Lourdes plays Betty Rizzo.
She is giving me Madonna circa 1991 Truth or Dare premiere vibes.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Truth or Dare: How Madonna's Documentary Changed the Next 20 Years
"There's nothing to say off camera," goes Warren Beatty's famous roast of Madonna in the 1991 documentary Truth or Dare. "Why would you say something if it's off camera? What point is there existing?"
He's mocking Madonna, his then-girlfriend, and the "insane" atmosphere her film crew added backstage during her 1990 Blonde Ambition Tour. The apparent generational divide in the exchange between the Hollywood legend and the savvy media manipulator has only amplified in the time since the movie's release. What once seemed like a fair point seems terribly quaint in these heavily documented times: who among us doesn't want to live off camera? Or, at the very least, who would be surprised to find out that someone you know doesn't?
Madonna has rarely had her finger directly on the pulse—it took her years to dabble in electronica and new jack swing and French house—but over 20 years after its release, Truth or Dare is relevant as ever. (It's out on Blu-ray for the first time today.) It's as close to a memoir as Madonna has ever gotten, and it's brilliantly fitting that the music video master stuck with the trusted audio-visual format that catapulted her to success. Why write when you can be? Madonna's life banged the dust out of vérité entertainment, suggesting the documentary didn't have to be stuffy, that it could be wildly entertaining and overwhelmingly trashy. Echoes of it are apparent in reality TV today, particularly that which focuses on stars (if Truth or Dare was the slightly sinister but mostly good-humored Mondo Cane of celebrity portraits, Being Bobby Brown was Faces of Death).
The film reflected our intensifying fascination with all facets of celebrity life. We see Madonna repeatedly flanked with cameras, we see throngs waiting for her outside of Chanel, we hear rabid fans on the ground from her hotel room. Madonna told Good Morning America that with Truth or Dare, she aimed "to explode the myth that we raise up on a pedestal people we turn into icons. We make them inhuman and we don't give them human attributes so they're not allowed to fail, they're not allowed to make mistakes." Not every star today cosigns on this level of invasion, but those who do (Dina Lohan, Paris Hilton) often talk about reclaiming their public image from the public, echoing Madonna.
A collection of human attributes and mistakes, Truth or Dare predicted the real-women-being-real-bad subgenre of reality TV. Throughout the movie, Madonna acts like a monster. She laughs when she finds out her makeup artist was raped and then explains, "All I can think of is that she started talking about how she's on tour with me, she's staying at the Ritz Carlton and those guys got it in their mind they were going to fuck with her." She tells those who appear with her onstage how much she loves them to their faces and then talks behind their backs about how her backup singers annoy her and hanging out with her dancers gets boring. She mocks Kevin Costner (who to be fair is sporting stringy hair, shoulder pads and a mock turtleneck) for calling her show, "Neat," as soon as his back his turned. She throws unexplained shade at Belinda Carlisle, Janet Jackson and, most confusingly, Oprah (Chicago's conservatism is a reason "to not wanna live in Chicago — beside for the fact that Oprah Winfrey lives here"). She laments Antonio Banderas' marriage in front of his wife. She throws tantrums and is oblivious to the manipulation of her manager, who calms her down with flattery.
It's all deliciously cringey, a train wreck before Madonna's popularity began to wane (in fact, Truth or Dare inadvertently captured her at peak popularity). It's also brave, and not just for Madonna's willingness to show her ass (watching, you wonder if even upon review she realized what a nightmare she was being, or if she thought her whole display was cute and worth sharing). No, it's brave most notably for its portrayal of homosexuality. Madonna's more than happy to use her dancers' culture (minus Oliver, who claimed he was straight) to shock, as a close-up on two dudes kissing was most certainly tailored to be, but Truth or Dare more often is often more blunt than that. Talented, funny, rivetingly bitchy gay dudes are allowed to exist as themselves in a vehicle that had built-in attention. "If you keep putting something in somebody's face, eventually, maybe they can come to terms with it," is how the woman who got Stephanie Tanner to vogue explained her commitment to the cause of gay acceptance to Good Morning America. (Given the switching back and forth from grainy black and white to exploding color onstage, the whole thing has a gay-coded Wizard of Ozfeel while explaining that Madonna's trips to fantasyland are a nightly occurrence.)
Truth or Dare is sometimes infuriating (a mid-tour switch from long ponytail to tight curls breaks up the continuity of the film as it switches from live to backstage footage and is never explained), but it's rarely less than fantastically entertaining. For as indicative as it was of where things in pop culture were headed, it's also a relic of a time before grueling media training, when pop stars didn't hang on the approval of their publicists before talking. It's bold and mouthy and exhilaratingly misguided. Just a few years later, Madonna's boundary pushing would eventually cost her fans, as the relatively low sales ofErotica reflected. Madonna talked out of both sides of her mouth when discussing the film with MTV's Kurt Loder, calling it "totally honest," and then explaining, "Even a lie is telling."
In Truth or Dare, Madonna offered a version of herself and, in a way that would incite furious recapping were it released 20 years later, let us determine what it meant. The result was more dare than truth, just as we like it.
Madonna Joins Campaign to Support Russian LGBT Community Read more at
MOSCOW – Madonna has signed up for a campaign in support of Russia’s LGBT community.The U.S. singer, who has repeatedly expressed her outrage against the law on gay propaganda, has joined the Human Rights Campaign’s "Love Conquers Hate" initiative. As the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics approaches, more and more Western celebrities are worried that the law, adopted first in St. Petersburg and later nationwide, could be used as a means to crack down on the local LGBT community.
"Even with the 2014 Sochi Olympics just a few months away, fair-minded Russians are facing fines, harassment and violence at the hand of thugs," Madonna said on the campaign’s website. "At this dangerous moment in Russian history, we, as advocates, have a responsibility to speak up and take our hopeful message global."
She continued: "Together, we can send a message to LGBT Russians that the world is on their side, and that those who seek to support them aren’t alone in this fundamental fight for fairness."
Russian LGBT rights organizations have welcomed Madonna’s move. "It is very important that celebrities like Madonna or Lady Gaga join initiatives of that kind,” Maria Kozlovskaya, a lawyer for the Russian LGBT Network, a national organization with a headquarters in St Petersburg, told the The Hollywood Reporter.
"That inspires the LGBT community members to further fight for their rights and gives them hope for improvement of their situation," she added.
Madonna’s August 2012 performance in St Petersburg, during which she spoke in support of local gays, waved an LGBT flag and stripped to black lingerie, showing the words "No Fear" scrawled on her bare back, stirred controversy. A local organization tried to sue her under the gay propaganda law for $10 million (333 million rubles), but the court threw out the lawsuit.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Piers Morgan's Madonna Feud Began With A Bread Roll
British newsman Piers Morgan has finally revealed the real reason for his long-running feud with Madonna - he once hurled a bread roll at her during a celebrity dinner party.
The Cnn anchor and former U.K. tabloid editor has made no secret of his hatred for the Material Girl over the years, and even banned her from both his U.S. and U.K. shows in 2011.
He has previously remained tip-lipped about what caused the bad blood between the pair, but he has now revealed the bizarre reason behind the falling out.
Morgan explains that in 2001, he attended celebrity chef Marco Pierre White's 40th birthday party, where Madonna and her then-husband Guy Ritchie were also guests. Morgan claims the singer was irritated by the dinner's entertainment, late comic Bernard Manning, so he decided to throw a bread roll at the Queen of Pop.
He tells Britain's Ok! magazine, "Madonna is pretty awful. She never forgave me for throwing a bread roll at her at Marco Pierre White's birthday. She was just being really obnoxious, not just to me, but generally. There was only 40 of us at this dinner party and she got annoyed because Bernard Manning started being offensive and that wound her up. She was with Guy Ritchie at the time and he'd been laughing his head off... I just picked up a bread roll and chucked it at her!
"I hate the phoney accent, the muscled arms, the stripping off in her mid-fifties... Everything about her is attention-seeking - I think her 15 minutes of superstardom has probably run its course."
Monday, December 2, 2013
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Quote of the day...
"Oh, my God! I used to ride my bicycle around for hours in the garage of our apartment building singing 'Material Girl'"
Milla Jovovich
In Style magazine, Sept/2006
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Friday, November 29, 2013
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Rocco gives Sean Penn the seal of approval on charity trip
They've been divorced for over 20 years but Madonna and Sean Penn are closer than ever, with the chart-topper and her son Rocco, 13, joining the actor for a charity trip to Haiti. Madonna flew out with the teenager on Monday to support Sean's J/P Haitian Relief Organization in the Caribbean country which was devastated by the 2010 earthquake.
While insiders have reported that the former couple, who divorced in 1989, are enjoying a 'lovely reunion' as they work together on projects in the country, Rocco has given his seal of approval, posting a picture of himself hanging out with his mother's ex on his Instagram page.
The teenager, whose father is director Guy Ritchie, shared a picture of him and Sean in a jeep and captioned it 'Trouble is always here @seanpenn (sic).
The selfie shows Rocco, wearing a black T-shirt and a backwards baseball cap, giving a half smile for the camera while Sean looks straight ahead behind the wheel.'
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