Category: Shallow

I’ll be the first one to admit that we here at low culture often take potshots at marketing, PR, and advertising executives. I mean, it’s so easy when they throw so much shit at us hoping something—anything—will stick.
Well, for once, I wanna compliment one of these unsung wordsmiths for a job well done. I just saw a poster for premium cable also-ran Showtime‘s newest series, The L Word and found it surprisingly, pleasingly clever. “Same Sex. Different City,” the ad says, above the sort of airbrushed promotional photo we’ve come to expect from ads for everything from TV programs to perfumes to clothing lines. I was impressed by how deft the copy was, how effortlessly it compressed so many ideas. I genuinely thought it was well done.
I can’t say anything about the show itself, which stars the once phenomenally hot Pam Grier who’s gone on to become something of a hip directors’ shorthand for “badass older chick.” It also features Mia Kirshner, who was decent in Atom Egoyan‘s Exotica, but seems to have been overlooked in favor her more talented A-list doppelganger, Jennifer Connelly. Anyway, I don’t get Showtime, so I’ll have to take your word for whether or not this show is even watchable.
I actually had the channel for a short time when Time Warner Cable was making amends for leaving me in the dark for over a week and I didn’t see much worth my money. I did, however, manage to watch the entire first season of Out of Order back-to-back in a fit of Huffmania. (To belabor the puns, I found it rather Stolzifying.) I wasn’t too impressed with the series’ tone of self-seriousness cut with self-awareness: it was just too knowing for me to care about, too melodramatic for me to laugh with. Also, I found the way Donna and Wayne Powers bit the hand that fed them by mocking F. Gary Gray and his hacky Italian Job annoying: if you guys were too good to (re-)write such a shitty script, you should’ve skipped the assignment—if you sold out big time to do it, just keep it to yourselves. (According to this week’s Times, Out of Order was not renewed.)
The L Word premieres January 18th. Reviews TK…

If I could imagine the banter around The New York Times Culture Desk water-cooler, it would probably sound a lot like the little year-end roundup conversations included in this weekend’s ‘Arts & Leisure’ The Highs (and Lows) of 2003 package.
Great, relaxed, off-the-cuff discussion on “The Lows” from Elvis Mitchell, A.O. Scott, and Stephen Holden on the film front. I much prefer this sort of approach to the obligatory year-end wrap-up to the more drawn out, rather blog-ish approach of The Village Voice‘s Take 5 critics’ poll or the ho-hum “best of” list found in nearly every magazine you can imagine. Here, for example, is a glimpse into the private life of a full-time film critic and father from Scott:

[I]t’s a terrible thing, I think, to have a film critic for a dad. My son—like some of our readers—didn’t trust me when I told him Cat in the Hat was no good. I was with another critic, who tried to explain to his daughter why it was a bad movie. She just burst into tears, as if he’d taken away one of her toys.

I also appreciated the fact that they all respected the Zooey Deschanel restraining order.
As much as I enjoyed “The Lows,” I have one complaint: stop the Larry Doyle bashing.

My good friends, Derek and Lauren, just gave me an amazing video for the non-denominational gift giving season (okay, Chanukah.) The tape—which was quaintly duped onto a commercially-available VHS tape and packaged in the original TDK E-HG cardboard box—came directly from its producer, director, and star, Sidney N. Laverents.
Never heard of him? Me neither. But I wish I had sooner, since his homemade shorts are incredible. This multitalented filmmaker makes jacks-of-all-trades (and credit hogs) like Robert Rodriguez and Steven Soderbergh seem like lazy bums. According to the Egg segment on him, Sid lives in San Diego and is 94 years old. He’s been conceiving, shooting, and editing his unique independent films for decades. (A fuller bio can be found here.)

Harry Knowles and his fellow movie freaks over at Ain’t It Cool News link to the trailer for the Coen Brothers‘ latest, a remake of The Ladykillers. (The 1955 version was directed by Alexander Mackendrick, probably best known for The Sweet Smell of Success, a film that should be required viewing for all media and gossip bloggers.)
It looks amusing, more in keeping with their ‘impossible caper’ flicks than their recent foray into Brian Grazer country, Intolerable Cruelty. (I can think of one thing right about that title.) It looks like it has the broad slapstick of Raising Arizona, but it also appears to have that film’s late period Fellini-ish love of laughing at odd looking people. Which is sad, since the Coen’s have moved on from that with beautifully-shot period pieces like The Man Who Wasn’t There, creepy ‘comedies’ like Fargo, and groovy hodgepodges like The Big Lebowski. (The latter of which, scene-for-scene, is still one of the best movies of the last decade and even more relevant since the capture of Saddam Hussein.)
Sure, O, Brother, Where Art Thou? had its share of mugging and hillbilly teeth jokes, but shot, as it was, to look like a sepia-toned screen gem, you kinda accepted the insensitivity of its humor as part of its period charm.
It looks like the cast of Ladykillers had a ball. Tom Hanks looks more at ease in a comedy than he’s been since, maybe, Splash. Marlon Wayans (who appears to have brought his same hairstyle and facial gestures from Scary Movie 1 and 2) looks funny. The character names alone make it worth the price of admission: Hanks plays a charming scoundrel named Professor Goldthwait Higginson Dorr (!) and Wayans is (Sir?) Gawain McSam (!!). I just hope the racial and cultural stereotypes featured prominently in the trailer aren’t as unbearable in the film: no one wants to see the Coens do Big Momma’s House.
So, I’m crossing my fingers for the best, and holding my breath until March 26.

From Done Deal:
Title: Untitled Washington-Williams and Thurmond Story
Log line: A reporter goes on 25-year quest to prove that a woman is the daughter of Senator Strom Thurmond and a young black housekeeper who worked in the Thurman family home. The housekeeper was sixteen and Strom was twenty two when the young woman became pregnant. The senator financially supported the young woman but hid that he was her father.
Writer: Horton Foote
Agent: n/a
Buyer: Peter Newman and Greg Johnson
Price: n/a
Genre: Drama
Logged: 12/19/03
More: Optioned life rights from Washington Post reporter Marilyn Thompson who broke her story. Also, the producers optioned the rights to the book Ol’ Strom: An Unauthorized Biography of Strom Thurmond written by Thompson and Jack Bass. Peter Newman and Greg Johnson to produce. Newman and Johnson are hoping to gain the rights of Essie Mae Washington-Williams as well. Thompson was repped by Gail Ross Literary Agency. Jack Bass was repped by Goldfarb & Associates.

President Bush at the Wright Brothers National Memorial (bottom); Cary Grant in North by Northwest (top)

A friend writes: Radosh has some great fun at David Denby’s expense over at his own site today. I’d like to add that based on the excerpt, Denby’s forthcoming book American Sucker seems to be the saddest bit of self-exploitation of one’s sex life by a New Yorker writer since Elizabeth Wurtzel welcomed us all to her Prozac Nation (population: 1). But then I remembered Lillian Ross’ book, which I was sure was called Put It In Here, But Not Here: My Life with William Shawn and The New Yorker, which a visit to Amazon quickly corrected.
Earlier thoughts on David Denby from low culture.

Piggybacking on Gawker‘s list of words for the New York Media Elite to drop from their vocabularies in 2004 (‘Memo from Gawker’s Ombudsman’), I’d like to add the following:
Henceforth, the term schadenfreude is to be replaced with sauerkraut, which, in addition to being easier to spell, means just about the same thing.
Irony is to be replaced with relish, which is a less ubiquitous word by far.
Similarly, Ubiquitous is to be replaced with mustard, for obvious reasons.
And finally, twee is to be replaced with katsup while erstwhile is to be replaced with ketchup.
We thank you in advance for your understanding and compliance.

This season’s most covetable coffee table book/load-bearing portable wall, GOAT may be too expensive for most readers (and too big for most homes), but you can enjoy its beautifully-designed Flash-intensive Web site. Less a promotional site than a well-curated mini Ali museum, it’s definitely worth a visit, if only for the spare, stirring intro. The excerpts and videos are great, too.
You don’t have to be a boxing fan or one of Muhammad Ali’s many intellectual courtiers to recognize that the man is a cultural and political icon, the likes of which we will never see again in our lifetimes. (Full Disclosure: I met Muhammad Ali at an airport when I was 6 years-old and still consider him among my best friends. I also wrote my thesis on him.)
Alas, I will not be buying the $3,000, 75-pound Taschen book. Not now; not ever. Man, that stings—like a bee, it does.

Professor Colin Pillinger (right), lead scientist for Britain’s Beagle 2 Spacecraft Project, Fresh Guy™ supreme.
[Fresh Guy™ is the universally-recognized intellectual property of How Fresh Is This Guy? and its partners. Used in good faith without permission. Each day’s a gift.]