The second week of President Barack Obama's (yeaaaaah, it feels good, doesn't it?) tenure in Washington left a few less casualties than usual in Hollywoodland. Unless you count Steven Adler, but his exploits on Sober House were technically filmed a few months back.
It was mostly a week for celebration, as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie unveiled their finest work yet, two nauseatingly adorable children, to the entire graduating class of a Japanese photography school.
But it was also five days of serious social commentary, courtesy of Ashlee Simpson and Kim Kardashian.
So without further drawn-out teasing of content that will ultimately be more succinctly stated than its lead-in, here are the top five things we learned this week:
5. Whether Tyler Perry's films offer something unique for an underserved demographic or actually pandering nonsense is debatable. But what's not up for argument is that someone should raise Jim Varney from the dead and give him some of Medea's royalties.
4. Jennifer Aniston likes to pretend getting naked on the cover of a magazine that sophisticated men jerk off to is somehow more noble than displaying airbrushed areolas for a publication less discreetly aimed at teenage boys and male divorcees. Then, again, what do you expect from a woman who's first major film role was in Leprechaun?
As that gleaming behemoth Hollywood slouches towards irrelevance, the winds of change must begin to blow in from somewhere. And where better than the so-called blogosphere? Like the polit-o-blog revolution, the great pitches of tomorrow ain't going to flow from the bloated butthole of some Hollywood hack, but rather from the proletariat. So welcome to NCDSUV's newest feature, The Slow Pitch, where we play a little game of would-be screenwriter wish-fulfillment. And viva la revolución!
Gentlemints, today I have an idea for you that's so funbelievable, that's so fuckcredible that you'll be shitting your brains for a millennium. Now, this being tax season and all, I've been having my CPA look over the books. Here's the thing: Did you know that after you ignore all the creative accounting, the only flicks that made bank last year were all those Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer joints? You know, [Blank] Movie, and you can fill in the blank with whatever: Disaster Movie, Epic Movie, Date Movie, Meet The Spartans,uh, Movie. And so on.
When I got the news from the number freak, I flipped my lid collection. But right as I was about to pass out, an idea so monumental came to me that it can only be the product of divine intervention. Or a combination of orgasm and a lack of oxygen. But, you know, either or. And that idea is:
Here we go with another ridiculous Films From The Cable Afterlife. As usual, we scour the cable movie listings and turn up some diamonds, and lots of the rough. For best results, watch both. Your life may improve! 8. Mystery Of Monster Island (1981) Fox Movie Channel, Wednesday, February 3, 4am Unbelievable pile of crap by Juan Piquer Simon, one of the worst directors of the 20th century (he's also responsible for X-rated chainsaw slasher Pieces, MST3K fodder Pod People and K-Tel Films release The Supersonic Man). How a major studio found their way around distributing this one is anybody's guess (a series of blowjobs, perhaps), but you will never see Terence Stamp look more embarrassed. Watch if you dare.
7. DOUBLE FEATURE ALERT Pumpkin Karver (2006) The Movie Channel, Saturday, January 31, 12am Pumpkinhead (1988) IFC, Saturday, January 31, 1:35am The stars have aligned: two pumpkin-related horror movies back-to-back on the same night. Different networks, but still, work with me here. Friday Night Lights' Minka Kelly stars in the serial killer/Juggalo-style horror dumper Pumpkin Karver, while Lance Henriksen conjures up a demon to kill bikers in Stan Winston's minor classic Pumpkinhead. It's "Pumpkininny!"
6. Booty Call (1997) Cinemax (@MAX), Sunday, February 1, 8:05pm; Cinemax (WMAX), Monday, February 2, 6:50pm; Cinemax, Tuesday, February 3, 8:30pm Boisterous, offensive and couthless, Booty Call is actually one of the funnier comedies of the late '90s, and deserves another look. Jamie Foxx and Vivica A. Fox (playing characters named Bunz and Lysterine, respectively), join Tommy Davidson, a fake Indian guy, a dog that barks "Nigga Please!" in subtitles (and one Gedde Watanabe, willing to take any role no matter the stereotype, saying "Nigga Preese" in a Chinese restaurant), some hilarious orange pants, an incident with Saran Wrap as dental dam and some dude named Ug Lee. There's no one who won't be upset in its 79 minute runtime, but I don't think it'd work any other way. Watch it and pick your jaw up off the floor.
5. Ladies And Gentlemen The Fabulous Stains (1981) Turner Classic Movies, Saturday, January 31, 2am I hope that now this one has finally made it onto DVD, and not from some bootleg version that's been duped a thousand times from a Betamax that caught it on Showtime in the '80s, that we can see this legendary unreleased film for what it is: kind of a stinker. Still, there's never been anything like it before or since, and it's a fun time with a message. Teenagers Diane Lane and Laura Dern start a makeshift punk band that lands an opening spot for the fake real punk band The Looters, featuring Sex Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook, The Clash's Paul Simonon and fronted by actor Ray Winstone. They create a media circus and have it all collapse on them within days, but it's a good enough time, also starring Fee Waybill from The Tubes and a special (awesome) appearance from Black Randy and the Metrosquad. Join the professionals!
Welcome to NCDSUV's splenetic, embittered new weekly feature, Overdressed & Underclassed, which with each installment will dissect a different aspect of celebrity fashion with the enthusiasm and exactitude of a taxidermist suffering from the second clinical phase of rabies (caution: We have reached the contagious stage).
Perhaps it's the prospect of facing the rest of a remarkably long, brutally cold winter and yet another tacktastic awards season; alternatively, a totally unexpected wave of good vibes is washing over me from the political changes in the air. Either way, instead of the nip of bitter grog I generally crave to counteract the effects celebrity fashion has on my parietal lobe, I'm in the mood for something more nourishing, gratifying and sustaining to get me through the inevitable nip slips, butt cleavage and exhausting razzle dazzle the Oscars and the Grammys will inevitably lay at my feet.
So in celebration of celebrities who could (and can) dress themselves, here's a round-up of the vampiest, sassiest, stylishist femme icons who have ever scaled the screen.
8. Mary Tyler Moore The style she brought to the role of working girl Mary Richards in the '70s, both on and offstage, helped make every career gal feel a little bit freer to balance her limitless ambition with her still-potent urge to primp. She made it okay, even sexy, to want to beat down the door to the boy's club at work with a polite smile without breaking a sweat in her sassy separates, vintage hats and quirky peacoats. No other female worker bee, no matter how beloved (not even Carrie Bradshaw or Peggy Olson) will ever give me the same kind of post-feminist, unconflicted case of warm fuzzies. That's right folks. She can turn the world on with her smile... take a nothin' day and make it all worthwhile! Sorry.
7. Katherine Hepburn Like most trailblazers, Kate The Great's singular road created quite a diversion for outraged onlookers from the roaring '20s onward. In a time when most women did a two-step simper, Katherine stridently strolled. When most women squeezed into oxygen-depriving undergarments under too-tight tailored dresses, she luxuriated in baggy, but impeccably tailored men's style pants, flowing shirts and combat-style boots. Even in her dotage, she tooled around on a bike, sat with her feet up and her legs splayed, wore little make-up and unpressed, drably colored clothes that lack any sort of definite shape... and still looked every inch the elegant, sexy, exquisite feminine beauty. She was the original Urbane Tomboy.
6. Brigitte Bardot Brigitte is that rare creature who can balance oooozing Hustler sex appeal with a degree of pre-Raphaelite restraint that renders it sensual, not slutty, even if she is crawling around on the floor in her undies or dancing on top of a bar in a dress that would make Paris Hilton blush. She single-handedly popularized the bikini, the beehive 'do, the bee-stung pout and general '60s-era sexy naif gear of all stripes. Unfortunately, her joie de vivre and stylishness is now less notable than her right-of-Rush Limbaugh political views.
5. Joan Crawford Unlike Katherine, Joan represented the pinnacle of idealized feminine fashion in the '20s and '30's, with wasp-waisted tailoring, exaggerated shoulder pads and breakneck-speed martini-fueled diamond-studded satin, vampy, gauzy glamour. A perpetual engine of reinvention, she sailed through 45 years onscreen portraying whatever America wanted to see in her: rebellious but innocent flapper; working girl/society girl with a heart of gold; psycho bitch; camp queen. Joan's innate ability to seamlessly morph personas paved the way for the tough, ever-changing broads we all have a soft spot who came after. But Joan never appeared to be as calculating or cynical about her image changaroos as, say, Madonna or Britney Spears do.
While this release week may bring more anticipated and notable efforts like the Dan Deacon /Adventure split 12" and The Whore Moans' Hello From The Radio Wasteland!, we here at NCDSUV prefer to analyze more futile musical recordings.
Welcome back to Unnecessary Album Releases, a feature in which we highlight the week's most egregiously bizarre, dull and often unpleasant albums from the music industry's "left"er side of the dial. Behold the obscure, the most fantastically superfluous musical curiosas for the week of January 27, 2009.
6. The Guggenheim Grotto, Happy The Man If you prefer your music with a message and featured on poorly scripted family dramas about unwanted teen pregnancies and kids who can't live up to their parent's expectations (think One Tree Hill and Brothers And Sisters), then this second release by Dublin darlings, The Guggenheim Grotto, which teems with the mawkish smell of freshly disposed Kleenex, is sure to make even the unhappiest man happy, man.
5. The Toy Killers, The Unlistenable Years Every so often (let's call it chance), an album title comes along and practically guarantees an excruciating listening experience. Featuring an hour-long, monotonous cacophony of unbridled noise, unheard studio and live material from 1980-'84, The Unlistenable Years is, unbearably, just that.
Well, ladies and gents, we can now move ahead toward a time of economic prosperity and racial harmony, because Barack Obama has been sworn into office. What's that? You're still unemployed and your boss keeps referring to you by prejudiced terminology? Oh, bummer. Guess one man can't change everything.
But even if you haven't been swept up in Obama-as-Messiah fever (ironic given his presidency signals an end to high government as guise for holier-than-thou demagoguery), we can all agree it was pretty sweet to see George W. Bush (and don't call him Prez) sent off on that helicopter one last time.
Not as sweet as seeing the likes of Mike Myers and Cameron Diaz get sliced and diced by the Razzies of course. So without any last-minute presidential pardoning, here are the top 5 things we learned this week.
5. Katy Perry may pretend she likes to kiss girls and is preciously cute when calling other people gay, but apparently she'll settle for nothing but the straight dish when tabloids report on her sex life, or lack thereof.
4. Britney Spears is somehow being raked over the coals for the suggestive phonetic pronunciation of her new single. Meanwhile, no one raised an ounce of cain over Van Halen's non-too-subliminal epithet placement within the titular acronym of their 1991 album. Guess parents were less afraid of Sammy Hagar gettin' their teenage tots in a heated lather.
As that gleaming behemoth Hollywood slouches towards irrelevance, the winds of change must begin to blow in from somewhere. And where better than the so-called blogosphere? Like the polit-o-blog revolution, the great pitches of tomorrow ain't going to flow from the bloated butthole of some Hollywood hack, but rather from the proletariat! So welcome to NCDSUV's newest feature, The Slow Pitch, where we play a little game of would-be screenwriter wish-fulfillment. And viva la revolución!
Wakey, wakey, time to makey some kwan, you slugabeds. Yeah, I dunno what that word means either, but my mistress got me one of those vocab calendars and I glanced at it before tossing it in the incinerator. Anyway, I got an idea for you that not just going to fill our coffer's to the overflow. Yeah, like Uncle Scrooge's money bin in Duck Tales. But it's also going to revolutionize movies. Wait, I mean money. It'll revolutionize money. Who gives a shit about movies?
So, I've noticed that show with Donny's son (yeah, Donald Sutherland... Christ, keep up) is getting a lot of column inches lately. Keifer! Ha! Keifer Sutherland! How much pot do you think D.S. smoked before thinking that one up. I remember on the set of S*P*Y*S, him and Elliott Gould used to huff gas just to stay interested in the film. Wait, maybe that was just what I did last week when I was trying to watch it. What a piece of shit.
More Cable Afterlife, because you demanded it. You beat down my door. You followed me home. You took my seat on the subway. You cut in front of me in line. You better watch ... these movies. On cable, this Friday through next Thursday, like always. (All times in EST.) 8. Shanghai Surprise (1986) Encore Love, Monday, January 26, 10:30am As Sean Penn gears up to possibly win an Oscar for one of his best performances (as the titular Harvey Milk), it's high time to see him in one of his worst, and I'm not talking about I Am Sam. No, this is the spectacular flop he made with Madonna while the two were married. I dare you to finish it. P.S. It's heavily steam. I've said too much. Or have I?
7. Bullet (1995) IFC, Tuesday, January 27th, 12am As for said Oscars, Mickey Rourke's on the ascent with his role in The Wrestler. Check him out as he was careening to the bottom, out-acted by Tupac Shakur in this ruff-n-tuff action thriller, directed by Julien Temple
.
6. Luv (1967) Turner Classic Movies, Thursday, January 29th, 8:15am Jack Lemmon's about to jump off a bridge when he meets old friend Peter Falk, who pawns off his wife (Elaine May) on him so that he can be with his girlfriend. You can't pass on that cast, nor will you want to miss this rarely-screened Clive Donner effort from the peace-n-love era. Expect awkwardness, and a cameo by a young Harrison Ford as a longhair.
5. Funny Games (2008) Cinemax, Saturday, January 24th, 10pm It hasn't yet been determined if Michael Haneke's shot-for-shot remake of his own cinematic paradigm---the movie so brutal and heartless, it dares you not to watch and in effect judges you for how far along you've endured it---fulfilled whatever sort of Hollywood traction he may have been going for... because nobody's seen it, really. Here's your chance to.
Welcome to NCDSUV's splenetic, embittered new weekly feature, Overdressed & Underclassed, which with each installment will dissect a different aspect of celebrity fashion with the enthusiasm and exactitude of a taxidermist suffering from the second clinical phase of rabies (caution: We have reached the contagious stage).
Beltway insiders seem to approach getting dressed as a way to: A. avoid indecency charges and B. To protect themselves from the elements. A "quirky" D.C. gal may be seen traipsing through Capitol Hill clad in a purple pinstripe suit from Anthropologie with some swingin' sky-high Prada pumps, instead of the de rigueur gray pinstripe suit from Ann Taylor Loft paired with Easy Spirit flats, much to the consternation, stifled envy and shock on the parts of the less stalwart.
But change is coming to Washington, along with (we hope) a new epoch for fashion forwardness. President Barack Hussein Obama's inauguration seemed to signal, among other weightier things, a much easier era for the eyes. Here's the eight fashion highlights from Tuesday's ceremonies.
8. Laura Bush The former First Lady's outfit epitomized what we all hope we'll be saying "farewell" to: frumpy grey pantsuits and boring heels; drab grey political horizons and boring heels (of the human variety).
7. Jill Biden After so recently thrusting her well-shod foot into her mouth on Oprah (Biden claimed that Obama had offered her husband a choice of jobs as either Veep or Secretary oO State, forcing his staff to go into spin mode), I expected Biden to slip on something decidedly understated. In stark contrast to everyone else's relatively muted swearing-in duds, she opted for a fiery orange-red jacket paired and a pair of hot-stepping black leather boots. It looks like we will be able to expect all manner of exciting fireworks from Biden. And just think: It was her husband everyone was worried about. Go, Jill, go: This administration has to give Saturday Night Live something to work with.
6. Aretha Franklin The Queen of Soul's rendition of "My Country 'Tis Of Thee" was almost as thrilling as the farcically bad, but oh so delectably good, massive, yodeling, rhinestone-studded bow plopped on top of a chirping church mouse of little grey hat. Sing it, lady!
5. Senator Ted Kennedy The senator, who has managed to continue his duties in recent months despite his bout with brain cancer, collapsed at the Capitol after suffering a seizure on the day of the inauguration. He's reportedly on the mend, and we hope as optimistic, jubilant and celebratory as he appeared to be at the inauguration in his jaunty fedora and dapper sky-blue silk scarf.
While this release week may bring anticipated and more notable efforts like the triumphant Airing Of Grievances by Titus Andronicus or Andrew Bird's Noble Beast, we here at NCDSUV prefer to analyze more futile musical recordings.
Welcome back to Unnecessary Album Releases, a feature in which we highlight the week's most egregiously bizarre, dull and often unpleasant albums from the music industry's "left"er side of the dial.
Behold the obscure, the most fantastically superfluous musical curiosas for the week of January 20, 2009.
6. Combichrist, Today We Are All Demons While they assume a glut of dubiously, dizzying, dark descriptors like "Hellektro," Terror EBM" or "Harsh EBM," the electro/industrial rock by Norwegian sextet Combichrist, would have justifiably leave genre pioneers like Ministry with a wry discontent.
5. The Harvest Floor, Castle Decapitation This jarring juggernaut of relentlessly grinding blast beats features the ferociously horrifying vocals of Travis Ryan, who concocts something akin to Gollum from Lord Of The Rings and a demonic death rattle all hoped up on steroids. Enjoy.
