Karina on SpoutBlog

• “Sex appeal is a big deal,” notes Ryland Walker Knight. “These Vanity Fair restagings seem to understand this, and are, for the most part, pretty cool.”
• Michael Guillen reviews Medicine for Melancholy, which is due to premiere at SXSW, at The Evening Class. Barry Jenkins first feature, says Guillen, “looks like it was shot in black and white and tinted by hand.?? Whether or not Jenkins and [cinematographer James] Laxton intended this to parallel how the color can be taken out of a person of color through the compromise of assimilation and the coercion of gentrification is anyone???s guess; but, that???s how I read it.”
• At ShortEnd Magazine, Noralil Ryan Flores reviews a book I’m currently dying to read, Pictures At A Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New. “Each moment, vivid as a snapshot, seeks its soul in that tireless inspiration not uncommon in Americana, that unflappable desire to produce, often at all costs–million dollar costs–the next big trend.”
• Did Dennis Lim’s much-linked interview with Jacques Rivette inspire you to [re]familiarize yourself with the old French master’s work? You can watch three of his features on Jaman.

Under discussion:

Hook  (1991)

TIME has a story about Steven Spielberg’s departure from his post as creative consultant to the Beijing Summer Olympics, and most interestingly, how China will need to scramble to save face in the wake of it.

Landing Spielberg in the first place was a coup, considering that China’s main goal with the games is to sell the idea “that China has returned to its rightful place as a world player whose opinion matters.” That’s not necessarily a fiction??????Spielberg, after all, dropped out of his commitment in frustration over China’s “opinion” on their trading partner Sudan and Darfur??????but the idea that China is ready to play on the world stage without facing the blowback of various human rights issues and international political, trade and manufacturing controversies certainly seems like a fantasy worthy of Hollywood. Can they pull off this globalist fairy tale without the guiding vision of the man who brought us Hook?

It’s a situtation that’s going to require serious damage control. As a spokesman for Human Rights Watch puts it in the article, “They are trying to have a perfect Games and present a picture of unmitigated success to the world. And here is something that is not a success.” Part of the problem is that protest groups, emboldended by the Speilberg exit, have started lobbying other Hollywood types associated with the Games (Ang Lee is another creative advisor), as well as the event’s corporate sponsors. China can probably survive the loss of their hired Hollywood cred, but if Coca-Cola drops out, their dreams of joining the big boys on the global-pop cultural stage will be dashed for good.

There’s a lot that could be said about Lindsay Lohan’s “performance” as Marilyn Monroe in this mostly-nude photo shoot for New York Magazine, aping the latter’s stars famous champagne-fueled “Last Sitting” with photographer Bert Stern from 1962. Just the frame-by-frame contrast above says a lot about how Marilyn and Lindsay approached the, um, role. Where Marilyn seems caught in a moment of abandon, Lindsay’s frozen in rabbit-toothed defiance, her wig shalacked into the antithesis of bedhead, nostrils flared as though she’s holding her breath. We could go through each of the pictures and talk about all that stuff, but that would seem to be giving the endeavor more credit than it deserves. As Perez Hilton so astutely notes (no, that’s not a typo), “She has no movie coming out. That new album won’t be released for a while. Lindsay has NOTHING to promote, other than herself.”

So you have to wonder what the Lohan camp sees as the endgame of this. (more…)