Fiercely Anticipating: Presidents’ Day weekend. It’s here! That glimmer of hope right in the midst of our seasonal affective disorder*! The Federal Holiday that no one remembers! The perfect little blue balls-inducing holiday weekend: too short to merit a vacation, but long enough to keep us from realizing we should stop slaving away for our corporate overlords and open a cooperative beet farm in Oregon! This is a nice one because we don’t have to deal with all the tediousness that marrs our other three-day weekends. I don’t have to be proud of my country, I don’t have to remember anyone, and my facebook feed won’t clog with inspirational misquotes and do-gooder cyber shaming. (Our first President was as boring as he was wooden-toothed, and as such, he is not remembered for his pithy sayings. “Bad seed is a robbery of the worst kind: for your pocket-book not only suffers by it, but your preparations are lost and a season passes away unimproved.” Pull that one out on Monday and see how many likes you get.) There are no parades to block traffic, no fireworks to pretend to care about, no enforced group meat-charring to attend. This is perfect for me, because I hate mandatory fun and I strongly dislike pool parties. As you can probably guess, I have big plans for this weekend. The idea is to drive up to San Francisco, hang out with friends, see Pina in 3-D, and while lingering over artisanal beers, meet a 6 foot tall Indian architect who loves Shakespeare, sandwiches, and casual relationships. What’s going to happen is this: on Friday evening I will don some soft, non-binding sleep wear, open a bottle of wine, and peruse the photo albums of my facebook friends who mysteriously...
Natalie Hall Has a Nerdgasm in Therapy [Fierce Anticipation]
posted by Natalie V. Hall
Comic-Con is over. George R. R. Martin finally released A Dance with Dragons. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part2: Welcome to the Real World” opened and reminded us all that everything you love will eventually end. Alan Rickman’s next film project is with – god forbid – Cameron Diaz. It feels as if nerds everywhere have collapsed into a sweaty, sticky, spent heap, like a child after the Disneyland parade, or an adult film star after the AVN Awards. Luckily, there’s always something titillating around the corner. In this case, some quasi-intellectual-pseudo-porn to keep you warm in your seat until Dark Knight Rises. FIERCELY ANTICIPATING A Dangerous Method Let’s be honest. The trailer to A Dangerous Method is, in a word, superhot. I always prefer my mind-fuck in a three-piece suit, don’t you? To anyone who’s ever fallen for his or her therapist (everyone who’s ever been in therapy) this is the ultimate in wish fulfillment. Michael Fassbender and Viggo Mortensen are both as talented as they are sexified. Vincent Cassel retains that “No Means Yes” quality even when dressed like Van Gogh (for no apparent reason). Kiera Knightly is miraculously not bothering me, and might actually be great in it. The dialect work sounds pretty above board all around. Plus: parasols! Bodice-ripping! Leather straps! Strudel! Had I known all I had to do to have some fun in the sack was go “Yellow Wallpaper” on everyone, I would have lost it a long time ago. Side note, I looked up director David Cronenberg on IMDB to verify a few things, and his helpful bio tells me that he is known as “The King of Venereal Horror”. I was going to be Sexy Hagrid for Halloween, but I think I have a new...
Fancy Pants with Lady Parts: The Boss Lady as a Rising Trope in Hip Hop...
posted by Natalie V. Hall
Let me preface my humble observations by saying that I am not here to address misogyny in hip hop as a whole. I’ll save my ideas about that for the college class I plan on teaching in which I will also discuss interior rhymes, the significance of which artists choose to rap about Old English vs. Cristal, and give lectures like: “Holla Atcha Boi: Gender-Bending in Rap Music.” Don’t you wish your kids were getting that kind of $100K education? I do intend to examine some recurring themes in hip hop from the male point of view that I’ve been noticing on the radio in between car dancing and lip-synching. Another note: I am but an amateur observer, a mere fan. Please to proceed. The Cinderella story is one of the most pervasive in Western mythology. The desperate working girl is noticed by a Prince who gives her fancy shoes, after which some snotty bitch is forced to let her shop on Rodeo Drive. Happy Endings all around, and I’ll let you make of that what you will. This storyline shows up in hip hop, as it does everywhere. Whether in the form of a video vixen, a basketball WAG, or a plain old groupie, we have heard volumes about the women who implicitly or explicitly sell themselves for material goods and proximity to men in power. The story tends to split into two major narratives: those who boast of their ability to shower women with diamonds and shopping sprees in exchange for total sexual access (natch), and those who warn us of the predatory succubae who bewitch powerful men on music video sets, but will take a handie if it’s offered. Take Twista’s “Overnight Celebrity” in which he sees a woman on the...
Natalie V. Hall Is Already in Love with One Page-to-Screen Adaptation. As for the rest… [FIERCE ANTICIPATION]...
posted by Natalie V. Hall
Fiercely Anticipating Game of Thrones I’ll get this out of the way first. FB@(#$&@(T$Y@PO#FN!!!! My little heart is skipping a beat over this one. But although I feel like one of those long-term, hard-core fans, I actually haven’t been on the Game of Thrones train for that long. I was introduced to the series by an old friend (one Ethan Hova) who finally sold me on it by saying it was “sexy, filthy, and clever.” In my disgusting mind, I interpreted that to mean “there are some good old Clan of the Cave Bear style sex scenes.” I wasn’t disappointed (Daenerys anyone?), but I also got a whole lot more. I bought the first book last week, and devoured it in two days. What a relief to not have to read “serious literature” for a thousand pages. Just swords, intrigue, incest and OLD SCHOOL ICE ZOMBIES. So I was thrilled when I started watching the trailers for HBO’s mini-series adaptation. Here’s the thing: it looks REALLY GOOD. No stunt casting. And the world really does look fairly close to the world I imagined in my head, with just a few exceptions. I’m also fairly confident that I’ll like the dialogue – 1: because what I have heard so far sounds VERY close to the book, and 2: because the head writer is David Benioff, whose book City of Thieves I truly enjoyed. (Please Mr. Benioff – THAT would make a fabulous movie.) I would like to take a second, however, to discuss something I always find interesting in historical or fantasy films. The accents. I understand why the fallback accent is British, I do. It’s a perfect collection of regionalisms and class signifiers, which is lacking in other English-speaking accents. It also, for whatever...
FIERCE ANTICIPATION: The Natalie V. Hall Edition [Broadway Edition Part Deux (Trois?)]...
posted by Natalie V. Hall
FIERCELY ANTICIPATING ARCADIA, starring: Billy Crudup, Raul Esparza, Grace Gummer, and some hottie named Tom Riley. No brainer. I love ARCADIA. LOVE IT. It makes me all hot and bothered and emotional and sad. We read it in my senior year English AP class and by the time the class finished it I had read it about 13 times and broken down sobbing at the end every single time. I once made a cake shaped like the Mandelbrot set because of this play. Because I mean, what’s not to love? The play is about literature, and history, and entropy, and mathematics, and HEDGES, and sex, and love, and paradise, and BYRON and hermits! And the Library at Alexandria for Christ’s sake! Formally it is just as beautiful and interesting, and it’s really just a perfect play. Not that I’m biased or anything. Now as everyone knows, Mr. Billy Crudup here is an old hat at Stoppard and played Septimus Hodge in the first American production. (Let’s take a moment to talk about Septimus Hodge. My ideal lover, the man of my dreams. The perfect storm of hard-edged and sexy with vulnerable nougat inside. Every girl wants a man who will be so distraught after her premature death that he turns into a crazy bearded hermit, right? Right guys? Who I really would have loved to see in this role is the man who originated it in London, the gorgeous and brilliant Rufus Sewell whom you might remember as a dishy and wall-eyed Fortinbras in Ken Branagh’s film version of Hambone, or as any angry royal misogynist in a lot of mediocre movies of the early 2000’s.) Anyway, I don’t normally trust Americans with the finer points of Stoppard, but Billy Crudup will be lovely as...