Hurtling Ever-Deeper into Decadence

12 DISNEY PRINCESS GIFS THAT CONVEY THE EXPERIENCE OF BEING {AGE}

8 WAYS 90S KIDS ARE FEMINIST

17 CORGIS RUINING NOT ONLY THE INTERNET BUT LITERALLY THE FUCKING CONCEPT OF WRITING IN THE 21ST CENTURY

50 MINOR DC CHARACTERS WHO COLLECTIVELY EXPLAIN SUBATOMIC PHYSICS

THE FALL OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION IN 19 GIFS FROM WILL FERRELL MOVIES

WHAT IS MY FUCKING LIFE AS DEPICTED BY 93 CATS STANDING IN FRONT OF TABLES

1000 ACCIDENTALLY RACIST THINGS YOU ALREADY SAID TODAY AND WHY THEY ALSO MAKE YOU A RAPIST

THIS MAP OF MY DICK WILL BLOW YOUR MIND

WOW! VAN GOGH’S STARRY NIGHT AS A MOSAIC OF SERIAL KILLERS’ MUG SHOTS

IF ALL DISNEY PRINCESSES WERE REPLACED BY BEYONCE

(this one literally exists)

YOUR REACTION?

HEART SPLENDID LOL BLIMEY WTF BONER MALAISE

HASHTAG #MURDERMEMURDERMEMURDERMEMURDERMEMURDERME

Brad of Steel

or,

The Zack Snyder Complex

"GUYS I LOVE MY FAMILY OK KIDS FAMILY BABIES KIDS FAMILY LOVE" - Brad Pitt [photo via an usweekly 'here's a trailer for a movie, yall' article]

There are many things one can fault the very loose World War Z adaptation Brad Pitt has finally shrugged his shoulders at and surrendered to inevitable, inexplicable profit-and-sequel-generating theatrical release for, a brief list of which follows:

1      it is a zombie movie rated pg-13

(1a   I get that when a film costs $200 million to make it has to be pg-13, but if your movie is about the zombie apocalypse maybe it just can’t be the summer tentpole you might wish it could be. Just saying.)

2      a theoretically major character falls over and accidentally shoots himself in the face in a moment only a fart noise away from self-parody

3      another character has her hand hacked off, and the camera proceeds to avoid the wound in ever-more-hilarious-and-maddening Austin Powers-style ways (see point 1)

4      Brad Pitt’s film children—“o hay dad so I know there are zombies killing [but not devouring; see point 1] most of humanity but I WANT MY BLANKET I WANT MY BLANKET MY BLANKET AAAAAAA”

5      In the last third, where they visit the budgetary black hole that is Cardiff and it turns into a pretty standard zombie movie, the likewise standard ~brutal killz~ Brad dishes out all happen off-camera with the ‘Indiana Jones punching a Nazi’ sound effect (see again point 1). It’s a small thing, but a good, juicy smashing-a-melon-with-a-hammer noise would go a long way towards making the entire third act feel satisfying.

All that aside, I found myself enjoying World War Z almost despite my-and-itself, because it’s really fun. Good? No, certainly not. Not as a zombie movie, at least. But it’s a light summer romp with big, impressive action sequences and brisk pacing; the plot duly resolves itself, seemingly advancing with its own confident energy. Given that no less than five people have writing credits, that’s something of a minor miracle—or perhaps no surprise at all; writing-by-committee may not provide coherent vision nor striking artistic statements, but usually neither do $200-million-budgeted movies, Batman aside.

That Nolan reference is not accidental, and not just a rule-proving-exception. The other day, I was trying to figure out why I liked World War Z even as I recognized its many flaws, and I realized something kind of shocking:

Man of Steel, a movie depicting Superman’s origin story and first big adventure, was infinitely more horrific than World War Z, a movie about the literal end of the world.

Zack Snyder has a very particular style, and like most artists he only becomes more like himself as he, well, matures isn’t the right word, but you know what I mean. Develops. The terrified, awestruck shakycam and the icy-instagram palette and the grim, explosive bombast were perfect for, say, the Dawn of the Dead remake, but nonsensical for Superman. I’ve seen various people critique Man of Steel as essentially what every 13-year-old boy in the world “would totally do if I were Superman”, only saving the couple people he knows personally and actually likes while throwing trains at his stupid, boring hometown, God, mom, I’m like, Superman, okay, and punching The Bad Mans so hard they like fly through a building full of screaming innocent civilians pow crash argh BOOM crunch pow. 

Pictured: HEROISM [photo via an entertainmentweekly 'box office preview']

David Goyer, Christopher Nolan’s screenwriter-of-choice, has said in most of his Man of Steel interviews that the point of the movie was to depict “what it would be like if Superman really existed, in our world. How people would react, etc” (a paraphrasing). Leaving aside how boneheaded it is to put the primary-colored symbol of Truth, Justice, and the American Way into a ‘gritty and realistic’ world, the answer he came up with seems to be that if Superman ‘existed in our world’, he wouldn’t be Superman, but a cape-wearing sociopath with a puréed fossilized baby skull lasered into his genes and no respect nor concern for the lives of mere mortals.

There essentially is no ‘Clark Kent’ in Man of Steel’s version of the universe, just Superman when he’s not wearing the suit. In large part this is down to the film's characterization and treatment of Kevin 'Not My Real Dad' Costner as Jonathan Kent: rather than the basically good, noble, and kind man who teaches his son that it is one's responsibility to use one's gifts to help one's fellows as best one can, he is presented as a basically reactionary, terrified misanthrope so concerned about 'fitting in' that he forces said son to watch him die a ridiculous and easily preventible death, just to prove some incomprehensible point about... something. Goyer, Nolan, and Snyder's Superman is a traumatized outsider, an eternal victim frightened of his own potential (and rightly so, to be honest, based on how he resolves his fight with Zod), rather than a representation of 'what is best in us,' an ideal to be aspired to.

The one appearance the classical Clark--the doofy, sweet kid from Smallville, Kansas--makes is in the final scene, and even there he’s a cute in-joke shared between Superman and Lois: “hahaha, wouldn’t it be silly if I were a human being with human flaws and emotions.” The Man of Steel Superman is unreservedly and overtly the version of the character Tarantino has David Carradine present at the end ofthe second Kill Bill movie: a smirking alien demigod who sees us as helpless worms, to be protected or destroyed as suits his unfathomable whim. Zack Snyder has made Lex Luthors of us all.

Me, watching Man of Steel [photo via a businessinsider article about the 2nd trailer]

 Contrast Man of Steel’s deeply offputting and alienating ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Kal’ tone to the very traditional Hollywood ‘Ostensibly Everyday Normal White Dude Fixes the Apocalypse so he can Hug his Kids’ story Damon Lindelof turned World War Z into, and the relationship between this year’s biggest selfconscious blockbusters becomes clear: while both films misinterpret their source material to an absurd degree, World War Z remembered that people go to big, expensive summer movies to see pretty people do exciting and impossible things—in other words, to have fun. And extremely stupid though it may be, ‘humanity’s last, best hope’ tripping as he steps off a plane and blowing his own head off is also extremely fun to watch.

Autre Ne Veut - Anxiety review

7.5

If you aren't already a fan, drop that score a couple tenths; me myself I was so looking forward to Any new Autre Ne Veut that the moment I heard his Voice again I was signed on for the rest of the record. The higher fidelity and slicker production on Anxiety actually do suit the mainstream rnb tendencies which have always obviously underlay Arthur Ashin's music, but they Also manage to turn one of his previous strengths into a limitation: the unhinged, about-to-disintegrate song structures, vocals so overwhelmed by emotion they verge on uncontrolled shrieks, in the context of 'a proper debut into the mainstream/"big leagues" of indie' limit conveyance of content. You can tell he's upset, excited, feeling deeply (eg the old track 'emotional'), but not quite Why or what About. Where previously even if the Implications of his words weren't clear, at least the vocals Themselves were at the heart of each song, on Anxiety the dense production overwhelms even verbal intelligibility; this is a record about its Songs in the broadest sense, rather than its lyrics.

This divergence between aesthetic and content dogs the record; the songs all Sound good, but only a select few are memorable out of context. It took me til the last few tracks to reason it out, but suddenly I saw: there are no Hooks in these songs. On his selftitled the most striking Thing is the immediacy of the melodies, that nearly every track feels like an old classic the first time you hear it, whereas here it feels as though he became so concerned with making the songs Sound Perfect that he forgot to Write them in the first place. It becomes an effort to get at his precise Meanings, and often enough, if reached, they aren't compelling enough to have warranted said effort. Where before it felt as though he wrote the Hell out of Every song, straining for alternate-reality chart-toppers at each at-bat, Anxiety feels a bit loaded with filler, even at just ten tracks.

Don't get me wrong, Play By Play is a fucking Monster of a song, but that's just it: its soaring earworm of a hook makes it the exception that proves the rule. In the harsh light of the blatant singles the 'album cuts' seem wan and bloodless, interesting but not Instant Classics of the sort he seemed to toss off before. The only other track that approaches that immediate sing-to-oneselfability is, ironically, the closer, World War. Midalbum blurs together a bit in the absence of distinct hooks and melodies, with the notable exception of Gonna Die, which captures quite well Another key component of his unique voice: the ability to state selfevident, almost pedestrian philosophical or personal notions (again, "I've got feelings in my heart/ that set me apart") and somehow have them bear the full weight of their deepest implications.

Anxiety is Autre Ne Veut's 'difficult second album', without a doubt, with all the songwriting trouble and artistic-directional confusion that term implies, but that by no means makes it a failure. It brings to mind that second Twin Shadow album that came out last year, which Also had a perfectly reasonable aesthetic and was acceptable as 'this artist's new record' but whose individual songs clearly were just not quite as immediate and memorable as those on his debut. That said, a gifted musician with a unique and valuable voice  performing weak tracks is Still a gifted musician, and this is indeed the second Autre Ne Veut album.