We weren’t sure how or why the sex symbol with diarrhea of the mouth, Megan Fox, got an entire cover article dedicated to her in the New York Times Sunday magazine. Is she really such a cultural force? She’s been in like a whopping two movies (we’re counting TRANSFORMERS I and II as one)! Well, we guess a billion Google searches can’t be wrong. We weren’t expecting to be riveted by the article, but surprisingly there was a ton of fascinating stuff on sex and gender roles — and not just out of skilled profiler Lynn Hirschberg’s mouth. Here are some of the best bits (in case you just can’t bring yourself to read a prettied up version of an US Weekly article):
Some people have been questioning Rihanna’s choice to wait to talk about her domestic abuse right until the release of her new album. But that’s just the way the magazine-TV-PR-celebrity-promotional circle jerk works: celebrities don’t tend to chat to magazine writers or TV presenters just because they feel like it, they do it because they are contractually required to promote something. And magazines, TV shows, et al are more than happy to comply, because celebrity cover stories sell like hotcakes.
The quality is pretty gritty, but I find them interesting, not the least because they are glimpses of these people without their artistic personas showing. Just another traveler submitting to the demands of the state.
We all must submit if we wish to travel to Cabo for spring break. Kidding.
Zach Galifianakis is one of those weirdo comedians you either love or you hate. We love him, mostly for his entirely inappropriate sexual humor. So if you haven’t checked out his Funny or Die series, “Between Two Ferns”, we recommend you blow off work for 15 minutes and do so. It’s a super low-budge talk show in which he interviews — or should we say berates? insults? assaults? — big-name celebrities who are so A-list you’ll wonder how he got them to agree to be guests (of course, they’re in on the joke, but still). The interviews with Charlize Theron, Michael Cera, Natalie Portman and Jon Hamm are the ones with the best cringe-worthy material. (He actually asks “Don Drapper”, totally deadpan, if he’s fingered any of his fellow “Mad Men” characters. Oh man.) It’s not high art, but it’s a pretty good commentary on the necessary evil of social niceties.
There isn’t better proof that an active, healthy, happy sex life keeps you looking young and vibrant than Betty Dodson, the great American sex educator who basically invented sex-positive feminism and almost single-handedly made masturbation okay for women. She turns 80 today — and doesn’t look a day over 60! It could also be the fact that she’s been known to date people 40+ years her junior. Or maybe what keeps her young is simply her super, super sweet nature (we met her at a Society for the Scientific Study of Sex conference in Vegas — natch! — and she was a ray of sunshine, attracting fans like bees to light). She’s in the process of creating her memoir online, via installments of text and video, with her web partner Carlin Ross (the younger one in the videos). Check out DodsonAndRoss.com. But don’t let the sweet, grey-haired exterior fool you — Betty will tell you stories that will make you blush with shock and/or envy.
Governor Sanford’s wife decides that she’ll be better able to “heal the family” from outside the Governor’s Mansion, and so she packs up and leaves. We can’t wait to see what kind of bad poetry this will inspire Sanford to write.
Light Test focuses its lens on the uncelebrated heroes behind the scenes at a photo shoot: the assistants. This is a fun and interesting collection of light test photographs for a wide range of professional, editorial, and commercial shoots, including some notable ones such as ones for Sarah Palin and Steven Spielberg. Others are goofy, sporty, glamorous or my favorite, jumpy.
Steven Spielberg, Hollywood CA
For USAWeekend Magazine
Photographer: Brad Trent
Assistant: Jared Mechaber
We’re still not sure why Seth Rogen and Anna Faris are America’s comedic sweethearts. We loved KNOCKED UP just as much as the next guy, but haven’t the overweight stoner and dumb blonde jokes been done to death? Well, they are America’s comedic sweethearts, which we guess is why Warner Brothers, plenty of movie critics, and much of America’s movie-goers have found the apparent date rape scene between these two stars in OBSERVE AND REPORT HI-larious.
From the looks of the rated-R trailer — she’s pounding shots, she’s throwing up, she’s unable to walk, she’s passed out, he’s having sex with her — it’s probably date rape, even if she comes to midway and groggily asks for more. But maybe the actual movie has some context we’re missing that makes it all okay…? Admittedly, we haven’t seen the the film, but assuming New York magazine’s Vulture is right, we’re not gonna see it, because according to them, there’s no other context: “It turns out that yes, by any reasonable standard of behavior, Seth Rogen’s character….totally rapes Faris’s…”
Sure, there’s been some criticism, mostly from those you’d expect (Feministing.com gave a Feminist Fuck You to Seth Rogen on Friday, though why they let Faris off scott free is beyond us). But before it hit theaters this past Friday, there seemed to be a lot of the love for this movie, including this scene: The New York Times review of the movie suggested that slurs in the middle of a blackout equal informed consent; New York magazine’s profile of Faris called the scene “their instant-classic seduction-and-sex sequence”; USA Today called it merely “a boozy date”; Starpulse.com called it a “crazy LOVE scene” [our emphasis]; in that article Anna Faris herself said she only agreed to do the scene because she thought there was no way the studio would ever allow it in the movie, but is now “…grateful that the movie is unapologetic”; and in that New York mag profile, she said of the scene: “It kind of gives you pause. It’s like date rape…. Like, hmmm, that’s funny, uh, right?”
Uh, wrong. We understand that it’s a black comedy, but when 1 in 6 women is sexually assaulted in her lifetime, and binge drinking is a way of life for college kids, and America’s comedic sweethearts are making rape look like harmless “boozy” fun in a big studio movie, it’s kinda hard for us to laugh. Maybe — hopefully — all the laughter in the theaters (like at the SXSW screening) is really just nervous laughter, which by definition comes more from discomfort and alarm than actual amusement.
Filmmakers, actors, and celebrities speak about the various happenings and emotions that define the collective experience that is the Sundance Film Festival.
