The Average Film

I’ve reached 400 feature-length movies on my watchlist with yesterday’s viewing of Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973). Business school dork that I am, I keep an Excel spreadsheet listing all of my numerical ratings of every film I watch. At the 400 movie mark, I thought it would be interesting to look at the numbers to see what my average, median and most frequent (mode) ratings were.

This process is inherently biased, as I obviously select movies to watch that I think I will enjoy or that others have reviewed positively, so the figures will likely be higher than if I watched every movie ever made and ran the numbers. Selection bias with a limited number of data points. What can I do besides watch more films?

Anyway, here’s what the stats say:

Average score- 72.945 (e.g. Forrest Gump, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Tropic Thunder)

Median score- 78 (e.g. The King’s Speech, My Cousin Vinny, The Breakfast Club)

Most frequent score- 78

Score Bin	Frequency
0	2
5	0
10	7
15	1
20	3
25	6
30	3
35	2
40	11
45	7
50	4
55	17
60	14
65	22
70	29
75	42
80	70
85	65
90	50
95	27
More	18

When plotted as a histogram, this data shows the range from 55-100 being of very roughly normal shape with a long left tail of outliers. It feels nice to see that my rankings are usually at least internally consistent.

 

My Top 10 Films

I do not pretend that this list is exhaustive, but merely reflects my feelings about the films I have viewed. If and when another movie enters the ranks of my personal Top 10, this post will be updated and shared. My full rankings of every movie I have watched can be found here (make sure to use the sidebar filter “Film Type.”)

[Previous entries: Annie Hall, 1977 (Woody Allen), Taxi Driver, 1976 (Martin Scorsese)]

10. Casablanca, 1942 (Michael Curtiz)

  9. Fargo, 1996 (Joel & Ethan Coen)

  8. Vertigo, 1958 (Alfred Hitchcock)

  7. The Godfather, 1972 (Francis Ford Coppola)

  6. The Cranes Are Flying, 1957 (Mikhail Kalatozov)

  5. Rear Window, 1954 (Alfred Hitchcock)

  4. There Will Be Blood, 2007 (Paul Thomas Anderson)

3. Apocalypse Now, 1979 (Francis Ford Coppola)

  2. Pulp Fiction, 1994 (Quentin Tarantino)

  1. Psycho, 1960 (Alfred Hitchcock)

The Final Scene of Taxi Driver

(SPOILERS) The ending scene of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) is one of the most hotly contested sequences in cinema. A great many people interpret the conclusion as a literal reality: Travis Bickle survives, is lauded as a hero by the media and regains the respect of his love interest. As the story goes, this is a sardonic critique of the notion of “hero worship” and the ability of the press to turn murderers into saints. I’ve heard tell that some also consider the finale to be an iteration of the Scorsesean theme of urban randomness. I find these interpretations lacking.

For one, the concluding sequence does not make logical sense if taken literally. If by some miracle of modern science Travis managed to survive being shot at point blank range in his neck, he would either be locked in a jail cell or a sanatorium; one cannot simply murder three people and face no legal inquisition. The three police officers standing in the doorway see Travis take responsibility for the events when he mimics pulling a trigger against his head! Even if we play devil’s advocate and accept that somehow a 12 year old girl managed to convince both the entirety of the NYPD and the district attorney that Bickle was acting in self-defense (unlikely given the glops of blood left on the sidewalk from a wounded Sport walking to the other building and the damning suicide note Travis left on his kitchen table…), there still remains the problem that Travis just tried to assassinate a presidential candidate in Columbus Circle… With his face being plastered all over the cover of the New York Times, every FBI agent east of the Mississippi would be converging on Travis’ apartment like pigeons on breadcrumbs in Central Park. There’s simply no way that Bickle could escape this nightmare unharmed and be driving a taxi on the other side.

Having hopefully poked enough holes in the literal interpretation to discredit it, I move on to my interpretation: everything that happens after the shootings is a dying hallucination. This seemed apparent to me on the first viewing, given Scorsese’s choice of camera angle on the withdrawal from the building. The shot points directly down at the ground from quite a high perspective, slowly pulling further and further away from the crime scene, eventually fusing into the disputed final sequence. This directorial choice seems to me to simulate the beginning of Bickle drifting off into the twilight of his death, the slow pan into a morbid dream.

As for the dream sequence itself, everything that transpires fits far too well into Travis’ ideal to effectively gel with a movie about a psychopathic vigilante. Essentially, you could cut this sequence and paste it at the end of the final scene of Breaking Bad. It’s that corny. What does a lowly, bitter creature fantasize about more than fame and glory? For the entire movie, everything occurs in a manner opposed to Travis’ desires: Betsy leaves him, Iris won’t leave with him, he can’t pull out his gun quite quickly enough, etc. etc. Travis never gets his way. That’s the whole point. It seems to make little sense to significantly alter the thematic message of the film in the last five minutes.

It seems hard to forget that Travis is the epitome of an unreliable narrator. Bickle is a mentally ill insomniac starved for attention, living on a steady diet of alcohol and junk food, fueled by coffee and unmarked pills. Why should we believe anything he depicts as being factual?

Go back and listen to Iris’ father reading aloud the letter he supposedly wrote to Travis: the staggered meter of the delivery almost perfectly resembles the pacing of Travis’ stuttered internal monologue. It’s also fitting that we never see the father on screen; he is merely a written creation, just like the persona Travis adopts when writing to his parents. Mr. Steensma can’t afford to come to New York and Travis can’t disclose his address to his parents. If Bickle were ever physically confronted with either party, his psychotic worldview would crumble. Keeping his admirers at arm’s length allows him to continue the fantasy that such admirers even exist to begin with.

I will take my interpretation one step further: Travis hallucinates his entire relationship with Betsy. When we are first introduced to Betsy at the campaign headquarters, we observe a bizarre conversation between the woman and her coworker; the dialogue is sterile, awkward, robotic. Suddenly, in an acute manner, we see Betsy identify the voyeur in the taxi cab. What explains the discomfort of this scene?

I posit that the conversation is a creation of Travis’ imagination; the entire scene is merely a fantasy wherein Bickle dubs over a muted interaction viewed from his visual perspective. I find the most compelling support of this interpretation to be Betsy’s rapid head turn: Bickle overemphasizes the drama of the moment in the visual because he knows he has been caught and is thus on high alert. From Travis’ perspective, Betsy reacts as suddenly as a guard dog to a midnight knock. Bickle fills the silence of the conversation with what he imagines people would be discussing in a campaign office, similar to the way that television’s Dexter meanders through life attempting to mirror the behavior of people he simply doesn’t understand.

Throughout the entire movie, but particularly at the finale, Betsy has a slight aura surrounding her that makes her appear fictionalized. We never see Betsy unless Travis is within eyesight and her feelings for him mimic his feelings about himself and the state of the world. At first, Travis’ self-esteem is very high and he views himself as a righteous, conscientious objector to the grime of his surroundings; Betsy views him as charming and charismatic, unlike anyone whom she has ever met. In the middle, Travis begins to detest himself for delving into what he sees as the moral vacuity of New York’s seedy underbelly; Besty leaves Travis for taking her to a pornographic movie. Bickle uses the created Besty persona as a masochistic tool for self-flagellation. At the end, Travis, dying, views himself as a redeemed hero, having rescued an endangered girl from a child prostitution ring; Betsy has regained respect for him, but Travis drives off proud, leaving Besty behind as he enters his eternal peace.

He has no use for her anymore.

 

Rating: 97/100.

The Best Albums of My Lifetime

The premise of this post is to identify the greatest albums of my lifetime. I allow myself one slot for every year of my existence. At the start of this exercise, I am 21 years old and thus there are 21 original spots. The intent is to expand this list by 1 spot every subsequent year of my life. New slots may be filled by albums released at any point during my life and are not limited to releases from the new year.

(Disclaimer: I have not listened to much modern metal, jazz or classical music, nor much music outside of the Western lexicon. This list is subject to change at any time.)

(Additional disclaimer: Tool’s masterful debut album Undertow was released in 1993, but 2 days prior to my birth. Had it been released on my birthday, the album would rank 12th on the original list.)

Without further ado:

21. Skeptic Goodbye  – You Won’t (2012)

I’m allowed one unknown hipster album, right? This album is a weird masterpiece. “Who Knew” is one of the 100 best songs of the new millennium and bizarre instruments appear throughout the track listing. The mixture of pure rock and roll with alternative sentiments and ballads makes this album essential to modern music. If you haven’t yet listened, I implore you to do so at your earliest convenience.

20. OK Computer – Radiohead (1997)

BEFORE YOU START WRITING ANGRY COMMENTS: I think OK Computer is overrated, but it is still a landmark album with several unbelievable tracks (the middle stretch from “Karma Police” to “No Surprises” in particular). I actually like Hail to the Thief a bit better, but I give OK Computer a spot on the list out of respect.

19. Stankonia – OutKast (2000)

“Well doesn’t everybody love the smell of gasoline? Well burn, motherfucker, burn American dreams.” Does any more need to be said when this is the effective opening line of an album? Andre 3000 kills every bar on this album. “Ms. Jackson” is a meaningful classic.

18. Weezer – Weezer (1994)

Best debut album territory. This work is without flaw: simple, impactful, fun. Weezer never quite regained their steam after this album (Pinkerton came close) and now they are essentially a parody of themselves. For shame.

17. White Blood Cells – The White Stripes (2001)

Everyone will clamor for Elephant, but this piece has the better album tracks. “Offend in Every Way” and “I Think I Smell A Rat” are top-notch. “Hotel Yorba” and “We’re Going to Be Friends” have become modern acoustic standards. “Fell In Love With A Girl” still kicks you in the ass just as hard as the first time you played this record. Jack White at the peak of his game.

16. Ready to Die – Notorious B.I.G. (1994)

This album begins with “Things Done Changed.” How prophetic. Bigge’s debut turned hip-hop on its head. “This album is dedicated to all the teachers who told me I’d never amount to nuttin’.” The quote really says it all.

15. Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend (2008)

Hate if you must, but know that you are wrong. Vampire Weekend is not only a brisk 34 minutes of aural perfection, but the album revolutionized alternative rock. Rostam Batmanglij finally brought sheer musicality back to pop audiences at a time when radio was becoming increasingly myopic. The album makes me feel like Peter Pan flying over the streets of London in the middle of the night.

14. Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) – Wu-Tang Clan (1993)

Bring the ruckus! East Coast hip hop has always and forever will be better than West Coast hip hop, due to the well known, but often futilely contested maxim that New York is awesome and Los Angeles isn’t. Wu-Tang helped to establish the feel of East Coast hip hop and made the biggest revolution in the genre since It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

13. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy – Kanye West (2010)

Look, I don’t care to ever hear “MONSTER” again, but this album is just shy of perfect. Only Kanye would ask Elton John (an all-time favorite musician of mine) to play a relatively simple piano part on a 1 minute interlude. Such is the genius of Mr. West, Mr. West. “Gorgeous” may be my favorite Yeezy song and Rick Ross absolutely murders his feature on “Devil In A New Dress.”

12. Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain – Pavement (1994)

It is well-established in alt-rock circles that Stephen Malkmus is an ornery, minimalist genius. Pavement was always Velvets-lite, but they were no less enjoyable. Lyrical imagery groaned over simple-yet-stunning guitar lines, Malkmus & co. make the most of their and my time. Aside from the classics “Cut Your Hair” and “Gold Soundz,” “Range Life” and particularly “Unfair” strike emotional chords with me.

11. If You’re Feeling Sinister – Belle & Sebastian (1996)

Dare I say it?… The most underrated band of the last 20 years. If You’re Feeling Sinister has no low point. “Seeing Other People” is unlike any song I’ve ever heard. “Me and the Major” is blissfully hectic. The lyrics of the title track cut to the bone. “Get Me Away from Here, I’m Dying” is as self-flagellating as the name suggests. For my favorite Glaswegians, I offer my favorite logical fallacy: no true Scotsman dislikes this album.

10. good kid, m.A.A.d. city – Kendrick Lamar (2012)

The greatest Grammy travesty since Jethro Tull in ’89 was Macklemore & Ryan Lewis beating out this instant classic with The Heist, a bubble gum faux-rap album with a few great pop tracks, but nothing truly impressive. good kid, M.A.A.d. city will go down in history as a seminal gritty hip hop album, the Straight Outta Compton to softy Drake’s Raising Hell. Kendrick could be brought up on human rights violations for the way he assassinated the beat on “Backseat Freestyle.” With this album, K-Dot took over Nas’ place as rap’s greatest storyteller.

9. Funeral – Arcade Fire (2004)

There is no more signature guitar riff this millennium than the guttural opening of “Wake Up.” This album is more a work of art than a statement about anything in particular. Canada’s greatest product since Gordon.

8. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness – Smashing Pumpkins (1995)

A double album?!? In 1995?!? Sublime (the word, not the stoner ska band). “Zero,” “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” “1979,” “Tonight, Tonight,” “Thirty-Three.” These 5 radio-friendly songs alone would make a top 10 album, let alone the numerous classic album tracks, ranging in style from noise rock assaults (“Bodies,” “Tales of a Scorched Earth”) to whimsical love songs (“Cupid de Locke,” “Lily (My One and Only)”.) [<— This is a punctuation mess] Mellon Collie seems infinitely textured and infinitely relistenable. I gain a new appreciation with every visit to Billy Corgan’s madness.

7. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot – Wilco (2002)

Oh thank god for alt-country. Jeff Tweedy saved us in the post-9/11 musical climate of Alan Jacksons and Toby Keiths. “Tall buildings shake, voices escape singing sad, sad songs.” The album was recorded prior to the attacks, but it’s nearly impossible to not retroactively identify the themes with the suffering. Simply put, Wilco kicks ass.

6. Illmatic– Nas (1994)

East Coast represent! We’ve reached the Rushmore of all-time hip hop albums. “Halftime,” “Life’s A Bitch,” “One Time 4 Your Mind.” Nas is the gangsta Slick Rick, a masterful storyteller painting New York a loving shade of black with a wide brush. “I don’t sleep cuz sleep is the cousin of death.” How could somebody sleep on the brink of releasing an album this good?

5. Anodyne – Uncle Tupelo (1993)

The last release before Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy went all Lennon-McCartney and broke up the band. Uncle Tupelo remains one of the most influential musical acts of all-time and they are at their best in this magnum opus, perhaps the last great true country album. The first 8 tracks on this album are perfect jewels and “No Sense In Lovin'” anchors the back third. I would lament the passing of Uncle Tupelo daily were it not for the glory of Son Volt and Wilco.

4. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea – Neutral Milk Hotel (1998)

If you’ve somehow never heard this album, stop what you’re doing and listen to it 4 times in a row. You’ll either want to strangle Jeff Mangum, or fall madly in love with his beautiful sadness. If you’re the former, you’re simply wrong. If you’re the latter, welcome to the club. We meet on Thursdays. I’ll see you there.

3. channel ORANGE – Frank Ocean (2012)

The best R&B album since Off the Wall. Frank Ocean is more than a crooner, he’s a songwriting genius. Malay’s producing is impeccable. Andre 3-Stacks and Earl Sweatshirt deliver heart-pounding verses. The themes of the album are timeless: sex, unrequited love, drug addiction, young adult apathy. Frank Ocean would be amazing in any time period. Thank goodness he was born into mine.

2. Kid A – Radiohead (2000)

Radiohead’s best album, a symphonic, frightening amalgam of Elvis Costello, Kraftwerk and Free Jazz. “Optimistic” is one of the 10 best songs of the millennium.  A mind-boggling, gorgeous masterpiece.

1. Late Registration – Kanye West (2005)

The Thriller of hip hop, but twice as good. Late Registration ranks with The Beatles, Animals and Give ‘Em Enough Rope: not just the greatest accomplishment of its genre, but an all-time pantheon album. Nobody had heard anything quite like The College Dropout, but Kanye’s debut was only an appetizer for this entree. Yeezy somehow improved Curtis Mayfield’s seemingly perfect “Move On Up,” made me tolerate Lupe Fiasco and got a good verse out of the usually pathetic Paul Wall. If those accomplishments aren’t worthy of the #1 spot on this list, I’m not sure what would be.

 

Near misses/Possible future inductees: Fashion Nugget (Cake), The Rip Tide (Beirut), Downward Spiral (Nine Inch Nails), Dookie (Green Day), Odelay (Beck), Reasonable Doubt (Jay-Z), Doggystyle (Snoop Doggy Dogg), O.C.M.S. (Old Crow Medicine Show), Illinois (Sufjan Stevens), The Way We Move (Langhorne Slim & the Law.)

Michael Jordan Gave Me Hope

When I was 8 years old, the Washington Wizards were a joke.

The year was 2001 and the Wizards were coming off a 19-63 season, the second worst in the Eastern Conference beating only the disheveled post-glory Chicago Bulls. The franchise had recently orchestrated a series of catastrophically awful roster maneuvers, highlighted by the 1998 trade that sent deserving future Hall-of-Famer Chris Webber to the Kings in exchange for recent inductee Mitch “The Rock” Ritchmond (who suddenly forgot how to shoot) and Otis Thorpe, a 36 year old one-time All-Star for the Rockets whose respectable career will forever be overshadowed by being one of the ten men selected between Charles Barkley and John Stockton in the 1984 NBA Draft.

As a virtue of the failure the trade had brought, the Wizards acquired the number one overall pick in the 2001 Draft, having the prime selection from among an unusually talented field. The draft pool included perennial All-Stars like Tyson Chandler, Pau Gasol, Joe Johnson, Zach Randolph, Tony Parker and future Wizards legend Gilbert Arenas, as well as a long list of successful starters and role players such as Jason Richardson, Shane Battier, Richard Jefferson, Gerald Wallace and Jamaal Tinsley.

Abandoning all foresight, the Wizards gambled on a 6’11” High School Senior out of Georgia named Kwame Brown. Now considered by all to be among the worst number one overall picks of all-time, Brown showed great potential up to which he would never live, averaging only 10.9 points a game in his best season.

But none of these management disasters mattered to me when I was 8. I loved the Wizards unconditionally, with the kind of passion only childhood innocence could facilitate. And when I was 8, Michael Jordan came out of retirement.

Jordan was an enigma for me; I was too young to remember watching him play on television with the Bulls. I knew of his greatness only second-hand, through SportsCenter highlights, Nike commercials and suburban legends. Jordan may as well have been Odysseus for all I knew.

Growing up in the immediate suburbs of Baltimore just 40 minutes north of Washington, I had no dearth of sports heroes. As every young child in Baltimore during the 90s, I idolized Cal Ripken. I was in the stands as a 2 year old the weekend the Iron Man broke the unbreakable record and as an 8 year old the weekend he hung up his cleats for good. I remember crying when he hit a home run in the 2001 All-Star game and being unable to even speak when I met him unexpectedly in a burger joint in high school.  Countering the Orioles’ awful play during my youth, the Baltimore Ravens had just won the Super Bowl in February of 2001, led by the fearsome linebacker combination of Ray Lewis and Peter Boulware, two players I also admired.

However, while baseball and football were the territory of Baltimore, basketball was relegated to Washington, with the Wizards (then the Bullets) having left our city for the District in 1973. The Wizards were awful, but I knew the team inside and out and I loved every player, being too young to realize that Tyronn Lue and Christian Laettner were anything less than heroes. As much as I loved the Wizards, I found it hard to root for a team that had no transcendent star and never made the playoffs. All of that changed when His Airness, malcontent with playing golf 7 days a week, decided to sell his ownership stake in the Wizards and string up his laces once again.

At the time, Jordan was inexplicably ridiculed by members of the mainstream media, who were terrified that MJ would ruin his seemingly untouchable legacy by playing for the losing Wizards. One of his few defenders at the time, Bill Simmons, has even now changed his opinion on the matter, lamenting Jordan’s injury-plagued return as a fall from grace on his podcast and in his (highly recommended) epic The Book of Basketball. People reacted as if Jordan’s second return was like Brando following his Oscar nom for A Dry White Season with Christopher Columbus: The Discovery. I didn’t care about the talking heads; I wanted to see Air for myself. Imagine if John Lennon and George Harrison simultaneously rose from the dead and announced that they were reforming the Beatles for a final concert at your birthday party; that’s how big of a deal this was to me- and not just because I loved the Wizards.

Just weeks before Jordan announced his decision, I awoke on what seemed to be a normal school day. At my elementary school, we had a fixed schedule of daily classes and one rotational class; we had gym twice a week and split the remaining three days between art, chorus and library studies. During third grade, I had my rotation class first thing in the morning. It was Tuesday and Tuesday meant chorus.

At the end of our singing lesson, we were walked back to our home classroom. When we walked through the door, we found our teacher crying hysterically at her desk. She wouldn’t tell us what was wrong.

Slowly but steadily, the office began calling names over the intercom for early dismissal. After four or five names were called intermittently, we all began to perk up; even in third grade we knew that five early dismissals couldn’t be a fluke and that all of our names would eventually be called. We were positively giddy, as all children are when they get to go home early. We didn’t piece together that our dismissals and our teacher’s tears were connected.

When my name was finally called, I packed my things and walked to the lobby, where I found my father and grandfather waiting for me with my little brother (a first grader). As we walked out of the school doors under a long metal awning, I asked my dad why everybody was getting out early. In turn, he asked me if I knew what the World Trade Center buildings in New York were. I was a very nerdy child obsessed with trivial statistics, so I was thrilled to show off my knowledge that they were the second and third tallest buildings in the country. Instead of rewarding my knowledge, my father coldly informed me that planes had struck the towers and that nobody was really sure what was happening.

I was terrified. Children lack all semblance of emotional nuance, ranging from joyous to petrified with not much in between. News stories began developing that the crashes were no accidents- we were informed that we were under attack and that we were unsure if the bombardment would continue. The northeast corridor from Washington to Boston was placed on virtual lockdown; an errant plane had struck the Pentagon and another, presumably headed for the White House, had crash landed in Pennsylvania. Having already struck New York and Washington, officials feared that the invisible enemy would target the World Trade Center in Baltimore, a towering beacon of our skyline that sits directly in front of the Inner Harbor as the world’s largest regular pentagonal building.

Everybody stayed at home for the rest of the week: confused, scared, grieving. Eventually my mother, who to this day works only 2 blocks north of the Harbor, had to return to her job. We had an old cushion chair in the living room of our brick row house in Dundalk, a border suburb of the city. I remember sitting in that chair the morning my mother left for work, staring out the window. I stayed there until she came home safely that evening.

Jordan’s announcement came shortly thereafter in my mind. In his return, MJ promised to donate the entirety of his modest $1 Million salary to the victims of the attacks. I don’t know what caused Michael to return. He could have simply missed playing competitive basketball, or he could have felt that it was his duty to distract the rest of us from our fears, or he could have been so scared himself that he needed to return to his security blanket on the court. Frankly, the reasoning did not and does not particularly matter to me. All I cared about was that he came back.

Later in the fall, after I returned to school and tried to regain some sense of normalcy, my father pulled me aside midweek and told me that a family friend had scored tickets to see the Wizards play in Washington. Friday night came and I could hardly contain my excitement. The 45 minute car ride seemed an eternity to the 8 year old in the backseat. We parked and began walking toward Chinatown. The lines to get into the MCI Center seemed to fuse into one enormous blob of patrons; as with every home game Jordan played with the Wizards, this night’s event was sold out. We had nosebleed seats just far enough toward midcourt that we had a perfect line of sight to the free throw line. The players looked like ants from this height, but Michael Jordan would be visible on the Isle of Man from the pier at Blackpool.

I don’t remember who we played. I don’t remember how many points Jordan scored. I only remember that the Wizards lost the game and I was devastated. I left the stadium feeling completely defeated, but I eventually realized that the only way to be crippled by a loss is to first expect a win, a feeling I had never experienced with the Wizards before.

One day, my grandchildren will ask me what life was like in the aftermath of 9/11, the same way that I asked my grandfather about the Great Depression. I look forward to telling them that for just a few hours during the most terrifying period of my life, I witnessed the greatest basketball player to ever live give me hope for something better. Thanks, MJ.

 

Alt-Rock Radio Recap: July

The most annoying songs on alt-rock radio:

10. “Habits (Stay High)”- Tove Lo

Wow, so edgy. Much hurt. Very sad. Wow.

9. “A Sky Full of Stars”- Coldplay

This song encompasses basically everything unlikeable about Coldplay: cheese, fakery, cringe-worthy melodies. This band has had more ups and downs than a sine curve and this song flops.

8. “Bad Blood”- Bastille

I love “Pompeii.” I stumbled across that song a few months before it became viral and I’m still not really sick of it. “Bad Blood,” however, sounds sophomoric. Also, how many seconds can he hold the “dryyyyyyyyyyyy” in the chorus? Moving on.

7. “I Wanna Get Better”- The Bleachers

This song would be fairly listenable if it weren’t for the refrain that sounds as if it were mixed in the garage while the neighbors mowed their lawn.

6. “My Sweet Summer”- Dirty Heads

There is essentially one musical line in this song and I find it incredibly grating. I change the channel whenever “My Sweet Summer” comes on.

5. “Lazaretto”- Jack White

Let me preface this: I love the White Stripes. I am not a Jack White hater. Halfway through this song, there is a climactic pause followed by several seconds of dead air- and then the song starts up again from the top, with nothing changed! This bothers me immensely because I can’t tell whether the song is over or if it’s only the middle. Not a good structure for a radio hit.

4. “Stolen Dance”- Milky Chance

What is with this same garbage, zombie, trance drum machine beat that it seems every band is using right now? I’m truly confused; did people forget how to bang on things with sticks? This is the one of the earliest skills necessary for our evolutionary success. Let’s try to have a revival.

3. “Come a Little Closer,” “Take It or Leave It,” “Shake Me Down”- Cage the Elephant

Everything about this band’s music pisses me off. Even when they broke big with “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked,” I had a carnal urge to reach through my speakers and strangle the singer until he agreed to end my misery. None of these three songs are technically new, but they get enough air time to leave me angry on the drive home from the gym.

2. “Safe and Sound”- Capital Cities

“Here’s my idea for a song: let’s find a Rob Thomas sound-alike and have him sing over music that resembles the demonic offspring of Daft Punk and MGMT. Any takers?”

1. “Radioactive”- Imagine Dragons

This song will probably hold this number one position until the average play count falls below once per 48 hours. I can’t think of a more annoying song by a more annoying band this millennium.

 

Not to be bogged down in negativity, here are ten songs getting heavy play that I thoroughly enjoy:

10. “Out of the Black”- Royal Blood

See music industry! Simple guitar riffs and drum licks can be enough to carry a song!

9. “Come With Me Now”- Kongos

A song I anticipate becoming tired of in the near future, but for now, it’s a fun 3.5 minutes.

8. “Heaven Knows”- The Pretty Reckless

The lead singer’s voice is gritty enough to be captivating, a feat I personally find rare in female rock vocalists.

7. “Fever”- Black Keys

Overplayed, but extremely catchy and raw enough to be listenable.

6. “The Walker”- Fitz and the Tantrums

This song was all over the NBA Playoffs broadcasts and I never tired of it. The saxophone breakdown takes it to another level.

5. “Waves”- Sleeper Agent

The rare example of a song that benefits from overproduction. The beginning of the song sounds like “Strawberry Swing” by Coldplay, so I’m always pleasantly surprised when it turns out to be this song instead. I like this song so much that I listened to the full album. It was disappointing- except for this song.

4. “Trojans”- Atlas Genius

“Trojans” is, ironically, rather infectious. The chorus riff is beyond catchy and the song has a wonderful groove about it.

3. “Take It as It Comes”- J. Roddy Walston and the Business

This band rocks my socks, so to speak. The Business is sort of like Kings of Leon fused with Arctic Monkeys and started playing Tom Petty covers.

2. “Riptide”- Vance Joy

A pop song recorded exclusively with actual tangible instruments. This song is immensely refreshing.

1. “Heavy Bells”- J. Roddy Walston and the Business

This is my favorite pure rock song of the decade so far. It’s been so long since a song came around that kicked my ass. I could play this on repeat all day.

The Glaring Plot Hole of Saving Private Ryan

(SPOILERS) Steven Spielberg’s WWII epic Saving Private Ryan is likely the director’s masterpiece. The movie is a truly visceral depiction of the storming of Omaha Beach at Normandy, a frightening portrayal of wartime violence unlike anything I’ve ever seen. However, there is one huge plot hole that almost ruins the conclusion of the movie for me.

At the beginning of the film, we see an aged man walking toward a memorial ground for fallen soldiers with several generations of his family behind him. Naturally, as Tom Hanks was the main star of the movie, I assumed that this man was Hanks’ character decades after the events that were about to unfold. The main twist ending of this movie is the death of Hanks’ Captain Miller, shot in the chest by a Nazi POW he had released earlier in the film. It turns out that the old man from the opening sequence is actually Private James Ryan (played by Matt Damon as a youth and Harrison Young as an elder), the namesake of the film.

The elder Private Ryan falls to the ground in anguish as the camera pans to US Army Ranger boats (carrying Captain Miller) preparing to land at Omaha Beach. After taking the perimeter at the shed of gobs of blood, Miller receives a mission to fetch a Private James Ryan. After Private Ryan loses his three brothers in combat, the military higher-ups decide to pull him out of battle and send him home safely to his mother, who has lost all but one of her children. Captain Miller and his group of soldiers have to trek through treacherous fields of Nazi soldiers, venturing from town to town in coastal France searching for Private Ryan, a paratrooper who went missing after his plane missed its drop zone. Once Captain Miller is killed attempting to prevent the Nazis from taking control of an extremely valuable bridge, the camera fades the young Private Ryan’s face into that of the old Private Ryan, at which point Harrison Young gives a speech at Captain Miller’s adopted grave, hoping he has lived up to Miller’s final advice to take advantage of the blessing of life that he has received.

This is all well and good; twists and turns and surprises are fairly pedestrian filmmaking tactics. But wait- wasn’t this supposed to be a flashback? After all, we are given the impression that the elderly man from the beginning of the film falls to the ground due to something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder; the memories have come racing back to him and he is overtaken with grief, causing him to lose control. This is the logical conclusion given the temporal structure of the film; after all, at the finale of the story, we return to the elder Private Ryan, who has regained his senses and is preparing for his one-sided conversation with Captain Miller. But how can Private Ryan vividly recall the journey of Miller’s soldiers when he doesn’t appear until halfway through the movie? He can’t possibly flashback to events he didn’t witness!

I suppose it is possible that Spielberg did not intend for the story to be a flashback, but if this were the case, he should not have set up the film in such a way that heavily insinuates this to be the case. The better structure would have been to simply open with the storming of Normandy and not show the old man until the conclusion. Spielberg even could have kept the face fusion of young and old with the same dramatic effect! It’s clear then that this was just a logistical oversight in the hopes of surprising the audience. The director can have either the twist ending or a proper time continuum, but not both.

Rating: 88/100.

Roger Goodell Must Resign As NFL Commissioner

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has plagued the league for far too long. Seemingly at every turn, Goodell has made bumbling mistake after bumbling mistake. This statement is less controversial than you may think; take for instance this 2012 Op-Ed published by the New York Times that calls for Goodell to resign over something as retrospectively silly as the league’s mishandling of contract negotiations with referees. Let’s recap:

Goodell publicly defends the viscerally racist nickname of the Washington professional football team, absurdly claiming that 90% of Native Americans support the name “Redskins.” Goodell holds this opinion despite only 0.6% of Washington, D.C. residents identifying as Native American and despite ducking the question of whether he would call a Native American a “redskin” to their face.

Goodell failed to punish wide receiver Riley Cooper for his violent use of the worst racial slur in our country’s history while in the audience of a Kenny Chesney concert. To quote Mr. Cooper, “I will jump that fence and fight every nigger here.”

Goodell has inadequately responded to serious medical claims regarding the prevalence and long-term health effects of concussions suffered by NFL players. With the recent suicide of Junior Seau and murder-suicide of Javon Belcher, both believed to be caused by chronic traumatic encephalopathy, as well as the $765 Million lawsuit from former players for concussion damages, the league has been caught with its pants down and has failed to make any meaningful change to the violent culture of football.

Goodell has continually delayed his submission of a still unseen punishment in the case of Colts owner Jim Irsay, who was arrested in March for driving under the influence of an unknown substance. Police recovered $29,029 and laundry bags filled with prescription pill bottles from his car at the scene.

Goodell has shown remarkable insensitivity to the moral agency of his players, suspending wide receiver Josh Gordon a full 16 game season for smoking marijuana. Even with Gordon being a drug recidivist, Goodell needs to explain how exactly NFL players can be suspended 16 games for smoking marijuana, 6 games for allegedly raping a woman in a bathroom stall and only 2 games for battering his fiancé in a hotel elevator. Mr. Goodell’s shocking disregard for the safety of his league’s female fans, essentially claiming a victimless crime to be an equal or greater offence than physical molestation, is emblematic of the patriarchy that still stains both the sports world and society as a whole.

In a society rapidly becoming more demographically balanced, Roger Goodell represents stagnant rich white male privilege. Goodell has routinely shown a tendency toward racial ignorance and wanton, callous disrespect for the welfare of his fans and players. This behavior is not only unbefitting of the commissioner of America’s most popular sports league, but of any member of our civilization. For the sake of the National Football League and the general public, Roger Goodell must resign his post as commissioner before he allows another preventable tragedy to befall us.