I Have a Bone to Pick With Verve!

I interviewed a freelance fashion writer from Verve Social Magazine for a short fashion article I wrote for my magazine class. I usually read her articles only, but for this post I want to explore a bit. Before I get to my rant, I want to critique their home page very badly! There are two photos of a tweet button displayed next to each other. There is also a slideshow that displays other running stories, but with the tweet photo yet again displayed another two times making it the dominant story. I get it, its a weekly story, but I don't need to see the pictures over and over again with the same titles, and the only difference are the dates.

Speaking of dates. There are no dates on this mans article! I know magazine's are supposed to be timeless, but I'd like to know when this was published. I just realized that this article is a fashion article. The picture displayed with the piece on the home page was a painting with an eye on it. I guess the web designer or who ever chose it thought it would go with the article because it is named, "Inside The Designers Eye: The Creator Nicholas Velez." People like me, who stop reading the blurb beyond the first error, missed the connection. His comma is outside of the quotation mark. That rule goes back to high school English.

Something that burst my bubble: "Right now you are probably wondering who is Nicholas Velez, well he is the late friend of Felix and Jesus, as well as cousin of Rico all young men of Dominican origin who shared the same vision." You know, I am curious who is Nicholas Velez, but now I want to know who Felix, Jesus and Rico are. I'm so confused! When a viewer stumbles upon your article, you can't automatically assume your reader knows who or what you are talking about! Tell me what's going on even if you have talked about it previously in a separate article! And what is up with this magazine being on a first name basis?

After the quote above, the writer continued, "This vision they shared two years in the making in fashion, they were all hanging out one day when they decided that there was a void in the men's fashion world that needed to be filled." It's already obvious the vision they shared was fashion, so that didn't need to be said. The writer should have ended his sentence at fashion, and began a new one at they. Don't even get me started on "men's."

At the end of the page, the writer's Facebook looking picture is displayed and next to the image is his first name, "jonathan." His first name is not capitalized, and I would love to know his last name. Stories are more credible with last names! The writer has a Wikipedia page...That's it. I'm finished writing.

Safe Haven Isn't Safe

A reviewer for Rolling Stone magazine wrote a short review for the movie, Safe Haven. He said, "I hate" and hate ten times in the review! Every other sentence began with I hate. We get it, you disliked it. See what I did there? I changed the word. Using the same word too many times is a no no in any form of writing. His being repetitive was the only thing I had a problem with. Other than that, his rant was true.

I have to admit, a lot of Sparks novels that have hit the big screen have lost a lot of substance the books provide. Directors make it all about the love and try to amp up the movie by making it more suspenseful or they simply overlook important details in the books that can help viewers understand the characters better. It's either the actors kill the movie, or the writing, or it drifts away from the real story line. Look at the couple for Safe Haven; it's freaking Julianne Hough, star dancer with a killer bod and her love interest, Josh Duhamel who is a widower and is a father to two children. Where on earth do I begin with him? He makes almost any woman drool. If I was a widow with two kids, I certainly wouldn't have rock hard abs and a perfect tan. There is too much ego within the relationship. Just look at the photo!

I know this comment I am about to make is very out of the blue, but when I heard Hough was going to act in Sparks movie, I wasn't too excited because I never took her seriously as an actress. I still picture her dancing with a cheerleader smile and in skimpy costumes from Dancing With the Stars. I didn't like her at all in Footloose, except in one scene. She has never looked serious to me, but when she cut her hair while doing this movie, for some reason my perspective changed a little. Short hair on her makes her look more serious to me, I guess. And Duhamel, he needs to stick to comedies. It's good to play the field, but he hasn't wowed me yet.

Hating on the Hathaway

Through most of the article the writer is hating on Anne Hathaway, describing her as "too actorly, and reminds us of the show-tune-belting nightmare we knew in high school, she's polished, successful, and driven, and people still find this distasteful in a woman; plump faces are the vogue and her face is too thin;...I'll add one more: she represents the archetype of the happy girl." In my opinion, the writer is jealous of her success. So she seems happy a lot? She has every right to be a bounding, happy-go-lucky woman. She just won a freaking Oscar!

The writer also points out the fact every other actress we see on the red carpet does their usual one hand on the hip and closed smile pose, while Hathaway has hands on both hips and has a huge smile on her face. The writer finds this annoying. Hathaway is a confident woman. This writer sounds bitter to me. 

Hathaway seems very comfortable with who she is, and she's proud of her success. I have never found her as a too happy and perky kind of woman. She seems like she has it all together and some people can find that very intimidating. I know perky people who I just can't stand, and Hathaway seems like a very tolerable woman.

The article is pure opinion with hardly any facts that aren't already known to the world. When I see opinion pieces I like to see some factual information, so the writer doesn't sound too biased. I believe this writer has a bone to pick with Hathaway. At the end of the article, the writer finally gives her compliment, but I think it was a little too late.