Music Videos on my Mind- Slaves’ “Hey”

Slaves are a two-piece band that comes from Kent, England. They are loud, like seriously angry and loud, but it’s done with such self-aware gusto that you smile at the comedy of it.

The music video for Hey is drenched in swathes of lacquered black humour, instantly registering as one of the most entertaining clips to be produced by the UK music industry this year. Its tongue is firmly in cheek as band mates Laurie and Isaac accost some smugly suited thirtysomething in a demented assault of verbal and visual intimidation.

Think of it as counterculture millennials getting their own back on the Gen X sell-outs.

-Music Videos on my Mind- Young Fathers’ “Low”

A year and one day ago, Scotland’s Young Fathers released the music video for their song Low to little fanfare.

366 days later, we’ve seen this odd music outfit go from tiny steps to big treads. Their album Dead is nominated for the prestigious Mercury Prize and the power trio has acquired the novel description of being Britain’s first "Liberian/Nigerian/Scottish psychedelic hip-hop electro boy band".

This is where the uncommon oddness of Young Fathers is further accentuated. Drawing heavily on the African heritage of members Alloysious Massaquoi and Kayus Bankole ('G' Hastings is the third non-African contributor), Young Fathers mesh the urban realism of their surroundings in Edinburgh with the faraway vibes of Soweto's Shangaan electro dance scene. It’s mad but somehow it works fantastically well.

This is highly original British hip-hop, with smatterings of fuzzy shoegaze reverb and mainstream pop hooks thrown in for maximum rhythmic effect.

Hollywood Adult Blockbusters Deserve Respect

Legendary European director Paul Verheoven is making another movie next year. In January 2015 the Dutch auteur will film Elle, an adaptation of Philllippe Dijan’s novel Oh…, a psychological victim-to-vindicator thriller in which a violated businesswoman plots revenge against the assailant who stalked and raped her. The film stars Isabelle Huppert and will be Verheoven’s first feature since 2006’s sensational Dutch thriller Black Book, becoming his debut French-language production. The pulpy premise seems entirely fitting to Verheoven’s skill set, and the casting of Huppert reminds us just how much the filmmaker is able to recruit big stars in controversial projects.

Those with a passion for cinema will know that even though Verheoven is a European director who made his name making provocative films in his native Holland, it’s his work in the 1980s and 1990s as an A-list Hollywood director that resonates most strongly. Verheoven’s canon of adult blockbusters during this period, some being the most expensive movies produced at the time, were cultural sensations drenched in ultra violence and explicit sex. Yet what was wondrous about his output is how layered the movies are: on the surface obscenely entertaining but functioning on another level imbued with highly intelligent political, ideological, psychological and theological subtexts. Not every movie Verheoven made in Hollywood struck gold, but when he did it created an impact, consequently auguring millions for studios. RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Showgirls and Starship Troopers are just some of Verheoven’s classics.

Things changed in 2000 with the release of Verheoven’s Hollow Man, a state of the art loose reimagining of H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, the film thematically playing on Plato’s Ring of Gyges conceit whereby the philosophiser posits the notion that powers of invisibility may compel even righteous people to commit felonious crimes. The movie cost a fortune ($95 million), the budget mainly devoted to stellar visual effects. Hollow Man was Verheoven’s biggest hit since Basic Instinct ($190 million worldwide), but neither the filmmaker nor Hollywood was entirely satisfied. The mood was changing. Adult blockbusters were proving too expensive and risky to produce. Verheoven returned to Europe and Hollywood limited its commitment to adult blockbusters.

Back then there was a clear distinction between what movies offered and what television provided: the two mediums strangely swapping places in recent years. Almost fifty years ago the Motion Picture Association of America campaigned to do away with the puritanical enforcement of the 1930s Hays Code in favour of a more modern film ratings system which is still in operation today. The argument was that conservative limitations imposed by the Hays Code infringed America’s right to freedoms of expression and compromised artistic integrity, though it more likely had a lot to do with American cinema’s perpetual fear of competing with television. Television was a threat and the only way around it was giving audiences something they couldn’t get at home. The 1970s to 1980s saw Hollywood produce movies rife with style, sex and violence, all in the service of catering to a more liberal viewership than previous eras. Even though these films were adult-orientated, the rating systems weirdly enough allowed people under the age of seventeen permission to watch adult movies if accompanied by a grownup. The aim was to maximise Hollywood’s income and this new system ensured that. Adult blockbusters were for everyone, regardless of whether it was appropriate.

The adult blockbuster was a powerhouse at the American box-office. Audiences flocked to see movies that revelled in heightened aggression and machismo. This is best demonstrated by Rambo: First Blood Part II which blitzed The Goonies at the summer box-office in 1985, the former making almost double what the perennial kids’ classic achieved during its run. American audiences wanted to see things suited to adult sensibilities; demanding movies loaded in excess but executed with serious attitude.

Even up until fifteen years ago Hollywood was still keen on producing adult blockbusters made with sizable budgets. The Matrix, Fight Club, Sleepy Hollow, Eyes Wide Shut, The Insider and The Green Mile were all major studio productions, none budgeted at less than $60 million each (unadjusted for inflation!), released intact with adult skewing certifications. Hollywood had thrived on adult blockbusters for the past thirty years and the assumption was that families stayed at home to watch cutesy things on television but came to theatres to see stuff broadcasters wouldn’t dare commission.

Fifteen years ago also saw the theatrical release of American Beauty and the television series The Sopranos air on HBO. American Beauty was a studio produced adult drama that won Oscars and made over $350 million internationally, while The Sopranos became an adult drama that was referred to as the greatest television series of all time, winning even more plaudits and changing our expectations of television’s dramatic capabilities. Watching American Beauty today one can safely assume that it was the last of its kind; a Hollywood adult blockbuster which would now be more at home on television rather than produced as a standalone feature film. Television has become the home of adult drama while cinema has courted family attendance by providing expensive animated films and pricy PG-13 action flicks. The adult blockbuster has been thrown under the bus in favour of four-quadrant movies.

The last few years has seen Hollywood engage in a system of insipid sequels and creatively bereft reboots. Brands have become vital signifiers, the notion being that recognisable cinematic products generate greater revenues than untested original ideas. Paul Verheoven’s original adult blockbusters like RoboCop and Total Recall have been remade as PG-13 family-friendly products. The remakes are just as violent but the depiction of blood and gore is limited to facilitate a more dishonest vision of brutality, all the while eradicating intelligent subtext to appease less demanding tastes. Even Verheoven’s seminal sci-fi epic Starship Troopers, which used fascist imagery to cleverly point out certain aspects of jingoism in American society, is undergoing a brainless remake proposition that will remove political satire to accommodate a more patriotic agenda.

The Hollywood adult blockbuster cannot die just yet, not if studios fail to recognise the fact that society is getting older and those with economic prospects are choosing to delay starting families. This ought to mean that the demand for adult blockbusters should be booming. The last month saw the release of a rebooted The Equalizer and crime thriller Gone Girl, both bona fide adult blockbusters, but they’re hardly ushering in a cycle of similar studio-backed titles. Hollywood’s focus remains on creating broad sweeps: films that at once target those in the Midwest as well as those in developing countries, thus producing features which abide to strict codification and uniformity.

Hollywood really missed a trick by not approaching Verheoven to direct next year’s adult blockbuster in-waiting, Fifty Shades of Grey. Rather than the corporate, restrained, anodyne soap opera we’ll probably get that’s designed to placate share holders, the studio had a chance to give the film an identity shaped by someone with cinematic personality as opposed to making the movie―one expects, judging by the trailer―imaginatively redundant. Rather than bringing on board people who can elevate the project to loftier heights, the studio has attached personnel to follow lustreless boardroom orders.

Matthew Frost and his Celebrity Pals Poke Fun at Modern Life

A few years ago we learnt that 10% of all the photographs ever taken by humanity were captured within the course of twelve months.  That means a tenth of all images existing in photography’s 215 year history came into being during recent months.

The need to self-celebrate and narcissistically capture personal triviality is obviously concerning many, especially celebrities who find it increasingly harder to compete with a system where people flock from fad to fad, taking little time to genuinely value precious moments. In Matthew Frost’s two-minute short Aspirational, Hollywood star Kirsten Dunst is accosted by a couple of Gen Yers who seize the opportunity to rampantly take selfies of themselves, as if posing with an inhuman object. “Do you want to talk or anything?” beseeches Dunst, “I mean, you can ask me a question, or are you curious about anything?” But the point is to shine a light on the transient attention span of modern times, and hopefully shame ourselves into recognition.

This Matthew Frost fella has a particular knack for roping in celebrities to make funny and succinct vignettes, bemoaning the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder plaguing us. That said, the shorts work best when those famous people participating are willing to make fun of themselves, too.

-Music Videos on my Mind- Ty Segall’s “Connection Man”

There’s no excuse for artists not putting out music videos in this age. Technology is meant to be cheaper and more accessible than ever, yet the number of times we come across fantastic new material void of moving images to accompany it, is maddeningly inexcusable.

But San Francisco’s Ty Segall seems an analogue soul in a digital world, hence why he names old rock bands from the ‘70s as icons that inspire him. Retro British music has been especially important to Segall, most notably glitter rock figures like T. Rex and Ziggy Stardust, whose psychedelic overtones are very much laced in his own output. (Even turns out that Baby Boomer favourites Hawkwind is Segall’s most esteemed band.)

Man, it’s almost tragic that a pop song as wicked as Connection Man has no music video. It’s equally tragic that an ostensible movie blogger like moi is too technically inept to patch together something that suffices. The shame of it.

-Music Videos on my Mind- The Foreign Resort’s “Alone”

It was thanks to The Cure that alternative rock music went commercial.

Fronted by the aesthetically gloomy Robert Smith and consisting of a line up of gothic outliers, The Cure wasn’t the type of group to appeal to the mainstream, but during the ‘80s they were massive. The Cure had a Midas ability to generate uniquely odd songs that absolutely rocked Top 40 radio. The songs were eerie but drenched in infectious melody, which made the band one of the most successful British groups of all time.

Interpol, The Smashing Pumpkins and Deftones all cite The Cure as primary influences, and it’s obvious that Denmark’s The Foreign Resort owes the same respect. However, The Foreign Resort is so hung-up on immersing itself in the whole UK post-punk/ new wave sound that they’ve failed to acknowledge that a huge part of what made The Cure’s music so brilliant was Smith’s weirdly playful lyricisms. Furthermore, The Cure had legendary music videos, whereas these guys haven’t seemed to have bothered much. Love the sound, though.

-Music Videos on my Mind- Yann Tiersen’s “Meteorites”

Yann Tiersen was up until now a name that appeared on movie credits for music by. It turns out he’s actually a French indie pop star with eight studio albums under his belt, and it appears that European directors wholesale lift songs from his albums because his sound is impressively cinematic. For example, the music used on Amélie pretty much consists of tunes pilfered from Tiersen’s first four albums.

Tiersen thinks in cinema. Everything about Meteorites speaks film, from a poetic recitation of what feels like a movie pitch, to the finale of 1950s B-movie theremins that brings it all back to ground. The song lives and breathes through Aidan Moffat’s brogue Scottish narration, who himself is the lead singer in Arab Strap, imbuing the vocals with a baritone dreaminess that takes the listener by the hand and whisks them on an exquisite voyage of ethereal loveliness.

Meteorites is a song of cosmic enchantment: building from small tender beginnings, flourishing into a sensual midpoint, only to then fade into a miasma of spooky exhaustion.

It’s the kind of song that is so epic in scale it seems a poor choice to have commissioned a music video which is so stiff and confined. It’s distracting to have French fashion model Clémence Poésy ineffectively mouth Moffat’s words. It proves distracting, whereas just to close one’s eyes and go on Moffat’s journey suffices.