Monday, August 19, 2013

Shia LaBeouf Bares All in Sigur Rós Video; The Lyrics to Lady Gaga's New Single 'Applause' Are Absolutely Ridiculous

Shia LaBeouf's penis is just one of the many images that flashes across the screen in the strange and downright depressing new Sigur Rós music video for their song “Fjögur Píanó." But it's the one image that will likely garner the most attention from Israeli director Alma Har’el's nearly 8-minute-long opus about addiction. (After all, "Shia LaBeouf Sucks On a Blinking Lollipop" doesn't have quite the same panache as "Shia LaBeouf Goes Full-Frontal.")

Still, the sight of the Transformers' star completely in the buff is hardly the most jarring visual from the divisive clip. Aside from the nudity from LaBeouf and his co-star, actress Denna Thomsen, there's a dance sequence that is, right now, at this very moment, making Mia Michaels weep (choreographer Ryan Heffington will get the credit for that) and a hell of a lot of symbolism for addiction.

As Har'el, who was given $10,000 and total creative from the band, whose new album Valtari was released last month, explains to the Wall Street Journal, the video is about "addiction to drugs, or sex, or anything — and how you get stuck in a cycle." Those butterflies aren't just butterflies, but "very beautiful things that die very fast" (nobody ever suspects the butterfly) and what one person sees as simply "candy and fish" is the hardship of "not knowing how to get out of something without causing pain to someone else." In other words, the video for the wordless "“Fjögur Píanó" will mean something very different to everyone.

Since the 26-year-old star, who has been nothing short of a PR nightmare over the past few years, reportedly volunteered to take part in the project, it's a safe assumption LaBeouf was hoping to earn back some of the long-lost actor cred and shed some of his own inner demons. Of course, in a culture where violence hardly causes us to bat an eye (the video also features some unsettling moments of violence) and full-frontal male nudity can still send people into a giggling frenzy, the core of what he was trying to accomplish may get lost in that frenzy. Just ask Michael Fassbender.

Check out the trippy NSFW video (unless you work in an incredibly lax office) here:

So there you have it.

Shia Nude

More:

Shia LaBeouf and Tom Hardy Are Slick, Old School Gangsters in Lawless Trailer

Cannes 2012: Pattinson, LaBeouf, and Efron Ready to Prove Themselves

Tags: Shia LaBeouf

The Lyrics to Lady Gaga's New Single 'Applause' Are Absolutely Ridiculous

The Lyrics to Lady Gaga's New Single 'Applause' Are Absolutely Ridiculous

By: Trish Halpin

3:49pm EDT

WENN

After a weekend of leaks, Lady Gaga's first single off ARTPOP was officially released on Monday, and boy, is "Applause" something. Not since Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell" have we heard the same word used in a song with such abundance (spoiler alert: she says "applause" a lot). Adding insult to injury, aside from the repetitive, self congratulatory, and worst of all, uninspired lyrics, the electronic dance beats that the Haus of Gaga threw together are stale and sound like a remix of "The Monster Mash."

Here's a sampling of our favorite lyrics from Mother Monster's new single and an applause count:

"I stand here waiting for you to bang the gong, to crash the critic saying: Is it right or is it wrong?"(It's wrong.)

"I've overheard your theory nostalgia's for geeks, I guess sir, if you say so, some of us just like to read"(Nostalgia ≠ literacy.)

"Pop culture was in art, now art's in pop culture in me!"(Andy Warhol just rolled over in his grave.)

"Put your hands up, make em touch, touch"(Yes, that is how to clap. Thanks, Gaga!)

The Applause count: 30. She says "applause" 30 times. That averages out to once every 7 seconds, almost as often as men think about sex. Anyone who took an English class in high school can tell you that repetition is a literary device meant for use by poets and musicians, but 30 fucking times, Gaga?! Get a thesaurus!