Archive | October, 2008

Early Gay Crushes: Leonardo DiCaprio

30 Oct

Every time I sit down to put together a new Sexiest Males Alive list, I ask myself the same question: Should Leonardo DiCaprio even be on here? That of course would seem like a very common question, as the whole point in these rankings is to determine whether one person or the other merit a mention, but with Leo it’s different still. Not so much a question of whether he deserves to be on the list, it’s a question of whether it wold do him, or his competitors, justice to be included. I’m still torn about the October edition.

This entire discussion invites perhaps unhealthy doses of nostalgia, maybe even sentimentality. At age 34, Leonardo DiCaprio may not be quite as sexy as he was in his younger, more playboy-like years, but a) he’s still hotter than most other people on earth (his movies continue to be obligatory viewing, for reasons of general quality and worship), and b) I still feel a sort of loyalty to the younger Leonardo I fell so passionately and confusingly in love with when I was in my early teens. With regard to the SMA list, the question then becomes whether he should be judged on his still considerable hotness, which would make him a contender for the Top 40, or his smashing 1997 looks, whose explosive cocktail of emotional and physical attraction would risk blowing away all competition. Over the last several months, I’ve ended with some halfway formula, but I can’t say I’m sure it has done him justice.

Back when The Fellowship Of The Ring premiered in 2002, I felt a certain with those people who camped outside their local movie theater in order to get their hands on tickets to the premiere. Not because I was particular passionate about Lord Of The Rings, but rather because it reminded me of how I myself looked forward to the February 1998 Norwegian premiere of Titanic with the same quasi-religious fervor. Some of it of course was due to how excellently James Cameron managed to wrap expectation into the whole Titanic mythology (The Biggest and Most Expensive Movie Of All Time etc.), but though I didn’t think about it at the time, Leonardo himself was a big part of my sky-high expectations. It was never something I questioned, but after I saw him in Romeo + Juliet the thought of getting to watch him on screen for three hours became an independent motivation for me to see Titanic. Though I often go with classic beauty, I’m also one who has a tendency to tire quickly on picture-perfect guys. But with Leo, I’ve never ever grown tired of him. I’m not sure about this, but I suspect that my instant physical and emotional attraction to him was one of the main reasons why Titanic had me crying my heart out. Or, just as likely, I was just a softie.

That said, I still try as best as I can to defend both Leo and the movie against unfair criticism. After the initial wave of interest, during which basically every single human being in the world saw it at least once, a predictable backlash materialized. The movie was dismissed as an intolerably sentimental chick flick, with Leo likewise was dismissed as nothing more than a teen heartthrob. Since I liked the movie very much, and to this day continue to think that Leo’s performance is quite good, I went to great lengthts to defend both, even though some people might look down on me for it. I guess one of the reasons why I did that was because I wanted to maintain my special relationship to the movie as a project, no matter what, but I’ll never be ashamed of it.

As the years have passed, and Leo’s list of critically acclaimed movies have grown longer, the need for me to defend him against unfair criticism (those people who instinctively think he’s a mediocre actor because they saw him in Titanic years ago), but I’ve found myself jumping into the fray occasionally if someone claimed that Leo was a fine actor, except, you know, he was in Titanic (rolling their eyes). Then I patiently argue that it could be that their assessment of the movie have been influenced by the broader cultural environment that now seems to have rendered Titanic out of sync with the expectations we have towards movies today. Often, they acknowledge that they liked it just fine when it was released, and Leo was good in it after all, not they haven’t seen it in a while. But I’m not collecting DiCaprio converts for their own good. I’m doing it for me.

Leo’s critical success have had other positive effects, too. One is that it’s no longer anything suspect about wanting to see a DiCaprio movie simply because he’s the headliner. Though not necessarily very successful artistically, movies like Gangs Of New York and The Aviator have gained him a reputation for continually growing as an actor, while at the same time not being afraid to do something he hasn’t done before; he brought something more than just his fabulous body to The Beach (1999), the somewhat idyllic adaption of Alex Garland’s cult novel; he saved Jack Nicholson from making a fool of himself in the otherwise brilliant The Departed; and in Blood Diamond he crammed an impressed range of conflicting emotions into his lead role. Much like Johnny Depp, Leo has often managed to make his characters seem perhaps more interesting than the would otherwise, and same with movies like Marvin’s Room, Catch Me If You Can and The Basketball Diaries. Leo has never really tested my loyalty, simply by looking so consistently hot, and acting so consistently well that I would’ve been foolish to lose interest.

Move Over, Matthew Perry. I’m Here For Zac Efron

24 Oct

I don’t know about you, but Matthew Perry isn’t exactly the main reason why I’ll go see forthcoming comedy 17 Again, scheduled for release in April 2009, and whose trailer was unveiled this week. As anyone who ever caught an episode of Friends would know, the man is actually capable of being quite funny, but I’m prettyy sure he will add almost nothing to the success or fiasco of this particular movie. One thing is that his movies so far have all been painfully bad (Almost Heroes, Fools Rush In, Three To Tango etc.), but more importantly of course, he’ll be absolutely overshadowed by his co-star Zac Efron, who, in a deeply cliched but no less disturbing twist, is set to play a younger version of Perry’s character, hence the title. New Line is banking on Efron, and it’s likely to be a wise move, because people like me are gonna give them our money.

But why, then, does it take so long for Efron take center stage in the trailer? Had I not known better, I would have assumed that this in fact was a Matthew Perry comedy, and not the new movie with the world’s most popular young male. The opening seconds of friendly banter between Perry and one I assume to be his best friend almost had me running screaming out of the room, and when we got to the point where Perry is time-shifted 20 years back in time, I had practically lost all hope in Hollywood. It took a full 50 – fifty! – seconds before Efron turned up. Will everyone be as patient as me?

When he’s finally there, though, there’s nothing wrong with him. Once you forget about the fact that he’s supposed to be a young version of Matthew Perry – and that the setup of the movie sounds a little too much like a male version of the horrible Freaky Friday, that starred Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis, – he’s as hot as ever And he even passes the ball around a little (He’s back in the game, as the narrator says, self-referentially). However, to keep ‘soft’ Efronites like me interested, it was probably not a bad move to throw Hunter Parrish into the mix alongside him. A double dose of earth-shattering sexiness should make this surely otherwise dreadful movie easier to bear. Parrish said, when promoting Spring Awakening, that he and Zac know each other and that he could possibly have been in Zac’s shoes right now, since he actually auditioned for High School Musical. It should be, erm, interesting to see them do something (like, y’know, acting) together. I already foresee an incredibly close fight for the Sexiest Male honors next April, if you know what I mean.

What Josh Peck Adds To ‘The Wackness’

22 Oct

It seems, having already heaped praise on Disney Channel for giving screen time and commercial success to everyone from Ricky Ullman and Jesse McCartney to Zac Efron and the Jonas Brothers, I’ll now have to turn my attention to rival Nickelodeon. At least that’s where Josh Peck, the breakout star of recent coming-of-age theatrical The Wackness, launched his career. From what I can gather from reading about Drake and Josh, the family-oriented sitcom he co-starred in with Drake Bell, today’s Josh Peck carry only the slightest resemblance to the Josh of yesteryear. First, he’s not a chubby (possibly even overweight) kid anymore. At 21, he’s slimmed down and has grown into considerable hotness. Secondly, The Wackness makes it perfectly clear he’s not a kid anymore, period. Movies about dealing pot, stitching your family together and palling around with quasi-suicidal old shrinks tend to hammer home that point.

Peck plays Luke, an 18 year old hiphop-loving slacker, who uses the summer of 1994 to ramp up his pot dealing, in order to (secretly) help out with his family’s financial troubles. During the summer months he pays regular visits to his client, Dr. Squires (Sir Ben Kingsley), whose daughter Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby) he falls madly in love with. As it turns out, Squires himself seems to have come to a fork in the road, and as the two them try to make sense of what their respective futures hold for them, they bond over a common love for music and marihuana. However, such brief plot summaries tend to do severe injustice to any movie, and The Wackness is no exception. For instance, you might get the impression that this is merely another somehat quirky stoner movie, and nothing could be further from the truth. I absolutely hate stoner movies (Dude, Where’s My Car, Smiley Face etc), and The Wackness is no stoner. The drugs certainly help ease the relationship between Luke and Squires, but as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that it’s only a minor part of it. If Squires at first is mostly a way for Luke to get to his daughter, their relationship soon develops into one of mutual dependence. Luke needs Squires to keep his mind straight, and Squires needs Luke to inject some new impulses into his tired life. At one point Stephanie mockingly asks Luke if he and her father are gay together, and I get what she’s meaning. Although (thankfully) there’s no physical attraction between the two men, the portrayal of their relationship is sufficiently nuanced as to make us believe that it’s perfectly natural for them to confide in each other.

More than a stoner movie then, The Wackness is a coming-of-age story and a love story. Though slackery, Peck manages to make Luke seem like someone a girl like Stephanie could actually fall for. He is far more insecure than he gives away at first glance, and that’s probably what makes him so charming. Watching from outside the fictional universe, and not needing to know exactly what kind of guy he is, I fell in love with him before Stephanie did (there really is something about that voice), of course, but when she finally does, it adds up nicely. For a while, at least. The first-love-ness of the whole thing carries with it a lot of emotional intensity, but to me The Wackness stays clear of the worst cliches, because, at critical moments, it never fails to back off a bit and bring things closer to earth, by injecting a joke or quirk. I guess many people will hate it for that, but considering it never gets cynical about it, I think it’s a wise move.

Also, The Wackness is the closest we’ve come to an ode to the early nineties since Cameron Crowe’s Singles, and I suspect that movie earned its status as a tribute to the grunge generation more from the cultural significance later attributed to it, than from actually wanting to be seen as an ode to the early nineties. It’s hard not to see The Wackness as a more explicit argument for why it was interesting to come of age at that time, particularly in 1994; early on, Luke makes fun of people who listen to Kriss Kross (giggle) one week, only to switch to Pearl Jam the next; people cling to their gameboys; emotional distress could still easily be attributed to Kurt Cobain’s death; Boys II Men was a household name, etc. Oh, and Method Man, as a kind of intertextual reference, plays Luke’s supplier.

Some critics have said that The Wackness is too preoccupied with being a kind of 1994 period piece, but that’s actually one of the things I like most about it. I was nine years old back then, and I actually listened to Kriss Kross (not Pearl Jam, though). I never ever thought they would come up as a pop culture reference again, but wham, there you have it. It’s like the 1990′s movie version of Everybody Hates Chris. That has to count for something.

Finally, Josh Peck actually reminds me somewhat of Adrian Grenier, who plays Vince Chase on HBO’s consistently brilliant comedy Entourage. Chase, of course, is modeled on the experiences of one-time rapper Marky Mark, perhaps better known these days as Mark Wahlberg. While probably not an intertextual reference as such, at least it’s a mildly amusing coincidence.

’7th Heaven’s Sexy Puritanism

15 Oct

I wasn’t supposed to love 7th Heaven. First, it’s a generally conservative show, and second, it always ranked high when Parents Television Council named the ten most family-friendly shows on television, alongside snoozers like Dancing With The Stars and Touched By An Angel. Most of my liberal friends loathed it, and more or less openly looked down on me for falling into the conservative trap. At a certain point it stopped bothering me, however. I calculated that the ridicule would wear off more easily if instead I embraced the show, wholeheartedly, publicly and repeatedly. Once I found a decent rationale, it turned out I was right.

Early on I explained my continued viewership by claiming to be fascinated with the conservative mindset of the Camden family. Put simply, I claimed that I watched 7th Heaven for sociological reasons. I’m not sure anybody actually bought that, but I kept insisting so fervently that the questions soon disappeared. This explanation might have held some clout at some point, but by the time I started using it in public, I was in fact already way past that phase of my fandom. What started out as a mix of boredom and curiosity had matured into a real emotional connection to the ups and downs of the Glenoak community. I actually cared what happened with family rebels Mary and Simon. I wanted my daily dose of Lucyness. Heck, I even wanted to see what would come of Sam and David Camden, the less-than-gifted twins that were added to the family tree a couple of seasons in. By the time I admitted this to my friends, they had probably written me off as a lost cause, and possibly even a closeted conservative. They were right about the lost cause part.

When I first realized that I didn’t want to go back to my pre-7th Heaven days, I soon realized the perks that came with being a Camdenite; most notably a steady stream of cute guys. So steady was that stream, that one could suspect showrunner Brenda Hampton of subscribing to what Slate recently dubbed Sexy Puritanism in describing Republican veep nominee Sarah Palin. The moral outlook of the show is no doubt quite conservative – sex before marriage is seen as an outrage, abortion is never discussed as an opportunity for pregnant teens, and there are never ever any mentions of homosexuality or other controversial culture war topics – but that conservatism is brought to the viewers by the best-looking blood boilers the casting company could find. If the storylines went off the tracks at times, at least you could concentrate your attention on smashing regulars like David Gallagher, Tyler Hoechlin and Adam LaVorgna, and the show had a very impressive list of guest-starring hotness as well; whatever your taste, Thomas Dekker, Kyle Searles, Aaron Carter, Andrew Keegan, Will Estes, Erik von Detten, Jeremy Lelliot, Colton James… they’ve all been there.

I don’t know which of these perspectives offer the most compelling reason for you to give it a chance the next time you catch an old rerun on cable, but they all worked for me, at different times. I suspect I’m not done with the show just yet, even though the show itself folded years ago.

‘Camp Rock’ Sorta Sucks, But I’m Still Going 180 On Jonas Brothers

10 Oct

Now I finally know what all the fuss was about. Disney Channel’s Jonas Brohers promo vehicle Camp Rock premiered here in Norway last week, and is sure to make them a household name in contemporary Norwegian pop culture, just like High School Musical did to the once obscure Zac Efron. The most important thing I took away from it, however, was not the fairly average Camp Rock itself, but rather an actual interest in The Jonas Brothers, with whom I’ve previously confessed deep scepticism. Once the movie ended, I for the first time made a serious effort to look beyond the insanely successful commercial branding of the family trio, and searched out what put them in this position in the first place; their music. If two months ago I would admit to no more than failing to hate them, now I’m gonna do a complete reversal. I love them. Sort of.

So, what happened? First, I don’t really think it’s JB’s fault that Camp Rock is bad even by Disney Channel standards. Nothing wrong with formulaic and predictable HSM rip-offs, but one piece of advice: Then don’t be ashamed about it! In Jonas Brothers, Disney Channel has a trio of band members with obvious screen presence (one of them is even funny, at times), but instead of cashing in on that, they ship two (Kevin and Nick Jonas) of the three people that make up the band Camp Rock is supposed to promote off to supporting roles, and make the final one (Joe) suffer through food fights and endless staring at the sunset for the chance to play one song. I hoped and expected Camp Rock to be a cheerful and goofy musical, or at least a film about music and/or the Jonas Brothers, but instead I got the framework of HSM with crappier songs. With this rant out of the way, now to the reason that I’m still likely to see it again sometime.

The Jonas Brothers number in the movie is, if not exactly groundbreaking, a good, clean piece of punky pop music. After falling in love with much of their music, I realize this should have been at the center of Camp Rock, too. 2007′s The Jonas Brothers, to my surprise, turrned out to be chock full of deliciously straightforward, yet unabashedly lighthearted rock music, in the vein of Green Day, Busted and Blink 182, with a little Hanson and even Westlife thrown in for good measure. The Hanson comparison is as predictable as it is unavoidable (three brothers and all), but as faithful readers of this blog should know, I mean it as a compliment. It basically means their music get stuck in your head, and after a while you stop feeling ashamed about it and start actually enjoying it.

For instance, take That’s Just The Way We Roll. In what seems like a nod to the preceding Tulsa Three – battledance against Hanson - the establish a self-awareness that’s not cocky, so much as it is self-deprecating. All their references to being free and independent spirits can be tiresome, but who the hell care when they’ve coming up with songs like Still In Love With You, the ultimate non-threatening rock song, complete with clapping and foot-stomping insistence? Or Australia, combining their Franz Ferdinand feel with richly ridiculous lyrics (I know she won’t break my heart/’cause I know she’ll be from Australia); the soppy but well-crafted Westlife-y ballad When You Look Me In The Eyes; channeling The Coral on Goodnight and Goodbye; or Kids Of The Future, which would be far more wisely spent as Disney Channel’s official theme song, than in that dreadful animated movie.

Their third album, A Little Bit Longer unfortunately also is a little bit weaker, songs-wise, but it still has some quite decent pop-rock moments. Shelf probably gives the young teen audience a sense of real rock, and surprisingly, taken together with the slightly Hives-ian One Man Show its a perfectly understandable guilty pleasure for all of us whose tastes are supposed to be more refined. Same goes for Sorry, a song that could easily be written off as a intolerably grandiose power ballad. Once you give it a chance, however, you may discover the small synth details and vocal quirks that lifts it above its peers. Also, for a loyal Fanson it’s nice to see that Nick Jonas can do a respectable Taylor Hanson impression, like the title track, A Little Bit Longer.

The best surprises are those that are unexpected. Maybe that’s why right now, love doesn’t seem to be too strong a word for how I feel about Jonas Brothers. Oh, and Joe takes his shirt off in Camp Rock.

Seeking To Avoid Clever Wordplay, Let’s Just Say Tottenham Is One Consistently Cute Club

1 Oct

I really don’t like Tottenham Hotspur. Their reliably mediocre Premiership performances have never made them much of a threath to my beloved Liverpool, but their supporters are possibly the most undeservedly cocky of all. Every year they seem convinced that they will finally take the final step towards being a serious challenger, only to discover that they stumble so badly from the outset that their season is practically over by October. I know I should feel bad for them, but there is something about their consistent failure to connect with the real world (in which Tottenham of course is a Top Seven contender, at best), that instead makes their predictable disappointment a source of cruel satisfaction.

Lately, that has not been the only source of pleasure Tottenham has given me, however. As the results have become progressively worse (itself a welcome development), the squad has just gotten hotter. When they play up to their potential, Tottenham is capable of playing wonderful soccer, but they have had a truly terrible season this far, so one cannot blame me for focussing on other aspects of their performance. Left defender Gareth Bale, for example. As one of only two soccer players on the most recent Sexiest Males Alive list, he sits comfortably at #24.

He’s not alone, though. Central defender Michael Dawson may not fit everyone’s taste, but I think he’s kinda hot. Jermaine Jenas should of course fit everyone, and he probably does. To top it all it all of, he shares the midfield with the undeniably attractive former Blackburn winger David Bentley, and fellow England international Aaron Lennon. Likewise, the newly arrived 19 year old Giovani dos Santos is set to melt some hearts at White Hart Lane.

Overall, these guys amount to one simple reason to take Tottenham seriously: They could overtake Liverpool as the sexiest team in the Premiership. No matter how you slice it, the enemy has never looked hotter.

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