Entries Tagged 'Entertainment' ↓

I don’t know how, until this very morning, I missed the April 15 New York Times profile of white rapper Asher Roth by former VIBE music editor Jon Caramanica. (“To Be Young, Rapping and White,” it was near sacrilegously titled.) But it was certainly worth the wait.

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SlashFilm.com reader  and graphic designer Bruno V came up with this allusive, “poster that never was” one-sheet mock-up, above, for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, opening tomorrow.

Directed by maestro David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en) and starring Brad Pitt with Cate Blanchett, the film, based on a story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald, tells the tale of a boy who is born old—with wrinkled, liver-spotted skin and white hair—only to become younger as he ages.

Though skilled, Bruno’s riff on Benjamin Button violates the cardinal rule of any movie with Brad Pitt in it: Show His Face As Often As Possible. See right, for an example, from an early teaser poster. Or as one of the commenters on /Film.com puts it, less delicately, “Who the f#@% wants to look at a wrinkled ass baby?”

Actually, if you ask me, actor Taraji P. Henson, who cradles the infant, is the bigger obstacle. Since she’s Black and not Will Smith, Halle Berry, Samuel L. Jackson, or Queen Latifah, putting her on a movie poster runs the risk of confusing the prospective audience. It could make them think that they’re going to see a Black movie—maybe one starring James Earl Jones as the wizened family patriarch—and not a flick starring half of the world’s sexiest couple.

At least, so goes conventional wisdom, and if there’s one thing we can all agree on, Hollywood definitely knows their stuff.

If you ask me, there’s only one way to deal with zombies: Rack ’em up and knock ’em down. I don’t care if they’re urban, rural, or suburban. You gotta show ’em who’s boss, and you can’t be the least bit ambiguous about it, or soon enough, one’ll be sinking his nasty dental work into your neck.

If you really wanna raise the stakes though, do what the new low-budget Japanese horror flick, Uniform Sabaigaru, above, which opened recently, does: Throw innocent teenage schoolgirls, right, into the mix. If you think co-eds can be brutal, wait’ll you hand one of ’em a Black & Decker.

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What you see, above—an Italian 4-fogli, or four-sheet, for the 1973 film, Coffy—is, for its subject, size, and graphical power, to me, the single most desirable ephemeral object in all of Black film, and possibly connected to any movie.

Why?

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All hail the Queen: Photo by Robert Maxwell for The New York Times

Is Queen Latifah gay?

Her flattering and attentive profile in this past weekend’s Sunday New York Times Magazine detailed many aspects of her professional life and career: Over thirty films, two years as host of her own talk show, Grammy-nominated albums, an Oscar nod, her landmark endorsement with Cover Girl, a thriving management business.

But it also raised the question that has attended the Queen, aka Dana Owens, and her reign, almost as long as she’s been in the public eye: Is she a lesbian?

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As evident to anyone whose been watching Tina Fey’s Saturday Night Live Sarah Palin parodies, like this weekend’s wide rip on the debate, above, the comedienne is destroying the Republican VP nominee. She does it by creating take-offs on the Alaskan governor’s goofy regular-gal-isms and studied folksiness that border on performance art. If Fey keeps it up, watch if she doesn’t get the Emmy, Twain, and Pulitzer, all in one glorious shot.

O.K., friends: The world got just a little bit bigger today. Thanks to my high school friend, Angela Renee Simpson—no singing slouch in her own right—I now know the name of countertenor Matthew Truss, an ’06 Boston Conservatory grad, and apparently one of the hottest new talents out.

If, like me, you get to the opera about once a kalpa, or you confuse the word “countertenor” with “counterterrorist,” prepare to be stunned by Mr. Truss’s rendition of “Addio, addio miei sosprir,” from 18th century Bavarian composer Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera, Orfeo ed Euridice.

The video is from the Intermezzo Foundation’s Elardo International Opera Competition this past summer in Brussels, at which Truss won the $5,000 Jerry Hadley Award. While you listen, remember: Your eyes do not deceive you.

I was actually kinda blasé about the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, at the outset, so I didn’t really tune in, initially, or check out the opening ceremonies.

Boy, was that a mistake.

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Artist Dan S. DeCarlo (1919-2001), below, is widely recognized as the creator of both the Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Josie and the Pussycats strips. But he is best known as the illustrator who gave Archie—the comic featuring the eponymous redheaded teenager, plus his friends Betty, Veronica, Jughead, Reggie, and the rest—their definitive form and line, the look by which they’re most known, and that modern artists must emulate when drawing the characters.

I think it’s for this reason that I love the two recently released Fantagraphics texts The Pin-Up Art of Dan DeCarlo, and The Pin-Up Art of Dan DeCarlo Vol. 2, edited by Alex Chun and Jacob Covey.

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She clearly didn’t expect to be followed so closely: Oprah Winfrey

Since starting January 1st, a Chicago performer, writer, and artist, Robyn Okrant, 35, has committed a full year to living her life as Oprah Winfrey suggests on her highly-rated TV program, The Oprah Winfrey Show. So, if Oprah says buy white pants, Okrant buys white pants. If Oprah says visit an animal shelter, that’s where she goes.

NPR interviewed her, and she’s writing about the experience on her blog, Living Oprah. No word on whether Oprah approves of this, however.