Texas and Madagascar Forever

Here we are, already a couple weeks into the summer movie season (even though it's not summer yet, but I've spent enough years whining about that), so I figure it's time for me to sift through the latest batch of summer films, destined to break records at the box office while offering very little in the way of compelling content. Unless you really like CGI. And if you do, you're in luck because most major summer movies also really like CGI.

We started the "summer" a couple weeks ago... the week after it was 35 degrees with snow and frost warnings... with the long-awaited blockbuster "The Avengers." I would sigh and say, "ANOTHER comic book movie..." but this thing has outperformed not only any other comic book movie but any other summer movie PERIOD. The movie set a record for biggest opening weekend (which is pretty impressive for opening the first weekend in May and not the traditional big $$$ weekends of Memorial Day or 4th of July) and has already pulled in $373 million domestically and over a b-b-billion dollars worldwide. Not bad for a movie that features characters we've mostly seen in other movies (Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Thor). Of course it doesn't hurt that Scarlett Johannson is in it, either.

The first real challengers to "The Avengers" opened today... sorry, the remake of the classic TV serial "Dark Shadows" was not a real challenger. Yes, we all love our vampire movies, but turning what was a quasi-serious soap opera into a goofy Johnny Depp comedy wasn't the best move in the world. Among the movies opening today are Sacha Baron Cohen's foray into scripted craziness, "The Dictator." Some critics have expressed dislike for Cohen's transition from the "gotcha" comedy of "Borat" and "Bruno" into the more controlled atmosphere of "The Dictator," but I actually find that more welcoming. Yeah, I thought "Borat" was hilarious, but uncomfortably so; I'm not much of a fan of watching people get exploited for laughs. That's why I don't watch "Jersey Shore" (ba dum bum). I think the over-the-top satire of "The Dictator" guarantees Cohen a longer shelf life. I'll be going to see this one for sure.

I will not be going to see the other two big movies opening today: "What to Expect When You're Expecting" and "Battleship." These are the antithesis of Cohen's creativity; movies stealing from a pregnancy manual and a friggin' BOARD GAME, respectively. Further proof that there are few original ideas left in Hollywood. When I originally saw the trailer for "Battleship" during the Super Bowl, my first reaction was, "This is a joke, right?" No, it's no joke... and it's going to be the second movie starring everyone's favorite high school football bad boy (Taylor Kitsch) to bomb in 2012. Texas forever.

Next weekend is Memorial Day weekend, so naturally there will be a franchise on display. However, the "Men In Black" franchise is over a decade past its sell-by date, and for that matter, so is Will Smith's acting career. He seemed to be doing better in his current gig as part-owner of the 76ers and pushing his kids, Jaden and Willow, on the world. "MIB3" barely includes original co-star Tommy Lee Jones, and seems to have been put together only to pump some life back into Smith's career. The only thing he has going for him is that by next weekend, "Avengers" fever will have probably died down, and his movie is the best of an iffy lot. The other new choices will be "Moonrise Kingdom", another Wes Anderson/Bill Murray film, and horror flick "Chernobyl Diaries."

June bows with the 2nd "Snow White" movie of the year... because apparently we really needed a lot of variations on "Snow White." Following the comedic stinker "Mirror, Mirror," we now have the horror-movie take on the fairy tale, "Snow White and the Huntsman." And when you have a dark, brooding version of Snow White, who better to get for the title role than Kristen Stewart? Then again, when your top competition that weekend is "Piranha 3: 3D", that's a pretty easy box-office win. June also features the sci-fi thriller "Prometheus," a 3rd "Madagascar," (which I welcome about as much as the 3rd "Piranha") and the film adaptation of the Broadway smash "Rock of Ages." Count me among those who are scratching their heads over the casting of Tom Cruise in the lead role, considering he's never really done the musical thing before, but then again when you consider the downward track of his career lately, I think he probably wishes he was back in the 1980s about as much as fans of the play do. Perhaps the perfect match then.

By late June, we have Disney/Pixar's latest family film, "Brave." When I first saw the trailer for this one, my immediate thought was that after successfully belittling Arab culture with "Aladdin," Native Americans with "Pocahontas," and the Chinese with "Mulan," the Disney folks have finally found the one culture they haven't yet offended: the Scots. Then again, the Scotts grass seed commercials may have already beaten Disney to the punch on this one... seed your lawn, seed it! Meanwhile, we also have the logical extreme of the vampire movie genre: "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter," as well as Woody Allen's latest, "To Rome With Love." Young Hollywood loves to work with the Wood-meister, and this time we have Ellen Page and Jesse Eisenberg joining Alec Baldwin and Penelope Cruz among the stars highlighting the cast. June concludes with a "G.I. Joe" sequel and yet another Tyler Perry "Madea" movie.

4th of July weekend means franchises, and this time we get the reboot of the "Spider-Man" franchise. The only reason the franchise needed rebooting is because Sam Raimi decided he didn't want to do any more "Spider-Man" movies, which meant that Tobey Maguire didn't want to do any more "Spider-Man" movies, which meant that Kirsten Dunst didn't want to do any more... presto, we need a reboot! This may be the first time that a superhero franchise gets rebooted and gets worse. Oliver Stone's latest offering, "Savages" also bows that weekend... uh-oh, Taylor Kitsch is in it. Bomb #3? Later in July, we get yet another "Ice Age" movie (yup, the animation industry has officially quit... "Madagascar" and "Ice Age" sequels forever), Seth MacFarlane's foray into live-action cinema, "Ted" (starring a teddy bear that seems an awful lot like Peter Griffin from "Family Guy"), before coming to my next must-see movie of the summer: "The Dark Knight Rises." Christopher Nolan has set up this Batman vs. Bane showdown to be the last act in a planned trilogy. Let's hope that it stays this way, and that this movie at least equals "The Dark Knight" in terms of cinematic brilliance.

After that, we're almost to August, which means we start getting toward the bottom of the barrel... chew on that point for a moment. The studios did not feel that "G.I. Joe 2" or "Piranha 3" were so bad that they could be pushed back for an August release. Which must mean that the likes of "Watch" (another paycheck for Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn), a rebooted "Bourne" franchise (minus Matt Damon), a remake of "Total Recall" (only 20 years after the original), and "The Campaign" (another paycheck for Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis) must be off-the-charts HORRIBLE. And there's an "Expendables" sequel, so there's that. Perhaps the diamond in this deep rough (no pun intended) is "Sparkle," a remake of a 1970s musical that will bring the late Whitney Houston to movie screens one last time alongside Jordin Sparks.

So there you have it... after last year's godawful summer, some actual signs of improvement and some moments of greatness amongst the retreads and pointless sequels and CGI. Select carefully, and you could see some really good movies this summer. Select poorly... and you may be seeing a lot of Taylor Kitsch.

Can't Afford to Have It, Can't Afford Not to

A recent story in the Chronicle of Higher Education raised some alarm bells among people like me who are sacrificing everything to get a graduate degree. Due to state-level cutbacks in higher education, grad students and Ph.Ds are having to go on food stamps because the jobs are drying up. Adjunct positions are no longer plentiful, and full-time positions are not becoming available, as public universities are forced to cut back to adjust to reductions in funding.

I am, at heart, a libertarian who believes that government should serve a limited set of crucial societal functions: things like the military, roads and bridges, and at the state/local level, public safety... and education. That's right... while I do think the federal government needs to get out of the education business, the states have a responsibility to provide children with a quality K-12 education, and to provide opportunities for higher education should people decide to pursue it. State universities are among some of the greatest research centers in the country, and through low tuition for in-state students, they give lots of low-income students a shot to get a college degree without racking up massive student loan debts.

Unfortunately, a lot of right-wing governors have gotten it in their heads that when it comes to balancing their states' budgets, education is the first thing to go. Now I can understand the feeling that there has been an inverse relationship between increases in education spending and actual results. I understand frustrations with people who see high schoolers who can't find Asia on a map or read at a high school level. I understand the frustrations of my fellow teachers at colleges who wonder how their students don't know basic skills that we think should be mandatory to give someone a high school diploma, let alone get them into college. Believe me, there are times when the idea that throwing money down the proverbial education sinkhole seems like it's not worth it anymore.

Take Philadelphia, for instance. The city school system was taken over by the state over a decade ago and that didn't stop the mismanagement. If anything, it got worse, as the district hired Arlene Ackerman as superintendent, only to watch Ackerman create a PR firestorm that caused the district to have to buy out her contract. And after they did that, leaving taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars, Ackerman had the audacity to APPLY FOR UNEMPLOYMENT. The last straw came when Harrisburg pretty much said they were done financing such shenanigans, and the Philadelphia School District had to recently announce that it is CEASING TO EXIST. In its current form, anyway. The kids of Philadelphia will still get an education, but there will be more reliance on private entities and charters (who are also going through their own cutbacks).

However, when it comes to college, I cannot think of any good argument for cutting funding. Not one. Now I've heard and read rumblings from some on the Left who think that the cuts are political... that right-wingers are sick of "liberal elitism" coming from our colleges and universities, so they are trying to flush all that out by starving state schools. Despite quotes from Texas education officials in recent years that seem to support this contention, I can't see how this is a good idea. Plenty of right-wing politicians went to state schools; they didn't all get MBAs from Harvard or wherever the hell Mitt Romney went. Rick Santorum went to Penn State... one of a few schools now being targeted for the second year in a row by Gov. Tom Corbett for massive reductions in state funding. The end result is positions getting dropped, because the schools have necessary expenses they have to meet, such as maintenance and public safety and administration. It also results in an increase in tuition for all students, but the in-state students are the hardest hit. The once-affordable state schools start to price themselves out of the reach of lower-income students.

Now the schools, of course, are not without blame. Universities feel the need to be constantly building or renovating, because they feel that they need to stay "competitive" with everyone else who is constantly building and renovating. But this arms race of sorts leads to increased maintenance costs, increased IT staffs to network these buildings, and administration to cover these new departments or whatever gets put in these buildings, all of which leads to higher tuitions. What I have never understood (and would love someone to explain to me) is the endowments. All universities, both public and private, have them. The private schools (especially the Ivy League schools) have the largest, in the tens of billions of dollars, but state schools also have billion-dollar endowments. With these schools sitting on so much money, why the hell do they keep raising tuitions? What is the purpose of the endowments, other than the ability to say "ours is bigger than yours?" Like it's a comparison of manhoods or something. Talk about hoarding cash. These endowments never get touched; instead, tuitions continue to go up, alumni are endlessly tapped for donations, and college becomes more and more expensive.

I agree with the president that we have to make college affordable, and give as many people as possible the opportunity to get a college degree. They don't have to take those opportunities, but they should be available. That leads us to the latest political football, the cut in student loan interest rates that is about to expire. I seriously wonder sometimes why we put "sunset dates" on laws... is it because we otherwise wouldn't revisit these issues? I don't think we really needed to revisit the possibility of interest rates doubling, but here we are, and unless our Congress acts (and based on everything that's happened in the last 18 months, the chances of them acting on this or ANYTHING are slim and none), the massive loan debt crushing our nation's young graduates will become even larger. Now some are calling for student loan debt to be forgiven completely. We cannot do that. I know it's a nice idea, but the economy (our financial sector in particular) really can't handle Sallie Mae following her cousins Fannie and Freddie into collapse.

I think instead we need to at least get a handle on this at the state level... there should be NO cuts to higher education at the state level. NONE. If states can't balance their budgets, they need to find other ways to get it done. If they absolutely have to make cuts in order to make ends meet and maintain critical services and not drive people to other states from excessive taxation, then the states should force their universities to spend more from their endowments to make up for the cuts. I think they should force the universities to spend more regardless, but at least this will solve the budgetary problems. Why would we not want to give people the chance to better themselves? It just seems ludicrous to think that in an age where you need a college degree to get most jobs, we would tell our young adults that they have to doom themselves to debt to get the degree, or worse, discourage them from trying at all. It's really about that more than anything. Sure I'll need a job in a year or so when I finish up in grad school, but if young adults just decide they can't go to college, there won't be any teaching jobs for me anyway due to lessening demand. And then nobody wins.

The Sweet Spot

I've done a couple of blog entries in the last year or so about the music of the mid-1980s, the songs of my early childhood that I somehow think were perfect pop classics, even though they do not generally fit with my tastes in older or newer music. However, the longer I think about this stuff, the more I analyze it (I can't help it, I'm a mass media doctoral student... it's what I do), and I believe now more than ever that the period roughly between 1982 and 1985 was a "sweet spot" for pop music. Not only that, it was the last time pop music was ever this good. Hasn't been since, probably never will be again.

How do I know this? Well, let me throw some anecdotal observations to start. These are songs that have staying power among people who are fans of classic rock, alt-rock, and even country. When you want to get the attention of people in their 30s at a bar/wedding reception/karaoke night, what do people go to? The women will go for "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," someone will request "Africa" by Toto, and you might even get "Total Eclipse of the Heart." And EVERYONE will stop and notice, and maybe sing along. Why is this? Because it was mass-appeal, and 1982-1985 was the waning days of mass appeal, especially on the radio. Shortly thereafter, niche formats splintered the music audience, and for a time it was inconceivable that someone would like rap/R&B AND country, or would like alt-rock AND a good power ballad. In recent years (although radio has not caught on to this trend), music genre-hopping has become the norm, and it doesn't sound so far-fetched anymore. People can certainly appreciate rap and metal (although I cannot appreciate those who like rap-metal), and Lionel Richie just had a #1 country album. How is this possible? Simple, because a lot of the people who like country now listened to Lionel Richie on pop radio in the 1980s and LIKED HIM.

The music has staying power in our popular culture, even if we don't immediately recognize this. What era of music did P. Diddy borrow from liberally in his hit productions of the late 90s? Generally, music from 1982-85... and it keeps happening. When you listen to the emo bands of the 2000s, you hear a LOT of influence of the music from that era, which is probably one of many reasons why I took to it so well. Lady Gaga... HEAVILY influenced by music from the 1980s, not just Madonna but also Bruce, Michael, and Freddie. If that isn't a good enough explanation for you, here's a list of other reasons why the music of 1982-85 was so important, so great, and may never be equaled:

Dance music was dance music, pop was pop. They did not have to be one and the same, as is generally the case today, thanks to radio smashing them together into the CHR/Rhythmic format. You had the Gap Band, the Pointer Sisters, hell even Eddie Murphy had a hit song. And they weren't afraid to do dance songs that went over SIX MINUTES LONG, with finely-tuned instrumental breakdowns amongst all the synth-grooves of the era. And you had the first commercial and artistic breakthroughs for rap. Sure, "Rapper's Delight" had already charted before 1982, but Grandmaster Flash wasn't rapping about mushed peas and soggy macaroni in "The Message." You also had "White Lines" by Melle Mel, LL Cool J's first album, and Run-DMC. The Kings of Rock.

Prince's musical genius. All happened during the "sweet spot." "1999," "Purple Rain," and the very underrated "Around the World In a Day" all came out between 1982 and 1985. Soon after that, he broke up Prince & the Revolution, decided he needed to work with Sheena Easton, and it all went downhill from there... which is not to say he didn't still put out good music for several years afterward. I just wouldn't put "Seven" or "Batdance" or "Money Don't Matter Tonight" in the same class as "Purple Rain" or "Raspberry Beret" or "Little Red Corvette."

Madonna's first two albums. She couldn't have made the societal impact she did without debuting in the perfect time period for pop music. Even though her music went downhill for a while after "Like a Virgin," one could argue that she was constantly in the process of changing her sound as well as her looks because she knew the times were changing. There's definitely some truth to that; consider that by the time her imitators (both in looks and sound) arrived, the "sweet spot" was over. Madonna wound up having staying power... Stacey Q did not.

Duets that worked... talk about genre hopping, from 1982-85, you had Phil Collins and Philip Bailey (Genesis and Earth Wind & Fire?) and Michael Jackson duetting with Paul McCartney AND Mick Jagger (and almost duetting with Freddie Mercury). And the pairings made sense... Michael wanted to work with the best, and Genesis had already borrowed EWF's horn section a couple of times... and "Easy Lover" wound up being Bailey's only post-EWF hit. There was also Tina Turner and Bryan Adams on "It's Only Love," the country music mega-pairing of Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, not to mention the guest appearance of Stevie Ray Vaughan on David Bowie's "Let's Dance" album. I am purposely leaving the steaming pile of crap known as McCartney and Stevie Wonder's "Ebony and Ivory" off this list; in fact, if I had to pick an arbitrary date when the "sweet spot" begins, I'd put it at the beginning of July 1982, when "Ebony and Ivory" got bumped out of the #1 spot on the pop chart. It's a very fine line; before the "sweet spot", you had duets that did not work. After the "sweet spot," you again had duets that did not work, like Jackson Browne and the late Clarence Clemons, Peter Cetera and Amy Grant... and who the hell was Marilyn Martin, anyway? By the time "Separate Lives" came out, Phil Collins was beyond saving...

Speaking of Michael Jackson: "Thriller." Only the biggest-selling, most Grammy-laden album of all time, and it dominated radio during the "sweet spot." Oh, and the session musicians on that album? The guys from Toto. And Eddie Van Halen played the guitar solo on "Beat It." Again, talk about genre hopping...

Men At Work. Classic example of perfect timing. They broke through in the U.S. in the summer of '82; they were done by the end of 1985. Oh, Colin Hay refers to their Grammy award for Best New Artist as the "kiss of death," but they did manage to have a second album that had as many hits as their debut... and quite frankly, I prefer "Overkill" and "It's a Mistake" to the hits on "Business as Usual" because those songs are still overplayed. After "Cargo," they dumped their rhythm section and recorded a third album. It sucked.

Celebrity cameos in music videos: Once MTV got huge, and people realized that music videos were here to stay, it became de rigueur for Hollywood B-listers (and below) to get themselves into videos. Hence, the many celebrity cameos in the video for "Ghostbusters," Mark Metcalf from "Animal House" in Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It," Captain Lou Albano in "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," and perhaps the most unlikely celebrity appearance in a music video: Dan Aykroyd in "We Are the World."

The music you didn't know about at the time: The indie scene of 1982-85 gave us R.E.M., the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Beastie Boys (RIP MCA), and a lot of bands known only to hipsters.

But alas, times change, music changes, and in this case it was for the worse. I figured out when the "sweet spot" began, and I can tell you even more specifically the moment it ended... October 26, 1985, when "Perfect Way" by Scritti Politti entered the Top 40. Before this song, Scritti Politti was actually a well-respected band that had evaded the U.S. mainstream and put out some pretty good stuff. They were a rather high-brow post-punk band that dropped references to Derrida and Gramsci in their lyrics. Unfortunately, around 1985, they decided to start working with Arif Mardin... the guy who unleashed Barry Gibb's falsetto on the world. In one fell swoop, they sold out AND provided a pop template for the rest of the 1980s. After "Perfect Way" became a hit, most pop music sounded like this song for several years. Listen to "Perfect Way" and then listen to "Who's Johnny" by El DeBarge and tell me I'm wrong. Or "Chains of Love" by Erasure. Or anything by The Jets. Hell, after this song, the success of New Kids on the Block was inevitable. The common thread: Goodbye instrumentation, hello taking the easy way out with electronic dance beats. Pop merged with dance music, and the world changed forever.

This is not to say that there weren't some musical screw-ups between 1982 and 1985. Oh, there were some doozies: Queen's "Hot Space" album... Rush deciding that Geddy Lee on keyboard and Neil Peart playing electronic drums sounded better than Lee on bass, Peart on REAL drums, and Alex Lifeson's guitar dominating... Roger Waters running off the other members of Pink Floyd... LaToya Jackson's singing career. I recently heard an old 1985 episode of "American Top 40" in which Casey Kasem quoted Elton John as saying that George Michael was "the greatest songwriter of his generation, right up there with Paul McCartney." To be fair, Elton was doing a lot of blow in those years. But for just some reason, most of the music just worked. Now I've had discussions with friends in which they say that the connections of these songs with my youth may overinflate their value and that people who grew up in the mid-90s or in the last decade might feel the same way about the pop music from those days. However, I feel like there were other factors at play: the state of radio, the influence of MTV, even societal shifts toward postmodernism. Anyway, that's my argument. Feel free to disagree, but first grab a copy of the Talking Heads' "Speaking in Tongues" or Huey Lewis & the News' "Sports" and try not to like it.