More Lamenting about Music

Yeah, I'm not impressed with my generation. Maybe I'm a music snob, and certainly I'm less of a snob than some people I know, but I was raised on really good music by my parents, and I like to think that I have a fairly good taste. But when I see the top 10 songs on iTunes, my heart sinks sometimes, and this week is particularly brutal, filled with samey synth dance things with all the wit and depth of a spoonful of Nyquil--even the one song I do like, which is in the number 3 spot, is electronically enhanced in a weird, bubble-gum sort of way. Ever the positive person that I am, rather than collapse inward in grief over the massive silliness of the 21st century, I like to pretend I could sit these people down and provide them with awesome alternatives to their mass-produced cotton candy fluff. So, here are some of the iTunes top 10 as of November 13, and what I'd recommend instead.

#3: "Fireflies", by Owl City
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI4JLa0hbUw
Okay, I admit, I do love this song. It reminds me of something Ben Gibbard, the lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie, might have done in high school, and the music video is beyond adorable. I shall let this one pass my ire, but put it up because it gets my Awesome Music Video Of the Week award.

#4: "Sexy Bitch (Feat. Akon)", by David Guetta
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcLLrwMYTiE
*sobs* I hate this song. It doesn't even sound any sort of good; it just sounds like noise. I had some patience for Guetta's "When Love Takes Over", the few times I heard it, because it at least was not horrifically offensive to the ear. Why do people buy this, and where's the amazing E they're clearly dropping which makes it such a religious experience to listen to?
Instead... Throw on 3OH!3's "Don't Trust Me". Not only is it awesome because they're from Colorado (shout out to my homies in Ft Collins, woot!), but they're unapologetically weird and, I think, totally aware of how silly they're being--the video totally proves that. Self-aware stupidity, friends. It's why Judd Apatow swims in a big pile of money.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-L8FRW72qo

#8: "Whatcha Say", by Jason DeRulo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmKEiYLG2rs
This one makes me particularly sad, because it dares to sample (read: destroy) a bit from one of my favourite artists, Imogen Heap, who knows how to make electronically-enhanced music actually sound like it has a soul. Here, our delightful Jason creates a fairly standard "girl, when I'm famous we're gonna be BALLIN'" song, interspersed with the aforementioned sampling of Heap's "Hide and Seek" (a song that has, tragically, become a bit of a meme due to misuse on one Fox prime-time soap, but in and of itself is quite stunning). The girls (if they are human, it's possible they're computer voices) singing the chorus sound especially snarky, as if they hate the song, hate Jason, and hate themselves for being his bitches. Frankly, I don't blame them. He sounds like my old nemisis, Karl Wolf. Because they all sound the same.
Instead... Check out "Bad Body Double", by Imogen Heap herself. Probably one of my favourite tracks off of her new album, it's got a fantastic beat, it's quite cheeky, and immensely more clever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR_heGRfwe0

So, basically:
=/=

The math makes sense, people. Math doesn't lie.

#9: "Party in the USA", by Miley Cyrus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M11SvDtPBhA
Now, I am known neither for my partying ways, nor for my status as a US Resident, but......bleugh. Just, bleugh. This is bland, croaky, and just silly. Butterflies? Seriously? This girl should not be as famous as she is. Art should be about the provocative, the thing that makes you think even as you enjoy the hell out of it. Miley Cyrus is the opposite of think. She is the antithink.
Instead... To you, tweens, I offer, simply, Beethoven's 7th Symphony, one of my favourite pieces of music and something intelligent and dark and absolutely stunning. So basically like nothing you've ever heard before (zing!). Here ya go. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdfNTO_o-3k

That's basically all I've got to say about that. Something needs to change, people. Seriously.

Newsies, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying about Quality and Just Feel the Love.

Cult Film (n): "A film that has acquired a highly devoted but relatively small group of fans. Often, cult movies have failed to achieve fame outside of this small group; however there have been many exceptions...Cult films often become the source of a thriving, obsessive, and elaborate subculture of fandom, hence the analogy to cults." - Wikipedia

I think everyone who watches movies has a guilty pleasure; unfortunately I'm in the rotten habit of telling my guilty pleasures to everyone who will listen, and you, my readers, are no different.
I'm not going to lie to you, I'm a fanfic writer. I have been ever since the sixth grade or so, and as a result (or possibly as a cause) I have always been a complete sucker for cult films and TV shows, and Newsies is by far my favourite. I know that there are many other more well-known cult films out there and some fans of other movies who will fight me to the teeth about my choice, but to me, Newsies epitomizes the definition of a cult film, because I was there, and I know how it went.

It's a film that few people have heard of, an innocuous little 1992 Disney musical about the newsboys' strike of 1899 in New York, starring Christian Bale (of future Batman fame, hooray), David Moscow, Bill Pullman, Robert Duvall, and Anne-Margret. It was a box-office bomb, savaged by critics and quickly forgotten....but yet, it wasn't.

Unlike some other cult obsessions of mine, I can actually tell you why I love Newsies so much: I starred (as the character of David) in a stage version of it one summer when I was about 13, and I fell passionately and completely in love with it. When the VHS from Amazon.ca arrived, I watched it every single night, and I'm honestly not kidding you about this. I got the soundtrack and treated it like it was a Fabergé Egg. My obsessive adoration for Newsies lasted from the ages of 13 to about 15 or so, but even after I stopped my daily viewings, it stayed with me. As an example (and my then-boyfriend tried this with me when we were 16, much to his amusement), I could cover my eyes during any part of the film and tell you exactly what the characters onscreen were wearing. Two years after that--a full four years after my obsession wound down--I can still do this trick.

Of course, this was all before I started studying film from an objective point of view. Looking on Newsies with my new critical eye, I cringed at a lot of it--some of the acting is melodramatic to the point of hilarity, the dramatic tension is pretty much at the level of high-school drama class, and Anne-Margret's role is obviously just to get her name on the marquee; her character flits in, sings in a terrible Swedish accent, and flits back out.
Newsies does not have any fantastic camera shots, exquisite pacing, or even a snappy script. It's not the worst movie ever made, no, but it ain't exactly Scorcese.

BUT.......
My god, is it fun.
This is a film that has so much heart in it that some people can't help but be charmed. The actors, even those who may have a slight idea that this isn't exactly Oscar material, just seem to have so much fun--singing, dancing, throwing completely harmless riots, it's all done with this massive sense of hilarity and enthusiasm. The music is by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman (both of The Little Mermaid fame); it's cute like anything, and always makes me want to jump up and dance and sing along. Or maybe that's because I already know every single word, I dunno.
The film has gained a massive cult following of people--based mostly on the VHS and DVD sales, and spread by the internet--who are just as devoted as I was. These fans have created their own hierarchies and rankings, their own factions and devotions; Want proof?
As of this writing, FanFiction.net has 5,833 individual fan fics in the Newsies category. Newsies fans are divided into two types, those who love Jack (Christian Bale) and those who love a secondary character called Spot. Homosexual pairings abound, as they always do in fan fiction. Out there on the web is a detailed lesson on how to do the chair dance from the 'King of New York' musical number. People have set up multiple online shrines in memory of one of the actors, who died of cancer--and whose most memorable moment in Newsies is hanging from a spinning ceiling fan as a big finale to a dance number. Little things like that.

A cult film is whatever strikes you deeply for very little reason whatsoever. I can say that my favourite movie is Fight Club, or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and tell you in definitive words why; with Newsies, as good as my vocabulary is, at some point it all just breaks down into a little shrug and an "I don't know, I just do." It captivated me, as it has captivated many others; not because it's particularly brilliant, but because it is goofy, sloppy, silly fun. Despite my craving for intelligent filmmaking, some movies like Newsies are always welcome to space in my collection purely because they never fail to make me stupidly, fantastically happy--and that's something that is incredibly important.

.....WHAT?

http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/05/10/footage-from-prince-of-persia-the-sands-of-time/

I'm not going to lie, I will probably see the Prince of Persia movie, or at least hope that it manages to not suck horribly, but the above clip makes me rub my temples in frustrated agony. The Sands of Time continues to rock my (admittedly limited) world of video games, being one of the only games I've ever come across that had a story that pulled me in so much that I was giddy like a schoolgirl anytime a major plot point occurred. I know that practically everyone played it in 2003 and my love is totally silly at this point because bigger and better things have come along, but honestly, I have yet to find a PS2 title that has drawn me in as much as Sands of Time did. When I heard that there was a movie in the works, for a brief moment I was actually a little bit hopeful; of all the video game stories, Sands of Time is probably one that's pretty filmable, if you did it right.

For those who don't know, the story hinges on the titular (and unnamed) Prince, who is on his very first crusade with his father; while on their way to the Palace of Azad, they conquer the Maharajah of India with the help of the Maharajah's double-crossing Vizier, and take the mysterious Hourglass of Time, as well as the Princess Farah, as loot. Eager for power and glory, the Prince is tricked by the evil Vizier into releasing the Sands of Time (using the Dagger of Time that he took as his own personal prize), destroying the Palace of Azad and turning every human save for himself, Farah, and the Vizier into monsters. Wracked with guilt and horrified at what he has done, the Prince travels through the ruins of the palace with Farah in the hope of returning the Sands of Time to their hourglass and undoing the damage he has done; the trick of the game, of course, is that the whacky-fun platforming is enhanced by your ability to rewind time if you screw up. The Prince is a fantastic character, snarky and witty while still being flawed; Farah, too, is a unique female character, earnest and idealistic, and the banter between the two characters (as well as their romance) is charming and delightful. The gameplay is fantastically fun, the visuals are stunning, and with the exception of the combat, pretty much everything is fucking awesome.

So that's what we have to work with: a redemption story featuring two well-developed characters that bicker like Bogart and Bacall, drop-dead gorgeous scenery, and the always-fun concept of turning back time to try all manner of things over again. And the makers of the Prince of Persia movie have, as far as I can tell, drawl all over this great idea with crayons. And it's not just because Jake Gyllenhaal is entirely wrong for this part; it is because we live in a world where an action movie with actual characters and really witty dialogue is almost unheard-of, because Hollywood has absolutely no respect for audiences, and because audiences don't really give Hollywood much to respect. I put forth that the storyline of The Sands of Time could have been a really really good action movie, and if I'd written it, I would have tried my damndest to show how it could be different from the other cavalcades of mediocrity that grace that genre. Why can't we demand action movies that also have great scripts and characters for the ages? Why can't producers take chances with smart ideas and actually keep them smart throughout the filmmaking process? Escapist awesomeness can still have a great script and good actors; the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie proved that, and it was based on a goddamn theme park ride.

I'm not saying that the Prince of Persia movie will suck; there's always hope that they're just hiding the cleverness from us in a massively misguided marketing scheme. But I'm not holding out hope. When I'm a filmmaker, hopefully enough time will have passed for me to try my hand at remaking some of the films that are just now coming out, such as Watchmen and Prince of Persia, because I think that we can do so much better.