#BigFeetProblems
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With 673 "FAB" votes.
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It even snows.
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Life really is like a good piece of candy
Poor American taste buds...
Be careful what you’re putting on your face.
Being A Magician Is A Dangerous Profession.
Posthumous albums are always kinda weird, but Xscape is a strong case that reworking MJ’s discarded tracks is actually a great idea.
It always feels kinda gross when a record label releases music by an artist after they've died. Even when it's presented in a respectful and classy way, it comes across like a blatant cash-grab, or worse, a violation of the artist's will by releasing work they had deemed incomplete or inadequate. Michael Jackson was dead for a little over a year when Michael, the first posthumous collection of his discarded material, was released by Epic, and it's a perfect example of why it's best to leave some recordings in the vault. That record, culled from unfinished material intended for the follow-up to his 2001 album Invincible, was uniformly underwhelming. The music certainly sounded like Michael Jackson, but the songs were well below the standards of classics like Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad, and even though the recordings were made in the three years before its release, the production felt very dated.
Xscape, the newly released second posthumous Jackson album, sidesteps the problems of Michael in part by being less reverent to Jackson's artistic intentions. The album, which was masterminded by Epic CEO L.A. Reid, is a set of eight abandoned Jackson tracks originally recorded between 1983 and 2001 that have been reworked by contemporary producers Timbaland, J-Roc, Stargate, and Rodney Jerkins, who co-wrote and produced the original version of the title track. If the idea of modernizing discarded Michael Jackson songs seems like a disrespectful, bad idea in the abstract, the result is actually really great. And if Michael Jackson were alive today, Xscape is pretty much exactly the kind of sparkling, classic yet contemporary pop album you'd want him to release.
The deluxe edition of Xscape features a second disc with all the original unfinished recordings of the songs, and it basically exists to prove that Reid was absolutely correct to overhaul the tracks. The songs are there, but the production feels dated or flat. The new arrangements — particularly those by Timbaland — aren't just more modern, they're also better frames for Jackson's melodies and vocal performances. The original versions of "Chicago" and the unfortunately titled "Do You Know Where Your Children Are?" are catchy, but too cluttered to deliver the sort of punch they get when paired with Timbaland's minimalist funk. Michael and the demo disc of Xscape sound like a brilliant artist who is either going through the motions or indecisive about how to complete his work. Comparably, the Xscape music finished by Timbaland and Stargate shows us that even a world-class genius like Jackson benefits from a good editor.
It's hard to imagine Jackson arriving at any of this "new" music if he'd actually worked with the same producers in his lifetime. Jackson's taste in production and arrangement calcified somewhere around the early '90s. Despite releasing the quasi-disco "You Rock My World" in 2001, he seemed resistant to the idea of revisiting the sound of his most famous and beloved records. This is admirable, if a bit disappointing — Jackson remained committed to the idea of pushing forward his entire life, even if the results, like his final album Invincible, mostly offered increasingly twitchy variations on the New Jack Swing style of Dangerous. But without Jackson around to veto anything, the producers of Xscape jump at the opportunity to bypass the sort of airtight syncopation Jackson became obsessed with as he got older, and give people the light, upbeat Michael Jackson music they wanted the most.
Timbaland and J-Roc, who produced and co-wrote the majority of Justin Timberlake's blockbuster 20/20 Experience albums, are obviously no strangers to updating the sound of Jackson's glory days. At least half of the songs on those Timberlake albums sound like Jackson fanfic. (It's worth noting that Timberlake's 2003 smash "Rock Your Body" was originally written for Jackson by The Neptunes, and the very fact that Jackson would decline a song that great calls his taste level in his latter years into question.) Timberlake actually shows up on the second disc in a remix of "Love Never Felt So Good," a song written by Jackson and Paul Anka circa 1983 that Timbaland and J-Roc have remade as a straight-up Off the Wall-style disco tune. This may not have been a direction Jackson would've gone in if he were still with us, but it serves his legacy well by reconnecting us with the joyous sound of him at his creative peak, before it all got so complicated.
“Lift the skirt” day was a pro-equality demonstration in Nantes, France, during which students of all genders were encouraged to wear skirts to school.
JEAN-SEBASTIEN EVRARD/AFP / Getty Images
JEAN-SEBASTIEN EVRARD/AFP / Getty Images
A casual reminder that these two are MARRIED. They’re at Cannes to win “Cutest Couple” right?
Pascal Le Segretain / Getty Images
Pascal Le Segretain / Getty Images
Pascal Le Segretain / Getty Images
Pascal Le Segretain / Getty Images
In the pilot of The CW’s Reign , Caitlin Stasey’s character Kenna shocked audiences with a controversial masturbation scene . Since then, she has remained an unapologetically sexual character — and, according to Stasey, an essential representation of female sexuality for young women.
The CW
The way Caitlin Stasey talks about her Reign character Kenna, a fictional lady-in-waiting to Mary Queen of Scots, is enough to make even non-Elizabethan era audiences blush.
"I call her the clitoris of the show," Stasey says after a quick glance around at her surroundings at Insomnia Café in Los Angeles. "Almost consistently for every episode I was doing something sexual. I was naked, I was doing this, I was making out with this person, I was having a threesome here, and I realized that was my position. Which is fine. I'm totally fine with that. It's great."
But while Stasey's frankness might shock the more inhibited among us, it reflects the kind of sexual openness the 24-year-old actor celebrates. The more we talk about it, she reasons, the less weird it's going to be. And for a generation of young girls embarking on the complicated journey of self-discovery, just knowing they're normal can make all the difference.
"The more normal it is, the more it's perceived as just an everyday way of being, the less scary it's gonna be for girls, obviously," Stasey says.
Of course, it's not as though Kenna has any trouble expressing her sexuality. The most liberated of the ladies-in-waiting trailing behind Mary (Adelaide Kane) on The CW's period drama, Kenna has wielded her sex as a weapon, been subjugated by those who seek to control her body, and finally discovered mutual respect and love over the course of Reign's first season. She's gone from being a virgin to the mistress of King Henry (Alan van Sprang) to the wife of Henry's bastard Bash (Torrance Coombs).
"She's kind of done it all," Stasey says, taking a sip from her iced coffee. She manages to come across as both charming and matter-of-fact as she discusses touchy subjects, lowering her voice ever so slightly when using words like "orgasm" and "masturbation." The other patrons at the coffee shop don't seem to notice.
The CW
"Masturbation" is, in fact, a major topic of conversation: Reign raised eyebrows with its pilot, in which Kenna — so sexually charged from watching a newly married couple consummate their relationship — ducks into a hallway to pleasure herself. It was a rare depiction of female masturbation on network television — and with a teenage girl doing the deed, no less.
Even for Stasey, who doesn't shy away from much, filming the scene was a daunting prospect.
"I was kind of horrified at the thought of having to masturbate on screen," she admits. "Masturbation was such a sensitive issue for me as an adolescent, as a young woman, the thought of doing it publicly, albeit very tame, it felt like it was going to be an insight into me and my desires and my methods, I guess you could say. Because a little piece of you has to find its way into those situations, into those scenes."
When the pilot finally aired, the masturbation scene had been cut down significantly: While it was obvious what Kenna was doing, the act itself was mostly just implied. As showrunner Laurie McCarthy put it, "With The CW's concern, we all came to a creative decision that allowed us to keep the bulk of the scene, but to make it more suggestive. It felt like the right way to do it."
Stasey is somewhat less understanding.
"I was disappointed," she admits. "It's always a little bit personal when your work is cut down for whatever reason. And when it's for reasoning that's as antithetical to my views as this was, it's even harder to swallow. It would be like if you were a gay man on television kissing your lover in a scene, and they had to cut it down because of network sensitivity."
Stasey's disappointment was compounded by the fact that she went through with it, despite her initial discomfort — and she was proud of her performance when all was said and done.
"I fucking did it," she adds. "I did it in front of all those men that I didn't know and all those women I didn't know, and now people got to edit it and watch it and fucking dissect it. There have been conversations over boardroom tables about my masturbating, so why couldn't you just let it happen?"
Editing choices aside, the simple inclusion of a scene of female masturbation on a teen drama remains a bold one. Particularly as the depiction of female pleasure on the whole is far more restricted than that of male sexuality. The response to scenes like Kenna's clandestine masturbation speak to a double standard in terms of what audiences are comfortable with. Variety's senior TV editor Brian Steinberg found the scene in question so distasteful that he wrote, "There's pushing the envelope, and there's dunking that envelope in a sink full of bourbon and trying to light it on fire."
It's a response that may disappoint Stasey but does not surprise her.
"We are the fairer sex. We are pure. We are not earthly creatures," she jokes. "And I think to put us in the midst of all of it, to see that we are in fact just as sexually driven as men, is kind of confronting. Also the fact that we are largely, nowadays, not reliant on men to provide pleasure for us."
Nearly 900 journalists (anonymously) responded to BuzzFeed’s salary survey. Men and women appear to start their media careers on the same footing, but what happens at more senior levels?
From left, in June 2011: Dean Baquet, the new executive editor of the New York Times; Jill Abramson, ousted executive editor; Bill Keller, Abramson's predecessor, who was reportedly paid more than she.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times via Associated Press
The abrupt firing of New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson sent waves through the media industry this week — particularly when reports surfaced that Abramson was paid less than her male predecessor, along with the suggestion that her request for pay equity may have factored into her termination. (The Times has denied this.)
Abramson's firing inspired dozens of think pieces about the pay and power gap, but few hard numbers. Do female journalists really make less? If so, how much?
To find out, BuzzFeed created a survey, which was emailed to BuzzFeed editorial staffers, as well as to former colleagues and contacts working at the biggest websites, newspapers, magazines, and broadcast networks in the country; they were asked to pass it along. The survey was anonymous and did not record respondents' names, email addresses, or employers.
Between Thursday at 3:30 p.m. and Friday at 8 a.m., nearly 900 people completed the survey. A few salaries exceeded half a million dollars; several hovered around $20,000. We did our best to remove the few responses that seemed to contain typos or obvious trolling.
The goal was to take an honest look at pay discrepancy. The sample wasn't random, and the survey is far from perfect. People who felt less satisfied with their salaries, for example, might have been more likely to complete the survey. But it's a useful step toward knowing how big the gap might be, and at what stage in our careers it widens the most.
Justine Zwiebel
Which makes sense, given the lack of room for negotiation. Both men and women working in New York City reported median salaries of $40,000 at the entry level. (Since cost of living varies so widely, we isolated respondents from New York City for this part of the analysis.)
The new “Run” trailer seems to promote their upcoming summer tour and features several celebrity cameos.
JAY Z's Life+Times / Via youtube.com
JAY Z's Life+Times / Via better-than-kanye-bitchh.tumblr.com
JAY Z's Life+Times / Via youtube.com
Marion Cotillard, Robert Pattinson, Ryan Reynolds, Kristen Stewart, and Channing Tatum are all set to show their stuff at the world’s most important film festival. Plus, Ryan Gosling’s making his trippy-looking directorial debut.
The annual International Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off on May 14 and runs through May 25, will see some of the biggest names in Hollywood and in the film industry around the world gather in the seaside French city.
The 12-day festival, which is chockfull of world premiere screenings and extravagant soirees, tends to be the place where producers launch their new movies and attempt to sell them to distributors.
This year's festival will see 18 films vie for the coveted Palme d'Or prize and the winner will be determined by a predominantly female jury, headed by Jane Campion, the only woman ever to receive the top Cannes award for her 1993 film The Piano. It's (finally) a female-centric year at the festival, which has faced criticism for its often male-heavy lineup.
Though Cannes' opening film Grace of Monaco, which stars Nicole Kidman as Grace Kelly, is getting most of the pre-festival press, there is plenty more intriguing fare in the competition. Check out 11 of this year's films below.
Films Distribution
Starring: Josh Charles, Anaïs Demoustier
Director: Pascale Ferran
In his first post-Good Wife role, Josh Charles plays an American businessman who checks into a hotel in Paris and can't bring himself to leave, while Anaïs Demoustier plays a maid in the hotel. Ferran, who is one of several female filmmakers this year with work in the festival, is best known for her 2006 D. H. Lawrence adaptation Lady Chatterley, which won multiple César awards.
Ego Film Arts
Nina Dobrev and Paul Wesley are hoping death comes to The Vampire Diaries — even if that means they’re the first ones to get killed off.
The CW
From Day 1, The Vampire Diaries declared itself as a TV show that wasn't afraid to kill off major characters, make bold storytelling decisions, and potentially upset fans in the process. In its first three seasons, the supernatural series was unwavering in its dedication to death — RIP Vicki Donovan (Kayla Ewell), Aunt Jenna (Sara Canning), and Alaric Saltzman (Matthew Davis) — but subsequent seasons have seen the show backtrack by resurrecting countless characters from seemingly fatal situations.
And that's something that isn't sitting well with stars Paul Wesley and Nina Dobrev.
Wesley's immortal character — vampire Stefan Salvatore — recently had his heart ripped out (one of the only ways for a vampire to truly die on the show), but when asked if he feared the reaper had finally come for Stefan, Wesley replied, "I'm kind of numb to these things, to be honest with you. I've had so many things happen to me that it's a little comical. So, yeah, no big deal."
That's why he's hoping the writers start to inject a sense of permanence to the show's revolving cycle of life, death, and rebirth. "I want them to start killing people," Wesley told BuzzFeed on the red carpet before The CW's upfront presentation in New York City on Thursday, the day of the show's Season 5 finale. "It kind of drives me insane that they don't. You can't keep killing characters and bringing them back while using death as a catalyst for us caring about the episode. Death has to the be ultimate fear on our show, so when Stefan is trying to rescue Elena, we're genuinely terrified she might die. Otherwise, what's the point?"
And Dobrev, who plays Elena Gilbert, concurred. "In the beginning, the shock value of killing Vicki in the first few episodes made us stand out," Dobrev told BuzzFeed. "As soon as you start bringing people back, you kinda lose that. I mean, it's great for me, personally, because I get to hang out with my friends, but from a story standpoint, now you don't care or believe when someone dies because you've seen how easily they can come back. The witches can always fix it, somehow. It's been six years, so I think it would be good to go down the list and cross them off."
Those are easy sentiments to express when you're one of the stars of the show, but Wesley and Dobrev insist they're happy to sacrifice those seemingly secure paychecks in order for the show to tell the best story possible.
"Obviously, if they killed me, I would be disappointed. But people need to die. End of story," Wesley said.
See what everyone’s wearing!
John Shearer/Invision / AP
John Shearer/Invision / AP
John Shearer/Invision / AP
John Shearer/Invision / AP
The soundtrack to Hell itself.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
“I’m the worst reader.”
Frazer Harrison / Getty
Even from beyond the grave, MJ’s a “Slave to the Rhythm.”
ABC
Via yahooentertainment.tumblr.com
ABC
ABC
SLAY NICKI, SLAY.
Frazer Harrison / Getty
Frazer Harrison / Getty Images
Tens of thousands of Aussies took to the streets over the weekend to protest the Abbott government once again .
