Let's talk about DAMN. (2017)

Let's talk about:

BOO! GOOD KID, M.A.A.D CITY IS BETTER! DAMN IS KENDRICK'S WORST ALBUM! BOO!

Ok so yeah, DAMN. is a 2016 hip hop album written by, produced by and performed by Kendrick Lamar. It also happens to be his best album so far.
I think it's important to acknowledge an artist's body of work when taking into account their latest release, and Kendrick's is a mammoth compared to those who own maybe just a small elk.

Kenny's body of work consists of four studio albums, five mixtapes, one compilation album and forty- three singles.
His most well- renowned piece, To Pimp a Butterfly (2015) was released to immense critical acclaim, which it still gets to this day, more so, some might say, since DAMN. was released.

Kendrick's style is often coined by his references to Compton (his childhood city), instrumental jazz accompaniment to the vocals and his use of the medium to empower the black persons of the United States who have endured what Kendrick has.
DAMN. is almost none of these.
DAMN. was, I think, so different to Kenny's first three albums that the majority of his long- time fans were not able to deal with the radical gear shift in tone and style.

DAMN. uses K. Dot's past works as a backbone to subvert expectations for the genre, as well as to subvert expectations for a Kendrick Lamar album. Why do this, though? Why do this after an album as conceptually thought out and constructed as TPAB?
Well, Kendrick created DAMN. in an effort to address his past work and to move forward in his creative field.

The album is a response, a wall for Kendrick to bounce his personal issues against and a vessel to reach an audience larger than previously reached.
Kendrick's veer away from Compton as a main concept, or location to ground the story of the album in, is a whiplash- inducing event, a change that's almost instantly recogniseable on first listens. The choice to move his attention away from the inner world of Compton, and onto the wider world around us all is a step away from one phase of Kenny's career, and into the next.

DAMN. uses this step away to appeal to a wider audience and to address issues that could only fit into an album such as DAMN.
The sound of the album is noticeably less jazz influenced when compared to TPAB, and less culture- based, opting, instead, to address the mainstream, in a move to create a personal piece that anybody can relate to.
I, personally, can't relate to Section.80 (2011), Good Kid, M.A.A.D City (2012), or To Pimp a Butterfly as well as I can DAMN. This is because of Kendrick pushing his style and conceptual approaches outside of the niche market of his past work, and into said mainstream. Kenny addresses issues I have, thoughts I have and concerns I have, which engage me better in the narrative of the record.

An argument can be made for the likes of GKMC and TPAB showing me a world I don't fully understand, and relaying the atrocities and deviances of these places in the everyday life of the populous. This argument is true in that this has occurred for me, but while I am more knowledgeable on the political and social struggles of Compton, Compton is still only one city, and not the one the rest of the planet grew up in.

DAMN. knows when to keep the pace within Kendrick's childhood home and his thoughts on the world outside of it. This is all the reason why I believe this to be Kendrick's best album. This is an outstandingly dark and cynical outlook that is, yes, explored in previous albums, but never to this extent. This is because of how K. Dot was feeling at the time of making it, again, this album is a way for him to truly bring out his personal demons that built up over 2016.

The overall message of the album, for me, concludes that we as people cannot exist without a balance of wickedness and weakness within our souls, having too much of one or the other will kill you, as has happened with Kendrick's friends back in Compton, illustrated in song throughout TPAD and GKMC. Kendrick uses DAMN. to reveal how and why those whom he held dear to his heart were killed, and how we can all use those awfully tragic moments as learning points to become better people, and to avoid such grisly fates so young in our lives.

"Is it wickedness?
Is it weakness?
You decide
Are we gonna live or die?"


What kept me going through this review: Kendrick Lamar - DAMN., Flying Lotus - You're Dead!, Posij - Cocoon and Eastghost - Misery & Wonder.

Doctor Who Season 5 Serial 5: The Web of Fear [review]

Ok so I'm not adding anything of worth to my blog lately, sorry.
The last good thing I did was that small David Fincher retrospective, I know..

So basically I'm gonna start doing reviews of an episode of Doctor Who I watch once I'm done with it.
I watch the damn show enough to have these be coming out twice weekly, in theory, but obviously I won't be doing that (although maybe later in summer, who knows).

(Also these are never gonna be in chronological order, sorry)

So, The Web of Fear is a relatively new story to me, only being released on DVD in early 2014 (another thing to add to the list of good that year), but regardless it has become one of my all-time favourites of the era. Not to mention one of Troughton's best out of a line of great serials.

Even though we only have tele-snaps of the missing third episode (no introduction for poor Nicholas Courtney) to go by when judging it, it;s still apparent the whole serial is an incredible achievement.

Among these special things is how surprisingly mature and clever the writing is in this serial; we get lots of memorable banter from the Doctor and his companions, but also from the strong female supporting character and many of the soldiers. There are so many twists and turns in the story that are just as impressive and completely caught me off guard on first viewing.

The atmosphere is another aspect I think of as ahead of its time considering the amount of attention this would get back in the 60's normally.
All of the location filming never wastes an opportunity to flaunt that THEY'RE ACTUALLY REALLY FILMING IN THE REAL LONDON UNDERGROUND EVERYBODY LIKE THEY GOT PERMISSION TO DO THIS, which is quite nice as none of that is wasted (something which did happen a lot back then). Every scene set in the labyrinthine tunnels, be it genuine or just a set, is clouded in a tangible mood that had never come before it.

So as to not spoil the ending, we basically get an anti- climax that feels somehow satisfying in its subversion and general tone. Again, this isn't something that happened regularly, and it feels so much more special than another typical 'turn the enemy's plan against themselves and then everything's completely fine afterwards' ending; instead this feels different, bittersweet and even a bit nuanced.
Which could also be said for the whole story, really.

Here's just some things that I want to call out for just being great: the classic, Hammer- esque intro scene, the whole who- dunnit mystery in the last three episodes, Anne and Professor Travers and their character development and interactions, Jimmy Court and Alan Jonas nailing the cinematography, the fantastic use of public domain music and:
Victoria: Well, where are we?

The Doctor: I really don't know, Victoria. Shall we go out and have a look?

Victoria: Now?! Is it safe?

The Doctor: Oh, I shouldn't think so for a moment..

Black Panther | Anticipation = Boredom

So my dad and I watched Black Panther like maybe a week ago, and it kinda sucked.

For some perspective:

I was looking forward to this movie ever since 'Age of Avengers Assemble: Captain America's War for Civil Rights 3' (or was it called something else??), because him and Spider-Man were easily some of my favourite parts of it.
While 'Civil War and Peace' wasn't particularly amazing, or even that great really, it certainly made me excited for a new Spider-Man movie (especially after whatever happened with 'The Amazing Spider-Man 2') and very interested in a movie centred around this fairly interesting new character (to me).

The further away we got from 'Iron Man and the Civil War-Vengers' and the closer to 'Black Panther', the more interesting developments began to spring up; namely the idea that a black director was making an almost entirely black cast film about black struggles in a white man's world, the soundtrack being curated and half made by Kendrick Lamar and the fact that the director is the bloke who made Creed, a person with a strong vision (something, at the time, was pretty much unheard of in the MCU).
So basically a lot was going for it and it was hyping me up more than I probably should have been, and a certainly larger amount than I was, and still am, about 'Infinity Gauntlet Wars: Captain America and Iron-Man Make Up or Break Up with Several 'Vengers in the Background Fighting or Something'.

-The first red flag that alerted me to 'Black Panther' not going the way I wanted it to was the Kendrick album (and OST) being pretty boring and just too superficial and less personal or soulful when compared to 'Damn', Kendrick's album from 2017 that everyone ever agrees on as being pretty damn great.

So ok, one down, but since this is just "Inspired by" and not the OST, I guess it's gonna be fine.

-The second red flag was all the bad and mixed reviews I saw for it.
Now I didn't read or watch any reviews other than probably Empire or something I dunno; who cares; but basically the main consensus was the critics weren't too happy with it, but the fans were (besides a few outliers, like said Empire).
Now I've never let a bad review of a movie put me off watching it, but man was seeing all those reviews suddenly appear out of the blue damning the poor movie.

Well, that's not very great, but a lot of people said Thor: Ragnarok was terrible and I loved it to death, so...

-The third red flag was about half way through the movie when I realised I wasn't enjoying what I was seeing, let alone invested in it.

I found most of the world building, characters and even the fight scenes largely boring. Usually Marvel has pretty good fight scenes, even in the lesser movies like The Iron Giant Man 2 or Thor: The Dark Eccleston, but this time the action was very poorly shot and lit to the point where I wasn't too sure who was who even in otherwise well lit places.
This being said, the action isn't at the forefront of this movie, oh no, it's instead dialogue.. and the dialogue is fairly underwritten and generic and the flat direction doesn't really contribute much to help with this problem.

I sought of figured that the director of Creed would make an action movie at least fun to watch, but I was proven wrong when faced with the bland acting and overabundance of CGI.. everything. And by everything, I mean it. Most things that didn't even need to be CGI is for some reason in this movie, and it makes everything feel fake and hard to take seriously, especially the Lord of the Rings battle at the end (complete with plastic Rhinos, buy now!), which just felt silly and only a device to distract the supporting characters while Black Panther and The Human Torch fought each other.

For the most part the costume design was very inventive and reflected the (CGI) world it was based in well. Seeing the different tribes all having their own unique style was fun and felt very much like something that would happen if Wakanda existed. And although I loved The Gods of Ragnarok and Guardians of Groot 1 and 2, I don't think the brightly lit and overly indulgent colours worked in BP's favour as it only adds to the plastic-y feel to it all.

Talking about plastic-y feelings, Killmonger was pretty dull wasn't he?
Everyone went on about how great Michael B. Jordan is as "Marvel's best villain to date", yet all I saw was another boring, explaining their plans, no- depth, over the top villain. If anyone should get praise for their performance it's Chadwick Boseman for making a boring script feel much more authentic and natural than it really is.

They even had snippets of Kendrick in the movie and even that felt lazily thrown in...

So in the end, this isn't Marvel's best movie, nor their worst, but man does it not impress.
I initially gave it a 6/10 on my Twitter, but now I think I'm gonna have to give it a boring 5/10 because of how generic and not special it was.

Why can't David Fincher suck?

I've mentioned David Fincher a few times before, but have never outright talked about him and his films as a whole.
Put simply, the man's a genius behind the camera, and easily my favourite director.

He's made films better than entire careers of lesser directors, he's made thousands and thousands of people demand better crafted films because of his control over a project, and most importantly: he's never won an Oscar.

Calling Fincher "One of the greatest living directors right now" is a huge cliche for sure, but that doesn't make it untrue in the slightest.
To talk about Fincher and his work is to talk about the very best cinema has to offer: he can manipulate the camera to show as much visual information as he likes, directing and misdirecting a viewer's attention to key threads in a web full of deceivers and meticulously planning and plotting a scene even down to the subtlest movements and expressions of a character.
These elements (just to name a few) make up Fincher's body of work, spanning a relatively short time, considering other director's and how long it can take for them to find their own flavour of film (Spielberg, Nolan, Villeneuve).

This speedy understanding of the medium, that is quite specific, can only be found in only a few other filmmakers, such as Stanley Kubrick or even Edgar Wright, I've found.
There are some names that come to my mind that may reach this point at some time in their future, but these last few are the ones universally recognised as being the forefathers of their respected genres and themes today (Wright- Visual Comedy, Fincher- Tense Thriller and Kubrick- Dueling Forces) which prove how well they know (and knew) the medium.

But back to just Fincher, I think it's important to expand on what I said in my micro review of Alien^3.
David wasn't instantly a genius director with a full know-how on film with his first film, far from it, but we can see even from his first feature- length film that we had something special, and from then on we saw a change and a growth; culminating in important and convention- destroying films using social commentary and dark humour to get across a new view point to a shaken audience.
All this from an overly long movie about an acid- bleeding, four legged alien killing off boring characters.

I believe it's very noticeable how much better Fincher becomes with each new project he works on. He can adapt to so many styles, themes and genres while keeping that potential of information fully tapped, and can keep expanding on or evolving his own themes and conventions. By making each new production different and familiar, the audience can be wowed and comforted, and this is the best state for being shocked in.

David now has the scene of 'two people in a room talking' down to as clever and subtle as you possibly could by this point.
Mindhunter's four Fincher flourishes are excellent examples of how perfectly he can convey invisible exposition on any character by simply letting the camera follow their movements, mimicking how they move and ultimately telling us how this person acts in this specific setting through body language.

The slow panning camera as someone walks, the veering of focus as we learn some new info and the tightly choreographed pace are all hallmarks of this refined style, coordinating an experience uniquely belonging to Fincher.

Logan (2017) Review

Yeah, so I've only now just watched Logan, what a piss poor superhero fan I am, huh?
Well it was pretty great, and I hope we don't see Logan on the big screen again for a long time, and definitely not in the body of Hugh Jackman.
Logan could be what fans may call "the quintessential superhero movie" in the near future, I think. So many things point to it, the overwhelmingly positive reception, the final chapter in the book of a beloved character (and characters) and the dark, gritty, unforgiving nature of its tone that seems to work well with superhero movies if done well (see The Dark Knight and/or The Winter Soldier).
I'd like this to be the case for sure, because this film gets it.

The subtle theming of this film really accentuates that bottomless feeling of 'this is the end, isn't it?' through hints at a larger part of the story many years ago that lead to the downfall of many characters, literally and metaphorically.
The constant references to western movies (a genre that died because of over-saturation.. sound familiar?) adds to this feeling too. And by using settings that once were cowboy shoot out zones, that are now shopping malls and gas stations is another clever hint at what the director is trying to say about this genre ("Out with the old and in with the new, but is old still better?").

While I really admire the fresher themes in this film, I do miss the idea of Mutants being used as walking metaphors for oppression and rights, but seeing as there's hardly any "Mutes" left, I guess that wouldn't fit the film.

I had a few problems with the child performances, it seems hollywood still cannot get their own child actors to behave like real actors. But every other performance was pretty great and meaningful, Hugh and Sir Patrick the most, of course.

But really, this is one of the best superhero movies ever, and I'm very glad to see such a violent one too, with really seamless special effects to cement that into place.
Hopefully we get more movies like this and less like Deadpool.

Logan gets a gritty 8/10