Finding Dory explains how Dory ended up lost in the ocean when she meets Marvin, or more accurately, the movie explains how Dory has been lost her entire life. In order for us to find her, Dory has to herself through random flashbacks that are pieced together at the heart-warming end. I actually think it’s a quite clever tactic: it gets the audience to stay the through the whole movie so they can figure everything out. Aside from the flashbacks, Dory actually goes on adventure to find her parents, which gives the audience the chance to see familiar faces on the big screen again such as Crush, Squirt, and Mr. Ray. (Honestly I was waiting to see the sharks again, but they’re only mentioned).

During the adventure we are also introduced to new characters, some of which I was happy with, and some of which I was not. Obviously we meet her parents, who seem understanding and loving despite their child’s memory loss. They are what gives this film those ‘family values’ the audience look for so desperately.

The comic relief is mainly shown through side characters: The shining stars of the entire film, the sea lions, only appear for a total of ten minutes or so. Two simple sea lions lying on a rock, and then suddenly, we have Gerald. Oh, Gerald.

Gerald is a goofy sea lion with a unibrow and a look of idiotic splendor. Poor Gerald, all he wants to do is lay on the rock, but he is denied by the other sea lions. Honestly, I would be fine if the movie just involved those three. Stupid, idiotic comedy is life’s greatest gift. Finding Gerald. Let’s make it happen.

Of course, then we have the main characters. My least favorite character was the whiniest whale around: Bailey. Apart from having a generally annoying voice, (sorry Ty Burrell), all the character does is whine. He’s like that friend who constantly complains about everything and always makes excuses not to do something, and then when they finally actually do something, they won’t stop bragging about it. That is exactly what Bailey does. You’re the worst type of person, Bailey.

While Bailey is unpleasant in is own way, Hank the octopus is just as predictable as they come: he’s naturally selfish but eventually ends up having a change of heart, thus strengthening the bond between

him and the protagonist. Also somewhere along the way he saves their life or something like that… you get the point. However, I do need to give props to the animation team for being able to make this septopus come to life with the movements of the tentacles.

Speaking of the animation, Pixar and Disney have blown my mind yet again. My jaw literally dropped at how beautiful they made the squid look as it glowed underwater. It was marvelous! And the crew didn’t skip out on the details either! You can get a real sense of how everything moves under water and the texture of everything is so spot on, even the lighting. The movement of the characters was flawless and with all the miraculous scenes filled unique marine life, I can understand now why this movie took so long to make!

One of my favorite scenes from the movie is actually towards the end.

I kid you not, everyone was dying of laughter as all the fish falling from the truck in slow motion while Louis Armstrong’s “Wonderful World” played in the background. My mom turned red with laughter as the fish ate each other like those little Russian dolls. The humor in the movie was great, although, times have obviously changed. Of course this movie is more comedic than the original; Finding Nemo, though it has its funny moments, was deeper (pun totally intended). While Finding Nemo had its serious moments, Finding Dory just seemed like one big, wild ride. The comedy is idiotic, with not much thinking done, but it is a kid’s movie set in 2016, so what can we expect?

Walt Disney believed that sequels are unnecessary and that time and imagination should be used for creating new movies, not reproducing old ones. We’ve seen a good example of why we shouldn’t have sequels: Cars 2, Cars 3, Return to Neverland, Cinderella II, Cinderella III, the Aladdin sequels. However, there are some sequels that do get it right, like Toy Story 2 and Lion King ½. So I ask our loyal readers, which category would Finding Dory fall under?

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It’s currently 2:42 am, and instead of sleeping, I’m being terrorized: A pop song has taken refuge in my memory and is most certainly not welcome. The popularity of pop music isn’t the reason why this hatred is so fiery, but rather because it’s a genre that hinders its own potential with predictable garbage.

I don’t even know where to begin with how wrong pop music is, so I’ll just dive in.

Pop music is inconsistent. Yes, all music changes with the times, but I swear pop music is the girl who changes 20 times before going out. This isn’t how it’s always been: Pop music was the groove to move to back in the early 2000’s. But my god! Today, pop music makes me call out to the heavens for patience.

Is it even music? It seems like today’s pop music consists more of synthesizers and electronic sounds rather than real instruments with actual chords and voices. Everything is done digitally; it’s to the point where we lose the authenticity that we crave from our musicians.

The most we get from our musicians nowadays is poor diction and closed vowel sounds. It seems the presence of auto tune has allowed people to grow cocky. Becoming famous has become as easy as going on social media and saying you want to be famous. If you can’t sing, you just try to imitate a proper note, and that works for people now.

“Hey kid, wanna be a star?”

“I don’t even sing!”

“That’s alright, just sing something remotely close to these three notes, and you’re set!”

The most upsetting part is that to someone who does take music seriously, this feels like a slap to the face. Songs are supposed to be sung in a way so audience can understand the music and feel meaning behind it. Pop music lost the emotion behind the singer.

But it doesn’t stop there: Pop has begun to claim whatever tune they can get their hands on. They’ve been known to take songs from alternative,

indie, and other alternative genres and remixed them to be “pop” standards and appeal the masses.

A current example of this would be James Bay’s “Let It Go”. I first heard this song years ago, and it was love at first note. The intimacy of the song made it feel that one could really understand the musician just by closing their eyes and listening.

Few years later, this song was played on the radio. The sweet sound of the guitar chimed through the speakers, but it wasn’t the same. This “Let It Go” by James Bay had upbeat drums pasted into the background.

This beautiful song, sung with so much sincerity and sentiment, was turned into a meaningless pop song, just with one simple instrument. The song wasn’t meant to be upbeat, and just like many other things that have come out lately: the original is better.

But even the original is now tainted by the memory of the remix. This isn’t the first time the enjoyment of a song gets ruined by its predecessor. Other examples include anything by the band Fun and the obvious: Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know”.

I loved this song. Or, you used loved this song. I wouldn’t be surprised if your old gym teacher did too because this song was everywhere! The “F*ck you” tone to Gotye’s voice made the song feel raw, complimented by the myriad of instruments it had. But that all got washed away with one set of wretched. upbeat. percussions. WHY MUST YOU RUIN SONGS THAT WERE ALREADY GOOD?!

I don’t know what’s worse: producers changing the songs, or the fact that there are people out there who will never get to hear the original because of Pop-radio standards.

And worst of all? There are musicians out there that work hard and search the deepest parts of themselves to come up with lyrics made to touch our souls with the sweet, sweet sounds of outrageous repetition.

Honestly, it would be a groundbreaking discovery to find a splinter of creativity in the pop industry. It looks like Rihanna didn’t “work work work work work” so hard to come up with her lyrics (She may not actually be pop, but that pun was necessary).

Here’s a rule of thumb: if you like pop music, but only have 5 minutes to listen to your favorite songs: listen to the first 30 seconds of a song, and then you’ll know the lyrics for the rest. You could even stop listening there because the rest of the album probably sounds like that too. If you’ve heard one pop song, you heard them all.

There are countless times where the radio will end up playing the same

song on multiple stations. But there are even more occasions where people think the same song is playing, when in reality it’s a different song with the same instruments, rhythms, voices, and basically everything else. With so many variations of notes, chords, and accompaniment, you’d think there’d be more diverse creativity.

My opinion isn’t law. This is quite obviously bias and it’s your choice to agree or not. But one thing isn’t debatable: Music is subjective, as is all art. Who knows, maybe you love pop music (bless your heart), or maybe you don’t. I am aware there are a select few pop artists out there who are genuine musicians and very talented making their music. Every genre has their issues; don’t even mention Dubstep or this article will double in size at record speeds. Though at the end of the day, Pop music will be always one of my least favorite genres. Consider it an honor.

This has been DJ Tica, bringing you her thoughts with the burning passion of a thousand suns.

The post THE PROBLEM WITH POP appeared first on SCAD Radio.

Speaking of weak, the idea of bringing Moira back was totally unnecessary. She might’ve helped in X-Men: First Class, but I don’t see how, in any way, she is important to Apocalypse. She was just there. Perhaps the only importance of her was that she leads to Apocalypse being awoken and to Charles finding Apocalypse, which then ended up backfiring on him….so I guess we wouldn’t have a movie without Moira…thanks it’s all your fault Moira! Other than that, she really doesn’t do anything else in the movie. Then again, maybe I didn’t notice her because I kept getting distracted by the fact that Apocalypse reminded me of Mr. Freeze from Batman and Robin combined with Ronan from Guardians of the Galaxy.

I was also distracted as I waited for Storm to actually do something in the film. She appears somewhat 20 minutes into the movie and uses her power to create the tiniest sandstorm. A tiny sandstorm won’t cover you if you try to steal from the market! Apocalypse strengthens her powers, but we don’t actually see her use them until the very end…for 5 seconds. Throughout the whole movie, we have this girl, emphasizing how much she looks up to Mystique, and we have the cameras zooming up on her during random parts of the movie, and all you give her is 5 measly seconds of just small bolts of lightning? I’m sorry, but there will never be a Storm like Halle Berry.

And of course, what’s an X-Men movie without Wolverine? Don’t get your hopes up though, He’s only in it for 5 minutes, acting like a wild monster. He doesn’t say anything, but hey, he provided more action in those 5 minutes than the other characters did in the whole movie. I

do have to say, though, that Quicksilver’s big scene was epic! They had special cameras for his scene since everything around him had to be in slow motion. The cameras filmed with 3600 frames per second, which paid off because the scene was incredible! Not to mention, the music was really good too (it’s set in the 80s, who doesn’t love 80s music?!). I loved Quicksilver’s character, or maybe I’m just a big Evan Peter’s fan. He brought the comic relief to the movie, and who doesn’t love a man with grey hair? Nightcrawler also brought comic relief with his naïve personality as he seemed so lost and in awe of everything.

As for Cyclops, aka Scott, I don’t know how I felt about him. There have been many versions of him in the films. I’m used to James Marsden as Cyclops in the X-Men trilogy and in a short cameo in Days of Future Past, and Scot made various short cameos as his younger self in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and in First Class, but Tye Sheridan as Cyclops in Apocalypse made me sort of uncomfortable. Maybe it’s because I’m not used to the teenage version of Cyclops, but Tye Sheridan didn’t work for me. He seemed too cocky and clueless. Though I am sure that version of Scott will get better with age.

Overall, X-Men: Apocalypse was an alright movie, but it could’ve been better.

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