by Paul Rader
Artwork of the Day: Finders Keepers (by Paul Rader)
Monthly Archives: January 2019
Music Video of the Day: Lucky by Britney Spears (2000, dir by Dave Meyers)
Britney Spears wins an Academy Award!
Okay, it’ll probably never happen. I mean, I’ve watched Crossroads more times than I care to admit but even I have to admit that Britney is a better singer than actress. That said, we’ll always have the music video for Lucky, in which Britney does win an Oscar. Well, actually, Britney plays an actress named Lucky who wins an Oscar but, even before the tabloids did their thing, it was obvious that Lucky and Britney were one in the same. With the benefit of hindsight, there’s a poignant subtext to this song and this video. Lucky was the first video that Britney did that centered around the struggle to balance fame with happiness. It would not be the last.
Lucky was the second single to be released off of Oops! …. I Did It Again and it’s hard not to feel that both the song and the video were designed to let us know that, regardless of what we may have heard, Britney wasn’t always playing with hearts and getting lost in the game. Much as how Sometimes was meant to counterbalance the more exuberant ….Baby One More Time, Lucky seems to be saying, “There’s more to Britney than what you’re reading in the tabloids!”
This video was directed by Dave Meyers, who has directed videos for …. well, just looking at his credits, it seems like he’s directed videos for almost everyone. Kid Rock, Master P, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, Jennifer Lopez, P!nk, Imagine Dragons, the fucking Dave Matthews Band …. he’s worked with them all. In fact, he directed that video for Katy Perry’s Fireworks. (Remember how sick we eventually all got of hearing that song? Seriously, all through 2010, I dreaded watching any sort of “inspiring” video because I knew Fireworks would be played at some point.) Anyway, Meyers has worked with Britney a few more times, directing the videos for Boys, Outrageous, and Radar.
Enjoy!
“Things Go Wrong” #1 Gets Plenty Right
This was a tough one — and I mean that in the best, most complimentary sense possible. But first the basics :
Toronto-based cartoonist Jason Bradshaw has garnered something of a small but dedicated following for his self-published ‘zine Bore, but it’s been damn tough to get ahold of copies of it on this side of the border — so in order to ameliorate this dearth of all things Bradshaw in the US, Robyn Chapman of The Tiny Report renown has taken it upon herself to publish a trilogy of his previously-issued minis under the new title of Things Go Wrong, the first issue of which was recently released under the auspices of her Paper Rocket Minicomics imprint. That’s the background. That’s easy. Now for the hard part.
And yeah, Things Go Wrong isn’t just a hard comic to get through, it’s a very hard comic to get…
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Diamond Among the Coal: Bela Lugosi in BOWERY AT MIDNIGHT (Monogram 1942)
I’ve written about Bela Lugosi’s infamous ‘Monogram 9’ before, those ultra-cheap spectacles produced by the equally ultra-cheap Sam Katzman for low-budget Monogram Pictures. These films are all Grade Z schlock, redeemed only by Lugosi’s presence, giving his all no matter how ludicrous the scripts or cardboard the sets. BOWERY AT MIDNIGHT is a cut above; still schlock, but the pulpy premise is different from the rest, and Bela gives what’s probably his best performance out of the whole trashy bunch.
Lugosi plays kindly Karl Wagner, a benevolent soul who runs the Friendly Mission down on the Bowery. But wait – it’s all a front for recruiting down-on-their-luck criminals into Wagner’s gang of thieves. And when he’s done with them, he bumps them off and gives the corpses to ‘Doc’, a dope fiend ex-medico who uses the bodies for his own nefarious purposes!
But wait again! Wagner’s not really Wagner, he’s…
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Song of the Day: Paradise Lost (by Gain)
The latest Song of the Day: K-Pop Edition is not just borderline NSFW, but should also piss off the very religious. From the video’s dark and very sexual imagery and choreography to it’s reinterpretation of some long-standing Biblical storytelling, Brown Eyed Girls’ member known as Gain released the song “Paradise Lost” from her 2015 solo album.
The song’s release had the usual fanfare but also reconfirmed her as one of K-Pop’s longstanding artist who pushed the boundaries of the very rigid and structured K-Pop industry where talent is trained and honed and controlled by untold numbers of corporate handlers.
“Paradise Lost” is a 4 minute-plus tour de force of a video that presents Gain in the role of Eve both while in the Garden of Eden and also after her expulsion from “paradise.” Whether it’s the elaborate satin and lace white wedding dress that obscures and hints at Eve’s repressed sexuality down to the black and white sequence where Gain is not just Even after her expulsion, but moving like the snake who tempted her and Adam to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.
While some will just focus on Gain’s sultry and smoldering beauty and the video’s sinuous and sexualized choreography, when the lyrics of the song and Gain’s powerful and emotionally devastating performance gets factored in the song and video become one of K-Pop’s great masterpieces that even the Western music world hasn’t seen since the days when Madonna experimented and explored her sexuality through her music and her videos in the early 1990’s.
So, come and take a seat and watch for the taboo thrill of the NSFW video, but stay for the message in the song and learn why sometimes it’s the non-believers who truly understands the true meaning behind the things we consider Biblical and sacred.
Artwork of the Day: Portrait of a Mobster (by Jerry Allison)
by Jerry Allison
Music Video of the Day: Oops! …. I Did It Again, covered by Nouveau Lounge (2018, dir by ????)
Today is National Bootlegger Day!
I know that because I use a site called CheckiDay, which is a really fun site that I recommend to everyone. Now, I’m not sure who exactly decided that today was National Bootlegger Day or why they decided that it should be on this particular date but, ultimately, the why isn’t important. What’s important is that the day just is.
Of course, when we think about bootleggers, we think about the 1920s and Al Capone ruling the streets of Chicago while Zelda danced and F. Scott wrote. The 1920s, which is one of my favorite decades, was a wild time, largely due to the fact that prohibition was the law of the land. I mean, just try to imagine it. Having survived both World War I and the Spanish Flu, Americans were told that they couldn’t even have a drink to celebrate. I mean, I don’t even like alcohol but I can definitely understand why that would piss people off. Bootleggers worked outside of the law and became folk heroes to a frustrated nation. Prohibition may have been passed to for reasons of health and morality but all it really did was show many Americans that sometimes it pays to defy the government.
Of course, there’s other reasons why I love the 1920s. It’s not just the bootleggers. There was also the music and the dancing and the fashions and the fact that we had three great Presidents in a row. (I know some of y’all are going to debate me on that but we’ll have to get into it later. Warren, Calvin, and Herbert for the win!, regardless of what Upton Sinclair may have had to say.) It was just a great decade.
And speaking of that decade, check out today’s music video of the day. This is a cover of Oops! …. I Did It Again, re-imagined as a vintage, 1920s song. The song is performed by a British band called Nouveau Lounge. (Singing is Amanda Davis.) This is a perfect video for National Bootlegger Day, don’t you think?
Now, if you want to know more about Nouveau Lounge, check out their Facebook and their Instagram. And definitely check out some more of their videos on YouTube.
(And if you want to learn more about prohibition, check out Daniel Okrent’s history of the era, Last Call!)
Enjoy!
Here’s A Teaser For Something That Might Be Ghostbusters 3
So, earlier today, Twitter was all abuzz because of a minute-long teaser for a film that won’t be coming out until 2020. That title of that film …. well, actually, it doesn’t have an “official” title yet but, for now, people are just calling it Ghostbusters 3.
That’s right. After all the controversy and drama that we went through with the last attempt to revive (or reboot, depending on which side you were on) the Ghostbusters franchise, it is happening again. Except this time, according to Entertainment Weekly, it appears that the new film is going to be a “direct sequel” to the first two Ghostbusters films and it’s going to be directed by Jason Reitman. Jason Reitman, of course, is the son of Ivan Reitman. He’s also a director who, after his last few films, could really use another hit.
(Apparently, audiences in 2018 really weren’t interested in watching a movie about a forgotten 1988 presidential campaign. Who would have guessed?)
The teaser itself is pretty simple. There’s a storm. There’s a barn. There’s an old vehicle with a Ghostbusters logo. Here’s what is not in the teaser. First off, there’s no sign of the cast of the 2016 reboot, which I guess will make the YouTube commentariat happy. There’s also no sign of Bill Murray, Dan Ayrkroyd, or even Ernie Hudson. In the past, Bill Murray has said that he wasn’t interested in doing a third Ghostbusters films and, considering that Bill Murray pretty much does whatever he wants, you have to kind of wonder if he’ll actually come back or if maybe Ghostbusters 3 is just going to be Dan Aykroyd teaching his grandson (probably played by Pete Davidson) how to hunt and trap ghosts.
One of the many theories on twitter is that the film will bring the two sets of Ghostbusters together, which I assume means that we’ll get hilarious scenes of Aykroyd and Melissa McCarthy teaming up to complain about Chinese food. To be honest, though, a crossover is not really that bad of an idea and it certainly would be fun to watch people’s heads explode as a result. In fact, if this new Ghostbusters film is anything like the last Ghostbusters film, watching people’s heads explode will probably be more fun than actually watching the film itself.
(For his part, Ivan Reitman told EW that this film would be a “passing of the torch,” which could either refer to a new group of Ghostbusters or maybe just the fact that Ivan’s giving his son a job.)
In other words, who knows!?
But here’s the teaser.
Artwork of the Day: Her Soul Went First (Unknown Artist)
Unknown Artist
Music Video of the Day: From the Bottom of My Broken Heart by Britney Spears (1999, dir by Gregory Dark)
Welcome to Cedar Springs Garden!
It’s a nice little town, somewhere down south. It’s a place where you can spend the day swinging back and forth on a tire swing and where you and your boyfriend can chastely spend the night sitting on the back of a billboard. It’s also the setting for the music video of Britney Spears’s From The Bottom Of My Broken Heart.
From The Bottom Of My Broken Heart was the last single to be released from Britney’s debut album and I have to admit that, when I watch it today, I have mixed feelings about this video. On the one hand, the song showed, in its own simplistic way, that Britney was a singer who was capable of delivering emotional content. On the other hand, there’s a soft-focus blandness to the video that kind of reminds you of why it took critics a while to take Britney seriously as a performer. Some of the problem is that the guy that Britney’s singing about doesn’t really seem like he’s worth all the drama. The other problem is that the video itself could have just as easily been set in the 1950s as opposed to the start of the 21st century. This is the safe, non-threatening Britney, as opposed to the Britney who, in her next big hit, would joyously and triumphantly celebrate getting “lost in the game.”
For such an inoffensive music video, From the Bottom of My Broken Heart was surprisingly controversial when it was released. That’s because was directed by Gregory Dark. It’s one of the many videos that have been directed by Mr. Dark and, in fact, one could argue that, in the 1990s and the early aughts, he was one of the best video directors around. However, before he directed music videos, Gregory Dark directed not only hardcore adult films but also several erotic thrillers. Even though, by the time that this video came out, Dark was no longer making adult features, it was argued by some critics that Dark directing this video was evidence that Britney was an unwholesome influence. That’s especially hilarious when you consider that this is probably one of the most wholesome videos in which Britney Spears ever appeared.
Enjoy!
Through the Shattered Lens 