2000s

I Could Get Used To This (Cross Talk Ep. 17)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

 

You may or not be familiar with a band called The Veronicas. I wasn’t initially, not until I stumbled across a Virgin Records store in New York City back in 2006. I intentionally hit up the store hoping to find some local New Yorkers on the rise, thinking I could beat the fame train and know some “cool” music ahead of my Edmonton hipster friends back home. I grabbed  Arctic Monkeys and the Veronicas, amongst a couple other picks.

I When I left the store, I immediately popped the Veronicas into my CD player, because people still had them at this time, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that I had landed across a couple of Australian identical twins that made a healthy mix of pop music. Electro, punk, rock, dance, prog, you name it, these chicks mixed with it.

Suffice to say, it was not my typical fare at the time. I was listening to mostly hip hop, punk rock, and the occasional foray into indie rock. Mostly because of my hipster friends.

I had some preconceived notions.

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Thankfully those notions didn’t hold me back for too long, and before I knew it, I was a The Veronicas fan. After all, pop music can be just as powerful as any other form of music, especially when artists explore the genre and bring something new to the table.

Which is why today, Chris and I explore the importance of looking at films you expected not to like, but ultimately did, so that we can break down some of these weird ideologies, get outside of our realms of influence, and experience excellent films. Examples for us as two white dudes that grew up in the 80s, watching animated movies and romantic comedies, but even within genres we are “supposed to” like, there are examples which break the mould.

I’d give you some direct examples, but I think it’d be best if you just watched the episode, reader readers.

This is episode seventeen of Cross Talk, and we at the timotheories team know that you’ll enjoy it. It’s an excellent topic and one that I’m personally stoked to share with you. So grab some popcorn and some candy, and figure out with us how to challenge these stereotypes! Plus Chris looks crazy in that preview thumbnail, so I fully expect that will serve as satisfactory clickbait.

Before I wrap up my thoughts on this post, I just want to remind you all of how important you’re support of this website is for me. I operate timotheories out of my own pocket, and exchanging ideas with creative professionals like you are one of the major reasons why this thing even exists in the first place.

So thank you.

Another day, another theory realized my friends. I look forward to hearing your feedback on the episode, and I’m so ready to dig into this week and share some reviews on the new Train album, the blu-ray release of Queen of Katwe, some thoughts on Facebook, and a digital download of my experience at a concert.

As The Veronicas, like to say, I could get used to this.

Please comment, subscribe, and share this video with friends. We want to hear your feedback!

Tim!

Good, Not Great (Bon Iver, 22 A Million)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

I’m glad I went to art school. I was exposed to a lot of people looking to impress, but without anything real to offer up. The struggle of the artist isn’t one of employment, it’s whether they can commit to a purpose and authentically represent it.

Too many posers walk around pretending they suffer, when they should put their nose to the grindstone and be affected for once. Yeah I’m feeling salty on this one.

Bon Iver – 22 A Million
released September 30, 2016
****** 6/10

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Bon Iver is a multi-instrumentalist group headed by Justin Vernon, one that focuses on indie folk and which has been around since 2007. They’ve put out 3 full-length studio albums at this point, but it has been five years since their last album was released.

22 A Million is more of an experiment then anything. Lots of the songs go into unique directions, ascending and descending, depending on the song, but often cutting short before we see a real resolution. I think I may have been spoiled this year dear readers, there have been so many great album releases that Bon Iver didn’t really have a chance.

I should be more clear with my intent – it feels like the songs have lost all interest in established forms of songwriting, and they don’t really help us to whatever atmosphere the group had strived for; thanks Justin and friends. It’s a challenge against convention, a battlecry against form, but the other team didn’t want to show up.

Folk music is in a difficult place these days it seems. While pop music has continued to explore what’s possible and even make conceptual decisions that are exciting, especially this past year, folk artists that dabble in pop should be uniquely poised to come out ahead. And yet, this album feels a lot like the late oughts. I find it very confusing. We’ve explored these themes already.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed parts of this album and it sounds beautiful, but as a professor of mine once said, I’m grading you based on your own ability and not on a preset standard, because that’s the only way you’ll grow. After all, I think it can be exciting when we reject tradition in favour of exploration, but exploration for explorations sake? Come on Bon Iver, wake up.

This album is a complete mess in terms of it’s composition. I might as well be listening to a 35 minute solo track in long form.

Literally every song on this album features some sort of dichotomy, good vs evil, up vs down, I could go on, but the point being made is one of tension. Even the song titles are written with symbols and avant garde grammar, it’s pretentious and we’ve seen that trick before too – leet speak is dead. Maybe I’m completely off my rocker here folks, but 22 A Million is not groundbreaking, it’s evocative, haunting, and a great jazz session. We should look at this as more of a mixtape then anything, and hopefully when the rest of the world wakes up, Bon Iver will have put their pants back on.

 

 

 

Maybe that was a harsh criticism, but I really do believe these guys are capable of a lot more than we saw on this record. I want to believe that this was just a misstep, but the flourishes and fawning of the masses over this record are driving me nuts friends. Listen to this one at your own discretion, but don’t for a second fall into the hype. It’s good, not great.

Tim!

 

Swordfish Doesn’t Even Taste Good Anyway (The Fast and the Furious 15th Anniversary)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Fifteen years ago my life changed, and for the better.

Last Wednesday marked the anniversary of that transformative experience and so I sat down in a theatre by myself to watch my favourite movie of all time and reflect on it’s impact on my own life – I remember that first experience like it was yesterday, dear readers.

My best and oldest friend, who we’ll call Rick for the sake of the story, was living in the city of Airdrie and I was visiting him for a couple of weeks at the start of the summer. We had grown up on the same block, living in mirrored houses of all things, and we spent most of our free time together, though we did go to different schools and had somewhat different hobbies, we were inseperable. Life was pretty good for two young boys, and we got into all kinds of adventures until he moved to Drumheller for his dads new job after the final year of elementary school.

So Rick and his family lived in Drumheller for the next 3 years and we would hang out for at holidays and in the summer, and we did our best to keep in touch. Initially with letters and phone calls, migrating to MSN messenger as new tech become available. And then Rick and his family moved a second time – now to Airdrie for another 3 years, right at the start of high school. I mention this because it helps bookend those memories for Rick and I and it REALLY helps me in the recall of this tale.

In the summer of 2001 Rick and I had both finished grade 10, hormones raging away. We decided to sneak into an 18A movie, but because we weren’t 18 yet, we needed to buy tickets for another movie first. What did we want to see you ask? Well if your memory is as good as mine, you’ll know that Swordfish had just come out that summer, and Halle Berry was paid an additional $500,000 to go topless in the movie. $250,000 per breast if you want to be specific.

As straight CIS males in the midst of puberty, and who didn’t have high speed internet, money, or legal adult status, nudity was in high demand for us. To put it another way the sexuality supply was short. And so, context given.

But we chickened out, and ended up in the theatre for The Fast and the Furious instead. Thus, my first taste of this franchise was born. On first pass I thought it was a fun action movie, but I didn’t make too big of a deal out of it, because I didn’t drive yet, and the actors were unknown. It was quotable though.

The summer concluded, and I went back to school, though I decided it was high time to get a part-time job at an arcade called Playdium. I learnt a lot about retail, people, and West Edmonton Mall working there, but most of all I watched a lot of partial movies on my breaks. I must of seen The Fast and the Furious in 30 and 15 minutes pieces over 15 complete times that year. This is because one of the older techs at Playdium lived on his own and would record movies from the movie channel onto VHS and bring it in for the staff. And so the quotes and culture of the first Fast became ingrained in my mind.

It was tough to invest in the franchise though, because as the as the first couple of sequels came out, I was entering into university, and getting involved with hipsters and philosopher king types. So my love of movies and brooding love for Vin Diesel and Paul Walker took a back seat. I would tell people it was my favourite movie, mostly under the thin veil of irony, and I also proclaimed that it was a standalone film.

Then I graduated from university and a couple of years later Fast & Furious came out in April of 2009 – I finally had a true sequel with the original cast and the beginnings of a tie-in with the 2nd and 3rd entries. As movies were added, the ensemble cast grew and the relationships between characters evolved. And then I realized that I had grown as well.

As a cultivators of the arts, a student of film, and a fan of this franchise, I can say confidently that The Fast and the Furious instills values of friendship, love, and family from it’s first few minutes all the way throughout its films and into the culture.

Best of all, in watching this limited release I had an opportunity to see advance footage from the set of the 8th instalment, and I was not disappointed. This is a franchise that has grown organically and so has it’s fanbase. I was so happy to see a packed theatre last Wednesday, and you really do feel like part of a family sharing with these actors and their characters.

Most of the already existing posts on this re-release have focused on the scale of the franchise and the “improbability” of it’s success. But what has been ignored time and time again is that at it’s core The Fast and the Furious is about heart and honour, it started out as films about car thieves, and slowly evolved into superheroes, but the heart has always been there, and I think that’s why it’s beaten the odds. But hey, that might just be a theory.

Tim!