the phrase "can i interest you in everything all of the time" is not a bad line at all but that song is, at best, listenable once
― burly crafty woodsman (James Harden) vs tall ethereal phantom (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, 8 June 2021 22:55 (three years ago) link
I liked the end when he brought all the themes of the songs together; but like I said, it took an awful long time to get there.
― akm, Tuesday, 8 June 2021 23:00 (three years ago) link
Eighth Grade is a great but tough watch
The most brilliant thing about Eighth Grade is the way none of the worst case scenarios it constantly alludes to actually come to pass. I love that just being a regular eighth grader (my younger finished 8th grade today!) and dealing with mundane teen shit is tough going enough.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 8 June 2021 23:33 (three years ago) link
I hope this movie doesn't end up being the exception that proves the rule that Bo Burnham fucking sucks
― flappy bird, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 19:18 (three years ago) link
I thought this was... quite ok? Not amazing but definitely not a hate-watch. Some of the observational comedy is half-assed, but the half-assedness kind of fits with the weary, cramped vibe. He's barely out of his twenties! It's not bad considering.
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 21:50 (three years ago) link
Less politely, I guess I mean some of the comedy is fucking lazy, but in pandemic summer number two, so am I and I didn't mind.
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 21:51 (three years ago) link
Enjoyed it, but if you told me this guy was in Pamplemoose, I'd believe you.
― too cool for zen talk (Eazy), Thursday, 10 June 2021 02:35 (three years ago) link
Inside was one of the worst things i’ve ever seen in my life
― flopson, Thursday, 10 June 2021 05:42 (three years ago) link
you need to see more bad things
― akm, Thursday, 10 June 2021 16:12 (three years ago) link
idk it was pretty bad
― intern at pelican brief consulting (Simon H.), Thursday, 10 June 2021 16:14 (three years ago) link
I started watching his 2016 special and it was very bad in a way that Inside wasn't
He's also cuter and in his underwear a lot this time
― Chuck_Tatum, Thursday, 10 June 2021 18:48 (three years ago) link
'inside' is p good! it's like darker weird al. dark al. it's too long, though.
― class project pat (m bison), Thursday, 10 June 2021 22:16 (three years ago) link
major Tonetta vibes on that turning 30 song
― Western® with Bacon Flavor, Friday, 11 June 2021 01:24 (three years ago) link
Idk about this.
― treeship., Saturday, 12 June 2021 01:58 (three years ago) link
Not eighth grade, which I love; the new thing.
― treeship., Saturday, 12 June 2021 01:59 (three years ago) link
He talks about killing himself a lot, which I can relate to, but I am resistant to the kind of implicit idea that this is a common generational experience. Idk. Something is off with his treatment of this topic. I don’t know his work and am still in the middle of the special so we’ll see.
― treeship., Saturday, 12 June 2021 02:06 (three years ago) link
yeah I think it's common to all generations not something special to his
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Saturday, 12 June 2021 02:18 (three years ago) link
I agree with the idea that the Internet has turned our lives into a nightmare. More art about that is welcome I guess.
― treeship., Saturday, 12 June 2021 02:20 (three years ago) link
^^^ one for the box art, as we used to say. before the internet
― intern at pelican brief consulting (Simon H.), Saturday, 12 June 2021 03:16 (three years ago) link
Wow. Inside was... something. Some good stuff, some clever stuff, some too much for sure. I did like at least half the songs. I think there's definitely enough sincerity in there to make it substantial.
― Nhex, Saturday, 12 June 2021 06:38 (three years ago) link
Dark "Weird Al" definitely a good ref point for this
Unfair to compare this to Eighth Grade obviously but I guess this is the thread to talk about Bo so...
― Nhex, Saturday, 12 June 2021 06:39 (three years ago) link
There’s a Harry Nilsson vibe - not just the songs but more in the presentation.
Not sure the special was for me but I definitely salute the effort. I mean getting ready to execute something big and being kneecapped by Covid and still getting something like that isn’t nothing.
― Western® with Bacon Flavor, Saturday, 12 June 2021 13:59 (three years ago) link
weird al would never subject us to this
― intern at pelican brief consulting (Simon H.), Saturday, 12 June 2021 14:07 (three years ago) link
no he wouldnt, thats why hes "weird al", bo is "dark al" do you see
― class project pat (m bison), Saturday, 12 June 2021 14:09 (three years ago) link
inside every one of us is an "al"
― class project pat (m bison), Saturday, 12 June 2021 14:10 (three years ago) link
― flopson, Thursday, June 10, 2021 1:42 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink
― akm, Thursday, June 10, 2021 12:12 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink
no thanks
― flopson, Saturday, 12 June 2021 16:55 (three years ago) link
all eyes on me is a really good closer.
― treeship., Sunday, 13 June 2021 02:42 (three years ago) link
maybe i like this.
i don't think weird al is a good point of comparison. these aren't parodies, this is a singer-songwriter project. the topical comedy stuff gives way really quickly to concerns that are wholly personal. the former is almost always just a premise.
the best part of the special might be the sequence following "unpaid intern," where he does that meta-trick, overlaying his commentary on the song, then his commentary on the commentary etc, each new layer disavowing what he had just said before, apologizing for it. that sense of paralysis -- or shame, really -- at the fact that everything he says is really just a projection of his own insecurities and need for attention.
i feel like there is a central fear at the heart of this project, which is that he is only able to care about the larger world insofar as doing so allows him to receive praise from others. (performative politics):
You say the ocean's rising like I give a shitYou say the whole world's ending, honey, it already didYou're not gonna slow it, Heaven knows you triedGot it? Good, now get inside
i think the kind of isolation he is exploring in this special is a lot bigger than just, like, covid/quarantine.
― treeship., Sunday, 13 June 2021 03:17 (three years ago) link
there is another part of the special where he talks about the real world only existing because it, like, provides an opportunity to document things for instagram, and that instagram feels "more real" than reality. this is a movie about drifting away from something and not knowing even what that thing is you need to get back to. all that's left is the feeling of being diminished and ashamed.
― treeship., Sunday, 13 June 2021 03:21 (three years ago) link
why do we keep posting st vincent lyrics
― intern at pelican brief consulting (Simon H.), Sunday, 13 June 2021 03:22 (three years ago) link
some of it seems a little cringe or on the nose
― treeship., Sunday, 13 June 2021 03:33 (three years ago) link
for sure
the funniest part was when he turned 30
― flopson, Sunday, 13 June 2021 03:36 (three years ago) link
forget Weird Al, these lyrics being posted are like a pretentious Mark Russell
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Sunday, 13 June 2021 03:39 (three years ago) link
i honestly didn't think any of it was especially funny.
― treeship., Sunday, 13 June 2021 03:45 (three years ago) link
the social commentary joke songs, like "how the world works" and "white woman's instagram" are kind of unbearable on their own. but the juxtaposition of this material with the more searching, psychological stuff is interesting. like the "white guilt" he says he feels early on isn't really that at all. he isn't just worried that he has no role to play in furthering the cause of justice -- i think the ending of the movie shows that sentiment is bullshit. it's at best a sublimation, or socially acceptable version, of his real fear, which is that he is a narcissist and everyone else is too.
― treeship., Sunday, 13 June 2021 03:48 (three years ago) link
I can think of at least one way he could have taken a principled stand against narcissism
― intern at pelican brief consulting (Simon H.), Sunday, 13 June 2021 04:00 (three years ago) link
good posts treesh
...his takes on early 21st century internet ennui are all just cliches tho?
i know this is kinda ‘the online miserablism knower has logged on’ of me to say but i feel like his depiction of why social media in 2020 is a hell of our own making was so generic, it felt like it was cribbed from old tweets rather than anything personal
maybe that experience is just really universal, so regurgitating tired memes *is* his genuine personal experience. if so, that makes me sad
i personally don’t relate to a lot of the cw about how twitter is a “hell site” and how instagram is so awful and commodified our lives. i see why ppl say that, and there are aspects of it that annoy me, but it also seems ahistorical and short-sighted (every era has people freaking out about new forms of media, and it seems quaint in hindsight to read people freaking out about like, how the radio has poisoned our minds) and also ignores a lot of the good parts of online
it feels like tired “trenchant social commentary” at this point, and didn’t bear the stamp of an authentic relationship to the internet imho. eighth grade seemed smarter in getting at that kind of relationship. i guess comparing his A24 movie with his ‘what if Nanette but Tenacious D?’ Netflix special isn’t fair, but i’m surprised the same person made both
― flopson, Sunday, 13 June 2021 04:01 (three years ago) link
https://imgur.com/Fxj8Myj
― flopson, Sunday, 13 June 2021 04:17 (three years ago) link
https://i.imgur.com/Fxj8Myj.png
Bo has begun his ditch trilogy
― Western® with Bacon Flavor, Sunday, 13 June 2021 06:10 (three years ago) link
i don't think weird al is a good point of comparison. these aren't parodies, this is a singer-songwriter project.
― treeship., Saturday, June 12, 2021 10:17 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink
weird al wrote originals too and they fuckin ownedbo uses a nasal voice that sounds like al to go into "funny songman mode"
― class project pat (m bison), Sunday, 13 June 2021 11:23 (three years ago) link
i'm not trying to say that this is better than weird al, just that it's really different.
i think this is valid. i am more of a cassandra about social media and i think the immersive parasocial nature of it can warp people's sense of reality and perspective. however, i don't think the value of this special lies in it saying anything new about these phenomena. what it does is describe the mood of online, feeling hyperconnected but increasingly alone, this grand and paranoid solipsism that *does*, to me, feel like the texture of our times. like how chekhov* described the particular loneliness of country doctors and schoolteachers in late imperial russia, burnham is trying to show our particular misery, not because it's new, necessarily, but because it's ours.
*i am in no way saying he is as successful as chekhov. the comparison is more about marking a distinction between what a sociologist or cultural critic does and what an artist does when it comes to describing and evaluating the times.
― treeship., Sunday, 13 June 2021 12:09 (three years ago) link
it's not at all a new theme either, not even in popular music. radiohead didn't think computers were "OK" either.
― treeship., Sunday, 13 June 2021 12:10 (three years ago) link
social media is not merely a "new form of media" despite the shared presence of the word "media"
― intern at pelican brief consulting (Simon H.), Sunday, 13 June 2021 12:44 (three years ago) link
what it does is describe the mood of online, feeling hyperconnected but increasingly alone, this grand and paranoid solipsism that *does*, to me, feel like the texture of our times
ya i agree w this. a lot of the shots of him just lying in bed half nude staring blankly at his phone were uncomfortably relatable lol
― flopson, Sunday, 13 June 2021 22:18 (three years ago) link
it is hard to get past how cringe some of the social commentary songs are. i tried to explain this special to my wife earlier today and put the soundtrack on when we were driving. by the time we got to the song about facetiming his mom, she just said, very gently, "this is really bad, sorry."
― treeship., Sunday, 13 June 2021 23:45 (three years ago) link
and she's right. that song sucks. and a bunch of others just seem like buzzy talking points. if there is any value in this, it only comes later in the special where the original schtick kind of gives way to something stranger, darker, more personal. i feel like this latter material shows up the former as a facade -- like it's actively working against it -- but some viewers haven't seen it that way.
― treeship., Sunday, 13 June 2021 23:50 (three years ago) link
i feel like the biggest influence on bo's sense of humour is seth mcfarlane
― flopson, Monday, 14 June 2021 00:25 (three years ago) link