‘Dancing with the Stars’: Season 8 Reveal
Dancing with the Stars revealed season eight’s dance couple’s today.
Hosts: The great Emmy nominated Tom Bergeron and Samantha Harris of E! Entertainment
Lance Bass and Lacey Schwimmer:
The former member of NSYNC and newcomer 2006 U.S. Youth Latin Champ and 2007 World Swing Dance Champ.
Toni Braxton and Alec Mazo:
Six time Grammy winner and season one champion.
Brooke Burke and Derek Hough:
Host/actress who is regularly ranked in men’s magazines as one of the sexiest women in the world and third time DWTS dancer and brother of DWTS dancer Julianne Hough.
Rocco Dispirito and Karina Smirnoff:
The James Beard Award-winning celebrity chef fifth timer who was paired up with R&B singer Mario last season.
Maurice Greene and Cheryl Burke:
Winner of two gold medals, in the 100m sprint and the 4×100m relay at the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics and two time DWTS winner of season 2 and 3.
Kim Kardashian and Mark Ballas:
Celebrity and reality star of E! reality series, Keeping up with the Kardashians and last season’s winner.
Cloris Leachman and Corky Ballas:
Nine time Emmy winner, winner of a Golden Globe, and an Academy Award who is best known for her role as Phyllis in the television series Phyllis and The Mary Tyler Moore Show and the World Latin Champion/Mark Ballas’s father.
Cody Linley and Julianne Hough:
The youngest contestant to ever compete on the show and known for his character Jake Ryan of Hannah Montana with two time DWTS winner of seasons 4 and 5.
Susan Lucci and Tony Dovolani:
Known as the most famous face of daytime television for her role as Erica Kane on All My Children and sixth time DWTS dancer.
Misty May-Treanor and Maksim Chmerkovskiy:
Her and partner Kerri Walsh captured their second Olympic gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics and became the first team ever to repeat as back-to-back champs and returning dancer for his fifth season.
Ted McGinley and Inna Brayer:
First known for his role as Jefferson the neighbor on Married with Children and first timer current US Amateur 10 Dance Champion.
Jeffrey Ross and Edyta Sliwinska:
Comedian/”Roastmaster General” and the only dancer who has competed in all 7 seasons of DWTS.
Warren Sapp and Kym Johnson:
Recently retired defensive tackle and Superbowl Champion Warren Sapp played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Oakland Raiders and fifth time DWTS dancer.
Check out the 3 day Season 8 Premier starting Monday September 22nd at 8pm.
-Shavon Keller
Smart People: Makes for a smart movie choice
In Noam Murro’s directing debut of Smart People, just released on DVD August 12th, he proves that some times smart people can’t always make the smartest decisions.
This slower paced movie is focused more on character development rather than action, but none-the-less it is entertaining and real because of its unique characters.
After experiencing a trauma induced seizure, a self-involved professor, Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid), must re-evaluate his life and become more dependent on others. His doctor, who happens to be one of his forgotten students from years back, Janet (Sarah Jessica Parker), informs him he is suspended from driving for six months. To his unwanted rescue, his free-loading adopted brother, Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), comes to stay for a “win-win” situation in his eyes, in which he stays for free and becomes Lawrence’s chauffer. With his visit, Chuck, tries to encourage Lawrence’s over-achieving teenage daughter, Vanessa (Ellen Page) to lighten up and for Lawrence, a widower, to get back in the game and pursue Janet as a love interest.
This film’s strongest element is its make-up of individually complex main four characters played by exceptional actors. It is hard to pick out just one of the four lead actors as showing the most talent, because they equally make their own characters believable, comical, and at times heartwarming. All four characters are on different levels of intelligence but equally connected in their lacking abilities to connect with and create fulfilling relationships with others.
Through these characters’ problems, the film plays with conventional relationship titles. In Lawrence’s relationships as professor, his colleagues don’t understand him and he has a great problem with remembering past students. With his own adopted-brother, he treats him more like his chauffer than his brother and refers to him as “adopted” with every opportunity he gets. And finally Lawrence’s initial treatment of Janet is as a student to lecture rather than a love interest.
Vanessa, with her genius intelligence, she acts too old for her age in which she is more like house wife than daughter to her father, performing all household duties, becoming jealous of the threat of a girlfriend, and she accepts the lack of acknowledgment from her father for her exceptional educational accomplishments. Also because of Chuck’s willingness to show Vanessa how to have a good time as a teenager, in a drunken stupor, she tries to make a move on her adopted uncle as a love interest rather than uncle because “he’s adopted anyway, it doesn’t count.” These confused definitions and blurred boundaries of relationships emphasize each character’s inadequacies with relating to others properly.
Although each of the four main characters’ are interesting and well developed, the film seems to overlook the development needed of its supporting characters. Such as the idea of having a lesser talented college brother, James (Ashton Holmes), for Vanessa to look down on and to be unappreciated by his father. This would make a positive addition to the family dynamic, but it wasn’t developed enough throughout the film and seemed as though in the final edit many of his scenes may have been cut causing a lack of interest in his character for us the audience.
Also, the character who seemed to be Janet’s best friend and fellow doctor, was only used in two important but quick scenes. One in which we find out Janet had a crush on Lawrence when he was her professor in college. The other we find out Janet has a habit of self-sabotaging her relationships. Although he is not a very important character, since he was included in these two scenes he should be present in a few more to make his character believable as Janet’s best friend and to provide him with more purpose in the film. Again, possibly an editor’s mistake?
Even with its few flaws, this film’s strong base of interesting characters and their struggles to connect with others is what drives this film. It proves that no matter what your intellectual abilities or limitations may be you can never have all the answers when it comes to relationships.
-Shavon Keller
The Patriarchal Unconscious: From ‘Adam’s Rib’ to Harvard
I was a speaker in a Gender Colloquium at Rider University and I decided to include a shortened version of my speech here about Adam’s Rib, Legally Blonde, and the patriarchal unconscious connection in law and film. Enjoy.
The law is seen as an ideal system that mediates all and shouldn’t be altered; but there is the presence of the patriarchal unconscious which creates flaws in this system. The patriarchal unconscious is that unknowingly, just as males are the fathers and head of the households, males are in control of the law system and how it functions. George Cukor’s 1949 film, Adam’s Rib, is a screwball comedy about a married couple, who are also both lawyers that take on the same case defending opposite sides. Adam Bonner tries to prosecute Doris Attinger who is accused of attempting to murder her uncaring husband; while Amanda Bonner defends this woman on the basis of “equal rights under the law,” which Amanda insists if the person on trial were a man he would be vindicated for trying to kill the lover of his unfaithful wife in order to protect his home. Adam’s Rib seems to be a film fighting for women’s rights and against the biased patriarchal unconscious, but on closer analysis one can see that the message seems to lose its hold in the end when Adam wins over his wife, Amanda, and the argument is dropped.
The scene in which we see Amanda start to become passionate about fighting for women’s rights is the next scene as they drive to work. Amanda is driving which seems like the film’s way of showing that Amanda is equal and has power, but then this is undermined by portraying her as a stereotypical bad woman driver with all the other male driver’s beeping and yelling. The shot composition throughout this scene distinguishes the divide between Amanda and Adam’s views as they are framed by the windshield with a divide down the middle. We first hear Amanda’s view when she says, “There’s lots of things a man can do and in society’s eyes it’s all hunky dory. A woman does the same thing, the same mind you, and she’s an outcast.” When she makes this strong statement she is looking forward, facing the camera because she is driving, so her view is clearly and strongly conveyed. When Adam states his point that anybody who commits a crime, whether it’s a man or woman, should be punished; rather than fully understanding Adam’s view we are distracted by Amanda trying to get a parking spot. This lack of acknowledgment of his view could be because in society we are too aware of this view as an excuse of the patriarchal unconscious to suppress women, or it could be because this is leading up to Amanda winning the one case in court, but finally losing in the long run with the ending of the film.
This film falls under the category of being a genre film, a screwball comedy, which causes the film to follow the patriarchal unconscious by not allowing the audience to take the lessons of women’s rights seriously. One particularly humorous scene is when Amanda asks the people of the court to imagine Mrs. Attinger, Mr. Attinger, and Mr. Attinger’s mistress as the opposite gender than what they are, in order to prove a point. In this scene when the females are transformed, their facial expressions and posture remain the same and we see the people around them acknowledge the change by sitting up or murmuring to each other. When Mr. Attinger transforms into a woman we hear Amanda say “try, try hard,” as if to imagine a male as a female is a very hard task. Then when he is dressed in the women’s clothing he changes his face into softer expressions, he stops slouching and sits straight, turns his hand up, and raises an eyebrow. His transformation seems more elaborate as he tries to be more feminine and we hear people gasp with much more surprise. This humor undermines Amanda’s strength as a lawyer. This sex change is supposed to support Amanda’s statement when she says, “an unwritten law stands in back of a man who defends his home. Apply this same law to this maltreated wife and neglected woman.” Her statement is strong and accurate but people miss it because of the distraction of the patriarchal unconscious which causes us to find a male in women’s clothing humorous since it seems such a contradiction from the dominant and anti-feminine role the male is given and the strong focus of heterosexuality in our society.
The ending of this film emphasizes the fact that Amanda, a female lawyer, has failed in altering the legal system. Again because this is a screwball comedy, there must be rules that are followed as a genre film which also affects the ending of this film. While Amanda may have won the case, this win caused a riff in their marriage which is typical in screwball comedies in order for the ending to be a happy moment where the couple forgive and embrace. In this last scene, Adam shows Amanda that men can use the trick of tears just as women and Amanda uses this as further evidence toward her point: that men and women are the same and should be treated this way. But Adam uses the “little difference” between men and women to finally win his argument once and for all and drop the subject forever. The patriarchal unconscious exists because of this “little difference” in which men feel that they should be in more power than women; and at the end of this film Amanda shows that she agrees with this ideology because there is a happy ending embrace to this screwball comedy.
At the start of this film Amanda seems to have a strong stance of pro-women’s rights and equality, but as the movie progresses Adam’s argument becomes stronger and Amanda becomes weaker by the falling out of their relationship as husband and wife. Therefore the film simply shows the injustices of the law and the prejudice of women but it does not truly fight for women’s rights because in the end the “little difference” is rewarded and the woman is merely wife to the man.
You might be wondering why the title of this blog is: The Patriarchal Unconscious: From Adam’s Rib to Harvard. That’s because in my original paper I compared Adam’s Rib to the 2001 film Legally Blonde because like Adam’s Rib it also seems to question the injustices of the law system, especially sexism. It was interesting to compare a film from the 1940s to that of one from the postfeminist era. But again with a close analysis of Robert Luketic’s Legally Blonde, one can see that it seems to start out unknowingly fighting against the patriarchal unconscious, and in the end Elle appears to be accepted for doing things her own way, but the major fight to change the system and the patriarchal influence is lost. Elle’s original fight in the film is actually for her ex-boyfriend to propose, but through this she came to realize her real fight should be for women’s rights. Just as in Adam’s Rib, Elle won the small fight by winning her case in court, by her terms; but she loses in the end because instead of standing up for women’s rights and trying to alter the law system she merely supports the law and actually claims that it is just, by giving credit to the patriarchal system for accepting her even though she was different in her hyper-feminine ways. Although these films are 52 years apart, and there’s the period of the feminist movement between them, they both seem to question the flaws of the law system, but unfortunately they each end with happy comedy endings allowing female inequalities in law to be masked by Hollywood genre conventions.
*work cited is available upon request
-Shavon Keller
‘Sisterhood’ A Challenging Adaptation
When my two best girlfriends of 7 years and I left the theater we weren’t discussing and gushing about the film instead we were reminiscing and laughing about our memories together.
Just like any film adaptation of a book it is difficult to make the decisions of what to leave in and what to leave out and still present the essence of the story. With this adaptation in particular it seems even more difficult since there are four main characters, the filmmaker has the task of providing equal attention to four different characters and to use these four stories to make the movie satisfying as a whole. There were some gaps and some moments where audience members must take a moment to make a connection themselves. I have not read the books but usually fans who have read the books first tend to complain about the choices the filmmakers make to leave particular events out that seemed prominent in the books. Also I read that the first movie is based only on the first book whereas this sequel is based primarily on the fourth book but brings in moments from the second and third books as well which may throw off some of the book fans and even upset them.
I think this film had a satisfying story as a film it did its job of sending a message about the bond and friendship among a group of girls from high school and into college, one that others can relate to such as my friends and I. It did help that the four actresses of the four main characters are each very talented and have each uniquely provided something enchanting to these characters that you can’t help but be intrigued. But since I know these films are based on books I know there are things missing which will probably provide more depth and connection between the characters. Therefore these films entice my interest in reading the books. It’s almost as if these films are advertisements for the books. Now I just hope my curiosities will be satisfied with reading the series.
-Shavon Keller
Apatow and Crew Do It Again with ‘Pineapple Express’
When my friend and I watched the preview for Pineapple Express , I couldn’t hold in my excitement for the film, but his only response was a shrug of the shoulders and the comment, “I’m not a fan of stoner movies.” I stared at him questioningly. I explained to him that this was not going to be a typical stoner movie; it’s a Judd Apatow and crew film, it has to be about much more than that. I listed off Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared, Knocked Up and tried to make him understand how amazingly funny and clever Apatow’s style of writing is.
After seeing the film my predictions were proven correct, it definitely was not just another stoner movie. Yes the plot revolves around weed but it’s the relationship and growing friendship between Dale (Seth Rogen) and his drug dealer Saul (James Franco). This is what I appreciate about Apatow’s work - the way he builds relationships between characters; it’s also why I appreciate the Apatow crew of actors who pull off these unusual and comedic characters so well. Rogen and Franco are Apatow actors from way back in his 1999 television series Freaks and Geeks . Rogen’s character Ken in the start of the series just delivered great one-liners but as the show progressed we saw him with his first girlfriend which provided more depth to his character through this relationship. Franco’s character Daniel is developed by his trials of his love/hate relationship with his girlfriend throughout the series. It is this focus on relationships that provides depth to Apatow’s humor. He creates characters that we can relate to because they too care about and are affected by the similar progression and digressions of relationships as we are in our own lives.
In Pineapple Express, we are first introduced to Dale as he goes about his daily routine of ‘serving’ people their court orders and smoking pot during the drive. We see him meet his girlfriend in the halls of her high school, in which he looks very out of place as a slightly overweight, 25 year old man in a suit, compared to the teenage jocks she hangs out with. Next it’s time for him to stop by his drug dealer’s house to stock up on some more weed. Meet Saul - lonely drug dealer who’s trying to raise enough money to pay for a good retirement home for his grandmother, and dreams of one day becoming a famous architect, but for now remains stoned practically all the time.
While in his car smoking the rare Pineapple Express weed Saul sold him, Dale becomes the single witness to a murder performed by a crooked cop. Dale panics and throws his roach of Pineapple Express out the window leaving it at the scene. Pineapple Express is so rare it can be traced back to Saul and possibly Dale. These two make an odd pair, but they are forced to spend all their time together as they are on the run from the cops. The rest of film showcases what Apatow does best, the development of his characters in hilarious ways as they develop their friendship.
There are many memorable scenes throughout the film as both Rogen and Franco give hilarious performances (Rogen’s awkwardness and Franco’s dopey expressions are my personal favorites). But there was one scene in particular that made me laugh so hard I started to cry and was still giggling into the next scene. I absolutely love it when people fall and in this scene it was so well choreographed with running and falling I couldn’t control myself.
During another scene in the movie, I heard a very loud laugh from a man in the row in front of us. When I looked to see who the loud laugh came from I realized it was from a man with his wife and they had to be at least 65, they looked to be about the retired age. It made me extremely happy to see that this film can reach out to even an older generation. I’m not saying that all 65 year olds would love this film, they probably wouldn’t, these two could have just been the cool exception, but it was still awesome to witness.
So, if you are an Apatow and crew fan you should have seen this movie already and loved it. If you’re not a fan then you should see the movie, fall in love with it, watch more Apatow and crew creations to learn and then become a fan of this brilliant type of humor.
-Shavon Keller
