I sometimes forget that the characters in my “stories” have had previous acting jobs. Which means that this adorable Brit:
Went on to become this Georgian corpse-killer:
While we can all agree that Andrew Lincoln is totally dreamy (even if he’s grown a bit skeletal himself since he started his Walking Dead stint) I think after tonight’s episode I’m firmly on Shane’s side – if you’re not busting zombie heads, you clearly have no interest in survival anymore.
American Horror Story premieres tonight at 10pm on FX, and let’s all pray to the gods of the F train that I make it home in time…
You may have noticed I have a thing for horror (see: The Woman In Black, The Prowler, a billion other things on this blog) and this show will try to make a case for serialized horror, versus something feature length. There aren’t many predecessors in this genre – the only one that comes to mind is Dark Shadows, a Gothic soap opera that aired on NBC in the late 60s/early 70s (that series is now being recast as a film, directed by Tim Burton, starring (surprise) Johnny Depp).
AHS follows an unfaithful psychiatrist and his wife and daughter as they move cross-country, mostly to try to repair the family after Daddy (Dylan McDermott) is caught cheating. The daughter is a especially awesome, as she sort of resembles Lydia from Beetle Juice. She smokes at school, and spits in the face of the girl who tries to stop her, and when the realtor mentions there was a murder suicide in their prospective home, she immediately replies “We’ll take it.” She’s like the ginger from Suburgatory with more Gothic bite. Here’s the 30-second spot they’ve been airing on TV.
The family ends up in a beautiful, sprawling house (yes, psychiatry pays well) with a bloody past. FX recently released the first five minutes of tonight’s episode. It doesn’t tell you much about the current family, but you get a sense of the creepiness that will be going on here. Hank Steuver of the Washington Post had this to say: “American Horror Story is one scream after another. So much creepy stuff happens in the first episode that viewers will be left asking: Can I possibly watch an entire series of this? Followed, of course, by a more obvious question: Why do they stay in that house?”
People in the horror genre are dumb! That’s why they stay put. Otherwise we’d have nothing to watch.
OK, enjoy the first five minutes.
To be honest, the scariest part for me was watching those boys vandalize irreplaceable light fixtures and stained glass. They had it coming.
Just to make sure you’re not missing the gay quotient here: The show is created and produced by the makers of Glee, and Zachary Quinto (is he or isn’t he?) has a recurring role as one half of the gay couple who formerly occupied the house – you know, the ones involved in the murder-suicide…
The answer: he is.
Looking for someone relatable to endorse your product? How about a blogger?
Everyone’s a blogger, so it seems like a valid way to connect with a big audience. I guess I feel a little jaded when advertisers finally catch on to the trends of 2008 and harness it for their own nefarious ends, but I can’t hate on blogger commercials TOO much. I mean, bloggers are pretty nice people, right? Unless they’re Les Carles or running the Westboro Baptist Church homepage.
Ashley runs Not Without Salt, a beautifully photographed culinary blog. Not long ago she was offered free samples of Finish dish detergent to try out. The samples worked really well! So she agreed to a commercial.
And she even wrote a very forthright blog post about the whole filming experience. It was sort of touching (her brother worked the second camera on the shoot).
Next up is Lindsey Calla, who writes Saucy Glossie, a fashion blog that’s been featured all over the place: Marie Claire, Elle, Seventeen, etc. She’s been working the ho stroll a bit harder than Ashley. Some sort of serious deal has been inked, as she hosts “Twitter parties” about TJ Maxx, does a few webisodes about “taking your look from the office to the club,” and offers tips on fashion trends via smart phone.
I’m wondering if every other commercial is going to have a blogger soon, like the capitalist realization of Diablo Cody’s “Honest to blog.” If so, I’ll probably like it. I’m the last person to call anyone a sell-out. So if Marlboros, Levis or TopMan need someone to receive free samples… you know where to comment.
First, Suburgatory wasn’t nearly as dismal as I thought. Second, it’s channeling a lot of that Mean Girls fish-out-of-water vibe with great success.
Is it downright derivative? Yes. When Tessa Altman’s dad (who is Elton from Clueless!) finds her condoms in her drawer, he moves them out of NYC and to a place that looks like Greenwich. She’s dropped off in suburbia and muses: ”Kind of ironic that a box full of rubbers would bring me here, where everything is… plastic.”
The suburban girls wear only pink, slather on lip gloss and live for the mall – all things you’ll recognize from the plastics in Mean Girls. When Tessa’s dad starts a new remodelling project, he meets Dallas (she’s not like a regular mom – she’s a ‘cool mom‘) who immediately tries to take the motherless Tessa under her wing. Tessa, who prefers ‘lesbian’ boots (according to her new classmates) doesn’t go for this plan.
(I mean, does this not look familiar? A ginger girl hiding in a bathroom stall at her new school. Who happens to also like animals? They could have been a tad more subtle.)
But listen, here’s what could redeem Suburgatory. First off, Mean Girls was awesome, and if this show can make that theme work over a season, I’ll be watching.
Second, both Mean Girls and Suburgatory are at their best when they break a bit from reality. In the former I’m thinking of all those fun jungle scenes. In the latter there are several moments of totally surreal, menacing homogeneity that actually make suburbia seem like hell. Tessa’s father walks into the country club, and six augmented housewives tanning in lounge chairs slowly put down their cell phones, sit up and pivot their heads to follow his stride in perfect synchronization. Later, Tessa’s walking down the street and thinking “New York was scary, but here. Here the people look like they could eat their young.” At that moment she passes a Real Housewife who’s just thrown a pair of baby booties on her grill.
I like a little weirdness like that. I also like Ana Gasteyer, and I can’t wait till she makes it across the street and becomes a real character.
See for yourself.
First off, this is an excellent song. I mean, it’s not exactly Eartha Kitt, but it gets across the slow, sultry vibe where the high hat sounds like it’s steam rising off the sidewalk. Did you guys see Pan Am yesterday? I had to, since Mad Men is so far away and I can’t survive indefinitely without weekly doses of Mid-century Modern.
It’s not fair to compare an ABC show with AMC’s output, so I won’t. Let’s just say it’ll do the trick for now. The score was a little hokey (not the pop songs, I mean the reheated Titanic strings that started soaring during take-off) and I don’t see why they felt the need to include espionage in the first episode. They spend a lot of time talking about how airline attendants are a “new breed of woman,” and they do all sort of act like sex-savvy polyglot models, so maybe that’s an accurate statement? I also can’t wait to learn more about Christina Ricci’s character, as she’s sort of a Boho Joan Holloway type who name drops Marx and Hegel.
This scene was really nice: if you’re going to be a runaway bride, may as well travel the world.
Also I’m speculating that the pilot and co-pilot are gay for each other. You can’t tell from this picture, but all that lingering eye contact and flirty banter speaks volumes.
If you’re interested, ABC (who are packaging the show pretty nicely) have made a Pandora station, which they’re calling the “tunes of the Jet Age.” Has a nice ring to it, right?
A parting question: Would this show have been made if a.) Mad Men weren’t postponed and b.) the TSA hadn’t made air travel completely hellish and sterile?
I was enjoying my normal Saturday routine: G&Ts on the lounge chair in the back yard with the latest men’s mags, when I came across this Banana Republic ad in GQ.
OK, fine, Mad Men. I dig that just as much as any of human being out there. I love the show, I LOVE the costumes – I even went so far as to download the characters’ individual playlists on iTunes – that’s how taken I am with a mid-century modern lifestyle (no, I didn’t not craft a personal Mad Men avatar, but I was tempted).
The thing is, Banana Republic has been going Mad for three years now. They started out with a ‘casting call’ promo in 2009. Then they rolled out their capsule collection in 2010 (I remember this in particular because I urged a straight friend to glean his whole wardrobe here). And now, in 2011, they’re putting out a third collection, even though the next season of Mad Men likely won’t materialize until 2012.
This show caused a bit of a style revolution, and I’m totally in favor of gents getting more dapper. The looks – a few of which I’m posting below – are still great, if extremely grey.
No arguments here, even if they are eschewing some of the preppier, Pete Campbell flourishes for The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit-style tailoring and homogeneity.
I just think it’s a bit lame that BR hasn’t come up with anything more exciting for the past three years than Mad Men. If I think your novelty capsule collection is starting to look familiar, maybe it’s time to change it up.
And for those of you trying to cultivate a little MM panache – try a vintage shop. It’ll be a whole lot more fun.
Seeing as most people come to this blog looking for either pictures of Bear Grylls or Jake Gyllenhaal shirtless (and who can blame them) you should all enjoy this video, from the July 11 season premiere of Man vs Wild. Jake and Bear head to Iceland, build igloos, make Brokeback jokes, and most importantly, lose their shirts and link arms to cross a river that – really, doesn’t look all that deep to me. But if I were in the wilderness with Jake, I’d keep him close at my side too.
When I come home and have the house to myself, there’s only one thing to do. Well, there’s lots to do, but after a brief Risky Business dance break and a dalliance with my roommates’ ice cream, the only thing to do is put on a horror movie.
Tonight’s selection came from FearNet, the horror movie cable channel, so I wasn’t expecting much. Most of their OnDemand offerings are sequels or straight-to-DVD releases starring P!nk or Paris Hilton. I picked The Haunting of Julia because a.) Mia Farrow and b.) it was released in 1977, so if nothing else, I could count on some good clothes. Man did I underestimate this one.
The movie opens with Mia Farrow, her husband and her daughter at breakfast. They look happy and rich (or ‘poncey,’ as they say in the London, where the film is set). Next thing you know, Mia’s daughter is on the floor choking on a piece of apple. No one knows what to do – the mother stuffs her fingers in her throat to get the offending apple piece, the father turns her upside down and shakes her (has no one heard of the Heimlich?) and then calls an ambulance.
Mia gets so hysterical she ends up grabbing a steak knife and attempting a shaky tracheotomy, so… Yeah, the ambulance doesn’t make it in time. But what a way to set up the rest of the film. Here’s the first fifteen minutes, if you want to be sucked in.
Since I already spoiled the opening, I won’t give away too much of the rest of the film, but when traumatized Mia moves into a big mansion by her lonesome, things don’t go well. She’s being (very subtly) haunted by the ghost of a little girl, but it’s not her own. There are time-tested horror tropes here – a creepy old medium holds a seance in the house, Mia has to go to the British Library to get to the bottom of things, a creepy clown doll makes frequent appearances, etc.
Better, though, is the way the movie handles psychological issues like anxiety about motherhood, mental illness, isolation, infantilization and infanticide. It’s definitely a movie that builds well (I know, how can you top a steak knife to jugular in the first scene, right?) and by the end I was chilled to the bone.
The next step, of course, is to get the book, written by Peter Staub.
It seems like the same poptarts whose CDs I bought in middle school continue to turn out songs I’m powerless to resist.
Exhibit 1: Britney Spears – Hold It Against Me
Really makes you want to go clubbin’. Even if you don’t go clubbin’. Someone recently explained to me that it’s a pick-up line. As in “If I said I want your body now, would you hold it [i.e. your body] against me?” Sorry if I just spelled that out and I was the only one daft enough not to get it. Anyway, considering how every thinks of Brit as the dumb blonde, you have to give her credit for working in all those double entendres.
Also, this song is derivative of one of those ittybitty music genres, dubstep – which I was glad to learn, because I always though dubstep was an offshoot of reggae, but it’s more like techno. BRITNEY TEACHES US.
Exhibit 2: Avril Lavigne – What The Hell
This one’s really infectious, though when I heard it on the radio I imagined Avril drinking a lot and making out with people, not crashing cars and playing basketball. I guess this is better(?) She looks great in the video and smiles a lot, which seems rare these days. My only complaint is that every third shot features a product placement (even if they’re her products) which is just weird, and not in the ironic way Lady Gaga did it.
Exhibit 3: Pink – Raise Your Glass
This plays on the radio non-stop, and you get NO idea from the song what she goes for in the video. It’s funny and bizarre, and of course she has me hooked with the Rosie the Riveter reference followed by what looks like a gay wedding. Her whole ‘turning the tables’ theme had me going until the part where she starts milking women, and then I was a little lost. (Sorry, I’ll probably never consider cows as ‘underdogs,’ I’ll consider them cows). But it’s great – I particularly like the part with the smiling babies, and the part where she sleeps with the nun and finds religion.
And yeah, all these artists had CDs ten years ago that I ordered from Amazon. Weird.
Well, nothing has proven to me the efficacy of the portable typewriter as much as my experience yesterday, lugging a “portable” (read: still way too heavy) typewriter through the streets of Philadelphia. The Philly Type-In was a whole lot of fun, and I really liked meeting some fellow typewriter enthusiasts (at best, most people just sort of raise their eyebrows when I talk about typewriters, then make some comment about getting their fingers stained, so this was a nice change).
What I learned, though, was that I need a lighter typewriter, and one that types faster. Today I found both in one – meet the Remette. Funny thing is, it’s the oldest of all my typewriters, and it also works the best.
What’s that, you ask? Is that a cedilla on the lower right? Hell yes it is. I don’t even know how to make a cedilla on this computer. ¸ OK, that spot you just saw is technically a cedilla, but it looks nicer on this key…
And, to see how it writes, check on my typecast below (it writes really well).
A barely related update: Nope, didn’t watch any of the Super Bowl at all. Did hear Christina fumbled the words a bit during the anthem, and it was Fergie, not Lea Michele during halftime. Frankly, no one is listening that closely to the words in the anthem anyway, but I’d say old Xtina needs to lay off her pipes a bit – to me they sound ragged, especially at the end. Bummer.
A postscript: I know I haven’t been updating much lately, but stay tuned for some vinyl I’m putting online, some great pictures from old issues of LIFE and LOOK, and generally a lot of other stuff that happened before I was born.
After years of people telling me I ought to, I finally watched (most of) The Shawshank Redemption. I liked it for the most part, but at this point I have heard Morgan Freeman’s narration parodied SO OFTEN that I can’t take him too seriously (plus the script has a saccharine folksy tone that irks me). Stephen King wrote the novella the movie’s based on, “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption,” so maybe I should give up and read that.
There is an opera scene that is completely unrealistic and still enjoyable.
I like how the camera pans across all the dudes in the prison yard staring up at the sky like it’s an alien invasion.
Then the script reads like this:
RED (Morgan Freeman) (V.O.)
I have no idea to this day what
them two Italian ladies were
singin’ about. Truth is, I don’t
want to know. Some things are best
left unsaid. I like to think they
were singin’ about something so
beautiful it can’t be expressed in
words, and makes your heart ache
because of it.
CAMERA brings us to Red.
RED (V.O.)
I tell you, those voices soared.
Higher and farther than anybody in
a gray place dares to dream. It was
like some beautiful bird flapped
into our drab little cage and made
these walls dissolve away…and for
the briefest of moments — every
last man at Shawshank felt free.
Actually, though, that aria (“Sull’aria… che soave zeffiretto” from The Marriage of Figaro) is about two women conspiring to expose a philandering husband, so, good thing Morgan Freeman doesn’t know Italian. Here’s a version w/ Renee Fleming as the Countess with the cheating husband, and Cecilia Bartoli as the serving wench who’ll snare him:
Makes you wonder what would happen if we piped opera through our penitentiaries. Kind of like Mozart for Babies, but it’s Mozart for Convicts. Just don’t teach them Italian, or they might subliminally start inventing letter schemes and kooky disguises to heighten drama in the final act.
OK my original intent was to talk about Nicki Minaj, because I really like her Beam Me Up Scotty mixtape and am pumped for her Pink Friday album release. Yes, it figures I would only like a rap album called Pink Friday. I have no response to that. Anyway she’s really good – for proof, see her verse in “Monster,” which totally put Kanye to shame (she comes in around 3:35). For whatever reason, I’m having a lot of trouble finding a good music video with her in it (maybe I’m not looking hard enough). I did find this though, which isn’t really her best.
Actually, maybe it’s supposed to be cheaply made and a little bit funny? Either way, I prefer her raunchy. More importantly, I only had to see like two seconds of flowing, color-saturated silk to see that they’re riffing off of Jet Li’s “Hero” in this video. If you haven’t seen “Hero,” you can do one of two things. 1. Make popcorn, watch it (get used to subtitles). 2. Play it on mute in the background, because the film’s so visually-arresting there’s a good chance every time you glance at the screen you’ll be impressed. For comparison, here’s one of the fight scenes toward the end of “Hero” (for maximum flowing silk enjoyment, start around the 1:00 mark).
And for my own Nicki Minaj preference, try this:
And if you see an itty bitty piggy at the market, give that bitch a quarter and a car, tell her park it.
If you’re anything at all like me, you probably already watch too much TV and have seen these commercials. People hate commercials, right? Why would you watch one when you’re online and you’ve already navigated past the pop-ups?
But I guess kids these days like their commercials as much as they like their regularly scheduled programming. I do, anyway. These ones in particular are fun to watch. And sort of disturbing.
While I’m thrilled that this toddler has a set of high-powered wheels, watching him weave through traffic has me convinced he’s one accidental nap time away from a serious collision. I’m guessing he doesn’t have his license yet (to be fair, neither do I).
Now for something more obviously problematic, and less tied to my overactive anxiety problem:
Really? They can run this on TV? Because this is some serious Red Scare throwback ish and it’s far from OK. I never put this kind of veiled racism past Republican Tea Baggers, but it looks like the Democrats are equally OK with China-bashing. I’ve seen a few off-color fortune cookie jokes and way too many gold stars lately.
If campaign ads are any indication, the scariest thing you could be this Halloween is a Chinese person.
I’ve seen this movie floating around forever, but never stopped to consider I might like it more than I like its TV series offspring. In fact, I do. The Valley Girl quotient in this 1992 film is way higher, it’s still directed by Joss Wheedon (who gays appreciate for his perfect understanding of camp), and it’s got Luke Perry, who, for the most part, does an excellent job of concealing his oversized forehead with a Caesar cut. Except for the big high school dance scene, where he loses the soul patch and slicks his hair so perfectly he gives the Count a run for his money (no widow’s peak, though):
At first I thought this movie was really derivative of Clueless. Actually, Clueless is really derivative of this movie (it came out three years after Buffy). It’s got the same vapid, mall-trawling airheads and makes lots of pithy social commentary, but it has an added attraction in the form of vampires. All Clueless had was a thinly-veiled Austen plot (which OK wasn’t so bad). Check the trailer for a dose of Malibu-Barbie vampirism:
Have you noticed this? I think I noticed this because while channel surfing I strayed onto Lifetime and was inundated by girl commercials, especially for Clairol. I almost watched this whole commercial before realizing who the blonde lady is:
It’s TV’s Angela Kinsey from The Office! It’s hard to recognize her without her trademark American Girl pilgrim oufits and limp dishwater blonde hair. An upgrade, though she looks a little manic, particularly on the Clairol site.
Is it me or do her arms and waist look Barbie-thin? I think they do. Still, I was excited to see Angela having some fun for a change. I was about to pull up a favorite Angela moment from the Office (probably something involving her posters of babies) but instead I found this clip of Angela Kinsey and Jenna Fischer (Pam) heading to a Fashion Week event together sometime last year. Pam is pretty much like her character on TV, but I think Angela comes off like a fun, semi-crazy girl.
Would you care for some pre-natal vitamins?
