Drag Race: The Sounds of My Fury

Here, in picture form, is why I've been unable to function whenever I tried to write about RuPaul's Drag Race

somehow the blurry screenshot seemed appropriate so i didn't try again

Laganja Estranja's bottomless need for attention coupled with her lack of deserving any but mostly her limitless capacity for meaningless affectation completely broke me. As did the epic 3 hours of episode last week -- 3 hours in one single night. Turns out that's enough glitter, saturated color, and aural assault to even give Baz Luhrmann pause. But mostly it was Laganja. If I could describe in writing the clucking, mouth popping, meaningless "words" issuing from her frosted lips I would but judge Michelle Visage summed it up brilliantly in a weirdly accurate gibberish approximation of Laganja's unprocessed non-integrated robotic regurgitation of every drag vocal affectation that the show has ever produced. <-- Good lord that last sentence was a mouthful. I'm gagging on it.

Now that Laganja has sashayed away, the aural nightmare is over (the blazing fury I felt from the sounds a fictional "reality" tv character can make surprised me). And I am free to write about the show again. "Halleloo!" (er... speaking of meaningless vocal affectations!) So instead of trying to catch up we'll just proceed from the now for the sake of all of you who are watching. Cher's family members (mother Georgia Holt and son Chaz Bono) guest starred in order to be interviewed by the queens and Courtney Act basically summed of all of their reactions to the camera...

 Not that that excitement helped them focus because for the most part, they were terrible at being talk show hosts. Trinity K Bonet, who sashayed away, was the worst. She kept calling Chaz Bono "Chad" which might have been funny if it were shady but it was just basic incompetence.

Courtney, who didn't suck at TV gabbing at all, won the night with a stunning wing span (the runway theme was animals) and in addition to the feathers (Trinity) and fur (Bianca) and lion-like manes (Adore), Darienne killed it with Elephant tusks, and Ben de la Creme made a fab entrance in a fly costume... even if it tilted more Costume Shop than Cronenberg. "Help meeee"

Group Regret: Everyone at my viewing party wished they could have seen what Milk would have dressed as in this particular runway challenge. Rawr. She left too soon.

Belated Confession: I really like Joslyn Fox as a person in the workroom (if not as a competitor) so I feel bad for how roundly I was dissing her in the first couple of posts. She's not as dumb as she came off... or at least she's people smart.

You can watch the episode right here if you missed it

Are your favorites still your favorites? Or are your allegiances shifting as we rapidly approach the finale?

Scream Queens, Rusicals, and Snatch Games

If you can't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love someone else? Amen. I love myself therefore I forgive myself for being three weeks behind my promised RuCapping. I hate calling tv posts recaps, though that's the web's preferred terminology, because I'm not about to recount everything that happened. That's for the contestants themselves to do on reality television. That's the whole structure, right? Step 1: Talking head commentary on clip you're about to see from contestant involved. 2: What you actually see from the contest. Step 3: A recap of what you just saw via the same or different talking heads. Then the next day on the internet everyone who is not on the show recaps again. We're a very redundant pop culture, we are!

But I do feel bad for going AWOL because these three weeks of RuPaul's Drag Race were really movie friendly and you know how I love my TV at the Movies. After the jump brief notes on the queens forays into celebrity impersonation, horror movies, and off-key musicals.

6.3 SCREAM QUEENS

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Drag Race: Big Opening Pt 2

Sorry this is so many days late! I promised we'd play along this year. And by play along I don't mind dress up in drag while typing but you can't see me so you'll never know but weekly posts on the best reality show on television (the Emmys sure are missing the boat float with their exceedingly conventional and stale nominations). Unfortunately "The Big Opening Part 2" which brough us another set of 7 queens, was much less cinematic in its shout-outs, so I made one up myself: Darienne Lake and June Squibb have the same designer. Pass it on!

 

Oh. my. god. Revelation as I typed: June Squibb would make the best Guest Judge on this show. Make that happen, Ru.

Not that no queens were compared to queens of the screen. Milk was told to "flash that Lauren Hutton smile" and Trinity K Bonet decided to go with 'something between Star Wars and Buckingham Palace for her look, citing Princess Leia as inspiration. The actual runway look skipped that generation and went straight for Princess Amidala. It worked for the judges.  

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Drag Race "The Sixening": Half a Premiere

Each year I think about covering RuPaul's Drag Race, so I'm finally doing it. Like Mad Men (and I bet this is the only time you'll hear them compared!) it's awash in fun movie references. Highlights from the past have included Raja's bucket of blood Carrie dress to Raven's "I'm giving Michelle Pfeiffer bitch" to Jinkx Monsoon's Grey Gardens fetish to Tammie Brown's demented Old Hollywood persona to numerous truly terrible movie star impersonations (I've never seen a worse Marilyn or Joan Crawford, for example, than this show has provided) and so on. I know. I know. It's the sixth season, "the sixening". The library is open if you'd like to read me because these books are overdue!

Four movie references to start us off... 

During the mini-challenge, a photoshoot where the queens lept across boob-tube color bars to a pile of foam below sees rubber limbed LaGanja Estranja compared to Goldie Hawn in Overboard. "I get that a lot," she said awkwardly pulling herself out of the foam. Laganga is obviously not in Goldie's comic league but, to be fair, Goldie Hawn did look like a drag queen in Overboard... 

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Take My Link Away

Shadow Play Shirley Temple in Fort Apache
Shoshi Games 2014 HA HA. A must for fans of Zosia Mamet on "Girls" and the Winter Olympics
In Contention Karen O to perform "The Moon Song" at the Oscars. So now all the songs will be represented including...
EW IDINA MENZEL doing "Let It Go" so we got our wish
The Wrap Drake is pissed that PSH's death robbed him of his Rolling Stone cover 

Keyframe The fall of Roman Eye Candy in sword and sandal epics
BAFTA last day to vote on the Rising Star award. I chose Lea Seydoux though Lupita Nyong'o was tempting, only because Léa has been great several times already in short succession. Let's hope Lupita gets a fair shot at a big career!
LA Times Gravity dominates the Visual Effects Society awards (as if anything else would have occurred!)
Variety on Disney's very smart hands-off approach to the viral Frozen celebrations happening online
Marvel Comics it's the 50th birthday of the Black Widow today. (Remember how Emily Blunt was going to play her and we were all excited and then it was Scarlett Johansson instead and we were like "ummm..." and then she was terrible in Iron Man 2 but suddenly great in The Avengers. Happy endings!)

Re: This Regurgitated Weekend
Dave Holmes at Vulture wisely (and with great humor) looks back at the box office of 1987 the weekend the original Robocop debuted. I bring this up because this weekend's wide releases are ALL THREE OF THEM 80'S REMAKES: About Last Night (1986), Robocop (1987), and Endless Love (1981). (Has this ever happened before? Probably but if it has please to remind me)  

The piece is really funny and also has one of the best lines ever uttered about The Witches of Eastwick:

Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer — the closest thing to an all-Beyoncé Destiny’s Child we’re ever going to get...

And speaking of the 1980s...

Exit Music
Readers of a certain age already know and love the awesome 80s bad Berlin (so many classics like "The Metro" "Masquerade" "No More Words") but younger movie-mad readers should also familiarize. For somewhat obvious reasons it's oft-forgotten that Terri Nunn, the lead singer was an actress before joining Berlin and was in the running for Princess Leia before George Lucas decided on Carrie Fisher! Berlin's biggest hit was the Oscar-winning Best Original Song "Take My Breath Away" from Top Gun... but they didn't write it so no Oscars for them. Anyway, they have a new record coming out called "Animal" and the lead single's video co-stars my personal favorite RuPaul's Drag Race diva, Raven. Raven loves the 80s -- remember her "I was giving Michelle Pfeiffer Bitch" on the show? She's a perfect fit to face off with Terri!