Jump to content
MadonnaNation.com Forums

All Activity

This stream auto-updates     

  1. Past hour

  2. Rebel Heart Tour DVD/Blu-ray

    Sloane replied to Mmmmm's topic in Madonna Tours Forum

    Oh there's no doubt in my mind. Even from the fan footage I can tell it's choked full of Madonna gloriousness, it's just hard to pinpoint exactly. Difficult to explain, I just know it when I see it and D&D cries out for pro shot. BIM is a prime example. It's meh in fan footage but came alive in pro shot. LAV is my absolute favorite from this tour but since it already slays in fan footage, pro shot isn't gonna escalate it. When somethings already brilliant, being even more brilliant isn't such a priority to me. In fact, in the case of LAV, I wouldnt be surprised if pro shot disappoints because I already love and have memorized my favorite parts. Watch pro shot go to an audience shot during some of her best moves lol shit like that. We shall see, I'm pretty excited to get this DVD.
  3. Interesting Buzzfeed article: Why The “New” Lady Gaga Never Took Off - By avoiding Gaga’s recent career struggles, the new Netflix documentary Gaga: Five Foot Two reveals why her turn towards the personal has been an artistic disappointment. - The film is notably evasive in chronicling Gaga’s professional life during an awkward moment of her career, from late 2015 to early 2017, as she recorded and released Joanne. - The Joanne album was intended as a mainstream comeback, following Gaga’s decision to take a break from Top 40 pop stardom after 2013's Artpop underwhelmed and she made headlines for lashing out at her management. - None of this context is overtly addressed in the film. While all documentaries like this bob and weave around revelation and concealment to avoid being too explicit or too bland, Five Foot Two virtually ignores the elephant in the room: the overwhelming media narrative about Gaga no longer dominating the zeitgeist pop scene like she once did and the subdued reception of Joanne, which opened with her lowest-charting lead single in years and has sold fewer than a million copies, a small fraction of the sales for her early albums. Even Billboard registered its surprise at how quickly Gaga stepped back from the project, releasing a non-Joanne EDM single just six months after the album. Still, the story the documentary tells is not “struggling pop star attempts a comeback,” but “pop star at her peak is nervous about ‘stripping down’ her image and sound.” - The resulting narrative, unraveled through carefully curated personal and professional vignettes — featuring scenes of Gaga doing everything from going to the doctor to buying her own album at Walmart — is not especially revealing in the way that the conventionally humanizing title suggests. Instead, it helps explain why she has struggled to re-establish herself in the cultural landscape. At a moment when other pop stars have turned their music into intimate confession and reality television, Gaga has been unable to perform the personal in the boldly unconventional style that made her famous. - The most compelling public dramas around Gaga have always come from her career, not from her personal life. Even the National Enquirer ran a headline earlier this year (“Flameout! Lady Gaga’s Career is a Goner!”) as if reporting on a sex tape. - Aside from Joanne leaking early, there is no real failure in this film. The documentary begins and ends with her 2017 Super Bowl performance, one of her few “professional triumphs” of the kind that the promotional materials mention, which also gave her a momentary respite when her sales and streaming numbers got a big boost in the show’s aftermath. But that show, the highlight of her recent career, was a celebration of her previous hits — not the new persona and style she was crafting and introducing throughout the period the documentary chronicles. - Its accompanying video of Gaga as mosh pit chick didn’t seem to connect to the stated overall concept of family relationships or being her father’s daughter. She later said in interviews that the song was about relationship illusions in the social media age, and teased fans by suggesting it was about her ex-boyfriend Taylor Kinney. As with Artpop, Gaga seemed unable to edit her visual, lyrical, and promotional concepts into a cohesive pop presentation. “Perfect Illusion” peaked at No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100, and quickly disappeared. - (The film very quickly quotes voices from reaction videos saying she sounds too “different,” requesting she “bring back the real Lady Gaga,” and echoing her trailer, “She was over at least a couple years ago.”) The real, arguably more honest, drama was happening outside of the camera’s frame, as Gaga was cringe-inducingly invoking Trayvon Martin in her tweeted reply to a New York Times review that critiqued the album’s lack of coherency and seeming lack of inspiration. - “It’s scary 'cause you know if they don’t like it, it’s like, it’s my life,” she says at another moment in the documentary, of her fears before the album’s release. But it’s her art, not her life, that was up for critique. Speaking off-screen as footage of her taking promotional photographs appears on screen, Gaga explains the album’s role as part of her ongoing attempt to de-escalate or reset her image. “I know that we want to elevate everything,” she tells a member of her team, “but I can’t elevate it to a point where I become Lady Gaga again, because then it’s like, why even? Why did I make this record?” The comment reminds us that however personal the album might be, it was also a pop star’s career move — as is the film about its making. - During the time Gaga took a break from the charts, other pop stars have been making music about their personal lives in more explicit ways. Beyoncé, for instance, sent fans on a search for "Becky With the Good Hair" as they filtered the lyrics of Lemonade through rumors of real-life infidelity; Kesha recently released an album that acted as cathartic triumph over public trauma; Taylor Swift uses her music like a reality television show to comment on her ongoing public feuds and relationships, and the media narratives around them. (Indeed, Five Foot Two first made headlines because of Gaga’s comments about Madonna.) - But one of the film’s most telling moments comes when Gaga asks a stylist, “Do you think that, like, some of my older fans are going to be disappointed that I’m not dressed up?” And the stylist replies, parroting back Gaga’s narrative about the album, “I think everyone’s going to be excited that it’s just, like, solely about feeling it, without anything to cover it up.” It comes off as an employee telling the empress that she has — lovely — clothes on. But one can read between the puff-piece lines to understand why Gaga’s attempt to transcend her meat-dress persona and showcase a more intimate side of herself through Joanne didn’t quite hit the right notes. - “Stripped-down” Gaga is still a costume, and the old Gaga would have made art out of the artificiality of that pose. Instead, she turned to very conventional ideas about authenticity and family to perform the woman behind the mask. Gaga has always been able to spin her contradictions into compelling art and performances; perhaps limited by her access, the makers of Five Foot Two weren’t quite able to do the same. Poor writer's gonna get death threats soon!!

  4. Rebel Heart Tour DVD/Blu-ray

    Shaun replied to Mmmmm's topic in Madonna Tours Forum

    It looks fucking great.

  5. Rebel Heart Tour DVD/Blu-ray

    Sloane replied to Mmmmm's topic in Madonna Tours Forum

    I'm excited for Deeper & Deeper in pro shot the most.

  6. Rebel Heart Tour DVD/Blu-ray

    Sloane replied to Mmmmm's topic in Madonna Tours Forum

    Oh good, sounds like she's still lifting up the ladder then lol I like that part. Gotta harp on LDLHA again though. Really, M? Get rid of a popular fan favorite she's never sung live and keep in yet another gypsy thingy (the medley). GUUURL STOP. What's next? Performing Rescue Me on the next tour and cutting that for Candy Shop I better shut up, she'll do it too LOL
  7. Yaaaaas Queen

  8. Rebel Heart Tour DVD/Blu-ray

    cosmic_system replied to Mmmmm's topic in Madonna Tours Forum

    The editing is actually pretty good, the strings outro of LDLHA is stille there.

  9. Taylor Swift thread

    Ciccone's Cheeks replied to Hector's topic in Pop Princesses and Divas

    Oh..it's official I def. think out of ALL the mega A or even B and C list pop diva releases in 2017 LWYMMD is hands down the worst. Of course the media and Trump country won't sweat her at all though. It's cringe worthy in so many ways but where the shit splatters all over the fan is the chorus (I think that's the universal opinion). One of the worst in pop history for an A list superstar first/lead single. The opening and buildups are just whatever and listenable but once the main chorus drops it's just absurd and lazy beyond anything I could remember. That and the line of her being dead of course. Like it's purposely looking to become a bad parody on SNL. CTTR and ALL of Katys songs including BA lol are masterpieces compared to it. All came down to the marketing and hype machines here. Taylor had it full blast. Katy didn't.
  10. I think Truth or Dare would have had a score over 90 if RT existed at the time of its release. It was very well reviewed, the sample there is probably quite small, maybe 20? Gags Five Foot Two will probably end up in the 70s, like her albums on metacritic

  11. Rebel Heart Tour DVD/Blu-ray

    Sloane replied to Mmmmm's topic in Madonna Tours Forum

    I'm really bummed that LDLHA isn't included. Big mistake it's one of my favorite numbers. It'll be interesting to see how she transitions into LAV without it, assuming that Graffiti song is gone too. I just don't understand how they could seamlessly delete that. Lol I'm curious, outta be fun though still disappointing.

  12. Rebel Heart Tour DVD/Blu-ray

    Sloane replied to Mmmmm's topic in Madonna Tours Forum

    Based on a few of the vids posted here (thank you) the editing is less chaotic than MDNA, which I also don't own for that very reason despite being a great tour, I'm gonna go buy RHT this week. It's the same as Showtime broadcast? No biggie, she's been doing that for years and I didn't see the Showtime broadcast so it's new to me. I'm excited, I've been waiting to see this tour in pro shot for so long. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna love this tour a lot more after seeing the DVD.
  13. The only lena you need to know is the one that plays Cersei in GoT

  15. Taylor Swift thread

    Ciccone's Cheeks replied to Hector's topic in Pop Princesses and Divas

    Exactly. Would be absolutely jaw dropping if her new album comes in/around the opening week sales and maintains them like all her previous albums. Very little love and hype for her news songs. Kind of sorta the video but the MUSIC ain't showing up. Almost everyone I talk to (including younger tween relatives who previously were loons) think she's horrible and laughable now due to simply not doing/being who she really is. System is so f'king corrupt now (similar to politics) wouldn't shock me in the least if her #s actually DO get fabricated to the point of laughable. Look at how overnight Gaga went from one of the lowest rated Super Bowls to the highest and it became fact to many people. We've seen this shit over/over with ALL of them. Each one (Paula, Alanis, Shania etc etc...) has that mega album, eras or whatever and insists they're the 'new Madonna, Beatles, MJ etc..' and will forever get the hits/sales but then they have that one stinker album and sales plummet after the first few weeks as well as long term interest. Fact Taylor (biggest star in the world now? lol) had to *discount her song already says it all. Plus, it's rapidly losing steam on pop radio already! You're right but those other songs you mentioned are least melodic 'songs' lol that made total sense they were hits. 'Generic'/super safe has never been more red hot on the radio now. Maroon 5 is a prime example of the ultimate sell out utter crap 'band' now. They were on point from around 2003-2008 and a few other hits here/there were good. But now every single song is basically garbage, painfully boring/bland and sucking up to radio. It's more what the music biz and machine wants and forces to people to hear and buy versus taking the time and resources ($$) to actually make quality, soulful, or even semi game changing music.
  16. Lena Morgana, sorry Dunham can go fuck herself. Another attention seeking media whore who portrays herself as a "rebel". I cannot stand her, another vile monster 👎🏻
  18. One insufferable whiny loser supporting the other, no surprise! Hideous women!
  19. Today

  20. Mexico's Fatal Earthquake

    Rebel Saviour replied to Pedro's topic in Politics and World Events

  21. "If I had kept that [tooth] gap I would have even more problems with Madonna!"
  22. I hate how she gets away with EVERYTHING. doing promo non stop, paying netflix for all those trailers, using madonna's name, doing a big toronto premiere, inviting all the press.. and claiming she doesnt want success.. gaga is allowed to manipulate and say horrible things about M.. but M isnt allowed to say "reductive". elton can call madonna a fairground stripper, gaga can imply madonna doesnt write her songs or isnt an artist.. cher can flat out insult madonna's looks and is loved for it.. tired of this MESS. madonna has to come back with a big artistic & true raw album, show that TALENT again, stop fucking with those DVDs, hire a new band (perhaps with people from portugal) and show them what real art is so they dont even dare to criticize or be hateful
  23. Trump is undergoing a slow moving investigation and might get impeached within the next year or so.

  24. EROTICA 25

    Vogue992 replied to Mattress's topic in General Madonna Discussion

    Still OBSESSED with these:
  25. I think she's the writer of a US comedy drama Girls? Never seen anything positive written about her but she's of the gaga generation of being a victim who is really strong blah, blah, blah. Type of person who'll support gags for her own gain. The RT fan score has dropped from 95 to 83 but the critic score is still 70. SMH

  26. Fergie

    FeTuoni replied to jaron's topic in Pop Princesses and Divas

    Can’t stand this Fergie person.
  27. anyone know how long this is gonna be on netflix? since it's a "netflix original doc"? let this BS disappear as fast as possible
  1. Load more activity
×