You Know How I Know You're Gay? Joe Satriani Is Suing You for Plagiarism.

It's common knowledge that anyone who is a heterosexual male over the age of 14 and in full possession of his auditory senses is required to dislike Coldplay if he wants to consider himself hip. This unspoken standard has presented a conundrum for me ever since Coldplay first entered the popular consciousness; while I fulfill all of the aforementioned requirements (especially the one about wanting to be hip), I am bitterly protective of my self-aggrandizing belief that I stand among the precious, enlightened few who know exactly why Coldplay sucks beyond the fact that The 40-Year-Old Virgin tells me so: their songs are shamelessly derivative; their albums are overproduced to the razor's edge of unbreathable sonic mush; their lead singer allowed Gwyneth Paltrow to name his children after a fruit and Charlton Heston, respectively. And yet, at the same time...I also kind of like them.

This seemingly irreconcilable internal conflict would have likely driven me to madness had it not been for the courage of '80s-era cheese-guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani to come forward and demand that Coldplay give him all of their money.

The fact that Coldplay's "Viva la Vida" really does kind of sound like Satriani's "If I Could Fly" is beside the point. What matters is the fact that a musician who hadn't been heard from in two decades--and who was only ever known strictly for playing the electric guitar, not for playing real songs with words--suing a band that is currently quite popular--but who, based on their technical merits, could easily fail to stand the test of time--for plagiarism is super-ironic. Irony is hip; therefore, Coldplay is hip (for a few hours today, at least); therefore, I (with acknowledgment to the same caveat) am indisputably hip.

But only because I don't really like Coldplay, unlike the rest of you losers.

End of 'The Dark Knight's' Box Office Dominance Foretold by Children

"For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions." - Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Neat as the above amateur trailer may be (and it is pretty neat), it is likely that those who enjoy it most--including the adult nerds who made it--are the least likely to recognize the underlying prophecy brought forth by its very existence...

Children are indeed the future--but that applies not only to the longview of humanity, but also to the short-term view of popular culture. The moment that the future embraces any aspect of the present, that aspect becomes a part of the past. Ergo, The Dark Knight's historic reign atop the box office will come to an end this weekend. Thus the children have spoken; thus Metroville guarantees it.

(Also, Tropic Thunder comes out on Wednesday; that kind of helps my fortune-telling confidence.)


[video courtesy Wizard Universe via Defamer]

No More Movies for You, America

If the writers' strike continues for a few more months, a world without new movies could become a reality. Based on the fact that Meet the Spartans was the highest-grossing movie in the country last weekend, that is a reality that this country richly deserves.

SIMPLY ACKNOWLEDGING THE EXISTENCE OF A POP CULTURE FACET DOES NOT QUALIFY AS A PARODY, SPOOF OR SATIRE OF SAID FACET. Simply ticking off a list of pop culture facets does not qualify as a movie of any kind. An individual who pays good money to witness said list be presented and accepts it as "comedy" does not qualify as a human being, but rather as a sheep dressed like a monkey.*

The argument that a person "just wanted some mindless laughs" is not a defense for having seen Meet the Spartans (or Epic Movie, Date Movie, or any film from the "here's-something-out-of-context-that-you- recognize-isn't-that-hilarious?" genre--which was essentially invented by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, who modestly only consider themselves screenwriters and directors, ignoring their much grander collective title of The Two Unfunniest People On The Face Of The Earth). Beyond the fact that there are no laughs in Meet the Spartans, "mindless" and "laughs" are not mutually inclusive terms, even in the realm of spoof. Anyone who spent 90 minutes of their weekend staring at that complete and total waste of all applicable resources could have used that time to watch Airplane! or The Naked Gun or any of Mel Brooks' early films and emerged a better person for it.

You know what movie I saw over the weekend? Rambo. While I am certainly not going to try to tell you that the film is an artistically meritorious piece of cinema (or even, on the whole, a particularly good movie)...I can hold my head up high for having contributed my $14 (damn your above-average-cost quality, ArcLight) to the country's second-highest grosser of the weekend. My conscience is clear not just because Sylvester Stallone is an old man who will need all the money he can amass for nursing care, legal fees and human growth hormone in his rapidly-advancing years, but because choosing Rambo was the American thing to do, god dammit. If more of my countrymen had made the same choice, it would have sent a message to the makers of dreck like Meet the Spartans that when it comes to movies, Americans will swallow a lot of crap (for example, Rambo)...but not that much.

Alas, Americans have announced loudly and clearly that they will swallow that much crap--and then some--with grateful smiles on their gap-toothed faces. Now that the financial success of Meet the Spartans has validated its creators' extremely low opinion of the filmgoing audience, thus emboldening them to puke up less of the same, we can all look forward to Ass: The Movie [link NSFW]...which, at this rate, should be in theaters by around 2015.


[*Not only was that joke more original than anything in Meet the Spartans, it didn't cost you $11.]