fourfour

I wanna feel soft and pretty

Funky Town Grooves recently issued expanded and remastered editions of La Toya Jackson's third and fourth albums, Heart Don't Lie and Imagination. They are really something, to say the least. I reviewed them for MTV Hive. Since the noises that come out of this woman's mouth are often unbelievable, I thought it necessary to collect her best screeches, interjections and declarations in a soundboard. It's below. Turn your speakers down (off, even!) and have fun. (I highly suggest at least listening to the very last file, the last minute of the slow jam "Love Talk." You'll thank me.)

John Carter is so bad

It is unconscionable in 2012 for a movie to portray a white dude who infiltrates a non-white native culture and then turns out to be better at being a native than even the natives are. We've seen it for years, we saw it in Avatar and now we see this straight up white supremacy in John Carter. The title character, a former captain of the Confederate fucking Army, is ported over to Mars, where he encounters a race of four-armed green monster warriors. Because of his bone density (bone density!), he is innately superior, able to leap in massive bounds and thus can defeat legions of not-so-nice four-armed green dudes who confront him in orgiastic pilings-on. He is a super hero and his white skin is all the cape that he needs.

I am not familiar with Edgar Rice Burroughs' beloved Barsoom books, so I cannot say whether John Carter does them justice. If they promote the idea of the white man's innate heroism and superiority, however, they are some bullshit and they deserve this piss-poor Disney film adaptation, if not worse. I can say for certain that transplanting this universe from print to film is not without immediate unintentional humor: Barsoom (the Martian word for "Mars" here) sounds way too much like "bazoom" when it is said out loud. I kept thinking about that awful woman Henrietta in Showgirls whose tits popped properly only with Nomi's assistance.

There's a lot of really stupid vocabulary specific to John Carter. There is a Martian city-state called Helium, and when another race (made up mostly of white people) kept talking about "saving Helium" at the beginning of the film, I thought they were discussing the element and could not figure out why it was so crucial. Maybe one of them really, really liked balloons, I thought. Like, liked them-liked them. Maybe they were planning a birthday party. That would have been more fun than John Carter's central demand of its audience to parse out dialogue over perpetually swelling music in some of the worst sound mixing I've ever experienced. But then, when I realized that the people were just babbling nonsense words anyway, I figured I wasn't missing anything.

Soon after arriving on Mars, John is given some elixir that allows him to understand the Green Martians' language. Mostly, it just cures the movie of subtitles, since the white people who already live on Mars only speak in English, even before the elixir is administered. Nothing in their speech is altered by John's taking of the elixir and they can freely communicate with the Green Martians, as well. I can't even figure out where the logic is there (other than allowing us the satisfaction of watching savages assimilate to our ears on their own fucking planet). The Green Martians are still capable of speaking in Martian or Barsoomic or whatever it's called, however, as we hear in prayers and various other mutterings throughout. So the elxir is more a Band-aid than a cure, I guess.

Also on the linguistic tip, when John Carter meets Dejah Thoris, the human object of his affection who kind of looks like Hoopz rendered as a Disney princess, we find out that there are still plenty of vocabulary differences. Planet names, for example, differ on Earth and Mars, although Dejah refers to everything as the "solar system" so somehow the stars aligned for that phraseology to be universal.

I know that many of these are minor points and that science fiction demands a suspension of disbelief. I don't know that John Carter is at terms with its own logic. Right up front we're told that Mars is not the airless or dead planet that we think it is, "but it is dying." So we're almost right, I guess? Great excuse for a story, righting our half-wrongs with racism.

I also don't really know what this movie is about. Opposing forces, I guess? Going from Point A to Point B through the desert on a Tauntaun knock-off with no name? Sword play in a time of aircraft technology that exceeds what we currently have on Earth by thousands of years? A cave of gold? A script whose first uttered word is "Mars!" that then goes on to deliver bon mots like, "Where on Earth am I?" and "I claim the right to challenge!" and "War is  shameful thing!" and "We are strong because we despise weakness"?

This movie is a pile of shit. I liked John's flat-faced dog side-kick because he reminded me of Winston, and I look forward to cutting together a supercut of all of the instances of people saying "John Carter" throughout this movie because they say it so much. It stops making sense and, like most of what comes out of people's mouths in this movie, is merely just noise.

I also reviewed Silent House for this week. Surprise, surprise, I also hated that, much to my dismay. I would love a good horror movie right about now, and I love to love Elizabeth Olsen. Ugh. I wish a good movie would come out. Right now, my favorite movie of the year so far is The Vow. Fucking The Vow!

Probably my only ANTM post of the cycle

As I've been saying for a while now (recapping be damned), I'm over America's Next Top Model. In confirmation, I thought last night's Cycle 18 premiere was fucking dreadful. I wrote about it for work, and a tweet I sent out with a link to that piece turned into an extremely unpleasant interaction:

I know people like that person from her past appearances on reality TV (I'm not much familiar with much beyond her name and occupation), but I think on ANTM, she is on some sub-Twiggy level shit. So dull. Here's the commentary on her that appeared in my review:

The biggest alteration arrives late in the premiere, when it is announced that fashion PR and reality TV vet Kelly Cutrone has replaced André Leon Talley on the judges’ panel. While Talley brought cloaks, his own vocabulary (“Dreckitude!”) and a sense of absurd performance (“I feel like I’m in a cinematic moment of something wonderful!”), Cutrone’s sole flash of color comes when she pronounces “aristocracy” as “UH-ris-to-crasy.” She is virtually lifeless, delivering flat line after flat line in a chat forum that demands animation (“It’s an unfortunate picture,” “The clothes are wearing her, she’s not wearing the clothes”). At one point, she describes her PR work by saying, “It’s my job to make them think they want things they don’t need.” If she’s trying to convince us that she’s what Top Model needs, she’s doing a terrible job.

A bit later, I recieved this reply:

There are many lessons to learn from this:

Love is deaf

I almost admire Rihanna's audacity. She is a willful woman in a world still fearful of them. She knew exactly the kind of backlash that collaborating again with Chris Brown would inspire and she did it anyway, taunting the world via Twitter last week in advance of last night's release of the remix of Talk That Talk's "Birthday Cake." (One tweet repurposed the lyrics of "Hard" from her superior, post-abuse album Rated R: "They can say whatever, Ima do whatever... No pain is forever <-----YUP! YOU KNOW THIS.") Rihanna has been unfairly accused of having no on-record personality, but the statement (and all of the psychological implications) made in one remix is bolder than that which your average contemporary pop star makes over the course of a single album.

So willful is Rihanna that she not only rejected better judgement and her record company (allegedly), but her own words, as spoken in her 2009 interview with Diane Sawyer, which aired around the time of Rated R's release:

"My selfish decision for love could result into some young girl getting killed. I could not be easy with that part. I couldn't be held responsible for telling them, 'Go back.' Even if Chris never hit me again, who's to say that their boyfriend won't? Who's to say that they won't kill these girls? And these are young girls...I just didn't realize how much of an impact I had on these girls' lives until that happened. It was a wake-up call. It was a wake-up call for me big time, especially when I took myself out to the situation and I'll say that to any young girl who's going through domestic violence: Don't react off of love. Eff love. Come out of the situation and look at it third person and for what it really is. And then make your decision, because love is so blind."

So is she regressing or making a cynical bid for attention (the second best currency in a rapidly crumbing industry)? Is she back in love, blinded all over again, the product of the effect on which she wisely opined two and a half years ago? None of this was any of our business, by the way, until she made it that way with such a public act of reapproval. As irresponsible as it would be for her to privately hook back up with Brown, there'd be little left to do but sigh over her not understanding the extent of the career she's chosen, that her words from 2009 were indeed true and that when you are a celebrity, at least part of your life is no longer your own. That's the trade-off for mass adulation and wealth. You don't have to be an explicit role model, but like it or not, you are an example.

The convenient thing about this "Birthday Cake" remix (and the infinitely duller "Turn Up the Music" remix, his song on which she now appears, in a one-two punch of releases) is that we need not examine a set of messy, complicated personal lives to critique the Rihanna/Chris Brown reunion: This time it's musical. It once was, too: Brown guested on a terrible remix of Rihanna's "Umbrella" before the pair confirmed their relationship. That one's long forgotten, as it deserves to be (it was dropped from playlists after the abuse reports, but it always seemed like a doomed, shrimpy attempt at eclipsing something that was iconic on first play).

The "Birthday Cake" remix will not evaporate so quickly. Like its Coldstone namesake, it will stick to the ass of pop culture. That's too bad because it is a terrible, terrible song. Brown, who's an embarrassment to the soul tradition, adds nothing as usual. His limited range and whiny tone help expose the song's ultimate bankruptcy -- what ran on Talk That Talk at a brisk minute and a half has been stretched to over three and a half minutes and you feel every extra second. Brown merely reiterates what Rihanna says verbatim. (Her in the first verse: "It's not even my birthday, but he wanna lick the icing off / I know you want it in the worst way, can't wait to blow my candles out"; Him in the second: "It's not even her birthday, but I wanna lick the icing off / Give it to her in the worst way, can't wait to blow the candles out.") His third person pronouns in reference to her help us look at this situation for what it really is: Chemistry-free. (When he does refer to her in the second person, it's to say, "Girl, I want to fuck you right now / Been a long time I been missing your body." So yeah, that's no better.)

An irritating clack of a song that finds its hook in a monotone, "Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake!," the "Birthday Cake" remix is a miserable experience. It's a shame because the original was something special: Not a song or an interlude, but a statement. It's a statement in which a woman sings, "I'mma make you my bitch," and it sounds plausible, not just wishful or compensatory to someone who already expressed what he thought of her humanity all over her face. The original features a hard cut right after Rihanna sings the words, "I wanna fuck you right now." She's so serious, so in control of her sexuality that she can't even be bothered to end her own song. It's real a shame that she somewhere lost belief in the power of leaving things unfinished.

This is the dumbest

 

This post should open with me saying, "I've seen some stupid as-seen-on-TV inventions in my day," and then list all the ones that now fall short of what I'm about to talk about, except my GoJo is so tight on my head it's affecting my recall. Literally a band to fasten your phone to your head so that you can walk around with your phone fastened to your head, this commercial is full of second-hand embarrassment while peddling third-. I feel like if this guy ever discovered speaker phone, he'd know the jig was up.

This was playing on a screen above a treadmill I was on this weekend. I glanced up from my iPad, saw it on mute, and figured it was a joke...until it went on for another minute and a half. I was hoping it was just a Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie flashback.

And by the way, you can strap a laptop on your head with the GoJo:

He's trolling, right? He's just trying to start a meme of things the GoJo will attach to your head, right? Someone want to get the ball rolling and make this a happy man?

Clearly, the best album

Here is the first thing you should know about Carol Channing's 2009 album of negro spirituals and assorted Lord-praising:

And here are 27 more things:

A very important JCPenney denim fashion show

 

On Thanksgiving, yet another Dancin' on Air reunion/retrospective aired on Philadelphia's local PHL17. It was very much like the first one, so I won't get too deep into rehashing, but I do think I'd be remiss if I didn't share this fashion show of gorgeous denim goods from JC Penney with you. This is so cheesy that it'd make Sue Ellen from Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead say, "NOT IN MY BACKYARD!" Unfortunately, Suell wasn't quite the commentator as the dude who's announcing this stuff.

Merry Jack-mas!

 

This may be one for the amuses-only-me file, but I've long wanted to replace the music from Poetic Justice's "I Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer" scene with something more absurd. So I did. Very TV Carnage move, but I talked to TV Carnage's Derrick Beckles about it this weekend, and I think he's fine with it.

(Spoiler alert! Using this song has nothing to do with Janet Jackson's childhood nickname of "Dunk." At least, not consciously.)

Things I hate about the part of T.I.'s Vibe story about gay people

Man, I will say this, the funniest joke I ever heard Tracy [Morgan] say during a stand-up was, ‘C’mon man, I think gay people are too sensitive. If you can take a dick, you can take a joke.’ [Cracks up laughing.] That shit was funny to me. And it’s kind of true.’ While T.I. makes clear that he supports anyone’s sexual preference, he then connects, in his opinion, a current oversensitivity among gay people with a consequential and ironic offense of the First Amendment. “They’re like,‘If you have an opinion against us, we’re gonna shut you down.’ ... That’s not American. If you’re gay you should have the right to be gay in peace, and if you’re against it you should have the right to be against it in peace.’ [Vibe]

- That five days after first reading about it, I'm still thinking about it.

Have you seen Zack Montana?

 

I was watching the local news at my mother's house Thanksgiving night (it's a Philadelphia station) and I just happened to catch a snatch of a child who supposedly performed at Philadelphia's kind of sad, definitely janky Thanksgiving Day Parade (CeCe Peniston, for example, lip synched the original, 20-year-old version of her "song that everyone knows," "Finally" -- no remix or anything!). Except, instead of performing, this child looked like he was batting out an invisible fire that apparently had a tenacious grip on his entire body. I soon discovered that he's a Radio Disney type named Zack Montana. I don't think he's related to Hannah, as she is a fictional character, but I do think that the last name is supposed to remind you of her and/or confuse you (especially if you are old and were previously used to Montana only being a state, a steamboat and a Slim).

I would have posted the video that introduced me to this wunderkind, but the quality of the clip posted on ABC 6's site is so poor, you can barely make out what's going on. That's jank on top of jank (spread jank, it's the Philly way). Luckily, Zack's act doesn't seem to change very much between performances, so I was able to find a much sharper, slightly older version of his up-to-the-syllable interpretive dancing on YouTube. It is above. This kid's got swagger like nothing I've ever experienced. It's like a drag show, except he's impersonating not a woman, but an adult, and since he's 13, Justin Bieber soooo qualifies as a grown-up.

(Am I wrong for kind of digging the song, though?)