P.Viktor

Rihanna - Rated R, Review

(3/5) There comes a time in every pop artist’s career when people start to focus more on the tabloid aspects of their private life and less on their music. For Rihanna, this was the case earlier this year after a very public assault by her then boyfriend Chris Brown prior to the Grammy Awards. For a time it appeared as though the controversy would engulf both of their careers, but Rihanna has since started to put it all behind her and put her energy into creating music. Rated R will never be completely free from the shadow of those events, and various lyrical references – though oblique at the best of times – could be interpreted to fit the paradigm of ‘vengeful woman’. What is quite clear from the outset, however, is that Rated R is full of anger and vitriol, though neither is directed overtly at the man the baying media have pinned up on a dartboard on her behalf.

Fans of Rihanna’s hugely successful Good Girl Gone Bad may find themselves at a loss with the abrasive R&B on offer here as the pop palette and finely crafted melodies of her previous album are replaced by hard-edged beats, pulsating bass, cold synths and sneering vocals. Rihanna had originally wanted to adopt a rockier sound for Rated R, making the kind of R&B to rock transition P!nk managed on her breakout album Missundaztood, but when record execs had a collective aneurysm over her decision to work with Paramore and Nuno Bettencourt from Extreme, things headed towards an edgy R&B sound. Still, for all intents and purposes, Rated R is a rock album sans (for the most part) guitars. But on songs like ‘Rockstar 101′, with its dull refrain of “I’m a rockstar /…big city, white lights / sleep all day, up all night”, Rihanna simply comes across as a try-hard, attempting to convince herself more than the listener of this dubious position.

Adam Lambert – For Your Entertainment

(3.5/5) When Kris Allen won the eighth season of American Idol, he must have thought that success was his inalienable right. He had vanquished the almost unstoppable juggernaut in runner-up Adam Lambert, won a record contract, and had been set-up for the kind of success enjoyed by fellow winners Kelly Clarkson, Jordin Sparks, and Carrie Underwood. Unfortunately for him, the battle did not end with the close of the competition. Despite a valiant attempt writing and co-producing his major label debut album, Kris Allen didn’t even scrape the top ten of the album charts, selling a rather paltry eighty thousand in its first week sales. Adam Lambert on the other hand, who has rarely been out of the headlines and who can boast a roster of top-notch talent on his own debut album, has sold more than twice the amount of his rival, and is on course for the third spot on the Billboard 200, held off the number one only by unprecedented interest in two of the most talked about women of 2009 – Susan Boyle and Lady GaGa. Could it be that America didn’t have the balls to vote for the right winner who, though not out at the time, was clearly gay?

For it is Lambert who has sky rocketed into a completely different stratosphere than Allen, especially after his recent ‘controversial’ (in oh-so-ironic quotation marks) performance at the American Music Awards in which he simulated oral sex and – oh no he didn’t – kissed another man. His profile is so high that no other contestant – winner or not – has had such international media interest so early on in their career. It took a while for Kelly Clarkson to establish herself in the states before she had a hit elsewhere, and Carrie Underwood is still relatively unknown outside of the US. A lot of the media interest seems to be generated from his being the first ‘out’ popstar in the US, but that discredits both his talent as a singer (the boy has both power and range, even if they aren’t always well applied), his outlandish style, and his confrontational and intelligent personality. I guess meek Arkansas boy Kris Allen didn’t really stand much of a chance with his polite and pleasant pop music.

Borders Bookshop Goes Into Administration

Very sad news this morning - one of my favourite bookshops, Borders UK, has gone into administration. Although they are currently looking for a buyer, it is likely that Borders will disappear from our highstreet for good - much like Woolworths. Though I am a fan of small independent bookshops, and always try to buy from them when I can, I also very much love the Borders chain, especially the store in Oxford. It is one of the biggest of its kind, and it is just such a great place to browse, find a comfortable corner and sit and read. There is a great cafe to buy a pastry and a coffee, and downstairs they have a large DVD and music section (in which I have spent a lot of money over the years). One of the best aspects about it is the large stationary section they have - any geek who loves nicely bound note pads and lovely writing sets and pens feels at home there. It has been in Oxford as long as I have, so to see it go would be a real travesty. Although admittedly I order books online (because they are often much cheaper) which has helped in its demise, I would happily start spending money there to help keep it afloat. The hope is that, much like Whittards, some stores manage to stay open. Oxford must be one them - shall I start a petition?

News source: BBC Online

Pumping Velvet: The Self-Portrait of Dustin Robertson, Review

Dustin Robertson’s Pumping Velvet (2009) has had a long and troubled history. Having taken the auteur five years to complete, it has become both a labour of love and a symbol of liberation. Having had a very limited release in 2004 to various small film festivals, Robertson then distributed the film on DVD in 2005. Very few copies of this rough cut are available and the filmmaker very much prefers it this way. Having spent the interim years re-editing his film, he has now launched it in its final form on his website as a free download. Perhaps a sign of wanting to move forward with a unique way of film distribution or perhaps acknowledging that the moment may have past for this kind of film, it is still however exciting for audiences to see Pumping Velvet as the director intended it.

Although Robertson would perhaps prefer it if those who watched the earlier version wiped it from their memory, it is incredibly difficult to watch this new version with a new set of eyes and not compare the two. Indeed, the comparisons are favourable. Pumping Velvet 2009 is much improved in terms of pacing, structure, and storytelling. Many of the distractions and digressions of the earlier film have gone, and the focus is solely on telling Robertson’s story. Much of that can be gleaned from my reviews of the earlier version of the film (part one and part two) which much remains the same – Robertson’s transition from gay teenager in American suburbia to the pursuit of an imagistic immortality, the turning of oneself into a piece of physical art or an icon – a symbol of self-reinvention and self-celebration, or as Roberston calls it Aviddiva, his persona imago.