The trailer for Sofia Coppola’s upcoming movie Somewhere made its way around the internet today, and the overall response seems to be positive. Even from people who claim they are not fans of Sofia Coppola. I am incredibly biased, I guess, because I’ve always been a big fan of Coppola. (Don’t even get me started on what I view as the undeserved general hatred of Marie Antoinette.) So of course, I think this new trailer looks darling – in that fluff-meets-profound-meets-utterly-cool sort of way that only Coppola herself can pull off with ease.

Wikipedia’s synopsis:

Stephen Dorff plays Johnny Marco, a Hollywood bad-boy stumbling through a life of excess at the Chateau Marmont when he receives an unexpected visit from his 11-year-old daughter, played by Elle Fanning. Their meeting challenges his lifestyle and forces him to make necessary changes.

Following her trend of casting blonde female main characters, I think it will be very interesting to see how Coppola directs the adult-child interaction in this story. Also, how sweet that her husband’s band, Phoenix, provides the movie’s soundtrack.

The film’s release date is set for December 22. And I don’t care what the non-fans say – which apparently is something like, “This one actually looks good” – I’m looking forward to Somewhere not only because it looks good, but because Sofia Coppola is a damn good storyteller who knows what she’s doing. Maybe this film will set the record straight.

I first saw Michelangelo Antonioni’s film La Notte my senior year of high school, at an Italian restaurant in Dallas. They were playing it on mute on two small TVs at the bar, but with the subtitles on. Acting as a sort of last addition of a “trilogy” (following L’avventura and L’eclisse), La Notte is about a middle-aged married couple – Giovanni, a successful writer, and his wife, Lidia – who go to visit their dying friend. Along this journey, they simultaneously try to escape and mend their bored, broken marriage. The final scene is what stands out most in my memory, what really caught my attention. After a night of partying and flirting with other people, Giovanni and Lidia take a walk. They struggle to come to terms with the state of their relationship and how they feel for one another. Lidia takes out an old love letter from her purse and reads it aloud:

“When I awoke this morning, you were still asleep. As I awoke I heard your gentle breathing. I saw your closed eyes beneath wisps of stray hair and I was deeply moved. I wanted to cry out, to wake you, but you slept so deeply, so soundly. In the half light your skin glowed with life so warm and sweet. I wanted to kiss it, but I was afraid to wake you. I was afraid of you awake in my arms again. Instead, I wanted something no one could take from me, mine alone…this eternal image of you. Beyond your face I saw a pure, beautiful vision showing us in the perspective of my whole life…all the years to come, even all the years past. That was the most miraculous thing: to feel for the first time that you had always been mine, that this night would go on forever, united with your warmth, your thought, your will. At that moment I realized how much I loved you, Lidia. I wept with the intensity of the emotion, for I felt that this must never end, we would remain like this forever, not only close, but belonging to each other in a way that nothing ever destroy, except the apathy of habit, the only threat. Then you wakened and, smiling you put your arms around me, kissed me, and I felt there was nothing to fear. We would always be as we were at that moment, bound by stronger ties than time and habit.”

Giovanni sits and listens thoughtfully, and when she finishes reading, he asks: “Who wrote that?” She replies after a moment, “You did.”

I think about this scene whenever I’m having a particularly long period of writer’s block or self-doubt. Giovanni did not remember writing such a poetically beautiful and heartfelt letter to Lidia, nor did he remember that he had ever loved her in such a way. When he asks, “Who wrote that?”, to me it symbolizes both a man who’s lost his way in his marriage, as well as a writer who’s lost his passion. But Lidia read the letter aloud and reminded him. And like Giovanni, I am reminded of deep-rooted sentiments and the capabilities of a past self, and I start to believe that maybe this lapse was only temporary, that it can all be restored once again.

“It’s something that happened many years ago…. He has suffered,” Allen told French radio station RTL. “He’s an artist, he’s a nice person, he did something wrong and he paid for it. They [his critics] are not happy unless he pays the rest of his life. They would be happy if they could execute him in a firing squad,” he said.

Yawn. What more could we really expect from Woody “I Basically Married My Stepdaughter” Allen? And no, I DON’T care that he was never “technically” the stepfather of then-wife Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter, Soon-Yi. It’s still creepy and gross.

(Many thanks to William for bringing this to my attention on Twitter.)

First impressions of a commercial for Sex and the City 2.

‘Sex and the City 2′ looks like a hackneyed, slightly racist mess. #SATC 8:44 PM May 6th

Update: Solange is still cooler than you, even while singing on one of those LSD-induced kids’ shows.

Dear @solangeknowles: Will you please make a full-length song of this Yo Gabba Gabba! thing? It’s damn catchy. http://bit.ly/cHDOR6 3:45 PM May 8th

A film I revisited and found it’s still one of my all-time favorites: Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas.

“I walked around for months talking to you. Now I don’t know what to say. It was easier when I just imagined you.” Damn good film, Paris, TX 5:31 PM May 8th

Betty White hosting SNL Mother’s Day Episode. I basically live-tweeted the Betty White-hosted SNL episode…along with dozens of my friends. In a nutshell? It was glorious. Undoubtedly one of the best episodes SNL has had in a lonnnnnnng time. Because of Betty White AND the fact that they brought back a lot of the former female favorites for the Mother’s Day episode. They have to know that they can’t really make it any better than that ever again…But we’ll see with the Alec Baldwin episode tonight. (Which, in the promos for, they’ve already made fun of themselves and their one-time success with Betty White.) Key tweets include…

Betty White on #SNL! Awesome already. Just to hear her say, ‘Jay-Z is here!’ 10:40 PM May 8th

NPR ladies!! Muffin!! Betty White!! #SNL 10:49 PM May 8th

TINA!!!! #SNL 11:00 PM May 8th

Jay-Z medley!!! This is the best #SNL episode ever. 11:12 PM May 8th

Omg. Maya’s Whitney impression is always gold. #SNL 11:21 PM May 8th

Cannes Film Festival 2010 starts; French New Wave pioneer Jean-Luc Godard’s new film Socialisme.

The trailers for #Godard‘s new #film just speed up the whole movie in its entirety, instead of highlighting scenes http://bit.ly/9fSymX 10:27 AM May 10th

RT: Racialicious explores Lady Gaga and white privilege.

Great read, fascinating. RT @britticisms Racialicious on how Lady Gaga’s white privilege makes her transgressive: http://bit.ly/gagawoc 2:35 PM May 10th

RT: Salon.com on the 90s MTV show Daria finally being released on DVD.

SalonMedia Remember the old MTV? “Daria” comes out on DVD http://bit.ly/a2ruwh 8:57 AM May 12th

“‘Daria’ could have only happened at that time, during that strange, transitional period after the grunge and gangsta rap of the early ’90s” 9:11 AM May 12th

RT: A friend lets me know about a development in the Polanski case.

DrMcButtcheeks @colleenclaes http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/05/14/polanski.second.accuser/index.html Honestly. Who saw this coming? about 22 hours ago

@DrMcButtcheeks But this just reminds me how I don’t even WANNA know how many old pervo Polanski did this to… about 22 hours ago

And that’s all for now. If you see anything you’d like me to elaborate on, please let me know! (Unfortunately, I don’t think my heart/anxiety can bear doing another lengthy post on Polanski…)

Seriously – 2010 is already a year marked by amazing music videos that just so happen to be made mostly by female artists. (i.e.: Janelle Monae’s “Tightrope,” Eyrkah Badu’s “Window Seat,” and M.I.A.’s “Born Free”). And now THIS by Queen B. Amazing. I love the look of the video, the song (a bonus track on Sasha Fierce, sounds to me like a little channeling of sister Solange), and the OUTFITS! Oh, the outfits…

I would write more about this, but it’d basically just be a regurgitation of everything Jezebel already said.

Also, the director of this video should not go unnamed. Melina Matsoukas graduated from NYU and did her thesis on music videos. She has a pretty envy-inducing music video filmography as well.

The main reason? “It was so long ago!” The other reason? Well, let’s let Polanski explain that one to us:

“I can remain silent no longer because the request for my extradition addressed to the Swiss authorities is founded on a lie,” writes Polanski, who blames Marina Zenovich’s HBO documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired for stirring up career-mongering LA prosecutors into acting on his long dormant case.

Oh, of course. The Wanted and Desired documentary from 2008…Which, as illuminating as it was, didn’t exactly vilify Polanski as much as it should or could have. It was fairly balanced as far as “telling both sides” goes. And it even ended with a close friend of the director’s saying – oh so poetically – how Polanski became “wanted” in the U.S. after he fled his crime, and then “desired” in France/Europe (but particularly France, with their odd glamorization and defensiveness of him). This seemed to me as if the documentary might be ultimately glorifying Polanski as some sort of misunderstood but irresistible legend – which sounds a hell of a lot better than “pervert-turned-fugitive who fled his rape crime.”

You can download Polanski’s full statement here. It’s basically everything you’ve already heard from the “Free Polanski” crowd but with added melodrama – as Polanski highlights the “injustices” of his case with the prefaced statement in bold, “I can remain silent no longer because…”

Best part:

I can remain silent no longer because I have been placed under house
arrest in Gstaad and bailed in very large sum of money which I have
managed to raise only by mortgaging the apartment that has been my
home for over 30 years, and because I am far from my family and unable to
work.

Aside from the fact that I just don’t give a…, this heap of “boo-hoo-poor-me” B.S. completely contradicts Polanski’s opening sentences: “I have had my share of dramas and joys, as we all have, and I am not going to try to ask you to pity my lot in life.” No. That’s exactly what you’re doing. And that’s exactly what everyone in support of you has been doing since September.

And ahhh yes. The media is just “out to get” Polanski. To make an example of him. Yeah. That’s it. Sure, the media loves it. But what really happened is that the U.S. finally ARRESTED him for his RAPE CRIME. I mean, some people agree with me on this, right?!

Oh, and then this happened on indieWIRE:

While I object to people who suggest that Polanski never did anything terribly wrong—he did—I do think that at his advanced age he bears little threat to anyone and has been punished, served time, and should be able to break out of this impasse. Was he a libertine and a reprobate, did he behave criminally and break the law? Yes. I’d like to see him cop to what he did. But this case is old and cold. There must be a way to fix this.

By the way, The Ghost Writer was one of Polanski’s best, sharpest, most personal films in a long while. I want to see him make more films.

Really, Anne Thompson?

And with that, I’ve unfortunately exhausted most words that I can muster up for this argument. All I have left to say is this:

I can remain silent no longer because Roman Polanski is a rapist who never served time for raping a 13-year-old girl; because I don’t care how old he is, or how long ago it was; because as The New Yorker explored, Polanski relished girls who were minors and showed no remorse for raping or engaging in sex with them; because someone needs to put his old, perverted, privileged, “above-statused” ass in jail already; because anyone who still thinks Polanski is either innocent or should be “let go” of the case needs to seriously reevaluate themselves; and because really – what’s not to understand?

This new M.I.A. video “Born Free” is something you have to watch, let roll around in your mind for a few hours, watch again, etc. Rinse, repeat.

In a nutshell, it’s a graphic political video that doesn’t hold back. A group of American soldiers storm through buildings and apartments searching for someone, and beating anyone who gets in their way. And who are they looking for? It turns out to be a resistant, young, white redheaded man. It becomes clear soon after that redheaded males are the only targeted group – and there’s an army-driven bus full of them. Ultimately, they are being driven off to be massacred.

One thing that this explicit video makes me think of is how the reign of MTV – and music television in general – is over. Not surprisingly, this video was primarily heard about through viral online tactics. As I’ve said before, the new music video platform is the internet. And what can you get away with on the internet? That’s right: Everything.

Sure, Marilyn Manson shocked everyone in the 90s when he released, for example, “The Dope Show” on MTV. But compare that to this M.I.A. video or the new Erykah Badu video and Manson just looks silly. I mean, the dude is only walking around in an alien body suit that gives him breasts…But this new wave of videos – these are forms of art that feel like they matter and are standing up for something. Artists are making statements not because they want to out-shock each other, but because they’re genuinely pissed off or impassioned. They are screaming to be heard.

As for M.I.A.’s video itself, there’s so much you could say. But I’ll give my first impressions. The choice of redheaded men as the target is the first thing to boggle your mind. Why them? It’s obviously symbolic in one way, or possibly in every way. You could say they represent Jewish people. You could say they represent Palestinians (and it’s interesting to note that the redheads attacking the bus are wearing red and white keffiyehs, most often associated with Jordan).

But for me what’s striking about this video isn’t who’s on the bus, but who’s not on the bus. People of color. Women. Girls. Blonde people. Dark-haired people. Old people. The only people targeted are light-skinned, redheaded boys and young men. But are M.I.A. and French director Romain Gavras trying to draw our attention to everyone who is and has been persecuted by marking their absence?

Another way to look at it is that it’s meant to make us realize how ridiculous profiling is. By asking, “Why the hell target redheaded young men?”, you might as well be asking, “Why the hell target Jewish people? Black people? Japanese people? Muslim people? Hispanic people?” The list goes on. The point being: There’s never a good reason for ethnic cleansing, prejudice, and profiling. It is never humane and it is never justified. And what good timing on M.I.A.’s part – just days after Arizona demands that Hispanics (or, sorry, only illegal immigrants…) show them their papers.

As for the artist herself, I do know this: Anyone who thought M.I.A. was done was horribly, horribly wrong. Long gone are the days of overplayed and eventually mediocre “Paper Planes.” M.I.A. does not just exist for you to announce that no one has “swagger” like you. This is why M.I.A. exists – to scream out against the world’s injustices. So get ready. ‘Cause it’s gonna get loud.

The late Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni really knew what he was doing by casting the uniquely captivating Italian actress in all three of his “trilogy” films (L’Avventura, La Notte, L’Eclisse).  I say “uniquely captivating” because – aside from the tousled blonde sex hair and the big, pensive eyes – you can’t exactly place your finger on what else draws you to Vitti, though you know it’s a culmination of things.

Vitti in 'L'Avventura'

In Antonioni’s films, she often plays the role of “the lost woman,” in a state of limbo in romance and in life. And she plays it well. Though the audience knows she is unsure and she admits it herself at times, she always somehow retains a sense of self-assurance, striking in its tenacity. While her roles in Antonioni’s films often require copious amounts of staring off deep in thought, Vitti accomplishes this by refusing to bore the audience. Simply put: You just can’t stop looking at her. Beauty helps, I’m sure. But I like to think it’s more of what she can produce with her eyes alone. It’s a look of profoundness masked with boredom.

Overall, she is effortless – walking or running in strappy heels, leading on a suitor, or putting on an outrageous show. There’s a scene in L’Eclisse that happens to be one of my favorite examples of Monica Vitti as an actor. Though – I must warn – this clip is drenched in racism, it’s one of the rare opportunities where we get to see Vitti break out of her more somber role. Vitti’s character, Vittoria, is over at a friend’s apartment – a white woman with a family-owned plantation in Kenya who also expresses blatant notions of racism towards Africans. In this scene, Vittoria and another friend put on a crudely offensive show and dance, mocking the Kenyan women who appear in numerous photos around the friend’s apartment.

I’ve always believed that this scene is meant to caricaturize the white Kenyan’s unabashed racism (and presumably the more suppressed racism of the other two), while also pointing to the desperately sad states of these bored, well-off Italian women cut off from the reality of the rest of the world. And here, Vitti is the obvious “star” – the ultimate vessel of upper-class boredom and yet provocative introspection.

While Monica Vitti is 78 years old now, she feels indefinitely suspended in the first few years of the 60s – placed in an Antonioni black-and-white film, playing the beautiful and charismatic “lost” woman with the intense, preoccupied eyes.

Is Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette partially responsible for the recent “cupcake backlash” and the macaron trend storming in?

Regardless, finding pictures of Marie Antoinette-clad Kirsten Dunst surrounded by expensive French sweets has been a casual fascination of mine for quite a few years now…Is that strange?

The left is the cover for Monae’s upcoming album (due for release on May 18th), The ArchAndroid; and the right is the promotional image for Fritz Lang’s 1927 sci-fi classic, Metropolis. I’m really digging this modern homage to the old movie.

Janelle Monae’s personal style is clearly unique with an emphasis on the futuristic and all things space-related. And interestingly enough, her EP was entitled Metropolis, which The Hydra called back in January a “neo-soul/dance interpretation of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.“

Monae herself seems pretty excited about the cover art, with tweet after tweet about it on her Twitter. As she should be.

At this rate, maybe there will be a class like, “Janelle Monae: References to Film Culture through Music” at some film school someday. I’d enroll.