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Thursday, August 4, 2016
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS
Latest Disgust-‘Nado’
TV REVIEW
Syfy’s latest provides
an unintentional dose
of despair and sadness
By MEGAN MITCHELL
Daily Arts Writer
After reaching only the first
hour in my two hour and four
minute (yes, I counted the min-
utes) viewing
of the low bud-
get-turned-
smash
hit
“Sharknado”
series’ fourth
installment,
I
contacted
my editor in
a
desperate
plea to end the
torture. Dear
god, please let it end.
In 2013, the world was intro-
duced to a bizarre, yet strangely
enthralling concept: a “sharkna-
do.” And surprisingly, the first
film gained a major following,
mostly stemming from the kind
of guilty pleasure viewing that
goes hand-in-hand with a Syfy
production. It’s easy to spend a
lazy Sunday at home with the
often ridiculous and out-of pro-
portion movies the channel is
infamous for. This time, however,
it’s become just too ridiculous to
be anything short of painful.
“Sharknado 4: The 4th Awak-
ens” begins with an intro à la
“Star Wars,” but in a manner that
would draw cringe from even the
most mercurial fan of the fran-
chise. With the scrolling yellow
letters littering the screen, we
brace ourselves for the pain. The
fourth movie begins five years
after the events of the third movie,
“Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!” that
premiered in July of 2015. Fol-
lowing the film, fans were called
upon to decide the fate of April
(Tara Reid, “American Reunion”)
via Twitter hashtags for #April-
Lives or #AprilDies, respectively.
First, there’s Shark World, an
entire Las Vegas hotel dedicated
to sharks that’s about to get hit
by the first, of many, sharknados
during two long hours. At this
point, Fin Shepard (Ian Ziering,
“Dancing With the Stars”), sens-
ing the oncoming storm, sets out
to save his newlywed son (Cody
Linley, “Hoovey”) from skydiving
into a sandstorm of sharks, which
ensues a mid-air car landing and
a wild ride on the Treasure Island
pirate ship. I wish I was kidding.
Usually, these movies are ridic-
ulously over-the-top, but there
are too many aspects that stand
out against the poorly-generated
CGI for it to be easily dismissed
(for example, April’s terminator-
style body, which enables her to
run a distance of approximately
30 miles by plugging herself into
a wall outlet like an iPhone). Or,
the fact that a sharknado began
in Las Vegas and miraculously
migrated to Niagara Falls in
the span of a day. Or maybe the
chainsaw store that conveniently
lined up eight fire extinguish-
ers against a fence when needed.
Maybe even the unacknowledged
death of a newlywed wife via fly-
ing sharks? I could go on all day.
The point is, “Sharknado 4” fails
to succeed in creating an equal
balance between a popcorn movie
event and a bad production, which
its
predecessors
miraculously
managed to pull off with rela-
tive ease and success. It all boils
down to one logical conclusion:
“Sharknado 4” tried to impos-
sibly pack a multitude of things
in a two hour span, ultimately
losing its audience as one thing
progresses into another at a ridic-
ulous pace. With little character
development to go off of in the
fourth installment, Syfy instead
chooses to jam in sharknados and
action
sequences
everywhere.
As a result, the pain and “dear-
god-please-make-it-stop” mantra
crescendoes to unbearable lev-
els, even for something so crazy
as a “Sharknado” franchise film.
After the first hour passed and
the dust-sharknado progressed
into a boulder-sharknado, cow-
sharknado and an oil-sharknado,
which morphed into a fire-shark-
nado and later progressed into
a
lightning-sharknado-turned-
nuclear-sharknado, I lost all hope
that the film could be brushed off
as another run of the mill Syfy
production.
In creating so many “-nados”
to fill in for character introduc-
tions and growth, the film lost
an essential concept the first film
touched on: family. In the previ-
ous three films, Fin Shepard was
on a mission to save his loved
ones from the sharknado event.
There was motivation and plot to
keep the movie running forward.
However, this installment feels
sloppy and lazy, opting instead
for more action sequences and
aimless wandering rather than a
set direction. Whether this was
intentional is unclear, but the
change in gears certainly didn’t
work for the fourth installment.
Running from Las Vegas to Texas
to Kansas to Chicago and ending
up in Niagara Falls via a falling
house created an unsavory expe-
rience for viewers. They already
made us believe in a sharknado,
but a sharknado that can trek
cross-country? Seems a little
unrealistic.
After their Kansas house was
uprooted and they rode the winds
to Chicago, the end was finally
coming into sight. Amid dry ref-
erences to popular pop culture
and a surprising lack of good
old-fashioned celebrity deaths
(because that’s why we’re really
here, right?), the film seemed
to reach a conclusion, sparked
from the deaths of multiple major
characters, who, for your infor-
mation, were eaten by increas-
ingly larger sharks in a grotesque
Russian nesting doll fashion.
They were then swallowed by the
endangered blue whale, who just
happened to be hanging around
Niagara Falls at the time, because
otherwise its presence would
make absolutely no ecological
sense. In the meantime, April
uses her cyborg abilities to fly
into the falls after her five-year
old son, who thinks his real mom
is a shark, and save him from the
rapids. After only just returning
to solid ground, the child picks
up a well-placed tiny chainsaw
and proceeds to cut open the
nesting doll of sharks and whales
to unearth the remainder of his
family members. Seriously, does
nobody watch this kid? Any-
way, the movie ends quite sud-
denly with Nova’s (Cassie Scerbo,
“Make it or Break it”) return on a
flying Eiffel Tower, which leaves
the franchise open for another
installment next July. Although,
in the meantime, I’ll be praying
that we won’t have to witness a
“Sharknado 5,” because I’m hon-
estly out of ideas. What could
possibly follow a nuclear-shark-
nado?
‘iiiDrops’ fresh
By HARRY KRINSKY
Daily Arts Writer
“You take a little Biggie and a
little Big L, add an adolescent on
the corner with packs to sell. You
take a little Em and
Andre 3k, and guess
what you got, the
2016 2Pac, back and
improved.”
The verse — or
rather,
the
really
scorching hot take —
comes from the 10th
track of Joey Purp’s most recent
mixtape,
iiiDrops
(pronounced
“Eye Drops”). Purp is a little over-
zealous in his comparisons, largely
because he overrates his bars by
putting himself in such company
— but at the same time, it’s also
what rappers do. The line is off-
base mainly because of who Purp
compares himself to rather than
making the comparison at all. Purp
isn’t necessarily a mix of Big L, Big-
gie, Eminem or Andre3000. Rath-
er, he embodies the likes of Jay Z,
Kendrick Lamar, a dash of Kanye
West — and sure, a bit of Big L too.
The mixtape’s first song, “Morn-
ing Sex,” sounds like a mix of Ye’s
“Devil in a New Dress” and Jay Z’s
“Encore” if that isn’t proof enough
for you.
Purp is a member of the Save-
money Crew, a large, loosely linked
Chicago based collective of rappers
and hip-hop artists that features
the likes of Chance the Rapper and
Vic Mensa. Prior to iiiDrops, Purp
had been rather quiet, having last
released a project in 2012. In the
time between his mixtapes, Purp
saw his fellow Savemoney brethren
abruptly ascend to varying levels of
fame (some arguably reaching the
top of the rap game, depending on
how much you enjoyed Coloring
Book). iiiDrops reflects this brood-
ing period in Purp’s life. It’s effi-
cient, consistent and anything but
repetitive, an especially impressive
feat for an 11 track mixtape.
In his time spent away from the
limelight, Purp manages to craft
something distinctly new school
with iiiDrops. And I don’t mean
that in the sense of being a trippy,
synthy,
sampling-Mario-noises-
while-autotune-flexing
mess.
Rather, it’s new school in the sense
that embodies the classic sounds
of ’90s rap, but ’90s rap that was
obviously made with the help of a
MacBook Pro. Purp exists within
the ’90’s boom bap tradition with-
out restraining himself to it, testing
musical boundaries with nuanced
beats and unique flows between
tracks and choruses. It’s a subtle
play on convention, which is (ironi-
cally) brave in the current day rap
climate.
All this comes to a head on “Pho-
tobooth,” the halfway point in the
album — and, by far, the project’s
most complex track. The beat shifts
three different times and cuts out
in a variety of places. By my 10th
listen I can’t decide if the scratchy-
screechy sound makes me want to
plug my ears and hide or vigorously
headbang to the song. The bars
match this purposeful confusion —
it’s pissed off, celebratory, socially
aware, serious and funny.
Then there is “Girls @,” which
features a Chance verse that
reminds everyone that Chance is,
first and foremost, the face of Save-
money. “Girls @” is fun. It’s the
kind of song that might play at a
bar, but the kind with strange, pre-
tentious paintings on the wall and
an atrium with ferns (but still a bar
I’d love to go to). At first, the single
feels out of place. It’s happy, basic,
and a song simply about Purp and
Chance repeatedly asking “where
the girls at.” It lacks some of the
frustration and anger that the rest
of the tape teems with. There’s a
perfectly reasonable argument that
the single doesn’t belong on the
tape, but it’s also possible the light-
hearted digression is exactly what
the project needs. iiiDrops ventures
to paint a picture of a community
and of the kind of life within that
community, and “Girls @” is a
light-hearted facet of that illustra-
tion.
Ultimately, iiiDrops introspects
and reflects. Something happened
between 2012 and 2016 for Purp.
Maybe it was seeing his Savemoney
friends like Vic and Chance suc-
ceed in bringing their more socially
aware music to the masses. Maybe
it was realizing a need for profun-
dity in his music. Whatever it may
be, Purp’s transformation conveys
a type of rapper who’s confident
in his convictions and unafraid
to tackle the kind of heavy com-
mentary needed in today’s hip-hop
scene. iiiDrops might get lost in the
shuffle of 2016’s rap mega-drops,
but the tape finds itself in more ear-
nest company than other similar
projects that have been released
this year.
F
Sharknado
4: The 4th
Awakens
TV Movie
Syfy
MUSIC REVIEW
B+
iiiDrops
Joey Purb
Savemoney