Rihanna isn't the only one getting a side shave. Watch Ai Weiwei give a haircut (ok, maybe it's more of a bowl cut than a side shave) last week to blogger Anthony Tao of the website Beijing Cream. It was filmed at Fodder Factory restaurant, also in Beijing, while the famed Spanish chef José Andrés talks excitedly about lobster and while an instrumental version of Hotel California plays in the background. It's weird and wonderful! Apparently AI gives many such haircuts, for reasons we're not clear on...
It's not all the Chinese artist and dissident has been up to. He recently revealed plans to record a rock album with his friend, the singer and guitarist Zuoxiao Zuzhou, inspired by the 81-day incarceration in a Chinese prison that shot him to international fame. During that time, he says, his guards would request that he sing songs to them, but he "felt so sad I couldn't sing any except the revolutionary ones we had to learn when we were growing up. After I came out, I realized I had never really listened to music or sung, so I decided to make an album. I know so many artists and musicians and they were really supportive." One of those supportive musicians was Elton John, who's agreed to advise him on the project. That'll be interesting!
Get ready for some Audrey Tautou adorableness, like it's the 90s all over again. The Wes Anderson of French cinema, director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep) has correctly cast her in his fanciful new flick, Mood Indigo, about a fetching, carefree woman with a big heart who meets and dates the perfect man. They do cute things like ride around on fluffy white clouds until things turn sour, when a blot on her lung turns out to be a flower (a water lily, if you must know) and she becomes gravely ill. Based on the 1947 book Froth on the Daydream, by Boris Vian, it's the latest example of Gondry's insistence on punishing people who have it all.
After screening his documentary The Director at the Tribeca Film Festival, James Franco has released the trailer online. The full-length feature, filmed over 18 months, is "an intimate portrait of Gucci's Creative Director, Frida Giannini, exploring the intricacies and inspiration behind the quietly brilliant power woman, whose own evolution as the creative force behind the brand is as nuanced as that of the storied fashion house itself."
It appears the doc, which comes out later this year, is mostly a bunch of footage from Gucci collections — and from Franco's own fittings at the house. Did you forget he models the men's campaigns? After the Oscars and Oz, this would be the least of his missed opportunities.
Watch Shiseido's latest animated video, She Say Do, in which a woman—possibly Asian, possibly Western, possibly both—wakes up and appears to be stuck inside various Shiseido boxes. She searches for a way out, eventually turning into an Amazon-like robot warrior with a giant mascara brush for a weapon. Such is the transformative power of Shiseido, which celebrates its 140th anniversary this year...
It's a little cringe-y. But Shakespeare's story of Romeo & Juliet is, by its very nature, a little cringe-y. And that's what makes it a classic, lending its timeless, love-conquers-all message to raconteurs through the ages. In the current age, the prevailing style is vampiric, brooding, and melodramatic, so we're treated to the look and feel of Twilight. (Plus, it was adapted for the screen by Julian Fellowes, the less-than-subtle creator of Downton Abbey.) But Hailee Steinfeld is a vision as Juliet, and Douglas Booth as Romeo ain't too shabby either. Ed Westwick is also in there, apparently...
If you were Shane, a fresh-faced teenage boy from Des Moines, Iowa, slopping spaghetti in a strange house full of shirtless people just like you, what would you say to Marc Jacobs' character when he asks if you want to make money from "jerking off," with the one rule that you have to trust him? That's the pivotal scene in the smut thriller Disconnect (in theaters Friday), in which the designer plays a kind of male madam, making money off of yet protecting young runaways, that also stars Jason Bateman, Alexander Skarsgard, and Hope Davis...
The trailer for the world's most improbable movie, Behind the Candelabra, has finally come out. Not improbable for the subject matter—the flamboyant, leisure-suited piano virtuoso Liberace, no less deserving of a Steven Soderbergh-helmed biopic due to his haute-camp piles of jewels and furs—but for the casting. In the HBO film, Michael Douglas is the misunderstood maestro with a gravely, somewhat bawdy voice like Harvey Fierstein's, while Matt Damon plays the much younger lover, Scott Thorson, the former chauffeur on whose tell-all book the film is based. The two had a tempestuous five-year relationship beginning in the 70s, although Liberace never publicly admitted he was gay. Here's more casting genius: Debbie Reynolds, Dan Aykroyd, and Rob Lowe, whose phenomenal feathered hair deserves its own Golden Globe. From the looks of it, this is what Liz & Dick should have been.
She's back! That sizzling old trailer with Chloe Grace Moretz as Carrie, in the frightening remake by Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry), has been updated. Now we have a good two minutes of the full-on, blood-curdling, redheaded rage about to hit theaters.
It's quite the challenge to improve on the horror classic by Brian de Palma, adapted from the novel by Stephen King, but if anyone can pull off the telekinetic high schooler, it's little Chloe — reprising, in a way, her role as Jack's demonic nemesis in 30 Rock. And if anyone can swing the role of the overprotective, religious nut of a mom, it's Julianne Moore.
Whoever has a case of pyrophobia (or erythrophobia) shouldn't probably not see this movie...
With much fanfare and a 15-second TV spot during SNL, Daft Punk's new album, Random Access Memories, is slowly but surely making its way to your iTunes. While you wait (until May 21, ugh!), why not watch the famed Italo-disco producer Giorgio Moroder discuss his groundbreaking work with Donna Summer, his thoughts on the greatness of Daft Punk, and why the world needs more dance songs. The "Collaborators" video series is an ongoing project in the run-up to the album release. Now we know why, in October, Giorgio Moroder suddenly took to SoundCloud with gusto...
