The more things change, the more they stay the same. The future, it turns out, is not all that difficult to predict. All you have to do is think about now and extrapolate a little. You’ll probably get more right than wrong unless you’re really reaching.

Case in point: back in ’98, Gallup and USA Today asked 1,055 Americans to imagine life in 2025. The result of that survey has been released, and people mostly nailed it, with a few laughable exceptions here and there.

Most Americans believed the country would elect a Black president, that same-sex marriage would be legal and common, and that a deadly new disease would emerge. That last one seems hilariously and frighteningly spot on in retrospect. What did 1998 landline-owning adults know that 13-year-old me at the time was blissfully unaware of?

So that’s three spot-on predictions. Here are some more: 1998 people were right to doubt that space travel would become routine for regular citizens, but could they have ever predicted that Katy Perry would find a way to be cringy in space? Good job, Nostradumbasses. Sticking to the space theme, the respondents also believed that we would not make contact with aliens. They were right about that, but that depends on how deep the alien conspiracy YouTube/TikTok rabbit hole you’ve gone down. If you’re one of the many who have taken that particular interstellar trip down social media, you probably think the aliens are wearing human skin suits among us.

As for the stuff that didn’t age well, about two-thirds of respondents assumed the United States would’ve elected a woman president by now. Close, but not quite. More than half expected a cure for cancer. While we were not there yet, mRNA vaccines could get us close to it. Sixty-one percent thought living to 100 would be routine. That is kind of happening, just not at a mass scale. The US centenarian population is projected to quadruple over the next 30 years, according to a 2024 Pew study, but that’s still not exactly “routine.”

Some other stuff that people from the distant past of 1998 got depressingly right: 70 percent thought that quality of life would improve, but only for the rich. Opinions were split on whether the same would be said for the middle class, and people definitely thought things were going to get worse for the poor.

Some stuff is easy to see even when you’re living in relatively good times. Nearly 80 percent predicted less personal privacy, and a majority expected less freedom overall. Check and check. Most anticipated higher crime. In reality, crime rates have been in a steady freefall for decades, a trend that there’s currently no reason to believe won’t continue.

Respondents also mostly believed that race relations would improve and that medical care would become more available. Not much to say about those other than lol.

The starkest, most telling change between now and then is in the general mood of the era. In 1998, about 60 percent of people said they were satisfied with the direction of the country.

Today, that number sits at 24 percent.

The post People in 1998 Made Frighteningly Accurate Predictions About 2025 appeared first on VICE.

A 20-year freeze on copyright expirations has prevented a cache of 1923 works from entering the public domain, including Paramount Pictures’ The Ten Commandments, Charlie Chaplin’s The Pilgrim, and novels by Aldous Huxley.

Such a massive release of iconic works is unprecedented, experts say—especially in the digital age, as the last big dump predated Google.

“There is certainly great value in effectively restarting the public domain, but the mistake was having extended the term of protection for already created works in the first place,” Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, told Motherboard.

For this we can thank a 1998 rule known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, famously lobbied for by the Walt Disney Company as a means to extend copyright protections. It was believed that Disney hoped to lengthen the copyright of the 1928 cartoon Steamboat Willie, which marked the debut of a certain Mr. Mouse.

Named for Congressman Bono who who’d sponsored similar legislation in the past, and pejoratively dubbed the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, the new rules modified an existing law, hitting the brakes on copyright terms for already protected works.

The Act lengthened copyrights of corporate “works made for hire” to 95 years (from 75 years) from their first publication, or 120 years from their creation—thus delaying Mickey Mouse’s earliest entrance into the public domain until 2024; and it also granted copyright coverage to works published on or after January 1, 1978, to “life of the author plus 70 years.”

The terms for works published in 1923 were retroactively amended, and have remained copyrighted for 95 years.

Compared to Canada, Japan, and New Zealand, America’s copyright laws are in ways more limited, and the decision to gatekeep entire eras of history has been characterized as enormously harmful to society, Motherboard has previously reported.

The end of the “dark ages” of copyright terms could usher in a Renaissance of creativity.

“Stuff from our distant past reappears when copyright goes away,” Christopher Sprigman, a law professor at New York University, told Motherboard.

“[Disney] had things like early Mickey Mouse cartoons that they may ideally want to stay in copyright forever. But that isn’t good for creativity,” Sprigman added.

In 2013, Paul Heald, a law professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, conducted a survey of books for sale on Amazon. He found that more books were for sale from the 1880s than the 1990s.

When most works enter the public domain, the public collectively owns them. Such freedom let screenwriters adapt Jane Austen’s Emma into the movie Clueless; allowed Disney to rework the grisly Brothers Grimm stories into G-rated fairy tales; and gave us dozens of horror films based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Public domain was partly responsible for the internet you’re using, and permits Wikipedia editors to use photos of famous people on their Wikipages. It’s how books become translated into multiple languages, and how researchers can share their scientific findings.

“The public domain of course is the default for creativity and innovation,” Jessica Silbey, co-director of Northeastern University’s Center for Law, Innovation and Creativity, told Motherboard.

“Most people create and invent without expectation of exclusivity that IP law provides,” Silbey added. “Before there was IP, and outside of formal IP systems, there is and was plenty of creativity and innovation. “

Yet copyright rules are complex, and exceptions exist. The terms for thousands of works published between 1923 and 1963 weren’t renewed as according to the law, and consequently lapsed into public domain. Sometimes authors will intentionally dedicate works to the public domain. Other times, a collection of works may be protected by copyright, even though the individual works themselves are not.

What’s certain is that works spanning the Great Depression, the Fifties, and the Computer Age will finally be released yearly over the coming decades—opening a floodgate of free and public knowledge, and perhaps kickstarting an exciting revolution of creative ingenuity.

“Celebrating the return of a yearly expansion of the public domain is the appropriate response,” Silbey said.

The post A Massive Number of Iconic Works Will Enter the Public Domain on New Year’s Eve appeared first on VICE.

For the past 20 years, Refused has been one of the most divisive bands in modern punk. It’s easy to see why, as the Swedish act’s 1998’s album, The Shape Of Punk To Come (A Chimerical Bombination in 12 Bursts), was a confident, revelatory statement in every sense. The album’s title, a braggadocious, tongue-in-cheek reference to Ornette Coleman’s 1959 classic, The Shape Of Jazz To Come, called out the band’s ambitions right up top. But beyond the record’s name, the music was just as bold. Refused had always been a hardcore band, but on The Shape Of Punk To Come they integrated drum-and-bass sections, more technical riffs, bigger hooks, and plenty of other pieces that bucked back against the genre itself. Since its release, everyone has weighed in on the album, either claiming that it’s an undisputed classic or a record that is grossly overrated, overstated its ambition, or just outright sucks. Everything that could be said about The Shape Of Punk To Come has already been said, so why bother trying?

Well, for one, I swiped the title of it for this column, so I’m pretty much obligated to. But also, I spent a year writing about records that came out in the same year as The Shape Of Punk To Come and their respective effects on the future of the genre. In doing so, what I learned was that in almost every instance, each one of those albums had a similar story. A band happened upon something special and people took notice. Then, before long, other bands started borrowing from them. Once those influences wound up in the wrong hands, the innovators were disavowed by the people who first championed them.

That trend has been common in punk since the genre’s earliest days, and it’s never fully waned. People may have loved Refused or Kid Dynamite or Alkaline Trio, but once every local show had a fourth-generation clone on the bill, the original no longer seemed so novel. Those bands eventually stopped being cited as an influence, being seen less as an active participant and instead viewed as a pariah in the world they once helped foster.

When The Shape Of Punk To Come hit in 1998, no one expected these five Swedes to become punk’s pacesetter for the next decade. Their early material was chug-laden New York hardcore worship, bouncy and groovy in a way that could still easily be sold to young kids today as Turnstile with beatdown parts. 1996’s Songs To Fan The Flames Of Discontent was the band’s first coherent statement, as they traded their baggy cargo pants in for some button-down shirts that, in true 90s fashion, were still maybe a size too big. It was a sonic jump that was welcomed, and in the two years that followed, Refused ensured that they wouldn’t be remembered as an also-ran hardcore act, spoken of only by a select few. By that measure, The Shape Of Punk To Come was a massive success, as it made Refused the talk of punk circles once the record’s reach started spreading.

Twenty years later, listening to songs like “Worms of the Senses / Faculties of the Skull,” “The Refused Party Program,” and, hell, even the album’s biggest hit “New Noise,” the songs all hold up. While bands that play around with futurist themes and sounds often make records that will eventually sound dated, The Shape Of Punk To Come doesn’t suffer in that way. Even for as ubiquitous as “New Noise” became, with bands like Crazy Town, Anthrax, and The Used doling out atrocious cover versions, it still retains its bite. The song’s first explosion, where vocalist Dennis Lyxzén throws out the iconic first line, “Can I scream?,” still feels vital even now.

That’s part of the beauty of listening to The Shape of Punk to Come, in that even when you know what tricks are coming, they don’t feel stale. Opener “Worms of the Senses / Faculties of the Skull” kicks off with a spoken word clip about how the classics go out of style and, inevitably, everything will. In the present, it’s easy to use that line as a way to take Refused down a peg, but that almost misses the point. They were calling their shot, and the fact that they were as accurate as they were means that the scrutiny is all the more invited. Refused knew if The Shape Of Punk To Come did what they wanted it to, they’d forever be criticized, and they embraced that reality without a second thought. It was all part of the plan. But for anyone to take notice, Refused first had to sacrifice themselves.

In 1998, The Shape Of Punk To Come was exciting, but like so many other bands of Refused’s ilk, it didn’t become an immediate phenomenon. Refused was still slugging it out on the road, playing small clubs and basements as they toured in support of the record across the United States. In the middle of that tour, in a Virginia basement, the band broke up on “stage,” one that was really just a floor, as cops flooded into the show as they played, quite appropriately, “Rather Be Dead.” As soon as they loaded out of that room, that story would begin to spread. Before long, all these second-hand tales would begin to make Refused into something larger than life. They went from one of many hardcore bands vying for a foothold in the scene to a band that existed on another plane. Rock history loves to romanticize the bands that couldn’t keep it together, often just as they were hitting their stride. And with Refused, they had all but cemented their legacy, and as the years marched on, the fact they broke up only extended The Shape Of Punk To Come’s influence.

In the ensuing years, the record became a reference point for artists from all walks of life. Be it Frank Turner’s hardcore band Million Dead—a name borrowed from a Refused lyric—doing their best take on that sound, Poison The Well recording an album with The Shape Of Punk To Come’s producers, Paramore inserting Refused lyrics into the song “Born for This,” or Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park saying “there wouldn’t be a Linkin Park without a Refused,” this little band from Sweden made a massive impact on nearly every facet of rock music. Of course, there were also bands like United Nations who wanted to offer a counterpoint to it, as “The Shape of Punk That Never Came” indicted Refused’s motivations and what, if anything, the band actually gave to the scene that bred them.

All that love, and all that criticism, was only further proof of the impression that The Shape Of Punk To Come made. Even if it’s become cooler to deny the record its place in punk history, the actual shape of modern punk music would be drastically different without Refused. For a full decade, bands used The Shape of Punk to Come as a sonic reference point, and it became a stand-in for a bigger ideological shift within the genre. It’s become a way to describe punk and hardcore music that has a forward-thinking approach, one that sees the style as an open space where anything could be possible. So while it may not be easy to find a band that accurately replicated Refused’s sound, the fact that they became the baseline for an entire artistic approach speaks volumes.

In many ways, Refused became the hinge upon which one era of punk ended and the next began. While The Shape of Punk to Come’s quality can be debated endlessly in the present day, its importance cannot be denied or overstated. But even if you’d want to, Refused already beat you to it. In “New Noise,” Lyxzén called out the fact that everything the band does is wrong, and that they are not the leaders of a new movement. Maybe it was a clever bit of future-proofing, or perhaps Refused were attuned to the backlash long before it even started, but whatever the motivation, it only strengthened their point that punk had become predictable. The hype, the hate, the endless debates, it was part and parcel of the scene and Refused made a record that poked holes in all of them.

It’s why, 20 years later, it’s still so compelling to dissect The Shape Of Punk To Come. All of the questions, clues, and answers are contained in those 12 tracks, and they can easily prop up whatever pet theory anyone may have about the record itself. Though punk would have still mutated in new ways even if the album was never released, its existence is monumental. And maybe that’s the real beauty of it; The Shape Of Punk To Come exists whether anyone likes it or not.

David Anthony is on Twitter.

The post Love It or Hate It, Refused’s ‘The Shape of Punk to Come’ Changed Punk appeared first on VICE.

The song was obviously a smash hit. It scaled the charts, hitting number one in at least 18 countries, becoming one of the best-selling singles of all time. It also paved the way for Britney’s debut album of the same name, which came out in early 1999 and became the star attraction of every slumber party thrown that year.

The rest of Spears’s ascent to superstardom (Britney as a Martian in red pleather in the video for “Oops!…I Did It Again;” her star turn the seminal 2002 film Crossroads; the iconic “Slave 4 U” MTV VMAs performance) is history. This writer, for one, is thrilled that Spears has been famous for two entire decades and seems to be doing just swell. (She paints! She has a sexy boyfriend! She’s doing another show in Vegas!)

Spears took to Twitter on Tuesday to commemorate the moment and thank fans for sticking with her through it all:

She also released archival footage from filming the video for “…Baby One More Time” on YouTube:

Since #BabyOneMoreTime20 is such a momentous historical event, here’s a roundup of some of Britney’s other seminal video works of art:

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Kara Weisenstein on Twitter.

The post ‘Baby One More Time’ Came Out 20 Years Ago, And We’re All Closer to Death appeared first on VICE.

Now, the steady decline of the rupiah’s purchasing power has some worrying that it’s about to happen all over again. The rupiah recently hit Rp 15,000 on the US dollar, it’s weakest point since the crisis days. The last time the rupiah fell this far, the country erupted into riots that continue to haunt the nation to this day.

But here’s the thing, this is nothing like the crisis. While the reasons behind the rupiah’s fall might be similar to 1998, the country isn’t anything like it was back then. The Indonesian economy is far better at bouncing back from these kinds of monetary hits today long before it teeters on the brink of a new crisis.

I know, I know. Just saying it doesn’t mean people are going to freak out less. So we are going to try to break it down for you to let you know that, while Rp 15,000 on the US dollar definitely sucks, it’s not going to bring the economy to its knees. Here’s why:

It’s not entirely our fault

It’s important to understand the roots of today’s rupiah problem. Firmanzah, the ex-president of the Economic Advisory board of the University of Indonesia explained that, simply put, the trade war initiated by the United States are causing interest rates and taxes to skyrocket, hurting several so-called “emerging market economies,” like Indonesia, India, and Mexico. As a result, foreign investors lose confidence in these economies and they begin to invest elsewhere. Combined with the fact that Indonesia has a pretty big trade deficit, the rupiah is bound to suffer in situations like this.

This current economic crisis didn’t begin in Indonesia’s backyard either, said Bhima Yudhistira Adinegara, an economist at Indonesia’s Institute for Development and Finance (INDEF). But it does hold a good lesson for all developing nations—too much foreign debt by one or more developing nations may trigger a wider contagion.

“The ‘98 crisis happened because foreign debt grew uncontrollably due to wild speculation,” Bhima said. “Turkey and Argentina’s massive foreign debt have become a crisis for them in 2018. The similarities today are that the ‘98 crisis began in developing countries like Thailand and Indonesia. The current downturn is the same, but it began in Argentina, South Africa, Turkey, and Venezuela.”

The weakening rupiah isn’t all that surprising

Everyone, no matter their socio-economic class, will feel the brunt of crisis-level inflation, Bhima said. But that doesn’t mean we’ll actually fall off that cliff. The last time the rupiah hit Rp 15,000 against the US dollar, it was only Rp 3,000 just six months prior. It was, by all accounts, a total shock.

In contrast, today’s shitty exchange rate has been a long time coming. The currency has steadily dropped in valuation over the last five years, briefly reaching Rp 14,800 against the US dollar in August 2015 ,only drop back down to a more palatable Rp 13,000 over the next few months.

But as much as the rupiah has been declining over the years, there’s also no real proof that young people of productive age today are earning less than their parents did, say, 25 years ago.

“Nominally speaking, of course now people make more,” Firmanzah said. “But that’s a nominal figure, with inflation it’s not so easy to tell.”

Watch: India’s Cash Crisis

The Rp 15,000 fear is a psychological one, for the most part

It’s reasonable to be concerned about Indonesia’s economic health, Firmanzah told VICE. But, he also said that the fear towards the Rp 15,000 figure is mostly psychological. “Rp 15,000 is an emotional figure,” he said. “In the past, the Financial Services Authority did an analysis about whether Indonesia could survive if the rupiah hits Rp 15,000 against the dollar. This figure then becomes the benchmark [of a worrying exchange rate]”

While it’s true that Indonesia’s current economy isn’t in the best shape, experts like Firmanzah are still fairly confident that Krismon-level chaos won’t be happening anytime soon, thanks to all the changes that took place in post-Suharto Reformasi period.

“The 1998 crisis was also worsened by the New Order’s social climate,” Firmanzah told VICE. “There wasn’t any democracy, and the politics caused everything to be tense.”

But now, with the help of autonomous economic institutions like Financial Services Authority (OJK), things aren’t as bad.

Bhima, however, is less optimistic. He believes that Indonesia is in a transitionary period and that the rupiah will drop to an even lower point before the end of the year.

“Hopefully it won’t be as bad as ‘98,” he said. “But if the question is whether there’s already a global economic crisis, then the answer is yes. The rupiah has already weakened 10 percent since the start of the year.”

Still, the rupiah will be just fine… at least until Rp 47,241

Central bank data shows that a more realistic benchmark for a Krismon-level crisis is Rp 47,241 against the dollar. And Bhima pointed out that the BI’s massively increased capacity to stabilize the currency will get the country through rough waters.

“In 1998 our foreign exchange reserves were only $23 billion USD, in comparison to the latest data we have from July 2018, when we had $118 billion USD worth of reserves,” he said. “This massive jump means that our capacity to stabilize the rupiah’s value is much better compared to in ‘98.”

Despite this optimism, he admits that a possible leap past Rp 15,000 will still affect people’s livelihoods, maybe in even worse ways than ’98. And the country’s current addiction to convenient LPG canisters as a fuel source could be one of the reasons.

“Back in ‘98 small and medium-sized businesses in the villages could still survive,” Bhima said. “When the crisis hit and the price of fuel skyrocketed, a lot of small businesses were still using firewood as an alternative energy source.

“Now, if the global cost of oil goes up, the government won’t have any other choice but to raise prices. And if the fuel price goes up while purchasing power goes down… well, that translates into a more complex situation than ‘98. If a 2018 crisis hits, it might be worse because even the lowest levels of society will immediately feel the shock.”

Rising fuel prices aside, Indonesians will also have to sacrifice the things we’ve taken for granted, like the foreign electronics, the 11 million tons of wheat, and the 2 million tons of rice we import every year if another crisis hits.

The bottom line is we’re not as doomed as many people think, but we’re also not totally in the clear either. Firmanzah believes that while things are much better today, no country is immune from a massive monetary crisis.

“It’s like a flu,” he said. “It’s not lethal and at first you’re only going to feel slight headaches and discomfort. But just like flu, if you don’t treat it immediately there’s a real potential that it will kill you.”

The post The Rupiah Is at ’98 Crisis Levels, But Does Rp 15,000 Really Mean the Same Thing Today? appeared first on VICE.

It deserved its place among tentpoles. The film’s mixed reviews seem like a product of their time, in retrospect. Those who liked it were generally surprised it worked as a cinematic outing, and those who didn’t tended to question it’s raison d’être, like the Washington Post’s Rita Kempley, who complained that Fight the Future felt like little more than “a two-hour teaser for the series’s sixth season.”

In the age of franchise filmmaking, doesn’t 90 percent of Hollywood’s output function as a teaser for the next movie?

At the time, Fight the Future was an odd Hollywood product, and maybe an even odder success, taking in nearly $200 million at the box office. To this day, TV shows don’t usually make the jump to the big screen. The notable exceptions tend to be already concluded (or cancelled) shows brought back to life, like Star Trek, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Serenity, or Veronica Mars—or the second X-Files film, I Want to Believe, released in 2008, between the show’s end in 2002 and its revival in 2016.

Variations on the mid-run model have cropped up here and there. They include things like Dragnet and Adam West’s Batman. None of those are even remotely recent.

So why don’t we see this more often? The “golden age of television” has seen series with cinematic production value, including A-list actors, gorgeous cinematography, big budgets, and even widescreen aspect ratios. More than that, series like Game of Thrones, Atlanta, Westworld, and The Americans all came into existence at a time when media platforms are incredibly fluid and the very definition of television is challenged by the breakdown of traditional broadcast models.

What can we learn from Fight the Future, then?

“I think the overarching feeling was how great it was that we had built a show that the studio felt was worthy of becoming a feature film,” director Rob Bowman told VICE.

The film works nicely on its own, opening with glimpses of what we can only assume is the first contact of humanity’s ancestors with alien life—cavemen encounter an extraterrestrial who infects one of them with a mysterious substance. This is immediately marked as a story that will explore the much larger elements of the X-Files mythology rather than the nitty gritty details familiar to viewers.

In the present day, some 37,000 years later, children discover the same cave in what is now Texas. One boy is quickly infected by the same substance.

FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully investigate after a suspicious explosion supposedly kills the infected boy, destroying evidence of what they soon discover is a massive conspiracy to cover up the existence of alien life on Earth.

The story is fairly easy to follow from there. We don’t get long explainers of who everyone is, but we get enough context to follow along, whether we’re fans of the show or not, and we’re filled in on anything that might be otherwise confusing.

“You don’t have to introduce Mulder and introduce Scully and introduce the world every week,” said Bowman. “Whereas the feature, you have to tell everybody who these people are, because it’s not just for the X-Files fans.”

That balance is one of Fight the Future’s great strengths, and one of the elements that could have easily derailed the film if it hadn’t been handled properly. “When you’re making the series, you know that it’s fan-exclusive, although you’re hoping to gain new eyes every week,” said Bowman, who was far more aware of the need for new eyes in cinemas.

Bowman remembers floating the idea of a film by series creator Chris Carter during a particularly ambitious shoot involving a submarine conning tower poking out of an ice cap. The effect involved bringing in about 150 tons of snow, and it felt bigger than a usual TV shoot. “I was on stage, looking at the conning tower between set-ups, and I called Chris,” he said. “The series and the universe that Chris and all the writing team was exploring, I thought was more than big enough to stick on a theatrical movie screen.”

Bowman knew the stakes would be higher, of course. You can have a few duds in a season of 20 or so episodes. Each episode takes about eight or nine days to shoot. That’s in contrast to the roughly 15 months it takes to make a movie, Bowman said.

“You sit down at the cinematic dinner table with one story, and I hope you like it, because it’s the only story you’re going to tell for a long time, and you have to fall in love with it.”

In some important ways, Fight the Future is an extended series episode. It even opens with the iconic six-notes of the show’s opening credits.

Yes, it stands alone, and would presumably make sense to an uninitiated viewer. But it also rewards hardcore fans. If you watch the episodes that bookend the film (the season finale and premiere of seasons five and six, respectively), you can appreciate how integral the film is to the series’ progress. Hence the “teaser” jab in the Post.

For one, the X-Files themselves, the paranormal cases that the two investigators work on, are shut down by the FBI at the end of season five. Mulder has followed one too many hunches and pissed off too many people. If you skip Fight the Future, you find yourself in season six with the X-Files miraculously up and running again. (The “previously on” recap at the start of season six even includes content from the film, shuffled in among clips of past episodes.)

The first mention of the X-Files in the film comes from Scully, who reminds Mulder that they are, in fact, closed, and the two need to move on. By film’s end, the two have proven the value of the X-Files to the bureau and secured the freedom to get back to work.

The film breaks plenty of new ground too. It pushes the relationship between Mulder and Scully into territory that packs an emotional punch. At one point, as he tries to convince Scully not to abandon the FBI, Mulder has a breakthrough. He suddenly seems to realize that he genuinely needs his partner. Not just because he cares about her, but because she actually supports him and makes his work better. Mulder constantly gets in his own way, alienating superiors with his combined arrogance and flights of fancy. He takes leaps that no one could reasonably be expected to back up. But Scully does. She’s always there for him.

That fact seems to dawn on him mid-sentence, acknowledging that Scully is completely justified in walking away. “I owe you everything,” he tells her, “Scully, you owe me nothing.” She looks at him with genuine shock on her face. Her work on the X-Files has never been acknowledged or openly appreciated in this way, at least not by Mulder. “I remember when I read that scene in the script,” said Bowman. “I was jumping up and down, because he finally said, I really appreciate you for being here and staying with me and supporting me, and putting up with me.”

Obviously not every show lends itself to cinematic exhibition. In 1998, The X-Files was pretty unique in both its scale and popularity. “We built that over five years to earn the right to make that movie, and the fact that we pulled it off was and will always be one of the greatest experiences of my life,” says Bowman.

It’s hard to imagine Friends or Law & Order, both popular at the time, working as movies.

The dearth of adaptable shows isn’t the reality anymore though. The TV landscape is all over the place, but certain series seem primed for their own cinematic outings. Last season saw Game of Thrones averaging 31 million viewers per episode. The CW’s Supernatural seems like it will never end, and has used the good will of its intense fandom to experiment with truly weird episodes, but still no movie. Netflix has dabbled in theatrical exhibition and could easily use cinematic outings to attract viewers to its original series—a Robin Wright-centric relaunch of House of Cards would be great, and it could benefit from a feature-length movie, for example. Or what about those Marvel TV shows on Netflix? The Defenders, while not great, could have easily worked as an “event” movie.

As for The X-Files itself, the revived show has wrapped up its latest series at Fox and won’t be returning—at least in its current form. Chris Carter says he’d like to keep The X-Files alive in some capacity, even floating the idea of an animated series.

Another movie might make sense though, if TV production schedules and consistent ratings are too tricky in 2018.

I ran the idea by Bowman at the end of our conversation, thinking he might want to direct again. “If there’s an appetite for people to watch it, and anybody would be interested in me doing it, then yeah, of course it would be incredible,” he said.

Follow Frederick Blichert on Twitter.

Sign up for the VICE Canada Newsletter to get the best of VICE Canada delivered to your inbox daily.

The post What Prestige TV Can Learn from the First ‘X-Files’ Movie appeared first on VICE.

I ask because the album’s 20th anniversary came and went last month and I didn’t see a single writer give it the credit it’s due. So who wants to raise their hand and throw their precious cultural clout proudly behind Keasbey Nights?

No one? Not one of you worthless scribes wants to devote any ink to this 1998 masterpiece? You’re telling me I can’t get a thinkpiece, an oral history, nothing? Oh, let me guess. It’s because it’s a ska album, right? Yeah, it’s because it’s a ska album and you’re an arbiter of taste with a reputation to protect. Sure. Go ahead and pretend like you don’t have a checkered past. Keep up this charade that 20 years ago you were wise beyond your years, possessing such a refined palate that it would only allow for masterpieces like PJ Harvey’s Is This Desire? and Tortoise’s TNT, when you secretly know that when you hear the opening horns on “Dear Sergio” you are overcome with the urge to skank like the pimply-faced teen you once were, and always will be deep down in your heart.

Oh, but In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is a cult classic, you say? It’s got an intriguing backstory, does it? Okay. You want an intriguing backstory? How about a ska album being released through hardcore label Victory Records? That do anything for ya? How about Catch-22 splintering off into two separate bands, one of which re-recorded the entire album song for song as Streetlight Manifesto eight years later to prevent their label from re-releasing it against their will? How about an ensuing million-dollar lawsuit from said label? Anything intriguing there, pal? Your journalistic senses tingling yet? How about the fact that movie director Nancy Meyers was said to have partially based her movie Something’s Gotta Give on the song “Giving Up Giving In”? That last part was something I just made up, but you wouldn’t know because you’re too busy trying to dissect Cat Power’s Moon Pix!

“A ska band? From New Jersey?” you scoff. “I’d sooner write about the 20th anniversary of Marilyn Manson’s Mechanical Animals or even Kid Rock’s Devil Without a Cause.” Alright. Have it your way. You’re the music expert, after all. Just seems peculiar to me that you see nothing worthwhile about a top-to-bottom perfect album. But I guess Keasbey Nights does lack the certain Anne Frank cosplay aspects of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. It never got the Pitchfork perfect score like your boy Jeff Mangum. It didn’t get reviewed by Pitchfork at all, in fact. It failed to achieve the prestigious honor of getting name-checked by Stephen Colbert on an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

Fine. I get it. Catch-22 is not “cool.” But can we at least sneak them into that sliver of uncool bands that are celebrated ironically for their nostalgic cache? Certainly, if we have room for Sum 41, Taking Back Sunday, and the entire Drive Thru Records catalog, we can squeeze them in there too, no? We cannot, you say. Trumpets and saxophones don’t age as well as off-key relationship whining. No clubs dedicate an evening each month to Ska Nite.

Fine. I suppose there’s just no room in our vast spectrum of cultural retrospection for anyone to celebrate their appreciation for Catch-22’s Keasbey Nights. Maybe in another 20 years, time will prove its worth and you’ll all say to yourselves “my, my, my how the time does fly” and finally come around on this crowning jewel of the third-wave ska movement. And in the end maybe I’ll see you there.

Dan Ozzi is on Twitter and if you come for him, he’ll be sitting at his desk with a gun in his hand wearing a bullet-proof vest.

The post None of You Motherfuckers Wrote About the 20th Anniversary of Catch-22’s ‘Keasbey Nights’ so I Guess I’ll Do It appeared first on VICE.

Though pop-punk has been around nearly as long as punk rock itself, it wasn’t until 1994 that the genre became truly visible. Following the release of Green Day’s Dookie, the genre would go through a boom period, with many of its early practitioners, such as Screeching Weasel, The Queers, and The Mr. T Experience, all attempting to capitalize on this sudden windfall of interest. But by 1998, the genre would become a playground for juvenile songs and increasingly homogenous music, as bands attempted to cash-in on the brash, snottiness of Dookie. There would still be innovation within the form, but its walls were only expanded when a hardcore band entered the arena.

Kid Dynamite formed in 1997 after the break-up of Lifetime, the New Jersey band that spent the bulk of their career vacillating between styles. A cursory listen to 1995’s Hello Bastards or 1997’s Jersey’s Best Dancers revealed that Lifetime were students of Embrace, a band that attempted to reframe hardcore as something more genteel and poppy. As a result, Lifetime’s sound could be described as pop-punk, hardcore, or even emo, refracted in whatever way matched a listener’s reference points. But when Lifetime ended in 1997, guitarist Dan Yemin was already looking to expand on what his band had built, attempting to find a way to ratchet up Lifetime’s aggression without cutting out the bubbly guitar melodies he’d become so adept at crafting.

Yemin quickly joined up with bassist Steve Ferrell and, before long, they began their search for a drummer. Ferrell recommended Dave Wagenschutz, a former Lifetime drummer whose relationship with Yemin had soured after being booted from the band. But with Ferrell as a makeshift mediator, the pair slowly made amends, repairing their friendship and kickstarting a new era for them as musicians. While it was clear Yemin wasn’t trying to distance himself from Lifetime, the songs he was writing in the wake of that band were shorter and punchier, with riffs that exited as quickly as they entered. Ferrell’s bass was noodly and nimble in the way of Descendents, and Wagenschutz pummeling drum thwacks united their disparate approaches. Together the trio would write six songs, and with Yemin not comfortable to take up vocals just yet—aside from the stray shout of “Go!” here and there—they’d begin their search for a vocalist.

Recording all their songs as instrumentals, the embryonic version of Kid Dynamite began passing cassettes to everyone in the scene in the hopes that fate would match them with the right vocalist. The tapes would circulate widely, ultimately landing in the hands of the former singer of Bound, Jason Shevchuk. He initially heard the demo when a friend was trying out for Kid Dynamite and asked Shevchuk to help him with vocal phrasings for the audition. The band passed on this submission, so Shevchuk went ahead and tried his hand at it, too. By then, Kid Dynamite had been looking for singers for almost a year, and when Shevchuk showed up, well rehearsed after a month of listening to the band’s demo while screaming along into his pillow so he didn’t disturb his neighbors, the band found their singer.

Even without a vocalist, Yemin had most of Kid Dynamite’s debut album already written, and, given his previous relationship with Jade Tree, the band was signed to the label relatively quickly. At the time, Jade Tree was on a hot streak, releasing records by many of the most exciting bands in that orbit, such as AVAIL and The Promise Ring, and once word was spreading that a new, post-Lifetime band was together, people were chomping at the bit to hear what they had cooked up.

When Kid Dynamite released their self-titled album that October, it rippled through the the punk rock universe. The opening track “Pause” was outright startling, as the band started on a downbeat, as though the record had skipped a few seconds ahead into the middle of the song. It was a deliberate move, giving people no time to think about what they were hearing and, instead, sucking them up into the band’s giddy energy. When the vocals came in, Shevchuk sounded like a snarling dog, a far cry from the mealy-mouthed delivery of Lifetime’s Ari Katz. The band threw another curveball when, around the 45-second mark, they paused briefly only to rush back in with a burst of Descendents-inspired poppiness. Shevchuk’s voice was still harsh, but his ability to offer up joyful whoas showed Kid Dynamite wasn’t solely concerned with aggression.

In 17 songs across a scant 27 minutes, Kid Dynamite established themselves as a different kind of band. While melodic hardcore had its own set of standards, Kid Dynamite felt outside of it. They were taking the framework of Descendents and making a more modern version of it, one that could be heavy without forgoing melody. They were a hardcore band playing pop-punk without any shame. “K05-0564” had the kind of melodic guitar lead that would have fit on a three-chord, Ramonescore album, but it pivoted into a singalong that packed an even bigger punch, with Wagenschutz’s drumming giving the song a heavy pulse and allowing Shevchuk to actually sing. And as the song jumped into an outright breakdown at its end, Shevchuk offered up an inhuman scream in the song’s final seconds, and all but shattered perceptions of what pop-punk or hardcore should sound like.

The band had no standard approach to songwriting, as they were able to take three 20-second songs and make them feel fully realized on the album. These tracks, “Sweet Shop Syndicate,” “Scarysmurf,” and “32 Frames Per Second,” condensed the band’s approach into micro bursts, yet each one felt complete due to the band’s ability to effortlessly slip into a hook-laden section even for just a single measure. When the band actually spread out, as they did on the mid-paced tracks like “Bookworm” and “3 O’Clock”—two of the longer songs on the album—Kid Dynamite showed they were capable of pulling off songs that functioned as quasi-ballads. These songs took hardcore’s chugging rhythms and softened them, allowing Shevchuk to show he could carry a tune without losing his raspy edge.

While Shevchuk’s voice drew people in, his lyrics provided plenty to chew on, as he openly challenged the rampant egotism of other men in the punk scene. “Sweet Shop Syndicate” was a blunt, feminist anthem, a pointed declaration against false allyship that, while not nuanced in the way one would hope for in 2018, sent a strong message in 1998: “Caress her emotions / Caress her trust / Squeeze them tighter then take her soul / Polluted by the crimes of my gender, she surrenders to the sweetness.” He explored a similar subject on “Showoff,” balking at those that used progressive politics for their own gain: “Put others down to put yourself on top, despite the people that you hurt / The life you glamorize, exploit, and advertise, means nothing to you.” Shevchuk effectively used songs to call bullshit on the sloganeering that had long fueled punk songs, challenging bands to actually take action instead of just singing about it.

The same year Kid Dynamite was released, Saves The Day released Can’t Slow Down, and a Florida band, then going by the name A New Found Glory, would also make their intentions to marry pop-punk and hardcore together known. Neither band had the caustic bite of Kid Dynamite, but it was clear a trend was emerging. But where those bands would take a few albums to find themselves, Kid Dynamite was fully formed.

After one more album, 2000’s Shorter, Faster, Louder, Kid Dynamite broke up, as Shevchuk wanted to finally finish film school. The band would reunite for benefit shows in 2003 and 2005, and by then plenty of bands were following in their tracks. Unlike AVAIL, whose influence felt more like a mutation of melodic hardcore, Kid Dynamite devotees just tried to sound like the band they loved.

In the mid-2000s, a rash of albums by bands such as Shook Ones, No Trigger, Crime In Stereo, and even Polar Bear Club used Kid Dynamite not just as their main influence, but as their entire stylistic goal. Each of these bands would grow in ways that broke that mold, but they’d carry that association with them all the while, rarely allowing them to step outside of the shadow of the band they so desperately wanted to be. There were subtle variations in each of their sounds, but it was effectively Kid Dynamite worship, so much so that they could never unring that bell. Before long, bands like Caleb Lionheart would be attempting to pull from the second-wave Kid Dynamite acts, effectively becoming a photocopy of a photocopy, yet bold enough to title their first EP Think Hardcore, Play Pop Punk as if they came up with that notion.

In 2009, the label Black Numbers released Carry the Torch: A Tribute to Kid Dynamite, which saw every one of Kid Dynamite’s songs covered by a different band. It showed how deep the band’s influence had permeated, with hardcore acts like Comadre and Lewd Acts paying their respects, and boasted just as many pop-punk covers courtesy of The Ergs!, Broadway Calls, and The Wonder Years. The involvement of The Wonder Years drew the most direct line outward from Kid Dynamite. As the pop-punk phenoms were clearly versed in bands like Saves The Day, their tribute to their Philadelphia forebears helped give them some credibility with those that questioned them. Though The Wonder Years would pull from more commercial sources, their lineage was indebted to Kid Dynamite, even if it was only acknowledged through a cover.

Like most bands do, Kid Dynamite reunited in 2010 to play a few festivals, including This is Hardcore, The Fest, and FYF Fest. The band never returned to full-time status, instead opting to pull the plug again in 2013, having given new fans the chance to see them and allowing the band members to soak up the adulation one last time. And though Kid Dynamite’s discography remains small, it’s a testament to what they did the first time out, making an album that reframed what pop-punk would sound like over the next decade, and spawning a litany of imitators, all in just 27 minutes.

David Anthony is on Twitter.

The post 20 Years Ago, Kid Dynamite Reshaped Pop-Punk in Just 27 Minutes appeared first on VICE.

And even if, as a former colleague point out recently, that 15th-anniversary retrospectives are killing the 20th-anniversary retrospective industry, get ready for another 12 months of friends sharing throwback thinkpieces on an almost daily basis. Here’s a primer of what to expect.

—

JANUARY

Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend (2008)

If you read ‘Meet Me in the Bathroom’ you’d know that this album represented a massive turning point for music in NYC in 2008, the only city in the world with music.

Dawson’s Creek debuts (1998)

Some outlets are already on it! What does Pacey’s affair with his teacher look like in 2018? Did they really need to kill Jen off? Was it even really Dawson’s creek? Can’t wait for these pressing questions to be answered.

Breaking Bad debuts (2008)

Yes, it’s already one of the most-written about shows in the modern era, but doesn’t Walter White—an entitled prick with a shitty health-care plan—seem even more topical in 2008? Hell, if someone wants to do an oral history of every single time Aaron Paul yells “something something, bitch!” someone would read it.

FEBRUARY

Winter Olympics (1988)

Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards sucks at ski jumping and becomes a meme before memes really existed. Meanwhile the Jamaican bobsled team makes international debut at the Winter Olympics (which goes on to inspire the film Cool Runnings five years later).

Neutral Milk Hotel – In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1998)

Is it the most indie album that ever indie albumed? Find out on Stereogum next month.

MARCH

The Big Lebowski (1998)

Who could have predicted at the time that this idiosyncratic Cohen Bros film about a philosophical slacker would generate one of the most dedicated cult followings of the past couple decades—with its own religion. Also, possibly the easiest Halloween costume to pull off last minute.

Starcraft (1998)

A real-time strategy game featuring alien races going at other alien races (Protoss all day), would convince players everywhere that one could actually make a living doing this thing.

MAY

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

The film that launched a hundred thousand wannabe journalists/drug tourists, and effectively rekindled the career of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson remains a weird thing to watch. Director Terry Gilliam did a masterful job capturing the look and feel of a bad drug trip while also managing to romanticize the writerly act of staring at a blank page until the words start to flow. Johnny Depp and, especially, Benicio Del Toro give seriously committed fanboy performances, but, in all honesty, it’s way more fun and satisfying to just read the damn book.

Seinfeld “The Finale” airs (1998)

When the creators made the contentious choice to put the four main characters on trial for their behaviour throughout the show’s run, Seinfeld’s massive audience was forced to realize they’d been obsessively tuning into the lives of four total assholes for the past nine years. Cue an entire generation of comedy writers creating shows around unlikeable characters.

Johnny Cash – Live at Folsom Prison (1968)

It’s been 50 years since the release of this legendary intersection of pop culture and prison life, where the Man in Black sounds perfectly at ease shooting the shit with the inmate audience (“Do you serve everything in tin cups?”) and ripping through songs about killing a man just to watch him die, enduring a death penalty sentence after sleeping with your best friend’s wife, and doing cocaine with loaded weapons around.

JUNE

Windows 98 is released (1998)

Startup music just wasn’t as good as Brian Eno’s Windows 95 jam.

The Truman Show (1998)

Wild how Jim Carrey invented Black Mirror 20 years ago.

JULY

Armageddon (1998)

Personally, I do prefer Deep Impact, but Armageddon feels like the perfect movie for a ‘Does it Suck?’ with a ‘so bad it’s good’ thesis. (“Don’t wanna close my eyezzzz / Don’t wanna fall asleep….”)

Die Hard (1988)

Did you know Die Hard, a Christmas Movie, came out 30 years ago? It’s the only Christmas Movie ever. Only REAL basasses know Die Hard is a Christmas Movie. Yippee ki-yay!

The Dark Knight (2008)

This one will be a bit of a twofer, as it’s also the 10-year anniversary of Heath Ledger’s death (he died of an accidental prescription drug overdose in January of 2008). It’s been said a lot, but his Oscar-winning portrayal of the Joker in Dark Knight towers so far above every other superhero movie performance it’s scary. As for The Dark Knight itself, there is some value into looking at the film in 2018. First off, DC’s continued attempts to replicate it’s “dark” themes via Zack Snyder and co. have been not-insignificant failures and have threatened its ability to compete with the cheery (and better produced) Marvelverse. On the other hand, no Marvel film (or any other superhero film) have quite matched The Dark Knight in terms of its visuals and standout scenes. (But the less said about some its plotting and its third act, the better.)

AUGUST

That ‘70s Show debuts (1998)

Ugh.

Lauryn Hill – The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998)

Could Beyonce’s Lemonade exist with this album? (Probably, but the parallels are too delicious for a critic not to indulge.)

iMac G3 (1998)

The candy-coloured desktop computer goes on sale, marking the return of Steve Jobs and the start of Apple ubiquity.

Google Inc. (1998)

With the help of a significant investment, the search engine becomes an incorporated company and the World Wide Web is forever changed.

SEPTEMBER

“Too big to fail” (2008)

Investment bank Lehman Brothers collapses, signalling a new peak in the financial crisis.

The Hunger Games book comes out (2008)

Once again, YA fiction tops the bestseller lists.

Sex and the City debuts (1998)

White feminism in stilettos!

Sarah Palin’s Distasterious Interviews With Katie Couric (2008)

Remember the good ole’ days of 2008 when being hilariously unqualified for office usually meant you were not elected to said office?

Barenaked Ladies release “One Week”

The single from Stunt allowed them to finally crack that elusive US market and propel them beyond being just a quirky Canadian phenomenon to a legit pop stardom, complete with a Jason Priestley-directed documentary.

Britney’s …Baby One More Time is released (1998)

Featuring the timeless love anthem “E-mail My Heart.”

OCTOBER

American History X (1998)

Two words: curb smile.

(Also, this terrifyingly realistic depiction of young people being seduced by racial hatred and neo-Nazi iconography is even more terrifyingly relevant in 2018. Seems like the moral of this story wasn’t brutally blunt enough for an entire new generation of shitheads to understand.)

NOVEMBER

They Live (1988)

Here is a list of things that John Carpenter predicted with this 30-year-old film:

Capitalism is a scam.
Global warming is man-made.
Branding is everything.
Plaid shirts and dark sunglasses are timeless.
Rowdy Roddy Piper was totally underrated.
Aliens are (probably) real and (probably) in charge of everything.
Democracies can quickly become dictatorships.

Half-Life (1998)

As we still wait for Half-Life 3, seems as good a time as any to write 5000 words on arguably the most influential game of the last 20 years.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998)

Is it the greatest Nintendo game of all-time? Find out this November.

Obama wins! (2008)

What a time to be alive! But also, sighhhhhh.

Twilight the movie comes out (2008)

Tweens discover goth. Kristen Stewart discovers aloofness.

Beyoncé releases “Single Ladies” (2008)

The single from her I Am… Sasha Fierce album enshrined Bey’s place as the soundtrack to every bouquet toss at every wedding reception for the rest of eternity.

808s & Heartbreak (2008)

Kanye releases his Auto-Tune heavy masterpiece, pissing off a vast number of his fans and redefining pop music at the same time.

Chinese Democracy finally comes out (2008)

It feels like only 10 years ago that we only waited 17 years for a new Guns N’ Roses album. Spoiler alert: It didn’t age well.

DECEMBER

Psycho (1998)

While not great in any measure, Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot update of the Hitchcock classic created excessive hand-wringing about the very nature of remakes—a concern that seems rather quaint now with so many singular films/shows/books spawning copious reimagined versions, both fanfic and official. (Shout out to Bates Motel.)

Baldur’s Gate (1998)

This role-playing classic basically turned a little-known Edmonton developer Bioware into an international powerhouse….that eventually got bought by Electronic Arts and made the ending of Mass Effect 3.

The post Here Are All the Pop Culture Retrospectives You’ll Read in 2018 appeared first on VICE.

It’s a Playstation version of Bioshock, one that reduces the original to the low-resolution graphics and simple corridors of a late 90s console shooter.

It was made by 98DEMAKE, a YouTuber who specializes in making classics games look like they came out 10 years ago. “Turning pretty games ugly again,” is his tagline and he’s a master. His 1998 version of Bioshock—with it’s jagged polygons, simple music, and simple level design—looks a lot like the game’s spiritual forebear System Shock 2.

His channel is about more than just the retro gameplay though, 98DEMAKE goes the extra mile by crafting the packaging the game might have come in in 1998. Every video starts off with a hand holding up the game’s jewel case in front of a VHS camera. The cases are British, so they’re a little wider than the American-style Playstation jewel case. Under the low-resolution fuzz of the tape, it’s hard to tell his demake cases aren’t official products.

According to his Patreon page, every video takes around 30 to 40 hours to make. That includes video production using 3D software and crafting the cases. There’s no coding involved, just clever art direction and a talented artistic hand.

The post Watch What ‘Bioshock’ Would Have Looked Like on the First PlayStation appeared first on VICE.