#flash anthony

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"Oh yeah, the popcorn chicken has just come out of the fryer"

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When people are able to predict when the crossing-signal is going to change and get it right every single time.

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Whenever anyone mentions The Hunger Games...

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2013: Let's Hear it For the Girls

It’s hard to think positively about a year where you can no longer count how many times you’ve been sneezed on. But alas, here I sit with a box of tissues and a very full bottle of had sanitiser next to me, ready to Flash you all one last time.

(I know what that sounds like. I did that on purpose.)

When writing this piece, I wanted to do more than just list the things I liked this year. Because I liked a lot and nobody cares what I think (illustrated by the popularity of this here blog). Looking back over the past year, there is one constant in amongst all of the things that I have (poorly) written about almost all of the pieces: women.

  Yes, ladies! 2013 has been a huge year for you, especially in the media! Robin Thicke objectified you, Miley Cyrus seemed to have both empowered and destroyed you (depending on your disposition/ care factor), Pussy Riot is getting released from jail, Lena Dunham is changing the game (sort of) and the best sitcoms on television (New Girl and The Mindy Project) are about women and have been created by women.  Haim had one of the biggest albums of the year and, undoubtedly, the most solid and self-assured debut album of the year. Also Tina Fey and Amy Poehler hosted the Golden Globes (and will host them again- DYING), which was (and is) the best thing ever.

  2013 has represented a marked shift in the representation of women in the media, or at least the public’s consumption and understanding of women in the media, and it’s been interesting to watch. Male or female, as consumers and creators of media we’re all participants in this debate and it’s an important one. It’s important because sexualisation has evolved into infinitely more sinister. We’re talking about rape now, about misogyny. And not in a way where we’re all in on the joke… In a way that’s just not okay.

  So I had to pick a moment that summarised all of that stuff and all of those ideas. That encompassed the GOOD to come out of this debate and actually made me smile, because happiness isn’t completely overrated.  So the best moment of 2013 is Lily Allen’s amazing song ‘Hard Out Here’.

  Now, it’s not the best song of the year and the video is problematic due to that whole racial appropriation debate which I understand but I’m not getting into because it’s bad enough being a man writing about feminism… I can’t simultaneously be a white person talking about racism. I’m not that much of a dick. But what it does do is have fun with something that is inherently not very fun. It’s a fuck you to an industry that has been fucking women over for a very long time. It’s a middle finger straight to the prostate and not in a nice way. It’s a positive statement by an artist (who, I think, speaks for a lot of other artists) who doesn’t want to deal with severe objectification anymore.

As an added bonus, the song is incredibly catchy and hilarious. It’s direct, intelligent, witty and fun. It’s vintage Lily Allen and really good writing.  Also, it tosses some serious shade toward Robin Thicke. Who deserves it for being an asshole and ruining Beetlejuice for everyone. In a year where women have (again) proved that they are, indeed, funny (because apparently they needed to), and more women are standing up for that they believe in, this song is perfectly placed as an anthem of sorts.

Or at least, just a really good time.

Happy New Year.

See you guys in 2014.

<3

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REVIEW: THE PURGE

Slasher/Terror movies walk a very fine and troubling line. On one side of the line is brilliance (The Strangers) on the other side of the line of unforgivable shitty-ness and stupidity (The Strangers). The Purge is no exception. Nonetheless, terror movies- while not necessarily being groundbreaking- are fun because they grab you by the throat and drag through a gamut of intense emotions. It’s nice to be engrossed in something so completely… even if it’s not entirely pleasant.

Unfortunately, The Purge doesn’t grab you by the throat. It doesn’t even fondle you inappropriately. It kind of just looks at you from across the room, and it’s really good looking, until you realise that its shirt is tucked into its underpants and it’s wearing two different coloured shoes and you’ve already started walking up to it, and you can’t back down now but GOD you wish that you could leave because you’ve been spurned before (cough Paranormal Activity cough) and you don’t have time for this shit in your life anymore because you are a GROWN ASS MAN NOW.

I guess what I’m saying is, The Purge doesn’t work.

THE PLOT: Set in suburban America in 2022, the Government- in an effort to lower crime rates and unemployment- suspend all emergency services for a 12-hour period known as (you guessed it) ‘The Purge’. In these 12 hours crimes like murder, theft and rape are legal as is the use of all firearms available to civilians.

The Sandin’s are an upper-middle class family who go into lock down during The Purge, using one of the state-of-the-art security systems that father James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) sells. He lives with his wife, Mary (Lena Headey), daughter, Zoey (Adelaide Kane) and his intolerable weirdo son Charlie (Max Burkholder).

After lockdown, a non-descript black man runs up to the house screaming and Charlie lets him in. The pissy-mask-wearing-white-people chasing the black man (it’s important that he’s black... or at least the filmmakers think it is) then threaten the Sandin’s to give up the black man so they can kill him, or risk incurring the full wrath of the pissy white people.

Shit gets cray.

THE PROBLEM:

The idea of a purge is a great one and bears all the hallmarks of a classic (even legendary) slasher set up. A family locked in a house on a night where all murder is legal? The entire nation is against them and perhaps they are against each other? Creepy masks? Electrical faults? A fun hashtag (#survivethenight)? Clever online marketing campaigns? An insanely gif-able set up? This is modern slasher perfection! Also, the film looks great and the performances are, for the most part, decent. The villains are creepy... It has all the ingredients of a fun, brilliant (at least for a party), slasher.

But The Purge ultimately fails because it attempts provide a social allegory where it doesn’t need to. Not because there isn’t sufficient opportunity to provide social commentary, but because the filmmakers had no idea about what they wanted to say.

Is it a comment on violence in film? No, because the violence isn’t pushed to the forefront of the film to make this idea plausible.  Is it a comment on race? Well, no because black people try to kill white people, white people try to kill white people and there’s even a singular Asian person holding a knife (#tolerance).  So it’s not that. Is it a comment on economic class? Well, no because everyone loses. Is it a comment on gun control? Maybe. But guns end up saving everyone so if it is, it’s a bad one.

On top of all this confusion, you have characters that are just flat-out irritating. In a slasher movie, you kind of need to feel sympathy for the victim. They have to make you want them survive. If you don’t care about them, then there’s literally no point in watching. Because when shit people die in a movie, you just carry on eating your popcorn.  I hated the Sandin’s, especially Charlie, who- despite having the only steadfast moral compass for the entirety of the film- is so unnecessarily weird and kooky that it makes you want to shoot him yourself… and I don’t think that’s what was intended.

All of these conflicting and poorly executed ideas make The Purge frustrating viewing.

Whatever The Purge is saying gets lost because it’s trying too hard. The filmmakers shouldn't have gone for depth, meaning, a moral or a literary social insight here. They could’ve said a lot more about America, about the viewer and about the human need for catharsis had they just made a balls-out horror movie. Thematic and ideological overkill where they just should’ve focused on the ‘kill’ perhaps?

To Conclude: The Purge verges on awful, whilst conceptually verging on brilliance. The Purge is the cinematic equivalent of that student who uses big words for the sake of it. You can tell that they understand the material and are, probably, quite smart but just keep fucking themselves over by trying to seem smarter than they are. It’s frustrating to watch someone squander their potential, which is why it’s so difficult to sit through The Purge.

 Intelligence only works when you have the knowledge to back it up. let's hope the sequel gets it right.

4/10.

   -- Flash Anthony

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FlashReview: Artpop- Lady Gaga

Flash Reviews are  easy to read reviews of big moments in pop culture. We break down the issue so you don’t have to. They are written ‘in a flash’ for you reading (dis)pleasure.

I love people having differing opinions, I do. I really do. But what I don’t like is when people are close-minded about things. When people’s prejudices blur the lines (hey Robin Thicke, thanks for ruining that saying for me you stupid fucking prick) between understanding and appreciating something and being a fool. Sure, hate something. Disagree with it. Call it shit because it is and you hate it. But you need to have a reason for doing so. That’s what intelligence is. Intelligence, apparently, is something that the folks at The Examiner clearly lack.

In a Flash (aka a summary of the review below): ARTPOP is not one of the biggest disasters in pop music history (I’m not quoting them directly because they’re being ridiculous.) It’s a decent album that’s quite a lot of fun. It’s not revolutionary… and if we all took Gaga a little less seriously, we could enjoy the album a lot more.

The Artist:

Lady Gaga has always been a polarising artist, no one thinks she’s ‘just okay’, you either love Gaga or despise Gaga. Unlike a lot of artists, she is her music, it is impossible to review any one of her albums (or outfits) without it becoming a full blown critique of her as a person, or whatever post-modern construction of a person she has painted herself to be. Artpop will do nothing to change that.

The problem with Gaga is that she gets a little too caught up in her own artifice and takes herself a little too seriously. The meat dress, the thinly veiled pro-gay message of BTW, it has a way of making her seem like she thinks she’s smarter than she is. In other words, it makes it easy to write her off as a failed art-school hipster dumbass. This isn’t helped by her ridiculous fans calling her mum every two seconds.

 But, throughout all of the overblown artifice, the music has been good enough (or, at least, catchy and fun enough) to make it okay. I don’t have to like ‘Born this Way’, but I can slam-dance to it after a lot of wine. Because self-assurance is best enjoyed in the form of pop music from a stranger.

  The Message:

Let me explain what I think she’s trying to do here. I hate that I have to this and I shouldn’t but blame those dicks at The Examiner.

Like all of Gaga’s work, Artpop has a clear and defining theme. One that is very simple and easy to follow, but is complicated by her complex (often unnecessary but aesthetically wowing) presentation of herself through fashion, music videos and performances.

Artpop is a statement by Gaga that all pop music (or, at least, HER pop music) is art of the highest order. She is placing herself next to Pop Artists like Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons (who sculpted her and designed the cover) and Jasper Johns by taking elements of Pop Music culture and re-appropriating them as high art. Whilst performing the song ‘Venus’(a modern take on a quintessential eighties pop anthem) on the X-Factor, she performed in front of Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’, one of the worlds most famous and recognisable works of art. See what she’s saying? She’s Venus. She’s painting herself as a true artist and pop music is high art like that of Botticelli. Simple, isn’t it?

This flows through Artpop, with Gaga refrencing important moments in pop music and copying them into her own. ‘Venus’ references the eighties (think Madonna and Bowie), ‘Manicure’ references the guitar addled rock-pop of the nineties,  ‘Do What U Want’ brims with the pop R&B funk of the early 2000’s and ‘Swine’ references the trappy-dubstep beats of today. She even references her OWN mark on pop history through ‘Applause’. All of this is presented in this heavily computerised, auto-tuned way, which is a staple of modern pop music… it’s why pop is seen as ‘not real music’. Gaga is trying to say that it is real music and that it’s valid art with this album.

In The Examiner article (I’m just not calling it a review anymore, DEAL W/IT), Gaga was berated for sounding like Christina Aguilera, Bowie and Madonna. But Pop Art takes images and ideas from popular culture in order to create new ideas. Andy Warhol didn’t invent the Campbell’s Soup can. Gaga didn’t invent these sounds, but she’s creating new ideas with them.

Now, this is all very lofty and pseudo-intellectual (we’re on Tumblr after all). But this is what Gaga was trying to do with this album, I think. I don’t know whether she completely pulled it off (some of the music is merely okay). She probably didn’t. But you have to make an attempt to understand something before you shit on it completely.

This is my attempt at understanding. I could see how you could hate this. I kind of hate it too because I'd rather just listen to music without being lectured. But the music is also pretty good, so I'll let it slide because Gaga does it with so much style, and panache that she can get away with it.

  The Music:

Now I’m going to shit on it completely.

(I’m not.)

The music is good pop music to jump around to after you’ve been drinking or dance to in your room late at night in your underpants (aka me).  I put this album in my car. I bopped along, I screamed to ‘Manicure’, ‘Venus’ and ‘Do What U Want’ (they’re awesome, okay). I had fun listening to it.

 Did it change my perceptions of pop music? No.

Will it change the landscape of music forever? No.

Will it make me sing at the stoplights with my windows down, thus embarrassing me in front of potentially hundreds of strangers? Definitely.

 Sure Gaga has done herself a disservice by taking herself to seriously, but we don't have to. Let's not hold Gaga to this high standard of being an arbiter of taste and just listen to Applause and clap like seals on acid. 

Listen to this album, make up your own mind and enjoy yourself. That’s the point, isn’t it?

 To The Examiner, I say that I see your opinion and raise you a thoughtful opinion.

--Flash Anthony

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Azealia Blanks: An Open Letter to Azealia Blanks

Dear Azealia,

It’s really hard being your fan. A lot of people like your music and you're an amazing performer, but you as a person. Mmm, not so much. Your music is an extension of you and YOU  are a lot to take.

 I’ve been pro-Azealia for a while now. I like my artists like I like my art: Ballsy, risky, mean and honest.You are all of those things. I’ve enjoyed watching a musician who is so unafraid of what people think, say or are expecting… you create. And you're damn good at creating. Your art stands up to your attitude. The only other star as ballsy as you is Miley Cyrus and you have A LOT more going for you than she does at this point. Your music is good. But it’s getting harder and harder to stand by you, lately.

  I stood by you when called Perez Hilton a faggot, I stood by you when you called Lily Allen’s kids ugly. I stood by you when delayed your album for the 473895740962894386th time. I even stood by you after you refused to perform at the Adelaide-leg of Future Music Festival, effectively leaving me and thousands of others, standing outside in the roasting 44 degree (Celsius) day. Because of you I got my face licked by an under-aged girl who was, in her own slurred words,  ‘tripping balls’. I let it go… I thought, ‘Hey! That’s just what she’s like!’ But hearing that you walked offstage at the Sydney-leg of Listen Out Festival because someone threw a bottle (or a can) onstage… I’ve finally had enough.  

  Below is a picture of David Bowie with a lollipop lodged IN HIS EYE after a fan threw it up onto the stage.

    After some crew checked him out and gave him the all clear, he swore at the crowd for a while and then continued performing. Now Azealia, I have a question for you: Are you David Bowie?

  Sure, you are a boundary pushing talent who is bisexual, replicated Bowie's 'bad eye' and has a penchant for the Avant-garde, but the answer is an emphatic NO. You haven’t released an album, the bottle didn’t even hit you and your mark on the music industry is not indelible like that of Bowie…212 is good, but Ziggy Stardust is better! You are a smudge on Bowie’s infamous sunglasses (which ever pair he is currently wearing).

  I guess what I’m saying is, YES! You are a talented musician. But you are not talented or important enough to get all pissy about a bottle being thrown onstage. Why? Because you’re a musician and that’s what musicians have to deal with- even great one’s like David Bowie. That’s why you’re paid millions of dollars, because you have to deal with shit like this. I’m not condoning it, but it happens.

Dealing with getting things thrown onstage is part of your job. I work on checkout at a supermarket part-time while I study at university. So my job is, for all intensive purposes, checkout operator. As a checkout operator, if I left my register every time someone threw their bags at me, talked over me, sneezed on me, swore at me, coughed on me or made fun of the way I look (yes, it’s happened because people are dicks) I would be unemployed. But I don’t leave, because I need to work and because I realise that without that stupid bastard hurling abuse at me from the other side of the register I wouldn’t have a job. Without that bottle-hurling douche, you wouldn’t even be performing anywhere.

    You might be a great musician, but you are replaceable. There will be another sassy female rap-artist (you’ve been called the new Nicki Minaj PLENTY of times) to take your place that is less of a diva. A bottle is a bottle. When people start throwing bombs and bullets onstage, then you can leave. But a singular bottle? That didn’t even hit you?

  No. Fuck off.

  You stay onstage and you FUCKING perform. You perform for the fans that didn’t throw bottles and tell the one that did to go fuck themselves. You perform because people paid money to see you, money that they’ve probably had to work REALLY hard for. Money that probably was the result of dealing with more than couple dickheads. It’s called respect and empathy. Sometimes we do things we don't want to do, it’s what happens when you live in a society. So perform. It’s a bottle. Jesus.

    Your remix of Work Bitch is genuinely amazing. Maybe you need to listen to that song (as bad as it is) and realise that you, too, need to work.

I’ll probably forget about this when you release your album. But until that happens, I’m going to grumble. Also- if you are reading this- please don't destroy me on twitter. I don't even have twitter.

Either way, get your shit together.

Sincerely,

Flash Anthony.

    A BRIEF MESSAGE TO READERS/ FOLLOWERS:

I’m really sorry I haven’t posted in such a long time!! Work, study and everything (so, life) happened and I’m just now on top of things . This post has been a long time coming! BUT I’ll be posting more consistently after the 23rd of November as that will be the end of exams and- therefore- uni for the year. Say tuned for more Flash’s next week from me and the other Reporters.

:D

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SUMMER FESITVAL ROUND UP

It’s a special time of year. The sun is shining, the temperature is rising, my hay fever is acting up to the point where my nose and face are so itchy that the only foreseeable solution is to repeatedly punch myself in the face in the hope that either the itching will stop, or that I will die in a sniveling bruised heap on a footpath somewhere.  And I’ve been swooped by about eighty magpies.

Let me clarify, special isn’t always a positive.

The word ‘special’ takes on numerous connotations: it could be like the way you feel on your birthday, it could also be used to describe that person that wears a helmet and is always licking things despite that fact that they are either:

A)   Not on a bike

B)   Do not have an ice cream or lolly

C)   Have never done anything involving options B or A

But there is one shining beacon of happiness to come out of this horrible time of year, and that is the presentation of hope and anticipation in the form of summer music festival line-ups. Yes, they’ve been announced and I’m going to help you decide the exact time and location in which you will spend in excess of $150 to get sunburnt, make poor choices and jam out to some of your favourite bands provided that those bastards don’t fuck up the timetables again.

Promoters have been promoting harder than ever this year but have they delivered?

BIG DAY OUT:

Now this line-up has been billed as their ‘best ever’. It isn’t. But it’s a lot better than you’d think. When I first saw the line-up I was disappointed, after having a great time this year, popping my pussy to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, I was bit like, ‘oh is that all’. But, now that I’ve had time to get over the fact that there’s no Yeah Yeah Yeahs (two years in a row doesn’t happen but I can dream and fuck you) and the rumours of Eminem headlining being false, I realised that BDO have done pretty well.

Pearl Jam, Blur and Arcade Fire (especially Arcade Fire) are all brilliant headliners. Snoop Dog (Lion) will be great, just for the novelty.  Tame Impala and Flume are great mid-range acts, being local crowd-pleasers in a big way. Tame, especially, have hit it BIG with their latest album Lonerism and following an Australian tour, this is the perfect chance for fans who missed out to see them. The Lumineers are also there to please indie fuckwits. And then there’s Loon Lake, who will be adorable.

The line-up is solid, a good spread of things- if not a bit rock-heavy, which is never a bad thing. To make this line-up perfection, I would substitute Blur for No Doubt, or- at least- chuck in a few better-known mid-range, Vampire Weekend- esque acts, just so there could be a bit more fun and novelty here to push the fun of the day.

FUTURE MUSIC FESTIVAL

The Futures line up for 2014 is a difficult one in that it is an amazing line up for a limited audience. Where the Big Day Out kind of caters to everyone (Flume, Pearl Jam, Mac Miller and Arcade Fire is varied enough for a wide appeal, but cool enough to ensure that everyone- regardless of taste- will have a good day), Futures has limited their scope considerably.

Where 2013 saw Ellie Goulding, Bloc Party and The Stone Roses share stages with Azealia Banks, The Prodigy and Hardwell, 2014 is decidedly dance heavy. The atmosphere will be INSANE but Futures has always been great at blending electro, dance, pop and alt-music in a way that other festivals can’t. They seem to have lost that this year. This year it feels a bit like a Stereosonic lineup, with a few guitars and a couple rappers chucked in.  

This line-up is HUGE and it’s fantastic to see the festival grow, but it’s a lot of the same thing. If they’d varied it up a bit, Futures would have been HANDS DOWN the best festival line-up of the summer. Deadmau5 is going to be brilliant. Phoenix are great, Cut Copy are a nice addition and Knife Party. Just Knife Party. It’s all good, and if you’re a fan of the music it’s probably the best thing ever. But they needed a big pop or indie act to even it out.

But I can’t help but feel that Futures has lost a sense of fun this year.

SOUNDWAVE:

There are some brilliant acts on the bill for Soundwave this year (Placebo, Stone Temple Pilots, Rob Zombie) but it’s Soundwave. Green Day is a great headliner, if not a slightly weird choice.

It’s Soundwave. It doesn’t really change, it’s good if you like that sort of thing. Short of the 2013 line-up, which was ridiculous, it is a festival that hasn’t undergone a great deal of evolution in the sense that I know what to expect (yes they've made the move from metal to a more inclusive hardcore, emocore, punk and rock environment... but it's still kind of samey). Every year I am generally shocked by BDO and Futures… they always surprise me. Soundwave never really has, and it hasn’t this year.

While something has to be said for consistency, I think (especially after the lofty highs of 2013), Soundwave 2014 is a justifiably smaller festival. But still great in it’s own way.

LANEWAY:

I know who Haim are. I know who Adalita is.

I don’t know who anyone else is on the Laneway line-up. I’m sorry, I’m just not cool enough. I’m sure it’s a brilliant line-up if you’re into it.

Summary:

There is no clear winner for the 2014 festival circuit, and I’m not the boss of you… you go to whatever festival you want to. At this time of year, we all need something to look forward to. Exams are imminent. Christmas is imminent. Work is going to suck. We all need to shake all of that stress off. I’m just annoyed that there isn’t a line-up that has caught everyone’s attention in a massive way. They’ve all been greeted with a gaggle of ‘maybes’ as opposed to the unified resounding ‘FUCK YEAH’ of previous years. I want a ‘FUCK YEAH’, I need a ‘FUCK YEAH’, god dammit.

  Come January, maybe I'll be more excited.