The Devil Wears Prada- No Sun // No Moon

Y’all I love these boys. I’ve been listening to this band since like, 2011. Andy Trick was one of my main motivations for playing bass (which I need to pick back up again, shit). I got to tell him that back at Warped tour 2014 and I like to think the picture I have of us together shows the genuine happiness I’m sure that brought him and therefore also me (I’ll stick that down below). I honestly totally forgot about the No Sun // No Moon documentary though. It journals the band’s 8 weeks in the studio recording their second-last album, Transit Blues (2016).

The doc is really straightforward. It is a good balance of the album-making progress, focusing in sections on each member doing their sessions and how they each approach the recording process. And it also tells an interesting side of the abrupt departure of drummer Daniel Williams and how they brought on Giuseppe Capalupo as their new drummer.

The doc also does have a good amount of the the boys just being boys, and that really brought a smile to my face. Like, it’s really cool seeing the work that went into the album but I really like just seeing the guys as just good ole boys, regular people who just happen to make really good music.

I’m not just praising the doc because it’s one of my favorite bands, either. I really liked the profression and pacing. There were a lot of cool shots and scenes and I thought it was really nicely put together. (I also cracked up at the fact that for the couple of inter-titles and lower-thirds they had they used the same font I usually default to my documentary projects, [Ballinger Mono if your wondering.])

I’m not sure non-Prada fans would really be all that interested in this, but for me it was a treat and honestly the only high point of a moderately shitty day.

Also here’s the picture of me and Andy from Warped ‘14

And I might as well toss in the picture of me and the boys from November of last year.

As promised, here’s my paper, where I really only just talk about buildings for three pages.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e2KrUyiKHVmIp7-FxeLp8D2LYvm_oQWq2UkVQ3fEnik

Day 3

Watched this one for class. Pretty confusing at first but I caught up and it was actually pretty interesting. Once I finish my paper for this one, I post it here. 

Day 4

Also watched this one for school. Most of next week will be PTA movies I have to watch for class. Not really super into PTA so far, so I probably won’t be writing anything very in depth. I might post the paper afterwards, depends on how it turns out. 

Day 3

Watched this one for class. Pretty confusing at first but I caught up and it was actually pretty interesting. Once I finish my paper for this one, I post it here. 

Day 2

“Creating a unique mix of punk, emo, and trap, Lil Peep was set to bring a new musical genre to the mainstream when he died of a drug overdose at just 21 years old. From the streets of Los Angeles to studios in London and sold out tours in Russia, the artist born Gustav Ahr touched countless lives through his words, his sound, and his very being. With Terrence Malick serving as executive producer, "Everybody's Everything" is an intimate, humanistic portrait that seeks to understand an artist who attempted to be all things to all people.”

I’m kind of out of my SoundCloud rap phase, but Peep was one of my favorites of that kind of “group”. I honestly didn’t know a whole lot about him, just that he popped up on my Spotify radio one time and I liked that darker, kind of grungy sound that he put out. I had only just started digging into his music and listening more when he died.

Watching the documentary I will admit that I really was only familiar with a few of the other musicians that he had worked/was friends with and are interviewed in the film, namely Ghostemane, Bexey, and Killstation. I had heard one song by Yung Goth, but only because it also had a Peep feature. Tbh I’m probably not going to look them up either because I’m kind of off that wave now. Also: y’all I’ve heard of the “opiod drawl” before and didn’t really think of it as an actual thing, but y’all the drawl is REAL in these interviews. I’m worried about some of these dudes.

The film’s editing was what you would expect of a documentary, but it was really clean and seemed pretty thought-out. There was a looooot of archival type stuff of Peep. I saw a couple of videos that I’d seen on some Instagrams and stuff. One thing I did like was the voiceovers of his grandfather reading the letters he’d written to him. It felt like they used them almost as transitions into the next chapter of the film.

Story-wise, it’s pretty straightforward at the beginning. It just basically talks about how he came into music and his time with Schema and GBC. Once his management company comes in, though, it seems like there’s a rift that opens up between the story of his friendship with people and the story of his rise to fame. It paints a picture of his friends using him to ride his fame, and I’m not sure how true everything is because there’s just so many people and so many sides of the story to process. Once the film starts talking about his death, it becomes clear that there’s a good amount of finger pointing going on. I’m not really looking to take sides; I’m just an observer. But they say it themselves in the film: there’s a lot of mystery around his death.

I do appreciate how they don’t end on that note and instead focus on his family. It takes us away from all the suspicion between his management and collaborators and really just focuses on that moment of grieving.

Regardless of whether or not I’m still listening to Peep and that genre that he helped to bring to a more mainstream light, this documentary is a pretty comprehensive story of his life.

Day 1

“ A vertical prison with one cell per level. Two people per cell. One only food platform and two minutes per day to feed from up to down. An endless nightmare trapped in The Hole. “  -From IMDB

This movie is probably not a good one to watch while you’re eating. It’s pretty disgusting. It feels strangely relevant right now, though. It’s got a very powerful social commentary. The editing was also pretty interesting to look at. The design was simple but really effective. Also, props to the food stylists. That must have been a hell of a job.