The Bling Ring

The hubby and me saw it on Sunday-- ugh, what a waste of time for the most part. I felt like Emma Watson was behaving like she was in a different, more over the top movie than everyone else. I was moderately sympathetic to the one guy in the group, but did NO-ONE of their friends actually say "Hey, wait a minute, this is wrong?"

Bizarre that the adults all behaved this idiotically. Bizarre that not one car they broke into had a working car alarm, and not one house had a home alarm system either. What magical part of LA did they operate in?

I was hoping Coppola would give context to all the criminality (we really enjoyed a lot of her wacky Marie Antoinette), but alas no. All we got was a cheap indie-look break-in and clubbing existence, and as soon as the fun ends, so did the movie. Bleh.

God, I loved this movie. I thought it was absolutely dead on from the first frame to the last, perfectly depicting the fame obsessed society we live in. I might be biased since Coppola is probably my favorite writer/director working nowadays, but I thought she nailed these girls and what they were about. As I was leaving the theatre, a girl behind me (maybe 17 years old), dressed to the 9's like she was ready to go clubbing after robbing Paris' house, said in a voice identical to Watson's in the film, "That movie was just like so harsh. Nobody like acts like that or stuff. UGH" I just rolled my eyes and knew how dead on the movie I had just seen was.

And yes, Watson was amazing. Her line "This is my interview" to her mother was the highlight of the year to me. So perfect in every way.

OH. MY. GOD. That's amazing.

The commercial with YiaYia was just as good as the video

Exactly, AnthVoice2010!

Sophia Coppola herself mentioned about a generation of young people now so celeb-obsessed and of the fame game in her interviews promoting this film. Thanks to mainstream media consolidation and the free market, among other things, which make the celebrity lifestyle so lucrative and aspirational (minus the struggles of making it and staying there). Those factors make it easier to market and sell as Easy Street, and this segment of kids (and even adults) lack the critical thinking skills to dissect it all. The social networking also highlight this.

I remember reading Robert Fuller's book, "Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuses of Rank" in which talks a bit about fame and how it attracts those who don't always have genuine interests of the celebs as well as the pursuit of it can be a double-edged sword. You can very well fall short or it would just be fleeting. These kids clearly had some severe feelings of nobodyism in their lives and wanted to change that.

Fits easily, albeit twistedly, into the vestiges of the American Dream and notions of meritocracy and the Puritan Ethic to achieve something of status the celebs have.