Pop culture treasure, high culture trash.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Let them eat transparent marketing gimmicks

File under STOP EXPLOITING MY FAVORITE MUSIC, FUCKERS:

Sofia Coppola has been hard at work since bringing us the racism-lite of Lost in Translation--a brave, unflinching film about Scarlett Johansson in her panties and the inherent weirdness of Japanese people. This month, hemorrhaging attention and currency, Coppola is finally wrapping her years-in-the-making pet biopic project on Marie Antoinette. In her panic to appear relevant, Coppola has not only swept the Stupid-Ass Casting Awards ‘06 by signing up cousin Jason Schwartzman for King Louis XVI, she's made the most laughable, incomprehensible, quaaludes-induced teaser of recent memory. It's one thing to try to modernize shit up. But grafting New Order's "Age of Consent" onto standard Merchant-Ivory period piece footage isn't subversive, it's awkward and lazy and tossed-off, as if Coppola got wasted with her trailers editor one night and slurred in passing, "Lesss make it rilly new wave, knamean?" Furthermore, when I hear "Age of Consent" I do not want to think of Kirsten Dunst pouting and running around in wigs and panniers.

Maybe Sof thought that casting Marianne Faithfull as Queenie Marie's mom got her a free pass on whoring out the genius band of her choice, to say nothing of stealing the film's title font off the cover of Never Mind the Bollocks. In any case, I can't wait to see how the final soundtrack turns out. X-Ray Spex for the coronation, perhaps, and Gang of Four for the sex scenes?

4 comments:

Mairead said...

amen amen hallelujah. d'accord, it's probably a bad sign when vogue covers yr work more frequently than, say, an actual film rag.

BUT. she and kirsten are, like, bff 4eva, ok? so, like, let 'em be, ok? totally.

femme feral said...

agreed! And glad to finally know that I'm not the only one annoyed by Lost in Translation.

rachel said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Raised By Bees said...

Actually, it kinda looks like a Killers video. And, I'd like to see X Ray Spex on any soundtrack, anytime.