Entries Tagged 'Pop Culture' ↓

To say I have a love-hate relationship with Vanity Fair would be sort of putting it baldly, and imprecisely. It’s more of a respect-recoil connection that we share.

What do I respect, and from what do I recoil?

Well, I don’t want to rush this, so what I’ll do is take each aspect one at a time, over the course of today and tomorrow, saving the best for last.

What makes me recoil from Vanity Fair is that the magazine, based on both its content and writing staff, seems to tightly embrace a dated form of racial near-sightedness. I call it anachronistic achromatism. It’s a magazine, Sly Stone be damned, about white people, for white people, and, especially, by white people. This is the norm in American media, but VF makes a deference to whiteness that seems, on this small, brown, post-9/11 planet, not just brazenly out-of-touch, but, even more, recklessly hopeful.

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I’d never heard of Canadian-Chinese pop singer Edison Chen, 27, until a link on racialicious.com told me his sordid story. In short: Brother took a laptop in to have it fixed. Then, in late January 2008, a picture of him in a compromising position with an Asian starlet appeared on the web.

At first, Chen gave the usual excuses—It’s not me, I’m being framed, etc. But, then, soon, more of the explicit flicks appeared, not just one or two, five or six, but dozens.

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“Yes We Can” is the Barack Obama-affirming musical short by Black Eyed Peas front man and producer “Will.i.am” Adams Jr. It’s peopled by minor celebrities, and Scarlett Johansson, sing-songing an insignificant melody to text and footage from Obama’s January 8, 2008 New Hampshire primary victory speech. As I post this, it’s been viewed 5,460,140 times at its main YouTube location.

Make that 5,460,140.5 times: I only got halfway through it before I just couldn’t take any more.

Pourquoi? I think it’s more than the film’s bloated, black & white solemnity and manufactured earnestness, both, perhaps, best signified by an otherwise throwaway gesture at the 0:06 mark: Will.I.Am “offhandedly” “fixing” a lapel pin that appears to be just fine. (These despicable qualities are also on display in the newer, “We Are The Ones” video, as is another starlet, Jessica Alba.) Indeed, to really put one’s hand on what the problem is, one has to briefly go back to the recorded origins of the Black Eyed Peas in the 1990s.

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No lie: My eyes literally watered when I watched this: the second full, 2 1/2-minute trailer from the upcoming summer blockbuster-in-waiting, Iron Man. (When I say second, I’m not including the incredible Super Bowl commercial, by the way. This new piece is currently the featured trailer on MySpace’s Trailer Park section. Special thanks to the folks at FirstShowing.net for dropping the bomb.)

Based on the long-time Marvel superhero comic, Iron Man stars Robert Downey Jr. as billionaire weapons designer and manufacturer Tony Stark; features Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard, and Jeff Bridges; and is directed by John Favreau (Made, Elf, Zathura). This is literally Paramount’s game to lose, if mounting fanboy excitement—and my own, doggone it—is any indication. Out May 2, 2008.

Why didn’t the recent DirecTV commercial, featuring Sigourney Weaver as “Ellen Ripley” in James Cameron’s 1986 movie, Aliens, get more amore?

You’ve seen the original: At the film’s geekalicious climax, Ripley takes on the villainous Alien Queen with an “anthropomorphic exoskeletal” Caterpillar P-5000 Powered Work Loader. (Weaver got a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her performance.)

DirecTV, as they’d done with well-known flicks from the ‘80s and ‘90s (Star Trek: Generations, Major League, Back to the Future), remixed the scene into an ad pitching the virtues of satellite over cable. Their digital fx hoo-haa even lip-synced Ripley’s 22-year-old footage to new script. (Hey: If we all yell and stamp our feet loud enough, maybe they’ll sign Pacino to remake the climactic “Sigh ay-low to mah lee’l frah!” bloodbath from Scarface.)

Yet, if you’re even a tiny bit like me, even a quarter-century in, there’s still no such thing as too much Aliens. If so, wrap your head around this: Hot Toys‘ 1/6-scale, 21″ high, fully articulated Power Loader model kit.

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You know the “My Talking Stain” commercial for Tide-to-Go that ran during the Super Bowl, and has been widely circulated since?

In it, a guy is interviewing for a job, but while answering questions, a stain on his shirt—it looks like java—sprouts a mouth and starts talking gibberish. It does this so incessantly that it overwhelms the prospective employer’s attention and completely drowns out the interviewee.

This funny ad urges consumers to buy Tide’s portable stain removing pen and not let the messes on their clothes send an unintended message. In fact, the spot’s so good, I only noticed on, maybe, the third viewing, a little bit of disclaimer text, right at the end:

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Is Gustavo Dudamel all that?

The Feb. 17 edition of 60 Minutes practically water-slided down the hunky, 27-year-old Venezuelan, and principal conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony in Sweden. (He takes over as music director for the Los Angeles Philharmonic in September 2009.)

But is he really as great as they say he is?

I have absolutely no idea. From the looks of all the smart white people whose eyes light up when his name is uttered, I’m sure, to quote Lorraine Baines from Back to the Future, he’s an absolute dream.

I was fascinated by the fact—and this seems to be the default mode when talking about hot-to-trot, European classical music conductors—that the way they conveyed how talented he is is by how wildly and hard he shakes and swings his baton when conducting.

Is that all there is to it? I mean, there was one part in the 60 Minutes piece where, Dudamel, trying to express the way a particular musician should play a part, used the idea of softly, gently kissing a woman’s neck to make correct technique clear.

But, for the most part, whenever these TV newsmagazines want to tell you that there’s a hot new conductor, or pianist, or violinist, that’s gonna change the world, the fast ball always seems to be that “They’re craaazzzyyy, man!! Craaaazzzyyy!!!“, followed by some footage of the artist doing something bordering illegal with their instrument, or that, at least, we all have a common understanding is inappropriate.

So what? I mean, is this the best that great European classical music can do?

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The new Knight Rider aired Sunday evening, updating the original David Hasselhoff ’80s TV show for the year 2000, while retaining the original premise. You remember: Michael Knight—here, Mike Tracer (Ooo!)—equipped with an ultra-advanced talking automobile as his primary weapon, roams the highways and byways, fighting crime.

Oh, to be a 14-year-old boy, again.

There’s a rhythm to hour-long, episodic television that’s always been there, I’m sure, but that, for some reason, I really started noticing while watching Grey’s Anatomy. It goes as follows:

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Thank you! people at Funimation for sending me copies of the Afro Samurai and Desert Punk boxed sets. Both animes take place in a futuristic Japan, but only one, it seems, involves a gun-wielding ne’er-do-well with Nadine Jansen-esque breasts. (The character’s name is Junko, “Vixen of the Desert.”)

I’m eagerly looking forward to checking both out. But what I also want for Christmas is another season of Gunslinger Girl, the 2003 series about a quintet of Italian, prepubescent children, each near death, who are rescued, their histories erased, and their bodies revived cybernetically, so that they can become skilled assassins; a clique of little La Femme Nikitas.

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