Category Archives: Movies
Miley Cyrus
Miley Cyrus’ remains a leader in family entertainment. Her performance at the MTV Video Music Awards introduced American parents to a new power word for the day – twerking.
As usual, I missed the VMA show but, thanks to the web, still got to see Miley’s performance – and build my vocabulary. Her dance was weird. It reminded me of the guy in the creepy teddy bear suit in The Shining. But the full shock value was lost on me because, shockingly, I’ve never seen Hannah Montana.
So, for the choreographical merits I defer to the experts. Two of them Camile Paglia and Kathleen Parker, were not amused. But for different reasons.
Paglia found the perky twerky one’s attempted lewdness to be, “clumsy, flat-footed and cringingly unsexy, an effect heightened by her manic grin”. She considers Madonna, not Montana, to be the gold standard in this area:
“The greatest performers, like Madonna … know how to use suggestion and mystery to project the magic of sexual allure. Pop is suffering from the same malady as the art world, which is stuck on the tired old rubric that shock automatically confers value.”
Parker agrees with the mystery part:
“Provocation for the sake of provocation is rarely provocative. And sex in the hands of a Cyrus-gone-wild has all the appeal of rutting season at the zoo.
Whither mystery?”
What’s it all Mean?
The writer ladies part company on where this all leads.
Paglia laments, “Unfortunately, the media spotlight so cheaply won by Cyrus will inevitably spur repeats of her silly stunt, by her and others.”
But Parker hopes, “This time may be different. This time, even the young are offended…Just possibly, America has had enough. When all things are permissible, then permissiveness loses its allure.”
Here’s what a disillusioned and anonymous 11 year old Hannah Montana fan had to say, “I bet her dad is sorry he got her into music”.
Oprah
Oprah wishes she had never mentioned her five figure handbag shopping incident in Jim Crow Switzerland. She didn’t buy the handbag but she did buy plenty of buzz. Her just released movie, The Butler, is number one.
NFL Gangster Style
John Facenda was known as The Voice of God. He was famous for his over-the-top NFL Film productions glorifying the manly ideal of the players. Now pro athletes glorify themselves as gangsters and rappers. At least that’s how Jason Whitlock sees it at Fox Sports. He says, “… popular culture has installed Tony Soprano as America’s most celebrated and revered icon above Joe Montana”.
The Wall Street Journal says that on a psychological profile Aaron Hernandez scored a perfect 10 on focus and a 1 on social maturity.
Best Picture to Kill an Ambassador
In a weird turn on Oscar night, Michelle Obama, flanked by U.S. military, announced Argo as the Best Picture winner. Some thought it was a little bizarre. I thought it was a little brazen. Argo is about the rescue of American embassy personnel from Islamist fanatics in Iran in 1979. Her husband, the president, was about not rescuing American embassy personnel from Islamist fanatics in Libya in 2012 – and then blaming it on a movie.
Mongo
Alex Karras died Wednesday. He played football for the Detroit Lions. He was also a pretty funny guy who appeared on Johnny Carson and in movies.
In one of Karras’ most famous scenes, as Mongo in Mell Brook’s “Blazing Saddles”, he slugged a horse knocking it out cold. Blazing saddles could not be made today. There would be naked starlet PETA protests (this is bad?), and the horse would be evaluated against his baseline concussion history and required to sit out for at least a week. Blazing Saddles mocked race relations, sexuality, Hollywood, the American Frontier, and Methodists. It fails the Civil Discourse test miserably. It’s hilarious.
I asked a really bright and hip young woman editor if she knew who Mongo was. She said, ” I can’t believe it! You’re the second person to ask me that today and until now, no, I’d never heard of him.”
Pop culture references are tricky.
