Random Thoughts: The Devil and Miss Stone, 300-Pack Abs, and Akon's Vibe

Some pop-culture-related nuggets that have been floating around in my head:

- Last summer I posted my positive review of The Devil Wears Prada to Blogcritics and got some feisty comments. “It’s not as good as the book!” “It glamorizes unhealthy female body image!” “There’s no conflict!” To which I say: no, yes and kind of. Now that I’ve rewatched it on DVD and also read the book, I still want to praise Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci. What Lauren Weisberger, the book’s young author, couldn’t understand was that her boss could be both a bitch and a brilliant woman who is incredibly good at her job. It is too bad that the heroine deems slimming down to a size 4 (from an elephantine size 6) as a major accomplishment, and yes, the boyfriend is lame (he’s an aspiring chef and he’s complaining about her schedule?), but overall, the film is still entertaining fluff.

- In the spirit of re-thinking, or amending past reviews: my love, or should I say my really like, for Janet Jackson’s 20 Y.O. has sufficiently waned to wonder what exactly is wrong with it. I know it’s underwhelming, and I know I’m tired of her obsession with sex, but what else is there? It didn’t hit me until I listened to the chorus of “Show Me” for the 800th time: “Show me, ‘cause actions speak louder than words.” No shit? I mean, she’s forty, and this is what she’s learned? A cliché that’s older than she is? Since the whole album is based on how she’s a forty-year-old woman who still looks/feels/acts like a twenty-year-old, I had to ask: should a forty-year-old want to think like a twenty-year-old? How is that a good thing? If it means trite “insights” like that, then guess what? It’s not.

- Why are songs that are about how inspiring music is so uninspiring themselves? I was reminded of this when listening to Joss Stone’s new CD and her song “Music.” It’s so laid-back it’s practically asleep. I mean, the song is fine, I guess, but if music is really so awesome then why is its tribute so comparatively boring? It reminded me of Leela James' "Music" (even these titles are boring) which I found equally odd – all about how amazing music is, yet so underwhelming itself. Which made me think about Lauryn Hill’s “Superstar” which at least had good lyrics but was still a mid-tempo chill-out that embodied her own accusations: “everything you drop is so tired.” Ironically, Hill guest-raps on Stone’s “Music.” It doesn’t help.

- What is up with AfterElton.com’s horrible book section? They feature only four items right now – scratch that, make it three, as they actually repeat the same link twice. And the big feature is an interview with Augusten Burroughs from May 2006! Their other sections like movies and especially TV are chock-full of articles, columns and recaps. Granted, if the site is about how gays are portrayed in the media, then I guess TV probably has a bigger impact than literature, but when Bookslut features new interviews with Edmund White and Andrew Holleran in the last two months, you have to wonder who’s asleep behind the wheel at AfterElton.

- In his gorgeous new Italian cookbook, Jamie's Italy, Jamie Oliver recommends a local treat: drizzle really good olive oil over really good vanilla ice cream and sprinkle with sea salt. I tried it. I think I need better olive oil.



- I love how, in his new interview in Vibe, Akon basically admits over and over again that he lies whenever he feels like it, leading one to believe that you probably shouldn't believe anything he says. And yet, somehow, I don't think that will affect his career at all.



- And finally...I finally saw 300. There’s a minor hubbub in the gay community over its portrayal of the villains in the movie. I was doubtful going in, but now I kind of agree. Frank Miller, who’s historically inaccurate graphic novel the movie is based on, clearly has some (probably unconscious) prejudices that he needs to work out. His heroes apparently have to be white and very heterosexual, virile, macho and hirsute who live to sleep with only women (again, historically misleading) and kill people. His villains, on the other hand, are be-jeweled, manicured, effeminate RuPaul clones who stage massive orgies with lesbians, trannies and hunchbacks. It’s not just offensive for the stereotypes and negative associations he’s passing on to young straight men everywhere (as if an R rating is keeping out the teens), it’s lazy, outdated shorthand to contrast the “other” from the straight, white, male protagonist.

I wonder if it would bother me less if I really enjoyed the movie, but I hope not. As it was, the special effects were cool, the Abercrombie & Fitch models - I mean, the cast - looked good in leather briefs and capes, but I didn’t care about any of the characters.

(Thanks to AfterElton for the pic.)

Also check out: If She's the Devil, Then Hell Must Be Fabulous.
And: What Do I Call Her If I'm Not Nasty?
And: Soul Sisters: Amy Winehouse and Joss Stone.

If She's the Devil, Then Hell Must Be Fabulous

(Update: the editors of Blogcritics have chosen this piece as an Editor's Pick of the Week. Trés chic!)

Now that the media seems to finally have exhausted itself with the Man of Steel, the movie of the moment is The Devil Wears Prada. Beyond the mixed reviews, many are debating the accuracy of the film's depiction of the fashion industry. Are the costumes over the top? Would Meryl Streep's character really let her hair go gray? Would editorial assistants raid their fashion magazine's racks of clothes for their own outfits?

Who cares? Let the fashion insiders nitpick over unrealistic details. The movie, quite simply, is fun.

Running at a fluffy, fast-paced hour and a half, Prada follows Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), a recent Northwestern University journalism grad, as she attempts to become a Serious Writer. Having recently moved to New York, she has to lower her entitled, Ivy League standards by landing a job millions of other girls would kill for: working at the elite fashion magazine Runway as the assistant to its demanding editor, Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep). Miranda has Andy perform increasingly impossible errands (like, say, tracking down the unfinished new Harry Potter manuscript for Miranda's twins), and, after a year, would give Andy a glowing recommendation that would help her gain entrance to any magazine she wanted to write at.

As most people know by now, the movie is based on Lauren Weisberger's hugely popular and critically derided roman á clef of the same name, which actually chronicled her own experience working at Vogue for its notoriously demanding editor, Anna Wintour.

Weisberger wrote the novel in her mid-twenties and didn't have the perspective to truly understand her own book's most fascinating character - not herself, but Miranda. The movie, however, fixes that problem by allowing Miranda to not only be fierce, aggressive, and scary, but also brilliantly talented and, more importantly, nuanced and even vulnerable. Of course, it helps to bring out those layers when the character is played by an icy, strutting Meryl Streep.

If you can, see the movie sooner rather than later, when there's packed audiences who will laugh, hoot and holler and maybe even applaud at some of Miranda's best lines. One of the best scenes (not from the book) is after Andy snickers at Miranda and her fashion crew over debating two similar belts. Miranda then coolly delivers a monologue, while simultaneously putting together the centerpiece of a photo spread, explaining how Miranda's decisions trickle down from Runway to runways to department stores to the Bargain Bin that Andy so carefully picks through to prove she doesn't care about fashion. It's a great way to explain how far Miranda's influence spreads across the fashion world, and you can't help but even root for her as she puts the clueless, equally snobby Andy in her place.

Streep delivers everything in a cool, restrained, almost dulcet voice, and she can destroy someone with either a fierce glare or, better yet, a dismissive, sleepy-lidded look to remind the recipient they're not even worth the energy of a fierce glare. Streep is, in one word, awesome. In fact, you almost end up rooting for Miranda over the entitled, whiny Andy (which is not a slam against the charming Hathaway but more of a problem with the way her character is written).

The funny thing is, when a movie like this is so urgently, fashionably modern, it inevitably feels dated after the end credits have started rolling. With 1988's Working Girl, people looked back ten years later and made fun of the skyscraper hair and football player should pads. Yet now, people are already criticizing Prada's decadent, almost 80's-esque fashions ten minutes after watching it. Are the clothes unrealistic? Yes. The costume designer, after all, is Patricia Field, who also created over-the-top ensembles for Sex and the City. Slate's Amanda Fortini explains it very well:

The problem is, subdued, well-edited clothing doesn't play well onscreen. The camera cannot sufficiently capture a sumptuous texture or a nuanced cut. The bright colors and conspicuous logos Field uses serve as visual shorthand for the glamour of a fashion editor's life. To differentiate her characters from regular women dressed up for work, Field had to make their ensembles over-the-top.

So get over it, you fashion snobs.

Sure, there are some problems. The tone never quite gels (the film wants to both make fun of the bitchy magazine staff and take what they do seriously at the same time) and the non-stop pop soundtrack turns the first half of the film into a music video. But, actually, even though I referred to the movie as "fluffy," it does have some interesting points about working in your twenties (doesn't everyone worry that their boss will be a Miranda Priestly?), sacrifices, accountability, priorities (if you're personal life is shit, that means you're probably doing well at your job; if you have no personal life, prepare to be promoted) and gender politics. In fact, Prada seems to be the movie everyone is talking about.

There's not a lot of movies that I want to see a second time so soon after the first, but this might be one of them. Actually, I don't want to see the whole movie. I want someone to re-edit the film with only the scenes that Streep is in. Okay, any scene with her or Stanley Tucci as her snappy, witty sidekick. I would definitely watch that 45-minute "best of" compilation over and over, martini in one hand, taking notes with the other.