#2016 era and onward perhaps?

[f4irly-l4cklu5t3r]

Is the sanders sides fandom still alive?

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 20/01/2024

Be Cool, Be Wild, and Be My Girl

Season 1 Featured on: GilvaSunner's Highest Quality Video Game Rips: Volume 6​.​66

Ripped by THiNGYBOBinc

Whew!! MAGFest days are finally over, and what a time it was - the SiIvaGunner Chipspace show was absolutely fantastic, and I hope it gets uploaded on its own soon so y'all can watch it as well! With that out of the way: the sappy times are over, Season 8 is ready to rev up and go at any moment, and the blog must go on. So, given that I spent all of yesterday talking about the Nostalgia Critic takeover with Fragile Snowman (Remastered), I figured it'd be fitting to return to the Season that said nostalgia was directed to - and an all-time favorite memory I have of watching the channel at that time.

I've pointed it out a good number of times by now, including once again in yesterday's post, but one of the things that really did make Season 1 so unique was how spontaneous and unpredictable it felt. The main reason was of course that we lacked much of any expectations in general, but the channel back in Season 1 also didn't exactly have much in the way of large-scale projects planned ahead like the Christmas Comeback Crisis, or the various Festival events that debuted in Season 4 Episode 2 onward. If you caught the SiIvaGunner panel at MAGFest this year, or have followed anything regarding rips like the Shop Fusion Collab or projects like CCC Episode 11, you'll know just how large and coordinated these projects have become. As Chaze explained back in MAGFest 2019: SiIvaGunner Presents - High Quality Ripping, meanwhile, back in Season 1 they would occasionally just completely abandon whatever event they seemed to be teasing just to fuck with the audience and subvert their expectations.

Subverting our expectations was the initial pitch for the SiIvaGunner channel as a whole, but by the time Be Cool, Be Wild, and Be My Girl was uploaded halfway through Season 1, it really did feel like we'd gotten better at seeing through the smoke and mirrors - we knew that all rips would show their cards eventually and then cue for laughter from us as viewers. Keep in mind: this was also just a week shy from the start of The Reboot, at at time when the idea of the channel having lore or that it would progress much further, was really just conspiracy talk. And indeed, Be Cool, Be Wild, and Be My Girl shows its hand quite early - just 10 seconds into the rip, as the song properly "begins", it becomes a pretty pretty standard, though befitting mashup, one you'd probably expect from just seeing the title. Joke revealed, cue laughter, add to playlist...

Then suddenly, the rip stops - and the facade is lifted. And I suppose it's time for me to start lifting the facade here too, perhaps?

Indeed, if you saw the title of today's post, opened the YouTube link in a new tab, and kept reading the post, you may have felt like you knew exactly what you'd be getting - a solid Season 1-era mashup of Be Cool, Be Wild and Be Groovy and the 2000s rock hit Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet. Yet before the mashup is able to go anywhere, the joke is interrupted, mockingly so, by Dr. Eggman, sentence-mixed to poke fun at you over thinking you'd gotten the joke of the rip down. This is no longer a bait-and-switch, but a DOUBLE bait-and-switch - presenting you with the switch for long enough to make you comfortable, then pulling the rug under THAT immediately. And, like - I don't think I can overstate how absolutely baffling that was to experience back in 2016?? Though SiIvaGunner was indeed about subverting expectation, six months in it had still built itself an identity of what to expect from the channel - yet without any warning, here it felt as if the team was practically doing a prank on its own fans. Better yet, the prank only escalated from there, as Eggman voice clips are interspersed in the beats inbetween the song's vocals, before he's suddenly joined by voice clips from Big the Cat of all characters - this prank is on three levels of rug-pulling.

And indeed, I've kind of pulled a prank on you here as well - because the post you're reading is actually about TWO rips from Season 1. Earlier in the third paragraph, I was describing the first of these rips, the one linked in the Bandcamp embed here - uploaded two weeks before the events of The Reboot kicked into motion. Because of that, it plays on the mixed feelings the fanbase once had on using Snow Halation in rips, only to switch it with Are You Gonna Be My Girl: hence the name, Be Cool, Be Wild, and Be My Girl. As The Reboot came and went, however, and told its story specifically about how Snow Halation truly deserves its place on the channel, we'd see the upload of a second rip a few weeks later - pulling the inverse joke. It's possible, back then, that enough time had passed between the two rips to where people had forgotten about the original bait-and-switch, but what was once used as a way to make fun of Snow Halation's percieved mediocrity was now spun into an actual appreciation and celebration of the song!

I hope all of this information on the history of these two moderately-known 2016 rips in particular is at all comprehensible, but the point I wanted to convey is - this shit was REALLY cool to see happen live with both videos. With Be Cool, Be Wild and Be My Girl, it felt like one of the first big shake-ups to the channel's status quo we'd yet seen at that point, and sort of prepared us to never take anything in a rip at face value - then, with the second rip, it felt like a perfect testament to how much The Reboot truly had changed the perception on Snow Halation as a song. The switch to the song didn't feel like an annoyance, but like a rip we'd all now suddenly actually wanted to see - one that we welcomed with open arms. Be it due to rippers being inspired or just paying tribute to one another, these kinds of call-and-response rips are a lot more common on the channel than you may initially think, and are sometimes even made years apart. Be it Windows Wonga Wappa, Ripping Video Game Music​.​.​.​.​.​.​At Night (2020 Edition), or even just with remasters like Violet Snow Memories, it never stops being heartwarming to see rippers pay tribute to one another - or just continuing on from a joke they themselves started.

ALL SYSTEMS, FULL HALATION!!!

[thepastisalreadywritten]

By: Luke Weir | 22 January 2022

Updated: 7 April 2022

There are few things so intrinsically linked with old-fashioned British culture as the red telephone box.

These became synonymous with paths all over the country during the 20th century, but inevitably, the introduction of mobile phones led to its decline from the 1980s onwards.

After decades of abandonment - with many boxes left in a derelict state - action is being taken by a local restoration company that set up the nation's largest 'telephone box graveyard' in Merstham in Surrey.

Unicorn Restorations proudly restore these iconic boxes back to their former glory following a period of them rusting away.

Staff spend up to 30 hours stripping each old kiosk, repainting them in the identical shades of red once stipulated by the General Post Office, and putting in new glass to complete the look, at the site just outside Redhill.

Once rejuvenated, they sell for a variety of prices ranging from just under £4,000 to as much as £20,000, with the price being higher for the older designs.

These include the three classic models of red telephone kiosk: the K2, the K6 and the K8.

The K6, which was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of King George V's coronation in 1935, is largely identified as THE red telephone box.

60,000 examples of these were installed across Britain, which is why the K6 has come to represent what many regard as the typical red phone box.

The K2 is deemed as the original phone box having been created in 1926, while the K8 was introduced in 1968 and was a radical change to suit the mood of the Sixties in a more futuristic design.

This was the last of the red kiosks to be produced and very few are in service.

The restoration experts are also able to redesign the interior of these kiosks and offer the ability to personalise the dial centre to carry your current number, but with the old exchange or with a memorable number from the past.

As stated on their website, they supplied the landmarks that you see across the UK and the heart of London such as in Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, The Tower of London and Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

They also carried out many prestigious kiosk restorations for BT, The Corporation of London and English Heritage.

📷: The phone boxes were originally planned to be painted yellow before the iconic cherry red was chosen (Image: Unicorn Restorations)

Their handiwork has even been showcased on the big screen, having supplied period pieces for film and TV productions such as Harry Potter, Paddington and the John Lewis Christmas adverts.

The necessity for these landmarks may have become non-existent in the modern era, but it's perhaps reassuring to know that they're going on to enjoy a second life.

During a 2016 interview with the Daily Mail, photographer Nicolas Ritter stated how he visited the yard back when he was just starting out as an assistant in 2012.

He said:

"Being at the telephone graveyard was a great experience for me. It felt like a journey back into the history of the country as the phone boxes are such a unique symbol of British culture."

These easily-spotted, brightly coloured boxes were once adored by Brits; by the time the 1980s rolled around, there were more than 73,000 dotted around.

Sadly, those numbers started to dwindle shortly after, with just 21,000 reported to be left standing today.

Thanks to Unicorn Restorations, though, it's clear to see that British people still have a great fondness for the old-fashioned phone box - just maybe not for their original, intended purpose.

[patriotsnet]

Did Democrats Or Republicans Founded The Kkk

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/did-democrats-or-republicans-founded-the-kkk/

Did Democrats Or Republicans Founded The Kkk

The Kkk Was Founded By Democrats But Not The Party

Democrats Founded the KKK.mp4

The Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1866 by ex-Confederate soldiers Frank McCord, Richard Reed, John Lester, John Kennedy, J. Calvin Jones and James Crowe in Pulaski, Tennessee. The group was originally a social club but quickly became a violent white supremacist group.

Its first grand wizard was Nathan Bedford Forrest, an ex-Confederate general and prominent slave trader.

Fact check:

Experts agree the KKK attracted many ex-Confederate soldiers and Southerners who opposed Reconstruction, most of whom were Democrats. Forrest even spoke at the 1868 Democratic National Convention.

The KKK is almost a paramilitary organization thats trying to benefit one party. It syncs up with the Democratic Party, which really was a;racist party openly at the time, Grinspan said. But the KKK isnt the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party isnt the KKK.

Although the KKK did serve the Democratic Partys interests, Grinspan stressed that not all Democrats supported the KKK.

The Anti-Defamation Leagues Center on Extremism senior fellow Mark Pitcavage told the Associated Press that many KKK members were Democrats because the Whig Party had died off and Southerners disliked Republicans after the Civil War. Despite KKK members’ primary political affiliation, Pitcavage said it is wrong to say the Democratic Party started the KKK.

Fact check:Yes, historians do teach that first Black members of Congress were Republicans

The Conservative Coalition Vs The New Deal Coalition

Now that we know the basics, the changes in both parties in the 1900s are perhaps best understood by examining;the Conservative Coalition;and the New Deal Coalition.

The Conservative Coalition was a coalition between the anti-Communist Republicans like Nixon and Reagan and conservative Southern Democrats. It arose to oppose FDRs New Deal progressivism, and it blocked a lot of the progressive legislation the New Deal Coalition tried to pass from the 1930s to the 1960s. The socially conservative solid south;was still its own entity. It sometimes voted;with other Democrats, and sometimes broke off into its own factions. See the 1960 election Kennedy v. Nixon v. Harry F. Byrd. The Coalition tellingly dwindled post 64 Civil Rights and ended in the Clinton era as conservative southerners became Republicans and formed;the modern construct of the Red States and the Blue States.

Meanwhile,;the New Deal coalition explains the progressive coalition of Democrats and Republicans the Conservative coalition opposed. Today the two parties largely resemble these coalitions.

A Summary Of The Solid South Switch

To summarize the above claims before we get to the details:

In 1860 the Democratic Party Platforms were about Small Government and States Rights, and the more aristocratic Republican Platform about Federal Power and Collective;Rights, but by;2016, the opposite is;true .

This is because the conservative south and old Republican Progressives can be said to have switched parties in reaction;to events that occurred from the Gilded Age to the Bush and Clinton years. These changes that are well symbolized by the 1968 election, but not explained by that alone.

To understand what changed, we must become familiar with;people like W. J. Bryan, Teddy, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, Henry A. Wallace, Strom Thurmond, FDR, MLK, and Hoover. We must look at the Red Scare, the Dixiecrat States Rights Parties, Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Nixons Southern Strategies, the New Deal Coalition and Conservative Coalition, etc. See;Democrats and Republicans Switched Platforms.

The full story aside, in the early days:

Populist social liberals used to ally with the populist socially conservative solid south .

The social liberal elite like Gouverneur Morris and Alexander Hamilton were in the Federalist party with classical conservative Tory-like figures and factions.

That pairing;of factions is either hopeful or a blight on history, depending on your perspective.

How the South Went Republican: Can Democrats Ever Win There Again? .

Also Check: Is Red The Color Of Republicans

In The Wake Of Trump’s David Duke Controversy Many Republicans Have Tried To Tie The Kkk To Progressivism

Its not news that Donald Trump appeals to white supremacists and his slowness in rebuking former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Dukes support hardly qualifies as surprising at this point. Whats instructive is how right-wing figures react. Earlier this week, political troglodyte Jeffrey Lord attempted to deflect criticism by calling the Klan a leftist terrorist organization perpetuating violence to further the progressive agenda.

That, of course, is entirely wrong. A short lesson in the basics of 20th;century American political history explains why.

White supremacist Southern Democrats were a key part of President Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal Coalition. They used their large numbers, unity and seniority to exclude as many black people from as much of the New Deal benefits and protections as possible and to stop the federal government from doing anything about lynching. Then the black freedom movement and white allies insisted on civil rights. In reactionary response, those white southern Democrats left the Democratic Party en masse, as evidenced by Strom Thurmonds Dixiecrat presidential campaign in 1948 and Richard Nixons opposition to school busing and play for segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallaces constituency.

White southern Democrats were explicit about their racism, and its no mystery that they left the party when it yielded to civil rights movement pressure, and as blacks began to make up a larger part of its constituency.

Did The American Political Parties Switch Clarifying The Semantics

People often ask,;did the American political parties switch?, but this question is semantically wrong, and thus we should address it before moving on.

Parties can switch general platforms and ideologies .

Voters can switch parties .

However,;the parties themselves only switch when they hang-up their hat to become a new party;.

Recommended Reading: Why Do Republicans Want To Impeach Obama

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Southernization Urbanization And Big Government Vs Small Government

Today the Republican party doesnt have a notable progressive left-wing and the Democratic Party doesnt have a notable socially conservative right-wing.

Instead both parties have establishment and populist wings and the parties are divided by stances on social issues.

In other words, regional interests and the basic political identities of liberal and conservative didnt change as much as factions changed parties as party platforms changed along with America.

The modern split is expressed well by;the left-right paradigm Big Government Progressivism vs. Small Government Social Conservatism, where;socially conservative and pro-business conservative factions banded together against socially liberal and pro business liberal factions, to push back against an increasingly progressive Democratic Party and America .

This tension largely created the modern parties of our two-party system, resulting in two Big Tents;who disagree on the purposes of government;and social issues. This tension is then magnified by the;current influence of media and lobbyists, and can be understood by examining;what I call;the Sixth Party Strategy and by a tactic called Dog Whistle Politics).

The result is that today the Democratic Party is dominated by liberal Democrats and Progressives.

Meanwhile, most of those who would have been the old;socially conservative Democrats now have a R next to their name.

Read Also: Is The Media Biased Against Republicans

Great Depression Shrinks Klan

The Great Depression in the 1930s depleted the Klans membership ranks, and the organization temporarily disbanded in 1944. The civil rights movement of the 1960s saw a surge of local Klan activity across the South, including the bombings, beatings and shootings of Black and white activists. These actions, carried out in secret but apparently the work of local Klansmen, outraged the nation and helped win support for the civil rights cause.;

READ MORE: How Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ Confronted an Ugly Era of Lynchings

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson delivered a speech publicly condemning the Klan and announcing the arrest of four Klansmen in connection with the murder of a white female civil rights worker in Alabama. The cases of Klan-related violence became more isolated in the decades to come, though fragmented groups became aligned with neo-Nazi or other right-wing extremist organizations from the 1970s onward.;

As of 2016, the Anti-Defamation League estimated Klan membership to be around 3,000, while the Southern Poverty Law Center said there were 6,000 members total.

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Limited Government States Rights And Anti

Had the populist liberals, who agreed with;limited government but did not agree fully on social issues, not aligned, there would have been a Federalist dominance in early America. The;dominant factions would have been northern know-nothing-like nativists, social progressive Roosevelt-like or Hamilton-like elites, and quasi-loyalist Aristocrats like Adams.

The founders were not pro-slavery. However, slavery;was part of the culture and economy of many nations; the South was one such region.

Abolishing slavery meant crippling the Souths votes and industry. This was the;main argument for slavery by the Solid South historically. It;didnt stop the abolitionists like Hamilton from pushing for the abolition of slavery;as;he pushed for a central bank or federal control . However, it did result in many key compromises from the 1770s to mid-1800s.

A Reconstituted Early 20th Century Kkk Attracts Members From Both Sides

The Inconvenient Truth About the Democratic Party

After Reconstruction, and as the Jim Crow period set in during the 1870s, the Klan became obsolete.;Through violence, intimidation and systematic oppression, the KKK had served its purpose to help whites retake Southern governments.

In 1915, Cornell William J. Simmons restarted the KKK. This second KKK was made up of Republicans and Democrats, although Democrats were more widely involved.

The idea that these things overlap in a Venn diagram, the way they did with the first Klan, just isnt as tight with the second Klan, Grinspan said.

Recommended Reading: Did Donald Trump Say Republicans Are Stupid

Why It Doesnt Make Sense To Equate Modern Democrats With The Old Southern Democrats

The Democrats, formally the;anti-Federalists,;had an;aversion to aristocracy from the late 1700s to the progressive era.

That truism;led to the southern conservatives of the solid south like;John C. Calhoun and small government liberals like Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren allying;in the same party;for most of U.S. history.

However,;that changed;after Civil Rights under LBJ and the rise of Goldwater States Rights Republicans .

Today the solid south, and figures like Jeff Sessions, are in an alliance in the big tent of the Republican Party . This was as much a response to the growing progressiveness of the Democratic Party as anything.

One simple way to confirm this is to look at the factions of;Lincolns time. There were four. They;were:

The Northern liberal Whig/Republicans,

The;Nativist Know-Nothing; allies of the Whig/Republicans,

The Southern Democrats and their Northern allies , and

The;Free Soil;;allies of the Democrats who;took a libertarian like position.

Todays Democrats are more like socially liberal Whig/Republicans , libertarians are like Free Soilers , Trumpians are like Nativist Know-Nothings , and Southern Democrats are like the modern Southern conservative Republicans.

The current parties are thus:

Social Liberals and Neoliberals vs. Social Conservatives and Neoliberal Conservatives AKA Neocons .

Clearly, the country has never been fully polarized, even at its most polarized.

Military Reconstruction And The Birth Of The Kkk

After the Civil War, during Reconstruction, the northern elite Radical Republican Progressives used the military to force the south to reform. At the time the Deep South used things like apprenticeship laws to extend slavery past the end of the War. The KKK took a;stand in defense of the old Southern way of life in a society divided by murder, military occupation, and;mayhem.

To be clear, Military Reconstruction is a term that;describes;the occupation of the South, and the KKK;formed as a response to it.

From that point on the South becomes Redeemed by Southern BourbonsAKA Northern Oligarchs who help the South;replace slave labor with wage labor.

The above might;be viewed less critically;if it wasnt for a notable speed bump:

Before Reconstruction could end naturally, in 1877, the Republican establishment traded the reformation of a few southern states for the Presidency when Tilden beat the Republican Hayes.

At that point, the Gilded Age began.;Gilded Age Republicans Redeemed the South and liked to be seen as putting aside the issue of race to focus on modernization and becoming a superpower.

The Gilded age gave way to the Progressive era. And in those eras, most of the country again minimized;issues of;race to focus on;other minority rights such as womens rights. Then, after that came the World Wars.

Radical Republicans From PBSs Reconstruction: The 2nd Civil War.

Don’t Miss: Who Gives More Democrats Or Republicans

The Rise Of Modern Social Liberalism And Social Conservatism

Later we get a third way with Bill Clintons New Democrats. This third way is an extension;of the;progressive bourbon liberal wing, but mashed-up with the progressive social liberal wing, and Reagan-era;conservatism. These three social liberal ideologies which Clinton embodied can collectively be referred to as an;American liberalism. These factions, which we can today denote as;progressive, neoliberal, and social liberal, can be used to differentiate types of liberals on the political left from the New Deal Coalition and the modern Democratic party of today.

TIP: As noted above in the introduction, there is no one way to understand Americas political ideologies, but each angle we look at things from helps us to better understand;bits of the historic puzzle.

Outside The United States

Aside from the Ku Klux Klan in Canada, there have been various attempts to organize KKK chapters outside the United States.

In Australia in the late 1990s, former One Nation member Peter Coleman established branches throughout the country, and circa 2012 the KKK has attempted to infiltrate other political parties such as Australia First.

Recruitment activity has also been reported in the United Kingdom.

In Germany, a KKK-related group, Ritter des Feurigen Kreuzes , was established in the 1920s. After the Nazis took over Germany, the group disbanded and its members joined the Nazis. Another German KKK-related group, the European White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, has organized and it gained notoriety in 2012 when the German media reported that two police officers who held membership in the organization would be allowed to keep their jobs.

A Ku Klux Klan group was established in Fiji in the early 1870s by white American settlers, although its operations were quickly put to an end by the British who, although not officially yet established as the major authority of Fiji, had played a leading role in establishing a new constitutional monarchy that was being threatened by the activities of the Fijian Klan.

In São Paulo, Brazil, the website of a group called Imperial Klans of Brazil was shut down in 2003, and the group’s leader was arrested.

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The Rise Of America First Nativism: Anti

During the 1830s to 1850s, as tension builds, third parties spring up like the northern nativist Know-Nothings;. This faction;pushed back against immigration in places like NYC and was more likely to be allied with the Whigs than the Democrats.

The conflict between Catholic immigrants and Know-Nothings is;the subject of the movie Gangs of New York.

These Know-Nothings were like a Northern version of the KKK but were notably;more concerned with immigration than slavery.;The soon-to-be KKK and the earlier;Know-Nothings shared an aversion to Catholics, Jews, non-whites, and non-Protestants in general, but much else was different.

The Know-Nothings were accused of being in bed with;Northern abolitionists,;and;their American party really never;caught on in the south due to them being perceived as more elitist and northern.

Thus, although each region breaks into;different groups, one should note that the slavery south is not;the only faction with socially conservative position, and certainly, they arent the only authoritative group. Remember, they are opposing northern elitists who are perpetuating their brand;of economic and political inequality.

Looking To The Classics And Factions For Proof

One good and not-so-divisive way to explain history is to look at the classics, especially those who focus on state-based political factions over political parties.

Classic works of this sort of political history, like V.O. Keys Southern Politics in State and Nation , make it very clear that the Solid South had historically always voted lock-step for the Democratic Party . Of course, the voting map over time, actual recorded history, and so much else tell this story too, but a well respected book like this is a great secondary source!

Today the Solid South is with the Republican Party and today old Socially Progressive Republicans like Teddy arent in the party .

This isnt to say that some of the more progressive Dixies, Bryan followers, and even economically minded Southern;Bourbons arent in the Democratic Party, they obviously are, just look at Carter, Clinton, Gore, and Bernie .

Likewise, the GOP have their constants. The;conservative Federalist pro-business faction, the neocons be they switched Bourbons, Gilded Age post-Reconstruction Republicans, or traditional Federalists, and the Federalist War Hawks are still in the Republican Party, as are the nativists;of the north Know-Nothings.

However, despite what didnt change, a ton did, including the party platforms, key factions, and a large swath of the voter base.

Modern Democrats know this well, they lost the 2016;election and didnt get one state in the Southern Bloc for Hillary .

Read Also: Democrats Have Tried To Impeach Every Republican President Since Eisenhower

A Century Of Jim Crow But Otherwise Lots Of Progress

From 1877 to at least the 1960s, the Solid South KKK-like;Progressively Socially Conservative Democrats remained a formidable faction of the Democratic Party.

This is true even though the party was increasingly dominated by Progressives like William Jennings Bryan. We can see in Wilson that both factions held sway in the party, Wilson was both a progressive liberal and a son of the Confederates.

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow | PBS | ep 1 of 4 Promises Betrayed.

TIP: During the late 1800s and early 1900s Eugenics was a popular theory. In this era, we might find;Margaret Sanger, liberal economists and social scientists, Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Ford, a young Hitler, and the KKK all agreeing on aspects of eugenics. There are many sides;of the eugenics argument, and one must study its history in earnest before making a judgment call. Very;radical right-wing propaganda equated birth control with;genocide, but there was a wide range of beliefs. An espousal of;negative eugenics is part of the dark history of the Democratic party.

[purple-ktj]

House of Army

I kinda received a few DMs about this and already replied to a few Taejinnies about what I think of it. Though I didn’t manage to really elaborate on my answer because I had quite a bit going on when I learned about this. 

Youtube Taejinnie Moon Child had posted about this and the whole Taejin community was shook for a moment but it didn’t really trend on Twitter as far as I know. Although I saw plenty of K-armys commenting under the initial Twitter post that they were extremely shocked that they missed this as well. 

First things first, I am shocked too, though more shocked that this was released in 2016 but only discovered now than the fact that he said those words. Or perhaps discovered earlier by some K-army but it wasn’t widespread among Taejinnies till now. As shocked as when I first discovered about their ‘ppo-ppo’ moment in the AMAs vlive. Shocked enough that I was in denial for a while wondering if this was fake and thinking how did we miss this? 

I went back to double check the version uploaded on Youtube 3 years ago with 4 million views, and sure enough the audio was audible there too. At 17:52 onwards.

So I put in my earbuds and turned up the volume. This is exactly what I heard, (with my basic knowledge of Korean) translated by Naver Papago: 

There’s a few differing opinions on who actually whispered, some saying it was Jin, some saying it’s Tae. I personally heard Jin’s voice, so this is up to the viewer’s judgement I guess. 

Now that’s confirmed, my next question is why? What’s the context? 

Everything from this point on is merely my speculations, take it with a grain of salt. 

So House of Army was shown on 12 Nov 2016, 3rd Muster. It was filmed on the day they had their Chuseok vlive on 13 Sep 2016. 

Referring back to my 2016 post (https://purple-ktj.tumblr.com/post/616555817561473024/2016-taejin), I speculated that they addressed their emotional and physical tension (aka becoming a couple) Sometime during BS&T era. This vlive happened at the end of Fire era and right before they dyed their hair for BS&T. A tiny bit earlier than I had thought. 

1. As much as I love House of Army, it’s still a painful memory as Jin had the role of props despite being the only one with an acting degree. Naturally he wasn’t too pleased with it as seen in behind the scenes, but put forth his best effort as usual, nevertheless. Also, Yoongi brought this topic up during the actual Muster and spoke up for him. 

2. Jin being Jin, he chooses what to reveal and what to keep a secret. Like all his previous revelations about Taehyung, were all deliberately said, which I believe includes this moment. When he spotted the camera he purposely asked “Are you filming? Oh well lets hug again.” Taehyung on the other hand, is loud with his actions but verbally doesn’t reveal as much as Jin does, he’s more careful with his words. Which is why I deduce that it’s Jin who said “we’re dating”, also because I really heard his voice. 

3. Another thing to note, we don’t know the heads or tails of this whispered conversation. The actual video context is limited to Taehyung saying “I’ll eat you up” to Jin during filming and in that screenshot, their hug and expressions are frankly speaking, too intimate to be a casual friendly hug. So I’m including my 2016 post context and also putting into consideration their history and dynamics and say that Jin likely was referring to the both of them.  

I don’t know why the skit roles were set up the way it was, but it is cruel to limit his acting chances and potential in this manner especially since this is their own content, which makes me think that his role in this skit it might have been a punishment of sorts for whatever unknown reason.

Again, I emphasise that this is all mere speculations- this led me to wonder if there’s a correlation between Jin outwardly whispering loudly but not quite enough to attract attention or be noticeable by the editor/translator that they’re dating as a possible ‘retaliation’ to his role in this Muster skit. If that makes sense. 

Lastly, I had one question running through my mind while writing this up: Why did BH include this in their DVD making of? The fact that the captions during the hug says “This is not for show” and there’s staff in the background, faces blurred smiling and laughing at the whole scene. I would put this in the same category as the Love Yourself DVD behind where they actually showed Taejin cuddling, but with Hobi, Yoongi and Jungkook in the back cuddling as well, the 2.5 seconds clip of Taejin hugging in the last episode of the Break the Silence documentary and the Winter Package hug. I am puzzled, and I have no answer, except that it either slipped past the editors due to the huge amount of content that they have to go through, or they thought it’s no big deal and left it in. Although either way, all of them are paid content. Paid, very questionable content.

What went through your minds the first time you knew about this? 

[outside-the-mailstrom]

GENERAL BACKGROUND

I've always been a fan of Marvel comics (or, Marvel Comics' properties, at least) I've fragmentary early memories of Batman The Animated Series, and some associated Batman and Superman comics (aimed at younger readers, in a 'Timmverse' style of the TV shows then airing - gorgeous, simple, iconic Art Deco inspired designs), but for the most part my early conception of superheroes came from what was called "Marvel Hour", a Saturday morning television timeslot ft. back-to-back episodes of cartoons from between the 60s and 90s, starring basically the big names you'd expect. I was quite wee, and don't rightly remember who did and didn't have their own show; obviously the big titles are easy enough for you to guess but I also feel (nebulously) that Iron Man, Hulk, Daredevil, and even the Silver Surfer had their own programs; the line-up jostled, there wasn't an Avengers or Defenders team-up show as there would be these days. There was always Spiderman, of course, and there were generally The X-Men.

X-Men The Animated Series, which was written and produced around the same era as Batman The Animated Series, does not (it has been noted) hold up near so well as its famed compatriot; it has its charms, and is a fascinating window into history, but it's not... strong on revisits. It's a little hard to say how much all this galvanized my interest in the subject matter, and how much it merely looks like it as an artefact of looking back through years of other things layering up (notably the early 00's onward movies, the X-Men Evolution tie-in cartoon [of which I was still, as a viewer, at quite a formative young age], a steadily developing interest in the concept of transition and transformation in all things, and ways that my own self-reinforcing creative projects drew from my standing experience of X-Men as a source material in ways that deepened my interest in, and sympathy for, it as a set of signifiers). Substantial engagement with actual X-Comics, however, comes later; primarily as a fan of the podcast Jay & Miles X-Plane The X-Men (which is pretty much as it sounds; a two-hander deep-dive through X-History & continuity, which settles early in its own run into a charisma and humour driven analytical recap of the major story arcs of the history of the franchise, starting at the Bronze Age [70s onward] and working forward practically issue by issue), aboard which bandwagon I found myself early in its days as a snowballing project (less than a dozen episodes as I recall? Certainly some time before it began to resemble a leading voice in intersectional leftist queer focal fandom, although it was always stridently those things, as well as advocating for a pro-soap opera, pro-minor characters, pro-Cyclops revision to popular understanding of what makes X-Men great).

Of course, if you sit two X-Fans down to talk comics for an hour a week for any length of time, really, under no x-ternal supervision or hard guideline parameters for what subjects are, and are not, on topic (amongst many other things more broad ranging and personal) they're going to get to discussing contemporary releases as well as ancient history. So, at the same time as learning, by glitzy guided tour, the history of The Hellfire Club, how the Phoenix Force actually works, why Scott Summers is autistic and Kitty Pryde is queer, I also got the nod-here-reference-there back ally tour of the contemporary X-Line, as it was shaping up; the early days of the Brian Michael Bendis run, the stuff that came out of Schism and Battle Of The Atom.

Consequently this particular period has always seemed, to me, beguiling.

I spent a period intrigued by it (not least because it’s intriguing, and this is a creative, perhaps even visionary author with strong, distinctive, and original ideas for stories that could be done with this premise and set of characters, and [by the accounts that I was receiving] was executing said ideas, if not flawlessly, at least with panaché). The podcast soon became somewhat of a bonding point between myself and my sister, who (being close in age to me) has always been very immediate in my life, but in such a way as can mean a lot of treading on one another's toes (less risk of that now). Like me she was a long time X-Fan, like me mostly from growing up on related media and finding them abstractly cool (we both had tween crushes on Evolution Nightcrawler - I remember printing out pictures of him from the school library, she now has a tattoo). My sister's completionist tendencies led her to track alongside the podcast, reading originally trade paperbacks and eventually Marvel Unlimited (with a cursory reading of revisionist takes on the Silver Age [60s] - X-Men Season One by Dennis Hopeless and Jamie Mckelvie, then hard-in with the real Bronze Age [70s onward], starting at All New Giant Size X-Men #1, and just working forward). I don't know quite where she's up to now.

I gave this a go, I certainly appreciated things about it, but in general it didn't grab me as my starting point - and while there are many other jumping on points between 1975 and 2013 (already three years in the rear-view by the time I decided to get around to this) the more-or-less present day just seemed the more-or-less obvious point to jump on, so I jumped.

Actually I read the first volume of G. Willow Wilson's Ms. Marvel, up to the 2015/2016 Secret Wars event, then I backed up and read Bendis' entire runs on Uncanny and All New X-Men (which notably, themselves, conclude at the start of Secret Wars), I also read, to my knowledge, all accompanying X-Titles coming out concurrently with the Bendis run, comprising what I'll generally refer to as the wider Bendis Era; Storm by Greg Pak, Cyclops by Greg Rucka, Magneto by Cullen Bunn, X-Force by Si Spurrier (all of which were really quite good, to my mind), and All New X-Factor by Peter David (which wasn't really for me - by which I seem to imply that it's probably for someone... in practice I think perhaps it is simply not really that good). I then read all of the X-Related crossover material that tied in to the aforementioned Secret Wars event (as well as a few non-X-related Secret Wars titles on general recommendation from Jay & Miles' Patreon stretch-goal video reviews of contemporary [primarily X] comic publications). My general process was to read an issue or two at a time then cross-reference with video reviews, as a lot of my engagement with media involves parsing it through the lens of critical voices who represent known quantities relative to my tastes (although it would be erroneous to suggest that by this point I'm not in some way attached to somewhat of a cult of personality around the public personas of the hosts, albeit what seems quite a calm and good natured one).

After finishing the Secret Wars titles I faced a relaunch of the line, and, eager as I was to find out what this experience (and the itemized content within) was like, I'd been a diehard Bendis fan through the process so far and wanted to let my recent reading mellow somewhat; to ruminate, and take a beat to work on other projects - breathe, mourn, let my first formative era of fandom settle before steam-rolling on with a new age.

It’s been… a few years, and while I really do have plenty else I ought be on with I've decided to throw myself back in and read some damn X-Men.

As follows are broadly my thoughts on what I will, somewhat snarkily be calling the 'Ordinary Era' (that is, post Secret Wars, through to the end of Jeff Lemire's Extraordinary X-Men, concluding with the Inhumans vs X-Men event), and beyond.

[wonderland-irwin]

Can I ask you something? This is all in good faith, I don't mean to make you feel bad at all. What's your opinion on Mitchy Collins? You're obviously a fan of his music but are you aware of the allegations of fans who accused him of praying on younger (often teen) women? If you don't believe it, why is that? I've just seen it around for a while now and you just posted you liked the band. Take care. 💙

Oh hey!

This is a good question.

I actually didn’t know about the allegations fans had made against him when I first started following him in late 2016 (I heard about the allegations in 2018). From what I’ve heard, he used to harass fans at 5SOS shows in the Sounds Live Feels Live era. Saying he could get fans to meet the boys, taking them elsewhere (pubs or clubs) and trying to hit on them. This is years ago, and I haven’t heard of any recent (like 2017 onward) allegations against him.

I truly hate hearing things like this about the people I’ve come to love. Especially since I learnt about the allegations after I became a fan. Like to hear that about someone you love, it hurts. It really does. He sings super relatable and real songs that I connect with really well. So to hear that he could have done these things to young girls, perhaps my age, maybe younger, stings and puts a little bit of fear into me. And it’s disgusting behaviour.

I have, however, met Mitchy twice. And both times he was absolutely lovely (pun not intended). Um, he was super polite and kept conversation friendly and whatever. It was at a formal meet n greet, so I haven’t seen him outside of a controlled setting, and I would like to hope that he has since grown since these allegations have occurred, and that how he behaves around young girls in these controlled settings with security and others watching, is also how he behaves around young girls in uncontrolled settings.

I would also like to believe that the boys of 5 Seconds of Summer would not be friends with people who behaved in such a way around their fans. You know what I mean? Like they’ve brought lovelytheband on tour with them twice now, Mitchy is in Michael’s wedding party. Like if he was sort of nasty towards fans, I would like to think 5SOS would cut him out (because fans can be super vocal), and his band (Jordan and Sam) would also do something.

I used to really follow this band called The Faim, and an ex of one of the members alleged he abused her and he was quickly dropped from the band, an instance also occurring with Iain from Hey Violet occurred last year as well.

In saying this, I don’t want to invalidate those fans feelings and what might have happened to them. If he did those things, than it’s disgusting. I work in a job where I am sort of vulnerable in the public eye (I’m a lifeguard/swim instructor) and men say the nasiest, sexist, rudest comments regarding our female staff and it makes me truly uncomfortable. I can understand how those fans might have felt, and I hope that they are okay, and feel safe and have recovered from what happened.

I hope this answers your question. I tried to do it without offending anyone, because the very last thing I want is to invalidate anyone’s feelings or opinions. If you have any more questions I can answer them as best as I can :)

[incomeb2-blog]

Your salary doesn't make you wealthy, Your investment will.

IncomeB

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Token

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[beersfromthebleachers]

Free Agents 2020 left unsigned for a brand NEW baseball team

It is that time of year again. The month of March draws closer, which means we are closer to Opening Day and baseball season is underway. Spring Training has officially begun for clubs in Arizona and Florida, and players young and old will play their best to make the roster for the first game of the season. Just like every other winter, a wild free agency took place. There always leaves a group of players without homes before Spring Training begins, and there are always enough players left to build a brand new team to play in the majors. There have always been talks of expanding the league a few more teams, it is only a matter of time where it happens for the better or for worse.

This Spring Training, there will be a few featured rosters that are catered to the idea of "what if" teams. The first one that will be focused on is the team of players that are without jobs and could possibly be the stars of a brand new MLB team. Placing in the possibility that some estranged billionaire could afford a brand new team and all of these listed players, they could make the argument of being a sellable team to a brand new city that would be a home of a new baseball team.

Catcher: Jonathan Lucroy, age 33: Lucroy is a seasoned veteran that has done some fine time in the majors for a few ball clubs. He is the best catcher available on the free-agent market for any team that is looking for a catcher that can make all the right plays for his pitcher. The two-time All-Star once led the majors in doubles during his 2014 campaign and finished shy of being the National League MVP for the Milwaukee Brewers. A career .274 hitter, Lucroy would be a good middle-man in the lineup to get on base and bring in runners. The problem where we have seen Lucroy fall from grace as being one of the best is his inability to stay healthy. It has been a real chore for Lucroy to play at least a hundred games, and lately, he has been platooning. Given the opportunity the team has him as the starting catcher for the team, a groomed catching prospect should be behind him taking in the lessons and to split time with Lucroy.

First Base: Yonder Alonso, age 32: Alonso has spent at least a decade in the majors and had the promise of becoming a great first baseman at the end of the last decade. It was his time to shine becoming a good featured player for the Chicago White Sox in an experimental lineup, but did not show his numbers like he did for the Oakland Athletics and the Cleveland Indians. For both the 2017 and 2018 season, Alonso hit for over 20-plus home runs and had an OPS in the .800s. Alonso has the promise to show power at the plate and be a guaranteed glove for first base. He has the best bet on the roster to play the majority of the games of the regular season at the position.

Second Base: Scooter Gennett, age 29: Gennett was one of the youngest players out of the Cincinnati Reds and Milwaukee Brewers' systems, and it seems to be a mystery on why he was used as a trade chip for San Francisco rather than stay for the Reds' rebuild instead. He probably has the best career batting average of this entire lineup sitting at .286. From 2017 and onward, he was hitting closer to .300 and eventually was hitting .310 in his All-Star season in 2018. He also had a great glove in the infield, turning 101 double plays in the same All-Star season. A quick player with effective speed, he knew how to execute plays on both sides of the ball. Unfortunately, Gennett was a part of teams when they were not a winning caliber team and his fundamentals did not go as appreciated. On the right team with a good amount of supporting players, Gennett would be the everyday second baseman and the leadoff hitter for most games.

Third Base: Jung Ho Kang, age 32: Everyone likes a great comeback story when someone has hit rock bottom, just ask Josh Hamilton. Kang was on his way to becoming one of the best phenomes to come out of the Korean baseball system, but was unfortunately overshadowed with his off the field problems with a drunk driving accident in South Korea during the offseason of 2016. The incident cost him his work visa to play the 2017 season for the Pittsburgh Pirates. In his three seasons with the Pirates, the Korean slugger hit 46 home runs and collected 144 RBIs. Sure, the guy has a history behind him, but the third base depth has been slim after the Josh Donaldson signing. Kang would make a case of being a legit cleanup hitter, perhaps pumping those RBI numbers into clearing the bases.

Shortstop: Addison Russell, age 26: Yeah…like I said, everyone likes a great comeback story. Another player that has his offseason troubles was Russell. Despite the domestic abuse of his ex-wife, however, when has that ever stopped the MLB from keeping a player from playing? Russell is the whole package with youth to build a team for years to come. With a World Series ring and an All-Star campaign in the same season as 2016, he knows how to get it down defensively with the glove at the shortstop position. In his time with the Chicago Cubs, he kept the statistic of making sure runs were prevented from being scored; a statistic he shared with Javier Baez. Offensively, Russell struggles at the plate. He has been a career .242 hitter with a high strikeout count. In the given lineup, Russell would be the last hitter. He benefits being on the field defensively anyway.

Left Field: Domingo Santana, age 27: Noted that Santana normally plays right field, there are not plenty of left fielders available in the pool who are still actively playing. Santana has played all three positions in the outfield, so he can definitely fill the shoes of left field. This lineup needs a slugger like Santana, who normally starts the season hot and can hit for the fence. Santana's best season was 2017 with Milwaukee when he hit 30 home runs with 85 RBIs. He has progressed to hit better than his career average since the turn of the last decade, but he has a lot of work cut out for him. He is hitting .259 for his career numbers, which makes him a slugging power hitter. Expect him to hit sixth in the clean-up crew.

Center Field: Austin Jackson, age 33: A team is going to need contact hitters that are going to get on base and move along the bases, and Jackson is the man to do so. Jackson has a career .273 batting average with a total of 114 stolen bases. He and Gennett would go game-to-game figuring out who would be the leadoff man. If Jackson was hitting before Gennett, he is the best chance of being a runner in scoring position if given the opportunity to get on base. A veteran like Jackson would be great leadership for the outfield to look up to on a senior level. He would most likely be the voice of reason for his other two teammates out there.

Right Field: Yasiel Puig, age 29: Well, this team is going to need a good public relations representative if the team is going to employ Kang, Russell, and Puig. Puig is the wildcard of the entire bunch and has been notorious for his antics on the field, but he would up being the primary starter of this team. Since his debut in the MLB, he has always been an insane power hitter. His career home runs sit at 132 in his seven years in the majors. Since leaving the Los Angeles Dodgers, he hit his career-high with 30 with both the Reds and the Indians last season. Puig is also a great weapon in the outfield. He has a cannon for an arm and can definitely prevent a runner trying to score from the outfield. With Puig's youth, he could be the player the team builds around for years to come. He would definitely be the franchise player for the team.

Designated Hitter: Brian Dozier, 32: Another World Series champion that can bring veteran leadership in the clubhouse is Dozier. His last two seasons have not been highlight-worthy, but he can be a great deal of more focus from hitting at the designated hitter spot instead of fielding. Since his All-Star season in 2015, he has averaged 24 home runs a season. He also brings the threat of collecting plenty of RBIs and could benefit hitting anywhere in the lineup, but would most likely be hitting towards the bottom half of it. With his only flaw being his batting average, as his career average sits at .245 which means he is a natural power hitter. Days where Russell or Gennett need a day off, he could take the field and play those infield of either of their positions. After all, he does have a Gold Glove from his last season playing with the Minnesota Twins.

The pitching depth for the free-agent pool is slim, but it does leave enough players to build an experience rotation. A great deal of these pitchers has seen some time in some stressful moments for their former ball clubs, which is why it makes them the best candidates for becoming a solid rotation. They are not the best pitchers of the bunch, but they can definitely make it work.

Ace Pitcher-Aaron Sanchez, age 27: Sanchez had a promising rookie year with the Toronto Blue Jays, and even gave the rotation promise when they were in talks of being a contender during his arrival. After suffering a lingering injury with a blister on his throwing finger, he has never had the opportunity to bounce back and pitch to his best potential. It has been a rollercoaster of a ride for Sanchez to get back into peak form, and it is another reason he was traded to the Houston Astros season during their last playoff run. After being the fifth starter out of the rotation, Sanchez looked like his form was coming back into form while pitching out of the bullpen. The alarming side of this entire rotation is that he holds the lowest career ERA at 3.98; an unimpressive stat line, but it happens to be the best out of the rest of the rotation hopefuls.

Starting Pitcher-Matt Harvey, age 30: Harvey has had his fair share of crazy career changes after riding the all-time high with the New York Mets. After having stints with the Reds and the Los Angeles Angels, Harvey has found his way struggling to keep an ERA under 3.00 since returning from Tommy John's injury in 2014. It would be a miracle for him to pitch over 150 innings, as it has been a chore to keep the ball in the park for the Dark Knight. Harvey’s best skill set has been his ability to get strikeouts whenever it’s needed. It is a risky move giving Harvey another chance, but perhaps a solid reliever that would eat those in-between innings could possibly bailout Harvey in order to get more wins.

Starting Pitcher-Andrew Cashner, age 33: Cashner has been an active pitcher for a decade for at least six organizations throughout his career. His best years happen to be during his time with the San Diego Padres when his ERA was 2.55 in 2014. His career ERA is north of that number, sitting at 4.10, but that does not remove him from being a supporting rotation member. Throughout his decade long career, he has a total of 901 career strikeouts. With the right team, he could possibly hit the career benchmark of a thousand strikeouts with this line-up behind him.

Starting Pitcher- Marco Estrada, age 36: At last, we come to the veteran who is at the back of this rotation with Estrada. He has his best years behind him, but he is one of the few pitchers in this rotation who can come close to 180 innings for a season. With eleven years in the majors, his career ERA is not as bad as Cashner's, sitting at 4.29 with 1094 strikeouts as well. Estrada may have enough in the tank to give the ace in Sanchez enough rest for the next series. In recent years, he has a tough time keeping the run control down, but he has just enough in the tank to be a supporting member of this pitching rotation.

Bullpen: Brad Boxberger age 31, Tony Cingrani age 30, Shawn Kelley age 35, and Wily Peralta age 30 (setup man): Surely, these sets of names are not enough players to have a solid bullpen. These are the highlighted names that have been a part of playoff-contending teams. Boxberger has spent a great deal of his career rotating between the closer and the setup man for the final innings, and he would be a guarantee pitcher to go to for a quick collection of outs in a close game. Cingrani was once a contributing pitcher that was part of rotations between the Reds and Cardinals, but towards the end of his career found more focus coming out of the bullpen for bulk innings that needed more relief than the average reliever. Kelley has solid career ERA coming out of the bullpen sitting at a 3.80 and is another pitcher that has the mechanics like Boxberger. Peralta has gone back and forth being a starter and an opener in his latest pitching years, and it would be best for him to come out during the eighth inning and shut down any chances for the opposing team to take advantage of before the closer can enter the game.

Closer-Addison Reed, age 31: There have always been closers who make their way back into the picture after others just show they have the same stuff anymore. Reed used to be one of the premier closers in the earlier years of his career. He was given fewer opportunities when his ERA began to climb, but in recent years he has been given that chance again. In 2017, he posted a 2.84 ERA as a closer between the Red Sox and Mets. With a career resume with 125 saves, 469 strikeouts, and a 3.53 ERA, Reed could be a definite guy to come in and lock it down during the ninth inning. At his age, he can definitely make a comeback and become one of the best closers in the game once more.

Do you think this team has what it takes to be a brand new team in the MLB? What will it take for Rob Manfred to move towards expansion if not trying to sell a current team to a brand new location? Sure, with the idea of him shutting down minor league teams, this team could absorb one of those teams and get some of those young talented players. After all, it is all that this team needs in order to thrive even further. There will be more "What if" rosters posted all Spring Training. Make sure to stay subscribed and to see what teams I will be coming up with next.

[trespeak]

What's your favorite house album?

Wow, that’s a toughie. Might just have to give you a list instead.

This ended up being pretty long so I’ve put all the big descriptions I wrote for each of ‘em under the cut, but here’s the gist:

Daft Punk, Discovery (2001)

Kaskade, Fire and Ice (2011)

deadmau5, For Lack of a Better Name (2009) and 4x4=12 (2010)

Phantoms, Phantoms (2017)

Justice, † (2007) 

Lazy Rich’s singles

Porter Robinson/Virtual Self – Spitfire (2011) and Virtual Self (2017)

I like a lot of deep house and electro house, so most of my picks here are within either or both of those subgenres (as well as progressive house, in deadmau5′s case).

For more of my thoughts (and there are many!), see below.

Daft Punk, Discovery (2001)

Accept no substitutes. For Guy-Manuel de Homem Christo and Thomas Bangalter, making quality tunes seems to just be second nature. Their second album replaces the underground, city-street feel of Homework with a shiny, discotheque-ready sound that stands on the shoulders of giants but does so as a means of updating and widening the reach of their own influences (with “Harder Better Faster Stronger”’s use of “Cola Bottle Baby” as a perfect example thereof). My favorite track on the record, “Digital Love,” perhaps only barely qualifies as house, but between the earnestness of the vocoded lyrics and the heart-stopper of a guitar solo, I don’t even mind – who cares about genre conventions when you’re a smitten robot? It’s utterly brilliant and its era exists as the gold standard for many DP fans, myself included among them.

Kaskade, Fire and Ice (2011)

Ryan Raddon’s seventh album and the one I hold the most nostalgia for. An ambitious effort on Kaskade’s part, Fire and Ice is a double album, with original tracks on one side and remixed, chilled-out versions of the same songs on the other (geddit?). The ICE mixes are something of a mixed bag, with some having more reason to exist than others, but the Fire side of the album earns it a place here on its own, with Skrillex and Raddon giving us their own brilliant take on a classic track from Guy Manuel de Homem Christo on “Lick It,” as well as the smooth vibes of Ryan’s collaboration with his band Late Night Alumni and Inpetto on “How Long.” Another standout track: “ICE,” a big, bumping jam Ryan made with Dan Black and Dada Life.

deadmau5, For Lack of a Better Name (2009) and 4x4=12 (2010)

Oh, Joel. These days he’s earned a controversial status as full-time internet troll alongside his career as a musician, but he’s still had a palpable impact on the industry at large (pop juggernaut Marshmello more or less owes his entire career to the allure of the man in the cute mask, and while Daft Punk did it first, Mello’s own interpretation is particularly and explicitly influenced by the way deadmau5 did it). These two albums dropped when I was twelve/thirteen and still opening my eyes to the wide world of electronica, and I think they’re particularly significant as the point where I went from being a casual fan of it to a devotee, sparking an investment in the Scene® that I still have to this day. The degree of control Joel flexes over his work at its peak was unprecedented for the time and still holds up now – “Strobe,” the album closer on For Lack Of, is particularly notable in how it makes ten minutes feel like no time at all in how it builds and shifts with just a few simple, powerful elements in play at a time. “Ghosts ‘n Stuff” earned Joel and vocalist Rob Swire a crossover hit, and “Raise Your Weapon” stands as an early illustration of what the North American take on dubstep would sound like in the years to come. 

Phantoms, Phantoms (2017)

Kyle Kaplan and Vinnie Pergola’s debut record is a clever mission statement for their work. Their deep house tunes are infused with pop sensibilities, placing them in company with contemporaries like Jamie xx and Disclosure as house DJs making an effort to bridge the gap between the radio airwaves and the dance floor. My favorites include “Just a Feeling” with Verite, a modody track called “Downtown,” and the utterly brilliant “Need You Closer,” a collab with Hayley Kiyoko that easily converted me into the Church of Lesbian Jesus. (Their recent work is also worth a nod as well – they’ve been building up singles to drum up interest in a new EP, including one of their best tracks to date, a driving progressive house tune called “Designs for You.”)

Justice, † (2007)

Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay’s debut record remains their best. There’s so many iconic tracks on this one: The slick vibes of “Genesis” and “Newjack,” the ever crowd-pleasing “D.A.N.C.E.,” the pumping “Phantom” and its sequel, the nu-disco sleaze of “DVNO”, and the ear-splitting delight of “Waters of Nazareth.” The record earned them a positive, if daunting, comparison to fellow French house pioneers Daft Punk, and while their work on it shares an obsession with taking diverse samples and reconfiguring them into their own image, Justice’s fascination with the macabre aesthetic of 70′s horror films and the rock ‘n roll ethos of T. Rex earned them a distinct spot in the pantheon of electronic acts with this record (as well as its followup, the different-but-still-great Audio, Video, Disco).

Feed Me - Feed Me’s Big Adventure (2011) and Calamari Tuesday (2013)

Jon Gooch was one of the earliest musicians to emerge under deadmau5′s mau5trap label, and still shines as one of its leading acts today (High Street Creeps, released earlier this year, has jams for days). While he started his career making drum ‘n bass tracks as Spor, the bulk of his work since 2009 has been under the Feed Me alias, where he’s dabbled in all manner of electronic but mostly hews close to the realm of electro house. Gooch’s experience in making complex tunes meant that Feed Me came out swinging, with tracks like “Grand Theft Ecstasy” and “Muscle Rollers” exhibiting a confidence and technical skill from the outset that most producers would kill for on their first record. By the time his first proper full length released two years later, he’d developed a consistent feel that made collaborations with indie bands (”Love Is All I Got,” with Crystal Fighters) and soulful singers (”Last Requests,” with Jenna G) feel as natural as hard-hitting bangers (”No Grip” and “Death by Robot”). Mix in a little bit of both and you get “Ophelia,” a anthemic ballad made with YADi – my favorite song from the record, and a earworm that still sticks with me six years on. Love, don’t let me drown…

and some honorable mentions!

Lazy Rich’s singles! Richard Billis is a Canadian DJ who retired from producing tunes in 2017, but for the decade or so he was releasing music, the electro house singles he released were nothing short of iconic. Songs like “Blast Off” (with Hirshee and Lizzie Curious) and “Flash” (with Hot Mouth) are energetic, breezy and danceable. There’s nothing quite like a good Lazy Rich drop; his beats hit the dance floor with the weight of a truck, and have a sonic diversity among them that would predict the electronic scene’s shift toward the dynamism of future bass. It makes me sad that we won’t get any more of them, but Billis left behind such an evergreen catalog of singles that it’s hard to be down for very long. (I used to use his remix of Zedd’s “Stars Come Out” as a theme song of sorts on an old website where you could be a DJ with your friends. The fond memories are strong with this one.)

Porter Robinson/Virtual Self – Spitfire (2011) and Virtual Self (2017) – Leave it to Porter Robinson to carve out a completely separate musical persona just to hearken back to his halcyon days as a young producer. My initial introduction to him was just after he’d emerged from the hands-up scene, while he had his eyes set on stardom through what he called “complextro,” and it was surprising to find that his work not only lived up to its genre classification but actively carved out a market for its sound, even before Porter had dropped an album. If the dubstep and house feel of Spitfire was a revelation, the DDR vibes of the Virtual Self EP are a revitalization; similar in ethos, but with an owned, Serial Experiments Lain-styled technological aesthetic. Porter does a lot of work to keep the two projects separate (even going as far as to delineate live shows between the aliases), but rather than fragmenting his work the distinction only ends up strengthening his catalog, in much the same way Jon Gooch’s work as Feed Me complements his earlier collection as Spor.

JOYRYDE’s singles and upcoming album - John Ford Jr. is an English DJ who knows what he likes: fast cars, bumping house beats, mean-muggin’ rap jams, and making tunes that blend all of the above in one way or another. His JOYRYDE project is only a few years old, emerging in 2016, but it’s very much the culmination of years of diggin’ in the crates and building a sound that blends the hip-hop influences of trap with the boogie-bounce sensibility of house. No sooner is this evident than the “parental discretion is advised” warning (and subsequent punchy opening bars) that welcomes you into “HOT DRUM,” though his other tracks (including “MAXIMUM KING” and the Rick Ross-assisted “WINDOWS”) share that kinetic energy. He’s one to watch!

Also worth your time:

Oliver’s Mechanical EP and their album Full Circle

Mord Fustang’s All Eyes On… compilations

Botnek’s singles from 2016 onward

Chris Lake’s releases with his label Black Book Records

Self Help by Walker and Royce

pretty much everything by Ellie Herring and Chrissy (Murderbot)

Fantasmas by Zavala

anything Wolfgang Gartner has made (particularly his early 2010s singles)

That’s all I got for now. If you made it this far, you’re an angel. Thanks for indulging me :)

[wardholtermann-blog]

Basics Of Pop Music

Modern folks music refers to a wide variety of genres that emerged in the mid 20th century and afterwards which were associated with traditional folk music Beginning within the mid-twentieth century a brand new form of standard folks music evolved from conventional folks music. Large, like Salimpoor, says that this distinction in choice is because of how our neurons are wired together, which in flip is based on our personal, personal historical past of listening to or performing music. Rhythm is all about predictability, he says, and our predictions about music start forming from a reasonably early age onward. He factors to the work of Erin Hannon at the College of Nevada who discovered that babies as younger as eight months old already tune into the rhythms of the music from their very own cultural setting. Whether or not you agree with Stanley's personal opinions, his ardour is undeniable. When describing the music that has really moved him, be it a Seashore Boys tune, a Motown monitor, a punk anthem, a pioneering techno observe, www.magicaudiotools.com or a 70s bubblegum pop song, his eloquence and unabashed enthusiasm are infectious, drawing the reader in. Stanley is each professional critic and professional musician, but he's additionally at occasions merely a fan, desperate to share his discovery of pleasure with others. One may not agree with Stanley's private opinions, however any music fan is aware of the giddy rush that only comes when getting lost in a favorite tune. Regardless of your musical choice, that may be a universal feeling that this e book ultimately seeks to have fun, and in that it does a exceptional job. Musicians making the move from songs to cinema is a dodgy one which hasn't gone properly for some of her predecessors (Rihanna, I love you, but literally your entire films suck), but Gaga's funding in her debut lead efficiency is so sturdy that she's practically unrecognisable beneath it. That's not a gimmicky tackle her much-discussed ‘stripped again' look, it is a testimony to her skill as a sincere actor. She switches up all the pieces, from her conversational mannerisms to her distinct fashion of performing, to take us away from her personal pop narrative - even when Ally's story bares some glaring resemblances to her personal. Streaming companies are a beast that needs constant feeding. Youthful hip-hop artists, already accustomed to offering sites like SoundCloud with a relentless stream of mixtapes and features, have adjusted to its demands more quickly than artists from other genres, and have thrived accordingly. At the coronary heart of rap's streaming dominance is something extra ephemeral: Some songs simply stream better than others, for reasons that no one can really clarify but. Hip-hop streams higher than other forms of mainstream music, and trap music streams better than different varieties of hip-hop. However radio is certainly sputtering out. I myself only hearken to high-40 radio when I'm in a Lyft, and I am fascinated by how related every little thing sounds: same tinny manufacturing, same rap breaks, identical millennial whoop. Plus, playlists are narrower than ever, so the thought of radio as a discovery system is long gone. I assume children are discovering new issues through Spotify or Apple Music, whose algorithms and daily discovery playlists are scarily good at predicting what I am going to get pleasure from. Nonetheless, these things only collect information, and only reply with knowledge: more songs in the key of the songs you do not skip via, with the identical modulations and vocal model. We're all getting pushed deeper into our personal little corners. What you see before you is a list that I hope might be learn as an intervention. Almost 50 girls who play a task in NPR compiled and voted on this listing. It options albums by artists who determine as female — together with some by mixed-gender bands, like Fleetwood Mac and X, that, modern Pop Music in our view, relied on ladies's creativity for their spark. These albums have been released between 1964, the year The Beatles invaded America and set in motion what can be called the "classic album era," and 2016, when Beyoncé arguably ushered in a brand new period with her "visual album" Lemonade. The purpose is to offer a view of widespread music history with women's work on the center. The record does not represent an "alternate historical past." It stands for music historical past, touching upon every significant trend, social situation, set of sonic innovations, and new avenue for self-expression that in style music has intersected in the past fifty years. Though Schlager music is a part of the pop tradition, it occupies a special, considerably devisive area of interest; people are likely to either adore it or hate it. But then there's straightfoward pop music, usually viewed as more palatable and widely liked. A classic instance of this is singer Herbert Grönemeyer. Although many outside of Germany know him only from his function in the film Das Boot," he is also essentially the most successful artist in Germany, with a career that, to date, spans 44 years. It typically takes us the longest to stop punishing the merely good artists for not being geniuses, but ultimately we do — Hall & Oates just received into the Rock Hall of Fame , as an illustration, however a decade in the past folks were nonetheless snickering at their Nineteen Eighties blue-eyed soul-pop, little question in shame over having favored it for some time. I wonder if we will study to skip that center step? I've admired you for having the maturity to attend to the communal virtues of Mumford and Sons and other neo-folks bands I discover icky, for example. I think I dislike them partly as a result of I grew up with Nineteen Seventies Catholic folks-guitar lots, so such jangly uplift choral music strikes me as oppressively naïve. I am interested on this article not a lot for the specifics of the gear and the plugins, however fairly just out of sheer awe on the complexity and nuance of the monitor's soundscape. My cadre of pop-oriented music lecturers likes to say that the creativity in recordings lies not in their melodies and the chords essentially, but in their timbre and area. Call Me Perhaps" is an excellent working example. Its melody and chords are enjoyable, however not exactly groundbreaking. But the monitor leaps out of the audio system at you, demanding your consideration, managing both to pound you with sonic drive and intrigue you with quiet element. Whether you need your attention grabbed in this method is a matter of style. I occur to love the song, however even when it isn't your cup of tea, the craft behind it bears some desirous about.

The historical past of Popular Music hardly qualifies as a precise science. It is a retrospective analysis of events that focuses on the underlying forces or common signs in the overwhelming manufacturing of music data, ignoring nuances and aspect-effects to grasp a understandable construction. It is because (standard) music is much from a static phenomenon: it is a consistently evolving, reworking, large organism. Almost by no means has a music style suddenly emerged as a surprising revolution without any trace or evolution in the past. All of them have naturally developed, mutated, merged, or turn out to be (theoretically) extinct. Solely the previous could be examined of this pure, organic network.

[deveharrington]

To: The anon who is sad about Deadbeat Ducookie (theoretically) being a two timing (and maybe three? four? five? etc? timing lmao) piece of fucking shit during the Gillovny revival era (~2016 onwards??): don’t be sad :-)

Be happy: this situation (if true) is only sad IF you legitimize David’s current “situation” as being anywhere near on the same plane as Gillovny, or any normal human relationship for that matter. 

Even if I do not support Gillovny anymore, there is no comparison to the obvious chemistry, rapport, way of interacting that exists between D and G. So, again, do not legitimize D’s current situation because how much more evidence do we need that it is bullshit (I don’t mean that it is not “existing”, I mean that it is a fucking fantasy, exploitation, manipulation, lie, deception, coercion, transaction etc.) and built upon a foundation of bullshit (D’s fantasy world. More concrete evidence: this guy actually thinks he is a legitimate rockstar* so… that should give you some insight on his grasp on reality). 

So, probably the only evidence we need that its fake bullshit (perfect for David :-) ): that age gap. 

I’ve said it before: Gillovny is too real for David, he can’t handle legitimate challenges in life and I’m pretty sure he can’t handle any relationship/“situation” that is not about his stupid male dominant fairytale ideals that he saw in one too many outdated movies, songs or books. The guy can’t create anything original, he can only follow, so don’t even be surprised that he’s embodying the midlife crisis nonsense to a T. Even his constant deflections and excuses for himself are as predictable as clockwork - we know his arrogance, his self consciousness, and his pattern of doing everything he can to conceal those things by now. lmao. 

Gillian did all the work for him so let’s be glad that she’s rid of the dead weight. 

So: again, don’t legitimize David. Don’t legitimize his judgment (how much evidence do we have or need of his superficiality? poor decision making skills? poor impulse control - thanks to another anon for pointing this out?), don’t legitimize his one million excuses that he makes to others and to HIMSELF (notice how all of his excuses always occur after the fact of his poorly executed behaviours? conclusion: he doesn’t put any fucking thought into his actions which is fucking reckless, even dangerous just to begin with), don’t legitimize his shitty views on women in any way, including by being sad that Gillian is now free of him :-) D is always projecting, but he’s the one who cannot survive without cheap validation. Gillian does not need that and she does not need him :-) Actually, her career flourished after being rid of that 200lbs (or w/e) of pure bullshit. 

More: David is so many shitty things but basically he is so incredibly disrespectful, and, as normal human beings, do we put up with disrespect in relationships? Would you put up with being hidden? having your “partner” always walking ahead of you, ignoring you? Never talking about you? separating you from their family and kids? 

The thing is, David WILL put up with disrespect, its an anomaly but it comes from him disrespecting HIMSELF, or perhaps not knowing himself nor setting boundaries for himself (maybe this is why he violates the boundaries of others so much). He WILL put up with disrespect, and actually this is nearly impossible for anyone to fathom if they respect themselves, but try to see it his way: imagine if you hated yourself so much you didn’t care how others treated you. 

To illustrate: Imagine if you hated yourself so much and ALSO COULD NOT TRUST YOURSELF to such an extent that there was nothing you could say to yourself to make yourself feel better so you decided to “tour” the globe just to stand in front of a crowd and make a damn fool of yourself JUST TO HEAR A CROWD CHEERING while at the same time knowing that people are only there because you were in a successful T.V. show in THE NINETIES. AND, IMAGINE YOU ARE AN ACTOR, AND YOU DIDN’T EVEN HAVE ANY SUCCESSFUL T.V. shows/movies w/e in the present!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

More on disrespect - he cannot respect the opinions of others: notice how he cannot address situations where he feels that he’s been slighted (its all in his head btw) without lashing out, insulting others, trying to change history etc. etc. He’s a child. 

So, most importantly he will put up with disrespecting HIMSELF, so if he will not trust himself then why should we trust him? Again, don’t trust or legitimize what he does, its not real. 

If you can see and admit that the rockstar bullshit is just that: bullshit (it’s bullshit but it still carries on like some morbidly limping machine because of too many enablers around D), then see and admit that the sexy irresistible jobless arrogant jerk “dating” someone around the same age as HIS OWN DAUGHTER bullshit is also bullshit (again, it’s bullshit but it still carries on like some morbidly limping machine because of too many enablers around D). 

Do we really want that kind of person around Gillian? 

Please learn from me: don’t sweat over him!!!!!!!!!! Though, I’m still trying to learn this. Let’s learn together :-) Be happy and laugh with me :-) HAHAHAHAH;K;AHAHAHAHAHALAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA 

BECAUSE: 

*I recently watched an interview from 2018 (!!) where David said that people were coming to his “concerts” for the “music” and not for his “celebrity” “status”…. LMAO ya’lls this guy is DELUSIONAL!!!! I can’t LMAO I swear he honestly believes this for real! He said it straight, he didn’t use any self deprecation in that statement there were no jokes but it was probably the most hilarious thing he’s ever said HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

[ollyarchive]

LET IT BURN: YEARS & YEARS

With Years & Years’ second album ‘Palo Santo’, Olly Alexander is smouldering away all negative energy and shaping communities from the dancefloor.

By El Hunt on 27th April 2018

Years & Years’ ringleader Olly Alexander - clad in a magnificent pair of PVC overalls; his second costume change of the day - is currently milling around an East London photo studio, thoughtfully munching on cookies, and discussing Mariah Carey in great detail. The megastar pop icon has hit the news this same week after speaking publicly about her bipolar disorder diagnosis for the first time, and Olly’s quick to commend her bravery in letting down her barriers. “I think it would be nice to believe that pop stars and famous people are just incredibly happy and fabulous; that they move glitteringly through the world, and that everything they touch turns gold,” he reasons. “But it’s a fantasy. Actually, I think vulnerability - and being able to be vulnerable - is a sign of real strength.”

You sense that Olly Alexander lives by these same words as he navigates the landscape of being a pop star in 2018. In the three years following Years & Years’ rapid rise to the highest echelons of the charts, Olly has gradually morphed into something of a public figure, too. A prominent spokesperson on mental health and LGBT activism in particular, Olly dedicated the band’s landmark Glastonbury show in 2016 - which took place roughly a year on from the release of their debut album ‘Communion’ - to pride, promising to “shove a rainbow in fear’s face” in an emotional speech to the assembled crowds. A year later, Olly took a camera crew back to his unassuming hometown for a moving BBC documentary titled ‘Growing Up Gay’, and was very honest in discussing his experiences with bullying, eating disorders, and anxiety. ‘Palo Santo’ - Years & Years’ second album - is a continuation of this, combining ridiculously overblown, brilliantly lavish sci-fi landscapes and gigantic pop ambition with an amped-up sense of honesty, and a space-reclaiming edge that defies the presence of negative energy. Today, Olly observes that one of his chief goals as an artist is to write the songs that would’ve lifted him up as a teenager still searching for a community.

After spending several years moving around the country living next to a variety of theme parks - the singer was born in Blackpool, where he lived next door to the Pleasure Beach, before moving down the road from both Alton Towers and Staffordshire’s Drayton Manor - Olly Alexander and his mum settled into rural Gloucestershire life when he was thirteen. Trading in the garish Blackpool illuminations for the distant glimmer of the Severn Bridge, it was a drastic change in pace .“It always gets described as sleepy, Coleford,” Olly grins, having swapped his neon-orange PVC vest and chain necklace (another of today’s outfits) for something a little more practical. Up until it became the hometown of Years & Years’ frontman, the small market town boasted a ukulele expert as one of its most famous residents, and was perhaps best known for being the location of the world’s only Ribena production plant. It wasn’t exactly the epicentre of queer culture for a teenager searching for a community, especially given that the nearest gay bar - Flamingos - was thirty miles away in Bristol, and located the other side of a toll bridge.

“I was actually too scared to go to Flamingos,” Olly remembers, laughing. “I love that as a name for a gay bar. Flamingos!” he announces, with grand intonation. ”[Coleford] was never a place that felt connected to anything queer when I was growing up.”

“I did like growing up around trees and fields, pretending I was a fairy,” he adds, chirpily. “I enjoyed getting that experience.”

“Being able to be vulnerable is a sign of real strength.”

Rather than heading to the now-closed Flamingos (R.I.P), Olly surrounded himself with a sea of pop bangers growing up instead, worshipping at the altar of Christina, Britney and TLC. And speaking of worship, he also remembers taking notice of another prominent community in the town: the church next door to his house. Though organised religion wasn’t his bag, the strange rituals - decorating an orange for Christingle, reciting the Lord’s Prayer at his local Church of England primary school - proved intriguing. Later in life, he’d grow to view songwriting as a cathartic and mysterious kind of healing ritual, as well as noticing odd parallels between a church’s sense of belonging, and the celebratory freedom that exists in a space filled with dancing, thrashing bodies, and filthy, sexy pop.

As Years & Years were starting to etch out the first strokes of ‘Palo Santo’ at the beginning of last year, Olly explains he was “newly single”, and reading a lot of books in his spare time. Besides taking on the mammoth task of conquering David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, he also picked up Andrew Holleran’s cult novel Dancer From the Dance; set amongst New York City’s LGBT disco scene in the 1970’s. As well as being flamboyant and fun - presenting a campy, fabulous surface world that’s soundtracked by The Marvelettes and Sister Sledge - it’s also a heartbreaking read, documenting the “psycho-sexual drama” of desire, and touching on both loneliness and immense inequality. It’s a double-edged sword that also exists in ‘Palo Santo’.

“It talks a lot about how the club is like a church; a church for gay people to go and dance, and I was like, yes!” Olly says, excitedly. “This is putting into words how I’ve been feeling for so long, and what I’ve been trying to communicate in music. It really inspired me to write a lot,” he says. One song on ‘Palo Santo’ directly credits the book as an influence. ‘I breathe the rituals of the dancer’s dance,’ Olly sings on ‘Sanctify’.

“When I see dancers, their body is their medium,” Olly notes. “The art is their body. What an amazing embodiment of creativity, to literally be your limbs and your expression and movement! I’ve always been enchanted by dance,” he says. “Plus, I think a pop video should have dance in it, too. It’s a prerequisite! A bit of choreography! You want that fantasy moment where everybody’s going to burst into dance. Some choreo! I just think, if you can’t do that in a pop video, where can you?”

Such considerations rule on ‘Palo Santo’, an album that pushes every last bold facet of pop to the maximum extreme. Set in a high-concept, futuristic world which plays on traces of real life to sneaky, allegorical effect, it also sees Years & Years more fearless than ever. One pulsing highlight, ‘Hallelujah’ dives straight onto the dancefloor to find healing in letting loose, while Olly’s current favourite ‘Lucky Escape’ confronts the more unlikeable aspects of our own emotions. “It’s such a petty song!” he reasons. “I was quite sick when I recorded the vocal for it, and I can really hear when I listen to the song that I’m not feeling very well. I don’t like the person that’s saying those words in a way, but it’s an honest reflection of what I was feeling at the time. I’m proud to put that on there.”

“I’ve always been enchanted by dance.”

Over the past three years, Olly says, he has started to realise that pushing his own boundaries reaps creative rewards. “Putting yourself in an uncomfortable position - in terms of the creative process - it usually means you’re going to get something worthwhile,” he adds. “I really had to get past the levels of pettiness…. sometimes it made me laugh. I’d be writing a song when I was so angry at my ex boyfriend. I would never want to present this to the world, where I’m just this bitter ex who’s still hung up on him!’ Olly admits. “[But] actually, sometimes we are hung up! It’s an ugly, but also truthful and beautiful, side to our humanity. I had to be okay with it.”

Another standout track called ‘Rendezvous’, meanwhile, contains hints of Jennifer Lopez’s euro-banger ‘On the Floor’ (“it does!” Olly exclaims in agreement) and explores hook-up culture, along with unpacking his immediate feelings as a relationship draws to a close. “After a relationship you think, maybe the things they did weren’t as well intentioned as I thought they were?” Olly says. “I was in my petty, angry phase. I have had a lot of experiences with guys where the sex has felt like this depressing inevitability. We’re gonna meet up, and we’re going to have sex. That’ll kind of be it, and then onto the next person. What’s happening in that interaction, and what happens in that interaction when it’s someone you want more from?” he asks, pausing. “I also just really wanted to write a song called ‘Rendezvous’!” he adds. “I think I’d smoked a really big joint before I wrote that song, so there’s that, too. Beyonce would have a song called ‘Rendezvous’ and she’d kill it! She has ‘Deja Vu’, of course. Britney loves a French moment, too. With stuff like that, you just need conviction.”

Conviction is a world that springs to mind easily when you’re talking to Olly Alexander. As well as his commitment to sharing his own experiences with unwavering honesty, this new era of the group feels like a step onwards from the anonymous throngs of bodies that once grabbed at Olly way back when the band released their video for ‘King’. Performing solo gyrating routines for a panel of extra-terrestrial judges as Years & Years returned with ‘Sanctify’ - a bit like a filthier Strictly Come Dancing if it were set in an alternate universe - it’s the very definition of conviction. And with his bandmates Emre Turkmen and Mikey Goldsworthy also taking on a slightly different role this time around - acting as behind the scenes production wizards and, as Olly puts it, “his musical husbands” - there’s a sense that he’s also careful when it comes to handling his newfound platform responsibly.

“What is the point of a pop star in 2018? What should they be saying?”

“What is the point of a pop star in 2018?” Olly asks nobody in particular. “What should they be saying?”

Heading into ‘Palo Santo’ with the aim of creating a record that tackles the intricacies of belonging in a world that feels increasingly dangerous and fragmented, the band crafted an entire fictional landscape to explore the darker grit. “It felt too monumental, hard or depressing to set everything in our real world,” he reasons. “I thought a lot about where I could make a place where we take out all the rules surrounding gender identity and sexuality. I thought, well, why don’t we just have everybody be androids?” Olly laughs.

“I’ve always loved artists that take people to their mad world with them, like Bowie, Prince, Gaga. I thought, I want to do something like that, and go as big as possible,” he concludes with resolve.

In ‘Palo Santo’, Years & Years have done just that, flinging open the doors on a vastly ambitious universe that ignites life’s bullshit in a blaze of euphoria. Infiltrating the mainstream with dagger-edged pop - and doing it in fantastical, glittering style - Olly Alexander might just be the most important pop star we have in 2018.

[contemporaryafricanartunframed]

An Introduction to Chéri Samba

Known for his playful, brightly-colored, graphic paintings with a political message, Chéri Samba is one of the most visible Contemporary African artists on the market today. His goal, as expressed, is to make people think critically about the world around them, and his topics range from the impact of colonialism to what it means to be a successful artist. Samba’s work has been included in basically every turning-point exhibition that is considered part of the genre’s history. His paintings have also been featured - and highly publicized - in every single one of the Sotheby’s Modern & Contemporary African art sales since they began in 2017. He exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2007, and is represented in the permanent collections of prestigious institutions like MoMA and the Centre Pompidou.  Through this blog entry, I aim to introduce the reader to Samba and his unique paintings, providing context that will help hopefully encourage him or her to explore further.

Born in Kinto M’Vuila, a small village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Samba came of age in a pivotal moment for his country. In the 1960s, the DRC was liberated from its Belgian colonial rule - known to be among the most violent and oppressive - and entered into a new era with “music, bars and cars” as it became an independent state. Eventually, the DRC’s economy crashed and became entangled in poverty, but the time in which Samba began to paint for a local audience (the 1970s) was one characterized by optimism and great political change. Through his artwork, Samba has set out to portray the everyday realities of Congolese life from the late 20th century up until the present day. Topics have included the involvement of youth in violence and corruption (ex. Little Kadogo, I am for Peace, That is Why I Like Weapons, 2004), as well as the prosperity of the upper-class (ex. Un Vie non Ratée (A Successful Life), 1995).

Samba has shown an interest in dilemmas that go beyond the borders of his home country and that affect us globally as well. The painting Probléme d’Eau (Water Problem), 2004 takes the international water crisis as its main theme, showing his intention to use his art to serve a purpose, or at the very least, make a political statement. Speaking about the difficulty accessing clean drinking water in Africa, Samba has said: “It’s a ridiculous problem. Why don’t the Americans help African governments to put a water tap in every home? It might be expensive, but I wonder, how much are they spending on missions to find out if there is water on Mars?” With this painting, Samba illustrates what he finds to be the absurdity of forgoing the needs of our own species in order to look for life (or evidence of life in the form of water) on other planets.

Chéri Samba, Probléme d’Eau, 2004. Acrylic on canvas. Source: http://art-for-the-world.blogspot.com/2016/05/world-water-joy-project-participating_48.html. 

Samba’s personal life plays an important role as well in the understanding of his works because many of his later works, from the late 1980s onwards, take this topic as their main theme or focal point. Samba always knew he wanted to be an artist, even from when he was a young child drawing pictures in the sand in Kinto M’Vuila. In primary school, Samba was known as the best artist, and he even sold his drawings to friends. Worried that he might not be able to make enough money off his drawings, Samba turned to painting by the time that he got to secondary school in hopes that it would lead him to a real career. One of Samba’s paintings was taken on tour with the school’s soccer team and received a huge positive reaction. Looking at the painting, Samba realized he needed to get out of his small village and pursue his artistic talent seriously.

Samba’s father, however, was not supportive of his son’s talent for art. Instead, he wanted his eldest son to stay home in the village and take care of the family farm. Samba’s struggle with his father to feel support for his artistic career plays a major role in the artist’s personal history, and has served as the inspiration for some of Samba’s paintings. In Le pardon libére, 2015, we see flames burst from Samba’s heart, as he dreams of following his love for creating art. Samba’s father stands with his back facing his son, representative of his dismissiveness regarding his son’s dream. Knowing that Samba was one of ten children, and the oldest male child, we might have some sympathy with his father, who was paying money for his son to get an education in order to help his family’s business.

Chéri Samba, Le pardon libére, 2015. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0loCX-b8hGQ. 

At age sixteen, Samba decided that it was time to follow his heart, even without his father’s support, and left for Kinshasa in 1972. Carrying with him a burning appetite for success and recognition of his talents, Samba arrived in the city and used his existing skills to land a job in a sign painter’s studio where he produced billboards and advertisements for local clientele. Three years later, at age 19, Samba opened up his own sign painting studio and also began drawing cartoons for Congolese entertainment magazine called Bilenge Info. The same year, Samba experimented with painting on sacking cloth, canvas being too expensive, and showing his work on the street. At first, people would pass by and not really notice his artworks. To captivate the attention of the Kinois who passed by, Samba began using text in his paintings, incorporating speech bubbles and narrative lines usually written in French or Lingala (one of the four DRC languages).

His paintings became popular with an intentional audience when Samba participated in the exhibition Les Magiciens de la Terre in Paris in 1989. Following the show, collector Jean Pigozzi began acquiring works by the artists featured in the show, including Samba- whom has since achieved international fame within the Contemporary African art world. In 2004, the artist landed a solo show (J’aime Chéri Samba) at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris, and was featured in another show there in 2015-2016 (Beauté Congo 1926-2015). Formal exhibition catalogues were produced for both shows, and although written in French (and therefore not accessible to everyone interested in researching the artist), they provide a valuable record of Samba and his work. The catalogue for Beauté Congo 1926-2015 is available in major art research libraries like the Watson Library at the Met and the MoMA library.

One of the most well-known (or at least visible in terms of the Contemporary African art market) Samba works is titled J’aime La Couleur (I Like Color), of which the artist made many versions. The artist himself is shown in the center of the composition, holding a paintbrush dripping with different colored droplets. The central figure is also slightly surrealist, as his skin is unfolding into a staircase-like form into the sky. Different versions of the work have come up at auction fifteen times. Perhaps the work is so popular because color is one of the signature marks of Samba’s paintings, and here he declares his love for color - matching his personal philosophy with his artistic style. Discussing the work, Samba explains: “Colour is everywhere. To me, colour is life. Our heads must twirl around as if in a spiral to realise that everything around us is nothing but colours. So I say 'I like colour' instead of saying 'I like painting'. Colour is the universe, the universe is life, painting is life."

Chéri Samba, J’aime La Couleur, 2005. Source: http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2018/modern-contemporary-african-art-l18801/lot.82.html.  

Chéri Samba in his studio, Kinshasa, 2003. Source: Les Initiés: un choix d’oeuvres (1989-2009) dans la collection d’art contemporain africain de Jean Pigozzi, Fondation Louis Vuitton, 2017.

My personal favorite Samba work is one in which he displays his signature whimsical, almost surrealist, tendency in full-force in order to relay his message. The work is called Le secret d’un petit poisson devenu grand (The secret of a small fish grown up), painted in 2002. The purpose of the painting is to instruct young artists on how to achieve success. Seeing himself as a role model, Samba has said that he hopes to inspire the next generation of African painters.

Chéri Samba, Le secret d’un petit poisson devenu grand (The secret of a small fish grown up), 2002, Oil on canvas, 81 x 100 cm. Source: http://www.pascalpolar.be/site/artisteview.php?nom_de_tri=Ch%E9ri%20Samba. 

In the work, the little fish becomes big because he has a “secret,” and that is listening to everybody, but ultimately making his own decisions with his heart. For this reason, the anatomical heart fills the largest ear present on the man-fish figure, symbolizing that among all the voices that we hear, the one of our hearts is the most important.  If no one is criticizing you, Samba explains, then it means that no one cares about you. In fact, this kind of exposure is even more important for African artists, Samba believes, because Africans should be proud of what they do. Before the exhibition Magicians de la Terre, Samba believes that people in the international art world did not believe that Africans could make art in a contemporary style.

Still working and making art, Samba splits his time between Kinshasa and Paris, and is represented by Galerie Pascal Polar in Brussels, Belgium. In terms of what Samba has been up to recently, his works were shown at The Fondation Louis Vuitton in 2017 as part of the exhibition Art/Afrique, le Nouvel Atelier, which featured works from the Pigozzi collection. Gallery Magnin-A, based in Paris, showed Samba’s work at 1-54 Contemporary African Art fair in London in 2017. Sotheby’s sold four of his paintings in their Modern & Contemporary African Art auction in May 2017, five in their March 2018 auction, and seven in their October 2018 auction. Concurrent to the inaugural edition of 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in Marrakech, Samba’s work was shown in an exhibition at the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL) in February 2018. In the summer of 2018, his paintings were shown at the Evora Africa festival in Portugal and at the University of Michigan. Who knows what’s next on the horizon for this Contemporary African art star? We can only stay tuned into ContemporaryAfricanArtUnframed.tumblr.com to find out.

Photo at top: Chéri Samba, Paris, France, March 13, 2013 in his Paris workshop.  © Antoine Doyen. Source: https://antoinedoyen.photoshelter.com/image/I0000ikhRfWbsesE

Bibliography:

Abramowitz, Eden. “Chéri Samba and Congolese Popular Painting.” Sotheby’s. September 1, 2017. Accessed November 4, 2018. https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/cheri-samba-and-congolese-popular-painting.

Art for The World. “World Water Joy: A Work in Progress- Participating Artist - Chéri Samba.” May 26, 2016. Accessed November 4, 2018. http://art-for-the world.blogspot.com/2016/05/world-water-joy-project-participating_48.html.

Artnet. “Chéri Samba, I Like Color - search results.” Accessed November 8, 2018. http://www.artnet.com/pdb/faadsearch/FAADResults3.aspx?Page=1&ArtType=FineArt.

ArtReview. “Chéri Samba- Congo’s Hogarth.” June 2007. Accessed November 4, 2018. http://www.fredrobarts.com/articles.html.   

Bonhams. “Lot 19: Chéri Samba: J’aime la couleur.” Accessed November 4, 2018. https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/23091/lot/19/.

“Chéri Samba.” In Luminós/City.Ordinary Joy, Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014. Exhibition catalogue.

Crichton-Miller, Emma. “Congolese art at Fondation Cartier.” Financial Times. August 7, 2015. Accessed November 4, 2018. https://www.ft.com/content/d7bf402e-3a92-11e5-bbd1-b37bc06f590c.

Culture Trip. “Chéri Samba: The Art of Telling the Truth.” January 29, 2016. Accessed November 4, 2018. https://theculturetrip.com/africa/dr-congo/articles/cheri-samba-the- art-of-telling-the-truth/.

Da Silva, José. “‘Global’ contemporary African art comes to rural Portugal - despite growing visa issues for artists travelling to Europe.” The Art Newspaper. May 30, 2018. Accessed November 4, 2018. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/new-festival-evora-africa-brings-global-contemporary-african-art-to-rural-portugal.  

Ellis-Petersen, Hannah. “Paris hosts first ever retrospective of art from Democratic Republic of the Congo.” The Guardian. July 10, 2015. Accessed November 4, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jul/10/democratic-republic-of-the-congo-art-paris-fondation-cartier.

Fondation Louis Vuitton. “Sweet Samba.” Accessed November 4, 2018. https://www.fondationlouisvuitton.fr/fr/collection/artists/cheri-samba.html.

Galerie Pascal Polar. “Chéri Samba.” Accessed November 4, 2018.http://www.pascalpolar.be/Polaruserfiles/file/about/polar/samba/Cheri-SAMBA%20BIO.pdf.  

Hawkins, Sydney. “U-M exhibition challenges traditional understanding of African arts and cultures.” University of Michigan News. August 8, 2018. Accessed November 4, 2018.  https://news.umich.edu/u-m-exhibition-challenges-traditional-understanding-of-african-arts-and-cultures/.

LVMH. “‘Art/Afrique, le Nouvel Atelier’ at Fondation Louis Vuitton showcases African art.” April 26, 2017. Accessed November 4, 2018. https://www.lvmh.com/news-documents/news/artafrique-le-nouvel-atelier-at-fondation-louis-vuitton-showcases-african-art/.  

Magnin-A. “Chéri Samba.” Accessed November 4, 2018. http://www.magnin-a.com/en/artistes/presentation/864/cheri-samba.

Magnin, André, Fondation Cartier. Beauté Congo: 1926-2015. Paris: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, 2015.  

Ochieng, Akinyi. “5 Works of Art You Need to See at 1:54 Contemporary African Fair London 2017.” OkayAfrica. October 6, 2017. Accessed November 4, 2018. http://www.okayafrica.com/5-works-art-need-to-see-1-54-contemporary-african-fair-london-2017/.   

Orosz, Peter. “Kicking it with the cool kids of 1950s Kinshasa.” Jalopnik. November 29, 2011. Accessed November 4, 2018. https://jalopnik.com/5863413/kicking-it-with-the-cool-kids-of-1950s-kinshasa.   

Piasa. “The contemporary art of Chéri Samba.” April 18, 2018. Accessed November 4, 2018. https://www.piasa.fr/en/news/actualite-art-contemporain-cheri-samba.

Sesay, Nadia. “1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair Landing in Marrakech is 2018’s Most Anticipated Art Event.” OkayAfrica. February 23, 2018. Accessed November 4, 2018.  http://www.okayafrica.com/1-54-contemporary-african-art-fair-lands-in-marrakech/.  

Sotheby’s. “Chéri Samba: Une Vie non Ratée (A Successful Life).” Accessed November 4, 2018. http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2017/modern-contemporary-african-l17801/lot.2.html.    

Sotheby’s. “Results for ‘chéri samba.’” Accessed November 4, 2018. https://www.sothebys.com/en/searchresults.html?query=cheri%20samba&refinementList%5Bdepartments%5D%5B0%5D=African%20Modern%20%26%20Contemporary%20Art.  

We Are Our Choices. “CHÉRI SAMBA 1/3 - Congo Imagination.” YouTube Video, 8:01. May 10, 2017. Accessed November 4, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLiFbXVhb3POVGoJ6OD1ZitKuBO97947eP&v0loCX-b8hGQ.

We Are Our Choices. “CHÉRI SAMBA 3/3 - From Africa to the World.” YouTube Video. 7:25, May 17, 2017. Accessed November 4, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQrwhAcJEMg.   

Worldcat.org. “Beauté Congo: 1926-2015.” Accessed November 4, 2018. http://www.worldcat.org/title/beaute-congo-1926-2015-congokitoko/oclc/914160532&referer=brief_results.

[aion-rsa]

2020: The Year That Changed How We Watch Movies

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Under normal circumstances, it’s easy to get lost in the grind of daily living, missing the forest for the trees. Under normal circumstances, one can be too busy to notice that history is occurring all around them. 2020 was not a normal year.

After nearly 12 months of pandemic and shutdown, social unrest and political upheaval, we are only beginning to understand the ramifications from the year that was. There hasn’t been one facet of our culture that wasn’t dramatically altered by the effects of COVID-19 and the world it wrought. And yes, that includes movies.

When the year began, moviegoers were still going to the last Star Wars movie in theaters to the tune of a billion dollars and looking forward to summer spectacle like Wonder Woman 1984. As 2020 ends, many of those same people are resigned to watch Wonder Woman on HBO Max. What occurred between marks a significant sea change for movies and the audiences who adore them. One that perhaps has changed this relationship forever. Here is a reminder of how.

When Movie Theaters Went Dark

March 17. That was the day movie theaters across the U.S., like European markets before them, began shutting their doors. Regal Cinemas, the second largest movie theater chain in the U.S., and which is owned by the world’s biggest, Cineworld, was the first to announce it would close all North American locations until further notice. Within 24 hours, AMC Theatres and most competitors joined them, with AMC having a particularly rosy outlook when it announced it would only be a 12-week “pause.”

With these events occurring nine months and a lifetime ago, it’s easy to forget how different the motion picture landscape was at the time. The New Year’s moviegoing season had only begun in earnest a few months earlier, with the surprise haul of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence’s Bad Boys for Life in January exceeding all expectations. It grossed $206 million in the U.S. alone.

Indeed, early months saw several blockbusters, as well as excellent smaller films, that are now ending up on end of year lists at an unusually high volume. Jason Blum’s horror factory of Blumhouse Productions released a Universal Monsters reboot that was better than likely anyone could anticipate in The Invisible Man, with Elisabeth Moss delivering a brutal performance that felt rooted in our post-#MeToo world.

Margot Robbie launched her passion project, Birds of Prey (and the rest of its title). And even with its R rating, the Harley Quinn film will ironically remain the highest grossing superhero movie of the year. And first-time director Autumn de Wilde and her star Anya Taylor-Joy found new, pastel-colored life in Jane Austen’s final novel, Emma, by pinpointing the humor and subversive brilliance of the author’s desire to “take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.” It’s the best period adaptation of that tale to date. Meanwhile in the indie world, Kelly Reichardt delivered another critical darling with the A24 released First Cow.

Those are a few of the early critical successes at the cinemas in 2020—and they remain so, as they were also among the only line-up of movies to be in theaters before the full extent of the pandemic was realized. But even before the stampede to video on demand, there had been a steady drip of movies being delayed as the full danger of the coronavirus pandemic became apparent. First Eon Productions moved the next James Bond picture, No Time to Die, from its nearby April release date to November. Then Universal Pictures followed, delaying F9 a full year.

The drip, drip, drip of delays soon became a flood, with the real tipping point being Paramount Pictures delaying A Quiet Place Part II, indefinitely at first. This was one week from its premiere. In fact, the studio had already done press for the movie, with the film being the last I saw in theaters, as well as the last film I did in-person interviews for (and the first where it was made clear no one would shake hands and there was a bottle of Purell available on every surface). The film was supposed to open on March 18. Instead most movie theaters were closed en masse during that weekend.

VOD Experimentation… and Revolution?

The films already in theaters in mid-March, such as Pixar’s Onward or Warner Brothers’ The Way Back, became the earliest to break the theatrical window and immediately go to VOD. Universal Pictures cracked that glass first with The Invisible Man, Emma., and The Hunt, but that was nothing compared to what they announced next: Trolls World Tour would have an alleged day-and-date release in theaters and on Premium Video on Demand (PVOD). But as theaters were essentially closed, this meant Trolls was the first movie to dismiss its obligations to theatrical exhibitors.

It was not received well within the exhibition industry then, and was treated worse still after NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell boasted about the success of pushing the Trolls sequel essentially straight to VOD—where studios keep about 80 percent of grosses, as opposed to somewhere between 40 to 60 percent from a theatrical release. Shell told The Wall Street Journal, “As soon as theaters reopen, we expect to release movies in both formats.”

The news was treated as a threat by AMC Theatres head Adam Aron, who said the largest theater chain in North America was effectively banning Universal Pictures releases in light of Shell’s comments, plus the still sour feelings about Universal putting Trolls 2 on PVOD without consultation with exhibition partners. This was the first public conflict between movie theater owners in dire need of new theatrical content as the pandemic wore on, and the theaters who were wary to provide it. It would not be the last.

Universal and AMC eventually patched things up, agreeing to create a historic model where Universal would keep new releases in AMC Theatres for 17 days (so about three weekend cycles), and then decide afterward whether it made better sense to leave new releases in theaters or to move them straight to PVOD, where AMC would earn an undisclosed portion of the revenue. Where this left AMC Theatres’ competitors is still an open question, but the compromise would look quaint with what was to come.

For while the Universal-AMC drama unfurled, more and more films, both studio efforts and independent releases, were jumping to PVOD or alternative forms of streaming. Universal tested the waters again with the Pete Davidson-led The King of Staten Island while Warner Bros. also gave PVOD a try with a major release via Scoob!

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Movies

Hamilton: The Real History of the Burr-Hamilton Duel

By David Crow

Movies

What Hamilton Doesn’t Say About His Real History with Slavery

By David Crow

Perhaps most presciently though was Disney releasing Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton movie straight to Disney+ for the Fourth of July. Technically an edited together version of several 2016 performances of the original Hamilton cast on Broadway, the “movie” was intended to be a special theatrical event released in theaters by Disney in October 2021. And the Mouse House paid a staggering $75 million for the distribution rights to the film.

With its early streaming release, Disney was now effectively using Hamilton as a loss leader for its fledgling streaming service in need of new content. It was a massive success for the Mouse, and Hamilton became one of the most talked about cultural cinematic events of the year, even if it was technically a piece of theater released to streaming. According to Variety and ScreenEngine/ASI, Hamilton was the most watched movie streaming event of the year.

As a harbinger of things to come, Disney continued to build its streaming service’s reputation, and the loyalty of its hastily growing subscriber base by releasing one of the most anticipated theatrical projects for next year.

As such, Disney (plus Miranda’s genius) dominated the cultural landscape in July with a reawakened interest in the legacy of a musical written in the Obama era about the Founding Fathers, but cast with diverse, multicultural talent. Premiering last summer when statues of Founding Fathers (among more deserving historic figures) were being torn down, Hamilton put Disney in the center of the “discourse” occurring in the zeitgeist. The company wouldn’t soon leave.

Tenet and Mulan: A Tale of Two Release Models

As a shutdown spring dragged into a grim summer, and U.S. Congressional leadership balked at the urgent need for a second round of stimulus in a desperate economy, questions began to arise about just how long movie theaters would be closed. In April alone, S&P downgraded AMC Theatres’ credit rating and suggested the theater chain was unlikely to survive if its doors remained shuttered past June.

While AMC and others did, in fact, struggle on, survival was not easy. As infection rates slowly descended in the summer, and more folks began dining inside and outside of restaurants, many in the exhibition industry took it as a sign moviegoers could also return to theaters with proper safety precautions. And at least one major filmmaker and studio agreed with them: Christopher Nolan at WB. The singular filmmaker behind The Dark Knight trilogy and Inception had a new sci-fi action movie epic slated for July 17, 2020, and while all of its competitors abandoned the summer, Tenet would not.

Viewing cinemas as “a vital part of our social life,” Nolan wagered audiences would return in smaller but steady numbers if studios would just give movie theaters content to release again. And after reluctantly agreeing with WB to delay Tenet several times, first a few weeks in July and then more weeks in August, he convinced WB to experiment with bringing movie theaters back: Tenet would open in European and Asian markets on Aug. 26, and then open in “select” U.S. cities on Sept. 3, ahead of the U.S. Labor Day weekend.

It was a monumental gamble intended to give refuge to movie theater owners, and the rest of the industry looked on. Even several other films kept adjusting their release dates around Tenet’s moves, from the B-thriller Unhinged with Russell Crowe, to Disney dumping The New Mutants into theaters a week before Tenet’s U.S. debut. Those movies floundered, but Tenet would be different, right?

Well one competitor who moved in unison with Tenet didn’t think so… Disney’s own controversial blockbuster, Mulan, was scheduled to open in theaters one week after Tenet in July—having moved off its original March 2020 release date due to the pandemic—and then was taken off the release calendar again following Tenet’s delay to August. Then Disney offered an alternative: they would release Mulan as a PVOD on Disney+ one day after Tenet’s U.S. opening.

That’s right, Disney was asking people already paying to subscribe to Disney+ to pay an added premium of $30 to access Mulan—about $10 more than all the other PVOD experiments by competitors earlier in the summer and spring. They also were offering a dueling vision for how to handle the pandemic on the same holiday weekend as Tenet.

It turned out to be a disappointing holiday, indeed. After the weekend was over, WB curtly announced the movie grossed $20 million during its opening weekend. However, that number turned out to include up to $10 million worth of preview screenings throughout the country from the previous weekend, as well as its earlier release in Canada.

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Movies

Tenet Ending Explained

By Chris Farnell

Movies

The Many Obstacles of Mulan

By Gene Ching

It was a meager debut for a movie that would go on to do okay business in Europe and Asia, but gross only an anemic $57.8 million in the U.S. Its failure was due in part to the United States’ biggest markets, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and more, remaining closed for its entire run. It also was a result of theaters’ health precautions only allowing most auditoriums to run at a third capacity or less.

More importantly, it was a result of audiences still by and large balking at going back to movie theaters in the midst of a pandemic. Shocking, eh? Even before Tenet’s second weekend, the rest of Hollywood was flinching, delaying its fall schedule into 2021. Black Widow moved again, as did Candyman, and No Time to Die… and WB delayed Wonder Woman 1984 for the second time, from October to Christmas Day.

Meanwhile as a benefit of relying on their own streaming service, Disney has not disclosed its grosses from Mulan’s “Premier Access” experiment. The movie seemed to have a muted reception, perhaps because of the film’s exclusionary price tag for many consumers, and perhaps because of the many problems dogging that production. But Disney was clearly happy enough with the result, as they’ve announced they’re trying Premier Access again next year with the rare thing: an original movie titled Raya and the Last Dragon.

The Awards Season Push

As 2020 concludes, it’s left what once was the height of awards season in a strange, muted place. As early as June, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences began facing the new reality by delaying next year’s ceremony from February to April 25, 2021. Additionally, instead of needing to open in 2020, films released as late as Feb. 28, 2021 are eligible for consideration in all categories.

Perhaps more significantly though, the Academy’s Board of Governors ruled films initially intended for theatrical release but released on VOD, streaming, or other means, including drive-ins, will now be eligible for consideration. Tellingly, this rule is intended to only pertain to 2020 (and early 2021), but it’ll be interesting to see if the Academy can put that genie back in its bottle. Firstly, because with a few notable exceptions, like Searchlight Pictures and Chloé Zhao’s beautiful Nomadland, many of the “big” studio awards contenders, like Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story, have abandoned 2020. As a consequence, what’s left of 2020’s movie calendar was dominated, both in the public and critics’ imagination, by streaming services.

Indeed, Netflix has developed a murderer’s row of awards friendly contenders, including Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7, David Fincher’s Mank, Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the latter of which features the final performance of Chadwick Boseman, which unto itself has generated awards chatter.

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Movies

Mank and Amanda Seyfried’s Quest to Save Marion Davies from Citizen Kane

By David Crow

Movies

Toronto International Film Festival 2020 Movie Round-Up

By David Crow

Amazon, meanwhile, is releasing Regina King’s stirring directorial debut, One Night in Miami, and previously dropped the underrated little character study, Uncle Frank. And even Amazon’s Borat 2 is an award contender for the supporting performance of Maria Bakalova. To put that into perspective for a moment, a sequel to one of the raunchiest comedies of the 2000s had its premiere on streaming… and is now an Oscar contender.

The times they are a-changin’.

The Next Wave of Movies

But even as the future of 2021’s film slate—much of it composed of movies originally intended for 2020—remains ambiguous, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel as the industry resumes production on films big and small.

Not surprisingly, it was a major studio tentpole, the type that underwrites the rest of a studio’s fiscal year, which was the first to go back to work. Universal Pictures led the way again with Jurassic World: Dominion, the third film in the Jurassic World trilogy, and sixth Jurassic Park movie. Universal is bringing back major cast members from the recent movies and the original, and as director Colin Trevorrow started filming again, the company released detailed safety guidelines for how to keep the cast and crew safe. They’ve since opened the production up to the gaze of the New York Times. “We are the guinea pigs,” star Bryce Dallas Howard told the paper of record.

They would not be the last. Ridley Scott resumed production on his medieval epic The Last Duel, with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Adam Driver; Guillermo del Toro finally got to finish his Nightmare Alley with Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett; and Robert Eggers traded in lighthouses for Vikings with The Northman. But it hasn’t been perfect.

Infamously, WB’s The Batman had to shut down production again (for the second time after a spring pause) when star Robert Pattinson tested positive for COVID-19. And Anthony Mackie got candid about filming during a pandemic with Entertainment Tonight.

Talking about the safety measures on the resumed production of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Mackie said, “Everybody’s very afraid of each other. The food is bad because they have to pack it up somewhere else and bring it to us in Ziploc bags. Yeah, it’s awful. You’re literally living in quarantine.”

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Movies

Jurassic World 3 Story Being Adapted to Reflect Post-2020 Landscape

By Kirsten Howard

Movies

The Batman: Robert Pattinson Returns to Set in New Images

By Kirsten Howard

But it’s keeping folks employed and the industry rearing up for a post-pandemic life. It’s maybe for that reason Tom Cruise made headlines when audio leaked of him chastising crew members on the currently filming Mission: Impossible 7.

“I’m on the phone with every fucking studio at night, insurance companies, producers, and they’re looking at us and using us to make their movies.” The show must go on, even if it hardly sounds like an opening night gala….

Did HBO Max Change the Game or Forfeit It?

When Warner Bros. announced in November that Wonder Woman 1984 was going to premiere day-and-date in theaters and on HBO Max, everyone in the industry took a deep breath. Obviously, this wasn’t a unique development. Disney tested these waters with Hamilton and Mulan, and this month’s Soul on Disney+. The more the merrier, right?

… And yet, it was the first time a studio placed its biggest tentpole of the year on streaming. Universal might’ve been the first to break the theatrical window, but that studio likewise made sure to move F9 a full year to hopefully keep its theatrical window safe. Still, director Patty Jenkins and star Gal Gadot accepted the Wonder Woman arrangement (as well as a rumored $10 million each, a consolation prize for losing gains from profit participation backend deals), and exhibitors were notified about WarnerMedia’s decision.

They were not on the next one. WarnerMedia’s bold choice to release WB’s entire film slate of 17 movies on HBO Max went off in the industry like an atom bomb. More troubling still, no one who worked on those movies, from talent to producing partners, were notified about a decision that could have unforeseen and extensive economic ramifications.

Nolan, the filmmaker who convinced WB to release Tenet in theaters, was shockingly blunt and uncharitable to the studio that was loyal to him for nearly 20 years. He called HBO Max “the worst streaming service,” which is flatly untrue to any cinephile who’s ever used it. However, the auteur made a better point about the hidden economic problems in the move.

In a more recent interview with NPR, Nolan better articulated, “The economics of it are unsound unless you’re purely looking at movements in share price, number of eyeballs on the new streaming service. Theatrical is really only one part of what we’re talking about here. You’re talking about home video window, your secondary, tertiary windows. These are things very important to the economics of the business and the people who work in the business.”

This is in line with what director Judd Apatow said separately to Variety, highlighting how the decision hurts people below the line, and just not stars and filmmakers with profit participation deals.

“It creates a financial nightmare, because most people are paid residuals – they’re paid back-end points,” Apatow said. “What they get out of it for years and years of hard work is usually based on the success of their films. And so now what does it mean to have a movie go straight to streaming? How do they decide what to pay you? Do you even have a contract that allows you to negotiate, or is it really just up to them at this point? It raises thousands of questions, which I’m sure are very complicated.”

It’s also why Denis Villeneuve, director of one of WB’s most anticipated new movies, Dune, penned a passionate essay in Variety, saying AT&T “hijacked” WB, and has no love for cinema or audiences. He outright states AT&T CEO John Stankey has led the horse (Dune) to “the slaughterhouse.”

Is that sound and fury against the inevitable changing realities of the industry, or justified anger at a panicked reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic—and more acutely HBO Max’s poor streaming launch?

Read more

Movies

What Alejandro Jodorowsky Thinks of the New Dune Trailer

By Mike Cecchini and 1 other

Movies

How Patty Jenkins Steered the Wonder Woman 1984 Ship

By Delia Harrington and 1 other

It’s hard to say at the moment, but it’s clear that WB’s fire sale approach of all or nothing to subsidize HBO Max’s poor performance is burning bridges in the industry, with Wonder Woman director Jenkins moving to Disney for the next Star Wars movie, Rogue Squadron, while entertaining the idea in the press of starting a United Artists-like studio with other filmmakers who still believe in the theatrical experience. And most persuasively, Disney, the Big Five studio best positioned to go all-in on streaming, is leaving its biggest 2021 blockbuster, Black Widow, slated for theaters even as it moves smaller efforts to Disney+.

The future isn’t written, and while the theatrical window apparently has been shattered, it may not be beyond some state of repair, even if it never quite resembles what it once was. These will also be lingering questions that will hang over cinema as 2020’s cold grip is finally shaken off.

Will 2021 be that different, for motion pictures and the world at large, from the chaotic upheaval of 2020? Only time will tell, but it’s worth remembering that if 2020 changed the future of moviemaking, at least 2021 promises a chance to embrace that future by turning the page on all the anxiety and uncertainty that defined this year’s biggest changes to the cinema.

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[smartsheffield]

Notes from Meetup #6: Coalitions of the Willing

The September SmartSheffield meetup was held on Monday the 11th September, and was the sixth(!) meetup of the ‘modern era’, i.e. since Arup came on board as hosts and sponsors last October. 

It’s probably time to take stock of what we’ve done so far and where we’d like to go next, but frankly we’ve little time for such naval gazing! Suffice to say that Matt and I always review each event afterwards, and our feeling is that the event is growing and becoming more significant to Sheffield’s emerging digital strategy (more about which later in this recap), that it’s attracting people from more diverse organisations, and has a good balance of technologists, business people and policy makers. One thing we would like is to convert all this interest and activity into more bids for project funding, so we’re thinking of hosting bid workshops in between the main by-monthly meetups. Please let us know if you think this would be a good idea!

We’ll also continue to tweak the format slightly - for instance we’re going to set stricter limits on talk length from the next edition onwards: we’re thinking a 10 minute maximum talk length, no more than 5 slides, and a max 5 minute Q&A afterwards. With so much to discuss, and the event attracting talks on so many active projects in the city, we are in danger of losing valuable networking time unless we set stricter limits!

Anyway, that’s enough self-reflection for now, here’s a recap of all the talks and news from last Monday. As always, the videos, presentations and any other supporting documents are also available in Trello, where you can also comment specifically on the topics discussed.

Mark Gannon: Building a Digital Coalition for Sheffield

This is probably the most important talk we’ve had at SmartSheffield so far, in that it’s the first detailed public expression of the city’s overarching approach to the digital agenda, across many smart city domains. Mark, who is Director of Information Systems and Business Change at Sheffield City Council, explains the intention to build a coalition of digital leaders across the city who are active in a range of domains, and how this coalition can be brought together and encouraged to collaborate and self-organise. 

Sheffield is building a reputation for taking quite a holistic approach to the smart city agenda (for instance the report ‘Smart-Eco Cities in the UK: Trends and City Profiles, 2016’ says “Sheffield’s concept of the ‘smart’ is experimental in its openendedness”. Which is nice.) and the ‘Digital Coalition’ strategy that Mark outlines continues in that vein with the intention to nurture groups of people who are active in digital development and innovation across many different aspects of importance to the city, and not just those directly under the auspices of the council.

Please watch and read the presentation for the low down, but in a nutshell the plan covers the following aspects:

The opportunity (why should we do anything?)

Who is the ‘we’?

What domains, and subdomains, should the coalition cover?

How could the coalition assess progress?

How can it be challenge-driven?

What behaviours and capabilities should we foster?

How should it be governed and organised?

What’s happening next?

If you’re quick, there is an opportunity to discuss the plan in more detail on Thursday the 21st September at the Digital Policy Conflab event at The Workstation from 6pm till 8pm. This event is hosted by Sheffield City Council and Creative Sheffield, in collaboration with Sheffield Digital, and you can find out more about it and register here: https://digitalpolicyconflab3.eventbrite.co.uk

Lee Mullin: Building Information Modelling (BIM) and the smart city

Lee Mullin is a specialist in Digital & Building Information Modelling for Construction at Autodesk, and provided an excellent tour of the technologies, applications and opportunities provided by BIM and how it connects to other smart city agendas such as movement monitoring, sensor networks, city operations centres and observatories, etc.

In addition, Autodesk are looking for collaborations to extend their core BIM technologies into new areas such as social care and infrastructure monitoring, as well as modelling. You can find out more about their BIM technologies here and/or get in touch with Lee directly.

Neal Forse: WND's national Sigfox roll out

Neal is co-founder and CEO of Wireless Network Developments UK (WND UK), who have taken over the contract to roll out Sigfox across the country from Arqiva (whom we heard from back in February). Neal’s approach to the roll out is very different, as they have substantially changed the cost/quality/speed equation, which, along with being venture finance-supported, has opened up different business model options for them. They are now looking for installation partners and will provide free access to the network for any building or estate owners that come on board. This approach seems much more scaleable, and brings Sigfox more firmly into play for SMEs and innovation projects. 

Get in touch with them at their website, or via Twitter if you’re interested in hosting a gateway, or partnering on an IoT application with them.

Chris Dymond: SmartSheffield News

Finally, I presented my regular slot highlighting things that have come to my attention in the Sheffield ‘scene’ recently. Here’s what I covered:

Superfast South Yorkshire Vouchers

This was really just a reminder that funding is available from SFSY both for broadband connectivity, up to £2,500 match via their Connection Vouchers, and for new innovations that use it, up to £12,500 match via their Innovation Vouchers.

This could be a great, local source of funding for smart city experiments, and we should look to take advantage of them!

All the details about them are here.

The Sheffield Things Network

There was a meeting of the Things Network (the 3rd one) before the main meetup. This network is coordinating the effort to develop a community-owned and operated LoRaWAN network across Sheffield and the surrounding areas. A full write up of the meeting will be published to the Things Network Sheffield community page, meanwhile here are some highlights:

Chesterfield Things Network have commissioned a single-channel gateway for testing.

Scott and Cullen have nearly finished building their gateway.

Craig Pickles has also built a single channel gateway.

Hive IT have a TNS gateway on order.

Uflo are keen to work out a way to include Things Network gateways in their plans, perhaps incorporated into the planned weather stations, perhaps part-funded by innovation vouchers from Superfast South Yorkshire.

In addition, Steve Jubb at Uflo has an opportunity to put a TNS gateway on the roof of the Arts Tower, alongside a WND Sigfox gateway when it is installed in the next couple of weeks.

There may also be opportunities to incorporate TNS gateways into SCC social housing upgrade work.

Shmapped

Shmapped is an app developed by the Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust in conjunction with the University of Sheffield. It “invites users to map the good things about Sheffield’s green and built spaces.”, and is part of the “Improving Wellbeing through Urban Nature (IWUN) project run by the Universities of Derby and Sheffield.

It looks like a really interesting data gathering exercise. The app can be downloaded from the AppStore or Google Play (just search for “Shmapped”, obviously), and you can find out more about the project here.

Coulomb

Coulomb is a Facebook Messenger application developed by longtime SmartSheffield collaborator Stuart ��Stubbs” Grimshaw. Coulomb is designed as an information service for drivers of plug-in electric vehicles and hybrids, and allows them to register their cars and when they are using public charging points. Doing so “helps you find the owner of that EV that's finished charging when you're low on juice and need to be on the road.”

The app is available via Facebook. And Stuart has also written about why he created it.

Active 10

Active 10 is a wellbeing app that has been developed as part of Public Health England’s “One You” initiative and in conjunction with the University of Sheffield. Active 10 is essentially a fitness tracker and motivator, but designed for people who are currently extremely inactive. It encourages users to perform at least one brisk 10 minute walk each day, and shows them how they are progressing.

It’s another in a burgeoning line of health and wellbeing apps that are being designed and developed in Sheffield, as the medical, life sciences, sports science and wellbeing research continue to collaborate. 

You can download Active 10 from the AppStore or Google Play (search for “One You Active 10”), and you can find out more about it here.

KNOWING

KNOWING is a research project currently getting started at the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield, which aims to better understand “the KNOWledge politics of experimentING with smart urbanism” (KNOWING, see? Very clever!). 

The project (actually, it’s an Open Research Area, which is a common platform for bidding for research projects as collaborations between certain European countries - meaning it will consist of multiple projects all with a common theme and motivation) intends to look at 8 European cities (Sheffield, Barcelona, Berlin, Hamburg, Eindhoven, Den Haag, Toulouse and Lyon) and compare their smart city and urban innovation efforts to see how they are shaping and re-shaping “urban knowledge politics”.

Which a) is fascinating and means that we potentially have a great way of connecting with urban innovators in those other cities; and b) means that, yes, we are being closely observed and monitored…

Hopefully Rachel, Aiden or Simon from the UI will be able to come and tell us more about it at a future meetup.

Meanwhile, there is a website in the process of being created to collate it’s activities, and an article about it all here.

BIN@Sheffield 2017

BIN stands for Business Innovation Network, and is “an informal international network of academic and industry partners engaged and supporting the creation of a sustainable forum for sharing good practice and opportunities in Innovation”, involving the Universities of Sheffield, Porto and Sao Paulo. It is designed to bring academics, researchers and businesses together to share knowledge and discuss what’s going on at the edge of research and technology. They host an annual conference which alternates between the three partners, and this year it is Sheffield’s turn once again.

The overarching theme this year is ‘Digitalisation’, with a particular focus on three strands: Health and Wellbeing, Industrial Digitisation and, of particular interest to us, Smart cities & mobility.

Here are details about the conference  and registration.

--

That’s it for another month. The next event will most likely be Monday the 6th November at the usual place and time. Please let me know if you spot anything that you think I should cover in SmartSheffield News, and let me know if you’d like a speaking slot - as I mentioned in the intro we’re going to limit slots to 10 minutes presentation (max 5 slides) and 5 mins Q&A from now on, you have been warned! :)

You can reach me at info@smartsheffield.rocks, or @SmartSheffield on Twitter.

Thanks again to everyone for coming along and getting involved!

Cheers,

Chris Dymond