Your Custom Text Here
We discussed Arrested Development, Family Guy, Myspace, Arabs.
So happy that she didn’t disappear after AD. I was genuinely worried for awhile! Also: makin’ moves and makin’ movies and not a size 0. Totally awesome. (Things I want to not see again for awhile - size 0 girls with reptilian spines in love scenes. It’s freaky.)
First Look: James Franco In Howl
I think James Franco was invented to keep me hungry.
(thanks Carrie for sending over the link.)
He’s mocking us all, Molls. He’s mocking us all.
THIS MONTH IN VOGUE
Since I’ve had a hellacious commute for a little bit, I’ve allowed myself the luxury of picking up magazines when taking the LIRR. A good test for the healthiness (and quality) of magazines at this point is its simplest: will it entertain me for the duration of my 45 minute ride?
The answer, often, is a resounding NO. Even the venerable, full-of-words O Magazine (my favorite by a long shot) is only making it, just barely, to the end. But the January 2010 issue of Vogue? Took me a grand total of 15 minutes at most. It was like a pamphlet and felt like it was as quick of a read as Entertainment Weekly. And Entertainment Weekly takes me 5 minutes.
So, let’s start: Cover article on Rachel McAdams. It is one full page and one half-page of words. I would guess it’s 1500 words at most - mostly filled with paragraphs trying to incorporate Keel’s Simple Diary. Since Sally Singer wrote it and not Plum Sykes, it’s relatively charming and you get an idea that McAdams is normal and sweet. It’s low of quotes or anything implying that they hung out for more than an hour. McAdams has always stayed relatively mysterious, and frankly, I want to know more! Not to hear quotes from Diane Keaton with awkward grammar.
There’s no entertainment section in this month’s Vogue. I would guess that’s due to the what’s coming in 2010 vs. putting it to bed in October issues, but still. Nothing? Books are released! People can get excited about movie awards! David Mamet on Broadway! There’s so much that could be there!
There’s a fashion spread featuring Carey Mulligan that’s horrible. The hairdresser hoboed out her short red pixie into ratty clumps. I think they were going for something that was adorable and Chaplin/hobo esque. It’s sheerly hobo, though. The column, that’s only about 600 words of look out for this girl, is boring and rote.
There’s a big fashion spread with Sasha Pivavoria and “buzz bands,” who are mostly “indie” genre bands on major labels that have been trying to break for the past two years. The Horrors? Really? They don’t have the songs, their “goth” hair is stupid, and even Ultragrrrl couldn’t make them work. I don’t find MGMT particularly interesting (when’s their Moby moment going to pass? I feel like “time to pretend” was as ubiquitous as that Moby album when it came to product placement…), dude from Beirut, whatevs., and stop trying to make “Chester French” work. They’re not going to work. A high percentage of these bands are just major label signings in the wake of Of Montreal breaking through, as far as I can tell.
Other material: a long article on a fancy spa in some abandoned town.
Someone trying to make Lara Stone surviving being a size 4 in the fashion world relevant. Good for her…but that still doesn’t really make her “curvy,” guys. It’s insulting to your audience who are not models.
And then the best dressed of the decade. And it was boring. You are done!
(This is fuel for the fire that I am making the right choice by, essentially, saying goodbye to my magazine dreams.)
The Q&A I did with Nicholas Hoult for work. Also: he’s pretty - and only twenty, he’s going to be ridiculous at about 26, is my call - and I totally developed a mini crush while talking with him.
Hi Joachim Trier! I would like to write you a very sincere letter soon.
You’re the best,
Elisabeth
Building on the D'Angelo blog: Nicole Holofcener, I know you have Please Give premiering at Sundance. Awesome. But how have you made a mere four features in the past fifteen years? Can’t you make something as wonderful as Walking and Talking on the cheap every year? (It is, I would argue, one of the truest films about female friendship EVER, and a creepy prophet in my life. But that’s another story.)
Release date: January 25, 2000. So: Voodoo. Definitely one of the best albums of the decade, easily. One of the best babymaking albums of all time, and I used to wake up to it spinning in my CD player alarm clock and the sounds of voodoo that started out the album would freak me out on the regular.
I saw D'Angelo play Boston during the Voodoo tour and it was the best show I’d ever seen, hands down. Upwards of twenty people on stage, vamping and freaking and making each song stretch out so it was nearly unbearable. Everyone was standing on their chairs (it was an outdoor venue), screaming the whole time. D'Angelo ran through the crowd at one point in his wifebeater - when he came back onstage, it was a string around his neck. Female hysteria was the order of the day.
The last song was “Untitled (How does it feel)” and one by one the band left the stage, so it was just D and his keyboard, playing the riff:
I love you Boston.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Do you love me?
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!
Fainting, screaming, freaking out. The best show ever. This video sort of almost gets the vibe, but it’s really impossible to capture.
Spin tried to do a “what happened to D?” piece. It was okay - but if you really want to get an idea, I’d recommend looking at Toure’s book of journalism/essays Never Drank the Kool-Aid. He had one Rolling Stone piece that came out around the time I saw D'Angelo, where D and ?uestlove were talking about their James Brown inspirations for tour and how they’re really creating a new black soul revolution; and then, later in the book Toure does an Q&A with ?uestlove where he talks about how much pressure D'Angelo was under regarding his buff body, how women just tore at him, how it drove him a little crazy. Taken together, they’re a fascinating portrait. (I’ve always thought Toure was a hell of a writer. It makes me sadder to see him on Fuse and not writing.)
It’s interesting though: Lauryn Hill, Maxwell, D'Angelo. It felt like a thing, right? And it wasn’t sustainable. I feel like that happens a lot in pop culture; it’s easy to relate it to movies, where a Wes Anderson can come out and become a “Wes Anderson,” (or any of the class of 99 - Spike Jonze, David O. Russell - and how is the latter signing onto movies?) whereas the road is littered with fantastic female directors who had one movie…and that’s kind of it. There’s a link in there, I suppose. White dudes falling into the status quo have the luxury of sustaining their careers…
WHY DID YOU CANCEL THIS ABC? I loved the journalist and the red headed mom and Sara Rue being on this show too. NOT FAIR.
I think the format works so well because:
*this is how people talk about movies! You see a movie and you’re like “omg, let’s talk about it”. Also, movies are such a hypnotic event that you want to tap the person next to you and be like “AHHH DID YOU SEE THAT TOO!?”
*the medium itself is -either rightly or wrong- informal so a ‘chat’ about it feels more approiate than a thesis driven essay. though, those are wonderful too. but often it, especially if you haven’t seen the movie, you feel like the author has grossly unfair disadvantage. Whereas say with Opera, I truly know dick about it so I feel more comfortable referring to an ‘expert critic.’ Whereas movies are for every one! And so you’re like, HAY QUIET DOWN, DENBY. You know?
*you consume movies in groups!
*ART! IT’S SO SUBJECTIVE YOU GUYS!
*it lubricates the brain twists
What I miss about seeing movies with an audience/my friends right now is that I don’t get to chat with them about what I think and what they think. My filmgoing as of late feels like a conversation with myself. And not a very good one! (And, let’s be frank: when you’re at a screening with a variety of people who need to see the film for some reason, if there was a zombie apocalypse Lost-sitch and you had to deal with these people and figure out which one you can make survivor babies with, you’d cry.)
Can I heart this a million?
Is it worse to be unemployed, underemployed, or over-employed?
Is it worse to be unemployed, to lose one’s sense of self-worth, to constantly live in fear, to have no money and rely on the kindness of others, to amass endless amounts of free time that no longer are pleasurable as the weather gets colder, to gain weight by consuming food to fill the void that work and its sense of purpose once provided you?
Is it worse to be underemployed, to work one job that barely covers a week of living expenses, to work many jobs but still lack health insurance and a somewhat balanced schedule, to jump from menial occupation to menial occupation in the hope that a temp-to-hire position will actually pan out even though you know better?
Is it worse to be over-employed, to have a full-time job and still struggle, to collect part-time gigs with stipends that may or may not arrive sometime soon in the mail to make up for the expenses that inevitably arise and are out of your control, to work so much that you take pills on a daily basis to fall asleep, to take up vices to fill that void that arose when you realized your life is your work?
Way too much to answer in a short, pithy reply, but I think this all hinges on whether you can, willingly, become one of those people who says “That’s why they call it work,” meant in a gallows-humor funny way but mostly tolling the bell, when one complains about their job.
Frankly, I don’t want to have that attitude towards something I do all day long. I want to be doing a job that I find fulfilling in body/mind/spirit. I think that’s a really important thing! I think that my parents - despite what struggles they’ve had and sacrifices they’ve made - have been in that kind of situation, they’ve gotten some succor from their work, and they’re a lot happier than other parents I know.
I haven’t detailed it yet but I’m in the middle of a job transition; even though what I’m doing is really lovely, ostensibly cool, and, even worse, kind of the culmination in what I’ve wanted to do my whole life. (That said, having a goal to write for a magazine that you would WAIT FOR DELIVERY FOR ON FRIDAYS in 1999 and is a mere pamphlet for the online presence in 2009, with features shrinking from 1500 words to 800…well, it changes things.)
Even though society tells you to go for the money and the things, you don’t need a ton of things to survive, really. It’s important to do what you can so you’re aware and enjoying what you’re doing in life. I want to think and experience things and I don’t want to be an automaton. I don’t want to be a computer jockey, either, I’m learning. I also want to NOT live with roommates. So, sacrifices.
I’ve spent a year being pretty miserable on a day-to-day basis; I hate how much I use and depend on my computer for entertainment at the moment; I am in no way at my fighting weight and kind of deploring that all the time. But I just made a choice that took a lot of weight off my back, that filled me with a lightness even though it’s scary.
That said, to straight up answer your questions. 1) isn’t unemployed, it’s depressed and unemployed and getting your self worth from that. Which isn’t necessarily the best route. 2) Underempoyed like that is tolerable if you’re on a good path, I think. Depends on the path and how much you need health care. 3) Again, if it’s going to pay off in something better, do it, but if you feel like a robot, inhuman, there’s no problem in saying goodbye to it. I may have kind of done something similar along those lines regarding a number 3 sitch, and part of it was due to the fact that there wasn’t quite a path that I could follow in this position. Nothing to quite aspire to, save my old magazine writer dreams and they’re really quieting down now.
Health care in America is so infuriating and I really envy the freedom my comrades in Canada and England have when it comes to the pursuit of the artistic lifestyle. Here we’re stuck with gambling if we really, really want it.
Since it’s the pop culture time of year for lists, and this year being a special year of best-ofs and the like, I’ve been thinking about things I’ve loved. For me, Reprise is simply one of the best films about YOUTH and BEING AN ARTIST I’ve ever seen. I adored every minute of it. (It also renders any American films about YOUTH, in particular, “mumblecore,” for the vacuous shallow parade of pimpled humanity that they are. To namedrop shamelessly, it’s like Ellen Burstyn was saying today: “There’s no theme in films today. It’s all surface.” SO TRUE, goddess!)
Reprise has a theme. It’s exploring what it means to live life, what it means to be an artist, how to deal with creativity and madness. The second trip to Paris is one of the saddest things on film.
Also? Tons of cute boys AND a party scene featuring Le Tigre’s “Deceptacon” as the floor stomping jam that it is that is both utterly right (and dates me a little for loving it so).
One of the best films of the decade, easily.
Other films that I have loved, off the top of my head:
State and Main: Makes me laugh so much. SUCH a good film about New England and the movies. I love Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s nebbishy playwright character and his SPOT-ON headshot on the back of his published book, ANGUISH. So quotable: “It’s about purity,” “I don’t know what her problem is. She takes off her shirt to do a voice-over. What’s her problem? The country could draw her tits from memory.” (America, this quote speaks to you. You know it.)
Children of Men
In the Loop
In the Mood for Love
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I’m kind of cool with that as a list, actually. For the 2000s. I think people will be talking about Eternal Sunshine for a long, long time. I almost want to compare it to The Graduate - except it didn’t hit our generation’s equivalent of baby boomer ennui, more like our generation’s general sense of existential disassociation with love and human connection.
HORRIFIC HAMM HAIR!
I am firmly in the camp that Jon Hamm as Don Draper = YES! Jon Hamm without the Brycleem = handsome but wouldn’t necessarily. This is proof.
(What About Brian, 1.5 “What About Secret Lovers?” screencap)
The most true thing that I’ve ever written on Facebook:
You know, I know a lot of people - maybe even myself - who would love to get an MFA at Columbia AND NYU and various other sundry schools, be on soap operas, get films in Sundance and Tribeca, and to get mad $ for my book of short stories.
Which is to say, James Franco, stop living EVERYONES DREAM.
(On top of it all, my sometime film career/perfume modeling is paying for this and I don’t need to teach undergrads. Thank god I look like a Michelangelo sculpture.)
(Also part 2: Is Ethan Hawke jealous, you think? I saw him walking down the street the other day, braying to a gal, dressed like a dirtbag, and my circa reality bites megacrush re-wilted again.)
De Niro’s love is a formidable thing.
His wife is in Precious, btw! She’s the social worker that comes in when Mo'Nique’s pretending everything’s fine with baby Mongo on her lap and that crazy jumpsuit. Also: his wife is really gorgeous. And: Deniro circa Falling in Love, so hot. I really hope the Variety reports on him doing Another Bullshit Night in Suck City the movie come true and become a good movie?
(via cosmic-dust)
these guys look like they’d make good friends.
Gorgeous photo. Love the light.