Blast the past with Paul Walker!

By giovanealex | Published: March 8, 2010

The real blond ambition, Paul Walker.

The real blond ambition, Paul Walker.

Like me, you may have watched only a couple of his movies and may not remember a thing about them. Alright, this is understandable – most of his movies are made of races and crashes and, well, crashes and races! Although, nobody would ever forget Paul Walker – even a comatose would awake mouth watering, feeling an aching desire for licking his entire smooth skin from head to toe (enjoying some delicious stopovers on the way) after having a sight of this perfect example of anglo beauty. How would anyone not remember this sexy blond, with manly face features, radiant smile, astonishing blue eyes and gorgeous athletic body? Whether his hair cut is a bit long, showing its golden wavy locks begging for some caress or is trimmed, Walker is a treat for the eyes (and the hands) and a feast for the libido. I could say he is dreamy but this word is not the exact translation of this guy’s physical potential. Isn’t “dreamy” a word too tied to a naive, typically adolescent idea of love and romance which is usually related to those glowing-skin twinks on teen vampire movies? Sure Walker would be an ideal match for you to live a life of full blown romance but, hey! We are not kids! We want a spicy romance, full of delirious moans and screams of pleasure and this handsome stud surely delivers this since his beauty owns a kind of wild feature that sends out rockets of pure lust in the atmosphere. Yeah, he may be a Walker but no space shuttle would take a man to the outer space like him.

Click HERE to download from Picasa almost 50 high-resolution pictures of Paul – including sans shirt shots.

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Blast the past!

By giovanealex | Published: March 7, 2010

Guessing game: who are the studs?

Guessing game: who are the studs?

I have already said it here that this happens almost everytime. When someone asks for prime examples of beautiful men people don’t even take time to think and promptly answers “Brad Pitt”, “George Clooney” and a couple of other man at most but let’s be honest: they have been far from being references of beauty of any kind lately – the first one looks like an hermit and the other has not take care of his body for ages. Even on their golden days there were many other sexy and handsome men out there (many of them much more hotter) but since entertainment media loves to constantly reinforce these guys as the top beauty references because the media themself firstly pointed them out as this most people use them as examples simply because they don’t know others (or do not care to know). Interestingly enough, I’ve noticed that while men are also affected by this, women in particular are the ones who do not often try to get new examples of handsome guys even with Pitt and Clooney getting less and less beautiful. On the other hand, guys who like men are often eager to make new male beauty discoveries, which helps them keep a much more updated and numerous repertoire of men to cite as examples. As I belong to the latter group and as I think that I know a fair amount of handsome men I’ve decided to declare battle against the monolithical male beauty standards. How? The simplest way possible: I’ll start to shed light on the ones I think are much more handsome, sexy and hotter, be them already known, fairly known or completely unknown – they all deserve our attention, folks!
So, subscribe to our RSS Feed and be prepared: the first one is coming tonight or tomorrow morning.

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Like, Not Quite like and Dislike: Emily Haines, (Frederik) Sioen and Broken Social Scene.

By giovanealex | Published: February 24, 2010

Emiy Haines showing her elegant beauty


Like:
Since I had first listened to her songs, Emily Haines has become one of my music idols. She is not only deeply talented, she is hugely versatile: on her solo project Emily Haines and The Soft Skeleton she has showed her most sensible, quiet, melancholic side, sometimes even reaching a sort of existentialism that gently covers some of her compositions; on her band Metric she has revealead a musical persona that swings sharply between pop and rock tunes which are often fuelled by a more vibrant and wild use of her vocal range.

Emily Haines and The Soft Skeleton – “Winning” (from Knives Don’t Have Your Back)

Emily Haines and The Soft Skeleton – “The Bank” (from What Is Free To a Good Home?)

Metric – “Love Is A Place” (from Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?)

Metric – “Handshakes” (from Live It Out?)

Frederik Sioen is really cute, isn't he?


Not Quite Like:
I have been trying to put Belgian singer Frederik Sioen (mostly known simply as Sioen) on my favourite artists list for some time. I guess I will keep trying to do it but I sense he will never get promoted since most of his songs are considerably boring. Actually, he has composed very beautiful songs on each of his albums but even some of these songs show quirky melodic shifts and obtuse lyric verses. Besides, his voice, which usually sounds beautiful with its husky softness is also quite strange as it seems to belong to a guy much older than he in fact is. Still, he deserves a place on my music library since he has a reasonable amount of beautiful songs and because he has showed a taste for musical versatility – his last album, Calling Up Soweto has proved it fairly well.

Sioen – “Reign” (from Ease Your Mind)

Sioen – “Son Of A Gun” (from Calling Up Soweto)

Broken Social Scene ensemble (are all of them here?)


Dislike:
When I watched “Half Nelson” some years ago I had a slight impression that Broken Social Scene’s songs (which are featured on the film’s soundtrack) would be of my interest but when I gave the band a try the impression completely vanished. Though I adore Emily Haines so much, in my opinion her involvement on the Canadian ensemble wastes most of her musical qualities. Not only the somewhat (supposedly) intended amateur and raw sound of the band diminishes the power of her warm, beautiful and deeply emotive voice but the excessive number of musicians also causes her gifted abilities as a composer and musician to be mostly undermined.

Broken Social Scene – “Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl” (from You Forgot It in People)

Last Note: while Emily Haines said last June she has some inspiration floating for another solo album, Sioen has left the following message on his Twitter and Facebook profiles: “Sioen is having a co-writing session in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (NY)… Exciting!”

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Cinema’s Opening Title Scenes: Lars Von Trier.

By giovanealex | Published: February 5, 2010

I know. This blog has not been frequently updated but I swear I’m constantly trying to gather some ideas. It was not what I’d promised to the foreign visitors of my main blog and I’m really ashamed about that. The fact is that it is much more easy to do cultural reviews (like I do on seteventos.org) but it is hard to get good ideas to write a more “blogish” post – but I’m trying hard.
That said I can come to the subject of the post itself. I have talked before about ending scenes and closing titles on movies, pointing some similarities between the ending sequences of two different movies. Now it is time to talk about title sequences, which vary from straight and simple compositions to very elaborate and complex ones, sometimes even being designed by specialized artists. That’s why in some cases they not only present the movie itself but give us hints about its creator. But instead of discussing today the most stylish title sequences, like the ones Saul Bass designed to Hitchcock films, I’ve thought it was better to start with the ones made by a director for his own movies: Lars Von Trier. The title sequences of his most celebrated movies follow some kind of pattern: they are usually very short, they bring the film’s title and the director’s name, sometimes showing both things at the same time, and they are directly followed by the movie itself – there is no casting or crew listing on them.
Let’s have a look at the title sequences from “Europa”, “Breaking The Waves”, “The Idiots”, “Dancer in the Dark” and Von Trier’s latest release, “Antichrist”, on a video I have made with them.

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=102764771

First thing to note is that “Europa” is itself an exception among the others: the title is in fact presented in the end of the movie, which makes it more a closing title sequence. Other than that, it reflects the pattern of two other movies, “Breaking The Waves” and “Dancer In The Dark”, showing both the director’s name and the film title at the same time. But since in “Europa” the highlight is given to the movie title and in “Breaking the Waves” and also in “Dancer in the Dark” is the director’s name which receives much more attention, they also show an interesting opposition in style.
Among all of the danish director movie titles, these latter ones are the most aesthetically standardized: both of them show the director’s name in bold long letters serving as a background for the movie title, which is shown in considerably smaller tipography over its background. Since the director’s name is the first thing to be noticed, it is not that difficult to find these title sequences as clear examples of Lars Von Trier’s trademarked egocentrism.
Before going on, we must give a bit more attention to the title sequence of Von Trier’s 2000 film. Unfortunately, I was unable to get the original theatrical title sequence from “Dancer in the Dark”, which was made of Björk’s “Overture” played over a blank screen. When the movie was released on DVD, the movie’s studio suggested to the director to make another one to avoid it to be mistakenly identified by viewer’s as a technical problem, so Von Trier filled it with abstract images, which is exactly the one featured on the video above. I think that both versions give to the audience a sense of the visual problems of Björk’s character, but the original one has much more impact on the audience’s feelings.
The less standardized titles here are from “The Idiots” and “Antichrist”. The first one is simply a shot of the film’s title written with white chalk on a wooden floor and is preceded by a “Dogma 95″ certification – which, as you see on the title sequence itself, is really applied to its full extent. The other brings the director and the title separately, handwritten and completely surrounded by dark and chaotic scribbles, which is undoubtedly signalling the insane and dangerous experience the main characters of the movie face.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a video with the title sequences from “Dogville” and “Manderlay”, which share the same visual style. So, instead of leaving them behind, let’s at least have a look of them on these screen captures


As you see, they are more like a “viewer discretion advised” notice than a title sequence. As to their style, they seem to give a subtle sense of nostalgia, which would not be at all a misunderstanding, since the films’ history are set on the first half of the 20th century.
As Lars Von Trier’s movies, these title sequences can reveal even more than what we see at first sight, nonetheless the meanings which were here underlined are enough to proof enough that they are more than simply an informative signal.

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Sex is a messy room (non-porn version).

By giovanealex | Published: December 25, 2009

Now and then there comes a celebrity of some kind to declare his or her so-called bisexuality. This is not something new and it’s usually a way to gather some self-promotion (pick Angelina Jolie, who more than once has stated herself as bisexual but we have only seen her with men, with whom she has married twice) but no doubt it is taking the place of the gay outing.
First, let me say I have nothing against keeping these issues as a private subject. I do appreciate a lot people who can live their life the way they want without this stupid urge to jump to a stage or to put themselves in front of a camera on a popular TV show or even on a famous magazine cover and declare their sexuality. Be it a sincere attitude or just a way to gather public attention, it does not matter, it seems so corny – and considering it is basically a variation of the same theme, the “bisexual outing” is also very corny. Despite the fact that she is, artistically speaking, nothing of value, that is the reason why I do not hate Lindsey Lohan. She has not done any of these things to start hanging out with her girlfriend, she simply started living her life with her without bothering to warn anyone of the fact. But the fact that the act of coming out publicly is corny is far from being the problem. The problem is the reason of this bisexual outing becoming so popular among celebrities. Why is it becoming so easy to open your web browser on any given internet news portal and run into someone doing this?
I think this is made for two basic reasons. The first one has more to do with self-promotion, as I have already pointed out: since gay outing has been unnecessarily overused by celebrities who would not need to say that (if in many cases this was too obvious, why bother saying that?), it has become something old-fashioned because it is not causing so much fuzz anymore and so it is being abandoned by whoever wants his or her name floating on the web, newspapers, magazines and TV shows in favour of its “updated” and “fresher” version. The second one would be more related to people who has a more sincere motivation to do the outing: because of the increasingly popularity of the gay stereotype, people who identify themselves as gay have been automatically associated with this, even if they have little to do with it but feeling attracted to people of the same sex, so some of them declare themselves as bisexuals to escape this oversimplified idea since they really don’t fit on it – it is a viable alternative, though I think it is far from being the right choice if you are really gay and not bisexual.
But this way out is getting problematic too: this time it is not getting overused, it is being erroneously used. Guess who are guilty? Yes, the same ones – once again people who would not need to state their sexuality is messing up the room.
Let’s pick someone to illustrate that. Do you people know that singer, Mika? If you are not sure about who he is, you can look for it in Wikipedia (here is the article about him) or you can visit his official site (click here). Though he can use the “stage persona” excuse, people will not have any difficulty to identify his sexuality since he explores the gay stereotype so skilfully that it makes it too obvious. But, surprise! Nevertheless, he himself does not think it is that clear. After avoiding the subject many times, according to Wikipedia, Mika has finally given the statement below to a Dutch magazine (that was pointed out here and also here):

“I’ve never ever labeled myself. But having said that; I’ve never limited my life, I’ve never limited who I sleep with. So, whatever. (…) Call me whatever you want. Call me bisexual, if you need a term for me.”

Ignoring the unbelievable possibility that he really considers himself as bisexual or, even worse, heterosexual (I intend to discuss this particular and disturbing issue on a second post about this subject), this peculiar procedure of verbally denying and putting into doubt what your behaviour makes clear can bring him some benefit (and I can’t figure out what it would be) but leaves none to people who is in fact bisexual – actually, they are the only ones who will carry all the harm here. Statements like Mika’s (whose aim is to dismiss the subject in spite of the fact that he has no problem exploring the gay stereotype all the time) lead people to identify bisexuality as a very inconsequent sexual behaviour, when in fact it’s just the opposite – it is a complex one, usually a non-skettish or frivolous demeanour. This way, as it happened to homosexuality, instead of being firstly understood in its essence and later in its inevitable complexity, bisexuality is being harmfully framed by reckless celebrities (not only but mainly by them) into a dull stereotype that does not reflect what it is supposed to define. As an inevitable consequence, it is being copied by people whose only objective with this is to build a “cool and contemporary” persona – in other words, just another way to present their show-off spectacle. It would be better not saying anything at all or, at least, reflecting a little about what you want to say before effectively doing it, but I am already asking to much of such narcissistic and headless people.

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