Music Video Reaction: Gorillaz- El Manana

To preface this, I could not get the tilde (~) to get over the first ‘n’ in ‘Manana’. So let’s all pretend I tried as hard as I could to adhere to the Spanish but Microsoft prevented my attempts at equal lingual appreciation.

“Feel Good Inc.” is a hard song to top. Indeed, it is the shining star of “Demon Days”, the latest Gorillaz effort. The video was breathtaking, and an incredibly imaginative transposition of the song. Both song and video were incredibly successful in mid-2005, which was odd because the song was released on iTunes (which I immediately nabbed) a week after the internet premiere of the video somewhere in March 2005, when it then took about two months for it to become an incredibly successful single (the album premiered in May, I believe). Feel Good was the closest thing to a pure “Feel Good Hit of the Summer”, with its ripping baseline and inspired chorus coupled with the video’s amazing use of the De La Soul verses. The most memorable thing about the video, arguably, was the beautiful imagery of the Noodle’s “lighthouse island in the sky” coupled with her soft, delicate guitar bridge. It was nearly tear-inducing.

Cut to today. The incredibly effective marketing campaign (when the marketing was taken from the hands of the webmasters of Gorillaz.com, who attempted some ultimately petty viral marketing ploys) has landed Gorillaz deeper into the American musical consciousness then previously expected, and actually topped the significant splash of their debut album. The remaining singles were “Dare” the fun, synth-infused dance number featuring some bloated has-been singer from “Happy Monday” (Mondays?) and a video which was interesting at best. To cut to the chase, the song was much more successful than the video. The next choice was “Dirty Harry”, a song which was first conceived as the initial single (the song was on iTunes a month before Feel Good, but could only be discovered via search, as it was not linked to on the Gorillaz webpage). It was clear that Dirty Harry was intended for the first song for radio-play, but the effort was most likely derailed by either the finished production of the superior Feel Good or the lack of a video concept for Dirty Harry—I prefer to think it is the former. Indeed, Dirty Harry clumsily handles the one factor from Dirty Harry (Clint Eastwood homage—the uneducated may not know that “Clint Eastwood” was the incredibly successful single from Gorillaz’s debut album, which furthers the idea that “Dirty Harry” was intended to be the first single on Demon Days) which is the children’s chorus. Annoying animated children are placed in the desert, who fight with each other and pick their noses, in the midst of Gorillaz’s beautiful non-political statement (the conception was an exercise in excellence) when they set up camp for their video in the desert and simply dance to the poppy “Dirty Harry”. Although, the desert setting may have simply been a misguided effort to put the characters of Gorillaz in a different environment just for the sake of the change of scenery with some possibility of renewed interest, but I digress. Also, the rap part ruined the video, not because of the nature of the music but the direction at the part of the video was weak and ineffective when an actual human was inserted in the cartoon creation of Jamie Hewlett.

Cut to today for real this time. The next single is “El Manana”—one of the weaker songs on Demon Days. There are few reasons why this could have been picked for radio-play. Here’s my personal list of what the first few singles would have been from Demon Days:

1) Feel Good Inc.
2) White Light
3) Dare
4) O Green World
5) Dirty Harry

Due to the initial reporting of the next single incorrectly stating that it would be “Kids With Guns/El Manana”, which might have worked, here is what seems will be the Demon Days single roster:

1) Feel Good Inc.
2) Dare
3) Dirty Harry
4) El Manana
5) Kids With Guns

El Manana is not single material at all. It is slow, unexciting, and the only redeeming quality is its synth baseline, which itself pales in comparison to the electronic elements on other Demon Days songs. I would compare it to “Starshine” and “Slow Country” of Gorillaz’s debut album. I was distraught when it was announced, and did not rush to see the video, and this was indefinitely increased when I heard of the video concept being something to the tune of the return of Noodle’s flying island from Feel Good.

There are many, many problems with implementing a popular minor aspect of a previous video for its own full length video. It is uninspired and a desperate marketing ploy. If Gorillaz ever fully sell-out, this would have been a milestone in that downward spiral. So much of the draw of Gorillaz was its defiant underdog status—an animated mainstream band with of no real definable genre? That’s nuts, and appealing. Gorillaz, however, was one of the few successful artists on the Virgin label in 2005. The motive for this video is far and wide from the other Gorillaz videos—which were all praised for their astonishing originality. This is a far departure from the videography of the band.

In its execution, El Manana suffers slightly. Its hard to put into words just how much the video departs from previous Gorillaz philosophy. At no point does anyone hold an instrument—simply, Noodle is repeatedly harassed on her lighthouse ship from Feel Good by the helicopters from Feel Good who make the lighthouse ship crash (presumably with Noodle in it—looks like Damon Alburn needs to get a new Asian tween guitarist).

The cinematography after about 30 seconds in is beautiful. This redeems the video immeasurably. Jamie Hewlett pulled through, and the destruction of the ship, and particularly the charred windmill, is effective and gorgeous. The animation is stunning, so stunning that it single-handedly led me to my overall “score” for the video.

Unfortunately, tedious logical lapses ruin the thought process when thinking about the video. Why did Noodle go back out after almost being shot? Why would they show her die? And above all, Why did Noodle not steer the ship into the clouds like in the Feel Good video in order to escape the helicopters? As well, the song is utterly unrelated to the video in any way, shape, or form. Even in previous videos, the vibe or mood was somehow conveyed with the changing of events or images in the video. Not for El Manana—the song compliments the video in no way tangible to the viewer. The song is evenly monotone and unchanging, and does not correlate with the dramatic events taking place in the video. This furthers my marketing scheme theory. The only feasible way this disconnect conveys art is that the song is indifferent to the horror Noodle is subjected too, but that analysis is too comprimisingly hopeful and overindulgent in credit.

The reasons these questions are being asked is because of the nature of the conception of the video—which was Virgin telling Jamie Hewlett to bring back that flying island everybody loved from the first time around, and to make a character die to incite some sort of interest in Gorillaz. Oh, and Jamie Hewlett forgetting he’s one of the founders of the multi-platinum band that saved Virgin from certain humiliation in 2005.

But the video is beautiful, despite questions surrounding ‘Why?’. And despite the compromise of Virgin’s marketing and the integrity of Gorillaz, this is a video far above par for the general music-video fare of today.

My “score” for music videos will be relatively simple, and have four ‘levels’ of scoring.

1) Do not see—a waste of time.
2) Perhaps—if you think this is up your alley, go for it.
3) Must view once—this has one or more aspects which must be seen.
4) Excellent—multiple viewings necessary.

I rank “El Manana” by Gorillaz:

3 out of 4.

Listening: Nine Inch Nails- Please

Movie Review: Hostel

My quest to review Hostel has been odd, long, and fulfilling. I saw the movie with CigaretteBurnt on opening day, and walked out of the theater exhilarated and pumped. Only after discussion of the film and pondering it for days did we come to notice continuity errors, plot holes, Roth’s weaknesses, among other things which the movie did not live up to in our minds. Should I review my personal experience with Hostel, or incorporate third-party opinion and acknowledge the criticisms of others, unfounded as they may be? I will do both- take the Ebertian view that the cinema should be regarded more as an engine for emotion than an artist’s palette, then will refute the negative buzz surrounding the film. Hostel is an audience movie, which plays well to human emotion and is wildly successful at its main purpose—to affect you—despite errors in narrative or direction.

The tagline “inspired by true events” is unnecessary for the advertising of this film, and is less than accurate in describing director Eli Roth’s inspiration from professional obese sellout film geek Harry Knowles’ masquerading about freakish parts of the internet. A Thai website was “discovered” through some endeavoring AIM conversation (I would do anything for the chat transcript) about Roth and Knowles deciding upon the ‘sickest’ activity which could ever be translated into cinema, and they soon agreed upon the torture of another human being. On the aforementioned Thai website, a person could pay $10,000 to “shoot a bound person in the head”, which was legal due to an unintentionally hilarious clause which stated that the victim’s “signed up” for the procedure. Either way, it barely affects me that somewhere in the world, someone may have gotten bound, tortured and killed in a similar fashion to characters in the movie. While Knowles hypes up his involvement sparking the idea for Hostel, Roth repeatedly has stated that he doubts whether the site was real or not, and has never seen it since. Nor did the idea of making the European institution of the hostel arise until some studio executive found the double-play on the word “Hostel” fitting for a horror movie. After the amazingly pretentious “Cabin Fever” met with mild success, an anomaly in the horror genre, Roth then was pitched deals for numerous classic horror remakes, which is all the rave in modern movie production, before finding himself wading in Quentin Tarantino’s pool bitching about how he’ll never pen a movie again before mentioning his hostel-related movie idea. Tarantino, as the story goes, adamantly denounced Roth as being an overly sick, disgusting individual, before demanding to see the movie made. Presumably, this amount of involvement on Tarantino’s part led to him garnishing the title “Executive Producer” of the flick, which caused the Hostel ad campaign to amount a lot of flak for shady posters where the name “Quentin Tarantino” was slightly larger than “Eli Roth”, which was an obvious marketing ploy. My surprise is how nobody complained about this issue during the Sin City marketing spree, where Quentin’s name for Guest Director on a rather mediocre scene probably pushed the movie towards a major profit more than any other factor. This hypocrisy and inconsistency leads me to the conclusion that such argument is irrelevant and the motives for such debate need not be speculated at—and that any movie campaign, really, should use and abuse the names it can to make a picture successful. The studios will make it happen anyway, and of all people, it is neither Roth nor Tarantino’s fault where the names were placed.

I’ll go ahead and skip the extraneous complaints of the movie as being marketed as some sort of snuff film on ice, or the criticisms of the television advertisements (which I have not personally seen, coincidentally) of reports that audiences ran, vomited, and fainted (in that order) while screening Hostel. Hostel is what it is—a horror film designed, at its core, to stimulate, scare, and disturb; evidence that the movie succeeds at its fundamental purpose is fair game for television commercials. That fact notwithstanding, television commercials featuring audience reaction to a movie has usually not accomplished actually attracting more people to the theater than expected—the last time reaction commercials were attempted was for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake.

And now, finally, for the movie we’ve all been reading for. This part of the movie review angers me the most, as I am unsure of just how familiar whoever reading this is with the plot I will analyze and discuss. So, I will use the safe and handy CHUD method—assume you saw the movie, but be light on the spoilers anyway. To make a vast, sweeping, and unfair generalization, Hostel centers upon pushing the hard R in most of every category possible. It begins with one of the most effectively atmospheric opening title sequences I’ve seen in a long time, although my friend CigaretteBurnt contends that the movie would have fared better without an immediate notification of the horrors awaiting the characters. I assert that everyone walking into the movie is fully conscious that they’re going to see some guys get their asses handed back to them with a pair of bloody pliers, but CB stands from the more Roeperian, artsy standpoint on the matter, which clashes with my Ebertian film philosophy which places more emphasis on the movie-going experience.

We cut to—20 minutes of Eurotrip. Which is funny, as the ultimate cynic would view Hostel as the fitting continuation of the aforementioned film. A rather funny neon reflection in the water kicks off about 8 jokes on how there are no Dutch people in Amsterdam, an aggressively annoying Icelandic man (Ethyor Gudjonson) and two shallow Americans who conduct themselves in a fashion which concisely explains why European would hate Americans so—we go there with a fistful of cash and our pants down and assume all of our wishes will be granted by these subservient people, who exist to entertain our touristy whims. This perverse voyeurism similarly leads to institutions such as the “Elite Hunting” torture club to exist and thrive so—but more on that later. Right when the trio are kicked out of the Amsterdam club and find themselves subject to the consequences of a missed curfew does the real film emerge and Roth initiates a strong positive momentum with the rest of the first act. I’m not even going to defend Roth’s attempt to add a complexity to the Jay Hernandez and Derek Richardson characters—the movie works far greater on the level of the characters being some sort of metaphor or parallel for the audience. As we laugh at their jokes and appreciate the carnal pleasures purveyed on the screen, the trio gets amazingly wasted and thoroughly laid. Similarly, later we are horrified as they’re frigging tortured to death. The guys end up mixing with the wrong crowd, and collectively ascertain that they would like to extend their adventures inside foreign women. Off to Slovakia! Here we are treated to one of the most brilliant aspects of the film—the Eurotrip takeoff in the train, which is later repeated as some sort of twisted comic relief in the first gruesome scene of the film. My personal research has led me to the conclusion that the subjective humor of the later Eurotrip reference is directly proportional to the degree of black comedy of the viewer can appreciate multiplied by how twisted they are. When we get to the small Slovakian town, something is clearly amidst, and is the only place in the movie where the score fails, as the music swells when we’re looking at a relatively tranquil rooftop crane shot of some actually intriguing architecture. Ultimately the ploy to make the audience cringe upon the first sight of the town is out of place.

This was the point in the film where I repeatedly questioned why I agreed to see this in a crowded theater and my general manner grew from anxious to tense to scared out of my wits when the actual torture began. From this I conclude that the movie was successful—when I was supposed to be petrified, I most assuredly was.

In all honesty, the exposition was more effective than in most horror movies despite the characters lacking enough dimensions to be fascinating. Probably the most fleshed out character was Derek Richardson’s—the soft-spoken, mild mannered, shy guy just looking for a good time while acting up just enough to maintain the approval of his raucous friends. Richardson does well at conveying the anxiousness and fear of his character and environment he is in after the Icelandic guy disappears—I personally believe that a better reason for this disconnect would be from a self-realization of the destructive lifestyle he is engaging in halfway around the world. In a move of inspired direction, the parallels between the train encounter and Richardson’s torture are insightful and amusing—this is juxtaposed to the actual horror of the bound man. In the few torture scenes (I believe I can count them on one hand with two fingers sawed off), we see Roth at the prime of his direction for the running time of the movie while destroying a horror cliché of how villains are treated.

What I most despise about the response to this movie are how the enormous achievements of Roth are ignored in favor of petty criticisms of more insignificant aspects of the movie. While the campy, below-par, ‘date’ horror movies of today seem to always focus on the humanity of the villain or make what is supposed to be horrific warm and funny. In Hostel, in almost every situation, all of the villainous characters are presented with redeeming characteristics but Roth reverts this to have the cold-blooded, sadistic, inhuman elements of these characters upstage and finally overwhelm who we thought might not be so bad after all. Another splendid aspect was the purpose and use of narrative—particularly in the two major torture scenes. When Richardson goes in, we have some idea of what’s going to happen, but Richardson does not, so the audience does not fully undergo the horrific realization of what will be beset upon Richardson as does himself. However, after Hernandez gets dragged through the frenetic montage of torture climaxes, he knows what will happen, and so will we. The mindsets are both equal—and so subliminally this affords a much stronger parallel to kick off the second half of the movie where the viewer and Hernandez are tortured and attempting to escape together. Not to rip off the 6th CHUD podcast, but Roth does not attempt cheap, quick scares. The audience is petrified by the existence, the very notion of these people who are such twisted, demented, evil monsters. Indeed, the horror is prolonged and swells, to the point where the most effective torture sequence culminates in the reveal of the actual physical mangling after the victim ‘recovers’ from it and tries to walk. Upon viewing the reveal, a severe pain jolted up both my legs that died down on the walk to the subway after the movie was over. I would go as far to say that ultimately, the notion of such places existing (Inspired by True Events?), within the universe of the movie is morbidly frightening, and as Hernandez checks out of the movie, an uneasy ambiance about the entirety of Far Eastern Europe is created, due to the immense plausibility of Roth’s concocted universe. It is, in fact, more than possible that anti-American sentiment could culminate in participation in “Elite Hunting”, but this is not truly xenophobic. The simple explanation for the price for torturing Americans being higher is both because they are harder to come by than local peasantry, and the clients of the torture club would most likely desire more to torture Americans due to their being American. There is strong anti-American sentiment in the world, most of it deserved—this is the plain and simple truth, with no exaggeration. Why do all forget this upon viewing the movie? Despite Roth’s ‘admission’ that his film is xenophobic, it is not. A critic also claimed that the movie was misogynistic in the first half hour—utterly untrue as well. Prostitution and stripping are inherently degrading and misogynistic. More than one critic claimed that the Dutch businessman’s character causes homophobia to be imbued upon the screen. The subject of homosexuality is barely scratched in the movie, and it simply appears in a troubled father who is confused about many things in his life. Jumping at a foreign man groping your thigh is not homophobic—it is a physical reflex.

The third act is not as bad as the critics make it out to be—but it is shoddily thought out and more of a loose confederation of ‘close call’ scenes meant to build up to an ultimately fulfilling revenge scene. The rescuing of the Japanese girl is not a wasted effort, but rather a reinforcement of the demise of Hernandez’s plight and isolation. And come on—what sort of high speed car chase could have happened in such an area? The car was simply a device of escape, some efficient revenge, a close call with the corrupt police, and a segway into the most hallucinatory ‘Miike’ scene in the movie where a bunch of little kids ambush the chasers.

But on the subject of the revenge scene, Roth does ask the question posed by movies as The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes (Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake?), of whether violence in the wake of violence is justified. Due to the nature of the movie, the answer comes far more rapidly than expected—a resounding yes. I cannot convey how wrapped up in the experience I was when the revenge took place, it was a breathtakingly involving scene where I was deep in the undergoing. The original ending, where the businessman’s daughter was tortured instead of the businessman, would admittedly not have worked in this regard because I would have felt dirty for emotionally involving myself in the death of the girl. In the final cut, we do not—and this makes for far better direction. I don’t know how far along into production it was when the ending was altered, but puzzlingly, all the mentions of the businessman’s daughter appear throughout the movie as if to lead up to the scrapped ending. I suppose the editing team thought it to be a device to inject humanity into the creepy character, but better methods of this could have been foreseen and implemented.

Quentin Tarantino said in an interview regarding Hostel, when asked “Why should somebody see this movie”, responded “Not everyone should see this movie!” He continued, “You should see this movie if you’re into extreme entertainment. Hostel has a very specific audience and a very specific purpose.” Hostel was no “21st century Texas Chainsaw Massacre” as speculated, but it was a damn solid movie-going experience and more, which sold me with its gore and revenge aspects and made a unique, excellent movie-going experience that came through in unexpected and inspired ways.

3½ out of 4 stars

Listening: “Banquet” by Bloc Party

Movie Revisiting: Jurassic Park: The Lost World

Steven Spielberg, upon returning from Oscars-abound Schindler’s List, goes farther down the path of the artfully spectacular and incredibly successful Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park II dilutes the second half of the first movie, puts it in the dark, and places Jeff Goldblum’s excellent acting at center stage. Julianne Moore is believable as the less-than-attractive paleontologist woman, Vince Vaughn capitalizes almost remarkably from his big-break movie “Swingers”, and the bald evolution of Wayne Knight’s character from the first movie is memorably dismembered in the evolved cliff set piece from the first movie’s Tyrannosaurus car encounter.

No doubt about it, this is a movie which exists to make money in the summer. This is a blockbuster movie. And a blemish on Steven Spielberg’s career. The exposition rides on Goldblum and a prolonged fascination with Attenborough’s signature ‘almost crazy’ old man. Spielberg’s direction is bored and tired during most of this. In fact, for the whole movie, I can probably count on one hand the number of times Spielberg effectively handled a scene or a certain shot. Maybe two hands. Major props goes to Peter Stormare and Pete Postlethwaite for their superior character work.

This is the sort of movie where certain scenes will stick in your mind. For me, it’s when the T-rexes share the bald guy among the two of them, and when Stormare is torn apart in a subtly complex, darkly comic death sequence. And Julianne Moore on the glass is handled effectively, and the scriptwriters did a great job ending the trailer on the cliff sequence, despite its not leading the plot along at all. Also, the incredibly bad shot of the flaming car falling on the tree at night with Postlethwaite and the guy with glasses is memorably atrocious.

But much is to be redeemed for this movie. Despite the detracting factors of the simpleton blockbuster script and Spielberg’s fatigued direction, certain actors carry the film immeasurably, and the scenarios where the CGI is placed is inspired—all around. The velociraptors in the field, the T-rex in the backyard, and even most of the Godzilla sequence was truly a pleasure to watch, no matter how much Spielberg tried to ruin it (the raptors in the field come to mind).

I’ll should probably give it 2½ stars, but because this movie is such a cornerstone of my childhood, I’ll be appropriately generous and award it:

3 out of 4 stars