A post relating to Summer Sequels

It happens every summer. The summer movie lists come out and everybody starts to complain that it's the same films (movies I suppose) over and over. It goes like this:

Action films (they will be full of color and general connections to the current state of political affairs).

Children's films from the "lame" production companies (usually Dreamworks and whoever put out Hoodwinked and Gnomeo and Juliet).

Sequels (self-explanatory unless you're an idiot).

I'm addressing specifically sequels since this summer, movies have covered all three. Cars 2, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Final Destination 5, Conan the Barbarian 3d, Spy Kids: All the Time in the World (seriously, this is happening).

Yeah that's Jessica Alba, the kiss of death with any film but that's another post.

Every summer, everybody complains. But the complaints are never as loud as when they're lodged against sequels. And the complaints are understandable. "It's the same plot as before", "They're not even trying,", "they're just repackaging the same movie for idiots". Yeah, that's all pretty annoying but it's all bullshit because every movie is a repackage. In a way, the studios are being more honest with us when they spit out a sequel.

Instead of giving us "new" movies that are repackages, the studio is saying "Look, let's be honest. We know you don't want the same thing you had before but we also know you'll bitch like an in-house soccer team promised pizza after a game but getting a ride home instead if we try to throw a provocative, emotionally-charged film at you. But then when we do give you brilliance, you won't come and bitch all summer that you just want to enjoy yourself."

Foreign? Fuck you I've got a sunburn!

I'm as cynical as the next liberal post-ad in a shitty job. I love film and I do feel a strange fury when a friend mentions how hilarious Hangover 2 is. But I'm also not stupid.

Every person on the planet who has watched more than one movie has had the Moment. The Moment when you're watching a movie and you're moved. That doesn't mean you saw Saving Private Ryan or Naked, it just means a movie touched you in a way that nothing else has. To be honest, for me it was Royal Tenenbaums. Cliche in two ways. On one side, cliche because I'm one of those people who loves "artistic films" but can't get into "indie" public domain movies like Garden State and then on the other, a cliche because I love the public domain of "artistic films". But with all that knowledge that film, since I was fifteen, has chosen for me any other film I've seen. The only reason I haven't watched every film derivative of Royal Tenenbaums exclusively is because I started living with a film-maker who made me watch the gamut. That Moment I'm speaking of can be a stupid, fart-filled comedy or a tear jerker of a drama but it guides every selection past the Moment.

We live in a society and, as a society, we live as a group and as a group there are films that maintain huge box office gross and box gross maintains what happens to the film after it premiers. This is why we're up to number three in the Transformer series and still at one for Happy Go Lucky.

Let me break this down a little further. We all like bright colors. We all get excited by explosions. We all cry when a nice person or dog dies. We all swoon when two people who are set up as not belonging together get together. We love references to our own life in wide or tight scope. You cut all of these into a film and skirt over a human being's "bullshit sensor" and you have a winner. It doesn't need to convince you, the movie just needs to give you any decent reason to love it. Just like politics.

So let's just say, for simplicity sake, the majorities Moment is Avatar. Bright colors, the character you've fallen in love with dies, it's kind of connected to the real world. We went fucking nuts, didn't we? Most money for a film evar! This same formula, that took a bunch of giant blue people and put them in a context that vaguely related to the real world, is applied to every movie.

I give you Super 8.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpzUCA5i6zY

(BTW, the company can go fuck itself for not allowing me to embed and not allowing any images on google. If that link doesn't work just search for the fucking trailer. Asses.)

Directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Stephen Spielberg. Who else is seeing this and not thinking "E.T.! I loved that movie when I was a kid!" or even Close Encounters. The Super 8 trailers are vague for a reason the same reason E.T. trailers are vague. And we as a populace remember and we go to see it for a little of that Moment. How about Apollo 18? A film built on the urban legend that the Apollo 18 mission did happen... and they found something. BUM BUM BUUUUUM. A little of that old feeling with a little new mixed in.

So what's my point? To put it simply, again, is EVERY film that comes out in summer, whether sequel or not, is a rehash of old films and at least sequels are the most honest of the bunch. They already got you with the first one and now they want you for the next. And the next. And the next. And the next. And the next.

Don't fake, people. You loved the first Transformer and you threw your money at the second. You were fine with taking your kids to every Spy Kids movie "for the adult humor". And, please, you like gore but not so much to make you question your own levels of squeamishness so off you go to Final Destination 5.

Complain all you want about sequels but in the end, you're just getting what you'd want anyway.

The Moment.

Josh BROLIN! I am READY Men in Black 3! Roll me.

The Death of Osama bin Laden

Well it happened. As of Sunday May 1st Osama bin Laden, the "mastermind" of 9/11 and face of Al Qaeda to the American public, is dead. Following this news was the expected gathering of American people celebrating and (in some cases) rioting in DC, at the site of 9/11 and around the country.

Also expected was the "other side" response of cynicism and disgust.

And I find myself right smack in the middle with my own opinion.

It's a familiar place. True, I do find die-hard patriotism creepy. The idea of supporting your leader no matter what they do speaks too 1984 for me. I was often infuriated by a political debate ended in the statement "you don't speak out against your president at war time". War time to me is the EXACT moment we should all have something to say negative or positive. Politics isn't religion (though the two have been disturbingly inching together over time) and I am not a heretic because I'm not in support of my leader in a time of crisis. I prefer to think of myself as having a brain.

However, while I find patriotism at times creepy, I also understand and in some moments feel that heart-swell of pride. Let's be honest, we're damn lucky to live in the country we do. It's not a utopia but the complaints we have seem childish in the face of issues inherent in the majority of other countries. And before you think I'm only speaking of middle eastern countries or third-world allow me to point out that Britain has (perhaps arguably) less tolerant ideas of racism than the US. I will still never enjoy the "Proud to Be an American" song and I don't own an American flag. But so far I don't have any plans to jump ship (we'll see after the next election).

Osama is dead. Half of the country is celebrating, the other half is lamenting how easily our country slips into a similar area as middle-eastern countries that celebrate deaths on our side. And while I agree with the latter, I also don't think it's surprising or even wrong the former reaction.

It's not because I feel the families need closure. Closure would be the end of terrorism and the death of Osama is not that. It's not because the death of a mass murderer is justified. Whether or not death for death is the right action is a difficult question one that I don't feel enlightened enough to answer.

It's because the country needed something to celebrate.

Maybe I'm the only who felt it, but there has been this increasing malaise in our public. Ten years ago one of the worst tragedies in our nation's history occurred. What followed was a knee-jerk joining together amidst mass confusion and fear. We were in mourning and clinging to the idea that we weren't strong, we HAD to be strong. We went into Afghanistan, though some of us didn't like it, and we tried to grip onto that feeling that we had to survive. We were beautiful then.

But it continued on much longer than anyone anticipated. We were in a war that wasn't a war. We began to be split. Those who were against, those who were for and those who lived everyday wondering if their loved ones would come back and only having each other to cling to because the rest of us don't understand. With enough time, the ten years overseas became a backdrop to everything. A sort of "oh yeah, that thing" for the American people. We cared and we didn't know what we cared about. We began to cling to the notion of patriotism, to supporting our troops, to protesting and, of course, to cynicism with the knowledge that none of us outside the political sphere will truly know what is going or what will happen.

Yellow ribbon magnets faded on cars, American flags frayed ever present in front of homes, special reports on the soldiers who are still leaving and sometimes coming back were smashed in between Obama news and updates on Lohan. What we were fighting for and why became less and less clear and we as a people sunk into a still proud but wary malaise.

And ten years later, a victory.

Yes, it's mostly a hollow victory. Al Qaeda still exists, our relationship with Pakistan is shaky at best and there is an increased threat of a homeland terrorist attack in retaliation.

But for now, we have a visceral success and it brings the country out of it's collective funk then I can handle a few too many riots and flag-waving celebrations for my taste.

Rebecca Black: The Most Hated Girl on Youtube... currently

I was recently introduced to music video Friday by Rebecca Black. Apparently, in our social network world, I'm the last person to hear it. And it would have been fine to never hear it.

Exhibit A. A... pop star?



Personally, I hate the song and the video. I hate how it was produced. I hate its history and the company's mission.

But I don't hate a 13 year-old girl.

Here's the backstory for anyone who hasn't checked wikipedia. Ark Music Factory is a Los Angeles vanity record label ("vanity record label" meaning a record company that produces content at the "artist's" expense rather than the other way around). Ark centers it's work around on the "recruitment/discovery of new young singers" according to the wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ark_Music_Factory) though the website itself gives no information other than offers of following them on every popular social networking site that currently exists and neon tweets for Rebecca Black and their other clients. The basic idea is the company has prewritten songs an "artist" can choose from then they produce a professionalish music video. What's not mentioned on the site is the cost, only contact info and more 90's myspace graphics. You know they have to be charging the clients. They're a vanity record label, it's the definition of any vanity company to charge the client.

Now here's where things get really shady. Yesterday I checked the wikipedia page on Rebecca Black and found quotes from her mother and a reference to $2000 paid for her video. And now it's gone along with the "about" section of the Ark website. I have no evidence but what it looks like is, with all the backlash against Rebecca Black and the company itself, they are working to wipe clean any trace of payment for the video and other videos they've produced. Otherwise, it'd give credence to the current permeating idea that Rebecca Black and the rest of the child clients are NOT artists, are NOT musicians and should NOT be allowed to skip over the hard work and years of training other singers go through to get to the same point.

And that idea is right. Kids with rich parents (especially kids with no stage presence and the talent of your little sister singing into a hairbrush) shouldn't be allowed to have money thrown into the pot and a career pop out. It's an insult to art and an insult to the rest of us who have to take out licks playing for free in cafe's where the only attendants are their friends they had to remind daily to show up (half of who didn't come anyway).

But the other poptarts in the genre throwing their two cents in really have no leg to stand on and Rebecca Black doesn't deserve to be treated like the Yoko of pop music.

Take for example this tidbit from Ms. Miley Cyrus.

"It should be harder to be an artist," Cyrus, 18, told Australia's Daily Telegraph of the 13-year-old Internet sensation. "You shouldn't just be able to put a song on YouTube and go on tour." (http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/42342379/ns/today-entertainment/)

Really Miley? But they should be able to have their daddy pull some strings to get them a network tv show with DISNEY? A show whose main character just happens to lead a double life as a pop-star? Is that how PJ Harvey got her start?

And I can think of another youtube star Miley doesn't seem to have any problem with.



Does this lesbiImean little boy look familiar. Yeah that's Justin Bieber seen with Miley Cyrus supposedly after dinner where they discussed a "side-project". (http://www.usmagazine.com/healthylifestyle/news/miley-cyrus-and-justin-bieber-go-on-dinner-date-2010115)

I wonder if the side-project was Miley teaching him the ins and outs of being a true artist?

So much of the backlash is completely hypocritical. If you break down the issues it comes down to:

"She bought her way in"

Well, that is infuriating. Being lower middle-class myself, of course it pisses me off personally but, for God's sake, she's thirteen! Her parents gave her an option and she went for it. Who wouldn't and how many pop stars haven't done it (I've already given you one, you can probably make a two page list in ten minutes)?

"She's a product"

Allow me to introduce you to American Idol and the Disney corporation. Ever seen the "dance breaks" between Disney shows? Terrifying.

HERE'S ONE!



"The song's TERRIBLE"

Sample lyrics from pop artists who don't have comment sections entirely of death threats and virtual spits in the face.

Kei$ha "Tik Tok": Don't stop/ make it pop/ DJ blow my speakers up/ tonight I'mma fight/ til we see the sunlight/

Britney Spears "Womanizer": Lollipop must mistake me you're the sucker/ to think I would be a victim not another/ say it play it how you want it/ but no way I'm never gonna fall for you never you baby

Justin Bieber "Baby": you know you love me I know you care/ just shout whenever and I'll be there/ you are my love you are my heart/ and we will never ever be apart

Miley Cyrus "Party in the USA": my tummy's turnin' and I'm feelin' kinda homesick/ too much pressure and I'm nervous/ that's when the DJ dropped my favorite tune

Sorry guys, it's all terrible. It all either reads like shitty middle-school poetry or lazy anthems to how hard white girls party at da club.

Look, pop music has NEVER been high art. As much respect as people have for Madonna, I don't know a single person who can say honestly and with a straight face that her music really changed their perspective on life. Pop music is meant to be fun, even the super duper sad pants songs. And that's what this kid did, she had fun.

And of course... here's her fucking video.



Psych! I love that dog.