Showing posts with label unoriginality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unoriginality. Show all posts

Moments of Unoriginality: AV Q&A

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I don't know how many of you read the Onion AV club, or how many of you read it as religiously as I do. For those who don't, this is what could be considered the "legitimate" end of the Onion's news empire. It's kind of like what we do here: a lot of pop-culture commentary, reviews, and general snark/sass/sarcasm. It's pretty damn good stuff, well worth following if you don't already. And now here's my angle beyond the plug: they have a number of features beyond reviews, like long-lasting series delving into a particular genre and inventories of, say, spectacular awkward moments in film. But there's one feature in particular that delights me, and that's the Q&A, when the staff answers a question about their own personal pop-cultural tastes. I've found that I end up answering the question myself as I read the responses, so I developed a (highly derivative) idea to test out, namely that I'll try and post my own answers to whatever question they have for the week. Or is that too unoriginal? Does anyone really care what I think about some random cultural question of the day? Does it matter? So, pending any change of heart, I present the first installment of what could become a series of shameless knock-offs of other established websites. And so it figures that the question for our first installment would be kind of a dud. A reader wonders, what hitherto unformed artistic collaborations would you (not I) like to see/hear? And now I waffle. My problem is that from a film standpoint, there aren't many special things I'd like to see that combine other things I like. Sure, I'd like to see Danny Boyle tackle something new, or to see Sean Connery act one last time in something a little more legit than "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," but I don't really think in terms of "I'd like to see Director X take on Screenplay Y with Actor Z." I don't believe in remakes generally, and like to keep my fiction and my movies mentally separated (case in point, the Harry Potter universes from the books and the movie), which means that I don't read something and immediately wish it was a movie. I guess the closest thing I have to a Dream Collaboration in mind for a movie would be to have, in the next Batman movie installment, Christopher Walken play the Penguin. I think that would be fucking incredible, and hopefully make the next film as good as the last one. Oh, and I've always thought that Asian Dub Foundation should score some kind of action-thriller type thing. Just an idle wish. And again, musically I don't have that much to say off the top of my head about collaborations. A lot of the music I like is by dead guys or not especially suited for covers/collaborations, like jazz and funk. I also don't know enough about hip-hop to really speak authoritatively about collaborations there, but I will say that if DJ Nu-Mark and Cut Chemist did anything (really) with Devin the Dude I would be eternally appreciative (or for a J5 reunion actually; I just tried to draft an all-star rap group and it turned into a compendium of rappers I like guesting on "Quality Control"). Actually, I have a few ideas now: Little Jackie could do a cover of "Son of a Preacher Man." Hopefully it would be awesome; I've got high hopes for those kids and want to see them do something new. But does it really count to just cover something else that's soulful? This experiment is going nowhere, so I'll comment later if I have anything remotely constructive to say. In the mean time, I encourage y'all to join in the larger discussion, and hopefully we can pull some good out of what hopefully doesn't turn into a failed exercise.