Inside Idol

Forget JLo's crying: Rosen & Alaina emerge as worthy favorites in Idol's longmarch to top 24

Robbie Rosen brings a combination of confidence and musical talent.
Jennifer Lopez went Idol soft, but her tears aren't the real story.
Lauren Alaina has ridiculous raw talent — and an equally ridiculous fashionsense.

After weeks of Hollywood rounds, a new Beatles challenge in Las Vegas and a set of comically long walks down the “Green Mile” (in what appeared to be an airport hangar), the top 24 contestants were finally revealed this week on American Idol. Props to the producers for giving almost every one of the successful contestants a fair amount of airplay — though it meant three whole hours for the reveal — and for generally cutting out the drama. Even Jennifer Lopez’s much buzzed about “breakdown” after Chris Medina's elimination felt as sincere to me as it did milked.

At the end of it all, we have an interesting and technically solid group of semifinal contestants, distinct and polished in a way that reminds me of the Season 7 cast. With so many big voices and personalities, the key to staying on top will be finding ways to make powerful, genuine connections to the music. As Jennifer so aptly put it: “Now we gotta see what you guys’ messages are as artists. What do you have to say? Do you believe what you’re singing?”

Next week we enter the live rounds as the 24 contestants are whittled quickly down to 12 — or 13. Lets take a quick a snapshot of the group that will sing for your votes:

The Chosen Ones

It’s tricky business being an early front-runner on Idol: every year one or two “anointed” contestants face early backlash from the public and the near impossible task of living up to initial hype. This year’s batch includes Robbie Rosen, Julie Zorrilla, Lauren Alaina, Jacob Lusk  and Casey Abrams.

Robbie and Lauren have impressed me equally — Robbie with his skilled combination of confidence and musical instinct, and Lauren with her ridiculous, raw natural talent (for her inexplicable Barbie-meets-tacky-cowgirl fashion sense, I will just have to forgive her).

Julie’s first audition with “Summertime” left me thinking “style over substance,” but we’ve since seen shades of subtlety from her, like on her superb “Something" duet with Tim Halperin. Jacob is one hell of a singer, but his notion that every performance demands every ounce of his voice is ill founded and unfortunately perpetuated by the judges (seriously, Randy, his “God Bless the Child” was the best performance of all Idol seasons?).

And Casey? When you not only have flawless pipes but can fully — fully — invest in your performances the way he does, you have my vote.

Hidden Talents

Blink and you might have missed Paul McDonald, Lauren Turner and Kendra Chantelle these past few weeks, seeing as the talented trio received little to no airtime. That’s a shame, because each shows promise and originality. Paul’s quirky, nuanced voice is unlike anything we’ve heard before on Idol. His “Blackbird” duet partner, Kendra, is equally intriguing, with a voice that teeters delicately between soul and country (does she remind anyone else of Lady Antebellum’s Hillary Scott?). And Lauren infuses some much-needed grit into the pool of girls with her bluesy, muscular voice.

Let’s just remember that we didn't hear so much as a snippet of season nine winner Kris Allen’s voice until the live semifinals — anything’s possible, folks.

Head Scratchers

Hailey Reinhart seems to be taking a page from Jacob Lusk's playbook; her oversung performances have been so squeezed and stretched that you can barely understand what she’s singing about. Joining her in the questionable decision camp is the inconsistent Tatynisa Wilson, the unremarkable Pia Toscano and the why-can’t-I-figure-out-why-I-don’t-like-her Thia Megia, whose technically proficient performances have left me cold.

And then there are two of the most polarizing contestants of the season: James Durbin and Scotty McCreery. The rocker displays an impressive range and an admirable drive, but I still don’t hear brilliance — or correct pitch — from him. The latter sang a spot-on version of (surprise!) Josh Turner’s “Long Black Train,” but there’s something detached about his persona that I can’t quite put my finger on.

And the Rest

Rounding out the rest of the Top 24 are:

Unique performers Rachel Zevita, Naima Adedapo and Brett Loewenstern
Powerhouses Clint Jun Gamboa and Jordan Dorsey
Smooth-toned Jovany Barreto and Stefano Langone 
Big-voiced Karen Rodriguez and Ashton Jones 
And singer-songwriter Tim Halperin

Quote of the Night

“I’m here to prove that people like me can be sexy”

-Casey Abrams before his delicious, bass-accompanied take on “Why Don’t You Do Right”

Get more of Tara Seetharam's pop culture musings on her website www.taraseetharam.com and follow her on Twitter @TaraAshley.

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Movie Review

New comedy I Want Your Sex saddles an all-star cast with a dull story

Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde in I Want Your Sex.

Writer/director Gregg Araki has been making provocative movies for nearly 40 years, releasing his debut — Three Bewildered People in the Night — in 1987. Most of them have had plotlines that revolved around sex in one way or another, and for his latest — his first film in 12 years — he’s putting it right there in the title, I Want Your Sex.

Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) is an aimless twenty-something who can’t even afford the rent for his apartment with best friend, Apple (Chase Sui Wonders). Thankfully, he finds a job at the gallery of artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), who is open with her sexuality both in her artwork and in her day-to-day life. That soon includes Elliot, whom she convinces to enter into a dominant-submissive relationship with her, with sessions taking place both at work and her home.

Elliot, who’s in a going-nowhere coupling with Minerva (Charli XCX), is more than willing to participate, both because it lets him feel something he doesn’t get normally and because Erika offers a perspective on sex that’s much different from people of his generation. But as he gets in deeper with her, he starts to lose a sense of himself, going down a path in which he finds himself talking to police detectives Zem (Johnny Knoxville) and Zola (Margaret Cho).

Araki does his level best to make I Want Your Sex into a broad comedy, and early on it seems as if he might succeed. The deadpan way that sexual objects appear in the film (a penis-shaped rug in Elliot and Apple’s apartment, a vagina artwork with chewed gum as the medium) make for amusing sight gags. He also makes Elliot the bewildered other in multiple twosomes, with Minerva being the funniest, as she’s way more interested in studying than his ham-fisted attempts at sex.

It’s clear that Araki wants the film to be a commentary on the generational differences about sex, but he fumbles his own idea. It starts with an on-the-nose conversation between Erika and Elliot, and continues with the various dalliances, which seem to be more about making Elliot look and feel ridiculous than giving true insight. Their encounters certainly open his mind about what sex can be, but their one-note nature makes them repetitive and frankly boring, odd considering the acts in which the two engage.

The uninspired storytelling makes the 90-minute film drag way more than it should. Araki includes a few other characters to try to vary the tone of the film, including gallery workers Zap (Mason Gooding) and Vikktor (Daveed Diggs), but their early promise yields little results. The framing device of Elliot’s interview with the detectives never works, especially because Araki completely neuters the personalities of Cho and Knoxville for seemingly no good reason.

The cast as a whole goes to waste. Hoffman is showing the promise of his late father (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and even though he’s appealing here, the material pulls him down. Wilde just made her own provocative movie about sex (The Invite), and this one pales in comparison despite her heightened performance. Wonders, Charli XCX, and Gooding are all young stars who deserve to be showcased much better than they are in this film.

A film called I Want Your Sex is announcing itself as daring and alluring, but this film contains almost none of those qualities. Instead, it’s a slog that only occasionally has something interesting to show or say, mostly relying on the power of its actors to hold viewers’ attention — and failing at even that.

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I Want Your Sex is now playing in select theaters.