Gloomy Retrospective

Because I like to counteract every action I make until everything is a dull, boring neutral, here are some thoughts about some songs I actually did like that came out this year. 10. Cardi B, Bad Bunny, and J Balvin's "I Like It" The sample here is electric, and Cardi B's personality carries what is an admittedly overstuffed song--overstuffed in the right way, however, and better for how it stands out from all the boring shit released this year than for how good it actually is. 9. Offset and Metro Boomin - "Ric Flair Drip" Just a jam all throughout, "Ric Flair Drip" is such a curious song because it contains all the normal trap stuff, but with one significant difference being the idea of Ric Flair being referenced in 2018. But it works because Offset is just so committed to the idea of it, and the silliness just makes this stand out as a unique song, especially in today's sound landscape. Also, just as a former wrestling fan, I'm just ...

Because I hate myself, I listen to modern radio a lot. And while I do find a lot of it good/passable, there are some repulsive pieces of popular music out there that just makes me want to rant about it till the New Year. See as this man with the black tie, wishing to listen to the white noise tell you the worst hit songs of 2018. 10. DJ Khaled feat. Chance the Rapper, Justin Bieber, and Quavo : "No Brainer" This song is stupid, even by pop music standards. A recycled version of DJ Khaled's slight but charming "I'm The One," it gets rid of the most lyrically-potent and -experienced of that posse (Lil Wayne), and goes for a copy-paste method of trying to recreate the magic of the first, falling short because, no brainer, doing exactly the same thing creates diminishing results. 9. Post Malone feat. Ty Dolla $ign - "Psycho" Post Malone is depressingly boring. And for a song named after a still-horrifying film, it also sounds limp...

This powerful piece of filmmaking deserves to be seen because this is how I imagined Jesus Christ would be in the modern world: charismatic, fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised, and tethering towards extremism. I mean, yes, Christ was a kind, soulful figure, but he was also angry at how society treats its people, and Malcolm X shows that idea with the power it deserves. I'm not saying that Malcolm X is Jesus Christ, but I am saying that he has attributes that seem to spring from ideals that Jesus Christ himself would have.

"Daria" is a strange piece of pop culture, and not because it's a female-led animated series, or the fact that it's an offshot of the popular and slightly more superior satire "Beavis and Butthead"; no, the strangeness lies in the mix of snark, satire, and sentimentality that the show provides, coming off more as a prototype for future shows like "Freaks and Geeks" or "Bojack Horseman" or "You're the Worst" in its strange willingness to cut through the irony and into the real emotions of all its characters, whether they're sympathetic, or just plain stupid. The thing about "Daria" is that it's a very '90s creation, what with its emotionally-detached main character whose quips are quick and her face stoic as if her ever-present frown was plastered by sculptors from her depressing past. Though she's an anti-social intellectual with a penchant for mockery, she's doesn't have low self-este...

So, last week, I heard the theme song of "Dawson's Creek" on the radio, and the fact that I identified it as such is weird because I've never seen "Dawson's Creek" in my entire life. So, in a state of inebriated depression, I decided to watch the first season to see why it's so lodged in my brain. Spoiler alert: it's not a positive review. "Dawson's Creek" is a 1997-2003 television series created by Kevin Williamson (the writer of the first two Scream movies) about Dawson Leery, played by James Van Der Beek, an aspiring filmmaker who's torn between his long-time best friend Joey Potter, played by Katie Holmes, and the new kid on the block Jen Lindley, played by Michelle Williams. And somewhere along this love triangle, it's supposed to do three things: 1) Be an exploration of teen tropes in film and television, 2) Be subversive and self-aware in the application of these tropes, and 3) Still retain the teen audience...

Seeing as TBA Studios has uploaded a copy of one of the best film they've ever made, let me share a few words about it. I'm Drunk, I Love You is a JP Habac film about two college students faced with graduation and an uncertain future. As a last hurrah, they go to this music festival days before their graduation ceremony to drink, listen to music, and deal with bubbling emotions deep underneath themselves that have been festering for seven years between the two leads. This movie is delightful, but that may only be just me. These are characters that I can relate to very closely, seeing as, like Carson and Dio, I'm also a snobby, music-and-film-loving college student held back for close to seven years with an uncertain future ahead. I also had a few friends whom, like Carson, I had a similar dynamic to; we used to go out and drink and revel in our unity, uncertain futures, and unresolved tension until we each found someone else that was willing to go out and date us inst...

I think I'm too old for this. I think I'm too old for most things, really, like existing or being alive, but right now, I feel too old to understand and empathize with Kanye West's public persona. Let's go back to two years ago, when Kanye West brought back G.O.O.D. Fridays and became basically a mainstay at Twitter with his incoherent tweets like "Ima fix wolves" and his pissy fight with Taylor Swift that no one except the two parties cared about. Was the music we got from that worth it? There's a lot of argument that, for the most part, The Life of Pablo (TLOP) is an incoherent mess that still somehow shows the genius of Kanye West by acting like a snapshot of his thoughts and ambitions at the time; others, a very vocal minority, says that these people are just riding Kanye's dick too hard and TLOP is just a mess. Personally, I straddle the fence on this: yes, the album is pretty good at points, but the publicity for it is exhaust...

I. Taylor Swift doesn't improvise well. A lot of her public image is this precise, detailed, mass-marketable girl-next-door pop star whose existence is a testament to the juggling act of her and her PR team. And her success, from her days as a teenager singing wholesome truths to America's teens and too-old-to-be-teens, up to her sell-out to pop music and becoming a provocateur of the iconography of pop music in general, has been this tightly controlled ship that gave her success in spite of the music and the authenticity of the product that she was selling. And with all of this, Taylor Swift became a powerful figure, one who can wage war with companies like Spotify over petty things like money; one who could be deaf for most issues of feminism except for the ones that affected her (the case she made famous where she destroyed a DJ's career for a dollar is a satisfying, but ultimately petty, show of power that works regardless of what movement she was in); and one who...

"Colossal" is a 2016 film directed by Nacho Vigalondo and starring Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis, about a woman with some alcohol problems who learns about a strange gift she has control over. I'm not going to spoil anything, because honestly, it's much better that you know near-nothing about this movie going in. But I will say that this is one strange f***ing movie. Let me elaborate. The central conceit of the story is quite ingenious, but writer/director Nacho Vigalondo twists the story so that it turns into a strong running commentary about empowerment, societal misogyny, substance addiction, the lack of empathy in mass blockbuster death and destruction, and the fake quirkiness of indie romantic comedies. It was so fascinating to watch something so ambitious out of what I thought was going to be another quirky romantic comedy, but with a monster. Because it catches you off-guard with its intentions, the points stick much more than if it were a typical ...

I've seen a lot of coming-of-age films over the years, mostly because I had the time to. And it's a fun genre, filled with humor and insight on the teenage mindset--and sometimes devastatingly tragic conclusions that just break your heart a bit (like a supposedly stupid sex comedy "Last American Virgin" ending on such a downer). Some of cinema's most enduring images come from the genre, whether it's John Bender's raised fist, or Ferris Bueller's smug face, or apple pies being f***ed by an idiot (although, honestly, I remember the "At band camp lines better). In my head, though, the final scene of "2 Cool 2 Be 4Gotten" belongs there in that pantheon. Etched in my head forever is that ending, seeping in ambiguity, raised from the simplicity of its imagery by the film that went before it, that creates conversation on its meaning, as well as refusing to resolve the tension the movie built up in its honest bid to be eternally tattooed i...

I had a whole review written up, but honestly this movie was too unambitious and slight to care about. If it were aiming for more, or if it was more interesting, I might care more, but my take on this movie is simple: It's OK. Sam Raimi's films were better. Michael Keaton was underused. And homage does not equal interesting. It's not worth the 750 words.

[Spoiler warning: I Will Talk About What Happens in the Revival and the Seven Original Seasons of "Gilmore girls"] So, for most of the two months in between school, I've been spending a lot of it re-watching TV series that I grew up with, most likely as a bid for cheap nostalgia and/or because familiarity is comfy like the carcass of a woolly mammoth. The one I most frequently re-watched was "The Office (US)" because that series is both hilarious and well-made, but I want to talk about the Gilmore girls revival, because it's something that I re-watched after binge-watching the six seasons that came before it (Yes, six, because f*** the seventh season with its bullshit Lorelei and Christopher marriage that they didn't have the guts to follow through with and instead just po-po through it for a few episodes before breaking them up when it could've been explored more, damn it). Personally, I had no problem with "A Year in the Life": ...

“Closer” by the Chainsmokers is one heck of a memorable song. I hate it like Duterte hates respectability, but I’ll be damned if I call it forgettable and dull. In fact, despite its stupid f***ing lyrics, or that soulless bleepity-bloop drop that seems to come out straight from an EDM version of Puff Daddy, or the fact that the male singer sounds like he just came home from an all-night rave and was forced to sing the song because their label was trying to rush out the single before the end of the summer, it’s still quite an unique song, one that will probably live in the annals of 2010s nostalgia far off in the future. POSITIVE THINGS ABOUT THE SONG: The song is basically about an alcoholic asshole and a shallow lady meeting after four years and then having a one-night-stand in the back in his/her Land Rover. Before I get negative, let me just say that I really like the fact that they give us enough details about these two people that we can extrapolate their character base...