Entertainment, Featured - Monday, February 2, 2009 10:56 - 1 Comment
Flight of The Conchords Achieves Success by Mocking Most of Us
Of all the TV shows seeking to capture the contemporary, local zeitgeist – an endlessly referential community of creative types too internally gentrified to identify themselves as artists – Flight of the Conchords has been the most successful. For this success, the show can thank its comedy genre.
Conchords’ bumbling, bearded protagonists, Brett and Jermaine, are convincing Lower East Siders: t-shirted and thin (Brett), flannel-clad with thick glasses (Jermaine) and in a band. But the show’s handsome, hip actors, Brett McKenzie and Jermaine Clement, are convincingly cooler — acting out a comedic self-parody of Lower East Siders. This act makes Conchords to TV as Hipster Runoff is to blogs: cultural mockery by and for the cultural types that it mocks. Continue…
Entertainment - Monday, January 26, 2009 18:19 - 0 Comments
Pamela Anderson Somehow Goes High Fashion
Pamela Anderson has been totally vindicated. Starring in a new Vivienne Westwood campaign, Anderson proves that if you never give up on being plastic, one day, you might end up ironically high-brow and artistically postmodern. Don’t stop believing, starlets.
Images via The Cut.
Entertainment - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 15:59 - 1 Comment
“The City’s” Self-Awareness Paradox
Last night’s episode of “The City,” I think, revolved around a sudden sub-character’s boyfriend, and how he may or may not have kissed another lady. I’m still not sure if he did or not, or if it even matters. The only aspect of The City worth watching – besides Whitney’s legs, face, clothes, hair, and, sigh, everything else about her – is rich kid tag team Olivia Palermo and Cousin Nevan. That said, we couldn’t help but notice – between the coy glances and half-smiles – that it seems some enlightened cast members are playing a role that they know they’re supposed to be playing (self-aware), while others are just bumbling through the episode (not self-aware). We index and analyze this phenomenon below:
Entertainment - Tuesday, December 2, 2008 10:12 - 3 Comments
Did Barack Obama Kill Irony?
A recent Times Style section story, with the tricky title “Irony Is Dead. Again. Yeah, Right.” wonders if America is entering a new era of authenticity. Joan Didion, ironic enthusiast and queen of chic prose, says that “hope is in” and “innocence is prized.”
But the Times points out that this would not be the first reported death of irony—its most recent other massacre occurred directly after 9/11, when a shell-shocked nation couldn’t even think of wearing their $20 WTC t-shirts to nightclubs. (Actually, that is still more offensive than ironic. Where did I even think of that?)
Well, clearly the Times has not read my pro-Sarah Palin piece or anti-Prop 8 article. But the so stylistic paper may have a point. With a “green” nightclub currently popular in Paris, the MisShapes part of some anti-poverty campaign, and art spaces cheering for an American president(-elect), is irony over? I sure hope not. Continue…
Entertainment - Monday, November 24, 2008 9:37 - 5 Comments
“Bring Back the Wooly Mammoth?” Asks New York Times…
In last week’s New York Times, an editorial board with a bit less to mull over between election night and inauguration took a stand on one our generation’s most overlooked issues: should we or should we not resurrect a wooly mammoth? Hold on to your butts, kids—Jurassic Park is becoming a reality. Continue…
Entertainment - Monday, November 17, 2008 13:02 - 2 Comments
Carrie Bradshaw Will Never Die
Brace yourself, NYU. If Kim Cattrall quotes are to be believed, Sex & The City is still not over. On a British talk show last week, the saucy Sex star admitted that a sequel to the HBO series’ film adaptation—which grossed over $50 million in its opening weekend—is in the works. Upon hearing the news, I couldn’t help but wonder… after six seasons and a movie, is this sequel necessary? Yes. Yes it is. Continue…
Entertainment - Monday, November 3, 2008 13:02 - 0 Comments
Are You Really Happy (Go-Lucky)?
Poppy Cross is thirty years old. She is hopelessly single, sexually confused, and plain-looking. She is a mere schoolteacher and she doesn’t have her driver’s license. But Poppy is a hell of a lot happier than most NYU students, and she’s determined to keep it that way.
Such is the set-up of Mike Leigh’s latest film, Happy Go-Lucky. The film has a softcore Todd Solondz humor to it, featuring seemingly insignificant slices of Poppy’s mundane life, asking the audience, Should you be laughing?
Predictably, Poppy’s character is initially really annoying. But her persevering happiness becomes absurd and endearing—and thereby, funny. Thus, Happy Go-Lucky’s philosophical dialogue: what really makes us happy? And Happy Go-Lucky’s conflict: how long can she keep this up? Continue…
Entertainment, Featured - Monday, October 27, 2008 2:27 - 7 Comments
The Olsen Twins Are Dead Inside (Maybe)
In this weekend’s rather admiring New York Times profile of NYU’s (sort of) hometown heroes Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, writer Ginia Bellafante concludes that Ashley O. has her sights set on Fortune magazine rather than Vogue.
The girls are doubtlessly darlings of the discerning fashion and art world—with a successful, high-end clothing line, The Row, under their tiny belts, and pals like Karl Lagerfeld—as well as members of exclusive, Beatrice-frequenting social sets. And so it struck the writer as notable that they have not necessarily eschewed their initially wholesome public image for one more befitting to their mysterious hipness. They maintain both.
“Is commerce their art?” the subtext asked me. Continue…
Entertainment - Monday, October 20, 2008 3:31 - 3 Comments
Rachel Zoe Is An American Hero
Rachel Zoe is stylishly soulless. Her seven-episode Bravo reality show, The Rachel Zoe Project, which concluded last Tuesday, offers a glimpse into her relentlessly superficial world. A world in which her small frame practically sinks in a coupling of her own making: aggressive work ethic and excessive materialism. But Zoe proves herself to be more than an older Hills co-star; she is an American hero! A bonafide careerist who spared no moral expense in becoming the exact person she wanted to be, pulling it all off in a fur vest with a bedroom-eyed half-smile. Explanation for Zoe as a manifestation of the American Dream, after the jump. Continue…
Entertainment - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 6:28 - 17 Comments
Mumblecore Is A Movement For Boring People
So, the generation that includes our older siblings has finally come up with something creative: mumblecore. The film movement is the voice of the homelier, semi-smart white people squeezed in between Millennials (Me and You and Everyone We Know) and Gen X (Winona Ryder, Douglas Copeland, et al.). The sub-genre is basically founded on a single tenet—everything on screen should be a mirror image of the viewer’s life, given that that viewer is white, 25-29, works a low-paying job, and laden with boring romantic troubles.
Example mumblecore film: Ugh, remember that one time my girlfriend drank that beer even though I asked her not to? We broke up six months later.
Mumblecore’s “greatest” hits are after the jump. Continue…
