Why I Gave Up The Walking Dead (SPOILERS)

At this point, it's safe to say the zombie mania boom that surfaced in the midst of the 2000's has somewhat petered out. 2004's Shaun of the Dead and the Zack Snyder remake of Dawn of the Dead inspired subgenre godfather George Romero to provide a long-awaited sequel to his Dawn almost thirty years after its release. From then on, we were treated to an endless spate of films, books and video games featuring the living dead. It finally came to a head when Brad Pitt was cast in the PG:13-rated World War Z and someone decided that fusing teen romance melodrama with zombies in Warm Bodies was a good idea.

The Walking Dead first aired toward the end of this craze in 2010, yet it's still going strong. It has the advantage of being based on beloved comic series still in production, and one of its greatest appeals is its cliffhanger-heavy soap opera approach to a zombie apocalypse. At the dawn of its seventh season, viewers are no longer intrigued by the concept of how society would function after it's plagued by zombies or how killing zombies with melee weapons is more efficient than using guns. No, people are still watching The Walking Dead because they want to see who's going to survive, who's going to hook up and which beloved comic book characters will finally make their debut.

The show is completely self-aware of this addicted following and takes advantage of it. By the second season, the show runners decided to devote the first half of the season to the disappearance of a young girl. That wasn't so bad, as it allowed for much story and character development while the cast convened with another set of survivors on a farm. The clash and eventual bonding of these two groups was important and fun to watch, so when the girl finally turned up, there was a satisfying resolution.

By the third season, a new trend developed. The plot was centered on the group taking over a prison, and a growing tension with developed community called Woodbury. This tension was not built in a roller coaster fashion. Instead, there would be back to back episodes with very little plot development interspersed with a lone episode (usually a premier or finale) in which too much happens within the hour time slot. New characters would be introduced and given more development than the primary cast only to be killed soon after. Worst of all, the long-awaited showdown which had been brewing for almost a year didn't even happen by the third season's conclusion. The writers found it more profitable to postpone the bloodbath viewers had been craving until halfway through the next season.

This trend of postponing the action for inconsequential, barely related drama cooled somewhat over the next season and a half. The show was still teasing viewers with the hint of a favorite character's possible demise, but it felt justified since the group was split in several different factions, so it wasn't terribly annoying when the focus would shift to a new character just after a cliffhanger episode. There were plenty of different subplots to develop within season 4 and 5, so this made the action all the more interesting and rewarding when it would happen. It seemed the show had finally found a balance.

This changed in Season 6, when the survivors established itself at the Alexandra Safe Zone, a haven in which they still remain in the comic series. At this point, the show's next logical move to follow the comic story would be to introduce its primary antagonist, Negan. However, since the show was dominating the ratings at this point, the creators decided they needed to create a season's worth of drama before bringing Negan into the fold. This is problematic, since there's very little that can happen when the group finally settles into their destined home base. Walkers can attack and people can come and go. That's about it.

At this point, a culture had finally surfaced on the internet surrounding the show. People would be scouring for spoilers on Facebook or requesting that their friends refrain from spoiling the plot. This sort of buzz was the bread and butter of the show at this point, and so the writers decided instead of writing an engaging plot, they would write episodes specifically centered around teasing a character's death. This culminated in the show's worst offense, in my opinion. The creators decided to produce a farfetched episode in which series favorite Glenn is clearly implied to have died, or so it appeared. The episode was intentionally directed to make his relatively ambiguous, and his survival was ridiculously explained after three or four weeks of keeping the viewers waiting for a resolution.

When I finally learned that Glenn had survived, I didn't even care by that point. The writers had just wasted the viewers' time with their teasing, following it with three episodes worth of story that seemed completely inconsequential in comparison. No one cared what was happening on the show with Glenn's life hanging on the line, and it was a bad move to follow the cliffhanger with episodes of such slow pacing with no substantial plot development. This is when I realized the writers weren't even trying to come up with a decent, engaging story line anymore. They knew we were invested in the characters and started to write episodes specifically for the purpose of screwing with the audience rather than telling an interesting story.

Ironically, this focus on stimulating viewers' reaction provoked an adverse one from me. Who wants to watch a show that isn't even trying to be good anymore? It had finally reached a point where it was pandering to its following, which ultimately where the line is drawn between good art and assembly-line entertainment. It's where innovation ends and monotony ensues. The show that had once intrigued me with the idea of such varied people working together after the world ends had finally turned into a game of "guess who dies next"?

Do You Know About Tyler Durden? Remembering Fight Club (Obvious SPOILERS)

Given the first two rules of Fight Club, I was reluctant to write this review at all. However, after trying to tackle a few deeper topics, I've decided to write a simple movie review.

Too bad Fight Club is anything but a simple movie. When it made its debut at the dawn of the millennium, I remember hearing a flurry of controversial buzz about it. Roger Ebert dubbed it "macho porn" in his first review and it seemed to generate a following mainly among my male friends impressed with its more overt moments of violence. I had no problem with violence in cinema as twelve year old, but even as a young critic, I had a problem with films that pandered to demographics for the sake of pandering. Fight Club was unfortunately marketed as macho porn for mindless action fans, so I skipped over it for many years.

I didn't have the chance to experience the movie until a junior college English composition class. The focus of the class was reflections of art and literature in society. When our professor took out two days of our schedule to watch Fight Club, I was wondering if we were going to study the film from an ironic perspective, or perhaps study the effects of violence in cinema. When the credits rolled to the Pixies classic "Where is My Mind", I was left with a bad taste. The movie just didn't sit well with me. I couldn't get over the film's overall nasty tone and its puzzling, juvenile off-color jokes interspersed with a few gross beatings. I disliked Brad Pitt's smug Tyler Durden so much, I was actually upset he got away with half the things he did in the film, even if he was a figment of someone imagination. A week later, I still couldn't get the film out of my head. It was like a car wreck; appalling yet I was compelled enough to buy the DVD. A few months and ten views after the class ended, Fight Club somehow raked its way into the top five films I'd seen that year.

My experience with the film isn't an uncommon one. Even its biggest fans like myself will tell you it demands repeat viewings to truly absorb not only its energy and ragged aesthetics, but its deeper messages. Both Edward Norton and director David Fincher have compared it to the counter-culture classic The Graduate. Like that 1967 satirical classic, Fight Club is indeed a coming of age film with social and cultural themes embedded in its dense story.

There is no single answer to the question of what the film is "about". Consumerism? Male aggression? The insecurities of turning thirty? Finding definition and self worth in the "me" generation? The rise to prominence and corruption of an underground cult? The complexities of true love? How about all of the above? Any time I've seen someone attempt to summarize the film's plot in one sentence, they completely overlook another extremely important element of the film. It's not about one or even two of these things, it's about all of them.

Similarly, it's difficult to categorize this movie. For a film called Fight Club with an underground boxing ring as its centerpiece, the fighting itself isn't viewed as a competition or even a persuasive plot device. It's more a symbol of the characters freeing themselves from the confines of a comfortable lifestyle, a form of non-conformist bonding therapy. In a way, fighting is the ultimate anti-social activity and these characters employ it as the ultimate middle finger to the established capitalist society which strips them of their identity. The film begins with a lament on how the narrator has become a helplessly addictive slave to consumer culture and ends with him watching credit card companies crumble to the ground while holding his outcast girlfriend's hand.

With the terrorist activities and completely non-romantic overtones that suggest a love triangle, the film almost reads like American History X meets Pretty in Pink. But while it is far from that, it's also been referred to as a "misunderstood romantic comedy" by the filmmaker. Understandably, the marketing team would have scratched their heads if Fincher pitched his bloody movie as such. But in addition to all of the silly phallic jokes and dark slapstick humor, there is indeed something of a screwball love story at the center of Fight Club. Like the film however, it's a puzzle trying to identify the players. Is the Narrator in love with Marla, or is he jealous of how she domineers Tyler (himself)? Maybe that's why he beats the prettier Jared Leto for becoming Tyler's new "favorite".

I read the book almost ten years after first becoming engrossed with the movie and while the film was surprisingly dedicated in replicating many of the book's lines, I would place it in the "movie did it better" category. For all of the endlessly quotable lines and rich plot twists, there's just something inexplicably rich about experiencing the story onscreen. The ending plot twist is one of the film's most-discussed elements, yet it's not exactly its defining payoff the way one might see in an M. Night Shyamalan film. In fact, the first two acts of Fight Club only become more interesting to watch once you know how it ends.

Ebert was wrong to first label the film as "macho porn". I would argue that it's quite the opposite. The story is not about alpha males flexing their dominance over all others. It's more about insecure men feeling betrayed by their upbringing, which has stripped them of any self-reassurance. From this perspective, it was a complete stroke of genius to cast Pitt as Tyler Durden. Pitt's Durden is supposed to be the embodiment of male perfection, as wise as he is completely confident and strong. He is the fictitious creation of the Narrator's ambitions for perfection, and appropriately the Narrator's last trial on the road to personal enlightenment is to kill Tyler, effectively letting go of that drive for "perfection". One of my favorite lines from the film follows the Narrator pointing out a Calvin Klein underwear ad, to which Tyler responds "Self improvement is masturbation...now self-destruction?"

 As I've grown older and seen it many more times, these deeper themes have only become more relevant and I grow more impressed with how they are presented in such an entertaining manner. For all the bloodshed and relentless beatings, this really is something of an upbeat film in the end. It's the classic story of a lost soul finding redemption and meaning in this crazy world, in an appropriately crazy manner. It's like a twisted, violent version of my favorite film It's a Wonderful Life, another story of a young man at the dawn of his thirties struggling with self-definition in a world perversely obsessed with glamor.

5/5: an all time Top Ten favorite for this viewer. 

Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged

Yesterday, I met with a college classmate from a few years ago. During the course of our conversation, I began to share my usual humorous cynicism regarding people in Los Angeles. This usually entails criticism of people who make me feel that healthy socializing is a thing of the past, whether it's old men at bars wasting my time or young women who speak to me as if I were an eight legged pest. Much of it is tongue and cheek now, as I've only begun to grow out of this negative phase at the dawn of my thirties.

 My friend is a young woman in her early twenties living near downtown Los Angeles. This puts her in a position where I knew she would completely understand, as someone who has probably been subject to lecherous men and all around crazy people. I was expecting her to respond with the same affirmation I've come to expect from having this discussion with people my age.

Surprisingly, she countered with her own positive perspective, essentially saying she had come to a place in life where she no longer sees the point in critiquing people so harshly. She wasn't at all oblivious to what I was talking about. It was almost as if she knew exactly where I had been, and she had already found her way out of that negative mindset. To hear a someone relate such a mature, positive attitude at such a young age in a place as manic as L.A. struck me. It also made me consider my own mental journey, as a slightly older male Angeleno.

When I was a child arguably free of life's corrupting influence, I remember being happy in my love for other people. I actually enjoyed being nice and loved it when I would have the chance to exchange niceness with another person. As I grew older, both the world around me and my own emotions became much more complicated. As one might imagine, it's very difficult to retain such a pure core of love for others when you're forced to grow up in a world full of people who are unreasonable, bitter, dishonest and perhaps abusive.

Of course it would be bit narrow-minded to classify people as "bad" or "good" based on those traits. I actually have a theory that many if not most people are born the way I described myself at an early age. I  believe we are all much more sweet and sociable than we eventually become in life. I think the very normal exhibitions of bitterness, dishonesty and lack of reason are the results of living in a society in which our tangible gains serve as a measure of our value instead of our true character. This is how we develop and train emotions like envy and the resulting resentment. We are all unknowingly conditioned to strive to be "better" or the "best" in regards to others, thus we are all placed in a competition we never wanted to enter.

I used to pride myself on "hippie"-like ideals and went out of my way to bring together disparate groups of people all throughout high school. I found it unnatural to be unpleasant to anyone, so I wanted to be everyone's friend. I remember inviting the strangest mixes of people to my birthday parties in college only to find three separate groups of people staring at each other and not saying a word. But without knowing it, I was idealistic. I knew everyone on personal level and was convinced they could get along with each other if they each made an equal effort. I was optimistic about this idea and was very much a people person at this time.

Such a personality comes with a few major downsides. For one thing, I spent so much energy on other people to the point where I had unrealistic expectations for being treated in kind. Without knowing it at the time, I had developed an overly critical attitude in evaluating the social habits of others. I became very sensitive to what I perceived as "rudeness" and unfairly measured it up to my own attempts at being friendly. It became exasperating to put out so much positive energy and always feeling like I was being given less than I had initially invested in others.

Perhaps most embarrassingly, I found out all too well about the "nice guys finish last" folk wisdom. While one can write an entire blog or book about the subject, let's just agree for the purpose of this blog that it is at least perceived by many to be a social truth. I have had many close friends of all genders attest to its unfortunate yet indisputable place in society, including women. Most commonly, people will note that by being quick to serve others first, one is demonstrating a lack of confidence or self-respect and is therefore socially unappealing. This has always been the bane of my existence, because I think it's a grand fallacy. I was personally raised in a quasi-Thai culture in which one's character and status is judged by their hospitality. My parents raised me to truly believe that the key to self-respect was learning to treat others well. This is why it felt so good to be nice to others. Of course if I'd have known the American measure of confidence was measured a little differently, I might have preferred a different family (joking).

These two fatal flaws led me to have a variety of unpleasant social interactions over the years and I eventually got the idea in my head that in order to gain any sort of respect, I had to change. I became withdrawn and much less receptive to people. There were even times where I had been ill-convinced that the way to attract women was to tone down the niceties and perhaps even act a bit standoffish. I don't know why I was at all surprised how poorly this was received. I don't know how I even felt like I had the right to criticize people for not wanting to be close to me, but I did. I developed a bad habit of reaching out to people and then cursing or even resenting them if they rejected me in any wa.

I also became highly critical of others, not only if they refused to engage with me but also if they overstepped their boundaries and monopolized my time. On a typical Friday night out with friends, the ladies my age at the bar would turn their heads away before I even had a chance to say hello, and the troubled old men would turn their heads to me before I had a chance to flee their proximity. These unpleasant interactions are magnified in Los Angeles, where they've forced people to remain more socially divided than ever. It's very difficult to make friends in this city unless you are forced together in repeating situations. First impressions and quick judgments have unfortunately become all we have at times.

Thankfully, this awkward period didn't last very long. I soon found out that in a bid to become more "centered", I ended up losing a great deal of self-respect. I suddenly felt like I was a bad actor, betraying my own natural tendencies for a cause that didn't even seem worthy anymore. There isn't a more unsettling feeling in the world and I found myself longing for those lonely, dateless nights when I was at least comfortable with myself. Indeed I eventually reasoned that it's better to be lonely as yourself than surrounded by people as someone else.

Once I accepted the idea of opening up to others again, I had to learn a new way to evaluate my social life. I would keep my core values intact, but strengthened by the wisdom and inescapable truths I had learned during my "cynical" period. I had to accept that even though I would be reaching out and investing love in others, I shouldn't expect to be rewarded in kind. That's a mercenary way at looking at it anyway, which isn't at all in the spirit of my reinvention. At the same time, I've also had to be careful not to put myself in a position where I would be putting myself at a detriment for a truly unworthy cause. Giving a drunk, incoherent stranger thirty minutes of my attention could never be argued as a worthy use of my time.

This is a complex, ongoing process in my life which has yet to fully mature. It's not a unique situation by any means. I'm sure it's normal for people to mellow out emotionally and lose interest in resenting others by a certain age. I still find it astonishing that my friend could see beyond all of the social complications of this sometimes cold city and still seek the best in people. There's more to gain from opening up to others and to see such a young woman understand this gave me a sense of hope. Maybe not for myself, but future generations.

For an Honest Girl

I've never considered myself an active feminist by any means. I've never engaged in feminist activism nor have I ever raised my voice meaningfully on behalf of women, even in one of my thousands of pointless social media bits. This doesn't mean I'm not supportive. I was raised to treat all people, regardless of gender, race or religion with the same respect I would grant myself. I'm also aware of the deeply institutionalized sexism that has arguably grown stronger in its subtlety the term was ever coined. I consider myself utterly supportive of women in their oppression, I've just never felt I've done enough to warrant the title of "feminist" the same way many more heroic and outspoken people have done so.

It's not even something I think about every day, but an encounter with a friend over the weekend awakened a surprisingly acute sense of awareness and empathy for the women in my life and those that I see every day around Los Angeles. I've become accustomed to visiting L.A. bars to see many of musically oriented connections play just about every month. These connections are often young women who have migrated to this crazy city after growing out of small towns with a much less exciting reputation. They come in search of a glamorous career or at least some proximity to glamour. To the uninitiated, Los Angeles may seem like a dream world.

Long story short, it's quite the opposite. It can be described more appropriately as a dense, overpopulated and overpriced battleground where the harshest realities of capitalism, greed and the grim side of human nature are displayed in all their gory glory. There's only space for a small percentage of our inhabitants to "make it" and this forces everyone to climb over each other just to make a comfortable living. We don't just strive to make a living out here, we strive to be known. Narcissism is the epidemic at the heart of our city. I'm being hyperbolic, but unfortunately there's much truth to this.

It doesn't take a genius or L.A. native to understand that young women who come to L.A. in search of the glamorous life are almost immediately exposed to predators of all varieties. This city features the most colorful and expansive cast of mentally ill drug abusers, sleazy entertainment figures and your garden variety "douche bags" who smear gallons of cologne made of testosterone. All of these archetypes crave even the thought of a young woman for nefarious reasons. They have a vast repertoire of nefarious tricks to play upon a woman's naiveté in order to gain a dominant access of her beauty. 

My friend is a guitar player from another country who came to LA just to play her music and hopefully forge out a career. That makes her a needle in a haystack here, but I do admire her drive and genuine passion for the craft. One of her regular activities is busking out on the boardwalk at Venice Beach. When she hinted that she runs into creeps on the boardwalk on a regular basis, I wasn't at all surprised. Unfortunately, it almost seems as if it's become the sad way of life here when a young woman does little more than walks out in shorts and naturally attracts the leers, catcalls and come-ons of one out of every ten male strangers.

I'm familiar with the narrative. However, I never really felt it until my friend described an experience from the day before in which she was provoked into a fight by a man who was trying to talk to her and became offended when she elected to keep playing music instead of devoting herself entirely to a stranger. He apparently responded to the rejection by putting pizza in her tip jar, prompting a physical altercation. She also recounted another experience in which a drug user broke a hole in her prized guitar. As a guitar player myself, there is no greater offense and no other option to cope other than physical retaliation.

I have my own complicated relationship with women in which I often find myself easily offended when spurned by them when I'm simply trying to be friendly or express romantic interest in an innocent manner. Being a minority often considered "invisible" in this country, I guess I've developed a sensitivity to being coldly dismissed, at no one's fault but my own. Sometimes it's difficult for me to accept the distance of others when I know my intentions are true.

This is of course, a completely unfair assessment of surface level relationships between men and women. Men have no right to force women into their lives and women have no obligations to engage with anyone unless it's their own personal wish. This is such a simple concept but as a man who is no stranger to rejection and the resulting bitterness, I often have a hard time remembering this. But my friend's story was so heartbreaking, it evoked an empathy within me where I was suddenly placed in a visceral situation in which I could fully identify with her.

I stopped viewing my friend as a woman for a moment and just thought of her as a person. A person who wants nothing more than to explore their passion for art. She has no ulterior motives or intent to hurt anyone. She just wants to play music for people. That is inherently noble, whether you're a man or a woman. Why then should she be subjected to strangers disrespecting her or stealing her time for their own pleasure? Why should she feel obligated to heed to the most unsavory lunatics who may even intend to physically harm her?

It was only my third time meeting this person but from the way she spoke, I could tell her barriers had significantly strengthened since I'd last seen her. In just a few words, she gave a complete insight into her current mentality. I could sense that she was fed up with men being drawn by her sexuality and continually crossing the line of rudeness into being plain threatening. For the first time I can remember in awhile, I wasn't at all critical of this girl's interaction with me. I didn't care whether she was being rude to me or not. My heart really hurt for her.

Women are judged much more harshly by their looks, to the point where their personalities or intelligence are completely cast aside. Asians have it hard in our own way, but I will never comprehend how it feels to be a woman. It's a grave injustice for someone to be robbed of their opportunity to simply be a person only to be judged in such a demeaning manner. There's the old cliche of women being "objectified" which has incurred a backlash of its own. I think a more appropriate analogy would be "animalizing" - treating women as subservient pets whose purpose in life is specifically to serve the happiness of men.

 I'm not sure what specific effect this will have on my own life, but hopefully the next time I try to talk to a girl only to be cast aside, I will keep in mind that girl has probably been approached and perhaps threatened by ten other men that week and how is she to know I'm any different?

-J

Do You Like Scary Movies? - 20 Years Since Scream

It's now 2016, twenty years after the first Scream film hit theaters. In the years since its release, the horror film revived the dormant teen slasher courtesy of that sub-genre's paramount Wes Craven. Not only did Craven and the bard of '90s teen culture Kevin Williamson resurrect the slasher, they did so in a tongue in cheek manner which was a mix of loving tribute and satire. Though Scream itself fell victim to the overlong franchise syndrome it parodied, it has earned critical acclaim and the original film has gone on to become a cult classic.

In the wake of Scream's popularity, a host of inferior teen slashers plagued the screen, most of which lacked the irony which kept it from simply being a bad film. This is where Scream's status as a work of art becomes difficult to assess. I remember watching it for the first time as a teenager. When one sees a film that is ostensibly "realistic" in its lack of monsters or magical fantasy elements, one strives to experience rather than view a film from an outside perspective. When I first attempted to identify with Scream's clueless, privileged suburban royalty helplessly baiting themselves to killers with Terminator-like strength, I frequently buried my face in my palms not out of fear but annoyance.

Craven and Williamson were perfectly aware of those grating movie conventions and Craven can be even credited as one of their creators. Though it features some surprisingly frightening moments of violence and dread, Scream is essentially a loving parody at its core, a cheesy horror film that honors cheesy horror films. Indeed its characters obsessively quote and analyze the classics from Psycho to Friday the 13th and Craven himself appears in a cameo as "Fred", a janitor who wears a familiar red and black striped sweatshirt. Much of the film's dialogue reads less like a teen drama and more like a round table discussion of B-grade horror films.

 With all of its "whodunit" plot lines and jump scares that truly bend realism, it's hard to judge the performances in Scream in a traditional manner. There isn't much bad acting per se, but at times it seems as though Neve Campbell and the rest of the cast are on the verge of cracking up over the lines they're forced to recite with such a range of emotions, mostly dread and terror. The characters themselves aren't cliche nor are they innovative, essentially refining the geeks and jocks of John Hughes' films and placing them all a little higher on the social food chain.

Though it's decidedly a thriller in tone, it's best to view the film with the knowledge that it is dripping with satire, otherwise it might play as a simply bad teen movie. I grew to appreciate Scream for its nostalgic connection to the Third Eye Blind era, now that it has long been replaced with more "atmospheric" ghost stories and the unfortunate found footage format. In spite of all its straddling the line of artistry and camp, I'd say Scream ultimately succeeds  as a film in the truest fashion: it's just a lot of fun to watch.

3/4

Damaged Goods: First Impressions of Gang of Four

If you were to ask the average Rock fan about Gang of Four, most likely they would shake their heads in bewilderment. Even someone identifying themselves as a Punk listener might do the same. Like The Velvet Underground, Gang of Four's influence on subsequent bands vastly overshadows their commercial visibility. But like that seminal New York band, the relative few who bought Gang of Four's albums in the late 1970's often started their own much more recognizable musical careers.

I'm no expert on the band, and I'm basing these impressions on their first two albums alone. From what I've read, the quality of their music dipped dramatically soon afterward and I haven't yet felt the need to experience that dip. The two albums I own are the landmark debut Entertainment! and the underrated sophomore follow up Solid Gold. The former is usually hailed as one of the greatest, must-hear albums from the Punk era while the latter is mostly familiar to fans, even though its a refinement of the music heard on the first and boasts an equally strong set of songs.

While elements of their sound can be heard before, during and after their rise to prominence, there really hasn't been another band like Gang of Four. The power trio's mix of Punk aggression, Funk arrangements and a distinctly English sociopolitical sensibility was an anomaly in the Post-Punk era, a time when bands tweaking rock's traditions was the norm. Indeed, they weren't quite a gloomy Post-Punk group in the vein of Joy Division, but their sound was too stiff to be considered Funk and not as driving or distorted as the average Punk band.

Vocalist Jon King spits out vitriolic rants that are sparsely melodic, joined by his band mates for unsettling backing vocals that sound not unlike a cult chanting at a football match. Guitarist Andy Gill forges a slashing sound that was cleaner than the typical Punk guitar tone, and more reminiscent of Pub Rock heroes Dr. Feelgood. Yet Gill might also augment a song with Flanger effects set to the extreme, or unaccompanied feedback for a whole minute. The rhythm section mixes or (or clashes) the syncopated groove of Funk with some touches of reggae, with Dave Allen and Hugo Burnham on bass and drums respectively. Allen often slaps and pops his bass, but it's rarely done with the intent of making the audience dance. Burnham similarly doesn't respond to his bandmates' Funk sensibilities with a dance floor-ready hi-hat groove. Instead, he's more likely to pound his toms and bass drum in a foreboding, militant style culled from The Velvet Underground's Maureen Tucker.

Gang of Four dabbles in the same social, political and economic subjects as late 1970's punk bands. However, they align themselves more with the intellectual approach to poverty, consumerism and corruption as their Punk cohorts Wire. Lyrically, Gang of Four could be described as a "thinking man's punk band". Even when they deal with the all-familiar topics of love and attraction, they offer a bleakly twisted perspective. When they're not boiling down attraction to its ugly, animal instincts in "Damaged Goods", they're describing the experience of love as akin to feeling like a 'beetle on its back' in "Anthrax".

Though music history will forever remember them as a cult band, their influence on the Alternative Rock era is incalculable. Only a few years after their peak, underground bands like Sonic Youth and Minutemen learned from Gang of Four's arty minimalism. Nirvana's Kurt Cobain described the early sound of his band as being a mere ripoff of Gang of Four and later listed their debut in his list of all time favorite albums. Perhaps more obviously, bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rage Against the Machine were taking Gang of Four's mix of Funk and Punk elements to their logical conclusion, with Rage in particular adopting a similarly aggressive political character.

It took me awhile to finally hear Gang of Four in all their glory, as I first heard "Damaged Goods" around the same time as I was swooning over Boston's "More Than a Feeling". When I was finally at a bleak enough point in my life, there was no better consolation than the energetic release of Gang of Four's angry outsider music.

Recommended Albums: Entertainment!, Solid Gold
Recommended Songs: "In the Ditch", "Natural's Not In It", "Anthrax", "Armalite Rifle", "What We All Want", "Damaged Goods", "Outside The Trains Don't Run on Time", "He'd Send in the Army", "At Home He's a Tourist", "Cheeseburger"

Play the Guitar on the MTV: Remembering Dire Straits

When my Dad first mentioned Dire Straits to me, I wasn't at all intrigued. As a teenage proponent of intense or "out there" music from The Velvet Underground to Black Flag, my ears weren't open to a band famed for their lack of rock ethics in favor of a "rootsy" approach, led by a finger-picking guitar player more in line with Chet Atkins than Jimi Hendrix. I ignored suggestions to listen to their music for years.

I finally heard "Money For Nothing" for the first time in 2007 while sitting in the car. After a long intro that was unmistakably '80s sounding, the tune finally launched into a groovy electronic bounce that surprisingly featured Sting's notable cameo singing "I want my MTV" in his signature falsetto. I'd actually heard that hook, grotesquely appropriated for a Toyota commercial as "I want my MPG". The lead vocalist sang in a gruff, English baritone. I figured it was David Bowie circa 1984.

Over the next few weeks, I discovered the true identity of the band who had me truly addicted with "Money for Nothing". I went so far as to learn Mark Knopfler's intricate but infectious fuzz guitar lick, which was equal parts J.J. Cale and ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons. I "acquired" a few other Dire Straits songs, including their other signature hit "Sultans of Swing".

At that point, their appeal started to make sense to me. They sounded very much of their time, yet I'd be hesitant to slander them with the tasteless generalization of typical "80's Music", as most of their music was far less dated than the many gated reverb and synth-driven one hit wonders you might hear in a retro sports bar. They were equally undeserving of the "roots rock" label, for even with all of their twangy licks reminiscent of country, blues and rockabilly, their music didn't sound like any one of those genres. It was hard to classify them at all, as they straddled the purgatorial line between the Blues Rock and New Wave generations. The former eventually drew them in due to Knopfler's virtuoso guitar playing, which had the same dignified attributed to Clapton.

This heightened level of artistic depth was a blessing and a curse for the band. Even early on, Knopfler was already  a seasoned songwriter who with the band turned out songs like "Wild West End" and "Down to the Waterline", which sound more like the more seasoned efforts from Clapton in his solo career than your typical New Wave-era band thrashing out their first album. Sometimes this resulted in the catchy, listenable song craft that resulted in their breakthrough single "Sultans of Swing" and it also meant they missed out on the charmingly energetic rock adolescence that gave early albums by The Police a sense of fun. At their most ambitious, Dire Straits could often be deservedly pegged as boring and pretentious, with some of their music bordering on tepid smooth jazz.

At their best, they always reminded me of fellow '80s fixtures Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and sometimes Elvis Costello in that no existing sub-genre of music accurately defined them. These bands created a sound of their own, which had stylish inflections of the new wave era but featured from-the-heart songwriting more typical of confessional singer songwriters like Van Morrison. Incidentally, Jimmy Iovine produced landmark albums for both Petty and Dire Straits. The timeless love anthem "Romeo and Juliet" from the Straits' Making Movies was the first song of theirs to become an all time favorite of mine, due in no small part to Iovine's earthy treatment.

Unlike Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers who endured into the Alternative Rock era, Dire Straits have not necessarily endured as a hip fixture. A reunion would probably land them a gig at the bigger Nokia stage than Coachella. Guitar players might appreciate Knopfler's status as a hero only beginning to enter the same conversations about Hendrix and Jimmy Page but their general perception has usually dubbed them middle aged Dad rock, mostly memorable for "Money For Nothing" and its influence on MTV.

Perhaps it's due to a greater separation of time since the '80s and thus the sense of nostalgia has grown fonder, but  I've noticed a shift in this perception, which is why I chose to write this piece. If I had to imagine a Dire Straits fan, I would imagine someone around my Dad's age who hangs on to the look and lifestyle glorified in Springsteen's"Glory Days", but two of the biggest fans I know are both lovely young women in their twenties who are connected with the more tastefully hip trends of modern music. Their influence can even be heard in today's pop music, with the Killers covering "Romeo and Juliet" and Bruno Mars augmenting his 2012 Sting tribute "Locked Out of Heaven" with a beat straight out of Knopfler's songbook.

It's unlikely this slowly burning buzz will reunite Knopfler with his cohorts, as he cordially yet firmly rejects his time with the band as a thing of the past he no longer wishes to revisit. This is understandable, as Knopfler is known to be adverse to the level of fame that threatened him when the band released their commercial blockbuster Brothers in Arms. A reunion would also be sadly unnecessary since the Straits' overall sound was produced largely by Knopfler alone. It's not like we would be treated to any new music on the level of "So Far Away" or "Tunnel of Love" anyway. Let's just enjoy the legacy they've left behind and see Knopfler in his comfort zone while we've still a chance.

Recommended Albums: Dire Straits, Making Movies, Brothers in Arms

Recommended Songs: "Money For Nothing", "Sultans of Swing", "Romeo and Juliet", "So Far Away", "Tunnel of Love", "Walk of Life", "Six Blade Knife", "Down to the Waterline", "Skateaway", "Telegraph Road"

Nostalgia: Yay or Nay?

While perusing my Facebook feed today, I discovered that Crystal Pepsi, the translucent counterpart to Coca Cola's caffeinated rival is making an unprecedented return to shelves after twenty three years of discontinuation. When it comes to manufactured food products from decades past, some have made their return such as the "Monster" themed breakfast cereals which make a fitting appearance in stores every October. Others like the turkey frankfurter Gobble Stix exist only in childhood memory. Just the thought of them takes me back to the third grade when my Mother would lovingly augment my insulated Thermos lunch bag with those salty, overly processed poultry snacks.

As I recall, Crystal Pepsi had the shortest lifespan of these products. I'm not even sure it lasted a whole year and I personally don't remember trying it more than once. I don't remember how it tasted, although it clearly wasn't remarkable enough for me to remember one way or another. Crystal Pepsi even incurred something of a backlash, with many of my friends and family declaring it a bland and unnecessary concept. There was even a "Crystal Gravy" sketch on Saturday Night Live which made the idea seem all the more bizarre.

Why then am I, a child of the '90s so excited to crack open one of these bottles with a lettering scheme that reminds me just how much soda company designs have subtly evolved over the years? No one seems to care a great deal when food companies tweak their fonts or coloring, but when you compare the same product that existed from two long separated decades, it's something of an amusing surprise.

This is how the most profound instances of nostalgia function: through the minute and sometimes inane elements of everyday life. I think of the "little things" as a provocative, visceral key to a bigger portrait of one's state of mind at a particular time in life. We can imagine our lives when we were seven years old, but it's these silly products and television shows that truly take us back there in feeling. That's why smell often functions as nostalgia's most evocative trigger. Before our minds really have a chance to process it, a scent from the past can conjure up surprisingly specific situations within a matter of seconds.

Nostalgia is defined as a longing for the past, with the past perceived as better than the present. Sometimes even if that isn't necessarily the case, we idealize the past in an increased contrast with a bleak present. That's why it carried both positive and negative connotations with people. It is common to see people derided for "living in the past" and forgoing the world around you entirely for one that has passed does indeed border on delusion. At the same time, nostalgia does have healing qualities. It usually surfaces in times of difficulty and improves our mood in response.

In addition to those pleasant feelings, nostalgia can also remind us in times of personal uncertainty that we were once capable of happiness and therefore provides hope that we have the ability to achieve it once more. Among the worst feelings one can experience is that of feeling disconnected or lost in search of your true essence. As we age, reality tends to instill us with a cynicism that combats the naive confidence one has in their youth. In contrast, nostalgia can remind us of times when we truly believed we were capable of greatness and at least instilling a hope that such a time is capable of reoccurring.

 I doubt I'll have such an existential experience when I sip Crystal Pepsi for the first time in over twenty years, but at the very least it will make Jurassic Park that much more fun to watch for the fiftieth time.

Defining Punk

"Punk Rock" is one of the most hotly debated musical genres in the history of music. When discussing Punk, many complex and often meta questions arise. Is it a specific style of music or a loosely defined genre? When did it really began? Can it still be heard today and where? Perhaps the most commonly pondered but rarely asked aloud is "What makes a band 'punk' rock?"

All of those questions raise inevitably subjective answers from both fans and critics. I developed my own perspective based not on the ruminations of either category, but from neophytes. A devoted music historian might offer a complex answer as to why Chuck Berry was more punk rock than Talking Heads, yet the average person would most likely scoff at the idea of Berry being punk while loosely associating Talking Heads with the genre. I'd tend to agree with the latter, and here's my reasoning behind it:

"Punk" is usually described in its simplest form as speedy, simple and irreverent rock music played with no more than three chords. Yet this serves as an accurate description of Chuck Berry, early singles from The Kinks and The Who while most records from Blondie and Television would swiftly fail the litmus test. If this serves as the defining factor of Punk, why did it take until the late '70s for the genre to be officially named when artists had already been playing it for almost two decades?  Most fans would cite the latter half of the decade as being the official era of Punk's arrival when the likes of Patti Smith, The Ramones, The Sex Pistols and The Clash released their subversively ragged debut albums in reaction to the bloated, overly polished excess of the Progressive Rock that reigned in the earlier half of the decade.

I would agree with this assertion, because I also feel that Punk is contextually tied to the decade that began in the late 1970's and ended in the late '80s before it was reborn as "Alternative Rock". Musically, three subversive and simple three chord rock existed in the 1960's as a collective of artists known in hindsight as "Proto-Punk", named for their influence on the artists that would officially be dubbed Punk Rock in the subsequent decade. Proto-Punk bands included The Velvet Underground, The Stooges, MC5 and later The New York Dolls, who served as a bridge between the two generations. These bands played off the wall, fast, loud rock music outside of the mainstream but what they lacked was a sense of unity or generational identity.

Community was distinctly characteristic of Punk and separated it from Proto-Punk as a true musical movement rather than a style or label. The first notable community of musicians to be known as Punk was the cadre of bands that originated from Hilly Kristal's New York nightclub CBGB's. Many of the bands that came from CBGB's indeed played an intensified variation on the same three chord rock The Who played in the previous decade, but bands like The Ramones, The Dead Boys and The Dictators augmented it with a bizarre, intentionally dumb flair for irony that renewed teen rebellion for a new era. The snobby, youthful sentiments of "My Generation" were taken to the streets of "Beat on the Brat" by kids that weren't simply rude, they were little thugs too. Punk bands didn't simply take the "fast, three chord rock" to a new level of intensity, there was also a sense of nastiness and rebellion that countered the joyous celebrations of youth heard in "Johnny B. Goode". Berry celebrated youth while his Punk antecedents lamented how shitty and confusing it could be.

Not all of the CBGB's bands followed this trend, which is why it would be incorrect to define Punk with only sonic characteristics. Bands like Television and Talking Heads played Rock music mostly free of loud, distorted guitars which was often complex in rhythm, form and even harmony. These qualities almost sound like they would be more akin to the Progressive Rock against which Punk was rebelling, yet there are indeed some intangible aesthetics that tie those bands closer to The Ramones than Yes or Pink Floyd. It wasn't rebellious lyrics or attitude, because both bands wrote lyrics more reminiscent of 19th century French poetry than Joey Ramone. What bonded those bands and pop outfits like Blondie with Punk was the context and an adventurous spirit that came from being in a struggling scene where the only thing every band had in common was a desire to play whatever the hell they wanted.

Though the definition of Punk is more contextual than it is strictly musical, that context wasn't limited to New York. My personal favorite  strains of Punk came from across the pond, where the first wave of Punk Rockers like The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned and The Jam were highlighting the rebellious nature of Punk with a sociopolitical consciousness in reaction to that nation's turbulent era of government. I still remember the rush that overcame me when I first I played Nevermind the Bollocks...Here's the Sex Pistols. I had already heard intense rock from The Stooges and The Clash's only marginally Punk sounding London Calling, but nothing prepared me for the fiery, nihilistic onslaught of "Holidays in the Sun". John Lydon's rabid bark led Steve Jones' thunderous guitar and Paul Cook's unstoppable drums directly in the face of the listener and shook you out of your seat.

I had no idea what to make of the lyrics when I could even discern them. But it didn't matter that I didn't know what Belsen was or that the Berlin Wall had already crumbled fifteen years prior. I felt and identified with the anger, frustration and energy that drives you when you're sixteen. It was liberating, not unlike the first time I heard Brian Wilson turn youthful vulnerability into innovative symphonies with Pet Sounds. It reassured me that people experienced the same confusion, unhappiness and oppression that plagues our adolescent years, whether you're in the bleakest parts of London or the posh suburbs of Pasadena. Punk rock gave me a form of solace and the feeling that you're never completely alone, even in the worst times of your life.

Punk guided me through my teenage years and has resurfaced in the same consoling light in the past few years as I struggle through my late twenties. As a musician, my romantic ambitions have been completely subdued by a volatile, assembly line driven music business built on the soiled ashes of Rock music. To quote Philip Seymour Hoffman's Lester Bangs from Almost Famous: "The war is over. They won." Now with the digital fast food masquerading as music produced by Taylor Swift, OneRepublic and Ariana Grande polluting the world around me, the only solace I can find is the ragged, driving rants of Elvis Costello and a young Paul Weller. It reminds me of a time when songs weren't written strictly for the intention of selling to the masses but to inspire something within them.

Life is Unfair: Remembering Malcolm in the Middle

"YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME NOW!" They Might Be Giants' theme song for 2000's FOX sitcom about a boy genius brings a certain generation of television viewers right back to those nights of watching a block of prime time comedies at the dawn of the new millennium, in the brief time when we would watch a scrambled signal on bunny eared antennas. I personally have fond memories of coming home from school, completing my homework to a certain degree and eagerly awaiting the block of reruns that would begin with Home Improvement at 6:00 PM and end with the network's centerpiece The Simpsons after the 10:00 PM news.

As a version of America's "average" family, Malcolm in the Middle leans heavily toward the latter's more fractured, dysfunctional take. Incidentally, multiple graduates of The Simpsons' writing staff from the show's golden era ended up working on Malcolm. The same cynical, irreverent humor that brought down fading Nuclear family conventions pervaded in the latter, ten years after that show first aired and thirteen years after Married...With Children. I remember when Malcolm was marketed in its first few years, it almost appeared to be an offbeat teen heartthrob vehicle for its protagonist, played with aplomb by Frankie Muniz.

Malcolm was anything but another Jonathan Taylor Thomas affair. Unlike the more wholesome afternoon fare of Saved by the Bell or Boy Meets World, it reveled in its boundless threshold for silliness and a fondness for losers. Where Home Improvement centered its episodes around a character's moral dilemma before ending it with hugs and lessons learned, Malcolm almost routinely ended its episodes with characters ending up in deeper predicaments by its second season. We would laugh at Malcolm and his family as they helplessly spiraled out of control into trouble, whether it involved a character being dumped or the family ending up in financial dire straits. We laughed not from a high horse, but right along with the family because they would end up in the kind of "Murphy's Law" situations that are truer to life than the picturesque situations on more wholesome shows.

Not that the show was completely immoral, which was the unfairly common criticism often associated with shows like The Simpsons or Beavis & Butthead. Like the former, Malcolm's family wore their lack of manners and basic decency toward each other as a twisted badge of honor. While most episodes found the children in the family and even the adults literally at war with one another, many episodes ended with the family reaffirming their love for another, though usually in the midst of a scuffle or a food fight.

This fearlessly cynical sense of humor comes courtesy of the show's staff, many of whom come from the often Ivy League-educated generation of writers that gave The Simpsons, Futurama and King of the Hill the same pointed, often mercilessly cruel and sometimes completely off-the-wall sense of humor. Malcolm walked that same fine line between intelligence and silliness, which found characters referring to Chaucer as "pop culture" and brainstorming ways to taunt a girl named "Regina (Ra-Jyna) Tucker", often in the same five minutes.

What really made Malcolm in the Middle something of an anomaly in non-animated TV sitcoms was the fact that the show retained its energetic humor for an admirable six or seven seasons, depending on who you'd ask. Comedy shows generally "jump the shark" by the sixth-season mark and rarely continue any further. The last two seasons of a sitcom tend to be unfunny and sometimes painfully depressing in light of its predecessors. Some of Malcolm's most laughter inducing jokes came from the last two seasons, when the show took advantage of its aging characters and emphasized their "hapless loser" aspect to offset the inevitably fleeting "cute" appeal associated with the younger cast members.

In addition to the direction staying strong, the cast similarly never seemed to phone it in by the later seasons. Featuring character heavyweights like Jane Kaczmarek and the now-ubiquitous Bryan Cranston in unforgettable roles. Kaczmarek revolutionized TV mothers in her turn as one of the meanest, sometimes most cold blooded characters since Nurse Ratched, yet that cruelty is tempered by a steely code of honor that often functions as the show's moral compass. As Hal, Cranston is her equal, who is never afraid to wear ridiculous, form fitting outfits or devote an entire episode to winning a match of Dance Dance Revolution. The children's performances are understandably more cartoonish, but it works in their favor with Muniz's almost constantly sour expressions and Justin Berfield's charmingly naive idiocy driving the laughs late into the show's run.

I miss Malcolm in the Middle because it was the last show of an effortlessly funny generation. I rarely watch any comedy these days, as it often ranges from a self conscious dryness that feels more like obnoxiousness or a formulaic randomness pioneered by Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow's camp. Malcolm in the Middle's characters were mean, but exercised that meanness within a well-constructed comic situation. The randomness didn't try to revive the early '90s stoner sensibilities but was rather a reflection of its naturally clueless characters. Everything had a reason behind it, whether or not it was apparent. And most importantly, Malcolm was one of the last few shows that championed the humorous appeal of true idiocy over vulgarity, though it had its share of the latter.

Thank God for Netflix.

The Future Thirty Years Ago: AMC's Halt & Catch Fire

I'm going to take a rare dip into contemporary pop culture for today's television review. I use that phrase 'contemporary pop culture' with hesitance because though AMC's Halt & Catch Fire is indeed a show on the air today, it's set thirty years ago during the computer boom in Texas and has hardly penetrated pop culture to the same degree of the network's apocalyptic behemoth The Walking Dead. Apart from the same opaque cinematography, the two shows have very little in common. As a complete neophyte to the world of computers, I start zoning out ten seconds after someone begins explaining the difference between MS-DOS and MSN. If I were a TV producer who had to choose between airing a fictional drama about the computer boom or another about zombies starring the cue card-toting Brit from Love Actually, I'd send the first person straight out the door. But from an artistic standpoint, I would be dead wrong.

For starters, Halt & Catch Fire isn't about computers just as The Walking Dead isn't really about zombies at heart. While the latter begs the question of what would happen to society if the technology-driven world were to end, the former is all about creation, progress and how technology dramatically changed the way society functions. It is a show set in the early 1980's when the internet, multiplayer online gaming and even the idea of social media had a little more than a decade to find itself in just about every household in the United States. There are indeed many winks and inside jokes that foreshadow many of the social customs influenced by technology today. Halt reveals to us how these ideas were rooted long before many of us were even born, much less sat in front of a computer.

This connection between the past and present allows the show to comment on contemporary issues from long ago. In one episode from the second season, a character goes on a blind date arranged through a chat room only to discover their suitor is not at all what they had imagined. This would have been relevant ten years ago when we were chatting with strangers on AOL Instant Messenger, and it's relevant in today's dating world driven by mobile apps. Almost every episode features an inside joke or "What if..." diatribe from a character in which the punchline is a culture-moving monolith, from Nintendo to the concept of the internet itself.

What really drives Halt is its four uniquely compelling protagonists. I first became interested in the show after Mackenzie Davis' brief but charmingly nerdy cameo as a NASA communications specialist in 2015's The Martian. On Halt, she plays something of an expanded version of that role as the rebellious but vulnerable programming prodigy Cameron Howe. While some have critiqued her character as cliche, I think seeing a woman play the role of a young, restless and somewhat troubled innovator is something of which we need to see more in film and TV. Similarly, the show's other female protagonist played by Kerry Bishe is equal parts Nuclear Mom and engineering genius. These characters do not function as the "women" characters on the show, they are at the forefront and by the second season, the stories center around their ambitions just as much as the men. There's nothing cliche in all of that.

It is hardly a show that specifically makes feminism its intentional focus, which is part of why I appreciate it. Halt doesn't feature stories about the struggles of women with the intent to combat sexism, it merely does so within its reach as a TV show by giving the women equal if not more driving roles than the men. The males are just as well-developed and interesting to watch onscreen. Lee Pace plays the bi-sexual, smoke and mirrors wielding PR visionary Joe MacMillan who incites both disdain and empathy from the viewer with his cold but impulsive antics. Scoot McNairy's broken engineering genius Gordon Clark is his best foil as everything Joe is not; insecure and somewhat short-sighted yet pragmatic. These characters all function as incendiary matches and fuses to each other; who knew that the creation of computers involved so much sex, vandalism and shady business transactions?

The second season increases plot accessibility and entertainment factor by shifting the focus to its female leads and placed them at the forefront of online gaming. The most interesting and inspired development of the show is Cameron founding her own game developing company Mutiny, which places more archetypal and mostly male portrayals of programming misfits in a workplace somewhere between a college frat house and a comic book store. This youthful and irreverent bunch clashes with the big business world of oil companies and provides a David and Goliath type drama which correlates with today's world in which corporate distrust has reached an all time high and tech entrepreneurs are emerging from their garages every day.

Halt & Catch Fire lacks the audience and therefore the self consciously desperate need to tow the dramatic line as seen in The Walking Dead. The strength and compatibility (or lack thereof) of the characters makes them interesting to watch, even if they're merely hovering over a monitor or sitting in a conference room.  There's no real gun battles in the show, but it's interesting to see how a friendly NERF fight in Mutiny may have led to the idea of a first person shooter. Though it appropriates the feel early 1980's, it's not exactly appropriate to dub the show as nostalgic. With its messages rooted in today, it's about as contemporary as any other show on TV now.

And as a huge fan of early punk rock, it's a love letter to someone like myself to hear such an offbeat, sometimes surprisingly obscure soundtrack provided by a cute nerd like Cameron.

-J

Not Quite Bourne Again: A "Jason Bourne" Review

When my friend agreed at the last minute to accompany me on a trip to see Jason Bourne at the Pasadena Arclight, I was elated. There was lingering nostalgia at play as I hold fond memories of watching the Bourne films almost ten years ago on weekends at the Paseo Colorado promenade when it wasn't quite a ghost town yet. It's silly to anyone but me, but the classical architecture and atmosphere of the surrounding area seems scantly reminiscent of the exotic locations where Matt Damon might be evading a multicultural cadre of assassins, all of whom conveniently work for the U.S. government. In short, it was the perfect place for me to enjoy the film. Thus when the long awaited reunion of Damon, director Paul Greengrass and Bourne was finally announced, I'd already decided where I was going to see the movie even if it was five dollars overpriced. It's nearly been a decade, for chrissakes!

I should have known this level of anticipation would inevitably lead to disappointment. The last two long-awaited sequels I enjoyed (Dumb & Dumber To, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) weren't necessarily great films, they were merely better than expected. In a sense, I had little faith that those films would live up to the high marks their predecessors had laid out and therefore I was easier on them. In the case of the Bourne franchise, Greengrass turned what could have been a fluke of an entertaining movie into the smartest action film franchise Hollywood has seen in the past two decades. Not merely continuing but improving upon the original, Greengrass made two sequels that featured intriguing espionage plots and of course thrilling action sequences that never quite went over the top. Bourne films eschew the modern practices of including corny humor or the need to temper explosions with bigger explosions i.e. Michael Bay.

This attention to nuance and balanced sense of theatrics is what precisely made those first three Bourne films age so well (no one even care's about Renner's The Bourne Legacy) and simultaneously they made the fifth installment feel like an unwelcome change of pace. There's no way to recapture the same exact feeling that occurred nine years ago, even if you bring the band back together, so to speak. Perhaps that would have been an unwise ambition anyway, but I couldn't help but be bothered by two centerpiece car chase sequences that felt like the first time Bourne wasn't borderline but completely superhuman. They were indeed longer and louder than the most exciting chases from the original films, but not necessarily more exciting. What makes Bourne such an intriguing action protagonist isn't how he can take down a S.W.A.T. truck with a sports car or survive falling off a building, it was his flair at problem solving which made us yell "Man, that's clever!"There was indeed some of that in the film, including sequences where Bourne expertly evades his pursuers while chasing down his own target in a dense London crowd, or when he found ways to trick both local police and undercover C.I.A. agents in the midst of a violent Greek protest.

Another point that's interesting about the film is just how eerily it reflects the turbulent year in which it was released. It entered principal photography in September 2015, a month before the terror attacks in Paris kicked off a violent year in which the world has seen mass shootings, bombings, violent riots and even a military coup attempt in Turkey. There were a few moments in Jason Bourne which would have simply been your average action sequence nine years ago, but watching Las Vegas security sound alarms over an "active shooter" situation onscreen a mere month and a half after the Orlando shooting drew an uncomfortable parallel. Coupled with the aforementioned protest sequence and a few references to the ubiquitous power of social media, one might say there was indeed an intentional commentary on modern times embedded in the film, though I'm not sure what it is.

Jason Bourne boasts perhaps the most star-studded cast in the franchise yet, with Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander and Vincent Cassel rounding out key roles as the elements trying to catch Bourne with their own veiled motives. Their casting sounds great on paper, and I personally had high expectations as a fan of both Jones and Cassel. Indeed they each turned in great performances, but I couldn't help but think they felt a bit out of place in the Bourne universe. Even as a quietly threatening villain, one can't help but like Jones or expect him to generate some dry humor when he's onscreen. Chalk it up to over-familiarity with Jones' characters. Similarly, Cassel is the most verbose and emotional of the C.I.A. "assets" sent to eliminate Bourne. This was intentional, as the character is written to have a personal vendetta against Bourne but what made the assassins from the original trilogy so intriguing was their cold, detached and way of operating independently from their employers. Vikander holds her own among such talent, but throughout the entire movie I severely doubted the premise that someone so young could rise to such a commanding rank within the agency.

What makes the film is the returning team of Damon and Greengrass. Julia Stiles reprises her role briefly and somewhat blankly, but Damon rises to the challenge of reviving his superhero spy with an impressive energy and his increasing depth as an actor. He doesn't expand on the character, but he doesn't disappoint an audience hungry for the same dizzying standards set fourteen years prior, and that's a remarkable feat in itself. Not once did I get the sense that he was too old to play the part or that he was phoning it in a la Bruce Willis or Harrison Ford. Greengrass similarly lives up to the high standards he set with exotic set pieces spanning from Greece and London to Las Vegas (a first for the franchise) and a mature sense of restraint he only broke for the film's seldom, most intense sequences.

My verdict is that the "mixed" reception it has been receiving is entirely apt. It's not quite as unnecessary as the Jeremy Renner-driven fourth sequel, but I think the risks it took to deviate from what made the original trilogy great ultimately count as failures. It's still leagues greater than anything Michael Bay could ever accomplish and still eclipses the Bourne-inspired Taken series, but at times it verged closer to pedestrian action film conventions than we're used to expecting from Damon and Greengrass. Still, it's not a bad film by any means. I was happy to see it after all these years, but I think the fact that I somehow ended up paying fifteen dollars for it (about three less than the usual Arc Light fare) seemed like an eerily appropriate discount. Good, but not great.

-J

A Mission Statement of Sorts

Welcome, bienvenue and make yourself comfortable! I doubt anyone will read this, but I've been encouraged to make an official introductory post should I ever start a blog. Lo and behold, I've decided to bring the hammer down and begin writing in a "public" forum.

Why? As a member of the ever-indecisive Millennial generation, I've spent most of my life avoiding that fatal question, "What do you want to do with yourself?" There's only been two passions in my life which I've been encouraged to pursue; music and writing. With the fading likeliness of the former ever becoming a reality, I've decided to focus more on the craft I can pursue comfortably in my road to middle age.

I'm not alone in this crisis. I've been fortunate enough to make friends from completely different walks of life who on the surface might only seem to have their age in common. I've heard these friends from disparate social standings and cultures confide the personal issues to me, almost verbatim. It's uncanny just how much the blonde, photogenic model from the Midwest and my eczema laden Chinese friend from Alhambra share the same lack of confidence, loneliness and general insecurities.

Before I decided to start a blog, I had a vague but inspiring vision that would address our problems and turn them into a shared badge of honor, as if to unite us even if it's our social disconnect that brings us together. I wanted to found a publication that would specifically be tailored to our uniquely bleak worldview, with 1990s nostalgia lists, how-to articles and no-holds barred emotional pieces that bring all of our vulnerabilities to the light. I wanted to create a forum of expression as an alternative to the mirage of social media; a no-bullshit where we can truly be ourselves without the self-imposed burden of image management.

Of course such an accomplished vision wouldn't happen overnight. After weeks of deliberating on this loose idea, the path of work it would take to reach the end goal became clearer to me. Before I launch the publication, I need to practice writing and organizing ideas in an accessible package. An easy-to-manage blog would be the perfect outlet for refining my ramblings. Furthermore, as an admitted neophyte to this tool, I need to familiarize myself with public blogs so that I may learn how to turn my own writing into something people would actually read.

So what can you expect from following this blog? As previously stated, I'm confident that no one's reading, but I will treat it as if I've already earned my audience and thus I will temper my long-winded expression, as if we were strangers sharing a deep conversation at the bar. Thus, under the influence of this atmosphere free of inhibitions, you will hear me airing my deepest insecurities, sharing day to day observations of this turbulent age and lamenting TV sitcoms from twenty years ago while indiscriminately disparaging the emerging pop culture as it continues to turn my hair gray.

-J