I’m pleased to share this silly-cute video from the people at Broadway’s Promises, Promises. These four lovely cast members understand your pain (they sing about kicking your fellow shoppers, after all), but they also want to keep you off the naughty list this holiday season. Following their advice may help.

(This video comes from the good folk at Art Meets Commerce, who also are responsible for the look of The Critical Condition. They rule!)

Recently, RuPaul’s Drag Race announced the contestants for its third season by posting preview videos of all the competitors on its website. The show itself doesn’t premiere until January, but I am already beside myself with excitement. (EEEEE!)

Fortunately, Marc Harshbarger, who runs the divine gay pop culture blog Deep Dish, is just as excited as I am, and last week, we decided to pre-judge all of this year’s queens. Do you agree with our choices? Or do you think we’re throwing shade? Do tell! (And if you’ve never been, make sure you visit Deep Dish, which will keep you in cute boys and interesting news.)

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Mark and Marc judged the queens. First, Mark wrote this:

Hi Marc,

Did you notice the big pink clouds in the sky? The cascade of glitter coming out of your shower head this morning? The parade of little dogs wearing elaborate wigs? They were signs that RuPaul’s Drag Race just revealed its third round of contestants. Let the celebrations begin!

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Big ups to Roommate Joe, who has provided us with 22 Short Thoughts About Burlesque.

Andrew and I saw this Cher-Xtina musical confection over the weekend, and I’ve got to say… I really enjoyed it. Joe’s post nails the movie’s successes and failures, so if you’re looking to discuss it, I  recommend checking it out. I would only make one addition: The scene where Cher goes crazy with a crowbar is like a gift from Sequinsia, the Roman goddess of camp.

The term “feelgood film” has curdled into an insult. Ironically, it suggests the kind of dreck that makes you feel bad by insulting your intelligence and pressuring you to pretend that yes, you really do enjoy poorly written, flatly acted, rotely directed crap about women who give birth in Wal-Mart and men who learn the true meaning of soccer.

But then there’s a movie like The King’s Speech. Instead of a “feelgood film,” it is a film that actually makes me feel good.

(mild spoilers ahead)

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Happy Thanksgiving, American readers! And if you aren’t in the US… well… happy day before Thursday!

One thing I’m intensely thankful for is the ongoing conversation we have on The Critical Condition. Every day, someone leaves a comment that makes me think, laugh, or smile. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that. I’m grateful for the community we’ve created here.

NOTE: One of my readers wrote a rebuttal to this review. You can find it here.

I’ve listened three times to Kanye West’s new album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and mostly, I feel sad.

I’m sad because I would like to enjoy it. For one thing, it has generated some very exciting reviews. Slate‘s Matthew Cole is so inspired by the record that he writes a brilliant analysis of how hip-hop has become obsessed with authenticity and needs to make room for West’s fantasy. Any artwork that engenders that kind of thinking has got to have something going for it.

I also wish I liked the record because I have really enjoyed some of West’s earlier material. College Dropout? Yes, please. “Love Lockdown?” I’ll take three. I want to love the new album because I want to continue my relationship with an outstanding artist.

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Last night, I had the good fortune to see Frank Rich interview Stephen Sondheim. They talked about everything from West Side Story to Glee, related some little-known facts and anecdotes, and wore some very endearing sweaters.

I wrote up my experience for NPR’s blog Monkey See. Go here to check out the highlights of their conversation

After participating in an interesting Twitter conversation with Roommate Joe and Nathaniel From Film Experience, I’ve decided to revisit AMC’s zombie series The Walking Dead.

You may remember that a few weeks ago, I praised the show for all sorts of reasons. (Nathaniel, however, wasn’t such a fan, and he makes an interesting case that the pilot had an undercurrent of misogyny. I disagree, but I can certainly see where he’s coming from.)

As the epsiodes have continued, the things I like are still in place, and I’m still enjoying the show. Quite a bit, actually. But the writing is beginning to show some cracks.

Mostly, there are consistent problems with the internal logic of the series, which is often sacrificed for the sake of “powerful” images or gross-out setpieces. In the second episode, we see the characters hacking a zombie corpse into bits, and it’s all very gory and satisfying. Yet while all the characters wear gloves, only one of them wears a mask. This despite the fact that we’ve been told getting zombie blood in your eyes or mouth will fuck you up. I’ve cut a grape tomato in half with a fork and seen juice fly halfway across the room, so you know that taking an axe to a zombie is going to create a serious splatter zone. Why wouldn’t these people cover the up? It seems like they’re only unprotected so we can see their grossed-out expressions.

Similarly, that episode ends with the Asian guy (sorry, I can’t remember his name) driving a stolen sports car at top speed down the Atlanta highway. (I’m heading down the Atlanta highway! Looking for a zombie getaway!) His side of the highway is empty because he’s traveling on inbound lanes. Meanwhile, the outbound lanes are clogged with wrecked cars. And yes, I get that people would’ve been trying to flee zombie Atlanta, and I agree that the image is cool… but the show has told us that Atlanta fell several weeks ago. Are we really supposed to believe that during the panic, no one tried to flee on the inbound interstate, especially when they saw it was empty? Dude.

Meanwhile, there’s Merle the Racist… I find it a little convenient that of all the people in the world, our small group of survivors includes “human monsters” like a virulent bigot and a wife beater (who shows up in episode 3.) Now, I’m all for archetypal writing, so this doesn’t bother me that much, but I can see how this tendency could make the show really, really preachy in the way that The Green Mile, which was also adapted and directed by Walking Dead creator Frank Darabont, gets preachy.

Again, these quibbles don’t overwhelm what I like about the show. They just make me an “agree” instead of a “strongly agree.”

Tinkletinkletinkle!

That was the sound of my shattering expectations. For the first time in my life, I like a Kenny Chesney song. Specifically, I like this Kenny Chesney song, his new single “Somewhere With You:”

I can’t tell you what a shock this is. Generally, I loathe his music because it all just sounds so fake to me. Like, maybe he really does want to spend his entire life on a beach drinking tequila and getting momentarily married to Renee Zellweger, but when he sings about these things, he strikes me as a cynical businessman in a tank top. More than any other major country artist, he makes music that sounds like a product of CountryTron 620, a nefarious program that panders to country music fans by giving them ditties about beer, America, lost childhoods, and sexy vacations.

RRRGH! Just thinking about it makes me mad.

But now… boom. I hear “Somewhere With You,” and I can’t be mad at all. For one thing, the song just sounds so interesting, with its moody, nervous tempo; its rapid-fire, rhythmically complicated lyrics; and its reliance on subtle emotional shifts instead of bombastic power chords.

And then there are the lyrics, which vividly evoke a specific relationship between a man and an unhappy woman. His memories involve how she hated her life, fought with her mother, and essentially wanted her man to save her from the mess she couldn’t face. Even the happy times sound chaotic, with the couple laughing wildly on a carnival ride and the woman laughing at the man when he tries to sing for her.

Yet the man yearns for this woman. They’re not together, but he desperately wants them to be. And that desperation, that desire to stay with someone who’s bad for you, perfectly matches the skittish music. This entire song captures the feeling of awful, exhilarating love.

Do you know what I mean? A few years ago, I dated a man who was terrible for me. Terrible like handcuffs are terrible for the skin on your wrists. And yet for a while, I was exhilarated by the fucked-upedness of it all. I couldn’t sleep when I lay next to him, and I realize now it’s because I didn’t trust him, but at the time, I thought it was because I just so happy. I even wrote a little song about it—shut up. I did.—and some friends pointed out to me that I was basically saying, “I’m so happy I never ever sleep! Nevernevernever!”

Anyway, I appreciate “Somewhere With You” for capturing that, and I appreciate Kenny Chesney for making a song about something so dark and twisted and true.

By DOUG STRASSLER

Hello! Since this is the last column I’ll write before Turkey Day, I wanted to flash back to one of my all-time favorite Thanksgiving movies. Planes, Trains and Automobiles, you say? Nope, though that’s a good one. Pieces of April, you might be thinking? Not that either.

The Thanksgiving flick hat I’m hoping to re-introduce into your Thanksgiving Day movie-watching repertoire is Home For the Holidays. W. D. Richter adapted Chris Radant’s short story after it ran in a Boston newspaper, and it became Jodie Foster’s second directorial effort following Little Man Tate, and clearly some major talent was eager to work with her in this familiar-but-fresh take on family warfare.

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