#because i think ive finally put it pretty succinctly

[mamthew]

My Star Wars Ranking, and some larger thoughts

There’s some spoilers for IX ahead, but I try not to get into the events of the film too much. 1. The Last Jedi 2. A New Hope 3. Return of the Jedi 4. Empire Strikes Back 5. Rise of Skywalker 6. Rogue One 7. The Force Awakens 8. Solo 9. The Phantom Menace 10. Revenge of the Sith 11. Attack of the Clones

...probably? The first two are pretty much set in stone, but then 3-5 are all on fairly even footing and ditto for 6-8, and 9-10.

The prequels are really bad films, but they're fascinating thematically and problematize every other story in that universe in really cool ways. I put Episode I first in part because it actually explores some really cool ideas surrounding imperialism, colonialism, and othering with the gungans, that it immediately and violently undercuts by coding the gungans in some pretty damn racist ways. Though Episode III does have some cool fights. Hmm.

All kidding aside, II and III do explore the problems with the Jedi as a religion and private military unit that exists to serve governmental interests, and the movies frame the Clone Wars as existing essentially to drive profits, where a shared ruling class takes advantage of the nationalism of the Republicans and the isolationism of the Separatists to play them against each other and drive the war. The war created by this war machine is fought by armies made up of two different underclasses - clones and droids - both of which are ultimately controlled by the same people for the same ends. This shift in the way war is seen between the Original Trilogy and the Prequels I think is indicative of how we've come to understand war in a post-Vietnam, post-Desert Storm, and ultimately post-9/11 world. We've moved away from seeing wars as the struggles against evil and opportunities for heroism that they were in the Original Trilogy. That's not to say that the audience isn't expected to sympathize with certain characters on a specific "side" of the war, rather that we're supposed to empathize with the characters and revel in their feats, while constantly aware that their cause isn't...real. Outside of, arguably, the liberation of Naboo, the protagonists of the prequels are benefiting the same system that the antagonists are. The Clone Wars TV Show does a waaaaay better job of exploring this than the movies do, but these themes still originated with the Prequel Trilogy, which is interesting all on its own.

The sequels are pretty fun films with really good characters and a middle installment that's kind of head and shoulders above the other two, thematically. I like Rey a lot. I love Finn just so much. Poe is super fun even if he essentially has the same character arc twice in a row. Kylo is...probably the weakest link but still complex and interesting and a worthy character to show off the Dark Side stuff. Every returning protagonist (with the possible exception of R2) is given good material that explores their new situations and doesn't let them rest on their previous laurels.

Abrams has said that the point of this trilogy was to do the "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" triad, and I think they succeed at that to a point, except that VIII is an antithesis to the larger themes of the Original Trilogy more than it was to VII, which was pretty light on larger themes. VIII explored a lot of the same ideas the prequels did, but much more deftly and succinctly, and in a way that emphasized the fallibility of even well-meaning authority. I think IX did a synthesis of VII and VIII as well as could be expected, but it had a lot to work with on one end, and considerably less to work with on the other, and that ended up with a final product that many people parse as a "course correction" or "apology" rather than the combination it attempts to be.

VIII also gives the Sequel Trilogy a way to pivot from being a story about essentially two private armies that fight each other to one about "the people" fighting a totalitarian regime on the rise. This means that IX retreads some of the ground the Original Trilogy does in refuting the Prequels' concept that war never has a purpose, but it does so intentionally. The Rebellion of IV-VI was always supposed to be a people's militia fighting a fascist regime, a la the viet-cong, but when the more recognizable military aspects of the Resistance are done away with after the deaths of nearly the entire Resistance in VIII, what grows from that more closely resembles a people's army, with the barest hints of a pecking order, outside of "we listen to Leia because she knows her shit." This is pointed out directly near the end, that there is no Navy, there are only people, and that's about as clear an answer as Disney could allow them to get to the question left open by the saga as a whole: If a Liberal government always ends in Fascism, how do we end that cycle?

Besides that, I think Rogue One and Solo were both really fun. It's a damn miracle Solo is as good as it is, given just how much of the movie was sewn together in post-production (THEY CAST THE MAIN VILLAIN IN POST-PRODUCTION). I think people have gotten harder on Rogue One as we've moved away from it. A lot of folks thought it was too grim, others thought it didn't do enough of its own thing. I disagree with both of those critiques, but not so heavily that I'd say people are wrong for thinking that way. I kinda see Rogue One as a transitional work between the grim ending of III and the hopeful uptick of IV, and I think getting to see in greater detail just what the Empire was doing to people helps to add some context to the OT.

[bbybaphomet]

COLA | cory.

If there has been one thing to stand out about Cory Osada, best known by the moniker Cola, it’s his tenacity. From the beginning of his roller-coaster career, Cola has met controversy, hate and hyperscrutiny largely with witty retorts and a self-assured insistence on keeping forward. Cola has grown up in the public eye, evolved from a precocious teenager mumble-rapping love songs in his bedroom to an international pop star, with over a hundred song-writing credits to his name and a kingdom of his own in form of Chapel Records, a label collecting the misfits of the Korean pop industry and giving them their deserved platforms. Many love Cola, many hate him; but one can not imply he hasn’t put the work in- from his debut album in 2015, he’s put out a full-length record every year since- until 2020. 

“2019 was the best year of my life until it wasn’t.” Cola said in an interview earlier in the year. And it certainly did seem like everything had finally come up Cola. He Has been nominated for Best Male Soloist at MAMA 2019- his first ever nomination, and his pre-singles for his fifth full album were skyrocketing up the charts. The fifth record, ‘Richer Than God & Twice As Pretty,’ was all set to be his third in a row to score a number one on the charts- Until, almost immediately after it’s release, 10 out of 12 tracks eligible for single release were banned from radio and broadcast with no option for alteration- and for reasons largely considered vapid by fans and the general public alike. And unlike previous instances of controversy, Cola had no smirk for the cameras, no wink nor nudge. Cola’s TV appearances to promote the record were brief and his spirits appeared broken, and he publicly wrote a message online to state that he was on the verge of giving up completely. His angry performance at MAMA later in the year was only punctuated by his loss of the award. Cola looked, and would later describe feeling, like he had finally been defeated by the industry that seemed so against letting his hard work and undeniable talent be rewarded.  

And so, come July 2020, after dedicating the first half of the year to the star’s push into acting and directly following his performance of a bombastic 33-song setlist at Lost Land 9 times over three weekends, Cola has once more pushed against convention as he drops his sixth record and first ever mini-album, simply titled ‘cory.’

‘cory.’ contains five songs, including the track ‘La Vie En Rose’ which had been made available on streaming services ahead of his festival tenancy, and ‘So That’s Where Your Face Went,’ which was performed as untitled throughout his set list. However, despite the EP dropping in the wake of the most public dark patch in the young singer’s career, ‘cory.’ carries a largely hopeful overtone; ‘I Got Hope (Cause Yesterday Is All Over)’ dares to look at the future as it celebrates what is perhaps Cola’s biggest personal strength- his ability to stand up, dust himself off, and keep going. 

Cola will not be promoting ‘cory.’, and no single from it have been sent to radio. “I wrote it for myself,” said Cola. “Because I needed to remember that this entire career I have started cause I just love to write music. It’s really, really fun. And it’s gotten me through a lot tougher things than what I’m going through right now. And I wasn’t going to put this record out, cause it was just... therapy? But performing at Lost Land, I saw kids in the crowd crying as they sang along to my songs. And I think, more than any award or number one single, that validated me. And then, I dunno. I guess I remembered who the fuck I am.” 

tracklist

i. La Vie en Rose ii. So That’s Where Your Face Went iii. Dreamlove iv. Waltz v. I Got Hope (Cause Yesterday Is All Over)

EXCLUSIVE: Cola gives a track-by-track explanation of cory.

LA VIE EN ROSE

La Vie En Rose was the first song I wrote out of the five on this EP, and I knew straight away that it had to be the sort of... intro to the record? I’ve recently had a huge episode of poor mental health, and that was worsened by both the way that my last record, Richer Than God, was... kind of sabotaged by people with more power than me. But on top of that, I also saw the end of my first real serious relationship. The negative side of experiencing the type of, like... intense, meaningful, love- the kind of love where you’re like “Okay, I thought I had but I’ve definitely never been in love before this” is when it all comes to an end, and then you have to realise “okay, I thought I had but I’ve definitely never fucking had my heart broken like this.” And so I was in a really dark place, where every day I’d wake up and before I opened my eyes, my first thought was that my heart was broken. And so I think I wrote La Vie En Rose in response to how low I was feeling, because it’s such a peaceful song. La Vie En Rose translates to The Life In Pink, which is a very Me phrase, but it’s also a saying similar to “looking through Rose-coloured glasses.” The lyrics reference that idiom, because I think above anything else, La Vie En Rose is a song about choosing to look on the bright side. It’s not as easy as just choosing to be happy, but wanting to recover is the only way you can start recovering. In the bridge, there’s a line about “crafting my new armour.” Ive grown up in the media, and so I definitely built up a tolerance to negativity. But for some reason, the Bans from last year really, really hurt me. They wounded my spirit, and for a while I was ready to just throw the towel in, especially as it sparked up all the old accusations of noise-marketing and doing things for shock value. It’s only been seven months. I needed some time to breathe and let myself feel what I was feeling and figure out how I deal with it this time.

SO THAT’S WHERE YOUR FACE WENT

This is a difficult one. So That’s Where Your Face Went just kind of happened, as a song. I think I came up with the melody of the hook in the car, and I just started singing “It’ll pass, chill. Stay alive, it kills.” This was the last song I wrote for the record, and it almost wasn’t going to be on it because I didn’t think I’d finish it in time. I think I was very influenced by the character I played in the drama True Beauty. I saw a lot of myself in that character, which is a really difficult thing to feel considering how his storyline ended. And so I think a lot of this song is complicated emotions. I’m definitely singing to myself up until the last little outro. But I think like... to sum it up, the song is strange and weird and I don’t really know how to explain it succinctly, but it’s ultimately about being in a shitty and scary situation and dealing with that in unhealthy ways.

DREAMLOVE

Dreamlove is definitely one of the sweetest melodies I’ve ever written. More than anything, it’s about the honeymoon phase of a new relationship. I’m not in a new relationship, and actually, I’m currently getting over a breakup of a long term one. But it’s more of a metaphor of where I’m at in life now. I think Richer Than God and everything that came from that, for better or worse, marked a turning point in my life for me. It’s been a really rough few months ever since, but I’m at at the start of a new chapter and I’m excited, which is why I wanted to write a honeymoon phase song. I had my first heartbreak but it’s healing now, and I’m pretty excited about the future. Even if things inevitably get hard again, I’m enjoying feeling hopeful.

WALTZ

Waltz is an escapism song. It’s kind of similar in sentiment to my song “Barbie Jeep Getaway.” It’s about just wanting to run away and separate myself from everything going on around me. I think I’ve been craving that more than ever. I promised myself a break after what happened with my last album, but then while I guess I gave myself a break from music, I totally worked the entire time. Waltz was kind of this... wish fulfilment that I could just run away and not look back for a while, because I don’t feel good enough and want to be relieved of that pressure, at least for a little while. “I just wanna waltz around it, then it never hurts” is kind of the attitude I’ve had to all the negativity I’ve had to face in my career. I haven’t really given myself a breathe to deal with it, and last year a straw broke the back on that camel. Laughing it all off and basing my image around how much I don’t care about what people think of me may make me look really cool, but it doesn’t do much for my mental health.

I GOT HOPE (CAUSE YESTERDAY IS ALL OVER)

I think the title of this song is pretty self-explanatory. I think that this song is the one that kind of best delivers the thesis of the album in the same way En Rose does. Which is why I knew as soon as I wrote it that it had to be the last song on the record. This EP is about a rough patch, and a broken heart and a sabotaged album that I poured my soul into, but it’s not negative because I think I started writing this as a means to cheer myself up. Performing at Lost Land the past weekend really showed me that no matter what, I do have worth as an artist. That’s what I was struggling with. I was considering never releasing another song again because I didn’t think there was space for me in this industry anymore, and when all those songs from Richer Than God were banned, I felt like I’d been essentially told to just give up. Lost Land really reminded me why I love this, and having all those people sing along to all the songs I wrote, to see faces in the crowd crying because I had made them feel happy, that meant more to me than any number one or any award I might have gotten had I been allowed to promote my album properly. I think the theme of this EP is just... I’m still hurt. I still have a lot to work through, I still need time to heal, but as things stand right now? I feel a little bit better. And I’m willing to count that as a win.