| Product: |
Closer |
| Date: |
12/11/03 (99 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Some funny and bitchy stories if that's your thang
Disadvantages: Terrible pictures quality
Can you remember the days when your Mother and Grandmother bought magazines each week. In our household, there was always a copy of either ?Woman?, ?Woman?s Own?, or ?Women?s Weekly? laying around. They used to seem so boring, and I could never understand why on earth my Mum wasted her money.
I do enjoy reading magazines, now I?m older, but find I go in fits and starts, and can sometimes go months without buying, only to then have a binge on light reading for the next couple of months.
For the past few weeks, I have been buying ?Closer?. The magazine deals with celebrity gossip and also human interest stories, rather than magazines such as ?Take a Break?, who concentrate on real life stories.
Closer is a weekly magazine and retails at £1 per issue, and the August issue, which I have in front of me was the forty seventh one to be published. Compare this in price to OK and Hello, and Closer is a whole pound cheaper.
The question is, can Closer compete with its rivals, such as Hello and OK? Let us delve into the issue and find out.
The first thing that strikes me from the front cover, is that the celebrity pictures displayed, are quite grainy, and are not of very good quality. The main story of the magazine, is that of the marriage breakdown of Sadie Frost and Jude Law, with pictures of Jude pushing one of his children in a buggy, whilst the one of Sadie shows her with her young, new toyboy.
The contents page inside the front leaf is set out plainly and informatively, with no frills, and is accompanied by a letter from the editor.
The articles within the magazine are all surrounded by pictures of the celebrity in question, but a lot of them do not have direct quotes from the people involved in the stories. As with most of the media, the magazine can be very cruel to the people in the news, such as an article on Cameron Diaz, showing spots all over her back and face, whilst out on the town with her new beau,
Justin Timberlake. Now, although I like a bit of bitching, I do feel that someone sporting an eruption of spots is just a tad cruel, especially when one of the photographs was a close up, showing the white heads.
Throughout the magazine, most of the celebrity stories have pictures that are of appalling quality, as if they have been shot from such a long distance, that everything is blurred. One of the articles deals with love rat Darren Day, and really you would need a magnifying glass, to prove that it is a picture of him leaving the room of ex-Hearsay singer Suzanne Shaw, after their recent night of passion.
However, when moving onto human interest stories, the quality of the photographs is as it should be, and the largest story in the issue I have is about the two gay fathers, who now have three children, all by surrogate mothers. The article takes us through a brief history of their lives, and how they originally met, to the idea of them having children together, and follows their plan through to fruition. The other tells the horrific story of a man from America, who has lost half of his face through a tumour. Heart rending.
Tara Palmer Tompkinson has her own column in the magazine, where she deals with celebrities in the news, and gives her viewpoint. I?m not particularly a TPT fan, but the column is quite a witty view of life through her eyes.
For anyone who is following Pop Idol, a page is devoted to one of the contestants who was ridiculed on the show. The magazine bought the girl into the studio, and then photographed her in an outfit that the super slim model Jodie Marsh had worn. A very cruel trick, as her breasts sag down to her stomach, and as she only had a tie across them it is not a pretty sight. I suppose she was paid for the privilege though. Not only are us normal mortals ridiculed, there is also a page showing an array of celebrities out and about, looking very scruffy. The picture of Tom Cruise makes the poor
chap look like a vagrant, but of course most of us love to see that celebrities have their off days too.
Closer has four pages of puzzles, which range from crosswords to word searches, and all carry a cash prize if they are completed and mailed to the magazine.
Although Closer deals mainly with the celebrity side of life, they do run true life stories, and if you really feel like baring your soul to the world, the story will earn you £500.
The letters page is a bit of a mish mash, with letters asking for beauty advice, where to buy clothes and accessories that celebrities have worn recently, to letters praising the magazine. I would rather these letters were put on separate pages, as they are in other magazines.
A fashion expert?s page shows pictures of the stars where she analyses their outfits, and says if they are a no no or a yes. A strange idea, but they obviously needed to fill space up this week.
There are the normal stories on diet, and this week features the Atkins Diet, its pros and cons, and the people in the news who have lost weight by following it. Also there are of course fashion pages, giving advice on how to make the best of your wardrobe.
Closer has a weekly television guide within the magazine, which in my opinion breaks the magazine up too much. Once I reach this section, I tend to flip to the last page, as following TV, there is a section on astrology, which does not particularly interest me. However, the last page is always an interesting read as it features a ?Where are they now?? story, this week the star of which are 80?s band ?The Proclaimers?, who had one hit song, then faded into obscurity.
My verdict overall is not particularly good. I feel that the lack of interviews with the stars, detracts from the stories, and most articles feature silly little headlines and terribly quality photographs.
With 100 pages for £1, Closer is not too expensive, but I don?t necessarily
think I would buy it again, purely because of the awful quality of the photographs on some of the articles. I would rather pay another pound for OK, which is larger in size, thicker and also has two free magazines, or go and buy Heat, which does the bitch fest much better!
Summary:
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