The Hills: a song review

Abel Makkonen Tesfaye or the artist known as The Weeknd is a Canadian R&B and Soul singer who found success by working with artists like Drake and Ariana Grande. The Weeknd is one of the "new" big things of this year, for better or worse, he had 4 Top 20 Billboard Hits this far and to be honest I'm not that happy about that. The Weeknd has this style of singing that really annoys me. The Weeknd made it into the charts with Love Me Harder aa good song which all the good parts are attributed to Ariana Grande contribution, then with Earned It a song that I actively dislike probably more than I should only because of the very bad video, then The Hills a song I will discuss in a few seconds and then finally Can't Feel My Face that I really like because of a very Michael Jackson vibe and the fact that is on the better range of The Weeknd's voice, but has a few problems that are attributed too the questionable lyrics. Now that I got that out of the way we can start praising this song because I really like it.

First of all I love the sound, aggressive, industrial, a perfect fit for the Halloween and how the base kicks in with the hook. It makes a great contrast with the high pitched auto-tune voice of The Weeknd. It has a great atmosphere that makes you feel uncomfortable. It has a monstrous feel to it that just feels huge.

But does the sound match the lyrics?

"Your man on the road, he doin' promo
You said, "Keep our business on the low-low"
I'm just tryna get you out the friend zone"

OH, YES! The context makes everything, it's about picking up somebody's girlfriend and it helps that he isn't bragging about that.

"Found out I was comin', sent your friends home
Keep on tryna hide it but your friends know"

Instead he's telling the story of how he's done it and not going off with that he continues the story.

"I'ma let you know and keep it simple
Tryna keep it up don't seem so simple
I just fucked two bitches 'fore I saw you
And you gon' have to do it at my tempo"

But the hook is the key element that holds this song together for me.

"I only call you when it's half past five
The only time that I'll be by your side
I only love it when you touch me, not feel me
When I'm fucked up, that's the real me
When I'm fucked up, that's the real me, yeah
I only call you when it's half past five
The only time I'd ever call you mine
I only love it when you touch me, not feel me
When I'm fucked up, that's the real me
When I'm fucked up, that's the real me, babe"

Where The Weeknd practically screams what the girl is to him and how genuinely awful he is. And it works. Because he isn't holding anything back, he isn't excuses, the topic is ugly so the song sounds ugly. It all has to do with the context and the framing.

This song reminds me of Love Me if Love Me was good. Love Me was awful because Wayne frame himself as the good guy. He was sleazy but still everybody loved him.

Overall I really like the song and the guy really gets better and better. One of the best hit songs of the year this far and it really makes me want to check out more from The Weeknd.

Beauty Behind the Madness: an album review (review to come)

Announcement: Soul Eater review and more...coming soon

Probably my favorite anime ever, one that's so good I decided to re-watch it again to see if I changed my opinion on. As it turns out I quite this is going to be a multi part review looking at ten episodes one after another. I'll put a spoiler warned paragraph on every episode review in chase you've seen the show.

Also as I want to tie in the Soul Eater wrap in my next "the obligatory Halloween themed review" week I plan.

Sicario

 Sicario is a dirty movie. And not in a good way. It's the kind of movie that makes you want to do a shower after it's over. It's like Se7en in that way. Bad things happen, no one can change that. I'm serious, if you have a very weak constitution you'll not take this film easy.

 Sicario is an example of craft over story (the best way possible though), it's drug-bust story with revenge elements to it that we all have seen before, but it's a good story but that's not my point. You ever had an uncle that was so cool to take you to a camp and told you stories there, and he had a way of telling stories so great that you begged for him to say the same stories over and over. That's Sicario in a nutshell. The story telling over weights the story. Like Memento. Memento has a "decent" story but the narrative it's what makes the film fantastic. Sicario has more going for than Memento. Sicario has one of the best scores of the year (composed by Jóhann Jóhannsson who also composed the score for The Theory of Everything), Roger Deakins  does wonders making Mexic look like a living hell and nighttime look like nighttime, Emily Blunt (in the best role of her career so far) proves that she really deserves more Oscar push, and Benicio del Toro gives maybe one of his best performances yet and, for sure, having one of his best character arcs yet. The only weak point of the movie, for me, was a subplot *SPOILERS* which seamed to take inspiration off Heat, which I felt was a bit unnecessary.

 I see myself changing the rating on a second watch but for now I would grade the film a bit less then some would expect. Still this is an astonishingly well made film, one that I really was looking forward, that sure would deserve a lot of award buzz this year. A-

Top 5 Most Anticipated Movies of 2015

Kind of disappointing.

This year seems very bad for movies. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed a lot of films this year but it just feels a bit disjointed. 2014 had a lot of fantastic films that wowed the shit out of me, but till now the only great film is Mad Max: Fury Road. But there are a few films that still hold some hope so I'm making this list now because the trailers, photos and information about the films I’m most interested were released recently (and I’m kind of lazy).

So let’s see my most anticipated films of the year the second part of the year".

Only God Forgives

I hated Drive the first time when I saw it but after that I have learned to appreciate it more for what it is. Now this is unexpected but upon watching it the first time I loved nearly everything Only God Forgives.

Blue is the Warmest Color [La Vie d'Adèle – Chapitres 1 & 2] (2013)

Blue is the Warmest Color is the story of Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos), a high-school beauty who's life change after she meets Emma (Léa Seydoux), a young woman with blue hair. A love at first sight. What follows is a affair initially based on carnal desire, that slowly morphs into true love that spends over the course of decades.

The good stuff first. The acting in this film. Léa Seydoux was just magnificent. She made me believe she was her character so much that I needed to search what the actress have done before this film. Apparently she was in plenty of stuff I watched. She played Charlotte LaPadite in Inglourious Basterds, Gabrielle in Midnight in Paris, Sabine Moreau in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol and Clotilde in The Grand Budapest Hotel, just that her performance here is miles better. But really what sells the film is Adèle Exarchopoulos. She gives what may be the best performance of 2013. Her transition from timid, confused teen to empowered, independent woman was so elegant, that it made her reckless behavior later in the film that much more heartbreaking. This is one tour-de-force performance and it shouldn't be missed by nobody. The actresses won Palme d'Or deservedly.
Also the cinematography is great. The film is filmed in very tight close-up, which consistently produces an intimate effect. The shot composition also stands out pretty well.
The script develops the characters in such a way that the film at 179 min doesn't feel dull in anyway. And the conversations just feel real and on point.

Now, the bad stuff. The graphic sex scenes felt like too much. These scenes helped me understand the bound between the characters but the scenes were too long and I felt like the director just wanted to show all the thing that he could show.
Other than that, the way that the bar scenes were filmed (and that's something that most film are guilty of). When you film a bar scene it makes sense to add music in post-production, because if you didn't as soon as you'll make a cut and you editing the song would cut as well and it would cease to be seamless. So when they're filming the scenes and delivering those lines there's nothing that they have to shout over but than they had in the lab music. And the dialogue stays loud enough to hear, but they're fucking whispering it. It takes all the The Social Network did the bar scenes perfectly and sadly most films do not.
realism away from me. The music in the background is obviously suppose to seem loud because of the post-production effects but the characters are never speaking as though there's something loud in the room that they're talking over.

Overall this film is really good and recommendable. Everything it seem super real and natural and I really love nearly everything about it but I'm kind of upset that it did have some problems. I'm not sure if this grade will stay consistent, maybe someday I'll change it. B+

Killer Joe (2012)

Finding himself in considerable debt, Chris (Emile Hirsch) a Texan drug dealer, decides the only solution is to murder his mother to collect the insurance money. Getting together with his father (Thomas Haden Church), the ex-husband of Chris' mother, they decide to hire Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) a contract killer, who also happens to be a police detective. The plan is that the money will go to Chris' sister, Dottie (Juno Temple). However due to the size of the contract fee, Chris agrees that Joe can take Dottie as a retainer until the insurance comes through.

Directed by William Friedkin (The French Connection and The Exorcist) this film is certainly brutal, at times disgusting and at end disturbing... and beautiful. There is violence, nudity and tension all over the place. Matthew McConaughey gives one hell out of a performance and the rest of the cast is great, mostly Gina Gershon. Unfortunately if you like KFC chicken I can't recommend the film. In the third act everything gets fucked-up and in real-time, so it's that. The editing at times was a little distracting and jumpy, but overall good. The shot composition and the lighting was good too. There are some continuity errors with wounds, but there is some obvious symbolism representing that it will happen something bad in the next scene.

I'm not sure if I like it or not, because it's...different. This film was really polarizing. I'm between 'It was a piece of shit' to 'It was great'. But I definitely respect it for it's WTF-ness and the bravery to go a step further. A-