Mad Men > Downton Abbey
Unpredictable romances and devastating results, stylized but believable that makes us truly nostalgic. substance vs. aesthetic.
(note I really like Downton Abbey, it's one of the best shows on television but Mad Men IS better folks, if we're comparing the two)
Dance Moms > Smash
Truth is stranger than fiction, a portrayal of performers that's truly devastating. Retrospective vs. Exploitation.
Cougar Town > Happy Endings
An estrogen farm that's not disingenuous. Satire vs. Sanctimonious Snark.
Portlandia > I Just Want My Pants Back
Hipster skewering manages to still be interesting and unapologetic. Comedy vs. Sarcasm.
Jersey Shore > Keeping Up With the Kardashians
The former manages to keep the most hateful types of people somehow endearing and vastly interesting.
Marketing genius vs. shameless self-promotion.
GCB > Hart of Dixie
Although teetering on exploitive, GCB manages to remain dirty and amusing while Hart of Dixie has always sustained a monotonous fish-out-of-water immaturity. Blunt vs. Bland.
Raising Hope > Modern Family
Chaotic and bizarre in ways that don't get cliche'd fast. Insight vs. Redundancy.
The Secret Circle > The Vampire Diaries
A show about mystical and mysterious sexualized hotties that's deliberately campy.
Ironic fabulousness vs. trying too hard.
Whitney > Are You There Chelsea
Although completely off on it's comedy, Whitney accentuates the filth and wins in the better-dirty-jokes race.
Authenticity vs. Gimmick
(another note: everything would be better than Glee so I'm not going to compare it to anything)
This post should have been titled 'When will they stop dragging Marilyn's name through the mud?' and the answer would be, not as long as there's a steady cash flow. It's difficult to say exactly when the Marilyn pastiche phenomenon began, one could argue that it started with her first unadulterated appearance in Playboy when in 1953, though the photographs published were actually taken 5 years prior when she was virtually unrecognizable, it marked the first time Marilyn's image was multiplied for the visual pleasure of others. Most could say that it initiated upon the release of The Seven Year Itch (1956) with mile-high billboards of her standing over a subway grate with wind blowing her lush white dress over her head, bright red lipstick adorning her effervescent smile. Basically, whenever it occurred, it was eventually going to surpass the human manifestation of its source. Marilyn's iconography has greatly exceeded any tangible conception that we as the public might associate with her.
It is believed that Marilyn herself was caught up in an identity crisis unable to disassociate her human attainability with her post-human superior celluloid sainthood. But we are not doing her any favors by chalking up flimsy and misguided 'bio's' of periods in her life in which she was at her most vulnerable and predictably self-destructive and then blaming the very methods we are using for destroying her.
First of all, that whole vulnerability angle is highly exaggerated and quite frankly a very simplistic way of looking at it. Yes, people are sensitive, particularly when they are under such immense pressure and scrutiny; loneliness, self-loathing, and despair ultimately become part of the equation, usually yielding tragic results, but this isn't a high school psychology tutorial.
Secondly, no one seems to be sticking to one thing or the other; pastiche vs. humanity. Everyone from Smash (2012 - ) to My Week with Marilyn (2011) is attempting to provide a confluence of the two, but that's highly improbable and doesn't make any sense. One must consider either the icon in it's manufactured and inorganic manifestation, or the person behind said incarnation. In a post-human sense, the two are fundamentally different.
The 'Marilyn' from which everybody is eagerly picking from is the representative illustration of a concept she had created as her cinematic identity. The person herself is in actuality a lot more complex than the bland and banal exploits of current films and television programs on the subject.
Thus, the Marilyn Pastiche is born. It is a literal jumble of ideas and hypotheses marrying the real with the unreal the intangible with the historical, attempting to create a more three dimensional, poignant, and explanatory portraiture of the existence of one of the most fascinating figures of the 20th century.
Why Marilyn is such an easy and popular target is because storyteller's framework functions to make public the private lives of iconic cultural representatives. With someone like Marilyn Monroe who's name and image is synonymous with pop-culture itself, it is undeniably tempting to try to discern the humanity behind the image. But when done with minimal guidance and proper historical citation, it becomes what we refer to as a pastiche, or in this case a pastiche's pastiche. It's a copy of a copy and thereby is highly irreverent and predictably inferior. I for one am tired of it, and practically intolerant to people passing these faux-intellectual and overly sentimental caricatures as insightful and researched portraiture. It's always a case of 'Marilyn: Behind the Scenes' but the behind the scenes part isn't even close to being genuine enough to be considered authentic. It's part of the hyper-extended reality that is created within the Marilyn pastiche that poses as fact but is a product of second-hand storytelling. Even the protagonist played by Eddie Redmayne (Colin Clark) who's first-hand experience with Marilyn Monroe is documented in the film My Week with Marilyn (2011) is only a very skewed and narrow view of the person she might have been. True to the title, he did only spend one week with her. I've spent months with people without ever learning their last name, doesn't make me an expert on their psychology.
This goes without saying that the Marilyn pastiche is unavoidable. It's fantastic fodder for people strapped for creative material because it's endlessly enigmatic. There's plenty of subjective drama one can add to such a tragic story coupled with such a high pedigree of iconography, and an attempt at coupling the two; making Marilyn both the mile-high billboard and the scared little girl lost is a promisingly fruitful challenge, but in my opinion, no one as of yet has risen to it.
Being able to have one of the ship's gargantuan propellers feel like it's falling right on your head, sure...that's fun. But I really hope (against hope) that our favorite village idiot James Cameron gives us more uuumf in the already awkwardly orchestrated anachronistic romance scenes aboard the Titanic.
1. I would love to see naked Kate Winslet (when she as 21) in 3-D. Make it happen Cameron.
2. When Leo's arm is pressed up against the glass (and it looks like a 13 year old girl's arm) I want it to be close enough for me to almost smell the sex sweat.
3. The corset tightening scenes could always do with a little 3-D.
4. Cal (Billy Zane) is pretty hot. I'd like to see more of him smoking disdainfully but right into my face.
5. Kate Winslet's boobs seem to always be heaving, as if they're trying to run away from her body because they know it's doomed. Explore those themes in 3-D.
6. The Titanic is a giant metaphor for a penis going flaccid after orgasm. In 3-D I want this to be more evident.
7. Is there anyway to make Leonardo DiCaprio taller than Kate Winslet in 3-D? Because that always bothered me in the original.
8. Please make that last kiss before inevitable death more romantic and less creepy between the two main characters. Here's hoping you cut it out completely.
9. Leo's hair needs to be more flowy and carefree in 3-D.
10. Dear James Cameron: please direct a 3-D porn version starring James Deen and Tori Black. Sincerely, Vera Ryzhik
That's all I have for now. I'll think up more whilst I'm watching it I'm sure.
Below is the trailer:
AND BELOW: One of the best Titanic parodies that exists by my favorite comedy duo French & Saunders. The fully version is available on the youtubes. Enjoy!
Still from The Babymakers (2012) opened this year at SXSW
This is a brave new world we're entering where everything that happened in Gattaca is coming true. There's nothing that defines a 'traditional family' anymore, and if your little swimmers are confused or your ovaries are shriveled up like a pair of raisins in Death Valley, it doesn't matter because science can solve your problem.
Hollywood has become obsessed with this notion of eugenics stemming from the idea that in these modern times we as a species can decide which first class man juice we want to eventually inhabit the DNA of our unborn children. The movie business in all of its maturity has converted this into crude semen jokes driving the point home that man gravy is fundamentally disgusting.
Clever use of semen hasn't been utilized since the days of There's Something About Mary (1999) but now it's splattered all over the place. No pun intended. The Babymakers (2012) recently premiered at SXSW, starring former Parks & Rec principal Paul Schneider and professional do-nothing hot-chick Olivia Munn. Here's the remarkably bland and predictable story: They are a happily married couple who just can't make natural babies no matter how many times they accentuate just how supple Olivia's tits are. Paul Schneider's little Phelpses just refuse to swim damn it. He then suddenly remembers that he donated sperm about a bazillion times to get her a Tiffany's diamond and now wants it back because those batches were the 'good ones'. Ergo, he decides to pull a bank job...a sperm bank job. Hiiiilarious.
Filmmakers explored this 'risque' avenues with last year's The Switch (2010) because it's completely not-obnoxius to imagine what would happen if you accidentally had your sperm mixed up and your best friend decided to donate his creating a child that was strangely exactly like him in every way. Apparently people who work at sperm banks are highly incompetent.
The visual displeasure as accentuated by everyone's general discomfort with the sticky white substance. On the poster work for The Switch, it's half Jennifer Aniston staring at something at a far off distance and half Jason Bateman looking repulsively at a donation cup appearing to be sniffing it. In The BabyMakers, it is pretty predictable that someone, doesn't matter who, is eventually going to be comically covered in slimy baby batter, getting it all over his face, into his eye, making a sperm angel and slipping in it, causing him to be enveloped in it even more. And that's exactly what happens, serving as the comedic climax of the film. I was sitting in the third row, if that had been in 3-D I don't think I would have been very happy.
Even someone like me isn't above being slightly offended by this poster. It's too much of hitting the nail on the head...so to speak.
After his recent teary-eyed adorable triumph at the Oscars, Frenchy Frenchman Jean DuJardin was untouchable. Between starring in the sleeper hit and best picture of the year The Artist (2011), and charming everyone and their mothers with his inherent Frenchness, pencil-thin mustache, and acceptance speech crying, It would appear the world is his oyster voulete. But he's quickly learning that not all of his actions are adorable and sweet. Case and point: ads for his upcoming film reunited with Michel Hazanavicius (American title: The Players, original title: Les infidèles) sparked some controversy not just here in Puritanical hypocritical America, but (gasp) in France too.
It is consistently being called a 'very French film', I have no idea what this means in a contemporary context; is it full of shots of Eiffel Tower with Edith Piaf singing in the backgroundand everyone of the extras constantly smoking? I only kid, what I'm assuming it actually means is that it's uncompromisingly and unapologetically promiscuous. So basically, it's a film about sex with a lot of sex in it...starring Jean DuJadrin...and some other people.
Here's the thing, I don't believe the French to be that big of an authority on sex in the cinema, though they like to constantly state that they are. I think they definitely make coitus into a bigger deal than it usually should be in any given context and tend to chew the scenery with gratuitous thrusting in random and unusual places where everyone is crying after, but other than that I don't believe it to ever be an honest portrayal of any given person's sex life. Even someone like Catherine Breillat whom I greatly admire as a filmmaker sometimes goes overboard, and I'm not talking about a sensory overload of endless fucking, (which can be applied to most of her films) I'm talking about substituting basic plot and storytelling guidelines for scenes of immeasurable nastiness (watch Anatomy of Hell 2004, I dare you). It seems like French filmmakers do a fantastic job of convincing everyone how painful sexual relationships are, and how disillusioning the experience is. They often flout the idea that intercourse leads to nowhere good, and now they get to do so in High Definition and perhaps even at some point 3-D.
But not to worry fine upstanding asexual citizens, The Players is a comedy. Therefore, it's sure not to contain as much pubic hair as you expect from a French film. But wait wait, it's already getting some negative press for being overly provocative and sexist. And I'm not talking Mad Men sexist, actual sexism without irony. The poster art speaks for itself. Though the subject of infidelity is often amusing, it is in danger of crossing into the sleazy zone.
Thank you for spelling it out for me that a film called 'The Players'' involves men getting head. If you hadn't pointed it out in this poster, I would have assumed that it's a soccer movie. PS. If you run the caption through google/translate it says; 'It's (the line) going to cut, I'm headed into a tunnel'...hilarious? Photoshop Bill Clinton's head on this poster and we could rename it 'The Great American Tragedy'
I love a no-holds-barred sex comedy as much as the next filth blogger, but the ad campaign was way the wrong choice. It looks like a cover for a unintentionally hilarious 'classy' porno and quite frankly makes DuJardin look like quite the creep. I also found it funny that in the original poster art, DuJardin's tie is actually not swept for his shoulder but extended down as it is regularly supposed to do, making it almost look as if it's hanging right into the middle of whomever legs those are, providing a not-so-subtle double entendre. I just happen to think it's not in good taste.
DuJardin is clearly trying to establish himself as a jack-of-all-trades, but I don't think coming off as a serial philanderer is the correct route right now. He's trying to go from the universally adored soft-spoken DuJardin to the James Bondesque no-apologies swave as fuck DuJardin, but the transition is just not happening as smoothly as one would like.
And here is the French trailer for said film: My french is very poor but I'm imagining most of the dialogue goes something like: 'she just landed on my dick, I have no idea how it happened'.
Since today is International Women's Day, I'd like to do a total gladiator champion death-match between the two queens of cinema and movie stardom that ever cemented what it was like to be a female on screen. I'm speaking of course of the grand dames of old Hollywood: Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, rivals, bitter enemies, evil bitches both of them, and fabulous as all fuck. Each brought their own reverence into the spirit of womanhood and shoved everyone else aside so she was the only one left standing; proclaiming, 'I'm queen here, bitches. Now get me a large scotch.'
Let's have a clean fight ladies...who am I kidding it's going to be an all out glorious blood-bath, so let's not stand on ceremony and start the show.
In this corner, weighing in at 105 pounds, she's the queen of shop-girls, a superbitch on the set and at home. Her daughter might despise her, but we can't get enough of that that my-way-or-the-highway attitude. She hates wire hangers, but she loves her some married men. The former Lucille Fay LeSuer, Miss Joaaaaaaaaaan Crawwwwwwwwford!
And in the other corner, right out of the blue-blooded east coast, coming in at 120 pounds, but sometimes more, with legit D-cups and a crazy-large pair of peepers, she's been married and divorced four times, and loved every minute of it. Don't get in her way or she'll go Of Human Bondage on your ass. It's the First Lady of Film and the Fifth Warner Brother, but don't call her that to her face or she'll throw her drink at you, Miss Bette Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaavis!
Ladies, let's have a good fight, no slapping, no biting, no hair-pulling, and no scratching, no backstabbing, no manipulating, and definitely no attitude...yeah right.
These two queen bees would have a life-long battle for all to see in both their public lives onscreen and their private lives at home. Always one-upping each other, they were destined to be competition from the word go. For two women that were constantly contending against one-another, it's almost astounding at how fundamentally different they were.
both had how shall we say it delicately, a plain jane past. This is Joan at 15 before the glossy glitz of the MGM style machine took hold of her aesthetic.
Let's review. Crawford was poor white trash from San Antonio, Texas who moved to New York and developed a reputation as fast and loose party-girl whom F. Scott Fitzgerald coined the term 'Flapper' for. She packed her bags for Hollywood when she was 19 and came to MGM as a dance extra for hire. In the next 5 years she transitioned from floozie to bona fide leading lady, and became her studio's hottest commodity next to Clark Gable. That same studio would betray her when she was labeled box office poison around the early 1940's and dumped her like a stray dog. But she had her revenge when she stooped to audition for MGM rival Warner Bros. hot new property Mildred Peirce (1945). But guess who was at Warner at the time and didn't like that one bit?
If you can believe it, this is Davis at 19...not 90.
Davis came from an upper-middle class family from bumblefuck Massachusetts, with a determined starry-eyed stage-mom that chose Bette over her sister to be the cash cow of the family. She didn't exactly look like a knockout, so began training as a 'serious actress' of the stage. She moved to Hollywood at 19 with mommers and scored mere extra work also until some genius casting agent fished her head shot out of the garbage and handed it to John Cromwell who was getting ready to direct Of Human Bondage. From then on Jack Warner latched on to Mrs. Ruth Elizabeth Davis and milked her career for close to 15 years, but he had no idea Ms. Davis had a pair of cast iron testicles and no one was going to tell her what she could and couldn't do. Becoming a royal pain in Warner's ass, also in the late 1940's, Davis splintered from her home studio and became one of the first high-ranking movie stars to fly solo without a studio deal.
Crawford and Davis both in they're 50's in the climactic art-imitating-life showdown circus that was the film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1962)
The friction between Crawford and Davis goes far deeper than just competition over film roles, and started decades before when Davis first started appearing on the scene playing tough and independent young ladies with a gritty realism; a role Crawford had been honing for quite some time at that point, but her boss Louis B. Mayer never gave her quite enough of a punch in the parts she played quite like Davis got. Ironically, Crawford always seemed softer, quieter, and more subservient in comparison with Davis' fiery and staunch personalities.
A masculine, tougher Joan Crawford emerges in the 40's, none so better illustrated than her character of Mildred Peirce, with the exception of Johnny Guitar of course.
Both were 'resurrected from the dead', as Davis once put it, after each had been divorced from her respective studio family, Crawford with Mildred Peirce (1945) for which she won the Academy Award, and Davis 5 years later in All About Eve (1950) both characters at odds with their age and subsequent place in the world while leading extraordinary lives of both extreme success and failure, and coping with the societal and personal struggles of being a woman with power.
The quintessential Bette Davis role was as Margot Channing in All About Eve (1950) who was pretty much an amalgam of Davis herself, the tough exterior, but vulnerable core, arrogant and loud, but tender and romantic; a woman that does everything in excess, drink, perform, and love.
Backtracking for a moment: when both hit their mid-30 mark and started settling down and having kids (in Crawford's case adopting kids...well in all fairness, buying kids off the black market because adoption services all over the country saw that she was too crazy to be a candidate) anyway! The competition only intensified, when Hollywood leach and supercunt Louella Parsons, a devoted slave of William Randolph Hearst, and basically the inventor of the tabloid reported that Bette Davis' newborn daughter B.D. was the most beautiful baby the world had ever seen, Joan promptly showed up to a press conference the next month with not one but two newly adopted babies. That's just one example.
Strangely, or perhaps not strangely at all, both BD and Crawford's daughter Christina later wrote scathing tell-alls against their mothers alleging all kinds of abuse and mistreatment. Christina's of course being the more famous of the two, and one has to wonder if that competitive air between Crawford and Davis transitioned into a competition between their daughters.
Bette Davis with daughter and mini-me BD Hyman on her wedding day. (Bette let her marry when she was only 16 by the way). BD's memoir about her mother (titled My Mother's Keeper) was, unlike Christina's, published while Bette was still alive, and had such an affect on the elder Davis that it caused her to have a second heart attack. Needless to say Davis later severed all ties with her daughter. and I for one like to think of BD as an ungrateful bitch. but that's just me.
I can tell you're getting bored and/or lost at this point, so I'll just leave it at the following:
Both Davis and Crawford created a female persona of unfathomable standards back in Hollywood's golden era. They were absolute consummate professionals of their craft and each defined what it was to be a star, what it was to be powerful, and what it was to be a woman. Both exuded qualities of extreme toughness and yet raw vulnerability, and every woman working in Hollywood right now owes those two a debt of gratitude.
Honorable mentions would of course include Barbara Stanwyck, Marlene Dietrich, and Katherine Hepburn, but when I think of a female movie star, I think either Crawford or Davis, and I usually think of both at the same time, because even though each had very different technique, style, and aesthetic, there's no winner to me. They are both just an inch above the rest.
If you want to see their bitchfight truly culminate, you have to check out Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), where they basically play themselves in the autumn of their lives; former child actresses, now completely discarded, still at odds with each other and ready to destroy one another...quite literally. In a nutshell Bette has to take care of sister Joan because earlier she had injured her enough to cripple her so out of guilt becomes almost her servant, resents it, cooks her a dead rat. Then there's drinking, bondage, and gruesome fighting. It's absolutely fantastic.
Below are some clips from both Crawford and Davis that I thought you might enjoy, more for people that are getting a crash course in the two. If you know your shit you can skip over them. Actually don't, watch regardless.
Unlike Bette, Joan got her start in silent film. Before she was everyone's favorite shop-girl, she was the wild and flirtatious nightclub dancer, this is way before she polished the 'Crawford persona' and developed her trademark, which is why she looks so different. She's considered 'the ultimate movie star' because she covers the entire spectrum; started out as a chorus girl, moved up to the flapper of the silent era, then transitioned successfully into sound. After which crested for a bit, and made a huge comeback in her 40's, a battle year for any actress. She was the personification of resilience.
Bette in her big break as Mildred Rogers the sluttish cockney waitress that ruins an idealistic young man (Leslie Howard) in Of Human Bondage (1934) (based on the classic novel by W. Somerset Maugham). She later said her career had two periods: before-Maugham and after-Maugham.
The trailer for that classic bitch movie The Women (dir. George Cukor, 1939) where Joan is the villain but somehow comes out everyone's favorite.
Bette Davis was actually the frontrunner for the wildly contested and coveted role of Scarlet O'Hara, but what kept her from eventually landing the role, which Warner Bros. was slated to give her was that she had only the year before done a part very similar to it, that of the lovelorn Southern Belle Julie in Jezebel (1938), for which she won her second Oscar.
Crawford made many films with the other giant MGM star at the time Clark Gable, with whom she had a longstanding passionate affair. This is one of my favorites, Strange Cargo (1940) a lot of the roles they played back in those days were along the same lines, but it's awesome to see those two commanding personalities duke it out. It's something I never tire of.
A very Crawford Christmas. A radio broadcast Crawford did with her children in 1949 which wreaks of being staged to the point where it's almost ridiculous. Christina Crawford would later cite how much she hated Christmas because of how stifling and unspontaneous the whole affair would be.
Bette Davis in perhaps her best role as uber-bitch Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes (1941) directed by long-time collaborator and some-time lover William Wyler. No one has yet pulled off being so deliciously evil.
Joan Crawford parodies herself and her onscreen persona (particularly the kind she culminated with Mildred Peirce) for It's a Great Feeling (1949)
The infamous 'lunch' scene from the ubiquitous camp opus Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) When tensions between sisters Blanche (Crawford) and Baby Jane (Davis) come to a disgusting head.
An old and wise, cynical, profound, and courageous Davis reflects.
Joan in a wonderfully ridiculous outfit in her last televised interview reminisces about her golden years in the industry and about the great loves of her life: Gable and Tracey.
Like the rest of the country, male of female, I am completely outraged and appalled by Rush Limbaugh's comments made last Wednesday, February 29th against law student Sandra Fluke and I couldn't sit idly by and not add my voice to the uproar. This is egregious and shameful, and I am beyond infuriated that this kind of thing still goes on in our country.
Now, was I surprised that Rush Limbaugh said something offensive and vehemently wrong? No, that's what he does. He's a professional asshole after all, and his 'public criticism' sub-category page on Wikipedia is longer than it's history page of the Soviet Union. But enough is enough. He's lucky he gets to wave the first amendment in our startled faces every time verbal diarrhea projects out of that filthy sewer he calls a mouth.
Now, because this blog is regarding the media, I think I'm entitled to cover radio, though despite what anyone says, it is a dying medium. Alas, Rush's talk show still manages to reach and influence a huge amount of the nation's populace.
And just like he stands behind that great American tradition of Free Speech and Free Press, I would love it if Sandra Fluke would introduce him to that other great American practice - lawsuits. Under the constitution, what he said is protected, but I'm sure he'll get across the board 'guilty' verdicts from any jury following a defamation of character suit, and that wouldn't be punishment enough as far as I'm concerned. For someone who so openly and shamelessly preaches sexism, misogyny, and chauvinism, it's shocking that he still has a syndicated radio show. Now, it has been reported that no less than 8 sponsors have pulled advertising from his program, which is clearly a sign that you can't just say whatever the fuck you want in this country and not expect there to be ramifications such as public humiliation total loss of respect from your colleagues and peers.
If you've been living under a rock, here's the gist of what happened the other day. Sandra Fluke is a 30-year-old graduate Law Student at Georgetown University (so right off the bat, you know that she's had more education than Limbaugh) who testified to the democratic members of the House of Representatives in favor of contraceptive being covered by health insurance clauses. A very important request to make, and something that should be seriously considered. Rush, being the classy, reasonable, and thoughtful gentleman that he is immediately took to the airwaves and called her, among other things, a 'slut' and a 'prostitute' and said, and I quote:
"So, Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here's the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I'll tell you what it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch".
When I first heard this, there wasn't enough Pepto Bismol to keep my lunch down. He also made a sick joke about how abortion is akin to sticking 'an aspirin between your knees' and other things that I don't even want to repeat.
This broadcast was so hateful, that it made me seriously resent the first amendment and makes me wish that there was an exception clause in it at the very end; an asterisk with Rush's name next to it and state: 'Should apply to everyone except the following'. Of course, we as free citizens can just all do the clearly right thing and not listen to him, but that's not going to happen. He's popular specifically because he makes wildly outrageous and incendiary comments and then apologizes about them later to keep the money for his show rolling in. Of course he's going to be crucified in the court of public opinion, but that's what he wants. He wants to be able to call himself a martyr of free speech, when all he truly is, is a monger of hate speech, and a sorry excuse for a human being.
All that aside, it's just a shining example how we as women in 'the free-est country in the world' are still second class citizens and are subject to this kind of torment and insult in this 'very progressive' society. It's a hypocrisy and Limbaugh is king of the hypocrites. By the by, he only apologized after severe public pressure to do so and threats of pretty much all of his sponsors to pull the money they invest in his show. So basically, he's not sorry and he did mean what he said.
Here's the transcript directly from his show. Listen at your own risk. If you vomit all over your computer and have to go to the apple store and replace the logic board I'm not taking responsibility.
Derek, the arrogant, womanizing director of the Marilyn musical ends up having a passionate affair with Ivy, the ambitious young star of said musical, and surprise surprise, he's kind of just using her and doesn't care about her as much as she does about him. How shocking.
It's 4 episodes into Smash (2012 - ), and I'm really started to get riled up, which is very cute to everyone around me, but I can't help feeling personally offended somehow by this show. Bare with me.
As someone who knows entirely too much about Marilyn Monroe, and I'm talking about the real Marilyn-Norma-Jean-Miller-DiMaggio-Baker-Mortensen-Monroe, and not the two-dimensional poster child that Smash keeps making her out to be by stating asinine things like 'they never paid her as much as she was worth' and 'she said she didn't want to be made into a joke', barely scraping the surface of the intensely complex and layered character that she actually is, I am consistently annoyed that this show can't hire just one Marilyn historian, or at least do a couple hours of homework reading a biography or two.
Look it's all fine to skim the surface when creating a Broadway musical about your subject and take creative liberties in order to punch out spectacular numbers with plenty of pizazz, but don't try to get serious by cramming in scenes between the writer and producer in which they lament over how sad Marilyn's life was over drinks like they've lived it. Please.
Listen I haven't lived it either but I don't pretend to.
Moving on, it's kind of a bad sign when by episode 4 you already hate every single principal character. They have been shoving all of their imperfections down our throats so blatantly that you can't help but be completely annoyed by all of them. Even the characters with whom we are all supposed to identify; Karen Cartwright the unlucky outsider, Ellis Tanchereon the lowly insignificant intern with ambition, Julia Houston the awkward but successful loner unlucky in love, and so on and so forth, but they have become the most repulsive characters on the roster.
And now, they've brought in Nick Jonas and squeezed in a couple of Adele songs to make it more catchy, but it can't mask that the show is royally failing, just like it's musical.
Ivy later seduces Nick Jonas, who plays this hot-shot teen star named Lyle West who's musical is worth 80 million dollars. She was feeling jealous that Derek inevitably reverted back to his womanizing ways and so it made it ok for her to have sex with a 15 year old. What?
Overall, this is supposed to be a show about the dog-eat-dog yet alluring world of the Great White Way and everyone in it; from the chorus to the star. It's supposed to be some kind of satiric tell-all about this business we call show, and how people will do anything, and anyone apparently to get to the top and stay there. It's trying to be the new television juggernaut that breaks down barriers by giving its audience an in to an otherwise exclusive atmosphere, but even the flashiest gimmicks cannot mask the terrible and trite writing and execution of this show. It is trying so hard to be a combination of All About Eve (1950) and A Star is Born (1954) through the All That Jazz (1979) filter, but it just doesn't have the originality, sincerity, and if you'll forgive me, gaul that its predecessors used to make themselves so memorable.
And let me point out something extremely lacking and also extremely important to the whole scope of this series; Marilyn's raw sexuality. Poor Megan Hilty (who is cast as the titular character in the fictitious Marilyn musical) is very talented, and is a showbiz veteran, i'll give her that, but imitating Marilyn's high raspy voice, and sultry seductive movements is just not enough. It's just another notch in the doomed pastiche of television's fascination with musical theater.
There is simply nothing sincere in any sexual scenario that is presented in Smash. Do impressionable ingenues sleep with producers for a part? Yes. Are busty blondes appealing to most audiences? Yes. Do affairs make it awkward for one to work with that same person later? Yes. We get it. You're not teaching us anything new Smash, and you're certainly not capturing the sexual spirit of Marilyn.
If there is one more karaoke-bar scene, this show is going to officially pass into the kitschy fluff, And with lines like 'go back to the chorus, there's nothing safe about being a star' had me gagging on my chocolate chip ice cream.
I'm going to give Megan Hilty an 'A' for effort, but it's going to take a lot more than a pearly white smile and tight-ass sweater to endear her character Ivy to the audience, and even more to make us believe that she can pull off Marilyn.
I was going to let that 3rd episode slide, but now that we're on our 4th and you still haven't shown us anything really sincere or genuine about Marilyn or the world of Broadway, I'm going to go ahead and give you a second strike. One more left, hope you nail it. So to speak.
Happy month of empowerment, fellow ladies and warrior goddesses. But before you go reciting a vagina monologue and doing a sister circle, I'm going to go ahead and put up the stankiest contradictions to everything that any suffrage or liberation front fought to let us have.
A really great example on TV these days of that classic second-wave feminist idealism and ambition is the character of Leslie Barbara Knope on Parks & Recreation, played incomparably by Amy Poehler. She's basically a younger version of Hilary Clinton who's determination and all-consuming hard work at a largely thankless and at times contradictory job as deputy director of a small-town Parks department. What's great about her character is that it doesn't shy away from the vulnerability aspect of a single woman in a man's world, and her penchant for waffles and white wine.
In the media, particularly in television, for every show like Parks and Recreation (2009 - ), which parody's and satirizes the idea of female empowerment, we have a show like the Real Housewives of... (2006 - ) where they actually call themselves 'evolved and intelligent' when the opposite is clearly true, but it's not even funny at that point, it's just so sad. Let's condense the history really quick. First, we got the vote, then we got equal pay, and then women got to be secretaries of state, but running along side all of those trailblazers were the following lovely, classy, and most lady-like members of the gentler sex that seem to keep us perpetually in second place. Enjoy your free drinks!
Basically what I'm saying is that for every Leslie Knope, there's 10 Taylor Armstrong's. The media is not the best example of woman's fight for equality, particularly reality television. And while public figures like Gabrielle Giffords, Nancy Pelosi, and Michelle Obama are making tremendous strides forwards, pretty girls with big boobs have television ratings to fish for and still ascertain most of our attention.
Below please find a very taught satirization of women's progress by SNL legend and huge female presence in said institution who broke down barriers for the likes of Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, and Maya Rudolph, Cheri Oteri. This is when Monica Lewinsky and the Clinton sex scandal was the major diet in the newspapers. It's actually frightening how foretelling it is considering we now have to deal with people like Dana on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and her 25,000$ sunglasses or Snooki on Jersey Shore, or all of the whiney bitches on Grey's Anatomy, who are all proving that the glory days of strong self-sufficient, ambitious, and independent women is a dream forgotten, and no Beyonce and Sofia Vergara don't count.
Are you kidding me Hollywood? It's the proverbial WTF heard 'round the world. Did you really think it would be a alright to sell the idea of coked-up rotted-toothed, party-slut Lindsay Lohan, the semi-annoying child actress of yesteryear and current walking train wreck as portraying the greatest silver screen icon that ever existed? I'm starting to think that the execs at Lifetime were waiting for the latter to kick the bucket so that she wouldn't be able to sue them when they held a picture of Lindsay in front of her and said; 'That's you'.
Clearly, this is one giant publicity stunt, and good thing it's for television, because I don't think the cinema would stand for such nonsense. They'd hire someone like Lily Collins or Ashley Rickards. Remember, Elizabeth was about 17 when she was cast in her first major adult film role, and Lindsay looks no younger than 42 these days. But it's not like we're such a classy society that we can't at least be a little bit titillated by the idea of total trash playing such a beloved figure.
Anyone remember this? Lindsay posed as Marilyn Monroe imitating her famed last photo shoot back in 2006. I honestly do not see any redemption in Hollywood's constant attempt to try to compare her to the sexual icons of the golden age of cinema. You can see how big of a fail this endeavor is.
I don't know who's slated for Richard Burton in this aptly and redundantly titled Liz & Dick bio-pic in the works right now, but considering their choices so far, I'm thinking Chad Michael Murray or Shane West. It's destined to be a frivolous farce for teenagers, as part of LiLo's contractually obliged big comeback. Think of it; it wreaks of disaster, but I might just be there to roast marshmallows from the flames coming out of Lindsay's ass as she's torn to pieces by outraged intellectuals and film buffs.
Ok I got a bit carried away. There are so many reasons why Lindsay is wrong for this project OBVIOUSLY. Also, Snooki is tan, and fish swim in the sea. But what if we did a complete reversal and talked about the ways in which she's right for it? Just for fun? I mean, no one is honestly taking this film seriously, Lifetime is a network that loves to milk shmaltz, melodrama, and camp (or what's left of it) so why not hold our heads high and consider the following?
1. Lindsay Lohan, like Elizabeth Taylor, started out as an adorable child actress and only when she started 'developing' was she cast in more mature roles.
2. Lindsay Lohan, like Elizabeth Taylor, has a shit balls crazy and determined stage mother, who uses her daughter to put herself in the ever so unflattering spotlight.
3. Lindsay Lohan, like Elizabeth Taylor was naturally blessed with a huge rack...so there's that.
4. Lindsay Lohan used to hang out with Paris Hilton. Elizabeth Taylor married to Conrad Hilton Jr. Paris' uncle. Are you surprised I had to scrape the bottom of the barrel here?
5. Both have done multiple extensive and lengthy stints in rehab.
6. Elizabeth Taylor died at 79. Lindsay looks 79. At this point the only person LiLo is an appropriate choice to play is Leona Helmsley.
Ok, I'm out. That was painful. All I'm wondering is what is going on inside Lindsay's head right now, aside from barbiturates. Is she hitting the books reading 'Furious Love' and 'The Queen and I'? Is she watching A Place in the Sun and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof? Is she buying violet contacts and consulting with her plastic surgeon regarding a boob lift? I really hope so.
But don't let's all start getting our hopes up, the only point of the upcoming project is to see just how badly she tanks. It's a gimmick. But unfortunately, it's done at the expense of Elizabeth Taylor and that's just not cool. For a woman who gave you basically her lifeblood for over the last 50 years, this is how you choose to honor her legacy? For shame.
