Blogcritics Author: Don Baiocchi

Periodically Purging: Magazine Round-Up and Fort Building

Don Baiocchi — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 05:42:25 EST

Reviewing the cover stories, overlooked nuggets, and would-be guilty pleasures from the past month in magazines.
I'm such a follower of magazines that I could assemble a fort with all the piles around my apartment. Maybe I have already, but that's not the point. The point is that I ignore them until I'm between books and then I go through my "magazine purge" to catch up. So I just thought I'd summarize some of the best and worst...

Movie Review: 30 Days of Night

Don Baiocchi — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 22:08:22 EDT

Josh Hartnett doesn't suck in it and - gasp! - that's not where the scariness ends.
If you live in an Alaskan town that experiences nighttime for one straight month, you basically want to be eaten alive by vampires. That was the main point I learned from 30 Days of Night, a new horror film based on a popular graphic novel.The real town of Barrow, Alaska is the country's northernmost settlement and doesn't experience...

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Giada De Laurentiis Added to Today Lineup, Starts Own Line of Food, Bakeware

Don Baiocchi — Thu, 9 Aug 2007 07:37:38 EDT

Food Network star Giada De Laurentiis is already the star of three shows: Everyday Italian, Giada's Weekend Getaways, and Giada in Paradise. She's also been a regular correspondent on NBC's Today. But now, according to Broadcasting & Cable magazine, her name-branding machine is kicking into high gear.Already appearing in ads for Barilla pasta, she will also be launching a line of oils, vinegars, and spices (to clarify for all you pervs, we're talking about cooking oils) with Barilla due in December. She's designing a line of bakeware for Pyrex Glassware to launch in early 2008. And come September, she will co-host the new fourth hour of Today for one week each month for at least a year, as well as becoming "one of a rotating roster of co-hosts for all of the hour's segments."Holy over-enunciated-Italian-words, Batman! Emeril may be the face of the Food Network and have his own line of cookware, and Rachael Ray may be the media-saturated star with her own talk show, magazine, and kitchen products, but Giada is really stepping out on her own here. She has really surprised me with her ambition. Her story always made it sound like she was just along for the ride, kind of like, "Oh my God! I wrote a magazine article about cooking for my large, Hollywood family and voila! Food Network asked me to host a show!" But now it seems like our dainty pasta princess is really aiming for household name status. (I was going to call her pasta queen, but that would be insulting Lidia Bastianich.)And what a name it is. How refreshing to know that a household name could be one as long, complicated, vowel-choked and flat-out Italian as hers. Yes, Ray is technically Sicilian, but I don't think anyone associates "Ray" with Italian ancestry. I know it seems trivial, but I've seen and heard as many possible variations of my last name as possible. ("No, ma'am, you can't insert a consonant between the three vowels just to make it easier for yourself.") Even if it's in some small way, someone like Mrs. De Laurentiis gives hope to all of us. We're here, we have long names, get used to it!Now, being a Giada fan from the beginning, will I mindlessly run out and buy her stuff? No. It's really not as if the world needs one more bottle of olive oil lining the shelves. I'm sure Giada's name alone insures some credibility, and therefore sales, but you just never know, especially when it comes to celebrity products. The article doesn't mention price points, either, so I'll simply have to wait, taste and see.It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Sometimes Giada cooks on Today, sometimes she doesn't. So will there be any cross-promotion of her products on the show? Will she use her own products on her own Food Network shows? Because one of the more interesting points of the article is that Giada's products, including her books, are separate from the Food Network.Food Network has approached De Laurentiis to jointly launch products, but she has chosen to go it alone (she already has three cookbooks in addition to the ongoing Barilla relationship) because star and network haven't been able to align on terms of a deal, she says.“I came in at a time where Food Network didn't have those ties with a publisher and others,” De Laurentiis says. “They were doing food programming, and that was it.”Luckily, both parties admit the mutual benefits of their relationship - the more popular one gets, the more it helps the other - and so it sounds like their relationship isn't affected negatively. Which is good, because I like Giada in the grocery store, even more so on my bookshelf, but most of all I like her where I got to know her first: on my TV.

DVD Review: Small Town Gay Bar

Don Baiocchi — Tue, 7 Aug 2007 07:28:35 EDT

Since I live in a city with a large gay population, a gay-friendly mayor, and two neighborhoods heavily populated by my fellow 'mos, it's sometimes easy to forget that not every gay person has it so easy. Granted, my boyfriend and I know not to hold hands in certain neighborhoods, and there's always going to be some bigoted asshole who has a problem just to have a problem, but Chicago has its advantages. There are plenty of stylish gay bars, gay publications and even Hamburger Mary's, a national gay burger chain (the waiters are actually ponies and the burgers are made out of glitter and Cher's old noses). It's not like I live in, oh, say, Mississippi. When you open a gay bar there, it's right down the block from a Confederate-flag-decorated straight bar where the patrons say things like, "If [the queers] fuck with me, I'm-a bust their heads wide open." Obviously, he's never tasted a queer burger. Chicago 1, drunk redneck 0.Luckily, that guy doesn't get too much air time in Small Town Gay Bar, a new documentary out on DVD August 7. The film, a grand jury prize nominee at the 2005 Sundance film festival, documents the struggles to open and maintain a gay bar in rural areas of the "Bible Belt." Faced with prejudice that sometimes leads to violence, the owners and patrons of these establishments risk social alienation and physical harm just to toss back a few Bud Lights.The film starts by interviewing many of the customers, who endlessly reiterate how much they need Rumors, the local gay bar - how it creates a sense of community, how it's the only place they feel safe and comfortable (once actually inside), how they'd have to travel up to two hours away to the second-closest gay bar without it. It then jumps, somewhat jarringly, to the tale of Scotty Weaver, a local boy who dressed in drag. He was tied up, strangled, mutilated, partially decapitated, then dragged to the woods and set on fire. The filmmakers tie this to the danger rural gay men and women face by being themselves. Anyone who follows the news knows that many gays are the victims of hate crimes all over the country, even in such gay-friendly cities as Chicago. But the film reminds us that the large scale of cities offers an element of anonymity, whereas everyone knows who you are in a small town. Sure, the local gay men and women could flock to a larger, more accepting city, but whether for personal or financial reasons, they choose to stay and live in the place they call home.In the film, we meet Rick, the owner of Rumors, who isn't even out to his parents ("I know they love me and accept me, but if I told them that I don't think they could accept that"). There's Rumors' "show director," the fantastically glamorous, sharp-tongued drag queen Jim Bishop, aka Alicia Stone ("Let us be the grown adult taxpayers that we are and make our own decisions"). There's also Lori and Ruby, the lesbian couple that buys the abandoned, dilapidated gay bar Crossroads and puts all their time and money into opening it up as a new gay bar, Different Seasons.We also get a long, in-depth interview with the Fred Phelps, leader of the Westboro Baptist Church that picketed Weaver's funeral (I'd compare his balding, pockmarked, squinty looks to Mr. Burns, but I would never, ever insult Mr. Burns like that). Phelps blames homosexuality on parents who don't teach their children about God 'n stuff and actually says, "I'm the only one telling [homosexuals] the truth, for God's sake. I'm the only one that loves them." Of course, that would be a lot more believable if he could actually supress his smirk when he says that all gays are going to hell.We also get to meet Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, located in nearby Tupelo, Mississippi. Wildmon describes his association's acceptance that other people are allowed to "exist" (gee, how big of them) while others explain how AFA members would read on the radio the license plate numbers of cars parked at gay bars the previous night. So, you can exist, just don't be different and drink beer at the same time.The film gets a little repetitive. Not to take away from anyone's problems, but there's only so many times in a 76-minute documentary you need to be told that being gay in a small town is really, really hard. Maybe it's because I'm part of the choir, but there's only so much preaching necessary to make your point -- and isn't this documentary probably going to be viewed only by the choir anyway? Also, after a moving, silent montage of proud gay men and women who promise to keep attending their local gay bar despite local prejudices, director Malcom Ingram strangely decides to end his film with one more offensive spit of verbal bile from Fred Phelps. Not exactly the note on which you'd expect him to end his tribute to tough, perseverant gay men and women. (To make up for that, if you get the DVD, definitely watch the hilarious extra with executive producer Kevin Smith, director of Clerks and friend of the gays.)Still, with the national debate still focused on gay marriage, it's easy to overlook the small, daily battles that gay men and women go through just to peacefully live their lives. These aren't activists marching in parades or providing commentary on national news shows. They're the local veterinarians and DJs and post office workers trying to escape from the daily grind like we all do. When you see all the effort they have to go through just to drink beer, laugh with some friends, and maybe dance to something other than Hank Williams, Jr., you have to stop and think. The AFA and others accuse them of trying to push a homosexual agenda or revolutionize mainstream culture. In some parts of our smorgasbord country, grabbing a beer bottle - next to a rainbow American flag - truly becomes something radical.

Movie Review: Race You to the Bottom

Don Baiocchi — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 07:29:40 EDT

What is it about sassy gay men that make them so hard to write as on-screen characters? It might work if they're sidekicks to the protagonist (and therefore taken in small doses) as in Kissing Jessica Stein or Will & Grace. But if one is the leading man of a movie, then you're spending two hours with a wannabe-Wilde who very quickly seems brittle, forced, condescending, and phony. It takes a very talented writer to make him likable and a very talented actor to let the wit roll off his tongue with panache. Unfortunately, we have no such luck with Nathan, the leading man in writer/director Russell Brown's Race You to the Bottom. Brown seems to like the idea of writing a young, successful, unabashedly sexual man (scratch the above "gay" and make that "bisexual"), but Nathan is also narcissistic, inconsiderate, rude, and sexually inconsiderate. And if you're going to make him "sassy" or "witty" or whatever, then you better give him some good lines. That doesn't happen.For a brief summary, Nathan (Cole Williams) and Maggie (Amber Benson) abandon their respective boyfriends to take a trip to Napa for an article he's working on for a travel magazine. As soon as they leave, they're making out! Sassy! I think we, the audience, are either supposed to be so shocked (rubbing our eyes in disbelief, "say wha...?") or cheering them on ("Yeah, you go, gay boy!" "Yeah, tap that sassy ass, straight girl!"). But all I could think was "Really? She's cheating on her supercute boyfriend with a greasy Clay Aiken clone wearing way too much eyeliner?"Some people mistakenly believe that they have to "identify" with the protagonists in art. While I didn't mind that I couldn't identify with Nathan (he actually tells Maggie "the taste of another man on your lips makes me hot." Who talks like that?), I at least wanted to understand what was so attractive about him to Maggie. The movie offers few clues: He spontaneously dances in hotel rooms! He... um... likes to drink wine! He can get erections!That last quality is apparently what gives him an edge over Maggie's devoted but pouty boyfriend, Milo. When her friend points out what a great guy Milo is, Maggie guiltlessly shrugs it off. Apparently, to her, it's perfectly okay to cheat on your long-term boyfriend if he can't get it up. And it's perfectly okay that she's doing this with a man who has a boyfriend of his own. The movie's tagline is "Maybe their boyfriends should worry..." Yeah, about STDs.It's too bad, because the movie could really have approached a unique situation. There aren't many films out there that deal with bisexuality as a legit sexual orientation or, at least, worth exploring as such. The fact that she deems Nathan a "70/30" kind of guy is perfectly fine with Maggie, and I know a lot of women in real life who wouldn't mind if their gorgeous gay best friends were 70/30s as well. And I'm sure relationships like this do exist, however underrepresented in film they may be. But Brown can't do his subject justice, and his dialogue bounces from unrealistic to overused clichés. When Maggie's friend explains Nathan's sexual preference with "bisexuality is just one stop on the road to gayville," I was expecting one of the Sex and the City girls to pop in with "that was my line!"In fact, Nathan is just so gosh darn sexual that he basically whips it out in front of every attractive guy he comes across. (But not around attractive women besides Maggie. Hmmm, maybe he's more 95/5.) Or he encourages them to whip it out. When they visit some friends during their road trip to Napa, Nathan effortlessly seduces the hunky husband, Joe (Justin Hartley, the only man in this movie who doesn't have the skinny, hairless build of a 12-year-old). But as he gives Joe a hands-on workshop in new masturbation techniques, Mr. Overly-Sexed-Up Nathan spaces out and we cut to an utterly pointless flashback. (Focus, Nathan! Aren't Gen Y-ers overly-medicated on ADD pills?) By the time we're back to the present, Joe zips up and gives the most unconvincing "wow" in cinema history. Geez, this movie about sexual boundary-breaking can't even get handjobs right. As they ascend the hills of their vineyard-hopping adventure, they become irritated and annoyed with each other - he at her clinginess and prudery, she at his pursuit of his 70% side. One review generously compared this to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for Generation Y (or whatever the hell we are), but I think that's a bit of an overstatement. They say such awful things to each other (especially Nathan) that you're not quite sure why you want to be around them anymore. You could argue that Nathan is intentionally turning Maggie off after she declared her love for him - to save her, to protect her, to break her heart now because it would be even crueler to lead her on - but that would mean Nathan would have to think of someone besides himself.First Maggie tells him that his need to seduce everyone is due to his self-loathing, then she accuses him of only loving himself. Which is it? Just like Nathan, the movie tries to have it both ways, mistaking snark for charm. And like Nathan, Race You to the Bottom sorely lacks the latter.

DVD Review: The Kinsey Sicks - I Wanna Be a Republican

Don Baiocchi — Mon, 4 Jun 2007 18:01:33 EDT

Are you a depressed Democrat, looking for a cheap laugh at your political counterparts' expense? Or maybe you're a repressed Republican who needs an injection of pride? Then you might want to think about checking out The Kinsey Sicks. These funny, talented drag queens have been performing since 1994 and have finally captured their four-part harmonies and bawdy political humor on their first live concert film, I Wanna Be a Republican.I admit, I had never heard of them before watching this new DVD but quickly found myself attuned to their patented brand of campy sarcasm. I mean, there's over-the-top, and then there's the Kinsey Sicks. Self-billed as "America's favorite dragapella beautyshop quartet" (because, really, we have so many to choose from. Thank you, democracy!), these four feisty drag queens stage a mock GOP fundraiser to announce their switch to the Republican party. According to anal Winnie, "your contributions this evening will help eradicate such rampant social evils as social security! Evolution! Pleasure!"The following 84 minutes are not only entertaining but, really, educational as well as they sing (in impressive a capella four-part harmonies) the benefits of conservatism. One by one, the group - which also includes glamorous Trixie, horny Rachel, and spiritual Trampolina - take to the podium to explain why and how they decided to cross party lines. At the end of the fundraiser, we're promised that "George W. Bush himself will be here to deliver his first ever coherent public policy address!"During their personal speeches, they take on numerous subjects, reveal personal confessions and hold nothing back. On why she's a pro-choice Republican, Trixie says, "We cannot go back to the days of back-alley abortions. I myself have spent much time in those back alleys and believe me, nothing ruins the moment more than a mangled fetus."On Trixie's decision, Winnie assures her that "it's fine for you to be a pro-choice Republican as long as you're content to have no influence whatsoever."And that's just the between-song banter. To kick things off, the ladies outline their motivations in their anthemic title song, singing "I'm tired of thinking about you when it's all about me, me, me!... Now I'm in a place where I'm embraced for being selfish and mean!"Apparently, joining the Republican party has its advantages. "Don't you just love flesh-colored bandages?" Trixie sings in "All the White Places." And in "Money," the title subject "buys you noses and elections, it buys you pills that buy erections." Plus, you can can have politically correct cocktail parties while exploiting those you oppress: "Rent a homo for your party, you will have a barrel of fun! Rent a homo for your party, every party should have one." The only part I found confusing was Trampolina's gospel-tinged "Be A Slut," where God told her to, well... I think the title explains it (in case it doesn't, the chorus goes: "Be a slut! Be a slut! No ifs, no ands, but lots of butt!"). The "abstinence-only" Republican party doesn't exactly seem pro-sex but hey, if every Republican drag queen was as inspiring as Trampolina, they might just change their policies. Girl doesn't just sing, she can sang.Filmed before a game audience in San Francisco (tough crowd to convince of the powers of Republicanism), the Kinsey Sicks doo-wop, meditate, seduce audience members and hire minorities for photo ops. Does W. ever show up for his public policy address? I won't spoil it, but they do perform his personal anthem called "When You're Good to Dubya," a take on Chicago's "When You're Good to Mama." Watching a concert on TV is always strange as there seems to be a disconnect between you and the live audience. Some things are just funnier in person, even if you're watching the same joke in your living room. And I admit, I never want to see a drag queen acting out the party game "Bobbing for Butt Hairs" ever again. But on one of the DVD's many special features, more than one of the cast members reveal that their conservative parents enjoyed the show. By the time the Sicks close with "We Arm the World," you might be singing along, too.

What Time Left Behind

Don Baiocchi — Sat, 2 Jun 2007 03:45:13 EDT

Time magazine's cover story on No Child Left Behind is a much-needed evaluation of a controversial, complicated law. I mean, their first example is a school where, before the law was enacted, only 13% of fifth- and eighth-graders could read at grade level or above. Now that number is 36%. That's like a difference of...um...well, it's a big difference.I've never read the actual document because it's, oh, 1,100 pages, so I'm only as familiar with the law as I am with the criticisms of it. (I'm barely getting through The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and that's only because I have to for my book club.) This article helped put the statute in perspective. The purpose of the law was to expose failing schools and hold them accountable. And, according to Time, it's done just that.It's almost everywhere else that the law has underperformed.Raising student achievement? "Though some districts are reporting significant gains, results on national math and reading tests are mostly flat - so far." (Which is only kind of true - their own graphs show gains in math for fifth- and eighth-graders.)Measuring school improvement? "The law's reliance on a single,pass-fail system for assessing 'adequate yearly progress' is one of its weakest points." In other words, every school has to reach a standardized plane of grade-level reading. So even kids who make significant gains but don't reach that plane are considered failures.Raising standards for teachers? "NCLB is the first federal statute to require that teachers actually know the subjects they teach, though there are still some loopholes." Time gave NCLB a mixed review for what it expects of teachers, and teachers have some problems with NCLB. 30,000 educators (and concerned citizens) have signed an online petition against the statute.Helping schools improve? "Even the department of Education concedes that its remedies for chronic school failure are not working." Ouch. None of the remedies, which include tutoring and transferring students to non-failing schools, "have any basis in reality or research," says one research professor of education at NYU. Ooh, snap.The part I was most interested in reading about was how NCLB's intense focus on standardized testing for math and reading leaves other subjects overlooked. With so much time dedicated to taking tests (a skill some smart children aren't good at, to begin with), the article explains how science and social studies have suffered.I was surprised that the authors left it at that. While those are undoubtedly essential subjects, I was expecting them to then explore the lack of art, music and physical education in our grade schools. Granted, their suggestions for NCLB's improvement include schools providing more information about "achievement in the arts" but the suggestion seems half-assed. What about the effects on students' morale, engagement and, indeed, performance in other subjects due to the dwindling focus on art and music? There have been studies done (they're what VH1's entire "Save the Music" foundation is based on), so why weren't they even briefly referenced?Even more blatant is overlooking the consequences of diminishing physical education. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (the same source for many of Time's figures), only 17-22% of elementary schools provided daily physical education in 2005. This is extremely important because childhood obesity seems to be growing as fast as a third-grader's waistband. (Seriously, has anyone at Time ever seen those overweight kids on Maury Povich? They eat grilled cheese sandwiches the way others eat french fries) Yes, there are other contributing factors, such as eating habits and extra-curricular activities. But do they think recess makes up for no gym class? Are they thinking about this at all?Almost 1 in every 3 kids is overweight or at the risk of becoming overweight. It's a greasy, oily, deep-fried downward spiral from there. The huge increase in rates of childhood obesity has led to increased rates of childhood diabetes, so much so that "adult-onset diabetese" has changed names to just "type 2 diabetese" since so many kids have it now. Along with increased blood pressure and stress, today's children are on the road to lifelong health problems. And according to the American Heart Association in 2006, the direct national cost of treating obesity-related diseases are already estimated at $61 billion. That number could go up and up as these overweight children become overweight adults. Of course, this problem began before NCLB, but that program's intense emphasis on standardized testing has exacerbated it.I know I'm hardly the first person to point all of this out, so I couldn't believe Time didn't even touch on this subject. Granted, it's already a long article (almost as long as this post), but still. If it's going to be a comprehensive evaluation of the program, negative side effects should be mentioned, if not thoroughly explored.Time's final grade for No Child Left Behind? C.My final grade for Time's article? B.

Music Review: Feist - The Reminder

Don Baiocchi — Mon, 28 May 2007 08:26:30 EDT

The cover of Feist's second album, The Reminder, shows rainbow lasers beaming from her throat, symbolizing either her colorful singing or that her neck is really gay. Feist (she dropped her first name, Leslie) was the lead singer for the punk band Placebo (but not the more famous band of the same name), sang with indie rock supergroup Broken Social Scene, and even collaborated with her ex-roommate, the raunchy electro/punk goddess Peaches. Since the rainbow beams are both behind and in front of her, maybe it's saying that her colorful past informs her colorful music?OK, so I'm overthinking it, but overthinking seems right up Feists's alley. The lyrics produce a cohesive vision of a self-reflective, independent woman who questions relationships but always acknowledges her own roles and flaws in them. Check out the uptempo, wonderfully complicated "I Feel It All," where Feist starts out chanting phrases like the title, "the wings are wide," "wild card inside," and "I know more than I knew before." It's as if she's psyching herself up to tackle the obstacles in her relationship ("No one likes to take a test"). But the head-boppy, guitar-strumming music is so upbeat, as is her delivery, that it sounds like Feist is ready to take it all on. Then there's the first single, "1234." Finger snaps, cascading pianos, bright horn sections, a back-up chorus and a banjo all swirl around some of my favorite lyrics on the album. "1234, tell me that you love me more/sleepless long nights that is what my youth was for" - I love it! Let me translate: "Hi, yeah, I'm not a teenager anymore, so that brooding, too-cool, anti-commitment thing isn't going to work. Be emotionally available or I'm out." While so many pop stars over the age of 25 think they have to get caught up in relationship drama to appear youthful (what's up, Gwen Stefani?), it's refreshing to hear a grown woman write emotionally developed, mature music, especially when she's so gosh-darn cute about them (to see what I mean, watch the video).With these gems, why does the album seem so long? Maybe it's because out of thirteen songs, about 8 of them are ballads. Seriously, Feist might be a mature, independent woman, but girl needs some caffeine. The lyrics are indeed insightful. Everyone can relate to "Intuition," which questions how and where one gets their feelings about the relationship they're in, such as when do you work at it? When do you move on? (It ends on the melancholy note: "It's impossible to tell/how important someone was/and what you might have missed out on... Did I miss out on you?" Pass the tissues. And the vodka.) It's lovely, but by the album's finale, these moments bordered on overly-precious.It's not that the slower songs aren't good, but when more than half the album consists of a girl and her piano - plus some funky extra (but minimal) sounds and a lot of water/mountain metaphors (I'll let you figure that out) - they tend to blur together. Feist seems to get lost in her music, as if in a trance, where her vocals echo and wrap around themselves to create more of an ambiance than a narrative. But when she picks up the pace, as in the haunting, jazzy "My Moon My Man" or the tribal "Sealion," her interpretation of Nina Simone's "See Line Woman," she creates an urgent sexiness without losing any of the mood or insight.Because the Canadian singer-songwriter is riding a shallow but growing wave of buzz into the U.S., I was hoping her sophomore effort would showcase her range of musical interests and to some extent, it does. The instrumentation is creative, unpredictable and sometimes curious, but in a good way. She's a worldly pop chanteuse that just happens to sometimes play the banjo. (I might not know punk, but that seems pretty punk, right? Right?) After touring for two and a half years supporting her first album, Let It Die, Feist cozied up with her band in a 200-year-old French manor house to record The Reminder. It's intimate, it's torchy, and even though she seems to have been dragged down by all the self-reflection, the overall album is beautiful. So after all that deep, profound self-analysis, let's just say the cover art for The Reminder is cool, and leave it at that.

Bravo Plagiarizes Itself

Don Baiocchi — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 03:32:43 EDT

With Top Chef, Top Design and last night's debut of Shear Genius, it seems that Bravo is committed to landscaping their entire schedule with the creative-arts-reality-contest "brand" they created with Project Runway. Take twelve campy, dramatic, creative people, stuff them in a pressure-cooker situation with multiple challenges per episode and then offer them up to awkward hosts and bitchy judges. As evidence of how much Bravo has diluted their own brand, Heidi Klum begat Padma Lakshmi who begat Todd Oldham who begat...Jaclyn Smith?Top Design is as much about a visual art form as PR. Sure, you might not get to walk in the space and really analyze the details, but for the most part you're experiencing what the judges experience. The vital difference from PR's judging process, however, is that rooms don't move. Those ugly, cavernous booths the contestants paint windows on just sit there. Each designer awkwardly stands at the entrance while the judges silently walk around their creation before moving on to the next one. The whole process is strangely quiet and restrained.At first I was underwhelmed by TD. Even after a couple episodes, not one contestant had produced a room provoking a response beyond "eh, it's fine." Luckily, Bravo snagged at least six genuinely talented designers that began to produce much work as the show went on. And I was happy to see the sophisticated Matt walk away with the contest. He was always professional and produced consistently chic rooms.What frustrates me about Top Chef is that you can't participate in the judging process the way you can with PR. You hear about the ingredients the contestants are throwing together, you watch them sweat over a stove with a blowtorch or massive chef's knife, and you can admire, or mock, the presentation. But you can't actually taste the final product. You have to take the judges' word on whether or not they achieve culinary perfection.As for Shear Genius...well, let's just say that so far, the best part about it is that it's theme song is nowhere nearly as ear-bleedingly bad as Top Design's. It's as if the composer of TD's wants everyone to hate music as much as they do.It's not the fault of the other shows. They just don't fit the medium of television contests the way PR does. Dinner plates and 12'x12' rooms aren't revealed by sexy models hopping and spinning and baring ass. I'm not saying they should, but it would be fun to see a starving model hungrily salivating over the hunk of beef she's parading around, and I don't just mean tall, scruffy TC contestant Sam Talbot.Whether it's a plate of dehydrated veal cheeks, plywood walls smothered in Tuscan Sunrise paint, or a mannequin head sporting yet another set of asymmetrical bangs, not one of these shows produces the same kinetic sexiness of PR's runway shows. And considering PR just started auditions for Season Four, it's going to be a while before the original returns.

Movie Review: The Reaping

Don Baiocchi — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 07:18:43 EDT

This review contains spoilers -- proceed at your own risk. The Reaping isn’t the zero-star catastrophe that some critics have claimed, nor is it as good as it could have been. But somewhere before producers and editors slashed the movie into tiny incoherent pieces is a movie that could have been both a topical commentary on current events and a throwback to when horror movies were actually respected (and respectable).Hilary Swank plays Katherine, a former Christian missionary whose husband and daughter were ruthlessly sacrificed by local savages while on a humanitarian mission in Sudan. Now a faithless professor who specializes in using science to debunk religious “miracles,” she’s asked to investigate a small town plagued by, well, plagues. In Haven (Get it? Oh, the subtlety...), Louisiana, the river runs red, frogs rain from above, and victims of boils beg for Dr. 90210 to save them. Instead, they get Katherine and Ben (Idris Elba), her hunky, faithful and faith-full assistant who believes the plagues have a Biblical explanation after all.The screenplay practically screams “Current Events!” as soon as our independent, scientist heroine is greeted by the God-fearing, breeding, family-centric Christians. Katherine hangs on to her scientific theories as long as possible, even delivering a fantastic monologue scientifically explaining the origins of the original Egyptian plagues, before things just get too weird.This sets up a story brimming with religious-thriller potential, and the fact that the writers are smart enough to create a character as three-dimensional as Ben – a teacher who can devote his career to science yet still wear a crucifix around his neck, a scarred beefcake with a rough past who can cradle Katherine in his arms after a nightmare – makes me believe they started with an interesting screenplay. But then the filmmakers drown the story in overly long flashbacks and unnecessary special effects. Warning: Spoilers Ahead!Worse, the writers overly complicate their own logic as soon as we learn that the Bible-thumpers are actually Satan-worshippers. They blame a little girl, Loren (the impressively creepy AnnaSophia Robb), for the plagues but it turns out that Loren is actually a heaven-sent angel (!) who can’t be killed (!!) and can also control entire swarms of man-killing locusts (!!!). The Satanists want to sacrifice her to… appease their Dark Lord… or something (all the explosions kind of distracted from that plot point).But it seems like the writers were on to something there, even something as provocative as this: is religious fanaticism dangerous, no matter the denomination? Are God-fearing fundamentalists just as (potentially) destructive as Satan worshippers? Is it really so easy to equate them as two sides to the same coin?Back in the early to mid-'70s, horror flicks were both respected cinema and cheap thrills exploitation, sometimes simultaneously. Movies like The Omen and The Exorcist scared up big business at the box-office and garnered critical raves. The latter was even nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.Then, in 1978, came Halloween’s Michael Myers, a silent, faceless antagonist onto whom we could project our own fears. The '80s brought us Freddy Kreuger of the The Nightmare on Elm Street fanchise – a snarky villain who stood in for the audience by mocking the horny teenagers he terrorized.From Scream to Saw, recent mainstream horror films have excluded religion entirely. Even 2005’s The Amityville Horror remake significantly reduced the role religion played in the original book and film from the late '70s (this prompted the Chicago Reader to headline its review of the remake “Secular’s Not As Scary”).The Reaping comes at a perfect time to return religion to the cinematic spotlight. With evolutionists fighting creationists, marriage and civil rights being tied to the Bible, and a president who has repeatedly used God to justify his occupation of the Oval Office, a thriller could tap into the national tension created by these issues. Instead, we get bad direction, lazy references to those Biblical thrillers from the '70s, plus a ridiculous Rosemary’s Baby twist thrown in at the end for no good reason. Even the priest (Stephen Rea) has to warn Katherine about the plagues over the phone in only two or three tacked-on scenes.The film never answers its own questions about religious extremism. I’m not even sure they knew their screenplay was asking those questions in the first place. An even bigger question might be what Swank is going to do now that she’s too old to play the tomboyish underdog. Because if she wants her third Oscar by the time she’s 35, she’ll have to wring out something better than The Reaping.