Jordin wins American Idol – as if anyone still cares…
Yawn! Oh excuse me, I just woke up from a bad dream known as American Idol 6. As everyone has known since the first show of the season, tolerable cutie-pie Jordin Sparks was just named Idol over fly white guy finalist Blake Lewis. Sex with Bob Dole could not have been more anti-climactic than this bloated, stretched out season finale since the judges have been pimping her for the top prize for weeks. Even she didn’t look surprised when her name was announced. Where’s the fun in that?
As usual, the declaration came after a string of Motown singers performing their greatest hits with Sanjaya giving his special flair as backup. And as usual some of the performances were great – Gladys Knight and Smokey, ya still got it – and others, not so much (Bette Midler screeched out “Wind Beneath My Wings” like a drunk Karoake star and Taylor Hicks sucked just because its in his nature.)
Yes, yes, yes, she has a great voice and is the total package but I found Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul’s hyperbolic gushing about her being the best singer ever. EVER. a little suspicious to say the least. Especially in the face of Melinda and Lakisha’s unbelievable talent.
Ah, well can we all at least admit that American Idol has jumped the shark? It has now been three seasons in a row that people with the personality of musty toe socks have walked away the winner in not-even-close snoozefests.
Here’s another yawn pic, one that should give the conservative, pro-lifer Jordin a warm fuzzy feeling. It’s a fetus!
jordin american idol
Columbia seals multi-pic production deal with Chinese hunk Stephen Chow
According to Variety Asia: Renaissance man Stephen Chow, the director and star of the hilarious Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer, has joined his production team, Star Overseas, with the Asian branch of Columbia Pictures to make Jump – a hip hop romcom co-starring someone intriguingly named Kitty Zhang.
Sony Pictures Releasing International handled the American distribution of Hustle and Chow’s soon-to-be- released caper, A Hope, and will continue to oversee distribution for all films resulting from the deal.
It’s exciting and promising that American production companies are moving away from simply snapping up the rights to Asian films in order to (badly) remake them for a PG-13 audience and moving towards developing the talent in their own markets and distributing those films here. Hollywood has controlled a disproportionate percentage of the foreign cinema market (60 – 80%) since motion picture technology was invented, now it is time to trust that our audiences are savvy enough to appreciate mainstream films from different, non-European cultures – even if they are subtitled.
Zoo surprisingly tame for a flick about bestiality
*review also posted on http://www.cinemattraction.com
It’s surprising that there is so little to say about a documentary that explores a topic as controversial and taboo as bestiality – or “interspecies relations” as the participants of Zoo might prefer to call it. Director Robinson Devor and writing partner Charles Mudede attempt to unravel the 2005 death of a Seattle engineer – referred to in the film only by his Internet handle of “Mr. Hands” – from a perforated colon caused by sexual intercourse with a horse. Read the rest of this entry »
Great – another singer turned actor. This time it’s Norah Jones debuting at Cannes.
As if it wasn’t enough for Norah Jones to bore me to tears with her snooze inducing lullabies on her last two albums, she has found a whole new medium to infect with her soporific adorableness. Looking like an ever so slightly ethnic mix between Rachel Weisz and Drew Barrymore – all pillowy curves and cuteness – Jones joined her caddish co-star Jude Law on the red carpet for My Blueberry Nights, the first English speaking film from Hong Kong director and critical darling, Wong Kar-Wai.
The pairing of Kar-Wai and Jones, seems like a natural fit. His fluid, smoky – and, let’s face it, sometimes downright SLOW – throwback cinematic style riffing on the themes of unrequited love and the elusive, transient nature of intimacy in Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love and 2046. Combined with Jones’ fluid, smoky, and slow chanteuse vibe, crooning about love lost. It could make for an unbelievably moving experience or it could be like watching paint dry, over and over again while “Come Away with Me” or something similar drones on in the background.
I’m generally skeptical about singers turned actors and vice versa. And if you’re wondering why, I have three names for you: Mariah Carey, Britney Spears and Mariah Carey. Yes, Glitter was THAT bad. As for Jude Law, while he may be handsome as a statue, he is no Tony Leung Chui-Wai, the impossibly suave star of In the Mood and 2046 as well as the recently remade Infernal Affairs.
On the upside, My Blueberry Nights has a solid supporting cast of Natalie Portman, David Straithairn, Tim Roth and Rachel Weisz. I can’t recall any of those actors ever giving a bad performance, so you really can’t go wrong. (OK, except for Portman as Queen Amidala and Weisz in Constantine, but I blame the directors in both cases!). While I wasn’t as crazy about either Love or 2046 as most critics and cinephiles were, mainly because of the pacing, it’s always fascinating to watch a foreign director sink or swim in a new market. And to analyze why some seem to make a successful crossover, i.e.Ang Lee or Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and who falls flat i.e. Matthieu Kassovitz (La Haine to Gothika) or Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels to Swept Away – ah, he was a hack anyway) .
Paris gets reduced jail sentence for showing up to court hearing.
Wow. Did I call it or did I call it? This heifer gets her sentence cut in half merely for doing something that, last time I checked, is mandatory – showing up to court. Or perhaps the judge realized how much “beauty and excitement” she brings to the world and took pity on her because, really, what would all of us be doing without Paris’ wacky shananigans and tomfoolery to report on. No, I’m serious about that part.
This is an excerpt from her MySpace petition – penned by her – to convince the Governator to pardon her.
“Paris Whitney Hilton is an American celebrity and socialite. She is an heiress to a share of the Hilton Hotel fortune, as well as to the real estate fortune of her father Richard Hilton. She provides hope for young people all over the U.S. and the world. She provides beauty and excitement to (most of) our otherwise mundane lives… We, the American public who support Paris, are shocked, dismayed and appalled by how Paris has been the person to be used as an example that Drunk Driving is wrong… This petition is to ask Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to pardon Paris Hilton for her mistake. Please allow her to her return to her career and life.”
(insert your own cleverly constructed zinger about how much of a self-absorbed twat she is, here)
She will also be place in a special housing unit for law enforcement officers, celebrities and other high profile inmates, which is a good thing because as much as she annoys me I don’t necessarily want to see her get a prison beat down. Unless it’s taped. And I can watch it. Or they turn it into a Paris Hilton Prison Survivor reality show, which would be pretty fucking cool.
I digress.
Alas, it looks like Paris will still have to attempt the act of contemplation for nearly a month as she stares at the wall in her jail cell, brushing her extentions and muttering “This is so NOT hot.”
Jerry Falwell passes away, packs shorts and a fan for his trip to the other side
I don’t want to sound insensitive, but when I found out that Jerry Falwell died I said, “Ha!” at my work desk and then immediately felt horrible. I tell myself that no matter how much I disagreed with this man’s beliefs and political convictions, that someone out there who loves him is mourning, and I respect that. Even though his intolerance has probably tangibly made my life worse as a woman of color under the Bush regime.
So be it, as Kurt would say.
In his illustrious tenure as “America’s preacher” and founder of the ever-bogus and hypocritical Moral Majority, Falwell “outed” Tinky Winky of the “Teletubbies” citing his flamboyant purple fur, his crowning triangle and the “purse” he carried – or man bag, as Winky preferred to call it – as proof that the liberal and immoral media was forcing the gay agenda on our impressionable toddlers.
I have to say that the few times that I watched the “Teletubbies”, I found it disturbing for a number of other significant reasons including the gurgling baby head in the sun and the constant stream of gibberish slowly draining my intellect and no doubt hindering the cognitive and linguistic development of many children. If Falwell had questioned the long term, live-in relationship of “Sesame Street’s” Burt and Ernie, perhaps his gay agenda theory would have went over better.
As if the “Teletubbies” unveiling wasn’t enough to secure his legacy, Falwell went on to blame the 9/11 attacks on gays, feminists, pornographers, abortionists and hell, liberals in general – why not? This statement proved to be too controversial even for his holy rolling homies in the White House and the GOP began to distance itself from Falwell and other notable Religious Right extremists.
While I can respect Falwell’s strength in his convictions and genuinely grieve the loss of any decent human being, I am relieved that there is one less person wielding their power and the supposed word of god, to persuade others to strip away my rights. Falwell chose to use his religion divisively and oppressively, in the service of exclusion instead of inclusion. Who will be the one to judge him for that? Perhaps God if s/he indeed exists but more importantly, those of us who are left behind will have to negotiate his far-reaching and malignent influence on reproductive rights (the “partial birth” abortion ban just OKed by the Supreme Court makes no provisions for the mother’s life), and social policies (gay marriage).
Perhaps this is the most fitting epitaph:
“Unfortunately, we will always remember him as a founder and leader of America’s anti-gay industry, someone who exacerbated the nation’s appalling response to the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic, someone who demonized and vilified us for political gain and someone who used religion to divide rather than unite our nation.” -Matt Foreman, executive director of National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
Paris Hilton soon to be penitentary princess
As everyone knows by now hotel heiress and tart extraordinaire, Paris Hilton (Looking like Prison Break Barbie in this pic), will serve a 45 day sentence for driving under the influence with a suspended license. Paris and her lawyers balk that because of her celebrity she is being made an example of with a cruel and unusual sentence. Her misguided fans – undoubtedlytweenagers and 50 year old men – are petitioning the Govenator, Mr. Schwartzenegger, to give her a pardon.
So it turns out that a close non-celebrity friend of mine committed virtually the same offense a few years ago and ALSO got sentenced heftily, to a 30-day jail sentence. The difference was that she had the option of paying a fine which was so astronomical that it wasn’t really an option at all.
IMHO Paris’ judge wisely observed that anyone worth millions who can throw their money away buying oodles of designer clothes, flying around the world, and replace every totaled car with new Bentleys like they were $2 Hot Wheels from Toys R Us – isn’t going to get the message from a $5,000-$10,000 fine. That’s the chump change she spends on daily pet care for her menagerie of neglected rat dogs and monkeys. Anyone who uses and abuses their considerable inherited privilege in the same manner as they do their body (and we know which part I mean), won’t be moved by two weeks of community service at a spa in Beverly Hills.
Honestly, Paris probably will only serve 20 days of that sentence. Letting this chick sit and do her best impression of thinking about who and what she is, and what she could have possibly done to some innocent person is the best punishment anyone could mete out. Unless there is some punishment that allows every woman in the country to line up and smack her upside her head for showing our daughters that fame is in direct proportion to the amount of vapidity, sluttiness, and utter lack of talent, or the amount of va-jay-jay, you display – or flash as it were. As a matter of fact add Britney, La Lohan and Kim Kardashian to that smackdown and you got a whole nuther kind of feminist backlash brewing.
Laughing at the French
Le Hee and La Haw I mutter at my French friends after the election of Nicholas Sarkozy. Despite all the crap Americans have gotten around the world for our village idiot Commander-in-Chief, why is it that so many other nations are electing their own watered down versions of ‘dubya’ to run their affairs?
Granted, right-wing in French politics probably skews more towards Giuliani Republicanism than Pat Buchanan scariness. However, if Sarkozy’s handling of the 2005 riots in the banlieues in which he compared housing project youths to “scum” to be hosed off the streets like garbage (southern sheriffs of the civil rights movement anyone?), instituted a “zero tolerance” martial law and attempted the mass deportation of demonstrators that were actually French citizens – are any indication of his domestic policies then the already put upon immigrants only have Nixon/Giuliani- esque racially motivated “law and order” crackdowns and the expansion of the prison industrial complex to look forward to.
Sarkozy stands to make France into a overworked imitation of America and Britain’s “liberalized” economy, meaning longer workweeks, shorter vacation time, fewer benefits of social citizenship like national childcare programs, cutbacks on healthcare and welfare and in general strip away the indulgent, lazy chic fabulousness of the French lifestyle. And for what? To have more cubicle mice making more money but without the leisure time to enjoy it? To score a lower quality of life rating? (USA consistantly rates the lowest of 1st world countries in this category). It’s perplexing indeed.
I love France, the movies, the food, the beautiful language, Juliette Binoche and Oliver Martinez…I could go on. But Sarkozy’s Bush-like agenda of being a ‘decider’ in order to dispel the image of the French as overly intellectual cowards (which doesn’t even make sense given their bloody history of revolution and colonization) smacks of crisis of masculinity governing. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that he was running against a liberal woman – her politics and gender encapsulating the somehow feminized hue that careful deliberation and diplomacy have acquired in the “War on Terror” age. We want our leaders to act, corroborating evidence or not, instead of thinking about the consequences. If you doubt this check out Tony Blair’s baffling transformation from thoughtful liberal Brit to Bush’s lapdog. Thank god he’s on his way out.
Even more telling, after learning of his win, Sarkozy took off on a yacht vacation with his family while riots tore the city apart. Do I even need to draw the connection to Bush’s extended and inappropriate wartime sojourns to his ranch in Crawford, Texas?
Still, there is hope. Sarkozy’s choice for PM seems reasonable at first glance and he is AGAINST the Iraq war. And he seems far less tolerant of police brutality than Giuliani – he actually suspended the officers responsible for the beating of a demonstrator – which is more justice than Amadou Diallo got. So we shall see if five years from now French remains the bastion of thoughtful sensuality in matters of food, leisure and art, as well as the bearer of an important intellectual tradition relying on rational (that word always deserves quotation marks) deliberation OR if it’s become a aesthetically beige, police state version of itself.
FINAL GIRL POP CHAT 