Every week, IndieWire asks a pick handful of movie critics two questions and publishes the consequences on Monday. (The solution to the second, “What is the great movie in theaters right now?”, can be discovered byby giving up this publication.)
Last week, I noticed the surprise (or as a minimum quick note) launch of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “ANIMA,” a 15-minute “one-reeler” that serves as a glorified and superb music video for three of the tracks on Thom Yorke’s new solo album.
This week’s query: What is the best music video of the twenty-first century?
The tuning video for Pulp’s 2001 track “Bad Cover Version” is unorthodox in numerous respects, however mainly one pretty enormous one: as opposed to the usage of the album vocals supplied via frontman Jarvis Cocker for this track of lackluster imitators—be they new romantic partners or “a later Tom & Jerry when the 2 of them could speak”—the way is here done by a cavalcade of expert imitators in a kind of “We Are the Bizarro World,” each of them taking the spotlight for a line or of caricatured glory.
As a bellowing Tom Jones crowds around the mic alongside a comically staccato Bjork and an outrageously shoddy Kurt Cobain who sings like a person with a throat full of lit cigarettes, it’s impossible no longer to be charmed using this uncanny valley sugar-rush time capsule of flip-of-the-millennium pop. The result is less a traditional video than a one-of-a-type short film that literalizes the tune’s subject matters along with no end-in-sight charming interstitial pictures that show the imitators affecting rock big-name cool while munching donuts and posing for group pics, attempting and failing to downplay the giddy thrill of the whole oddball operation.
The first time the sector saw Slipknot without their mask, it changed at a press conference following the untimely loss of life of bassist Paul Gray. Eight large, bushy, tattooed metallic heads sat and wept in front of the world’s press, even looking to choke out condolences for their fallen brother. Before this moment, the nine individuals of the scariest band in Metallic saved their identities tightly under wraps (er, aside from at the same time as playing in Stone Sour, which for some reason wasn’t counted). The tuning video for the hit track “Before I Forget,” launched in 2004, playfully teased hardcore fanatics (lovingly called “maggots” because they feed off the band’s song) with the aid of showing simply sufficient of Slipknot’s feet, fingers, elbows, and hair as they thrashed out the track in a recording studio.
It facilitates that the music’s an absolute banger. However, the concept is genius, keeping us guessing and giving us an extra look at much less high-profile individuals like Sid or Craig than we’d ever seen. The aspect is likewise fantastically shot, which, even as commonplace for a metal video, is surprising for Slipknot, whose gritty, nuts and bolts aesthetic powered them through the likes of “Left Behind” or the strong “Duality,” which saw a deluge of giddy maggots destroying assets even as watching the band play an impromptu gig (“Why could you hire a house to Slipknot?” the group mused in an interview).
There’s a playfulness to “Before I Forget”; however, the video also showcases what each band member contributes to creating their wild, unhinged sound. Flying within the face of accusations that one or greater of them are just there to bounce, all nine dudes are given their second to shine, with their masks hanging tantalizingly after their devices as they do so. It illustrates what makes this band excellent and why they’ve endured so long as a unit. Fifteen years later, it nevertheless packs an effective punch — even though, with the aid of now, we know what all of them appear to be.
The quality tune movies are the ones that paint maximum flawlessly as each accompaniment to their track and as works of film art in and of themselves. That’s why the answer is Michel Gondry’s video to the Kyle Minogue music, “Come Into My World.” In addition to simply being visually exciting and to gaze at for a couple of minutes, a first-rate video must encompass both the song’s lyrics and sonic palette. For a pinnacle-notch Kylie Minogue song embodying the sonic palette, it is wildly completely satisfying but repetitive and fairly pedestrian; however, it is utterly entrancing. With a song called “Come Into My World,” the video nicely presents an international the viewer wants to get away to.
Gondry nails all those goals, no matter the dueling nature of some. In a real feat of choreography (both human and digital camera), Gondry gives a one-shot video of Kylie on foot, a loop around a road corner, encountering diverse human beings going about their day. It takes Kylie a little over a minute to complete her course, at which point she returns to her starting spot, and the video loops.
The digicam and the preliminary Kylie hold going while the entirety of the primary adventure around is there once again, now doubled. The timing is best, so every time Kylie returns to the start, the chorus is just starting anew, and the lyrical invite of coming into her world accompanies the doorway of but any other Kylie. There’s an easy, lulling fascination to watching those dupes boom in range on a constant revolution as each new chorus has you bopping along. Kylie’s global keeps growing, and so does its pull on you. As a piece of approach and execution, the video must be seen to be believed.
