Quite the extreme reversal from #4 to #5 but then my taste in music between junior high and high school was pretty much all over the place. I could be listening to the latest teeny bopper, LAtin-freestyle dance track one month then I’m picking up that hard rock or metal song that I knew my parents would never approve of (especially my mom).
Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” was one such song though I was surprised that my Dad actually liked it as much as I did. My first memory of ever hearing “Welcome to the Jungle” was watching the latest and last Dirty Harry film with my dad. It was The Dead Pool and this song was used as a sort of soundtrack in the fake horror film in the film. I’m not sure if my dad liked the song because it was in a Dirty Harry flick or he just liked it because he grew up in the 60’s and 70’s listening to hard rock.
I don’t think my dad was too keen on the Guns N’ Roses look though. Even then he knew the hair metal, glam look was no bueno.
So, “Welcome to the Jungle” was my initial introduction to Guns N’ Roses and pretty much opened up my ears to a whole new spectrum of music. I never abandoned the R&B, dance pop and freestyle songs from junior high and even years later, but hard rock and metal soon joined the LP (and later CD) rotation.
This is the song that ushered me from junior high and straight into high school. Again, much of the music that kids my of my age in 1986 just fell in love with The Jets’ ballad “You Got It All”.
There was something very earnest about this song even for a kid. There’s nothing cynical about the message in the lyrics and it helps that the group’s lead vocalist, Elizabeth Wolfgramm, just killed it. Here’s the kicker….Elizabeth was just 12-years old when she sang this song with the rest of the group (literally her brothers and sisters). Even 28 years since having first heard of this song it still resonates in this cynical man’s heart.
“You Got It All” definitely brings back fond memories of being a kid and just entering those teenage years when anything was possible. I don’t want to be that cliched old man who rails against the music of today’s youth, but one must admit that this song from The Jets has more heart and soul than most of what kids these days are listening to.
Now, you kids get off my porch while I listen to my stories!
The Minions are back and all is right with the world. What better way to decompress from a month full of horror and everything horror than to get back to our helpful, little yellow henchmen.
Minions stars Stuart, Kevin and little Bob. They go on a journey in search of the ultimate master villain to pledge their race’s allegiance to. We’ll find out in July 10, 2015 if their search is one of success.
This question was brought up by a song which debut during my freshman year in high school. That song was Taylor Dayne’s “Tell It to My Heart”. A question that probably still perplexes teens today as it did over twenty years ago.
Dayne was part of the freestyle and dance pop wave that was hitting the U.S. during the mid-80’s. Their songs was easy to digest, made one’s feet start a-tappin’ and one couldn’t help but want to go out and start dancing. Well, I wasn’t one of them but I still love this song. Dancing was the sort of activity that I wasn’t so keen on during my first two years in high school. Hell, it’s still not something I go out of my way to do, but I’m not as gun shy when at an event where dancing is a possibility.
I think what attracted me to this song was the video itself. Taylor Dayne made for a fine figure of a woman and she definitely came off a quite fierce in this song’s video. It might be due to the huge hair plus the bangs crimped up, but this video and Dayne still works even two decades removed from seeing it for the first time.
Though I will say that the acid-wash jeans jacket and pants her back-up dancers wear don’t quite make the cut. I’m so glad I never owned a pair even when they were “popular” back in the day.
Season 5 of The Walking Dead has been on such a hot streak to begin the new season that it was bound to have a bit of a drop off sooner rather than later. Even the best shows needs to slow things down after sprinting right out of the gate. Tonight saw the show finally answer the question: Who took Beth?
“Slabtown” answers this question by dedicating an entire episode to it, but also focusing the entire episode on Beth herself. This is a character who has outlived it’s comic book counterpart and who had become a punching bag for fans and detractors alike. Beth Greene has been called worthless and whose only skill seems to be taking care of Lil’ Asskicker and singing for the group. Her character was one example of why the show’s detractors have called the writing on The Walking Dead one of it’s biggest flaws. Yet, the writers since Scott M. Gimple took over as showrunner seem to have found something salvageable about the youngest Greene.
Beth Greene’s character reclamation began all the way back in Season 4 where she began to show signs of understanding the rules which now govern the new world they all live in. When her new boyfriend was killed off in the last season’s premiere episode her reaction was to shrug it off and just remember the good times she had with him. This new found attitude would continue throughout season 4 yet Beth never sacrificed her hold on her humanity even as she finally adjusted to the new world she found herself in. It helped that she found a sort of big brother-like protector in Daryl who received emotional support from Beth as payment for teaching her how to better survive.
Now with tonight’s episode the initial reaction by most would be to groan and wonder if and when Daryl and Carol will come in with guns blazing to rescue her from what looks like a very bad situation. People wouldn’t be too harsh for thinking such a thing, but Gimple and his writers know that this was an opportunity to continue building up this new Beth Greene. Just as season 4 saw the emergence of Queen Badass Carol Peletier this season could further see Beth raise up her game and show everyone that she’s not useless and could more than take care of herself even when separated from everyone else.
It didn’t take long for Beth to realize that Officer Dawn and Doctor Edwards were more than just helpful faces. Dawn never even gives Beth a chance to think that her new situation was better than the one she left. Grady Memorial looked safe enough, but the “greater good” way that Dawn ran things was nothing more than a thin veneer over something that the Governor and last season’s Joe would approve of. In a move that harkens back to how drunks and poor people were shanghaied into indentured servitude on ships a couple hundred years ago, Dawn has built herself up a dictatorship all in the name of preserving civilization. She wanted to keep things as organized and law-abiding until rescue comes from the government and things go back to normal.
Beth saw right through this charade while Officer Dawn and Doctor Edwards fail to notice that the young, pretty thing in front of them has survived on the outside and grown to become a hardened fighter in her own right. She’s learned from the best (Rick, Daryl, Maggie and, to a certain extent, even from Carl himself) and throughout the episode we could see the wheels in her head turning, turning for a way to get herself out and back out in the world where she knew she had a better chance of surviving.
While the episode still slowed things down a tad too much in the beginning to set-up the final minutes, they weren’t as painful as similar slowdowns as in the past. We got to learn who at the same time as Beth did that her new protectors were bad news (some even quite open with the rapey angle) and that others also wanted out. While it would’ve been great to see the show make more use out of guest-star Keisha Castle-Hughes (will be great to see her on the upcoming season of Game of Thrones) there’s a chance that we might see more of Tyler James Williams’ as Noah who made good on finding a way out.
Is Noah the unseen figure Daryl called out in the end of last week’s episode?
I guess we will have to find out a couple weeks from now as the show now turns to focusing on the Abraham group as they head towards our nation’s capital. Now that we’ve gotten to see Beth prove herself as worthy as the rest (to some degree) of the Rick Grimes Gang, it’s now time to see if the writers have a way to make Abraham, Eugene and Rosita more than just one-dimensional characters to this point and time of the show.
Notes
“Slabtown” was written by Matthew Negrete & Channing Powell and directed by Michael E. Satrazemis.
Nice to see Tyler James Williams of Everybody Hates Chris on the TV once again.
Keisha Castle-Hughes of Whale Rider cameo’s as a ward of Grady Memorial who ends up ending the further rapey adventures of Officer Rapey McRaperton aka Officer Gorman.
Either Rick’s people just have had a lot of practice shooting zombie heads while on the move or Beth has been hiding just how good a shot she really is. She missed just one out of at least 15 shots.
Tonight’s episode was pretty much a whole new cast outside of Beth and until the very end with the appearance of Carol for a few seconds.
For a city that was supposedly bombed out by the government in the height of the zombie outbreak, Atlanta sure looks quite intact as it did in the season premiere. I guess the production designers on this show have never seen footage of German cities truly bombed out during WWII. This is how Atlanta should look.
Talking Dead guests tonight are John Barrowman (Arrow, Torchwood), Ana Gasteyer (SNL, Suburgatory) and Beth Greene herself, Emily Kinney.
Anyone who grew up during the 80’s knows this song. The moment they first heard the song it burrowed it’s way deep inside. Then the music video arrived and we saw the awesomeness of Cameo’s Larry Blackmon. His unique vocal stylings matched only by his personal look. The over-the-top hi-top fade hairstyle right up to the bright red codpiece became as much a part of the group’s identity as their funkadelic sound.
1986’s “Word Up!” became the group’s biggest hit and whether one was a fan of R&B and funk didn’t matter. This was a cool jam for all listeners and some heavy rotation of the video on MTV (yes, Virginia, MTV actually showed music videos back in the day) made sure everyone knew what’s the word.
Cameo definitely helped define what was good about the 80’s.
To much fanfare we finally have the teaser trailer to the latest adventures of Dominic Toretto and his band of misfit drivers.
Now officially titled as Furious 7, the latest film in the franchise goes further away from it’s street racing roots and into the spy thriller and superhero genres it drifted into with Fast Five. Even the title alone sounds like a superhero team straight out of Marvel Comics. It’s almost as if I expect to see Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Daredevil and Elektra plus three other furious heroes fighting the good fight.
The teaser pretty much teases the sort of over-the-top, physics-defying action scenes we’ve come to expect from this franchise. It’s almost as if with each new film they up the ante as to how much universal laws Dom and his crew will break in order to entertain it’s massive fan audience.
Furious 7 is set to ride and die this April 3, 2015.
Lisa Marie has been doing such a great job with her featured theme sets that I think it’s time I tried my hand in doing one.
I’ve been doing themed features but never one that would go day-to-day towards a set goal. I think the easiest one for me to start on would be 27 Days of Old School. When I say “old school” I mean as in jams. These were songs from my youth right up to the mid-90’s. Most on this list tend to be from the 80’s with a few bleeding into the 90’s, but in the end they were songs I grew up listening to. Some will range from straight up R&B to pop to dance and right up to heavy metal.
To start things off what better way to begin and have the number 1 label than what I consider Michael Jackson’s greatest song (and my favorite of his many tracks): 1982’s “Billie Jean” from his second solo album Thriller.
“Billie Jean” is such a great song. Even if one didn’t understand what he was singing about there’s no denying the fact that this song had one of the greatest bass lines running from start to finish. David Williams’ bass line that’s became recognizable to fans of this song both new and old. Whether one was a fan of Michael Jackson or not they know this bass line.
It’s difficult to try and celebrate Halloween without at least remembering the classic John Carpenter film of the same name which help give birth to the slasher horror genre. Halloween has become a staple in my horror watching lists. It joins such other classic horror as the Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Craven’s The Serpent and The Rainbow.
Filmed on a tiny budget of $325,000 and released in 1978, Halloween would introduce to the film world one of it’s most iconic horror figures in the Michale Myers. The film’s opening would become famous in it’s own right as it didn’t just give us a look into Michael Myers backstory, but make the film audience become almost active participant in the murder that introduced us to our killer.
This extended introduction scene let’s the audience see through Michael Myers’ eyes as he stalks through the house towards his sister’s room where he commits his first murder. This point of view through the eye holes of Michael’s mask would be repeated several times throughout the film.
“Four Walls and a Roof” was a surprising episode as it unfolded not because of the payoff in the end, but how it further signifies the changes in how the show’s writers have been handling the show’s pacing. This was a major development considering the criticism it’s detractors (and some fans) have had about the series.
In seasons past, The Walking Dead always had major issues with it’s pacing. Despite what some have been saying the show does have some great episodes, but we do get several slow and wheel-spinning episodes following it up. Almost as if the writers were trying to find a way to help the audience decompress after a very tense, action-packed and/or horrific episode. It wasn’t such a major issue during it’s premiere season which was only six episodes long, but as each season got longer there came a time when too obvious filler episodes were aired that sucked the momentum from the series.
Even some of the show’s most strident supporters have complained about the necessity for extending certain story-arcs when it was obvious that they could’ve been handled and resolved in just a handful. Tonight’s episode was such a surprise in that it resolved a story-arc that was a major one in the comics in so short a time. Yet, despite having condensed the “Hunters” storyline from the comics into just three episodes they still kept the impact that it’s much longer comic book version had on readers.
The episode itself begins pretty much right after last week’s episode. It’s a cold opening that’s eerily done with images of zombies and the Terminans eating meat interspersed to make the two groups indistinguishable. Calling themselves Hunters, Gareth and his bunch were still having a moonlit dinner with Bob’s left leg as the main course. Of course, Gareth continues to monologue his way through the cold opening as if he just can’t help do so now that he has such a captive audience in Bob. One could almost sense that his own people were probably sick of hearing him talk through dinner, but were more afraid of him to say so. Gareth’s moment gets a major interruption as Bob, in a fit of crazed laughter, finally tells them a secret of why he was out all alone in the end of the previous episode. Bob didn’t make it out of the flooded food bank unscathed and the festering bite on his right shoulder was evidence enough for Gareth and his Hunters to lose their appetite.
One thing that could easily have derailed tonight’s episode was to spend too much time trying to figure out what happened to Bob and if Father Gabriel was involved in some fashion. Even after last week’s revelation that the people who have been stalking Rick and his people was Gareth and his small band of Hunters there was still theories that Father Gabriel might have been involved in some way. Gabriel had survived this long without having to deal with the zombies and other survivors looking for sanctuary. Someone must’ve helped or made a deal to spare him and Gareth looked like someone pragmatic enough to come up with a plan and deal to keep Gabriel stocked with food and not bothered as long as he pointed some people towards Terminus.
The fact that we get to the bottom of Gabriel secret and shame in the very first ten minutes of the episode was a nice change in how the show has been treating major personal secrets. The expectation that the show would keep Gabriel’s secret for more than two episodes was a given, but to have it resolved in swift fashion showed that Scott M. Gimple and his stable of writers do understand that pacing on the show has been an issue and they’re trying to fix that.
To top Gabriel’s secret now out we also get another surprise in Bob being brought back by Gareth and his people to just outside the church. The plan by Gareth to traumatize and put Rick and his people back on their heels actually was a sound plan, but he failed to factor in the fact that this band of survivors was not the type he and the Terminans have had to deal with since their fall into the darkside.
Rick might be a leader who has had some bouts of indecisiveness and more than just a tad bit of self-loathing which made him a liability, but his dedication to keeping his family (which now includes those he has added since Atlanta) alive throughout this hellish new world has seen him go from an idealistic man of the law to one who now understood that pragmatism and controlled brutality was now the coin of the land. We saw the final nail in the peacemaker Rick begin to recede in the back of his mind when the Governor returned in the mid-season finale of season 4 and saw Hershel killed and his prison haven destroyed and his people scattered.
Throughout the series there has always been the main question of does someone get to keep their humanity in a world where it has no room for it if one was to survive. It’s a question that’s been answered in one form or another whenever Rick and his people come across other survivors who have discarded their humanity and done evil things to survive. Some have become haunted by their acts while others have embraced them. Rick has become the barometer by which we judge our band of survivors. He’s taken it upon his shoulders to be the one that makes the hard decisions.
He’s always tried to deny the role of leadership and just want to be there for his son and daughter, but we’ve come to realize through his own personal revelations that people would always look to him as their leader whether he wants them to or not. Others see it in him and even Gareth, right up to the end, sees that this was a man who has done terrible things to survive this long to save his people. Where the difference lies between Rick and Gareth (and the Governor and Joe in past encounters) is that Rick still strives to keep some hold on his personal moral code. He might be setting aside his humanity to get the job done, but he does it as a necessary evil and always looking back to make sure that his humanity still waits for him once the task was done.
Tonight’s episode was a perfect example of Rick finally accepting his role as group leader and doing what must be done to keep everyone safe.We’ve only seen glimpses of this through the first four seasons of the show and it’s refreshing to finally see the writers stop waffling about Rick should continue to torment himself about doing the right thing.
Does this put him on the same path which tainted the Governor, Joe and Gareth?
There’s a good chance that it could, but as we’ve seen Rick has something those other men never had to keep him from falling to the darkside. Rick has good people around him to offer friendship and moral advice. They understand that Rick has taken on much to keep them alive and it’s their job to help him keep his humanity intact once the nightmare ends.
Bob might be gone from the group, but just like Hershel before him, his very optimism in a world that rewards nihilism and brutality has left a mark on everyone. His parting words to Rick showed that Rick still remains a good man despite doing things that Gabriel and others would call evil.
The Walking Dead has had it’s ups and downs since it’s first season and I don’t think a barreling first three episodes of this new season could solve all the problems it has had. But it’s encouraging to see that the producers and writers haven’t been tone deaf to the complaints about the show’s storytelling and its work on making the characters believable and complex. Even with its ridiculous ratings with each new episode they do understand there’s room for massive improvement and if what we’ve been witness to this early in the fifth season then The Walking Dead might just have it’s best days still to come.
Notes
“Four Walls and a Roof” was written by Angela Kand and Corey Reed and directed by Jeffrey F. January.
Like how even the smallest details in this young season has become a major factor. An example was Glenn finding the three suppressors in the looted gun store in the previous episode feeling like some throwaway moment, but it sure made a difference in tonight’s episode.
It looks like there might be further issues between Rick and Abraham if tonight’s episode was any indication.
One of the best scenes in tonight’s episode happens in the end as Michonne glances down at the carnage they heaped on the Terminans and notices that one of them was carrying her katana. The look on her face she drew it out was priceless. She’s whole once more despite telling Rick last week that she didn’t miss it.
Tyreese and Glenn look to be the frontrunners on who should be taking on the role of moral center since Hershel left the group midway through last season.
Surprising how Larry Gilliard, Jr. wasn’t a guest in tonight’s Talking Dead episode.
Talking Dead guests tonight are Slash (Guns ‘N Roses, Velvet Revolver), Mary Lynn Rajskub (24, Californication) and Gareth himself, Andrew J. West.
Through the Shattered Lens 