April Fool: The first was a Friday… Coincidence?

So last time I critiqued several films I’d watched in theaters. Mainly because several of these films did not measure up to my level of expectation, and when I’m disappointed, I'm inclined to rant.

Well, folks, I’m back, and I’m here to criticize a different entertainment medium:  the music industry.  Particularly, the lyrics of so called “music” nowadays.  If the screenplays and dialogue of some recent movies have been lackluster (and the performances as well, but moving on), it is nothing compared to the sorry state that lyrics have been reduced to in today’s songs.

I’m pretty sure you know the specific song that brought this entire subject to my mind. It’s been recently mocked and parodied by everyone over the last few weeks.  If you haven’t heard it yet, I apologize in advance, because once you listen to it, you can never “unhear” it:

That’s right. It’s Rebecca Black’s tribute to banality:  the monstrosity aptly titled Friday.

It’s a song where in the bridge the lyricist found it necessary to list the order of certain days of the week.  And unless one’s target audience is composed of people from a planet other than earth, this is rather excessive and, frankly, insulting to a person’s intelligence.

Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday

Today is Friday, Friday

…

Tomorrow is Saturday

And Sunday comes afterwards

The number of bash-worthy elements in this music video is endless (vocals come immediately to mind, but I digress).

Another trend in the music of today’s pop culture is to make other pop culture references.  This is nothing new and it has been done ad nauseam. 

Take for example the movie Inception.  Yes, I loved that movie and it was awesome (don’t judge me), but why must all these songs be singing about it suddenly?

Jennifer Lopez – On the Floor

I’m loose
And everybody knows I get off the train
Baby it’s the truth
I’m like inception I play with your brain

Black Eyed Peas – Just Can’t Get Enough

Honey got a sexy all steamin’

She givin’ hotness a new meanin’

Perfection mama you gleamin’

Inception you got a brother dreamin’, dreamin’

Another thing these songs love to mention is new technology.  However, in a few years from now, listening to a song that references checking your facebook or listening to your iPod is going to be as dated as listening to a song that discusses a VHS tape or a record player, etc.

Iyaz – Replay

It’s like my iPod’s stuck on replay

(Newsflash: It’s a “repeat” button not a “replay” button.)

Black Eyed Peas – Imma Be

Imma, Imma, Imma be rockin’ their iPod to the infinite

Also, because originality and creativity are no longer things artists strive for anymore in their songs, many popular hooks and choruses are simply a remix of older ones.

No Love – Eminem (feat. Lil Wayne)

Remind you of anything? Maybe Haddaway’s What Is Love?

Black Eyed Peas – The Time (Dirty Bit)

Remind you of anything? Maybe (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack?

will.i.am and Nicki Minaj – Check It Out

Remind you of anything? Maybe Buggles’ Video Killed the Radio Star?

(And yes, as sad as it is, I was convinced that the backup singers’ “ooh, ooh” originated from the will.i.am and Nicki Minaj version. My boyfriend had to convince me that they actually “borrowed” it from a preexisting song.) 

He also dislikes the Eric Prydz song Call On Me…

Because it’s just a rip off of Steve Winwood’s Valerie.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I may be bashing some of these songs that I’ve used as examples, but I’m willing to admit that I have fun listening to some of them despite the fact that they may not be as good as the Beatles, Michael Jackson, or whatever “fill-in-the-blank-artist-or-group-stands-as-the-paradigm-of-musical-genius-in-your-book,” etc.

Even my boyfriend rolls his eyes every time I jam to Katy Perry’s new song E.T. because he thinks the lyrics are just God awful. And yes, her songs are not necessarily masterpieces when it comes to the lyrical department. And yes, the song is crammed to the max with space-related lingo to the point that it reaches the ridiculous.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I have fun jamming to Katy Perry...

 Boy, you're an alien
Your touch so foreign
It's supernatural
Extraterrestrial

In other words, maybe I should just stop criticizing music because everyone enjoys different styles and even I like lame stuff sometimes, right?

Nah.

March Movie Madness

I should be a critic.

Seriously.

I’ve considered different options over the years for a career as I’ve worked toward my English degree… writer…editor…professor, etc.  But now I know.  Critic is the answer.  When I took my required Critical Theory and Practice class senior year and learned about the complex, competitive love-hate relationship between the author, reader, and critic, I never dreamed that I would fall within that third category.

But that was before.

The signs were all there.  They were small perhaps, and I can see now that I had obviously ignored them.  After all, I had always possessed an innate desire to point out the stupidity versus the genius of certain television commercials.  It was, after all, my duty to verbally declare to the room when they insulted the human intellect.

Little did I know that these experiences illustrated a potential future in criticism and not in writing as I had hitherto believed.  Great satisfaction was gained from mentally rating them on a scale from late night infomercial to Super Bowl worthy, so I can only imagine how great the satisfaction would be if I was actually paid to do so. 

And over the past few weekends I have certainly watched several movies that have only solidified my new resolve to engage in such a profession. 

**WARNING: Some Spoilers**

Movie #1:  The Adjustment Bureau.  

Good in parts, yes, and it had an Inception-like vibe that I enjoyed. Plus, let’s face it… Matt Damon and Emily Blunt are simply two people that look incredibly sexy together. They do possess amazing on-screen chemistry. The story – while incredible – was intriguing, with its promised combination of action/adventure and romance:  a love affair between the two characters David Norris and Elise Sellas is thwarted by outside forces who call themselves the Adjustment Bureau and are responsible for ensuring that people stay on track with the life plans that have been preset for their future.  The movie seemingly promises to delve headfirst into a profound free will versus fate debate.    

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Even the poster campaign makes this seem like a logical deduction.

Instead the audience discovers that the mechanics behind the powers these bureaus members were endowed with came from the imagination of an elementary school child.

• Really guys? Magical hats? Even if they were fedoras? 

(Although, yes, fedoras did make many of the actors in this film much “hotter” than they would have been fedora-less.)

Clearly there are exceptions to the rule… 

• Door knobs that lead one way if turned to the right but *gasp* go somewhere else if turned to the left.  

•  Only certain doors go to certain places in New York.   

•  Water affects their powers...

Those are the limitations? Really? Seriously now… who made up these rules? A fourth grader? I can only suspend my disbelief so much for one film before things just turn comical.

Also, I must complain about the anticlimactic ending.  I’ll simply compare it to this scenario:  Imagine that you are watching an action flick, and you have steadily and mentally prepared yourself for an epic last fight scene only to have the two opposing parties show up at the battle and be all like “Sooooo, I’m actually good… wanna just shake hands and be friends?”

It reminded me a lot of the ending to Breaking Dawn in that way. Anticlimactic.  However, at only 106 minutes, the film also felt much shorter than it should have been. Something I can’t say about the aforementioned book and its superfluous 754 pages.   

(And yes, I know. Do I really have a right to critique anything if I’ve read a Stephenie Meyers book, some of you might be thinking.)

Movie #2:  Red Riding Hood.

Before I watched it, I had commented that it looked like Twilight meets The Village… and it was, but in the worst possible way.  Congratulations, Catherine Hardwicke.  Red Riding Hood almost makes Twilight look good by comparison. 

In some ways I found the first half more ridiculous than the second half, only because it focused even more on the melodramatic, not-at-all-reminiscent-of-Twilight love triangle between the characters Valerie, Peter, and Henry.  Also, the second half was more interesting simply because I honestly couldn’t figure out who the wolf was.  To throw us off track even more, the director decided last minute to throw in additional, random possibilities for the mysterious wolf’s human alter ego by showing us that *gasp* almost everyone in the village has brown eyes… just like the wolf!  

Brown eyed people are of the devil. Moral of the story. 

With few exceptions, all of the one-liners were just so darn absurd that it was downright entertaining.  The acting across the board was far from outstanding.  Some people have observed that Gary Oldman was one of the few good actors in this mess, but I beg to differ.  And his getup looked like it was inspired by Gene Wilder’s costume from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.   

 versus  

 Well, I see it anyway.

Like watching The Adjustment Bureau, there were just too many parts in this movie where I started laughing only to suddenly and uncomfortably realize, Oh, that probably wasn’t meant to be funny. Oops.

The scenario I found myself in was a problem that frequently arises when melodramatic movies convince themselves that they are dramatic movies. They take themselves far too seriously… and the only rational response for the audience is to engage in awkward, self-indulgent chuckling.

Movie #3: Beastly.

As soon as I saw that it was made by CBS films, I mentally groaned. And yes, it had lackluster acting and the dialogue quality of a direct-to-DVD release.  It was essentially a made for TV film released in theaters… the deformed love child of a Disney Channel Original Movie and a Lifetime Movie Network production.

It’s a movie adaptation of a book by the same name written by Alex Flinn, and it puts a modern spin on the Beauty and the Beast story…because let’s face it, if there is anything we don’t already have enough of it’s re-tellings of classic stories.   

In the movie, the character Kyle is an arrogant, attractive, popular boy at school cursed by a witch with ugliness for a year until he can find someone who loves him.  Without this confession of love, he is doomed to stay repulsive and disfigured forever.  Lindy is the Belle/Gabriella Montez-esque character destined to discover Kyle’s inner beauty and set him free physically, emotionally, spiritually, yada yada.

Mary-Kate Olsen plays the witch character named Kendra who looks like a druggie… so, Mary-Kate on a normal day, I suppose.

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 Mary Kate: Wardrobe and Make-up Department? I came to the set this way...

P.S. On a similar note, watch some episodes of College Humor’s series Very Mary-Kate. You won’t regret it.   http://www.collegehumor.com/verymarykate

Speaking of Kendra, her curse was the most random and ridiculous of any I’ve ever heard: “Embrace the suck.” Wow. Great dialogue. Kudos to that screenwriter. It was Daniel Barnz, by the way, in case you were wondering.  He was also the director.  Very ambitious man.  He likes to suck at two things simultaneously. (Oh, I’m sorry… I mean he likes to “embrace the suck” of two things, rather. My bad.) 

Then again, I haven’t actually read the book, so this gem of a phrase might have been the handiwork of the author.  Still, in any case, knowing the ungodly amount of creative license a director is usually granted, I then hold Daniel Barnz personally responsible if he chose to retain that line on purpose.

A friend of mine later pointed out that “embrace” and “suck” were literally tattooed across Kyle’s face where his eyebrows should have been, begging the question:  How did Lindy not know who he was when that was one of the last things someone had publicly said to him before his disappearance from school and general society?

The face only a mother could love. Seriously though… his father couldn’t even stand to be around his ugly mug.

I’m shocked I didn’t actually notice those particular tattoos before though.  I guess I was just too busy embracing all the other aspects of this movie that sucked.