So I've been doing a bit of warm weather inventory here at the Shallow End, which invariably leads me to that list of oft-repeated tunes — the ditties you just can't escape — iTunes' collection of my "Most Played" tracks. The top 10 is nothing to write home about and encompasses about everything you'd expect. The 57 seconds of brilliance that is "Stu's Song" from "The Hangover." A melange of '90s One Hit Wonders, and the world's most perfect love song and best with the word "Wanna" in the title (eat it, Spice Girls): Hootie's "Only Wanna Be With You."
But #2 is an entry I simply can't get my head around. It's the eighth track off of the unfortunately titled "All Killer No Filler" by Canadian punk band Sum 41, whose only real claim to fame in 2013 is that their lead singer, Deryck (that's not a typo, apparently they enjoy consonants up North) Whibley's fling with Avril Lavigne. I have to give the boys credit, though. A Rockstar (video game company) sticker is has a conspicuous cameo in the video for "Motivation," one of the few angst-ridden tunes of my teens I still return to from time to time without wanting to travel back in time and punch a hole through my own skull.
As we all remember from early 2001, Sum 41 hit it big with "Fat Lip," that song you sang in your bathroom mirror because clever lyrics like "The doctor said my mom should have had an abortion" seemed incredibly edgy at the time. Sum 41 became the third most popular punk band with an unexplained number in their name that summer, and made the rounds of TRL and whatever subsequent noise VH1 was throwing on the air. All Killer No Filler went platinum, the Warped Tour was cool again and swimming pools everywhere emptied for impromptu skate competitions.
Why, then, did an unreleased track find its way onto my Most Played list?
Unlike Fat Lip, "Summer" is a bit of a conundrum lyrically. Gone are the references to trashing house parties and unsupervised El Camino binges, replaced with what reads like verbal overflow in which our narrator admits he's "awkwardly speaking with nothing to say."
One could argue the entire period of "punk pop" from 2000 through its fiery death in 2005 could be described this way. These were the years when Blink 182 was still writing about prank phone calls and some band that looked like Incubus felt compelled to tell us they weren't perfect. Yellowcard was signing about sunny California while trying to recreate Groundhog Day and the second incarnation of the Cure was trying to confuse teenagers with overwrought allusions and fancy adjectives.
What did it all mean? In the end, a whole lot of nothing. And that's what "Summer" is. It's a nice upbeat song that perfectly encapsulates the "whoa!" of everything speeding around you, and just as quickly you realize the time is up and it's been wasted. We find ourselves, as fans of this music, admitting vicariously to our former favorites: "The worlds not learning from you."
Or maybe I'm just looking a little too closely and being a little too harsh. Here's to summer, you fans of that late 90s/early 2000s punk sugar. The rush will end someday, but replay "Summer" and live in it for just a while longer.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Saturday, June 15, 2013
A Sticky Floors and Salty Popcorn Movie Review: Man of Steel
There's a scene in Zack Snyder, Christopher Nolan and David Goyer's reboot of the Superman film franchise where our hero, Clark (Henry Cavill) visits the Smallville parish. We've received the obligatory backstory at this point, with Kevin Costner and Russel Crowe performing valiantly as Jonathan Kent and Jor-El, respectively. The evil General Zod (Michael Shannon) has arrived on Earth and demands Clark turn himself in, ostensibly to save the human race.
As Clark and the bewildered minister discuss the moral quandary, Cavill's profile is framed by a stained-glass image of Christ in a not so subtle nod to Superman as savior. It's a brief moment in the film, certainly not a narrative thread one would call dominant in the film by any stretch of the imagination, but it's an interesting choice given the note Nolan and Goyer left their last superhero project, The Dark Knight Rises. It's as though the heroes of the DC Universe, on the screen, are both grappling in worlds that are extremely gritty but built ideals that existed way back when these characters were created. It's a dynamic that, in the Dark Knight trilogy, worked because of the inherent tragedy at the center of the story: the death of the Waynes, and Batman's righteous quest to carry on their ideal, within limits.
Superman has no limits. We know that early in the film, when Lara worries their son will be killed on Earth and Crowe's Jor-El deadpans, "How?" Therein lies the center problem with any Superman film, and the reason 2006's "Superman Returns" left many moviegoers with a bad taste in their mouths. How do you craft a villain for a hero with so few weaknesses?
Snyder and Co. do well with Shannon's Zod, and his accomplice Faora-Ul (Antje Traue). But Nolan and Goyer's mold just doesn't fit the Superman mold perfectly, and in grasping for a narrative that makes sense in this universe, there are some misfires (the church scene chief among them, because the idea of Superman as a martyr to human beings fails on a few levels).
That's not to say Man of Steel isn't a great film. It is, it just feels disjointed. The performances, particularly of Costner and Crowe, stand out. It's just too bad that the questions of patriarchy and the effect they have on Clark are never fully explored. In one scene, Clark bickers with Jonathan about his future. Within minutes of screen time, Jonathan is taken from Clark forever, and the emotions as a result feel...slightly off. That may be because the origin story is told through flashbacks, a narrative technique that works in this film but lacks the gravitas, say, of a "Batman Begins."
The film looks great, though. Snyder is the perfect choice to direct a film in which hand-to-hand combat becomes pivotally important, as it does in the film's final third. The director's signature camera slowdown works excellently here with the jerky, thrusting movements of Zod's foot soldiers, and the climactic battle between Zod and Clark in the skies above Metropolis will take your breath away, regardless of whether you watch it in two dimensions or three.
Much has been made of Cavill's lack of the humor that makes Superman relatable to the audience. It's a valid complaint, but also one with its origin in the source material and not the story that Nolan and Goyer are trying to tell. This is a story with weight — questions of humanity and how it might react to the larger question presented by Superman's presence: How do our notions of the universe (and even God) change when a man with such abilities appears on Earth? The smartest decision the team made was making Jonathan and Martha (Diane Lane) keenly aware of the effect this knowledge will have and using it as the source of their wish to shelter Clark from the world. It gives this tale a touch of humanity and reality that might have otherwise gone by the wayside with so many things blowing up.
I'm not sure where the Man of Steel franchise will go from here. Given the early box office returns, a sequel is inevitable. And while not perfect, Man of Steel sets the canvas on which to paint a number of very interesting stories (and potentially set up that Justice League movie, eh, Warner Bros.?). Let's just hope the next time out, that story is chosen from the start and remains focused during all of those aerial theatrics.
Verdict: 4/5 stars
As Clark and the bewildered minister discuss the moral quandary, Cavill's profile is framed by a stained-glass image of Christ in a not so subtle nod to Superman as savior. It's a brief moment in the film, certainly not a narrative thread one would call dominant in the film by any stretch of the imagination, but it's an interesting choice given the note Nolan and Goyer left their last superhero project, The Dark Knight Rises. It's as though the heroes of the DC Universe, on the screen, are both grappling in worlds that are extremely gritty but built ideals that existed way back when these characters were created. It's a dynamic that, in the Dark Knight trilogy, worked because of the inherent tragedy at the center of the story: the death of the Waynes, and Batman's righteous quest to carry on their ideal, within limits.
Superman has no limits. We know that early in the film, when Lara worries their son will be killed on Earth and Crowe's Jor-El deadpans, "How?" Therein lies the center problem with any Superman film, and the reason 2006's "Superman Returns" left many moviegoers with a bad taste in their mouths. How do you craft a villain for a hero with so few weaknesses?
Snyder and Co. do well with Shannon's Zod, and his accomplice Faora-Ul (Antje Traue). But Nolan and Goyer's mold just doesn't fit the Superman mold perfectly, and in grasping for a narrative that makes sense in this universe, there are some misfires (the church scene chief among them, because the idea of Superman as a martyr to human beings fails on a few levels).
That's not to say Man of Steel isn't a great film. It is, it just feels disjointed. The performances, particularly of Costner and Crowe, stand out. It's just too bad that the questions of patriarchy and the effect they have on Clark are never fully explored. In one scene, Clark bickers with Jonathan about his future. Within minutes of screen time, Jonathan is taken from Clark forever, and the emotions as a result feel...slightly off. That may be because the origin story is told through flashbacks, a narrative technique that works in this film but lacks the gravitas, say, of a "Batman Begins."
The film looks great, though. Snyder is the perfect choice to direct a film in which hand-to-hand combat becomes pivotally important, as it does in the film's final third. The director's signature camera slowdown works excellently here with the jerky, thrusting movements of Zod's foot soldiers, and the climactic battle between Zod and Clark in the skies above Metropolis will take your breath away, regardless of whether you watch it in two dimensions or three.
Much has been made of Cavill's lack of the humor that makes Superman relatable to the audience. It's a valid complaint, but also one with its origin in the source material and not the story that Nolan and Goyer are trying to tell. This is a story with weight — questions of humanity and how it might react to the larger question presented by Superman's presence: How do our notions of the universe (and even God) change when a man with such abilities appears on Earth? The smartest decision the team made was making Jonathan and Martha (Diane Lane) keenly aware of the effect this knowledge will have and using it as the source of their wish to shelter Clark from the world. It gives this tale a touch of humanity and reality that might have otherwise gone by the wayside with so many things blowing up.
I'm not sure where the Man of Steel franchise will go from here. Given the early box office returns, a sequel is inevitable. And while not perfect, Man of Steel sets the canvas on which to paint a number of very interesting stories (and potentially set up that Justice League movie, eh, Warner Bros.?). Let's just hope the next time out, that story is chosen from the start and remains focused during all of those aerial theatrics.
Verdict: 4/5 stars
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)