Fashion Review
The past few weeks have been a wealth of fashion red-carpet moments with the annual Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals taking place consecutively. Sure there were movies shown and many entertainment publications talked about the standouts that may be a precursor of what’s to come for Awards season. But let’s face it, many of us look just as forward to the fashion at the festivals, as we do the films. And right on the heels of these two events, was one of the highlights of the fashion year – New York Spring Fashion Week. Below are some of my favorite fashion moments from all three events.
Venice International Film Festival
Elizabeth Banks in Elie Saab
Elizabeth Banks in Dolce & Gabbana
Amber Heard in Stella McCartney
Diane Kruger in Jason Wu
Diane Kruger in Valentino
Toronto International Film Festival
Evan Rachel Wood in Gucci
Natalie Portman in Lanvin
Amber Heard in Elie Saab Couture
Alicia Vikander in Rosetta Getty
Kate Mara in Marc Jacobs
New York Fashion Week
Oscar De La Renta
Delpozo
Ralph Lauren
Jason Wu
Alexander Wang
Vera Wang
Reality Review
My favorite reality shows are back and I couldn’t be happier. Dancing With the Stars, which often premieres a week before Survivor and The Amazing Race, has actually been back for two weeks. And thanks to a really stupid idea from producer Rob Wade to have two consecutive nights of dancing and eliminations last week, the couples still standing have already done three dances. The good thing about this is that it has allowed me to better judge each couple and decide who I think has the best chances.
Dancing With the Stars
At the moment, I think the favorites are Bindi Irwin/Derek Hough, Tamar Braxton/Val Chmerkovskiy and Nick Carter/Sharna Burgess, who were most people’s early picks going into the season. While Nick Carter, who was the pre-season heavy favorite had a major stumble with his poorly executed Jive, he rebounded strongly the next night with his beautiful Foxtrot. Bindi Irwin is the giddiest and most adorable girl ever who has likely wormed her way into the voters’ hearts. Her actual ability and Derek as her Pro doesn’t hurt either. Tamar and Val seem to lack a strong connection but she has a lot of natural rhythm and ability and could take it all the way, as long as the voters are there.
Spoilers
While the previous three couples are the heavy favorites, there are some emerging couples, some very unexpected, who can prove to be major spoilers down the road. The biggest surprise is Alek Skarlatos who is paired with Lindsay Arnold (finally getting her long overdue second shot as a Pro and KILLING it). Alek is the definition of a guy plucked from obscurity and dropped into the ballroom. He gained notoriety after he and his two friends stopped a terrorist attack in France. Most viewers probably had no idea what to expect from him. I mean he’s definitely not a dancer and isn’t even a performer. However, he has been amazing and with the All-American, American hero, everyman thing going for him, I can definitely see him taking it all the way to the finale.
The other spoiler is Hayes Grier, a 15-year old Vine “star” (yeah I don’t get it either), paired with Emma Slater. Now I’ll be honest and admit that I don’t think Hayes is so great and am actually baffled by some of the judges’ love for him. However, I do like that he has a great attitude about the show, really gives it his all and he and Emma have a really fun partnership. If the judges keep liking him as they have, coupled with his fanbase, he could make it far. However, with Willow Shields, Cody Simpson and even Bethany Mota only making it to 4th place, we’ve seen fans of young stars like Hayes don’t actually vote.
Finally, Carlos PennVega and Witney Carson look very strong. Carlos is competing on the show with his wife, Alexa. But while she’s been seemingly consumed by him, he’s been all about the competition and so far has proven to be the stronger of the two. Witney’s choreography for him has been on the money and he has shown great natural rhythm and movement. I’m not sure if the fanbase is there though.
Disappointment
My biggest disappointment of the season so far has been Alexa VegaPena, Carlos’ wife, who is paired with Mark Ballas. I had such high hopes for her this season and everything I saw from their rehearsals made it seem like she was going to be amazing. But a combination of nerves, being more concerned with Carlos rather than forging a connection with Mark, etc. has just left her performances a bit lackluster for me. Her rumba was beautiful but there was something weird going on with her back all throughout the dance that was taking me out of it. As it stands, I think she’s going to be the season’s shock boot.
Survivor
This season of Survivor is called Second Chances and is all about players who have only played once before, getting a second chance. The good thing about a season like this for me, is I already know all or most of the players and so I don’t have to spend the first three episodes trying to remember who is who. Some quick observations about the season premiere and some of the players.
Vytas’ elimination was pretty heavily telegraphed throughout the episode. The moment they showed so much of the dynamics of that tribe, it was clear they were going to lose immunity and Vytas was obviously a goner because while Abi-Marie may have shown a little of her crazy, Vytas seemed to be creeping out or annoying everyone. Shirin’s reading of him as smarmy was right on. In his elimination video, he opines that the tribe got rid of him because he was a huge threat. Uh yeah, sure dude…
Speaking of Abi-Marie, she started the episode talking about how she wanted to do things differently this time and learn from her past mistakes on the show but it seems like the crazy is very alive and well. Although I will say, I did agree with her that her bracelet being in Pei-Ghee’s bag was suspect. But unfortunately I can see the crazy fighting desperately to come out of her. Shirin seemed to be trying to rein in the annoying but she can’t help geeking out and not playing it cool when talking strategy and that might come back to hurt her.
The tribe of Joe and company definitely looks physically stronger but I hope the challenge wins end up evenly split and we don’t have a complete dominance, because I’m not interested in seeing a merge of one dominant group and a Pagonging. Poor Fishbach looked so lost over there and as he said, is back in his same nightmare of being surrounded by alpha males. I’m not sure if Joe is just playing the same game again or this is like deja vu where things seemed all rosy for him at the beginning and everyone loved him but as soon as the merge happens, he doesn’t have the numbers. The “Joe is awesome” and Joe love was really on display in this episode.
It will also be interesting to see what happens with Spencer and Woo on the same tribe, since Spencer was not particularly kind to Woo the last time they played together, in his assessment of his game and sometimes even his intelligence. Spencer is right, he can be cocky and quite the intellectual snob. I was worried about him, thinking he had no shot, much like Joe, but Joe has somehow seemed to secure his place in his tribe and Spencer looks good. But that might not be the case if as the promo suggests Varner and Dietz wake up and realize they need to get rid of the younger players who are too much of a threat and I think in their minds that might be Spencer. But I think he has some numbers with Kelly, Shirin, maybe Wigglesworth and again Woo is questionable. Should be a very interesting season.
The Amazing Race
The race around the world is back. Hopefully we will be spared another season of someone as annoying as Hayley was last season (#FreeBlair – never forget). Which is not to say there wasn’t plenty of annoying to go around – the Texan boys and their so called “charm and sex-appeal to women” can shut up anytime. They did seem to get a dose of humble pie after they were in last place getting out of the starting line but then they finished the leg first so I’m not sure the cockiness will go away anytime soon.
There are the cheerleader cliches who were almost eliminated, which hopefully means they realized that being “cute” isn’t going to do much for them on the race and they can get over themselves. The biggest dose of humble pie was Justin, an Amazing Race super-fan who created his own mini-race to propose to his girlfriend, which actually went viral. Proving the old adage that these shows are a lot tougher than they look on television, Justin made a series of mistakes that almost cost them very dearly. Hopefully he’s learned and will dial down the cockiness and “know-it-all” attitude down very fast. Oh and let’s quit with the tears too because that got annoying VERY fast.
Also, possibly unpopular but I was kind of bummed the TMZ women got eliminated. I thought they would have been fun to watch on the race but I liked their chill attitude over their elimination.
PoPnOgR@PhY 