Alright Still
By Lily Allen
Released July 2006, by EMI
So, two of the magazines I reviewed for this project (Shout, and Bust) both had interviews with Lily Allen. In fact, she was on the cover of the Shout magazine I looked at. I had heard of Lily Allen from last summer, when her song "Smile" was featured on a blog I frequent; and then in an end-of-summer wrap-up in People magazine or something, they mentioned her song "LDN" as one of the songs of summer.
So, I had slowly started downloading Lily Allen songs, and the more I heard her songs, the more I liked them. My initial favourites were "Knock 'em out" which is a song about telling off jerks who make moves at you in clubs; and "Take what you take," a kind of cheeky life manifesto.
Lily Allen's songs are all filled with cheeky British attitude, and very interesting musical samples set to kind of old-school hip-hop beats. Most of the songs are easy to sing along with, as she sings mostly in the same range as her speaking voice, and it's mostly sort of talk-singing anyway.
I can see teens really enjoying this album. Her fun, irreverent attitude and refreshing lyrics where she makes fun of the beauty industry are a nice change from the "I love you forever" lyrics of other singers in her age range like Jessica Simpson or Brooke Hogan. In addition, seeing her healthy body image makes her songs where she makes fun of double-standards in the fashion industry ring a lot more true than when someone like Beyoncé or Christina Aguilera makes similar statements.
I guess from a library perspective, the main concern about this album would be that there is an awful lot of profanity in almost every songs. Her accent is so strong, though, that it's hard to make out what she is saying so a lot of the profanity would probably go unnoticed by listeners. The album does have a parental advisory sticker on it, and I believe from looking at the Amazon listing, that there is a "radio-friendly" version of this album that maybe a library in a more conservative environment might prefer to purchase.
However, I find the profanity a lot less offensive in her cheeky songs than in the more sexually-charged, exploitative songs and videos coming out in a lot of hip-hop albums (i.e. 50 Cent, Bubba Sparx, et al)
Rating: Great, catchy, cheeky music for ages 15 and up. I'm sure younger teens would like it and would probably listen to this album, but due to some of the lyrics, I wouldn't specifically recommend it to them. But I wouldn't stop them from borrowing this album.
And for your listening pleasure, here is one of my favourite songs from this album, "Everything's just too wonderful":
OK.
So, I am probably overthinking here.
But, after watching High School Musical again, I realized something kind of neat:
Both High School Musical and John Tucker Must die have one exact same scene happen in both movies.
I'll set the scene:
The star of the basketball team (Jesse "Abs" Metcalfe, Zac "Bangs" Efron) likes a very sweet girl (Brittany "Blond" Snow, Vanessa Anne "Ethnic" Hudgens), and his basketball teammates think that it is distracting him from The Team. And they confront him in the locker room about this. But they don't know that the sweet girl's brainy friend (Arielle "Maxim 100 Hottest Girls 2005" Kebbel, Monique "Dancing with the Stars" Coleman) IS SECRETLY CAPTURING THIS CONVERSATION VIA WEBCAM.
And what happens? Well, Abs/Bangs, feeling demasculated by his teammates, says something kind of mean about the sweet girl. In the case of Abs, he says something along the lines of "I am going to pork her tonight", followed by raunchy movements. In the case of the more gentlemanly Bangs, he says something along the lines of "Hey, the team is more important to me than the girl," followed by saying the team chant.
And what happens? Blond/Ethnic is confronted with this webcam footage - and she realizes that he's been playing her all along! Although, that was the exact OPPOSITE of what was happening in both cases -- Abs/Bangs really felt something for Blond/Ethnic -- and Abs/Bangs was just SAVING FACE in front of the guys. How was he to know that Maxim/Dancing was capturing the whole thing on webcam?
Anyway. I am sure you will be relieved to know that both movies mostly deviate at this point - Blond sets out to wreck Abs' life and the full cast winds up in a cake-fight in John Tucker Must Die; in High School Musical, the team apologizes to Bangs, and he apologizes to Ethnic, and then everybody does a big song and dance number.
But still... two movies. Both from 2006. One starring 28-year-olds, the other starring 18-year-olds. One features a scene of "lesbian" "kissing", a man running about in a thong, and a lot of discussion of one character's sluttiness. The other features creme brulee, a rooftop garden, and far too many pleather pageboy caps. But both movies? Feature THE EXACT SAME PLOT POINT.
Kind of interesting.
Here is a visual comparison:
I visited the teen website of the Prince George Public Library, http://www.lib.pg.bc.ca/teens, which is still being built up, but they seem like they are really on the right track with this site.
The design of the main page is anime-inspired, with a simple layout featuring some manga-style teens, as well as a photo of the library's youth advisory board. There are a number of book lists in a variety of genres of interest to teens, such as vampire books, chick lit, and fractured fairy tales. Some of the "genres" may be slightly mislabelled - I am not sure what they mean by "those teenage years" or "not everything is as it seems..."
They do also have a separate page for graphic novels, which is divided into YA and adult titles. As their graphic novels are not catalogued, these pages contain directions to find the graphic novels, as well as a list of series. They also provide a list of links for graphic novels (at the moment, there are only three listed, but all three are good), as well as a list of books the library holds related to drawing your own graphic novels (these titles are not hyperlinked to the catalogue, which I think would be helpful, as they are all catalogued non-fiction items).
The teen site also contains "entertainment" links for teens, which have a good collection of resources for things to do in Prince George (or "PG" as they seem to call it), as well as external sites such as Much Music, MSN, and Famous Players. Their "homework" page contains links to on-line resources such as dictionaries and encyclopedias, as well as the all-important "ask a librarian" link. Their section of "weblinks" is kind of confusing to me - these are links to to sites related to health information, job resources, and also a section for book lovers. This section might be better labelled "resources" or something like that.
There are also pages for their youth advisory board, as well as a page of resources for parents and teachers, as well as a page of recent book reviews.
The design of the pages is consistent, but I would add maybe a coloured background and some more images to the various pages - even just some shapes or something. It is all very basic with a white background, red menu icons, and the same anime characters on each page under the menu. Even if they changed the anime characters' presentation so that they have different "looks" depending on what the pages are about?
Overall, I think that the PG library is well on their way to developing a very useful, friendly teen space.
So, I looked at the teen space of the Worthington Public Library, which is set up like a blog: http://www.worthingtonlibraries.org/teen/blog/
I thought that it was all quite well designed, with lots of bells and whistles, like you would find on a teen's own blog, or a MySpace page or the like. The website includes features like a poll, this month asking which YA book movie adaptation was the worst (Eragon was in the lead last time I checked).
The blog was last updated two days ago, which seems reasonable to me (there wouldn't be something to say every single day, after all). There is information there about an upcoming program where they are making clocks out of old CDs, and the blog entry also includes information about other things you can do with old CDs (i.e. make a disco ball). They are also doing a recycled clothes designing competition along the lines of Project Runway, which seems like a fantastic idea.
The blog also includes information about newly arrived YA books (featuring short plot descriptions), and I was impressed that they talk about books in several different genres - some fantasy, some historical, some contemporary.
There are also a lot of fun little links to click on - like a map which charts where visitors are logging onto the website from (I think the teeny dot on N.S. is me!) - and links to library resources such as how to get a library card or homework help - and also a link to the library's MySpace page. The previous blog entries are all categorized so you can see entries about new (or award-winning) books, entries about events, programming, and the library itself.
Overall, I thought the design was busy enough to keep a teen interested, but not so cluttered that you can't find information. The overall design is OK - one of the better teen library sites, probably, but I would personally do away with the photos of wholesome, cheery-looking teens; and also the acid-wash-esque banner at the top of the page.
This is a great resource for the area's teens, who seem to be a valuable part of the library.
High School Musical
2006
OK. So, I had heard sooo much about how this movie is single-handedly defining the new generation of teens. According to my teen magazines I have been reading, HSM (as they call it) it is the "Grease" for a new generation, and also Zac Efron is totally hot. So I figured I had to watch this movie. Let me first just say that my research has found that:
a) there is currently a touring concert version of this movie
b) also a live stage show
c) and an ice show
d) and the sequel comes out this summer
e)
oh, and there is also a novelization. That I am not very curious to
read. How do you novelize a song and dance routine involving
basketballs?
But I digress.
This movie is actually really sweet and funny. It is also refreshing to watch a movie where the teens actually look like actual teens -- as in, this case appears to be at least ten years younger than the cast of John Tucker Must Die.
I guess everybody knows the plot by now. Dreamy basketball player Zac Efron falls for mathlete Vanessa Anne Hudgins -- and they both secretly want to be in the musical. The school's star actors, brother and sister evil duo Ryan and Sharpay, do their best to foil Zac and Vanessa's plans for musical superstardom. The basketball team thinks Vanessa is distracting Zac from the big championship game. The mathletes think that Zac is using Vanessa. Misunderstandings. Singing and dancing.
I guess it is kind of refreshing to see a movie where the singing is clearly being done by these actors, and so is the dancing. In that neither is really award-winning calibre, but the teens are having so much fun doing this movie, it is really uplifting to watch. Though can I say, Zac Efron is really, really, not a very good dancer. Or singer. But he does have the requisite puppy-dog eyes and shaggy bangs to make all 8 year old girls swoon.
I think my favourite part of this movie was the songs (and the soundtrack is apparently the #1 selling album of 2006 or something). At least two of the movie's stars - Ashley Tisdale and Vanessa Anne Hudgins -- have released solo albums. Monique Coleman was on last season's Dancing with the Stars. Zac Efron is currently on the cover of every teen magazine I am reviewing for my YA Hotline project, and he will also be in the new Hairspray movie musical.
Rating: Great for kids ages 8+, especially girls (and older teens might like it too) (but they probably wouldn't admit that they like it)
Directed by Betty Thomas
OK, so as must as I enjoy 80s teen movies (Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink) and also the 90s teen movies I watched growing up (i.e. Can't Hardly Wait,
10 Things I Hate About You) - I figured, for this assignment, I should watch *current* teen movies that teens might be watching, in order to see what current teen movies are like.
The verdict is: teen movies are about the same as they always have been. Kind of lame, featuring lots of cute outfits, implausible contrivances that all work themselves out at a big party. This movie did have some interesting bits, for instance, the casting of Jenny McCarthy at the protagonists' mother. Now, suprisingly, Jenny actually did a decent job in the role. Regrettably, she looked to be only about 5-10 years older than the protagonist's friends or love interests. But here is how I look at this - when two of your movie's leads (Ashanti and Jesse Metcalfe) are both between 1978 and 1980 - and it is 2006 - and you are expected to believe these people as HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS, there is something clearly wrong here. Although, Penn Badgley, who plays Jesse Metcalfe's brother, was allegedly born in 1986 even though he looks about 30.
In any case, I have to believe that the phemenon of casting mid-20s people as high schoolers is similar to how teens read books about characters older than them - teens want to watch movies starring people who look older than them. With the exception of Brittany Snow, who stars in this "film", who was born in 1986 and actually is somewhat believable as a high schooler.
The plot in brief: Brittany Snow's character has come to become very cynical about love, after seeing her mother (Jenny McCarthy) repeatedly have her heart broken by a variety of creeps. Jenny's way to deal with this is to move her and her daughter around a lot - but Brittany has always been a wallflower and so she never really makes friends wherever they go. UNTIL - through a variety of contrivances - she comes to see that the Big Man on her latest campus, John Tucker, is three-timing three of the school's most popular girls. (The three girls are from different cliques - one is a cheerleader, one is a vegan activist, the other is an overachiever, so John Tucker figured the three would never talk to one another - LITTLE DID HE KNOW that his own HOTNESS would trigger the gym teacher's ANGINA so that all of the first-period gym classes were put together and the three girls would all meet!!)
Anyway. So, the three wronged girls entail Brittany to seduce and then destroy John T. They have to coach Brittany in how to lure John, but at the same time, Brittany has already been hitting it off with John's "younger" brother,
Looking at this "film" objectively, I would say that it does have some OK lessons for teens, such as Be Yourself! And also, If A Guy Won't Admit He Is Your Boyfriend In Public, He Kind Of Sucks. And also, Girl Power! And also, Tiny Cameras Hidden In Your Cleavage Are Able To Get Surprisingly Clear Images Of Both You And The Person You Are Facing.
But this isn't a movie you watch for life lessons. It is a movie you watch because in one scene, Brittany kisses another girl! And because in one scene, John runs around in a thong! And because
Brittany's character is kind of the heart of the movie, and she is sweet and sympathetic, in the model of Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls. They even both undergo a similar wallflower, low ponytail, layered clothing makeover into trampy popular girl clothes and flat-ironed hair. Buried very deeply underneath all of the frantic trying to be cool and edgy and funny, is a kind of sweet story about a girl coming into her own. And I think today's teens might find themselves being nostalgic about this movie ten years from now, when a new film comes out starring some Penn Badgley lookalike.
Oh, and I almost forgot my favourite part - when John is falling for Brittany, he goes to talk to Penn about what Brittany is like (because Brittany and Penn are lab partners). And Penn tells John that Brittany is deep - she likes "old school Elvis Costello, obscure podcasts, and reading Dave Eggers." ... "Obscure podcasts?" Riiiiight. Are we talking about Brittany here, or the movie's thirty-five-year-old alcoholic writers?
Anyway. This is an OK movie. I give it, four out of ten for adults and seven out of ten for teens.
Rating: Good for teens aged 14+
