strange
09/07/2007
Jennifer Lopez, "Do It Well"
Jennifer Lopez's "Do It Well," the first single from the new album Brave, is a funky celebration of bringing hotness and commitment together. The video, on the other hand... You know how sometimes you see a video, and you think, "Damn, that is the perfect depiction of everything that song is about," and then the song and the video really resonate with you for a long time? Yeah. This isn't one of those times.
So Jennifer Lopez is this badass beyotch in a supersexy trench coat, and she gets this message that she needs to help the world's youngest fry cook get to Union Street. So she goes to a club where they have strippers in Habitrails, pushes a guy down the stairs, gets another guy in a chokehold, has a dance break, shoves and punches eight or nine more guys, has another dance break, passes a dude in a mousetrap, has another dance break, saves the little fry cook, kicks one last guy down the stairs, and leaves. Presumably for Union Street.
Feel the heat. Feel the love. Feel the inimitable, "Look, Ma, I'm directing" style of the famously edgy David LaChapelle. Feel the need to wonder aloud, "The hell?"
08/20/2007
Bearforce1: The World's First Bear Band
Because Manband wasn't manly enough, the four gentlemen of Bearforce1 ("the first real 'bearband' of the world") are here, rocking some very tight polo shirts as they riff off established club favorites like "I Feel Love" and "You Spin Me Right Round."
"Viewers of a weak disposition might want to turn away now," warns the opening narration, but you won't see anything in this video that you wouldn't see walking through West Hollywood on a weekday night. Okay, a Friday night. Maybe.
06/08/2007
Arctic Monkeys, "Fluorescent Adolescent"
While I don't know if this video is, as guitarist Jamie Cook claimed in an MTV interview, "one of the best videos in, like, the last ten years," it is a lot of fun. Plus, unlike a hell of a lot of videos hitting the streets lately, it actually seems to have something to do with the song.
Sure, on the surface, it may just look like the madcap mayhem of a bunch of vigilante clowns. But much like the way the song's jaunty beat and clever, rapid-fire lyrics slowly reveal the lament of a faded party girl, at its heart this video is lamenting lost innocence. It just happens to achieve that by featuring Snatch's Stephen Graham as an angry clown haunted by his past as he confronts a childhood friend gone bad.
Plus, clowns beating up bank robbers! Who doesn't enjoy that?
