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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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PSA: HIGH CHOLESTEROL FOODS WILL STILL CAUSE HEART DISEASE

If any of you caught the ABC documentary 'THE HEART OF THE MATTER: DIETARY VILLAINS' you may have been overwhelmed by the title, and you may have also picked up some new advice. That advice being high cholesterol does NOT cause heart disease and most people are wasting their time taking cholesterol-reducing drugs called statins. 

Thankfully Media Watch was on the case and became the beckon of truth that we deserve.

The Catalyst documentary made claims such as:

'I think it's a huge misconception that saturated fat and cholesterol are the demons in the diet, and it is 100% wrong' - Dr Johnny Bowden

'Saturated fat has been vilified for years because of the cholesterol theory' - Dr Stephen Sinatra 'A multibillion dollar food industry has fuelled our phobia of fat and cholesterol and dramatically influenced our diet' - Dr Maryanne Demasi 

Now I'm not a doctor, and for all I know these good people could be telling the truth. However after the second episode went to air, the ABC's Health expert Dr Norman Swan was outraged stating that catalyst's program would kill people as it suggested those with high cholesterol to stop taking their medication. 

A healthy debate between doctor's is normally for the best. However apparently you can get PhD's from just about anywhere these days. 

Doctor Johnny Bowden, has a PhD but it's not from a recognised university. It’s a Clayton’s PhD obtained by correspondence from the Clayton College of Natural Health in Alabama, which offered degrees in naturopathy, holistic nutrition, herbal studies and iridology ... before it went out of business in 2010. 

So sadly just to make things clear: butter is bad for your heart even though it tastes like happiness.

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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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9TH SPOT IS PRETTY MUCH 1ST

Today Lonely Planet released its convented top 10 cities to visit in 2014. That isn't the shock, it's something they do annually, duh. The shock is that our little old town of Adelaide, came in at 9th spot. Now before you say 'well I bet Sydney and Melbourne were on the list', the weren't. SO SUCK IT EAST SIDERS. Naturally the media and population of Adelaide are celebrating as if we came in first. As we should, good for us! We're not extreme hipsters, or uptight Sydneysiders. We're not cashed up bogans, or... cashed up bogans. We're the city next door! However like all cities next door we've got some issues. Just tiny issues that Lonely Planet has thankfully overlooked. But I thought I'd bring them to attention anyway.

1) WE ARE CONSTANTLY UNDER CONSTRUCTION

You know how your neighbour has that patio out the back that he's been working on every summer since 05' but never seems to finish. That's Adelaide's CBD. What used to be a city of churches is now a city of construction and cranes. Not that it's a bad thing constant improvement is what makes a city grow. But like our ageing population its just taking us longer than usual to complete.

2) WE DON'T BREED VERY WELL

Back in 2009 your neighbours took in two Asian exchange students. Full of hope and determination these kids were going to breed like rabbits. Well that's not right, I just had to somehow stick with the analogy. The two Asian kids are Adelaide's Giant Panda's Wang Wang and Funi and when they came to town boy was it a big deal. Soft toys, book deals, these Panda's could do no wrong! That was until the zookeepers started to try and breed the couple and neither was having a bar of it. We have them until 2019 and if Wang Wang doesn't stick his wang wang up Funi and get her pregnant by then, well let's just say we won't be taking anymore exchange students for a while.

3) YEAH WE'RE NOT JOKING ABOUT THOSE SERIAL KILLER STATISTICS

Ah yes the creepy uncle that sometimes pops past the next door neighbour's house, or you know the casual serial killer. In 2008, the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that South Australia holds fifteen percent of Australia's convicted murderers, despite holding only eight percent of population. Some of our serial killers, like John Bunting, even made double figures before they were caught. My pro tip for avoiding serial killers: 'don't be a dumb tourist, by yourself, in the country, with no petrol left in your hire car' also find out which footy team they go for and just try and become friends.

Adelaide's heaps good, mate.