from <i>The Legend of Zelda</i>, and the palm-muted chugs of the rhythm guitar sound like a freight train. "You've Got Another Thing Comin'" has enough power to smash through a brick wall, and I can't help but dig on the cocky drawn-out, three-note phrase that makes up the main riff. Not into metal? Well, you've got another thing &c.<br />
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<h3>11) Artist vs. Poet - "Runaway"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/6775/artistvspoet.jpg" alt="" align="left" />Artist vs. Poet is a simple, fly-by-night power pop band that's no more memorable than the bag of Gushers I had with lunch today. But much just like said fruit snack, however, they're sweet, immediately likeable, and tasty right up until the very last bit. "Runaway" was my first Artist song, and fits well with my usual roster of power pop groups (I also included another of their songs, "Car Crash," on my Spring '10 mix. Must be the time of the season).<br />
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<h3>12) Journey - "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/314/journeyc.jpg" alt="" align="left" />One of the most recognizable keyboard openers in 80's rock and I first hear about it through <i>Tron: Legacy</i>. Yes, dear readers, my introduction to this Journey staple was not through a Greatest Hits compilation, nor through my local classic rock radio station (though it certainly didn't hurt the song's placement)—instead, I learn of its existence from a movie directed by a guy who makes video game commercials. Though, to be fair, they are <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccWrbGEFgI8">stonking</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z36WDj2PcU">great</a> video game commercials. <br />
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It's not just the synth that calls to me with "Separate Ways," though. The constant floor toms give the song an understated intensity, and the unusually-heavy-for-Journey guitar lets the audience know that the band means business. Of course, Journey's penchant for soaring vocals boosts "Separate Ways" into a sort of 80's rock overdrive, and, really, who can say "no" to Steve Perry's siren voice? Rawr.<br />
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<h3>13) Avril Lavigne - "What The Hell"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/5214/avrillavigneg.jpg" alt="" align="left" />Oh boy. At least once per mix, I have one or two guilty pleasure songs that a masculine dude like myself should have no business liking. Yet here we have "What The Hell," Avril Lavigne's successful attempt to out-brat her 2006 hit "Girlfriend," and the catchiest damn song to make me do the most embarrassing actions while car-dancing. It's bad, and will go further undiscussed. Let's just quickly gloss over the song's excellent use of organs, simple melodies, and both "la-las" and "woah-ohs."<br />
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A anecdote story about this song: the first time I heard it, I was on a road trip with my friend Jordyn to Missoula from Helena, where we were to drop a friend-of-a-friend off at the airport. During the drive (a two-hour jaunt, which isn't bad for Montana), Jordyn idly mentioned that, oh hey, there's a new Avril Lavigne single out. Being morbidly curious, I decided to impulse buy it from Amazon with my smartphone. We listened to it once, and thought it was no big deal. Then once turned into twice, turned into five times, turned into the whole damn afternoon. All the while, we chatted about the various garage sales and Christmases it took for Jordyn to collect her entire catalog of Disney Animated Features, and how I was working on my own DAF collection. It wasn't until much later that I realized that my friend-of-friend passenger's first impression of me consisted entirely of Disney VHS packaging jabber and a continuous drone of "All my life I've been good! But now!"<br />
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Unsurprisingly, I haven't heard from her since.<br />
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<h3>14) Ray Charles - "Mess Around"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/4991/raycharlesm.jpg" alt="" align="left" />Many of my Testermix song choices are informed by Rock Band (drink), but this one was informed by, of all things, <i>Family Guy</i>. Specifically, the <i>Return of the Jedi</i> parody episode "It's A Trap." Specifically, specifically, it's the portion where, during the battle of Endor portion, an AT-ST driver reenacts a scene from <i>Planes, Trains, and Automobiles</i> where John Candy mimics playing Ray Charles while driving. Making this the most disgustingly meta pick on the whole playlist, and I'm going to stop thinking about it right now.<br />
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Anyway, "Mess Around" is a fun, manic little track, replete with lots of early Motown-isms like a sax solo and Ray's own signature piano playing. Lord knows why it made the final cut of this mix, but I like how it acts as a break in the action; 2:39 worth of lively soul music, and a small reminder of watching <i>Family Guy</i> with friends. Could be worse.<br />
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<h3>15) Eddie Money - "Shakin'"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/2946/eddiemoney.jpg" alt="" align="left" />I've already written <a href="http://diversiontwopointoh.blogspot.com/2011/06/diversion-20-thirty-day-song-challenge_12.html">at length</a> about "Shakin'" and how it helped fish me out of an emotional torpor, so here's a quick summation of why I love it: "Shakin'" is the most erotic-sounding song I've ever heard. The floor toms, the sexy guitar, and the slinky sonic trailing-off that hallmarks most of the verse all give the impression that <i>something</i> is going to happen, and that's not even including the lyrics ("It got so hot we had to pull to the side / and did some shakin' till the middle of the night"). Rawr pt. II.<br />
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<h3>16) Foo Fighters - "Everlong"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/8231/foofightersh.jpg" alt="" align="left" />Out of all of my favorite songs to play on <i>Rock Band</i> (drink), "Everlong" is an absolute blast. My antipathy towards most 90's rock is well-established, but "Everlong" has pacing and energy like few other tracks from the decade of VH1 and Furbies. Particularly, the drum-playing, which has a delightful, challenging series of bass kicks and drum fills—small surprise, considering what a talented dude Dave Grohl is on drums. <br />
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I honestly don't have much to say about this song, other than the melody ramps up perfectly from verse to chorus, and the backing instrumentation creates a wall of sonic intensity that complements the vocals splendidly. It's powerful, it's uplifting, and it's hard for me to actively listen to this track and not get chills.<br />
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<h3>17) Chali 2na - "Don't Stop (Featuring Anthony Hamilton)"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/8884/chali2na.jpg" alt="" align="left" />When I was younger, one of my favorite hip-hop groups was Jurassic 5, a six-member conglomerate from Los Angeles specializing in old-school-mentality rhymes and attitude. Unfortunately, the group broke up sometime in 2007, but several ex-members still carry the torch in their solo work. Chali 2na had easily the most unique voice out of the group (describing his deep baritone as the "verbal Herman Munster"), making him an ideal choice for a solo career. <br />
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"Don't Stop" was featured heavily on Bozeman's local Top-40 station, which makes no sense to me because of Chali's independent, underground roots. <i>Que sera, sera</i>. Anyway, the breezy flute-loop beat wouldn't be out of place in a J5 song, and 2na's Marianas Trench-deep vocals provide a pleasant cushion for the ears. I may not get a new Jurassic 5 album any time soon, but as long as I can still purchase music from its members, I'll be able to get by.<br />
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<h3>18) Fall Out Boy - "G.I.N.A.S.F.S."</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/2237/falloutboyn.jpg" alt="" align="left" />A bonus track from Fall Out Boy's third major release, <i>Infinity on High</i>, "G.I.N.A.S.F.S." went unheard by me for nearly three years, on account of my poor decision not to drive to Billings and purchase the album at Best Buy, where it was an exclusive song. Most of the nice things I usually say about Fall Out Boy apply here: Patrick Stump's ramrod-straight vocal delivery of Pete Wentz's clever-but-self-consciously-so lyrics, Joe Trohman's strong guitar-playing, and Andy Hurley's erratic, energetic druming (which manifests itself in this song through some intensely-satisfying snare triplets). A quasi-hidden gem that I was all-too-happy to dig up.<br />
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A side note: I looked it up, and apparently the song title is short for "Gay Is Not A Synonym For S@%#$y." Yep, that's Pete Wentz, alright.<br />
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<h3>19) The Material - "What Happens Next"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/3533/thematerial.jpg" alt="" align="left" /><mushy, personal stuff><br />
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During the beginning of 2011, I left my steady job at a large company here in Bozeman. The office culture was great, and I was working alongside many excellent people, but I couldn't get into the actual work itself, and departed in the face of becoming slowly, steadily miserable with myself. Unfortunately, I didn't have much in the way of a back-up plan, and would flounder around for work for a long while afterwards. <br />
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It was during this time that I bought The Material's "What We Are," the debut full-length album from a San Diego band I'd followed and enjoyed since 2007. The Material's juxtaposition of aggro guitar and punchy drums with pretty, feminine-sounding vocals suited me well in my post-employment blues, particularly "What Happens Next," a forward-looking, bittersweet tune about changes and moving on. It fit, and so it's here. It's a reminder of how things were, and the hope that things would get better.<br />
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</mushy, personal stuff><br />
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<h3>20) Man Down Medic - "Extra, Extra"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/9349/mandownmedic.jpg" alt="" align="left" />Man Down Medic is a small, four-part band from Washington that I saw at a show during my sophomore year of college. Their music is everything I don't like about the indie genre, yet they've rearranged most of the egregiously twee stuff and make it sound palatable. Kind of like how a Bloomin' Onion tastes good, despite still being a damned onion.<br />
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Nearly everything about "Extra, Extra" is slight but pleasant, from the lead singer's voice to the simple melodies of the verse and chorus. What draws me in the most, though, is the synth/violin hook, which I find mildly exhilarating. I also dig how the female singer harmonizes with the male one during the chorus, and the memories is conjures of when I traveled to different towns to watch shows. "Extra, Extra" is a slight downer, but that's why it's near the end of the mix and not further up.<br />
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<h3>21) The Who - "Won't Get Fooled Again"</h3><img style="margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;width:200px;" src="http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/2155/thewho.jpg" alt="" align="left" />I'll be honest: some of these picks can get pretty impulsive, and similar to what happened with "Shakin'," I chose this song because I happened to be tired while listening to the radio one night. In this case, I was making my way home from a late night Bell-ringing (I have no words in my defense), and I came in during the ginormous instrumental break that takes up almost the entire latter-half of the track. I like to end my mixes with large, sprawling songs (it gives the ending a sense of finality), and I basically decided then and there that "Won't Get Fooled Again" would make this mix.<br />
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Another fun note: the end track is almost invariably this first song sequenced once the final pool of songs has been decided on, and often one of the first songs put into said pool.<br />
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At any rate, election season's coming up, so I don't need to get into the song's not-subtle jab at politicians and the fun game of American and/or British politics; seriously, if even <i>I</i> can get it, it must be pretty apparent. Instead, I'll mention in passing the organ (a recurring theme for this mix) and extended guitar solo, and briefly note how satisfying that extended musical break is. <br />
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Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you all during my next write-up.<br />
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Unless (*puts on sunglasses*) you get mixed up.<br />
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YEEEEAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-51082960684192131412012-02-07T11:14:00.000-07:002012-02-07T11:14:04.503-07:00Testermix 2011: Year in reviewLoyal readers of Diversion 2.0 may remember my old series of mix CDs, titled Testermix. I used to make one for each season of the year (quarterly, if you will) as a means to keep track of passing time, capturing snapshots of my memories and mood through music. I also wrote about them on this very blog, partly because I wanted to explain my mentality for why I picked certain songs, but mostly because I needed <i>something</i> to write about.<br />
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Well, I continued to make Testermixes, though my write-ups slowed to a crawl. No longer. While it's a bit late to continue reminiscing about 2011, I figure reposting Testermix Spring '11 - Winter '11 will be a good chance to review what happened last year, and what I listened to. Plus, you folks get a <i>phenomenal</i> list of songs to track down on iTunes. Everyone wins!<br />
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Stay tuned during the coming weeks for various sonic flavors from the past four seasons. In the mean time, enjoy...<br />
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PS - You can thank Jordyn for reminding me to post my old mixes; she, too, is doing a mix series, and insinuated that I post these entirely more often than I do. You can follow her series at <a href="http://poppeddensity.blogspot.com/search/label/Year%20of%20the%20Mix">Popped Density</a>.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-67050347760945903312012-01-21T22:43:00.005-07:002012-01-21T23:06:45.721-07:00You were so awesome. You were like Rin Tin Tin -- The Adventures of Tintin<div style="text-align: center;"><img align="middle" alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/4797/theadventuresoftintinpo.jpg" width="400" /></div><br />
Longtime readers of Diversion 2.0 (I feel like there must be at least three of you at this point) know my affinity for adventure media—films, video games, whatever; if it reminds me of a Carl Barks <i>Uncle Scrooge</i> comic book, chances are I’m going to like it an awful lot. It’s with this mindset that I bring up <i>The Adventures of Tintin</i>, a motion-capture film version of Belgian artist Hergé’s famous newspaper comic strips, which, to my understanding, are to European audiences what Uncle Scrooge is to me. Produced by Peter Jackson and helmed by Stephen Spielberg (a man who knows a thing or three about putting together an adventure film), <i>Tintin</i> is swashbuckling and satisfying popcorn cinema, and if it’s not as good as <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i>, it’s at least as fun as <i>Romancing the Stone</i>.<br />
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<i>The Adventures of Tintin</i> is based on three volumes of Hergé’s work, and follows Tintin (Jaime Bell), a newspaper reporter with a penchant for finding hidden treasure, as he attempts to discover the secrets of a model ship with the figurehead of a unicorn. Along the way, he meets Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), a boozy, blustery seaman with at least three catchphrases to his name (“Blustering barnacles!”), and the slinky, sinister Mr. Sakharine (Daniel Craig). Tintin and Haddock’s travels take them from France, to Morocco, to the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, though, disappointingly, there’s not a single sequence involving an old parchment map or a traveling red line.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img align="middle" alt="" src="http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/8905/theadventuresoftintinin.jpg" width="400" /></div><br />
<center><i>Tintin and Haddock manage to get both into and out of several scrapes along the course of the film.</i></center><br />
Motion capture animation, made popular by films like <i>The Polar Express</i> and <i>Disney’s A Christmas Carol</i>, has received a healthy amount of flak from audiences, mostly for the off-putting, Uncanny Valley appearances of its characters. I was concerned that I would spend most of <i>Tintin</i> distracted by its animation style, but after I got over the initial shock of the characters’ realistic proportions and cartoon faces, I was amazed by how good the film looked, and how fluid the action was. Far from an unnecessary stylistic flourish, <i>Tintin</i>’s animation gives way to fantastic, larger-than-life stunts and setpieces, like a harrowing motorcycle chase through a Moroccan city in pursuit of a falcon, or a kinetic, rain-swept duel between two enormous ships.<br />
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And how wonderful the set pieces are! Far from simply shooting them and cutting together the footage, Spielberg takes the freedom brought by animation and uses it to swoop in and out of the background, following characters as they leap, slide and run through the environment, all without a single break in the action. If <i>Tintin</i> succeeds on any level (and it does on numerous ones, I should think), it’s in the movie’s heedless, joyous celebration of movement and spectacle.<br />
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<center><i>During many of Tintin's setpieces, the camera darts in and out of the action, which I rather enjoyed.</i></center><br />
<i>Tintin</i>’s acting performances are solid throughout. I’m unfamiliar with Jaime Bell’s work, but I enjoyed his portrayal of the titular character, doing his best to power through the character’s inherent hollow writing. Craig is wonderful as the menacing Sakharine, to the point that I didn’t even know it was Craig until I watched the credits. The real show-stopper, though, is Serkis, who puts his motion capture experience from <i>Lord of the Rings</i>, <i>King Kong</i>, and <i>Rise of the Planet of the Apes</i> to good use, imbuing Captain Haddock with boisterous energy and personality, not to mention a ruddy good Scottish brogue. Helping round out Tintin’s audio package is a rousing score from composer John Williams, who uses his old-fashioned matinee sensibilities to great effect, while sprinkling in Middle Eastern motifs and playful jazz-era sounds reminiscent of his work in <i>Catch Me If You Can</i>.<br />
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For all its does right, though, <i>Tintin</i> doesn’t escape without a few blemishes. As I mentioned earlier, Tintin as a character has few distinguishing qualities, and while I get that he’s meant to be an audience cypher, he still feels quite dull onscreen. As a result, many of the character development scenes fall flat, especially early in the movie before the introduction of Captain Haddock. Also, while I was able to push past <i>Tintin</i>’s use of motion capture, I realize that some might still be weirded out by overall aesthetic of the characters, though I will say that <i>Tintin</i> looks miles ahead of other motion capture films I’ve seen.<br />
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<center><i>Many characters sport bulbous noses and other exaggerated facial features, which clash a bit with their smooth, normal-looking movements.</i></center><br />
Then there’s the matter of Captain Haddock, a character whose primary trait, apart from being a sea captain and a Scot, is his rampant alcoholism. Usually, it’s played to comic relief, such as when Tintin elaborately steals a key from a quarter of sleeping sailors, only to find out the key unlocks the ship’s liquor cabinet; or when Haddock’s foul, fermented breath is able to keep an airplane running midflight. At other times, Tintin gives Haddock grief about his constant drinking, in a darker, Rather Serious manner, making Haddock’s later scenes of comic drinking all the more surreal. <i>Tintin</i>’s treatment of Haddock’s alcoholism, ironically, is like that of a drunkard, weaving back and forth between hilarity and pathos. W.C. Fields, this film ain’t.<br />
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Still, for the couple knocks against it I have, I still enjoyed the heck out of Tintin. Even without having read a <i>Tintin</i> comic book, the movie still drove home a sense of adventure and excitement like few other films from recent years. The movie ends with the promise of a sequel, and I’ll be hotly anticipating Tintin’s further adventures.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-2613497763013300112011-12-22T12:04:00.001-07:002011-12-22T12:05:40.556-07:00Last but not beast -- Beastly (2011)<div style="text-align: center;"><img align="middle" alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/1220/beastlyposter.jpg" width="400" /></div><br />
Squarely aimed to appeal to <i>Twilight</i> fans looking for more Paranormal Teen Romance, <i>Beastly</i> is a modern retelling of Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s “Beauty and the Beast” set in a posh New York prep school. While the idea of taking a classic fairy tale that has already received a<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_and_the_Beast_%281991_film%29&sig2=C0e5mEeZeI_26Hxc1dxHFg"> pretty definitive update</a> and melding it with pretty girls wanting sullen boys seems colossally wrongheaded, <i>Beastly</i> honestly isn’t as bad as it could be. That’s not to say that it’s not absolutely gosh-awful, because it is, but it’s gosh awful in <i>exactly</i> the right ways and wraps in a wonderfully slight 86 minutes, making for a delightfully gaudy and trashy slice of “teen” entertainment, as perceived entirely by marketing.<br />
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<i>Beastly</i>, as its title suggests, follows the story of the Beast, played by Kyle Kingston (Alex Pettyfer), an obscenely wealthy and vain son of a famous, parentally-distant newscaster (<i>Beastly</i>’s angle is to blame Kyle’s jerkwad nature on his daddy issues, which it works tirelessly in the first half of the movie before dropping entirely in the second). Kyle wins the presidency of some thinly-described school club, and celebrates by publicly humiliating the piercing- and tattoo-laden school “witch,” Kendra (Mary Kate Olsen. Yes, <i>that</i> Mary Kate Olsen), for being a pug-fugly heifer-face, or something to that effect. Kendra responds by turning the pretty boy Kyle into an equally piercing- and tattoo-laden creature of so-called ugliness, though by allowing him to keep his washboard physique and slender build, Kendra effectively makes Kyle a Suicide Boy.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span align="middle">Billboard Dad, <i>this ain't.</i></span></div><br />
Of course, Kyle and his father will have nothing to do with his new, alternative look, and he’s given a private condo overlooking the Hudson, so that he may be spared the humiliation of being seen by other, equally-shallow classmates. In fact, the only person who showed Kyle any non-fake affection before his transformation is the humble, down-to-earth Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens), who attends the prep school on scholarship, tipping the audience off that, because she’s not of privilege, she’s an actually decent human being. Kyle seeks Lindy out and saves her from a murderous drug dealer, letting her stay under his roof until the whole thing blows over. At first, Lindy doesn’t take to him, and balks at his attempts to buy her affection with increasingly-expensive gifts, but as he opens his heart to her, she begins to see his kinder and gentler side, and then it’s all over but the crying (which a friend of mine actually did during our most recent viewing).<br />
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You may have noticed my many oblique references to the many material goods featured in the movie. This is because <i>Beastly</i> is, first and foremost, lifestyle porn. I was honestly blown away by the constant name-dropping of expensive brands like Dolce & Gabbona, Prada, and more, as well as the pie-in-the-sky wealth on prominent display by nearly every character, including and up to Kyle’s sky loft condo, which must cost more in one month than I make in one year.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span align="middle"><i>Love conquers all, especially if you're a bad boy with Jay-Z levels of expendable income.</i></span></div><br />
The second thing <i>Beastly</i> is, or wants to be, is a movie about the Teen Experience; it valiantly attempts to punch up its workaday screenplay with modern, “hip” flourishes, and could not sound more forced if Diablo Cody stuck her head in midway through and began rambling on about Sonic Youth and her hamburger phone. Characters—<i>grown</i> characters—arbitrarily start speaking in “teen”-sounding neologisms (describing someone as “tool-y), and several important, plot-related shots are predicated on text messages, darting across the screen in a see-through montage promising dramatic heft (“Can’t be there 2nite. :(” The heart reels). <br />
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Combining white privilege, American teenagers, angsty romance, and wrapping it in a fairy tale guise sounds like the most surefire recipe for disaster that Man could possibly invent, but for some twisted, indefensible reason, it kinda worked for me. The over-the-top wealth and gratuitous “teen” vernacular works well with the fairy tale story, helping solidify the notion that the whole movie is a folk tale, but a modern one. <i>Beastly</i> doesn’t feel anymore “real” than Beauty and the Beast must have sounded to its original audience, but its heightened, exaggerated telling works well for the story, in the same way a pet-stained rug can, in the right venue, straight-facedly be presented as modern art.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img align="middle" alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/4371/beastlykylelindygreenho.jpg" width="400" /></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span align="middle"><i>In the weirdest, peanut-butter-and-sardines way,</i> Beastly<i> kinda, sorta works, though having a few drinks before viewing can't hurt.</i></span></div><br />
In terms of the acting, there’s nothing abrasively “bad” about <i>Beastly</i>, though I’m certain there’s little that can be truthfully described as “good.” Both Pettyfur and Hudgens bring little insight and depth to their characters (beauty isn’t the only thing skin-deep), but their aggressively bland performances truly, honestly contribute to the above fairy tale stylization. More active and altogether interesting are Kyle’s blind tutor Will (Neil Patrick Harris) and live-in maid Zola (Lisa Gay Hamilton), who both act as cyphers for Lumiere and Mrs. Potts from the Disney version, respectively. Since both actors realize that most of the audience will not care one iota for their collective existence, they give comically broad performances that don’t necessarily gel well with everyone else in the movie, but still entertain nonetheless.<br />
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For reasons my brain will never, ever feel good about, I actually enjoyed <i>Beastly</i>, in a sort of avante garde, tongue-in-cheek way. I will never own it on DVD, and my enjoyment and recommendation comes with a big ol’ asterisk, but if seen for what it is (or, perhaps, what it isn’t), <i>Beastly</i> is a satisfying, amusing exercise in the realm of so-bad-it’s-hilarious filmmaking.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-82690469612027582472011-12-19T11:00:00.000-07:002011-12-19T11:00:06.380-07:00Now groove, sucka! -- Sucker Punch (2011)<img src="http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/9472/suckerpunchposter.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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In <i>Sucker Punch</i>, the main protagonist suffers from a dissociative identity, in one moment occupying the persona of a 1920s bordello girl, and in another, becoming a badass super soldier garbed in fetish-y schoolgirl gear. How interesting, then, that the movie also suffers from a dissociative identity, unable to decide if it wants to be a look into the struggles of an oppressed young woman rebelling against the system, or an elaborate effort to see how much stereotypical nerd-wank director Zack Snyder can cram into the space 110 minutes, which is easily twenty minutes longer than it should be.<br />
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Okay, maybe that’s a bit harsh. For <i>Sucker Punch</i> certainly isn’t the worst film I’ve seen this year, and, at a stretch, “works” the way I think it intends to. When all is said and done, though, <i>Sucker Punch</i> simply doesn’t satisfy me, and what should be a fantastic piece of escapism instead glides past my interest like a sparrow into a closed window.<br />
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The main plot of <i>Sucker Punch</i> concerns Babydoll (Emily Browning), a young woman put in a mental institution after the death of her mother by her slimy, sleazy stepfather (Gerard Plunkett). Stepdad bribes an orderly (Oscar Isaac) to have her lobotomized in five days’ time; that the orderly is only too happy to oblige is because, I dunno, video games didn’t exist in the 1950s and he needs a break in the monotony every once in a while. <br />
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After a yet more exposition, the setting changes, revealing that the mental institution is, in fact, a 1920s bordello, and Babydoll is the new arrival. Babydoll is told that she is to work in the bordello, dancing until the High Roller (Jon Hamm) comes for her in five days’ time. After a set of lessons, Babydoll discovers that her dancing is so wildly captivating, it locks everyone watching into a trance, and she soon uses her newfound abilities to concoct plans of escape. Helping her along the way are overprotective Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), tomboyish Rocket (Jenna Malone), sweetheart-type Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), and introverted Amber (Jamie Chung).<br />
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<img src="http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/2348/suckerpunchbabydoll.png" width="400" /><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><i>They're like the Spice Girls, but with more heavy artillery. And misogyny.</i></div><br />
What makes <i>Sucker Punch</i> unique, and what comprises its entire hook, are Babydoll’s dances themselves, which are not actually shown to the audience, but are instead interpreted as a series of elaborate fantasies involving World War I trenches, bipedal mechs, towering castles, zeppelins, zombies, Vulcan cannon-wielding samurai. It’s an impressive cocktail of otaku imagery, and the film’s biggest draw. <br />
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On paper, <i>Sucker Punch</i> looks like a breezy, breathless mash-up of everything Zack Snyder thought was cool when he was twelve—an empty-headed thrill ride meant to blow away the audience with its eclectic universe and bombastic action. In execution, though, it buckles under the weight of its own mythos, laboring far too long on affairs in the bordello, and generally acting as though the audience did not attend for the express purpose of watching a fishnet stocking-clad B-52 pilot shoot a dragon in the face with a small-arms handgun.<br />
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Seriously, for a movie that sells itself as a fantastical voyage into a patchwork quilt of fan service, it spends a healthy chunk of time (too much, in fact) on the plight of Babydoll and her four cohorts. Ironically, even with the extended character moments, the film’s treatment of Babydoll and co. never becomes meaty enough to become emotionally invested in; each girl has only one or two personality traits, and are difficult to distinguish between after a spell, leaving me to differentiate between them by their different hair styles.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/9290/suckerpunchcoveringfire.jpg" width="400" /></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i>None of the central cast makes much of an impression, creating confusion when they become buried under a mountain of CGI.</i></div><br />
Hell, even the much-vaunted fantasy sequences are hard to get worked-up about after the novelty is worn out, due to its lifeless execution. Tearing through a wave of Helgastian soldier with the help of steam punk gadgetry and <i>Modern Warfare</i>-style guns-with-scopes should be damn invigorating, but instead feels tired, drifting from one shot of mind-bending action to another in the sleepiest was possible. Without the ability to sell themselves as fun or entertaining, the movie’s bread and butter—its set pieces—end up feeling like so much cinematic masturbation.<br />
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Which is a shame, because the action and scenarios are all outstanding ideas. Perhaps it’s because I, like Snyder, was also once a twelve-year-old boy, and can appreciate how Awesome is the notion of throwing together so many disparate elements of nerdy iconography. And while I feel like the fantasies could have been more exciting, Snyder does a good job of keeping the action clear, refraining from the jump-cuts and shaky-cam that many contemporary action flicks use as a crutch.<br />
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<img src="http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/4715/suckerpunchsaturn.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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<i>The film's over-the-top, nonsensical style is commendable, whenever it isn't suffering from its milquetoast action.</i><br />
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I also can’t fault Snyder for what he wanted to accomplish with the bordello bits, either. Wall-to-wall CG shots of pretty girls using martial arts and heavy firearms could get pretty tedious, pretty fast, and I dig the literal notion of creating a fantasy in order to cope with a difficult situation, but most of the chatter about escape and the High Roller drag the movie down like so many pounds of cinder blocks. Ultimately, <i>Sucker Punch</i> turns into one big game of Why So Serious, plodding where it should be springing, and effectively sucking the joy out of what should be a bats@%# crazy good time.<br />
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In truth, perhaps that’s the reason why I’m most frustrated by <i>Sucker Punch</i>. This is a movie I should be hard-wired to like, but its desire to be both a dour character study and phantasmagorical action flick bogs it down. Perhaps it’s worth renting in order to experience the film’s many flights of fancy, but don’t be surprised if you start inventing coping-fantasies yourself.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-77583046085119882202011-10-13T22:02:00.000-06:002011-10-13T22:02:55.506-06:00Give it away Now: Spoilers in Video Games<b>Naturally, this post contains SPOILERS about several popular games and movies. However, most of them are from properties at least ten-years-old (aside from the <i>Batman: Arkham City</i> plot point that inspired this article), so there’s a good chance you’ll be alright if you read this.<br />
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Last week, on Friday, September 30, Kotaku published a <a href="http://kotaku.com/5845285/the-joker-dies-in-the-first-act-of-arkham-city-or-does-he">preview</a> on <i>Batman: Arkham City</i>, a recap of author Kirk Hamilton’s experience with a build he was playing at PAX. Upon release, the article was met with cries of dissent and barely-stifled indignation. The reason: the article’s headline and accompanying graphic revealed that, during the first act of <i>Batman: Arkham City</i>, the Joker dies.<br />
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Sifting through the comments, one can easily pick out a common thread between them: there should have been more warning, the twist shouldn’t have been so obvious to people who may not have wanted to read it, etc. The developers were cool with Hamilton writing about the event, so it’s not as though he was out of line regarding what he should or shouldn’t have said, but <i>Arkham City</i> fans appeared to think differently, at least in regards to how the article was titled.<br />
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This post isn't a complaint about Kotaku's decision-making in publishing, nor is it meant to put Kirk Hamilton on blast for his <i>Arkham City</i> article (which, incidentally, is a well-written and informative preview focused largely on the game's play mechanics). Instead, I want to take a larger look at spoilers and their place in the gaming press.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-wawTSVHLXiU/TpeyaTA0rgI/AAAAAAAABxA/n2SJNZ-8IzY/s800/batman-arkham-city-glide.jpg" style="height: 240px; width: 400px;" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>PARTY FOUL!</i></div><br />
If you follow the gaming press, there's a good chance you come across many small spoilers every day. Every preview on <i>The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword</i>, every review of <i>Resistance 3</i>, every editorial about the latter half of <i>Rage</i> contains potential spoilers, spoilers of where you'll visit and what you'll do when you get there. More often than not, these are minor, relatively harmless spoilers that won't upset any but die-hard dry-runners (I remember hearing a Game Informer podcast where an editor reminisced about some readers complaining when they mentioned that you would get missiles in an upcoming <i>Metroid</i> game. Come on).<br />
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Different, though, are major spoilers about certain, plot-crucial moments. More often than not, they're warned about ahead of time, but sometimes, like in the <i>God of War 3</i> episode of G4's <a href="http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/703445/feedback-god-of-war-iii-and-nintendo-3ds-edition/">Feedback</a>, they can come out unexpectedly. There’s a joked-about “Spoiler Statute of Limitations” that says revealing twists for older games is fine (e.g. “Aerith dies at the end of disc one” isn’t a party foul anymore anymore), but discussing major story elements of games that are new are off-limits (particularly, games that haven’t come out yet).<br />
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Oddly, some story elements first considered spoilers end up perfectly acceptable to talk about as the series goes on. When <i>Assassin's Creed</i> first released in 2007, several publications ended up bending over backwards to avoid discussing the Desmond portions of the game, instead conveying that the title was a period piece, and not set in the near future. Now, Desmond's role in the series well-known, and is an often-discussed aspect of the series.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-J-0wz4nTUuU/TpeyYssec3I/AAAAAAAABw4/JT0dkDTZq_M/s431/assassins-creed-epic-vista.jpg" style="height: 300px; width: 400px;" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Back in 2007, everyone pretended that this was a historical fiction series. Now, it's generally accepted that </i>Assassin's Creed<i> is straight-up sci-fi.</i></div><br />
Why do folks get so worked up about spoilers? For me, it denies me the opportunity to discover the material for myself, and to react to it within the context of the game/movie/whatever. Granted some spoilers don’t phase me too badly (“No, <i>I</i> am your father”), because these moments are often integrated into the public narrative of the piece (is there anyone who doesn’t, at least partially, think of <i>The Sixth Sense</i> as “the movie about where Bruce Willis is dead”). New games/movies/etc. don’t have the opportunity to establish their identity yet, and certain big moments, when taken out of context, can detract from both the individual moment’s impact, and the impact in the larger context of the experience (e.g. the nuke scene from <i>Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare</i>, or the scene in Andrew Ryan’s office in <i>BioShock</i>).<br />
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Games still function even if the story is spoiled, though. Even if I were to find out what happens at the end of <i>Dark Souls</i> before finishing the game, I can still enjoy the title as a journey, having fun with the combat and world-building, and taking in the game as an experience. Perhaps this is why the gaming press is less concerned with spoilers: at the end of the day, games are meant to be <i>played</i>. Compare this to movie press: the average film-goer attends movies on the basis of their narratives (compared to, say, the sound design or the cinematography), so it behooves critics to reveal as little about the fine details of the film's plot as they can (less, in fact, than many trailers). A video game, on the other hand, lives and dies by the strength of its gameplay, and ancillary plot details won't steal the fun from solid game design. Some games suffer more than others by having their story spoiled (I would personally punch anyone who ruins the ending of <i>Alan Wake</i> for me), but the actual gameplay itself often compensates for a less-compelling narrative.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-ijq5dC1hHBY/Tpeyaq2cSfI/AAAAAAAABxI/Ghy_QlbynYk/s800/alan-wake-bright-falls-ferry.jpg" style="height: 240px; width: 400px;" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Even if I knew how the story ended, I could still enjoy the gameplay.</i></div><br />
Part of why I think this Batman story has been so harshly attacked is because video games so often lack quality, spoiler-worthy narratives. Some game stories are as predictable as the sunrise: Mario will always rescue Peach, the Pokemon trainer will always defeat the Elite Four, and that plucky girl you met up with at the start of your quest is probably a princess in disguise. Batman is an unusually character-driven property, and <i>Arkham Asylum</i> provided an involving story that well-utilized nearly every character involved. Fans were likely hoping for similar involvement in the story, and became agitated at the apparent flippancy with which a perhaps-major story point was revealed.<br />
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For me, it ultimately comes down to choice. Sometimes, I don't mind when I find out crucial details of a game's plot in advance, especially if I don't plan on playing through it, or I'm not particularly invested in the game's story (e.g. <i>Gears of War 3</i>). However, there are other times where I'll go to absurd lengths to protect myself from dreaded "<a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/4/27/">thpoilerth</a>;" when <i>Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows</i> first released, I spent most of the two days it took me to finish the book in my room, cut off from communication in case my friend's manager at Pizza Hut stole his phone and texted me a list of which characters died (something my friend warned me he would do and, in fact, did).<br />
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My point being: spoilers are far less offensive when I <i>choose</i> for them to be spoiled. If I choose to go on Wikipedia and read about the plot of a game I don’t have time to play, I am willing to incur any penalties or cheapenings that happen if I do decide to play it. However, if someone on the street were to walk up to me back in 1997 and blurt out that Sheik is actually Zelda in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda_Ocarina_of_Time">disguise</a>, I’d be more than a little ticked off. I should be able to choose if I want a major plot point revealed to me ahead of time, and not a moment before.<br />
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On the other hand, I think I would have preferred to know that I wouldn’t be playing as Snake <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid_2:_Sons_of_Liberty">the whole time</a>.<br />
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[Originally appeared on <a href="http://vgtribune.com/give-it-away-now-spoilers-in-video-games/">VGTribune.com</a>, October 7, 2011]Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-74502556100119847772011-10-09T16:40:00.000-06:002011-10-09T16:40:07.262-06:00Oh, Oh, It's Magic -- Magic: The Gathering: Duel of the Planeswalker 2012<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-cGHC9yUKHfM/TpIhKiNSJnI/AAAAAAAABwo/ZPJuhx9W2CQ/s600/magic-the-gathering-duels-of-the-planeswalkers-2012.jpg" style="height: 228px; width: 400px;" /></div><br />
I've been a fan of collectable card games for over ten years, ever since I bought my first booster pack of Pokémon TCG cards. I'm not sure if it's my latent Montanan predilection for gambling, or because my affection for board games has never truly gone away, but collectable card games have always scratched a gaming itch I can't find anywhere else. Unfortunately, CCGs require two things I, for the most part, lack: an involved community with whom I can play my cards, and a large chunk of disposable income for accumulating new cards.<br />
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Fortunately, Stainless Games has me covered with their series of Magic: The Gathering games of Xbox Live Arcade. With their two Magic titles, Duel of the Planeswalkers and Duel of the Planeswalkers 2012, Stainless provides a refined Magic experience, eschewing the deck-building that can be intimidating for some (i.e. me) in favor of pre-built, balanced decks, while still allowing for a degree of customization, and retaining the series’ deep rule set and satisfying gameplay.<br />
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I cut my teeth into the original Duel of the Planeswalkers back in 2009. The turn-based, strategic combat helped ease my mind when I was stressed, and it even helped me through a post-hangover New Year’s Day. My excitement turned palpable when Stainless announced a follow-up title, Duel of the Planeswalkers 2012, earlier this year; it eventually released on June 15, 2011. I held off buying it at the time because I was playing through DotP’s third DLC pack, and didn’t want to overwhelm myself. When it finally showed up on the Xbox Live Deal of the Week for half price earlier this week, though, it was unavoidable: I purchased it immediately, and have been loving it ever since.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-cL02d6oUmkA/TpIhLJRufkI/AAAAAAAABws/TORhYmg3t6I/s600/magic-the-gathering-duels-of-the-planeswalkers-2012-sprawling-vista.jpg" style="height: 224px; width: 400px;" /></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i>Yeah, they're just cards, but use your imagination, and it looks like </i>this<i>.</i></div><br />
The most immediately-noticeable thing about Duel of the Planeswalkers 2012 is the updated UI. Stainless has cleaned up a good deal of the mess from the original Planeswalkers, streamlining the HUD that shows your cards, life, and what phase of your turn you’re in. Stainless has also made the proceedings go back faster; Plainswalker 2012 has far shorter loading times than the first title, and on a whole, the game seems to clip by faster than its predecessor.<br />
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The new cards look exceptional as well, highly detailed for your zooming pleasure (let’s face it, half the fun of magic is checking out the awesome artwork on the cards). The decks from Duel of the Planeswalkers have been heavily overhauled for their appearance in Planeswalkers 2012, largely keeping the same theme, but adding new cards to the mix. Stainless has also added a few new, more unique decks, like a Black/Blue/White artifact deck, or a Blue/White Creature Deck.<br />
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Of course, graphical polish and new cards aren’t the only things Planeswalkers 2012 has to offer. The game’s single player campaign has been given a dose of player choice, allowing gamers to occasionally choose between two different deck types to play against, or offering a host of puzzle-like one-on-one challenges. In addition to the main campaign, there’s a revenge campaign, which simply re-orders the AI opponents, and a new Archenemy campaign, which pits three players against one super powered one. It’s neither the deepest nor the most original single player game, but it’s a step-up from the previous iteration.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-_TTNK78untQ/TpIhPcxjaVI/AAAAAAAABww/R4SxidwMK58/s600/magic-the-gathering-duels-of-the-planeswalkers-2012-combat.png" width="400" /></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i>Clashing art. Go with it, alright?</i></div><br />
I haven’t had time to check out the multiplayer yet, but my enthusiasm for online Duel of the Planeswalkers died after one-too-many folks who bailed on my game when it looked like they wouldn’t win. Bummer.<br />
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For gamers who like collectable card games, now is a great time to pick up a digital iteration of the best one out there, and for 400 Microsoft Points ($5), it’s an absolute steal.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-78694556712756240652011-09-29T10:43:00.001-06:002011-09-29T10:43:58.249-06:00We'll Be Right Back, After These MessagesAs you have no doubt realized by now, I have been less-than-punctual in my delivery of my Revenge of the Thirty-Day Song Challenge entries. I could give a full explanation of why my performance has been so slack, but there's a good chance it would sound something like HOWL HOWL GARGLE HOWL GARGLE HOWL HOWL HOWL GARGLE HOWL GARGLE HOWL HOWL GARGLE GARGLE HOWL GARGLE GARGLE GARGLE HOWL SLURRP UUUURGH COMPLAINING, so I'll instead refrain. <br />
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I have, though, taken steps to open up my free time, so I fully intend to get back on the wagon with posting, if only to expedite progress on my nearly-ten-months-old Disney blog series. Look forward to future praises, grousings, and general <i>words</i> on cheap Blu-rays, songs, and, yes, even video games. <br />
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End of line.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-7292731611507792812011-09-22T11:15:00.000-06:002011-09-22T11:15:52.323-06:00Revenge of the Thirty-Day Song Challenge - Day 16<i>Day 16 - A Sequel Song </i><br />
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Occasionally, certain songs become popular enough to warrant a follow-up. The need to create a song with thematic ties to another, earlier song makes absolutely no sense to me, but it's been around for a good chunk of time in pop music. Sometimes the relationship is explicit to the point of being tedious (e.g. "The Devil Went Back to Georgia"), and sometimes you hardly even know it's there. <br />
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<b>Kelly Clarkson - "My Life Would Suck Without You" </b><br />
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<iframe width="400" height="225" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/cRM70Jw7F4M" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
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Hands up: who here knew this was a sequel song? <i>Without</i> looking at the Wikipedia page? I sure as hell didn't; why would I? Lyrically, it's a standard, if rather catchy, getting back together anthem. But no, dear readers, it's not just any getting back together anthem, but instead is the follow-up to her massive 2004 hit "Since U Been Gone." <br />
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Why make a sequel to a song that went number two nearly four years prior to "My Life's" release? We may never know, but I can take a guess. Clarkson's 2007 album, <i>My December</i>, was a grandiose, epic piece of Evanescence-y alt-rock, and despite garnering largely positive reviews and eventually going platinum, it never posted the same numbers as her previous album, <i>Breakaway</i>, nor did it produce as many hit singles. After such an experimental (and controversial) project, I imagine the label wanted to return to something a bit more secure--from this, we retread the familiar ground of one of Clarkson's biggest singles, written by one of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Martin">most successful</a> pop songwriters of the last generation. I have literally no proof to support any of this, but it makes that most sense as to why "My Life" sounds so incredibly different from every other song on <i>All I Ever Wanted</i>. <br />
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Anyway, "My Life Would Suck Without You." It's a catchy bit to pop-rock, carried by a simple, driving guitar line, constant (if artificial) drum and cymbal track, and an occasional swooping synthesizer. All of this is augmented by Martin's titanic-sized hook that peaks in all of the right places, and Clarkson's soaring vocals, as passionate and energetic as anything one can hope from the most successful alumnus of American Idol. It's a perfect track for white-girl car-dancing, which I've indulged in occasionally, and I'm not even a white girl. <br />
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Goodness knows how legitimate it is as a sequel song (though apparently Max Martin wrote it explicitly as a sequel to "Since U Been Gone;" kudos to him for not having the gall to call it "My Life Would Suck Without U"), but it's a damn fine slice of late 2000's pop all the same. Who knows what the future will hold for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stronger_(Kelly_Clarkson_album)">Stronger</a>, but as long as Clarkson keeps her ear for tight, energetic anthems like this, I'll be happy.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-84873886664601867412011-09-19T21:05:00.000-06:002011-09-19T21:06:56.464-06:00Our Feature Presentation (25/50) -- Tangled (2010)<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Kjvul1_uDdQ/TR2H8-4eXcI/AAAAAAAAAuE/fx5JqqX-6m0/tangled-poster_409x599.jpg" style="height: 587px; width: 400px;" /></div><br />
Of the over 50 films part of the Disney Animated Features canon, <i>Tangled</i> led me on the biggest emotional rollercoaster. I first caught wind of the project back in 2009, when it was titled <i>Rapunzel</i>, and, indeed, there was a <i>Rapunzel</i> teaser trailer that made its way onto the Blu-ray release of <i>The Princess and the Frog</i>. What happened from there, no one can truly know, but here’s what conventional speculation and Wikipedia tell us: <i>The Princess and the Frog</i> was a mild box office success, rather than the titanic megahit it was supposed to be, and Disney execs got a bit gun shy. <i>The Princess and the Frog</i> was marketed as a back-to-roots labor of love, similar to projects released in the 90’s; since that didn’t seem to work, Disney decided to give audiences a new vision of its Rapunzel project. From this bit of decision-making came one of the worst promotional campaigns I’ve seen in film, now titled <i>Tangled</i>, with trailers that made the movie out to be a hip, snarky take on the classic fairy tale, a la <i>Shrek</i>.<br />
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My antipathy for <i>Shrek</i> doesn’t run as deep as some in the blogosphere, but if there’s one thing that absolutely does not belong in a Disney project, it’s snarky, hipper-than-thou “attitude.” Granted, it’s not like Disney hasn’t <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_%281997_film%29">attempted</a> <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aladdin_%281992_Disney_film%29%E2%80%9D">hipness</a>, but the Disney Animated Features brand has lived and died by its sincerity, and even its <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Groove%E2%80%9D">most</a> <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilo_%26_Stitch%E2%80%9D">irreverent</a> <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_on_the_Range_%28film%29%E2%80%9D">projects</a> have had a strong emotional core. Fortunately, <i>Tangled</i>, turned out to be one of the most sincere projects seen from Disney in quite some time, with strong characters, a good story, and the sense never to posture as “above” the material.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-2dAYd1f4LkU/Tnf9Yud6HPI/AAAAAAAABwc/d_ykSr-nX0A/tangled-tower.jpg" style="height: 225px; width: 400px;" /></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i>Old-fashioned, yet still fresh, </i>Tangled <i>is an absolute goodie.</i></div><br />
<i>Tangled</i> begins with a narration, where we learn about a centuries-old witch named Mother Gothel (Donna Murphy) and magical flower that keeps her young. The local queen is expecting a child, though, and needs the flower to deliver the baby (in lieu of Rampion, I suppose), so the flower is found and given to her, and she safely delivers a happy baby girl. Gothel, however, steals the child, whose hair now possesses the flower’s healing power, and raises her in an old, obscure tower. Brokenhearted, the king and queen begin a tradition of releasing a series of paper lanterns every year on the missing princess’s birthday, as a way to remember her, and to find her if possible.<br />
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Cut to eighteen years later. Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) is now a beautiful young lady, content with living in her tower, but for one thing: more than anything, she wants to see the lights that appear in the sky on her birthday. This would require leaving the tower, which, to Gothel, is completely out of the question. After a large row that ends in Gothel angrily telling Rapunzel that she can never, ever leave the tower, Rapunzel appears defeated in her desire to see the lights in person.<br />
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Ah, but enter Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi), a crafty thief who has just stolen a crown belonging to the lost princess. After ditching his accomplices, the Stabbington brothers (Ron Perlman, <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armie_Hammer%E2%80%9D">Armie Hammer</a>-style), Flynn hides himself in a non-descript tower… where he is promptly knocked over the head and captured by Rapunzel. Rapunzel offers Flynn a deal: if he will take her to see the lights, she will give him the crown. What follows is a bit of a road movie, where Rapunzel and Flynn learn about themselves, and grow closer together.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img height="178" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-uOudQksiTMU/Tnf9WK0oERI/AAAAAAAABwU/tA76w3vzFtU/tangled-rapunzel-and-flynn-lantern-scene.jpg" style="height: 225px; width: 400px;" /> </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Prototypical Disney tropes and quippy dialogue meet in the best way possible, kinda like Rapunzel and Flynn in this scene. </i></div><br />
I mentioned in my <i>The Princess and the Frog</i> write-up that <i>Princess</i> had an old-but-new approach to Disney filmmaking, a self-conscious throwback to the pictures of the Disney Renaissance, peppered with newer narrative ideas and details. <i>Tangled</i>, by contrast, has a new-but-old take on its conventions as a Disney feature; while it’s built with new-fangled, gorgeous CGI and 3D effects, it’s made with a much more traditional (and, frankly, much more Disney-esque) story progression, cast of characters, song style, the whole nine. I think it’s this sheer, unadulterated Disney-ness that gave <i>Tangled</i> such success; <i>Tangled</i> is the second-highest grossing Disney feature in the United States (after <i>The Lion King</i> and <i>Aladdin</i>), and gets the jollies of more people I personally know than any other Disney film of the past ten years (though <i>The Emperor’s New Groove</i> comes close). <br />
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And yet, for a movie so unabashedly sincere, <i>Tangled</i> is incredibly funny in a completely 2011 way. Small, slick lines creep their way into the dialogue (“Frankly, I’m too scared to ask about the ‘frog.’” “‘Chameleon.’” “Nuance.”), and it has a penchant for quotable deadpans like few other films in the Disney canon (“You should know that this is the strangest thing I’ve ever done!”). <i>Tangled</i> never tries to be above its fairy tale material, though, and gracefully treads the line between clever and smirking (as opposed to many of its contemporaries, which go for out-and-out <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/73/Trollface.png%E2%80%9D">troll face</a>).<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-u1eKYAQ-7WU/Tnf9bvFnwNI/AAAAAAAABwg/cyNQC0ii77c/tangled-flynn-and-frying-pan.jpg" style="height: 225px; width: 400px;" /></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i>Good lines about in </i>Tangled<i>. </i><br />
<i>"Oh mama, I have got to get me one of these."</i></div><br />
Helping to sell the humor is <i>Tangled</i>’s cast of well-rounded, enjoyable characters. Rapunzel operates straight out of the Ariel school of strong female protagonists, but she’s given the chance to develop her character more often than not; I love her little “Eeep”s, and the scene where she rebounds between ecstatic and remorseful (“Best day ever! … I am a terrible human being.”) is one of my favorites. Flynn is a suave, Han Solo-esque rogue who isn’t quite all that he seems (original as sun in the desert, I know, but it works for him), and Levi gives an extra “aw, shucks” charm to him. Mother Gothel is a powerful diva of a villain, equal parts dangerous and drama queen; I also love her faux-motherly relationship with Rapunzel, and she manipulates her through guilt without Rapunzel’s knowing. Even the by-now-requisite animal sidekicks manage to stand out, using silent comedy to the best possible effect. Pascal, the chameleon, uses small, specific movements to sell his character’s humor, which Maximus, the horse, performs in huge, broad strokes—in a way, it’s almost like having Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in the same movie.<br />
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Speaking of non-vocal parts, I want to use this paragraph specifically to talk about Rapunzel’s parents, the king and queen. Both the king and queen are rarely seen in in <i>Tangled</i>, but they have one of my favorite scenes in the movie—it’s near the two-thirds mark, just before the first lantern is about to be released to the kingdom. The queen (whose resemblance to Rapunzel is remarkable) comes to fetch her husband. She fastens his cloak, meeting his eyes with a weak, sad smile, and we see a single tear fall from his cheek. Though the filmmakers do nothing to explicitly spell it out, we are able to glean exactly what is going through the king and queen’s mind: that what has been alluded to as a yearly festival is, in fact, a painful and vivid reminder of how, eighteen years ago, their only daughter was taken from them, and that time has done nothing to dull their hurt. Dear readers, it lasts all of twenty seconds, and it is HEARTBREAKING. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-wTUjZfeeFrc/Tnf9UJCYVYI/AAAAAAAABwM/V-VLQ-Sauq0/tangled-king-and-queen.jpg" style="height: 225px; width: 400px;" /><br />
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<i>Their screen time is very brief, but the king and queen both create a lasting impression, at least for me.</i></div><br />
Moving on. The animation in <i>Tangled</i> is absolutely gorgeous. In particular, the film makes delicious use of color, particularly the deep greens of the forest and royal purples of the kingdom. There are also a multitude of small details that help give the world its place, things like the textures on Rapunzel’s wall and Pascal’s scales, the small floating particles in the water, and the individually detailed hairs on Rapunzel’s head (they even get disheveled during a scene of conflict). Character animation is stellar as well; everyone looks soft, and different from other CG animated pictures. Lastly, <i>Tangled</i> makes perhaps the best use of 3D I’ve seen in any movie, and though I don’t feel like I’m less involved when I watch it at home on 2D, I sure wouldn’t mind paying to see it in 3D again.<br />
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<i>Tangled</i> also happens to be an excellent-sounding film. I consider myself a small Alan Menkin fanboy, and his score for <i>Tangled</i> is exceptional, especially the way he uses the score to punctuate gags and action moments. The songs aren’t stone-cold classics, but are more than pleasant, and while I don’t expect to find someone on the street humming “I’ve Got A Dream,” I could certainly understand if they wanted to.<br />
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I was pretty terrified when <i>Tangled</i> came out, but since then, it’s not only assuaged my doubts, but also has moved on to become one of my absolute favorite Disney films; not bad for a movie that just came out less than a year ago. Excellent characters and humor, fun songs, and a story that is all-but-guaranteed to leave a warm, gooey feeling inside the viewer, <i>Tangled</i> comes highly recommended, and is an absolute must-see for folks who are worried that Disney has lost its touch.<br />
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Top Three Songs<br />
<ol><li>“Mother Knows Best (Reprise)”</li>
<li>“When Will My Life Begin”</li>
<li>“I’ve Got a Dream”</li>
</ol><br />
Favorite Scene<br />
<ul><li>Rapunzel first leaves the tower</li>
</ul><br />
Favorite Character<br />
<ul><li>Pascal</li>
</ul><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-9p8ef9tnXqU/Tnf9XrF_w6I/AAAAAAAABwY/23foRvqCGMA/tangled-pascal.jpg" style="height: 141px; width: 225px;" /><br />
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The Jar Jar<br />
<ul><li>Old Man</li>
</ul><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-cKF4QvH6aMw/Tnf9VBgY_tI/AAAAAAAABwQ/Z_m8EYN0fc0/tangled-old-man.jpg" style="height: 141px; width: 225px;" /><br />
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<b>How I Watched It</b><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-9Ueiq1bLn0M/TnfmYHML5KI/AAAAAAAABwE/GersRFdRb_U/s640/2011-09-19_19-01-54_434.jpg" style="height: 401px; width: 300px;" /></div><br />
With all of the prosal love and kisses I gave <i>Tangled</i>, you’d better believe I snagged this one the first day it was available. <i>Tangled</i> comes in three flavors: a single-disc DVD, a double-disc Blu-ray plus DVD, and a four-disc 3D Blu-ray that comes with the 2D version, a DVD copy, and a digital copy. My Samsung is not 3D-compatible, so I was more than happy to save ten dollars and buy the double-disc edition. <br />
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As expected, <i>Tangled</i> looks bloody fantastic in high definition. Colors are bright and saturated, and the small details I mentioned earlier are easy to spot with the enhanced resolution. I couldn’t use the surround sound with my review, but I have no reason to believe it would be anything less than at-least-pretty-good. <br />
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For a film that just came out last year, there is a surprising lack of bonus features. Included are several surprisingly-lengthy deleted scenes, a few alternate openings to the movie, and a small making of featurette, “Untangled: The Making of a Fairy Tale.” The featurette is hosted by Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi, and is all of twelve minutes long, and though it does have a few interesting bits, it’s too kid-centric and EPK-happy to be of much educational use to anyone. <br />
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To be honest, I’m a bit bummed by this release’s supplemental extras. Perhaps it would make more sense if <i>Tangled</i> had flopped at the box office, or if it was made a while ago, but <i>Tangled</i> was the 10th highest-grossing film of 2010, and the third-highest-grossing Disney film domestically. I suppose they figure the kids wouldn’t watch them anyway (they’re probably right), but I would love for more info about <i>Tangled</i>, especially since it has such a long and complicated development history.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-38196043251486167082011-09-16T15:50:00.000-06:002011-09-16T15:50:39.983-06:00Revenge of the Thirty-Day Song Challenge - Day 15<i>Day 15 - A One-Hit Wonder </i><br />
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The term "one-hit wonder" is a bit annoying, because it is terribly vague. Is it only an artist that had one, and only one, single? Perhaps an artist that only had one single in the Top 40? Maybe the artist had other singles, but they were all overshadowed by their grand uber-single. It's a rich tapestry. Regardless, today's entry is on a band primarily known for one, and only one, ultra-ubiquitous single.<br />
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<b>Crazy Town – “Butterfly” </b><br />
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I was ragging a bit on the 90’s <a href="http://diversiontwopointoh.blogspot.com/2011/09/revenge-of-thirty-day-song-challenge_09.html">the other day;</a> I’ll add a few more qualifications onto it. I don’t think I’ll mind <i>too</i> heavily when 90’s nostalgia comes back in, but I think, musically, I’ll be much more receptive to tracks from the late 90’s and early 00’s (The Offspring, Coolio, Good Charlotte, etc.) than from the early 90’s (Mariah Carey, Boyz II Men, Milli Vanilli, etc.). There are a few reasons for this, the largest one being that I did not listen to much music from the early 90’s, and thus have no prior attachment (another smaller one: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqGTb4ZFAS8">I hate that stupid keyboard sound</a>). Ah, but the late 90’s, now we have some semblance of awareness on monsieur Testerman’s part (hell, I’ll even be cool with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra_%28band%29">Cleopatra</a>). <br />
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One late 90’s song that I will be receptive to entirely without irony is Crazy Town’s number-one hit, “Butterfly.” A staple of middle school dances and house parties everywhere during the days of Palm Beach County, “Butterfly” is one of the only songs I can think of where the rock/rap genre of music actually sounds <i>fun</i>. Consider: Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit (gah, those names), Saliva; all were angsty buggers with copious amounts of yelling thrown into their lyrical flow. Great for dudes who were into ostensibly heavier music (like me), but not so awesome for folks who were already sold on the concept of “constantly sounding angry.” <br />
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“Butterfly,” on the other hand, has a playful, light delivery, and its white-boy cadence sounds much more appealing since it lacks any pretensions of being “hardcore.” The song’s instrumentation is pretty damn catchy too, with its slightly-hypnotic bass line and dreamy guitar riff acting as the melodic center points. Coupled with the turntable interlude and serviceable drums, and it’s perhaps the most conceptually-pure form of the dreaded late 90’s rock/rap, and its lack of drop-D chugs make it all the more satisfying. <br />
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Lastly, and I’m giving it its own paragraph to mark its importance, is the chorus. If the success of “Butterfly” can be attributed to any one element, it’s the chorus, a smooth-as-1999-will-permit series of corny lines that gel into one big, satisfying slice of Just Go With It (as opposed to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Go_With_It"><i>Just Go With It</i></a>). Perhaps it’s a generational thing, but singing along with “Butterfly,” especially with other people, feels incredibly cool (it also feels incredibly stupid, but the two emotions create a nice synergy together). <br />
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Crazy Town, for all intents and purposes were never heard from again. They released a follow-up album, Dark Horse, in 2002, and a total of four more singles, but none of them ever charted on the Billboard Hot 100. Apparently they are fixing to release a new album for the first time in nearly ten years. If they end up touring to promote it, I bet I can guess at least one song they’ll play at their show.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-11115705825832154382011-09-12T12:45:00.000-06:002011-09-12T12:50:29.996-06:00Revenge of the Thirty-Day Song Challenge - Day 14<i>Day 14 – A 10’s Song</i><br />
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Alright, we’re about a year and a half into the new decade, which doesn’t leave with much to write about (unless you were clever about this challenge and <a href="http://poppeddensity.blogspot.com/2011/09/revenge-of-30-day-song-challenge-day-8.html">picked a theme</a>). Still, I’m nothing if not persistent, so here we go!<br />
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<b>Kanye West - "Power" </b><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="328" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/YOshf_FeG6c" width="400"></iframe><br />
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An innovative producer and creative wordsmith, Kanye West is one of my favorite rappers of the past ten years. However, because of his rather unfortunate penchant for acting like a jackass, I find that his music is best enjoyed in a bubble, willfully ignoring his comments about George W. Bush vs. black people, or his musings on exactly which music video is the greatest of all time. <br />
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"Power" was Kanye's first single released after his self-imposed exile following his notorious interruption at the 2009 VMAs. I had a good deal of interest vested in this song when it first came out; not only to see what the reaction to it would be, but also whether or not it would be any good. I had given his previous album, <i>808s & Heartbreak</i>, a pass, and I was ready for some new content (Kan-tent?) that I could actively care about. Fortunately, "Power" came through. <br />
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Like most of my favorite Kanye West songs, "Power" has some stellar production work. "Power" samples what sounds like Native American chanting and mixes it with huge-sounding drums and a warble-y guitar, giving it a hugely unique sound, and one that stands out many modern rap songs in that pop space. Lyrically, it's a return to Kanye's more specific, personal writing style that was prominent on his first two albums, and while lines that are very particular to Kanye West make it hard to forget exactly who is performing the song, I do enjoy some of his lateral thinking punchlines ("Everybody, we rollin'/With some light-skinned girls and some Kelly Rowlands"). <br />
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My only gripe with the track (apart from how pleased Kanye sounds with himself during most of the song--then again, we <i>are </i>talking about Kanye West) is the two-minute outro portion of the song, which takes a perfectly radio-friendly hip hop single and extends it into over-indulgence. In fact, I have this problem with nearly every track on the album this song comes from, <i>My Beautiful, Dark, Twisted Fantasy</i> (ugh, even the title is self-consciously overbearing). Most of the songs say everything they need to in 3-4 minutes, then stick around anywhere from 1-5 minutes for the apparent sheer, unadultered hell of it (seriously, there's no reason why "Runaway" needs to be nine minutes long). It's this faux-epicness that keeps me from giving it more than two or three casual listens. <br />
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Still, I dig "Power" overall. The production is great, the chorus works, and the song just feels good. It's also one <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppamk0iTCQ8">hell</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlzdKhOTqEs">of</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji0c4RnvdGk">a</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BTo-Wzdong">trailer</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlmSzZKeExY">song</a>.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-44442108096133118992011-09-10T15:57:00.000-06:002011-09-10T15:57:26.570-06:00Revenge of the Thirty-Day Song Challenge - Day 13<i>Day 13 – A 2000’s Song</i><br />
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The Aughts (are they seriously called that?) are still pretty fresh to do musical post-morctem on, but I will say this: the early 2000’s pop music scene was pretty well-saturated with rap. Granted, it’s not like rap has really gone away since then, but it seems like, between ’02 and ’05, a constant revolving door of new Yung Schmos or Lil Shawtys had a new single tearing up the charts. We’ve since segued into more dance-heavy territory, but I’ll never forget the period of time where the best way to dance was simply to pull your pants up and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1UhPz_73cY">lean back</a>.<br />
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<b>Chingy – “Right Thurr”</b><br />
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Remember Chingy? Probably not. But if you listened to the radio during the summer of 2003, there’s a good chance you’ve heard him, and his breakthrough single “Right Thurr.” “Right Thurr” is an ode to a lady, a lady who Chingy hits on repeatedly through the course of the song, though where she stands in relation to the lyrics is a bit dubious (One line: “I’m thinking ‘bout snatching you up, dirty, and make you mine.” The very next line: “Look at her hips, look at her legs, ain’t she stacked?”). The production is nothing special, with only a slightly acid-sounding synthesizer giving it any character at all, and the lyrics are pretty inane at best (“I swooped on her like an eagle swooping down on its prey”).<br />
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What, then, made “Right Thurr” so popular that it managed to climb all the way up to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100? Bugger if I know. If I had to posit a guess, though, I would submit that “Right Thurr” benefited from The Ke$ha Effect. The Ke$ha Effect (in addition to sounding like a 3D IMAX concert movie) is what happens when a song is so dumb, listeners start taking to it ironically, only to become caught up in the song on a legitimate level. The difference here is that while Ke$ha can be reasonably defended on a musically creative level, I’m not sure how adamantly I can come to the aid of “Right Thurr,” a song whose primary appeal is dumbness for the sake of being dumb, without any clever behind-the-scenes design decisions.<br />
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I remember liking “Right Thurr” during the height of its popularity, but time has not been kind to it. Nor, indeed, to its artist; though he is apparently still active and working on a new album, Chingy hasn’t had a Top 40 single since 2006’s “Pullin’ Me Back.” It’s just as well, I suppose—after all, not everyone can be Ludacris or Jay-Z.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-88195835002570258882011-09-05T13:09:00.000-06:002011-09-09T01:12:05.172-06:00Revenge of the Thirty-Day Song Challenge - Day 12<i>Day 12 – A 90’s Song</i><br />
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I briefly skirted by my mild antipathy for 90’s music during <a href="http://diversiontwopointoh.blogspot.com/2011/09/revenge-of-thirty-day-song-challenge_03.html">Day 11</a>, so I think I’ll clarify my position today. I don’t hate 90’s music or anything, I’m just not a very big fan. I enjoy Native Tongue hip-hop from groups like A Tribe Called Quest and Black Sheep, I appreciate the developments happening in pop music near the turn of the century, and I have no doubts in my mind about the quality of 90’s country music, but that’s about where my enthusiasm ends. <br />
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For one thing, I’m not a big fan of the R&B movement that happened during most of the early 90’s. For some reason, groups like Boyz II Men and artists like Mariah Carey never caught on with me, and most songs put out during this time sound terribly dated today—while songs from Boston and Steve Miller can arguably stand toe-to-toe with modern rock ‘n’ roll artists, I wouldn’t think twice about wanting to put a song from someone like Janet Jackson up against one from someone like Beyonce (hell, I wouldn’t put it up against one from Kelly Rowland).<br />
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Second, I’m not a fan of grunge. Perhaps it’s because I’m a pop music fan, and grunge runs almost counter to the idea of pop music, but artists like Soundgarden, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam simply don’t have enough melody for me to care about them. Not to mention their <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SWyU_Gfdig">slightly unorthodox</a> vocal stylings.<br />
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<b>Blink-182 – “Josie (Everything’s Gonna Be Fine)”</b><br />
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You know what was good in the 90’s, though? Pop punk. Granted, it was a different breed than the more emotionally-tinged tunes of Fall Out Boy and Jimmy Eat World (your mileage may vary), but the basics were there: fast-paced, energetic songs built with an attention to melody. The 90’s begat many-a decent pop punk acts, including The Offspring, Good Charlotte, and Green Day, who arguably ushered in the whole movement altogether. <br />
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Helping lead the post-Green Day pop punk charge was a certain trio called Blink-182, who, in a sea of similar acts, managed to differentiate themselves and achieve both fame and forture as follows: while most late-90’s/early 2000’s pop punk groups wrote bratty, snarky songs about, I dunno, how girls are chubies, or something,<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=2438565808790371654#" style="text-decoration: none;" title="As opposed to nowadays, when the songs are about how girls are chubies, and how sad it makes the boys singing about them.">*</a> Blink-182 wrote bratty, snarky songs about poop and penises. Again, <a href="http://www.punknews.org/review/5638">your mileage may vary</a>.<br />
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Occasionally, though, Blink produced semi-romantic love songs, shedding much (though not all) of their sophomoric sensibilities while hanging onto their knack for a good hook. “Josie” is one such track. Really, it’s a very sweet, earnest song about a guy who likes his girlfriend, which seems much more original when delivered <i>vis-a-vis</i> Mark Hoppus’s blazing-fast bass-playing and Travis Barker’s signature spazz-drumming. The verse melody is pretty hummable (notable, especially compared to other modern pop punk songs), and “Josie’s” mixture of romance and unbounding energy make it feel like a can of Monster bought for Valentine’s Day.<br />
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Pop punk is a different landscape than it was during the second Clinton administration, but I still enjoy “Josie” and all of its rough edges—similar to the song’s protagonist, “Josie” takes me away to a better place.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2438565808790371654.post-63418643648624493772011-09-04T11:09:00.000-06:002011-09-09T08:30:19.635-06:00Revenge of the Thirty-Day Song Challenge - Day 11<i>Day 11 - An 80's Song</i><br />
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Aw yeah, this is where it's at. It seems like contemporary culture is awash with 80's nostalgia (<i>Hot Tub Time Machine</i>, <i>Conan the Barbarian</i>, etc), and as long as that means it's cool to blast songs from Eddie Money, Rick Springfield, and The Outfield, cashing in on the memories of baby-boomers can only be a good thing (though I also dread the inevitable 90's nostalgia wave of the late-2010's and early-20's, during which we'll doubtlessly see the revival of grunge, <i>Married... with Children</i>, and JNCOs). Anyway, here's an 80's gem I discovered during one of my regular Helena trips last year (thank you, Greg Kihn).<br />
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<b>The Scorpions – “No One Like You”</b><br />
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One reason why I like 80's music is because of its preponderance to flat-out “go for it.” This is particularly true with the Glam Rock movement (Hair Metal, for those keeping score at home), with wicked-hot licks, shredding guitar solos, and soaring choruses; and no one made better Hair Metal songs than The Scorpions. There were bands that made “better” music, as well as groups that certainly were more “metal,” but, to me, nothing screams “The 80’s!” more than titanic riffs from the likes of “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” “Big City Nights,” and “Dynamite.” <br />
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My favorite, though, is “No One Like You,” a track that reaches the same giddy heights of “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” but shows far greater indulgence to my music cred, because it is slightly more obscure. From the outset, the song kicks open the door with a squeal-y, gnarly-sounding riff that morphs into a dual-guitar harmony, reminding me of the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TdqpWiBliw"><i>SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron</i></a> theme song, and being all-the-better for it. Also, as a fan of instrumental start-stops, I like how the guitars drop in and out of the song, providing greater dynamics and sound-variety.<br />
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Unfortunately, I don’t think over-the-top metal antics like The Scorpions could work nowadays; there’s too much of a temptation to be ironic, or to position one's self as “better than” the material (minus The Darkness, but every rule has to have an exception). Part of what makes bands like The Scorpions so great is how sincere they are—if he says he’s gonna rock you, you’d better be damn Skippy that he’s gonna rock you, pretensions not included. Still, even without additional entries in the Glam Rock sweepstakes, songs like “No One Like You,” “Holy Diver,” and “Run to the Hills” are still quite rockable to this day. Do yourself a favor: find the nearest drop-top you can, and blast this song while it’s still summer.Andrew Testermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17636448677366233823noreply@blogger.com2