Looking back, we can't help but wonder how many times we ethusiastically danced the Y.M.C.A. in an innocent haze and how ridiculously in retrospect that may have been. Although we were in a crowded elementary school gym and everyone else was doing it. Stop. Must stop making excuses for ourselves. It's all in the past.
ANYWAYS there is a great article on the history of "Y.M.C.A." over at spin. Read it!
Do not, under any circumstances not involving extreme duress, go and see the new Stone Angel movie. It is a honest-to-goodness, top-to-bottom, adjective-preposition-adjective, stinkbomb.
First a short preface: in one of my classes we are studying Margaret Laurence's book and we thought it'd be neat-o to drag the kids downtown and see the movie. The odd thing was, the first time we read the book (in third year...maybe...memory fading...) we detested it, a pure loathe usually reserved for guys who wear scarves indoors with no jacket. We honestly couldn't relate to any of the characters, the narrative seemed really self indulgent and honestly, one of the most boring reads ever. Needless to say we weren't thrilled about having to teach the book. Yet, after rereading it this month we actually enjoyed it. The writing is really compelling and funny and it turned out to be a much more tragic book then I remember. There is probably a point to be made about maturing tastes in there but we're too busy thinking about boobs to fully pursue it.
Well, while the expectations for the movie were not high (based on the trailer alone, we had sneaky suspicions that the movie would be atrocious...watch and judge for yourself) but we had hopes that it would at least be enjoyed, esp considering the actresses involved.
HOWEVER this was not even the case. Not since we suffered our way through a bootlegged copy of The Day After Tomorrow have we endured such a drawn out piece of garbage. While the actual acting is OK the script drips with an over dramatic element that borders on kitsch. The book itself is quite wide in scope, spanning Hagar's whole life, and so the movie tries to mirror that; the only problem - you get a 2 minute scene for one that took 20 pages in the book. The movie is way too rushed - really just a Coles' Notes version of the book, leaving all the interesting elements unexplored (such as aging and the torments of a body breaking down, the death of going to a nursing home, the pure stubbornness of Hagar and her unrelenting fight against her own mortality...you know, the central themes of the book). More than this, they took giant liberties with the book, cutting out scenes that were fairly central to explaining the characters(like Hagar's brother dying and her refusing to comfort him in his dying delirium. In fact, there is no second brother in the movie). The part that really pissed us off, the movie ends not with an affirmation of Hagar's fight but with her closing her eyes, perhaps dying perhaps not. The Hagar of the movie is so much more passive and uninvolved in her own life that in the book and really that was the main thing that interested us in the book. We actual sympathize way more with the movie Hagar than we should and we think that's a complete failure of the movie's and the original character's purpose. Plus, the movie leverages Ellen Page (of Juno fame) and her 10 minutes on screen into a top billing position on the movie poster. Shameless.
It was not all bad; there were glimmers of tolerance in the scenes involving a young Hagar and Bram; there was a surprising amount of sex in the movie which we guess is cool if we have to suffer through the rest. But overall, this movie was hideous a 2 out of 10 on the Taste scale.
A late night showing of Purple Rain revealed many new things to me. But first, we take a lot of weird looks for trumpeting the wonders of Prince. To be fair he's an odd guy, all blouse and high heels and pouty eyed looks. We're firm believers that he would be just as maligned as Michael Jackson if he wasn't such a overtly sexual creature (Jackson's problem even as early as Thriller was that he seemed almost a-sexual, despite the fact that every girl wanted him, lending itself to suspicions of a) homosexuality b) pedophilia or c) culkinilia ). But Jackson could never rip a guitar like Prince and that is ultimately his saving grace. As Zappa proved, you can be as weird as you want, hell name a kid or two Moon Unit or Diva Muffin, so long as you can play guitar really well.
ANYWAYS Purple Rain has a lot going for it - awesome performances, bare breasts, Prince riding a motorcycle twice the size of him etc. There's also extended shots of Prince's basement apartment (where his parents live upstairs) - the basements scenes are always delightful because it's impossible to view them as an actual place and instead we were left convinced that basement is what the inside of Prince's mind looks like - there's all these weird drawings on the walls of seductive half faces, a bunch of French clown figurines (???!!!), lots of candles and inscence and plenty of windows so everyone can see you having dirty sex. The acting itself is pretty B-rate but man the music is awesome - the surprise favourite was "Beautiful Ones" a song that we always thought was way too slow and boring but in the movie Prince just starts yelling and squealing and rolling around on stage, putting on a giant stink over some girl and it gets turned into wickedness.
That's not to say there weren't problems, the most glaring one seems to be that Prince is sort of a misogynist dick: he treats Appolonia like shit, leaving her bare breasted and freezing on the side of a lake and hitting (or almost hitting) her twice. Now the abuse thing is supposed to be OK because his Dad is abusive towards his Mom and somehow that makes it more understandable. He's actually a relatively unlikable character yet, again, because he plays ridiculous guitar and composes sweet pop songs, who can resist?
And not to ruin the ending but the last set, to save his career, he finally breaks down and plays "Purple Rain" (a song partly composed by his father, who shot himself in the scene before, and the two female band members he's been bagging on the whole movie). Everyone in the club ends up in tears. Literally, everyone is crying. It's a sad yet hopeful ending and then it fades to black. ONLY IT DOESN'T. He actually opens his set with "Purple Rain" then plays two more songs after. What the fuck? No wonder he's stuck playing in a shitty club, competing with other shitty bands (The Time, the other villain band, is atrocious but kind of funny in a over-the-top 80s dance moves way). He doesn't even know to save his best song for last. Instead it ends on "I would Die 4 U" and then "Baby I'm a Star" - decent songs but no "Purple Rain". Then the last shot is this. Totally cheese!
As an end note, the most succinct criticism we ever heard of 8 Mile was: "I liked it better the first time I saw Purple Rain." We can't really argue. Also, in case you're one of the six people who haven't seen it, here's the Chappelle Prince sketch:
We at The Taste have been taking a lot of shit lately because of one innocent, heartfelt, though drunken, comment about the above video. It's true, we sincerely love "Night Moves", enough to put it very close to the top of our favorites. It's a nostalgic, winding, piano driven rock-country song and, aside from guitar solos, that's really our main weakness. Basically the song dominates and all those who dismiss it because it's Bob "Like a Rock" Seger can go straight to the special part of hell reserved for people who like Celine Dion.
It's true the song is awesome, however the video is basically an incoherent pervy mess. First, there's Bob, looking like a rejected extra from Full House, wandering around peeking at people from the projector booth of the drive-in playing his "guitar" (phallus alert!). Also, there's more soft porn here than most Showcase shows, including one highlight at 1:40 of the video where there's a girl with her face down in a guy's lap behind the movie screen. (Note: Upon further review, the girl is only straddling the guy in a dress. Only.)
Like "This Ain't a Love Song" this seems like a video that tried to pull through some story line, then gave up about 35 seconds in; there are reoccurring characters here but hot damn if they're doing anything but showing up twice and looking all googley eyed at each other. We almost lost our shit when none other than Matt LeBlanc shows up for a meaningful stare with a girl that also looks vaguely 80's familiar. Again, the viewer gets a sense that these two are main characters, but they only show up again when the girl briefly looks in and catches Matt making out in the backseat with some other floozy.
Which brings us to the last troubling part of the video: this song was originally released in '77 (earning Rolling Stone's coveted and well respected Single of The Year, beating out "Come Sail Away" and Frampton's XXX throwdown "I'm in You (So Deep It's Coming out Your Mouth)"). YET this video looks like it was filmed early 90's, maybe late 80's. In fact, as we were internet sleuthing we found out Matt LeBlanc was born in '67 which would have made him ten at the time of it's original release. we would put him at at least 20 years old in the video. So why the devil did Bob Seger re-release this song 10 plus years later?
We think the short answer is firmly rooted in the pure dominatory nature of the song. The long answer probably involves a lost bet to Matt LeBlanc's mother over who could pee the furtherest or something.
Beware: This post contains elements of psuedo-intellectualism and life admissions. Proceed with caution.
As we rolled around the TTC this morning and the ungodly Saturday hour of 8 o clock we decided to let the i-pod random about. This is not generally the practice before work, mostly because we MUST have excellent music to motivate us to even get in the door of TAIE, but today we were resigned ourselves to the fates.
Buried on our beloved i pod is some Lynyrd Skynyrd. Mostly we can tolerate the band because "Freebird" is exactly the guitar wank we here at The Taste are constantly in need of. Yet, we am completely and utterly passive towards the band as a whole and really they haven't written many other redeemable songs except "Simple Man" and perhaps "Sweet Home Alabama". In fact it was the latter that spurned this post after so long a hiatus.
"Southern Man" is a pretty damn fine condemning song of the institutionalized racism that raged (rages) through the southern United States. The images of the bull whips are shocking and as the central image of the song represent the various vicious instruments of extreme hegemony that South has been so imbued in. It is jarring and effective in portraying the real violence and brute ignorance of southern bigotry.
"Sweet Home Alabama" then is written as a response to "Southern Man" and "Alabama", going so far as to directly call Young out saying that their consciences are clear and that "they (the South?) don't need him anyhow". Really? That's your rebuttal? Skynyrd's response to the visceral and social argument Young makes is to ignore the history and points Young raises and instead create a dismissive pop song blinded by regional pride and a catchy chorus.
Depressing yes, but is also still the pervading logic of the current administration in the States. Over the last six years there have been many rational and effective arguments against what the US is doing overseas and almost every one of them was dismissed with the same "Well if you're questioning America, you must not love America" sort of patriotism. In this light, "Sweet Home Alabama" is the equivalent of changing French to Freedom Fries: it completely misses the point of the original argument and instead muddies that argument beyond comprehension with narrow visioned patriotism.
But enough of this bad talk friends. This post deserves a few more paragraphs but alas, the bell tolls for home. We hope to have more posts up here soon but again, maybe?!!
We're sure there are people out there that are going to be like "What? You're talking about Lost now? That was so 2004" or whatever but we've been sucked into watching the first season due mostly to a lack of interest in our long running ambition to watch all the X-Files episodes. Make no mistake: we here at the Taste are not movie people. We enjoy TV much more (probably due mostly to our extreme attention deficit and our inability to convince ourselves doing something for two and a half hours is productive-ish). There is nothing finer than a sitcom. Really we believe this. On that same note, we love the 45 minute mini-drama things that splice in pseudo-science and a healthy dose of superstition (past winners in this category include The Adventure of Lois and Clark (represent!) 21 Jump Street, Buffy and, lamely, Smallville).
So forgive us if we're a touch behind the times but hot damn is the first season a treat. Initially we stayed away from the show, despite our smart friends like Stirlbot and Professor Pharmacon insistences on its goodness, because it seemed TOO popular. Now this is the life of a semi-hipster: you are always suspicious of something that everyone likes. Eventually of course you break down, like we have, and consume at full tilt for 3 months until you know everything about it (as we are in the throes of doing). We have not enjoyed a season of TV this much since we plowed through Freaks and Geeks in a week. First the characters are compelling beyond all get out: it's hard to pull off this large an ensemble cast but the show works very well, mostly because it can hide the badish actors for long periods of time (looking at you Kate and Boone). Second, The backdrop is gorgeous, and the filming itself is a real treat for the eyes.
More than this though, the show is reflexive and dare we say metaphoric. TV like Lost show that audiences will respond when you take them beyond the literal world of reality TV and game shows. If there is a stronger argument for the Writer's strike than Lost, a show which thrives on its ability to be smart in its storytelling and wide visioned in plot arc, than we can't think of it.
As for our theory, we think it's purgatory. We will not go through our long list of details and examples supporting this claim, just know that we are probably correct.
Suddenly My Teenage Fantasies Are Slightly more Obtainable
So we were minding our own business the other day, wandering the interweb and looking for ways to make our mark in society when we stumbled upon one of the finds of the century.
When we were young we used to have this clone thing. Some might call it a fetish but we prefer to call it a bankable masturbatory scenario (BMS for short. Tell your friends). ANYWAYS a lot involved a number of identical girls ravaging us in unspeakable ways often involving poinsettias and baby oil. Because Shania Twain was the hotness our BMS often centered around her.
And now, ho ho, we've found a real life way in which this could happen. Shania Twin! She's a tribute act that tours Canada and small towns raising hormone levels and destroying morals. We were naturally curious so we began checking out other tubes in the interweb and also found Shania's Twin!".
We're hard pressed to figure out which one is better. Shania's Twin has a video and is obviously willing to look the part and her voice sounds pretty similar but she is lacking a certain something, perhaps a willingness to contribute to the Twister soundtrack. However, Shania Twin lacks an apostrophe and somehow that lends her a bit more legitimacy.
However, we will not split hairs. Since Shania Twin is coming to Toronto (!!!) we plan on approaching her with some sort of indecent offer. Assuming she's not allergic to holiday flowers we think we got a safe chance of getting this ball rolling.
As a bonus here is our favorite Shania Twain video:
She gets increasingly attractive as the video progresses, if that's even possible. Plus any reference to the immortal Robert Palmer is alright in our books.
