Nicki Minaj’s new video for “Starships” does not disappoint ya’ll. Everyone should watch this. Not only does it feature her most important asset quite prominently (you know what we are talking about) it also looks like everyone is having a good time filming this music video (rave).
“Starships” can’t really make up its mind on where it’s going, so it’s a little hard to describe the concept when it seems to change every thirty seconds. Here are some words that we thought described the video: TROPICAL, SPACE, RAVE, DANCE, BOWLER HAT, KALEIDOSCOPE. Right? None of this makes sense. But in Nicki’s world, it does.
Oh Nicki. Here are some of the most notable moments:
1.) Tribal dancers in red bowler hats. Clearly the highlight.
2.) The spaceship, no wait, STARSHIP opening. Nicki Minaj is indeed from outer space and made of stardust. We get to watch her get beamed down.
3.) The number of bikinis Nicki seems to have in this video. We counted at least 4. She was also a little uncomfortable in one of them–note in the white one towards the end that she keeps trying to hold it in place.
4.) KALEIDOSCOPE. KALEIDOSCOPE NICKI. It’s actually really strange but we couldn’t stop watching? It makes you imagine what the world would be like with 12 Nickis instead of just one.
5.) Nicki’s hair: so many colors.
While “Starships” is definitely not our favorite Nicki song ever, the video’s entertaining. We’re relieved that Nicki decided to just throw a party instead of trying to make the song deeper than it is. Nicki: embrace the shallow. It’s why we love you!
So for all you students out there – finals is already or soon will be upon you. Unfortunately, we have already started ours. Like most people during finals, we only do one thing: WATCH YOUTUBE. Studying is for people who like… want to go to grad school or med school or something. We are not burdened by those concerns, and so instead we watch YouTube as we attempt to get ready for our tests and papers. Unfortunately, like everyone else, we have way too much to do.
Navigating the world of YouTube videos is a seriously emotional journey for us. There are so many happy videos out there (i.e. “Call Me Maybe) and hilarious ones (ie. Drunk History). YouTube is normally a pick-me-up for us. But during finals, we just start crying at videos. Like, sometimes not even ones that it makes sense to do so with? You know what we’re saying. One minute you’re a normal person watching a video, the next minute you’re that cray crying in the library. Below we have listed our top three videos that have been making us cry during this finals period… so if you just need to let it out, now you know where to go.
Number 1: Kelly Clarkson Winning American Idol: “A Moment Like This”
Grantland reminded us of the existence of this video yesterday, and we watched it and IT WAS A MISTAKE. Kelly is so young and so excited to be winning and everything is so emotional and we went on a really intense journey with her and WE’RE CRYING. They keep showing shots of her mom (like all of America, we love Kelly Clarkson’s mom for no apparent reason)! Also her hair has those super weird blonde highlights. We all make poor choices sometimes.
Number 2: Miranda Lambert’s “The House that Built Me”
Oh my God. This song. Just hearing it makes us cry usually, but during finals all we want to do is go home. We are so close, and Miranda keeps singing about it and making us all sad! It has all these cutesy home video looking shots of baby Miranda (unclear if they are actually hers or filmed specifically for this video). Baby Miranda (even a possible fake one) makes us weepy.
Number 3: BYU It Gets Better
Okay if you do not cry at this one you actually have no soul. LGBT students at Brigham Young University are talking about their experiences and if you know anything about BYU and Mormonism’s history with LGBT people, it makes sense that all of these people have had really difficult experiences. We LOST IT when Mark (?) started talking about his sister. They are so inspirational and genuinely so optimistic about their futures as gay Mormons and it makes us cry and then remember that actually the 40 pages of writing we still have to produce in the next week is not that big of a problem.
In sum, now you know what we’ve been up to lately… crying everywhere. It’s okay. We understand. It’s all going to be over soon. Until then, Kelly, Miranda, and the BYU LGBT students are there for all of us.
As much as we personally love rap and respect it as an art form, it remains unfortunately all too true that hip-hop is still not considered “real” art a lot of the time… and by a large number of people, mostly white. Much of the time, rap is placed in this racialized ghetto away from what music’s establishment considers “real.”
Ice-T is actively trying to change this perception this summer with the movie he’s directing, Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap. He’s managed to get many of the most important and most prominent rappers alive today to collaborate with him on this movie, explaining their own processes and the importance of what they do. AND IT LOOKS AMAZING! Here’s the trailer:
“Dignity behind that rhyme” is probably the best quote from this trailer that sums up why we want to watch it. This film focuses on the artists themselves (basically every rapper ever) and it gives them a chance to really open up and explain their art. Hip-hop is an extremely important movement and has been for decades. This is legitimately one of the movies we are most looking forward to seeing this summer. While we may spend hours at a time looking up hip-hop music videos and artist interviews, we realize that not everyone else does. Ice-T has taken the time to piece together an amazing film that synthesizes the story of hip-hop, from its conception to its current status in popular culture today.
As the quote featured on the poster from Grandmaster Chaz says, “Hip-hop didn’t invent anything. Hip-hop re-invented everything.” This is so true–the number of things that hip-hop as a cultural movement had a major influence on is absolutely incredible, and our cultural landscape today would be unimaginable without it. Seeing the thoughts of the people involved in creating this huge movement is so important and we are so glad that Ice-T has put this together!
Also Snoop Dogg = Tae Kwon Do. We love him. Seriously. And we can’t wait for this movie.
The first footage of the most anticipated movie of the summer is finally here. No, not The Dark Knight Rises, you fools. Magic Mike!!!In case for some reason you have not been following developments in this movie as closely as we have, Magic Mike is the movie coming out this summer based on Channing Tatum’s actual past as a male stripper. He helped write the movie, and will play the male stripper mentor to the character based on himself, played by Alex Pettyfer. Also naturally Matthew McConaughey is in this movie, because he loves being shirtless/naked far too much to let an opportunity like this pass him by. And for True Blood fans out there, we must not forget Joe Manganiello (a.k.a. Alcide – the guy Sookie should be dating) who plays the best-named character ever: “Big Dick Richie.” We are not making this up.
So the full trailer is debuting tonight, but in the meantime, the teaser footage has been posted online. YES. Some notable moments in this teaser footage:
1.) Channing Tatum is now just “Channing.” No last name necessary.
2.) The part at 0:23 where we see Alcide flip around a very lucky audience member… and then maybe pull his back? Don’t get injured, guys! We’re just getting started!
3.) Opening line: “Ladies start your engines.” Actually in general the narrator voice over was our favorite.
4.) Channing: “You don’t want to know what I have to do for twenties.” Hahahaha also yes we do.
5.) Solidly half of this footage is Channing Tatum shirtless, and some of it involves him dancing as well. We approve. One of the biggest problem The Vow and 21 Jump Street faced was a lack of shirtless, dancing Channing.
In short, this movie looks to be incredible. We don’t understand why there aren’t more male stripper movies already out there, and fortunately Magic Mike is stepping up to fill that sad, sad gap… thank goodness. We can’t wait for opening day!
Oh Yeezy. How we love you. For those of you who have somehow missed it, Kanye’s new song “Theraflu” was leaked to all of his adoring fans (and haters) on the internet. While some people may think that this song is egotistical and arrogant, we have to respect Kanye for just being himself. He may be a bit of a cray, but he doesn’t try to be anything else in this song – which is exactly what we like about Kanye. And after all, aren’t all geniuses a little bit insane?
Make sure to listen to this song – at the moment we only have the YouTube audio version for you to watch. (Though we seriously cannot wait for a music video!) We like the way YouTube member syrupticious did the lyrics. And his/her sense of humor. And his/her name.
Doesn’t that just remind you why you love Kanye??? Doesn’t it just encapsulate all of his crazy awesome genius self in those lyrics???? For those of you too blown away by the epic-ness of the song, we went ahead and compiled the reasons why this songs represents everything that is amazing about Kanye.
Allusions to other artists: At the beginning “Funkmaster Flex night” is a reference to the DJ/hip hop producer by the same name. Kanye is known to sample from a lot of different artists in his records. Also, we would like to think that “Uhh, can the headphones go louder?” is a tribute to his mentor, Jay-Z. At the beginning of “Dirt Off Your Shoulders” Jay-Z says “Turn the music up in the headphones” in a similar way – it serves to kind of pick up and really start the song. These two have been known to allude to each other’s past work in their songs. Despite Kanye’s love for himself, he still recognizes other people and can stay (sort of) humble.
Suck it PETA!: Kanye’s chorus is just too good. “Can’t a young ni**a get money anymore? / Tell PETA my mink is draggin’ on the floor / Can I have a bad bitch wit’out no flaws / Come to meet me wit’out no drawers?” Basically, what we learn about here is #kanyeproblems. Doesn’t it just suck when you get your mink all dirty from it dragging on the floor? And, seriously, why can’t perfect women just show up to your house with no drawers? WHAT HAS THE WORLD COME TO WHEN KANYE DOES NOT HAVE AN UNLIMITED SUPPLY OF BEAUTIFUL WOMEN AND MINK?
The Deets on His Personal Life: OMG. At 1:31, he just admitted that he is in love with Kim Kardashian! Like whaaaatt? After all of this speculation in tabloids he just comes out and says it in a song. Not to mention his shout out to Wiz, a.k.a. Wiz Khalifa, a.k.a. the guy who is dating Kanye’s ex Amber Rose. And then the part where he thought about asking Jay-Z to drop Chris Humphries from the Nets!! This song is better than TMZ.
The Longest Shout-Out to Chicago Ever: So for like the last minute of the song there are all these shout-outs to Chicago. Like a lot of shout-outs to Chicago. We maybe stopped listening after 30 seconds of them.
So Yeezy, thank you for this song. Thank you for reminding us with your clever lyrics and badass beat of all the reasons that we love you. Keep making songs like this because we will buy all of them. And to all you Kanye-haters out there, we just have to quote Kanye on this one at 0:55, “So whoever think they words affect me is too stupid / And if you could do it better then you do it.”
Ladies and gentlemen – “HYFR” is officially the best Bar Mitzvah-themed rap music video OF ALL TIME. Admittedly this is a title with limited competition, but it is just… so good. Not only is this actually a pretty good song, but the music video shows us another side of Drake! The baby Drake at a (his?) Bar Mitzvah dancing!!!!! So presh. This video is based around Drake getting re-Bar Mitzvah’ed last year, which is really all you need to know… the song is clearly seconday here. Words can’t really describe the awesomeness of this video… just watch it.
Best Parts:
1.) BABY DRAKE DANCING. We cannot emphasize enough how cute this is. It comes at the very beginning and says “Mazel tov,” and it is adorable.
2.) Drake’s face during the hora. As they lift him up in the chair, he has an expression of pure delight, and it is probably the happiest we have ever seen Drake.
3.) The line, “All my exes live in Texas, like I am George Strait.” This song and music video is an unusual combination of unexpected things. But, we have to admit that hearing George Strait’s name thrown out in a rap song tops the list of WTF allusions.
4.) Drake’s crew of white Jewish guys in this video. Hilarious. They mostly just stand around, although one does reveal a tank with Stars of David on it.
5.) L’il Wayne!!!! In a PANDA MASK! Oh how we’ve missed you.
6.) The old white guy doing the air guitar and making out with a chick on the dance floor… so random, and so unlike any bar mitzvah we attended.
7.) THE CAKE. At around 1:25, the most amazing re-Bar Mitzvah cake ever created emerges.
8.) Please note that on the refreshment table at 1:57 is AN ENTIRE PLATTER OF BAGELS. We don’t really have anything to say about this, it’s just hilarious. Hooray stereotypes!
This video legit made our week. “HYFR” is okay as a song, but with the video it is a work of art. Drake, make all of your videos like this, please. Also please invite us to your next re-Bar Mitzvah, because it looks super fun!
Saturday Night Live, while an American institution, is admittedly something of a hit-or-miss proposition. As we saw with LiLo’s disastrous attempt, sometimes SNL just doesn’t know what to do with its hosts. Sometimes the musical guests… are Lana Del Rey.But sometimes, everything comes together and SNL creates a solid show that really brings the laughs and has a fabulous musical guest. This happened last night, with Sofia Vergara and One Direction! We’re not doing a full post on it, but here are some of the things that made last night’s show great.
“Hunger Games Reporter” was absolutely hilarious. Spot-on imitations of everyone in the movie, while adding an element to The Hunger Games that made it a fabulous parody as well. Also Sofia Vergara was at her best! She did not seem self conscious or nervous at all – she just embraced being absolutely ridiculous in this sketch and it was AWESOME!
“Watch What Happens Live” was probably our favorite skit of the night. As established with his Robyn “Call Your Girlfriend” video tribute, Taran Killam is our favorite featured player on SNL and someone who needs to be moved up to a full member ASAP. He did a hysterical Andy Cohen impression, and in general SNL is always on point when making fun of Bravo. “Watch What Happens Live” was basically made to be parodied on SNL and we were glad that the task fell to Taran Killam!ONE DIRECTION!
To top it all off, One Direction (a.k.a. proof that Simon Cowell is a genius) appeared!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As the exclamation marks imply, we have totally fallen in love with this British boy band! Their outfits, their accents, and their cute boy-band-chemistry make them basically the greatest new band this year, and we were so excited that SNL booked them! They sounded good live, and as always were completely adorable. We just love everything about them! More of this please, SNL.Overall, we laughed more than we cringed while watching this episode of SNL. The writers churned out solid stuff, and they were lucky to have a host who was willing to be as crazy-ridiculous as Sofia Vergara was! This episode reminded us that while SNL may have its ups and downs, the potential for greatness is always there… and that’s what keeps us coming back every time.
Katy Perry releases crazy music videos. This is undeniable. We’re talking about a girl who has had both icing and fireworks shooting out of her boobs in previous videos. For her first post-Russell Brand breakup video release, though, Katy is going in a very different direction… and joining the Marines. No, we’re not kidding.
First of all, there’s a weird 40-second set up before the music actually starts, which relies entirely on Katy Perry’s acting skills (questionable in the best of times) to convince us that she’s heartbroken because her boyfriend kissed another girl at work while she was in her car spying on him in the parking lot. What? So she’s clearly already a little mentally unstable. Once she throws a locket or something at him, the music finally starts and we get into gear.
Katy decides to stop at a gas station for a drink after (breakups make you thirsty? We don’t know), where she sees an ad for the Marines on a bulletin board in the gas station. Actually, it’s not even an ad–basically someone pinned up a bumper sticker saying, “All women are created equal, then some become Marines.” This bumper sticker somehow convinces Katy Perry that the only way she will get over her breakup is by joining the Marines… and the video starts getting even weirder.
In order to join the Marines, Katy goes into a gas station bathroom and cuts off all of her hair, binds down her breasts, and changes out of her cute outfit into a hoodie and pants. This is seriously the most inexplicable part. First of all, they don’t force female Marines to cut their hair, and we’re pretty sure she could have just worn a sports bra instead of binding–which is super painful! Anyway, once she has physically transformed herself Katy is magically, instantly a Marine-in-training.
This is when we start to become kind of uncomfortable with the video. There are tons of shots of different kinds of Marine training, while Katy continues to sing, “This is the part of me that you’re never gonna ever take away from me.” So… the Marines is the part you’ll never take away? “You’re not gonna break my soul!” Katy keeps telling us, and we are confused as to whether she means the guy she broke up with or the Marines. Basically at this point we have stopped watching a Katy Perry video and are straight-up watching an ad for the Marines.
Best part: Katy sings (you don’t see her actually singing for most of the video, but here she is) “look at me I’m sparkling” while in Marine fatigues and carrying a gun. We laughed out loud. Her sparkling must have been figurative.
Then Katy stops being a regular Marine and gets to twirl around under a GIANT American flag that all of the other Marines are holding up for her. Girl. Marines are not twirlers. Get it together.
Overall this video was way less fun than we expect from a Katy Perry video. If the Marines didn’t pay her to do this advertisement for them, they completely should have. We just want fun Katy back!
So, as we mentioned before, we love Taylor Kitsch from “Friday Night Lights”. We also love Dominic West from “The Wire”. And since they were both in the we-hoped-this-was-going-to-be-a-blockbuster-but-it-failed-epically movie John Carter, we were pretty much morally obligated to see it.
Guys. We saw it. But we don’t recommend that you do. This movie had such potential to be good and then… it just wasn’t. For every good CGI moment there was a piece of bad dialogue or an awkward scene. And for every good actor that somehow ended up in this movie, there were like 12 green aliens running around with horns. What went wrong with this movie exactly? So many things. But we’re trying to keep the list short for you.
Things that went wrong:
We had to pay $14 to see this movie in 3D. FOURTEEN DOLLARS PEOPLE.
Taylor Kitsch’s beard for the first 20 minutes of the movie. We barely recognized him.
The dialogue was so weird. And uncomfortable. We laughed (or cringed) at seriously every other word.
John Carter jumping. Um… cool we guess? We were mystified that people were so universally impressed by this skill. Also why could no one else do this? It seemed like it would be more due to different gravity than to anything that John Carter was actually able to do on his own…
This movie was over 2 hours long. And it felt like it was even longer.
Why so many green people? And why are they so mean to each other?
Since we were so bored with what was happening on the screen, we started pondering questions of how Barsoom (it’s Mars’s secret name, guys, obvs) worked. Like, how were all of these creatures–including John Carter–surviving without any visible source of water? Why were there so many different sentient species, and why were they not fighting amongst each other?
So many plot holes. There were many points in the movie where at least one of us genuinely had no idea what was even going on. And we were very shaky on characters’ names in general.
Basically we didn’t care about any of the characters, sort of including John Carter. While we love Taylor Kitsch, and he did the best he could with the material, the only characters we were actually invested in were CGI: Woola and Zola. This is not a good thing. We should have cared about the people in it, but we kept forgetting the name of the chick he was falling in love with.
The ending. It was seriously ridiculous. We thought (hoped) that it was finally over, and then it just kept on going. For seriously at least 20 minutes longer than it needed to.
Why was Woola not the main character? Seriously, one of the main problems of John Carter was an insufficient amount of Woola. LOOK AT HIM! Who wouldn’t want a pet Woola??
In sum, this movie is not worth your fourteen dollars (we’re still bitter). Rent it when it comes out maybe – you and your friends can talk through the whole thing and laugh at all the bad parts. You can take comfort in the fact that you only paid $1 for it at a Redbox. Beyond that, we don’t particularly recommend it.
