The Buzz: Too Many Cooks can spoil an Interstellar Comeback {MotH Original}

{Originally appeared in Man of the Hour Magazine on November 15, 2014}

Well, here we are, winding down the clock on 2014. To think, back when the year started, after a stellar 2013 cinema season, we though this year would be hopeless with a hint of Lego Movie. Instead, we’re looking at a transcendent year of films (well, besides Transcendence, anyway) that cover all genres, all time periods, and in the case of today’s review, time itself. We also tackle the two-parter finale of the fate of Panem, catch up with Valeria Cherish and see whether Too Many Cooks has gotten too much hype. That and all the news you need in this week’s Buzz.

Movies: Its important with certain films, particularly those that contain a polarizing theme or artist, to know where the critic stands before reading their review. This matter has been previously touched on before in this author’s review for The Expendables 3, and given director Christopher Nolan’s recent trip along that roller coaster of praised/overpraised/polarizing (made worse by his militant, death-threat wielding fan base), its important to clarify this author’s previous take on Nolan so as to better aid the reader in understanding their take on Interstellar.

While The Dark Knight and Memento are undeniable masterworks, the the Hitchcockian aspirations ofFollowing and The Prestige are admirable and thoroughly enjoyable, this critic has felt Nolan was on a downward spiral after TDK, which itself was less a tribute to Nolan’s singular craft so much as a convergence, an “all the planets in alignment” bit of magic where every element from Goyer’s script to Ledger’s Oscar-winning performance all came together in such a complex and perfectly fragile arrangement that one thing out of place could have ruined the film. Yet Inception, in this author’s opinion, was painful overrated, unnecessarily complicated, and a nonsense display of “Look how smart I am” trying to anchor itself in a relationship which had no chemistry, and bland, cardboard performances. Yet, to question the creator of the Holy Bat was to incur the wrath of the Nolan leg-bumper fanboys, and even mores when this and other critics were silenced on Rotten Tomatoes after death threats were made by the aforementioned fanboys to any who dared give the third installment of the Dark Knight Trilogy a negative review (note that none of these fans had actually seen the film yet, but all were already prepped to call it the best film of the year, because the public is nothing if not objective). Of course, time has begun to show to all but the most fiercely leg-humping that The Dark Knight Rises is easily Nolan’s worst film, a hodgepodge of ideas and imagery riddled with plot holes and terrible incoherent moments without a single bit of understanding for the source material, as though the director didn’t really want to make the film at all. The poor quality of the film, mixed with the ardent love of its advocates, has created a sort of animosity amongst many who, when early reports of Interstellar were less than stellar, were sharpening their knives to take down the sacred calf of cinema. Those of us, like myself, who kept trying to assure the fanboys jumping for joy over the first sounds of Bane’s asinine voice from leaked footage that the film could indeed suck were ready to be able to rip into Nolan’s newest, which looked poised from the adverts to be even more overly, unnecessarily complicated, full of weak sentimentality from a man who doesn’t understand emotion, and ultimately be the downfall of the over-hyped, self-important auteur.

Instead, I found it to be an absolute delight. It was powerful, moving, and utterly cinematic. Admittedly, while Nolan shows his influences a bit more obviously than ever before (lifting shots straight from 2001, or setting up the NASA hideout and its rogue discoverer just like Dagny Taggart and Galt’s Gulch in Atlas Shrugged), and there are some hockey elements, the film works as a film, as a piece of pure cinema, self-aware without an ounce of self-consciousness like classic Spielberg used to do. Unashamed to be sentimental, uncomplicatedly and necessarily technical, full of astounding moments of beauty and sincerity, begging its viewers not to scrutinize or philosophize, but rather to dream. To hope. To gaze upward in wonder, the kind of wonderment the movies used to inspire before the “dark and gritty” movement Nolan himself popularized.

The film could be picked apart, all its qualities weighed out before you, the reader. But it would serve better purpose to say that even an extreme Nolan detractor can see this film for the extra ordinary spectacle that it is, so those wishing to tear it down might have a different, less objective motive at heart, and you truly should see it for yourself (though see it in 35mm, for that true vintage cinema feel, and skip the IMAX, whose sound mix issues are a totally legitimate complaint).

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What sets the Hunger Games franchise apart from all other YA films (Divergent, Twilight, and towards the end, yes, even Harry Potter) is its commitment to quality. The films are well-shot, well-paced, well-acted. Everything seems committed to making a quality product, nothing done for the sake of making a quick buck off some eager teens. Well, until now. Just like the final Harry Potter film, or the final Twilight film, the team behind the Hunger Games has decided to split the final book of the franchise into two parts, thereby killing the narrative flow of the surprisingly well-written novel Catching Fire. All the action apparently got pushed to the second film, and the character moments, while enjoyable, are hardly worth the price of admission. Sit this one out until it hits Netflix, then go see Part 2 on the big screen. No point paying twice for one movie (considering we’re now going to pay Peter Jackson a third time for the privilege of finishing a movie that started two years ago).

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TV: “Give her another take! Give her another take!” Such was the chant of the studio audience for “Room and Bored” the sitcom within a sitcom that Valerie Cherish (Lisa Kudrow) uses to try and relaunch her career on HBO’s cult series The Comeback. Though The Comeback was initially met with mixed reviews and was cancelled after 13 episodes, it had a loyal following who continued the cry for “another take” for almost ten years, and finally HBO relented, and gave The Comeback a comeback? So is it worth it? Well, I suppose it depends who you ask, and whether they felt it deserved it at all.

When The Comeback first aired, critics were mixed, criticizing it for its dry tone and lack of originality in the premise, though Entertainment Weekly would, years later, latch on to the cult obsession by calling it one of the 10 Best Shows of the Decade, and fans are quick to describe the show as “ahead of its time” and compare it to the holy grail of “ahead of its time”, Arrested Development. The thing is? Those criticisms were valid.

Full disclosure: This critic hated The Comeback when it first aired, found it humorless and grating, playing only on the humor of a character’s awkwardness and desperation to be loved, similar to what The Office did with Michael Scott, except robbing us of any of the humanity or pathos Carrell embed in his bumbling boss. However, in order to properly review the second season premiere, and in response to the myriad of “ahead of its time” declarations, I decided to binge watch the entire first season again, now in the time it was apparently meant to be in. And yet I found the show to be just as irritating and insufferable as ever. So with that context out there, let’s take a look at the premiere of season 2, though fans of the first run should likely take this opinion with a grain of salt (but feel free to comment below, as it would be interesting to know if The Comeback 2.0 satisfies those who wanted it in the first place).

Of course, by now the reader is expecting the negative review, and sadly that expectation can’t be defied. Yes, The Comeback Season 2 is bad (at least what’s been aired thus far), and in fact much worse than the original. Gone is the somewhat engaging dynamic of Valerie trying to control the reality crew filming her, and trying to connect with showrunner Jane (Laura Silverman). Instead, Valerie has amassed her own crew to film her in the hopes of getting picked up for another reality show. Where in the first series, the humor rested in Valerie being forced to take a supporting role in a bad sitcom to try and revive a faltering career (a believable premise, and one experienced by many an aging performer, which gave the show a sort of insider feel), this season reeks of desperation, and not just from Valerie but from the show itself, trying to find some reason for being. In place of it realistic premise the first time around, this season finds Valerie infuriated that her antagonist from season one, the smug sitcom writer Paulie G, has apparently gone through rehab for heroin and is creating an HBO series about his life called Seeing Red about a drug-addicted sitcom writer and his battles with an aging TV star named Mallory Church. Valerie attempts to cease production only to find out she has been offered the role of Malerie, which she accepts. So this is what we’ll be dealing with this season, an absurd batch of meta-humor on meta-humor wrapped in an insufferable amount of cameos (the premiere alone brought us Andy Cohen, Ru Paul and Carla Hall as themselves). Whatever charm or sincerity was within The Comeback, whatever sense of purpose was within it, its absent in this second season, which seems a desperate attempt from HBO to have a hit on their hands besides Game of Thrones. Perhaps eventually I may learn to love The Comeback Season 1, as many insisted I would. I can even see why people would have been fond of it, vague elements protruding that people could latch onto it. As for Season Two, however, to quote the catchphrase Valerie so often repeated “I don’t even want to see that!”

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News: After a more Bourne than Bond reboot with Casino Royale and an abysmal follow-up (perhaps the third worst in the entire franchise), nobody but the most die-hard fans of destruction really wanted them to trot out the seemingly dead horse that was once MI6’s best agent for another flogging. Yet Sam Mendes stepped up to the plate and knocked it out of the park with Skyfall, and he’s returning to the helm for what’s shaping up to be an even better installment in the rejuvenated franchise, as 007 has just gained some new cast mates that make for an extraordinarily promising dynamic. First off is the ever important role of the Bond girl, previously a role occupied by the likes of Eva Green, Halle Berry and Denise Richards, yet this time around it appears they’ve gone for someone with a fair amount of talent, as Lea Seydoux hs been all but formally confirmed as the love interest of the man with a license to kill. While Seydoux may not be a household name here in the states, odds are you’ve seen her, with bit parts in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, however she’s best known for her work in Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol, and for her remarkable performance in the Palme D’Or winning film, Blue Is The Warmest Color, for which she became one of only two actresses in history to receive the award, which is traditionally reserved for the film’s director (the only actress to receive the honor was her co-star from the film, Adele Exarchopoulos).

It’s shaping up to be a Basterds reunion on the 24th Bond film as another alum is set to join the cast, this one far more well known to the American public, but only in the last 5 years. Winner of two Oscars, one for the villainous Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s WWII action film, and one for King Schultz, a bounty hunter on a mission in the director’s follow-up Django Unchained, Christoph Waltz has just the perfect blend of charming menace to thrive on the dynamics of the typical Bond script, no matter what role he’s in (though its safe to assume it will be a villainous one, since that’s typically the juiciest role, as fellow Oscar wine Javier Bardem showed the last time out). Whether Waltz is friend or foe, or indeed a reboot of Bond’s old nemesis Blofeld, is yet to be seen. All we know for sure is, with this cast, the film is bound to be one hell of a ride.

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Short Film: We couldn’t not talk about Too Many Cooks here. The short film is an under appreciated art form, one we here at Man of the Hour have been trying to shine a light on. So when one rises to the surface and indeed conquers the internet for a brief moment (before Kim Kardashian had to take her pants off and steal the spotlight from our beloved Smarf), we gotta give our take on it.

Airing on Adult Swim at 4 am between actual infomercials, some perplexed Redditor thankfully uploaded it to Youtube and let the world bask in the madcap dissolution of structure crafted by the team behind the AS show Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell. Beginning like a typical 80’s sitcom intro, it introduces a predictable but amusing gag that Too Many Cooks has too many cast members, before it begins to brilliantly switch genres, all with a sense of dread and menace looming in the background. If you’ve not yet seen the short screened round the world, please do so now to avoid the spoilers.

You good now? Good.

The brilliance of Too Many Cooks is how infinitely rewatchable it is. It’s Twin Peaks influenced killer with the unreadable name (though I’m sure some intrepid viewers will dissect every name from within the tracking scramble) may seem to come out of nowhere when first introduced in the G.I. Joe segment, but indeed upon rewatching you discover him leering in the background from practically the very beginning, the darkness lurking just beneath the perfect image, echoing a sentiment David Lynch has expressed since Blue Velvet, but with a very Adult Swim style of stoner humor. One can appreciate it for its bizarre collapse of sanity in the vein of Don Hertzfeld’s Oscar-nominated short Rejected, or see it as a bold attack on the brainless, soul-crushing aspects of television, like the cult-hit Don’t Hug Me, I’m Scared. Indeed, one could just get high and laugh at the repeated shots of the falcon. It seems to strangely never lose its appeal, the well of things to take from it and enjoy or deconstruct has yet to run dry. The creator admitted that he had some deeper meanings in mind when he created it, but didn’t want to elaborate on them to avoid seeming “pretentious”. So grab some friends, gather round the laptop, and discuss whether Smarf pushed the button or not, becauseToo Many Cooks is well worth a watch, and another watch, and another watch…

The Buzz: From A to Z, from Two to 6, from Bad Judge to bad movies, we've got it all {MotH Original}

{Originally appeared in Man of the Hour Magazine on November 8, 2014}

We’re in prestige picture season now, folks, when the studios bust out their big guns. While TV is putting the axe to a few shows that faltered, the movie theatre is the place to be as the Oscar-bait roll-out begins. This week Jake Gyllenhaal grabs at the gold with a manic performance, Disney lets us meet Baymax who wants to meet Oscar, and Amanda Seyfried takes a spin on the shorter side of cinema. Plus Two and A Half Menreturns minus the half-man for one final season and three shows don’t make it past there first.

Movies: Can a film be both dazzling and terrifying? Disturbing and yet somehow droll? Prophetic and preposterous at the same time? It can, and 1976 taught us that with Sidney Lumet’s dark news satireNetwork. It’s bleak and bizarre skewering of 70’s television by imagining an absurd future for network news proved to be an oddly accurate depiction of the cable news era, and now Dan Gilroy attempts to do the same by crafting Lou Bloom, a sick obsessed loner who plays like Travis Bickel with a camera and a Horatio Algier sense of the American Dream.

In the wake of the 4Chan murder photos, we can feel the creeping chill of Nightcrawler’s prescience much sooner than even Gilroy could have imagined, and I’d imagine for those seeing the film with both that and the Farmingdale beheading burned into their brains, Gyllenhaal’s Joycian named journalist’s Homeric journey into the seedy world of L.A. night-crime and the people who cover it might be all the more unsettling. Within this brooding mood piece are the finest works of both Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo, who give Oscar worthy performances as the haunting Lou Bloom and Nina Romina, the news director who indulges Bloom’s lust for glory by any means necessary.

To dissect the twists and turns in this Michael Mann-esque neon blue chiller is, like many great films, diluting the impact of the startling, unsettling imagery. This dark thrill ride is like a tone poem of obscenity, or perhaps a Swift-ian eulogy for journalistic integrity. Either way, while not for the faint of heart, Nightcrawler is a remarkable piece of cinema that dares its viewers stare deep into the blackest heart of the American Dream.

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Wanna take the kids to the movies this weekend, but think Interstellar might be too complicated (it is, but more on that next week) and Nightcrawler might be too dark (Might be? Might be?!?! Dude, get your head in the game, man)? They wanna see a cartoon, but you wish instead that there was another Marvel movie coming out so you both could enjoy? Well, Disney’s served up a nice compromise with this rousing animated take on one of Marvel’s more obscure properties. Sure, there’s no Thor or Iron Man to be seen, but Big Hero 6 takes you to the streets of San Fransokyo to meet a whole new team of heroes, including the adorable, highly merchandisable Baymax that will have you and your kids both quoting the film to infinity and beyond (or all the way to Disney Infinity, the video game tie-in your kids will likely demand after watching the surprising amount of ass these animated heroes kick).

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TV: Well, by this point in the year there aren’t too many premieres, save this Halloween themed season debut for the once top-rated comedy, so lets dive in to the kick-off of what will be the final season of Two and a Half Men (and as someone just tuning in after dropping out years before Charlie Sheen did, I’m thrilled to see this bloated behemoth of laugh tracks collapse). The season opens with an in-joke as Jon Cryer’s Alan chooses to dress as Ducky from Pretty in Pink for Halloween (ya…ya get it? Cause Jon Cryer played Ducky) and that’s about the smartest joke we get as this premiere trudges through lame, easy joke after lame easy joke, the insipid CBS laugh track like a cruel mockery, or a surrealist commentary on the blandness of sitcoms, where after a while, the stereotypes and misfire zingers are seemingly taunted by the canned laughter like something from David Lynch’s Rabbits. By the end, we’re introduced to the season-long story arc where Ashton Kutcher’s billionaire needs to be married in order to adopt a baby because the in shape, healthy guy conveniently has a heart attack which changes his life and blah blah blah homophobic humor he wants to marry Alan. There, I just spared you a half-hour of drivel and indeed an entire TV season of dreadful humorless episodes before we all inevitably turn on the curio of a series finale, perhaps out of nostalgia for the CBS distraction we once turned to in its early days of adorable Jake and Oshikuru the Demon Samurai, or perhaps just to see if Charlie Sheen really does return. But for now, avoid it like the plague it is.

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News: Well, folks, you knew it was time. NBC killed Community in hopes that a new show would take its place, yet here we are in a year of Mysteries of Laura (which somehow got picked up for a full season). So another year of peacock misfires means another year of forgettable shows on the chopping block. Hope you weren’t too fond of NBC’s newest cutesy comedies, then again, if anybody were they probably wouldn’t have been canceled in the first place. That’s right, folks, say goodbye to the rom-com where the dead mom fromHIMYM hooked up with the nipple-less ad exec from Mad Men entitled A to Z, and send an extra bon voyage the way of Bad Judge; well, that’s assuming you know where they are, what channel, what day or what time, though I assume most readers don’t even know what either show it about (we don’t blame you). More surprising to some would be the loss of the much publicized Utopia over on Fox, as they’d actually likely heard of it, and maybe even watched the premiere. Of course, that’s likely where they stopped as ratings for the reality experiment dropped exponentially, proving some shows can be too dumb for even Fox to let live.

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Short Film: A reader recently got in touch with me and expressed a sentiment of frustration that I rarely negatively review a short film. Of course, I hadn’t noticed this myself. I felt I’ve reviewed some films in a less than stellar fashion at times, some that felt disappointing, or cliched. Admittedly, there hasn’t been a short film upon which I’ve spewed hate and vitriol the manner in which I did for, say, No Good Deed (though may I point out how little joy I took from The Little Mermaid), and perhaps that’s because I do view the shorts before selecting one for the column, and perhaps unconsciously felt like avoiding those which were just painful to endure, sparing our readers seven days of wondering what went wrong in the brain of that Buzz guys just so I could round out the week with a Ebert’s North review style rant. However, I’m always interested in responding to feedback, and therefor have decided not to pre-view the short films prior to their selection for the column, so as to be certain to give a wide range of opinions in my final weeks here. And with that, this week’s selection, the first selected in this new approach, was Dog Food, a short that boasts many a festival laurel and Les Miserables star Amanda Seyfried to boot.

Well, with an introduction like that, you can’t be expecting all sunshine and butterflies, can you? Not to rely on another man’s words, but allow me to quote the aforementioned patron saint of cinematic hate: “I hated this movie. Hated, hated, hated, hated, hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.” Yes, Dog Food is a failure which telegraphs every insipid twist well before it occurs, concluding with a moronic, first-year-in-film-school attempt at a clever ending, and one marvels that an actress with enough clout to get real work would stoop to something so childish and inane. it’s characters are ill-defined, so much so as to make every action every one takes be inexplicable rather than unpredictable as the director intended, as nothing that happens in the previous scene justifies anything that comes to pass in the next one. The fact that it received as many screenings as it did speaks volumes to the current state of the film festival and its favoring of star-power over storytelling, and confounds any who still believe in the future of small films with new ideas and good hearts being able to triumph over Hollywood money and big names.

Headphones: Prince is back, so tonight we're gonna party like it's 1989 {MotH Original}

{Originally appeared in Man of the Hour Magazine on November 5th, 2014}

Halloween has come and gone. The autumn foliage giving way to bitter chills and fireside evenings. The perfect time to find some new tunes, and this week’s got some great ones. From a rising star to returning royalty, 2014 appears to be ending in a much better place than it began, so get ready for the concerts to come and plug into this week’s Headphones.

Album: 1989- Taylor Swift

You don’t wanna like it. You really don’t wanna like it, I know. But you best be ready to pop some Swiftamine, because 1989 isn’t just the most consistent record of Swift’s career, its the best album of the year, hands down.

The infectiously catchy “Shake It Off” was just a warning shot before the blonde bard dropped a megaton pop record on the world, chock full of influences like Lorde and Lana Del Rey to craft something so undeniably enjoyable that even the most hardened of hearts will be jamming. Sure, the weakest track is unfortunately the opener, “Welcome to New York” which feels as though it was written by a wide-eyed teen on a school field trip, but its followed up by the best track of the record, and perhaps of Swift’s career, “Blank Space”. A lot has already been said about this very modern-sounding track, and more will likely be written when its made a single, gets an equally enjoyable video and inevitably wins a Grammy (mostly because what the hell else could win anything this dismal, platinum album-less year?), but it should be noted how enjoyable it is to hear Swift come into her own. Yes, she had albums before Fearless, but truly that’s her debut, her big hit, the one that established the idea of “Taylor Swift”, and idea recurred to less acclaim with the follow-up Speak Now, dodged and toyed with in Red and finally observed, accepted and almost lampooned on this track, with its mocking reference to a “long list of ex-lovers” who say she’s “insane”. She’s no longer trying to claim she’s not a serial dater, but rather that she “loves the players” just as her new intended target to fill the blank space on her list loves “the game”.

“Style” comes as close to a rock feel as she’s gotten thus far in her career (though that would be an interesting turn when the pop phase has run out), and while its not exactly single material, it’s a catchy car jam, and it makes a great bridge between “Blank Space” and the I’m-A-Grown-Man-And-Shouldn’t-Be-Half-Dancing-To-This beat of “Out of the Woods”. While a few tracks on the record can be a tad over-produced in a determination to break the mold of “girl with an acoustic guitar” (like the following track, “All You Had To Do Was Stay” which suffers from a painful, uncharacteristically falsetto chorus), “Out of the Woods” is masterfully mastered with a gargantuan sound that perfectly fits the composition. “Shake It Off” is a track we’ve tackled before, and its the most single-ready track on the record, catchy, simple and sing-along-able in a way few tracks on the record can match, and “I Wish You Would” is enjoyable enough (though you can already imagine the stripped down acoustic version buried beneath all the production, awaiting an MTV Unpluggedspecial), but it’s “Bad Blood” that stands out as an example of “new” Taylor.

Sure, “Bad Blood” isn’t the first angry Taylor song, but its the first to be embedded with something beyond impotent rage. Rather than lamenting some boy with a box of Kleenex and regret, “Bad Blood” is clearly directed at a former friend with a fierce bitterness, a sense of betrayal wrapped up in a “f--k you” so clear you’d swear the words were lyrics within the sponge itself. Lyrically, no, it isn’t “Positively 4th Street”, but that’s the closest song one could compare it to, so clenched fist/clenched teeth fury burns beneath the electric beat. “Wildest Dreams” feels like a lost Lana Del Rey track, filtered through Taylor’s optimistic Springsteen-esque vision of love as an escape, a runaway daydream in a fast car with the roof down to be treasured and buried within the abyss of memories long past. This sentiment is repeated and reversed in the narrative, pseudo-instructive “How You Get The Girl”, a track which feels the most in line with “old” Taylor Swift, the only track that could remotely feel like it fits on a bygone album, like a lost track from Red. “This Love” begins with a more acoustic tone, teasing us of how things were (and reminding us where all these heavily produced pop tracks were conceived by the “little girl with the guitar” we loved back in the Fearlessera) and keeps its mellow tone even with the electronic backbeat.

“I Know Places”, the penultimate song on the album, has a weird vibe to it. It’s near feral in its wooden imagery, with breathy vocal, orgasmic choral wails and a pulsing beat that gives the song a passionate, animalistic and admittedly almost sexual tone, a maturity that has never been present in any of Swift’s tracks before, even on this record, as though this track (with its inclusion of the uncharacteristic swear “all the damned time”  ) was Taylor fully maturing past the juvenile country starlet to the woman she intends to be, a towering pop icon, and closes out the album with “Clean”, stripping it back down and highlighting her lyrical imagery “You’re still all over me like a wine stained dress I can’t wear anymore” as though to prove she’s inching ever closer to the compositional comparison proposed by Brad Nelson of The Atlantic back during the dawn of the Red-era, Leonard Cohen.

No, nothing on 1989 reaches the heights of Songs of Love and Hate or I’m Your Man, but then she wasn’t trying for that at all. She was trying to break free of her prior image while still staying true to who she is (or her public persona, as she seems to smart and crafty to truly expose all of herself to the world), and there she succeeded. She was trying to craft an exquisitely catchy pop album, and there she succeeded to an impressive degree. It’s all the more remarkable that her lyrical flair and personally poetic imagery managed to shine through even on an album so intent on avoiding the introspective. 1989 is a must hear, must own album that closes out a dismal year on a remarkably high note.

Single: Sure, normally we at Headphones like to highlight a track that’s out on iTunes, one you can track down, pop on your iPod and blast in the car. This week, however, scoring that sweet tune will be a bit harder, but we couldn’t not highlight this insanely killer cut from an otherwise dismal SNL. His majesty, the once and future Prince took the stage to deliver a searing, astounding 8 minute medley in lieu of two singles, and he and his backing group tore it up for every second of it. Click play and bask in the master, baby.

Music Videos:

Electronic: “Dare You 2 Move ft. Problem”- Destructo

This 8-bit video game sounding track is accompanied by a bizarre video that riffs on rap cliches, driving montages and even the cult-classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Hip-Hop: “My Own Parade”- Mayday! x Murs

Its hard to define a video that seems at the same time minimalist (or at least cheaply achieved) yet in line with the absurd artistry of Odd Future’s typical visual output. Either way, well worth a watch.

Pop: “Beyaz Sevda”- Kendi

It’s weird, oddly Priscilla Queen of the Desert-esque with an element of Jodorowsky and a hint of “Perfect Drug”. It’s in another language. Yet “Beyaz Sevda” is strangely engaging, as though through watching the actions of the darkly dressed women you might begin to understand what the woman in pink so passionately sings about, like trying to unravel the mystery of the spanish “Crying” singer in Mulholland Drive.

R&B: “Life”- Efya

Efya uses her newest, aptly titled video “Life” to explore her own, utilizing dramatized sequences, concert footage and home movies to chart her trajectory from unknown to engaging R&B performer.

Rock: Kim and the Created- Dead to Me

A fun little lampoon of old B-horror flicks, the grit of the indie band is perfectly accompanied by the grainy footage and the Troma-esque fascination with smoke and slime. Indeed, the video could well be a Nuke’Em High sequel all its own.

The Buzz: Dear Black Panther, The Life and Death of John Wick and Mike Tyson (MotH Original}

{Originally appeared in Man of the Hour Magazine on November 1st, 2014}

It’s been a crazy week as we gear up for Oscar season. With films like Interstellar and Into the Woods on the horizon (as well as stills from and a plot for a new Terminator movie that looks, well, catastrophic), this week we here at the buzz wanted to check out some smaller, lesser known titles before the big names hit the screen. This week brings us some helpful tips for white people, we find out what a boxing champ does in his spare time, meet Tommy Chaos and Stacey Danger and find out why you shouldn’t mess with Neo’s pet. Plus, another week of big Marvel news. So climb on in, cause it’s time for this week’s Buzz.

Movies: An inflammatory, racially charged title for an indie directorial debut from a young, black gay director? This promised to be a skewering, vicious piece of angry satire from the get-go, and its incendiary trailer only reinforced the expectation that this would be like Spike Lee’s School Daze with more bite. You could feel the controversy and the Conservative whining already about the anti-White America sentiments, and a rally of fans gathered to celebrate the satirical slaughter of racial politics. Hell, that’s what we signed on for. Those of us that followed the film on Facebook and Twitter, that championed the trailer, that watched director Justin Simien on Colbert and lined up on opening day, we awaited (even those like me, who are so white american-looking we resemble a Captain America who gave up and discovered doughnuts) that classic American art form, that Twainian pageant of cliches dissecting other cliches to expose the harsh truth to stereotypes and ignorance.

But that’s not what we got. Oh no. We got something so much better.

Dear White People is the kind of film whose trailer already commands adjectives like “bold” and “vicious”, but you wouldn’t expect to call it “beautiful”. And yet here it was. A strikingly beautiful coming of age story, about the age that matters. Not Stand By Me-esque childhood nostalgia, but the search for identity that comes with college life. Dear White People isn’t populated with cliches and stereotypes, but rather 3 dimensional characters brought to life with subtle, nuanced performances from extraordinarily gifted actors (many of whom, because of the lack of quality roles for black actors, have never gotten to show such range), particularly the transcendent Tessa Thompson as the defiant fire starter Samantha White, a film student who crusades for equality who’s like “…if Spike Lee and Oprah had a baby”, but whose bitterness masks a wounded and vulnerable woman trying to find her place in the world. Her story runs concurrent with, amongst others, Tyler James Williams, a young gay black man wondering which “group” he belongs in, the “gays” or the “blacks”, feeling he’s not truly either nor truly accepted by either one (despite one black student assuring him “I’m listening to Frank Ocean right now”. 

In the end, there is still a great deal of racial conflict and satirical skewering in Dear White People, but it takes unexpected sides at times, refusing to point fingers at anyone in particular, and making no true “bad guys”, like a more light-hearted Do The Right Thing. However, the crux of Dear White People isn’t really about black or white, its about identity, of which “being black” being about more than just skin color is sadly a factor in today’s society as exemplified by Teyonah Parris’ somewhat tragic “Coco” Conners in her lust for fame. It’s a film well worth checking out, both thought provoking and life affirming, and hands down the best directorial debut this year.

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Keanu Reeves is back, and better than anything since The Matrix (in fact, acting wise, this might be his best role ever). John Wick is an insane, all out action fest with gorgeous cinematography and a script that keeps on giving if you’re a fan of the genre. True, the film hinges on whether or not the viewer can digest the insane premise that because Keanu’s John Wick has a dog which gets killed, he proceeds to murder approx. 80 people, but on the other hand: John Wick has a dog which gets killed and so he proceeds to murder approx. 80 people. How are you not at this movie already?

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TV: If you’ve got a strange idea for a TV show, Adult Swim is probably the place to go. Talk show hosted by a bad Hanna-Barbera cartoon? Greenlit. A Law & Order style legal show based around a different bad Hanna-Barbera character defending other Hanna-Barbera characters? Sure. Hell, no Hanna-Barbera characters at all, just some talking food and a guy from Jersey? F*** it, why not? In fact, “f*** it, why not?” appears to be an overture for the entirety of the new series Mike Tyson Mysteries. In the premiere episode, Mike Tyson (voiced by the boxing legend himself) sits poolside with his friends, a posh ghost, a talking pigeon (who was once a man) and Mike’s adopted asian daughter checking his pigeon coop for distress messages. As the supporting characters all explain their origin (and Mike stands by both the hesitance of a song called “Ain’t Got No Time for Bird Sex” and that his adopted daughter, as a baby, told him to “stop living for himself”, Mike receives a message from acclaimed author Cormac McCarthy (whose name Tyson cannot pronounce) asking for help to finish his book, before the gang has to square off against a chupacabra (which Tyson also can’t pronounce). Animated in the style of classic cartoons like Johnny Quest and scripted in that Simpsons/Family Guy humor of smart people writing dumb jokes (just wait till you see who the chupacabra is), Mike Tyson Mysteries may be one of the strangest things to appear on any other channel, but by Adult Swim standards its fairly tame, more in line with the more straightforward humor of The Boondocks and Black Dynamite (unlike, say, Mr. Pickles, where the less said about it, the better). While the show could fall off from here, the pilot shows a great deal of promise, and could admittedly be off-putting to some. For this critic, it was a good little distraction, well worth returning too. However, you can decide for yourself, as Adult Swim graciously uploaded the premiere to Youtube.

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News: Dear White People, you aren’t the only superheroes in the game anymore.

A lot of big announcements came from Marvel’s big impromptu panel in LA this past week, some long rumored (Cap 3 will be Civil War, the popular marvel story, there will be a Doctor Strange movie, etc.) but the biggest revelation was about a character well likely unknown to most. In addition to announcing Avengers: Infinity War in two parts, as well as a Captain Marvel movie (the female version, Carol Danvers) and an Inhumans movie, we got the big reveal when not only did the announce a Black Panther film was in the works, but that they’d already cast Chadwick Boseman (the extraordinary talent from Get On Up) and revealed concept art for the costume.

For thos unaware, Black Panther is the alter-ego of T’Challa, a fierce and noble ruler in the African nation of Wakanda. He earned the title of Black Panther from his father, T’Chaka, who was murdered by Ulysses Klaw over Wakanda’s stockpile of vibranium (the metal used for Captain America’s shield). The story of Black Panther is a complex and dramatic one, almost Homeric in its tensions and dynamics, and will make an extraordinary edition to the Marvel line-up. It’s expected release date is November 3rd, 2017.

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Short Film: Let’s get this out of the way: The story doesn’t really go anywhere. It’s a love story, plain and simple. Well, not so simple. It’s actually the most visually inventive short we’ve reviewed here in a long time (and genuinely almost infuriating its a student film, for how inventive and delightful it is). Everything from its art design to its score fill the heart with joy and delight, indeed, delightful is the perfect word to describe TheLife and Death of Tommy Chaos and Stacy Danger. It’s an utter delight with its quick cuts and cute moments, that feels both universal and personal. Plus, when lines like “he thought of the women he smoked like cigarettes” are so well written they send viewers to google to see if its a literary quote, you know you’ve got a good thing on your hands. The film is a must watch that will fill your heart with joy and a swell of affection for that person in your life you may have drifted from (plus, it will make up for all the disturbing horror shorts from last month).