Posted on July 12, 2014 at 10:22 pm
Colbie Caillat is not the only one paying tribute to the full range of female beauty with a new video. John Legend’s “You & I” is a deeply moving tribute to the woman he loves, who appears in the video along with a heartwarming array of beautiful girls and women.
Posted on August 15, 2013 at 3:19 pm
Writer/director/star Lake Bell has produced a smart, fresh, and funny film that sends up Hollywood, sexism, and the conventions of the romantic comedy and yet somehow has us rooting for the characters to find a happy ending. And she has given juicy roles to a great collection of performers who are too often overlooked — starting with herself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpFNTvA93iYBell plays Carol, a voice coach and would-be voiceover announcer, the daughter of Sam (Fred Melamed), a very successful voiceover artist well known for his work narrating movie trailers. The death of Don LaFontaine, the acknowledged leader of this small and very competitive field, has left a perceived opening. According to this film, LaFontaine’s signature opening, “In a world….” is about to be revived for a new “Hunger Games”-like “quadrilogy,” and the job of narrating the trailers is considered the ultimate achievement. Sam has just told Carol she cannot live with him any more because his young girlfriend is moving in. So, Carol has gone to sleep on the couch in the small apartment her sister Dani (Micheala Watkins) shares with her work-at-home husband, Moe (Rob Corddry).
Sam is advising up-and-coming voice artist Gustav (Ken Marino), positioning him to take over the big “In a world…” job. But a temp track recorded by Carol has captured the attention of the studio, and she finds herself in the running for an unprecedented opportunity to be a female voice on a movie trailer. This makes sense as the quadrilogy is about mutant Amazons, but the established tradition is for a deep, rumbling, male “voice of God” narrator.
Bell makes first-timer mistakes in trying to pack too many ideas into the film, but she does a masterful job of keeping it all in balance. She serves the other actors as a director better than she does herself. Carol is sometimes just too much of a clueless, klutz. But when she shows a young professional woman that taking like a teenager with a question inflection at the end of every sentence how important it is to own your voice, it is clear to us that this movie shows how well she owns hers.
Parents should know that this film has very strong language including crude sexual references and some non-explicit sexual situations with some poor choices.
Family discussion: Why don’t trailers use women narrators? What do we learn from Carol’s conversation in the ladies’ room?
If you like this, try: the documentary about voiceover artists, “I Know That Voice”
Posted on November 13, 2012 at 3:33 pm
Radio you can watch – that’s the idea.
On November 15th, 2012, the public radio show This American Life will release a video of a two-hour episode entitled “The Invisible Made Visible.” Fans can download or stream the video for $5. It will also be released on DVD, exclusively via the show’s web store.
“The Invisible Made Visible” was originally performed onstage and broadcast live into movie theaters in May, 2012, to over 70,000 people across the U.S., Canada and Australia. Host Ira Glass personally curated the show. “The whole point,” he says “was to do stories that are far too visual to ever be on the radio.”
The result is a mix of animation, live dance from Monica Bill Barnes & Company, a wildly funny short film by Mike Birbiglia starring Fresh Air’s Terry Gross (I promise, you will not guess the ending), a classic This American Life story (told by Glass) about the brilliant street photographer Vivian Meier, a Chicago nanny who never showed anyone the pictures she took over decades on her days off. They were discovered almost by accident after her death. The show also has comic monologues by David Sedaris, Glynn Washington, and Ryan Knighton. My favorite is the story by comedian Tig Notaro (recently in the news for her monologue about cancer) about repeatedly running into 80’s pop star Taylor Dayne. There is music from OK Go. It’s all performed in front of changing illustrated backgrounds.
Probably the most memorable moment in the episode comes during a story by longtime This American Life contributor David Rakoff. He talks about the abilities he’s lost during his fight with cancer, and then, gracefully, beautifully, does a solo dance onstage. It was the last story Rakoff ever wrote for the radio show. He died three months later, in August.
