3D Movies Suck, And So Do You For Liking Them

There have been many disturbing trends in movies over the past few years. Remakes, reboots, Ryan Reynolds, just to name a few. The ungodly amount of movies about emo vampires is disturbing as well. But the worst, the absolute worst by far has been the sudden re-emergence of 3D cinema.

Every decade, this gimmick (and that’s what it is) comes back from the dead. I don’t know when it first made an appearance in movies, but I do know that it was around in the 1950s, as the Vincent Price classic horror flick House of Wax was originally 3D. For the most part, that is where 3D has stayed, in the horror genre. Who can forget classics like Friday the 13th Part 3D, Jaws 3D, or My Bloody Valentine 3D?

But seriously, that is where 3D should be, campy horror movies. It’s a neat gimmick for arterial spray, boobs, and blunt objects coming at people. The only other place it works is in amusement park attractions, since it is usually tied into rocking seats and all kinds of other effects best suited for a theatre in Busch Gardens. Otherwise, its pretty goddamn cheesy and completely unnecessary.

Movies like Thor, Captain America, Cars 2, and Harry Potter were all in 3D this summer and it was nothing more than a way for their producers to grab some extra cash at the box office. There was nothing in any of these movies that could be enhanced by a third dimension and the scenes that were set up for 3D were really obvious and kind of hokey. I say this having not seen any of these in 3D; it is just that you can tell even in a normal, real movie where the 3D scene is intended to be. It takes you out of the movie for a second, because you tend to notice things like “Oh shit, there’s a wand/shield/hammer shooting out of the screen” and not “Oh shit, Voldemort/Red Skull/ Loki is going to kill Harry Potter/Captain America/Thor.” You forsake plot details, acting, and skill as a filmmaker for a cheap thrill that looks cheap when you stop to think about it. Transformers 3 was also 3D, but that doesn’t really matter because that looked like a piece of shit no matter what way you see it.

A lot of this craze happened because of Avatar and how people were in love with the way it looked. Not to burst anyone’s bubble, but that movie was all style and no substance. For all the raving about motion capture and effects, people need to just own up that it was just a fancy cartoon mixed with some real shit in it. After that, every movie was coming out in 3D. Most of them weren’t even filmed as such (like Clash of the Titans) and effects were added later to make it playable in the format. How stupid is that? Granted, it isn’t like we’re talking about True Grit or The King’s Speech or some kind of genuine artistic film endeavor, but you’re still taking an existing product and adding shit that wasn’t there originally just to be able to charge an extra $5 for a ticket. The only recent 3D release that can even be justified being as such is Jackass 3D, because well, that’s funny.

Luckily, it seems like people are starting to buy into the fact that they are getting ripped off. Attendance at movies that are showed in 3D is considerably lower than its 2D counterpart, and the number of people seeing 3D is shrinking. What needs to happen is that people need to realize seeing a movie in 3D is a waste of the extra money and deliberately avoid seeing it in any format other than the traditional one. It’s the first step to stopping Hollywood’s line of thought that you can sugercoat bullshit by making it pop out of the screen at you. Production companies think viewers are dumb enough that they can be swayed by seeing an object fly out of the screen that they won’t realize that the movie they are at probably sucks (Green Lantern) or could just as easily have been seen for less money in (the still overpriced, but not as bad as 3D) the 2D format. Of course, they may have a point. People are pretty fucking stupid, or why else would Sarah Palin have two bestselling books and a reality show? Come to think of it, that is actually scarier than 3D.

Free Palestine!

One of the biggest stories in the news this week is taking place at the United Nations. Palestine and its representatives are pushing for a UN vote on Palestinian statehood, much to the chagrin of Israel and the United States. This move is being seen as very controversial and a way to circumvent the peace process in the Middle East.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama are hard at work trying to either A.) prevent the UN from taking the issue up for a vote and/or B.) urge Palestine to not force a vote on this. The United States has promised a veto on Palestinian statehood if it does come to vote, which would kill the resolution.

This of course would be a political and cultural landmine the United States would be stepping on. President Obama has already left his Jewish Democrat base and the Israelis feeling miffed by openly declaring his support for Palestinian statehood. The Islamic countries in the Middle East (and around the world really) are already in a great deal of turmoil and have long excoriated the US for its support for Israel. A commitment to a Palestinian state can go a long ways towards earning the trust and respect of Arabic nations in the hopes of scaling back some of the vitriol directed towards America. By stopping a vote or vetoing it, it sends the message (whether justified or not) that the United States is only paying lip service to Palestine’s aspirations.

Israel is condemning Palestine for going to the United Nations, claiming that it is just a ploy to get the rest of the world to bully and beat on Israel some more. This is preposterous. Israel condemns acts of terrorism committed against them and the use of violence as a means of solution. That’s fair enough; terrorism isn’t a solution. But to condemn them for taking it to the UN has nothing to do with it circumventing their negotiations with Palestine.

It has to do with the fact that outside of the United States, the rest of the world recognizes and speaks out on Israel’s complicity in limiting the peace process. Their responses to terrorism could be considered as such themselves and the economic and political repressions of the Palestinian people do not jive with the concept of Israel as victim. This isn’t even mentioning their constant expansion of new settlements on Palestinian territory and the severe restrictions they insist upon in any peace agreement. A vote before the UN isn’t kicking Israel around; it’s airing Israeli’s part in the hostilities in the region on a public stage.

For a supporter of a Palestinian state, this whole situation reeks of Obama kowtowing to a base he is afraid of losing to Republicans and an unwillingness to truly sway from decades of longstanding American policy of unwavering support for Israel. No one in American foreign policy is looking at a UN vote as something that could actually help to force a peace agreement between the two. If Israel is forced to have to recognize Palestine as an equal, it has to at least consider negotiating in good faith. On the other side, if Palestine is considered an actual state, it would be compelled to stop allowing terrorists to act on its soil, or at least try to stem that tide. If it wants to be considered legitimate, it would have to act like a responsible nation and negotiate as such with Israel. And at the very least, a vote and its consequences has just as good (if not more of) a shot at success than any other method. Its not like any other option has worked.

New Nightmare, or How Bob Ezrin Sucks

Bob Ezrin built his reputation on Alice Cooper in the 1970s. He cowrote songs on and produced the great albums that defined Coop’s career: Love it to Death, Killers, School’s Out, Billion Dollar Babies, and Welcome to my Nightmare. He followed these up by working with KISS on their Alice Cooper-lite (and for some reason most popular album) Destroyer, and found his biggest success with Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Without a doubt, Ezrin was a very successful and skilled producer in the 1970s.

This all fell apart in the 1980s. He managed to force Ace Frehley out of KISS and talk them into recording the insipid concept album Music From The Elder, a piece of music so embarrassingly awful that even Gene Simmons admits it was a piece of shit. He also managed to produce a really bad self-titled album for Rod Stewart in 1986, as well as some utterly forgettable Cooper albums in the 1980s. He then managed to stumble into producing Revenge, the last great KISS album. I would attribute the success of this album more to the fact that Vinnie Vincent returned to the KISS fold and wrote some skull-crushing tracks with/for them than any kind of inspiration from Ezrin.

Since then Bob’s kept a low-profile and hasn’t really done much of note, until recently that is. In the beginning of the year, Ezrin and Cooper announced that they would be teaming back up and bringing some of the old Alice Cooper band from the 1970s with them for a tour and sequel to the aforementioned Welcome to my Nightmare. The sequel’s title? The rather unclever Welcome 2 My Nightmare. As someone who is a huge fan of Alice Cooper (I would easily put him into my top five favorite musical artists of all-time) and his classic material as well as his more recent work, I do not approve.

Since 1994’s The Last Temptation of Alice Cooper to 2008’s Along Came a Spider, the man has put out six albums that have ranged from decent (2005’s Dirty Diamonds) to excellent (Last Temptation). Most importantly, he hasn’t just continued to cash in on hits from the 1970s like a lot of his fellow classic rockers (coughKISS/Aerosmithcough). True, he plays mostly older hits live, but he always adds new songs to his set list and keeps them around for several tours. He also continues to put thought and effort into each album, rather than using them as a way to continue to tour. The biggest sign of someone who is a serious musical artist is that the person continues to record new material and doesn’t just rely on old standards to justify existing.

That’s why this new collaboration is so distressing. Cooper gave an interview recently where he stated that he wanted to make a sequel to Along Came a Spider, but Ezrin flipped out and wouldn’t let him, saying, “Why would you make a sequel to an album no one bought?” He then coaxed Alice into a sequel to Welcome to my Nightmare instead. Never mind the fact that a producer should be there to guide the musician’s ideas and not to dictate what the music should be, the bigger problem is that Ezrin is obviously unfamiliar with his dear friend Alice’s material. Along Came a Spider is a sequel to Welcome to my Nightmare. The whole point behind the album is that it can be taken as a sequel or as a stand-alone piece of work. In some ways, Last Temptation is a a follow-up of sorts to Nightmare, featuring a main character of Steven that may or may not be the same person as the one from 1975. Regardless, Alice has touched upon elements and themes from Welcome to my Nightmare a few times without having to do a blatant follow-up.

This is why Bob Ezrin sucks. He gets it in his head that HE is the brains of the outfit and knows more about what is good for the artist than the artist does. In fact, it’s the opposite. When he pushes something in a direction of his choosing, it is terrible. The prime examples would be his work with KISS. People love Destroyer, but when you look at it as a whole, it is good despite his production and not because of it. His production makes it sound like Billion Dollar Babies without the great songwriting and personality. The track he cowrote, Flaming Youth, is just a shitty retread of Alice’s Department of Youth. Destroyer can’t hold a candle to his work on Elder. Coming into that recording session, KISS brought in a bunch of heavier and more rocking material, which Ezrin told them was shit. He then said they needed to do a concept album so that critics and the world would take them seriously and brought in Lou Reed to help them write material for it. Yes, that Lou Reed. He paid no mind to the fact that unlike Alice Cooper, the members of KISS didn’t think in terms of concepts and themes and story arcs. They wrote straight forward, three to four minute, three chord rock songs. What came out of it was a concept album that made no sense and made them sound utterly ridiculous. Elder is clearly the worst KISS album, and possibly one of the worst rock albums ever made.

Now, I don’t think that Welcome 2 My Nightmare is going to be bad like Elder is bad. Alice is adept enough at concept album writing that he won’t unleash songs like “A World Without Heroes” or “Under the Rose” upon the world. It’s just that there are two things that “classic” artists do as a cash grab when they can no longer write good material or are too lazy to try: re-record a bunch of songs from that were popular thirty years ago or write a sequel to an album that was really popular thirty years ago (ex. Operation Mindcrime II by Queensryche). Alice Cooper is better than that. He can still write songs and still wants to. It’s too bad that Bob Ezrin doesn’t.

Music that puts hair on your chest, Vol. 1: Motorhead

During the course of my life, I have listened to hundreds of different artists spanning a plethora of styles. There are a select few that are so powerful that listening to them can actually make you manlier. This post is dedicated to one such band: Motorhead.

If Led Zeppelin is considered the blues on steroiids, Motorhead is the blues on speed and coke. Often considered to be a progenitor of the thrash movement, Motorhead is actually a blues band that plays really fuckin’ loud and really fuckin’ fast. From their inception with their self-titled 1976 album to this year’s The World is Yours Motorhead has been churning out R&B (old school Little Richard/Chuck Berry style) from Hell. Every one to three years, Lemmy and the gang, be it the “classic” line-up from the late 70s or the incarnation of the band that has stood for the past twenty years, can be counted on to release a new album that stays true to its roots and doesn’t throw the listener for a fucked up curveball with pan flutes or something lame.

While most people correctly consider Motorhead’s best material to have been released between 1978 and 1982 with the classic line-up of Lemmy on bass and lead vocals; Philthy Animal Taylor on drums; and “Fast” Eddie Clarke on guitar, it isn’t like the band just dropped off and made shit after that. The current roster of Lemmy, Mikkey Dee on drums, and Phil Campbell on guitar has been together for nearly twenty years and still make music that crushes souls. From the dawn of the band to now, a Motorhead song can be counted on to have the following: powerhouse four on the floor drumming, a buzzsaw guitar riff and tasty solo, a punishing bass line, and Lemmy’s distinct growl. Motorhead’s music should be considered a constant alongside life, death, and taxes.

Really, it can all be defined with this one quote from Lemmy: We want to be the band that if we moved in next door to you, your lawn would die. A manly proclamation from the second manliest dude alive (behind Vlad Putin). If you are doubting the sheer power of Mr. Kilmeister, you obviously have never heard his music, seen his ridiculously awesome mustache/sideburn combo, read his autobiography White Line Fever, or seen the documentary about him. The man needs to be seen and heard to be believed; he makes Ozzy Osbourne look like a milquetoast.

While the bulk of the Motorhead catalog can be described as at least “good,” there are three essential albums for anyone who wants to know and love the band: Overkill, Ace of Spades, and No Sleep Til Hammersmith. Rather than got bogged down in the minutiae of reviewing them, just trust me that they are savage rock journeys into sex, drugs, and mayhem that should be heard. As my brother would say, “It would make your balls grow balls.”