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Tag: Joseph Kahn

  • Margaret Qualley Serves Taylor Swift in “Delicate” for Bleachers’ “Tiny Moves” (Which Is Meta Because Taylor Swift Serves Margaret Qualley for “Delicate”)

    Margaret Qualley Serves Taylor Swift in “Delicate” for Bleachers’ “Tiny Moves” (Which Is Meta Because Taylor Swift Serves Margaret Qualley for “Delicate”)

    Continuing to act as Jack Antonoff’s muse in multiple ways, Margaret Qualley makes a far more pronounced appearance in the latest Bleachers video than she did in their last one (some wannabe Lynchian fare for “Alma Mater” featuring Lana Del Rey). Indeed, she’s the star of the show. One that is rather limited in production value (on the surface), but nonetheless channels the vibe of Taylor Swift in her far more “blockbuster-y” 2018 video for “Delicate,” directed by Joseph Kahn. This, of course, is a rather meta statement considering Swift borrowed all her swagger for “Delicate” from Spike Jonze’s 2016 ad for Kenzo World starring none other than Qualley. 

    In said ad, not only is Qualley wearing a similar style of frock to Swift’s in “Delicate” (the latter wearing a blue instead of a green tone), but, most important of all, she’s dancing “like no one is watching.” That is to say, like a monkey let loose from the zoo. This is precisely how Swift feels in “Delicate” upon realizing that she’s invisible. A dream come true for someone so incessantly scrutinized. With this newfound freedom from being studied, let alone perceived at all, Swift delves into some very Qualley-esque choreo that eventually leads her out into the pouring rain (pouring rain being Swift’s bread and butter when it comes to accenting dramatic effect).

    Funnily enough, this is one of the few songs in recent years that Swift didn’t tap Jack Antonoff to produce. Instead, Shellback and Max Martin (the latter being all over the Reputation album) did. But even if Antonoff had produced the track, he wouldn’t have said anything to Swift about how “familiar” her video looked. Because, at that time, he still wasn’t dating Qualley. Instead, he was in his breakup year with Lena Dunham (who Qualley probably doesn’t want to think about having shared a penis with). Right after their breakup in early 2018, Antonoff went right for a visual opposite of Dunham in Carlotta Kohl. 

    Similarly to Antonoff’s rebounding propensities, right after her breakup with Shia LaBeouf in 2021, she began dating Antonoff. A man who, instead of being an outright fuckboy (Qualley had already made that mistake with Pete Davidson in 2019, too), just looks like one. Though her romance with LaBeouf only lasted a year, it was still enough time for them to star in a music video for “Love Me Like You Hate Me” by Rainsford (a.k.a. Margaret’s sister, Rainey Qualley). Although this gave her another slight opportunity to showcase her dancing and movement abilities (having been trained heavily in dance and ballet during her teen years before quitting to study acting), it is with Bleachers’ “Tiny Moves” video that she gets to truly display her chops in a manner not seen since the Kenzo World ad that Swift so blatantly borrowed from.

    Qualley’s involvement in the conception of the video appears to be so extensive that she even has a co-directing credit with Bleachers go-to Alex Lockett. And, perhaps to honor Antonoff’s hipster roots, the video’s backdrop is the New York skyline (filmed from a vantage point that one presumes is in Williamsburg). 

    Considering the chorus of the song goes, “The tiniest moves you make/Watchin’ the whole world shake/Watchin’ my whole world change/Tiniest twist of faith/Watchin’ the whole world shake/Watchin’ my whole world change,” having Qualley not only present in it as the focal point, but also showing off her dance moves feels like a no-brainer. For, when speaking of this song in particular, Antonoff noted, “​​I met my now-wife, and it feels like a lot of the mythology and armor that I wore [fell off]. And when you have a big shift like that, which was really meeting my person, it’s brilliant and amazing, but it’s also destabilizing ’cause you have to deal with all of the past, where you lived by this code that was bullshit.” 

    As Qualley dances (once again in a long, flowing frock—this time a white one instead of a green one à la Kenzo World) like she’s being demonically possessed (that’s kind of her thing) against the night sky, the camera eventually turns away from the view of the city to reveal Antonoff himself leaning against the hood of his car while marveling at Qualley from afar. Evidently, she dances long enough for dawn to eventually come (as manifested by the lightening sky color), finally stopping to stare back at Antonoff and approach him. As though she’s made enough “tiny moves” and can finally cease performing them so as to see what kind of ripple effects they’ve invoked.

    Getting closer to “her man” so that she can embrace him (complete with cheesy, circling camerawork to accent the intensity of their connection), Qualley can probably safely say that her tiny moves have had a big impact. Which was already apparent when Swift saw fit to cop them for “Delicate.”

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Inside the ‘New York Times’ Debate Over Its Gaza Hospital Bombing Coverage

    Inside the ‘New York Times’ Debate Over Its Gaza Hospital Bombing Coverage

    A series of Slack messages obtained by Vanity Fair shows there was immediate concern inside The New York Times over the paper’s presentation of the Gaza hospital bombing story. But senior editors appear to have dismissed suggestions from an international editor, along with a junior reporter stationed in Israel who has been contributing to the paper’s coverage of the war, that the paper hedge in its framing of events.

    Several news organizations are facing scrutiny for early coverage of the explosion, including the Times, which issued a rare editors’ note Monday admitting that the paper “relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified” in its early coverage of the blast. These internal messages provide a window into the Times’ decision-making process and reveal how some journalists urged caution in the early moments of an unfolding tragedy.

    On the afternoon of October 17—shortly after the Times published its first version of the story, with the headline, “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinian Officials Say”—a senior news editor tagged two senior editors on the Live team and wrote, “I think we can be a bit more direct in the lead: At least 500 people were killed on Tuesday by an Israel airstrike at a hospital in Gaza City, the Palestinian authorities said.”

    One of the tagged Live editors replied, “You don’t want to hedge it?”

    A junior reporter for the Times who has been covering the conflict for the paper from Jerusalem chimed in: “Better to hedge.”

    The senior news editor replied, “We’re attributing.”

    The exchange took place in a Times Slack channel called #israel-briefings, which hundreds of journalists have access to. Vanity Fair is withholding the names of the Times staff involved at this time. The Times declined to comment on the Slack messages.

    A few minutes later, a senior editor on the International desk wrote in the same Slack channel, “The [headline] on the [home page] goes way too far.”

    A second senior news editor asked, “How is it different than the blog hed,” referring to a headline in the paper’s live-blog format. “They both say Israeli strike kills, per Palestinians.”

    “I think we can’t just hang the attribution of something so big on one source without having tried to verify it,” the International editor said. “And then slap it across the top of the [home page]. Putting the attribution at the end doesn’t give us cover, if we’ve been burned and we’re wrong.”

    Then a second senior editor on the Live team replied to the International editor, asking them to confer with a senior Standards editor. “This was discussed with a bunch of people,” that second senior editor on the Live team noted.

    As NiemanLab’s Joshua Benton reported, the “Israeli Strike” language was not removed from the top headline until 4:01 p.m.

    On Monday, nearly a week after the hospital bombing and Slack messages in question, the Times published the editors’ note, which was notably the first since executive editor Joe Kahn took the helm 16 months ago. “Given the sensitive nature of the news during a widening conflict, and the prominent promotion it received, Times editors should have taken more care with the initial presentation, and been more explicit about what information could be verified,” it read.

    Kahn also addressed the note on Monday in an interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro on one of the Times’ own podcasts, The Headlines: War Briefing. “What I think we needed to reflect on a bit was not necessarily the news-gathering process, as it plays out all the time, but when a certain piece of information is verified or valuable enough to put into that very, very top headline—what I refer to as the banner headline—and to get the extra promotion and attention that that kind of headline would get,” Kahn said.

    “Given Hamas’s role in this story, given that it had just attacked and murdered hundreds of Israelis, one thing that I’ve been trying to understand is it would have been easier to err on the side of caution,” Garcia-Navarro said. “I mean, this wasn’t a scoop by the Times. If there was any question whatsoever of who was responsible, wouldn’t it have been easier to sort of be very forthcoming with the audience about that and lean into the ongoing ambiguity, given the significance and the stakes of this? Why didn’t the Times do that?”

    Kahn said they published an editors’ note “to reflect on exactly that.” Asked about his personal involvement in the decision to publish the headline, Kahn said, “We were all aware, and we discussed the developments in that hospital bombing or blast. The actual words in the headline were debated by a team of people who routinely work out the wording. I wasn’t directly involved in that, but I was watching very closely on the coverage.”

    Charlotte Klein

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  • ‘New York Times’ Issues Apology For Reporting Palestinian Deaths

    ‘New York Times’ Issues Apology For Reporting Palestinian Deaths

    NEW YORK—Claiming that the humanizing of occupied peoples is not what the newspaper stands for, The New York Times issued an apology Tuesday for reporting on Palestinian deaths. “Our thoughtful and accurate coverage of the Palestinian death toll in no way met our editorial standards for obfuscation, and for that we sincerely apologize,” said executive editor Joseph Kahn, explaining that the article marked the first such mention of Palestinian suffering in the Times’ 172-year history, and it would certainly be the last. “Rest assured, the individual responsible for bringing to light the atrocities perpetrated on the Palestinian people has already been terminated. We will use this as a teachable moment and redouble our efforts to conceal the anguish of all marginalized and oppressed peoples going forward.” At press time, the Times issued a retraction for incorrectly identifying Palestinians as “human beings.”

    Alphas Explain Why They Love Joe Rogan

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  • On the Arrogance of “The Boy” and the Logistical Nightmare of Boning Two Different Women Who Live Next Door to Each Other

    On the Arrogance of “The Boy” and the Logistical Nightmare of Boning Two Different Women Who Live Next Door to Each Other

    There are many moments in “The Boy Is Mine” video that require more than just “a little” suspension of disbelief. But chief among them is “The Boy” in question, played by Mekhi Phifer, thinking he can actually get away with balling two women who live right next door to each other. This embodies either peak arrogance or peak stupidity. One tends to believe the latter. And it seems that the song it riffs off of, “The Girl Is Mine” by Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney, did well to eschew a video altogether. Even if Jackson and McCartney probably would have had an easier time sharing a woman as neither one shared the same taste in domiciles (Jackson having a very specific flavor indeed with regard to his residences). As such, “The Girl” of their tale likely never would have encountered them living next door to each other the way “The Boy” does in the Joseph Kahn-directed video from Brandy and Monica.

    Evincing the set design aesthetic of Britney Spears and Madonna’s “Me Against the Music” video long before it was released, “The Boy Is Mine” was shot in such a way so that we can see each “cube” a.k.a. apartment that Brandy and Monica inhabit at the same time, with the “strip” of a wall dividing their abodes as they hear different goings-on in the other’s apartment. Though, thankfully, never the familiar moaning sound of “The Boy” orgasming too soon. They don’t even seem to hear the sound of the other girl’s TV as they war for airwave frequencies the same way they do for “The Boy.” Brandy wants to watch The Jerry Springer Show (still endlessly relevant in 1998), while Monica wants to watch a generic black-and-white old movie or show (so generic it seems unidentifiable). As they go back and forth on switching each other’s channel without comprehending their next-door neighbor is responsible, it serves as the symbolic first “instance” of the women fighting over something—in this case, use of their TV. Because we’re evidently to assume that it must be an electrical wiring shitshow in that building.

    Not that it matters, so long as “The Boy” shows up to keep one of them company. When that doesn’t happen, Brandy is obliged to invite over three extremely disinterested friends to sit in her apartment and regale them with her spiel about how “The Boy” is hers, not yet suspecting, for whatever reason, that “The Other Woman” lives right next door. Meanwhile, Monica is also talking to her own trio of friends as she, too, ruminates on how “The Boy” is hers, playing the “McCartney” role in the permutation. And yes, “The Girl Is Mine” is a far milder, “sweeter” song, with Jackson lightly “asserting” in the opening verse, “Every night she walks right in my dreams/Since I met her from the start I’m so proud I am the only one/Who is special in her heart.” McCartney quickly debunks Jackson’s delusions of heterosexuality with, “I don’t understand the way you think/Saying that she’s yours not mine/Sending roses and your silly dreams/Really just a waste of time.”

    Eventually, Jackson is pushed to screaming, “But we both cannot have her/So it’s one or the other/And one day you’ll discover/That she’s my girl forever and ever.” So much for polite declarations like, “The doggone girl is mine.” A cheesy line, to be sure. Which is probably part of why Brandy and Monica wanted to update the concept with a far more believable lyrical display of jealousy as they go mano a mano with, “You need to give it up/Had about enough/It’s not hard to see/The boy is mine.” But when we’re actually first introduced to “The Boy,” it’s clear he belongs to no one as he flashes a winsome smile at each friend set leaving Brandy’s and Monica’s respective apartments. It is in this moment that we must ask ourselves: why wouldn’t one of the friends mention something about this sighting? Only further adding to the incongruity of the idea that Brandy and Monica wouldn’t catch on sooner to the fact that “The Boy” has been visiting each of their apartments regularly (granted, it’s not any more incongruous than Jackson and McCartney being similar enough in their “predilections” to like the same woman). As though the idea of being caught by one of them gets him off all the more. 

    If one was looking for signs of who he actually prefers, however, he seems far more interested in ogling Monica’s friend trio than Brandy’s. So maybe that means Monica is more his type? Who knows? It often feels like men are attracted to anything with a womanly shape, with no discernment regarding face. In that sense, “The Boy”—and all the boys he represents—has something tantamount to prosopagnosia. A convenient excuse for not caring who a person is so long as their vag feels slightly different when fucking.

    The addiction to “experiencing” different pussies for men like “The Boy” is part of what might come across as bravado, but is ultimately as simple as a total lack of concern for the emotions of the woman who’s bought into the yarn he’s spun for her. Believing him when he whispers sweet nothings like, “Without you, I couldn’t make it through the day.” Of course, there’s no mention of the night, when he has manifold punani options. A.k.a. what “The Boy” has in Brandy and Monica. For we soon see him with his arms around each woman in alternating crosscuts. That he’s wearing the same cornball shirt (rife for being worn by Will Ferrell or Chris Kattan in A Night at the Roxbury) in each scene indicates this is all one evening. He’s so out of control that he’s seeing both of them in a single night. Though, again, the logistics of this are highly implausible, for why would the first girl he visited “let him go” so quickly? What’s more, even if he pretended to leave by making a big show of walking down the hall and getting on the elevator, there’s no way Brandy or Monica wouldn’t hear him knocking on a different door when he came back. For they can certainly seem to hear one another during the back and forth that ensues later on that night when they’re both flexing their silk pajama set game.

    As Kahn pans rapidly between the rooms divided by a thin wall, they each appear to be having a conversation with one another through that wall as Monica announces, “What we have you can’t take… I can tell the real from the fake” and Brandy shouts back things like, “When will you get the picture?/You’re the past, I’m the future.” Brandy even makes the universally understood gesture for “crazy” when she says, “I’m sorry that you seem to be confused.”

    In the next scene, however, it’s Brandy who looks confused when she hears the phone ring and goes to answer it, only to realize it was coming from Monica’s apartment (once more, we have to ask: where was this ability to hear everything going on through the paper-thin walls when “The Boy” was yukking it up in the other’s apartment?). After Monica hangs up from her conversation with “The Boy,” he then has the audacity to call Brandy to confirm plans with her as well, with both women having put on their “going out” ensembles. This, too, presents a great risk to being caught. Moreover, wouldn’t the girl who was scheduled for the ultra-early or ultra-late date be suspicious about the timing of the get-together? How does he honestly think he can carry this off?

    The answer is that he clearly can’t as Brandy and Monica finally get wise (way too late in the game, if one considers realism) to his two-timing and decide to have a little fun of their own with the dirty bastard. But not before each woman gets rid of her framed photos and photo albums featuring pictures of them with “The Boy” (as well as any “trinkets” or “tokens of affection” he gave them)—this indicating that the relationships have been going on for at least months, prompting the viewer to continue scratching their head on how he wouldn’t have been caught coming or going from one of their apartments by the other far sooner. Tossing all of the romantic ephemera out at the same time at their front door, Brandy and Monica still want to blame the other one briefly for what is “The Boy’s” fuckery and betrayal—which neither woman is responsible for. And yet, perhaps because of the scarcity of hot straight men, they want to fight just a bit longer over who he really belonged to.

    In the final moments of the video, “The Boy” hints anew at who he might truly prefer (and not just because Phifer would also star with Brandy in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer that year) as he decides to knock on Brandy’s door (Apt. 6) first, only to be blindsided by Monica also answering the door with her. Was he really so deluded as to think this wouldn’t happen sooner or later? Signs point to yes as he appears genuinely surprised to not only see both of them, but then have the door slammed in his face.  

    Nonetheless, the video offers no truly satisfying resolution. One really wants to know, did “The Boy” end up smooth-talking his way into a threesome? Did he choose to home in on one girl and convince her to stay with him? If so, did that result in one of the girls having to move out of her apartment to avoid the awkwardness of such a situation? If not, did Brandy and Monica claim sweet revenge beyond just a slammed door by throwing him out one of their windows? Whatever one’s fan fiction chooses to lean toward, the fact remains that “The Boy” is emblematic of the level of arrogance many “single” straight men still possess because they believe themselves to be “at a premium” for their rarity. Not to mention that no one involved in the video’s concept thought about how daft it would make Brandy and Monica look to not instantly pick up on the romantic con.

    Genna Rivieccio

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