Madonna, the eternal queen goddess from whom all new pop starlets are derived, has never been totally satisfied with just being the eternal queen goddess of pop. After trying her hand at acting, she's now increasingly behind the camera as well. She's made two features (Filth & Wisdom in 2008 and W.E. in 2011) and now she's backtracking a bit with a short film. You're supposed to make the shorts first to warm up Madonna, geez. The title is the awkward secretprojectrevolution but "secret" has such a sell by date as a description, you know. Especially when your film debuts online.
Do that dance you do so well.
The full 17 minute movie, co-directed with Steven Klein, and a few comments are after the jump...
I haven't had time to process this yet but I wanted to post it while it's fresh. This feels like an extension of whatever she was working through on MDNA's "Gang Bang" and its subsequent concert imagery with all the stylized gunplay. For this film I love the narcoleptic circus music that underscores her short theatrical bursts of violence and that dancer moving without any music is cool, too.
Madonna has been very smart over the years about never resting on her laurels, learning new musical instruments, pushing her own boundaries as a performer, training her voice (most people having achieved her degree of success don't think there's more to master, you know?). I only wish in that time -- and this is meant with love as I have nothing but that for Her -- that she had sought out more training to her speaking voice, which plays at least a little bit in to some of her trouble with acting. There's something a bit flat about it still, a lack of tonal shifting or emotive range which undercuts some of the delicious bluntness of the provocations she tosses out like pop culture grenades and makes her civil war between self-mockery and self-actualization a little easier to snark or miss entirely and interpret as dully generic self regard.
If I was wearing combat gear, and had an AK-47 strapped to my back, would you take me seriously? Instead I'm a woman. I'm a blonde. I have tits and ass and an insatiable desire to be noticed.
"Come on baby show us your ass. Shake it for us baby. Do that dance you do so well for us, baby."
...Okay. But I still want to start a revolution.
That's my girl.
P.S. If you're interested in Madonna or in the secret project revolution you should be reading Boy Culture daily. Matthew Rettemund always has the inside scoops on Madonna.