#pupsclusive

I've been making music under my real name for a while to let Backseat Goodbye breathe a bit; and now, three years later I've finally found a refreshing direction to take the project in what funnily enough will be the 10th anniversary of my first release. This song itself is literally a re-introduction of sorts for BG... I wanted it to be somewhat familiar lyrically, but also show that this new direction is a much more mature both musically and lyrically.

"Cola" is mainly about being young and enjoying the hell out of life, and then growing older, moving out of your hometown, and coming back to it just not feeling the same. The chorus is the hopeful part of the song, and most of the verses are paying homage to the years I spent touring alone in my car as Backseat Goodbye. However, the song opens with a second part of the verse where I muse a bit about the digital revolution and our need for actual physical connection with people, with the lines: "Hey, by the way, it's good to hear your voice in the same room / The telephone killed the love letters, and video will take us over soon / If the thrill of touch is a memory, god I hope I remember you".

So, I hope people will enjoy the track.... With a three year break in-between releases a lot of shit can pop up in your head of whether or not people will even care anymore. Either way, I'm ecstatic to be making music under the BG name again, and can't wait to share a new EP and album with people after this single is out.

A better screenplay is what this film is in need of. It never feels like it has a nice flow; it abruptly jumps from scene to scene giving an offbeat pattern of pace. Some scenes were relatively interesting and garnered my full attention. These were followed by a string of scenes that simply weren’t as interesting. Russell gives the movie a bit of flare with his directing but it burns out quick when you realize that there’s not much happening in what you’re watching. The film also seems to suffer from a bit of an identity crisis. Sometimes it’s throwing jokes your way and then it will suddenly turn into a deadly serious drama. This works sometimes in the infamous “dramedy” genre but the poor pacing ruins it for the film.

However, I will give credit where credit is due – the movie does successfully pull off the 70s look and feel. The costumes are perfect and many scenes are accompanied by an appropriate 70s soundtrack that helps suck the viewer into this world a bit. But costume design and soundtrack isn’t what I went to American Hustle to see. I went to see great actors play interesting characters with a worthwhile story. I got the good acting (as good as you can get with this script) but nothing was ever interesting enough to really pull me in or grab my full attention for longer than one scene every 25 minutes or so.

In the end, American Hustle was simply disappointing. It’s not awful and it’s perfectly watchable, but for what it had going for it and the anticipation behind it, nothing came out quite right. This is where the joke about hustling to a different movie or away from the theater goes.

One of my biggest problems with the first Hobbit film was how much the tone resembled that of The Lord Of The Rings. Yes, it’s the same world and characters but a completely different story. Simply put, The Hobbit isn’t as “epic” as Lord Of The Rings. The story is much lighter and the tone of it needs to reflect that and it does beautifully in this new installment. I had FUN while watching this movie as opposed to the first which compared itself to LOTR too often. This lighter tone helps the movie move at a much quicker pace and it doesn’t feel any longer than 2 hours, let alone tacking another 45 minutes onto that.

Now that we’ve had all of our characters established in the first film, it’s very easy to latch right back onto them here. The drama between characters feels completely authentic and legitimate, even with the newly introduced ones. This is a bit surprising in retrospect considering our dear Bilbo isn’t in the movie as much as you would expect him to be or as much as he was in the first one. This goes back to the characters already being established, but this movie is more about the team of dwarves, and Bilbo, as a whole and everyone’s stake in the quest. Along with these great characters are some remarkable action scenes. There are several and they’re all great but there’s one that involves a river, barrels, orcs, elves, and our band of dwarves that makes for what is one of the best action scenes of the year. I would see the movie again just for that scene alone. The only downfall it has is this really bizarre choice of doing some POV shots that look like they were done on a Go-Pro camera. That may have been the strangest thing I’ve seen in any Peter Jackson middle-earth movie, and these are movies with little people with giant feet and wizards riding ponies.

All of the returning actors are excellent at slipping back into their roles. Martin Freeman is always great (even though it’s weird seeing him as a Hobbit after seeing The World’s End so many times), as well as Ian McKellen as Gandalf. There are too many dwarfs to get into everybody, but Aidan Turner as Kili and Richard Armitage as Thorin brought some really honest performances to their characters and I was extremely impressed, perhaps because I thought Bilbo would be the absolute central character again. And of course, how I could I ever forget about Benedict Cumberbatch as Smaug. His voice amplified to the monstrous lengths needed to portray a dragon added to its beautifully terrifying appearance. I wasn’t too impressed with what I saw of Smaug in the trailer but now he’s one of the best antagonists of the year.

The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug took everything wrong with the first movie and did away with it making for a much more satisfying experience, one that is going to be hard to top by The Hobbit: There And Back Again. But after this movie’s excellently executed cliffhanger, I can’t wait to see what’s in store.

I think what makes Carrie good are the performances, especially Moore. Any scenes with her pushed the movie up a couple of notches from just average. As for Moretz, I think she was miscast. Don’t get me wrong, I think she’s a great actress and she was perfectly fine in the movie but, quite frankly, she’s too attractive (it’s not weird, we’re nearly the same age – calm down). She doesn’t look like a girl that would get picked on. After she gets embarrassed in the beginning of the film, sure, but it’s clear she was being bullied long before that. Not to mention we live in the “Tumblr Kid” era. Being a social outcast is considered cool nowadays and that’s not even a problem with the casting of Moretz, that just shows that the story is a little outdated. But still, Moretz is great as always in the film. The rest of the cast is perfectly fine too. All the side characters are basically just archetypes of generic high school personas (the jock, the mean girl, the nice girl, etc.). I think the performances are what make the movie seem better than it actually is. What was really strange is that a select few of the bullies were written almost as if they were serial killers. I was surprised there hadn’t been a homicide case at that school yet.

The scenes of Carrie using her telekinesis, particularly the scene at the end that you’ve seen in all the trailers, are neat at times and at other times look ridiculously goofy. I could tell I was seeing CGI computer people and things and that’s something that completely sucks me out of any movie. CGI can look great at times but this is not one of those times. Still, the climax was a mostly satisfying watch. Some of the character drama and dialogue based scenes were silly as well, particularly a scene of Carrie and her mother talking as she is about to head off to prom (you’ll be using the term “dirty pillows” often after seeing this film). These were the cause of some laughter from the audience that I don’t think was intentional. However, there are scenes that make you really feel for Carrie and I found myself surprisingly invested in the character and the movie as a whole at certain points.

Carrie isn’t an awful film in the slightest, but I just don’t see the point. This movie could have never been brought up and I’m sure no one would have been questioning where the Carrie remake we were all desperately anticipating was.  But it did bring out a couple of great performances and a few cool (and violent) telekinesis scenes, and I suppose if we just have to have a Carrie remake, eh, it could’ve been worse.