The Next Generation of Graduation Songs?

When I graduated from high school, we went old school with our senior song. After a vote from the senior class, which included a lot of lobbying from me and my best friend to get this song voted in, we chose “I Will Get There” by Boyz II Men. It was a great inspirational song, but it reflected our mood without reflecting our generation. Sure, we were taking the next step in our lives, but it the sound was outdated.

Good graduation songs only come out about every ten years. There are a few like “I Will Get There” that we pass off as graduation songs out of necessity. Songs like Vitamin C’s “Graduation (Friends Forever)” are rare and so overused that alternatives must be found.

I’ve been listening to music a lot more lately and I came across two songs that could definitely fit the graduation bill–“Night is Young” by Nelly Furtado and “Long Live” by Taylor Swift. The lyrics allude that what happens during graduation and sound is current.

Even though we don’t have a graduation song in college, “Long Live” will be my unofficial one.

Listen to the songs below:

“Night is Young” by Nelly Furtado

“Long Live” by Taylor Swift

Being A Colored Woman As A ‘Metaphysical Dilemma’ in ‘For Colored Girls’

 

The cast of "For Colored Girls"

They laughed at their sorrows.

Women in the theater, that is. They laughed, as the women on the screen cried. I’ll save my deeper thoughts on why for my self-esteem blog, but I think it had something to do with the deep nature of this film.

Unlike a lot of other African American films, this one digs deep to identify struggles the characters face and to reconcile them without slapstick comedy.

For Colored Girls, based on Ntozake Shange’s celebrated choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf, portrays the “metaphysical dilemma” of being a colored woman. Tyler Perry, who directed the film, weaves a storyline through the poems told by characters connected through experiences at a fifth floor walk-up that’s home to three of the characters. These women are all distinct, interchangeable in some of their best and worst experiences but not in the person they became as a result.

There are eight women, all based on archetypes, but too complicated to completely fill an archetypal role: Tangie (Thandie Newton), Joanna (Janet Jackson), Crystal (Kimberly Elise), Kelly (Kerry Washington), Alice (Whoopi Goldberg), Gilda (Phylicia Rashad), Juanita (Loretta Divine), Yasmine (Anika Noni Rose) and Nyla (Tessa Thompson). Their stories are ones of hope, love, pain, abortion, rape, incest and strength.

The performances were all as close to perfect as I’ve ever seen an a film. The transformations these women went through during their struggles were astonishing. The pacing was perfect. Every line was delivered with honesty and pain. It’s impossible to watch it with understanding and not get wrapped in the emotion.

I think that’s was where the women in the theater got lost. They didn’t understand that a character talking about bones crushed like an ice cream cone was a metaphor for abortion, not a longing for a cold snack.

It’s not easy to understand the script. Shange didn’t write the choreopoems to be literal. It’s a metaphor for the lives of colored women. If you’re not ready to think (I went at midnight, so I doubt most of the people in the theater were able to think a lot at that hour), don’t go see this film. It’s not for someone who doesn’t want to go deep into the lines and into themselves.

Every woman in the film gave one of the best performances of their careers, but I can’t forget Michael Ealy in this review. He played Crystal’s boyfriend, an Iraq war veteran with a drinking problem and a strong case of PTSD. Ealy, usually handsome and debonaire, stripped the charm for his role. There was so much depth to the character. The last male performance I saw done so well was Will Smith in Seven Pounds, but his character was more in control of his personal demons.

I laughed (when the moments were funny, of course), I cried, I got the chills and one moment had me shaking for about five minutes. For Colored Girls is not only powerful in its execution and amazingly written lines, it’s also empowering.

I don’t want to get too specific with this review because, like the choreopoem, it has to be heard. Reading something about the script or even the script itself is moot. Listening is the only way to truly understand it. Shange’s lines are so deep and can be defined in so many ways, that hearing the words always means something new.

If you’re in the mood for a film that will increase your intelligence and self-awareness, you must see it.

By the way, this blog got 817 profile views last month. I am glad to have so many people who seem to care about my opinions on popular culture. Thanks for the support!

Answered: Who’s the Hot Guy in Nicki Minaj’s “Right Thru Me” Video?

French model Willie Monfret shows off his fit body. He plays Nicki Minaj's love interest in her music video for "Right Thru Me."

After the premiere of Nicki Minaj’s video for her single “Right Thru Me,” women almost broke the Internet with talk about her hunky love interest. I was curious, so I did a little digging.

His name is Willy Monfret and he’s a model from France. His ethnicity is French and African.

Monfret isn’t just a gorgeous face. He was a track star before he became a model, but an injury ended that chapter of his life. But don’t feel sorry for him. In addition to having modeled on numerous fashion campaigns and on the runway, he also has a master’s degree in business and, according to his Myspace, he’s working on a French fashion brand called Shams. Did I mention he’s also a DJ?

He’s the total package–cute, educated and driven.

Plus, he’s on Twitter and Facebook!

While you’re at it, follow me on Tumblr for a more photographic version of popular culture. I always follow back.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you can watch Nicki Minaj’s “Right Thru Me” below. (Look for a post later on Nicki’s natural beauty look in this video.)

Diddy, I’m Definitely “Loving You No More”

There are some artsy music videos that hit the mark (“She Will Be Loved” by Maroon 5 and “Mad” by Ne-Yo) and some that miss it completely. Diddy-Dirty Money’s video for “Love You No More” apparently didn’t even know where the target was.

There’s a lot of needless posing in this video. It’s not the dramatically fabulous posing frequently done by the likes of Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Rihanna. This was forced. You see Diddy looking out of a window with a girl (who looks a lot like his on-again-off-again girlfriend Cassie) laying on the bed behind him. Then, he’s sitting on the floor, while she’s on the bed. At some point in their in the bed together. It’s obviously supposed to give a feeling of tension, but it really just screams awkward, especially if you ask yourself why to grown people are sleeping in the middle of the day in the brightest room in America.

After ex-Danity Kane member Dawn Richard’s over-indulgent introduction (we know you can sing; no need to ham it up so much), Diddy starts singing. That’s right–he sings in this song. Well, he holds a note and auto-tune makes it more pleasing to the ears. He’s a little uncomfortable with his singing voice, which makes you a little uncomfortable, too. I give him props for trying, even if he did take the slacker’s way out by using electronic enhancements. And, for some reason, he deemed it appropriate to sing with gold teeth on his bottom row of teeth. Classy.

Horrible video aside, the lyrics are not good. They’re more repetitive than Mike Jones song. Rap artists are increasingly using techniques that use the “record scratching” made popular by DJs to take up time because they don’t have enough to say (listen to just about any Nicki Minaj song). It doesn’t translate well in slow love songs, which we see here with Diddy mumbling “I just, I can’t, I just can’t be” over and over. And over.

Drake is a welcome change from the overly somber mood of the song and video, but he’s only around for about 30 seconds of a 4 minute and 30 second song. While Nicki Minaj was able to help Trey Songz from missing the boat on “Bottoms Up,” Drake is ill-equipped to work such a miracle on this song. It was too far gone before he arrived.

“Loving You No More” is from Diddy-Dirty Money’s upcoming album, “Last Train to Paris.”

Let’s hope the next single is better.

Films I Love: Edward Scissorhands

Johnny Depp as Edward Scissorhands with Co-Star Winona Ryder as Kim in Tim Burton's 1990 film Edward Scissorhands. (Photo courtesy imdb.com)

Up until about three years ago, I thought it was normal for a 7-year-old to watch Edward Scissorhands every day for months with their 3-year-old sister (who wasn’t really interested). Along with my thoughts about every family watching Animal Planet at least five hours a day, this was debunked.

It wasn’t until last week when I was talking to a friend that I realized it wasn’t the non-cartoon aspect of the film that made it weird for me to be so obsessed with it–it was the dark nature. My friend told me the film made her cry when she tried to watch it at 8 years old. This was about the same time I was rewinding the tape to watch it for the second time in one day.

I obviously wasn’t a normal child.

There was always something about the film that drew me to it. Edward was the kind of person a kid wants to be around–kind, soft-spoken. Plus, he had scissors for hands and kids are by default attracted to things that could be dangerous (electrical outlets, hot stoves). He was also misunderstood and some of the good things he tried to do for people were taken the wrong way. As a kid, there were a lot of things I did that I thought would turn out good, but I got in trouble for. Why wouldn’t my mom enjoy the pictured I colored for her on the wall in the hallway?

When I bought the collector’s edition in high school, I noticed how great the acting was. Johnny Depp really embodied this character. Edward had never been around people–he spent his whole life with his toymaker father, waiting on hands that never came. Watching it at 17, ten years after the obsessive years, I realized how much he reminded me of Pinocchio (he was also created by a lonely man). He got his chance to be a “real boy” and he entered the manicured-lawn world of suburbia. They embraced him at first, as more of a party joke than a real person, but they turned on him when he needed them most. The script follows that Golden Age children’s literature idea of characters that are too pure for the world. They usually die because this world is too corrupt for them.

Maybe Edward escaped this fate because he got to experience something most of those Golden Age characters were too young to–love. His love for Kim (Winona Ryder) was a part of the film that was done perfectly. It wasn’t done too much or too little. It was also unrequited for most of the film because Edward was really too pure to realize what Kim was mature enough to know. They could never be together. The world wasn’t going to allow it and he’d get hurt (possibly murdered) in the process. Maybe that’s why I never really thought he was unhappy in the end until my friend brought it up last week. Their experience together let him spend the rest of his life knowing he was loved by someone at some time.

In life, we take that for granted.

Glee Gets Preppy for GQ

 

Glee Gets Preppy, and a little racy, for GQ.

 

I know, I know. This photo shoot is a big deal, right?

Adults who play teenagers are obviously not allowed to act their age, according the the Parents TV Council. But they are adults, so I think we should stop acting like they’re actually as young as the characters they play on TV.

The first thing I thought about this photo shoot wasn’t that it was racy. That didn’t even cross my mind until someone else said something about it.

I thought–oh my gosh, prep!

Just take a look at the photo. A rugby shirt, socks with heels and a skirt that looks like it came out of the film Heathers (don’t get me started on the great preppy fashion in that film because I’ll get Rachel Zoe fashion-gasms). I’ve scarcely seen so much prep squeezed into one photo.

Of course, the prep doesn’t stop there in this photo spread. Dianna Agron dons a polk-a-dot skirt (the silhouette is similar to the one pictured). There’s also tasteful plaid (as opposed to the thick plaid pattern farmers are famous for), large sweaters and a fitted blazer.

Prep is about more than collared shirts and ties. It’s really about color. The best thing about wearing preppy clothes, which I do very often, is adding a pop of color to a dark outfit. A dark-colored suit jacket and a dark tie can be paired with a pair of white (orange, yellow or whatever color depending on your preference) pants. You really get to play around with the color wheel.

One of the best examples I could find of prep online is Unabashedly Prep (it’s an amazing blog that’s a compilation of all things prep, including street style). F.E. Castleberry, the creator of the blog, did an amazing photo shoot with Street Etiquette (another great prep fashion blog) called The Black Ivy. There are no words to describe how amazing that shoot is.

How do you guys feel about the GQ shoot?

Ahhh, The Smell of Desperation.

The cast of the Fox television series "Lone Star"

While I was editing stories for JAYE (I’m features director for the college women’s magazine), I caught up on fall premieres, which I had already seen a little of during the two nights of the week that I don’t work.

As I watched these shows, I began to smell something. No, it wasn’t my computer overheating or me burning frozen pizza in the oven again–it was the pungent odor of desperation.

I watched several episodes of new shows last week praying to find one I would like. After tiring of Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice about a year ago (they were practically my only television outlets), I was looking for replacements. All I found was a desperation to succeed that was so prominent in the actor’s/writer’s/director’s minds that it showed in the episodes.

The problem? A mixture of new actors and actors at the end of their careers. One set desperately trying to catch the boat and the other trying not to get pushed off.

FOX’s new drama, “Lone Star,” is about Robert, the son of a con-man who grows up to be, you guessed it, a con-man. He and his father are working on a big scam that involves selling shares in a non-existent oil well to kind rural people and trying to steal millions from an oil company to pay for his father’s dream of living on an island and never working again (Assuming that he calls his con game work). We realize in the first 10 minutes or so that Robert has a live-in girlfriend in a small town and wife in the city. It’s a mixture of Dexter (Robert has a conscience that makes it hard for him to keep hurting people, but he does it anyway) and Mad Men when Don Draper was married (Draper did live two lives–married man and boyfriend). James Wolk, who plays Robert, is as green as they come and has a tense nature that he cannot completely let go of. Add David Keith’s teeth-gritting, neck bobbing intensity and Jon Voight, looking like Custer at his last stand in this last attempt to stay current, and you’ve got a flop, which only brought in 4.1 million viewers (despite a prime spot after the season premiere of “House”). Sadly, even the creator of the series, Kyle Killen, knows it and asked his blog readers for help, writing:

I’m not going to beg. I’ll mow your lawn or offer you some sort of sensual massage, but I won’t beg. The truth is, what we need to do is nearly impossible. I’ve heard and read that a million times since Tuesday morning. But isn’t that why we watch television? Sports? Movies? To, every once in a while, see something impossible actually happen? Impossible is AWESOME! Am I right? High five!

It’s apparent the desperation doesn’t stop with the actors.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Boris Kodjoe star in J.J. Abrams' "Undercovers" on NBC

No show on television was pushed on viewers as much as “Boardwalk Empire” on HBO. Five minutes into watching it, one things was clear–Steve Buscemi wasn’t scaring anyone. He was shifty-eyed and perspiring during the whole first episode. He looked more like Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon during his televised debate with the handsome John F. “King of Camelot” Kennedy. Buscemi, who’s been more of a supporting/character actor in the past, was horribly miscast and it seemed like he even knew it. He sweated, he shifted his eyes and he gave the same look every time it was apparent that he didn’t know what emotion to portray. Add a cast of unknown actors hoping to cash in on the 5-season run that most HBO shows get and you can rename Atlantic City, Desperation City. The show’s been picked up for another season, but if the cast can’t become more certain of their characters it will probably be their last.

The most desperate show? That award goes to “Better with You,” which stars a cast of people who make you ask the question, “Where have I seen them before?” But then you realize you really don’t care. The show is sadly based on archetypes and jokes that are mildly amusing, but not laugh-out-loud funny. Because of the success of “Friends,” which shares executive producers with this show, this show seems desperate to prove that the producers still have the magic touch. But they fail. Creating jokes the resemble the ones from “Friends,” but relying so much on humor (there are literally about three jokes a minute) that they forget to show the complexities of the characters, two sisters at a crossroads in their lives. There’s Maddie, a 30-something lawyer in a 9-year committed relationship (“It’s a valid life choice,” she constantly says) and JoAnna Garcia, a 20-something Internet entrepreneur who gets engaged to man she’s known for 7 weeks. The plot could go somewhere, but since the characters are archetypes (the career woman and the flighty 20-something), reacting predictable in just about every situation, there’s little hope for a second season.

I cannot end this post without mentioning “Undercovers,” an excuse to show beautiful people using words like “sexpionage” and “Outsourced,” a horribly offensive comedy that will probably get its own post on this blog because of its racist nature and because the writing is horrific.

M. Night Shymalan Learns (Not) to Brand Himself

When I first saw the trailer for “Devil,” it looked interesting. People were just standing in the elevator when, all of the sudden, they realized something was amiss (watch the trailer above to see what goes on). Everyone in the movie theater watching it with me was holding their breath. Then, the kiss of death came on the screen–the words “M. Night Shymalan.”

The whole theater exhaled and laughed. Had we actually almost seen another of his films? That was a close one.

I swore off Shymalan after I saw “The Last Airbender.” It’s so easy to fall into his trap that I cannot blame people for seeing the films. He promises action and suspense in the trailer, so you get fooled into dishing out $10.

Instead of branding the film with his name, which is his trademark move, Shymalan has stayed away from letting audiences know he is the director. Every time I have seen the trailer on television it has conveniently left off the usual branding he leaves with each film he does.

It seems like he’s realizing that we were willing to spend an hour-and-a-half watching “Sixth Sense” for the clever ending, but (spoiler alert) aliens that are killed by water, people who live like 16th century villagers in modern society and kids who can’t act are not going to give us any more reasons to see your films.

I can only imagine what’s in store for the ending of this film. If it turns out there is a bunny in the elevator biting people, I wouldn’t be surprised.

How to Pull Off a Two-Year Prank (with no real pay back)

Joaquin Phoenix in his first public appearance under his persona for the satirical documentary "I'm Still Here," which was part of a two-year hoax with director Casey Affleck. During the outrageous interview, Letterman said, “Joaquin, I’m sorry you couldn’t be here tonight.” (Photo Courtesy IMDB.com)

Daniel Day-Lewis might have to watch his back.

Joaquin Phoenix’s two-year jaunt as a caricature of himself, as sub-par as the product seems to be, took a lot more dedication than Day-Lewis’ three-month transformations into characters he portrays.

After Roger Ebert wrote a review that almost made it seem like he cried during a screening of the film, Casey Affleck broke the news yesterday that it was all a joke; an attempt at turning Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo journalism tactics into a film. Haha?

Putting my thoughts about trying to recreate groundbreaking journalism techniques when you’re only basis is probably reading and/or watching “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” aside until I actually see the film, my biggest question is why?

After winning an Oscar for an acclaimed performance as Johnny Cash (he actually learned to sing like Cash for role, for goodness sake!), I can understand doing two things–taking a break or taking on more roles. I cannot understand letting your best friend talk you into pretending to be insane.

In the film, Phoenix decides he does not want to “play the character of Joaquin” anymore. So, he goes on Letterman and tells the world that he wants to be a rapper. The only problem is, he cannot rap, so he takes out the stress of his failing rap career by buying hookers, attacking former assistants on the streets and yelling in Central Park, according to reports on the film from the New York Times and Chicago Sun Times. There are even a few cameos from A-list celebrities.

If people was still unsure whether the film was real or not, it may have had a better chance at gaining an audience, but now it’s in an unsure state. The hope to get more viewers was probably Affleck’s driving force in spilling the beans about this joke, but it also may have been its ultimate downfall.

Instead of spending  hard-earned cash on Casey Affleck this weekend, my money’s on most people seeing Ben Affleck’s newest film, “The Town.” (If it’s anything like “Gone Baby Gone,” it’s awesome)

Advice for Joaquin: next time you spend two years on a film, make sure the director’s name is either James Cameron or Steven Spielberg. At least if the movie’s bad, their name will get an audience.

Searching for Diversity in ‘Mad Men’

Cast members of "Mad Men" with a rare species--the minority character.

Finding a minority character on “Mad Men” is like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. Viewers must constantly be on their hands and knees, searching through pounds of straw in search of the mythical minority needle that will change racial diversity on the show from basically non-existent to at least semi-present.

Yes, this was the 1960s, but minority people existed. They shopped at stores, they walked on sidewalks, they visited the park. I saw a black couple on Sunday’s episode and I was in shock. Of course, the camera panned right over them, returning to Don Draper’s inner monologue as he smoked a cigarette on the sidewalk.

There have been sprinklings of diversity. Paul, a foolish character who seems to be long gone, dated a black woman until she dumped him on their way to protest against segregation in the South (which we only saw during a 30-second bus ride). Of course, there’s Carla. She’s served as the Draper’s “girl,” as the former Mrs. Draper (she divorced Don and remarried, making her Mrs. Francis now) called her, for years and is basically raising their children. Instead of receiving any storyline that would acknowledge this, she exists mostly in the shadows, communicating through nods and only referred to in an answer to where the children are.

There’s been a little talk about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which is fast approaching (if it hasn’t already, since there’s a chance they would ignore it completely), but no real coverage of race relations during the period.

I’m not asking for an all-black cast or even a black employee at the advertising firm, but can someone at least meet a black person in the park and have a five-minute conversation about something substantial? Can we see Asians who did not come from Tokyo to give you their Honda contract? Can you show us a little about the social aspects of the time period?

Maybe the producers and writers think exclusion says enough about the period, but it’s ignoring the problems. It’s ignoring the reasons the Civil Rights Act was needed and going against the historical accuracy the show seems to pride itself on.

I can see them searching through the haystack, but they get poked in leg by the needle and retreat in fear of its power to make minority viewers feel included.