the_town_cryer

Rock Movie is a recurring column looking at the forays of musicians into the world of acting, and music released by actors. Do they work? What do they reveal about the artists in question? Would anyone give a toss if they weren’t already famous?

The tagline for Moonwalker declares it to be “A Movie Like No Other!” Unlike most vague, seemingly unprovable taglines, this one is more or less spot on: you’d be hard pressed to find another movie more batshit crazy than this. It is part musical retrospective, part wide eyed adventure, part spectacular vanity project, part churlish swipe at his critics – and 100% nutso. Basically it’s Michael Jackson in celluloid form. 

The opening shows MJ performing “Man in The Mirror” live, with footage of starving children and historical figures edited in amidst the mass hysteria of an MJ concert. If there’s one thing that has always bothered me about Michael’s “Heal the world” thing is that it always seemed a little fuzzy and disconnected from reality – it’s all very well to throw together some footage of unbearable suffering, do some totally sweet dance moves, and then rock the Jesus pose, but does it actually make the world any better? But I didn’t feel that way this time around. After he finished singing, he asked me to ‘make the change’, stretched out both arms and looked to the sky. I was ready to find out what that change was, and by God, I was totally going make it.

Then the film segues into a breathless montage of every hit song that MJ had been involved with up until that point, both solo and with the Jackson 5. This section is inarguably fantastic and builds up a great well of goodwill that the film will need later on. Behold:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f7cxG5FJSM

 Later in the film, whenever I asked myself ‘Why am I watching this schmaltzy, overblown love letter to Michael Jackson from Michael Jackson?’ The sequence above would answer: “Because he wrote and performed a string of singles almost unparalleled in popular music and at any second he might create some kind of new super-rad dance move. This is a man who takes on a robot in a dance contest, chooses to do the robot and still wins. That is why you're still watching.”

Then comes ‘Badder’, the “Bad” Video clip as though it were directed by Anne Geddes rather than Martin Scorsese. This is the point where the film starts to wobble – sure it’s kind of sweet watching a bunch of little kids dressed as 80’s toughs, but that’s all it has going for it, and after three minutes, isn’t particularly funny or entertaining. Like a lot of the film, it seems to be an idea that got in because no one was there saying ‘no’.

 The next chunk is ‘Speed Demon’, perhaps the saddest and most illuminating part of the film.

 As light-hearted as it tries to be, the sequence comes across as bitter and paranoid. Jackson was barely 30 when Moonwalker came out, but he was already an industry vet of 24 years. Given the scrutiny he was constantly under, is it any wonder that the fans in this section are stupid, grotesque and horrifying? Or that the paparazzi is portrayed as a great seething insect with cameras for eyes? The ten minutes devoted to Speed Demon, and  the following video, ‘Leave me alone’ (not coincidentally the two weakest songs in the film) are the bloated, sour, low point of the movie.And then:

Shit goes CRAZY.



Smooth Criminal can charitably be called the ‘narrative section’ of the film. It centres around the adventures of Michael and 3 adorable little street moppets, including Sean Lennon, son of the musician and noted car company rep John. The gang have recently stumbled upon the underground drug production lair of Frank Lideo (Joe Pesci), a complicated and nuanced villain whose plan involves ‘stopping children praying in schools’ and ‘having every kid in the world taking drugs because of me’. Oh Frank, we may never truly grasp your dark heart.

Pesci as Lideo squawks his way through the film like a ranting Tommy Devito turned up to eleven. Yes, that’s every bit as irritating as it sounds. Lideo and his army of henchman hunt MJ through the Gotham-like city where the film takes place. Unfortunately for Lideo, ‘Good Fellas’ is still a couple of years away, so he doesn’t realise that there are several easier, quieter, less ‘drawing attention to criminal shit’ ways of offing a witness than quite literally sending an army to his house. Also hampering Lideo’s quest to make the world a little less ‘Michael Jacksonagical™’ is that MJ has a lucky star which appears whenever he needs it. Most people would assume a lucky star is a lazy deus ex machina that causes some fortuitous event that allows our protagonist to escape, but not in this case. In this case it’s just a ‘power to do anything in the world’ star. So this happens:
 

After using his new found car-like ability to drive around really fast on 4 wheels to escape, Jackson returns to human form (or at least, you know, Michael Jackson form) and provides us with the most stirring and iconic moment of the film, the smooth criminal dance sequence.

To re-cap, in case you don’t have the ten minutes spare to watch the whole thing – Jackson wanders around the club starting fights, hitting on women and just kind of acting like a dick. Then there’s that freakyness when the music stop, the dancing stops, and every one just sort of stands around shouting and moaning for a bit. Then all is forgiven when the song kicks back in and Jackson and Co pull out the kind of heart stoppingly rad dance move that kept you watching in the first place:

 
“But...I mean…how…?”

From this point on the film drags towards a conclusion that would be predictable, if it wasn’t executed in such a shit-on-a-salad insane way. While the kids watch Michael tear it up, Katie, the young blond girl, is kidnapped by Lideo.

So upon infiltrating Lideo’s base, finding himself surrounded by bad bastard henchmen, and faced with the prospect of Lideo injecting Katie with some non descript but presumably nasty and not at all fun drugs, another lucky star turns Michael into a robot. This robot:

So, being a peace loving, child-like kinda guy, MJ just give Lideo a chinese burn and rocket mans himself the hell out of there with the kids in tow, right? Well, not exactly – he more just opens his jaws and screams and screams until all the henchman’s heads explode. Why yes, It is completely fucking nightmarish, thanks for asking. From there, Michael upgrades to a space ship, blows the holy living fuck out of Lideo and then disappears forever(.) or does he(?) no he doesn’t(,) he comes back pretty soon.

The film ends with a fairly moribund cover of ‘Come Together’ which doesn’t really add or detract anything from the film, it’s just there to give the fans what they probably still want at this point – more Michael Jackson performance footage.

Then the credits role and we are left to reflect on the timeless messages of the film: Michael Jackson is fucking awesome, you shouldn’t inject kids with heroin without their express permission, and of course, that once you’ve been a car, a robot and Michael Jackson, the only place left to go is space ship.

What does it say about the artist?: I’d be interested to see what it revealed about him when it first came out, but certainly there isn’t much in here that we don’t know about now. His gargantuan ego, his need for attention and paradoxically, his desire to spurn it, his weird, possibly incriminating fetishism of children and childhood and of course, his massive planet sized talent.

Does it work?: I’m going to go with yes – sure, it makes basically no sense, but what do you expect? It’s based on a story by Michael Jackson (or, if my theories are correct, based on drawing by Michael Jackson when he was 8) so the fact that it contains MJ quite literally turning into a spaceship should surprise no one. But it’s mostly a great ride, and then of course, there’s the music (which always going to be the saving grace of a project like this) which provides a reminder that whatever you want to say about Jackson’s God complex, the history of popular music may well agree with him.

Firstly, I know the whole 'making fun of chain mail' thing has been done to death, I know this. But sometimes you come across something so awesomely terrible, it seems a shame not to share it.

I found this pasted into the comments on a random facebook groups wall recently, while "researching an upcoming blogpost" (see: Reading strangers profiles while naked and weeping. It's a legitimate research method).
 

Women

10:50am September 25th, 2007

Recently I was flicking through a copy of cosmopolitan in my work lunch room and I came upon an article entitled “Breast flashing: Is it the new feminism?” And, while Obviously nothing screams “i want equality and to be able to define myself on my own terms” like sexily peeling of your t-shirt in front a room of drunken apes or some guy in a band, I couldn’t help but think something must have gone awry…

I guess the question that jumped into my head was when/why did women start hating themselves this much, or at least, when did they start becoming so complicit in being treated this way? I skipped back to the cover (it being slightly bad form to openly ogle a page of topless women at work, even if it is with the sole intention of expressing solidarity with their progressive message) and looked at the other stories - it was all: sex tips to please your man, how to get that glam job through nothing but fabolousness, why you should make out with your hot friends (hint, your man would like it), how to get a figure that gets you noticed. the handbag that will make you whole etc etc - I am paraphrasing slightly, but those are genuinely the ideas being expressed - a lesson in submissiveness posing as sexy empowerment.

Aren’t we supposed to have left that era behind?

 Mourning Gervais (or: How the second series of Extras and that which followed it broke my heart)

8:40am September 27th, 2007

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ia__1d_rM&feature=PlayList&p=C5B2897AE7DD46F6&index=0&playnext=1

I was going to make today’s post about how much peter hellier sucks (and oh christ oh lordy does he suck...) but I found, to my delight/slight annoyance that the clip I was going to use to illistrate my point (Helliers craptacular appearance on ‘thank god you’re here’*) isn’t available on youtube, and , fuck, I’m not going to scour the internet just so i can point out that a fat, mildly retarded man isn’t always as funny he should be.

So instead, a much graver sore point for me - the slow, painful erosion of my goodwill towards and love for Ricky Gervais( and to a lesser extent Stephen Merchant).

I love the office like a nutcase - it was hysterical, painfully well observed, wise and insightful. I realised recently that it enaged me emotionally more than any tv show I can think of. I misted up when Brent begs to keep his job at the end of series two, I got a great thrill out of him telling finchy to fuck off and the tension and release of Tim and Dawn getting together in the christmas special was completely genuine and estatic. No matter how often I see the brent dance, or gareth acting like a dick, or tim and dawn flirting I never ever get sick of it. Oh my god do I love that show. And I thought the first series of Extras was superb - the celebs where well intergrated into the storylines and Mercant was fucking brilliant as Andy Millman’s manager.

Gervais became ubiquitous a year or two ago (he did a few amusingly obnoxious cameos for Comic relief, my favourite of which is attached) and that’s where it all went wrong for me - his patchy-at-best stand up, his appearance on several high profile american movies/ shows ( a night at the museum, for your consideration, the simpsons), all extended riffs on Brent, really started to wear thin. Could there have been anything more disapointing than his simpsons starring/writing cameo, something which promised to be, like, the most mindbendingly great thing ever,and turned out to be an utter non event?

So then Extras series two comes along and I’m ready to be won back over. But I’m not. I’m not at all.  Extras 2 is rubbish.

Firstly, in series one, the celeb cameo’s were written into the storyline in a way that was interesting and relevant, as was the way they played around with their public persona - the Ross Kemp/Kate Winslet/Les Dennis episodes wouldn’t have worked without them, they were intergral to what happened in the plot of the episode. Now the Celebrity cameo’s have gotten bigger, the roles they play have gotten smaller - now Chris Martin turns up for two minutes of screentime and leaves. It still makes you smile to see him acting like a jerk, but it’s not great writing.

But their greatest crime was turning Maggie into such a nothing character- in series one, sure she had idiotic tendencies, but she was also warm, caring and capable of insight and wit. She was a real person. Now she’s just flat out retarded, says nothing of any interest, and has the tact of 2 year old. Maggie’s only role is to fuck things up for Andy, no matter how blindingly unrealistic her faux pas are - it’s as though they write an episode thinking ‘right, andy has to get in trouble with his Ex. Let’s just have maggie explicitly tell her private stuff in an enitrely unmotivated fashion.” She has gone from being a character that had plots written to service and develop her further, to a character that exists soley to service the plot, something which would be unforgivable from bad writers, let alone writers as great as Merchant and Gervais.

Last night I saw a preview scene from “Stardust” the latest big budget feature that Gervais has appeared in and I felt the Nadir had been reached. Sharing the screen with Robert De Niro, using all the facial and vocal tics associated with brent, he rolls his eyes and say ‘you’re avin a larf!’ and briefly chuckles. Suddenly Gervais looked an uncomfortable amount like the kind of lazy, one note comedian that he has always loudly claimed to despise.

*Basically,hellier has one joke through the entire sketch, and that joke is ‘ “Boy, improv is hard. They really should’ve hired someone funny“

Hahn’s Low Carb beer Makes sure you know what a goddamn mess your life is.

8:02am October 29th, 2007 |

But still, even I think they’ve kind of put a step wrong with the current tagline for their new low carb beer. On the advertising I’ve seen, below the picture of the frosty bottle is the phrase “At least you’re doing something right”. Like, wow. Way to totally harsh out my buzz, Hahn.  Like, what’s next?  “you might as well drink – what have you got that’s worth being sober for?” or maybe just ‘Your kids don’t love you”

I always thought drinking was supposed to help your forget mistakes and regrets, rather than have the packaging directly call attention to them.