Category "Music, cinema, TV, books..."
Have you heard of the meat dress Lady Gaga wore for Vogue Homme Japan?
It's said to be real meat. Which is, in the end, like wearing fur, that is, killing animals in a simply esthetic goal. And this is even worse because this dress can only be worn once. If you can appreciate the provocative, trashy and novating aspect of the dress, ethically speaking, you can't. By the way, Gaga went to Ellen DeGeneres' show, a vegan lesbian, who asked her if she understood that vegetarians and animal rights organisations could have got offended. And Gaga played it über-hypocrite:
No but you know Ellen, it's a metaphore. If we don't fight, soon we won't be worth the meat on our bones! You know, there are people who get fired from our military because they're gay, and we need to fight!
That's such bollocks. And she couldn't be more of an opportunist by talking about Don't Ask Don't Tell to a lesbian. She could have done so much better! At her place, I would first have worn a fake meat dress, and then, I would have said it's a statement about the textile industry where everything's been made in countries where people are exploited and that we were supporting an unfair industrty, so that's it, we would blood on our shoulders ==> FLESH!! But no, she even sends the opposite message: we can kill to be talked about in the press, which pleads for a cruel society.
It shows something recurrent about her, and more and more present in entertainment: the need for violence.
In their video Telephone, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé get into a restaurant and kill everyone. Among the corpses, they can't find anything better to do than dance on their crappy lyrics song. I have nothing against some dedramatisation/humorisation/esthetisation of violence, when it's in an "artistic" context, I even think it's got some cathartic potential. But the dress goes way beyond for me, because it's not comedy anymore, real cows got chopped up just so that we talk aboutLAdy Gaga.
I saw the Midnight Juggernauts for the fourth time.
Of course they've been good.
Even my mate Julie who didn't know them had a great time.
after the gig, we got some sandwiches in the little shop beside the venue. We chatted with the waiter for some time and I saw the Midnight Juggernauts, outisde the Bataclan venue. I said to myself I shoul go and tell them something sort of interesting... But they were surrounded with underage hipsters and it put me off.
Shame.
Next time!!
Since I can now speak some Spanish, I've decided to take part in the El Quijote project, which aims at making the reading of Cervantes' Don Quijote de la Mancha with as many people as possible on YouTube. Here's my humble contribution, with my little peruvian hat, my very french accent and my random pronunciation.
I love speaking Spanish, rolling Rs and insisting on Ss...
OK, Björk's Homogenic is an old album now - it was released in 1997 - but still, it doesn't sound old!
First because the instrumental combination of big infrabass beats with violin cream remains innovative. It's funny by the way because many artists rushed on electro-acoustic music but I think nothing has been better or as good as that. I'm probably biased.
Anyway Björk must like this song too because she keeps singing it at nearly every gig and always in different versions. Sometimes the strings are replaced by brass, sometimes it's only strings, and so on... And everytime it's genius.
The video got a lot of publicity even though I don't find it extraordinary. But still, I'm gonna post it:
I remember a documentary (yeah, they even make documentaries about Björk, crazy people), in which she explained the song Hunter was about a thing her grandmother was telling her about swans that, at some point in their life, decide whether they're gonna live in a couple or stay hunters. To my eyes, it doesn't appear clearly in the lyrics. Nevertheless, in the music and the voice, that starts softly and then thunders, there is something I find beautiful, there is the image of that person who is strong enough to decide to live alone.
I FINALLY (FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY!) got Tim Exile's album, Listening Tree. Yeah, remember, I posted the video of Family Galaxy here. OK, I'll just post it again:
It's a very good album. First, the music is genius, worked out to the finest detail, and stuff. It's normal, it comes from Warp. The asynchronous loops of Family Galaxy keep driving me cray. You have to know that the guy creates his own instruments! By the way, a little demo of one of his lives with a joystick:
At the end of the record, I Saw The Weak Hand Fall is more ambient then IDM, and even reminds of classical music. (Time Exile only does electronic music but he's been classically trained - he can play violin.)
The lyrics too are interesting. If several titles address, sometimes in a clumsy way, critics towards consumer's society (such as Pay Tomorrow or Carouselle), others are so abstract you can associate anything with them and quickly identify. In the title-song Listening Tree, it gives:
The Listening Tree has a message for you:
All you need to be is here
You can then think of how you sometimes pressure yourself to be the best, the most handsome, the most intelligent, the purest, the most perfect although you may need to be all that.
His lyrics can sometimes as well be more cynical. Love songs say that a couple make one person, hippies as well but in a more global fashion. Exile starts the album with Don't Think We're One, ah ah ah!
The fact he writes interesting lyrics may come from the fact that he completed a degree in philosophy. (Maybe!)
In a nutshell, Tim Exile is not only a musician, he's also the best, the most handsome, the most intelligent, the purest, the most perfect...
In the comments of my post on gay porn's new generation, I was joking about how porn would get included in soap operas. I also said that soon you'd have to be a sexy beast as well as a good boyfriend, and even maybe an intellectual. Well, here, it's not a soap opera, but a small budget movie, that is not even finished, that tells the story of a gay guy in San Francisco and sometimes there's sex, and you can see everything! It's called I Want Your Love and you can already watch the scene on the movie's website. Go and have a look, it's worth it.
OK, you've seen it?
So, it's interesting, it starts like a mainstream movie, with two people talking and then they have sex, like a mainstream movie, except that you see everything. First, in many movies, you have people having sex, it's just that the actors are not really doing it. Then, there have already been movies in which actors were really fycking, like In The Realm of the Senses or Catherine Breillat's movies. So it's nothing new, but what I find strange, is that most movies are only erotic. The characters should be fully fucking, it's part of the story, and then it's a bit hypocritical these movies where you can see the actors are moaning of pleasure but not their genitals.
In this movie, you can feel the character's intimacy (it's actually a very strong acting performance), so much that you wonder whether you're watching an actual couple, or amateur porn. The whispered words, the laughters, the hairs stuck in the mouth after the blowjob, everything that happens when you fuck with someone and however never happens in porn, where everything is choregraphed and overacted. It's the first time I see that on screen and somehow it reassures me. I thought I was the only idiot making jokes during sex.
I was reading the comments on porn actor Colby Keller's blog and a reader was saying he felt depressed after watching the movie, because it reminded him how lonely he is as a long-term single. I wondered whethere, when we were looking for a one-night stand, are we not looking, as well, for some intimacy with someone? That may indeed be the limit between porn and romantic comedy. Rom-coms are supposed to make you dream and idealise the great love and stuff, whereas porn only excites you. So the best thing is to get both! But I think it's a bit worrying as well. A study claims that people addicted to rom-coms have a very bad love life. Why? Because they would idealise too much what they see in movies, and would then get let down in life. I guess then that if porn was added to rom-coms, where perfect people with perfect bodies have perfect sex in a perfect house, blah blah blah, we would reach an idealisation level even higher, so an unreachable ideal. I think that if I Want Your Love ever ends on a perfect love relationship where the guys have a simultaneous orgasm, I'm gonna feel very lonely myself.
Anyway, I find it very interesting and I starts reading all the articles on what is already called "cuddle porn". I would have called it, after romantic comedy, romantic sodomy.
I FINALLY could get the new Midnight Juggernauts album, ha ha!! And I was so lucky because even though I got it two months after its release, the shop had limited and signed editions, yeah!
I really liked the first single This New Technology, but I was rather disappointed by the second one, Vital Signs. And actually, I really liked the album, the first time I listened to it.
The 3 Aussies have kept in line with the previous album, it's rock with a space disco flavour. The first half of the album is really good, the second one, less. Many fans seem to say they have taken too different a direction. I don't think so, not at all actually. Their sound got more perfect. As a result, it may be less... fanciful, let's say. But it's still good.
The song The Great Beyond deserves its name given how high they go in it. Lifeblood Flow, Lara Versus The Savage Pack are very punchy. Regarding The Final Goodbye, I just regret it's not a bit longer, and I hope it's not self-fulfilling.
The lyrics tend to be different from the previous album, Dystopia, as they speak less about galaxies and stars, and more about life itself. You know, when you're a fan, they can talk any bollocks, you're still gonna like it and be much more merciful than with others. For example, when Ke$ha talks about love, I don't buy it, I think it's easy, silly and/or hypocritical and I hate it, but when it's Midnight Juggernauts, then I'm all like... sweet like honey. The chorus of Vital Signs is:
You've got to open up your mind and feel the love in your life
You've got to open up your heart and feel the love in your life
And, yeah, I totally understand what they mean.
I really like these ones from Lara Versus The Savage Pack, I was repeating myself this kind of stuff when I was travelling around South America:
Keep on building
Chasing that feeling
If we make it out of here alive
We'll get through anything
This title is a bit shit but you're gonna understand.
I came back in France so I watch all the shitty TV shows. I'm following L'Amour est dans le Pré ("Love is in the Meadow") and mind you, can't even think it's a shitty TV show, my brain is really getting fucked up. For those who don't know this show, it's about 10 single farmers who get the chance to pass an ad on TV and get to meet suitors. After a quick selection, two people can go ahead and spend a few days at the farm. If the show can sometimes be cynical or cruel with some, it also shows another side of the farming world that urban people like me don't know or have forgotten. I think the image of the farmer's job is being restored with that show, it's crazy! I don't think they have this show in other countries.
I've followed for the first time this year and I was rooting for the Philippe & Margarida couple!
Still, it would be really funny if they had a gay version! I can already imagine the guy: "Looking for young man who wants to get on my big truck". And I would apply to meet my big gruff man lost in the Limousin region, I would work hard to clean the cows' shit, and I would scream when he tells me he doesn't Björk's Homogenic. My rival would probably be a young, slim, hairless guy and I would have to fight to make him go, even if I have to burn his Dolce&Gabban bag!! And then I could make an unglamourous but M6-audience-known couple and, this way, make LGBT rights in the countryside progress.
Obviously, this show really fried my brains. Or it's due to the lack of sex. Or both. Shit, I'm fucked.
Ah, Boards of Canada... And that video is really beautiful.
I read Sartre's Nausea. Yes, I'm blogging it only to show I read some intellectual stuff! (I'm trying to fix my lack of culture.)
I liked the first third of the book, the second third nearly killed me with boredom, the last third though was interesting. In this book, Sartre tries to explain existentialism but it's still very blurry for me... I read some parts with perplexity and I thought he would articulate his thoughts further on... But no. In that respect, I was disappointed because I didn't manage to understand. As a result, I didn't memorize much.
Nevertheless, as much of a paradox as it may sound and despite the very boring second third of the book, I liked this novel. Probably because I identified with the main character when he had these strange experiences that he calls Nausea and that reminded me of things I may have felt (but that I found ecstatic and that I called vertige, or vertigo).
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