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by | May 23, 2013 · 5:04 pm

Review: Daft Punk – Random Access Memories

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In 30 years, they’ll still be discussing the marketing campaign for Random Access Memories. I’m just not sure if they’ll be talking about the album. Buoyed by one of the most exciting buildups of all time, it was inevitable that the reality of Daft Punk’s fourth studio album wouldn’t be able to match the possibility suggested by the heavily Instagrammed billboard on Sixth Street or the SNL ad that forcibly shoved “Get Lucky” down our ear canals. It is unfair to judge Random Access Memories by the gap between it and the imaginary RAM that has lived on blogs and in my mind for the last three or four months, but even setting that aside, I’m not quite sure that the record matches up.

Take “Giorgio by Moroder,” a tribute to Girogio Moroder (with an interview with the man himself) that simultaneously feels like a thesis statement for the record and a remake of “Losing My Edge” without any of the self-awareness or humor. The line between “making a record with the sounds of the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, and the future” and “you kids need to turn down that racket and respect your elders” is a thin one and often, it feels like RAM slips and starts making sure you knew it was there (it was theeeeeeerrrrrre). Blown out to near double-LP length, the band seems content to wander through a field of influences and old loves. This can lead to an amazing sense of discovery, as on “Touch” where emotive parts melt into a ragtime dance and then back to ballad, but it also seems like the band gets lost, as on the tedious “The Game of Love.” For me, the album briefly catches fire as “Touch” builds and builds to Paul Williams’ emotive vocals and then melts into the glorious, extended version of “Get Lucky” (when the one-minute snippet was first released, it was so catchy that I wondered just how much of that song I could listen to without getting sick of it. Apparently the answer is “at least more than 6:05”). But once “Beyond” kicks in, I find my attention fading again. Its a little too easy for me to zone out and find that I’ve missed a couple songs.

A lot of attention has been paid to Daft Punk’s decision to forgo sampling but the album is actually still sample-heavy in spirit; its just that they skip over the actual sampling part by bringing in the musicians to record new music that sounds like the kind of thing they used to do. They could have placed Pharrell’s vocals on top of Nile Rodgers’ disco guitar loops and added some Daft Punk vocoder action, but the decision to unwrap this process and actually record the parts live and in collaboration with the artists in question leads to a vitality and energy. However, at the same time, they’re so intent to play “curators” that the songs rarely rise above mash-up. Random Access Memories is its own remix.

Critics have taken this move largely as a response to EDM, the genre that Daft Punk accidentally launched and now, in interviews, seems eager to disavow. That’s fine as far as it goes, but it seems to lead the band to embrace their worst impulse, which is their need to say Something. Whenever Daft Punk goes too far off the reservation and attempts to add deeper meaning to their musings about technology you end up getting something like this. Or songs called “Give Life Back to Music.” Listening to the record, it feels like both Daft Punk and the larger critical community that is so eager to declare this a Great Record are looking for some kind of large statement on a record that doesn’t have one (which is fine) and peddles in largely shallow generalization (which is not). That said, the band’s selection and recreation of old sounds actually touches on a very modern notion.

In their own way, Daft Punk have managed to an album-length recreation of the modern Internet and media atmosphere, where “curation” and dressing up other people’s content in a new outfit is more profitable and more widespread than actual new stuff. More to the point, I don’t see any practical difference between what Daft Punk is doing on this album and what, say, Maria Popova does on Twitter or the staff of Buzzfeed does on their site. At the end of the day, Random Access Memories feels more like a work of aggregation and SEO than an album. “24 Great Songs From the 1970s That You Have to Hear Now.”

The other half of the new media equation is sharing, which brings me back to where we started. Capitalizing on our need to share things and plant flags in culture we approve of, every element of the Daft Punk build-up was meant to get us talking and sharing, but also to get us to take ownership of the album. There may have only been a few billboards and, to my knowledge, the commercial only ran at Coachella and on SNL, but it made the rounds on the Internet and, as it spread, it turned the people spreading it into tastemakers while also having them, conveniently, do a lot of the street team level work building awareness. We rented space on our Facebook and Twitter pages out to Daft Punk’s label, allowing them to use it publicize their album, in exchange for some cultural capital that comes with being the first to spread the word about a particularly cool album. Its a weird relationship, one that I dealt with a lot when I was working as a film blogger, but the end result is a tangible investment in the album being good (and, on the other side, a thirst to push back and be contrarian by declaring the album “bad”).

In a way, this is the extra-textual element that the album backs up the best. It is a record that is meant to be passed around and explored collectively. It is probably best listened to in a big room with lots of sweaty people around you, where the exquisite production and propulsion can cover for a lot of what is otherwise a little tedious. All of Daft Punk’s albums are lumpy, but this one is lumpy and seems to think it has more to say than it actually does. Of course, the only reason it feels like it has grander aspirations than getting you to shake your butt is because the amount and execution of hype primed the pump for an album that did more. Perhaps the album’s biggest crime is that it did too good of a job of capturing culture in 2013. Random Access Memories is imprisoned by the very cycle of aggregation and sharing that it mimics, capturing the exuberance, but also the disposability, of whatever viral hit is plastered all over your Facebook wall this week.

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by | May 6, 2013 · 2:39 pm

Why Are the Commercials On Mad Men So Irritating?

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There are two major complaints cropping up about this season of Mad Men: the characters are too unlikeable and the commercial breaks are too abrupt. I’m waiting to see how the season plays out to say much about the first complaint (although I will note that I’ve found Don Draper pretty irredeemable for two or three seasons now, but my fascination has never wavered) but the second is in some ways more interesting. The abruptness of the cuts to commercial break on Mad Men is nothing new, but as more television critics stopped getting pre-air screeners from AMC and were forced to watch the episodes live, the complaints have become more and more vocal. However, there’s a possibility that I think is worth exploring: the commercial breaks are supposed to be jarring.

A couple of quick notes. First of all, it is important to establish that the jarring commercial breaks are a matter of authorial intent and not AMC’s fault. Mad Men is a hypnotic, languorous show, more so than almost anything else on TV, and snapping out of its trance is not easy. But, more to the point, there’s a specific structural quirk at play. For those who might not know, most commercial television scripts are structured to accommodate commercials by breaking them up into several acts. Each act corresponds to a segment and ends with an act break, some kind of moment that’s meant to push viewers into the commercial while making sure they’ll want to stick around to see what happens next. Matt Weiner and his writing staff intentionally write episodes of Mad Men without act breaks. They aren’t the only people who do this, but pretty much everyone else who does writes for premium channels like HBO, which are commercial free. This is how Weiner would have written scripts for The Sopranos and how screenwriters have been doing it for decades.

The writers aren’t stupid; they know they’re writing a show with commercials and could choose to accommodate the ads if they wanted. So why don’t they? It could be because this is simply how Weiner wrote on The Sopranos. But he’s not the only writer of the show and The Sopranos isn’t the only show he wrote for (he was also on the staff of Andy Richter Controls the Universe, which aired on FOX). It also could be so the show plays better on DVD and Netflix. But whatever the reason, the result is that it strengthens the show’s critique of American capitalism and, especially, the ways that advertising propagate ideology.

If you are already on-board with the concept that at least part of what Mad Men is doing is critiquing of American capitalism in general and advertising’s role within that system specifically, feel free to move along to the next paragraph, but I would like to show my work a little. Mad Men does more than just peel back the curtain on the process and people behind advertising; it looks like an advertisement. The gorgeous, meticulously arranged mise-en-scene wouldn’t look out of place in a Sterling-Cooper design, but an ad by the agency (or anyone else) would be using those images to suggest that the same perfection and happiness is within your reach through consumption of a given product. On Mad Men, the point is the opposite. These are the people living in those ads, consuming and consuming, and all they’re left with is emptiness and displeasure. Think of “The Wheel,” where Don turns family photos into a literal advertisement for Kodak, convinces himself that domestic perfection is within reach, and then returns to find an empty house.

So Mad Men is a show critiquing advertising’s role in society, but this is a difficult argument to coherently communicate when you have to stop the show down every ten minutes to air commercials. I would argue this is one of the reasons why scholars have been so quick to look down on TV for so much of its history: how incisive and critical can a series be when its main reason for existing is to provide a hospitable atmosphere for advertising. Mad Men side-steps this by creating as inhospitable an atmosphere as possible. The cuts are abrupt and jarring, the show makes no effort to incorporate breaks into its overall structure. The ads don’t fit because the show doesn’t think they should fit.

As a result, the commercials exist as the breaking of a trance, an imperfect, loud, and classless intrusion on the perfect structure of the show. They don’t fit and, as a result, draw attention to themselves. You think critically about them. You notice how irritating and fake they are. You are angry about their very presence. It is a small leap to move from feeling like the presence of the ads is artificial to feeling like the substance of the ads is artificial. Mad Men takes a simple fact of its form, commercial breaks, and contorts them until they fit its larger critique of American society.

Of course, the obvious retort to all of this is the fact that Mad Men has relied on product integration for much of its run. However, as the show has had more autonomy, it has reduced the amount of paid product placement and also made the real brands that appear in the show pay a steep price for that exposure. Most obviously, Jaguar, which was shown as structurally corrupt in “The Other Woman” and utterly unreliable in “Commissions and Fees.” Heinz is shown as immature and high schoolish, with an executive who is a unpleasant, petty mess and the Chevy car that Don and Teddy pitched for last night turns out to be a historic lemon. Those appearances may not have been paid for, but one that was, by Heineken, was used as a backdrop to Don’s humiliating manipulation of Betty.

If I had to guess, I would say the main reason Mad Men ignores the commercial breaks is simply because they can. However, the result is that it deepens one of the show’s most important, and yet easy to miss, themes. These people have been lied to all their lives by the very industry they work for and tricked into believing that the right car and the right suit and the right job and the right wife would make them happy. Why would the show help keep up that illusion when it can subvert it instead?

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by | July 18, 2012 · 1:32 pm

New Music Roundup – “The Safety’s Off”

This week’s roundup of new music features records that I was really looking forward to but that, for one reason or another, haven’t really been doing it for me. Let’s take a look:

I lived in Austin for a couple of years and, really, it was a tremendous place. However, if there was one thing I couldn’t stand about it, it was all the people acting like they were special and unique for enjoying nature’s beauty. It was a one-dimensional, touristy idea of nature based on easy-going vibes and an unquestioning belief in the awesomeness of getting drunk next to a tree.

I thought a lot about that dichotomy while listening to Oshin, the debut LP by Beach Fossils affiliates and spelling bee champions DIIV. The music is pleasant enough to listen to and certainly taps into the kind of hazy joy that Beach Fossils and Real Estate got big trafficking. But there’s a hollowness to the whole record that leaves it empty and unsatisfying.

This big picture problem wouldn’t be as much of a problem were it not for the fact that the album had so little else to offer. The reverb drenched vocals, Neil Young-inspired noodling guitars, and beachy harmonies have become to 2012 what syncopated drum beats and post-punk guitars were to 2002 and samples of atrocious yacht-rock songs were to 2010. The result is an album that goes in one ear and out the other.

In Ian Cohen’s BNM review of the record for Pitchfork, he talks about how DIIV has tapped into something elemental and natural, but have they? The record is closer to the equivalent of a shirtless bro, beer in hand, floating the river on an intertube and talking about how close he feels to nature. The elements that symbolize “nature” are present on the record, but the music is too generic and formed to really back that up. It is a bloodless vision of nature, one drained of any sort of tension or reality so that DIIV could set up a shack and sell guided tours at $20 a ticket.

I don’t really know what else is left to be said about POP ETC, the moment where whatever term you want to use for “R&B music that gets posted to blogs” (I prefer PBR&B) began eating itself. There’s a reason why people don’t look back on Discovery with fondness.

POP ETC seems a little more sincere than that effort, which is almost more of a problem. There’s so little distance between singer Chris Chu and lyrics like “she said why did we bother/I said I’m not your father” that, frankly, its a little embarrassing. With Katy Perry synths and a lot of autotune, the record sounds like it wandered in from 2008, still drunk an unashamed.

I liked The Morning Benders fine, especially their Grizzly Bear-by-way-of-The-Shins second album, and I respect them for following their muse. And some tracks, like “Keep It For Your Own,” show a kind of focus and energy that seemed to be missing from their earlier work. But its clearly an awkward fit that the band is still kind of trying to negotiate.

I’ll admit that its probably a little premature to put the Dirty Projectors on here and I remain open to being convinced otherwise. There are moments that I really love, the spacey harmonies that open “Offsprings Are Blank” and the propulsive immediacy of “Gun Has No Trigger,” but the record as a whole suffers from a little bit of sequelitis. There are no moments as surprising and attention-grabbing as the heights of Bitte Orca (which basically were the entire album from start to finish).

Bitte Orca was one surprise after another, here’s a Beyonce-level R&B song, now here’s a Nico rewrite, now here’s the whatever the hell “Useful Chamber” is. Swing Lo Magellan is more focused and tighter. You could even call it the most distinctly Dirty Projectors record yet, but that’s the problem. The record leans perhaps too heavily on the band’s trademarks, whether its the soaring harmonies or the now-ubiquitous African rhythms.

Furthermore the new wrinkles that they did do nothing but detract from the album. The folky touches, cribbed from Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, make the album sound, at times, empty. Songs like the title track trade away too much complexity in favor of a stripped-down amiability that veers dangerously close to generic. With Woody Guthrie folk music must come politicized lyrics and, once again, the band kind of falls on its face. Dave Longstreth is not quite an effective enough storyteller to pull off the company man tragedy of “Just From Chevron” while “Gun Has No Trigger” is laughably simplistic.

It’s not like Dirty Projectors forgot how to make music and, even listening to the record while writing this, I can feel myself softening. It’s not that Swing Lo Magellan is bad, its just a frustratingly sideways move from a band that has spent the better part of a decade swirling and rushing forward in thrilling ways.

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by | May 1, 2012 · 3:04 pm

Album Review – MSIF+Boost: Giggle In Awe (with download link)

Howdy folks,

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, and I wanted to let you know I apologize deeply for that. I’ve still been seeing movies on my golden pass, but I’ve failed you on posting my rambling thoughts.

Well I’m here today to let you know not about movies, but instead about some music you should be checking out. The album I’m recommending is Giggle In Awe by MSIF+Boost. MSIF is currently based out of Atlanta, although they just recently moved from St. Louis. The album (released May 1st) is the first release by Mike Stasny, the main man behind MSIF. It’s also important to credit Mr. Stasny for his role in writing the lyrics for this viral video.

This is some electro-dance pop. The album has tracks that fulfill the lighter-side of dance (“A Few Good Men”, “The Boogie That’s Mine”) and some that make you wish you were at a lunch rave in Sweden (“Change Me Levity”, “Full Circle”, “Abby”). It passingly reminds me of a less grandiose Empire of the Sun, combined with Jookabox (whose song “You Cried Me” is a must listen to jam). One thing that stands out to me is the production quality on all these tracks. It’s high quality.  I’m not sure how the drums were recorded, but the record sounds like the instrumentation was recorded by real people and not just a producer behind a drum machine and a keyboard. Props are also due for the vocals, which are in many cases double tracked in an excellent manner that keeps the range open and prevents them from ever getting boring.

The moral of this story is get on over to the Bandcamp page, grab yourself a copy of this album, and dance (or nod if you’re at work).

Recommended if you dig: The Notwist, Empire of the Sun, Jookabox White Flight

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by | February 6, 2012 · 11:03 am

Person Seeks Publicity Through Controversy

Somehow, we have reached a point where M.I.A. can play the Super Bowl Halftime show, where she made an appearance along side Madonna, LMFAO, and Cee-Lo. Somewhere, in 2005, 18-year-old me just had his head explode. Anyway, M.I.A., as she is wont to do, gave us all the finger, predictable people responded predictably, and it turns out that anyone who would be inclined to listen to M.I.A. probably didn’t care too much about this whole thing to begin with. Now let’s watch the hilarious, hilarious Bradshaw touchdown and never speak of this again.

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by | January 24, 2012 · 12:04 pm

84th Academy Award Nominees: Who Will Win, Who Should Win, and Who Was Snubbed

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The nominations for the Oscars went out this morning and with them, the first round of quick reactions and predictions. After several months of following smaller, but not insignificant awards, here are our official predictions and complaints. Agree? Disagree? Let us know!

Best Picture

The Artist

War Horse

Moneyball

The Descendants

Tree of Life

Midnight in Paris

The Help

Hugo

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Who Will Win: The Artist. It’s had all the steam throughout the early awards season, and it doesn’t appear any of the other films have the clout to take it down.

Who Should Win: Really it’s a wide open category if The Artist loses, but look for The Descendants to take the statue if Oscar voters aren’t into French silent films.

Who Was Snubbed: Young Adult. Not a single nomination for Jason Reitman’s latest. It’s surprising The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo got nothing, but the lack of any love for Young Adult is a travesty.

Best Actress

Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

Viola Davis, The Help

Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs

Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Who Will Win: Michelle Williams. She’s clearly been the front runner through most of awards season and though Meryl Streep has had a lot of buzz, Williams is by the far the safest bet of all nominees.

Who Should Win: If not Williams, it will be Meryl Streep. The other three nominees are all deserving, but Oscar politics always trump anything else.

Who Was Snubbed: Tilda Swinton. I’m not sure if We Need to Talk About Kevin was eligable for the Oscars, but if it was, it’s a travesty she didn’t get a nod. Also deserving: Charlize Theron, who carried Young Adult.

Best Actor

Jean Dujardin, The Artist

Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

George Clooney, The Descendants

Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Demián Bichir, A Better Life

Who Will Win: George Clooney. He has a Supporting Actor award already, and as is the Oscar way, he’ll win because it’s his time.

Who Should Win: Honestly, this category is dynamite. If it’s not Clooney, expect either Oldman, Dujardin, or Pitt, in that order.

Who Was Snubbed: Michael Fassbender for Shame and Michael Shannon for Take Shelter. Two of the most talked about performances of the year got no attention. I expected at least one to get a nod, and it’s surprising neither of them did.

Best Supporting Actress

Octavia Spencer, The Help

Bérénice Bejo, The Artist

Jessica Chastain, The Help

Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids

Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs

Who Will Win: Jessica Chastain. Sometimes the Oscars are about welcoming people into the community of Oscar winners, and after a huge year, expect Chastain to get that honor.

Who Should Win: This is another loaded category in which anyone has a convincing argument, but if it’s not Chastain, Bejo could steal the show.

Who Was Snubbed: Though she really didn’t get nominated for any other awards, Shailene Woodley from The Descendants deserved at least a little attention for her breakthrough performance.

Best Supporting Actor

Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn

Nick Nolte, Warrior

Jonah Hill, Moneyball

Max Von Sydow, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Who Will Win: Christopher Plummer. This is the closest thing to a lock in this year’s ceremony.

Who Should Win: Honestly, Plummer. He owns Beginners and is truthfully the most deserving.

Who Was Snubbed: Albert Brooks. Without a doubt the biggest snub of the Oscars. Though no one expected him to beat Plummer, not even getting nominated was absolutely crazy. Special Mention also goes to Patton Oswalt for Young Adult.

Best Director

Alexander Payne, The Descendants

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

Terrence Malick, Tree of Life

Who Will Win: Martin Scorsese. When Oscar voters are in doubt, they always go with one of the all time greats.

Who Should Win: Alexander Payne. Consider it the consolation prize for The Descendants if The Artist picks up Best Picture.

Who Was Snubbed: David Fincher is notably absent from this list, but given the overall lack of love for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, it’s not too surprising.

Best Original Screenplay

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, Bridesmaids

J.C. Chandor, Margin Call

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

Asgar Farhadi, A Separation

Who Will Win: Woody Allen. Midnight in Paris was a phenomenal film, and given his uneven work in the last 10 years, this could be the Academy’s last chance to honor one of the greats.

Who Should Win: Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo have the best shot at sneaking in if Allen doesn’t win. Hazanavicius has a shot as well, but he’ll win elsewhere, leaving the door open for the breakthrough comedy duo.

Who Was Snubbed: Diablo Cody for Young Adult. It’s ridiculous this film didn’t get a single nomination. It rank with Albert Brooks as one of the biggest snubs of the year.

Best Adapted Sceenplay

Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, The Descendants

John Logan, Hugo

Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian, Moneyball

George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Beau Willimon, Ides of March

Peter Straughan and Bridget O’Connor, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Who Will Win: Payne, Faxon, and Rash. Again, look for The Descendants to pick up a bunch of awards that aren’t Best Picture. That’s not to detract from the fact that they actually deserve this award though.

Who Should Win: If the Descendants  lose, the safe money is on Sorkin and Zaillian, picking up Moneyball’s consolation prize.

Who Was Snubbed: Yasmina Reza and Roman Polanski for Carnage. Easily one of the funniest films I saw all year.

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by | January 18, 2012 · 4:28 pm

So this post is a little overdue. It’s going to be a double review of two movies I saw back-to-back: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” and “The Adventures of Tintin”

First up is “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows”. Where to even begin? I guess I should let you know that I only saw bits and pieces of the first one while on a bus traveling to a rowing event. This meant it had bad sound, I was likely tired and in the process of cutting weight. I came to this movie with fresh eyes (you really don’t need to know much about the first movie to get the plot of this one), so maybe I missed something that would have changed my opinion, but I’m skeptical.

The dialogue is terrible. It’s presented as pithy and witty. But it’s neither. You might get wrapped up in the way it’s acted (which has the airs about it), but don’t be fooled. Just take a look at IMDB’s “Memorable Quotes” page and you’ll get the idea.

The only redeeming quality of this movie is the way it looks. The color of the movie is very cool. Blues and greens pop out creating a look that does seem to evoke a historic feel. The movie also periodically slows things down for certain action scenes, sometimes using a narrative to explain the thought process behind certain movements. This produces some effective scenes that breed excitement. But they are few and far between, and had they been used more, they would have likely lost their charm. The final part of the movie I liked was the abundance of amazing facial hair. It’s just luxurious. It’s hard to go wrong when you have beards like this:

(not even the best one, but no appropriate images are easily available)

Rounding out this post is “The Adventures of Tintin”. Which in my opinion was delightful. It wasn’t perfect, and some parts of the movie seemed to drag a bit for me, but I for one had a good time. When I tell people that I’ve seen the movie, they always ask me what I thought about the animation. “Was it creepy?” or “Was it hard to watch for the entire time?” were the two questions I was asked the most. My response is that it seems so for the first few minutes, but tends to just fall into the background.

(Real)

The plot centers around the first meeting of Tintin and Captain Haddock. The movie merges the plot lines of a few of the different comics to set up the series. In a way, it was somewhat of an overview of the whole series. This provided one of the most interesting features of the movie. Captain Haddock, as any reader of the comics would know, is a terrible alcoholic, and it features prominently into the plot. This is the first kids movie that I recall seeing that features alcohol this prominently. It certainly made for interesting questions from my “Little Brother” Joshua on the way back from the movie. It is brought to attention in the film, but the actions still make it a little fun. I’m guessing most of the readers of this review are over 21 or close. But don’t let the alcohol dissuade you from taking young people to see the movie if it’s appropriate.

Anyways, there are the reviews. See Tintin, don’t see Sherlock. It’s that simple people.

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by | December 28, 2011 · 12:51 pm

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

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I’ll start where the movie starts, Budapest. It’s one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever been to, and the opening shot over the parliament building captures it perfectly. We then get our introduction to the story. Having only ever seen the original Mission: Impossible, I can assure you that there’s no need for context. You’re going to get it very quickly. A few bodies later, and we’re straight to the point: Tom Cruise being a badass with a nice cast of backup characters including the always funny Simon Pegg as Benji. 

Directed by Brad Bird (Writer/Director for Ratatouille, The Incredibles, and The Iron Giant among other things) in his first live-action movie, it nails everything down tight. Can we talk about smooth? This movie had some sort of witchcraft that made it so that transitions were completely effortless. Other action movies are like when you play the game Mousetrap. You set it up, but you didn’t set it up quite right. It takes a little bit of human hands to make it work. MI was like the commercial for Mousetrap, it just worked, and it makes it look so easy. We go though such a number of challenges to global safety, threats of defeat, tech failures, car chases, and explosions to fill three action movies, but in the right hands, it just all clicks.

And that brings me to the pacing of the movie. Fantastic. MI puts you through your paces, but recognizes that sometimes you need to cool it off just enough to build a bit of suspense. My cousin who I saw the movie with had just been telling me about this app called RunPee which alerts you when it’s the best time to use the bathroom during a movie. MI only had two spots which they recommended you could skip out on. One of those scenes was a few minutes of the bad guys shooting at things underwater. 

So this movie has it all. Pretty people, cool gadgets, good humor, and awesome title sequence (not quite as good as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, but more on that later) loads of action, but more importantly smart pacing of said action. If you want to understand why we have so many sub-par actions movies, it’s because movies like this (and Die Hard) make them so enjoyable to watch. And I’m sorry for this, but I feel obliged: Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to go and see Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Trust me, it’s an enjoyable and easy mission.

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by | December 22, 2011 · 4:02 pm

Greetings Earthlings

Hey there folks.

New guy here. Name’s Andrew. I’ll be doing some movie reviews for the good ol’ blog here and might venture further into some other territories like the future of media, it’s cultural impact, and good workout music. But before I do that, I just wanted to take a moment and introduce myself.

To give you a little background, my brother is one of those cool cat you see blogging here. Ah glorious nepotism. Anyways, after a freak science accident left me with super powers charity auction  left me with a year-long movie pass, I decided it’d be cool to write some movie reviews. TUIW has graciously agreed to let me post them here. I warn you in advance many of these reviews will not happen the weekend the movie comes out. So don’t wait for my review before you go out to see movies.

For some personal background, I currently live in St. Louis where I do marketing and product development work for a tech start-up. I was a college DJ for four years and currently am woking on some projects in the music scene down here. I have a wide variety of media taste (including Disco!), and I’m working really hard on being less judgmental of other people’s choices.

I look forward to typing out things for ya’ll. Always feel free to give me your feedback and opinions. And if you want some social ambiance (phatic communication for you nerds) you can follow me on the twitters here. 

Catch you on the flip side,

Andrew

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by | July 13, 2011 · 5:45 pm

Leave Mad Men Alone!

A couple of otherwise excellent previews of the return of Breaking Bad have put me in kind of an awkward position. I’ve been a flag-waver for Breaking Bad since marathoning the entire first season the morning of the second season premiere. It is a great show, probably the best on television right now and certainly the most criminally underwatched. So why do we need to trash Mad Men to make that point? Both New York Magazine’s set profile and Chuck Klosterman’s think piece for Grantland seem to misstate some stuff about Mad Men, all in the process of making a point that I largely agree with.

Broadly, I understand the impulse that is driving all of this. Like when The Wire was being ignored while airing at the same time as The Sopranos, it is insanely frustrating when all your friends watch and obsess over Mad Men but won’t bother with the arguably better show airing on the same network. Mad Men and Breaking Bad become tied together and it becomes more and more irritating that no one seems to care just how GOOD the latter is getting.

But, all due respect, I really don’t understand a lot of the points they’re making. Klosterman says that on Mad Men “every action the characters make is not really a reflection on who they are; they’re mostly a commentary on the era,” which seems kind of asinine to me. Maybe in the first season, when the show a little worse about making “weren’t things different in the 1960s” jokes, that was the case. But what makes Mad Men so effective is just how good it has gotten at digging deep into its characters and having their actions driven by who they are. The ending of this season, where Don Draper chose his sexy but demure secretary over a professional equal, was so frustrating precisely because it was the kind of terrible decision we’ve seen Don Draper make over and over again for the last four years. Klosterman says “all their decision can be excused…by the circumstances of the period…so we can’t really hold [the characters] accountable for what they do” which is the total opposite of what makes Don Draper such a tragic figure. He KNOWS better and still chooses the easy path. The show hardly invites us to excuse his (or any of the characters’) choices and instead invites us to be as angry at them as we want (as in, once again, the completely infuriating season finale).

Meanwhile, the New York Times’ preview of Breaking Bad suggests that Walter White is unique
for the way that he “suffer[s] crushing reversals with lasting impact.” I’m actually not clear on what the writer, David Segal, is trying to say here. Is he saying that, unlike Don Draper, Walt’s misdeeds have left “permanent scars?” Because Don’s lies destroyed his family and seem to have wreaked psychic havoc on his daughter (the extent of which was dramatized this year). And Tony Soprano’s actions certainly had lasting impact on the lives of others around him, even if he never changed. And Breaking Bad’s nearest predecessor, The Shield, was all about the long-term cost of poor choices.

I don’t mean to be the guy scolding other people for comparing two comparable works of art because I certainly do that all of the time. But I guess I feel like Mad Men is being misrepresented? Or at the very least oversimplified in order to prop up the pro-Breaking Bad side? Or maybe I’m just feeling especially good about Mad Men right now for some reason? The important point here is that AMC has two of the greatest shows ever right now and just because we’re excited for one coming back after a far too long hiatus doesn’t mean we need to go around trashing the other one, you know?

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