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Movies
Star what?
10 reasons not to see "The Phantom Menace."
By Toby Young
[05/14/99]

Movie Review
Disenchanted forest
Too many weak performances -- and no, not including Calista's -- prevent Michael Hoffman's opulent "A Midsummer Night's Dream" from being more than a mildly pleasurable exercise in ornamentation.
By Stephanie Zacharek
[05/14/99]

Movie Review
Endless love
Director Franco Zeffirelli never surrenders his sunny disposition in this semi-fictional adaptation of his memoirs as a youth in World War II-era Italy.
By Andrew O'Hehir
[05/14/99]

Movie Review
Boys to men
"Edge of Seventeen," a film about coming out and of age in the early '80s, trumps the current crop of nice-guy gay films.
By Daniel Mangin
[05/14/99]

Column
Father figure
Director Irvin Kershner, the unknown wizard behind "The Empire Strikes Back," talks about being Darth Vader, working with George Lucas and making the best "Star Wars" film.
By Michael Sragow
[05/13/99]

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Recently I met a woman named Amy who was left at the altar a few years ago. Her reputation preceded her, and I had always been fascinated by her horror story. Exactly one day before her huge, elaborately planned wedding, to which more than 1,000 guests were invited, her fiancé called it off. There wasn't enough time to call everyone -- many guests arrived and were informed by the clerks at the front desk that the wedding was cancelled. Gifts had to be sent back. None of the costs of the wedding could be refunded. The unthinkable public humiliation she must have suffered! How did she survive? I wanted to know more, but I didn't want to embarrass her by mentioning it.

She unabashedly brought up the whole nightmare, and when I asked her how she made it through, she replied, "I know this is cheesy, but have you heard the new Alanis Morissette CD?"

Admitting that you love Alanis Morissette is almost as embarrassing as getting left at the altar.

Admitting that you love Alanis is like admitting that you own a "Buns of Steel" video. It's like admitting that you cook with butter instead of olive oil, that you never really finished "Backlash" or "Infinite Jest" and never got past the first chapter of "Gravity's Rainbow," that you sometimes watch Oprah and cry when the guest therapist talks about how important it is to feel sorry for yourself. Admitting that you love Alanis is almost as bad as visiting a tanning bed, or talking about your sex counselor or subscribing to InStyle magazine. Loving Alanis is something any self-respecting woman fears deeply and avoids at all costs.

She's a woman who speaks almost entirely in pop psychology clichés and New Age dogmas, a woman whose twisted fixation on the most mundane of struggles makes her a slower-moving target than a "Cathy" cartoon strip. While Tori Amos unearths child molestation, Liz Phair trots out rough sex and Polly Jean Harvey tackles revenge fantasies, Alanis brings us weight problems and "figurative slaps on the wrist." Helium's Mary Timony wrestles with dragons and fairies, Tracy Chapman talks about revolution and Alanis worries that needing a hug might make her seem "whiny."

In a time when discriminating tastes are turning to Jewel's poetry for inspiration, Alanis' disturbingly unsubtle lyrics seem better suited to the self-help shelves. Only preteen girls wouldn't cringe over lines like, "We were together during a tumultuous time in our lives. I will always have your back and be curious about you, about your career, your whereabouts." This is not a woman searching for the most graceful way to express her thoughts. "It's a cycle really you think I'm withdrawing and guilt-tripping you I think you're insensitive and I don't feel heard." This is the "Chasing Amy" school of songwriting -- no mystery and nothing to read between the lines, a diary on a billboard.

But then her video for "Thank U" came out, and there she was, standing naked in the street, singing, "How 'bout getting off of these antibiotics?" She was making it so easy for us to hate her, for everyone to hate her. The bestselling female artist in years, looking pasty. Heavy in the hips. Awkward. Why didn't she wear more make-up, or change her hair or use a body double? How could she do this to herself, expose herself like this, set herself up to be ripped apart ruthlessly?

Within weeks, parodies were everywhere, including an MTV promo that featured an extremely unattractive naked older woman whining hideously and being mocked by a throng of onlookers. Irish songwriter Sinead Lohan told "On The Record," "Oh my God. People like that, I wouldn't consider her a songwriter at all."

But it really is a catchy song, as long as you block out the part where she thanks the entire country of India for aiding her self-actualization. It's not long before you're singing along whenever "Thank U" comes on the radio, and then you're buying the "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie" CD, and then you're actually sitting through the video. Before you know it, something inside you has shifted, and one day you find yourself telling a woman who got left at the altar that you unabashedly bawl your eyes out whenever you hear the part about "unabashedly bawling your eyes out."

Next page | Thank U for embarrassing yourself