Kanye Last Song Standing

The plan is to do a Last Song Standing episode, in the spirit of the Dissect podcast, with Lucas in which we nominate Kanye songs from various albums, put them in a March Madness-style bracket, and find the last song standing. Here's my documentation of my nomination process.

4/4/26: College Dropout

We Don't Care (5)

All Falls Down

Spaceship

Jesus Walks (2)

Never Let Me Down

Get Em High

The New Workout Plan (4)

Slow Jamz

Breathe In Breathe Out

School Spirit

Two Words

Through the Wire (1)

Family Business (3)

Last Call (6)

If I had to pick today, I'd kill New Workout Plan and Last Call. The former is surprisingly fun, the latter was an old favorite of mine, but neither shines brightly enough. Family Business is a personal one for me, so it's tempting to kill. We Don't Care was never a highlight for me personally, but it stands taller than something personal like Family Business. I'd have to sort through the influence of Jesus Walks and try to map the quality. I never liked Through the Wire when I was growing up, but now I feel like it's so iconic that he's rapping through the wire; "they can't stop me from rapping" is such a Kanye thing.

4/5/26: Late Registration

Heard Em Say (3)

Touch the Sky

Gold Digger (2)

Drive Slow

My Way Home

Crack Music

Roses

Bring Me Down

Addiction

Diamonds from Sierra Leone (Remix)

We Major (1)

Hey Mama

Celebration

Gone

Diamonds from Sierra Leone

Late

4/6/26: Graduation

Good Morning

Champion

Stronger

I Wonder (1)

Good Life (4)

Can't Tell Me Nothing

Barry Bonds

Drunk and Hot Girls

Flashing Lights (2)

Everything I Am (3)

The Glory

Homecoming

Big Brother

Good Night

4/6/26: 808s

Paranoid (2)

Street Lights (1)

4/6/26: MBDTF

Dark Fantasy

Gorgeous (4)

POWER

All of the Lights (5)

Monster (3)

So Appalled

Devil in a New Dress (2)

Runaway (1)

Hell of a Life

Blame Game

Lost in the World

4/7/26: Yeezus

On Sight

Black Skinhead (1)

I Am a God

New Slaves (3)

Hold My Liquor (4)

I'm In It

Blood on the Leaves

Guilt Trip

Send It Up

Bound 2 (2)

4/8/26: TLOP

Ultralight Beam (2)

Father Stretch My Hands Pt 1 (5)

Pt 2

Famous

Feedback

Low Lights

Highlights

Freestyle 4

I Love Kanye

Waves

FML

Real Friends (6)

Wolves

Frank's Track

Silver Surfer

30 Hours (4)

No More Parties in LA (1)

Facts

Fade

St Pablo (3)

Also: Violent Crimes

Albums:

1. TLOP
2. LR
3. MBDTF
4. Graduation
5. College Dropout
6. Yeezus
7. 808s

Okay so TLOP has way more crap than LR. But it also has many more glorious moments. LR is more consistently strong; it's classic all the way through. TLOP is so fragmented. But LR doesn't deliver so many amazing moments. LR only offered a few songs for this project; TLOP offered 10. So it's a question of sane classic status vs bipolar glory. LR is more subtle and measured like the sermon on the mount, TLOP is just basking like the resurrection.

So my wild card options are:

• Heard Em Say
• Everything I Am
• 30 Hours
• St Pablo

Some things are more fun to recommend than to experience. They're like someone handing you a flyer on the street like "here, you throw this away." Dogtooth and Antichrist are fun to talk about and convince someone else to watch. Everyone has War and Peace but no one reads it.

Alien

I expected more than thrills from Alien. Science fiction has a philosophical connotation to me, but Alien, unless I missed some symbolism, was just a thriller set in space. It borrowed aesthetics from 2001 but none of its pondering. Yet what a thriller it was! I liked the bleak direction: for a lot of the horror, there was no music or even screaming, just panting and sweating. Weaver toward the end was a marvel in her desperation. I also particularly liked Bilbo's performance -- for someone playing a robot, he may have acted more humanly than anyone else! That's good acting for 1979. Unfortunately some of the effects showed their age -- the alien itself, the explosion of the ship, the severed head -- but a lot of the effects were surprisingly effective, like the early form of the thing when it's on Kane's face, and what spills out of Ash, etc. There was some bad dialogue, but more awesome intensity than I expected for a movie from the 70s. How did Kubrick manage to control the cheese so well in 1968? Largely by avoiding dialogue, and avoiding entertainment -- entertainment ages faster than art. What's humorous or cool to the mainstream fades fast by its very nature. Humor and a sense of cool are inherently transient. Kubrick skipped both, dealing just with humanity's biggest questions and with clean, brutal visuals. So his movie ages better than almost any other sci fi. Alien kept some of that brutality though, so I'm pleased to say I enjoyed it all these years later. I just wish it had dealt with more interesting ideas, if I am to watch any of the others in the series.

I tend to think of classic sci-fi as either philosophical or allegorical. It's just a genre that ages so fast, unless it lean heavily on timeless ideas. Star Wars leans too much on visual effects, fun ideas, cool style, personality, humor, and enough basic stimulation to sell out theaters. Now, I think the story of Star Wars cuts some classic arcs, but it's leaning too heavily on these other things which age so fast. If sci-fi is typically supposed to be an exciting glimpse of the future, it by definition ages quicker than other genres focused on the past or on timeless ideas. Its speculation and special effects go outdated so fast. 2001 dodges this by focusing on themes that have persisted throughout human history, and by austere visuals as opposed to hovercraft races and laser guns, and by minimalism instead of personality. It's less massively appealing in the year it's released than Star Wars, but it ages better. The old Star Trek series are an interesting case of aging terribly in terms of technical achievement, but aging gracefully in terms of thematic content. They knowingly eschewed big-budget effects and focused on almost stage-like situations. I'm speaking pretty ignorantly though... I haven't seen much Star Trek and I really haven't seen much sci fi in general. 2001 aged the best, Alien aged pretty well because it's minimalistic in a lot of ways, Star Wars aged worst because it rode the heat of the moment. Interstellar probably won't age very well, though I love it right now. Even now I know it's so cheesy. Maybe it'll be one of those classics that nobody really enjoys anymore, come 2050. Nobody except my generation. I expect Nolan movies to go that way in general -- beloved by my generation, cheesy to all future, even if they're still technically known as classics.

Logan

I heard rumors this was much grittier and subtler than most superhero movies, but after seeing it, I don't think the disparity was huge. The R rating helps -- violence and language can make you take a superhero movie more seriously. And it wasn't bad. But it still felt like a superhero movie, or some other sort of basic action movie. The formula and tone were still there. It was good enough to inspire me to want to see other X-Men stuff (I've seen basically none), but not to inspire me to actually believe that I should watch any of those movies. Like, I want to experience the wonder of Charles' mind, but I'm confident it carries too much baggage for me to seriously consider watching any more X-Men movies, especially knowing this is deemed the best of em. If this is the best of em, then X-Men is probably an artistic desert. But I'm always a little susceptible to cinematic candy, and superhero movies press that divinity button.

Cinematic canon

It's so hard to talk about my favorite movies nowadays, or even books or TV, since I've loved very little of what I've seen since high school, and almost zero if we just go since college. My tastes have changed, so it feels uncomfortable to report on my favorite movie being what it was in high school, but nothing has taken its place, and I can't even see my old favorites through the lens of my new taste, because I'm too familiar with them and they carry too much baggage. So I can't say any new stuff is my favorite, because I don't love any of it, but I'm also uncomfortable claiming any old stuff, because I can't reconcile it with my new taste. Like I can't cognitively line them up. So I just keep saying "Synecdoche, with a huge asterisk". Then my mind races through other options; finds Tarkovsky for some reason, discards it; finds LotR, but has a hard time upsetting the original canon -- the one from when my identity started crystallizing; besides, LotR is an adventure, it doesn't speak directly to my soul like my old favorites did. LotR is just a fantasy, Synecdoche was a dialogue with who I actually was. Nothing has hit me like those did in high school, so it's hard to demote them.

Old canon I have a hard time revoking:

• Synecdoche
• Magnolia
• 2001

Old canon I'm okay demoting:

• indie realism like Cianfrance
• Eternal Sunshine; it's still up there, but not in that top tier
• foreign films like Tarkovsky and Bergman; Tarkovsky as a filmmaker is up near the top, but I don't enjoy his or any old "world classics" quite enough, if I'm being honest
• most Kubrick

The only things that have even dared to breach the canon since college:

• Les Mis
• Game of Thrones (I know it's not a movie, but even including TV it's the only one; and it is cinematic)
• Harry Potter
• Dune

Coincidence that two of those were 100% driven by Hannah? And one of the only others to join the canon since high school (LotR) was driven by another romance? Am I that much more sympathetic in those scenarios? I doubt it, since lots of others in those scenarios have not breached the canon. Also notice all four are epics with some fantastical flair (for Les Mis it's the music and general theatric staging). I think the only book to give me a really powerful moment, as well, in recent memory, was Once and Future King, which is directly up the alley of epic/fantasy/historical.

Actual canon:

• Synecdoche (grandfathered in, but there's a chance I still love it and call it a great movie)
• Magnolia (grandfathered in, less beloved than Synecdoche, but more objectively classic)
• 2001 (grandfathered in, less beloved than Synecdoche, but more objectively classic)
• LotR (consumed my taste in college and for a while after; no question it suits who I am as an adult)
• GoT (fascinating and intense, I didn't love it the first time, but I also didn't love LotR the first time)
• Harry Potter (the newest and shakiest entry, but I can't deny it gave me a LotR-like experience, one of the only thrills I've had in movies since college)

Is that it? The second tier houses things like:

• Eternal Sunshine
• Les Mis
• Dune
• Tarkovsky
• Casino Royale
• The Departed
• The Godfather
• The Office (undeniably canonized, but at a lesser, sentimental level)
• Birdman
• Melancholia
• other PTA and Kaufman
• other Kubrick
• Interstellar
• Tree of Life
• Hobbit
• Persona

Notice everything in the actual canon is epic and fantastical. They're all lengthy (other than GoT, which is a series, the rest are all notably long movies). They all contain some version of fantasy: Harry Potter, LotR, and GoT are obvious, but 2001's sci fi blends with fantasy, especially toward the end (and anyway, outer space and the dawn of humanity both feel fantastical to the modern earthgoer), Magnolia features a few miracles, and Synecdoche projects a distorted psyche onto the world such that the whole thing bends the imagination. So you'll say I'm drawn to fantasy, not necessarily in a wizarding sort of way, but in a way that bends the imagination without losing its humanity. I don't watch movies for a literal window into reality, I want my mind to stretch, and you don't even have to be subtle about it!

So fantastical epics. But there's a spectrum from conventional storytelling (Harry Potter) to brutal world-building (GoT) -- with LotR in between the two -- to moody meditations on modernity (Synecdoche, Magnolia), to rock hard sci fi (2001). So within the constraints of a runtime approaching 3 hours and some stretching of the imagination, there's some wiggle room in terms of what subjects you're dealing with and what your point is. But here's the thing: you have to be stylistically bold! Artistically adventurous! And you have to think really hard about what you're doing. Don't try to underanalyze your epic. Even Rowling, the author among them that appeals easiest to the mainstream, was strategically brilliant.

Wuthering Heights

My mother always told me the movie is never better than the book. Well. What's the easiest path to violating that rule? Take a shitty book. Make a movie that's sort of inspired by it but is really a whole different beast. All you have to do is make an average movie to transcend a shitty book.

The other option is distilling the perfections out of the book and only filming those (Godfather, 2001, etc). Fennell took the easier route. Wuthering Heights is a quivering story -- it's not hard to imagine a raptured atmosphere for the cinema, nor imagine a more emotionally satisfying focus on Catherine and Heathcliff.

That's one of the most obvious ways to generate something enjoyable out of this book: focus on Catherine and Heathcliff. In the book, she's dead before the halfway point, and it makes little emotional sense. Their relationship is one of the best things about the book. Fennell makes it her cornerstone, and corrupts it along the way, but at least she has a cornerstone onto which the audience's heart can lean. The book is utterly bereft.

She corrupts it by taking its most basic romantic interpretation: that they really love each other, in the normal Hollywood way. That's not so in the book, whatever people might say about Catherine's "I am Heathcliff!" speech. Heathcliff is too close to being a twin brother in Catherine's eyes, in the book. I don't think she ever really loves him in this straightforward way. The movie makes Heathcliff appealing, and makes Catherine love him like a basic romance novel.

That's another obvious way to generate something enjoyable out of the book: make Heathcliff appealing. He's a menace in the book, and it makes little emotional sense. In the movie he's "rough and wild", which have positive sexual connotations these days, especially when you cast a heartthrob. You might say Wuthering Heights as a book is a romance, of the romantic period, but the movie is a severe romanticization. It makes the book feel distinctly unromantic.

Heathcliff is more appealing than his literary counterpart, although thankfully Jacob Elordi is just odd enough looking that Heathcliff isn't a total slobber. But his hair, voice, and presence are solid. I like the way he speaks -- it's very Jon Snow, super breathy and deep and chokes out whole syllables in that northerner's way. The last scene also makes a statement that Heathcliff is not a villain, which is a betrayal of the book, but a pleasant one.

As for Catherine, Margot Robbie was a decent choice, although I don't think this will go down as one of her important performances. She's quite restrained compared to Babylon, Wolf of Wall Street, and (I must assume) Harley Quinn... which is fine, but she spends most of her time crying or moaning. She's missing a lot of that vibrance from her other roles. That spark. I think she plays it well though. The source gives her a meager foothold, and she transcends it. Catherine is not a very good character in literature, but Robbie looks like she should look, so Robbie is a decent choice to do a better version of the character.

Differences from the book: Catherine and Heathcliff are much more straightforwardly and zestily romantic, the movie ends at Catherine's death (which is not even half of the book), Catherine's dad is despicable, the setting is fantastical, Nelly is less heroic, Catherine does not have a baby (the baby is critical to the novel).

I thought the movie was decent. The atmosphere and visuals were pretty cool. The love story was fine -- maybe I would have liked it better if I didn't already have such a distaste for the characters from the book. I also knew roughly how it would end, so there was no roller coaster. I could see that story being full-hearted without the context of the novel. As is, it pales in comparison to Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre hit me hard back in college, in the way Wuthering Heights (the movie at least) tries to hit you. Though I kind of liked the Wuthering Heights movie, Jane Eyre is easily the winner in my mind, as far as the stories themselves go.

I don't think I realized this before: it's so strange that within ~6 months Jacob Elordi has played two monsters of Frankenstein, after a fashion, in adaptations of gothic novels I hated. Heathcliff is a very Frankenstein's-monster sort of character in the novel. Oddly parallel that he should take both roles. You might think that endears me to him, that he's reading the books I'm reading, but I didn't like these books, so I wouldn't take on these roles. Nevertheless, he's doing a fair job.

Skywalkers: A Love Story

Q: Do I support their lifestyle?

A: Yes. The word "illegal" shouldn't be used as a moral weapon. "Irresponsible" isn't up to me, it's up to them. I think humans should be permitted to fly, inasmuch as they can, especially of their own muscular exertion. That's partly why I like climbing, and partly why I envy these rooftoppers. They're just trying to fly, and despite the artificial structures, they're doing it in a relatively organic way: using their bodies and brains to summit the structural world. I wish I had the motivation to make this happen -- it takes a lot of planning -- and the exposure tolerance. I'm better with heights than most people, but certainly not to this level. I'm sure their palms wouldn't sweat watching this movie; mine did. So I not only support them, I envy them. Perhaps support is not the right word though. I wouldn't donate to them, or wish their lifestyle on my loved ones. But I wouldn't say anything against them, unless I heard from someone they're hurting with these pursuits. As it stands, the main party they injure is the billionaire commercial property owner against which they trespass, and that doesn't really bother me. They aren't vandalizing, not in any meaningful way. They're just sneaking up. Landownership bothers me in general, so a little trespassing is one of the lower sins the law prohibits, in my estimation. One of the greatest thrills I can imagine is property lines being lifted for a day. I suppose people who denounce rooftoppers are most likely overly moralistic about the law. Perhaps they have reasons I don't know about to honor property ownership. But I bet it's more often a spurt of legalism mixed with jealousy. I don't think these two are shallow or excessively narcissistic either. I think they're just trying to make a living, and trying to feel accomplished. And trying to feel loved.

I liked the movie. It was inspiring.