After the jump, we have a video of a the long lost third member of The Good Girls, who’s apparently preemptively traded in the glamorous life of global superstardom for an even more glamorous life as a British bag lady. NO! It’s woman throwing a sh*tfit at a KFC in Brighton. The crime? They won’t give her any more butter! Sacré beurre! (See what I did there?) Anyways, the language is salty, so if you happen to be at work, you probably shouldn’t be on this site pinkies out and headphones up, y’all:
Seeing as how I’m a self-acknowledgedkaraoke nightmare, I wouldn’t want to try and measure up against anybody else’s vocal prowess. Even if they mute. And particularly if they were Whitney Houston, circa The Bodyguard:
As such, I’m not going to say that the girl in the video after the jump is bad, per se. I’ll just leave it at that when she does fail, she fails spectacularly. And with liberal use of the “f*ck” bomb, so if you happen to be at work, you probably shouldn’t be on this site pinkies out and headphones up, y’all:
When things get quiet over at this particular corner of the internet, the reality is there’s only person we have to blame, and that person is me. The only problem with this is that I’m a blame shifter, so when things get quiet over at this particular corner of the internet (at least this time around), it’s Christopher Nolan’s fault. Seriously, he’s the man behind Inception, and I’m merely the owner of the mind that movie melted, which mean he’s the one who committed the mind crime! (Get it?!?) Besides, Joseph Gordon Levitt looking positively dapper (or do I mean Draper?) in a suit and vest will muddle your brain for days like that. Oh, and the Mad Men Fever obviously isn’t helping my crazy, either. Anyways, we’re not here to talk about Inception (YET); we’re here to talk about Today’s (much belated) Fabulous Image in Cinema, and Today’s (much belated) Fabulous Image in Cinema is from Notes on a Scandal, so let’s talk about it.
There are plenty of actresses out there who deliver perfectly serviceable freaking-the-f*ck-out FACE, but I will forever stand by the notion that Veronica Cartwright had a hot moment in the late ’70s where–between Ridley Scott’s Alien and Philip Kaufman’s superlative remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers–she made it her business to lose her shit on a completely different level. I mean, have you seen her in Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Frightened Veronica Cartwright and bugnuts hysteric Veronica Cartwright are basically the same thing, which simply goes to show how much she COMMITS. Seriously, a long-standing appreciation of scream queens has taught me that there’s many a way to portray fear on film, but nobody else does it with quite the same panache as Veronica Cartwright.
And as usual, don’t hesitate to click to enlarge and appreciate the fabulousness of it all.
Sure, technically it’s Judo, not Kung Fu, but let’s focus on what’s important in this video, and what’s important is that this is from a movie that stars Joan Crawford as a mental hospital’s head nurse who teaches Judo to the other nurses so they may use it against the ward’s patients. And even moreso? This movie exists, and its poster is fabulous:
Sweet mercy! I’m happy enough that The Caretakers features Evil Nurse Joan Crawford with karate-chop action. I mean, Joan Crawford performances are like Pokemon toys for gay men: you gotta catch ‘em all! But then I’m confronted with all these images female hysteria in the poster, and I get so overwhelmed, and all of a sudden I’m out in the streets making a scene. Sorta like Polly Bergen in The Caretakers:
No no, I can’t wait for Chloe because it looks like it’s going to be this year’s Obsessed (and we all know how I feel about Obsessed), but this time it’s starring Julianne Moore and gunning for a hard R-rating, so it looks even better than Obsessed, but I digress.
My point is you need to watch the trailer because SPOILER ALERT it’s bonkers:
Admittedly, there are certain differences between Clint Eastwood’s Changeling, starring Angelina Jolie, and the following YouTube video I stumbled upon. For example, Angelina Jolie didn’t have a long-haired fright wig in the movie. No no, she sported a fashionable 1930s bob:
Added to that, given that Changeling was a period piece, Angelina Jolie never wore hoodies or Billabong shirts, though sometimes she did wear this hat that I want:
Everything else about this video, however, is spot on:
Responsible Mad Men recapping blogs probably try and follow the narrative arch of the episode, and they’d probably delve a little more into the fact that Sterling Cooper is once again up for sale, which makes Lane Pryce sad and his wife very happy. I am not that blog. Now let’s do this thing irresponsible style!
So Paul Kinsey was intimidated by Peggy and her keen improvisational skills, and then he got too drunk while working on his Western Union account. This taught us all the important lesson that you should always write down the brilliant ideas that you have when you’re drunk so you don’t forget them. If he had written it down, we’d have instead learned the equally important lesson that the brilliant ideas that you have when you’re drunk are never as brilliant in the sober light of day, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyways, Peggy fortunately used his screw up to save him, and I was I left baffled that telegrams were something people still actually used in 1963. Also, maybe it’s just me and my love of all things of questionable taste, but Aquanet is doing wonders to Peggy’s hair.
In other plot lines, Don’s relationship with Suzanne Farrell unfortunately continues to happen:
I find this plot to be like the narrative version of Ipecaca, and I blame this largely on the fact that Ms. Farrell hasn’t once seemed interesting enough to warrant such of devotion. A scene with a Maypole, a drunk dial, and a few lines of straight up crazy is all it takes to have Don Draper all up in your lady business in a serious sort of way? I’m deeply unimpressed with the both of them. And the fact that the writers continue this charade.
The lone silver lining to their bumping uglies, though, came in the form of Suzanne’s epileptic brother, Danny, who was helped by Don to do what else? Pull a Don Draper. That’s just him being philanthropic by sharing his secret to happiness and success: it comes from running away from the unpleasant parts of your identity. Or, in Don’s case, all of it. You may be constantly haunted by your past and incapable of genuine human intimacy, but at least you’ll get signing bonuses and shiny awards at the fortieth anniversary Sterling Cooper parties. Fair trade, I’d say.
And speaking of fortieth anniversary Sterling Cooper parties, Trudy Campbell’s party ensemble was some kind of wonderful:
Perhaps I’m slowly losing my few remaining marbles on account of my feverish anticipation for 2012 (currently 103° of PURE EXCITEMENT*), but this poster is destroying me like Mayan-calendar-predicted global-scale apocalyptic disasters destroy giant statues of Jesus Christ:
This poster is so brilliant that I just can’t deal with it, let alone articulate why I can’t deal with it, but let’s still try.
A part of me just thinks it’s a spectacular and clever image. It evokes the Jesus-Saves/God-Is-Dead dichotomy central to the spiritual/existential anxieties that surround doomsday scenarios. You can’t tell if 2012 will be popcorn nihilism or a blockbuster call to repent. Sure, it’s a Roland Emmerich film, so it’s probably best not to think too hard about these topics for fear of giving yourself a brain aneurism, but I’m happy 2012 has a teaser poster that offers such a fun little intellectual exercise for us film nerds. It’s kinda like a pop-quiz, except one that makes you want to buy movie tickets in the process.
Of course, there’s also the part of me that loves this poster for hyping 2012 as straight-up disaster porn. Sure, this movie stars John Cusack and Amanda Peet and Oliver Platt and a Space Ark, but sometimes it’s better to just bank on images of stylized destruction over big name stars. After all, Space Ark–like Megan Fox–has yet to prove herself to be a box office draw. This poster is completely over the top, and I love it for that much like I love this clip from the movie:
There’s a well known saying that goes “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em; and if you tend to share similar interests with legions of teenage girls, don’t even try and front.” Truer words have probably never been spoken, and so it is with a deep shame that I admit the following:
