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Movie review: Ralph Breaks the Internet

Shank (Gal Gadot) is from the online auto-racing game called Slaughter Race

The first movie I went to see after the Academy Award nominations were announced was Ralph Breaks the Internet, a possible pick for Best Animated Feature. It is the sequel to Wreck-It Ralph, which I saw with a room full of kids, which definitely helped define the experience.

Whereas my daughter and I saw RBTI at the Regal Theater in Colonie Center on a Thursday afternoon, and there was no one else there. A couple people slipped in late to make out in the back and left well before it was over.

Ralph (voice of John C. Reilly) and Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) have a nice, predictable existence: work by day in their respective games at the arcade, and hang out as best friends after hours.

But an incident puts Vanellope’s race car game, Sugar Rush, in peril. The friends enter the word of the Internet, which is as overwhelming as really it sometimes is. With some help of KnowItAll (Alan Tudyk) they navigate a dizzying array of options to find what they need on eBay. But how to pay for it?

Yesss (Taraji P. Henson) is the head algorithm of the trend-making site “BuzzzTube” and her segments speak to the cultural phenomena that pop up nearly daily, as well as some of the downsides.

Is Ralph Breaks the Internet an advertisement of the fact that Disney owns everything? The princesses, most or all voiced by the original performers, I liked a lot. The movie has fun with their various personas. 3CPO (Anthony Daniels), is on only briefly. And speaking of brief, you see the late Stan Lee for about two seconds.

Shank (Gal Gadot) is from the online auto-racing game called Slaughter Race, a far cry from Sugar Rush. She has a cadre of assistants, but she’s the great character on her own.

There’s one scene that was pure King Kong. Ultimately, the movie was about how friendships evolve. Part of me that thought the movie was overstuffed with in-jokes and another that says that’s fine because one can catch more of them on repeated viewing.

If you get to the VERY end, you’ll see the previews from FROZEN 2; hey, I laughed.

Bottom line is that my daughter, who doesn’t always convey her feelings at the cinema, told my wife (not me) that she really liked the film. I thought it was good, not great, though I know I would have enjoyed it more if I could have gauged audience reaction.

Who Pays: Analysis of Tax Systems in All 50 States

The vast majority of state tax systems are regressive, meaning lower-income people are taxed at higher rates than top-earning taxpayers.

Who-Pays I’ve been perusing Who Pays: A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States because that’s what I do. It is “the only distributional analysis of tax systems in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. This comprehensive report assesses tax fairness by measuring effective state and local tax rates paid by all income groups.”

If you’re NOT from the United States, you may nevertheless find it interesting. “No two state tax systems are the same; this report provides detailed analyses of the features of every state tax code. It includes state-by-state profiles that provide baseline data to help lawmakers and the public understand how current tax policies affect taxpayers at all income levels.”

The conclusions are not surprising. “THE VAST MAJORITY OF STATE AND LOCAL TAX SYSTEMS ARE INEQUITABLE AND UPSIDE-DOWN, taking a much greater share of income from low- and middle-income families than from wealthy families.”

The “terrible ten” of states with the most regressive tax policies contain some of the states I frankly expected, but it had some revelations. “Washington State is the most regressive, followed by Texas, Florida, South Dakota, Nevada, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Oklahoma, and Wyoming.”

That said, “Those in the highest-income quintile pay a smaller share of all state and local taxes than their share of all income while the bottom 80 percent pays more.”

In other words: “Forty-five states have regressive tax systems that exacerbate income inequality. When tax systems rely on the lowest-income earners to pay the greatest proportion of their income in state and local taxes, gaps between the most affluent and the rest of us continue to grow.”

The report, the sixth edition, was put out by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. “The report was originally released in 1996 and has since been updated in 2003, 2009, 2013, 2015 and 2018. The 2018 report includes tax changes enacted through September 10, 2018.”

Lydster: K-pop, especially BTS

BTS is not just a pop band. but a phenomenon.

BTS: Clockwise, from left: V, J-Hope, RM, Jin, Jimin, Jungkook, and Suga — Clockwise, from left: V, J-Hope, RM, Jin, Jimin, Jungkook, and Suga

My daughter has a near-encyclopedic knowledge of K-pop; that’s Korean pop for you mortals. She is specifically a massive fan of a group called BTS.

The group’s name “stands for the Korean expression Bangtan Sonyeondan, literally meaning ‘Bulletproof Boy Scouts’. The name was conceptualized with the thought that BTS would block out stereotypes, criticisms, and expectations that target adolescents like bullets and protect the values and ideals of today’s adolescents.” In 2017, they’ve rebranded the name as “Beyond the Scene.”

The septet consists of RM (Kim Namjoon), Jin (Kim Seokjin), Suga (Min Yoongi), J-Hope (Jung Hoseok), Jimin (Park Jimin), V (Kim Taehyung) and Jungkook (Jeon Jeongguk). I have been tested on this and have failed miserably.

They were stars in South Korea and Japan back with their debut album in 2013. But because of their music and their social media savvy, they have crossed over big time in the United States.

“Their second full album, Wings (2016), peaked at #26 on the Billboard 200 [US], which marked the highest chart ranking for a K-pop album ever. The group’s next release, Love Yourself: Her (2017), debuted at #7 on the Billboard 200, the highest rank for an Asian artist in history.”

In November 2017, the group became the first K-pop group to perform at the American Music Awards. I experienced the equivalent of Beatlemania in my living room.

“Their third full album, Love Yourself: Tear (2018), debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200, making them the only K-Pop act to achieve this feat so far. Love Yourself: Answer, the repackage of that album, also debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200. On November 9, 2018 Love Yourself: Answer became the first Korean album to be certified Gold (500,000+ units).”

They are not, however, just a pop band. but a phenomenon.

Twitter’s Year-End Data: BTS Is 2018’s Most Tweeted-About Celebrity globally, “topping the tally for the second year in a row”
BTS Voted Person of the Year in ‘Time’ Reader’s Poll. (The magazine ultimately gave The Guardians -journalists targeted for their work- the title.) In October 2018, Time Magazine featured BTS on the cover of their global edition, naming them “Next Generation Leaders”
Janet Jackson Meets BTS Backstage at Mnet Asian Music Awards, where they won Artist of the Year, Album of the Year (LOVE YOURSELF 轉 ‘Tear’) and Worldwide Icon of the Year
A K-pop ‘ARMY’ might show us a way forward in the ‘War on Media’ (no, really)
YOUTUBERS REACT TO BTS (K-Pop), July 2017

If I said I totally “got” it, I’d be stretching the truth. But I try. Since I foisted the Beatles and Motown on her, I attempt to understand the appeal of BTS and the other K-pop groups she follows.

LISTEN to:

Fake Love; peaked at #10 on 6.2.2018, certified gold
IDOL, Featuring Nicki Minaj; Peaked at #11 on 9.8.2018
MIC Drop – Featuring Desiigner; Peaked at #28 on 12.16.2017, certified platinum (1,000,000+ units sold) in the United States
DNA – Peaked at #67 on 10.14.2017, certified gold
Waste It On Me – Steve Aoki Featuring BTS Peaked at #89 on 11.10.2018

Butterfly
Not Today
House of Cards
Pied Piper
Go Go (live)
Boyz with Fun
Save Me

Most Viewed K-pop Music Videos (All time); #1 is Gangnam Style – PSY; BTS is 4, 6, 10, 12-14, 19…

Is ‘laugh resistance’ against the regime funny?

Pottersville is our reality.

Recently, writer Mark Evanier made this suggestion after that Saturday Night Live sketch that set him off, the It’s a Wonderful Life “remake” —which “wasn’t even the harshest thing they’ve done about him.

“The cold open I’d like to see them do would go something like this: They’d have an Oval Office setting and they’d trot out all the usual players… — and right in the middle of it, Alec Baldwin stops in mid-sentence, everyone on stage freezes and Baldwin breaks character…

“He pulls off the wig, turns to everyone and says, ‘I’m sorry. I can’t do this anymore. This man is no longer a clown to make fun of. This man is doing so much damage to the country I love and causing so much anxiety and pain among the poor and the non-white that I can’t make fun of his hair anymore. This is much more serious than that.’

“He walks off, the other cast members look at each other to ask ‘What do we do now?’ And then they all realize he’s right and they start pulling off their wigs and appliances and in unison, they tell the camera, ‘Live from New York…’ etc., and the show proceeds with no more Trump imitations. Until he’s no longer a threat.”

Larry Wilmore

Evanier’s not wrong. The trick here for me is that it has already been done, three years ago. The Nightly Show, starring Larry Gilmore, which followed The Daily Show on Comedy Central, did this skit in December 2015.

In case you can’t see it in your country, actors Mike Yard and Ricky Velez each start doing a piece mocking Trump and then quit mid-skit, suggesting that the guy isn’t funny. Gilmore is initial “surprised” but then agrees that his cast is absolutely right. Unfortunately, The Nightly Show was canceled a few months later.

This is why the comic shows I watch that skewer Trump are, for my money, only purportedly funny. I’m not laughing ha-ha, only at the absurdity of the situation. If he’s upset when “idiot” is trending on Google, the humor factor is mitigated by the noise of him and his sycophants. As Ken Levine noted, “‘Pottersville’ – named after the evil businessman Mr. Potter – is our reality. The nightmare has come true.”

I think most of the late-night shows are “a sort of ‘laugh resistance'” against the regime. This IS quite useful and informative, especially from Seth Meyers, Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah, and John Oliver. But some of them – Stephen Colbert being prime among them – I agree with philosophically yet I find usually unwatchable.

Variety suggests that the trick for the late-night hosts “is to make sure their content is fueled mostly by humor.” That is a fine line to track – be both funny and relevant.

John Belushi would have turned 70

Saturday Night Live was the platform from which John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd launched the Blues Brothers.

John Belushi.Rolling Stone Since John Belushi (January 24, 1949 – March 5, 1982) was only 33 when he died, he’s been gone longer than he was alive.

I watched Saturday Night Live religiously for the first quarter century. While that original cast was quite gifted, I’ve always balked at the notion that that all the subsequent groups were inadequate by comparison.

It’s unsurprising that Jane Curtin recently talked about sexism at SNL. “‘There were a few people that just out-and-out believe that women should not have been there and they believe that women were not innately funny,’ said the first female anchor of SNL’s ‘Weekend Update’ segment.” And one of those was Belushi.

Nevertheless, in lists of the greatest cast members of all time, Ranker has John Belushi at #3 and Rolling Stone dubbed him #1. “‘Samurai Hitman,’ where Belushi proves he doesn’t need words — just a robe and a sword — to turn a one-joke premise into a savage comic ballet.” He did a great Henry Kissinger, and the Greek owner of the Olympia Café always fascinated me.

SNL was also the platform from which Belushi and Dan Aykroyd launched the Blues Brothers. I suppose I was nervous about their sincerity – I didn’t know at the time that Aykroyd had played with a blues band in Canada – but having such luminaries as guitarist Steve Cropper and bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn from Booker T and the M.G.’s well as Matt “Guitar” Murphy, gave me comfort.

I was pleased when I bought the four-CD set Atlantic Blues in the 1990s and found Hey Bartender by Floyd Dixon and I Don’t Know by Willie Mabon. The Blues Brothers’ covers were surprisingly credible, I discovered.. Now the Blues Brothers MOVIE (1980) was loud and messy and pretty much critic-proof. And it had Aretha, Ray Charles sand Cab Calloway.

Belushi’s previous film, National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) practically invented the raunchy college comedy. What it lacked in script – “food fight!” – it more than made up with energy and panache and a great Elmer Bernstein score. It was wildly successful, and generated spinoffs on all three TV networks, none of which lasted more than a few months.

Animal House was endlessly quotable – “double secret probation.” But never more when Bluto Blutarsky (Belushi) gave the Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? speech.

The other John Belushi movie I saw was Continental Divide (1981), with him playing a tough Chicago reporter who “gets a little too close to the Mob.” For his protection, his editor sends him to Colorado to investigate an eagle researcher (Blair Brown).

I remember enjoying the movie, with Belushi playing against type. Though I recall that the reviews were mixed and the box office tepid, Roger Ebert liked it.

There’s often a desire to play “what if” when performers die tragically young. But it’s a futile task.