Friday, June 20, 2003
FRIDAY VIDEO REVIEW PALOOZA
And, there's a bonus commercial review in there, too!
BONUS COMMERCIAL REVIEW
"Leave content out of it, and some of the most spectacular examples of film art are in the best TV commercials."
--Stanley Kubrick
"Pillow Fight" for Miller Lite
Staring Kitana Baker, Tanya Ballinger, and Pamela Anderson
Produced by Ogilvy & Mather
Grade: A+
(NOTE: You must be 21 to view the commercial on Miller Lite's website.)
OK, what grade did you think this was gonna get? The girls from "Catfight" bust into a hotel room and get in a pillow fight with Pamela Anderson. I object to all claims that this campaign is sexist. In fact, I welcome the efforts of anyone to do a campaign that would appeal to heterosexual females and/or gay males in a similar fashion. Straight men love to gawk at beautiful and underclad women; always have, always will. This notion that it's sexist for beer commercials to notice and take advantage of this has got to go. Hell, every ad campaign for anything uses sex appeal, even if it's the one-sheet for some kids' movie starring a fourteen-year old, and don't get me started (again) on the Swedish Underage Slut Brigade. In a world with things like that, I don't understand how I'm supposed to get worked up (in a bad way) about some Playmates running around in swimsuits. Life's just too damn short.
"21 Questions" by 50 Cent featuring Nate Dogg
Directed by Dr. Dre, Phillip Atwell, & Damon Johns
Grade: B+
I hold no quarter for the song, but this video tells a good story. I have strong musical objection to the Dre Crap Rap squad, yet I have to say that this is an unobtrusive entry. 50's wife is played by Meagan Good, who 50 spotted in Biker Boyz, which is the first I'd heard of anyone on Earth seeing Biker Boyz. It's a good casting choice, and not just because Good is a major babe; the girl actually pulls off the emotion of the video quite well, adding to its appeal.
Quite honestly, that's all I got today, my faithful and completely imaginary readers. Now, back to that Miller Lite commercial ...
And, there's a bonus commercial review in there, too!
BONUS COMMERCIAL REVIEW
"Leave content out of it, and some of the most spectacular examples of film art are in the best TV commercials."
--Stanley Kubrick
"Pillow Fight" for Miller Lite
Staring Kitana Baker, Tanya Ballinger, and Pamela Anderson
Produced by Ogilvy & Mather
Grade: A+
(NOTE: You must be 21 to view the commercial on Miller Lite's website.)
OK, what grade did you think this was gonna get? The girls from "Catfight" bust into a hotel room and get in a pillow fight with Pamela Anderson. I object to all claims that this campaign is sexist. In fact, I welcome the efforts of anyone to do a campaign that would appeal to heterosexual females and/or gay males in a similar fashion. Straight men love to gawk at beautiful and underclad women; always have, always will. This notion that it's sexist for beer commercials to notice and take advantage of this has got to go. Hell, every ad campaign for anything uses sex appeal, even if it's the one-sheet for some kids' movie starring a fourteen-year old, and don't get me started (again) on the Swedish Underage Slut Brigade. In a world with things like that, I don't understand how I'm supposed to get worked up (in a bad way) about some Playmates running around in swimsuits. Life's just too damn short.
"21 Questions" by 50 Cent featuring Nate Dogg
Directed by Dr. Dre, Phillip Atwell, & Damon Johns
Grade: B+
I hold no quarter for the song, but this video tells a good story. I have strong musical objection to the Dre Crap Rap squad, yet I have to say that this is an unobtrusive entry. 50's wife is played by Meagan Good, who 50 spotted in Biker Boyz, which is the first I'd heard of anyone on Earth seeing Biker Boyz. It's a good casting choice, and not just because Good is a major babe; the girl actually pulls off the emotion of the video quite well, adding to its appeal.
Quite honestly, that's all I got today, my faithful and completely imaginary readers. Now, back to that Miller Lite commercial ...
TWINS!
The Coors Light twins have a website. Did you know that they have a band, called Klone? Anyway, this doesn't have anything to do with anything, but that's life.
The Coors Light twins have a website. Did you know that they have a band, called Klone? Anyway, this doesn't have anything to do with anything, but that's life.
Thursday, June 19, 2003
POOR FIDEL
The same Miami DJ's who crank-called Venezuela's Hugo Chavez a few months back have now struck against Cuba's Bearded Brute.
The same Miami DJ's who crank-called Venezuela's Hugo Chavez a few months back have now struck against Cuba's Bearded Brute.
THE KING SPEAKS
The InstaPundit, King of Blogdom, issues a decree on what makes a good blog.
Careful imaginary readers will note that I am missing one thing the InstaPundit does not mention--actual readers.
The InstaPundit, King of Blogdom, issues a decree on what makes a good blog.
Careful imaginary readers will note that I am missing one thing the InstaPundit does not mention--actual readers.
MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW DU JOUR
"Freetime" by Kenna
Directed by Vem & Tony
Grade: A
(Note: MTV credits this video to both the team of Vem & Tony and Marc Klasfeld, their partner at Rock Hard Films. However, the official website credits only Vem & Tony, so that's what I'm going with.)
A highly original video follows the trials and tribulations of a young man from foot level only. We see him leave his home (and apparently his girlfriend or wife) and go on a series of misadventures which end up with him getting beat half to death.
Why is it that pop stars would never try such an interesting gambit? We never see the artist (though at one point a magazine cover emblazoned "Freetime" may feature a photo of the Nigerian-born Kenna, but I'm not sure); naturally, this wouldn't make sense in any debut video, at least if the label has confidence that you're going to be a star. So, instead of distracting us with a montage of gold chains, expensive cars, and flashy T&A, Kenna comes after us with creativity. Though all those other accoutrements are appreciated, it's nice to have a video that actually tells a simple story.
Somewhere on his page, Nigel Dick speaks of how he will often get notes back from the label demanding "less story, more close-ups." (This actually made me think of David Fincher's video for Aerosmith's "Janie's Got a Gun." Could anyone possibly care less about seeing the band in that video?) Here, Vem & Tony and Kenna bring us "all story, no close-ups," and it's a refreshing change.
Quite honestly, the story is no great shakes. This young man basically ends up hooking up in a club, much to the ire of his new girl's bully boyfriend. Violence ensues, and a presumably wiser protagonist returns home at the end. But the telling of the story completely at foot-level is an interesting and appealing gambit, relying on (lower) body language and production design to get the story across.
The song itself is okay, but far from exceptional. But thumbs up to Kenna for allowing his directors to try something outside-the-box, for the result is one of the best videos of the year.
"Freetime" by Kenna
Directed by Vem & Tony
Grade: A
(Note: MTV credits this video to both the team of Vem & Tony and Marc Klasfeld, their partner at Rock Hard Films. However, the official website credits only Vem & Tony, so that's what I'm going with.)
A highly original video follows the trials and tribulations of a young man from foot level only. We see him leave his home (and apparently his girlfriend or wife) and go on a series of misadventures which end up with him getting beat half to death.
Why is it that pop stars would never try such an interesting gambit? We never see the artist (though at one point a magazine cover emblazoned "Freetime" may feature a photo of the Nigerian-born Kenna, but I'm not sure); naturally, this wouldn't make sense in any debut video, at least if the label has confidence that you're going to be a star. So, instead of distracting us with a montage of gold chains, expensive cars, and flashy T&A, Kenna comes after us with creativity. Though all those other accoutrements are appreciated, it's nice to have a video that actually tells a simple story.
Somewhere on his page, Nigel Dick speaks of how he will often get notes back from the label demanding "less story, more close-ups." (This actually made me think of David Fincher's video for Aerosmith's "Janie's Got a Gun." Could anyone possibly care less about seeing the band in that video?) Here, Vem & Tony and Kenna bring us "all story, no close-ups," and it's a refreshing change.
Quite honestly, the story is no great shakes. This young man basically ends up hooking up in a club, much to the ire of his new girl's bully boyfriend. Violence ensues, and a presumably wiser protagonist returns home at the end. But the telling of the story completely at foot-level is an interesting and appealing gambit, relying on (lower) body language and production design to get the story across.
The song itself is okay, but far from exceptional. But thumbs up to Kenna for allowing his directors to try something outside-the-box, for the result is one of the best videos of the year.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW DU JOUR
"Crazy in Love" by Beyonce featuring Jay-Z
Directed by Jake Nava
Grade: A-
Who is Jake Nava and where has he hid Beyonce's modesty? Okay, she hasn't had much to begin with, at least for awhile. But the opening verse of this video features Beyonce dancing like a stripper. It then alternates between scenes of her clad as a fashion model (for the chorus) and dancing like a stripper (the verses), with a part where she gets wet (the bridge). During the second verse, we get a sequence where Beyonce's dancing girls join her in dancing like strippers, though this part is tame compared to later.
There's a part where Jay-Z, who insanely calls himself H.O.V.A. (in reference to Jehovah, a mistranslated name for God) sets a car on fire. Beyonce is kind of in the car and kind of isn't, and this doesn't make any sense at all.
Jay-Z, predictably, is the worst part of this video. His rap solo sucks, and he does nothing but stand there and impersonate a pole for Beyonce to dance around.
Jake Nava is uniquely qualified for this, having directed saucy videos featuring international hotties the Spice Girls, Atomic Kitten, and Holly Valance. He falls prey to the Paul Hunter Fast Cutting Syndrome, by which shot of alluring women are cut together so fast that you can't get a good look in edgewise. It at least makes some degree of sense in this context, as the camerawork and cutting are as "crazy" as Beyonce's love for a man who thinks he's God.
It probably sounds as though I don't like this video, and yet you, my faithful imaginary readers, may have noticed I gave it an A-.
Have I mentioned that Beyonce dances like a stripper?
(By the way, I have learned that the infectious horn sample is from the Chi-Lites' "Are You My Woman?" I also read that it might be from a Kool & the Gang song, in addition, so I'll keep investigating.)
"Crazy in Love" by Beyonce featuring Jay-Z
Directed by Jake Nava
Grade: A-
Who is Jake Nava and where has he hid Beyonce's modesty? Okay, she hasn't had much to begin with, at least for awhile. But the opening verse of this video features Beyonce dancing like a stripper. It then alternates between scenes of her clad as a fashion model (for the chorus) and dancing like a stripper (the verses), with a part where she gets wet (the bridge). During the second verse, we get a sequence where Beyonce's dancing girls join her in dancing like strippers, though this part is tame compared to later.
There's a part where Jay-Z, who insanely calls himself H.O.V.A. (in reference to Jehovah, a mistranslated name for God) sets a car on fire. Beyonce is kind of in the car and kind of isn't, and this doesn't make any sense at all.
Jay-Z, predictably, is the worst part of this video. His rap solo sucks, and he does nothing but stand there and impersonate a pole for Beyonce to dance around.
Jake Nava is uniquely qualified for this, having directed saucy videos featuring international hotties the Spice Girls, Atomic Kitten, and Holly Valance. He falls prey to the Paul Hunter Fast Cutting Syndrome, by which shot of alluring women are cut together so fast that you can't get a good look in edgewise. It at least makes some degree of sense in this context, as the camerawork and cutting are as "crazy" as Beyonce's love for a man who thinks he's God.
It probably sounds as though I don't like this video, and yet you, my faithful imaginary readers, may have noticed I gave it an A-.
Have I mentioned that Beyonce dances like a stripper?
(By the way, I have learned that the infectious horn sample is from the Chi-Lites' "Are You My Woman?" I also read that it might be from a Kool & the Gang song, in addition, so I'll keep investigating.)
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
NO MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW DU JOUR
Due to massive exhaustion from the Armond White post. Maybe there'll be two reviews tomorrow. Since all my readers are imaginary, I'm not that worried about it.
Due to massive exhaustion from the Armond White post. Maybe there'll be two reviews tomorrow. Since all my readers are imaginary, I'm not that worried about it.
FISKING ARMOND WHITE
A takedown of his current review. My comments are in bold:
"'It's hot!' is the explanation Jennifer Lopez gave for why she decided to pay homage to the 1983 movie Flashdance. 'This was a specific iconic movie of our generation,' said the 32-year-old Lopez. For clarification she added, 'It still holds up and it's hot.'"
Very insightful commentary from J-Lo.
"Lopez could not describe the film's appeal beyond the word 'hot'--that handy euphemism for unexamined excitement--partly because Flashdance did away with articulation. (It opened concurrently with the education system's collapse during the Reagan era.)"
Could this be more ridiculous? Did the education system really collapse in the Reagan era? Where is this coming from? Behold figures 3 & 4 here, which clearly demonstrate that more people are getting more education with every passing year, and trend that continues unabated through the 1980s.
Is Armond White referring to literacy? For his sake, I hope not.
And if Armond White thinks that people's affection for Flashdance is related to math ability, he has another think coming.
"That a generation's esthetic taste could have been formed by a film as trifling as Flashdance is an alarming realization. It gives unexpected significance to Lopez's newest music video 'I'm Glad'--which faithfully restages many of Flashdance's most famous sequences."
Well, that's inarguable.
"Lopez stars, showing more flesh than ever even in leotards strained between her haunches."
Is this a problem?
"The video compresses the essence of Flashdance into about three minutes (movie-trailer length)."
Does Flashdance deserve more?
"Coincidentally, this reduction tells almost everything we need to know about the state movies are in."
Here we go: Cinema Is Dead.
"Flashdance should go down in history as the single film that destroyed modern cinema."
A distinctly bold claim. See below.
"(Snobs like to cite Star Wars or Jaws, but as Robert Towne judiciously pointed out in A Decade Under the Influence, 'A very talented filmmaker had made a very good film; it's just that Hollywood followed the lessons of Jaws to a fault.')
Bravo to Armond White for this. I've personally had enough of Star Wars and Jaws ruined everything. Look, I love 1970s American cinema more than that of any other decade. But the era has been mythologized as being a paradise of cinematic art unceremoniously derailed by the corrupt commercialism of Lucas and Spielberg.
The 1970s aren't only about edgy fare like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or The Last Detail. The 1970s brought us Love Story and The Towering Inferno. Star Wars and Jaws did not invent the blockbuster film--hell, The Godfather had lines around the block. What changed was the business model, in that films were no longer platform released. This did not kill the 1970s.
You know what killed the spirit of the 1970s? There were several factors, of course, but here are a few:
1. People were sick of being depressed. An important development. Jimmy Carter spoke of a 'malaise'; by the time Star Wars came around, we had been in turmoil and malaise for over a decade. People were ready to welcome any kind of joy they could find.
2. One from the Heart and Heaven's Gate. Combined, these films cost $70 million. Combined, they grossed $2.4 million. These two high-profile flops underscored the tremendous financial risk studios were taking by allowing stubborn auteurs to disappear with their money for months and months at a time. As a result, the studios gave power to their producers, and decided that if they were going to spend $70 million, it would not be on artistically daring and financially risky ventures, but on spectacles that were perceived to be safe bets.
Financially, you can understand the studios' position, even while lamenting the creative deficit afflicting The Industry.
What studios learned that is if you're going to spend $70 million, spend it on one movie, and market the damn thing so that people actually want to show up to see it. Which brings us to:
"Flashdance influenced more than marketing; it changed movie content into non-content."
In his indispensable Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson points out that, invariably, the trailers for Adrian Lyne films are better than the films themselves (I don't fully agree, but the point is legitimate). The marketing is the content. I am not in significant disagreement with Armond White here.
"Before its release, movie stories stayed true to social and psychological details; a recognizable or empathetic character made a movie an edifying experience. But Flashdance decimated such storytelling."
Full confession: I have never seen Flashdance. But I think White's positioning this specific film as such a turning point has no validity. I submit that had J-Lo made a video honoring Top Gun, White would have identified that film as the beginning of the end.
"The ludicrous plot about a female welder named Alex (Jennifer Beals) who longs to be a ballet dancer had about one-tenth the credibility of a regular movie. This was stretched thin when Alex practiced her avocation by moonlighting as an almost-stripper in a dingy Pittsburgh bar that featured Las Vegas-style production values."
Sure, this does sound ludicrous. But is it unique? Haven't we all seen stories of girls trying to make it on Broadway? Or in the movies? The tropes were updated to match the times, but the idea that there had never been ludicrous plots before Flashdance defies common sense. Let's go back to a quote from above:
"Before its release, movie stories stayed true to social and psychological details; a recognizable or empathetic character made a movie an edifying experience."
Really? Has Armond White ever seen an Elvis movie? Does he submit that every pre-Flashdance musical is worthwhile? This is an indefensible and unbelievable position. There were bad movies before Flashdance, and there have been many since. There were bad movies that had financial success before Flashdance, and there have been many since. 'Twas always thus, and always thus shall be.
"Alex didn't study, she danced pop while dreaming of ballet--an immediate fabrication of normal, real-life work ethic. That was Flashdance's contribution to the Reagan/80s go-for-it ethos, an odd combination of class snobbery and populism. It was 'hot' because it looked easy; it looked easy because it was a lie. And that's because it was, essentially, an advert."
Again, is any of this unique? Was any of this an innovation of Flashdance?
"Director Adrian Lyne (who slimed his way to Fatal Attraction, Jacob's Ladder, Indecent Proposal, Lolita and Unfaithful) got his training making British television commercials. As part of the Brit-ad invasion of Hollywood by Alan Parker and Ridley and Tony Scott, he transferred the moral vacuity and visual slickness of commercials to feature-filmmaking."
Here we go again. This time, we can blame commercial directors for destroying Cinema. That Armond White in particular would subscribe to such a point of view, given his admiration of the music video form, is surprising and distressing.
Lyne, Alan Parker, Ridley Scott, and Tony Scott have all made good films and bad films. Ridley has even made more than a few great films, and I would say Parker has come close from time to time.
Is it fair or accurate to assign a trend to these men? To some degree, yes. Their visual styles are similar, and there is occasional overlap in their choice of content. Does that mean that coming from a advert background dooms you to being a hack director? Of course not. These men have disparate talents, and this is reflected in outputs of varying quality.
And why is "visual slickness," in and of itself, a bad thing?
"Lyne was the least imaginative of these carpetbaggers, mixing superficial product placement with pseudo-serious sleaze; his debut, Foxes, similarly crossed teen angst with a gauzy, softcore peepshow. 9 1/2 Weeks is Lyne's best film, largely because Kim Basinger softened and complicated the cliches."
I have no quarrel with his claim that Lyne is the least of the Brit Advert Invasion.
"In Flashdance, Lyne did away with realistic affectation altogether."
I am here to tell you that Lyne did not write Flashdance. It was written by Thomas Hedley, Jr. and Joe Esterhas. (If Armond White wants to write a piece on how Esterhas has dragged down Cinema, I'm with him 100%.)
"Unlike a traditional musical shifting into fantasy to reveal the song-and-dance in a character's heart, Lyne breached both realism and fantasy."
Insane. Was Gene Kelly singing "Singin' in the Rain" a fantasy sequence? What the hell is he talking about? Memo to Armond White: Dancer in the Dark is not a traditional musical.
"With an ad man's ruthlessness, he pulverized the nuances of Alex's desire (the 80s urge to achieve) into a blatant series of absurd tropes: Job, Fun, Sweat, Flirtation, Lust, Competition plus pulsating musical interludes about Nothing."
Paging Joe Esterhas.
"Remember the scene where Alex and her boyfriend stop to watch black kids breakdancing on a street? It was as revolutionary as Eisenstein's Odessa Steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin."
What???
"Lyne allowed his story to stop dead for this moment of fake-realistic, cliche-atmospheric topicality."
Perhaps. But what does this have to do with the Odessa Steps?
"What J-Lo's peers fell for as the portent of something new (Hollywood's earliest validation of hiphop) was, actually, something awful. Instead of selling teenagers sneakers and acne products, Lyne sold them (and the rest of movie culture) a diminished way of appreciating the world and characters' private ambitions."
Wait, because Flashdance didn't really validate hip-hop? If White claims that Flashdance was a contributor to a diminished appreciation, that's one thing. But I don't understand how the hell that ties in to the breakdancing scene in any way. So a girl watches people breakdancing, and enjoys it. So what? What does that have to do with the Death of Cinema?
"In place of comprehension and expression, Flashdance highlighted sequences of impersonal, meaningless materialistic sensation. (This may in fact have opened the crack in the wall that Madonna's craven spectacle eventually tore down.) Strangely enough, Flashdance's box-office success--the fact that people didn't mind that it made no sense and its story was alternately incoherent and completely predictable--meant the beginning of visual illiteracy."
Again, I haven't seen the film, but these plot criticisms seem quite legitimate. But how does that contribute to visual illiteracy? A deliberate ignorance of plot is an altogether different problem than visual illiteracy. Armond White elaborates.
"Trained by television, moviegoers of J-Lo's age became accustomed to watching stories through escalated flashiness at the expense of believability and concentration. This was a horrible pop culture swindle. The producers of Flashdance devised it using early-80s dance-pop as if speaking a new language to a new audience; the soundtrack album became a hit partly because its tunes were easily complemented by simple, gaudy imagery no different from what was then premiering on MTV."
Again, valid. But, again, his argument has little to do with visual literacy, per se. Flashiness is not intrinsically good or bad. It can be misapplied, but also properly utilized.
MTV has not destroyed Cinema. I would argue that some aspects of visual literacy have been improved by music videos, commercials, and video games. We can process images more quickly. Is that a bad thing? No. Does that mean that every film should be an onslaught of cuts? Absolutely not; the lesson can be misapplied. But to paint all commercial filmmaking with such a broad brush is a disservice.
"It seemed new, but it wasn't. And wasn't meant to be."
Exactly! So what makes Flashdance so much worse? The fact that it was a 90-minute music video, but a commercial success?
Armond White's objection is to the fact that a ludicrous plot was shot in a stylish manner. He believes that this has contributed--no, led--to visual illiteracy. I accept that it may have contributed to narrative illiteracy, but he is overstating this particular film's significance tenfold.
"'I'm Glad' suggests that Lopez is intuitively aware that Flashdance's narrative was solely in the language of advertisement. Lopez and her music video director David LaChappelle together accept that pop imagery can be endlessly recycled--looking like something new yet having the same old purpose--to sell. That's why Lopez can't talk about the movie's ideas or style; for a pitchwoman it need only be 'hot.' For today's non-skeptical audience of consumers, 'hot' is anything easily assimilated that can be consumed in its entirety without thought but with the feel of satisfaction."
I have no quarrel with this.
"Lopez and LaChappelle refer to Flashdance's major set-pieces--the steel factory, the "splash" dance, the kabuki dance, the ballet-school audition, the jiggle-jogging to Michael Sembello's 'Maniac' (although 'I'm Glad' is a song with a completely different rhythm)--but not as film scholars."
Come again?
"These fragments don't evoke deep feeling like the movie references in Techine or Bertolucci films; rather, 'I'm Glad' confirms a proposal that the cable-tv network TNT had been asserting for years: that some of the most meretricious films of the 80s have, indeed, become 'The New Classics.'"
I'm not sure how Armond White could ever expect a J-Lo video to "evoke deep feeling," but I feel the rest of this.
"For Lopez's generation, Flashdance is recalled as fondly (and perhaps as legitimately) as Casablanca is endlessly and repeatedly recalled by the majority of voters of those American Film Institute polls.
I don't think that's true.
"It would be pretentious to say that Flashdance, An Officer and a Gentleman, Top Gun, The Breakfast Club, Fatal Attraction, First Blood, Dirty Dancing, Stand By Me, Rain Man and When Harry Met Sally constituted a new canon. These movies don't need critical endorsement when there's the consensus of popularity (and frequent television rebroadcasting)."
What do these movies have in common? That people like them, but Armond White doesn't?
"As a result, 'I'm Glad' doesn't dig into cultural memory the way director Mary Lambert did when appropriating the 'Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend' number from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for Madonna's 'Material Girl' video."
The only difference is that Armond White likes Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
"Lopez and LaChappelle, like TNT, evoke the comfort of immediate identification."
Um, yes? But didn't White immediately identify with 'Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend' because he has positive feelings toward the reference point? This sentence strikes me as irrelevant.
"Instead of trying to bestow significance upon J-Lo's career by equating her latest venture with a past cultural landmark, 'I'm Glad' simply announces J-Lo's self-gratification."
Whoa. Where has Armond White been? Of course the video announces self-gratification. The video is a commercial for a single which is a commercial for an album. It's not there to bestow significance--and quite honestly, I don't think Madonna's diamond dance was supposed to, either. (Maybe I'm wrong on that point. I would like to see the argument developed further.)
"Going back to a movie event from her youth, 'I'm Glad' plays out J-Lo's shallow artistic goals. She's not subverting ideas of the past but latching on to a landmark for unsophisticated reasons. (You have to see 'I'm Glad' to believe it; otherwise it's unthinkable that anyone could hold Flashdance as a model to which to aspire.)"
Again, okay--but how does "Material Girl" subvert ideas of the past? It simply replays them to give Madonna iconic credibility. Is that a subversion?
"What exactly is J-Lo honoring when she imitates Alex's striptease-under-the-torn-sweatshirt? Or when she climbs atop a table to thump her ass at a panel of judges? Does she see herself as a Latina Billy Elliot? Was her own career path as hoary? By hooking her Bronx-to-Beverly Hills profile into Jennifer Beals' Cinderella myth, Lopez perpetuates Flashdance's ethnically vague sex symbolism--Maid in Manhattan II. While Beals iconographically opposed Hollywood's racial restriction--a breakthrough, of sorts--there is no progress in Lopez repeating her footsteps two decades later. J-Lo may do her own dancing, progressing over the body-double stunts that Marine Jahan performed for Beals, but it's a less honorable charade."
A meaty paragraph. But the answer is simple: J-Lo is honoring a movie that she loves and which (presumably) inspired her. And the fact that there has been no "progress" in the intervening twenty years is a red herring. Did anyone really consider Flashdance a hallmark of racial empowerment?
"By referring only to the surface of Flashdance,
What else is there? Didn't Armond White just spend a few hundred words explaining that Flashdance is only surface?
"J-Lo neglects that alongside Beals' ethnic pantomime, a Puerto Rican striver's saga was expressed in Flashdance's theme song, Irene Cara's 'What a Feeling.' Cara's film career should have been the model for J-Lo's adoration (the way Morrissey's Suedehead video swoons over James Dean). In films like Aaron Loves Angela and the cult-classic Sparkle, Cara became the first teen movie star of color, bridging the blaxploitation trend and indie trend as well as uniting the sometimes riven movie audience of ethnic urban teens by attesting to the city--America's--plurality. (If Cara passed for black in Sparkle, she righteously reversed what Ronnie Spector had done in the 60s.) As Cara grew into her maturity and eventual Hollywood obsolescence (take heed, J-Lo) she finally got to have her say in the Flashdance theme song (co-written with Giorgio Moroder), singing with heart-bursting aspiration that eventually won her a Grammy and an Oscar."
I don't even know what to do with this. So an adolescent J-Lo was more impressed by the actress than the singer. Is this significant?
"Lopez's I'm Glad taints that history."
No, it doesn't. Irene Cara is not at all tainted by this video.
"Attempting a pastiche, she and LaChappelle wind up making a palimpsest, painting their commercialism over Jennifer Beals' subversion and Irene Cara's mini-triumph. And misrepresenting the loathsome Adrian Lyne as a visionary. J-Lo's reduction reminds me of a Flashdance porn parody, Fleshpants: Cop a Feeling."
I think this video is simple. J-Lo was inspired by Flashdance as a youth, and enlisted a top-notch director to shoot her homage thereto.
Is J-Lo's critical acumen suspect?
Most likely.
Is Flashdance the cause of the Death of Cinema?
It may be an anathema, yes, but it's no cause.
Is J-Lo a 'hot' piece of ass?
You bet. Shut up and watch the damn video.
A takedown of his current review. My comments are in bold:
"'It's hot!' is the explanation Jennifer Lopez gave for why she decided to pay homage to the 1983 movie Flashdance. 'This was a specific iconic movie of our generation,' said the 32-year-old Lopez. For clarification she added, 'It still holds up and it's hot.'"
Very insightful commentary from J-Lo.
"Lopez could not describe the film's appeal beyond the word 'hot'--that handy euphemism for unexamined excitement--partly because Flashdance did away with articulation. (It opened concurrently with the education system's collapse during the Reagan era.)"
Could this be more ridiculous? Did the education system really collapse in the Reagan era? Where is this coming from? Behold figures 3 & 4 here, which clearly demonstrate that more people are getting more education with every passing year, and trend that continues unabated through the 1980s.
Is Armond White referring to literacy? For his sake, I hope not.
And if Armond White thinks that people's affection for Flashdance is related to math ability, he has another think coming.
"That a generation's esthetic taste could have been formed by a film as trifling as Flashdance is an alarming realization. It gives unexpected significance to Lopez's newest music video 'I'm Glad'--which faithfully restages many of Flashdance's most famous sequences."
Well, that's inarguable.
"Lopez stars, showing more flesh than ever even in leotards strained between her haunches."
Is this a problem?
"The video compresses the essence of Flashdance into about three minutes (movie-trailer length)."
Does Flashdance deserve more?
"Coincidentally, this reduction tells almost everything we need to know about the state movies are in."
Here we go: Cinema Is Dead.
"Flashdance should go down in history as the single film that destroyed modern cinema."
A distinctly bold claim. See below.
"(Snobs like to cite Star Wars or Jaws, but as Robert Towne judiciously pointed out in A Decade Under the Influence, 'A very talented filmmaker had made a very good film; it's just that Hollywood followed the lessons of Jaws to a fault.')
Bravo to Armond White for this. I've personally had enough of Star Wars and Jaws ruined everything. Look, I love 1970s American cinema more than that of any other decade. But the era has been mythologized as being a paradise of cinematic art unceremoniously derailed by the corrupt commercialism of Lucas and Spielberg.
The 1970s aren't only about edgy fare like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or The Last Detail. The 1970s brought us Love Story and The Towering Inferno. Star Wars and Jaws did not invent the blockbuster film--hell, The Godfather had lines around the block. What changed was the business model, in that films were no longer platform released. This did not kill the 1970s.
You know what killed the spirit of the 1970s? There were several factors, of course, but here are a few:
1. People were sick of being depressed. An important development. Jimmy Carter spoke of a 'malaise'; by the time Star Wars came around, we had been in turmoil and malaise for over a decade. People were ready to welcome any kind of joy they could find.
2. One from the Heart and Heaven's Gate. Combined, these films cost $70 million. Combined, they grossed $2.4 million. These two high-profile flops underscored the tremendous financial risk studios were taking by allowing stubborn auteurs to disappear with their money for months and months at a time. As a result, the studios gave power to their producers, and decided that if they were going to spend $70 million, it would not be on artistically daring and financially risky ventures, but on spectacles that were perceived to be safe bets.
Financially, you can understand the studios' position, even while lamenting the creative deficit afflicting The Industry.
What studios learned that is if you're going to spend $70 million, spend it on one movie, and market the damn thing so that people actually want to show up to see it. Which brings us to:
"Flashdance influenced more than marketing; it changed movie content into non-content."
In his indispensable Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson points out that, invariably, the trailers for Adrian Lyne films are better than the films themselves (I don't fully agree, but the point is legitimate). The marketing is the content. I am not in significant disagreement with Armond White here.
"Before its release, movie stories stayed true to social and psychological details; a recognizable or empathetic character made a movie an edifying experience. But Flashdance decimated such storytelling."
Full confession: I have never seen Flashdance. But I think White's positioning this specific film as such a turning point has no validity. I submit that had J-Lo made a video honoring Top Gun, White would have identified that film as the beginning of the end.
"The ludicrous plot about a female welder named Alex (Jennifer Beals) who longs to be a ballet dancer had about one-tenth the credibility of a regular movie. This was stretched thin when Alex practiced her avocation by moonlighting as an almost-stripper in a dingy Pittsburgh bar that featured Las Vegas-style production values."
Sure, this does sound ludicrous. But is it unique? Haven't we all seen stories of girls trying to make it on Broadway? Or in the movies? The tropes were updated to match the times, but the idea that there had never been ludicrous plots before Flashdance defies common sense. Let's go back to a quote from above:
"Before its release, movie stories stayed true to social and psychological details; a recognizable or empathetic character made a movie an edifying experience."
Really? Has Armond White ever seen an Elvis movie? Does he submit that every pre-Flashdance musical is worthwhile? This is an indefensible and unbelievable position. There were bad movies before Flashdance, and there have been many since. There were bad movies that had financial success before Flashdance, and there have been many since. 'Twas always thus, and always thus shall be.
"Alex didn't study, she danced pop while dreaming of ballet--an immediate fabrication of normal, real-life work ethic. That was Flashdance's contribution to the Reagan/80s go-for-it ethos, an odd combination of class snobbery and populism. It was 'hot' because it looked easy; it looked easy because it was a lie. And that's because it was, essentially, an advert."
Again, is any of this unique? Was any of this an innovation of Flashdance?
"Director Adrian Lyne (who slimed his way to Fatal Attraction, Jacob's Ladder, Indecent Proposal, Lolita and Unfaithful) got his training making British television commercials. As part of the Brit-ad invasion of Hollywood by Alan Parker and Ridley and Tony Scott, he transferred the moral vacuity and visual slickness of commercials to feature-filmmaking."
Here we go again. This time, we can blame commercial directors for destroying Cinema. That Armond White in particular would subscribe to such a point of view, given his admiration of the music video form, is surprising and distressing.
Lyne, Alan Parker, Ridley Scott, and Tony Scott have all made good films and bad films. Ridley has even made more than a few great films, and I would say Parker has come close from time to time.
Is it fair or accurate to assign a trend to these men? To some degree, yes. Their visual styles are similar, and there is occasional overlap in their choice of content. Does that mean that coming from a advert background dooms you to being a hack director? Of course not. These men have disparate talents, and this is reflected in outputs of varying quality.
And why is "visual slickness," in and of itself, a bad thing?
"Lyne was the least imaginative of these carpetbaggers, mixing superficial product placement with pseudo-serious sleaze; his debut, Foxes, similarly crossed teen angst with a gauzy, softcore peepshow. 9 1/2 Weeks is Lyne's best film, largely because Kim Basinger softened and complicated the cliches."
I have no quarrel with his claim that Lyne is the least of the Brit Advert Invasion.
"In Flashdance, Lyne did away with realistic affectation altogether."
I am here to tell you that Lyne did not write Flashdance. It was written by Thomas Hedley, Jr. and Joe Esterhas. (If Armond White wants to write a piece on how Esterhas has dragged down Cinema, I'm with him 100%.)
"Unlike a traditional musical shifting into fantasy to reveal the song-and-dance in a character's heart, Lyne breached both realism and fantasy."
Insane. Was Gene Kelly singing "Singin' in the Rain" a fantasy sequence? What the hell is he talking about? Memo to Armond White: Dancer in the Dark is not a traditional musical.
"With an ad man's ruthlessness, he pulverized the nuances of Alex's desire (the 80s urge to achieve) into a blatant series of absurd tropes: Job, Fun, Sweat, Flirtation, Lust, Competition plus pulsating musical interludes about Nothing."
Paging Joe Esterhas.
"Remember the scene where Alex and her boyfriend stop to watch black kids breakdancing on a street? It was as revolutionary as Eisenstein's Odessa Steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin."
What???
"Lyne allowed his story to stop dead for this moment of fake-realistic, cliche-atmospheric topicality."
Perhaps. But what does this have to do with the Odessa Steps?
"What J-Lo's peers fell for as the portent of something new (Hollywood's earliest validation of hiphop) was, actually, something awful. Instead of selling teenagers sneakers and acne products, Lyne sold them (and the rest of movie culture) a diminished way of appreciating the world and characters' private ambitions."
Wait, because Flashdance didn't really validate hip-hop? If White claims that Flashdance was a contributor to a diminished appreciation, that's one thing. But I don't understand how the hell that ties in to the breakdancing scene in any way. So a girl watches people breakdancing, and enjoys it. So what? What does that have to do with the Death of Cinema?
"In place of comprehension and expression, Flashdance highlighted sequences of impersonal, meaningless materialistic sensation. (This may in fact have opened the crack in the wall that Madonna's craven spectacle eventually tore down.) Strangely enough, Flashdance's box-office success--the fact that people didn't mind that it made no sense and its story was alternately incoherent and completely predictable--meant the beginning of visual illiteracy."
Again, I haven't seen the film, but these plot criticisms seem quite legitimate. But how does that contribute to visual illiteracy? A deliberate ignorance of plot is an altogether different problem than visual illiteracy. Armond White elaborates.
"Trained by television, moviegoers of J-Lo's age became accustomed to watching stories through escalated flashiness at the expense of believability and concentration. This was a horrible pop culture swindle. The producers of Flashdance devised it using early-80s dance-pop as if speaking a new language to a new audience; the soundtrack album became a hit partly because its tunes were easily complemented by simple, gaudy imagery no different from what was then premiering on MTV."
Again, valid. But, again, his argument has little to do with visual literacy, per se. Flashiness is not intrinsically good or bad. It can be misapplied, but also properly utilized.
MTV has not destroyed Cinema. I would argue that some aspects of visual literacy have been improved by music videos, commercials, and video games. We can process images more quickly. Is that a bad thing? No. Does that mean that every film should be an onslaught of cuts? Absolutely not; the lesson can be misapplied. But to paint all commercial filmmaking with such a broad brush is a disservice.
"It seemed new, but it wasn't. And wasn't meant to be."
Exactly! So what makes Flashdance so much worse? The fact that it was a 90-minute music video, but a commercial success?
Armond White's objection is to the fact that a ludicrous plot was shot in a stylish manner. He believes that this has contributed--no, led--to visual illiteracy. I accept that it may have contributed to narrative illiteracy, but he is overstating this particular film's significance tenfold.
"'I'm Glad' suggests that Lopez is intuitively aware that Flashdance's narrative was solely in the language of advertisement. Lopez and her music video director David LaChappelle together accept that pop imagery can be endlessly recycled--looking like something new yet having the same old purpose--to sell. That's why Lopez can't talk about the movie's ideas or style; for a pitchwoman it need only be 'hot.' For today's non-skeptical audience of consumers, 'hot' is anything easily assimilated that can be consumed in its entirety without thought but with the feel of satisfaction."
I have no quarrel with this.
"Lopez and LaChappelle refer to Flashdance's major set-pieces--the steel factory, the "splash" dance, the kabuki dance, the ballet-school audition, the jiggle-jogging to Michael Sembello's 'Maniac' (although 'I'm Glad' is a song with a completely different rhythm)--but not as film scholars."
Come again?
"These fragments don't evoke deep feeling like the movie references in Techine or Bertolucci films; rather, 'I'm Glad' confirms a proposal that the cable-tv network TNT had been asserting for years: that some of the most meretricious films of the 80s have, indeed, become 'The New Classics.'"
I'm not sure how Armond White could ever expect a J-Lo video to "evoke deep feeling," but I feel the rest of this.
"For Lopez's generation, Flashdance is recalled as fondly (and perhaps as legitimately) as Casablanca is endlessly and repeatedly recalled by the majority of voters of those American Film Institute polls.
I don't think that's true.
"It would be pretentious to say that Flashdance, An Officer and a Gentleman, Top Gun, The Breakfast Club, Fatal Attraction, First Blood, Dirty Dancing, Stand By Me, Rain Man and When Harry Met Sally constituted a new canon. These movies don't need critical endorsement when there's the consensus of popularity (and frequent television rebroadcasting)."
What do these movies have in common? That people like them, but Armond White doesn't?
"As a result, 'I'm Glad' doesn't dig into cultural memory the way director Mary Lambert did when appropriating the 'Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend' number from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for Madonna's 'Material Girl' video."
The only difference is that Armond White likes Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
"Lopez and LaChappelle, like TNT, evoke the comfort of immediate identification."
Um, yes? But didn't White immediately identify with 'Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend' because he has positive feelings toward the reference point? This sentence strikes me as irrelevant.
"Instead of trying to bestow significance upon J-Lo's career by equating her latest venture with a past cultural landmark, 'I'm Glad' simply announces J-Lo's self-gratification."
Whoa. Where has Armond White been? Of course the video announces self-gratification. The video is a commercial for a single which is a commercial for an album. It's not there to bestow significance--and quite honestly, I don't think Madonna's diamond dance was supposed to, either. (Maybe I'm wrong on that point. I would like to see the argument developed further.)
"Going back to a movie event from her youth, 'I'm Glad' plays out J-Lo's shallow artistic goals. She's not subverting ideas of the past but latching on to a landmark for unsophisticated reasons. (You have to see 'I'm Glad' to believe it; otherwise it's unthinkable that anyone could hold Flashdance as a model to which to aspire.)"
Again, okay--but how does "Material Girl" subvert ideas of the past? It simply replays them to give Madonna iconic credibility. Is that a subversion?
"What exactly is J-Lo honoring when she imitates Alex's striptease-under-the-torn-sweatshirt? Or when she climbs atop a table to thump her ass at a panel of judges? Does she see herself as a Latina Billy Elliot? Was her own career path as hoary? By hooking her Bronx-to-Beverly Hills profile into Jennifer Beals' Cinderella myth, Lopez perpetuates Flashdance's ethnically vague sex symbolism--Maid in Manhattan II. While Beals iconographically opposed Hollywood's racial restriction--a breakthrough, of sorts--there is no progress in Lopez repeating her footsteps two decades later. J-Lo may do her own dancing, progressing over the body-double stunts that Marine Jahan performed for Beals, but it's a less honorable charade."
A meaty paragraph. But the answer is simple: J-Lo is honoring a movie that she loves and which (presumably) inspired her. And the fact that there has been no "progress" in the intervening twenty years is a red herring. Did anyone really consider Flashdance a hallmark of racial empowerment?
"By referring only to the surface of Flashdance,
What else is there? Didn't Armond White just spend a few hundred words explaining that Flashdance is only surface?
"J-Lo neglects that alongside Beals' ethnic pantomime, a Puerto Rican striver's saga was expressed in Flashdance's theme song, Irene Cara's 'What a Feeling.' Cara's film career should have been the model for J-Lo's adoration (the way Morrissey's Suedehead video swoons over James Dean). In films like Aaron Loves Angela and the cult-classic Sparkle, Cara became the first teen movie star of color, bridging the blaxploitation trend and indie trend as well as uniting the sometimes riven movie audience of ethnic urban teens by attesting to the city--America's--plurality. (If Cara passed for black in Sparkle, she righteously reversed what Ronnie Spector had done in the 60s.) As Cara grew into her maturity and eventual Hollywood obsolescence (take heed, J-Lo) she finally got to have her say in the Flashdance theme song (co-written with Giorgio Moroder), singing with heart-bursting aspiration that eventually won her a Grammy and an Oscar."
I don't even know what to do with this. So an adolescent J-Lo was more impressed by the actress than the singer. Is this significant?
"Lopez's I'm Glad taints that history."
No, it doesn't. Irene Cara is not at all tainted by this video.
"Attempting a pastiche, she and LaChappelle wind up making a palimpsest, painting their commercialism over Jennifer Beals' subversion and Irene Cara's mini-triumph. And misrepresenting the loathsome Adrian Lyne as a visionary. J-Lo's reduction reminds me of a Flashdance porn parody, Fleshpants: Cop a Feeling."
I think this video is simple. J-Lo was inspired by Flashdance as a youth, and enlisted a top-notch director to shoot her homage thereto.
Is J-Lo's critical acumen suspect?
Most likely.
Is Flashdance the cause of the Death of Cinema?
It may be an anathema, yes, but it's no cause.
Is J-Lo a 'hot' piece of ass?
You bet. Shut up and watch the damn video.
MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW DU YESTERDAY
"I Must Not Chase the Boys" by Play
Directed by Sasha Levinson
Grade: Incomplete
This video is a lie.
For several weeks, I was fooled.
I thought this group was a manufactured consortium of 18-22 year olds.
I was wrong.
This group is a manufactured consortium, for sure. A Swedish quartet.
Would you like to know their ages?
15-15-15-13.
The main singer, whose name I will not tell you, walks around flaunting her cleavage and purring at the camera. The idea that this girl is actually fifteen and just made to look like a sorority girl is absolutely appalling.
Columbia Music has deceived us. And their wanton sexualizing of adolescents will not stand.
I hereby declare Jihad against Columbia Music. (This is not retroactive Jihad; feel free to enjoy Bob Dylan or any other pre-Jihad Sony artist.)
Do not support Play. They are a group of lies.
"I Must Not Chase the Boys" by Play
Directed by Sasha Levinson
Grade: Incomplete
This video is a lie.
For several weeks, I was fooled.
I thought this group was a manufactured consortium of 18-22 year olds.
I was wrong.
This group is a manufactured consortium, for sure. A Swedish quartet.
Would you like to know their ages?
15-15-15-13.
The main singer, whose name I will not tell you, walks around flaunting her cleavage and purring at the camera. The idea that this girl is actually fifteen and just made to look like a sorority girl is absolutely appalling.
Columbia Music has deceived us. And their wanton sexualizing of adolescents will not stand.
I hereby declare Jihad against Columbia Music. (This is not retroactive Jihad; feel free to enjoy Bob Dylan or any other pre-Jihad Sony artist.)
Do not support Play. They are a group of lies.
