10.25.2010


I finally got to watch Kanye's new movie "Runaway" the other night. I have mixed feelings on it. First off, the opening scene was dope as fuck. The track that accompanies the scene, Dark Fantasy, is ridiculous.



How you say broke in spanish? Me no hablo...
So much head, woke up in Sleepy Hollow


Damn.



If you'd like to watch the movie, it's available below.


As for the rest of the movie, I understood the parallels that Kanye was trying to dry between his own life/career and the Phoenix. I thought some of the dialogue was corny, well I guess just one line in particular, "First rule in this world baby, don't pay attention to anything you see in the news." I dunno why, I just hated that line. Maybe it was the "baby". I felt like the music, the colors, the camera angles, the locations, they all told the story perfectly. There was almost no need for dialogue.

I loved how the colors and the music matched perfectly.
Besides the opening scene, I think my favorite scene was the dinner scene. The way the soul sample for "Devil in a New Dress" comes in and in walks Kanye in his beige and black tux with a fine ass Phoenix on his arm. Leave it to Kanye to always raise the bar. Everybody in the room got a female with them and this nigga walks in with a fuckin' PHOENIX. *blank stare from everyone*



I'm still not very crazy about the song "Runaway". I like the message and the lyrics, but the delivery is still a little off to me. However, I love the elegance and the flare that the ballerinas display and how precise the whole piano scene is.

I liked the foreshadowing shown by the  silhouette of Kanye and the Phoenix against the clouds right before the love scene on the roof. Kind of like the calm before the storm. The music from "Lost in The World" grows with passion as Kanye and the Phoenix make love for what will be the last time before he awakens to find her gone.

The last scene brings us full circle as Kanye is now sprinting back into the very forest he found the Phoenix, once again engulfed in flames, but this time taking flight instead of crash landing. The Phoenix gives one last sorrowful glance towards Earth before blasting off into the sky.

Overall, I'd say it was a great work of art. It shows how far ahead Kanye is of not just hip-hop, but music as a whole. The man is a visionary, a true artist. Not a recording artist, and artist. Kanye has a way of telling a story as it's never been told through any medium that is made available to him. I look forward to hearing his new album My Dark Twisted Fantasy.

random thoughts:
- I didn't realize how much of a banger Selita Ebanks is before watching this. I mean, duh, I knew she was a VS model but wow, she's stunning.
- I dunno if the "home" scenes were shot in Kanye's actual house but I loved to minimalism of the living room.
- Did that giant Michael Jackson head creep anyone else out?
- Kanye isn't a racist. Everyone (including myself) thought the fact that all of the guests at the dinner scene were white, and that all the servers were white, was racially charged. In a post-movie interview with MTV, Kanye told Sway that the scene writer for that segment was a white female and she used the two different races purely for the contrast.
- I loved the British Nicki Minaj at the beginning. But then again, I love British accents.
- I don't really care for the name "My Dark Twisted Fantasy" for the album, but as long as the music's good right?

2 comments:

  1. I would've liked to hear (see you write) what you thought of the whole scene about upsetting the Phoenix with the Turkey that was served.

    The MJ head was a bit confusing/creepy...

    I'm pretty sure that was Kanye's actual house...he's posted pics of diff rooms of his house on twitter before, and the same speakers were in both pics, as well as the pics in complex mag after he shot "Heartless" to show what his living room looked like.

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  2. The scene with the turkey was kinda awkward. Like, symbolically I guess I could see how it represented the way people want to crucify something that's different (a bird, the Phoenix was a bird) but it also was kind of an awkward scene for the movie's sake...

    Thanks for the feedback.

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