Showing posts with label music videos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music videos. Show all posts

Sunday, November 23, 2008

What I need is a good defense.

Oh my friggin' gulay. This definitely made my day. Or my week, which was unbelievable grueling. The top 100 music videos of all time according to Stylus magazine. This is what you call a no-bullshit list. I couldn't really contend on the spots and who's occupying them because I think this is well-deserved. Why it rocks? Because these are videos that went beyond the boundaries of music videomaking, these videos created haunting, sad, classy, poignant images that I think can never be matched. And because they never make music videos like this anymore.

Because it brings back memories of a high-school me glued to the TV set, being mesmerized by videos such as Nine Inch Nails' The Perfect Drug or blown away by Blur's Song 2. Perfect Drug lands in the list but not in the top 20, though I think it should have been there, easily one of my favorite videos. Other faves that were in the list includes Virtual Insanity by Jamiroquai, Criminal by Fiona Apple which is at # 11, Tonight Tonight by Smashing Pumpkins and Just by Radiohead, which is at # 5. I expected Bjork's All is Full of Love and A-Ha's Take on Me. U.N.K.L.E. and Thom Yorke's Rabbit in your Headlights is at # 1.

Some names would be familiar as some of the music video visionaries landed on film themselves: Michel Gondry, Jonathan Glazer, Chris Cunningham and Anton Corbijn, who directed Joy Division's Ian Curtis' film biopic Control, one of my 2007 best. Gosh, I didn't know it was Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Farris who directed some of Smashing Pumpkins videos. Of course, you know, they went on to make that little movie that could, Little Miss Sunshine.

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family, Choose a f—king big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose a three piece suit on hire purchased in a range of f—king fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the f—k you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing f—king junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, f—ked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose a future. Choose life . . . But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?

Renton, Trainspotting