To kick off a new category and series of HOTS blog posts, I’ve revisited one of my favourite chick flicks: Legally Blonde.
I first saw Legally Blonde at a theatre at The Eaton Centre, which isn’t there anymore. It was 2001. Little did I know at the time that the film about a blonde sorority girl disproving others’ perception of her by going to Harvard Law School would spawn sequels and propel Reese Witherspoon’s career much further than Election could accomplish alone.
As I re-watched it for the umpteenth time on DVD, I was more attuned to the product placement. Not just the Red Bull that Elle’s sorority sister drinks while exercising or the stack of Cosmopolitan magazines on Elle’s dresser, but especially the OPI nail polish bottles scattered across her colourful room. Even when Elle has the revelation at a nail salon to enroll in law school to win Warner back, the back cover ad on the magazine she’s reading is for OPI. I also thought about the contrast between Elle’s nerdy classmates on black PCs and her brand new orange Apple iBook.
Prior to the Queen of Pop’s Super Bowl halftime show, I noticed she received lots of criticism, yet couldn’t fathom why. I’ve been a Madonna fan for as long as I can remember. Some of my early childhood memories include watching documentaries about how her career escalated before I was born and lip syncing singing along to her duet song, “Me Against the Music” with Britney Spears over the phone with a close friend. A few years ago, I even painted a ceramic plate with an iPod in the center and the tagline, “Get into the Groove.”
At 53, not only does she hold records for her chart-topping tracks, but she also looks incredible and shows no signs of slowing down. After dazzling us at the Air Canada Centre on her Sticky and Sweet Tour, where I regrettably didn’t buy an “Express Yourself” concert tee, it was difficult to see the superstar in a negative light.
Since “Give Me All Your Luvin’”, the first single from her 12th album, MDNA, debuted, reasons to dislike Madonna started becoming more apparent, but I find it hard to turn my back on one of my favourite performers.
Today Madonna made news because Malawi’s government officials are fed up with her donations that they feel are motivated too much by corporate interests in her global brand image than concern for children. When I first read the Toronto Star’s article, I mistook “state of the art girls school” and thought she’d arranged to build an arts school for girls because that sure would be thoughtful of her!
To be “fed up” with Madonna for wanting to improve Malawi’s education system is like being fed up with Angelina Jolie’s mass adoption spree or even Oprah’s generosity overseas for that matter. All of the above women have significant personal brands to protect, but along with their high status careers comes gigantic salaries and I hardly think we should criticize Madonna’s generosity to this extent. I hardly recall criticism from urban planners when Madge opened her first fitness centers in North America, so why so much outrage when she tries to do good in the world?
The blatantly excessive product placement in the “Give Me All Your Luvin’” music video was far from impressive, but it’s sure a catchy tune. That said, I confidently predict that it will not rank high on media professors’ list of video clips to show in future celebrity classes, the way that “Material Girl” was shown and then discussed at length last Friday at Western. They might as well just show separate commercials for Smirnoff, Adidas and whatever other brands were featured because aside from the ladies resembling Gwen Stefani’s Harajuku Girls, the brands were the standout visuals in the video, and I certainly don’t mean that in a good way.
Madonna’s professional contributions to music, not to mention my iTunes library, combined with her ongoing philanthropic projects make her an icon to watch. I’m curious about what critics will say once MDNA’s full length tracks are released, but until then, let’s remember the positive memories Madonna offers fans and focus on that.
In his first few scenes of The Kids Are All Right, I thought Paul (Mark Ruffalo) was a strange, hippy guy. Driving a motorcycle may be dangerous, but Ruffalo makes it look très cool. As the movie progresses, Paul comes across as someone who would make for a cool uncle, which is convenient for a sperm donor who spontaneously enters his biological kids’ lives. Ruffalo has been in a number of cheesy chick flicks – Just Like Heaven, case in point – but this performance and his role in Canadian indie My Life Without Me prove why he is in the biz.
When Nic (Annette Benning) remarks how each kid is so similar to their respective biological mother, I suddenly realized how the film presented the characters precisely in this way. It wasn’t necessary for the movie to deliberately depict the ‘like mother, like child’ cliché, but this is precisely what writer and director Lisa Cholodenko did.
Considering that soap opera characters inspired the possible alternatives for my own name, I found it mildly funny that Joni (Mia Wasikowska) was named after Joni Mitchell. Let’s just hope that teen moms don’t think it’s cool to name their newborns after Ke$ha, or some other one hit wonder.
The hair department really should have done something different with Joni’s hair, instead of letting it look so plain and straggly. Just because she is more anxious about starting college and moving out than choosing which shade of lipstick to wear, doesn’t mean she can’t sport a ponytail every so often.
Without any spirited sophs carrying mini fridges in their jumpsuits, Joni’s campus is oddly quiet on move-in day when her unconventional family says their goodbyes. This would’ve been a good time to hire some college-aged extras looking to brag that they were on the same set as Julianne Moore.
Cholodenko tells an interesting story with minimal product placement courtesy of Volvo. She doesn’t conclude with a fairytale ending per se, as she leaves some questions unanswered (like Joni’s When Harry Met Sally situation), but reassures viewers everything will be all right, regardless of how dysfunctional a family is.
