Tag: Rihanna

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Film Features Film/TV

Ocean’s 8

What is the appeal of the heist movie? Is it about watching a supremely clever person concoct an elaborate plan, and then reveling in the OCD perfection when all the pieces click into place? Is it about the powerless getting one over on the powerful? Or is it all about the charisma of the criminal mastermind, a way for the audience to harmlessly indulge their need for a leader?

The history of heist pictures goes all the way back to the beginnings of American cinema, and they’ve always been popular. The Great Train Robbery held the record for highest grossing movie from 1903 until Birth of a Nation in 1915. It was also the subject of the first remake in history, when Edwin S. Porter’s original film was redone by Sigmund Lubin and released under the same title in the same year.

The only heist movie that’s been remade almost as often as The Great Train Robbery is Ocean’s 11. The original is a curious artifact: a massive vanity project put on by the Rat Pack as their Las Vegas decadence reached fever pitch. It’s not a great movie. Frank Sinatra is visibly distracted, while Martin is visibly drunk. It’s a bunch of celebrities cynically cashing in on their fame, best enjoyed by fans who are content just to look at their heroes.

Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter star in writer/director Gary Ross’ Ocean’s 8.

That’s one of the reasons Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 Ocean’s 11 remake was so surprising: It was actually a pretty good movie. Just as the original cemented the Rat Pack as the pre-eminent stars of the early 1960s, so too did Soderbergh’s Ocean’s 11 define the first batch of 21st-century superstars: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, and Andy Garcia. Julia Roberts was the lone feminine presence to redeem the sausage fest.

Soderbergh took the barely-there plot of trying to rob a bunch of casinos at once and honed it to a razor edge. His editing was tight and cinematography outstanding. The 2001 Ocean’s 11 wasn’t just an object of fan admiration — although it unmistakably was on some level — but unambiguously good filmmaking. It’s trashy fun, but incredibly well executed.

A female driven remake was inevitable in the #MeToo era. The ragtag band of thieves camaraderie translates perfectly into the girl power moment, and high-powered talent agencies would love to see their clients put into the roles that women all over the world would imprint on. In the Sinatra/Clooney slot is Sandra Bullock as Debbie Ocean, the younger sister of Danny Ocean, who, we find out in the opening shots of the film, is dead. Probably.

The film gets off to a good start with Bullock faking sincerity in her parole hearing. She’s got the smooth prattle and irresistible charisma of the Ocean family down pat. Less than a day after being released from her five-year stint in the pen, she’s shoplifted a whole new wardrobe and fraudulently ensconced herself in a luxury hotel. Then, there’s the requisite gathering of the team: Lou (Cate Blanchett), a crooked New York nightclub owner; Amita (Mindy Kaling), a jeweler; Constance (Awkwafina) the pickpocket; a hacker known as Nine Ball (Rihanna); and Tammy (Sarah Paulson), a big time fence hiding out as a suburban mother of two. The plan, which Debbie came up with while in solitary confinement, is to steal a necklace called The Toussaint, valued at $150 million. To steal it, it has to be lured out into the open at the Met Gala, an annual, super ritzy fashion world party thrown by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. To do that, the gang targets Rose Weil (Helena Bonham Carter), a fashion designer drowning in debt, to convince superstar actress Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway) to use her clout to convince Cartier to let the necklace out of the vault so she can wear it for the party.

During the scenes inside the simulated Met Gala, Ocean’s 8 functions extremely well as lifestyle porn with a more propulsive plot than Fifty Shades of Grey. The actresses are rarely called upon to do much more than stand around and look cool, so heavy hitters like Blanchett and Paulson are out-cooled by a spliff-smoking Rihanna. In that way, Ocean’s 8 is much more like the 1960 Ocean’s 11 than the 2001 version. Unfortunately, director Gary Ross fundamentally lacks the Soderbergh snap that was on display in last year’s Logan Lucky. But if you’re just in it to look at some of the best actresses in the business pal around for a frothy summer treat, Ocean’s 8 will do just fine.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (February 12, 2015)

CREDIT: REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Sir Paul McCartney, Rihanna, and Kanye West perform at the Grammy Awards

How fortunate am I that the Grammy Awards should occur on the same night that I write this column? My original opening sentence was going to be, “For the love of everything that’s holy, vaccinate your damn kids,” but the musical-industrial complex’s annual circle-jerk is just too outrageous to go uncommented upon.

Before we enter snarkville, let me tell you what was good about the show. Catering to the aging demographic, the former headbangers AC/DC played their hit song, “Highway to Hell.” Only, it was a hit in 1979, before two-thirds of the audience was born, and it was revealed that the ancient mariners needed a teleprompter, upon which appeared the lyrics to their own song, just in case those tri-focals failed. Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett continued their May/December smoochy lounge act, singing Irving Berlin’s, “Cheek to Cheek.” But here’s a secret: The 88-year-old Bennett can’t sing anymore and she’s been carrying him for awhile. At least she didn’t wear meat this year. Beyoncé was divine. Pharrell Williams was terrific. Usher was great. And I was happy to see Beck win Album of the Year, although Twitter erupted with queries of, “Who is this guy Beck?” Which is a shame since I still consider him one of the newer artists.

Annie Lennox was all class singing the old Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ song, “I Put a Spell on You,” in direct contrast to Madonna, who refuses to age gracefully or perform an age-appropriate song. I get it: She’s a gym rat who’s in good shape for her age, and she has great legs. Still, they’re attached to a 56-year-old ass, and her sex-kitten routine, surrounded by back-up dancers wearing demon’s horns, has lasted well past its shelf life. The 60-year-old Lennox, in black slacks, sequined top, and minimal makeup, looked beautiful by comparison and didn’t need auto-tune either. I love Pharrell, who won Best Pop Solo Performance for “Happy,” only he was dressed in a bell-hop outfit reminiscent of The Grand Budapest Hotel. That funny doorman’s outfit will probably be this year’s Smokey the Bear hat. Emotional tenor Sam Smith, who won Best New Artist, Song of the Year, and Record of the Year for his smash hit, “Stay With Me,” neglected to thank Tom Petty, for whom he recently gave a songwriter’s credit and paid an undisclosed, out-of-court settlement for cribbing the chorus to Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.”

The most egregious pairing of the night, and possibly of all time, was the trio of Kanye West, Rihanna, and Sir Paul McCartney singing a nondescript song called “FourFiveSeconds,” just released as Rihanna’s new single. Sir Paul has all the money and fame in the world. For the life of me, I can’t understand why he would enter into this unholy alliance. Didn’t he learn anything from that heinous duet he did with Michael Jackson? Or is he that desperate to remain relevant? Basically, McCartney was reduced to playing back-up guitar and singing inaudible low harmony while Rihanna warbled and Kanye chirped through auto-tune to cover up the fact that he can’t sing. McCartney was among the nine songwriters on this mess, but he was content standing there like a twit and never even sang a verse. I had to shout out loud, “Do you remember who his partners used to be?”

That faint music you hear is John Lennon, somewhere from the great beyond, singing another chorus of his “How Do You Sleep at Night.” And speaking of songwriters, the winner of the Best R&B Song, Beyoncé’s “Drunk in Love,” credited eight writers. Since when did songs begin getting written by committee? It only took one person to write “A Case of You.”

It was keenly disappointing to see that the “In Memoriam” segment, while mentioning music lawyers and agents, omitted the names of artists and legends beloved to Memphians whom we lost this year: Jimi Jamison, John Fry, Mabon “Teenie” Hodges, Jack Holder, John Hampton, and “Cowboy” Jack Clement, the legendary producer who began his career with Sam Phillips at Sun Records. I understand the names were printed in a longer read-out on the Grammy site, but each of these artists deserved an on-air remembrance.

The program’s closing segment, a tribute to the movie, Selma, featuring Beyoncé, John Legend, and Common, was transcendent. I’ve heard Legend sing many times, but I believe this was his finest performance. There’s a lot of great music out there; it’s just not what the near-extinct, corporate labels want you to hear. Personally, I enjoy watching the old, thieving, grimy music “industry” implode. It deserves to. All told, the 2015 Grammys were merely tepid, but it might have been worse. They could have let Dave Grohl play.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Sex, Lies, Videotapes, and Hackers

When I was in high school, I worked as a stockboy in a drugstore in my small Missouri hometown. My job was to replenish the shelves and do general grunt work. One of the store’s services was developing photos. The task fell to an older fellow (we’ll call him Joe), who spent hours in the store’s basement darkroom, turning rolls of film into family snapshots.

One day, as I was loading my two-wheeler with boxes to take upstairs, Joe called me over. “Look at this, kid,” he said, holding up a picture. I looked. And looked again. It was a photograph of female breasts. My 16-year-old eyes must have widened. Joe laughed and said, “Happens all the time. People take dirty pictures of themselves and hope I’ll develop them and not say anything.”

Then Joe opened a file drawer and pointed: “Look in there.” The drawer was filled with “dirty” pictures. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff I see,” he said.

The impulse to create nude or sexually titillating pictures has been with the human race forever — from cave drawings to ancient Hindu temples to Manet’s “Olympia” to Playboy. Small-town Missourians were not exempt from the urge.

Nor are celebrities. The news is filled this week with stories about the release of private nude and sexually explicit photos and videos of Jennifer Lawrence, Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, and others. The source of the photos obtained them by hacking into “the cloud.” Which is a lot like Joe’s file drawer, only bigger. Now, what the celebrities thought was private is public.

We may, in fact, be in the process of redefining the very term “private.” In a world of cellphone cameras, sexting, home-made sex videos, and internet servers that have access to it all, “private” only means you hope nobody ever opens the drawer where your stuff is. All your “secret” text and Facebook messages, all your “funny” racist emails, your “silly” naked phone pictures, your potentially libelous personal Tweets, your ice bucket challenge gone wrong — all are potentially available to the public, if someone wants to make it happen badly enough.

This too, is nothing new. Only the methodology has changed. The FBI and the CIA — and lately, the NSA — have been invading Americans’ privacy for decades. Even presidents have not been immune. John F. Kennedy’s sexual adventures were closely tracked by the FBI, for example. In those days, they used phone-taps, stealthy photographers, and informants. Now, it’s easier. We do the leg-work for them.

Being outed as gay or having smoked pot used to be enough to keep someone from public office. It was potential blackmail material. Now there are many openly gay public officials, and people shrug it off when they learn a politician once smoked pot. If the walls of privacy continue to crumble, revelations about a public figure’s sexy private pictures may soon engender the same response.