We live in a cyberpunk dystopia. Some people might quibble because there aren’t enough lazertacular synth pop jams and airbrush art, but they just haven’t looked at the right spots on Bandcamp and Soundcloud and such. It is the time for cyberpunk. Cyberpunk comes out of rebellion against oppression – corporate fascist oppression trying to turn us all into burnt out zombie consumers, laboring on treadmills until our bones grind to a halt, heads plugged into virtual reality to avoid the sad sight of the lives they have left to us.

Disney has always been at the vanguard of oppression in the creative sphere, and have finally cemented their monopoly status. Epcot Center is The Death Star for vital and socially relevant art. Pew pew. Kablooey. Nobody will be able to compete at their level. But what about making art below that level? What about tha streetz?

There was a time when Star Wars and comic book movies and such could be at least kinda liberal. The first Star Wars in particular was very much antifascist, even while it cribbed some imagery from Triumph des Willens. Now that the noose has tightened, we’ll see more playing it safe, more bland bullshit riding the creepy side of the political center – and never doing anything to offend the censors in Beijing while they’re at it.

What interests me is the potential for independent art to take the inspiration of those stories and use it to create something else. Nobody’s really tried to capitalize on the success of Star Wars with an equivalent spirit of fun and adventure since the various B movies around the first one. Shit like Ice Pirates and Starcrash. Nowadays all it would take to make a good funtimes antifa scifi adventure is for some theater kids from the fine art school to join forces with computer graphics fuckos from the commercial art school. Get on it, people.

Superhero stuff would be even easier because you could set it on modern-day earth and not have to create all your sets in CG. Chronicle had a budget of $12 million (peanuts to the studios these days), which was probably pretty heavily invested in the actors and Hollyweird apparatus. Not much of that budget made it to the screen – something like it could have been made for a lot less.

That’s just talking about the genres we’ve come to expect from the big boys. Horror and arthouse and all kinds of movies can get made if people get the gumption. Maybe all it will take is for Monopoly Mouse to keep disappointing our asses just a little longer. They’ve already inspired a massive wave of piracy. Classic cyberpunk. Now let’s see if they inspire some real art too.
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I guess I’ll be the first person to reference this prominently on the internet. It is really hard to find anything about the movie “Us” on the web still. I hope that doesn’t mean people are sleeping on it. One of my few quibbles about its execution is that I wanted more, and that would only be possible with a bigger budget. It’ll be harder for Peele to get the kinda budget he deserves if this one doesn’t crush at the box office like it ought to.

Anyhow. Ophelia, call the police!

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I’m watching “Us” tonight. And I won’t stop making nagging posts about it until everyone comments here that they’ve bought tickets or made plans.

EDIT – I saw it. My work week’s starting now-ish so I don’t know if I’ll get a full review in. It was a good time.

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When I tried to get tickets for “Us,” I could only find 7 PM showings. I assumed the theaters were, for whatever reason, giving it a limited run. However, I was very mistaken. I wasn’t aware the release date had been bumped to the 22nd, and I also wasn’t aware that it’s normal for shows to have night time showings the day before the official release. I was shopping for tickets on the 21st, so only showings were 7 or later.

That’s nice tho. I’d hate for there to be anything holding back that movie’s conquest of the universe, and I found out there isn’t. Also, it explains why the internet has been so quiet about it. The hype will happen when people start to see it.

That’s all for now. Also, see the movie, or I’ll box your ears.

EDIT TO ADD: Incidentally, this means I’m going on opening night, which I didn’t want to do. O_o

EDIT TO ADD:

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Content Warning: Cinematic Horror

Jordan Peele’s new movie “Us” is coming out in a few days and by rights this movie should just demolish the box office. Maybe it will, but it’s starting at a big disadvantage. When I went to buy tickets, there were no showings before 7 PM anywhere. Most theaters are only showing it once or twice a night. Why? What the fuck is that?

This movie has – no exaggeration – the best trailer I’ve seen in decades. It’s exciting as hell. I’m vibrating with anticipation for it. I’m not going to get a chance to see it until the 21st, but I got it locked in. I’m going. A borderline agoraphobic dude is braving a movie theater for the first time in nine years to see it with me. If you like horror at all – especially action-oriented horror like zombie movies – you better go too.

The original trailer is way better than the cut that aired for the super bowl. If you missed it when it dropped, drink it in here and now babies. Feel it. Jordan Peele came up with a concept similar to Invasion of the Body Snatchers but with so much more electric potential.

He’s created a new type of apocalyptic monster scenario, which the world has been in desperate need of since zombies got squeezed bone dry by every trendchasing loser in hollywood. I want there to be instagram filters to make people look like these doppelgängers. I want every artist dork on the internet to be scribbling up their doppelsonas. I want the fanfic sites to get creepy with it.

I’ve got a bunch of speculation I could get into, like you can find on youtube easily enough. But that might feel spoilerish to some of you, so I’ll leave it be. But I do want to mention something other internet heads have missed. I think the rabbits in the hall may be, in part, a small homage to a Japanese movie called Suicide Circle. Toward the end of that movie, there is a scene of surreal horror taking place in a small brightly lit space, with tiny yellow chicks running all over the floor. That movie is far from a favorite, but if I’m right, that would show the breadth of the horror content Jordan Peele has consumed on his way to becoming a master.

The Doppelpocalypse is nigh. Be there for it.

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Congrats, you’re old! Me too. Now for something in a similar spirit, enjoy Youth Code.

Flashing light warning on the first video for photosensitive epileptic people.

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I rarely get music news from Japan. I love a few bands, but for some reason they don’t cross my mind every day, I can lose track. But I found out several years ago Kaori from Yellow Machinegun started another band called Suzisuzi, which means “vein” in Japanese. They are old school thrash punks, not young people, but exactly what you would hope to see in rock stalwarts. They crush it. And added bonus, one of these tracks is a retail worker anthem:

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