Category Archives: Film

UPDATE II: Celebrity And The #Selfie

Aesthetics, Celebrity, Feminism, Film, Hollywood, Pop-Culture

Less repulsive than Kim Kardashian’s preoccupation with selfie taking is the fact that she goes unchallenged when depicting her obscene, whorish narcissism as an attempt to come to terms with her body. “Be a little easier on myself,” as she puts it. Kardashian is as heroic as the females mocked in last week’s “Heroism Or Hedonism?”

A voice in the wilderness is the “iconic French actress Catherine Deneuve,” who reminds us that real feminine allure and mystic are not to be found in the “new generation of celebrities addicted to social media.”

“A star is someone who must show themselves only a little and remain discreet. With the introduction of the digital age there is an intrusion of everything, everywhere, all the time,” she said.

“We see a tremendous amount of people who are very famous, with millions of followers, and who have done absolutely nothing.”

“Heroism Or Hedonism?” made similar points with respect to true heroism: it is private and discreet.

Deneuve is on my short list of the few good things produced by France. So is Brigitte Bardot, Rene Guinot and the Musée du Louvre.

UPDATE I (5/11): More for the list: Victor Hugo, Gustave Flaubert, Ravel, Debussy, Degas, Monet, Chagall (not born in France), César Franck (also not born there), and many more. But you get the picture, and the use of humor (I hope) to make a point about a generally insufferable lot.

UPDATE II: Albert Camus, too, WAS WONDERFUL. He was born in Algeria but was French. The French dislike him and prefer that retarded, piece of rotting flesh, Sartre, who recommended ignoring Stalin’s gulag, so as to keep the morale of the workers’ of the world high. Yep. The French …

Evocative Ad That Wouldn’t Wash At The ‘Toilet Bowl’ Halftime

Aesthetics, Art, Business, Film, Music, Technology

It’s a beautiful and evocative ad, which explains why you didn’t see it during the ‘Toilet Bowl’ halftime.

Music makes an event, an ad, a movie, even a marriage. Who among us oldies can forget the sound track to the French film “A Man And A Woman,” directed by Claude Lelouch? Not me. This dates me—both as an oldie and an incorrigible romantic.

The fact that I identified the voice and song of Edith Piaf in “The Daring: No Regrets,” a new ad for the 2016 Cadillac CT6, dates me too. The text is good, the sound track beautiful—I can’t believe I used to mock Edith Paif’s overly emotional delivery. I guess it takes decades of Beyonces, Jay-Zs, Madonnas, Iggy Azaleas, Katy Perrys, and Coldplays; a Nicki Minaj, a Kanye West, and a Missy Elliott to make one appreciate a tune, a voice, instrumental proficiency; chord progression and composition, in general, to say nothing of the emotion music is meant to evoke.

Enjoy the music and the message. Steve Wozniak makes an appearance to drive it home. A shame that the slogan, “Dare Greatly,” comes courtesy of statism by FDR. To be expected, I suppose.

As expected, Cadillac has taken the next step in rebuilding its image by releasing a new ad entitled The Daring: No Regrets. First airing during the 87th annual Osca

BRAVO.

Bum’s Rush For Allison Williams (Daughter Of Brian Williams)

Film, Gender, Hollywood, Morality, Pop-Culture, Relatives, Sex

The phrase a “bum’s rush” means “throw the bum out!” Libertarians, the tinny kind that ignores the cultural aspect of liberty and civilization, will attack this post with hackneyed lines, such as that, Allison Williams, daughter of disgraced NBC anchor Brian Williams, is making her way in the free market. Leave her be. Don’t like what she does for a living? Don’t consume her crappy, pun intended, products (movies).

For one, it is arguable that Ms. Williams would be where she is were she not “a member of the media circle jerk,” courtesy of her father. For another, I never watch filmic effluent like “Girls,” in which Allison Williams apparently stars. All I know of this rubbish comes from perusing news headlines.

Like a lot of north American females, this girl acts and talks dirty (highlighted below). I’m no prude; do what you may in the bedroom, but why coarsen the public square? Whatever happened to privacy? Via Mediatie:

While we all watched the Golden Globes on Sunday evening, Gawker noted that HBO’s Girls began its fourth season with Allison Williams‘ character Marnie on the receiving end of some ol’-fashioned “booty eating” from her new beau.***

In advance of the episode, Vulture had a reaction from Allison’s father, NBC newsman Brian Williams, who gave pretty much the same answer he does every time his daughter is involved in a sex scene:

She’s always been an actress. For us, watching her is the family occupation and everybody has to remember it’s acting, no animals were harmed during the filming, and ideally nobody gets hurt.

For her part, Williams told EW about the scene’s creation, in which no butts were actually eaten:

I had a couple of days talking to wardrobe and makeup to get ready to rig the thing that I wore for the ass motorboating. It was an engineering achievement! I would manufacture it if more than one person a year needed it. [Laughs] It was so elaborate—it involved Spanx that we cut away and glued down and involved menstrual pads and two of those weird thongs. I’ve had to do scenes like this twice now.

The moment below, in GIF form here.

And head on over to Gawker if you want to view the actual scene.

***Prediction: This article’s comments section will be full of the predictable “this is disgusting” outcry, but take note, fainting-couch frequenters: The activity known as “booty-eating” is currently experiencing a cultural renaissance. [This is a non sequitur: An activity doesn’t become laudable just because the masses engage in it—ilana]

UPDATE II: The ‘Selma’ Or ‘Sniper’ No-Brainer

Affirmative Action, Film, History, Hollywood, Just War, Military, Race

“Sniper” Or “Selma”? Which flick would you rather see? I will pass on both. However, if forced to choose between a 2-hour long, historically inaccurate guilt trip, laid on thick by the MOPE (Most Oppressed People Ever), and an action movie about an all-American “son, husband, father, and, most of all, decorated military man”; I can see why “American Sniper” is a box office sensation, while “Selma” circles the drain. “Sniper” grossed $105.3 Million on the week-end of its release; “Selma” $11.5 million.

Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, the subject of the “Clint Eastwood’s biopic,” in my opinion, squandered his talents as an assassin for Uncle Sam. Kyle’s claim to fame, by the news media’s telling, is that he “held the record for number of kills by an American sniper. The Pentagon has confirmed more than 150 of his kills. The previous record was 109.”

As I wrote at the time the SEAL passed away, “live by the sword, die by the sword. Or in hippie speak: Kyle had bad karma.”

I’m quite comfortable stating that poor Kyle was not in the business of defending American liberties, as the mouths on neoconservative media insist. That the war over in Iraq saved lives stateside is a dubious proposition at best. To the contrary, there is more proof of the opposite; that picking off women and children and other invaded species, “when he [thought it] necessary,” increased the danger to Americans stateside from the victims’ community. (Unfriend and unfollow me all you like; that doesn’t change this immutable truth.)

Still, if “American Sniper” is an apolitical rendition, a human story about a controversial, conflicted assassin for the state—much like “The Hurt Locker” was—I can see the appeal.

UPDATE I: A day after I wrote “Live By The Sword, Die By The Sword” (02.03.13), Ron Paul tweeted out the same (02.4.13). He was denounced, of course.

UPDATE II: Writes pat Buchanan, in “Selma, 50 years on”: … “The era of marching for civil rights was over, and the era of Black Power, with Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown and The Black Panthers eclipsing King, had begun.”