snakenax

I'm really disliking Yu Tsai, he kind of goes past 'acerbic art director' and into 'should be fired for unprofessional behavior' regularly to me. He gives off a really sleazy vibe to me his behavior backs up. The photos of the remaining contestants were not so great, generally prefer the photos of the eliminated contestants this week. Between Will and Keith's very similar photos I would have gone with Keith's for FCO, Neither were my favorite, but I thought Keith's was better. My actual favorites were Ben's and Shei's. Raelia's was terrible.. but it was also exactly what they told her to do. Which is a bit par for the course when the show wants to eliminate a contestant, I just don't think it's been as open before about doing so. I'm not really seeing what they liked in Lennox's. It looked really awkward and like a ad for big novelty bunnies.

I liked that Puck is pretty much the only Top Chef judge who calls out some of the laziness in design or over affected preciousness you see on the show(Top Chef Canada's judges do that a lot more). Like I loved it when he commented on liking the one dish of the night that didn't have a puree on it because he doesn't need babyfood with his meals, and i'm totally with that because the purees on the show have always looked like gross baby food.

I think Shandi was a good example of a contestant that didn't have the personality for modeling. She took good pictures, but she just didn't have the drive for self promotion.

I'd say it's more that TV audiences have become less forgiving of harsh judgements on women's appearances and telling a 130 lb waif she needs to be 115 lbs isn't kosher, even if it's basically true to the industry. But male modeling is really harsh, I knew a guy who modeled in Milan between 17 and 22 and he went in about 170 and left around 135 and left because he was still being hounded to lose weight after his hair started thinning and he went impotent from crash dieting(and being constantly insulted for being too gay to model). But the reality for male modeling is you'll want as low a body fat % as possible, preferable under 5%, and from the looks of it Will is probably 10+% while Keith and Adam are probably closer to 5%(though Adam has his own issue with bloating and puffiness from drinking too much, but that is something relatively easy to take care of). Now pretty much any contestant on the show ever would need to lose weight and gain muscle definition to really model. Which isn't shocking, being in high fashion modeling shape is like being in bodybuilding competition shape: it requires you to dedicate your life to it, is hella difficult to maintain and extremely unhealthy to keep up. Overall I really liked this photoshoot, though I preferred the non-doubled photos everyone took more. I didn't really get the huge praise for Chantelle's. Her skin tone calls for higher contrasts and the 'whites' in that shoot were more beige, so everything kind of blended into a beige blur. But her poses were good. Mirjana's non-doubled photo is acceptable but weak, her double was just hilariously bad. Seriously she's shoving her cakes at the camera and no one wants to know the flavor. I really liked both of Adam's, strong use of his body and out of all the guys on the last two seasons of the show he fills out underwear the most like a underwear model. His best photo by far at this point. Lennox's were kind of surprising, for as much whining as she's done in the past about being sexual suddenly she's effortlessly making out with herself while topless. But they didn't really wow me, they felt a bit flat. Keith's were just bad. Not Mirjana bad but plenty bad. Will's was also really bad, especially the double photo which made me laugh when it popped in. Shei's was ridiculously good, better without the double but the double didn't hurt it nearly as much as most's. I think they all just lost their minds judging that one because it's the first real 10 photo all season for me and justifies Shei's awful makeover. Raelia's wasn't good, though I feel they intentionally jabbed her on the fan score since her single shot is her weak wingless pose while her relatively strong winged pose is the double(everyone else got their winged shot as their social media photo).

I can't really fault Chantelle's attitude much. Yeah she's arrogant and obviously shameless in her own self satisfaction and ego... and so have most of the working models to come out of Top Model, which currently includes Chantelle. Most of the rest of the models here are too delicate, too sensitive, too shy and too anxious, good qualities in the 'good guy' side of a reality TV show narrative, horrible qualities in a high pressure highly critical self promotion based industry.

I thought Dina's was beautiful but they all suffered a problem of not being kaiju enough. Kaiju used a lot of exaggerated features and had a lot of character to their design. These were pretty basic giant humanoid animals(I would have loved seeing someone tackle a non-standing kaiju, like one on all fours), straying a little too much into the realistic make up in a challenge calling out for the exaggerated and unreal. I thought they were really kind to George's. I love both classic Doctor Who and Japanese tokusatsu shows, his was crummy even by comparison to the 'spray paint bubblewrap' budgets of those(and modern tokusatsu actually have some pretty amazing make up and fabrications in them).

I think the problem there is that Josie wasn't really in contention to go. They overall liked what Josie put out and Kristen admitted to the parts they didn't like being her decision. Kristen could have brought up Josie's lack of teamwork, but back end dramatics have rarely swayed them to send someone home over the dishes put out. Ultimately being the head chef in Restaurant Wars puts your head on the chopping block and that is what happened to Kristen.

It's not terrible surprising he won. They've always considered the actual make up itself of primary importance and Rayce wasn't even close to challenged by RJ or Ian on that front. It could have swung a close race, but it's a foot note when there is a clear winner.

The fan vote is based solely on photos, not personality. Also it's per photo(I'm not sure how the comeback score is calculated, given IIRC all the possible comeback people generally had a higher score than they showed there). Well except for Adam, who had the disadvantage of having his dirty laundry ready to consume pre-show(I'm not saying his photos are great, because they ain't, but 'hot guy' usually has enough power with the fan vote to keep them from being the lowest scorer). Though I did like Adam's fan vote photo this shoot, it looks like a actual catalog shot to me. Which isn't necessarily flattering, catalog shots are generally stiff and boring looking but hey it's nice to have a shot that looks like /something/.

I felt a little sorry, but not much, for Denzel in the casting process because he had a double disadvantage going in: most runways don't cast multiple black models and Keith is obviously superior to him(you saw the same thing last season with Cory and Don being in direct competition with each other for a slot in runways). I find it a bit hard to gauge male model's walks, the expected type of walk seems to be 'guy on horse tranquilizers' so they never look that great to me. With girls you get more variety and I thought Shei was really amazing at it, Raelia was pretty good to when she wasn't making a huge stupid mistake. And geeesh, all the clothes they had to model were tacky, it looked like the dumpster behind RuPaul's Drag Race vomited. While I understand that the Challenge scores can't imbalance the overall score too much, it does seem weird to me that the difference between 'didn't book anything' and 'booked something' is only one point, considering how poorly being unable to book a show looks when your job is to book shows. I found the shoot weird. Especially since the fan vote is on a entirely different photo(and I noticed they didn't show Raelia/Will's, maybe because they didn't want to show how abominable Will's is compared to the photo the judge's got to use). I wasn't fond of any of the photos, though Will/Raelia's definitely stood out(both went a little into the 'model camp' look with Raelia channeling Marilyn Monroe and Will channeling Zoolander, but hey that is still more striking than the nothing everyone else was doing). I really don't understand the concept of separate photos for judges and social media vote, since the quality difference between the photos was pretty big, with IMO the social media photos overall being much better for most of the contestants. I'm so happy to see Denzel gone. He was just.. blah on every level. As for the comeback model.. Chantelle is actually easily the best model of the season, so obviously she isn't coming back. Which i'm cool with, she does awesome work off the show but wasn't terrible notable as a reality TV contender. Ben is good eye candy and this show desperately needs eye candy to remain watchable.

From what I gathered given her reaction and what she said to Blais after is that it wasn't just that it was a overly fatty cut of meat, but that his station was a mess and though I felt we didn't really see it, both Padma and Blais seemed really taken back by his attitude. Basically she felt grossed out on multiple levels, which honestly seeing his station i'm not surprised by. Seriously I work in a deli and his station was filthier than the sandwich station at lunch rush and we aren't exactly on Top Chef, I probably would have decided not to eat his food after one look at that.

Personally I don't find it hard to see why Drew is there. He's a bit of a coaster, but most seasons have a coaster in the finale. George is the one that really perplexes me, since he's consistently made me wonder if he even has the base technical/creative skills someone on this show is supposed to have, and the closest i've felt to that in someone who made it past the first four episodes were Niko and House and those two really aren't great comparisons to be a part of. His stuff just so often looks like a costume for a school play, this one included.

Generally on the show I just want to roll my eyes when someone goes scallops, ceviche, tartar or carpaccio. Because those are your basic 'these are easy and reasonable fancy so I stand little chance of going home on it' lazy choice. And they do them /alot/, some seasons it seems like every challenge you'll see at least one of each of those.

I loved Dina's and thought it was definitely the best of the ones up there.. but it didn't deserve to win for one reason: It was last week's Aphrodite after going through a mudslide. It was great and well done and everything, but much of the forms and choices were incredible similar to her Aphrodite so I just had to ding her for that. Cig's was very good, pretty and well put together. I'm surprised they didn't mention how bad some of his edges were, or how monotone his color schemes was outside the face, but it deserved the win. I don't know what the heck they were talking about with George's, I thought it was horrible. The weird looking face with the big jarring flaw on it, the bizarre blinking thing in the shoulder, the children's craft show wings. I just really didn't like anything about it at all. I actually really liked Drew's fairy. The edge was noticable, but not super noticable like Cig's last week, and at even a medium distance I found the paint job mostly hid it. But the paint on the skin was just fantastic, the oil looked great and she had a wonderful presence. He should have made the dress shorter though, so there wasn't so much unoiled negative space on the model. Stella's was just a big fat no. Nothing worked right on it.

With Heather I wonder how much of what went on there was some form of jealousy. Heather was one of the least technically competent of the chefs, her culinary specialty(big slabs of meat and unfinessed sides) is not one generally taken seriously in the industry, her two most complimented dishes were another Chef's cake recipe and despite being one of the older chefs with more experience there, she was clearly on the lowest rung of actual skills and versatility. Beverly meanwhile was routinely complimented on her technique and apparently had the most experience working in high end kitchens of the people there and she could make absolutely beautiful plates.

IIRC, Paul had a fair number of supportive talking heads about Beverly and the only non-mean girl negative talking heads about her I can think of are Nyesha(who had a specific spat with her about stove space) and Ed(who talked shit about everybody). Really I think Beverly and Marcel had much the same issue: they are extraordinarily socially awkward people. Just on different sides of the spectrum, with Beverly being passively awkward and Marvel being aggressively awkward. And that is catnip to bullies and assholes and drama mamas.. which is something you find a lot of in management and food service and chefs are food service management. Though the main thing that gets me about the treatment of Beverly is how WTF it is. I get the bullying of Marcel, I don't like it or think it is right, but he's kind of aggressively unpleasant and has a lot of off putting tendencies(like the crazy eyed unfocused unblinking stare.. which now that I think about it seems to be a running theme with the molecular gastronomy people on the show, Blaise does it too). Beverly.. made Asian food? Was mostly quiet and kept to herself? If Beverly had ever done anything I could at least grasp the concept of why the mean girls ganged up on her outside of sheer malice, but unless we were being aggressively lied to nothing showed up to support that there was a greater underlying reason than that she was a easy target. That neither Heather or Sarah put forth a greater reason why than 'Because I wanted to' post show when their treatment of Beverly became a big deal in interviews etc suggests to me that there likely isn't.

Except Ashkenazi Jews are a distinct ethnic group, right down to having their own unique genetic issues to worry about like Tay Sachs. It's actually one of the most distinct ethnic groups within the European mix because of centuries of no intermarriage and being segregated into ghettos.

I have to admit, Yu is making me a bit uncomfortable on the show. He seems to jaunt over the line from 'flirtatious photographer' to 'skeevy and unprofessional' with incredible ease.

Will and Lennox definitely did the best, though I don't think it was a terrible fair photo shoot. Will and Lennox got really, really good composition for their shots, very artsy and editorial. The composition for everyone else was more standard to the current low rent photo shoots: basic boxes with the model in the middle with their facing pointing to the camera. Actually Lennox's photo reminds me how rare it is to see more artsy angles on a photo shoot in the show at this point, I think this might be the first one this whole season.

Periods probably aren't a issue, how often you get a period is based on nutrition and a woman who is getting sub-500 calories a day, like most of the people on the show, is going to pretty much stop having menstruation at all.

Well i'm not sure how the genetic markers thing works(or if it's even just phoney junk science to scam people out of money) but it could be they don't have markers more clear than that. Though if Africa is actually just one region, like it was shown on the show, then that is some laughable categorizing since Africa has more regional DNA differences than the entire rest of the world and using DNA to track what region of Africa someone's ancestor came from isn't even a new trick in the US. That photo shoot was quite bad. Cory as usual was just horrid in every shot. I did like a lot of the costumes though, the mixture of sci-fi styling and tribal clothing made me think of Raja from Drag Race. Especially Shei, Raelia and Mirjana's outfits Matthew going is really draining my interest in the season. The eye candy is pretty much down to Adam, none of the girls really hold much interest as contenders and only Raelia has enough spunk, without being bitchy about it, to really make me want to root for her. And I just can't with Keith and Denzel, their looks aren't bad or anything but their personalities are horrid.

I think one of those two is basically certain, unless George is saved by someone having a catastrophe. Now the winner is the interesting question to me. I'm betting it will really come down to Cig vs Dina and their styles couldn't be farther apart. Though if it's standard finale type for the show where the piece has to be able to be put under heavy stress in dance/action sequence/whatever I could see Cig being at a disadvantage, he tends to sculpt big and immobile(Roy and Tate were killed in the season 5 finale by the same issue).

Athena is a hard one for the base concept though, especially if you want to avoid owl stuff. Since there are no visual symbols that clearly say 'wisdom'. Though I just would have picked Demeter, who is a easy planty Mother Earthy concept, or Artemis, slap some animal traits on and some moon symbology and bam you're done. Though Dina had a equally difficult task, since love is also a difficult abstract to visually represent, and got over that hump wonderfully.

Dina's was just amazing. Easily one of the best make ups i've seen on this show and definitely the most divine looking of the group. I kind of hated Cig's. Apollo was primarily the god of music, art, male beauty, youth, athletics and health. The proper god of the sun is Helios. Where the whole 'plague god' thing came from I have no idea. But his make up uglied up what is actually probably the most attractive of the male models they currently have, which really hurts for a god where beauty is actually one of his primary traits. The edges were just heinous and his paint job was weird and uneven. And that severed head was just a big foam blob. Stella's was technically good, but a bit uninspired and waaaay too sea creaturey. She should have used more human and less creature if she wanted to portray the divine. Drew's was a bit of a dull mess, you have the clearly Lord of the Ring's inspired Hades ringwraith with a really meh looking severed head. But at least it wasn't a technical failure like the last two. George's was just awful. The proportions were awful, did he originally intend to get a more muscular model and then just not change his ideas when he got the most slender of the guys or did he really intend for it to look like a big giant head on small body with armor made so large it didn't remotely meet up to anatomy it was meant to cover? Seriously the chest piece wouldn't have looked like man boobs if it had been where pectoral muscles are, instead it hung down through the belly and the abs were almost at the crotch. And why age the face if you're going to leave so much bare skin unaged on a obviously very young model? At this point i'm kind of wondering how George even got on the show, this is now like the fourth make up he's made that looks more like a kid's craft project for a school play than a professional make up piece. And he liked it and actually thought it looked good, that really gets me. At least Sasha knew she put out a bad piece, George thought this was okay. Sasha's was just heinous. Nothing about it worked right. But especially that Medusa head, it was just awful and unless you told me it was Medusa I wouldn't know since it had no clear Medusa traits.

Actually Athena is a goddess of war, it's just not her primary aspect. But Ares is basically the awful god of war representing everything bad in war(right down to himself being a coward) while Athena represents the tactics and strategy and other enlightened aspects of war.