Atlanta season 1's sweetest move was an old 30 Rock move: it never tried to sell Paper Boi as God's gift to the trap scene

This is the first of 12 or 13 blog posts that will be posted on a monthly basis from now until this blog's final post in December 2017.

I was skeptical about Donald Glover's Atlanta when FX first announced in 2014 that it picked up Glover's creation, his first TV series since his departure from Community, the offbeat cult favorite where he continually killed it each week as Troy Barnes, a high-school football star trying (and failing) to suppress his nerdy side (like that time when Troy, in what has to be my favorite acting moment from Glover on Community, was so excited to be in the presence of his childhood hero LeVar Burton that he turned catatonic). A half-hour comedy about a trap rapper and his manager cousin trying to get by in the rap game? Disquieting visions of "Entourage for the Atlanta trap scene" danced in my head when FX first hyped Atlanta. The world doesn't need another half-hour piece of boring lifestyle porn where the lead characters constantly bang anything that breathes in the most opulent of settings and the storyline with the biggest stakes would be "Is Vince Paper Boi doing or not doing the movie A3C?"

Another disquieting vision I had was that Atlanta was going to be a weekly half-hour ad for Glover's musical career as Childish Gambino. Glover is a good example of an actor/rapper whose beats, frequently provided by Community and Creed score composer Ludwig Göransson, are solid, but his bars leave a lot to be desired. I was never a fan of Gambino's corny verses about his Asian fetish.

Gotta have fetishized at least 3 asian chicks before u can really appreciate Childish Gambino's music

— Desus Nice (@desusnice) October 31, 2013

I caught up on Atlanta season 1 on FX on demand, about a few weeks after the season concluded, during a couple of breaks between chapters for a manuscript I've been working on since August (chapters that I, by the way, ended up having to delete from the manuscript because I found myself thinking, "This material isn't gonna work as a YA novel anymore. A Jim Rockford-type Pinoy should be the audience surrogate, not a precocious Richie Brockelman-type Pinoy," so I got rid of all the teenage characters). Atlanta, which took home the Best Comedy Series and Best Actor in a Comedy trophies at the Golden Globes earlier this month, exceeded my expectations. As a half-hour single-camera comedy about the rap game, thankfully, it's more Taxi than Entourage.

Sure, Atlanta is frequently funny (three words: secret revolving wall), but Glover and his writing staff's brand of humor is tinged with Taxi-style melancholy, particularly about how working-class adult life often feels like you're running in circles. That melancholy reflects Glover's belief, as he once said during a 2016 Television Critics Association press tour panel, that "you watch Master of None and it's a very optimistic look at millennialism, [but] I'm pessimistic about it. I feel like we kind of fucked up."

There's nothing lifestyle-porny about Atlanta. Neither are there any moments of blatant product placement for Awaken, My Love!, the surprise Gambino album Glover dropped one month after the Atlanta season finale, save for a cameo by the Awaken, My Love! cover artwork on a bookshelf in the "Juneteenth" episode. The non-rap Awaken, My Love! is also the first-ever Gambino release I've genuinely liked from start to finish, aside from whatever the fuck Bino was doing with his voice during "California."

The show is an exploration of, as Joshua Rivera put it in GQ, "the stress and pain of being broke," particularly when that broke-ass person is both a creative and a POC, like Earn Marks, Glover's Ivy League dropout character, and, to a lesser extent, his cousin Alfred (Brian Tyree Henry), a.k.a. the trap rapper known as Paper Boi (not to be confused with Paperboy, who recorded the 1992 one-hit wonder "Ditty"), who's more economically stable than Earn, thanks to income from drug dealing, but he's not exactly on the level of Future/Gucci Mane-type wealth yet. "Ballin," singer/songwriter Bibi Bourelly's current ode to finding ways to "treat yo'self" when your savings account is empty, could be an unofficial theme song for the daily hustle of either Earn, who becomes Alfred's manager, or teaching assistant Van (Zazie Beetz), Earn's ex and the mother of his baby daughter (I wouldn't be surprised if Bourelly's extremely relatable song surfaces on Atlanta during its second season, which is currently scheduled to air in 2018, partly due to Glover's upcoming gig as young Lando Calrissian).

AFOS Blog Rewind: Not everyone's a critic, which was why Fox's enormously funny The Critic didn't last

Last week, Uproxx posted a lengthy and enjoyable interview with longtime writing partners Al Jean and Mike Reiss about their short-lived but well-remembered creation, the '90s animated show The Critic. The show centered around Jay Sherman, a persnickety film critic nobody likes, except for Marty, Jay's 13-year-old son, and Margo, Jay's teenage foster sister, who both look up to Jay, and Jeremy Hawke, an easygoing Aussie B-movie star who considers Jay his best friend ever since he was the only critic who didn't trash his first movie. In the Uproxx article, Jean and Reiss recalled the main reason why The Critic lasted from only 1993 to 1995 (the new Fox network president at the time hated it) and the challenges of attempting to give Jay and the other Critic characters the same kind of revival Family Guy and Futurama experienced after they were cancelled by Fox too (three of The Critic's regular voice actors are no longer alive, and Reiss also points out that "Siskel and Ebert are dead and those kinds of shows don't exist anymore. Movie critics used to be all over TV and they used to wield great influence and they just don't"). So from March 18, 2008, here's a post about The Critic, originally posted under the title "'Now who wants to boogie with Baby '37?'"

This weekend, I was surprised to find an eight-hour ReelzChannel marathon of the short-lived animated series The Critic, James L. Brooks' second foray into animation after the success of The Simpsons. Created by Simpsons writers Al Jean and Mike Reiss, The Critic aired on ABC during its first season (1993-94) and then for its second and final season (1994-95), it went to die on Fox (where the show's "Hey! We're on Fox" gags were amusing, while on a non-Fox channel in reruns years later, uh... not so much). The show, which comes complete with Simpsonian catchphrases that never took off ("It stinks!," "Hotchie motchie!," the Chuck McCann-referencing "Hi guy!"), later enjoyed a cultish afterlife in webisode form and on both DVD and Comedy Central's animation lineup.

The Dissolve has sadly but elegantly irised out (so you win again, terribly written pop-culture news sites that are full of typos and annoying listicles)

Back in May, Pitchfork.tv posted a well-made animated short adapted from an anti-PG-13 essay published by the Pitchfork Media-owned film review site The Dissolve, and I wrote, "I'd like to see [Pitchfork.tv animator Mack] Williams do more animated tie-ins with The Dissolve. The site's discussions of Midnight Run with Adam Scott and Running Scared with Paul Scheer are crying out for the animated treatment, as is Noel Murray's essay 'Why great comics don't always make great movies.'" Sadly, there won't be any more animated Pitchfork.tv/Dissolve team-ups because during a three-week break I took from posting AFOS blog material (but I wasn't able to take a complete break from writing that material), The Dissolve closed up shop after two years of publication, simply because the economics haven't been kind to The Dissolve.

Although The Dissolve's reviews of new releases were well-written, they weren't the reason why The Dissolve was my favorite destination for discussions of film--other than The Onion Film Standard with Peter K. Rosenthal, of course. In an age when click-bait--particularly superhero movie costume news updates and listicles that are so lazily written and mindless they've caused me to stop writing listicles for good--has dominated film writing and made it less appealing to me, the content that made The Dissolve special and unique was all the articles that clearly weren't generating as many hits as the kind of empty and forgettable click-bait The Dissolve stubbornly refused to succumb to publishing in order to stay alive. I'm talking lengthy but never-boring and never-pretentious articles like the essays about the challenges of adapting graphic novels for the screen or the fascinating changes in recent film score music and the "Movie of the Week" roundtable discussions of older films like Repo Man and John Carpenter's Snake Plissken flicks and more recent cult favorites like Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and MacGruber, discussions that often made you look at an old film in a new light. The reassessments of Spike Lee's work as a music video director or the reassessments of the filmographies of directors like Frank Tashlin and Ernst Lubitsch were also among the things former Dissolve staffer Scott Tobias and his colleagues "knew few people would read" when Tobias and Keith Phipps discussed the demise of their site, but The Dissolve was admirable for not caring that only a few film geeks would read those pieces.

The Dissolve's articles were often as impeccably edited as the movies the Dissolve writers adored and celebrated in their "Movie of the Week" discussions. Typos or misspellings were such a rarity over at The Dissolve. The only typos I spotted were in articles by--ooh, big surprise--Nathan Rabin, who, as an easily bored and barely awake TV recapper for the Onion-owned A.V. Club, once memorably wrote that Jack Donaghy "sneaks pills into Tracey's [sic] jelly beans and transforms him from a space case to an Adderal [sic] achiever" when Jack was so clearly not drugging Tracy Jordan, so Rabin would repeatedly get mocked for his pills mistake in the A.V. Club's comments section. Ooh, look, here's another one of those Rabin typos now.

Typos aside, Rabin's pop-culture writing is actually often worth reading. Like so many of the other former Dissolve writers, Rabin (who perhaps saw the writing on the wall and actually left The Dissolve a couple of months before the site's demise) came from the A.V. Club, which championed and fostered the same kind of smartly written and witty pop-culture writing that was found on The Dissolve and continues to do so, although the A.V. Club, along with Indiewire and Uproxx, has lately become much less of a favorite destination for me because of how often its gazillion ads (fuck you, Flowplayer) cause my browser to freeze up. Meanwhile, The Dissolve refused to clutter its articles with ads, which I assume is what also brought about the end of The Dissolve. But it's better that The Dissolve went out fighting with the integrity in its writing intact instead of dying out as yet another slow and laggy site full of articles that are either littered with or disrupted by ads that slow down my browser and can't be turned off.

If you write or blog about film or pop culture, you might get asked by someone the following: "The Internet's as overwhelming as Comic-Con. There are too many sites to choose from when I want to read stuff on the Internet. How can I tell apart the sites that are worth visiting from the sites that aren't worth visiting?" It's simple. Any publication that frequently makes typos like the following isn't worth the time of day.

Neither is any publication that posts "20 Things You Didn't Know About the Catering for Ant-Man."

Remarkably, The Dissolve was neither of those things, although it did publish a listicle, but only occasionally, like when it discussed "The 50 most daring film roles for women since Ripley" or was presumably ordered by Pitchfork to assemble "The movies' 50 greatest pop music moments." Listicles aren't the only form of digital publishing that bores me. Blog posts that are simply hastily written regurgitations of press releases bore me as well. Sure, The Dissolve had a news section that consisted of hastily written regurgitations of press releases too, but otherwise, 90 percent of its content was the thoughtful and lengthy pieces about movies like Heat, a movie I was obsessed with in college, or Midnight Run, a movie I'm still obsessed with and was a favorite subject of the Dissolve writers because of its countless highlights, like Danny Elfman's "Try to Believe" theme, and because, as Noel Murray said, "This is a movie about adults, made for adults."

When I recently watched McCabe and Mrs. Miller for the first time ever (I checked it out from the San Francisco Public Library, a great alternative for whenever Netflix's DVD rental service comes up short), the first place I clicked to after watching the Robert Altman western was The Dissolve because the site had once picked McCabe as a "Movie of the Week." I wanted to read what the Dissolve staff had to say at length about Altman's offbeat western about the struggles of independent businesses against Big Business, struggles that were similar to The Dissolve's own financial struggles. Not even the late Altman's McCabe audio commentary was satisfactory enough for me. The "Movie of the Week" section is the thing I'll miss the most about The Dissolve. I'm worried that Pitchfork Media will someday remove all these Dissolve articles from the Web because there are so many other older movies I haven't seen yet and were given the "Movie of the Week" treatment by The Dissolve, and I still want to read what its writers had to say about those movies.

I will admit that one of my recent blog posts was written in the style of a Dissolve piece. That post was "The Game of Thrones 'Hardhome' massacre and Mad Max prove that near-silence is golden, so why hasn't anyone stepped up to make the first great modern-day silent action movie?" It's a depressing, "Hardhome"-ish time for film writing: The Dissolve has been shut down, and nobody can make a living from film writing like the late Roger Ebert used to be able to do because the tech world is run by corrupt assholes who don't pay their writers. At the risk of sounding like William Fichtner's "Criminals in this town used to believe in things" line from The Dark Knight, when I was a stringer for a major newspaper in the '90s, I wasn't paid a lot for the movie reviews I wrote, but at least I was actually paid back then. Listicle click-bait like "The 5 Best-Looking Buttcracks in Minions" may have won this round, but let's continue fighting against that type of writing. Let's keep The Dissolve--and what it stood for--alive in our approaches to writing about film or pop culture. It will make the sting of its demise less painful. We can do better than listicles about yellow buttcracks.

Nielsen releases an infographic that lists how much of your life you've wasted watching Sheriff Rick brood in a spotty Southern accent

Nielsen is an evil company. Because broadcast networks still rely on Nielsen's horribly outdated ratings diary system for deciding which shows to cancel instead of measuring a show's popularity on streaming video services (which are where viewers like me prefer to access shows these days), a lot of shows I like that were more popular with viewers at streaming video services than with Nielsen families have been cancelled.

I'm still not over ABC's cancellation of the hilarious but low-rated Happy Endings (which starred Damon Wayans Jr., who might end up edging out Elisha Cuthbert as the most well-known name from that show if his upcoming--and promising-looking--hard-R comedy Let's Be Cops becomes a hit). I resent Nielsen so much for its role in the cancellation of so many great shows that when I attended V3con in L.A. last year and was handed a goodie bag containing a free T-shirt from one of V3con's 2013 sponsors, which happened to be Nielsen, I felt like tossing the Nielsen tee into the garbage. It's currently lying in a pile of clothes I've set aside for Goodwill.

Orphan Black

Occasionally, Nielsen does something that's actually beneficial to the public, like posting an infographic that displays how much time viewers would spend watching the entire runs of shows like The Walking Dead, 24 and "¡Escandalo!" (Sherlock takes up the least amount of time, of course, because it produces only three 90-minute episodes per season or series). It's an interesting chart--although I wish it would include Orphan Black, the most recent show I Netflixed from start to finish--and it's quite useful for someone like me who hasn't watched a single episode of House of Cards and wants to know how much time it would take to stream both seasons of House of Cards on Netflix.

But I still dislike Nielsen. For example, in the infographic, they use the term "binge-watch" to try to be hip. I hate that term. Along with terms like "shippers," "squee," "bromance," "amazeballs," "the feels" and "reverse racism," "binge-watching" should be taken out back and shot and then buried in a ditch. "Binge-watching" makes watching TV sound like an eating disorder. I prefer the term "marathoning" because it sounds more proactive, and it makes you feel like you've accomplished something special, like sitting through three days and two hours of Ted Mosby's obnoxiousness without strangling somebody.

Who are these nutcases who like to "binge-watch" things? Ingesting an entire season in one sitting is crazy. Even after two episodes, I start to get antsy. Three is my limit for a marathon, whether those three episodes are from a half-hour comedy or an hour-long drama. To get caught up on Orphan Black in time for its season premiere, I marathoned its first season on a disc-by-disc basis over the course of one week, and I found the three-or-four-eps-per-disc marathoning pattern to be perfect and not-so-exhausting.

Next, I'd like Nielsen to post an infographic on marathoning really old ABC sitcoms like Family Matters and Mr. Belvedere, an atrocious show that comedian Ken Reid reveals himself to be an expert on--I never knew about the Belvedere writing staff's bizarre fixation on rape--during Hari Kondabolu's entertaining guest shot on Reid's podcast TV Guidance Counselor. Would sitting through Belvedere's overly preachy Very Special Episodes about date rape or AIDS be a two-day ordeal or a three-day ordeal? (And who knew that one of the most progressive stand-ups of color around is also a Perfect Strangers/Family Matters nerd? There are side characters from Family Matters whom Kondabolu brings up that I never knew existed. I didn't realize that there are layers to the Urkelverse that rival the layers of the Tommy Westphall Universe.)

I'd also like to see an infographic that looks at when viewers start to lose their patience while marathoning the one-hour Republican Party commercial for the torture of suspected criminals that was 24. I've been wondering if more viewers start yawning when the cougar shows up or when the show runs out of people for Jack to torture and decides that "Hey, let's have him torture his own younger brother! That should be amazeballs!"

Original score cues from Arrested Development, Game of Thrones, 30 Rock, Battlestar Galactica and The Wire, which are among the shows listed in the Nielsen infographic, can be heard during "AFOS Prime" on AFOS. Two of those cues are "Balls in the Air," an original David Schwartz/Gabriel Mann song from Arrested Development, and "The Fall," Blake Leyh's end title theme from The Wire.

"It might be malig-nant": When good actors pretend to be crappy ones

Most TV heads love Bradley Whitford because of his heroic Josh Lyman character from The West Wing, but to me, Whitford gets a lifetime pass for a much lesser-known bit of post-West Wing TV work: Burn Notice creator Matt Nix's The Good Guys, where Whitford killed it each week in his comedic role of a gung-ho Dallas police detective who still thinks he's living in the '80s. The Good Guys came and went so quickly that when I revised the following blog post about fake bad acting in May 2012, I totally forgot about The Good Guys, which had gone off the air only a couple of years before. Whitford's return to TV this fall in ABC's surprisingly funny single-camera comedy Trophy Wife has brought back memories of The Good Guys, a show I miss a lot (The Good Guys can be revisited on Amazon streaming, but it will never hit DVD or Blu-ray because it would be impossible to clear all the '70s and '80s rock songs that were featured on the show).



The funniest episode during The Good Guys' single-season run involved the Whitford cop character transforming himself into a fake Mafioso. I'm adding it to a list of my favorite instances in which a decent or excellent actor portrays a less talented version of himself or herself (the other day, I Hulu'd a Good Wife episode where Alicia and Cary hire a hilariously overwrought Chicago actress to play a mock trial witness, and if the actress who played the crappy thespian weren't so unknown, I'd add her to the post too). The Good Guys episode precedes many other moments of great fake bad acting (some of them I previously discussed in January 2008).

Bradley Whitford, The Good Guys ("Silvio's Way")
I can't believe I nearly forgot this episode, where Whitford's Dan Stark brings out of mothballs an old undercover persona of his when he attempts to bust a group of mobsters he failed to catch seven years ago because he fell asleep during his own sting operation. The best part of Detective Stark's fake Italian character Silvio is his inconsistent accent, which Whitford kept changing during "Silvio's Way" to show how terrible Stark is at acting (one moment, he's channeling Walken, and then the next, his mobster voice turns into a completely different-sounding Brando type of thing). Whitford once told an interviewer that "Silvio's Way" was his favorite Good Guys episode to shoot, even though it called for him to strip down to a green Speedo when Stark gets strip-searched and stays undressed for a ridiculously prolonged amount of time that was longer than Whitford (or any male viewer like myself who never man-crushed on Josh Lyman and paid more attention to Mary-Louise Parker) was comfortable with. But like those creepy MADtv "Parents Walking Around in Their Underwear" sketches with Michael McDonald in just a pair of Walter White tightie-whities and dress shoes ("Boy, it's hot!") and Mo Collins in a pair of granny panties, the Speedo scenes make for great comedy. "I was instructed to gain weight and this is a tip for any actor--when you're doing a television show, when the head of the network says, 'It would be great if you gained some weight, because this is kind of a dilapidated character,' the next thing coming is a script where you're in a Speedo," said Whitford to Assignment X in 2010. "So don’t do it."

Sigourney Weaver, Galaxy Quest
Weaver's Gwen DeMarco character is a biting spoof of the uselessness of the secondary actors on certain shows that carry titles that rhyme with "car wreck." DeMarco had two functions on her old show: to serve as eye candy and to repeat whatever the spaceship's computer said. In Galaxy Quest, DeMarco amusingly undoes everything that Weaver worked to accomplish in the Alien films as the iconic Ellen Ripley, one of the fiercest female characters to ever spearhead a sci-fi franchise. Well, almost everything. The little-seen Galaxy Quest 20th Anniversary Special mockumentary--an uproarious Sci-Fi Channel tie-in that was stupidly left off the Galaxy Quest DVD and Blu-ray--suggests that DeMarco's limited Lieutenant Tawny Madison role had some merits. The mockumentary discloses that Tawny's trademark karate kick (a nod to the fighting moves of both Emma Peel from The Avengers and Erin Gray's Colonel Wilma Deering from the disco-era Buck Rogers) inspired a whole generation of blond-wigged female "Questarians" to imitate Tawny's fighting moves, and that maybe Tawny was a better role for DeMarco than the one she turned down, "a small part in a Woody Allen movie" (a sly reference to Weaver's appearance in Annie Hall). Speaking of secondary actors on fake sci-fi shows...

Derek Jacobi, Frasier ("The Show Must Go Off")
The esteemed British thespian deservedly won an Emmy in 2001 for his hilarious guest shot as Jackson Hedley, a mash-up of William Shatner and future Frasier guest star Patrick Stewart. The episode involves the Crane brothers' reunion with Hedley, a stage acting mentor who introduced them to Shakespeare when they were kids. Because Frasier and Niles are elitist snobs, they're more familiar with Hedley's Shakespeare work than with his signature role, as the android sidekick on Space Patrol. The brothers are appalled to discover their acting idol has been reduced to a Galaxy Quest-like, post-show career of "hawking T-shirts and sci-fi gewgaws," so in another one of their misguided business ventures, they attempt to rescue Hedley from the sci-fi con circuit by bankrolling his stage comeback. But Frasier and Niles become even more horrified when they watch Hedley rehearse and realize maybe he isn't as great a thesp as they thought he was. To give you a good idea of Hedley's atrocious delivery, think Dr. Orpheus from The Venture Bros. suffering from diarrhea--and if he had taken elocution lessons from Jon Lovitz's Master Thespian from SNL.

Alec Baldwin, SNL "Soap Opera Digest" sketch
In a 1993 sketch that's funnier than his most popular SNL bit, the balls-deep-in-double-entendres "Schwetty Balls," Baldwin delves into his soap opera acting past (The Doctors, Knots Landing) to play Trent Derricks, the star of Doctors, Nurses and Patients. Actually, Derricks isn't that bad of an actor. That is if you overlook his tendency to give interesting pronunciations to medical terms ("We believe it might be a pole-yip. It might be the Big C: canker! It might be benig. It might be malig-nant.") and names of Ivy League universities ("There's no class at Yeah-leh Medical School that can prepare you for this!"). (The sketch can be found on the SNL: The Best of Alec Baldwin DVD but is nowhere to be found in Yahoo's "complete" SNL archive.)

Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock ("Jack-Tor")
I know it's Baldwin again, but the guy just excels at pretending to be a subpar performer, whether it's inebriated '60s variety show host Joey Montero, the Dean Martin analog in the recent live episode "Live from Studio 6H," 30 Rock's delightful homage to live TV, or Jack Donaghy, a network exec with no clue about how to say a simple line or two in front of a camera. Lorne Michaels, whose company produces 30 Rock, must really be good-humored about himself because the "Jack's outtakes" montage in this episode is clearly star/showrunner Tina Fey's jab at Michaels' stilted cameos on SNL.

Any of the actors who played Jack Horner's porn stars in Boogie Nights
Almost everyone has a favorite moment from Boogie Nights. Heather Graham stripping to nothing but her roller skates. The shout-out to I Am Cuba. Mark Wahlberg mangling that cheesy theme song from The Transformers: The Movie. The drug deal-gone-bad sequence. The end credits--for those of you with a weak bladder. For me, it's Graham stripping to nothing but her roller skates. Coming in a close second is any of the footage from Jack Horner's movies-within-the-movie, in which we glimpse the genesis of John C. Reilly's dimwitted comedic personas ("Let's get some of that Saturday night beaver..."). Amber Waves' stilted delivery right before her first sex scene with Dirk Diggler always amuses me. Julianne Moore is a whiz at portraying vacant-eyed starlets like Amber. The character has never quite left Moore: a little bit of Amber seeped into a surprisingly funny SNL Ladies Man sketch where Moore stole the show because of her performance as a ditzy spokesmodel, as well as into her Cookie's Fortune character, an amateur actress who participates in a cheesy production of Salome at the local church.

"Ask for Babs" mix-ology: The reasons for the order of the tracks

Thanks to beyond, deux for mentioning my "Ask for Babs" mix. What do I gotta do to spread the word about this mix? I'm new at this. I'm often not comfortable promoting myself. I'll be satisfied if at least one another blog or Twitter feed besides beyond, deux mentions the mix.

Ask for Babs (Universal 100th Anniversary Mix) by Dj Afos on Mixcloud

Here are the connections between each "Ask for Babs" track (besides the Universal connection, of course).

1. Nigel Godrich, "Universal Theme," Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: Original Motion Picture Score, ABKCO
2. Alan Silvestri, "End Credits" (from Back to the Future Part III), Hollywood Soundstage: Big Movie Hits Volume I, Varèse Sarabande

Scott Pilgrim/Back to the Future connections: Scott Pilgrim and the Back to the Future trilogy are FX-heavy flicks with constantly bullied loser musicians as heroes; the Pilgrim film is nostalgic for '80s and '90s 8-bit video games like the BTTF game for the NES.

2. Alan Silvestri, "End Credits" (from Back to the Future Part III), Hollywood Soundstage: Big Movie Hits Volume I, Varèse Sarabande
3. Rose Royce, "Car Wash," Car Wash, Motown

BTTF/Car Wash connections: Fancy-car porn; pop star cameos; the BTTF fanfare is in the same key as the Car Wash theme.

3. Rose Royce, "Car Wash," Car Wash, Motown
4. Public Enemy, "Fight the Power," Music from Do the Right Thing, Motown

Car Wash/Do the Right Thing connection: Both films have multiracial ensemble casts and wall-to-wall soundtracks and are set over the course of one day.

4. Public Enemy, "Fight the Power," Music from Do the Right Thing, Motown
5. J.J. Johnson, "Willie Chase," Willie Dynamite, Hip-O Select/Geffen

Do the Right Thing/Willie Dynamite connection: Willie Dynamite star Diana Sands appeared with Do the Right Thing star Ruby Dee in the stage and film versions of A Raisin in the Sun.

5. J.J. Johnson, "Willie Chase," Willie Dynamite, Hip-O Select/Geffen
6. Giorgio Moroder, "Tony's Theme," Scarface, Geffen

Willie Dynamite/Scarface connection: Both films are crime flicks with huge followings in the hip-hop community.

6. Giorgio Moroder, "Tony's Theme," Scarface, Geffen
7. Jan Hammer, "Chase," Miami Vice: The Complete Collection, One Way

Scarface/Miami Vice connections: '80s; Miami; gangsters; synth-pop; drugs (speaking of which, the second soundbite during "Tony's Theme" is from Jon Stewart's cameo in the Universal cult favorite Half Baked, in which a blazed Stewart mentions Scarface and another Universal film starring Al Pacino, Scent of a Woman).

7. Jan Hammer, "Chase," Miami Vice: The Complete Collection, One Way
8. Stu Phillips, "Knight Rider," NBC: A Soundtrack of Must See TV, Tee Vee Toons
9. Timbaland and Magoo, "Clock Strikes (Remix)," Blackground
10. Busta Rhymes, "Turn It Up (Remix)/Fire It Up," Elektra
11. Punjabi MC, "Mundian To Bach Ke," Sequence

Miami Vice/Knight Rider connection: Both shows were NBC hits that aired at about the same time (and for one season, on the same night).

11. Punjabi MC, "Mundian To Bach Ke," Sequence
12. Johnny Harris, "Odyssey (Pt. 1)" (from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century), Sunshine Sound Disco

Knight Rider/Buck Rogers connection: Glen A. Larson produced both shows.

12. Johnny Harris, "Odyssey (Pt. 1)" (from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century), Sunshine Sound Disco
13. Danny Elfman, "Main Titles," Midnight Run, MCA

Buck Rogers/Midnight Run connections: Buck Rogers is set in New Chicago and Midnight Run anti-hero Jack Walsh used to be a cop in the old Chicago; "Odyssey" and the Midnight Run theme are both heavy on the bass.

13. Danny Elfman, "Main Titles," Midnight Run, MCA
14. Oingo Boingo, "Weird Science," Best O' Boingo, MCA

Midnight Run/Weird Science connection: Danny Elfman.

14. Oingo Boingo, "Weird Science," Best O' Boingo, MCA
15. Nigel Godrich, "Chau Down," Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: Original Motion Picture Score, ABKCO
16. Dan the Automator, "Ninja Ninja Revolution," Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: Original Motion Picture Score, ABKCO

Weird Science/Scott Pilgrim connections: Weird Science and Scott Pilgrim are FX-heavy fantasy films with dorky youngster heroes; Pilgrim is nostalgic for the era when the Weird Science movie and TV series were made.

16. Dan the Automator, "Ninja Ninja Revolution," Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: Original Motion Picture Score, ABKCO
17. Randy Edelman, "Dragon Theme," Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, MCA

Scott Pilgrim/Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story connections: Scott's temporary girlfriend Knives Chau is like the Bruce Lee of blades; scenes of action movie stars kicking the shit out of non-celebrities on movie sets; Asians who kick ass.

17. Randy Edelman, "Dragon Theme," Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, MCA
18. Henry Mancini, "The Boss," Touch of Evil, Varèse Sarabande

Dragon/Touch of Evil connections: Dragon was about Lee having to put up with yellowface/brownface, and Touch of Evil had Charlton Heston in brownface; Lee starred in The Big Boss, and the Touch of Evil cue is called "The Boss."

18. Henry Mancini, "The Boss," Touch of Evil, Varèse Sarabande
19. Henry Mancini, "Main Title" (from Charade), Music from the Films of Audrey Hepburn, Big Screen

Touch of Evil/Charade connection: Henry Mancini.

"Ask for Babs (Universal 100th Anniversary Mix)"

To mark its 100th anniversary, Universal unveiled a revamped version of its globe logo (The Lorax is the first Universal release to open with it) and got frequent Fast and the Furious sequel composer Brian Tyler to update Jerry Goldsmith's rousing 1997 Universal logo fanfare with a choir and additional percussion.



What was originally supposed to be just a blog post I was going to do about Tyler's spiffy arrangement of the Goldsmith fanfare evolved into the mix below. Because of Universal's centennial, I've put together a mix--my very first one, in fact. It consists of favorite tunes that were written for Universal films or TV shows.

Ask for Babs (Universal 100th Anniversary Mix) by Dj Afos on Mixcloud

It's hard to find original score material from Universal films or shows that's as dance floor-friendly (or full of rhythm that makes my head nod) as J.J. Johnson's "Willie Chase" from Willie Dynamite or David Holmes' "Rip Rip" from Out of Sight, so I had to really dig deep into my station library.

Universal smash hits like the Bourne franchise and 8 Mile are represented on the "Ask for Babs" mix, as well as Universal releases that didn't exactly set the box office on fire but are great or good films and have gained--and I hate this term because cults are creepy--cult followings (Midnight Run[*], Scott Pilgrim vs. the World). The mix also includes material from some Universal films I've never seen (like the not-on-DVD 1969 curio The Lost Man, which has a couple of problems that bother the African American cinema blog Shadow and Act: "It's not good" and as a black militant, Sidney Poitier "is simply miscast in the role, and clearly looks uncomfortable"), but I love the music that was written for those films.

Determining the ways each track would transition into another and basing the order of the tracks on certain connections between them were particularly fun. I blended Vic Mizzy's Ghost and Mr. Chicken main title theme with 30 Rock's fake novelty song "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah" to show how much 30 Rock composer Jeff Richmond must have been inspired by Mizzy's Ghost and Mr. Chicken score. Tracy Morgan is followed by The Roots' original track for the Best Man opening titles because both Morgan and The Roots are employees of Lorne Michaels. I had a Touch of Evil score cue follow the Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story main title theme because Dragon was about Lee having to put up with yellowface/brownface, and Touch of Evil was full of brownface. Plus, Lee starred in The Big Boss, and the Touch of Evil cue is called "The Boss." "Lose Yourself" from 8 Mile segues into the best original theme from Out of Sight (the theme for Don Cheadle's Snoopy character) because both movies involve Detroit. Fast Five, the best of the Fast and the Furious films, was placed next to The Rockford Files because, uh, car chases.

Except for Quincy Jones' cowbell-licious re-recording of his own Ironside theme (a staple of vintage kung fu movie soundtracks that Kill Bill introduced to a new generation of moviegoers), the excerpts of beatmakers sampling Knight Rider and Public Enemy's classic sample of Queen's Flash Gordon theme, I didn't want this mix to contain covers of Universal film or show themes like the Lalo Schifrin disco version of the Jaws theme. I wanted it to be all-original music, but edgy, propulsive or funky original material instead of strictly symphonic material. So that meant crime-jazz-era Henry Mancini (Touch of Evil, Charade) instead of NBC Sunday Mystery Movie theme/A Warm Shade of Ivory-era Mancini, and no Jaws, Jurassic Park, E.T., To Kill a Mockingbird, Spartacus or--*yawn*--Out of Africa (although some of Alan Silvestri's Back to the Future theme turns up at the beginning). Yeah, Jaws was Universal's biggest cash cow shark for a while, and the Jaws theme was a great achievement in John Williams' career, but it doesn't make my head nod (there is, however, a brief soundbite of Jaws, which like all the other soundbites during the mix, comes from a Universal film or show).

My only disappointment with the "Ask for Babs" mix is that I so wanted John Barry's Ipcress File main title theme and Iggy Pop's Repo Man theme to be part of the mix, so I tried editing them into the mix, but all my editing trickery just couldn't get either of them to fit in well. Sorry, Harry Palmer and Harry Dean Stanton.

[*] Director Martin Brest's last enjoyable film is neck and neck with Do the Right Thing for my favorite film that was released by Universal. It features my favorite Danny Elfman film score. And years before lengthy bits of improv were an integral part of Judd Apatow-produced Universal comedies like Bridesmaids, there was the duo of Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin, ad-libbing most of their interplay and most of the brilliantly underplayed Red's Corner Bar sequence.

1. Nigel Godrich, "Universal Theme," Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: Original Motion Picture Score, ABKCO
2. Alan Silvestri, "End Credits" (from Back to the Future Part III), Hollywood Soundstage: Big Movie Hits Volume I, Varèse Sarabande
3. Rose Royce, "Car Wash," Car Wash, Motown
4. Public Enemy, "Fight the Power," Music from Do the Right Thing, Motown
5. J.J. Johnson, "Willie Chase," Willie Dynamite, Hip-O Select/Geffen
6. Giorgio Moroder, "Tony's Theme," Scarface, Geffen
7. Jan Hammer, "Chase," Miami Vice: The Complete Collection, One Way
8. Stu Phillips, "Knight Rider," NBC: A Soundtrack of Must See TV, Tee Vee Toons
9. Timbaland and Magoo, "Clock Strikes (Remix)," Blackground
10. Busta Rhymes, "Turn It Up (Remix)/Fire It Up," Elektra
11. Punjabi MC, "Mundian To Bach Ke," Sequence
12. Johnny Harris, "Odyssey (Pt. 1)" (from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century), Sunshine Sound Disco
13. Danny Elfman, "Main Titles," Midnight Run, MCA
14. Oingo Boingo, "Weird Science," Best O' Boingo, MCA
15. Nigel Godrich, "Chau Down," Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: Original Motion Picture Score, ABKCO
16. Dan the Automator, "Ninja Ninja Revolution," Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: Original Motion Picture Score, ABKCO
17. Randy Edelman, "Dragon Theme," Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, MCA
18. Henry Mancini, "The Boss," Touch of Evil, Varèse Sarabande
19. Henry Mancini, "Main Title" (from Charade), Music from the Films of Audrey Hepburn, Big Screen
20. Vic Mizzy, "Gaseous Globe," The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, Percepto
21. Vic Mizzy, "Main Title," The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, Percepto
22. Tracy Morgan & Donald Glover, "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah," 30 Rock, Relativity Music Group
23. The Roots feat. Jaguar Wright, "What You Want" (from The Best Man), Home Grown! The Beginner's Guide to Understanding The Roots Volume One, Geffen
24. Quincy Jones, "Main Squeeze" (from The Lost Man), The Reel Quincy Jones, Hip-O
25. Quincy Jones, "Ironside," TV Land Crimestoppers: TV's Greatest Cop Themes, Rhino
26. John Powell, "Jason's Theme," The Bourne Identity, Varèse Sarabande
27. Brian Tyler, "Tego and Rico," Fast Five: Original Motion Picture Score, Varèse Sarabande
28. Mike Post, "The Rockford Files," Synth Me Up: 14 Classic Electronic Hits, Hip-O
29. Richard Gibbs, "Main Title (UK Version)," Battlestar Galactica: Season One, La-La Land
30. Queen, "Flash's Theme," Flash Gordon, Hollywood
31. Public Enemy, "Terminator X to the Edge of Panic," It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Def Jam/Columbia
32. Stevie Wonder, "Jungle Fever," Jungle Fever, Motown
33. Eminem, "Lose Yourself," 8 Mile, Interscope
34. David Holmes, "Rip Rip," Out of Sight, Jersey/MCA
35. Brian Tyler, "The Perfect Crew," Fast Five: Original Motion Picture Score, Varèse Sarabande
36. Oingo Boingo, "Goodbye Goodbye," Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Full Moon/Elektra

The big alley

So it's San Diego Comic-Con time again, huh? Screw the overcrowded and stress-inducing Comic-Con. Here at A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Blog is an Artists' Alley where, like the Artists' Alley down at SDCC, you can find lots of stunning-looking art, but the alley here is a little nicer. It's not crowded, it doesn't smell as strange and there aren't any guys wearing those stupid-looking mandals because they think America wants to see their ugly toes on national TV. (For Christ's sake, you're a grown-ass man. Dress like one. They're called shower shoes for a reason: they're meant only for the shower. The only people who should be wearing open-toed shoes are ladies and Spartacus extras.)

During the week of last year's Comic-Con, the AFOS blog posted several great examples of TV show-inspired artwork. Here's some more standout TV-related art.

30 Rock/League of Extraordinary Gentlemen mash-up by Alex Ross. I'm looking forward to the inevitable mash-up of Warren Ellis' Ministry of Space and Astronaut Jones.

Return of the Jedi/Community "For a Few Paintballs More" episode mash-up by Victor Perfecto.

Daria by Ming Doyle.

Fozzie Bear stops by Marc Maron's garage, by Skottie Young. I enjoyed Maron's controversial exchange with Dan Savage about Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum on Real Time with Bill Maher last week.

Detective Nick Yemana from Barney Miller by Pete Emslie.

The Wire as a Hanna-Barbera cartoon by Paul Sizer.

Derezzer's edge: Daft Punk's Tron: Legacy score is now part of "Assorted Fistful" on A Fistful of Soundtracks

I'm a fan of Daft Punk, but I was never really into the Tron franchise. So the French duo's original score for Tron: Legacy, which Walt Disney Records released earlier this week, is the only element of the sequel I've been looking forward to, and it's as dope as I expected it to be.

Another thing I expected was negative reactions to the Tron: Legacy score from both film score music fans who are too conservative to get into Daft Punk and Daft Punk fans who find film score music--including even the kind of score music Daft Punk wrote for Tron--to be too conservative-sounding and old-fogey for their tastes. I don't belong to (or care for) either camp, of course, which is why I've added the duo's score to daily "Assorted Fistful" rotation (also new to "Assorted Fistful" are selections from the recently released two-CD score album for another franchise that's known for its futuristic motorcycle chases, 30 Rock).

Daft Punk's sound also graces another Disney property, the Iron Man movie franchise, but for only a few seconds (the late DJ AM mashed up their 2005 track "Robot Rock" with Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" and Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock's "It Takes Two" during Tony's drunken brawl with Rhodey in Iron Man 2, the last of the Paramount-distributed Iron Man installments now that Disney is assuming distribution). In some alternate universe that's more musically imaginative and less clichéd than ours, the Iron Man movies were scored by Daft Punk, and the duo's catchy 2001 track "Superheroes" is either a needle drop in some other superhero flick or the main title theme for a superhero cartoon series, which is where that track always belonged (see Interstella 5555--"Superheroes" goes well with animation).

Shows I Miss (Already): Better Off Ted

I know Better Off Ted's not officially cancelled yet, but the fact that ABC burnt off an episode on New Year's Day and is burning off two more eps on the same night--this Tuesday night, to be exact--indicates the hilarious but little-watched series is being taken out back and shot.

Ted, which is narrated by the title character (Jay Harrington), who's like a kinder, gentler, health-conscious Don Draper, is about the research and development department Ted runs at the morally dubious conglomerate Veridian Dynamics. His neurotic scientist underlings Phil (Jonathan Slavin) and Lem (Malcolm Barrett) toil over inventions like vegetables full of anti-depressants, "weaponized pumpkins," "Hushaboom technology" ("War just keeps getting better") and a motion-detection system that throws Ted and his team into panic mode when they discover that its sensors are unable to recognize black people (an eerie foretelling of HP's racist face-tracking software!).

It took me a while to warm up to showrunner Victor Fresco's latest corporate satire--his signature creation is another corporate satire, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, which also co-starred Slavin--but now I consider Ted one of the most consistently funny single-camera sitcoms currently on prime-time. I can always count on Ted to contain five or six strange and absurdist lines that crack me up (the sexual harassment-themed ep that ABC burnt off on New Year's, "The Great Repression," rattled off way more than five or six and was endlessly quotable, with great lines like a reference to a lengthy hug as a "Midwestern handshake"). Community, Parks and Recreation, The Office, 30 Rock, The Venture Bros., How I Met Your Mother and even Modern Family--which I like despite its occasionally sappy concluding voiceovers--have the same batting average as Ted's.

I've never seen former Arrested Development ditz Portia de Rossi play an ice queen before. (Did she play one on Ally McBeal? I wouldn't know. I'm a guy. I wasn't into Ally McBeal.) She pulls off the ice-queen act incredibly well as Ted's boss Veronica, whose callousness towards lesser human beings like her little sister never fails to amuse ("When my little sister came along, I was very jealous. That feeling never went away, even when she was older and I put testosterone in her orange juice, so she became hairy and unlovable and got kicked off the gymnastics team for doping"). Mrs. DeGeneres is the scene-stealing MVP on this show, much like Alec Baldwin on 30 Rock and William Shatner on Boston Legal, although on some weeks, she's been edged out by Andrea Anders as Linda the eccentric product tester.

When Ted premiered last spring, I felt at first like Fresco was just rehashing material from Andy Richter. But then I got onboard when I realized that "Whoa, Veridian's a pretty evil corporation, and the show's not going to sugarcoat Veridian's evilness or make this workplace one big happy surrogate family" and that the main female love interest, who's often boringly written on these sitcoms, is kind of nutso--a nice change of pace from "idealized, humorless girl-next-door" or "shrill, stick-in-the-mud female foil." Anders is a riot as Linda, a misfit and audience surrogate who hates the corporate world and continually finds ways to rebel against it, whether it's secretly writing a children's book that she hopes will be her ticket out of Veridian or responding to the craziness of Veridian by being even crazier than the company itself. Linda is the source of many of the show's most absurdist lines, like her random nickname for Ted at the beginning of the aforementioned kids' book ep ("Bloopity-bloo"). She's like a Midwestern working class version of the original Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby, except more attractive (peep the Xena outfit) and not as scatterbrained. This enjoyably written character and the loony, "Hushaboom technology"-worshiping universe that surrounds her and the level-headed Ted are some of the many reasons why I already miss Better Off Ted. Thanks a lot, According to Jim-loving Nielsen family dipshits.

Five definitive Star Trek cues

I was hoping a May 21 post about my unpublished 2007 wish list for J.J. Abrams' Star Trek prequel or reboot or preboot or whatever would be my last Trek-related post for a while. No dice.

A Film Score Monthly blogger recently posted a list of five Trek score cues that best sum up or represent the venerable franchise. It's a nice list--it's cool to see Gerald Fried get some love, and though I still think the nearly wordless Star Trek: The Motion Picture travel pod sequence (in which Admiral Kirk looks like he wants to take his own starship behind a Spacedock and get her pregnant) is overlong, it's hard to dispute the post's argument that the pod sequence contains one of Jerry Goldsmith's most sublime moments as a film composer. The list inspired me to post my five favorite cues from the franchise and stream a block of these five tunes on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel all through August.

1. Charles Napier, "Heading Out to Eden," Star Trek ("The Way to Eden")
This "Way to Eden" number is one of Trek's proudest musical moments.

2. Charles Napier, "Hey Out There!," Star Trek ("The Way to Eden")
This other "Way to Eden" highlight is such a poignant expression of Gene Roddenberry's philosophy of IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations).

3. Charles Napier, "The Good Land," Star Trek ("The Way to Eden")
Aw, Trek, you can do no wrong.

4. Kirk Thatcher, "I Hate You," Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
This touching melody was written and performed by a Trek IV visual effects PA who was promoted to associate producer and even got to appear onscreen as a mohawked miscreant Earthling during the playing of his own composition.



5. Bruce Hyde, "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen," Star Trek ("The Naked Time")
Not a dry eye in the house.

Alright, I'm kidding.

Not exactly a shining moment in the career of legendary female Trek scriptwriter D.C. Fontana (who hid behind an even more male-sounding pseudonym for the heavily rewritten "Way to Eden"), Trek's atrocious space hippies episode is proof that network TV series writers in their 30s or 40s aren't the best people to turn to when you need someone to capture the pulse of the counterculture.

"I Hate You" is such an ersatz punk tune Avril Lavigne mistook it for the real thing.

It's funny that Thatcher complained about the inaccurate sound of the music that was previously selected for the Trek IV bus scene because lyrics-wise, the song he contributed ended up sounding only slightly more authentic. A real punk band would never say "Screw you!" like Thatcher's "Edge of Etiquette" did during "I Hate You."

Seriously, here are my actual five definitive Trek cues.

1. Gerald Fried, "The Ritual/Ancient Battle/2nd Kroykah," Star Trek ("Amok Time")
Fried would bristle whenever the show would recycle cues like what I think is his crowning achievement, the piece that launched a million Trek music parodies ("Sometimes, I thought it was ludicrous what they did [to keep the series' music budget down], and sometimes, I think, 'Well yeah, alright, it sort of works.'"), but after the show's post-network success, I bet he's been touched by how much recognition and spoofage his catchy fight theme receives.

2. Sol Kaplan, "Kirk Does It Again," Star Trek ("The Doomsday Machine")
Oh, so that's where John Williams got his Jaws theme from.

3. Jerry Goldsmith, "Spock Walk," Star Trek: The Motion Picture
The cue that best captures the cerebral and mysterious feel of The Motion Picture isn't the rousing but somewhat out-of-place main title theme. It's the eerie "Spock Walk," which accompanies the movie's only genuinely thrilling sequence (besides the still-dazzling opening shot of the Klingon armada and the upgraded Enterprise's launch sequence): Spock's thruster-suited trip into the v'gina of V'Ger. As a Trek installment, ST:TMP is uninvolving, witless and flat (the original cast comes off as nervous and stiff in their first feature film together), but it's a triumph of mood and atmosphere, especially during the spacewalk sequence and the sterling Goldsmith cue that accompanies it.

4. James Horner, "Battle in the Mutara Nebula," Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
My favorite Trek II cue, which kicks off when Kirk bites into his apple and tells Saavik, "I don't like to lose," accompanies the perfectly paced sequence in which the Enterprise and the Reliant circle each other like a matador and a bull with nacelles instead of horns.

5. Michael Giacchino's Star Trek main title theme (not found on the score album--the brief cue is most likely just snippets of "Enterprising Young Men" edited together)
The moment this enjoyably pompous new theme played over the opening title image of the gleaming Starfleet arrowhead insignia, I knew Trek was back--even though the theme wasn't Alexander Courage's classic fanfare. Like the rest of Giacchino's new material during the score, Kirk's theme, in its various forms, perfectly embodies the spirit of classic Trek.

Some viewers are disappointed that Courage's fanfare doesn't appear until the film's climax. Have they forgotten this is a prequel? To borrow Giacchino's own words, this film is about everything that came before the Trek we know. Delaying the classic Trek theme (a la the late appearance of "The James Bond Theme" in David Arnold's Casino Royale score to enhance the moment when the upstart hero finally comes into his own) was a bold and fitting move.

The Black List: Neal Evans ought to do more scores

While checking out Vol. 2 of the excellent Elvis Mitchell/Timothy Greenfield-Sanders documentary series The Black List, which premiered on HBO last night, I really dug the wall-to-wall yet laid-back and pitch-perfect score by Soulive keyboardist and first-time scorer Neal Evans. The series' cool main/end title theme can be streamed on Evans' MySpace. (There was a lot of terrific original scoring on the tube last night. Besides Evans' Black List score--which is as multifaceted as the range of different black experiences that are captured in the doc--I also enjoyed Jeff Richmond's tinkly "hunting for Liz's boobies picture" theme for piano and flute during the latest 30 Rock.)

Former UC Santa Cruz students like myself will get a kick out of The Black List: Vol. 2 because two of the interviewees are from UCSC's past (Angela Davis was a longtime History of Consciousness professor there, and ex-SNLer Maya Rudolph graduated from the Porter part of campus and majored in photography). Also, there are a couple of film music-related bits in Vol. 2 that are noteworthy (no pun intended). Melvin Van Peebles briefly recalls working on the Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song soundtrack with a then-unknown-and-starving band--Earth, Wind & Fire--and in my favorite Vol. 2 segment, Ghost Dog and Afro Samurai composer RZA discusses how he found empowerment through chess tournaments, martial arts flicks like The 36th Chamber of Shaolin ("The Asian history was remarkable and special... That brotherhood right there helped me spawn the brotherhood of the Wu-Tang Clan") and Silver Surfer comics.

Rizz's admiration of Norrin Radd is similar to how many of us Asian American writers and artists have felt empowered through the comics medium, whether it's reading comics about heroes with AA-like experiences and identifying with those characters--even though they're of a different color--or creating comics with actual AA characters like the tales in the Secret Identities anthology (see how I tied it back to Secret Identities? April 14 in stores everywhere). His story about Wu-Tang fans who have asked him during his college lectures why he's not keeping it real and why he's trying to ditch the hood is heartbreaking. Who'd have thought RZA's segment would be the most introspective and moving part of the doc?