Host, executive producer and award-winning chef Gordon Ramsay fires up a brand-new season of HELL’S KITCHEN with a special, two-hour Season 13 premiere airing Wednesday, Sept. 10 (8:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. Once again, 18 new chefs from all walks of life will be tested like never before as Chef Ramsay puts them through a series of grueling team challenges and dinner services to prove they possess the passion, culinary ability and determination to win a life-changing grand prize: a Head Chef position at a Gordon Ramsay restaurant, a total prize value of $250,000. Season 13 also will feature the milestone 200th episode of HELL’S KITCHEN.
In the first hour of the premiere episode (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT), Chef Ramsay extends star treatment to the newest batch of contestants when they arrive in Hollywood for a silver screen experience. But the Hollywood ending is cut short when Ramsay splits the chefs into two teams – men (Blue) vs. women (Red) – and asks them to present their signature dishes in front of a live audience. Later, the chefs struggle to work together during their first dinner service, and one team’s performance is so disappointing that Chef Ramsay forces them to leave the kitchen.
Mr. Brainwash is either a terrible artist or a great work of art. Whatever he is, he was apparently in lower Manhattan today, putting up an enormous, garish 9/11 mural on a department store across from the World Trade Center site.
Mr. Brainwash, for those who don't follow the arcane world of street art, gained fame after appearing in Exit Through the Gift Shop, a 2010 film by the shadowy, astonishingly popular stencil artist Banksy. The film, ostensibly a documentary, follows Thierry Guetta, a talentless hanger-on who finds success and acclaim after christening himself Mr. Brainwash and leveraging his connections with big names like Banksy himself. The moral—that art, like any other industry, is largely about who you know and how much money you have—rings true. Almost too true, given Banksy's well-documented art-market pranksterism.
"Riddle? Yes. Enigma? Sure. Documentary?" asked a 2010 New York Times headline. "Is Banksy's Mr. Brainwash an Art-World Borat?" wondered New York mag. (Their assessment, after viewing an exhibition: "The show was so wretchedly derivative, repetitive, and insultingly insipid that we felt it could only have been an intentional prank.")
So either Banksy is pulling the strings, and Brainwash is the most interesting artwork he's ever produced, or he simply lucked into an illuminating subject for a documentary. Maybe it's some mixture of the two: Banksy set up a situation that made for good filmmaking, and Guetta recognized a good opportunity and ran with it.
In any case, Mr. Brainwash is still making and selling work. He's responsible for the "remixed" version of Warhol's Marilyn Monroe that adorned Celebration,Madonna's latest greatest hits collection, and now, this 9/11 mural. If it's a joke, Century 21, which commissioned the piece, doesn't appear to be in on it. Company co-owner and so-called art aficionado Isaac Gindi said in a statement today:
"When Mr. Brainwash came to us with this idea we were honored. We are such big fans of his work and loved the idea of showing our support and dedication for the Downtown community and NYC's bravest and finest right on our building. His piece exemplifies a tribute to the resiliency of New York City and all Americans after 9/11."
The piece itself, which reads "WE LOVE NEW YORK" and depicts a heart and an American flag, isn't particularly offensive or anything, but it's not particularly good, either. That it exists at all is very weird. According to Time Out,it will stay up for the next three weeks.
source
picture of me and banksy's identifier :p
how come we don't have any "art" tag?
Did yet another beloved TV character just bite the dust? After a TV season filled with heartbreaking casualties courtesy of The Good Wife and Game of Thrones, few were likely expecting USA's sun-soaked sophomore drama Graceland to add to the body count. However, in the final moments of the Season 2 finale, FBI Agent Mike Warren (Aaron Tveit) appeared to die after dirty cop Sid (Carmine Giovinazzo) came to his hospital room and cut off his air supply, knowing full well that Mike's lungs had collapsed in surgery. Briggs (Daniel Sunjata) rushed into Mike's room right after only to find Mike without a pulse and flat-lining as the doctors rushed into try to save him. So is Mike really dead? And if so, what does that mean for the show? TVGuide.com spoke to creator and executive producer Jeff Eastin to get all our burning questions answered.
Is Mike dead? Because he looks pretty dead.
Jeff Eastin:Let's put it this way: He looks pretty dead to me. I'm not supposed to say officially yes or no, but I'll just say he looks pretty dead to me.
Although his heart stops in this finale, I think most fans will assume that because he is one of the two lead characters, he can't die. Is that true? Should fans still be worried about Mike?
Eastin: This wasn't a last-minute decision to try and do something exciting. This is something we've been thinking about for a long time, which is Briggs, Mike and everybody else in the house, the decisions they make ultimately have costs. Whether it's Johnny's story, which going into Season 3 is one I'm really excited about, where Carlito's putting him in a position to betray the house to save the woman he loves and puts Johnny in a really tough spot. Going into it, it was the decision Johnny made. He chose to fall in love with Lucia. He could have backed off at any time and Jakes kept warning him. ... the same with Mike. Mike at any point could have said, "Look, maybe I take the loss on this one and shut down the house." But instead he tried so hard to keep Lena alive and everything else and ended up in this spot.
As Sid is closing off Mike's air supply, he talks about killing off the rest of the Graceland team. Will Sid be back next season? Why does he seem so determined to kill not just Mike but everybody in the house?
Eastin: Those last lines to Mike really are what our intentions are for Season 3. He says to Mike, "I know all of your roommates." He knows all of them. He knows who Paige is. He knows Briggs. He knows Mike. And ultimately, he's working with Carlito, who knows Johnny and Jakes. The whole story comes wrapped up and the only person who knows he's been in that house for sure is Mike and with Mike gone, then he's free and clear to do it. Carmine Giovinazzo, who plays Sid, we got to know each other on Shasta McNasty, which is the first show I ever did on UPN. I just knew what a really good actor he was and so I had been looking for something to bring him on that was a little more long-term than just playing the villain of the week. ... The network really liked him and I think he did a really great job with the character. For us, it was a no brainer to say this is the guy going into Season 3 that we're going to pit against the house.
Paige helped Sid find Mike. Why did she give him up?
Eastin: I love the moment where Mike says, "It's good that the family believes." "Believes what?" "Believes that she's doing OK." There's that moment where Paige processes it and realizes that it's all been bullsh--. Maybe Mike's intent was never to betray her, but, like the Tin Man trying to have a heart, ultimately he sent the letter to convince this family their daughter was OK and knowing full well that he did incinerate her body. In that moment, it all comes full circle for Paige. The emotions he's dragged her through: falling in love, then feeling betrayed and that he had done these horrible things to this woman she cares about, then feeling that she had been wrong about it and then to have it all ripped back and realize she was right — for us, it really left her no choice. For her, the scales have to be balanced. To balance that scale, Mike needs to die. Obviously her dealing with that decision will figure very heavily into the next season.
Eastin: The decision there was two parts. One was ultimately for her to lose the baby. Vanessa, who really is a mother, she said to us, and I agreed with her, "This is a big thing to have Charlie gone through the emotional wringer like that." What we didn't want to do was have her lose the baby and not be able to give it sort of the time it deserved. Let her go through the pain that I think Charlie needs to go through. She does lose the baby. ... Charlie's going to be dealing with that quite a bit next year so let's put it this way: She hasn't lost the baby yet.
In light of everything that happens in this finale, how do you envision changing the show next year? What do you see as the theme if the show comes back next season?
Eastin: We started looking at what worked and what didn't. One thing that we realized was Briggs' character had taken a bit of a backseat early on in the season and we want to bring Briggs really back to the forefront. ... A lot of things are also based around the idea of these friendships. The idea is that Graceland is a sanctuary. Behind these walls, they can relax and drop their guard and we've done our best in the first two seasons to fracture that. So a lot of what Season 3 will become is really trying to restore order out of the chaos that we've created and, of course, that will not run smooth at all.
What did you think of the Graceland season finale? Did you think Mike is really gone? Will you miss him?
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