Crushable |
- James Franco Reviews Twilight: Breaking Dawn
- Video: What’s Up With This Weird, Star Studded Ad For Megaupload?
- Video: George Takei Ends Star Wars/Star Trek Feud By Suggesting Nerds Turn Against Twillight
- Season Finale Recap: Where Will Boardwalk Empire Go From Here?
- ABC Family’s 12 Dates Of Christmas: The Highlights Reel
- A Follow-Up Dicussion Of Ke$ha’s Cover Of Bob Dylan’s ‘Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right’
- Is Robyn’s Call Your Girlfriend About An Imaginary Affair?
- Check Out The First Trailer For Lena Dunham’s Girls
- The American Reunion Poster Recreates The Original American Pie Poster
- The Best Books For Teen Readers Who Have Moved Past Twilight And The Hunger Games
| James Franco Reviews Twilight: Breaking Dawn Posted: 12 Dec 2011 11:18 AM PST
“Death comes pretty simply in the latest installment of Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" series, too: the conceit allows the filmmakers to get away with murder, literally. Meyers has set her vampire story in adolescence (never mind that Edward is more than a hundred years old and could probably be Bella's great-great-grandfather), and the constraints and abilities of the vampires become a metaphor for the emotional chaos of high school. In the first "Twilight" installment, Edward can't kiss Bella because he is afraid that he will get so excited he'll loose control of himself and suck her blood; for them, sex is tantamount to death. Not that this sense of decorum prevents Edward from killing evil vampires, or nearly murdering a group of young men whose rape-fixated thoughts he can psychically overhear. Edward has murdered, and in Breaking Dawn we learn that he has murdered lots.” Dun dun DUN… Essentially, this reads like a pretty good tenth grade English paper. Discussions of what metaphors mean and semi-colons abound! Or maybe this is super-meta and is supposed to read like a tenth grade English paper, so better to criticize the Twilight world. (via The Paris Review) Post from: Crushable |
| Video: What’s Up With This Weird, Star Studded Ad For Megaupload? Posted: 12 Dec 2011 11:02 AM PST MEGA UPLOAD SONG!!!! BROUGHT TO YOU BY OKFOCUS! from OKFocus on Vimeo. What do Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, P. Diddy, Alicia Keys, will.i.am and Chris Brown have in common? Lots of things, probably (nice cars, good stylists, membership in the 1%), but the weirdest thing has got to be this extended musical commerical for Megaupload. In this bizarre commercial, millions of dollars worth of celebrity endorsements are set to an unnervingly catchy song about the virtues of the ubiquitous file sharing site. There are also some stand-alone video testimonials. “I love Megaupload ’cause it’s fast and safe and amazing,” says Kim Kardashian. Do we really trust the person who couldn’t keep her own sex tape from leaking to tell us how to safeguard our sensitive electronic materials? How did Megaupload afford all these celebrities? Why is that song so catchy? With all the R&B and hiphop artists represented, are they intentionally marketing the site to an “urban” user base? Does anyone think it’s ironic that all these famous recording artists are shilling for a site that millions of people have no doubt used to steal their music? I really hope I get to the bottom of this.
(Via Vulture) Related posts: Post from: Crushable |
| Video: George Takei Ends Star Wars/Star Trek Feud By Suggesting Nerds Turn Against Twillight Posted: 12 Dec 2011 10:49 AM PST
Last week, William Shatner and Carrie Fisher traded a series of videos in which they mocked each other’s series: Shatner called Star Wars derivative of Star Trek, while Carrie mocked Shatner’s weight. They might have been only playfully joking, but it just made everyone on the Internet incredibly uncomfortable. Film critic Roger Ebert even weighed in on the developing feud, writing, One can only hope George Takei can be brought in to broker a peace settlement before blood is shed. Well, here’s Takei to the rescue! The man who once played Lt. Sulu on Star Trek posted the video below where he tells Carrie and William to simmer down and consider that both of their series are masterpieces, especially compared to the current cash cow Twilight. Takei, a fan favorite, is quickly becoming known for these quick, witty videos in which he represents for both the geek world and the LGBT community. He manages to join in on serious issues while still retaining some wryness so that he won’t alienate viewers. “Gone is any sense of heroism, camaraderie, or epic battle,” he says. “In its place we have vampires that sparkle and mope and go to high school… In Twilight, the only message that rings out loud and clear is, ‘Does my boyfriend like me?’” (Great Kristen Stewart impression, btw.) The best part that shows that the two fandoms can coexist is when Takei ends the video with “And may the Force be with you.” Which only serves to show that Star Wars is better, obviously. Related posts: Post from: Crushable |
| Season Finale Recap: Where Will Boardwalk Empire Go From Here? Posted: 12 Dec 2011 11:13 AM PST
Holy shit, you guys. Last night’s season finale of Boardwalk Empire was such a game-changer, I don’t even know where to begin. But did it change the game for the better? (SPOILERS AHEAD, OBVIOUSLY.) Last night saw the long foreshadowed death of Jimmy Darmody, who for many was the heart and soul of the show. Before he went, we saw Jimmy humanized in ways that earned him true tragic hero status, perhaps a little too literally. Aristotle defined a tragic hero as someone “who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty.” Jimmy’s “frailty” might have been his devotion to his monstrous mother, whose love for him often looked a lot like abuse. But unlike Jocasta in Oedipus Rex, she was not a passive or unwitting pawn; deformed by her own traumas, Gillian seems to be starring in a tragedy of her own (Medea, perhaps?). When we finally found out Why Jimmy Dropped Out Of Princeton To Fight In A War, it turned out to be a reason so horrible that we had to cut him some slack. But just when we’d gotten that payoff episode about why Jimmy turned out the way he did, it was curtains for him. This was tragic but understandable in the framework of this kind of story; from Jimmy’s point of view, he had exhausted every possible source of redemption, and his last glimmer of hope died with Angela (who let’s be honest, wasn’t doing him many favors before). Still, I thought his love for his son might save him; if Jimmy really gave a shit, he wouldn’t have left Tommy with Medea to potentially repeat the same cycle of abuse that killed him. Hence, his death was doubly tragic in that he gave up on not one life, but two. Cursed is the house of Darmody. And Jimmy wasn’t the only great character we lost. Once a beacon of savvy, morally conflicted womanhood, Margaret Another potentially great character lost is Angela Darmody, who, in a world brimming with historically accurate misogyny, showed glimmers of a better way in her nascent lesbian bohemianism. Oh well! Lawyer Esther Randolph is another breath of fresh air in this arena, which makes me seriously fear for her life. The only positive development for women so far has been the writing off of Paz de la Huerta, whose whiny woman-child courtesan Lucy Danziger (and I’m not convinced she was acting) was enough to undo the progress made by a hundred Esther Randolphs. And then, of course, there’s Nucky. For a while now, we’ve sympathized with him because he seemed so affable and well mannered compared to the other gangsters on the show, but as TV and movies constantly remind us, those are the ones you really need to watch out for. As Jimmy told him in season one in a line lifted straight from The Wire, “you can’t be half a gangster,” and he’s spent both seasons gradually fulfilling that maxim. Like Walter White in Breaking Bad, he’s become a monster in ways we can no longer ignore, which begs the question: where do we go from here? Who is there left to root for on this show? Personally, I would not be opposed to a third season which casts plucky lady lawyer Esther Randolph as the protagonist as she pursues an ever more devious Nucky Thompson, fighting sexism as she goes.
Related posts: Post from: Crushable |
| ABC Family’s 12 Dates Of Christmas: The Highlights Reel Posted: 12 Dec 2011 10:03 AM PST
You guys, I actually really liked the new ABC Family holiday rom-com 12 Dates of Christmas despite a lackluster premise and recognizable but not powerful stars Amy Smart and Mark-Paul Gosselaar (a.k.a. Zack Morris!). Amy was really delightful as marriage-obsessed career gal Kate, who has to relive the events of Christmas Eve — her ex proposing to his girlfriend, an awkward blind date with Mark-Paul’s character Miles, and her fears of being alone — over and over again until she can do it right. Plus, the moral wasn’t as sappy as I expected. So let’s go through the Highlights Reel and pick out this Groundhog Day ripoff’s best moments! Related posts: Post from: Crushable |
| A Follow-Up Dicussion Of Ke$ha’s Cover Of Bob Dylan’s ‘Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right’ Posted: 12 Dec 2011 10:22 AM PST Two months ago, I got wind (it blew through the office, leaving answers in its wake) that Ke$ha would be covering “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” on a Bob Dylan tribute record. And so, as we often do in such situations, Kasey Anderson and I held a Gchat symposium on the matter. The track has finally been released, and it’s a somber, teary little thing that simply needs more discussion. So Kasey and I have come back for round two. Kasey: You should know that it took me seven tries to log in to Gmail for this chat because I misspelled my own email address SEVEN TIMES. Liana: Oh, but “kaseyishandsome@gmail.com” is NOT that hard to spell! Liana: Okay, Ke$ha time. Kasey: I see someone has heard Scarlett Johansson’s Waits record. Liana: I see someone has also been using the “Leslie Feist” filter in Pro Tools. Kasey: There’s a Leslie Feist ProTools filter?! This whole time? Liana: Yes, and one on Instagram too! Kasey: There’s cello! Cello is what artists use when they want you to know they are SERIOUS about the material. Liana: Guess who did not use cello on this track? Bob Dylan! Kasey: Cello and E-Bow! Oh man. She means business. Liana: What is an E-Bow? That is a 90s rapper to me. Kasey: E-Bow is a neat little gadget you hold over the strings of an electric guitar to make it sound like you’re using a bow to play the instrument. It is, if you will, an electric bow. Kasey: Is she crying? She is crying. Liana: She is crying. And snotting. E-snotting. Kasey: Oh, also she changed the lyrics of a Bob Dylan song. She changed THE LAST LINE of a BOB DYLAN SONG. me: She did! She changed “You could have done better but I don't mind/You just kinda wasted my precious time” to “You could have done better but I don't mind/You just kinda wasted my precious LIFE.” Kasey: That’s cool. I was thinking of remaking 8 1/2 but tinkering with the ending a bit. Kasey: Wait, Rob Marshall already did that. Kasey: That changes the point of that whole last verse. To change “time” to “life” takes so much of the power away from the narrator. Kasey: It changes the subject from a waste of time to somebody capable of impacting a person’s entire life. Liana: Which effectively ruins everything that’s great about the song. Kasey: Everything about Dylan’s original, from the lyrics to the delivery, suggests that he is being flippant, not mournful or maudlin. Kasey: This is a problem that seems to crop up when people cover Dylan. They prevailing assumption seems to be that, because he is so Important, every single one of his songs has this immense gravity to it, and that’s not the case. Kasey: So many of his songs are wry. Liana: Most of them, even. Kasey: I will say, though, that this is not a bad version, per se. She sings well and the arrangement is far more interesting than I expected it to be. Liana: I agree. She has a nice little voice. Kasey: I hate the Grateful Dead more than I hate any other band that is not the Doors but, for some reason, Garcia seemed to really understand that and his Dylan covers always suggested that he was singing through a grin. Liana: You will never know though, because: beard. Liana: I wonder why, however, that this song that Ke$ha thinks is about the deepest of sadnesses means so much to her. Because that emotion completely misses the mark. Kasey: To play devil’s advocate: maybe she got emotional because the song evokes, for her, a certain period or place that makes her emotional? I know, for instance, the Peter Case’s song “Walking Home Late” is about New Orleans in the summer, but I always listen to it in the winter and focus on the one couplet (“things didn’t work out west in Hollywood / you never got lucky, did you ever get good?”) that is neither carefree nor summery. Liana: Here’s a question: Do you get to be Ke$ha — glittery, trash-talking, postmodern feather explosion Ke$ha — and make godtons of money being that, and then suddenly also get to ask people to forget all that and take this song seriously? Liana: Ostensibly we’re interested in this song specifically because she’s Ke$ha. I’d venture to say there are 50 pretty, evocative covers of this song by unknown women on YouTube that are just as affecting, or “affecting.” Kasey: That’s a good question. You make an excellent point but, at the same time, maybe she doesn’t want to keep making those same kinds of records? Or maybe she thought it would be disrespectful in some way to Dylan to “Ke$ha up” the song. Liana: B0b Dyl@n Kasey: RT @Ke$ha “precious LIFE!” RT @BobDylan “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright” Liana: “It ain’t no use in turning on your light, slut” Kasey: I wanted to find an example of a great cover of this song and so I went to YouTube and I want you to guess who does the most faithful rendition I’ve ever heard. Kasey: The tempo, the fingerpicking, maybe not the delivery entirely but it’s close. All spot on. I want you to guess the artist, right now. Liana: Kasey Anderson. Kasey: JOHN MAYER. Related posts: Post from: Crushable |
| Is Robyn’s Call Your Girlfriend About An Imaginary Affair? Posted: 12 Dec 2011 09:50 AM PST
And I finally realized. “Call Your Girlfriend” makes much more sense as a theoretical conversation Robyn’s having with herself. According to the lyrics, Robyn’s embroiled in the kind of affair that’s not going to go away. It’s time for her man to tell his girlfriend that this thing is for real. Obviously, it’s a great song, and her SNL performance is definitely worth a viewing (or five) if you missed it. But the more I listened to the lyrics, the more I found myself wondering how an affair would get to this point. Robyn is awfully nice to think of the feelings of her new man's current girlfriend. I don't know many home wreckers who are too worried about the relationship they're ending. Some of the lyrics talk about their amazing connection, but the chorus is all about breaking the news to this guy's current chic:
But if the affair is really this amazing, why would the man need this advice? Wouldn’t he just end his current relationship and run off with Robyn into the sunset? I mean, I would. Robyn, however, is giving this guy the perfect play by play of how this convo should go down:
Because the guy didn't mean to cheat. He just met Robyn. Except it's kind of hard to get your head around a situation where this conversation makes sense. Often, cheaters are just as happy going along with two options rather than ending their relationship. Sometimes cheaters do end their relationship and make an affair last. But if Robyn is exactly this awesome, why does she have to tell the guy it's time he broke up with his girlfriend? Shouldn't he have realized that by now? I think it makes much more sense that this isn't about a real relationship at all. It's about Robyn having a crush on a guy, and realizing how crap his current relationship is. If they were to get involved, this is the conversation she would have with him. Because she's not a home wrecker, but the guy would be better off with her. And he should clearly break up with his girlfriend to get things started. I think the video proves my point. In it, Robyn is alone. She's in a warehouse, displaying some of her amazing dance moves. If the guy she was interested in saw her doing this, he would want her and go after her. But if this song was about a real relationship, wouldn't there be a hot dude in the video? There isn't, because this song is all about Robyn. And it has the same kind of underlying melancholy that Dancing My Own presents right on the surface. She’s pleading with this man. But I don’t think it’s a conversation happening out loud. Because really, it makes more sense for a woman pondering an affair to think about the other woman's feelings. Who could continue to feel that sentiment when they're in the midst of said affair? Even if the woman is Robyn. Actually, especially if the woman is Robyn. Dude ought to know this lesson without her having to spell it out for him. Related posts: Post from: Crushable |
| Check Out The First Trailer For Lena Dunham’s Girls Posted: 12 Dec 2011 10:17 AM PST Girls is an upcoming HBO series created by and starring rising superstar Lena Dunham. Hot on the heels of her breakout feature Tiny Furniture, this series is executive produced by one Judd Apatow. Can’t really complain about that. The show will focus on a trio of girls in their 20s trying to make it in New York. It costars Allison Williams (Brian‘s daughter!) and Jemima Kirke. I’ve got to say that, while Tiny Furniture wasn’t really my thing, this trailer’s got me pretty excited about the show. And Lena Dunham is undoubtedly some kind of superstar. Post from: Crushable |
| The American Reunion Poster Recreates The Original American Pie Poster Posted: 12 Dec 2011 08:34 AM PST
The only possible thing that Universal could’ve done for the American Reunion poster was to bring back our fond memories of the twisted original movie, 1999′s American Pie. There are some key differences, like the actors’ comparative lack of hair and added wrinkles, though the latter has mostly been erased thanks to Photoshop. And since the movie is about leading adults lives, of course Michelle’s (Alyson Hannigan) famous flute has been replaced with a baby bottle. Also, Jason Biggs‘ expression has remained mostly unchanged for the last twelve years. I don’t know what it says that Tara Reid in 2011 looks so much more familiar than (we have to assume) pre-plastic surgery Tara Reid from 1999. The one major downside for me is how much they cut-and-pasted everyone; you have to wonder if they couldn’t get the gang together for a quick photo shoot. (Especially since that’s how we first heard about the movie, through a shoot and video for EW.) Regardless, the movie looks pretty funny and like it’ll be in the gross-out style of the original. [via] Related posts: Post from: Crushable |
| The Best Books For Teen Readers Who Have Moved Past Twilight And The Hunger Games Posted: 12 Dec 2011 08:18 AM PST Post from: Crushable |
Did you think you were just about set with Breaking Dawn reviews? Well, you aren’t, because you haven’t yet read James Franco‘s take on things, published in the Paris Review. Without further ado, 
Long before Twihards battled Hunger Games fans for dominance, the original geek fan face-off was Star Wars versus Star Trek. It’s not surprising: Both have introduced famous depictions of sci-fi, with heroes we love and canon we follow. So it’s understandable for the fans to nitpick over which is better. But when the actors involved join the debate and call each other out, then it just gets ugly.
On Saturday night, Swedish pop star Robyn gave a characteristically amazing performance as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. For her performance of "Call Your Girlfriend," she used basically the same choreography as in her video directed by Max Vitali, but the sheer awesomeness of her moves in a live setting made me watch the video over and over again. And because of this, I spent some time thinking about the lyrics of the song and the thing I could never get around: Why does Robyn need to have this conversation with the guy she’s seeing?
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