Bruno Mars loves Mary Jane: Zendaya from Spider-Man: Homecoming accidentally resembles vintage MJ in the "Versace on the Floor" video

This is the 11th of 13 or 14 all-new blog posts that are being posted on a monthly basis until this blog's final post in December 2017.

WARNING: Spoilers for Spider-Man: Homecoming ahead.

And now, something interesting someone else wrote about a work that's represented in my "Ask for Babs" mix: Fast Five (gear two)

Because Universal was founded 100 years ago today by nickelodeon owner Carl Laemmle, I've chosen to focus today's "Ask for Babs" mix-related blog post (which is the last of these posts) not on an article about a blockbuster from Universal's past like Jaws or Back to the Future but on a piece about a Universal film franchise that hints at the studio's future, as well as the future of American cinema in general.

Boston Globe film critic Wesley Morris' 2011 essay "Fast forward" insightfully discusses why Universal's Fast and the Furious movies, including the Justin Lin-directed series highlight Fast Five, are so special, particularly to moviegoers of color like myself and Morris who have always wanted to see someone make some good action films that reflect the multiracial world we live in and opt to treat "race as a fact of life as opposed to a social problem or an occasion for self-congratulation":

Go on and laugh your Benetton, Kumbaya, Kashi, quinoa laugh, but it’s true: The most progressive force in Hollywood today is the “Fast and Furious” movies. They’re loud, ludicrous, and visually incoherent. They’re also the last bunch of movies you’d expect to see in the same sentence as “incredibly important.” But they are—if only because they feature race as a fact of life as opposed to a social problem or an occasion for self-congratulation. (And this doesn’t even account for the gay tension between the male leads, and the occasional crypto-lesbian make-out.) 

The fifth installment, “Fast Five,” comes out Friday, and unlike most movies that feature actors of different races, the mixing is neither superficial nor topical. It has been increasingly thorough as the series goes on—and mostly unacknowledged. That this should seem so strange, so rare, merely underscores how far Hollywood has drifted from the rest of culture. 

The movies have often dealt with race, of course, and when they do they tend to treat it as a serious and unwieldy problem... 

That is the loose history of race as a subject in Hollywood: the province of a liberal white industry that wanted to promote fairness and equality, often at the expense of realism and sometimes at the cost of the black characters’ humanness. Movies about race still tend to be self-congratulatory (“Crash”) or mine tension for comedy, the way “48 Hours” and its offspring have... 

The “Fast and Furious” movies, by contrast, are free of this angst. They’re basically a prolonged party for a ring of street-racing urban car thieves... 

It was a place the movies had never precisely seen before: gangs of young people of different races unified by automotive exhilaration. There were blacks, Asians of all kinds, Mexicans, Michelle Rodriguez, and whatever Vin Diesel and Jordana Brewster are... 

Since then, the series has spiraled even further into a world that’s post-racial, post-American, post-almost every category you can think of, including coherent... “Fast Five” sends the gang to Brazil, brings back Tyrese, and invites the half-black, half-Samoan Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to chase Brian and Dom around Rio... 

It’s a strange thing to see these movies as a novelty in 2011, and not because Barack Obama is president. The series has grossed just under $1 billion, and for the young and youngish people who’ve bought tickets (and rented and downloaded it), this is just how the world looks. And it’s how a lot of pop culture looks, too. Last February’s Grammys telecast was a cross-racial bonanza, whose highlight was the team-up of Janelle Monáe, B.o.B, and Bruno Mars, two black artists and one half-Hispanic, half-Filipino, all popular, who, for one evening, tinkered with pop, hip-hop, and rock so that the music they made no longer had a genre. 

The movies, meanwhile, have become lucrative in their segregation. While most major-studio productions feature white casts, Tyler Perry has capitalized on the void... From this, the major studios have taken perhaps the wrong lesson: more all-black movies. It’s a development that appears to obviate a need for more integrated ones... 

You wouldn’t draw much of a popular audience, mixed or otherwise, to a movie about race, of course. And that is the accidental genius of the “Fast and Furious” movies. They’re not about race. Race—and casualness about race—is just their hallmark. They’re about something else, a great American unifying principle: sexy cars that everybody wants to drive. 

Even (or maybe especially) when they’re demolishing the Dominican Republic or tearing up Brazil, these films couldn’t be more American. If we don’t know where race is headed in this country, or where in the movies it ought to be, perhaps we should climb aboard. In the end, it might not be Barack Obama who drives us into the future. It may just be Vin Diesel and The Rock.

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

And now, something interesting someone else wrote about a work that's represented in my "Ask for Babs" mix: Fast Five

Director Justin Lin and Vin Diesel on the set of Fast Five.

Last May, playwright Philip W. Chung of the You Offend Me You Offend My Family blog (and upcoming YouTube channel) reflected on the box-office success of director (and You Offend Me founder) Justin Lin's Fast Five and what it could mean for future films directed by Asian Americans. Since Fast Five's release, another Asian American director, Step Up 2 the Streets helmer Jon M. Chu, was also handed the reins of an action movie franchise, Paramount's G.I. Joe, which had a mediocre first installment (The Rise of Cobra from Mummy director Stephen Sommers). Now we'll just wait and see if G.I. Joe: Retaliation, which is directed by someone who grew up with G.I. Joe and wanted to make the second installment more closely resemble the beloved '80s G.I. Joe comics and cartoon, will live up to its exciting trailers and outstrip its predecessor in the same way that Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan compensated big-time for the mistakes of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Most sequels that are the fifth installment of a film franchise show signs of creative fatigue. But thanks to a bigger emphasis on the heist flick elements of the original Fast and the Furious and perhaps additional star power (Dwayne Johnson, who, between Fast Five and G.I. Joe: Retaliation, has turned into Hollywood's go-to guy for rescuing critically drubbed action franchises), the fourth Fast and the Furious sequel became one of the few fifth installments to receive better reviews than the first film and perform so well at the box office:

Hollywood has always been behind the rest of the arts when it comes to reflecting the world in which we live. You look at other fields like music where out and proud Asian Americans like our friends Far East Movement and Bruno Mars are at the top of their game and it’s clear it’s only a matter of time before the movies have to start reflecting that reality too or it’ll go the way of fax machines, VHS and CDs. Hopefully, the success of something like Fast Five will give Hollywood a big push in the right direction. 

But where this reality is truly reflected is online where the young and Asian American generation of YouTube stars like Wong Fu, KevJumba and Ryan Higa are already the rock stars and pioneers… 

It reminds me of the early days of Hollywood when most people dismissed the new medium of motion pictures as a fad and something that was beneath them (sound familiar?). It was Jewish immigrants (or children of Jewish immigrants) who became the pioneers and leaders in what would become one of the largest industries in the world because they got involved from the beginning when no one else would and saw the potential that others didn’t. 

Well, we’re in the same place today with YouTube and new media and Asian Americans are the new Jews—we were able to see and utilize the potential in this new form before others did and now we have the power to really create a new model that can potentially transform the business. The only difference is that back then, the Jews who ran the studios had to “hide” their cultural identity and make films that did the same because they didn’t think the mass audience would be supportive (and they were most likely correct). But this new generation of Asian Americans are proud of their identity and they know their multicultural audience is ready and willing to embrace that too. And that’s a very good thing. 

So let me proclaim right here that it might just be the most exciting time to be an Asian American in this crazy business. To see the success of a film like Fast Five, to see the FM boys move up the charts with each new song, to see these young YouTube guys being greeted with Beatles-like fandom wherever they go, to see so many TV pilots this season featuring Asian characters—it does feel like a perfect storm is brewing and it’s fucking exciting! Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. 

Am I saying everything is perfect and we’ve made it? Of course not. No one knows more than those of us in the trenches the real obstacles we face everyday (Yes, Justin still gets mistaken for the Chinese delivery guy on the sets of his own movies), but I think no one else also knows better that the world is such that we now have the power to affect real change. We have to get out of this 20th Century mentality of victimhood—boo hoo, Hollywood doesn’t care about us. So fucking what? It’s the 21st Century now. It’s time to move beyond that. We’ve been on the defensive for too long. It’s time to play some kick ass offense and we now have the players to do that.

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

Five killer samples that most people didn't know originated from film score music

Cee-Lo recently dropped his new single "Fuck You" on the Internet, and the delightfully profane break-up anthem, which originated from a song idea that Bruno Mars and Philip Lawrence of "Nothin' on You" fame pitched to Cee-Lo, has become a viral sensation. Before "Fuck You" (which has spawned a lame radio edit called "Forget You"), the Gnarls Barkley singer and former Goodie Mob MC's most popular track was his 2006 Gnarls hit "Crazy." Even though I got sick of hearing "Crazy" all over the place back in '06, I loved how Danger Mouse, the beatmaker half of Gnarls, sampled an obscure spaghetti western score during "Crazy." Not many people knew that the catchy bass line and strings were copped from Gianfranco Reverberi's "Nel Cimitero di Tucson," a score cue from 1968's Preparati la bara!, a.k.a. Viva Django. Here are five other killer samples that many listeners--including myself in some instances--didn't know came from film score music.

1. Jay-Z and Alicia Keys' "Empire State of Mind" drum break, 2009 (from Isaac Hayes' "Breakthrough" from Truck Turner, 1974)
The opening drum solo in "Breakthrough" is the Betty White of drum breaks: old and ubiquitous but reliable and entertaining every time. H.O.V.A.'s biggest hit of his career is the latest of many joints to sample "Breakthrough," an instrumental you can now check out during the daily "Assorted Fistful" block on A Fistful of Soundtracks.

2. Sneaker Pimps' "6 Underground" harp melody, 1996 (from John Barry's "Golden Girl" from Goldfinger, 1964) [WhoSampled comparison page]
If you were in college in the late '90s, you probably made out to "6 Underground." Did you know you were actually making out to the music from the dead-naked-chick-covered-in-gold-paint scene from Goldfinger?

3. Cibo Matto's "Sugar Water" wordless melody, 1996 (from Ennio Morricone's "Sospesi Nel Cielo" from Malamondo, 1964) [WhoSampled comparison page]
One of my favorite videos from the '90s is the Michel Gondry-directed video for "Sugar Water" (a.k.a. the song that soundtracked Buffy's sexy dance with Xander during her "Joan Collins 'tude" phase). My recent discovery that the duo sampled Morricone's Malamondo score made me love "Sugar Water" even more.

4. Ghostface Killah's "Alex (Stolen Script)" bass line and strings, 2006 (from Henry Mancini's Thief Who Came to Dinner theme, 1973) [WhoSampled comparison page]
MF Doom's sense of humor really comes through in his choice of the theme from the Ryan O'Neal/Jacqueline Bisset caper movie The Thief Who Came to Dinner (when's Warner Archives going to release that flick?) for Ghostface's How to Make It in America-esque tale of a Hollywood thief who comes to dinner--or to be more exact, a P.F. Chang's pitch meeting with the song's title hustler, who's pitching to him the script for Jamie Foxx's Ray biopic--and proceeds to steal Alex's copy of the Ray script. As music critic Jeff Weiss once wrote about this Ghostface chune, "Aspiring MC's should study this like the Rosetta Stone."

5. Wu-Tang Clan's "Rushing Elephants" brass riffs, 2007 (from Morricone's "Marche en La" from Espion, lève-toi, 1982) [WhoSampled comparison page]
My favorite film composer and my favorite experts on martial arts cinema "unite."