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Arts
Friday, September 27, 2019 — 5A
This week, ABC’s “LOST” celebrated
the 15th anniversary of its pilot. Originally
pitched as a cross between “Survivor” and
“Gilligan’s Island,” “LOST” at one time
boasted the most expensive pilot in television
history and was one of the first shows to
capitalize on the burgeoning internet-
person desire to intensely dissect every last
frame of every episode that ever aired. The
show featured a diverse ensemble cast, and,
through the use of its flashback structure,
could go from a cop drama to a hospital soap
opera to a sci-fi thriller episode to episode.
It also took place on a mystical island with
polar bears and smoke monsters and hatches
buried underground. It was crazy and it
was beautiful; there hasn’t been anything
remotely like it since it ended.
When “LOST” originally came to a close
in May of 2010, its end was met with an
intense amount of scrutiny and criticism not
unlike the ending of our current decade’s
cultural juggernaut, “Game of Thrones.”
Both shows captured the imaginations of
million of people. Both had long-running
serialized stories that relied on cliffhangers
and shocking twists to keep the audience
engaged. And while both ended in finales
that are not always thought of highly, the
endings themselves were criticized for very
different reasons. “Game of Thrones” was
critically savaged for turning its characters
into cardboard cutouts of themselves and
racing to an ending that didn’t feel earned.
“LOST” ending-haters tended to focus more
on the mysteries that were left unanswered
and the decision by show runners Damon
Lindelof and Carlton Cuse to focus their
ending almost exclusively on the character
arcs at the expense of the sprawling
mythology they had created.
A lot of a show’s legacy is tied up in its end.
Over the past nine or so years since “LOST”
ended, whenever the show is brought up
its ending is almost always brought up as
well. They say that time heals all wounds,
and that is certainly the case in terms of
the “LOST” finale. As the years have gone
on, the decision to focus the ending on the
characters instead of the plot has proven
prescient. As peak TV has become more
and more character focused in the decade
since “LOST,” audiences have come to
expect satisfying endings to character’s
journeys. The wrap-ups of “Breaking Bad”
and “Avengers: Endgame,” widely regarded
as solid for their respective stories, both
choose to focus their ending around their
central characters.
The ending of “Game of Thrones” was torn
apart by fans, critics and audiences alike. It
was compared to the ending of “LOST” and
this comparison was used as a sign of scorn.
But time has been kind to “LOST”s finale,
and it’s possible that time will be kind to
“Game of Thrones” as well. As people forget
the immediate pain and disappointment of
a favorite series coming to an end, the good
memories that they have of the show begin to
take precedence in their mind. Humanity as a
species tends to look more fondly on the past
as a way to justify the present. Everything
looks better when you’re comparing it to
what’s going on now. The ending of “LOST”
looks great in comparison to the ending of
“Game of Thrones,” and the ending of “Game
of Thrones” could look great compared to
the ending of whatever the next big thing is.
How the ending of ‘LOST’
explains most endings
IAN HARRIS
Daily Entertainment Columnist
ENTERTAINMENT COLUMN
YOUTUBE
MUSIC REVIEW
Former member and heart and soul of Blink-
182 Tom DeLonge is often found at the buttend of
jokes. How could he not be, though? He originally
left the band so he could attempt to “change the
world” with his influence and his various business
ventures. Now, he claims to be the military’s chosen
vessel to share information regarding UFOs and is
the executive producer and star of a mini-series on
the subject. On the outside, DeLonge appears to be
completely delusional.
The same goes for the rest of Blink-182. Mark
Hoppus, Travis Barker and newest member Matt
Skiba are all in their mid-to-upper 40s, and they’re
still singing about the same shit. Blink used to be
all about youth culture, toilet humor, the endless
pursuit of girls and the struggles that go along
with it, and unfortunately, that’s still the band’s
main focus on their ninth album, the cleverly titled
NINE. Just look at a recent promotional video
starring Travis Barker and pornstar Riley Reid as
she attempts to recreate the near-iconic “What’s
My Age Again?” video. The band feels they have
an image to maintain, and on NINE, they’re trying
their very best to maintain it.
Lead single “Blame It on My Youth” tells listeners
everything they need to know about NINE. On the
song, Hoppus and Skiba explain a little bit about
their upbringings, with Hoppus stating that he
“started off with plenty of nothing at all” and Skiba
belts on the chorus, “You could never kill my high
/ I’m the ink and you’re the headline / Blame it,
blame it on my youth / Blame it, blame it on my
youth / You could never block my shine.” It bears
repeating that these men are in their 40s and,
somehow, they still feel the need to justify how
they became the men that they are.
The rest of the album follows a similar trajectory.
The songs are largely uninspired, riffing on the
usual tropes, and there isn’t much musical range
between them. The one song that deviates from
the norm is “Generational Divide,” a fast-paced
barnburner, especially when stacked up against
the rest of the album. It is a quick rumination
on the cultural division between generations,
specifically between Hoppus and his son. It feels a
bit like a return to form that was stopped short for
some reason. This glance backwards is especially
depressing as the album moves forward.
For some reason, Blink’s members decided
it would be a good idea to start playing with
elements of electronic music and vocal processing
techniques like autotune. The biggest offender of
this crime is “Ransom.” It starts off questionably
with some glittering keys, and then turns to shit
as soon Hoppus’s autotune drench voice comes in.
It’s sprinkled in sporadically throughout the song,
and it’s wince-inducing every time. The song soon
bursts into typical Blink fare, but by that point, the
damage has already been done.
On NINE, the members are beyond disillusioned
with themselves. They seem to think that they’re
still the tastemakers of the pop-punk world. But
alas, they are not. They are grown men who are
still bitter about the women that spurned them
(see “Hungover You” for further elaboration). Had
the band taken a darker turn and explored the
downfalls of their lives, perhaps NINE would have
been more interesting. Instead, the album feels
repetitive and out of touch, with no new ground
broken.
On the other hand, things are beginning to
look up for Tom DeLonge. His show Unidentified:
Inside America’s UFO Investigation has been well
received by viewers. What is even more notable,
however, is the US Navy’s verification that videos
released by DeLonge on his television show are
indeed real. This, honestly, is a very big deal
for him. It legitimizes his previous claims and
validates DeLonge’s research group, To the Stars
Academy of Arts and Sciences, as the leaders of the
field of UFO identification and research.
Who’s the delusional one now?
Blink’s ‘NINE’ is just shitty
JIM WILSON
Daily Arts Writer
NINE
Blink-182
Columbia
YOUTUBE
There’s this moment, about halfway through
“Hustlers,” when Ramona (Jennifer Lopez, “Second
Act”) is taking a photo of her young mentee Annabelle
(Lili Reinhart, “Riverdale”) to lure a Wall Street guy to
meet them. “Turn around baby,” she tells Annabelle.
“You know what he wants.” Annabelle turns around,
looks over her shoulder, and touches her index finger
to her lip, smiling coyly. Ramona snaps the picture and
within seconds, the guy asks her when and where she
wants to meet.
It’s not a particularly important moment in the grand
scheme of the movie, but it’s emblematic of a sense in
“Hustlers” that women are experts of their own bodies.
They know exactly how to calibrate the shape of their
hips and the curves of their smiles to get what they want.
They understand intimately the currency their bodies
provide, and exactly how volatile that value exchange
can be. “Hustlers” is a complicated story that navigates
friendship, stripping, the financial crisis of 2008, sex
and power. But if there’s a central conceit at the heart
of the film, it’s about how women navigate that tricky,
constantly moving target that is the intersection between
their bodies and the profit they can extract from them.
It’s a singularly American story, about how women
shoved to the margins of society claw and fight their
way to make it in a world that sees them as disposable. It
would be a disservice to the complexity of the film to call
it “empowering,” but it gives a voice to a group of women
who are usually denied space or agency in Hollywood.
Their story is remarkable.
Based on the real life exploits of a group of ex-strippers,
“Hustlers” is centered on the perspective of young
stripper Destiny (Constance Wu, “Crazy Rich Asians”),
who joins with seasoned veteran Ramona to build a crew
of fellow strippers who steal money from the high-roller
finance guys who frequent their club. Ramona is a force of
nature — charismatic and brilliant, sexy and sharp as all
hell — and Destiny is entranced by her from the moment
she lays eyes on her, working the pole to Fiona Apple’s
“Criminal” as the stage under Ramona’s feet becomes
awash with bills.
Ramona wraps Destiny in her lush fur coat and takes
her under her wing. She teaches Destiny how to give a
proper lap dance, how to hoist herself up the pole, how
to spot the men who will pay well. Mostly, she shows
Destiny how to make real money in the exploitative
system of New York City strip clubs, where the girls
are the draw but all the profit ends up in the pockets of
scummy managers who take 40% cuts of all the dancers’
earnings. Ramona has a daughter to take care of, Destiny
has a grandmother. They bond over the ferocity of their
protectiveness over their dependents and over their need
to be self-sufficient. Destiny starts making good money
under Ramona’s tutelage, and she finds community
among her fellow dancers who have a warm, familial
banter in the club’s dressing room.
Then Destiny gets pregnant, and she leaves the club.
A couple years pass, and suddenly it’s 2008. The market
has crashed, her baby’s father leaves her, and Destiny
starts dancing again. Except now the rules have changed,
the clubs are empty of clients and the warmth among
the dancers is gone. Ramona and Destiny have to start
getting creative.
“The game is rigged,” Ramona says. “And it does not
reward people who play by the rules.” So they recruit a
couple of other girls, Annabelle (Reinhart) and Mercedes
(Keke Palmer, “Pimp”), to help them “go fishing,” or find
rich men at high end New York bars to lure back to the
strip clubs. Once they get them to the clubs, they get
the men as intoxicated as possible, and start racking up
the credit card charges. Destiny becomes the CFO to
Ramona’s CEO, or the Kobe to her Shaq, as the women
themselves put it in the film. It doesn’t take long for them
to up the stakes. They concoct a new drug cocktail to
slip into the men’s drinks to make them more malleable
and willing to give up their cards. They graduate from
taking $5,000 a night from one of their marks to $50,000.
Together, they’re absolutely ruthless in the influence they
exert over the other girls in their crew, and over the men
they steal from. It’s modeled off of classic mob cinema,
but this mob is a matriarchy, specifically run by and for
women of color. Like any pair of good mob bosses, Destiny
and Ramona’s relationship builds to a Shakespearean
intensity in a swirl of designer clothes, money, blood and
sweat. The highs are intoxicating. The lows will gut you.
It’s difficult to overstate how deeply excellent this story
is. Watching it feels like a zap of electricity, like you’re
made privy to the very best of what entertainment can do.
Granted, it would be very difficult to make a bad, or at the
very least non-entertaining movie based off of a story this
intrinsically strong. But everybody involved in “Hustlers”
knocks it out of the fucking park, and every aspect of
production is as brilliant and careful as it possibly could
be — from the pitch perfect casting, to the rhinestoned
costumes, to the legitimately transcendent soundtrack.
Make no mistake, this movie is a masterpiece. There isn’t
a wasted second or a dramatic beat that’s not earned.
“Hustlers” is already a huge commercial success,
which is unsurprising given how much unadulterated
fun it is to watch, with all its delicious sleaze and
sparkle, punctuated by a slew of sexy dances and
shopping montages set to early 2000s pop and rap. This
accessibility as a piece of pop art is crucial to the film’s
urgent, glittery genius. The legibility, the sleaze, the sheer
joy of watching “Hustlers” allows it to act like a Trojan
horse for one of the sharpest commentaries on the post-
recession economy to ever hit the theaters.
In that way, “Hustlers” is a lot like the women
themselves, hiding their incisive intellect and business
acumen under layers of fake lashes and contoured
cleavage. But then, maybe they prefer it that way. Maybe
it’s in their best interest to be underestimated, because
after all, these are powerful men they’re targeting.
Executives. Hedge fund managers. The high rollers at the
tops of skyscrapers directly responsible for the poverty
and desperation of the people below. But it doesn’t
matter how weighty his gold watch is, or how diverse his
stock portfolio. Each man they choose is utterly leveled,
not only by the women’s bodies, or the sprinkled drug
cocktail, but by the precision with which they expertly
construct a fantasy that reduces him to a lolling, drooling
mess at their feet. They’re too smart, too hot, too good at
what they do — experts in the politics of money and the
body. He never stood a chance.
‘Hustlers’ is precise, powerful and psychotically good
ASIF BECHER
Daily Arts Writer
Hustlers
Gloria Sanchez Productions
Quality 16
YOUTUBE
June 19, 2016
June 1, 2017