My latest random connection is wacky, but it appears from a viral test currently making the rounds of Facebook that I’m almost entirely right-brained. I’m now allowed to be random and wacky with impunity. According to Sommer-Sommer.com I am congenitally creative, chaotic, intuitive, imaginative, curious, and fantastical. I would add tangential to that list of adjectives.
Where was I? Oh, right…
THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES | THE INDIA FILES
by James Killough
My Fellow Denizens of the Blogosphere —
Lest we ever give up, the Rigging Miss India post finally seems to be having some impact via an Indian beauty pageant forum called missology.org. It would appear that the pageant organizers themselves are commenting; there are some very well informed opinions floating around on that particular thread. For instance, someone mentions how the 1993 pageant didn’t have computer tabulations of the judges’ votes, despite the fact there were computers on site; they conveniently went down just before the show. I’ve heard that excuse before, with the exact word ‘tabulations’… when was that? Oh, right. When I hosted the 1993 Miss India Pageant.
Still one of the most beautiful women in the world, Aishwarya Rai was only the second runner-up in the Miss India Pageant the year after I hosted it. Why she wasn't the outright winner for the whole decade is another question for the Times of India. She laughed all the way to the bank with that L'Oréal contract, though.
Guys, as you well know, we were there for over four hours taping that show. There was plenty of time to count the votes of a few judges accurately by hand. Just as there was enough time for the judges to write me notes about who the real winners were. What you did was not only wrong, it was sloppy; I’m still carrying a grudge that I was sent out on that painted plywood peacock stage in front of a billion people without a rehearsal.
THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES | REVIEWS
by James Killough
I have a good friend who sits on the opposite end of the filmmaking process from me. I simmer up to my neck with scalding brimstone in the deepest malebolge of development hell, while he, as the owner of an entertainment advertising firm, strums a harp strung with cash in marketing heaven, where desperate studios heap clouds of money in an attempt to polish their turds and dupe the public. This sensible friend once observed, “Nobody ever sets out to make a shitty film.” And yet so many are made.
The Chemical Brothers and epileptic seizure-inducing lighting follow Hanna-as-Alice as she escapes to less-than-Wonderland.
With regard to Joe Wright’s Hanna, I wholeheartedly agree with Rex Reed’s review in the New York Observer. It’s a “pretentious mess,” which I suppose isn’t so surprising given who made it. I’ll add my own observations to Reed’s from a more technical point of view in a bit, but not without taking this occasion to name drop and somehow tie Hanna into my own experience.
TUTTLE MODE
by James Tuttle
Gentle reader,
In deference to our non-gay readers, I shall attempt to tread rather lightly here. Too much gay can be a frightening thing, especially in the wrong hands. If you don’t believe me, just read Perez Hilton.
Here’s where I’m going with this. We’re all fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race, right? I mean, what could be more stimulating than a weekly talent competition in which a six-foot-four vision of black cross-dressing glamour purrs “Con-drag-ulations, you are the winner of this week’s challenge” and “Now it is time for you to lip-sync for your LIFE!” before kicking a failed drag queen back into the gutter? What’s not to love?
If you think getting dressed is a chore, imagine waking up a tall, bald, skinny man and turning yourself into this every day.
The producers really have kicked it up a notch this season with the quality of the contestants and the production itself. After the mostly fat “performance art” queens got booted off in the early stages, the remaining queens are mostly quite beautiful, and they’re pretty damned skilled at padding those hips, tucking that junk, and making those racks look squeezable.
The guest judges are pretty sensational this season, as well. This week, they included Sharon Osborne and comedienne Margaret Cho. The absence of my friend, fashion journalist Merle Ginsberg, does leave quite a gaping hole on this season’s panel, though. There’s still a jar of Vaseline smeared on the lens every time RuPaul is in the shot but that’s part of the charm. All divas need to manage their on-camera image. A friend who worked with Faye Dunaway told me that she would put cans of Sterno beneath the lens so the fumes blur the shot.