July 2008 - Posts
Since attending my first concert at age 12, I’ve been hooked on seeing musicians live. Sure, their records sound flawless and uninterrupted at home, but a concert can provide a glimpse of the person behind the tunes, reinterpretations of favorite songs, the opportunity to enjoy it in with a room (or stadium) full of others who also dig the artist, and more.
But there are always a few folks who put a damper on the shows and my mood.
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Nothing stirs the masses like a good political debate, and aside from Michael Moore, the one person we can count on to get red and blue blood boiling is director Oliver Stone.
Stone, who brought us the presidential films "JFK" and "Nixon," is back with "W," a film about the life and presidency of George W. Bush. The film stars Josh Brolin as the president, Elizabeth Banks as first lady Laura Bush, Thandie Newton as Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Richard Dreyfuss as Vice President Dick Cheney and many more. Stone reportedly did a major rush job on the making of the film in order to have it ready before the November election. Brolin and Jeffrey (Colin Powell) Wright made news this month when they were arrested following a bar brawl on location in Shreveport, La.
The first trailer for the film hit the Internet this week and it shows Brolin, as a young Bush, using a beer bong. He also gets yelled at by his father. That's it. Roll credits. (OK, there's a little more to it than that, but those parts stuck with me). Stone has said the film won't be an anti-Bush polemic, but, as he told Daily Variety, "a fair, true portrait of the man. How did Bush go from being an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?"
I'm not going to get into the politics of political movies. I've seen a few I like and a few I didn't over the last eight years. Generally when I seek out a political film, I look for documentaries so I don't have to suspend so much disbelief and forget that Hannibal Lecter is playing Richard Nixon. I am curious about whether you think Oliver Stone can make a decent movie here. Is it the wrong time to explore this subject -- a sitting president? Is there a political film you'd point to as top notch in the genre? Do you plan on seeing "W."? Cast your votes in the comments.
Last Thursday (in the a.m.), I turned to TV editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper and said, “Next week, I’m going to write about how Will is going to win ‘So You Think You Dance.’” Little did I realize the travesty that was in store that evening when the sweet (and, thankfully, often shirtless) Will got sent packing, along with female contestant Comfort.
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"Mad Men" is back, and did I ever need it. Even if you haven't watched the AMC drama about Madison Avenue ad men in the 1960s, you've probably heard about its 16 Emmy nominations. I'm here to tell you: It's worth all the hype. It's a show full of sharp dialogue and situations that feel real, with no explosions or serial killers.
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For the last couple weeks, the buzz on the Internet has been overwhelming for Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Bastards.” The writer-director has been working on this script, about a band of soldiers who try to take down the Nazis during World War II, since the release of “Jackie Brown” – “Bastards” was reportedly first intended for release in 2001. But does Tarantino’s name still draw fans the way it once did?
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When the topic of girly girl TV shows comes up, the same series are often mentioned: “Sex and the City,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Ugly Betty” and the like. They all tend to feature a strong female cast, dramarific plotlines, modern-day knights in shining armor and often, excellent wardrobes and shoes to die for.
But beyond the obvious female-oriented series, a few “manlier” shows, both currently on air and retired, can catch the ladies’ fancy.
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I'll be the first to admit that I spend a great deal of time on the Internet looking at paparazzi pictures of celebrities. I'll also admit that I think 99 percent of this stuff is garbage and makes me glad I'm not a big shot star (at least not in my own mind).
The only reason I bring this up -- because by now I've learned that all of you who tirelessly read about celebrities actually hate reading about celebrities -- is because two noteworthy photos surfaced this week. One photo shows Britney Spears smoking a cigarette in a bikini as her 2 1/2-year-old son Preston stands nearby, getting ready to lift her smokes off of a table. This image was actually on the cover of the New York Post, teasing a story about how horrible a mother Britney is.
The other image shows Brad Pitt out for a cruise in a golf cart with his young daughter Shiloh riding on his lap. The photo is reminiscent of Britney again, who got more bad mothering heat for riding in her car with one of her kids on her lap.
Some will say Britney and Brad should know better by now, that they live their lives within range of long camera lenses and everything is fair game because they're celebrities. I'm not going to condone the actions being taken in either of these photos, but I think that's a little crazy. It's ridiculous to expect these people to be perfect at every turn when we, the people who feed on their every misstep, would look just as silly under the same microscope.
Regardless of Brad and Brit's parenting skills, who in their right mind would want to be a megawatt star in this day and age? Do the hotels and the boats and the cars and the houses really offset the lack of privacy that comes with being pursued 24-7?
Think about it as the helicopter hovers overhead as you stand there looking bloated in your bikini, your 2-year-old momentarily reaching for your cigarettes before a picture is snapped and sent around the world. Would it really be worth the hit record or the blockbuster movie?
Much has been made of Katharine Heigl's comments that she wasn't worthy of an Emmy nomination this year because the "Grey's Anatomy" writers didn't give her an Emmy-worthy storyline to work with. Mark Harris makes a very thoughtful argument in defense of Heigl in the July 25 issue of Entertainment Weekly (page 18 if you have a copy. I'd post a link but EW.com doesn't have it up yet). Some have argued that the comment was a ploy by Heigl to get herself written off the show so she can pursue her movie career (hopefully with movies much better than "27 Dresses"). Rumor has it that the "Grey's" writers will give Heigl her wish, they are going to give her character, Dr. Isobel "Izzie" Stevens, a fatal brain tumor. All is can say to that is ... YES!
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For those of you who didn't notice (and judging by the comments we've seen, more than a few of you have), we've made some changes to Test Pattern in the past few weeks.
Gael Fashingbauer Cooper was the sole author of this blog for the past several years. While she was on maternity leave, we wondered what we would do about Test Pattern, and it was suggested -- by Gael -- that we make it a section-wide blog. And that's exactly what we did.
So now, instead of just sending the funny, bizarre, infuriating and thoughtful items we spot on the Internet to each other, we're sharing them with you. Our internal musings have become the fodder for posts, from Anna Chan's confessions of a band girlfriend to Paige Newman's dismay about Gil Grissom's depature from "CSI" to Kurt Schlosser's love of watching people fall. And while Gael now will only be writing one post per week, for those of you who want more of her unique perspective, check out her own blog, Pop Culture Junk Mail.
I hope you enjoy the wider (or as we say here at msnbc.com, fuller) spectrum of opinions and tastes. And I look forward to sharing more of my musings in the future.
Denise Hazlick
Entertainment editor
We talked earlier about how ad agencies try and play on our love for certain songs, hoping we'll transfer that love to their products. They do the same thing with kids. But just as a proud parent is quick to assume everyone thinks his or her little darling can do no wrong, commercials often make the exact same mistake.
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“Well, there goes that show,” my pal, co-worker and fellow “CSI” devotee, Gerrie said after hearing the news that William Peterson is leaving “CSI.”
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The sun is out, the birds are chirping … and I’m fiddling with the rabbit ears on my TV. Yes, I am one of the few people in the U.S. without cable. And yes, it sucks. Especially for a TV junkie like me. It’s even worse in the dead of summer, when I’m stuck with reruns.
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You'd have to be dead to not know that this is a big week for a particular movie star who is no longer with us. Heath Ledger's turn as the Joker in the new Batman film is being hyped and hailed as Oscar worthy, and for the first time since "No Country For Old Men" I'll probably make a trip to the theater.
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For me, Ledger falls into the category of celebrities who died too soon and are actually worth missing. His death from an accidental overdose of prescription pills in January was a shocker and my sympathy for those who were actually close to him is coupled with my own selfish regret that I'll no longer see him on screen. I felt the same way when River Phoenix died in 1993 -- again very talented, very young and again from a drug overdose.
In 1994, I was deeply saddened when Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain took his own life. Something about having the architect of your life's current soundtrack suddenly disappear will put a crimp in your turntable. I imagine many people felt the same way about Elvis or Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin or John Lennon or Jim Morrison or ...
Is it the shocking death that makes the star burn brighter for us? Plenty of huge stars live into old age and die with less media fanfare than Ledger. Leaving one final critically acclaimed performance on celluloid doesn't appear to hurt one's legacy. Yet how do we explain Anna Nicole Smith or the inevitable next star who burns out without leaving a body of work one would deem worthy of the coverage their death generates?
As we appreciate the work of the Joker this week and watch the box office dollars roll in for "The Dark Knight," take a moment to remember an actor or musician who impacted your life and was then gone, too soon. Are you still affected by what this person left behind when you see or hear it? Do you appreciate it for what it was then and leave it at that, or do you wish he was still alive today as whatever brand of entertainer time had turned him into?
I really need a good laugh. I need the kind of laugh that makes your stomach and jaws hurt; the kind that surprises you by how strong it is. So far this year, only “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” provided real movie theater laughs. Yes, there were sweet chuckles in “WALL-E” and conspiratal snickers in “Iron Man,” and even guilty-pleasure giggles in “Sex and the City,” but nothing has made me spill my popcorn yet – and I need to drop that $6 bucket sometime real soon.
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Everyone has always misspelled my first name. But the more I read about celebrity baby names, the less I feel like complaining. With this weekend's arrival of Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt, let's review this latest batch of star baby monikers.
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I mentioned two weeks ago that I might be discontinuing Multi-link Monday due to the new group-blog format (and to the fact that it gets just a fraction of the traffic other Test Pattern posts receive). That mention drove Multi-link Monday fans out of the woodwork to leave comments pleading for the feature to stay. There may not be that many of you, relatively speaking, but you sure are loyal.
I'll try and keep the Monday fun going, but a warning: It may not be every Monday. And I need your help. When you see a goofy, fun, time-wasting site, post it in the comments of the most recent Multi-link Monday post. I'll elevate the best links to the next week's post. And thanks for the kind words.
• The Celebrity Apes Weblog is a bit creepy. It reminds me of the old "Planet of the Apes" movie series and I become convinced that the scenario in those films has come to pass. The Weblog takes photos of celebrities and replaces their faces with those of apes, and if you think that sounds quite a bit disturbing and also a little bit funny, you are right on both counts.
• I feel a little sheepish that I like this "find the six differences" game so much, because it resembles a simple game I used to play in my Highlights for Children magazine when I was a little kid. Find the differences and click on them as you find them. (Link via Ultimate Insult.)
• Need a home project? These folks decided to make a giant Kit-Kat bar at home, and as their photo essay shows, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They even impressed the logo into the top of the candy, just like on real Kit-Kats. Note that if you ate the whole thing, you'd consume about 45,000 calories. I can feel cavities forming just from thinking about it. (Via Web-Goddess.)
• XM Radio's baseball site has a fun feature: You can make a virtual bobblehead doll of yourself or a friend and e-mail it to someone. Hey, I'd rather be a bobblehead than a celebrity ape.
• I love touring weird little museums when we go on vacation. But this summer, with a new baby and soaring gas prices, we may not be road-tripping very much. Never fear, I can visit the Banana Museum online, since it's only a virtual museum anyway. Great old photos and labels, and I am fascinated with the eerily realistic banana carved out of bone.
Just when I thought my "Vacation" from the 80s might be permanently over, back came Christie Brinkley this week. The Girl in the Ferrari, as IMDb.com lists her for that 1983 movie, zoomed onto the gossip pages and cable TV with her lurid, public Long Island divorce trial. Aren't you glad?
I guess the saving grace is that the proceedings against soon-to-be-ex-husband Peter Cook ended fairly quickly thanks to a settlement between the two parties Thursday. Brinkley gets the kids and the knowledge that a certain segment of the public that paid attention now knows Cook was her fourth husband. And they know that the decision to go public with the (normally) private and (likely) devastating business of dismantling a marriage was her idea. And that same tuned-in public now knows that Cook cheated on his supermodel wife with a teenager he met at a toy store. And he spent a good deal of money every month on Internet pornography. He gets $2.1 million in the settlement.
I don't feel like I'm better off for knowing any of the information I learned from this entire public display. Marriages end in crummy ways -- knew that. People look at porn online and spend lots of money doing so -- knew that. I guess what I didn't know is that a once famous Sports Illustrated swimsuit model was in a lousy relationship with a jerk. Was it worth it for me to know that, Christie? Your kids are 10 and 13. Did their friends need to know everything?
A court-appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Stephen Herman, testified that Brinkley needs to examine her taste in men and that Cook is a narcissist with a bottomless ego. There's your one-line takeaway from this week's "Vacation" from reality to celebrityland.
The club is packed, the music’s rockin’ and the stage lights are perfectly illuminating the hot frontman of the band you’re seeing. You gaze up adoringly at him, silently gloating to yourself that he’s your man and no one else’s.
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By now, in our hyper-immediate, straight-to-the-Web culture of infotainment, I guess I would have expected most people to be familiar with Sacha Baron Cohen, aka Borat, aka Ali G, aka Bruno. Thankfully, for the sake of comedy, many people are not familiar with him.
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A couple of weeks ago I went to see “WALL-E,” and was thoroughly delighted. Not only was it one of the sweeter love stories to hit theaters recently (I couldn’t even think of another one – what has happened to the romantic comedy, Hollywood?), it also gave a satirical look at the future with overweight people being carted around in floating barcoloungers who never looked away from their video monitors. Of course, this poked a bit of fun at audience members who sat passively watching the film with their large Cokes and tubs of buttered popcorn.
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Let's talk about music in commercials. Not jingles or songs written just for the ads ("five...five dollar...five dollar footloooooong"), but commercials that use well-known songs in the hopes that if we like the song, we'll transfer that feeling to their products.
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Even at the ripe old age of 29, I feel like I'm closer to 18 than 30. And judging from the tunes on my iPod, I may as well be, because my taste in music is firmly stuck in the past.
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Rodney King famously asked during the 1992 Los Angeles riots: “Can we all get along?” Despite the fact that his iconic plea was made so close to Hollywood, and has since been mockingly uttered by every meathead within earshot of a disagreement, apparently the phrase is lost on the modern-day celebrity.
A few examples of recent, public celeb-on-celeb nastiness have me wondering what else these people need in life since fame and money apparently aren’t enough to satisfy their easily bruised egos.
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It’s still two weeks off, but reviews of Christopher Nolan’s Batman sequel are already starting to appear. Rolling Stone reviewer, Peter Travers, was one of the first to be allowed to post an early review and wrote, “A thunderbolt is about to rip into the blanket of bland we call summer movies … The haunting and visionary ‘Dark Knight’ soars on the wings of untamed imagination.”
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