Phoenix, "Entertainment"
Besides being hugely fun and entertaining to watch, the new video from Phoenix serves to remind us the extent to which the annoying-but-very-catchy tunes of the American power-pop band Fun (insert your own period if you like; I can not do it) are indebted to their French predecessors. Here, those predecessors (Phoenix) are played by Korean actors. Which serves to remind many of us (because we are racist Americans who cannot help but to conflate East Asian countries in our provincial minds) where we first heard Phoenix: in that great Tokyo party scene from Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation. Which I watched for the first time in years last weekend and is still so, so, very excellent. (And is now ten years old!!!) Nothing will help me figure out why the word “phoenix” is spelled with the “o” coming before the “e.” I will be misspelling it forever.