Hilary Duff, Bank of America Pavilion, August 30, 2007
By ELLEE DEAN | September 4, 2007
POST-DISNEY HILARY: Lizzie McGuire, meet Madonna. |
Clutching her rhinestone-studded mic, Hilary Duff sounds like Minnie Mouse when she talks. Of her fans — bespectacled little girls with glow sticks at Bank of America Pavilion — Duff exclaims, “It’s very, like, empowering!” (She also admits, “I lose my words up here.”) Such is the empty-sugar-packet archetype of pop perfection. Back-up dancers in string bikinis and unzipped Daisy Duke body suits might be descending the stairs behind her, but Duff doesn’t lose her dignified beat — especially not during Dignity’s chiding, electro-pop title track. “Where’s your, where’s your, where’s your dignity?” she chants, as tabloid covers flash on the screen behind her. Her dancers don oversized designer purses and they and Duff gyrate their hips. “I think you lost it in the Hollywood hills,” she coos, for a sexy-lite second, looking like a miniature Brigitte Bardot, though with too much highlighter on her Shape-magazine-cover thighs.However sexy she might look in hoop earrings and a pair of low-cut gold overalls, Duff acts the part of a punctiliously packaged pop star/teen role model. In front of an image of blue sky, she tells us that “Wake Up” is a song about “boys” and “girls” all over the world turning their backs on negativity. And her tabloid-trash routine reams wayward-rehab stars like Lindsay Lohan more than Pink’s “Stupid Girls.” But at the end of the set, when she stands atop the stage’s staircase and sighs — utterly defeated, it seems, by her own career — something strange happens. She performs two encores. After the first, the lights come on and she politely introduces her band. Cue the mom-and-daughter glow-stick exodus. But then the Pavilion grows dark again, and the band start to play in front of a fiery-red screen. Duff’s shadow writhes in front of the flame to the opening beat of her TRL-featured single, “Stranger.” Suddenly, she’s Lizzie McGuire cum Madonna — with purring vocals, but she doesn’t claw at the floor just yet. It’s the confusing former-Disney-teenage-female-pop-star battlefield, as in “Love Is a Battlefield” — and, yes, Duff does okay with Pat Benatar’s fist pumper too.
Related:
Busdriver | Jhelli Beam, The Duff connection, Material Girls, More 
- Busdriver | Jhelli Beam
For a guy whose layered rhymes are less accessible than Hilary Duff's muff, Busdriver designs relatively people-friendly hip-hop.
- The Duff connection
“I really haven’t had to deal with any crazy paparazzi, since we usually keep a low profile and sneak in the back door of places.”
- Material Girls
The latest vehicle for Hilary Duff (and poor Haylie, who looks like the drag-queen version of her pretty sister) is an insipid mess not worthy of the tweens who flock to such flicks. Watch the trailer for Material Girls (QuickTime)
- Smoosh
Earlier this year, Hilary Duff told Elle that she pities critics who don’t adore her.
- Interview: John Cusack sounds off on War, Inc.
Most filmgoers recognize John Cusack as a brooding sexy, sometimes sardonic leading man.
- Company man
In at least one of its toss-away scenes, Joshua Seftel’s War, Inc. rises to the level of brutal bad taste that distinguishes master satirists from Jonathan Swift to Stanley Kubrick.
- Marketing magic
When you dial the Disney Channel headquarters in Burbank and ask to be transferred, the operator will cheerily instruct you to have a “magical day.”
- Cringe catharsis
I think I’m addicted to the cringe catharsis.
- The Big Hurt: Hagar the horrible
I was reading a fascinating article about Sammy’s new record deal, and an epiphany struck: every year, Sammy looks more and more like the Dude.
- Just like a woman
The new, improved, clean, sober, and buff Trent Reznor is no longer wrestling with downward spirals.
- Less
Topics:
Live Reviews
, Celebrity News, Entertainment, Music Stars, More
, Celebrity News, Entertainment, Music Stars, Pat Benatar, Lindsay Lohan, Minnie Mouse, Hilary Duff, Hilary Duff, Hilary Duff, Pink (Singer), Less
