Opening Ceremony--Where The Wild Things Are

As the release of Spike Jonze's Where The Wild Things Are draws closer, Opening Ceremony has put out a small collection inspired by the film. The collection includes fur coats, mini-skirts and full body suits. It's really fun and playful, and overall cute as nearly everything Opening Ceremony has a hand in is.

Movie Roundup

Jennifer's Body--

I actually had expectations for Jennifer's Body, the trailers made it look like it could be a fun campy, maybe scary movie, similar in tone to this year's "Drag Me To Hell". However, Diablo Cody

is no Sam Raimi, and Jennifer's Body was short on both thrills, and laughs. Megan Fox did the best she could I suppose, deliv

ering lines like, "you're so lime green Jell-o and you don't even know it". Ugh. There was a fair amount of Veronica Mars crossover in this, and it was sad to see their talent wasted. We didn't see the movie in a full-enough theater to yell at the screen and have a good time, so Jennifer's Body was ultimately totally boring.

Final Verdict: Skip it

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs--

I haven't been impressed with many non-Pixar animated films lately (Bolt came about the closest and it was just OK), but Cloudy

With A Chance took me by surprise. Cloudy is HILARIOUS, it's written and directed by the sa

me guys responsible for Clone High so it's no surprise that the humor was right up my alley. What I liked most is that the humor was funny enough to make my sides hurt, but it wasn't stuff that would go over the kid's heads. It's just funny, character based humor, without shoe-horning cultural references in a-la Shrek. Beyond being HILARIOUS (seriously, one of the funniest movies of '09) it's visually stunning, it's so fun to be transported to this food land. The film had a lot of emotional resonance too. The main character's relationship with his father was real and beautiful and made me cry. The voice work was great too, Anna Faris, Bill Hader, and Mr. T were all highlights. It's a seriously fun, sweet, well-paced moive.

Final Verdict: See it! (In 3-d!)

Word Wars

Word Wars is a really cool documentary about competitive Scrabble playing. Word Wars focuses on 4 competitors, going to the Nationals. They players

are all unemployed, living in squalor, and not anyone that you would aspire to be. These players gamble their money away on high stakes games of Scrabble, and obsess about anagrams all the time. Many of them claim to have the dictionary memorized. The documentary is depressing, it's hard to see people with such a specific, well-developed skill set suffer so much in the real world. Totally worth watching though, stomach-churning as it is.

Final Verdict: Rent It

The Squid and the Whale--

I revisited this movie finally. I saw it in theaters and loved it when it came out, I was 15 at the time. I was worried that like many indie type movies I saw at that age the cool factor would have worn off and I would be embarassed to have liked it. However, The Squid and the Whale held up. It's not often in movies that people who like to think of themselves as intellectuals are criticized, and Jeff Daniels' character is one of the more realistic professor types ever, and he sucks. Everyone in the movie is kind of miserable, and it's hard to watch, but totally enjoyable to revel in on a grey day.

Final Verdict: See it!

Wavves

Wavves played a free show last night in Grinell, IA. They took the stage 2 hours late and the sound in the venue was horrible. Wavves still put on a great, ridiculously energetic set, the highlight of which was definitely No Hope Kids. No one in the crowd knew the songs or who was preforming but they were won over pretty quickly. Great show all around! Also, Nathan Williams was really sweet, polite and mild mannered, which shocked me.

Gossip Girl Season 3 Premiere

The biggest surprise of Gossip Girl season 3 so far is that I'm still watching because I'm pretty sure I hate this show. Anyway the premiere, exciting stuff! Third season! New drama! Wrong, this episode is such a snooze fest.

At least the show leads with its best foot forward and the episode opens with Chuck and Blair the only characters I can imagine viewers like. Because it's impossible to be genuinely invested in the struggles of these impossibly, rich, attractive and creepily mature teens, so why not just show us exaggerated fun well dressed stereotypes with catchphrases. I'm bored, and you've ruined my pants. Yes! This is what we want. Anyway we don't get it. Blair and Chuck are playing a game in which Chuck seduces girls, and Blair walks in, pretending to be a woman scorned. This is to prevent their relationship from becoming stale because you know, they're 17 and MID LIFE CRISIS IMPENDING. Anyway they're still in love and this makes them so zzzzzz. Thank God Chuck is gorgeous otherwise this may dip to Vanessa

levels of boring.

Nate is sleeping with some girl from a rival family. Hearts are breaking, forbidden love, scorned grandparents. It's Shakespeare over on the CW guys, tune in. If it ends in a double suicide you'll be sorry you missed it.

Across town Vanessa is mad at Dan for owning a designer wallet because authentic people with morals only shop at Urban Outfitters, obviously. Didn't she date an Archibald last year though? Vanessa's moral high ground act is getting SO TIRED .

Finally, there's Serena's baffling plot line. I seriously have NO IDEA what's going on. She faked being on a spiritual journey for the summer while she was really in Europe trying best she could to get into all the papers. She continues to try to make a scene in New York by losing her top (isn't she supposed to be 17, this show is so ew sometimes) and leaving some Polo match in Connecticut on a horse, who knows? Anyway we're all hating Serena for being some attention whore, but then her voice over let's us know that there's a reason. She wants her father to see he in the pages of the magazines so that he will come back into her life or contact her or something. OK we all sigh in relief together, she wasn't publicly flashing because she's a whore, she only wanted her dad to see!

The only silver lining of this show is that Dan and Serena's step brother is way overly interested in Dan, and I'm really hoping this leads to some gay incest. Also, Georgina next week.

Team Kanye

I know, you're sick of it, I'm sick of it, we're sick of it, there's wars going on, health care etc. Everyone is fatigued on Kanye-Taylorgate '09, but this cultural fixation is only making me more interested. I love that our cuture still isn't saturated with celebrity culture enough to realize that this is 100% a publicity stunt and benefits EVERYONE! Taylor Swift isn't crying because she didn't get to thank Carson Daly for awarding her best female video (do we know what video it was)? And Kanye isn't apologetic because the crazier he looks, the more stunts he pulls, he becomes less of a person and more of a brand. Need proof that Kanye values being distinguishable over dignity?

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury his hair, his leather shirt, and his girlfriend. Kanye the-crazy-George-Bush-doesn't-care-about-black-people-stupid-sunglasses-wearing-I-am-the-king-of-pop controversy monger eclipsed Kanye West the rapper, and certainly Kanye West the person. Which is why his apology on the Jay Leno (who is so ugh) was so interesting.

I may be naive (I am being naive)but I think that Kanye was genuinely upset when Leno asked him how his dead mother would feel about his "outbreak". And I don't know how it's more socially acceptable to scold a grown man by making him imagine his recently deceased mother's disapointment than to momentarily interrupt a speech at an award show at which Fartman makes frequent appearances. Also Taylor Swift is kind of the worst, in her View interview this week she whined about not getting to thank the fans, and having to pull herself together to preform like a professional 5 min later. I'm sorry but your lipsyncing on the subway was not preforming like a professional. This is preforming like a professional (except for the whole 'I'm beasting, of this riesling' line. Cringe.) take notes.

Rhymefest

I was introduced to Chicago rapper Rhymefest this summer, I liked what I heard, but didn't bother to look for more until this week. And now it's all I've been playing; his studio album Blue Collar, and two mixtapes--The Manual, and Man In The Mirror (a Mark Ronson produced Michael Jackson tribute). Rhymefest's raps are wonderful. Clever, fast, vicious at times and a breath of fresh air.

Rhymefest has the ability to make me laugh and tell a real story in his rhymes as well as create some seriously catchy tunes. I think his stuff is pretty accessible too, he uses a lot of mainstream tunes as his beats, especially on Man In The Mirror, on which virtually every backtrack is a Jackson hit. He's signed to ark Ronson's label, and co-wrote Kanye West's "Jesus Walks".

Essential Tracks: Every track on Blue Collar, seriously they're all great, especially: More, Sister, Tell A Story.

From Man In The Mirror: Breakadawn, Never Can Say Goodbye

From The Manual: RNQ

Spring 2010 RTW Faves So Far

Clockwise from top left: Alexander Wang, Lacoste, Boy by Band Of Outsiders, Rag & Bone, Organic by John Patrick

VMAs 2009

This year was the first year I watched the VMA's with "normal" people, and let me tell you it's THE BEST. The questions, the confused look, the disgust. It's so great.

Anyay first things first, the pre-show, the Twitter Tracker, UGH. Repulsive, micro-blogging rules, and don't get me wrong, I was refreshing my TweetDeck on the minute, but the correspondence on Twitter, the technology that looked more advanced than the election trackers, ew. Also, 2/3 out of the girls I watched with had no idea what Twitter was. Normal people, what a life. Other than the tweet coverage, Pink arrived in a fire truck (ugh), Taylor Swift arrived in a clear carriage drawn by white horses (double ugh) and Lady GaGa arrived with Kermit The Frog in a feather neckpiece and a gold mask (YES YES YES!). The normal's reaction to GaGa's get-up was SO AWESOME a lot of overwhelmed faces, and "Wait so is she like, a dude or what?".

So finally (?) the show begins with Madonna giving some weird tribute to Michael Jackson, and having everyone in the audience yell "LONG LIVE THE KING". I like Michael's music, and I have no problem with the musical memorial Janet put on, but if we could refrain from celebrating the character of someone who we all know was a child molester.

Next came the best moment of the night, Kanye West running on stage to tell Taylor Swift that Beyonce deserved the award. That in and of itself wasn't that great, Kanye does this ALL THE TIME, he's not really a loose cannon, he's a calculated cannon and he knows what nerves to hit to make your mom call you and ask you if you heard about what that Kane West said. And he does a great job because people FREAKED OUT. The girls I watched with were beside themselves "OMG I love Taylor! She's so cute! Kanye's such a jerk omg, he has no heart". I didn't bother trying to say that Taylor Swift is 19 and can handle being interrupted and these are the VMA's not the Grammy's or her High School graduation and who even fucking votes for the winners of these things because I really think it's just Kurt Loder, and that really Kanye was right Taylor didn't deserve the award, I mean did you see her performance moments after?

Holy shit, the subway, the dress, the teens singing along, it's all too much. But still:

GaGa was my other highlight of the night, just her attempts to be as bat shit crazy as possible, and the normal people in my room were freaking out.

There was this:

and this

and especially this:

The night closed with Jay-Z and Alica Keys, and Jay-Z KILLED IT. Then Lil' Mama ran on stage and started nodding at Jay-Z really hard and it was all kinds of awesome


In closing this sums up my feelings on the VMA's this year:

Degrassi: The Next Generation Seasons 1-3

Degrassi has been my latest obsession. Seasons 2-3 are available to watch instantly and having always been curious about the show I decided to check it out. I finished 2 and 3 in a week. The show isn't great, the acting is stilted, the scripts are Lifetime movie quality and the clothes are particularly painful (exhibit A Emma's linen pants painted with dolphins--puke). However Degrassi has some magical Boy Meets World quality that makes me feel like everything is going to be OK when I watch it. I know that at the end of the 22 min episodes everything is going to be OK. There's no problem to big to be wrapped up in a bow by Degrassi (although teen pregnancy, child abuse and rape did require 44 min double episodes). And I have no problem with this being trite, or unrealistic (for the record IT IS), but it's so ridiculously comforting that I'm totally OK with it. Sign me up for Degrassi High, Class of 2006.

The characters are (kind of) realistic in the sitcom High School stereotype way, there's Craig, sensitive heart-throb never seen without his acoustic guitar and camera. Paige, popular blonde cheerleader, complete with bedazzled "hottie" tank top. Manny, the younger girl attempting to make the transition from cute to sexy, and Mr. Simpson the sweet, awkwardly cute computer teacher going through chemotherapy. Degrassi's biggest strength is its ensemble cast. Each episode focuses on a different character and you really get a full view of the high school as a whole.

Check out Degrassi if you've got the stomach for it. I can't wait to start Season 4.