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***...
What is that mess?
What is that *** ?
To be continued...
The 7th art.
Today we'll try to have an overview of the movies related to metal music.
Of course we won't talk about all of them in a video,
first because I don't know them all,
and anyway you won't hesitate to make remarks in your comments.
Careful, I decided to look into movies, and ONLY movies,
we agree on the fact the "Global Metal" or "Le Metal expliqué à ta Mère"
aren't cinematographic works, but reports.
They treat the subject in a informative way, with a specific and precise perspective,
and this is not at all what we want to deal with.
Lets start with an unavoidable one.
At first, Wayne's World was a stupid and rock'n roll section that was broadcasted in the late 80s
during the American show "Saturday Night Live", and which was in a way
the logic evolution of the "Wayne's Power Minute",
absurd and heavy metal review from Canadian show "It's Only Rock'n roll",
presented by Mike Myers or better say by his character Wayne
heroe of the movies you all know : Wayne's World 1 and 2.
Those two comedies are today completely integrated in the rock landscape,
and even in pop culture.
So if you are among the very few ones who don't know the adventures of Wayne Campbell
and Garth Algar, this gap needs to be filled quickly.
Even if the movie doesn't treat the subject quite deeply,
the engaging personnality of the characters,
their quite personnal sense of humor, and the universe in which they live,
make of Wayne's World a joyful and credible sketch
of what rock'n roll could be as lived by two eternal teenagers in the late 80s.
She will be mine, oh yes, she will be mine."
Lets go on with a key character in rock today, who have prevailed as a musician,
but also as an actor through comedies such as Shallow Hal,
Gulliver's Travels, or the awesome Be Kind Rewind...
here comes Jack Black! But today we are focusing on his band Tenacious D.,
folk rock tendind to heavy metal, which gave birth to a TV series,
and more importantly the movie The Pick of Destiny,
in which the band goes seeking a magic pick that will make them rockstars.
The movie is sustained by the frantic personnality of Jack Black,
his unlikely mimics, and his blind dedication to rock'n roll.
Same for his second movie on the same subject Rock Academy,
in which his character ends up being a rock'n roll teacher in a prestigious school.
In the late 90s, Kiss were topping their album sales,
the band takes benefit of that and will try their hand at comics,
releasing a first one at Marvel's.
If this release was a success,
the same cannot be said about their movie that was released a year later :
Kiss meets the Phantoms of the park , which is an absolute B-movie with botched production
and in which the band is confronted to a mad engineer at a carnival.
They have superpowers and will have to fight ninjas, ninja werewolves, Dracula,
Frankenstein, and their own clones, but no ghosts, never.
To watch wasted with some friends, and maybe even this won't be enough!
Concerning Kiss, if you want to see a better comedy, go for Detroit Rock City,
in which we follow the journey of four teenagers to a show of their favorite band : Kiss of course!
Indeed! There was a time when cinema was not afraid to go flirting with hard rock or heavy metal
because if we think more deeply about it,
today there are very few movies dealing with the metal culture,
and even fewer when it comes to extreme metal.
In fact, the "recent" movies that moved me the most is Detroit Metal City, released 2008.
The film got its inspiration from the manga, comic and anime with the same name,
and I really advise you to watch it since it's an authentic Japanese product.
Already, the principle of the movie makes you smile :
we are following the setbacks of a young boy who leaves his home province
for going to the big city where he will try to get into the world of pop music.
What? I find this cool!
And who will, in the end, become the most demoniac metal star the country has ever known.
Ok that's mainly a clown...
Of course he doesn't accept it at all, and even hides it to his relatives.
And it's from that moment that the story starts.
What is cool with that movie is that it parodies in such a rough way
and takes so much liberties that it leads to completely stupid and extreme situations,
as for instance this final battle between the main character and the master of black metal...
don't look for it, when the heroe must sing as fast as his opponent plays the guitar.
Holy ***, it makes no sense but it's funny and die hard in crap.
But in fact, it's not the movie you find funny, you're laughing only because they are ***!
Of course I'm racist yes!
Little mandatory stop in France.
If the Anglo-Saxons had awesome comedies such as Wayne's World or Spinal Tap,
I won't develop but rush into this one, in France we had Pop Redemption,
and this movies shows well the risks of wanting to celebrate on screens such a codified
and specific world metal is.
Even more in that precise case in which the characters are musicians in a black metal band.
If this full-length movie didn't make me smile more than that,
the characters didn't convince me at all either, even more in their trve black metal role.
Their universe, their attitude, the way they talk, their name, their music...
Nothing appeared to me as familiar or properly described in that movies,
and you know that at 2Guys1Tv we are quite open-minded & we know self-mocking very well
Where humorists like Les Inconnus managed to make us laugh and make everybody agree
with their quite absurd caricature of the heavy metal fans in the 90s,
I only perceived an easy and naïve parody in Pop Redemption.
Not mean for sure, but long and awkward.
As I was explaining it in the episode about humor, when you want to make fun of a genre,
or you want at least to dedramatise it,
with a softer tone, better have studied your subject a lot,
or write clever enough to re-appropriate the various codes we are representing.
There are lots of movies about rock'n roll.
Mainly comedies, but not only. So two last ones to finish.
Almost Famous by Cameron Crowe telling the adventures
of a young reviewer just beginning in music journalism.
He will discover the world of rock'n roll, life on tour, groupies,
and all business around rock'n roll.
Beautiful and immersive movie that I personnally particularly enjoy.
To finish with, but in a totally different but quite fun genre, Hardrock Zombies,
a really bad horror Z-movie but with a cool soundtrack.
Same here, watch it a bit drunk since it's really not good...
Lets now talk about animated movies a bit.
And lets start with Heavy Metal, this movie is in fact the story of several adventures,
told through animes, and getting their inspiration directly from French magazine Metal Hurlant.
The journal was adapted in the US in 1977 under the name Heavy Metal,
and as a series since 2012.
This series doesn't respect quite much the universe of the comics and of the movie.
Anyway, the simple storyline allows us to escape quite quickly.
Oscillating between fantasy world and cyber punk,
we sometimes have the feeling of being caught in an old cover of a progressive or heavy band.
Fight between Good and Evil, a good dose of sex,
a hard rock and heavy metal soundtrack featuring Black Sabbath,
Trust, Cheap Trick.
Many arguments in favor of watching this work,
and talking of that, some of you may already have been confronted to this universe
in South Park, indeed in the episode "Major Boobage" (season 12),
the series pays a tribute to it when Kenny gets high on cat's ***...
Heavy Metal had a sequel : Metal 2000, with a single storyline this time,
and with more modern animation and soundtrack.
As we are talking about animated movies here, I have to mention Metalocalypse,
starring the decerebrated and whimsical members of virtual death metal band Dethklok,
one of the main economic powers in a post-modern world in which most of the population
are fans of the band to the point they could sacrifice for them...
The series works pretty well thanks to the free violence
and to the humor once satyrical once absurd.
The music is all composed and recorded by one of the two fathers of the show:
Brendon Small, who even went up to releasing albums by his imaginary band!
After that, there wasn't much in regard of series...
Of course Beavis and Butthead are very often making allusions to metal,
the two main characters being fans.
And there was this very cool pilot film of Mr. Pickles.
It doesn't talk about music at all, but the sound and visual aspect of the episode truly are metal.
The extreme bias of the series is completely great,
and this 0 episode should have its following broadcasted by the end of the year.
Furthermore, a lot of series broadcasted by Adultswin can attract a metalhead audience
like Korgoth of Barbaria for instance,
but this one did never overcome the pilot film status unfortunately...
When we talk about metal that influenced movies,
we can also talk about cinema influencing metal...
Yes, there was even a whole genre that was created as a tribute to blockbusters.
The orchestral setbacks of Luca Turilli with Rhapsody of Fire
& his side projects gave birth to a symphonic metal subgenre himself called "Hollywood Metal"
and it is true that the music of the Italian master could evoke the metallized soundtrack
of a fantastic blockbuster.
He is not the only one to do this orchestral music that is close to what we could find
in some Hollywood movies, Nightwish and Septicflesh
latest albums being the first examples coming to my mind...
We will talk about that in another Metal Crypt,
but the Sci-Fi and fantasy literature also got an influence on many metal subgenres,
and the cinema itself being influenced by this kind of writings, offers a big stock of inspiration.
The coolest example coming to my mind are the brilliant Norwegians from Pagan's Minds,
to whom we owe not only the most ugly covers ever,
but also six power-prog albums based on the license Stargate.
But the influence of cinema on metal music doesn't stop there,
since we feel that some others got influenced by this not for everybody low-budget cinema.
That's no secret for anyone that death and even more brutal death bands
love being borderline with censorship filling their covers with blood, corpses, zombies,
and other cute little pink flowers.
George Romero and Tom Savini probably being a bit responsible for that.
Of course Z-movies and horror movies lovers did not all go for death metal :
some preferred doing thrash, some industrial metal,
like Rob Zombie who even directed movies himself.
Even in hardcore this kind of cinematographic references can be found
like for exemple the band from Nantes Tromatized Youth,
apparently traumatized by the "Troma Society", producer of trash and B-movies since 1974,
particularly through their Toxic Avenger,
disfigured character with surnatural strength, heroe of a saga with his name.
Sharing a common imaginary and a do it yourself spirit on first producions,
we feel well that fantasy cinema,
and also the niche cinema could have a certain influence on metal stage.
About the movies directly dealing with metal,
I think there are still plenty of things to tell and to put on stage,
the subject is still very little exploited for now,
so lets hope having interesting stories coming out in the future,
not telling too much ***, and having a true and credible approach to the music of the devil...