Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 232

Zoolander 2: Joyless and Offensively Stupid

You don’t need to go to the theater to get the full experience of Zoolander 2. Simply get your hands on a copy of the original, watch it, and then yell a bunch of unfunny topical lines every time somebody tells a joke. That’s how it feels to watch Ben Stiller’s sequel to his 2001 spoof of the fashion industry: Zoolander 2 takes pains to reference every successful gag you remember from the original, and then embellish them in painful—often offensive, almost always outdated—fashion. It’s a film that has no real reason to exist, and it spends its entire running time reaffirming that fact.

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The original Zoolander, to be fair, had no business being as funny as it was—it made fun of an industry that already seems to exist in a constant state of self-parody, and much of its humor relied on simple malapropisms and sight gags. But it was hilarious anyway as a candid snapshot of the fizzling-out of ’90s culture. Like almost any zeitgeist comedy, it belonged to a particular moment—and boy, should it have stayed there. With Zoolander 2, Stiller (who directed, co-wrote, and stars) tries to recapture the magic of 2001 by referencing its past glories with increasing desperation, perhaps to avoid the fact that he has nothing new to say about the fashion industry or celebrity culture 15 years laters.

There are, though, some topical gags about society as it exists today. For example, cellphones used to be small, and now they’re big again. Also, it’s fashionable to say that things are “farm-to-table,” and millennials seem to spend all their time pretending they aren’t excited or sincere about anything. Some of these observations are more accurate than others, but none of them could be called insightful. Other jokes land with a nastier thud, like the androgynous model “All” (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) who’s become the toast of the town during Derek Zoolander’s (Stiller) 15-year hiatus. Maybe there’s a point to be made here about how the fashion industry blandly tries to seize onto whatever trends it haphazardly identifies in society, but not when most of the jokes amount to Derek and Hansel (Owen Wilson) trying to guess if All has “a hot dog or a bun.”

Where the first film cleverly poked at the fashion world from outside its cloistered establishment, Zoolander 2 is clearly playing with house money. It’s roped in a cavalcade of industry stars who are loudly announced every time they appear on screen—Anna Wintour, Tommy Hilfiger, Valentino, Alexander Wang, Kate Moss, Marc Jacobs, Vera Wang, and more—but who seem unaware that they’re being satirized, partly because the jokes fall so flat. When in doubt, Zoolander 2 reaches for a celebrity appearance—there’s Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, others I’ve already forgotten—but does nothing with them.

The story concerns Zoolander returning to public life after going into seclusion following the death of his wife (Christine Taylor) from the first film. Drawn into a web of celebrity murders that seem tied to his legendary “Blue Steel” pose (the first of many opportunities the film takes to load up on the star cameos), Derek and Hansel are dragged back onto the scene to try and get to the bottom of things. The villainous Mugatu (Will Ferrell) is of course involved, as is a new designer mogul, the ridiculously-accented Alexanya Atoz (Kristen Wiig). Penelope Cruz plays a helpful Interpol agent, and unfortunately, there’s also a Derek Zoolander Jr. involved, played by the young Cyrus Arnold.

It should be a rule for sequels like these to avoid subplots about mirthless children, but it’s a mistake almost all of them manage to make. I’m reminded of Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues from 2013, a similarly unnecessary work that failed to build on its masterful predecessor and devoted way too much of the story to its main character’s stoic heir. Zoolander 2 makes Anchorman 2 look like tasteful piece of fine art, though—the former leans heavily on the joke that Derek’s kid is chubby and unattractive. Yes,  the empty-headed models might be the ones technically being satirized here, but that feels like a disingenuous excuse when you consider how eager and gleeful the film is about mocking the child.

Which lies in sharp contrast to Stiller’s original film: Zoolander had a strangely touching grasp on its tiny-brained protagonist and won you over partly by making his tiny progressions (he learns to turn left! he emotionally connects with a normal human being!) feel like real achievements. Derek Zoolander may have been a fool, but his inherently good nature always redeemed him. Fifteen years later, he’s regressed to someone who has to learn to be nice to his son—as if he’d forgotten what it’s like to have a father who’s ashamed of you (“Merman!”). At this point, there’s only one way to redeem this character, and that’s to pretend this movie never existed. Let’s start now.

The Sedition Charge Against a Student Leader in India

The head of the student body at one of India’s most prestigious universities has been arrested and charged with sedition in connection with an event held at the campus of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi that critics are calling “anti-national.”

Kanhaiya Kumar, the president of JNU’s student union, was arrested Friday, charged, and sent by a Delhi court to three days in police custody. At issue was a protest held on February 9 at the JNU campus to mark the third anniversary of the execution of Afzal Guru. Guru, who was from Kashmir, was sentenced to death in connection with an attack by militants on India’s Parliament in 2001. Debate over Guru’s guilt or innocence has swirled ever since his arrest after those attacks. You can read those views here (guilty) and here (innocent).

The JNU protests, news report say, involved slogans in praise of Guru and Pakistan. They went ahead despite the university canceling permission for the event following complaints from another student group, which is known by its initials ABVP. The ABVP, which is affiliated with India’s Hindu right wing, as well as a lawmaker from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), many of whose members share a Hindu nationalist ideology, called the protest at JNU “anti-national” and filed a police complaint against the organizers.

Police, in response, arrested Kumar on Sections 124A (sedition) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code. The court remanded him to police custody until February 15. Police are seeking five others in connection with the case. They too have been charged with sedition and criminal conspiracy.

In court Friday, Kumar denied he had been among those shouting the slogans.

“I dissociate myself from the slogans which were shouted in the event. I have full faith in the Constitution of the country and I always say that Kashmir is an integral part of India,” he said.

And, he said, only some of those involved in the protest were JNU students.

The status of Kashmir is a sensitive topic in the country. The state is the only one with a Muslim majority in predominantly Hindu, but officially secular, India. But part of Kashmir is administered by neighboring Pakistan, a Muslim country. Both nations claim Kashmir in its entirety and have fought two wars over it, have come close to a third one, and have been engaged in countless border skirmishes over the region.

The sedition law with which Kumar is charged is, like many holdovers of the Indian Penal Code, a British colonial-era law passed in the 19th century. It has been used in recent high-profile cases, including against a cartoonist. Critics say it stifles free speech.

One of those critics, Amnesty India, said Kumar’s arrest and the charges against him are “uncalled for.”

India's sedition law contrary to international standards on freedom of expression must be repealed. #JNU

— Amnesty India (@AIIndia) February 12, 2016

Political reaction to the arrest was mixed—depending on worldview of the speaker. The main parties, including the BJP and the opposition Congress, which is centrist in its politics, condemned the events.

“If anyone raises anti-India slogans, tries to raise questions on country’s unity and integrity, they will not be spared,” said Rajnath Singh, a BJP lawmaker who serves as India’s home minister. “Stringent action will be taken against them.”

Dissent came from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which controls nine out of 545 seats in India’s Parliament. Sitaram Yechuri, its head, tweeted:

What is happening in JNU? Police on campus, arrests and picking up students from hostels. This had last happened during Emergency.

— Sitaram Yechury (@SitaramYechury) February 12, 2016

The Emergency to which he refers is the 21-month state of emergency declared by then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975. The era witnessed a curtailing of civil liberties, mass arrests, and the crushing of political dissent. Many critics of India’s BJP government say those conditions are slowly returning along with intolerance of dissenting views. The BJP’s supporters dismiss those claims.

The events at JNU serve as a microcosm for much of the debate that’s occurring across India. The university has long been a bastion of left-wing, especially Communist, student politics and student activism. But recent events at JNU have mirrored India’s rightward tilt. Last September, the ABVP won student elections at JNU after 14 years. India itself elected its BJP government in 2014 after a decade of a Congress-led government.

A Planned ‘Cessation of Hostilities’ in Syria

Updated on February 12 at 12:48 p.m. ET

The UN hopes to start delivering aid to Syria’s beleaguered population as soon as Saturday, a spokesman said Friday after U.S. and Russian officials announced a “cessation of hostilities” among the various factions—excluding ISIS and the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front—involved in the nearly five-year-long civil war.

“The UN system has been geared to deliver this aid all along, especially to besieged areas, and that’s precisely what’s going to be discussed today: how to start, and when to start,” Ahmad Fawzi, a UN spokesman, said in Geneva. “We hope to start as early as tomorrow, immediately after the meeting, decisions will be taken to roll the aid in, especially to besieged areas that need it.”

Early Friday, John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, announced in Munich that they had agreed upon the delivery of aid to besieged Syrian cities, followed by a “cessation of hostilities” starting next week. The term is more temporary than a cease-fire, Kerry said, and would constitute “a pause” in the fighting.

The date agreed to in Munich is a compromise between the two powers who are on opposite sides of the Syrian civil war: The U.S., which is calling for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down, had wanted an immediate cease-fire; Russia, which is backing Assad through military means, had offered a March 1 date.

Critics of the Russian offer, however, pointed out that with Russia’s military help, Assad is in a stronger position now than at any point since the civil war began in March 2011. Indeed, in recent days, his troops, backed by Russian airstrikes, have bombarded Aleppo, a rebel-held city that is Syria’s largest. Capture of the city would further entrench Assad’s position, giving him fewer reasons to negotiate with the Syrian opposition.

Indeed, in an interview published Friday with Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, Assad vowed to retake all of the country.

“Regardless of whether we can do that or not, this is a goal we are seeking to achieve without any hesitation,” he said.

Still, if the Munich agreement is successful, it will mark the first time there’s been a halt in the fighting since the civil war began in the throes of the Arab Spring. And, it is hoped, the “cessation of hostilities” will pave the way for the resumption on February 25 of UN-mediated talks in Geneva involving the various warring Syrian factions, and, eventually, to a cease-fire.

Still, Kerry, speaking after announcing the deal with Lavrov, acknowledged the difficulties that lie ahead.

“What we have here are words on paper, what we need to see in the next few days are actions on the ground,” he said.

Indeed, the parties involved in the Syrian civil war will have to agree in one week to the terms of the agreement, a time frame Kerry called “ambitious.”

“The real test,” he said, “is whether all the parties honor those commitments.”

Even if they do, it is unclear what impact such an agreement will have. Two of the most powerful groups fighting Assad—ISIS and the al-Nusra Front—are excluded from the agreement. The groups are the two biggest draws for foreign fighters involved in the Syrian civil war. ISIS controls large parts of territory across the Syria-Iraq border; al-Nusra, meanwhile, controls parts of northwestern Syria.

Kanye's Beautiful, Haphazard Yeezy Season 3 Spectacle

If anything’s been made clear in the run-up to Kanye West’s seventh album, it’s that the man is not, in the traditional understanding of the term, a perfectionist. The p-word’s been assigned to him before due to the opulence of his music and precision of his taste: He mixed “Stronger” 50 times in 2007 before he had a version he felt okay about, and he made a fuss about the gilded restroom specifications at his wedding in Versailles. But no one for whom the impression of flawlessness was the goal would let the public see him waffle about his album title and track listing right up to the release date, or promote his fashion line with lo-res JPEGs in his twitter feed, or use that same feed to commit PR suicide by calling Cosby innocent.

It’s not that Kanye never before seemed to act on a whim—see “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” or the Taylor Swift VMAs incident—but it’s surprising to see him seem to allow so much chaos in his creative process. It’s even more surprising for him to allow the audience to witness it.

The culmination of this ongoing demonstration of how madness and premeditation can coexist came at Thursday night’s unveiling of West’s Yeezy Season 3 fashion line and new album The Life of Pablo in a Madison Square Garden event simulcast in theaters and online to a reported 20 million viewers. The public didn’t get many details about what was about to happen; many of the people who paid up to three-figure sums for tickets expected a concert, as would be typical for a musician at Madison Square Garden. Instead, West stood behind a rig on the floor of the arena as his album reverberated from speakers above Yeezy-clad models acting out choreography by the artist Vanessa Beecroft. After the album finished, West made remarks that some will label “a rant,” and then played a few extemporaneously chosen songs from his catalogue and others, using Soundcloud. At one point, the thousands in attendance heard the sound of a message notification from his laptop.

Which is not to say the work on display was haphazard. Though the acoustics were harsh, the content of the album seemed super-delectable: gospel-tinged like Kanye advertised, but with crunchy dance beats, an epic Rihanna hook, and one track that managed Yeezus-style spookiness without Yeezus-style noise. I am not qualified to judge the clothes on display, though I will note that despite widespread skepticism about his previous lines, this particular arena full of West fans had seemed to have fully absorbed their idol’s fashion dictums—minimalist, muted, militaristic, and with big contrasts between wide and skinny shapes—and looked pretty cool.

Most impressive was Beecroft’s presentation. When the show began, the center of the arena featured an enormous grey sheet that billowed and undulated over bulbous shapes, almost looking like a CGI data visualization. When it was pulled away at the end of the first Pablo song, it revealed an entire fashion village: hundreds of models in an encampment that nodded either to poverty or a post-apocalyptic community. The models mostly stood steely and still for extended periods of time, though some—including a black-fur-clad Naomi Campbell—did slow versions of runway walks.

To be clear: It was impossible not to feel a little bored. But it was the boredom of a long church service—healthy, the kind that makes you think. Beecroft has said her performance/conceptual work is akin to painting, and from my seat in the venue, the best way to approach it indeed was as a static visual experience. You could admire the inexplicably beautiful arrangement of earth tones throughout the crowd like you can appreciate the total effect of a pointillist landscape. Or you could focus in on the individual models and notice how each person held themselves in ways that were unique to them—hands on hip, or legs draped off a roof, or slumped forward, or stick-straight—and yet seemed of a piece with the rest. During the show, the purported do’s and don’ts for the performers leaked online. A lot of people made fun of how dictatorial and contradictory instructions were (“LOOSEN UP NO STIFFNESS … DON’T BE CASUAL”), but the only sad part to me was in learning that the seemingly ineffable vibe of the set could be achieved with a list of rules.

It’s also possible that Kanye simply thinks Beecroft is dope, that his own clothes are dope, and his music is dope, and bringing them all together creates a dopeness supernova.

What did the Beecroft arrangement, the Yeezy clothes, and The Life of Pablo all have in common? I really don’t know. Some people on Twitter have noted the diversity of the models and proposed that there’s something political in the presentation. That’s very possible; I heard lines about police abuses in the music, and at one point, some of the actors put their fists in the air. But it’s also possible that Kanye simply thinks Beecroft is dope, that his own clothes are dope, and his music is dope, and bringing them all together creates a dopeness supernova. Kanye’s art, after all, is largely about Kanye. The speech he gave was shorter than usual but hit the typical themes about him wanting to bring beauty into the world despite all the people trying to limit him as an artist. At one point, he seemed to suddenly remember to show off a video game he was working on, about his mother ascending into heaven. I will tolerate no joking about this. The trailer was the most emotion I felt all week.

Given this busy season in pop, it is inevitable that roll-out strategies for superstars will be compared. Last weekend, Beyoncé exercised her command-and-control model of stardom with a perfectly timed video, song, and Super Bowl performance that were surely meant to cause almost all of the conversations that they then caused. Kanye’s sudden outpouring of not-very-congruous creative statements is the opposite of that. The final judgement on this phase of his career will come once people have decided what to make of The Life of Pablo, no doubt. As of this writing, despite previous indications to the contrary, it has not officially been released to the public.

Deadpool: The Superhero Movie as Bromedy

In our brave new world of ever-multiplying and cross-pollinating superhero franchises, Ryan Reynolds was the first man to be cast in two different super-roles: playing the supporting character Deadpool in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and then the lead in 2011’s Green Lantern. (He beat Chris Evans, who played the Human Torch and then Captain America, by a nose.) But with his encore turn as the protagonist of Deadpool, Reynolds is now alone in the distinction of having played titular characters from both principal comic-book universes, Marvel (Deadpool) and DC (Green Lantern).* As such, he is a near-perfect test case for the different paths the two companies have chosen in their adaptations from page to screen.

Green Lantern was a terrible, terrible, terrible movie. As the hot-shot-test-pilot-turned-galactic-policeman Hal Jordan, Reynolds was intended to be an amusing wisecracker, a la Tony Stark. But the movie failed so utterly that DC famously (if only allegedly) instituted a “no jokes” policy for all its subsequent properties (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc.). This was, in a word, idiotic. Green Lantern didn’t fail because it was funny; it failed because it was painfully unfunny, a sour tale full of unlikable characters. Moreover, it’s hard to imagine more dispositive proof that humor and superheroing are compatible than the ongoing mega-success of Marvel Studios, which has ridden a light comic touch to approximately one gazillion dollars in box office over the past several years.

But anyone still seeking additional proof need look no further than Deadpool. Crass, profane, and intermittently quite funny, the directorial debut of animator Tim Miller inaugurates a new genre hybrid: the super-bromedy. Reynolds stars as Wade Wilson, a former special-forces soldier currently working as a low-rent vigilante-for-hire, roughing up stalkers and the like. (Or, as Wade himself puts it: “I’m just a bad guy who gets paid to fuck up worse guys.”) Carousing in a bar, he meets the love of his life, an escort named Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). Following a montage that features more sex than every other superhero movie to date combined, Wade proposes marriage. And then he discovers that he has terminal cancer.

Wade leaves Vanessa and volunteers for a murky experimental procedure that promises to cure him by triggering latent mutations. (It’s perhaps worth noting here that the rights to the Deadpool character are owned by 20th Century Fox, so he inhabits the same super-verse as the X-Men, rather than that of the Avengers et al.) What Wade doesn’t know is that the procedure in question involves his being tortured to the brink of death for weeks (months?) on end—nor that, should it succeed, his tormenters (Ed Skrein, Gina Carano) intend to turn him into a super-slave. The procedure ultimately does succeed, granting Wade miraculous regenerative abilities but also a terrible case of full-body psoriasis. He escapes, vows revenge on the people who did this to him, and adopts the moniker Deadpool. From there the movie proceeds in pretty much the manner you would expect.

As is perhaps evident from that summary, Deadpool doesn’t have a great deal to offer plot-wise: The arc is predictable, the villains forgettable, and the Big Finale relatively small. It’s true that the movie is more extreme in its violence than is customary—Deadpool favors swords and pistols over his fists—but where it truly breaks new ground is in its tone. Flamboyantly vulgar and determinedly self-referential, Deadpool has the shape of a superhero movie but the soul of a Danny McBride flick.

For those in the mood for its super-powered low-brow, Deadpool offers an eminently amusing diversion.

The college-lampoon mood is set early, with a title sequence promising, among other characters, “a British villain” and “a sexy chick,” and explaining that the film is produced by “some asshole” and written by “the real heroes here.” (Those would be co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.) Over the course of the movie, Reynolds will spend far less time fighting bad guys than he will offering crude commentary, demolishing the fourth wall, making X-Men inside jokes, and occasionally all three at once—e.g.,  “Whose balls did I have to fondle to get my own movie? I can’t tell you, but his name rhymes with ‘Pulverine.’” There’s a gag riffing on Monty Python’s “Black Knight” sequence, another that recalls a bit from Stripes, and a third that borrows from Saw (and, before it, the original Mad Max). And there is, of course, a barb hurled in the direction of Reynolds’s failed earlier franchise: “Please don’t make the super-suit green!”

Reynolds brings admirable charm to the parade of puerility, and he gets welcome backup from T.J. Miller, who plays bartender/best friend “Weasel” with the same sloppy brio he brings to Erlich Bachman on Silicon Valley. There are appearances by X-Men both second- (Colossus) and third-tier (Negasonic Teenage Warhead), and more than one joke about how they couldn’t afford to feature bigger stars given the movie’s budget. (What’s less clear is whether it’s deliberate that Colossus’s shoddy CGI makes him look like a man in a foam rubber suit that’s been spray-painted chrome.) Tucked away in there is a likable bit part for 72-year-old Leslie Uggams as the foulmouthed blind lady with whom Wade takes up residence. And although it almost seems beside the point, first-time director Miller keeps the film moving along and shows a solid knack for action choreography.

Does it all add up to much? No. Is the movie as clever or subversive as it imagines itself to be? No. But for those in the mood for its super-powered low-brow, Deadpool offers an eminently amusing diversion and an object lesson in the elasticity of the genre. Or to put it another way: It’s a hell of a lot funnier than Green Lantern.

* This article originally stated that Ryan Reynolds was the first actor to play multiple superhero roles in movies made by both Marvel and DC Comics. In fact, Halle Berry was the first. We regret the error.

Vinyl: Forrest Gump, but for Classic Rock

Midway through the two-hour season premiere of Vinyl, the flawed but brilliant record executive Richie Finestra finds himself where the so many flawed but brilliant men at the center of TV shows and movies have found themselves before: at his own birthday party, thrown by a loved one against his wishes. During the obligatory backyard toast to a crowd of friends and business associates, his wife, Devon, announces that she has a confession to make. She and Richie did not attend Woodstock. They had tickets but were so in love that they ended up staying in bed all day.

Richie’s coworkers are shocked. What happened to his story about seeing Pete Townshend beat Abbie Hoffman with his Gibson? What about hanging backstage with Alvin Lee?

“What do you want from me, huh?” bellows Richie. “How am I gonna admit I blew off Woodstock? I would have lost all credibility, right?”

It’s a clever moment from the 1973-music-biz drama created by Mick Jagger, Martin Scorsese, Rich Cohen, and Terence Winter. In the opening moments of the series, Richie’s voiceover cautions that this telling of his story will be “clouded by lost brain cells, self-aggrandizement and maybe a little bullshit.” Lying about attending Woodstock is precisely the kind of bullshit that powers this show and the industry it concerns. Vinyl arrives in a world where rock and roll has already become legend, legend has become commodity, and legend-making has therefore become a capitalist imperative.

Whether Vinyl wants to critique this dynamic by exposing the immense amounts of BS involved or just participate in it by reamplifying old legends isn’t ever clear, at least in the five episodes I’ve seen. Enjoying the series certainly seems to depend on your interest in being retold some of the most hoary tales in pop history; it depends on you actually being thrilled to hear from the folks who were at Woodstock, even though you’ve been hearing from them for decades.

Bobby Cannavale plays Richie, whose loutish exterior disguises an ear for talent and—I think we’re meant to genuinely believe—a special, gentle soul. In one scene, we’re told he’s the nicest guy in the record business; in another, he worries about the fate of potentially laid-off employees as his partners roll their eyes. A number of flashbacks work to demonstrate that the love between him and Devon (Olivia Wilde) is enduring and real. The rest of the time, he hoovers coke, commits shocking violence, and neglects his family. It’s HBO—he’s a complicated man, okay?

Richie’s record label, American Century, once commanded the charts but, after 20 years in an ever-more-saturated market, has hit upon hard times, to the point where rivals call it “American Cemetery.” A German conglomerate wants to buy it, to the initial delight of him and his partners, including Ray Romano’s wiseguy head of promotions Zak Yankovich. The plot really begins to move, though, once Richie reignites his passion for rock after stumbling into a New York Dolls concert so loud it causes the venue to collapse.

That collapse actually did happen in real life, and Richie’s coincidental attendance of it is one of many things that makes him feel like a classic-rock Forrest Gump, casually crossing paths with the most pivotal figures and events of the era. Mad Men was sometimes criticized for its exaggerated winks at real history, but that show’s engagement with its era was a masterwork of subtlety compared to Vinyl, which features scenes that literally consist of people reading from lists of famous names. To be fair, a hip record exec in 1973 New York City would have had lots of celebrity encounters, and the screenplay inoculates itself a bit with the acknowledgement that Richie’s making much of this stuff up.

The period specifics might even be the best reason to watch the show. If you get a kick out of seeing actors interpret Robert Plant, or Howlin’ Wolf, or Robert Goulet, or Kool Herc, then many kicks you shall have. Mick Jagger’s son James plays a proto-punk frontman whose band is, of course, told to get music lessons by an A&R square who just doesn’t get it. Scorsese is as stylish a documenter of rock as he’s ever been, though by now his techniques, like everything else in this show, won’t strike any viewer as novel. Perhaps the best thing about the cosplaying aspect of Vinyl is the reminder that the diverse proper nouns people think of as “the ’70s” really did exist at the same time, often in dialogue with each other. Bruce Lee, Andy Warhol, and Richard Nixon all made an impression on a nation listening to ABBA, Black Sabbath, and Grand Funk Railroad.

Scorsese’s as stylish as ever, though by now his techniques, like everything else in this show, will not strike any viewer as novel.

Anyone who sees the current pop landscape as especially debased will receive a dose of perspective from Vinyl, which at times plays like a how-to in the payola, sales falsification, rip-off contracting, and intimidation that powered the ’70s record-label system. The show, to its credit, doesn’t glorify white guitar gods at the expense of the black pioneers who inspired them; racial exploitation is a major theme here, shown in a plotline involving Ato Essandoh as a disillusioned blues player. Racism, as well as sexism, also rules American Century’s office culture, a fact that again might draw comparisons to Mad Men. But because Vinyl takes place after the sexual revolution and civil-rights movement, there’s a false pretense of openness and equality in the workplace that, say, allows men to maybe-jokingly-maybe-not request a blowjob from women who are expected to playfully banter back. Yet while Mad Men took seriously the emotional and material toll on women and minorities from demeaning behavior, so far in Vinyl, piggishness is mostly just a punch line.

Perhaps that’s because the central concern of Vinyl isn’t social change but rather the eternal tension between art and commerce. On one side of Vinyl’s cast are unambiguously disgusting industry men breaking kneecaps and accepting bribes and swindling musicians. On the other are the artists, uniformly uncompromising and humane, willing to literally torch their work rather than sacrifice its integrity. Richie seems to believe he can bridge these extremes. Do you care if he’s right? The show is as expertly shot and acted as its pedigree would suggest, with each episode serving up a few scenes of frightening tension. But the overarching plot of a man trying to rediscover purity in a corrupt world is not a complication of the already over-documented milieu Vinyl exists in. It is exactly the story rock has told about itself time and again, and not a ton is gained in the retelling here.

Patience: The FBI's Strategy to End the Oregon Standoff and Nab Cliven Bundy

The story of law enforcement in the Oregon standoff is one of patience.

On the most obvious level, that was reflected in the 41 days that armed militia members occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns. It took 25 days before the FBI and state police moved to arrest several leaders of the occupation and to barricade the refuge. It took another 15 days before the last of the final occupiers walked out, Thursday morning Oregon time.

Each of those cases involved patience as well: Officers massed on Highway 395 didn’t shoot LaVoy Finicum when he tried to ram past a barricade, nearly striking an FBI agent, though when he reached for a gun in his pocket they finally fired. Meanwhile, despite increasingly hysterical behavior from David Fry, the final occupier, officers waited him out until he emerged peacefully.

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The End of the Oregon Standoff

But all of these pale in comparison with the time it took to apprehend Cliven Bundy. The father of Ammon and Ryan Bundy, two leaders of the Oregon occupation, he was arrested Wednesday night at the Portland airport when he arrived from Nevada. He had flown in to support the remaining group of four, three of whom surrendered shortly after he was taken into custody. For the FBI, the wait to arrest Bundy was longer: almost two years, since Bureau of Land Management agents who tried to remove his cattle from federal land where they were grazing without permits or fees were met by a huge group of armed men who turned them away.

Or perhaps the wait was much longer. As the criminal complaint against him notes, he had illegally grazed his cattle on federal land for more than 20 years, and he’d been under a federal court order to remove his cattle since 1998—an order he’d brazenly flouted.

The FBI hasn’t said much about why they arrested Bundy when they did. During a press conference Thursday, Greg Bretzing, the head of the FBI’s Portland office, referred questions to the district of Nevada. A call to the U.S. Attorney’s Office was not returned. Perhaps the government felt it would be easier to arrest Bundy away from home and away from less likely to be around armed men. The complaint describes the situation for agents in the 2014 standoff—outnumbered, surrounded, outgunned, and afraid for their lives:

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Cliven Bundy has been charged with a long slate of offenses, including conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States; assault on a federal law-enforcement officer; use and carry of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence; obstruction of justice; interference with commerce by extortion; and aiding and abetting. The full document is here. Those charges together bring a hefty set of penalties, and Bundy, 74, could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted of several of them.

Those charged in the Malheur standoff have all been charged with conspiracy to impede officers of the United States from discharging their official duties through the use of force, intimidation, or threats. That’s a federal felony that carries as many as six years in prison. The virtue of the charge from prosecutors’ perspective is that they have recordings of the occupiers discussing their deeds, which were broadcast live. That makes it comparatively easy to prove they conspired without having to prove they actually followed through.

During a press conference Thursday, however, Bretzing suggested there would be more charges to come for some of the occupiers. Once again, patience is the watchword: He described a painstaking process to go over the refuge in the coming days and weeks, and while he said the FBI would try to turn it over to the Fish and Wildlife Service to reopen as quickly as possible, there were several steps required to get there. First, law enforcement was sweeping the entire refuge to make sure no one else was left. Then a multi-agency bomb squad will go over the property. (Asked whether that was in response to any specific threat, Bretzing said only, “Several things that have happened over the last 41 days that have led us to believe this a prudent thing to do.”) After that, an FBI evidence team will go over the center, followed by a forensic team examining computers, and finally an FBI art-crime team that will assess Paiute Indian burial sites and artifacts that may have been disturbed.

Just how willing were police to wait? Going back to the January 26 arrests and barricading of the refuge, it’s notable that the FBI only decided to act as Oregon authorities got increasingly anxious. Residents of Harney County were angry, restive, and afraid. Governor Kate Brown had written to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey asking for action.

“I would say the armed occupiers have been given ample opportunity to leave the refuge peacefully,” Bretzing said at the time. “They have been given opportunities to negotiate. As outsiders to Oregon, they have been given the opportunity to return to their families and work through the normal legal process to air grievances. They have chosen to threaten and intimidate the America they profess to love.”

Even then, it turned out the FBI was willing to wait another two weeks for the remaining holdouts to give up. Bretzing didn’t offer much detail about why they decided to bring the siege to an end now, except that one occupier’s ATV journey outside the perimeter the militia had set up seemed to spur the action. “We felt it was time, both for safety of those on the refuge and for the safety of the officers in the event,” he said. When they moved, they did so in concert with people like Nevada legislator Michele Fiore and the Reverend Franklin Graham, folks whose views on the occupiers’ cause Bretzing rejected Thursday, but who were able to de-escalate the situation.

The risks and rewards of the FBI’s strategy remain up for debate. Federal authorities seemed to approach the situation with the goal of not replicating the catastrophes at Waco and Ruby Ridge, where overwhelming force led to many deaths and serious backlash against the federal government. In this case, where the occupiers were specifically alleging an overweening federal government, such a response would have validated that view for many critics. Yet other critics have complained that the hands-off response only emboldened the occupiers. There are calls for thousands more armed “Patriots” to descend on Burns. And after all, it seemed like Cliven Bundy had gotten away with his rebellion in Nevada.

But it turned out the feds hadn’t given up on nabbing Bundy—they were just waiting patiently for the right moment. Whatever the perverse incentives risked by the wait-’em-out approach, it’s hard not to look at the result in Oregon and be impressed: Every occupier gone, the leaders apprehended and in jail, and only one violent death—and that of a man who had declared his intention to die before being arrested, was reaching for a pocket with a gun, and, according to the testimony of another occupier, crying, “Shoot me!” The difference between the FBI’s hesitation and the hasty resort to force by local police departments in dozens of high-profile shootings over the last year couldn’t be clearer, and might provide a model for how more cops should operate.

A Guilty Verdict in the Akai Gurley Case

A New York jury found an officer guilty on Thursday for the 2014 shooting and death of Akai Gurley, an unarmed black man killed in the stairwell of a Brooklyn apartment building.

The Brooklyn Supreme Court found Officer Peter Liang guilty of manslaughter and official misconduct, for shooting, then failing to help Gurley after he lay dying. Liang had faced five counts in all, including assault, reckless endangerment, and criminal negligent homicide.

The trial went to jury Tuesday. At closing arguments, Liang’s lawyers asked the judge to declare a mistrial, saying the prosecution made an “inflammatory and inappropriate” argument when they said Liang intentionally shot Gurley.

“He chose to point his gun,” said the prosecutor, Joseph Alexis. “He chose to put his finger on the trigger, to fire the gun.”

“What happened here is a tragedy,” argued Rae Koshetz, one of Liang’s attorneys. “It’s a terrible tragedy, but it’s not a crime."

Liang shot Gurley, a 28-year-old father of two in a dark hallway of a public-housing building. The rookie officer and his parter were on a routine patrol of the Louis H. Pink Houses when they opened a door to the stairwell on the eighth floor. With the lights out, Liang unholstered his 9mm Glock handgun and held a flashlight. When he walked into the stairwell, Liang told jurors he heard a “quick” sound that startled him, “and the gun just went off after I tensed up.”

The defense had argued that unholstering the gun––despite no obvious threat––fell in line with protocol, because the building was known to be dangerous. They said as he entered, Liang held his finger off the trigger, just as he was supposed to.

Liang’s willingness to walk around a public-housing building with a drawn weapon raised the issue of reasonable force––something that has played out across the nation and has gained increasing attention amid the shootings by police of unarmed black men and women. In this case, the prosecution argued that Liang’s decision to to unholster his gun was “reckless and deadly choice.”

Just before Liang fired, Gurley and his girlfriend, Melissa Butler, had walked into the stairwell one floor below. The elevator was out. As Liang’s gun fired, the bullet hit Gurley in the chest.

Liang said he wasn’t immediately aware of this. Not yet. While Butler screamed and ran to find help and a phone, Liang and his partner, Shaun Landau, walked back into the hallway they’d come from and debated who would call in to report that Liang had fired his gun. It was only after Liang went to search for his bullet that he heard someone crying, he said. It was then he he realized what had happened.

But even then, neither Liang nor Landau tried to save Gurley. Instead, the prosecution said Liang worried “whether his mistake would cost him his job,” as The New York Times wrote.

Gurley’s girlfriend tried to save him. A 911 operator coached her over the phone in CPR. Landau later testified under immunity that he’d never fully learned CPR at the police academy––where Liang and he had graduated the same year. He said his CPR training consisted of little more than two minutes with a dummy, and that an instructor fed recruits answers for the exam. At trial, Liang said he called an ambulance. But that too has been questioned.

“Peter Liang was sworn to protect and serve Akai Gurley, but he shot him for no good reason,” said Alexis, the prosecutor. “He heard a noise in a dark stairwell and instead of shining a light, he pointed his gun and shot Akai Gurley.”

Liang will be sentenced on April 14. He faces 15 years in prison.

A Verdict in the Akai Gurley Case

A New York jury found an officer guilty on Thursday for the 2014 shooting and death of Akai Gurley, an unarmed black man killed in the stairwell of a Brooklyn apartment building.

The Brooklyn Supreme Court found Officer Peter Liang guilty of manslaughter and official misconduct, for shooting, then failing to help Gurley after he lay dying. Liang had faced five counts in all, including assault, reckless endangerment, and criminal negligent homicide.

The trial went to jury Tuesday. At closing arguments, Liang’s lawyers asked the judge to declare a mistrial, saying the prosecution made an “inflammatory and inappropriate” argument when they said Liang intentionally shot Gurley.

“He chose to point his gun,” said the prosecutor, Joseph Alexis. “He chose to put his finger on the trigger, to fire the gun.”

“What happened here is a tragedy,” argued Rae Koshetz, one of Liang’s attorneys. “It’s a terrible tragedy, but it’s not a crime."

Liang shot Gurley, a 28-year-old father of two in a dark hallway of a public-housing building. The rookie officer and his parter were on a routine patrol of the Louis H. Pink Houses when they opened a door to the stairwell on the eighth floor. With the lights out, Liang unholstered his 9mm Glock handgun and held a flashlight. When he walked into the stairwell, Liang told jurors he heard a “quick” sound that startled him, “and the gun just went off after I tensed up.”

The defense had argued that unholstering the gun––despite no obvious threat––fell in line with protocol, because the building was known to be dangerous. They said as he entered, Liang held his finger off the trigger, just as he was supposed to.

Liang’s willingness to walk around a public-housing building with a drawn weapon raised the issue of reasonable force––something that has played out across the nation and has gained increasing attention amid the shootings by police of unarmed black men and women. In this case, the prosecution argued that Liang’s decision to to unholster his gun was “reckless and deadly choice.”

Just before Liang fired, Gurley and his girlfriend, Melissa Butler, had walked into the stairwell one floor below. The elevator was out. As Liang’s gun fired, the bullet hit Gurley in the chest.

Liang said he wasn’t immediately aware of this. Not yet. While Butler screamed and ran to find help and a phone, Liang and his partner, Shaun Landau, walked back into the hallway they’d come from and debated who would call in to report that Liang had fired his gun. It was only after Liang went to search for his bullet that he heard someone crying, he said. It was then he he realized what had happened.

But even then, neither Liang nor Landau tried to save Gurley. Instead, the prosecution said Liang worried “whether his mistake would cost him his job,” as The New York Times wrote.

Gurley’s girlfriend tried to save him. A 911 operator coached her over the phone in CPR. Landau later testified under immunity that he’d never fully learned CPR at the police academy––where Liang and he had graduated the same year. He said his CPR training consisted of little more than two minutes with a dummy, and that an instructor fed recruits answers for the exam. At trial, Liang said he called an ambulance. But that too has been questioned.

“Peter Liang was sworn to protect and serve Akai Gurley, but he shot him for no good reason,” said Alexis, the prosecutor. “He heard a noise in a dark stairwell and instead of shining a light, he pointed his gun and shot Akai Gurley.”

Liang will be sentenced on April 14. He faces 15 years in prison.

The End of the Oregon Standoff

Updated on February 11 at 6:04 p.m. ET

The armed militia takeover of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is over: The final holdout at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge turned himself in to the FBI after earlier saying he will “die a free man.”

David Fry walked out of the refuge and into custody, ending the standoff 41 days after it began. He gave himself up after calling on people to say Hallelujah.

“I heard hallelujahs from the SWAT team. I heard hallelujahs in unison from an entire building that was watching that, hoping to God they could get everybody out alive,” Dave Ward, the sheriff of Harney County, said later.

Fry was the lone holdout for part of Thursday after his three companions surrendered to the FBI earlier. Speaking via telephone to his supporters, in a conversation that was broadcast online, Fry appeared to be disturbed over a variety of issues, including the federal government, UFOs, and marijuana. And, he said, he will not leave.

“I declare war against federal government,” he said. “There’s no way to beat this anymore. Liberty or death.”

His three comrades,  Jeff Banta, 46, of Elko, Nevada; Sean Anderson, 47, and his wife, Sandy, 48, of Riggins, Idaho; were all taken into custody by the FBI earlier Thursday.

The three of them—and, later, Fry—were met by the Reverend Franklin Graham, the Christian evangelist, and Michele Fiore, the Nevada Assemblywoman, as they left their encampment at the refuge.

“As we have said since day one, our goal has been to end this illegal occupation peacefully, and we are grateful that we were able to do so today,” Greg Bretzing, the FBI special agent in charge, said.

He added that though the occupation is over, work still needs to be done before Malheur can be reopened to the public. The agents, he said, will man checkpoints at the edge of the refuge to maintain security, inspect and secure buildings to ensure no one else is hiding, and look for any weapons or explosives on the scene.

The entire process is expected to take a few weeks, he said.

The fast-moving developments on Thursday developments came just hours after authorities arrested Cliven Bundy, the father of Ammon Bundy, one of the leaders of the protest on Wednesday night; and after FBI agents in armored vehicles rushed the building where the last four occupiers remained.

On Wednesday, the FBI said one of the militia members rode an ATV outside of the barricaded refuge, approached an officer, then quickly sped off. The FBI then moved on the building. The bureau said there were no shots fired during the siege, and, after a few hours, a militia member said the group would turn themselves over Thursday morning, but only to a  religious figure and a member of the Nevada state legislature. Fiore and Graham offered to intervene, and Bretzing, the FBI special agent in charge, said he “can’t say enough about specifically about” his role in the resolution.

Cliven Bundy had said he planned to go to the refuge, but it’s not clear what his intentions were when he said he’d fly from Las Vegas to Portland International Airport. There, the 74-year-old was arrested by authorities.

“We are being told by eyes on ground that he was surrounded by SWAT,” read a post from the Bundy Ranch Facebook page. He was charged only with violations of federal law related to the 2014 standoff at his ranch in Nevada.

Cliven Bundy became famous after that standoff. He had illegally let his cattle graze on Bureau of Land Management property and run up $1 million in fees. When agents came to round up Cliven Bundy’s cows they were met by a militia of armed men. The siege eventually ended, the agents withdrew, and Cliven Bundy has not yet paid the fine.

As my colleague David Graham reported, Cliven Bundy’s influence loomed large on his sons Ammon and Ryan, who were among the leaders of the siege in Oregon.

They “had learned some lessons from their father’s turbulent fight in Nevada. Despite being in clear and flagrant violation of the law during that Nevada standoff, Cliven Bundy had initially gained support from many national conservatives,” Graham wrote. “But once he started offering racist soundbites, they abandoned him. Ammon Bundy was careful not do the same, with message for the most part carefully controlled.”

It’s hard not to wonder how much Cliven Bundy’s triumph in Nevada encouraged his sons and their supporters, creating an expectation that the federal government would easily roll over when challenged by a group of outlaws with guns.

But both Ammon and Ryan Bundy were arrested last month along with other members of their group. During that incident, one member of their protest, LaVoy Finicum, was shot and killed by police. Four holdouts remained in Malheur on Thursday, the 41st day of the standoff, and Ammon Bundy had previously urged them to surrender. His father, however, told the remaining militia members to holdfast. They did—until Thursday.

“I don’t think there’s anything that’s been done that can’t be worked through,” Ward, the sheriff of Harney County, said later. “If we can’t work through the differences we’ve found in our little community right here, how can we expect the rest of the nation to work through the division that we face?”