Film Review--Paris Is Burning

Jennie Livingstone’s Paris Is Burning is a documentary made in 1990 that explores the little known and unexplored culture of black drag queens and transvestites in New York City at the end of the 1980s. At the time it was created, this type of behavior was seen as subversive by the mainstream and not much was done to fully understand it.

The narrative is centered around the Ball, a celebrated event in the underground world of drag. The Ball is essentially a runway for the different participants to walk down, showing off their talent and “realness” when it comes to being femme. The one with the best outfit, look, walk, and personality that fits the category the best wins a trophy and gains a certain high status within the community. Interviews with the house mothers (a house is essentially a nonviolent streetgang where they compete in the Ball) provide an insight into the personal lives of these men as they dress as or are on their way to fully transitioning into women. The director also highlights the differences between those in the older generation and the young “children.”

Livingston received funding for her project from the National Endowment for the Arts and kept the details to a select few to avoid controversy. After it was released, it was hailed by some as groundbreaking and by others, particularly black scholars, who referred to it as a source of entertainment for white people. Regardless of the cultural criticism, it still remains relevant to this day and is one of the few films to infiltrate this subject matter.

Album Review--Dowsing's All I Could Find Was You

Chicago has seen many great bands come and go, and hopefully the newly formed foursome Dowsing is here to stay (at least for a while). When a group of college friends come together to play music and have fun, their passion and excitement for their project definitely shows.

Dowsing formed in late 2010 and by mid-2011, they had already signed onto Count Your Lucky Stars Records and released their debut EP, All I Could Find Was You. This six song release will take you back to your old days of innocence, being young and stupid, falling in and out of love, and learning valuable lessons. When you listen to this record, all you will want to do it just turn it up, forget everything, and sing as loud as you can. In fact, their songs welcome this result—more than half of them have significant parts dedicated to chorus chants and repetitive, nostalgic phrases with words and subject matter that everybody can relate to.

Dowsing’s music can mostly be compared to that of The Promise Ring, but they still create a new sound of their own. It can best be described as subdued melodic pop punk paired with rough vocals. If you’re in a mood to just have fun, be yourself, and jam out, Dowsing is a must-listen.

Album Review--Bloc Party's Silent Alarm

Silent Alarm, Bloc Party’s debut album, was released in 2005 by Witchita Recordings and was well-received internationally by critics and new fans alike. The British foursome proved early on in their career that they could blend genres, create a new type of experimental sound, and still somehow manage to appeal a variety of people.

The album teems with rhythm and steady upbeat tempos that are hard to stop listening to. The songs manage to sound thoughtful and pensive but can be danced to without having an overly electronic sound. The consistency of the music throughout the release can either make people love it or hate it. With most CDs, there is usually “that one fast song” and “that one slow song,” but Bloc Party doesn’t try to please varying preferences for one or the other. The fluidity of each song going into the next is enough for someone to be able to either enjoy the album as a cohesive whole, or to perhaps "just listen to that one song."

The lyrics are personal yet ambiguous. Lead vocalist Kele Okereke states that this allows for the listeners to interpret them for themselves and take what they can get out of the songs on their own. They do, however, have underlying political messages that make it very clear as to where they stand on the political spectrum. “Helicopter,” for instance, is widely believed to refer to America’s ex-president George W. Bush when they sing “He doesn’t like chocolate…he’s born a liar, he’ll die a liar...some things will never be different…just like his dad, just like his dad.”

Regardless of where the listeners’ beliefs lie in terms of politics, this album is one that most people can agree upon. Its subtle experimentalism is accessible and will either soothe or energize you.

Web Content Review--Whopple.com

Whoople.com is a blog-style website that features interviews with artists. Run by Anne Marie, a retired media publicist, the goal of Whopple is to shed light on currently practicing artists and to spread awareness of their work publicly. Once an artist is accepted for an interview, Marie claims that she sends out a full press release to all of her art-related connections, made during her years as a publicist. This seems like a win-win situation for both the featured artists and the website, but does the site actually accomplish what it states?

Upon first visiting the site, the lack of professional and aesthetic design skills is apparent. It uses a Wordpress blog interface, which makes the navigation and content accessible and easy to find. However, the choice of color, fonts and background image are reminiscent of build-your-own-websites of the early 2000s such as Yahoo!’s Geocities that spawned a number of hideous user-made web pages. Such small tweaks like those has a huge impact on the viewer. By merely looking at a site, a viewer can tell right away whether or not the website is trustworthy or a sham just by how cohesive the design is. Marie strives for some professionalism, but Whopple’s credibility can easily be upgraded by hiring a design pro or by using a pre-made layout offered by Wordpress.

The content is only slightly above calibur in relation to the aesthetics. The categories for types of artists are both generally and extremely specific. General categories include labels such as “Digital,” “Mixed Media,” and “Photography.” The other categories wrongfully use art historical terms such as “Impressionistic” and “Surreal.” Both of those terms refer to art movements specific to a certain time and place. Although a piece of art can appear to have the visual traits of an Impressionist work, by no means is the artist an Impressionist. The worst category of all is “Contemporary.” Since all of the featured artists work in this day and age, they are all technically “contemporary.” The array and types of categories show Marie’s thoroughly lacking education in art and art history.

Whopple’s whole shtick is artist interviews that provide a deeper insight into how the artist works and creates. However, this too falls short of any depth as you slowly realize that the same generic questions are asked of every single artist who applies to be on the site. “How long have you been an artist, do you make a living off your art, what is your inspiration, what was your first job” and so forth do not highlight the artists as Whopple states. It makes you wonder if these questions were on the application to even be considered for the website. Readers get a peek at the artist without the presence of the interviewer to further engage the interviewee’s answers.

All in all, Whopple is good if all you want is general background information for a lesser-known artist or an introduction to the art world. The immature design and content most likely do not attract dealers and galleries as the website would have one think. One of the few good things about Whopple is that it does not cater to one particular kind of art or viewer and is unbiased in the information provided. This appears to be more so of a personal project for Anna Marie than an actual place for artists to show off themselves to the world.

TV Pilot Review--Breaking Bad

Have you ever found yourself wondering how far you would go in order to make ends meet under certain circumstances? What would those circumstances have to be, exactly, and just how willing are you to put your limits, both mental and physical, to the test? Don’t ponder over your own predicament for too long--if you tune into AMC Sunday evenings at 11 PM, you can forget all about your own problems and instead follow those of Walter White in the debut of the 2008 series Breaking Bad.

The producers waste no time in getting the audience’s attention. Within seconds, you get bombarded with a pair of pants and a shirt flying through the desert air, only to get run over by a speeding RV moments later. This puzzling scene is accompanied by sirens, and is interrupted with shots of a puny older white man wearing only tighty-whities and a gas mask as he tries to gain control of the hurtling vehicle, which by now is tumbling directionless all over New Mexico’s rocky topography. As the car comes to a halt, the man rolls out with a video camera, and, still semi-nude and covered in dust, he proudly stands up and states the following into the camera: “My name is Walter Hartwell White. I live at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87104. To all law enforcement entities, this is not an admission of guilt.”

Now what the f*%^ was that?!

Bryan Cranston stars as Walter White, your below-than-average Joe, living with his family in New Mexico. Cranston is no stranger to playing common suburban dads and is best known for his role as Hal, the father in the Malcolm in the Middle series. When it becomes known that White is a high school chemistry teacher who also works a second shift at a car wash to make a few extra bucks, you definitely begin to wonder how the hell he ends up racing in the desert in underwear and gas masks. While pilot episodes usually present a sort of conflict that sets the foundation for the rest of the series, it is rare for the main character to undergo such a drastic personality change to this degree in under 45 minutes.

After the stunning opening sequence, the show takes a break from all the action and brings you back three weeks earlier to the scene of White’s 50^th birthday party, where all the underlying issues slowly begin to unfold. Right away, it is apparent that White has a strained but loving relationship with his pregnant wife, Skylar (Anna Gun), and tries his best to be a good father to his son, Walter Jr. (RJ Mitte), who has cerebral palsy. He is unhappy with his life, and yet he can’t seem to really do anything about it until he is randomly reacquainted with an old deadbeat student of his, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul). They strike up an odd friendship to say the least, and things only get stranger from there.

Breaking Bad chronicles an over-the-top middle life crisis of a man desperate to grasp hold of something new in his mundane life. The show explores White’s breaking point and how he handles his financial troubles in a manner that relates with many viewers. The program presents many serious issues and falls under the category of  “drama,” but with the ridiculousness of some of its contents, it’s difficult to say whether or not producer Vince Gilligan (of X-Files fame) intended for it to be more of a comedy.

Walter White’s life became so unbearable that even he had to step back and revisit who he is as a person as well as his moral standing. How far will he go in order to feel alive again? This series appears to be one with a long over-arching narrative so unless you have plenty of time to dive into a new TV show, avoid at all costs because you will get sucked in and you won’t be able to break away.