What a world we live in to spend so much time and energy focused on some old scandal-prone slag with fascist tendencies.
I'm of course talking about Bessie Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson Windsor, the subject of Madonna's new movie, W.E. Honest.
The week's best headline (so far) comes to us in French from the online daily news site, Cyberpresse.ca, based in Montréal.
I translate the headline, "Madonna cinéaste? Hélas, pas encore . . ." in two ways:
"Madonna a filmmaker? Alas, not yet . . ."
Or my preferred version, "Madonna a filmmaker? Good grief, not again . . . ."
I suspect the former is more accurate, but the latter is more fun to read--and closer to world opinion, I would imagine.
I won't translate the entire article--we'd be here all day and then some--but in the second paragraph, the author remarks on the "obstinancy with which Madonna applies herself to cinema to be both touching and troubling."
Or possibly just really, really tiresome.
* * *
I've just finished a biography of the famed French composer of popular song (and all-around provocateur), Serge Gainsbourg (Serge Gainsbourg: A Fistful of Gitanes by Sylvie Simmons), in which the author contemplates Serge's possible frustration with his creative, uh, oeuvre. Monsieur Gainsbourg successfully composed musically and lyrically innovative, clever, and appealing popular songs for himself and many others and was always striving for new sounds, expanding the bounds of language, and challenging himself and others with his work.
And yet . . . he also attempted to write, paint, photograph, make commercials (!), and make films, with varying degrees of success, all perhaps as a way to be seen as more "serious." Simmons speculates that Gainsbourg did so because he didn't fully appreciate his songwriting, because composing came so easily to him and because he was writing pop songs, not heavy, more "consequential" works.
The author of the Cyberpresse article makes some of the same points about Madonna, that her filmmaking is a way to be taken seriously, when, in fact, she's already very good at what she does.
If history serves as a guide, I don't think any of the critics--or me--are bound to change Madonna's mind, that's for sure. If the critical or popular reaction to Swept Away, The Next Best Thing, Body of Evidence, or Shanghai Surprise didn't do it, clearly nothing will.
I'm of course talking about Bessie Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson Windsor, the subject of Madonna's new movie, W.E. Honest.
The week's best headline (so far) comes to us in French from the online daily news site, Cyberpresse.ca, based in Montréal.
"Madonna a filmmaker? Alas, not yet . . ."
Or my preferred version, "Madonna a filmmaker? Good grief, not again . . . ."
I suspect the former is more accurate, but the latter is more fun to read--and closer to world opinion, I would imagine.
I won't translate the entire article--we'd be here all day and then some--but in the second paragraph, the author remarks on the "obstinancy with which Madonna applies herself to cinema to be both touching and troubling."
Or possibly just really, really tiresome.
* * *
I've just finished a biography of the famed French composer of popular song (and all-around provocateur), Serge Gainsbourg (Serge Gainsbourg: A Fistful of Gitanes by Sylvie Simmons), in which the author contemplates Serge's possible frustration with his creative, uh, oeuvre. Monsieur Gainsbourg successfully composed musically and lyrically innovative, clever, and appealing popular songs for himself and many others and was always striving for new sounds, expanding the bounds of language, and challenging himself and others with his work.
And yet . . . he also attempted to write, paint, photograph, make commercials (!), and make films, with varying degrees of success, all perhaps as a way to be seen as more "serious." Simmons speculates that Gainsbourg did so because he didn't fully appreciate his songwriting, because composing came so easily to him and because he was writing pop songs, not heavy, more "consequential" works.
The author of the Cyberpresse article makes some of the same points about Madonna, that her filmmaking is a way to be taken seriously, when, in fact, she's already very good at what she does.
If history serves as a guide, I don't think any of the critics--or me--are bound to change Madonna's mind, that's for sure. If the critical or popular reaction to Swept Away, The Next Best Thing, Body of Evidence, or Shanghai Surprise didn't do it, clearly nothing will.
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