That's My Dad.

G.O.O.D. Music - Cruel Summer

For those interested in a slick Kanye West production, another “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” or a “Watch the Throne”, something crafted with the perfect blend of immaculately polished, fresh and clever million-dollar worthy bangers with the reputation of mainstream frivolousness, check these out: 

• To the World (Kanye West & R. Kelly)
• Clique (Kanye West, Jay-Z & Big Sean)
• Mercy (Kanye West, Big Sean, Pusha T & 2 Chainz)
• New God Flow (Kanye West, Pusha T & Ghostface Killah)
• I Don’t Like (Kanye West, Chief Keef, Pusha T, Big Sean & Jadakiss)

Everything else? Well, you’ve probably heard a generic hip-hop album before. (5/10)

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Regina Spektor - What We Saw From the Cheap Seats

Come at last a return to quirky form for beloved indie piano-ballad queen Regina Spektor, “What We Saw From the Cheap Seats” brings the glistening, uncanny poetry and beguiling emotional musings known on classic Spektor records like “Soviet Kitsch” and “Begin to Hope”. But after a decade of being the youthful charmer in the anti-folk scene, age tends to take a toll on an artist’s bank of ideas and song-writing skill. The opening three songs (“Small Town Moon”, “Oh Marcello” and “Don’t Leave Me”) recall her nearly forgotten trademark ability to make eclectic and unorthodox pop tunes. Even tracks like “Firewood” and “Jessica” are undeniably captivating and relaxing ballads with solemn charm and illustrative lyrics. The other half of the album and a handful of her bizarre sonic experiments and arrangements result unsuccessfully. Much of what makes this an incomplete record come from lack of innovation. Even on more proper moments like tracks “How” and “The Party”, Spektor poorly treats her compositions with nearly forced and gimmicky emotion, leaving the songs to be inevitably pigeon-holed as uninspired rubbish. It’s hard to appreciate “What We Saw From the Cheap Seats” as a whole; even for its inconsistencies, Spektor’s musical abilities lack her youthful finesse and high-ranged song-writing chops. (6/10)

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Shame - 

As a critic, I will encounter a film like Shame and end up drowning myself in thoughts. Directed by Steve McQueen and starring Michael Fassbender, Shame is a textbook example of modern art-house cinema and an unflinching examination on addiction, more determined than any film about its subject matter.

Fassbender and McQueen previously rose to fame with their 2008 gritty masterpiece Hunger; a physically demanding and eternally frightening biopic. The two create a blend of transgressive and audacious art and the well won’t be drying out soon. For the sake of cinema, this duo needs to make a generation of films together; the two creative forces are beyond restraints of human efforts, they are immaculate. 

It’s a little ironic to define, describe or critique Shame; a film that functions through emotion and rarely words. Yes, art-house films almost always follow such an agenda. But the brute artistic force and dexterity McQueen brings with his camera lens steals the words from my tongue and, like Houdini, makes them disappear. Both of his directorial efforts leave me stunned, effected and traumatized for severe amounts of time. 

Sure, we can talk about Fassbender’s performance: his impenetrable forces put as an actor physically and cerebrally. We can bring up the undermined values of Shame: Carey Mulligan’s best career performance, ground-breaking cinematography, visual language and scene structure. We can also point out the unfathomable script the film has been built. 

But instead of technicalities, I want to bring up a question. Why do people drink black coffee? 

You might say, through the pain of the consummation, there is a new state of mind to be explored. Or maybe after a point in life, you get used to the feeling. Or perhaps one gets sick of cream and sugar; needing a kick in the head. 

I say, there is an undefinable zenith humans can reach, but fear. It comes from getting addicted to a force like black coffee. It is this zenith found in Michael Fassbender’s vexation. It’s found through Steve McQueen’s unyielding exploration of the human condition. It’s a zenith known as shame, and this film was the mirror revealing its face to us. 

(10/10)

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A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory

Between all the jazz and hip-hop fusion, the legendary artistic confidence and technical ability, rap legends A Tribe Called Quest were on the top of their game with The Low End Theory; which after countless spins, is considerably the hippest and most influential alternative album of the 90’s. (10/10)

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Charles Mingus - The Black Saint and the Lady Sinner

If New York City could offer one piece of jazz to the world, it would be Charles Mingus’ avant-garde masterpiece: The Black Saint and the Lady Sinner. Despite one’s level of interest in the genre, Mingus proved that it only takes four tracks, six movements, to change your life. (10/10)

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Breathe in the smug and let the neon lights begin to phase you. Forget what it means to think. Indulge in something new. You are lost. Welcome to the thoughts of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The Great Gatsby is a love story.

We meet Nick Carraway. A narrator, a voice, a layer, the tone, the eyes we’re allowed to see through. He’s making an observation. He sees Jay Gatsby. 

Gatsby is the heart. He’s the almighty, all-loving man who cheated reality and created magic. He falls in love again. He thinks it’s with a woman, but that is as much of an illusion as he is.

A man who has constantly painted the same painting over and over again for the sole purpose of a single woman’s attention is in love. He is in love, but love is a force. It’s something we hold and place it into anything we desire. That love that was once for a woman is now turned to the art of painting that same painting and creating an illusion. Gatsby had taken the love he had for Daisy, his lover, and used it to paint this new picture. When Daisy finally took notice, she became nothing more but a concept to Gatsby. An inspiration, an illusion, a dream. The only thing palpable anymore was the painting.

What are we supposed to believe? Does reality happens in front of you or masquerades around you? That’s what Fitzgerald is dealing with himself. We are not at liberty to declare the truth because Fitzgerald is too enamored with the illusion to know himself. If we choose to make conclusions outside of what Fitzgerald’s thoughts have given, we have cheated him as a novelist and have produced something else. 

The Great Gatsby is a product of seduction. The seduction of the city. The seduction of love. The seduction of consumerism and fantasy. It is that women in the twinkle of our eye that The Great Gatsby is all about. 

We are meant to fall under that lust through Fitzgerald’s words; they seduce us and take us there. We are meant to be tricked. We are meant to fall in love with the illusion. Gatsby did, and he was great for that. 

The Great Gatsby is a love story. It is a classic. It is a drug. 

This book was my dad. 

What sets apart the art within the organized strips of a comic book from the frame within a film? What dimension is it that sets things apart? 

Director Robert Rodriguez slips us all a drug. Something that makes everything beautiful and monochromatic. We are under a spell and we see only exactly what Rodriguez wants to show us. We are stuck in Frank Miller’s Sin City, a vicarious fantasy colored in with dreamy ultra-violence explored through picturesque film-noir. It’s a drop dead visual rendition of reading a comic book that no one ever thought of.

What can I even say about the visual shaping of this film? It’s a landmark of invention in film. It can never be done again either. Sin City can rightfully hold its ground as a brilliant experiment in conventional film-making from the past decade. A dream team cast providing performances that conquer every corner of Frank Miller’s work teamed with a set of directors who refuse to let even a spec of the comic books be neglected result in a wonderful combination. 

The themes of persistence and going through mountains of evil to strike with the thread of good within play out explicitly. Sin City’s atmosphere caves in on you, much like it does on the characters. You begin to understand the tyranny of its world, why the carnage exists; it’s like being poked and prodded by a massive satirist who questions your own world. That’s the effect these comic books want to give you and that’s what you get. 

The biggest success of this comic book rendition is not just in the visual style, but in its striking ability of capturing the jaded and horrific purity the series is based on. It makes it the ultimate focal point throughout the film and never takes its eyes off it.

In the head of Frank Miller, everything is disappearing and only blood needs color.

This film was my dad.

Classic Recommendation: Serpico (1973)

Witnessing the painful birth of innovation that goes head-on against the world around him. It’s tormenting and horrificly undermined. 

Despite being Sidney Lumet’s & Al Pacino’s infamously most under-rated product, the praise comes from the rarity this film’s nature holds. There is an atmosphere, a world meticulously carved out and a savage of a hero hunting evil down however he so desires. Frank Serpico is methodical and dense, but he has a heart filled with purity and we see tear himself apart with the help of the world around him. It goes beyond the character study norm and delivers that rare breed of storytelling too intense to keep itself on the page leaving you to follow the character along, letting the order of events to effect both you and the protagonist. It’s an ironic parallelism between the film itself and the character of Serpico. 

The corruption of New York City is aimfully depicted strictly without glamour, thematic use of suffocation or grotesque brutality. Serpico is a progessive tale done with care and brevity. These are what movies once were: straight-faced tales that carried their own weight through a sheer amount of hard work. 

This movie was my dad.