I've been hearing a lot about Justin Bieber's mental health lately.  Not that I asked, or anyone asked if I cared.  This story is one of those completely non-censensual celebrity exposures that is a common hazard for those trying to navigate entertainment news for actually relevant information.  I mean, I could also get into this Prince Harry situation, but...uh, I didn't ask either, and I actively resent being added into his reality-show group chat as well.

I don't have any insights into Bieber's health, mental or otherwise.  The problem is that....neither do any of these people reporting these "concerns" over his health matters.  All I can see is that Bieber, apparently, has gotten married, had a baby, sold off his past song catalogue for half a billion dollars and fired his previous management team including at least one person who conspicuously made a lot more money off of Justin Bieber than Justin Bieber did.  So, good for Bieber.  It looks like he's trying turning a new leaf and moving on from an industry which probably and profitably caused him lasting childhood trauma.  You would think that, if anything else, this currently acceptable form of celebrity child exploitation/abuse would be and has been the main threat to Bieber's mental health this whole time, so maybe it's more of a positive that the former industry puppet-boy is finally cutting the strings and trying to live a more normal family life.  But apparently not according to the entertainment press.  Based almost entirely on "anonymous inside sources", people "familiar", it is precisely that Bieber has chosen to cut ties with these parasites in the industry, ie "the people who made him", which is the red flag of Bieber's mental turmoil, rather than the psychological ravages of all the fame, drugs and possible Diddy freak-sex he was immaturely exposed to by these very same "handlers".  The fact that Bieber doesn't seem interested in currently working so hard to keep making all of these other people money.  No, the evidence is clear: Bieber seen not wanting to be photographed at gas stations by paparazzi.  It's a cry for help!  Worse than that, he's even started going to a new church!  Sure, it's a weird church.  Is there a normal church in Los Angeles?  Isn't this the same town which tolerates Scientology rapes and kidnappings?  Isn't Lady Gaga doing pseudosatanic services at her concerts?  We're supposed to be worried about Bieber's prayer breakfasts?

Anyway, whatever.  Hope Bieber's doing fine with his family and that half-bill.  I think he's probably going to be OK.  I would really prefer though that if these entertainment news fools insist on doing this kind of celebrity-parasite insider hitjob coverage, that maybe they might start applying just a little bit of skepticism when it comes to sources who sure look a lot like Scooter Braun in a fake mustache, talking about how "sad" Scooter Braun is that Bieber doesn't want to dance on his strings anymore.

As for Harry....get on a fucking plane, dude.  Why are you telling me this shit?  Take care of your private business on your own time.  You're the fucking prince.  Knock on the door.  They'll let you in.
 

Andre 3000 has been inspiring some interesting words over his new EP, 7 Piano Sketches, which is largely what it sounds like.  Jazz pianist Matthew Shipp has especially gone viral with his thoughts: "this is some atrocious shite", "is he some type of fucking asshole?", "it is so dreadful", "what an ugly piano sound", "sounds to me like pure fraud", "lack of respect for the discipline", "depressing that this garbage will get any attention", "complete and utter crap–horrific, god-awful insipidly wretched nothing".  Maybe it'll grow on him.

Here's the thing.  It's not great.  It might have been of minor interest as a demo, released years after the fact, for whatever he could have built on with the few musical ideas he has in these "sketches", and, in that sense, it is a very good question then why he chose to release this EP rather than build on these ideas for a future project.  (I stole it online, but I truly hope Andre isn't expecting anyone to actually buy this thing.)  Andre has even tried to defend himself by saying that "these piano pieces weren’t recorded with the intention of presenting them in any formal way to the public".  OK.  But you did?  So it's an open question of "why?"

Let me put this in context.  This Andre 3000.  Who went nearly 20 years without releasing any new music.  But was always giving interviews about how much new music he was recording, and how great it's going to be once he puts it out.  Nada ziltch.  I do have a bootleg called Whole Foods with some of this unreleased music.  It's OK.  But the point is that he did not deem any of it worthy of release.  Fine.  I guess he's waiting until he gets a true masterpiece.  So, finally, he does release a couple of EPs (they're OK) and last year's New Blue Sun, which marks a very different direction, but I happened to like a great deal.  But to reiterate, New Blue Sun is the only LP of new material that Andre has released since Love Below 20 years prior.  And, for some reason, he decides to drop some poorly recorded piano doodles.  He should have named it Out of the Fucking Blue.  Had Andre been consistently releasing this kind of whimsical, even amateurish, music over these many years, I think it would be a different situation.  Such a slapdash approach could be seen as part of his style.

In terms of musical style, it is more than understandable why a professional jazz pianist would find this insulting.  Make no mistake, Andre is clearly attempting a cosplay pretense of a free jazz pianist here.  It's pretty weak Monk-lite.  A couple of birds outside his window prove to be more catchy than his tunes.  And here's the thing about true jazz musicians, the adage of "you have to know the rules before you can break them".  Any solo jazz recording is a daunting undertaking, even for the greatest among them.  It's easy to see how such a jazz musician, or even a jazz fan, would find this flaccid simulacrum of Thelonious Monk as disrespectful or just arrogant.  It reminds me of Miles Davis' negative reaction to when Ornette Coleman attempted to pick up a trumpet in concert, without ever having played the instrument before.  Miles took it as mockery and insolence.  (Thankfully, Herbie was more forgiving when Miles took up the organ.)

This was actually my apprehension over Andre's instrumental turn on New Blue Sun.  I first saw him perform on Colbert, and it was....unimpressive.  Andre looked like a child who had just gotten his first recorder.  Sure he was having a good time, I'm sure the band was well paid, but the music was terribly tepid.  And I took umbrage when Andre started hyping his new album, making allusions to the classic 'spiritual jazz' albums of the era.  I'm thinking "these balls over here".  Motherfucker is not good enough to tie Pharoah Sanders' shoes, much less step into them.  Who the fuck do you think you are?  Worse, is the prospect that Andre could be able to effectively fake the vibes enough to convince his audience that he's really on that strata.  I can perfectly relate to why actually disciplined and experienced jazz musicians would be put off by this hubris.  But, ultimately, as I wrote in review, I was eventually pleasantly surprised and relieved that, on record, he did not attempt to ape instrumental virtuosity, instead focusing more on ambient mood textures, more fitting to his strength as a producer than an instrumentalist.  Suffice to say, 7 Piano Sketches, fails to deliver in the production department.

Again, there are some interesting ideas in these sketches, and even towards the end (around "Blueberry Mansions" or so), there are even some attempts at production, even a stab at Reichian sound work.  So the question remains...is this simply a toss-off wank-work, or is Andre capable of building something on these jazz/avant/ambient elements on which he could truly hang a hat of artistic genius?  It remains to be seen.  But by publicly releasing these sketches, unlike all of the other music he's supposedly been working on these last two decades, he seems to be suggesting that he has no intention to.  Instead, as we sometimes see in music circles, there's a certain fetish of the savant, and perhaps Andre sees himself in this category.  Bluntly said, he ain't no Moondog, folks.
 

Remember those good old days when pus-filled fanboys where accusing Rotten Tomatoes of deliberately tanking the Zack Snyder superhero films (as if Rotten Tomatoes writes the reviews on their site) because they were in cahoots with Disney/Marvel to sabotage DC's box office?  Remember 'Red" for god's sakes?  'Randy'?  Are there even enough diapers anymore?

So it probably isn't much of a surprise that these "activists" are less loyal to DC as much as to Snyder (probably having something to do with how Snyder's films inspire fascist sympathies), and they are now currently plotting to tank the new "Gunn-verse" Superman movie coming out.  And I honestly wish there was any way whatsoever that I could possibly care less.  And like an answer to my prayer, there appeared a small sliver of something that I could actually care about.  This plot, as it were, being concocted in close consultation on Reddit, involves some typical unsurprising things - posting as many spoilers from the film as soon as possible, and rigging such online audience ratings scores as RT or IMDb (which don't require any proof of having seen a film) by mass-posting the lowest ratings possible.  These kinds of obnoxious efforts have been with us for years, and pity the poor soul who might possibly be in desperate need of some kind of internet consensus before deciding whether or not to watch a new Superman movie.

But here's where things get stickier.  Recently, movie theaters have shifted to online ticket purchases, and even reserved seatings.  So check out this instruction to the Snyder-trolls, "Reserve tickets online but don’t complete the purchase. By selecting and reserving tickets, it gets taken out of the pool for a period of time which means this has a chance of stopping gunn-bots from buying tickets."  Now this is a lot more serious, imo, actually sabotaging box office by potentially tying up, what?, thousands of tickets and available seats from being purchased?  Keep in mind, any film whatsoever could be targeted like this.  Let's say, No Man's Land or Zone of Interest for clear political motives?  But probably more likely individual stars who might have a small horde of online haters.  You want to tank the latest offering with that gorgeous actress who you know wouldn't give you the time of day?  You got a problem with a Polish/Colombian Snow White?  Maybe you just want to tank the competition of a film you strongly support?  Or maybe even Jezebel readers want to jeopardize the latest Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp movie?  I mean, regardless of intent, the possibilities are alarming.

Hopefully, such online ticket outlets, like Fandango, can figure out how to prevent such schemes by restructuring its ticket-buying process.  (Since I have neither bought a ticket or reserved a seat online, I honestly don't even understand the validity of this scheme.)

............

Although none of this makes me even slightly more motivated to watch this new Superman movie, I was a little delighted to hear director James Gunn opine: "I do believe that the reason why the movie industry is dying is not because of people not wanting to see movies.  It’s not because of home screens getting so good.  The number-one reason is because people are making movies without a finished screenplay."  I'm glad that someone said the quiet part out loud.  We heard during the Writer's Strike questions about the poor quality of so many modern film scripts (and I'm sure there are quite a number of writers who need to start looking for work elsewhere), it makes more sense when we consider the poor quality being the fault of the studio executives who green-light projects with half-assed, possibly even no script at all, based entirely on either previous I.P. or some glib pitch ("It's like Rocky meets Ninja Turtles - it sells itself!").  And especially when you have studio executives who don't believe in "quality" to begin with.

This also echoes what Dakota Johnson said about her disasterous Spiderman spinoff, Madame Webb, which reportedly rather than a script, the film was still being conceived during the shoot: "It started out as something and turned into something else.....There’s this thing that happens now where a lot of creative decisions are made by committee. Or made by people who don’t have a creative bone in their body. And it’s really hard to make art that way.....it’s hard when creative decisions are made by people who don’t even really watch movies or know anything about them, and that tends to be what’s occurring a lot.....you cannot make art based on numbers and algorithms. My feeling has been for a long time that audiences are extremely smart, and executives have started to believe that they’re not. Audiences will always be able to sniff out bullshit."
 

Bill Burr needs to sue.

Maybe he will or not.  Like a lot of outwardly cantankerous people, I suspect Burr is probably pretty non-confrontational when it comes to most things.  BUT, I will make it known.

Bill Burr did a bit on his podcast last year, a throwaway bit, something that amused him while he was high with friends.  The premise was that he wanted to come up with the dumbest possible IP/reboot ideas to pitch to the kind of useless C-suite studio stooges who wouldn't know the difference.  One of these theoretical pitches was One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest II: This Time I'm Keeping the Sink.  The idea was that this sequel would follow up on Chief's adventures after escaping the nuthouse, presumably committed to carrying around a steel water fountain (which he clearly discarded in the final scene of the film, but whatever). 

So it turns out that some nephew, Paul Zaentz, of stray Saul Zaentz seed, has decided to reboot One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, as a TV show, with a second season dedicated to "what happens to the Chief after he escapes".

This is worse than A.I.  This is plagiarising an idea specifically intended to demonstrate the complete idiocy and creative bankruptcy currently infecting our entertainment corporate media behemoths.

No, you know what?  Don't sue, Bill.  Tell them to go right ahead.  Give Bill the material he can use to further burn down any last ember of respectability in your fumigating industry.
 

Again....I'm not really interested in watching a Superman movie.  I'm resigned to accepting the Donner as all I need. 

But I don't wish any ill-will, and I do appreciate some of what Mr. James Gunn is at least publicly claiming as his intentions.  Above, I highlighted his commitment to scripting integrity, the abdication of which is one of the most obvious vulnerabilities in 21st century studio production strategy.  I also appreciate Gunn's returning of the character - on paper, at least, as I can't judge the execution - to what he stresses as "kindness".  That's such a banal issue that it really does take some effort to reckon why exactly such a simple gesture was even needed.  It really has to result in painting the indictment on what I think may be one of the most perverse decisions of the decade, century, regarding this specific commercial medium of American mythmaking.  We need to take stock of not only how corrupt was Zack Snyder's vision of this All-American Moral Tentpole Archetype, but also of why we, as a culture, didn't immediately call it out for the clear abomination it was at the time 12 years ago.  Instead, it was like we were just collectively fazed, like maybe we didn't understand.  We've had a number of similar brickslap reactions in our cultural media in these years.  "Is this really this bad?  Could it be?  They put an awful lot of money in it.  Is anyone else seeing how bad this is?  Are we supposed to be nice to these people who made this?  Oh, the kids?  Is this just what they want now?  How the fuck do they know?  Because it's on 5 thousand screens?  Aren't we kinda bluffing ourselves here?"  These are the FOMO-infected thoughts racing through the heads of audiences for most of the reboot/franchise/IP-hump/fanboy-hype that we've just kind of been dealing with for the past 20 years or so.  But, no.  It would unfortunately take two more Zack Snyder junkfucks before people started to figure it out.  (Parallel to the identical Star Wars grift.)

The basic truth, as then as now, is that Snyder's Man of Steel Superman was not kind.  In fact, he seemed confused by the concept of kindness.  He took years vagabonding the country trying to understand why he has to try.  The essential corrupted morality of the Kents, with Ma saying "You don't owe this world a thing" and Pa is actively discouraging him from self-sacrifice for the betterment of humanity.  This was the morality that a Hollywood studio was investing billions of dollars to be the ground zero of their intended commerical pantheon.  They say that our superheroes reflect our times.  Yeah.  This should have scared the fuck out of 2013 America.  But it didn't.  Because it's just a movie, after all.  Not like this would have....reverberations elsewhere in our culture.

So I do wish Mr. Gunn all the best, in trying to renew this spirit of kindness and self-sacrifice as an essential ethical necessity, as all of the folks, from Megyn Kelly to Jesse Watters, who like to push back against the 'cancel culture' of woke scolds, attempt to cancel this film's success because maybe they don't want the burden of having to be a little nicer to strangers.