In this increasingly connected world, I’m obviously not the first to discuss this on their puny insignificant blog and I certainly won’t be the last, but Michael Jackson is dead at 50. My eyes welled up when the initial shock washed over me. He went beyond all superlatives. And, despite his troubled life, he will be missed. Though, I suspect, never forgotten.
Three years ago I noticed a bunch of CDs on sale on amazon.ca for 99 cents each. I already had an order that needed a few more dollars to get free shipping and I love music, so I added a few for the sake of curiousity. A few weeks later the order arrived and I immediately started going through the CDs I purchased. The first I opened up to listen to was The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place by Explosions in the Sky. Immediately, I knew that I had discovered something amazing. Hidden in this seeming pile of refuse was an album that from its first echoed notes took hold of me and drew me in to a world I had never experienced previously and left me wanting more.
Eight months ago, I walked into a low capacity hall at San Diego Comic-Con for an early morning panel about an upcoming show from NBC called Kings. After a short discussion of the basic premise of the show — an alternate history drama set in a monarchy named Gilboa inspired by the biblical tale of David and Goliath — they screened the first twenty minutes of the pilot episode, and I experienced that same enraptured envelopment into a brand new world that that amazing album had beset upon me. Now, eight months after that initial burst of interest followed by a relative dearth of new information, Kings has finally premiered and my first impression has only been enriched by the complexities I once imagined were possible now made manifest by the remainder of this amazing premiere.
Over at Ain’t It Cool News, they’ve compiled snippets of the many reviews of this show. Some of them are fairly positive, but it seems as though most of them chide the show for having cheesy aspects, or soap opera trappings, comparing it to shows like Dynasty and Dallas. I’m not sure why any show that manages to tell a serious story is immediately a soap opera. Is Battlestar Galactica a soap opera because of its intense dour depiction of life? Of course not. It’s merely a show willing to deal with things seriously, as is Kings. To call the show a soap opera is to call Deadwood, or other such character drama, a soap opera: it’s not disingenuous to do so, but it belittles the show to use such a pejorative. All of the criticisms, though, are not unfounded. But the good, and more importantly the potential for good, more than outweighs what little there is to legitimately criticise.
The main story of the premiere, and likely of the rest of the series, is of David, played by Christopher Egan. Taking his name from the biblical slingshot-wielder, the show begins with David living the rural life as King Silas of Gilboa — Ian McShane in a typically brilliant performance — unveils the shiny new capital, Shiloh, built upon the ashes of the cities destroyed by the years of war that ravaged Gilboa before Silas united the lands in the unification War, a costly conflict that left David fatherless with a disenfranchised mother.
Before the inaugural speech is over, tensions are rising with the neighbour nation Gath and two years later the war carries on with David now at the front lines. When the survivors of an ambushed squad are taken hostage by Gath, David defies the orders and, crossing the front lines, rescues the hostages, including the King’s son. This rescue is no small feat given that the front lines of the war are lined by Gath ‘Goliath’ tanks, a menacing visage to all Gilboan soldiers. And so David returns as the hero who slayed a Goliath and saved the King’s son. That’s the first twenty minutes wrapped up in a few sentences. There’s much more there, but I find that the more I like a show the more I want to detail every nuance of the scene (which is why I rarely write about Lost; I don’t want to end up writing 15,000 words per episode) so I’ll leave the rest to the viewer to relish. I will say however, that those twenty minutes are the best and most effective exercise in world building I’ve ever seen.
This premiere has already established that, while this is an alternate history with kingdoms where America once reigned, this world only diverges from ours in the last two centuries. David’s love of classical piano, and more importantly his playing of a piece by Liszt, underscore an implicit history that will certainly get explored as the series continues. How did the world of Liszt change such that not America but Gilboa and Gath were formed? Hopefully, the writers already know the answer.
Perhaps as impressive as the world building is the character building, with every character having complexity and ambiguities which can be developed and exploited over time. The King’s wife, for example, is a quiet but manipulative woman who publicly expresses a distaste for politics while privately and silently ensuring her family’s skeletons stay in their respective closets. Similarly, his son portrays himself a womanizer to the paparazzi to keep up appearances, despite his homosexuality. His desire for power is clear but he is neither the villain nor the brat in this story. At least not yet.
The King’s brother-in-law, the head of a large corporation, Crossgen, which has bankrolled Silas’ rule for years is the most villainous character introduced thus far. His need for war to ensure quarterly profits impel him to push Silas to war despite peace being offered. It’s not until David, once again defying the will of the King, bravely reaches out to their faceless enemy, as the Goliaths stare him down, and brings about renewed peace talks, that his lust for war is sated. Even then, his plots and machinations continue apace to replace the King and continue the profitable war.
David is the archetypal hero. He is a farm-boy turned war hero who doesn’t understand nor desire the world into which he’s been thrown. He quickly falls for the King’s daughter, herself a passionate supporter of improving the nation’s health care much to the King’s dismay. His star rises precipitously, first due the the rescue of the hostages, then later from his part in the reestablishment of peace talks with Gath.
And of course, King Silas himself, around whom all this intrigue revolves, is one of the great draws of this show. Ian McShane, playing a character as conniving as Al Swearengen in a world much more civilized yet just as brutal as Deadwood, is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale network television environment. Silas is a complicated man, a melange of numerous regal stereotypes. His opening speech, and most likely every speech after that, describes a story from the founding days of Gilboa when a flock of butterflies came upon him and perched upon his head in a ring as if they were a living crown. A sign from God. And yet, he has none of the trappings of the typical religiously driven leaders of our time: he knows full-well that evolution is a truth, and devotes a family breakfast to the topic; he accepts his son’s homosexuality as a part of his nature; he is an eloquent leader, who uses his words for both good and ill; he is a brilliant tactician whose military experience lent itself to the political travails of a King. Of course, his religiosity is tempered by his desire for power, and when the Reverend Samuels disowns Silas near the end of the premiere he is more than willing to abandon God. But despite these two conflicting aspects of his larger-than-life personality, beneath it all is a long dormant desire for a quieter life. He is a tragic yet terrifying hero, one we know will eventually fall away for David to rise.
The two weak points of the premiere are the wartime scenes and the relationship between David and the King’s daughter. That Gath would hold hostages just past the front lines of battle, even temporarily, strain credulity. In addition, David’s impassioned speech to Gath asking for compassion and common ground would have likely ended with David brutally destroyed by the numerous tanks trained on him throughout the speech. But I take both of these points in stride because a) this is a different world, with different alliances and territories, strategies and tactics could be slightly different b) David held a white cloth stained in his brother’s blood as he delivered his speech; had Gath fired upon a white flag, there surely would have been international repercussions and c) it is David’s destiny to become King — the final scene where the butterflies land atop his head to signal his coming reign is a sure sign of that — and so I’m willing to accept a few well-timed mistakes on his enemies’ parts; many of the most successful kings and emperors of the past have had such luck in the ascension to power.
The other weak part, the love story, is weak because it happened too easily. There’s no real conflict there, they both seem to already be smitten with each other and in a relationship. I was hoping for it to take a while for their bond to grow before all that happened, but this is a minor quibble as the show could easily still get those things done over the course of the season by introducing conflict. It’s also very daring that the show took what appears to be the only romantic relationship on the show and resolved it so quickly. It’s like if the writers of The Office got Jim and Pam together in the first episode. So I’m willing to believe, for now, that they’ve thought about this and are subverting the stereotypes again for effect.
It’s been a couple days now and the ratings have been tallied and they’re atrocious. Kings had a horrible opening. Kings has already finished filming for the season and I used to think that networks wouldn’t cancel a show with complete episodes ready to air, but Firefly and Daybreak shattered that misconception, so I have to hope that the word of mouth on Kings spreads fast and the ratings improve week-over-week, because this show is a real adventure. It’s an adventure in storytelling, it’s an adventure in world-building, and perhaps most importantly it’s an adventure in broadcasting. It’s the sort of high concept high drama story that’s been relegated to cable television in recent years, and yet here it is on a Big Three network (admittedly the smallest of the Big Three). If Kings becomes a ratings success, as it deserves to be, it could be a catalyst for the networks to reinvigorate the increasingly conservative and middling television they produce.
I loved the premiere. I’m deeply impressed with the show so far. It’s an achievement in storytelling, and I’m sure the subsequent episodes will be as good if not better.
Last night, yet another of the final episodes of Kyle XY aired, and the show still manages to amaze me with its ability to draw realistic characters while maintaining its sci-fi arcs.
I started watching Kyle XY for a lot reasons. The first reason I had was the music: there’s an ongoing thread in the original scores for Kyle XY that, to this day, reminds me of Explosions in the Sky. And we all know that Explosions in the Sky’s music makes even the most mundane moments seem epic so the early moments of the show were greatly enhanced by the minimalist bombast of the score. I mean, there’s a scene where Kyle eats a freaking muffin in the first episode that makes it seem like he’s climbing Mount Everest.
So the music made me stay for a little while, but the thing that really made me stick around was the novelty and realism with which they handled a character with complete and utter amnesia, though it’s not really amnesia per se. The scene I linked to earlier is Kyle’s first meal. He didn’t know what food was or how to eat before that scene and his discovery of it is handled very well. In a scene shortly after this he pees his pants because he didn’t know what that strange sensation he was having meant. There are lots of little interesting trains of thought brought up through the narration in those early episodes that offer a fantastic look at what it might be like to be born fully grown. This sort of storytelling is already very much in the realm of science fiction, but the show goes beyond that by introducing Kyle’s superhuman abilities and the mystery of where he came from, why he isn’t there anymore, and why he has no bellybutton. And while those sci-fi elements are interesting, the thing that really truly makes me excited to see each new episode is the characters.
When I wrote about Kyle XY getting canceled I mostly brought up its sci-fi aspects, but the real world relationships are why the show is so good. That science fiction is a part of the tapestry of the show is surely a reason I enjoy it, but I get as much pleasure from Kyle using his super genius brain to hack into a mainframe as when he’s super nervous about his first date with Amanda.
Last night’s episode had some of the sci-fi stories to tell, but the real beauty of them was that they were there to facilitate telling stories about the characters. Kyle used his ability to visually explore memories to help Jessi, his female bellybutton-free counterpart, get some closure on the disappearance of her mother. Those scenes also brought some much needed empathy and humanity to Jessi and managed to convert me from a Jessi pseudo-hater into a full-on Jessi/Kyle shipper. And all of that happened in just one of the plots of the episode. In another thread, Josh and Andy, one of the best teenager relationships — one of the best relationships in general to be honest — on television, are forced to deal with their impending separation. And he makes all the stupid mistakes you know you shouldn’t make when you’re desperate not to lose the most important person in your life. Josh began the series as the slacker joker who never takes a moment seriously and if you started watching this show with this episode you would have been amazed at his evolution and growth.
I wish this show was continuing on. Mondays at 9, two shows come on that I watch: Heroes and Kyle XY. I think you all know my stance on Heroes by now, but I haven’t done my due diligence in expressing my love of this sweet little show. Don’t let the fact that it airs on ABC Family dissuade you: this show is worth your time. Enjoy it while it’s still here.
A friend of mine recently linked to a parody music video on facebook about riding the TTC. I’ve seen lots of parodies on youtube over the years but for some reason this one made me have a sudden realization about how the internet made Weird Al Yankovic obsolete.
Back in the day, Weird Al got started by working with Dr Demento and singing short easy parodies. It was really something that any relatively talented and funny guy could do if given the opportunity by working with Dr Demento. But Weird Al is the one that did it, and with a bit of savvy he turned that into a successful career as a song parodist.
But today, Weird Al, or some modern day analog to him, would be unlikely to move beyond a youtube or myspace page with a few million views. Popularity? No doubt. Celebrity? No way. That world where a moderately talented guy with access to distribution has been replaced by one where thousands of very talented people vie for notoriety in an incredibly accessible and incredibly competitive environment. The internet has done more than made things more easily available: it has also made us all increasingly more critical. In this new world with millions rather than hundreds or thousands of content generators, we all need to judge things harshly or all our time (and then some) would be monopolized by mediocre content.
It’s this increased competition and accessibility that makes the music industry, and really all media industries, in so much trouble. Piracy has existed ever since media could be reproduced even in rudimetary forms. Piracy is not the reason sales have decreased. The problem is that competition and access have increased.
Christian Rock sucks. It does. You shouldn’t try to defend it, you should be more worried about why you listen to such shitty music1.
It’s shitty half of the time because it’s cloying and cliche and the other half of the time because it’s deceitful. The first half is the stuff you see in one minute mini-infomercials late at night. The second half is the stuff that makes it out of the core Christian Rock culture and into mainstream rock.
Switchfoot. POD. Seventh Day Slumber. This Beautiful Republic. Christian Rock bands generally have really lame names. And if you run across the music of any of the bands that “pass” as regular rock, you’d probably like it enough to listen but not enough to love it. It becomes a part of the din of songs that get played on your local rock radio station. But, for me at least, when you find out they are a Christian Rock band, suddenly every time their songs come on you can hear nothing beyond their hidden evangelizing.
It’s not that I dislike that they infuse their music with their religious beliefs; the best music comes from your most strongly felt emotions. But those bands go about it in a deceitful way. When interviewed they claim they’re not “Christian Rock” even when they began their career in the highly accessible Christian Rock tours that can really raise the profile of up and coming bands. I understand that the label of “Christian Rock” has a dirty connotation to it, but it has that because of bands like those that deny the meanings behind their songs. Rather than admit that they’re praising God, they pretend the song is about a girl.
The less notable segment of Christian Rock isn’t much better. With their over-the-top references to Jesus and God, they go beyond simply expressing their feelings and thoughts and head into the world of evangelizing. And when your songs are little more than evangelical chants wrapped in rhythm, you not only lock yourself into the Christian base, a base which doesn’t need evangelizing in the first place, but you reduce your credibility as an artist.
I’m an atheist but that doesn’t mean I detest religion; I simply have no need or desire for it in my personal life. But many of my favourite shows and movies have religious and mystical concepts at their very heart. So don’t think I hate Christian Rock simply because it involves God. I hate it because it involves God poorly.
An example of a band which is not Christian Rock but has lyrics which discuss God and Jesus very openly (and earnestly) is Page France. I’ve listened to most of Page France’s “Hello, Dear Wind” and overall the album’s a little weak, but the tracks that I find myself returning to since the initial listen — the opening two tracks (Chariot, and Jesus) and the closing track (Feather) — all contain various levels of religious and Christian symbols. But the key is that those songs talk about Jesus and God in novel ways, and they appear to be not an active part of their music. Their songs don’t include God because they think their songs should include God, but merely because the songs they end up writing include him.
I said Christian Rock sucks, but the truth is that Christian Rock shouldn’t even exist. Like the “Pro-American” parts of America Sarah Palin talks about, Rock music isn’t something to be chopped up and spread among ideologies. Music which contains religious references isn’t Religious Music. Categorizing music is fine, in fact I Love it, but there’s a difference between an adjective and a noun. A noun is what you are, but an adjective is simply a modifier. Much like the difference between calling a gay person “a gay” and “a gay person” it seem nominal at best, but the difference is staggering in its connotations. And far too many people don’t treat “Christian Rock” as an adjective followed by a noun.
Music today, popular music anyways, seems to rely much much more on catchy hooks and addictive beats. There’s nothing immanently wrong with music like this, but the fact is music can do better.
Verses have become afterthoughts, subsumed by choruses and pre-choruses. What’s worse is that songs often begin with the chorus now. Starting a song in media res is not daring, innovative, or Tarantino-esque. It’s simplistic song writing, relying on simple repetitive overgeneralized lyrics which water down the more complex issues dealt with in the verse. As OutKast said in “Hey Ya!” about the song’s message that Love is not magical and eternal: “Y’all don’t want to hear me, ya just want to dance.”
Our culture is far too invested in distractions. I can hardly act self-righteous about this point given the sheer quantity of television I watch. Escapism is something I do every day. But often my escapism isn’t into a shiny happy world of harmonies and melodies. It’s a gritty realistic sobering take on life in space that takes on issues our society grapples with daily. Or it’s a tale of battles between good and evil occurring in one of the darkest times in our recent history. The things I watch and listen to for entertainment inform my views of the world today. If the same is true for the people who listen to current pop music as their predominant music then future generations are fucked.
Music was most likely the first art form our species experimented with (this can be easily disputed by virtue of the ephemeral nature of sound, but at least intuitively makes sense) so its power should not be underestimated. We began with simple grunts and rhythms and as we grew more sophisticated we developed harmony and melody and with the advent of language we incorporated lyrics into the tribal drums and bone flutes. So don’t tell me lyrics don’t matter.
Lyrics do more than repeat tropes over newly generated beats. And if you have nothing of value to say with your words, then let your instruments do the talking. I have nothing against a catchy beat, and I have no fundamental issue with pop music. I simply believe that music doesn’t need to be watered down, nor should it be; it should be distilled into its harshest, most biting, most truthful. One of my favorite songs of recent history is Casey’s Song by City and Colour which contains the lyrics “With you on my mind and my heart held in your hand, screaming ‘Break me’” and that’s it. I don’t need a verse to elaborate on that, those few words along with the accompanying music tell a story better than most exposition-laden pop songs.
It may seem like those two points are contradictory but they’re not; I want terse and smartly written lyrics, but I’m not willing to put up with pop music’s current love of short verses and repetitive choruses with little substance. Pop music is popular music, not bubbly vapid superificial music.
I like CDs; they’re a high fidelity standard that everyone agrees on. While SACD and DVD-Audio are higher quality and offer surround sound, most music is stereo — if only because we don’t care whether the rhythm guitarist was behind or beside us — and the increased quality is noticeable but not exceptional. They’re nice, but unnecessary. But CDs? CDs are awesome. They provide a permanent physical digital representation of music. The best part about them is their lack of copy protection. This isn’t a hippie/pirate thing, though I appreciate file sharing for the ability to get introduced to new genres and bands that radio doesn’t offer; I still buy music, but without file sharing you’re buying blind. No, the lack of copy protection and DRM is purely for historical purposes.
Many audiophiles rave about the warmth of vinyl records but because they’re analog the sound is not perfect. It sounds pretty much the same with each new listen but subtle variations can crop up. I mean, it’s not a huge deal but it matters when the same piece of vinyl has been played thousands of times and is sitting in a vault five thousand years from now, right? So CDs offer a digital alternative. There would be a bit of MacGyvering to get sound from ones and zeros, but if phonographs were lost and all the future had was the vinyl, it would be equally difficult to reverse engineer sound from those little bumps.
There’s a lot of talk about digital downloads taking over from DVDs and CDs and, in my opinion, it’s just the naivete of younger people who think that whatever new thing they grew up with is the wave of the future. People will always want that physical thing, that thing they can hold in their hands, that thing that was made by a professional, that thing that is theirs. It’s identical to all the others but it’s unique nonetheless. But I could be wrong. I still don’t see how social networking sites can replace real physical contact with friends and yet that’s just what they accomplish for many people. But I don’t want to be wrong. I don’t want CDs to be obsolete.
I have over a Terabyte of hard drive storage on my main computer. In fact, I’d have more but a couple of my drives are disconnected because my power supply doesn’t have enough SATA power cables. I store lossless copies of all my CDs there in FLAC format, and I also have mp3 versions for standard consumption. I don’t usually listen to the FLAC because my mp3s were made at very high bit rates and the difference is mostly indiscernible with my sound system and my ears. The FLAC is there for archival purposes. But that’s not what hard drives are good at. Hard drives, and similar media, are good at quickly erasing and rewriting data. And they’re susceptible to magnetic phenomena, so any attempt at using them for permanent storage would be foolhardy. What if, for example, during the great pole switch, that occurs periodically on Earth, the magnetic shift disrupts all earthbound hard drives? (I’m talking out of my ass here, someone please correct me if I’m wrong…)
The key here is that CDs remain. They are much more permanent than most other forms of digital storage. And they’re something you can hold. I still maintain that the tactile feeling of holding a CD can add a lot to the enjoyment of music. Flipping through the liner notes, reading the lyrics if the band prints them there (if they have lyrics), all of that lends to the mindspace that that particular set of songs imbues within you.
One claim is that with digital downloads you’re provided the luxury of buying only the tracks you like. There are two problems with that. The first problem is that it’s not always the best songs that get play time. An example from my own life: my favourite band is Interpol; I think their debut album “Turn on the Bright Lights” is the best album I’ve ever heard. Every song is amazing and gets better with each listen. There were four singles released from that album. They are all great songs but none of them are the best song on the album. Not only that, but the best song of the bunch that were released as singles has the part that makes the song so fantastic cut out to make it shorter for the radio. The point here is that if all you listen to is what mainstream media offers to you — or even what the band has to offer on their MySpace — you might not be getting the piece that speaks to you the most. Sometimes you need to take that leap and buy an album. If it sucks, it sucks, but then there are those diamonds in the rough that change the way you feel about the world. And all you went in looking for was a catchy single.
The second problem is that offering single track purchases can deflate the purpose of the album. Despite what many of you might think, the concept album is not an extinct species. Not every musician in the world listened to Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” and decided they’d never do better so they shouldn’t even try. Many concept albums may even masquerade as regular albums, or vice versa as was the case with American Idiot. There’s a song, Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt, on The Mars Volta’s debut album “De-Loused in the Comatorium” which is a good song if listened to independent of the rest of the album. But when listened to as the final song of the album, it transforms into a powerful conclusion to the ongoing, albeit vague and byzantine, story. You’re not only robbing yourself of the true potential of a concept album song by hearing it out of sequence, but you’re also disrespecting the intention of the artists.
This doesn’t mean that I think, or even want, digital downloads to go away. They provide a convenient source of music, both mainstream and independent. This gives independent bands the chance to get their music out there without going through the costly process of CD manufacturing and distribution. But it is not a replacement, it is an augmentation. Ultimately, if the music of these independent bands is good enough, a CD will be produced.
Humans are a social species, and it’ll take a few millennia of slowly evolving brain chemistry to change that, so the so-called “Brick & Mortar” stores of today aren’t going anywhere; we simply like the company, even of strangers, far too much to give it up. I love the convenience of going to amazon.com and ordering exactly what I want and getting it a few days later, but sometimes I want to wander around a store looking at band names, looking at album covers. Some of my favourite album have been purchased, or downloaded and subsequently purchased, on an utter whim with something as inconsequential as the look of the album or the weirdness of the band name to convince me that the album was worth my time. I think, and hope, that, by and large, most people are like that and that won’t change any time soon.
When I was a teenager I listened to emo music. This was in the middle age of emo. In the beginning emo was an outgrowth of hardcore rock which was explified by more emotional lyrics. Then somehow the soft acoustic music of Dashboard Confessional in addition to the pop-inspired rock of Jimmy Eat World became associated with emo. The story goes that early in their career Jimmy Eat World was an emo band and when their first commercial success, Bleed American, came around everybody called them emo despite the change in their musical style. Similarly, Dashboard Confessional was the side project of the lead singer of a band called Further Seems Forever who were a heavy punk rock band with emo sensibilities and so it seems likely the label simply traversed the chasm between the parent band and the side project. The middle age of emo was a mixed bag. A lot of it was simply duplicating the pop-punk Jimmy Eat World style rather than duplicating the lyrical style. But there were a precious few who wrote heartfelt songs about love and heartbreak. I should state here that when emo began it was not exclusively romantic in nature; the lyrics had to resonate emotionally with the listener but it could be about anything which came from the heart. The middle age of emo changed that of course.
In my eyes, the middle age of emo is not exemplified by bands or even albums but individual songs. Dashboard Confessional’s earlier works (essentially everything earlier than “A Mission, A Mark, A Brand, A Scar”) are the closest you can get to the prototypal emo band, but even then certain songs are more immanently emo.
Of course you can see where the path of emo went. It followed the path of the superficial pop-punk. And so now we have bands like Fall Out Boy who are considered emo. And thus the pejorative use of the word began. I don’t want to get into a huge rant about how the changing definition of emo has marred the works of the middle age emo bands I just want you to know that emo isn’t all bad. In fact, there are songs from the middle age of emo that I still listen to on a regular basis.
The real problem here is that emo has forgotten its origins. Emo was an offshoot of punk at first and punk’s primary philosophy is “Fuck You.” So in my eyes, which are tainted by my understanding of emo, emo is about guys saying yeah I’m a romantic and I’m not all about female conquest. I have meaningful discourse and don’t limit myself to what’s appropriate. I don’t care if you think I’m a pussy because I like cuddling. I don’t care that you’re a misogynistic douche and can’t understand guys who want co-operative and equal partnerships with their lovers. Fuck You.
And I’d like to think that if Coleridge and Wordsworth were around today, they’d be in emo bands. The good kind though.
So I finally buckled under the pressure of critical praise and my long-abated desire to do so and saw Little Miss Sunshine. The longer it took me to get around to it, the more I feared I would be disappointed. All the praise that was slopped onto Napolean Dynamite before I saw it got me overexcited and I didn’t want Little Miss Sunshine to suffer the same fate. Fortunately, there was a difference between the two movies: Little Miss Sunshine didn’t suck.
Unlike its indie darling predecessor, the film’s characters don’t feel like they’re quirky for the sake of being quirky. Each eccentricity feels real. Each action follows from the character not the script. Not only that, throughout the whole desperate hilarious affair you actually see characters change. And when the sea change comes upon them, it’s not a instant but the culmination of past events. One such moment of change is the dance scene. Oh the dance scene.
If you’re going to have your movie and its characters pivot on an awkwardly bad dance sequence, do it the way Little Miss Sunshine did it; when that scene started, I had flashbacks to Napoleon Dynamite and feared the worst. And once again Little Miss Sunshine did what a good movie should do: it surprised, it warmed the heart, it made you feel like all the pain in the world is worth it for these few moments we have together.
On a tangent, the movie’s soundtrack is really good and the song which finishes off the movie is a variant of DeVotchKa’s “How It Ends.” I’ve been a fan of DeVotchKa ever since I downloaded “Una Volta” a couple years ago. Their music truly defies categorization and is filled with the same melancholic yet bucolic sense as this movie. In fact, this movie reintroduced me to DeVotchKa as I hadn’t listened to anything new of theirs in quite some time so that alone was enough to make me enjoy this movie. But that’s not the only thing this movie did. I feel reinvigorated regarding independent film. It’s been a long time since I’ve headed down to cumberland to see the newest limited release film and this movie reminded me of why I should.
I’ve been going through a rough point in my life involving heartbreak, depression, and a general apathy toward accomplishing anything with my life. One side effect is that all these schmaltzy songs which I normally think are cloying and just plain stupid have been affecting me more than usual. In particular, I hate James Blunt, but I heard that song “Goodbye My Lover” recently and I was connecting with the lyrics. Of course, I’m in an emotionally dangerous state so it’s somewhat understandable that I would relate the heartbreak in the song with my own but that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. It’s like if you went to your friends and wanted consolation and they said “I’m really sorry that you completely ruined your life, cause she was perfect for you and I don’t know how you’ll get over that” while you’re thinking the same goddamned thing. It’s not helping the situation if you know what I mean. I spent most of my adolescence in that never-ending spiral of regret and pain and I’m perfectly (ok obviously not perfectly) happy without it.