It has been a long time since I've written a blog post in earnest. This is a problem, as I see this as a kind of proving ground for my future career. If I fancy myself a writer, then I should theoretically be crafting a new piece every day, taking that time to sit down and really think about what goes into the work, what makes a good piece of writing, or more importantly a truly awful one. The world is too full of distractions: day jobs, shiny objects, the ever-ready journalist target that is Twitter. When it comes to this blog, my safe place where I can try out different styles and outlooks in order to find a coherent voice, I can very rarely stay focused on even a starting topic. In fact, I interrupted the crafting of this opening paragraph in order to go down and jump in the hotel pool downstairs. This site is supposed to be here as a writing free-for-all, but I can't seem to get more than a few words down at a time before running off to do something else. Perhaps it is a lack of inspiration, but the more probable explanation comes from the fact that I have no exterior forces motivating me. I feel like I wrote the best when I was in college, and my next assignment had to be ready for class. My senior year saw me writing over one hundred thousand words of criticism, taking on myriad sources and learning that I could write about pretty much anything if I was under a deadline and utterly freaked. That is missing here, and I feel like my work suffers as a consequence.
Therefore, I am using the great power of the Internet in order to jump-start the writing process. Mr. Unhipster, and its federated Jimmy Rabbitte establishments, are going to draw their next articles from you. Twitter, the Strange New Internet Thing du jour, has proven itself to be a fantastic source of short topics which could be expanded into larger essays if given an honest thought. Aside from the menial and mundane that all Twitter users tend to post, detailing restaurants in which we are eating or idle thoughts on morning routines, among other topics, there are slices of wisdom which appear to spring sui generis out of the ether. Sudden epiphanies, revelatory thoughts on film and music, and potent ephemera all appear on my feed daily, tiny bon mots which leave the reader musing the genesis behind them and the ramifications of them. That's why I enjoy the service. The tiny morsels of wit and wisdom often provoke my mind into odder places.
I've seen this phenomenon in the keywords used to navigate to my work from search engines as well. Among the variations on inquiries into Malin Ackerman's acting abilities and her CV previous to her time as the Silk Spectre there are buried some lyrical and downright confounding keywords, words that I would have never strung together in order to reach my blog. Among these are “defending maligned teachers,” “comma misappropriation,” and “iPhone different product,” each of which makes me wonder how any of my entries became linked to these phrases. I feel somewhat disappointed for the creators of these lyrical delights, as I doubt that my articles and essays did anything to sate their curiosity on any of these matters. Still, it has been interesting to read these keyword jumbles, as I wonder what I would have written if given them as a starting point.
So, in the interest of finally getting to the point, here's how my new little experiment is going to go down: I'm on twitter as JimmyRabbitte. Easy to remember, so long as you double up all but the lead consonants. Go ahead and follow me, and I'll try to be interesting. Then tweet anything at me. Any kind of topic. Movies I should yell about, weird collections of words that almost make sense, current (and not so current) events, beers I should be drinking; nothing is off limits. Just make sure you either direct it at me (using @jimmyrabbitte) or put it under a hash-tag (using #rabbittewrite for this one). I'll see it, and I'll write something for the blog about it. That's the plan. It's like a jukebox, but for on-demand writing.
So get cracking, folks! Fire one at me! Head over to your Twitter device of choice and tell me what you want to see! Then tell your friends, because the more the merrier in this situation.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Advertising Horrors from the Past: March 11, 2009
Our cheese is like a love affair.
...Smelly and full of preservatives? Or impermanent and often ignored at parties?
Monday, March 9, 2009
Mr. Unhipster and Defending Malin Ackerman
“And then there's Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre. I'm sure Ms. Akerman is a nice young lady, but having seen her in "27 Dresses," "The Heartbreak Kid" and here, I'm not so sure acting is the career for her. Her delivery is so flat that it would compel an acting teacher at a community college to say, "Have you thought about becoming a nurse?" Whether she's learning a shocking secret, fighting with Dr. Manhattan or doing it with the Nite Owl, she sounds as if she's reciting lines she just memorized. It's painful to watch.” --Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times, 6 March 2009.
Ouch.
For some reason, we are all playing the blame game in the film industry today. Yes, I pointed out yesterday that I believed the Watchmen take to be disappointing, but only in the front-loaded nature which leaves its second weekend in uncertain hands. The film was not a failure by any means, and it used to be common knowledge that one could not open a movie in the Spring and expect it to be a hit. Opening a blockbuster in the weeks before Memorial Day was even considered a major gamble, as kids wouldn't be out of school and families would be less willing to trek out to the theater. Now the studios can rush out their potential hits at any time of the year and see returns, to which the damn near inexplicable returns for Paul Blart: Mall Cop can attest. Fifty-five million dollars does not match the seventy million take of 300 on this weekend two years ago, but no one should have been expecting this take. Warmer weather and a movie that's nearly twice the length, not to mention one that's horrendously inappropriate for children, combined to produce a lower take. These are understandable factors, especially within an economy which should be hostile towards anyone shelling out fifteen dollars to see this movie in IMAX. Of course, if the movie did not meet its lofty and rather insane opening-weekend predictions then the blame must be laid somewhere. Watchmen is a terrible movie, or so the reasoning goes, and someone must be held responsible.
The scapegoat I'm seeing the most often is Malin Ackerman, and I'm baffled.
I've been intrigued by this project for the past few years, watching it pass from one director to another as it was mired in development hell, caught up in the act of translating the untranslatable to the screen. One night, around the same time the book had been assigned for one of my university courses, I took some time to jot down who I thought would best suit the roles. Dennis Farina did not become The Comedian, and you'll never see my genius idea of a chiseled Matt Damon playing Ozymandias, but two of my casting choices did make it into the film, much to my amusement. The first was Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl. The second was the maligned Ms. Ackerman.
Now I can't recall why I put her down; I know that there were several other actresses I would consider a better physical match for Laurie Jupiter, and ones who are much better known. Ms. Ackerman had first risen to my attention as a comedic actress, and I've always maintained that comedians understand drama much better than straight actors understand the art of the joke. At the time I was watching her in a program named The Comeback, a Lisa Kudrow vehicle which was very well constructed and acted, but to which I could never cotton. I could appreciate it much more than I liked it, and that was the same reaction I have to Watchmen. The book, for all the bravura sequences and intricately-laid threads, leaves me cold. By the end of the story, and the much-discussed, distressingly squid-based ending, I just can't seem to care about it anymore. Perhaps it was the detachment I felt to both of these pieces which created the link, because they have nothing else in common. Whatever the reason, director Zack Snyder saw Ms. Ackerman as the character as well, and now she's in the cross-hairs of every pundit, critic, and fanboy who wishes to assassinate the movie. Here I have to split with Mr. Roeper, as well as the anonymous cranks of the Internet-at-Large who are too vulgar to quote, and declare that Ms. Ackerman is not the problem, nor is she anywhere near the failure which she is touted to be.
Voracious media consumer that I am, I've found that I have seen every film or television program in which Ms. Ackerman has appeared, save for a Canadian pilot with the unfortunate name of Shotgun Love Dolls. (Don't worry; I'm on it.) What I've realized from her performances is that she is a good actress, a studied chameleon who learns through experience like all worthy character actors should. She does not rely on shtick which has received acclaim in the past, nor is she a massively experienced and classically trained actress who can slip naturally into any given role. She is a director's actor, a workhorse who needs the clear advice and steady hand of a seasoned pro in order to coax a great performance. Under the eye of helmers like Michael Lehmann and Danny Leiner, journeymen who have lots of experience with all kinds of actors, Ms. Ackerman excels. More visual directors and relative novices do not seem to work as well with her, leading to utter duds like 27 Dresses and The Circle. (The latter movie brings up the unfortunate career of Sidney J. Furie, which I will have to discuss at a later date.) She is only as good as the director behind her, which is no slam against her abilities. Only a preternaturally great actor can overcome a bad director, which is why everything that Gene Hackman has ever done is worth viewing, even if the film around him is pitifully bad. Ms. Ackerman acted as a great foil for Christopher Meloni in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, and was an absolute show-stealer in the aforementioned The Comeback. With so many empty vessels polluting Hollywood films, it's nice to see that one can act when the right people are involved.
The problem, in regards to Watchmen, is that Zack Snyder seems to have no idea how to direct actors. He is an astonishing visual director, but he takes Hitchcock's old adage about treating actors like cattle to an absurd end. He corralled an astounding cast for this picture, and then let them do whatever with their performances. Matthew Goode speaks with a German accent, Jackie Earle Haley apes like a hobo playing at Richard Widmark, and that guy in the Nixon mask does the least convincing Dick this side of Futurama. Does any of it make any sense together? Not really, but all of them are fantastic in their own way. Ms. Ackerman would already have it tough sharing the bulk of her scenes with Patrick Wilson and Carla Gugino, but she's impeded further by a director who does not seem to have any real desire to control his actors. Certain performance styles do not work well together, and nearly all of them are on display during Ms. Ackerman's scenes. The movie is a strange melange of wild extremes, from near-pantomime to extreme-Method, and it has a hard time gelling because of this. Ms. Ackerman, the workhorse with no particular style on which to fall back, occasionally feels lost. While it's a pleasure to watch these actors, it feels weird and somewhat unfair to see Mr. Wilson slip into the character of Dan Dreiberg like he's been playing him on Broadway for three years, while Ms. Ackerman struggles to figure out how to respond off of him. She occasionally seems outmatched next to these actors, but never to a point where one wants to throttle her for ruining takes. No, there is just a disconnect in how to portray each moment, one to which most of the actors fall prey; of the ensemble, only Mr. Wilson and Jeffrey Dean Morgan seem to hold any kinship, and they appear in only one meaningful scene together.
Speaking of meaningful scenes, if an actor gets even one in a film, and plays it off beautifully, then most transgressions are forgiven by an audience. Ms. Ackerman doesn't get this scene, as her one purpose in the story is being “the only girl.” This was a failing of the comic book as well, but at least there the Silk Spectre had the luxury of appearing over a twelve-issue period. Within the confines of a three-hour movie, the limitations of the character are more striking. She appears to exist only to convince Dr. Manhattan to return to Earth, and that scene is staged in such a way that it is robbed of all dramatic tension. Before the scene even starts, the clairvoyant Manhattan informs Spectre of her every motion and mood over the next few minutes. We know what's going to happen before it occurs, so even the performance of Ms. Ackerman's life could not infuse any tension into the moment. It's a stupid, backward way to write a scene, and speaks less of Ms. Ackerman's acting talents and more of how idiotic the idea of an omniscient, omnipresent, glowing-blue super-being is in a story which should have narrative drive and purpose. Billy Crudup and the fifty million dollars worth of special effects work surrounding him ruins any chance Ms. Ackerman has at an emotional payoff.
If I ever find myself in the hospital, laid up with some grievous injury, I would indeed like my nurse to look like Malin Ackerman. It would probably dull the pain and make my days in that building a bit more tolerable. But Mr. Roeper was incorrect when he suggested that as her new profession. What she needs is not a change in vocation, but rather a director who is interested in fostering her development and helping her towards a great performance. Ms. Ackerman's next project is The Bang-Bang Club, a potentially stellar film detailing the photographers who covered the last days of Apartheid-era South Africa. Under the stewardship of documentarian Steven Silver, who was behind the superlative Diameter of the Bomb, she will hopefully excel.
Ouch.
For some reason, we are all playing the blame game in the film industry today. Yes, I pointed out yesterday that I believed the Watchmen take to be disappointing, but only in the front-loaded nature which leaves its second weekend in uncertain hands. The film was not a failure by any means, and it used to be common knowledge that one could not open a movie in the Spring and expect it to be a hit. Opening a blockbuster in the weeks before Memorial Day was even considered a major gamble, as kids wouldn't be out of school and families would be less willing to trek out to the theater. Now the studios can rush out their potential hits at any time of the year and see returns, to which the damn near inexplicable returns for Paul Blart: Mall Cop can attest. Fifty-five million dollars does not match the seventy million take of 300 on this weekend two years ago, but no one should have been expecting this take. Warmer weather and a movie that's nearly twice the length, not to mention one that's horrendously inappropriate for children, combined to produce a lower take. These are understandable factors, especially within an economy which should be hostile towards anyone shelling out fifteen dollars to see this movie in IMAX. Of course, if the movie did not meet its lofty and rather insane opening-weekend predictions then the blame must be laid somewhere. Watchmen is a terrible movie, or so the reasoning goes, and someone must be held responsible.
The scapegoat I'm seeing the most often is Malin Ackerman, and I'm baffled.
I've been intrigued by this project for the past few years, watching it pass from one director to another as it was mired in development hell, caught up in the act of translating the untranslatable to the screen. One night, around the same time the book had been assigned for one of my university courses, I took some time to jot down who I thought would best suit the roles. Dennis Farina did not become The Comedian, and you'll never see my genius idea of a chiseled Matt Damon playing Ozymandias, but two of my casting choices did make it into the film, much to my amusement. The first was Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl. The second was the maligned Ms. Ackerman.
Now I can't recall why I put her down; I know that there were several other actresses I would consider a better physical match for Laurie Jupiter, and ones who are much better known. Ms. Ackerman had first risen to my attention as a comedic actress, and I've always maintained that comedians understand drama much better than straight actors understand the art of the joke. At the time I was watching her in a program named The Comeback, a Lisa Kudrow vehicle which was very well constructed and acted, but to which I could never cotton. I could appreciate it much more than I liked it, and that was the same reaction I have to Watchmen. The book, for all the bravura sequences and intricately-laid threads, leaves me cold. By the end of the story, and the much-discussed, distressingly squid-based ending, I just can't seem to care about it anymore. Perhaps it was the detachment I felt to both of these pieces which created the link, because they have nothing else in common. Whatever the reason, director Zack Snyder saw Ms. Ackerman as the character as well, and now she's in the cross-hairs of every pundit, critic, and fanboy who wishes to assassinate the movie. Here I have to split with Mr. Roeper, as well as the anonymous cranks of the Internet-at-Large who are too vulgar to quote, and declare that Ms. Ackerman is not the problem, nor is she anywhere near the failure which she is touted to be.
Voracious media consumer that I am, I've found that I have seen every film or television program in which Ms. Ackerman has appeared, save for a Canadian pilot with the unfortunate name of Shotgun Love Dolls. (Don't worry; I'm on it.) What I've realized from her performances is that she is a good actress, a studied chameleon who learns through experience like all worthy character actors should. She does not rely on shtick which has received acclaim in the past, nor is she a massively experienced and classically trained actress who can slip naturally into any given role. She is a director's actor, a workhorse who needs the clear advice and steady hand of a seasoned pro in order to coax a great performance. Under the eye of helmers like Michael Lehmann and Danny Leiner, journeymen who have lots of experience with all kinds of actors, Ms. Ackerman excels. More visual directors and relative novices do not seem to work as well with her, leading to utter duds like 27 Dresses and The Circle. (The latter movie brings up the unfortunate career of Sidney J. Furie, which I will have to discuss at a later date.) She is only as good as the director behind her, which is no slam against her abilities. Only a preternaturally great actor can overcome a bad director, which is why everything that Gene Hackman has ever done is worth viewing, even if the film around him is pitifully bad. Ms. Ackerman acted as a great foil for Christopher Meloni in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, and was an absolute show-stealer in the aforementioned The Comeback. With so many empty vessels polluting Hollywood films, it's nice to see that one can act when the right people are involved.
The problem, in regards to Watchmen, is that Zack Snyder seems to have no idea how to direct actors. He is an astonishing visual director, but he takes Hitchcock's old adage about treating actors like cattle to an absurd end. He corralled an astounding cast for this picture, and then let them do whatever with their performances. Matthew Goode speaks with a German accent, Jackie Earle Haley apes like a hobo playing at Richard Widmark, and that guy in the Nixon mask does the least convincing Dick this side of Futurama. Does any of it make any sense together? Not really, but all of them are fantastic in their own way. Ms. Ackerman would already have it tough sharing the bulk of her scenes with Patrick Wilson and Carla Gugino, but she's impeded further by a director who does not seem to have any real desire to control his actors. Certain performance styles do not work well together, and nearly all of them are on display during Ms. Ackerman's scenes. The movie is a strange melange of wild extremes, from near-pantomime to extreme-Method, and it has a hard time gelling because of this. Ms. Ackerman, the workhorse with no particular style on which to fall back, occasionally feels lost. While it's a pleasure to watch these actors, it feels weird and somewhat unfair to see Mr. Wilson slip into the character of Dan Dreiberg like he's been playing him on Broadway for three years, while Ms. Ackerman struggles to figure out how to respond off of him. She occasionally seems outmatched next to these actors, but never to a point where one wants to throttle her for ruining takes. No, there is just a disconnect in how to portray each moment, one to which most of the actors fall prey; of the ensemble, only Mr. Wilson and Jeffrey Dean Morgan seem to hold any kinship, and they appear in only one meaningful scene together.
Speaking of meaningful scenes, if an actor gets even one in a film, and plays it off beautifully, then most transgressions are forgiven by an audience. Ms. Ackerman doesn't get this scene, as her one purpose in the story is being “the only girl.” This was a failing of the comic book as well, but at least there the Silk Spectre had the luxury of appearing over a twelve-issue period. Within the confines of a three-hour movie, the limitations of the character are more striking. She appears to exist only to convince Dr. Manhattan to return to Earth, and that scene is staged in such a way that it is robbed of all dramatic tension. Before the scene even starts, the clairvoyant Manhattan informs Spectre of her every motion and mood over the next few minutes. We know what's going to happen before it occurs, so even the performance of Ms. Ackerman's life could not infuse any tension into the moment. It's a stupid, backward way to write a scene, and speaks less of Ms. Ackerman's acting talents and more of how idiotic the idea of an omniscient, omnipresent, glowing-blue super-being is in a story which should have narrative drive and purpose. Billy Crudup and the fifty million dollars worth of special effects work surrounding him ruins any chance Ms. Ackerman has at an emotional payoff.
If I ever find myself in the hospital, laid up with some grievous injury, I would indeed like my nurse to look like Malin Ackerman. It would probably dull the pain and make my days in that building a bit more tolerable. But Mr. Roeper was incorrect when he suggested that as her new profession. What she needs is not a change in vocation, but rather a director who is interested in fostering her development and helping her towards a great performance. Ms. Ackerman's next project is The Bang-Bang Club, a potentially stellar film detailing the photographers who covered the last days of Apartheid-era South Africa. Under the stewardship of documentarian Steven Silver, who was behind the superlative Diameter of the Bomb, she will hopefully excel.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Mr. Unhipster and the Box Office.
When a film with such expectations as Watchmen opens in theaters, the talk the Monday following will invariably be over its box-office takings, and what they mean for the road ahead. The upshot of all of the marketing, the months of anticipation, the good reviews and the terrible ones, and all the various trappings of the buzz surrounding this film is that the opening was horrifically front-loaded. It made nearly half of all its weekend total on Friday; usually, an opening like that means no one was convinced by word of mouth or favorable impressions of the first audiences to experience the film. One only needs to look back to Friday the 13th's opening last month, where fully one-quarter of the box office total was made on the first day. Once the initial curiosity and novelty value was sated, the movie had no repeat business. This kind of early-run bulldozing might allow the production company to make back their budget, provided that the film was made on the cheap, but it's no way to run a railroad. Eventually there will be a movie that attracts zero customers, and the company will not have made enough money to cover the losses from their most recent disaster. One can always hope that ancillary markets, the DVD release and cable rights and such, but even these avenues suffer if your movie is a flop.
I had a professor in college, Prof. Jason Squire, who was the only man I've ever met who had literally "written the book" on any subject. His text, The Movie Business Book, is practically sacrosanct in the industry, outlining how to make money in a business that never seems to spend it twice as fast as it accumulates. His lectures were about the most fun I had in a classroom, and his demonstrations on accounting hypocrisy left me agog. It was here that I learned a movie which cost seventy million dollars, and make three hundred million, could still lose fifty million dollars. Of all the lessons learned in that class, there was one which became my rule of thumb for judging movie success: if your film's business declines by less than forty percent on its second weekend, then you may have a hit.
If I was still anywhere near campus, I would dash to his office hours to ask him about Taken. That movie is the real story of the weekend box office. Forget all about Watchmen, because its precipitous first-weekend decline and prohibitive rating and length point to a quick exit. Taken is busting every rule that a movie is supposed to obey when competing at the box office. It was held back from release until every other country in the world had a chance to view it. It was an action movie released on Super Bowl Weekend, a slot that means death for any male-driven piece. It's by an untested director, stars a well-respected character actor in a rare leading role, and is penned by two writers who have inconsistent resumes at best. By all rights this film should have opened poorly then disappeared, every fan of Luc Besson with a decent internet connection having pirated and watched it long ago. Everything about current box-office rules refuses to apply in this instance.
Taken paid for itself before it ever reached a United States audience, as box office showings in Europe were stronger than expected. There was no reason to give it a big push, hence the late-January dump. It's being handled by Fox, who are notorious for their inept marketing campaigns and need to interfere with every release, much to their detriment. Yet here we are, six weeks after the movie opened, trying to figure out how it placed third at the box office this weekend. The fabled forty-percent drop only occurred once, and that was in the fourth frame, where much of the movie-going public was concerned with Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail. The film has not registered more than a twenty-five percent drop during any other week-to-week period, a feat unheard of during this era of saturation releases and third-week theater jettisons.
Why did this happen? What is causing this movie to do so well? One could cite any number of factors: the lackluster economy driving people to the cheap entertainment of the theater in ever greater numbers, the lack of competition from other action pictures, the sudden appearance of a good thriller and the word-of-mouth that generates from it. The outcome, no matter the root cause, is that Fox has banked $120 million in domestic sales so far, and it has no direct competition until Fast and Furious opens next month. By that point Taken could well break past the sesquicentennial mark, a number that could utterly confound box-office prognosticators and studio accountants. If the majors want to stay in the black, and maybe generate enough money to live beyond the dreams of avarice, then they should be focusing their attentions on how to make more Takens, and fewer Watchmens.
I had a professor in college, Prof. Jason Squire, who was the only man I've ever met who had literally "written the book" on any subject. His text, The Movie Business Book, is practically sacrosanct in the industry, outlining how to make money in a business that never seems to spend it twice as fast as it accumulates. His lectures were about the most fun I had in a classroom, and his demonstrations on accounting hypocrisy left me agog. It was here that I learned a movie which cost seventy million dollars, and make three hundred million, could still lose fifty million dollars. Of all the lessons learned in that class, there was one which became my rule of thumb for judging movie success: if your film's business declines by less than forty percent on its second weekend, then you may have a hit.
If I was still anywhere near campus, I would dash to his office hours to ask him about Taken. That movie is the real story of the weekend box office. Forget all about Watchmen, because its precipitous first-weekend decline and prohibitive rating and length point to a quick exit. Taken is busting every rule that a movie is supposed to obey when competing at the box office. It was held back from release until every other country in the world had a chance to view it. It was an action movie released on Super Bowl Weekend, a slot that means death for any male-driven piece. It's by an untested director, stars a well-respected character actor in a rare leading role, and is penned by two writers who have inconsistent resumes at best. By all rights this film should have opened poorly then disappeared, every fan of Luc Besson with a decent internet connection having pirated and watched it long ago. Everything about current box-office rules refuses to apply in this instance.
Taken paid for itself before it ever reached a United States audience, as box office showings in Europe were stronger than expected. There was no reason to give it a big push, hence the late-January dump. It's being handled by Fox, who are notorious for their inept marketing campaigns and need to interfere with every release, much to their detriment. Yet here we are, six weeks after the movie opened, trying to figure out how it placed third at the box office this weekend. The fabled forty-percent drop only occurred once, and that was in the fourth frame, where much of the movie-going public was concerned with Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail. The film has not registered more than a twenty-five percent drop during any other week-to-week period, a feat unheard of during this era of saturation releases and third-week theater jettisons.
Why did this happen? What is causing this movie to do so well? One could cite any number of factors: the lackluster economy driving people to the cheap entertainment of the theater in ever greater numbers, the lack of competition from other action pictures, the sudden appearance of a good thriller and the word-of-mouth that generates from it. The outcome, no matter the root cause, is that Fox has banked $120 million in domestic sales so far, and it has no direct competition until Fast and Furious opens next month. By that point Taken could well break past the sesquicentennial mark, a number that could utterly confound box-office prognosticators and studio accountants. If the majors want to stay in the black, and maybe generate enough money to live beyond the dreams of avarice, then they should be focusing their attentions on how to make more Takens, and fewer Watchmens.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Advertising Horrors from the Present: March 3, 2009
Oh. My God.
I'm sure there has to be some kind of explanation for this image, which at first glance appears to be horrifically objectifying. Let's read directly from the ad copy, shall we?
Well Put Together! Kelly's got it all: a sculpted body, flawless skin and a flair for the FUNdamentals. Clearly, she was made to model.
Nope, this advert does not appear any better when investigated further. Never mind the atrocious message, because that should be self-evident. The additional crimes are committed against grammarians everywhere: the lack of an Oxford comma, misappropriation of pronouns, and the interior capitals which not only drive home an insipid point but also make one think that the writer has no understanding of the shift key. The whole thing is atrocious, so I leave you with this alternative phrasing:
Old Navy: Women are things! Ogle them!
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