Like any of us could pull off that outfit at the gym.
A new video gem by Miss Weird USA, Nicki Minaj went viral the other day breaking the earlier Vevo record held by Miley Cyrus's Wrecking Ball, getting 19.6 million viewers within the first 24 hours of being posted. And when I mean viral, this might be the first video to actually give you a virus.
It samples that classic anthem of the early 90's that was everyone's guiltiest pleasure; Baby Got Back by the best-named rapper in the biznax; Sir Mix-a-Lot. Now, knowing the musical stylings of Nicki Minaj, hearing this song, I knew it wasn't just going to be a lame remix of the undertrack. She does take it to a whole other level, and when the video 'popped' up on the youtubes, every man in America had to hall ass to the Apple Store for new keyboards.
Not only the song, but the video harkens back to the good ol' days of bizarre novelty rap and over the top nail-on-the-head videos that came with it; as in Sir-Mix-Alot bustin' rhymes on a giant ass and bananas colliding with peaches. Oh how subtle, Sir knight.
All of that stuff is still there, but ever the envelope pusher, Nicki stepped it up a notch and a half. Unlike her pudgy somewhat repulsive predecessor, Nicki has a body that was built by 13 year old boys in a laboratory. You see her in any outfit you're like daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn.
Boy toy named Troy, used to live in Detroit...
So why not sample a song about big butts when you've got the most curvaceous one in fem-town? All the double entendres are there, but you mix in Nicki in a jungle theme like she just walked out of Britney Spears' VMA I'm a Slave for You performance, sweaty and lucious, you've got yourself a winner. Oh and btdubs. THAT'S WHAT I CALL TWERKING.
Oh and who makes a cameo in the whole thing? Labelmate Drake who's job it is to sit in a chair while Nicki dances all up on him like no-one's business and not get an erection. I'm not sure that mission accomplished.
And she cooks! (or performs colonoscopies)
It's hard for me to believe that people like Nicki exist sometimes. Not only is she extremely talented and creative, but my gawd. That body is so fierce I feel like I have to watch her videos through a hole in a plate. You go girl, I am on board with all of your future endeavors. Thanks for saving us from the plight of boring music and overly emotional music videos (talking to you, Miley) and reminding us what fun feels like.
My whole office has been abuzz with the rivalry between two pop-culture giants in music that each have enough moon men and Grammy's as Meryl has Oscars. But let's talk about these two in terms of a Mulveyian skew if we might. Or even Molly Haskell, to me, one is synonymous with the other. If you don't know who they are really quick; Laura Mulvey wrote the seminal film essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' which people read to this day in they Intro to Film class all over the country, and yes I met her once at a conference. It was awesome. Last thing she wants to talk about is that essay :P and she loves red wine. Molly Haskell is Andrew Sarris' widow, who's most famous work is an book, also seminal in its own way and much more incendiary; 'From Reverence to Rape; The Treatment of Women in Movies' basically both of these scholars had the same idea and different ways of getting there. In pure layman's terms; the female, when manifest on the screen creates a somewhat dangerous relationship with her viewer, presumably male. Meaning that she puts herself in a context in which she is desired, which at first light, one might assume the facade of being symbiotic, and actually healthy, but both argue that it is tricky territory because as the object of desire, the woman is both threatening in her symbolism of castration (Mulvey) and as the object of desire ignites caveman DNA in the male who wishes to possess her (Haskell).
Ok with all that academic jargon out of the way, let's talk about Perry and Gaga. What's happening right now? They are both releasing new albums; Gaga has 'ArtPop' (which might be a nod to Warhol, I'm not sure) and Katy Perry has 'Prism', and both of their new singles suck I'm sorry but they do. So let's just objectify them and treat them for what they are, though both are innovative, they are both living gimmicks, let's just be honest.
ArtPop single cover.
Here's the thing, I've watched Katy Perry's latest video for 'Roar' and my god was it the worst piece of shit ever. I don't even think she qualifies as being desirable on screen, except igniting my desire to be gone from it.But Katy Perry has always objectified herself by playing on words and gestures in order to keep innocence while maintaining a level of absolute sexual prowess. She's maintained a certain level of 'girlhood' while clearly being a sexually aware woman...kind of like Britney, but she's obnoxious with it and suggestively eats marshmallow pops and has fireworks shooting out of her tits like anyone is going to be turned on by that.
Katy Perry in her single 'Roar'
Gaga on the other hand, has been such a chameleon it's really difficult to put her into a Mulvey or Haskell context, but probably easier with the former because of her androgyny and yet very clear acknowledgement of her womanhood. And before we go any further, Gaga had sparks flying out of her bra long before Katy Perry decided to do that so, nyah. Because she's clearly a woman but does not play coy, but plays exactly the opposite which is her strength and 'empowerment' she is more threatening to the male viewer because of that (unless of course you're in her little monster gay man fan base (of which I'm an honorary member)), thereby toying with both ends of the spectrum. She is threatening and desirable at the same time. Forget the meat dress, the cigarette sunglasses, all of the fashion LSD she's on; and think that for that she's actually ahead of the curve on this one, because a woman is always either one or the other. Also it doesn't help that her music are basically anthems for the LGBT community and that in her mid-20's she's accomplished more than it takes some a lifetime to do. Katy recently has been criticizing female pop-stars for being 'hyper-sexulaized' I'm assuming she's talking about Miley Cyrus naked writhing on a wrecking ball, but hey, until you stop performing with your comically over-sized boobs out and simulating fellatio on candy I'm going to keep calling you a hypocrite. I guess what I'm trying to say is I hate Katy Perry.
But then again I was never a huge fan of Gaga either (I had to pretend for my gay friends), but I would say like Christina Aguilera who is very much an original and a traleblazer in every sense of the world, she was likened to Gaga when she put out her 'Bionic' record, and hunnies she lost. Gaga built a protective shield around herself where her antics actually paid off, and she doesn't look no where near stopping, and even though she's probably already tried everything, that's what they said of Bowie after his Ziggy Stardust days were over and everyone said he was washed up.
I think what a huge difference is that Katy is always seemingly surrounded by guys who want to fuck her, while Gaga is surrounded by well...that, but also guys that want to embody her in a sense, that want to be 'castrated' as Mulvey would put it just so they can be fabulous for a few minutes and wear that sideways crown.
If you want to read 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' and I highly suggest you do, you can find it here: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Below I'm putting two videos from each starlet that I think perfectly encapsulate their identities as pop stars and also as women:
Emma Watson stars as the 'ring leader' in The Bling Ring (2013)
With Spring Breakers (2013) on top of the box office charts in its first week of release, and The Bling Ring (2013) slated to be Sofia Copolla's most interesting film yet in a sea of non-interesting bullshit fluff, one has to compare the two considering the subject matters are extremely similar thematically.
Both concern bright young things with 'a talent for living' who are not shall we say well-off but not necessarily starving either and go on crime sprees if for no better reason than that they're bored.
In Spring Breakers, the motivation is to find sufficient funds to keep the beer flowing and the bikinis off for an endless spring break that leads to violence and murder, while in The Bling Ring, a bunch of spoiled brats from Beverly Hills decide to rob other rich peoples homes if for nothing more than attention, which they got. They even made a show about it which aired on E! called 'Pretty Wild'. Needless to say, it didn't do so well.
Beautiful still from Spring Breakers (2013)
The motivation of crime for crime's sake stretches way back to the times of the infamous Leopold and Loeb case where two rich lovers decided to kill a young boy believing themselves to be personifications of the Nietzscheian 'Superman', killers without consequence, those who do the crime without ever considering of doing the time, just to see if they could get away with it, and more often than not, they can't.
In both films the characters are hipstery brats that have nothing better to do with time, and we love to hate their careless abandon but also embrace it as we live vicariously through them for a little under 2 hours.
The members of the so-called Bling Ring and co-starring skinny jeans.
Both of these themes run parallel in the stories of both films, so the question becomes who will be the more outrageous. Clearly, my money's on Korine. I love the man, and if you've ever watched any of his films he's one step away from pure Vincent Gallo-esque outrageousnous.
Sofia on the other hand, has always been close but no cigar. Her films almost have a point, and then they don't. It's just about sad and lonely people in a world that doesn't understand them and....snore.
But I have to give her at least some credit, after watching the trailer for The Bling Ring, I was almost impressed. The Sleigh Bells playing in the background was also helpful, and it looks rather accurate if it's actually based on the facts which her prior film Marie Antoinette (2005) was certainly not.
Haromony Korine, one of our generation's greatest auteurs.
Therefore we have to think of these films as a series in the portfolio of auteurs, and for Korine, this definitely fits in with his repertoire. Drugs, sex, violence, and everything bizarre have always been the corner stone of his content, and what he's able to do with it so brashly and apologetically is nothing short of art. If The Bling Ring (2013) is to be taken seriously, and looks like it's going to be, it's going to have some serious shoes to fill. The film needs to be sardonic, contemptible, fanatical, and tawdry, all in the best way imaginable. It needs to be filthy like Korine, or it will be just as forgettable as all her other endeavors, so I guess Sofia, I wish you luck. You'll need it.
Official trailer for The Bling Ring (2013)
Official trailer for Spring Breakers (2013)
An excerpt from 'Pretty Wild' the show about the girls who started the bling ring, featuring ring leader Alexis Neiers.
Eugene Hütz has become somewhat of a sex symbol in his own right and rightfully so.
It was 2007, I was living in the East Village finishing up my miserable BA in Cinema Studies. My good friend Erin was always down to meet me at the local watering hole slash only place we ever met for drinks, the now closed Cooper 35 in Cooper Square near the Bowery, and one of these nights we were talking music. I mentioned this band called Gogol Bordello which everyone in New York between 19 and 25 seemed to be in fervent love with. After about 5 or 6 whiskey sours, we decided we were going to walk, yes walk to the Lower East Side to this bar we'd always heard of but not yet had the balls to visit called Mehanata. The story was that it was a Bulgarian bar in existence for over 20 years and was basically the hub in which Gogol Bordello was born.
Gogol Bordello, a band that fused authentic Eastern European gypsy folk songs with American punk rock. It's a good thing.
I made eyes with the door guy and he let us all in for free. We walked into a dim smokey bar playing Easter European fusion punk gypsy music. The air was illuminated with red tinted christmas lights and revealed a few strange New York City types sitting around, speaking Russian to each other with a bottle of Vodka at each table. We made our way to the bar and the bartender insisted that we drink Rakia, a kind of Bulgarian moonshine not even available in the states unless you bought it on the black market which they always did. It was delicious, and we got wasted in a matter of minutes. Then we went downstairs.
Downstairs was a whole different animal. It felt like a seedy club. There was a DJ booth, and a few crystal balls from 1972. Strobe lights were the only source of light down there, and myself and Erin soon learned that we didn't have to walk all the way through people and up the stairs to the outside to chain smoke; our favorite activity. You could apparently do it on the back stairs whilst a drunk girl leans up against your knee and tells you you're beautiful.
Eventually it started getting crowded and around 1am Erin and I decided that we needed fresh air to have a cigarette in (oh the fucking irony) and we shimmied our way through dancers and goosestepped our way over drunks until we were at the entrance. We lit up and talked about god knows what for a few minutes. All of a sudden, I see her eyes get extremely wide and her speech getting instantly slow. She seemed to be looking at something directly over my shoulder, and I was horrified at the thought that there might be a really tall ghost breathing just on the back of my neck. After a few seconds of drunken hesitation I turn around only to be shoved slightly into her direction (she was in front of me) and I felt bangles hit the small of my back. Before I had a chance to look and see what was behind me, a pair of large hands steadied me from behind and a soft voice spoke 'scuze me doorling', and I knew exactly who it was.
Don't get too excited, I don't like Madonna, here's a still from her film Filth and Wisdom (2007) with Eugene Hutz who basically plays himself, and Gogol Bordello appears in the film as his character's band.
It was urban legend that Eugene Hütz, the charismatic, enigmatic and eccentric lead singer of Gogol Bordello still showed up to DJ at the bar that had made him famous, and all of a sudden, there he was, decked out in striped skinny jeans, a spangled gypsy scarf wrapped around his waste and that unmistakable handlebar mustache, bumping into me. I was stunned. It was up to par with a normal person bumping into I dont know...Brad Pitt. He was even more amazing in person. Around 6'3, with the most commanding presence, we immediately followed him in and basked in his presence at the bar, trying to non-chalantly stare at him. Neither of us had the nuts to talk to him, but we did end up dancing our asses off, and were at Mehanata every Saturday hence forth until I moved to to the Upper West Side when I began my Master's at Columbia (humblebrag!) and it was just too far to travel. I listened to them all day and all night for a good year after that experience until they stopped coming out with new music, and I'm just wondering two things, well three things; 1. Why have they not recorded a new album? 2. When can I come back to New York and go straight to Mehanata from JFK? 3. Miss Erin Kenealy, will you still come with me when I go?
Here are some videos and clips, get into them, they're awesome!
The first one is a video for their most famous song 'Start Wearing Purple' which was actually filmed right in Mehanata when the band was starting out and had no money, having to shoot at wherever they were welcome.
Below is a trailer for a film that Zhenya (that's a casual way to refer to someone named Eugene in Russian btdubs) called 'Everything is Illuminated' (2005) and turns out he's a bloody good actor too.
Below the trailer for 'Filth and Wisdom' (2008), where Hutz basically plays himself.
Joaquin Phoenix in a still from The Master (2012) dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
After years of playing second banana to his much more talented older brother River, Joaquin (or Leaf as he was called back then) got his golden opportunity in 1995 playing opposite Nicole Kidman in perhaps one of the filthiest, most deliciously satiric films of that decade; Gus Van Sant's To Die For (1995). He was only 21 when he played a naive and rather idiotic high school student who gets seduced by Kidman's will-do-anything-to-be-famous-even-being-infamous character Susan Stone who convinces him through her lady parts to kill her dimwitted husband (Matt Dillon). After that, there seemed to be a lull in his career with flops like Oliver Stone's U-Turn (1997) and culty 90's bullshit like Clay Pigeons (1998). But then as we all know, he hit it big, and I mean big as the conniving, hedonistic, ego-maniacal, antagonist Commodus in Ridley Scott's Best Picture winning film, Gladiator (2000).
Joaquin opposite Nicole Kidman in To Die For (1995), jump starting his career at the bold young age of 20.
As an actor, Joaquin was always a very special presence. Jaded by the Hollywood machine that seemed to claim his brother's life when he was just a teenager, and intelligent enough to bring a forceful yet thoughtful edge to every one of his performances, Joaquin was never an actor who played by the rules, and the roles he chose proved to illustrate that.
One of my favorite performances of his is when he played sexually repressed, and spiritually tortured Abbé de Coulmier in director Philip Kaufman's beautifully decadent and sharply dark interpretation about the life of the Marquis de Sade after his incarceration in Quills (2000). He proved to be as versatile as he was creative, and was unwilling to be compromised by Hollywood.
Joaquin Phoenix and Kate Winslet in Quills (2000)
This notion might have been driven too far when he went balls to the wall (no pun intended) with his bizarre 'performance art' stint as a methed-out Rabbi, but now he's back to normal and slated to garner even more awards and nominations in perhaps the most anticipated film of this year; cinematic genius' Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master (2012). Just winning the principle role opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman in such a huge project which is premiering at two of the biggest International Film Festivals (Venice and Toronto) is a huge accomplishment and Joaquin proves time and time again that he's up to scratch and is more than just shtick and idiosyncrasy. People will finally start to take him seriously as the tour-de-force which he is, and will stop comparing him to the legacy left by his brother. Joaquin Phoenix is a filthy, unapologetic, obnoxious, tenacious genius, and talented as all fuck. With The Master (2012), he is well on his way to cinematic god-hood, and I have no doubt that he'll get there sooner rather than later...all we have to do is forget about I'm Still Here (2011) which I basically have, except for that full frontal part.
Below some trailers from his films including The Master (2012).
I realized I have yet to write one of these, and I guess it should be the first thing I should have lead-in with when I started this blog. Considering how big of an Orson Welles fan I am, I'm going to call this a Declaration of Principles even though it's more of a statement on the person I am and the kind of work that I do so that one doesn't see my posts as coming from an invisible anonymous source.
Like anyone who is brave enough to put their thoughts out into the interwebs (or obnoxious enough) I am privy to a lot of flack, and sometimes it comes from the most surprising sources, like my constantly judgmental mother who cannot fathom why I use what she refers to as 'incomparable writing talents and creativity' to blog about penis length, sex-scenes, and man gravy. Well, I'll tell you, it's more than just the ever-present two words that bind together all of mind kind and society as we know it which is 'sex sells', but also it's what I enjoy doing, and it's what makes me feel relevant as a writer, which is something I almost never get to do, and unfortunately something that very few of us will ever get to do. Blogging is a way of writing and not worrying about a publisher buying it, or an editor destroying it. It's free, and it's easy, and it gives me that thing that I was born to crave - attention.
I might not be at a Jezebel level yet, but I have a pretty decent reader count, a good group of followers, and circulation is growing. I've been asked many times why I want to paint a picture of myself in such a way; a person who has constant dirty thoughts on her mind, says 'fuck' way too much, and publicly addresses the fact that she's most of the time completely perverted. Why can't I be nice, civil, charming, and what you can refer to as 'a lady'. The answer is simple. Because I'm not. I enjoy writing for Filth Screen, and sometimes it's the only thing I have to enjoy. When I can be completely free from censorship, hypocrisy, and cantankerous behavior is when I feel the most free. And since I'm not anywhere near writing my great American novel, I'll stick to this for now, thank you very much. And I'll never be ashamed of it.
I have never been a private person, and enjoy more than anything sharing all of my thoughts, as random and asinine as they may be with everyone as often as I am able to. It gives me pleasure, and I think that's the whole point. If you look at someone like Jean Genet who's in my opinion one of the greatest writers ever to wander aimlessly across this stupid earth, and used his snark, sarcasm, and wit to point out everything he saw ridiculous with it, and do it in a manner that was purely unapologetic, you have to admire that. And if I'm anywhere near that ever in my trajectory, I'll consider myself a success. What else can I say? Haters gonna hate.
Interesting remix of 'S&M' to the films of Warhol and Kenneth Anger. I can't believe this wasn't thought of earlier. Featured in this remix are 'Blow Job', 'My Hustler', 'Kiss', 'Mario Eats a Banana', 'Scorpio Rising', 'Lucifer Rising', 'Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome'... you get the idea. This is pretty awesome. I like. For those of you not in the know, Kenneth Angers films are the ones in color, and Warhol's films are the ones in B&W. The man dancing very strangely with a length of chain is poet and Warhol's right hand, Gerard Malanga. The man eating the banana in 'Mario Eats a Banana' (the only color Warhol film in this collage) is seminal and famed drag performer Mario Montez, who went on to be one of the most influential presences and an icon in avant-garde and underground cinema. Edie Sedgwick can be seen to Malanga's left sitting and smoking. And just to be clear, the pixelations are of course not of the original films, but have been put in for youtubes sake, which I consider close to sacrilege.
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