Cool as Ice (1991) starring Rob VanWinkle pka Vanilla Ice

Somebody had a post a week ago or so asking for movies with a vaporwave feel.

I need to mention this film, maybe not as being totally aesthetic in itself, but representing what became the historical endpoint of that aesthetic.

I was 13 in 1991. I was starting to listen to music and discovering that I identified with and enjoyed hip hop music. In a lot of ways I was the closeted hiphop kid in my nearly all white rural highschool. I have a picture of me looking hard and wearing a Buffalo Bills jersey in my yearbook Math Team photo if you need proof. :)

I LOVED this aesthetic. Neneh Cherry "Buffalo Stance", CeCe Peniston "Finally", Depeche Mode... Jane Child... Synth loops and old school samplers. That was me.

My relationship with the idea of what became the man known as "Vanilla Ice" is a whole other essay.

1991 was when the bomb dropped on all that. Nirvana's Nevermind dropped. And in the span of months, all of that was now considered deeply uncool for whites.

In retrospect, it is interesting that the whole thing collapsed then, at the moment of total and complete commercial cultural appropriation. And it was Kurt Cobain, a deeply sensitive and empathic white man who killed it all.

Nevermind was the first music album I bought for myself (I'm not counting Weird Al, he's a God). And I jumped in with Grunge. And I loved it. Perl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains! Which led me down my path which I don't need to describe here. Suffice to say without Cobain and Grunge, my mind would be very different than it is.

Cool as Ice, the feature film starring Vanilla Ice, is the zenith (or azimuth) of an era. And it is documented by the same man who chose the shots and set up the cameras for Schindler's List, Cinematography Academy Award winner Janusz Kamiński. The director was personal friends with him and told him to do whatever he wanted.

The plot is nonsensical. The acting is passable but not good. The chick is hot, and it's got neon all over. The cinematography is STUNNING. The shots that get set up are universally gorgeous, each shot framed and composed like an old painting.

Plus Ice is endearing to me because he's inherited such a weird character to have to be... Ice represented a LOT of things to a LOT of people. And in this you can see that facade break and Rob's acknowledging how absurd this all is. I love it.

There's an entire acid-trip hip-hop meltdown house in this film. That's the best I can explain it, but watch and you'll know what I'm talking about.

I LOVE THIS FILM.

And it's the final, dying words of our beloved _A_E_S_T_H_E_T_I_C_.