Madonna, Justin Timberlake, Timbaland – “4 Minutes”

  We start out with Timbaland on a stage somewhere, standing in front of a giant clock display. The clock is supposedly showing us the four minutes that we’ve got left to save the world from… well, it’s never made clear, but it actually appears to be showing us four hours. Unless we’re counting the milliseconds? Why would we count those? Those things only matter in Tom Cruise movies where he has to push an important button right now or Manhattan will be turned into a decaying wasteland, just like the Republican National Convention.

  Odd clock aside, Timbaland is currently invested in making some interesting noises that go along with the ominous opening notes of the song. But more importantly, we get our first images of this creepy triangle-based mass that appears to be eating parts of the set around him. Timbaland doesn’t seem to care, since he’s got the music in him and that’s all that’s important, but we get a close-up of a dusty speaker component that is trembling in fear because he’s further down on the cast list and will probably be the first casualty. (Maybe he should have had a better agent.)

  Brief montage of some gears spinning and cocktails on the verge of being spilled. No idea.

  First image of Madonna, wearing some form-fitting night-night clothes and facing away from us. (I guess we should have purchased the higher-priced concert tickets if we wanted to see more.) Then Justin debuts, again not facing us, wearing basically the same outfit that he has worn since moving on from the Mickey Mouse Club. Interspersed with all the introductions are shots of Timbaland still enjoying the noises that his mouth can make, then we cut to a fancy car rolling towards somewhere.

  Oh look, the car is being pushed by Madonna, now wearing a black outfit that involves parachute pants and a matching puffy blouse that practically scream “1984”. But we can forgive the debatable fashion choice, because you really shouldn’t question couture decisions made by a woman who has thighs capable of repositioning vehicles. (I guess it really does pay off to have a personal trainer who will holler in German and force you to do enough leg lifts that you could raise the Titanic.)

  Okay, I guess Madonna loses interest in impressing us with the number of squat thrusts that she’s apparently done in her day, so she sexily slides off the front of the car onto… a dinner table where a random and sad-looking family is eating leftovers. The family pays no attention to what is actually happening in the real world (do they watch Fox News?), slurping their soup and ignoring the woman on their table who already has more secrets in her parachute pants than they will ever have in their lives.

  Meanwhile, we keep getting quick glimpses of the Triangle Monster munching on everything in its path and not caring what it swallows. I could make a Rush Limbaugh reference, but that would be too easy.

  Madonna marches away from that set where all the lonely people are, and launches into her part of the song. This requires her to wander through a loft apartment where a young couple is preparing for a bath and kissing one another. (No idea, part two.) Cut to Justin in the same apartment, singing to himself in a dirty mirror and admiring his nifty neck-scarf that one would normally wear in an artsy movie where British people talk about nothing and wait for redemption that never comes.

  Cut back to the kissing couple who apparently don’t mind having international superstars show up at unexpected times, and we can see that part of their flesh is missing as they smooch, showing bone and such. This is possibly the least erotic thing I have ever seen, and I’ve been to some very questionable websites. Then we’re back with Madonna somewhere else in the apartment. (Is she in the couple’s bedroom? Not clear, but it’s definitely not a place where she or her staff would ever sleep.)

  Madonna rips off her puffy parachute jacket (my prayers worked!) and possibly straddles the bed, but then we cut to the kissing couple again and they are missing more flesh, so we are now basically watching two of those life-size dissected-body models from high-school biology class sucking face.  With tongues involved. Ugh. This is a world I would not want to save, I don’t care how many minutes we have.

  Then Madonna and Justin meet up and hover around the bed where the Skeletors are procreating, and just as quickly hop out some convenient windows that are nearby. Outside, they find a bunch of cars parked in a haphazard manner, with two guys wearing red plastic doing street moves on top of one of them. This is an additional sign of the apocalypse, so our stars should just keep running, but they don’t. Justin has to get something important out of the trunk of the car where the jacked-up Oompa Loompas are gyrating. (Is it his recording contract? Yeah, probably should grab that.)

  Madonna, on an agenda of her own, as she always is, decides that she needs to jump in and out of some of the cars in a sexy but unclear manner. Not to be outdone, Justin decides to run across the top of the cars using the same mysterious motivation. They manage to meet up in the front seat of one of the cars, where Madonna briefly flirts with Justin, whispering in his ear and either hinting at a future hook-up  or promising that she will one day make a movie that doesn’t require serious editing before it can be released.

  The frolicking with the cars continues for some time, with both of them proving athletic prowess and the ability to strike poses right on the beat, but without anyone explaining the critical bit about what needs to be done to save the world or at least make the two dudes stop dancing on the one car. Those guys really need to find a better purpose in life, because they are just a few online votes away from surpassing The Skeletors as Most Invaluable Players.

  Hold up, now Madonna and Justin have made their way (via modern technology) to a supermarket of some kind. We have an extended scene with the two of them alternately flirting with or threatening the various products lining the shelves of the aisles, nuzzling up to the granola and slapping the canned tuna. They eventually reach the front of the store, where each of them jumps on a conveyor belt at the checkout counters so they can dance while essentially running on a treadmill. (Is it always about physical competitions with Madonna? Honey, can’t you prove your supremacy with a non-strenuous card game or maybe a nice round of Jeopardy?)

  Happily, they both give up with whatever they were trying to accomplish in the checkout lanes at Wal-Mart, and they both suddenly appear on that stage with the clock that I don’t understand. (Timbaland is gone, so he’s probably off at yet another awards show.) Madonna is back in her naughty night-night ensemble, and Justin is back in the outfit that he’s never changed since Mickey.) They are both breaking out some serious dance moves here, but it seems a bit odd that they are rarely in the same shot. Do I smell a contractual clause of some kind? (“I want 36 flavors of vodka in my dressing room, 24 varieties of massage therapists, and only 12 moments when I am in the same room as my co-star.”)

  We have some quick scenes here and there of someone wearing aggressive high-heels and stomping around an office environment. We’ll just assume it’s not Justin. Not that there’s anything wrong with that if it’s really him.

  Wait, now Madonna has just stormed into a public bathroom. She’s back in part of her black outfit, so I’m not sure where this fits in the space-time continuum. And now she’s looking in the mirror and Justin is staring back at her. They do some mess where it appears that they exchange clothing but they really don’t, with each of them throwing the unwanted garments off toward the less-popular toilet stalls. Then they tromp out of the restroom without even bothering to leave a tip for the attendant who is probably hiding in a corner, weeping and wishing that s/he had paid attention to their mother  when she proclaimed “do your homework or you’ll have to listen to people pee for the rest of your life.”

  Okay, NOW we have Madonna and Justin on the same stage at the same time, and they seem to be involved in yet another dance-off. Justin is very good with his street poses and arm-flipping, but he’s up against Madonna, who was already artfully thrusting her crotch when Justin was still trying to figure out which end of his baby bottle offered the most promise. Still, they’re both very energetic  and each manages to hold their own, despite Justin’s insistence that he keep wearing that scarf from the British play where nothing actually happens.

  As we roll to a close, Madge and Just-In start ripping parts of their couture off of each other. In most diva camps, this would result in a drive-by shooting, but they both handle the ripping and flinging in a professional manner. Then Timbaland arrives back from his awards show just long enough to holla “breakdown” on the soundtrack, which sends M and J into overdrive.  They amp up the dance moves, trying once again to prove who has the most flexible whatever while Timbaland makes noises off to the side.  The “oh yeah, we almost forgot about that” Triangle Monster arrives onset and starts chewing the scenery, as well as our illustrious co-stars, causing flesh to disappear without leaving a forwarding address.

  Our last image is of Justin, with an exposed rib cage, leaning in to kiss Madonna, who has an exposed jaw. Just like Romeo and Juliet. Only completely not…

Click Here to Watch this Video on YouTube.

Madonna – “Borderline”

  We start out with Madonna and a gang of friends all gathered round one of those areas where folks used to do spontaneous break-dancing back in the day, mainly because the Internet really hadn’t caught on just yet and people were bored. There’s a small child doing a backbend whilst Madonna, wearing trash-girl couture that was so popular back then, does some odd dance steps and then touches his hiney. In modern times, that would constitute child abuse and Madonna would get thrown in the Big House, but such overkill political correctness won’t happen for another twenty years or so.

  Then we have a montage of street-dance sequences, where Madonna gets to show off the fact that she can throw her leg over her head, and we get introduced to her lover, a man-boy wearing tighter pants than she is. Everyone seems to be having a very good time, or at least as much fun as you can have when people are spinning around on their backs with their legs in the air, when some snooty photographer guy comes waltzing up and crashes the party without an invite.

  Normally, this would require that one of the gang members get an attitude and pull a knife, but this isn’t reality, so the street folks just keep spinning and dancing unprofessionally while the photographer (let’s call him Hank) hands his business card to Madonna. We don’t know why Hank would single out Madonna, when most of the other folks are spinning and spreading their legs with much more gusto, so Hank must have a special fondness for the bandana thingy that Madonna has artfully woven through her hairdo that is bigger than Detroit.

  Well, Man-Boy doesn’t care for small pieces of cardboard being handed to his lady-friend, and he makes a small scene that implies we don’t need no paparazzi up in here. (Apparently he doesn’t know Madonna very well, since she’s dreamed of paparazzi since the doctor slapped her newborn ass at the age of 10 seconds.) Madonna gives him a look (and a shove) that makes it clear that she and her bandana are going to do whatever it takes to not have to dance on this street corner any more.

  Cut to Madonna hopping into Hank’s fancy car (while Man-Boy glares from what looks like a balcony in Barcelona, so there might have been some editing issues), and the next thing we know Madonna is wearing an outfit with extreme ruffles and screwing around with a giant ball while Hank takes pictures. (There’s also some business with Madonna wearing a leather jacket accented by a hairstyle jacked to Jesus, but it’s not clear if Hank is also recording that Madonna or if it’s just her auditioning for a Broadway revival of West Side Story.)

  Next up are some shots of Madonna and Man-Boy on a rooftop somewhere. They seem to be very much in love, or at least horny, and they proceed to admire each other’s wardrobe and then make out. Zip back to Hank’s photography studio/penthouse, where now we have Madonna traipsing around in another leather outfit amongst some fake Greek columns and a giant statue of a naked man. Hank seems to be encouraging her to twirl as much as possible, when he really should be advising her to brush her hair at least once a week if she wants to be taken seriously.

  Then we have a montage of Madonna in another frilly outfit that no serious person would ever wear unless under court order as she and Hank review the photos he has taken and they both guzzle margaritas. Apparently Madonna is quite pleased with Hank’s work, because she lustfully kisses him on the lips and they presumably proceed to have questionable sex while the giant naked statue reviews the proceedings.

  Cut to a phone booth, with Madonna back in her street gear, a colorful ensemble with a Keith Haring theme and more hair that has not received proper attention. She’s hanging up on someone, but we don’t learn who it is because we have to see another round of Madonna dancing back at the studio. This turns into an extended scene where Madonna uses all of her acting skills to show that she can wear an outer garment that is clearly too big for her and maneuver her way through the Greek columns without mishap or any damage to the artwork.

  Now we have Madonna (back in the Keith Haring outfit) standing on a street corner and chatting with several of her girlfriends, all of them sporting hairstyles courtesy of the Helen Keller Salon in SoHo. Man-Boy shows up and pouts whilst leaning against a lamppost and smoking a cigarette, because his part in the script wasn’t clearly defined and he’s winging it.

  Madonna finally wanders over and tries to make nice, but her efforts are thwarted by Man-Boy doing something with an unexplained pool stick and his obvious dissatisfaction with her sluttiness (people talk, you know he’s got the 4-1-1 on her banging Hank and his foo-foo photography accessories) and the fact that her hair is bigger than his. He stomps away and heads back into a building, leaving Madonna to fret and kick the innocent lamppost, like it had anything to do with her bedding choices.

  We go inside the building, where Man-Boy is playing pool (somewhat explaining the stick in the previous scene but not the manner in which he was fondling it), which is something some guys naturally do when their Former Squeeze is on the brink of international superstardom. Madonna appears in the doorway and tries to interest Man-Boy in her womanliness, or at least her more expensive couture, but he ignores her and keeps shoving balls into pockets. Madonna turns and struts away, apparently deciding that this is a part of her life that won’t make it into her autobiography anyway, so what’s the point?

  Back to Hank’s studio, where Hank is smirking and Madonna is twirling, not showing any signs of guilt about working her way up the corporate ladder. Cut to Many-Boy walking up to a newsstand, surprising all of us that he reads, and seeing Madonna on the cover of “Gloss” magazine. He snatches up the magazine and proceeds to another Barcelona balcony so he can pout some more and have flashbacks of those special fifteen minutes that he and Madonna had on that random rooftop.

  Studio once again, where Hank is trying to convince Madonna that she needs to wear an especially unattractive floppy hat for their next photo session. She doesn’t seem to care for it, but Hank gets her on his artistic-vision side by handing her a can of spray paint and letting her draw hearts on his fake marble wall. This appeals to she street side of Madonna, so she proceeds with the graffiti despite the stupid hat whilst Hank points and shoots.

  Madonna, who firmly believes in excess, gets carried away and accidentally spray-paints Hank’s fancy car during the ecstatic exuberance of getting to deface property that does not belong to her. Hanks gets all pissy with Madonna, despite the obvious stupidity of Hank parking his car in the middle of a photo shoot, and there is an altercation, one that presumably does not lead to wanton sex.

  Cut to Madonna waltzing down a darkened street, headed toward the pool hall where Man-Boy is still shoving a stick at balls and making it clear that he doesn’t have a real life or he wouldn’t still be there. First, Madonna greets her gal pals standing outside, because you always have to give props to your sisters or you get kicked out of the gang and you can’t have that kind of mess showing up in your autobiography, then she heads inside for the showdown with Stunted-Growth-Boy.

  Madonna and the Pink Ladies sashay their way past Man-Boy, who apparently hasn’t moved from his position on the table since Oklahoma became a state, and then Madonna tries to appear disinterested as she peruses the selections on the jukebox. (After all, Joan Jett advised us years ago that we should put another dime in the jukebox, baby, and peer pressure is really hard to shake off despite counseling and distance from your formative years.)

  Man-Boy rushes up to Madonna before she can insert anything into a slot, and they embrace each other fervently like Madonna didn’t offer her wares to the first guy who had more than just liability insurance on his car. To confirm their back-togetherness, we cut to Man-Boy showing Madonna just exactly how his pool stick should be handled to achieve the most satisfaction. We finish out with another shot of Madonna singing the final notes of the song and wearing that ill-advised floppy hat with the most annoying bow known to mankind…

Click Here to Watch this Video on YouTube.

Madonna – “Burning Up”

  Wow, this one goes quite a ways back, to a time in the early 80’s when I had the energy to dance all night but the only place I could afford to do that dancing was at Wal-Mart. Anyway, here we go…

  We start out with a close-up of one of Madonna’s eyeballs, which can be quite alarming if you’re not prepared for it, then we zip through what appear to be a string of random images. Flowers, lips, modified pickup trucks, a marble bust, and the first of many scenes where Madonna is wallering around in a random parking lot at night. This was made during a time when people who worked on music videos first discovered something called “the editing button”, and these people are whacking at that button like woodpeckers.

  Then we head back to that bust, the non-Madonna one, and we learn that it lights up, so that the eyes glow and it looks like something that menaced  William Shatner on an old Star Trek episode. I’m not sure how we’ll use this information in our lives, but we’ll see. Then we suddenly have Madonna, decked out in the leather and chains that she was so fond of as a freshman, lunging at the camera and then doing a few mad twirls, probably because the peroxide in her hair is still burning her scalp. Then she does something with her arm that makes a laser beam shoot at an otherwise innocent goldfish bowl. I guess she doesn’t care for seafood.

  Next up is a nice Risky Business tribute with sunglasses, followed by another visit to the parking lot, where Madonna is sitting on the ground and holding her legs to keep them from flying open. We get another shot of the sunglasses, which have now become radioactive because Madonna’s lust is so burning, and several more shots of the Parking Lot Madonna, who has finally stopped flopping around enough that she can model her dress for us, which appears to be something inspired by Roman togas, a cute little number that she can easily slip out of later in her career when she decides to pose naked as often as possible.

  Cut to some black-and-white footage where Madonna is supposed to be all sweaty with desire, but some makeup person must have done something she shouldn’t have, because Madonna just looks like she has malaria. The camera pulls back and we learn that Madonna is standing behind a heavy-duty X-ray machine that has enough lights flashing that somebody somewhere must have just hit a jackpot. That’s a little too busy, so we zoom back in to Madonna’s drenched head, and I guess she’s shaking off the malaria because now she has some color in her cheeks. Still a lot of wetness, though.

  Zip to somewhere else, where Sunglass Madonna goes into a dance that requires her to throw some of her many accessories around the room. (Based on the number of rubber bracelets she has on that one arm, this routine could go on for quite some time.) The main motif of the choreography has something to do with Madonna jumping around in a circle and clutching at her trendy half-jacket. Eventually she gets a little tired, so we cut to a dramatic sequence where Madonna is trying to open a door that has far too many knobs. Failing to get the damn thing open, she turns and just sings to us for a while, occasionally yanking on the chain at her throat to let us know that bondage apparently has a very special place in her heart.

  Brief bit where different eyeballs fill the screen. You can user your own judgment on that image.

  Then Bouncing Madonna is standing right in front of the complicated door, and just as it hits us that it appears to be shaped like a rowboat, it turns into one, which is really something that doors shouldn’t do, and suddenly we’re floating on a green sea with Toga-Dress Madonna resting comfortably inside it while she sings. This is followed by several shots of some guy driving an older model car, one of those barge-like things that can seat 12, as he races toward some destination. (Did he get word that Madonna has malaria?) He looks sort of like someone who might have gotten kicked out of Duran Duran for not wearing enough makeup, but that’s probably not important to our story.

  Time to check in with Parking Lot Madonna again, and she’s heavily involved in doing poses as if she’s a swimsuit model, despite the fact that she’s not wearing bathing attire and her ass is rolling around on asphalt instead of sand. (Could these people not afford to fly somewhere with a beach?) But at least she appears to be having a good time, and that’s all that really matters.

  Next up is an image of Madonna in the rowboat on the green sea, lying on her back and floating along peacefully, not bothering anyone. Suddenly, the Duran Duran guy drives by in his whale of a car, somehow managing to not sink as he plods along. (Maybe he used some of those rubber bracelets as floaties?) This is probably a political statement of some kind, but I don’t have enough dance training to fully understand it.

  Now we have a montage of Duran driving along less-watery highways, Madonna becoming super-heated in her Parking Lot of Lust, and Madonna suddenly disappearing from that rowboat (maybe she went to take out more insurance after nearly being killed at sea by a Buick?). Then we focus in on Parking Lot Madonna, who apparently still has a lot of naughty poses that she simply must get out of her system or she will implode. It appears that certain key moves help relieve the sexual pressure, like flipping her multi-hued hair around, crawling around on all fours, tugging in frustration at her clothing, and snarling at the camera whilst in the midst of presumable orgasm with an intensity that no one on the planet has ever experienced before.

  Meanwhile, Duran is still driving around, so I’m starting to think this is not someone you should call if you need him to get somewhere in a reasonable amount of time. His tardiness doesn’t really matter, though, since Madonna is still on fire in the parking lot and is happy to share with us even more ways one can express uncontrolled passion. (I’m surprised she isn’t physically riding the camera by now. I’m sure it crossed her mind.) This part of the her repertoire includes more hair-flipping, posing in a manner that reminds everyone she does indeed have breasts that have certain needs, and undulating in such a startling way that no one will ever use slot 12 in that parking lot again.

  The video comes to an end with slow-ass Duran finally arriving on the scene just as Madonna is eyeing the nearby shrubbery as possible relief, and even though we don’t get to see the discussion that immediately follows, things apparently don’t work out too well for Duran. The final shot is of Madonna driving the tanker away, all alone. I guess she doesn’t like to have sex with people who are wearing more eyeliner than she is…

Click Here to Watch the Video on YouTube.