Now Playing at Western Bridge

A family drama set in multiple Ikea showrooms:



Israeli artist Guy Ben Nur makes Ikea living rooms look like foreign lands we enter into. In his film "Stealing Beauty," now playing at Western Bridge, he comments on the stark reality of remaining an immigrant in your own bedroom (your bed frame designed in Sweden, assembled in China, and sold just off I-5). He wants us to see the ridiculous dreams we attach to furniture. But Ner isn't content to simply satirize the American dream home. He also weaves in Marxist speeches, hilarious camera faux-paus, and visual gags into his work (check out the giant price tags and alien-like stock photos in the picture frames). The results transcend typical consumerist critiques.

Now playing at Western Bridge as part of a series of installations on the relationships between parents and children.

Glee's Football Team Puts A Ring on It

Who hasn't looked out at a boring football game and wondered what it would be like if all the players started freak dancing together? Not you? You haven't had this fantasy? Well, aren't you great. Aren't you fantastic. But this has definitely been a fantasy of mine. And now my fantasy has come true (suck it, Disneyland!) because Glee has finally infected the straight men, too. This show is fast becoming the most ridiculous, nonsensically funny thing on teevee.

Have You Seen the Newish Justice Music Video?

Take it away, LA Times:

There are plenty of gasp-worthy moments in the French electronica duo Justice's video for "Stress": when one of its becrucifixed teenage bangers, all notably black, Middle Eastern or North African, gropes a woman in a train station; when another smacks a cafe owner in the face with a bottle; when the whole gang whales on a police officer with his own baton. But the most telling moment is its one instance of levity; the gang steals a car and, supremely annoyed by Justice's hit "D.A.N.C.E." on the radio, kicks the dashboard to pieces.

It's a clever, self-deprecating gag, but entirely symptomatic of the spirit of this horrifically compelling video from director Romain Gavras, which debuted two weeks ago to instant controversy on Kanye West's blog. The clip's merits lie solely in the aesthetic power of its allusions and references. In this case, the video gestures at the 2005 riots that swept through the Parisian suburbs and painfully underscored the deep division of race, class and religion in what many outsiders saw as a model society.

The duo admitted in a press release about the clip that "we have neither the intention nor the legitimacy to express ourselves, in any in-depth way, on social issues." If that's truly the case, then Justice has made an irresponsible and intentionally thoughtless video that does nothing to further understanding, empathy or clarity of the issues they gesture at here. That makes "Stress" a powerful but truly failed piece of art. "Opening up debate" is a good start for a piece of art's goals -- it's the height of laziness to call it an end point.

But, as my friend Emma Tupper pointed out, isn't the whole point of the video to make the audience simultaneously attracted to, and repelled by, their own racism and obsession with violence? And if putting audiences through that kind of mental torture is somehow lazy art, what does that say about movies like "A Clockwork Orange"?

This Looks Amazing

The Gayest Song I've Ever Heard

(Wait for the chorus).