A pop song's accompaniment.

When Bob Dylan was filmed flipping through sheets of paper with some of the lyrics to his song Subterranean Homesick Blues in 1965, a new artform was born: the music video. Two years later, the Beatles' clip for Strawberry Fields Forever proved nearly as seminal and influential, and cementing the music video's commercial power from 1975 on was Queen's concoction for Bohemian Rhapsody. These three clips, most notably, helped to demonstrate for artists, record companies and even everyday music fans that the concepts and themes of a song could be no less important or memorable than the songs themselves, musically. And, in fact, that they could outlast the song or (perhaps even single-handedly) help to sell them.

In the 1980s, music videos came into their own even more, thanks to Michael Jackson alone. Starting with Thriller in 1982 (which arguably helped its track's album of the same name become the biggest-selling LP ever), his videos were increasingly ambitious and expensive, with numerous Hollywood directors like John Landis and Martin Scorsese (who directed the Bad clip) at the helm. Female artists like Cyndi Lauper, a resurgent Tina Turner, Whitney Houston and most of all Madonna also flourished thanks to the music video and MTV; they even sometimes made it controversial, like when Madge danced in front of several burning crosses and freed an imprisoned black Christ figure in her Like a Prayer video (1989). And 1986 saw what I consider the best music video ever made: for Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer. This claymation masterpiece, from director Stephen R. Johnson and pre-Wallace and Gromit Aardman Animations, deservedly won nine MTV Video Music Awards (a record unequalled to this day) and is reportedly MTV's most aired video ever. I love the song, too.

Entering the '90s, videos became less memorable for me (though the music didn't), but starting with director Samuel Bayer's unshakable creation for Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991) that decade still delivered some powerful gems, like the Cranberries' immediate and movingly political clip for Zombie (1994) and the beautifully appropriate black-and-white/colour fusion for Oasis' Wonderwall (1995). Into this century, three very memorable clips for me are those for Good Charlotte's Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous (2002), Bruno Mars' Just the Way You Are (2010), Kisschasy's Opinions Won't Keep You Warm at Night (2007) and especially Green Day's Wake Me Up When September Ends (2004).

The music video has absolutely proved its cultural and commercial effectiveness, and it can stand on its own (most obviously, if you enjoy the clip but not the song). But it can overpower or contradict the accompanying song, and more so it can lack the effort and imagination that goes into the music. I think those are both quite dangerous. Like music itself, the music video should be a sincere, explicit artform, with which the artist(s) consciously tries (but not excessively) to really break the mould. Nonetheless, though, we should be thankful it has existed and endured at all. Because it has also helped music itself to endure and grow.

Some other classics:

A-ha - Take on Me (1985)
Crowded House - Better Be Home Soon (1988).
Billy Joel - We Didn't Start the Fire (1989).
New Radicals - You Get What You Give (1999).
The Dixie Chicks - Not Ready to Make Nice (2006).
Eminem - Without Me (2002).
AC/DC - It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'N' Roll) (1975)
Paul Simon - You Can Call Me Al (1986).

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #93: Across the Universe (2007).

It's 1968. Young Liverpool dockworker Jude (Jim Sturgess) lives with his single mother Martha before sailing across the Atlantic to find his long-lost father, who was an American soldier stationed in England during the war. After finally meeting him at Columbia University where he teaches, Jude meets sibling radicals Max (Joe Anderson) and Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), who take him in. Before long, of course, Jude and Lucy are an item, Max is conscripted to Vietnam and they all dive right into the anti-war movement in New York City's Greenwich Village, where they meet such colourful characters as Janis Joplinesque singer Sadie (Dana Fuchs), Jimi Hendrixesque guitarist Jojo (Martin Luther McCoy), closet lesbian Prudence (T.V. Carpio) and protest rally leader Paco (Logan Marshall-Green). But in the face of many powerful forces (no pun intended), Jude and Lucy must fight all the way to stay together and find some peace in their mad little part of the world.

Across the Universe is a deep line in the sand and I understand why, but from the moment I first saw it I was enchanted. I've never really cared about this movie's plot because director Julie Taymor and writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais weave it very carefully around the immortal songs of the Beatles, which the whole cast (including cameos by Bono, Joe Cocker and Salma Hayek among others) do justice to, and the rather cliched central romance I think feels relatable nonetheless. Taymor, Clement and La Frenais collectively evoke the aura of the late '60s so accurately and affectionately because that really was their era (although there are some anachronisms; the Let It Be sequence most notably), and they don't shy away from much of the counterculture's dark side either. Taymor particularly revels in laying plenty of very fitting psychedelic visuals over the musical sequences without jarring us, and composer (and Taymor's husband) Elliot Goldenthal competently meshes them together with his own interludes. There's also some delicious sets and costumes, detailed cinematography and sharp editing to maintain the pace.

Sturgess makes an amiable hero and smartly lets us gradually see all his layers, as does Anderson as the more caustic and rebellious Max, but the MVP here is Wood who's beautifully delicate and balanced in a role that could quite easily have been overplayed. All the main characters are named for characters in Beatles tunes, too. But if I'm honest, I love this film most of all because I've long had a real soft spot for its era: the worldwide youth awakening, the political upheavals and of course, the art in general. (Not the clothes or psychotropic substances, though.) And Across the Universe takes you there and, if you're like me, will make you want to stay.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #92: LOL (Laughing Out Loud) (2008).

Teenager Lola (Christa Theret), known as LOL to her friends, lives in Paris with her divorced mother Anne (Sophie Marceau), with whom she constantly fights, and two younger siblings. She is taking her first tenacious steps into young love by dating classmate Arthur (Felix Moati), but this falters when he tells her he cheated on her over summer with one of her close friends. LOL decides to cut him off and retaliate with one of his mates Mael (Jeremy Kapone), an aspiring rocker with parental issues of his own. Her other friends get quite a kick out of complicating things further meanwhile, and after a school trip to England her home life spirals even more out of control when her mum starts two-timing with her boyfriend and her ex-husband, the kids' father Alaine (Alexander Aster).

On paper, LOL (Laughing Out Loud) may seem a pretty stock teen comedy in the vein of John Hughes or Amy Heckerling, but co-writer/director Lisa Azuelos makes it feel fresh and entertaining by consciously casting her own Eurocentric eye over these familiar adolescent themes. She injects with a lot of French culture and attitude but also much of that of America and England to give us a keen view into how multicultural France has become, particularly its younger citizens. At the start Lola even mentions entering her school gates like she's attending her prom, before emphasising that proms don't exist in France. And it has unisex resonance and likability because despite the title, it's actually an ensemble piece as it flits back and forth between Lola's misadventures and that of her girlfriends, Mael and Arthur and their gang, and also Paul-Henri (Emile Bertherat), the rebellious son of a local politician.

Azuelos' and co-writer Delgado Nans' intelligent screenplay also gives the cast consistently sharp dialogue, and from this they all give very natural and balanced performances, particularly Theret and Kapone (a real-life musician who actually performs a self-penned song here), and it even inserts some rather metafictional scenes which aren't jarring or forced, along with very patient and tender cinematography and a ripper soundtrack of chart hits. All this adds up to LOL (Laughing Out Loud) being a deliciously unique entry into a frequently tired genre.

Chick flicks with testosterone.

Among the lesser-known or acknowledged subgenres or modern cinema is the "guy-cry" movie. It's possibly a descendant of contemporary chick flicks; where those frequently focus on themes like sisterhood and mother-daughter relationships, guy-cry films usually invoke ones like chivalry, mateship (Australian ones specialise in that) and father-son relationships, obviously. Think Armageddon and Saving Private Ryan (both 1998), and assorted sports films et cetera. Now, before I proceed any more with this, female stories should indeed be told in all mediums and there's no such thing as a gender-specific theme or emotion, but there is such thing, I think, as a difference in what commonly validates or provokes those among the genders, not to mention how everybody reacts to their ways of being explored.

Guy-cry movies have been produced nearly since the start of sound cinema, but they didn't really become so commonplace until about the 1980s to my knowledge. That decade, my favourite for cinema, saw titles like Raging Bull (1980), Gallipoli (1981), Platoon and Stand by Me (both 1986), Rain Man (1988) and Dead Poets Society (1989; and funnily enough, Peter Weir directed it and Gallipoli) with male protagonists all wearing their hearts on their sleeves, cutting a template out into which many newer flicks have tried to fit themselves. Some that come to my mind are Good Will Hunting (1997), Gladiator (2000), Mystic River (2003), Into the Wild and Romulus, My Father (both 2007), The Black Balloon (2008, which a woman wrote and directed, too), Big Hero 6 (2014) and Hacksaw Ridge (2016). Two others which I've read cited as guy-cry movies are Schindler's List (1993) and Titanic (1997), but they don't quite fit the description for me (particularly Titanic as it's told from a woman's perspective).

Guy-cry movies are equally important as chick flicks, I believe, because they can remind us males that there's nothing shameful or weak about letting it out, at least in certain contexts. That's simply one of the things that makes us human. And where males can learn more about women and girls from watching chick flicks, they can learn more about what us tick from watching a guy-cry movie. As I've often said, art is meant to entertain and education, not just one or the other. And it should also help us when necessary.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #91: Fanboys (2009).

It's 1998 in Ohio. Eric Bottler (Sam Huntington) is about to inherit his father's (Christopher McDonald) used car dealership, when at a Halloween party he unexpectedly runs back into some old friends: Hutch (Dan Fogler), Windows (Jay Baruchel) and Linus (Chris Marquette). Back in school, the four were mad Star Wars fans and even aspired to start their own comic strip. But after graduation Bottler felt obligated to grow up and move on without the other three, which particularly upset Linus, who had known him the longest. But their fateful reunification ignites something dormant in Bottler: his insatiable Star Wars fanboyism. So after a drunken Windows suggests it at the party, a few days later Bottler visits their memorabilia store with floor plans to Skywalker Ranch (George Lucas' HQ) and a brave pitch: to break in there and steal a print of Episode I for themselves before it's released. Bottler advocates this even more when he learns Linus has terminal cancer (a plot point that made the uneasy producers cut it from the film; after a public outcry it was restored), and then, with the others' feisty but equally geeky employee Zoe (Kristen Bell) in tow, they pile into Hutch's barely roadworthy van and take their mission all the way to California.

Obviously this movie's target audience is those its title references and as one myself I could never critique it objectively so I won't even bother trying. Fanboys was unmistakably a labor of love for director Kyle Newman and writers Ernest Cline (Ready Player One), Adam F. Goldberg and Dan Pulick and therefore the result is as gleefully unself-conscious and nerd chic as imaginable. Newman intended for Fanboys to evoke the anticipation and goodwill of the period between the 1997 Special Editions of the original trilogy and the then-upcoming prequels, and that does surface. Our heroes are cleverly observed substitutes for the heroes of the Star Wars OT: the conscientious Bottler is Luke Skywalker (and his father naturally has a scene where he mimics Darth Vader), the brash Hutch is Han Solo, the panicky Windows is C-3PO, the wise and spiritual Linus is Obi-Wan Kenobi and of course Zoe is Princess Leia (and yes, she dons the gold bikini). En route to Skywalker Ranch they also encounter a stoner Indian chief (Danny Trejo), an angry Trekker horde, two escorts and their dangerous pimp (Seth Rogen, on double duty as the Trekker gang leader), Windows' online girlfriend who's not quite what she's claimed to be, Ain't It Cool News website founder Harry Knowles (Ethan Supplee) and cameos from three very familiar faces.

But thematically it has a very beating human heart which even viewers detached from Star Wars will at least be able to acknowledge, and that's the most magical ingredient for me. Over their bumbling, risky journey, the guys and girl all renew their very intimate bonds with each other and the common thing that unified them to start with, and literally everybody has at least one thing that nourishes and inspires them as much as Star Wars does for our heroes, even if it's totally bereft of art or entertainment. And in its more tender moments Newman and his cast, who all give fun and natural turns, never let it get too mushy. How else can I possibly close this review? The Force is very strong with Fanboys.

Untitled.

As I sit here trying to fill my quota for here (I guess), I think I have writer's block. Or at least, no original or specific topic to cover. I also hesitate, for several reasons, to disclose anything very personal here. And by saying that I could inadvertently be repeating and thus also contradicting myself and if so, I'm sorry. But even if this is my blog and I want to discuss on it whatever I feel like, it nonetheless should be interactive. So if you're out there, what do you want to know about me? What would you like to read from me? Please, indulge me. I'd love to finally hear from a regular reader regardless, if I have any. I've no doubt I'll soon discover new things to discuss or feature on here (and I have heaps more movies etc. to continue SCFLOR with; I just like keeping that as a once-weekly series), but for today, I'm afraid my brain is emotionally and creatively spent. For that also, I'm sorry. Thank you for reading.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #90: The Princess Bride (1987).

A young boy (a pre-The Wonder Years Fred Savage) is sick at home, so his doting grandfather (Peter Falk) comes to visit him. Grandpa insists, despite the boy's persistent scepticism, on reading him a story which has become like a family heirloom: S. Morgenstern's The Princess Bride. It follows Princess Buttercup (Robin Wright), heir to the fantasy realm of Florin, who spends her days masking her crush on farmhand Westley (Cary Elwes) by shamelessly bossing him around. But he doesn't mind; because he loves her equally he's more passive with her than a stunned mullet. Indeed all he ever says to her is "As you wish." (Elwes has been quoted as saying women have approached him ever since asking him to say that to them.) However, she's betrothed to the pompous and power-crazed Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon) who has her kidnapped and him killed (or so he thinks). Now Westley, disguished as a Zorro/Errol Flynn type, embarks on a quest across Florin to exact revenge and free his Princess, while a grandfather and grandson slowly bond over their story.

William Goldman wrote the novel The Princess Bride after one of his daughters told him to write a story about a princess and the other said he should write one about a bride. It was published in 1983 and after several attempts under numerous directors, Rob Reiner finally brought it to the screen in 1987. Coming just a year after his coming-of-age masterpiece Stand by Me and before that the teen romance The Sure Thing and rock mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, Reiner was the ideal director for this one because it enabled him to indulge in his love for and skill at genre-fusion more than ever, and to satisfy his inner child. He also had a strong basis in Goldman's riotous screenplay which admirably acknowledges and meets the audience's desire to have our intelligence catered to; much of the dialogue here will infiltrate your conversation immediately if you're anything like me. There's also very rich production design and cinematography, and an infectiously emotive score from none other than Mark Knopfler (yes, the Dire Straits frontman).

But the real meat in this delicious sandwich for me is the impeccable cast. Wright brings immense strength and beauty to the would-be damsel-in-distress, Elwes makes the traditionally (read: predictably) dashing hero into one with a refreshingly cynical sense of humour, Sarandon has fun showing his nefarious side, and there's very funny cameos by Peter Cook, Mel Smith and especially of course Billy Crystal. But shining brightest of all are Westley's sidekicks: Wallace "INCONCEIVABLE!" Shawn as the irritable, duplicitous Vizzini, Andre the Giant as wingman Fezzik and most of all Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya, who's out to avenge his father's death at the hands (no pun intended) of the six-fingered Count Rugen (Reiner regular Christopher Guest). Collectively and individually, they always have me wishing I could be transported to Florin to join them.

The Princess Bride was a commercial flop initially, but once it was released on VHS it gradually became a true, massive cult smash and it deservedly remains so today. In the making-of documentary on the DVD, Patinkin even calls it the Wizard of Oz (which itself, ironically tanked at the box office) of his generation, which is probably true. As a fractured fairytale, a romance, a celebration of family and storytelling, and a work of metafiction, The Princess Bride is pure magic. If you ever wanted me to watch it with you, naturally I'd say "As you wish."