Tyler Coates

I’ve thought a lot about Jodie Foster in the hours following her rambling, confusing speech at last night’s Golden Globes. Should I be proud of her honesty, her coming-out-without-coming-out statement that made more of a comment about the nature of our celebrity-obsessed society than it did her own sexuality and its relative unimportance in the context of her career and work? Or should I find her suggestion that, as a professional woman in a certain spotlight—one who is also the member of another minority that is repressed on an international scale as well as within her own industry—she has no intention of letting her personal life intervene with her public life, neither in her art nor in the wide opportunities for mentorship and philanthropy. Should I care about Jodie Foster at all?

Why We Should Be Talking About Jodie Foster’s Coming Out 

YES. THIS SUIT.

The thing that makes writing anything about Lindsay Lohan nearly impossible is that, by press time, she will have at least three more things no one could possibly have predicted. She seems to live in a wonderland where she can do six impossible things before breakfast. Just a few weeks ago, Lindsay supposedly punched a psychic in the face over a weird dispute involving a member of a boy band. I cannot imagine what she’ll do this week. But I know it will be bizarre, and I know I will turn my attention to her for at least a moment, because Lindsay Lohan was honestly the only truly fascinating star to watch in 2012.

Personal Faves: Lindsay Lohan’s Wild Ride

bbook:

Personal Faves: Having A Sex Dream About Nicholas Brody

Instead of ending the year with a slew of Best Of lists, BlackBook asked our contributors to share their thoughts on the most important moments in art, music, film, television, and fashion that took place in 2012. Here, Drew Grant discusses why she loved the year’s most popular cable TV drama, Homeland. [Warning: spoilers ahead!]

“He had a weak chin and a wet little mouth that squinched up like a butthole whenever he was supposed to express emotion.” Oh, Drew, I love you.

(via bbook)

Who Will Be Snubbed At Next Year’s Oscars?

It’s that time of year again: when I am preemptively pissed that Kirsten Dunst doesn’t have any Oscar nominations.

I interviewed this hottie. Read it here.

bbook:

As the titular b—— in the hit ABC comedy Don’t Trust the B—— in Apt. 23, Krysten Ritter holds her own against sleazeball James Van Der Beek in millions of homes across America. But who is the woman behind the B?

Krysten Ritter Is TV’s Baddest Bitch (But In Real Life She’s Pretty Nice)

This happened on the weekend I found out we had bed bugs and I spent all morning washing all of my clothes and throwing things away and nearly crying. And then, you know, I had to go meet Krysten Ritter for lunch in Williamsburg. This summer was weird.

Never in my life did I think there’d be a work crisis as a result of Robert Pattinson. Oh well. Read Joshua David Stein’s totally nutso cover story from the September issue here.

Though the majority of the comic books I grew up loving are DC, I’m not the kind of person who says, “I’m only going to read DC, or Marvel, or Vertigo.” I’m not a comic book snob. Lately I’ve been really into a book calledThe Last Days of American Crime.
 It’s written by Rick
 Remender, who worked
on Marvel’s Uncanny
 X-Force, Punisher, 
and Venom titles and 
illustrated by Greg 
Tocchini, the Brazilian
 comic book artist. It is
 a vigilante comic book that mixes in elements of Orwellian social critique. My boyfriend, who is also an incredible comic book geek, gave it to me to read.

For the June/July issue of BlackBook, Adrianne Palicki discussed her obsession with comic books and, surprisingly, Pogs!

Her songs are still extremely autobiographical, which is perhaps their charm. Following in the footsteps of other singer-songwriters, especially women who emerged in the early ’90s and expressed their emotions in particularly vulnerable ways, Apple’s openness has always had an empowering appeal. Her songs seem to suggest that feeling a variety of emotions—sadness, glee, despair, insanity—is not only normal, but, like those self-reflective musicians before her, she also gives permission to her listeners to feel the same way.

Even for Apple, her older songs are relics of another time, and she now makes them applicable to her life in the present. “They all kind of become poems after a while,” she says. “You can take your own meaning out of them. It’s been a very long time [since my first albums], and I can apply those songs to other situations that are more current in my life.” She admits she has changed greatly since she started writing songs in her late teenage years, especially when it comes to how she portrays herself. “I don’t feel comfortable singing the songs that I wrote. I used to blame other people and not take responsibility. I thought I was a total victim trying to look strong.”

And she is much harder on herself in the songs on The Idler Wheel than she ever was before. Sure, she admitted to being “careless with a delicate man” in “Criminal,” arguably her most famous song, and in When the Pawn’s “Mistake” she sang, “Do I wanna do right, of course but / Do I really wanna feel I’m forced to / Answer you, hell no.” On The Idler Wheel, Apple examines her own solitude and neuroses as well as their effect on her relationships with others. “I can love the same man, in the same bed, in the same city,” she sings on “Left Alone,” “But not in the same room, it’s a pity.” On “Jonathan,” a somber love song layered with robotic, mechanical sounds that’s presumably about her ex-boyfriend, author and Bored to Death creator Jonathan Ames, she urges, “Don’t make me explain / Just tolerate my little fist / Tugging at your forest-chest / I don’t want to talk about anything.”

Read more of my profile of Fiona Apple right here! I’m really proud of this one. 

Fiona Apple
Photographed by Dan Monick, Los Angeles 

I’ve never been a big re-writer or eraser. I don’t tend to write things down until they are what is in my head. With this album, I didn’t question that came out of my brain or mouth. I just decided to spit everything out and accept as it was and not go back and change anything. I don’t really remember writing the songs. I don’t remember them being at an in-between stage. I remember the beginning and I remember them being done.

Fiona Apple on Her New Album, Lana Del Rey, and Reading Blogs