Rainbow is the first studio album from Kesha in five years after a legal battle with Dr. Luke who allegedly assaulted and drugged the performer and her record label who urged her to maintain her contract and work with her abuser. During this time Kesha wrote a plethora of meaningful, self-exploratory songs that made it onto the new album. Kesha’s third studio album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 117,000 album-equivalent units. The 14 songs on the album range from soul-searching ballads, such as Praying co-wrote with Ryan Lewis, to powerful pop anthems like Boogie Feet which features Eagles of Death Metal. Kesha said that Rainbow was inspired by Iggy Pop, The Beatles, and Dolly Parton, whom Kesha sings a popular song with. The album starts with a soft ballad Bastards and then gives anthem after anthem including a song inspired by the infamous Donald Trump “pussy-grabbing” comments in 2016. Kesha says she screamed at the TV when she heard his words and wrote Woman soon after. Kesha is following up her album release with a U.S. tour and says that she’s happy to be making music again.
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The new space opera by legendary director Luc Besson of Fifth Element fame, is an underrated and under-marketed gem in the middle of a dry summer when it comes to inventiveness. The biggest sin of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is how inadequately it was marketed and how unimpressive it’s box office numbers have been so far. While focusing on the title character Valerian from the comics of the same name, space adventure dares to be unique amongst the normal superhero blockbusters and reboots. Valerian is the most visually stunning spectacle on the screen since Avatar and is genuinely fun to watch. Without spending a lot of time building the universe, the audience is introduced to Alpha, a metropolis made up of thousands of planets and numerous different inhabitants cohabitating each planet. For the most part, this is a peaceful home to the largest conglomerate of interspecies relations the universe has seen in the last thousand years. The film picks up with two already well-established heroes, Major Valerian and Sergeant Laureline, who are partners on a case and have conflicted negotiations about where they stand as a couple. Without a prominent exposition, the adventure is already underway and it’s up to the audience to decode the mystery of a refugee species, an emerging threat at the core of Alpha, and a secretive government that proves, Alpha isn’t much different than the Earth we remember. While the story does putter at moments and the acting isn’t always consistently amazing, the characters do grow on the viewer quickly and each new alien is more surprising than the last. Cara Delevingne plays Laureline and is a rising star in her own rights. Despite numerous previous attempts at launching her acting career, she hasn’t been able to land a lead role that isn’t riddled with false marketing or poor scripts. In Valerian she plays a strong heroine and steals each scene that she is in. Quickly the title character is outshined by her performance and at times I wondered why we needed the Valerian/Laureline dynamic when Laureline could easily handle any assignment she was given. In the middle of the movie we are introduced to a shape-shifting cabaret dancer named Bubble (played by Rhianna) who is severely underused in the story. Despite giving the best performance from Rhianna I have ever seen the character didn’t get used in the way that her narrative was building her up for. Along with her and many other aliens, I wanted to see more from the film once the credits rolled. Knowing that Besson will probably never get the chance to make a sequel, this one-shot will only grow in popularity to very likely become a cult classic, but will always be undervalued by mainstream society. With a Star Wars meets 21 Jump street feel, Valerian could easily be my favorite movie of the summer if it didn’t have such hard competition in Spiderman: Homecoming and Wonder Woman. That said, Valerian has more heart, fun, and uniqueness than both those films combined. |
Erick L. Graham Wood
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