For Your Pleasure

Cineplex Reflections - Iron Man

I realize that I am weighing in on this one a bit late, but after three solid and satisfying rounds of bowling, I capped off my day with a late afternoon showing of Iron Man. Without question, Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark is the perfect anti-hero hero for this modern age. Humor me as I unpack my ideas concerning why:

1. At the start of the film, Tony Stark has attained a certain heroic status as a dashing media figure: a loaded playboy fully equipped with intelligence, wit, and one helluva sexy smirk. Both his weapon empire and persona are available for public consumption. The military, the press, and the public-at-large all are invested in Tony Stark and freely demand what they want of him. They’ve all helped elevate him to his godly role and can easily arrange for his downfall. Of course, one can find the parallels between Mr. Stark and other real-life celebrities susceptible to the information age’s exaltation and subsequent denigration of anyone who makes themselves visible to the public eye. 
2. Most superheroes’ aims are solely altruistic.Their main objective is to help the defenseless masses against the powers of evil that threaten them. He/she is a (wo)man of the people. (Although let’s face it, most of them are men!) Before his superhero transformation, Stark already is a man of the people providing them with weapons meant to protect them from outside harm. In some ways, he already assumes another identity apart from the “real” Tony Stark creating a facade built on mordant witticisms and a sense of infallible power: he is Stark Industries, a superhero of the military-industrial complex. The “real” Tony Stark, however, is found within the battery heart of his armored suit. Ironically, he wears armor as a way of exposing his vulnerabilities to the havoc wreaked by war, by the explosive devices which he has created. He constructs his alter ego as a means of rejecting the public’s expectations and doing solely what he sees as right. I can’t claim to be wholly familiar with the entire comic book canon, so I can’t say for certain if this is the only instance of a comic hero bucking the trend and building his new and powerful identity not just as a means of avenging evildoers or saving the world, but as a means of survival. Stark builds the suit primarily as a way of escaping those who’ve enslaved him and thereby saving his own life. As an afterthought, he wishes to stop the wrongs that he’s personally responsible for: the manufacturing of weapons that are killing innocents in foreign lands.
3. While Gwenyth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts is the ginger-haired girl Friday, the woman behind the “great man”, the elusive love interest of our studly hero, she also has enough self-respect to avoid his sexual advances and not just because it will leave both wanting more—which, of course it will and does! But she also doesn’t wish to jeopardize her career or her professional reputation. She doesn’t visibly turn to jello in stilettos under the playful smirk and puppy-dog, impish brown eyes of her boss. That, in itself, is quite commendable. Also, she actively participates in saving the world from Obadiah Stane’s evil plot for world domination/annihilation. She turns some knobs and switches and hacks into computers to obtain top-secret information instead of just hanging by her feet from some tall building somewhere just waiting to be rescued.
4. Robert Downey Jr. Is. The. Man.

All ideas herein are half-formed and not intended to offend any hardcore Marvel acolytes/fanatics.

Totally on Top: ANTM's Whitney! Yay!

So, I’m nearly 48 hours late on this one, but the joy is just as immediate as it was Wednesday night when full-figured Floridian (Whoo, Florida!) Whitney was crowned America’s Next Face to soon only be seen in those cheap and annoying “My Life as a Cover Girl” spots. Still, it was an overall victory for girls everywhere that like to both ingest and digest food. Or so Mamma Banks and her merry crew would like you to believe. More on that later…

As Cycle 10 neared its end, I tried to hold back the tears. But why should I, when the models themselves were weeping? Anya’s quiet, possibly extraterrestrial tears trickled down her albino cheeks. It’s impossible not to grativate towards her sweet, alien being.

The elimination that would reveal the final two focused on the outcome of the Cover Girl commercial/photoshoot challenge. Fatima recited her lines like the most gorgeous automaton ever created but delivered a photo that had her eyes watching God. The judges found fault with this, which led Tyra to dispense some idiotic advice on how to properly grin with your eyes by squinting but keeping them open. It’d been so long since we had witnessed these visual pearls of wisdom!

Whitney toned down her prom queen mannerisms in her commercial and provided a photo that was wide-eyed and retro and near perfection. Still, the judges thought she was “holding back” because of being beaten down from an early age for being of average build. Mamma Banks demanded nothing less than waterworks by coaxing Whitney into showing her “true self” which translates into a blubbering, blonde and beautiful mess. ANTM’s audience thrives on hot messes especially those who overcome any sort of adversity to show the world how drop-dead gorgeous they really are. Hey, this show isn’t just about knowing how to laugh with your eyelids. It’s about relating a powerful message.

Anya, our Tower of Babel on heels couldn’t seem to get a grasp on the English language but the wind tousled her hair effectively and she smiled that coy, nymphish Cover Girl smile. The judges seemed to think this enough. And let’s face it, it is. A model’s job is to let the “pretty” distract us from everything else, including an accent that can’t be placed anywhere on a map. Anya does a pretty good job of this.

Fatima was sent home because Tyra had tired of advocating African refugee rights and wanted to focus on championing her pet cause: women with booty. So we were left with the second coming of Powder and the plus-sized pretty. The two girls battled out in a VERSACE!!! fashion show that featured shirtless man models but no Donatella! Even though the show’s budget allowed for the models to showcase a REAL designer’s clothes, the producers still cheapened the moment by not letting audience bask in the dorito-hue divafied hot mess that is Donatella. How can you have a Versace show without Miss Versace herself?

Whitney worked it with all her va-va-voom while Anya’s walk was more ho-hum than out-of-this-world. After all the judges carping this season about Whitney’s fake personality and Miss America dramatics, they crowned her the winner. She then gave some teary-eyed interview worthy of a pageant show about how she had been teased for her size and how this was a triumph for women everywhere. While this is more or less true and I applauded this show’s satisfying and guilt-free ending, it was then revealed by the fab FourFour that Whitney might have been more of a fake than the judges were letting on. Apparently, she didn’t even try out but rather was approached by the producers and asked to gain more weight in order to enter the Top 3 as a curvy girl that breaks the mold and shatters those suppositions about the insidious and manipulative images manufactured by the fashion world/modelling industry. With this news coming to light, FAT CHANCE.

Observations Made at Last Night's Cut Copy Show

• I counted at least a dozen girls in the audience with bangs perfectly frozen in place. Not a stray hair in sight. This phenomenon unsettles me and yet fascinates me.
• Hearing Howard Jones’ “Everlasting Love” between band sets is both a joy and a privilege.
• Cut Copy compels my body to move energetically even when clothed in leather and a stifling sweater while being crushed by the drunken, sloppy masses in a restricting space reaching infernal temperatures. This must mean they are good.
• I love when Cut Copy emulate ELO. More bands should adopt Jeff Lynne and company’s vocal stylings.
• Cut Copy’s lead singer Dan Whitford also apes Bernard Sumner without making it painfully obvious.
• Cut Copy dedicated a song to Stevie Nicks. Therefore, they rule.
• Cut Copy = Good hair, good looks, good and subtle use of unlikely influences (Fleetwood Mac, ELO, etc.), good tunes = Great, great times.
• Upon leaving the venue, it was noted that those girls with immaculate bangs astonishingly still managed to keep all hairs in place. It should also be noted that my hair was a damp, flyaway mess. And I didn’t care; I wore my limp, disturbed tresses with pride —an indicator that I’d rather groove than groom.

Noooooooooooo...

alexbalk:

“Nicolas Cage will star in an updated version of 1992’s “Bad Lieutenant” with Werner Herzog directing, Edward R. Pressman producing and Avi Lerner’s Nu Image/Millennium Films financing.”

I have a lot of faith in the Vernster, but, uh, no. I’m not sure what’s worse: the possibility of seeing Cage’s wee-wee or the fact the EVEN Bad Lieutenant IS FIFTEEN YEARS OLD.

I recently viewed Bad Lieutenant for my first time and have yet to share my thoughts here. But let me just use a popular internet catchphrase to express my feelings about this remake: DO. NOT. WANT.

"Sticky as Lips and Licky as Trips"

I was one of those Cure weirdos in high school who thought that Robert Smith was the bard of young solitude for using words like “treachery” and “duplicity” as many times as possible within the same song. Under a canopy of glow-n-the-dark stars, I listened to Disintegration and my 9th grade soul floated from the bed merging with Robert’s wild, mopey howls. I was forever changed.

It’s been over a decade since I faithfully scribbled the lyrics to each and every Cure song in my notebook; the task took up many Friday nights of my freshman and sophomore years.  While I still hold a special place in my heart for Robert’s lipstick-smeared laments, I’ve put away the B-sides, posters, and other dark and gloomy trinkets of my miserable past while indulging in the occasional listen to The Top or Head on the Door. 

And then I listened to their new song. It’s reminiscent of the giddy pop songs off of Wish or even Wild Mood Swings and I am grateful that Bob and company have moved away from those seemingly endless dirges that bogged down their last few efforts. But the lyrics are still stunted and read like the poetry I wrote when I was 16 and listening to, hah, The Cure. 

I’d rather remember how I viewed them when I still thought that misery was the  heartbreak of a man-child in kohl eyeliner sitting alone in a dark room and writing music for the fragile hearts of teenage girls sitting alone in their dark bedrooms. Now I know that real anguish and heartbreak is a lot less romantic and a lot more lame. 

The Cure at their absolute best: