Not Fade Away

Youth for me is often characterized by spontaneity and conviction, tackling the unforeseen head-on, learning to personally adapt to shifting interrelated paradigms and opportunities, struggling to synthesize components of both the contemporary and historical real.

Not that careful planning doesn't also often play a strategic role, it's just that this aspect of youth is much less romantic, not to say that it isn't more durable, and more likely to win consistently when playing cards.

Tough to say which trajectory is more reckless.

And it's obviously relative too, the 27 year old seeming more youthful than someone in their 50s, etcetera, etcetera, wow.

David Chase's Not Fade Away concerns a number of youths and the rock and roll band they form during the '60s, as well as the familial and amorous relations of one of its members. Success is referred to within as the result of 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration, from a variety of socio-economic stances.

The question here is, according to this criteria, is Not Fade Away's exploration of youth a success, and if so, does it interrogate the reckless, planting a forest through the trees?

The dialogue also heavily favours the commercial side of art and it's this domain within which the film operates.

It's very calculated.

Throughout I kept thinking that this is the corporate packaged conception of what should be appealing to suburban youth without going so far as to plausibly alienate their parents, based on composite statistical data.

The only possible artistic moment (I should clarify what I mean by art in a book someday) occurs during a point where the film seems pointless, and you're thinking, good lord, corporate pointlessness, how 21st century!

But then the main couple critiques a film they're watching for its pointlessness, after which things become more bourgeois, and a more traditional plot takes shape.

Perhaps I'm too old to comprehend Not Fade Away's spontaneous conviction, but I am old enough to appreciate the skilful ways in which it condenses multidimensional intergenerational issues into a mildly entertaining fictional synopsis.

Still wasn't enough for me though, and if that 10% inspiration doesn't transmit at least the possibility of spontaneous artistic conviction to the rest of the text's perspiration, I can only state, that if packaged corporate youth is a success, with all its missionary incarnations mathematically corporealized, planned twenty years in advance (note that the Rolling Stones, whom I love, are still being used to classify youth 50 years later), and completely lacking spur of the moment improvisation, it's reckless, and therefore youthful, yet hopelessly banal (the wrong side of The Schwartz).

Gus Van Sant's Promised Land offers an escape from this predicament.

Not that this form is ever going to fade away.

Drank a busch tallboy while writing this.

Rock of Ages

Well, without digging too deeply into the ideologic-socio-political dimensions of Rock of Ages, here's a brief snapshot of what happens.

A beautiful young girl (Julianne Hough as Sherrie Christian) travels from Oklahoma to Los Angeles in the hopes of becoming a singer. It becomes clear early on that the odds are stacked against her but she's fortunate enough to catch the eye of a barback (Diego Boneta as Drew Boley) with similar dreams who finds her a job at the prominent nightclub (The Bourbon Club) where he works.  

In less than a week they've developed a strong emotional bond.

Known, as love.

Legendary demonic alcoholic singer Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) and his band Arsenal are scheduled to play their last collective performance at the Bourbon Club, and the sultry studious astute Constance Stack (Malin Akerman) of Rolling Stone hopes to ask Mr. Jaxx some sharp related critical questions beforehand.

After three or four minutes she's prancing around in her underwear.

She does still publish a vitriolic article later on.

But by the end of the film she's carrying his baby.

Meanwhile, the clueless adulterous Mayor Mike Whitmore's (Bryan Cranston) religious wife Patricia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) hopes to put an end to the Bourbon Club's cult and is crusading against Mr. Jaxx as well.

The only man who ever made her feel like a real woman.

By the end of the film she's back in the audience, hoping Stacee will notice her once again.

Sherrie and Drew break up and she finds a job stripping while he gets stuck in a boy band.

And another monster rock ballad is sung.

I'm not really looking to complicate this film or anything, but it does present politics and feminism as hypocritical meaningless endeavours whose initiatives crumble beneath the seductive gaze of the established subterranean patriarch.

In this case, the political initiatives are invasive and counterproductive but if they function as a foil for such initiatives generally they can be considered belittling and grossly disproportionate (there is no alternative political option presented).

I prefer grassroots music to that manufactured by market based research but it's not as if classic rock isn't alive and well.  

It's nice to see gay characters given a strong masculine structural role within, not in terms of encouraging anti-feminist apolitical activities, but in regards to taking risks in order to establish an integral celebrated entrepreneurial identity.

I can't think of any other things to say besides the fact that the film's soundtrack contains some songs that I like.

Rock of Ages. 

Rollin' along.

Queen of the Damned

It's surprising how subdued Michael Rymer's Queen of the Damned is, considering that it showcases the reawakening of Anne Rice's famous vampire, Lestat (Stuart Townsend), and his subsequent rise to rock and roll superstardom. To its credit, Queen of the Damned doesn't provide formulaic crests and valleys as it unreels its dark and sombre narrative. Instead, it proceeds by introducing shocking scenes in a sedate manner that melancholically mediates the sensational subject matter. Lestat is awake after sleeping for a hundred years and ready to embrace the twentieth century. As his popularity grows and he continues to openly claim to be a vampire, his fellow creatures of the night grow increasingly irate and seek to ensure that he delivers a final performance. Unfortunately for them, Lestat's music awakens another slumbering vampire, the ancient Queen Akasha (Aaliyah), who admires Lestat's unabashed openness and seeks his assistance in subjugating humanity. Observing the events is Jesse Reeves (Marguerite Moreau) of the paranormal activity monitoring group Talamasca. Her burgeoning humanistic interference is all that stands in the way of either a resumption of the habitual vampiric code, or the unleashing of a monstrous new world order.

I'm not sure if Rymer meant for the film to be so laid back or if he simply failed to dramatically execute the traditional climactic build up (either choice explains why his film was panned), but Queen of the Damned's absent cataclysmic content supports its subterranean form. You would think Queen Akasha would have had a more prominent role but Marius (Vincent Perez) almost receives as much screen time (if not more). I liked how the film's primary focus was relegated to a secondary role for it formally highlights the ways in which supporting players often have a more prominent effect than their political object of desire. But all of these reversals and sedatives aren't surrounded by an inspiring entourage of symbolic pillars (although the musical accompaniment worked well [original music by Jonathan Davis and Richard Gibbs]), which, unfortunately, causes the film to fall flat.