Kanye West's "Flashing Lights" video

16.2.08



Kayne West wants so badly to go down in the MTV halls of fame with Michael Jackson, Madonna, and even Britney, but no matter how much he protests not being able to perform on the main stage at the VMA awards, he needs to realize he isn't quite there yet. (In fact, he needs to stop thinking about it at all; his lack of Zen towards his own status is one of the things preventing him from becoming the icon he wants to be.)

That said, I really love this song so I was waiting patiently for this. It's nowhere near what I expected, but I can't say I'm disappointed -- there is some really cool shit going on in this clip. The "Flashing Lights" video is pretty much his "Thriller," or at least the closest thing he's had to it so far.

What I think makes "Flashing Lights" his closest attempt at iconic music video is that fact that it's so far left of what "Thriller" came to be emblematic of: namely, long-ass videos with cinematic flourishes and dialogue interspersed with the music. Trying to be like "Thriller" is what made a lot of hip-hop videos in the 90s (when rap was making huge movements and beginning to dominate MTV) really really bad, typical, and forgetable.

Here, Kanye goes the opposite direction and makes a video that, while spectacularly memorable, is shorter than the actual song. Instead of adding dialogue (or worse, attempting to act), the video's imagery creates a massively creepy extrapolation of the song's lyrics. "I never thought/ that you would take it this far/ what do I know?" sings Dwele. Yeah, no shit on the taking it this far part.

What "Thriller" is to widescreen, high-concept 80s cinema, "Flashing Lights" is to digital age hand-held, pocket-narrative short films made for cellphones and iPods. Movies made for cellphones and the like are typically filled with static or slow moving shots, with bare-bones narratives that operate much like jokes rather than 3-act narratives: there's the setup, and then there's the punchline, rather than a fullblown denoument and conclusion. In this, "Flashing Lights" is incredibly forward thinking, almost too much. And as far as cellphone cinema goes, still in its fledgling stages, "Flashing Lights" is one of the better ones I've seen so far.

The only thing that stops it short of being a landmark MTV video is that it hardly operates as a music video. There's abolutely no performative aspect, instead banking on the story and, moreso, the ending. But the shocking conclusion really only works once and isn't visually interesting enough to warrant repeat viewing. As well, because the video is shorter than the song, it can't be watched as a substitute for playing the track. You're only going to watch the video specifically for the video, and it doesn't have the legs for constant rotation.

There are some visual idiosyncrasies that make the video more interesting, such as the pixellated lighter fluid, the slow motion stripping that is more ominous than sexy, a gagged Kanye in an impeccable suit, and the odd closing title card. But, despite the fact that I loved it, it's not enough to make me watch over and over again like my favourite videos. Kanye nailed this one, but I hope he's emotionally prepared to not win Video of the Year for it.





Michael Jackson's "Thriller"
CRS's "Us Placers"

Posted by Posted by Scene -- at 5:24 PM
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Ellen Page and the great hipster reveal

13.2.08


[Spoilers]



I've already written about Juno and its/her transition from hipster posturing to simple sincerity. But I just watched Ellen Paige's other starring vehicle, Hard Candy, and wanted to note some similarities.

In Hard Candy, Page plays a young girl named Haley who meets an uncomfortably (for the audience) flirtatious thirty-something photographer on the internet. She naively agrees to meet him for coffee where they talk and connect. They both read Zadie Smith and love the band Goldfrap. One thing leads to another and Haley ends up in his apartment, drinking screwdrivers and asking him to take pictures of her.

Later, we learn that Haley is not such an unwitting victim -- she's a teenage vigilante seeking vengeance on child predators. It's a clever flip on pulp movies where victims of rape turn into mankillers -- I can't say it made for a good film or that it was socially satisfying in any way, but it was a twist that I didn't really see coming.

Anyways, at one point, in order to drive home that Haley isn't the little innocent girl he thought she was, Haley screams at the photographer that, contrary to their coffeeshop discussion, she "fucking hates Goldfrap." This recalls the scene in Juno where she tells Jason Bateman's character, "Oh yeah, I listened to Sonic Youth. It's nothing but noise."

In both films, Page's character poses (yes, I chose that word purposefully), to some degree, to be a precocious, hipster, cultural know-it-all. A really young hipster-snob that older hipsters find cute. But both films also have her cast off that identity halfway through and prove to be something more by reducing a band to something less.

I'm not really going anywhere with this, just noting a pattern. Something about all this strikes a chord with how I see Page in real life interviews. There's definitely a level of hipster-meta-awareness (what thee fuck did I just say?) in her real persona -- I just can't decide if she's somewhere before the great reveal, or after.

Hard Candy's Trailer
Ellen Page on Letterman

Posted by Posted by Scene -- at 5:23 PM
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Eminem's "The Way I Am"

8.2.08



Track 7 of Eminem's "The Marshall Mathers LP" (2000) marked a turning point for the artist. Up until here (both on his previous album and on the six tracks preceeding on this album), Em used a motormouth flow, cramped and always playing catch-up with the beat. His lines often ended with a punchline and a pause. He was the addled baby of Masta Ace and Pharoahe Monch.

With "The Way I Am," Em does a test-run on the flow he will use for much of his next album. It's slower, it marches over the track in a way fascists would be proud of, and it's constant. This is the beginning of Em's obsession with beat-riding. It's almost scary, and the end results -- "Renegades" off of Jay-Z's "The Blueprint" and "Lose Yourself" off of the 8 Mile soundtrack -- are disgustingly perfect.

What I remember most about first hearing this song was how different it was. Up until "The Way I Am," Em was certainly darkly humorous and almost horror-core, but here he actually became slightly disturbing. I remember my first vocal response to the friend who played this track for me was, "Damn. He's angry."

There are ominous chimes in the background and for the first time Em projects his voice powerfully and convincingly without traces of helium. But more than that is the absence of the stutter-stop. His multi-syllable rhymes are stretched out over the beat like a gag over a mouth. The interneal rhyme schemes keep ticking as if they're keeping time. On "The Way I Am", Eminem's verbal assault just keeps coming and never fucking lets up.

And it's not just the new powerhouse delivery, it's also how the song is mapped out. When it comes time for him to take a breath his voice smartly echoes in the background. As a result, from when we first hear his voice to the last, there is not a bar on this track (save the chorus) where we are allowed any break from the onslaught of Eminem. Even when he needs to pause, his voice comes back in to sucker punch us.

It's subtle but it works, and it's Em's most successfully angry track. Unlike his scathing Benzino diss tracks or even on the devastating "Kim", on "The Way I Am," Em's anger isn't conveyed just by the disgusting stuff he's saying or how loudly -- it's how he's saying them and how he constructs something bigger out of it.

Posted by Posted by Scene -- at 7:34 PM
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RIP Tony Silver

4.2.08




Filmmaker Tony Silver passed away over the weekend. He had long been suffering from a brain condition.

Silver was the co-director (with Henry Chalfant) of Style Wars (1983), one of my personal all-time favourite films.

A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of working as a programming director on a hip-hop film festival. Style Wars was our closing night gala and seeing the crowd turnout for that film was one of my proudest moments.

I won't go so far as to say I knew or even met the man, but in our few email correspondances I geeked out knowing I was communicating with one of the legends of the culture. With Style Wars, Silver forever etched his name on the walls of hip-hop, and he did it with flourish. It was an honour to see his name pop up in my inbox.

I don't know enough about his personal life to write a proper obit, but like the subjects he trained his lens on, Silver's work does the talking for him. Here's what I wrote in our festival program introduction:

...the hip-hop film scene is all encompassing, vibrant and vital. More than merely recounting the story of hip-hop, these films, through narrative and cinematic style, embody the verve of the hip-hop aesthetic: confrontational, reflective, visceral, and full of vision and imagination...


I wrote that about hip-hop films in general but it's a good indication of how much I love Style Wars, which was, and is, my favourite of them all. I urge everyone to check it out, either again or for the first time. You won't be disappointed.

Watch Style Wars
Buy your own copy of Style Wars

Posted by Posted by Scene -- at 12:50 AM
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