NASA's online contest to name a new room at the international space station went awry. Comedian Stephen Colbert won. The name "Colbert" beat out NASA's four suggested options in the... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 24 Mar 2009 | 11:36 am
AP - The spread of new 3-D movie technology to theaters around the world has been slower than expected, but its prospects remain strong because it offers a better visual experience, DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg said Tuesday.
A Chinese giant panda eats bamboo while another one walks around at their home in the Taipei zoo. Chinese artist Zhao Bandi never goes anywhere without a panda, and his visit to Paris this week was no... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 24 Mar 2009 | 11:10 am
Chinese artist Zhao Bandi has a passion in life: the panda. After years of photographying himself together with the national icon, he has found a new outlet for his obsession: fashion. The AFPTV followed... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 24 Mar 2009 | 11:10 am
Chinese artist Zhao Bandi never goes anywhere without a panda, and his visit to Paris this week was no exception. "I have many of them, but this one often comes travelling with me," said Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 24 Mar 2009 | 11:10 am
AP - Kiefer Sutherland will be back to play Jack Bauer for an eighth season of the hit counterterrorism drama "24," but the show's longevity will depend on its writers, the actor said Tuesday.
AP - Kiefer Sutherland will be back to play Jack Bauer for an eighth season of the hit counterterrorism drama "24," but the show's longevity will depend on its writers, the actor said Tuesday.
AP - Kiefer Sutherland will be back to play Jack Bauer for an eighth season of the hit counterterrorism drama "24," but the show's longevity will depend on its writers, the actor said Tuesday.
Front Page: Actress to star in indie romantic comedy -- Liv Tyler is set to star in "The Romantics," an independently financed romantic comedy written and to be directed by Galt Niederhoffer.
Front Page: Filmmaker signs on to direct New Line drama -- Nick Cassavetes has signed on to helm the conservation-themed drama "Peaceable Kingdom" for New Line.
Front Page: Duo sign on for another two years at studio -- Barry M. Meyer and Alan Horn have signed on for another two years at Warner Bros., continuing their decade-long partnership in the top slots at the studio.
Front Page: 'Witch Mountain' director to helm adaptation -- Paramount Pictures has acquired the Sarah Mylnowski young-adult novel "Gimme a Call" and will develop it as a directing vehicle for "Race to Witch Mountain" helmer Andy Fickman.
Front Page: Guild settlement hearing hits a snag -- The WGA's efforts to settle a tangled 2005 lawsuit over millions of dollars in foreign levies collected on behalf of writers have hit another roadblock. The result is that scribes are unlikely to see any money from the class-action suit anytime soon.
Front Page: Fox to distribute 'Ghost' comicbook adaptation -- New Regency has acquired "Freedom Formula: Ghost of the Wasteland," an adaptation of the Radical Publishing comicbook series that will be developed as a potential directing vehicle for Bryan Singer.
Does Octomom have six hands that we can't see? Or a pot o' gold, perhaps?
If not, why would she fire the nurse-nannies that were charitably provided for her by the nonprofit...
You know all that hooey we’ve been spewing about how United States of Tara has been taking too long to give us too little? The show has made up for lost time by presenting a major turning point in every story line — including some major testicle-growing on the part of a certain doormat husband — and even mustered some full-fledged LOLing from us. We should’ve known things were going to get good when Tara’s bratty sister summed up Tara’s mode of interpersonal connection: “It’s not a relationship, it’s an orgy.”
The Unaltered Tara
After Tara gets dumped by her Glinda the Good Witch therapist, her sister drags her to a spa for some massage therapy. Though Tara’s presumed date rape has made her averse to the touch of a stranger’s hand, Charmaine is set on getting all limbered up for her sex date with an environmental lawyer.
And wouldn’t you know it, as soon as the kindly old-lady masseuse lays her hands on Tara’s tense, rippling back muscles, Tara freaks the fuck out and enters the animalistic altered state of Gimme. The goblin personality runs hog wild through the spa, tearing down curtains and scaring the bejeezus out of everyone in the place — then immediately transitions into the cool-cucumber teenage alter, T.
Another Altered State
Marshall, his gay romance now in full bloom, gets all decked out for the first day back at school since his big kiss with his Christian lover, Jason. Though Jason blows … off Marshall at school, the two go on a bike-riding date, at which point Marshall nearly gets Jason to commit to being his “BF.”
After Marshall is called into a family meeting, T lures Jason into her lair — a backyard shed to which she is often banished when she gets too mouthy. Soon enough, T puts the moves on the sexually confused bible thumper. He relents; Marshall walks in on them. It’s not pretty.
Things also get ugly with Kate when she finds a picture of herself stashed in the desk drawer of her onetime makeout partner and current creepy boss. A co-worker encourages Kate to sue for sexual discrimination because, hilariously, her winnings could get her both a “white Lexus and Invisaligns” — or so she hears from her sister’s best friend’s cousin.
Pause for Pop-Culture-Reference Comment
We’ve whined about U.S. of T.’s barrage of incongruous pop-culture references before. This episode, Marshall and his fag-hag friend share the most unlikely exchange between two TV teenagers, which, over the course of about three minutes, includes mentions of From Here to Eternity, Montgomery Clift, and A Place in the Sun. We don’t care how cool you were in high school, you that weren’t conversant in Old Hollywood.
Back at the Tara Plantation
The episode closes with the show’s most climactic moment yet: Totally ticked-off Marshall goes firebug on T’s backyard shed, and the show closes with him smugly reclining on a lawn chair as his family frantically douses the flames with garden hoses. It’s beautifully effective, and, for the first time, we’re truly, madly, deeply eager to see what’s next.
Late-night talker David Letterman married his longtime girlfriend, Regina Lasko, last week, according to a transcript of the taping of his Monday night show. Letterman told his audience the wedding almost didn't happen after the couple got their truck stuck in the mud on the way to a Montana courthouse ceremony.
“If you’ve ever sat in bleachers where your child is competing against other children, with other parents, it’s a very volatile place to be,” Jeff Daniels, who relocated to his native Michigan some years ago, told us at last night's God of Carnage premiere. "I mean, everybody has a blind spot for their own kid." Daniels’s sons played hockey, but he says he never took a stick to a parent. Instead, he taught his boys to take care of themselves. “Some of my proudest moments were when they took care of things on the ice,” he said. “You just stand there and their kid mouthed off, and my kid takes care of it, and then you look over at the parent and he’s looking at you like, you know, you’ve just wronged his child, and you just go, ‘Your child has a big mouth; he needs to shut his mouth.’”
For more tales told out of school and discussion of projectile vomit, check out our Party Lines Slideshow.
We confess, we missed the big Saturday premiere of MTV's new House of Style, hosted by Bar Refaeli. But we knew the show included segments on jelly shoes and friendship bracelets, and we had naps to take and cocktails to drink. (Besides, if we had spent more time in front of the tube we would have been feeding our new, inexplicable Millionaire Matchmaker addiction.) We watched some clips of the new House on the Internet today and it is mostly just awkward and boring. For one, Bar Refaeli isn't the greatest at reading her cue cards. Maybe it's because English is her second language, but it's still distracting. Jezebel has a clip of Jessica Stam showing us how to shop in our closets. Her revelatory ideas include wearing a white T-shirt with a skirt and heels and trading your $1,500 handbags with your friends at some sort of bag-swap party. Because who doesn't have $1,500 bags lying around that they're just so sick of using? You can watch the clip of Justin Timberlake behind the scenes at his William Rast show with Bar here. We're not posting it because it was that boring. But we like the Millionaire Matchmaker, so maybe it's just us.
Ad pages are down, staffers are forced to take unpaid leave, and more dailies are shedding their smudgy paper skins and going live. Plus, there's one less gay publication to go around (in an opaque plastic sleeve). After the jump, today's bad media news.
• Steamy gay monthly Genre has suspended publication do to a slump in ad sales during the recession. [Towleroad]
• Like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer before it, the Ann Arbor News will close in July to be replaced by web-only AnnArbor.com. Publisher Laurel Champion, who will be executive vice president, told News employees they can apply for positions with the new company. Gee whiz! How sweet of you, Laurel. [MLive.com]
• McClatchy's Charlotte Observer will cut its workforce by 14.6 percent and reduce the pay of most remaining employees, the company announced this morning. [Charlotte Observer]
• Vacation never seemed so ominous. Gannett Co., the owner of USA Today and more than 80 other daily U.S. newspapers, is requiring its highest-paid workers to relinquish up to two weeks pay due to sinking advertising revenue. [Yahoo]
• Similarly, Advance Publications is instituting mandatory ten-day unpaid leave and a pension freeze at nearly all of its daily papers outside Michigan, including New Jersey's Star-Ledger, Cleveland's Plain Dealer, Portland's Oregonian, New Orleans's Times-Picayune, and The Staten Island Advance, as well as the chain's dailies in Syracuse, N.Y.; Birmingham, Ala.; and Harrisburg, Pa. [Editor & Publisher]
• Even sex and fashion are floundering in this economy. All of the women's and mens' fashion magazines — from upscale Vogue to sexalicious Cosmo — lost 20 percent or more ad pages in April, according to the latest figures from Media Industry Newsletter. [WWD]
Front Page: Obama's rescue plan revives Wall St. -- The Obama administration aimed squarely at the crisis clogging the nation's credit system Monday with a plan to take over up to $1 trillion in sour mortgage securities with the help of private investors. For once, Wall Street cheered.
It seems like hip-hop’s class of ’09 — that obsessed-over (by blogs) batch of fresh-faced, mix-tape-hawking would-be rap saviors — have all decided to move to the main stage: Charles Hamilton’s releasing music videos, Asher Roth’s on MTV, Kid Cudi’s basically Kanye's new best friend. Now it’s Wale’s turn: After announcing that his debut Interscope album, Attention Deficit, is coming this summer, the D.C. emcee released first single “Chillin.” And, well, it’s a bit of a letdown. We could maybe excuse the radio-pandering inclusion of Lady Gaga (sounding decidedly like a Canal Street M.I.A.) or the completely unnecessary (never, ever necessary) “Na Na Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” sample if Wale had just come a bit harder (“Hos calling me Mr. Never-wear-the-same-thing?”). Okay, “I got a buzz like that n**** Chris Mullin” is awesome, but it’d take referencing all of Run-TMC to save this one.
"We are not talking Cartier here. We are talking plastic. Hunting with girlfriends who'd call out, 'Ruthie, look at this.' Ruthie then came and looked at this."
But what is most surprising about this to us is not that Ruth Madoff continues to shop, but that Ruth Madoff still has friends, considering, you know, her husband metaphorically if not literally fucked everyone he came into contact with, and we would imagine the girls would have a hard time getting over that. Snaps for the sisterhood. Hey, maybe they were all buying necklaces!
• Victoria's Secret Angel Marisa Miller hides cellulite with self-tanner. Maybe Lindsay is onto something? [Fox News]
Makeup
• Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubenstein may have founded their companies at the same time and lived in the same hood, but they never met. The fierce business rivalry is explored tonight in The Powder & the Glory, airing on PBS. (Check local listings for airtime.) Beauty catfight! [WSJ]
• Clarins is revamping its U.S. image in hopes of making it sexier and reaching the Hispanic market. We can't remember the last time we bought Clarins, so this is probably wise. [WSJ]
Hair
• Does anyone know why Fergie's scalp is … orange? This blogger can't figure it out. Glaze? Radioactive makeup? [Beauty Department/Glamour]
Nails
• Revlon is releasing a line of polishes that smell addictively fruity. This really won't help nail biters one bit. [Fashionista]
Plastic Surgery
• Icky blind item: An unnamed fashion editor apparently had too much fat pumped into her lips, earning her the name, "Hamster." We don't know what's worse: That this happened or that it's a blind item. [NYP]
Who says you can't teach an old dog some new, not so stupid tricks?
David Letterman swapped vows with longtime love Regina Lasko Thursday afternoon in a no-frills courthouse...
Ever daydreamed about what it might have been like to have been Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger on that fateful day — March January 15, 2009 — when the U.S. Airways pilot heroically landed a commercial jet full of people safely on the Hudson River, saving nearly 150 lives? Well, now you have your chance. For just 99 cents, you can buy the iPhone simulator game and see how well you would have done if you were in the cockpit that day. With "Sully's Flight" you can hear the same frantic audio that Captain Sullenberger was hearing, you can survive the bird attack, and you can attempt to enter the river at precisely the right angle and speed. Apparently, it's remarkably lifelike. Except you can play it on the subway on your 3" by 5" iPhone. And, you know, nobody's life is at stake. Or anything.
Yes, it's true. Chuck and Blair are over. But could there be a silver lining for us Gossip Girl fans? Could there be something in tonight's rough-and-tumble fights between the two worth...
A star has already been born, but apparently Anne Hathaway's Oscar-nominated role as a tempestuous recovering addict in Rachel Getting Married was just a warm-up.
The 26-year-old It...
90210 costars and onscreen couple Jessica Lowndes and Adam Gregory may have ended their real-life romance, but they're still bumping into each other off the set.
The former...
AP - "The Long Fall" (Riverhead Books, 306 pages, $25.95), by Walter Mosley: Since his debut with "Devil in a Blue Dress" in 1990, Walter Mosley has created some of the most memorable characters in modern crime fiction: Easy Rawlins, Socrates Fortlow, Paris Minton and Fearless Jones. And he has used the imagined lives of these four proud, black men to explore the turbulent racial history of Los Angeles in the three decades following World War II.
Musicians (L-R) Neil Young, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash attend the premiere of "CSNY Deja Vu" held at Eccles Theatre during the 2008 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Folk/rock... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 23 Mar 2009 | 10:03 pm
With the filming of New Moon under way in Vancouver, the newest batch of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart romance rumors should start rolling out any day now.
Even though the two...
Front Page: 4.5 million tune in to Nora Roberts adaptation -- "Northern Lights," Lifetime's latest Nora Roberts adaptation, premiered to 4.5 million viewers Saturday, making it the network's top-performing telepic so far this year.
Opinions of Treasury Secretary Geithner's economic plan seem to be split perfectly symmetrically today: The smarty-pants club (all the economists, except this one guy in Australia who uses the term "non-recourse" compulsively) all hate it. The dumb-ass club (a.k.a. the stock market) loves it. (At least for now.)
So what's a non-reflexively negative person of middling intelligence to think? That's where the Downturnaround comes in! Today, we journeyed down the dark and twisting pathways of other people's opinions about the economy, and lo and behold: At the end of the tunnel, we saw a light.
First, let us say that we are put off by the spitfire pundits who find Geithner guilty of either gross, chicken-hearted incompetence or, worse, playing Wall Street's lackey. Here's why we reject that: Because he works for Barack Obama. The president may not have much economics expertise, but he knows a moron when he meets one, and he certainly did not get himself elected in order to screw the American people on behalf of the wealthy. Sure, we have worries and doubts, and any time we see the words "trillion" and "taxpayer" in the same sentence we scream for an intern to bring us our smelling salts. But as this plan solidifies into reality, we find we have more trust in Obama's good judgment than a blogosphere full of pissed-off Monday-morning quarterbacks who each have an idea that would work perfectly if only we'd turn the government over to them.
Second, amid the madness, we found ourselves a new hero. Among the few non-Australian smart people who attempted to understand Geithner's plan, there was Berkeley economist Brad Delong, who posted an FAQ about the plan and then bravely posited that Paul Krugman — who wrote today that "the real problem with this plan is that it won’t work" — might be wrong. Disagreeing with Krugman does not go over well in these circles, and thus Delong's commenters went totally Santelli on his ass. Except for one lone voice, who wrote this note, which he addressed to Krugman:
Recently you have been on the nationalization bandwagon. Frankly, what are you smoking? You nationalize one major bank, I guarantee you there will not be even one major financial institution left standing as private or quasi-private entities. The markets react with cold rationality and will drive each one in turn into the arms of the US government. Now is that showing faith in the American Way? Mr. Bernanke has indicated that he understood this dynamic very well, as does Mr. Geither [sic] and I believe so do Larry Summers and Paul Volcker. But you have turned 'shrill' instead. Why can't you see that freight train coming?
Here is what the Fed should have done (and finally is doing) — tell the Planet, the US Federal Reserve is the bid, You have assets to sell, the Fed is buying, with new printed GREENBACKS. This is BECAUSE the entire planet is betting on political economy of the United States.
Having immigrated here 26 years ago, I am making the same bet (it's been bloody and painful). Not to do so would render my family's decision to send me here for my education as a terrible mistake. That I am unwilling to accept. It is this country which has led the planet in the 20th century, and will do so for the foreseeable future, and that is because it is this country which recognizes the supremacy of the individual over the state, and it is this value coupled with strong property rights that simply has no alternative on Planet Earth. ... All markets in the end depend on confidence of all participants, and finally the Fed is moving to restore it. We wait to see the outcome with baited breath. The Fed is the bid, the world be damned, now that is more like it, the American confidence and swagger is returning and we need more of it.
He signed off as "The Saint." Whoever you are, the Downturnaround would like to buy you a drink.
Lady Gaga wears this bubble dress on her current Fame Ball tour. The New York Times' Moment blog noticed that it's almost identical to a Hussein Chalayan dress from his spring 2007 runway show. This upsets them:
Even if she admits that the Chalayan dress is what she’s “recreating,” that doesn’t negate my point. Why should she get away with “recreating” such a recent look? I love the fact that a mainstream artist is aware of these avant-garde designers, but it’s a disservice to both her and the designers to do a loving-hands-at-home version. That would be like Chalayan or Margiela “recreating” one of her songs, titling it “Jokerface” and scoring a hit single.
If that happened, it would be awesome. And yes, though designers copy each other all the time, it's perhaps slightly unfortunate that Chalayan is missing out on the publicity he might have received if Lady Gaga just wore the original. But we can't expect her to go for the original when it covers the crotch area, whereas hers does not. But still, why fixate on the negative? For once we're talking about what she is wearing (bubbles) instead of what she's not (bottoms). Her style is evolving (maybe), and blessed are we who witness it.
According to today's reports, Governor Paterson has been forced to do something that he most definitely does not like to do: make a decision. The governor must decide whether he’d rather alienate the state’s wealthiest residents, newspaper editorial boards, and fiscal conservatives by agreeing to an Obama-style tax increase for the well-heeled, or stick it to his own party members in the Legislature and the state’s largest labor unions. And his solution to heavily tax anyone making more than $500,000 a year is full of mixed signals.
It’s not a good time to be governor, especially one like Paterson with an approval rating at a historic low. And this is just another hard test of his leadership, not to mention his Albany gamesmanship. As with everything that Paterson does, nobody expects it to be pretty. There are two schools of thought on Paterson’s choices. The one shared by the Albany old-timers — the lawmakers and lobbyists who’ve been around long enough to know that governors don’t win budget battles but survive them — is that Paterson doesn’t have one. Bereft of political capital and allies, he can’t afford to alienate organized labor, the elementary unit of the Democratic base.
Advocates are trying to convince Paterson that he can tax without fear: “Barack Obama got elected president, winning red states all over the country, on a platform of raising taxes on people who make $250,000 or more,” says State Senator Eric Schneiderman, whose latest proposal kicks in at $500,000 a year. “The old political wisdom that voters will punish anyone who raises taxes is left over from the nineties.” Recent state polls showing that most people like the idea of taxing the rich would seem to bear that out.
The other view — one that naturally holds sway among the tax-hike critics but also by politicos less steeped in Albany’s insular culture — is that Paterson’s biggest concern should be overcoming his flighty reputation. “I would pick a fight. He’s got to show some backbone. People don’t like vacillation in their chief executives,” says one well-known Democratic operative. Still, if he resists, lawmakers will try to embarrass him by denying him an on-time budget, which would only reinforce the perception that he’s lost control.
By standing firm, even if that means blowing the budget deadline, Paterson can count on a slap on the back from the Daily News, the Post, and probably the Times. Business groups and the real-estate crowd would roar with approval. Still, the ultimate impact of such support is questionable. Says the longtime lobbyist: “I just watched Shelly Silver come through a campaign where three newspapers were out to kill him, and he won 68 percent.” Which means that, once again, Paterson’s move is anyone’s guess. The twist, turns, skids, and swerves of his first year in office don’t yield clues.
That it’s not even certain that Paterson will run next year only makes it harder to read his thinking. The most common view around the State Capitol is that the governor will consent to a tax hike — but one that sunsets after a few years and is perhaps half the size of Schneiderman’s $6 billion-a-year plan.
The Post’s Fred Dicker reported today that Paterson has privately agreed to a $4 billion-a-year tax on earners making more than $500,000, which would expire just before Paterson’s term ends. The governor, once again, is sending mixed messages. From what could be gleaned from recent chats with the tax opponents, he seems to be holding ground, albeit tenuously, to his conviction that raising taxes will only lead to reckless spending. “He basically said to me, ‘They don’t get it. They don’t know we’re in this profound economic crisis,’ ” says Kenneth Adams, who heads New York’s Business Council. “He didn’t tell me what he was going to do about it.”
Erin Wasson offers a possible reason for the garage sale she held in California over the weekend: "If I'm working all day and I have a dinner or something, I'll go from jeans and T-shirt to maybe a simple black dress. Same heels. Same hair and makeup. I really like the idea of being utilitarian. My dream is to edit down my wardrobe and be very Japanese, where you have one rolling rack and it's like your four T-shirts, your five dresses, your two pairs of jeans. That's so not the case right now. I have so much crap in my closets. I love the idea of being super edited." [Racked, Guardian]
Just 31, NYU-film-school alum Cary Fukunaga made his feature debut on Friday with the release of Sin Nombre, the harrowing story of a young Honduran woman who falls in with a Mexican gang member as she attempts to cross the American border on a dangerous train. The intense, brash film so impressed Focus that they signed Fukunaga to a multipicture deal. Fukunaga spoke with Vulture last week about making Sin Nombre and surviving a real-life train attack.
Sin Nombre is wildly ambitious — the opposite of what film professors might suggest for a first film, right?
Writing the film, it was just what the story required. It wasn't until we were sitting there in preproduction, that we realized: Uh-oh, we're writing a movie set on trains and filmed throughout Mexico that might be too ambitious. I was literally like, "Oh, God, I'm such an idiot."
Crime, poverty, foreign locations: Films like City of God and Slumdog Millionaire have both been branded as "poverty porn." What’s your take on that debate?
I’m definitely sensitive to the idea of exploitation. You don’t want to glamorize certain things. My take on it is, I try to find the universal aspect, the emotional aspect, and make that the focus for the film. So rather than couch it in any kind of style, per se, I find out what the characters really want, and make that compelling. Then the world around it becomes the setting.
Visually, this film looks very different from a Slumdog or City of God — no shaky cam, no flashy effects.
I did not want to do that shaky, zoomy, overmanipulated inflected camera style, or an overtreated image. City of God and Slumdog Millionaire are both films that I really like, but they are stylistically the opposite of what I wanted to do. I was just tired of it.
You did research in Mexico.
We spent a couple weeks doing research in shelters and train yards and prisons. I had a lot of questions, mainly about the gangs. Like, why rob these trains when the people have so little money? That’s why I rode the train myself, so I’d make the film from things I’d seen with my own eyes, rather than just meeting some immigrant who’d gone through terrible things and stealing his story.
Your train was attacked, right?
It’s where I realized the naiveté of that idea. People do get killed. And there was an attack. I was in the carriage of a tanker car, which is kind of an extension up on top, with about a dozen guys. After the attack, in sort of a blissful moment, one of the Guatemalan guys just said, in this funny way, how lucky he felt that out of all the trains in Mexico, he was riding on a train car with this gringo who would maybe write a film about this one day.
What’s your next move?
There’s also a musical I’ve been talking to some people about. Zach Condon from Beirut almost did the score for Sin Nombre, so we’ve been talking. Him and Owen Pallett [from Final Fantasy and Arcade Fire], we've been trying to figure out how to do a musical or an opera of some kind. A rawer style than your standard Broadway adaptation or Busby Berkley throwback. I haven’t cracked it yet, because my thing is, I don’t really like musicals. We just don’t like the music in musicals, so the big question is how to turn the challenge of pushing narrative forward through song in a way that the songs aren’t ruined.
We don't know whether Donnie Deutsch was on the AIG pitchfork bus tour this weekend, but judging from his appearance on Morning Joe today, it would have been right up his alley. At one point during a wide-ranging roundtable discussion, Deutsch went a little too far in a rant about AIG employees who received bonuses. "Why is everyone so concerned about protecting these guys? If you took a bonus and you got us into this, I want to know who you are, and I want to see you when you bring your kids to school, and I want to look you in the eye and say, 'Give that money back, that's not yours, that's mine.' Why do we protect these people?" Because the rest of us have yet to turn into rabid bonus zombies, Donnie.
Footloose is now Zac Efron-free.
The teen dream has shimmied out of his Kevin Bacon-channeling role in the long-gestating remake of the classic '80s musical.
Efron was...
Are Todd (Barry Watson) and Samantha (Christina Applegate) the next great TV will-they-or-won't-they couple? Christina herself seems to think so, and we couldn't agree more. When Samantha...
This season of Donald Trump's ongoing televised psych experiment The Celebrity Apprentice is beginning to pick up steam, as the teams are whittled down to their most competent celebrity masterminds (we're looking at you, Joan Rivers). However, there remains one player still on board who most Americans are probably tired of -- a player who hasn't contributed much in the way of helping the men's team, but who has contributed plenty to celebrity death threats (we're looking at you, Clint Black.) We speak, of course, of piercy-faced basketball player Dennis Rodman, who has managed to hang in there despite week after week of doing basically nothing, other than drinking and yelling. His drinking is so out of hand, actually, that it's highly possibly Ken Seeley himself will roll into next week's A&E sponsored boardroom.
But you know, we think businessman and former multi-millionaire Donald Trump knows better than to keep dead weight on his show. In fact, the more we think about it, the more we realize that Dennis Rodman deserves to win that entire damn show. Here are 12 Reasons Why Dennis Rodman Should Be The Next Celebrity Apprentice:12. He has serious Hollywood connections:
11. He is the only basketball player who could also be a contestant on Flavor of Love 5:
10. There is a possibility he is bionic and can live forever:
9. He owns his own banana farm:
8. He can introduce Mr. Trump to his next wife:
7. He's a family man:
6. The ladies love him:
5. And he loves the ladies... as his alter ego, Mystery:
Though we've been following it for weeks, we weren't certain if this Twitter feed really belonged to Courtney Love. But after a marathon Tweeting session last night yielded 130 indecipherable 140-character revelations about Edward Norton and Winona Ryder, as well as unintelligible rants about the bank bailouts and Courtney's own personal finances, we're beginning to think it's probably her. [Twitter]
Once a week, Daily Intel takes a peek behind doors left slightly ajar. This week, the TV Producer Who Knows Everyone: female, 29, Upper West Side, straight, single .
DAY ONE3:30 p.m.: Uneventful weekend. Spend the first few hours at work Facebook-stalking old boyfriends/hookups. I have been on a hot streak since July, when I broke up with my ex, which was the best decision I've ever made. I am nowhere near ready to settle down. I don't view myself as slutty, just honest.
8:30 p.m.: Industry party, open bar. Run into two old flames, Marathon Man (he runs a lot of marathons but likes to come in his pants while we're just making out) and Famous Actress' Son, who professes his love for me, yet again. I kindly hold back that the reason I broke it off with him is because his oral sex skills used to make me actually scream out in pain. 10:30 p.m.: Talk up a cute guy for my friend. Turns out that I've booked him as a political talking head more than a dozen times. He's drinking a red, fruity drink, which is questionable. 10:45 p.m.: I call it a night — but not before falling on the way out. Classy. 11:30 p.m.: Get into bed and masturbate. Always have the same fantasy of my ex on top of me, pushing into me, with his hands on my ass. Fall asleep happy.
DAY TWO 2:00 p.m.: Get an e-mail from a guy from my sex road trip to Newport right after the breakup. He's asking when I'm coming to visit. Am so excited, I stare blankly at my computer screen for 30 minutes, fantasizing about our Newport rendezvous. E-mail all my single girlfriends and start organizing road trip. 4:30 p.m.: Get a very explicit fantasy (including size and placement details) text from my D.C. hook-up. Okay, it's a little aggressive for the middle of the day, but I play along. Filthy texts. Put an end to it before I have to head down to the control room. 8:30 p.m.: Dinner with girlfriend. Tell her that my friend wound up sleeping with the political talking-head guy. She does nothing but obsess over her BlackBerry and why none of her boys have written her back yet. 10:30 p.m.: Call the ex for the final of our break-up conversations. Determine that we love each other deeply, but are at different stages in our lives, namely that he wants a wife (me) and I want a life (going out every night). Cry myself to sleep, wondering if I'm letting go of the one person who really knows me, and loves me for me.
DAY THREE 1:30 p.m.: Sneak out of work for a gynecology appointment. Not my favorite thing in the world, but necessary. Panic while being examined — let's face it, I'm not always the most careful. Doc tells me my junk is in perfect-working condition. Hooray! Vow to never have unprotected sex again. 5:30 p.m.: Get a message from a hotel one-night stand a couple weeks ago who is at a wedding in Philly. He'll be in town on Friday night and wants to hang out. Can barely contain my excitement at the prospect of a good old-fashioned lay. 9:30 p.m.: Head to local bar with a friend to meet her guy friend, who she wants to set me up with. Proceed to get supremely wasted. He never shows, because he's "working late." Wind up staying out until 3 a.m., anyway, celebrating the fact that I'm getting laid by a hottie tomorrow! 3:01 a.m.: Attempt to masturbate. Pass out with the vibrator still going.
DAY FOUR 8:30 a.m.: Wake up with a splitting headache. Seriously contemplate suicide. Then remember I'm getting laid. Walk to work with a spring in my step. 5:30 p.m.: Go home to shower, get ready. Smoke with a friend before happy hour with old work colleagues. I'm so excited I feel like I'm about to burst! 6:00 p.m.: Arrive at happy hour. Flirt with the hot bartender, who I've been flirting with for years. I totally would have banged him by now, but he has a live-in girlfriend who he proclaimed would literally "kill him." 9:00 p.m.: Arrive at a friend's party. Get nice and liquored up before heading to the apartment where Philly boy is. Smoke over there with his friends for hours before we are finally left alone. Start making out hard on the couch. After what feels like hours of manual warm-up, he can tell I'm ready to do it. Unfortunately, he is not so ready. Pass out on the couch, pissed off.
DAY FIVE 9:00 a.m.: Wake up to something poking me in the back. It takes a few minutes, but I finally realize where I am. Start to get into it, and the performance is much better, especially when he sticks his finger in my butt. Quickly finish and even more quickly get dressed and get the fuck outta there. Go home and pass out for several hours. 3:15 p.m.: Exchange texts with Philly throughout the day, but remain supremely noncommittal. To be honest, I'd rather just stay home and watch TV then have a subpar lay. 4:00 p.m.: Start missing hometown boyfriend, and even though I'm not supposed to, call. We talk for 30 minutes, and I feel better. At least someone out there loves me. 7:00 p.m.: Can't decide what to do tonight, am so tired. Stay home. Philly and I text a bit. Use my Sharper Image vibrator — ahem, back massager — for hours before falling blissfully asleep.
DAY SIX 11:30 a.m.: Have weekly therapy session. Carefully omit all the casual sex. Lying to your therapist is normal, right? 1:30 p.m.: Meet the girls for boozy brunch. Don't realize how boozy it is until Champagne bottle number three. 3:00 p.m.: Return back inside from smoking, and find my friends talking to two dudes. Before I know it, I'm making out with one of them, a Brit. At the bar. Sunday Funday has begun! 7:00 p.m.: Everyone else leaves except for me and the Brit. I realize I'm starving and he buys me dinner. 10:00 p.m.: Hop in a cab and realize we're heading back to my place. Why the hell not? Get inside, get naked and get a good look at this guy for the first time. He's not a big dude, but he is packing. Also: uncircumcised. Let out an "Ewwwwwww" (I can't help it) but he still manages to stay hard. 3:00 a.m.: On our fourth time of doing it. He begins touching my breasts and asks me in his sexy accent if I'm a naughty girl. Shortly after he discovers that yes, I am a very naughty girl. Almost orgasm on the spot.
DAY SEVEN 9:30 a.m.: Start to wake up and realize I have a virtual stranger in my bed. He seems nice though. Do it again. 10:30 a.m.: Leave for work. The Brit walks me to my office, holding my hand the whole way. Um, he totally lost me by that one move — the hand-holding. For me, sex does not equate emotions of tenderness and love, unless I've been dating the person for awhile. 3:00 p.m.: Already received two texts and countless Facebook IM's from the Brit. Am slowly starting to realize I have a Stage Five Clinger on my hands. He asks me to hang out again this coming Sunday. I do not respond. 8:30 p.m.: Leave work and head immediately to McDonald's where I order a Quarter Pounder meal. On my walk home, spot a guy from my Newport sex trip standing outside a restaurant. Immediately cross the street to avoid him. Pass out twenty minutes later.
Totals: Three sessions of masturbation, one aborted for sleep; six acts of intercourse with two partners; two anguished phone conversations with longterm ex; three casual spottings of former hookups; one therapy session.
When the trio behind Inven.tory opened their first store this past fall on Kenmare and Elizabeth, they weren't planning on unveiling a second locale quite so soon. But their popularity and recession-friendly prices defied current economic trends. The new Inven.tory space, at 237 Lafayette Street, is several times larger than the first location, complete with impressively high ceilings, lofted offices for the staff, a D.J. station near the register, and an entire section of vintage clothing. But the concept is the same: The store buys overstock merchandise, which the owners (Mike Townsend, Kat Berkery and Whitney Singer) acquire from designers like Cheap Monday, Idol Radec, and Steark. They then sell the items at wholesale prices. Inven.tory carries both men’s and women’s labels, along with shoes and accessories. Click ahead to see some of our favorite finds.
We hate when the Times plays coy by not printing swear words, such as they did in this weekend's "Styles" article about Diablo Cody, which informs us that the coterie of female screenwriters she pals around with all "wear the same gold necklaces with tiny heart pendants inscribed with words that can’t be printed here, gifts from Ms. Cody." Honestly. All this does is cause a stream of possible obscenities to enter our head, which is, when you think about it, so much worse than if they just printed the one word. If there's anyone out there who can put an end to our case of mental Tourette's by letting us know what these infernal necklaces say, e-mail us: intel@nymag.com.
Update: Ok, we found out. They say, "Fuck My Face." That is awesome.
• Aw, guys, Chris Brown can't focus on making his record because he's too torn up about this Rihanna stuff. At least, that's the word from Tyrese—his friends really...
Lately, it seems like the world's gone mad. Last week, populist outrage over AIG bonuses reached a boil, to the point where those who received them were being stalked in their homes. Members of Congress seemed to be actually frothing at the mouth as they hysterically passed an insane bill slapping a 90 percent tax on workers at bailed-out firms earning more than $250,000 per household. And even though the president seems iffy on that, he's still considering a cap on executive pay, because, look, people outside of New York "would be thrilled to be making $75,000 a year — without a bonus." At this point, the rich, corporate American bankers are literally on the verge of being driven underground. It's time for someone to take action. Someone needs to defend the rich's right to act rich!
Apparently, because everyone else is in the shits, that responsibility has fallen to Jamie Dimon: The tendril-headed, blue-eyed, muscle-bound CEO of JP Morgan, the quarterback to Daily Intel's slutty cheerleader — wait, sorry, what were we saying? Right. Anyway. Dimon, who recently called for an end to the "constant vilification of corporate America," has made a move that we think is important. His firm has committed to a $138 million plan to buy new corporate jets and refurbish their hangar, and he is not going to cancel it because of the threat of mob retaliation.
ABC reports today that the plan includes the purchase of two Gulfstream jets, ("described by the manufacturer as the fastest, widest and most comfortable private jet ever with superior cabin amenities, an optional stateroom, and 12 interior designs to choose from," says ABC news) and a hangar "built with reclaimed wood, quarry tile and even a 'vegetated roof garden.'"
ABC does their best to gin up outrage over this, because of the fact that JP Morgan received $25 billion in TARP funds ("It's a remarkably boneheaded decision," they quote a corporate watchdog as saying) but JP Morgan has long maintained they've never wanted or needed those funds, and they don't plan on using the money, anyway. "We will not purchase any replacement plane or make any related expenditure until after we have repaid TARP funds in full," a J.P. Morgan spokesperson tells DealBook. And after all, who can fault them for a plan that's so shabby chic? After all, the Obamas have a vegetable garden.
While some pajama-clad bloggers are celebrating that they were able to get 50 Cent excised from the cast of The Expendables, it's only natural that other, less positive news regarding Sylvester Stallone's upcoming masterpiece would also break today. In an e-mail that Stallone sent to the fansite StalloneZone, Sly relates the sad story of hearing from Kurt Russell's agent that Russell wasn't interested in being in his sure-to-be-awesome film because he "is not interested in ‘ensemble acting’ at this time." [StalloneZone via Ace Showbiz]
Nubeo is a high-end watch brand known for its jellyfish-inspired timepieces. They're teaming with Kobe Bryant for a new line of limited-edition high-tech sports watches, ranging in price from $21,000 to around $285,000, some of which are adorned with sapphires. The line will hit stores this fall — when we'll probably all be just as broke as we are now — and marks the company's U.S. debut. But can Kobe sell it? Most Americans have probably forgotten about that time in 2003 that he was accused of rape, and, though the charges were dismissed, lost endorsement deals with Nike, McDonald's and Coca-Cola. Nike and Coca-Cola have resumed endorsement deals with him, so they either believe in him or have no faith in our nation's collective memory. But the next question is: Who would buy it? Who would be shameless enough in These Times to spend the price of a house on a sapphire-encrusted watch meant to be worn to the gym, of all places? Those AIG nitwits for sure. Also, P. Diddy.
We pick up right where we left off: Walt and Jesse are running from the crime scene, Tuco’s dead by Hank’s hand, and Walt’s family still thinks he’s missing. Often, there's no time break between episodes; Bryan Cranston explained to us that it’s a technique employed to keep Walt’s illness from seeming to progress too quickly.
Walt and His Family
In what seems like an inspired move, Walt strips naked in a grocery store and is admitted to the hospital. He claims he doesn’t remember the past few days, and suggests that his multiple cancer treatments are to blame for his temporary amnesia (and strip show). Skylar believes his story, but the doctors aren’t so sure. Walt tells the hospital psychiatrist that he’s lying, and that he just needed out of his life for a few days. He runs down the litany of sorrows we’re so familiar with from season one: His wife is unexpectedly pregnant, his son has cerebral palsy, he’s overqualified for his meagerly paying job. This is a clunky way to get viewers up-to-date: The look on his face when he enters a successful former colleague's house would have been enough.
Walt has to sneak back into his own house and hide his gun and some drug money, and when he’s slinking around he observes a moment with Skylar and Walt Jr., and clearly envisions their future without him. And then there's the painting in Walt’s hospital room, which shows a man rowing away from his wife and two children toward a ship. Could this represent Walt leaving his family for more adventurous things — i.e., the life of a drug dealer — or his guilt over dying young? Probably!
Walt and the Drugs
It's on with the police hunt. Jesse packs up the meth paraphernalia in his basement and stores it and the RV in a friend’s garage. His car was left at Tuco’s house, so turns himself in and gets his meth-addict friend Wendy to lie and say they were together all weekend. (Strung out Wendy: best meth PSA we’ve ever seen.) Hank brings in Tuco’s uncle to try to rat out Jesse, but instead of cooperating, he poops on the floor in protest. Gross. Hank doesn’t believe the story, but can’t disprove it. Finally, Jesse calls his dad for a ride from the police station — and is denied. No wonder Jesse keeps hanging around Walt.
What Now?
Walt’s continuing to morph before our eyes. On a phone call with Jesse from the hospital, Walt insists that they’re going to cook again, and Jesse is incredulous. “What’s changed, Jesse?” Walt spits. If anything, Walt seems like he’s getting off on the danger. Skylar, however, has reached her breaking point. She asks Walt about his second cell phone, and after he denies it, she turns her back to him. She won't take Walt’s lying much longer.
Let's play a little game: Think of the two celebrities you'd most like to go to Disneyworld with. Got two folks in mind? Good. Because we have news for you...
THEY WENT THERE WITHOUT YOU.Find out who was spotted in D'world ahead.
It's a double-star sighting today at Magic Kingdom with 30 Rock star/mastermind Tina Fey and ER star John Stamos, posing with princesses Belle, Cinderella and Snow White inside Cinderella Castle. Fey and Stamos are visiting Walt Disney World with their respective families and happened to be at the theme park on the same day. Stamos is a known Disneyphile --
Wait, sorry what?
Stamos is a known Disneyphile.
A Disneyphile? REALLY JOHN? Really. Well, there goes any and all attraction we ever had to John Stamos. There's just something about Disney-sessed people that doesn't sit well. Looks like we won't be wearing our Jesse and the Rippers t-shirt again anytime soon. And forget about ever eating Uncle Jesse's Nuts again... no thank you. Source: Best Week Ever | 23 Mar 2009 | 7:16 pm
After two women in New Jersey were hospitalized for infections stemming from Brazilian bikini waxes, the state was considering banning the procedure. But the ban is off the table after salon owners protested and the state's consumer-affairs director refused to support it, noting that the procedure could be safely performed. So summer on the shore should go, uh, smoothly. [Jezebel]
Opera Garnier new director French Nicolas Joel unveils to the press a star-studded 2009-2010 season for the Paris Opera, the first of his new six-year mandate at one of the world's great opera houses. Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 23 Mar 2009 | 6:58 pm
Reuters - It may have been a fashion first, but supermodel Naomi Campbell has nothing to fear. Source: Yahoo! News: Fashion News | 23 Mar 2009 | 6:53 pm
"We were smart when we picked the Amish to characterize every so often because truly they would never have any idea. Maybe that's cowardly of us, but it works for us. The turnaround time for complaints from the Amish is suitable for a fast-moving TV schedule." —Mindy Kaling on not worrying about backlash regarding Dwight's Amish heritage [WP]
"Vee are a young, struggling bandt from Norvay, and vee vant to get signed." —Metallica'sJames Hetfield posing as a random band from Norway at SXSW [MTV]
"National Hockey League went on strike, and it was replaced by fucking poker, and poker did better. You can't find a hockey game now, so, yeah, I was terrified." —Kiefer Sutherland on judging the comeback of 24 by the demise of hockey [Sci Fi Wire]
"'This is the worst story I've heard in my whole life. There is no tragedy.'" —Lionel Richie on what Hollywood producers say when they ask about his exciting life [Contact Music]
"We will coordinate our outfits so we don’t clash and maybe I’ll wear pants too." —Oprah on looking like Ellen DeGeneres for the cover of O magazine [Lifeline Live/USAT]
"My music's never going to roll over in bed one morning and tell me it doesn't love me anymore. I have a problem with rejection." —Lady Gaga on choosing music over marriage [Contact Music]
After Michelle Obama planted the White House vegetable garden with some kids, she talked to reporters about something far more interesting: her clothes. She said Barack tries to monitor her fashion purchases.
“He’s always asking: ‘Is that new? I haven’t seen that before.’ It’s like, Why don’t you mind your own business? Solve world hunger. Get out of my closet.”
She teasingly imitated him: “You didn’t need any more shoes. The shoes you had on yesterday were fine. Why can’t you just wear that for the rest of the presidency?”
Barack may not understand that there is no "need" in "fashion," but he redeemed himself. Take MObama's gray metallic belt:
“Barack calls it my ‘Star Trek’ belt,” the first lady said in an interview this week. “He doesn’t understand fashion.”
Why, that sounds like something we would say! Barack, you are always welcome to guest-blog here, like Beyoncé just did.
Voting is open on the first Bracket of 90s Movie Madness:
Remember, the question is "WHICH MOVIE IS MORE 90s?" not just "which movie is better" - Vote away after the jump and leave your arguments in the comments:
Remember those rumors that Agyness Deyn and Albert Hammond Jr. were engaged? And how they used to fuel them by going out in public with their hands glued together for all we knew? Walking adorable puppies? Well they broke up. So, so much for all that. [NYM]
The numbers were good for "Knowing." The apocalyptic film finished No. 1 at the box office, despite tough competition and terrible reviews. Its star and director say the film taps into spiritual elements, and that may have helped.
Virtuoso film directors Joel(R) and Ethan Coen, seen here in 2008, will remake the classic 1960s western "True Grit," which earned American screen icon John Wayne an Academy Award, Hollywood media reported... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 23 Mar 2009 | 5:56 pm
In honor of March Madness, BWE is holding a two-week event to answer a question which society has yet to properly determine:
Which is the 90s-est movie of all time?
The winner will be selected via a single-elimination bracket format in which the winners are determined by YOUR VOTES. Remember, the question isn't "What is the best movie from the 90s?", it's "Which movie best represents 90s-ness."
The films have been selected and seeded based on the following highly scientific criteria:
1) Representation of 90s cultural themes, people, styles, music, and language.
2) Features actors/actresses synonymous with the 90s.
3) Overall popularity in the 90s / cultural impact.
Voting on the first bracket will open at 2:00 - After the jump, check out The Brackets:
The movies have been selected after a one-week period of Gmail conversations/arguments with a dozen of my friends (including Michelle), and I've taken upon myself the unenviable task of narrowing down the list from about 250 to 64 and creating the brackets. I've tried to do my best to distinguish between "really 90s" movies and just famous movies from the 90s, and I've attempted to scale the list down by reducing redundancies (e.g. leaving Clerks and cutting Mallrats and Chasing Amy) and by cutting movies that didn't take place in the 90s, as 90s as they may be (pains me to lose Demolition Man, but without this distinction there's at least another 40 movies that belong).
Here are the Brackets for 90s Movie Madness:
Bracket A:
Bracket B:
Bracket C:
Bracket D:
The toughest group to cut were the really awesome 90s movies that weren't really that funny in their 90s-ness; Pulp Fiction, Big Lebowski, Terminator 2, The Matrix and a handful of others are just really awesome movies that could probably be released today with almost zero changes and fit perfectly. A film like Silence of the Lambs, however, while it's also a great film, is just so synonymous with the 90s with its characters, quotes, the billion of crappy knock-offs it inspired, and so on (again, very scientific).
The other tough group to cut were ones that made us laugh just by mentioning them but that just weren't popular enough to make the list -- Cool As Ice, Cool World, Toys, Wolf, Little Giants, and a bunch more also fell into this category. There were too many funny but at least semi-memorable films that just pushed ones like Andre off the list.
Anyway...hopefully this gives you some idea of the tough decisions I wrestled with when cutting literally 190 movies (Sophie never faced anything close to this). Feel free argue on behalf of any that I left out in the comments (or even, maybe, compliment the bracket? Anyone?) My conclusion from this process: A lot of movies were really frickin' 90s. Source: Best Week Ever | 23 Mar 2009 | 5:35 pm
Lindsay Lohan recently told Nylon that in light of having no acting work lined up, she hopes to model instead. "I love doing photo shoots. I mean, if I could just sign with IMG and do ad campaigns and model more, I'd do that ... because that's fun for me. That's not work," she said. (For the record, she said it wasn't work.) A senior V.P. of IMG Models told the Post that he'd take a meeting with her. But what does Lindsay know about modeling? Is that a transition she's not only ready for, but skilled enough to make? We've seen what she can do in magazine editorials, and in ads for her own leggings line and self-tanning spray. But based on her print ads that came out in January for Italian label Fornarina, we're not sure she has smiling with her eyes quite down (love ya, LiLo, but some of those stares felt a little vacant). Does her new Fornarina commercial heighten her spokesmodel prospects?
Hmmm. So now we know she can stand up straight, point, lie down, say one word at a time, and may or may not be able to open her own umbrella. Tyra Banks might say a true top model is the master of her own props. Sayin'.
No explanation needed. Wait, seriously? Uccccch fine. A Japanese cat -- you might remember him as the famous DIET SODA CAT -- gets his head stuck in a paper bag. But he doesn't let that stop him from takin' a stroll with his big cat body and tiny paper head. 1:22 is what really gets me... for its subtlety... someone, please give this cat a permanent stool on The View, he is priceless:
We're pretty sure this is how Jamie Foxx rehearsed for his part in Ray. Off to watch this 3 more times x ∞.
(via Buzzfeed; title via Salute Your Shorts) Source: Best Week Ever | 23 Mar 2009 | 5:14 pm
The family history of poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath took another tragic turn Monday when it was revealed that their son had committed suicide after battling depression.
It might only be Monday, but allow us to preemptively award this week's "Worst Week Ever" title to the oft-forgotten animal that is the horse. Look, let's faces -- pretty much every week for a horse sucks. The lucky ones are traded away from their horse families to eventually be ridden by the bony asses of the nation's wealthiest; the unlucky ones are forced to drag unsightly tourists around Central Park in exchange for a slap in the horse face and some hay. Indeed, being a horse ain't all it's cracked up to be.
But dare we say that, if you are a horse, this might be your worst week ever. First, we get news from England about a horse named Pandora who is allergic to grass -- can't be near the stuff. As a result, her owners have no other choice but to dress her up like a total a**hole:
As though this Ku Klux Klanzy get-up isn't bad enough, poor Pandora also has to take 15 horse-sized anti-histamine tablets a day, not to mention drink something called sugarbeet chaff, which sounds both disgusting and yet oddly erotic.
If you can, just for a moment, get Pandora out of your head, we present to you yet MORE proof that horses are having the Worst Week Ever. For two innocent little ponies were forced to take part in a photo shoot that no animal with a shred of dignity would ever agree to be a part of...
Here is British famewhoreKatie Price Jordan, posing with two orphaned ponies while she models off her new Equestrian line of clothing:
If ever you wanted to see a horse make his/her "WTF?" face, we present you with the above photo. First of all -- those clothes are equestrian? We wouldn't doubt she rides bareback, but horses? In velour? SHORTS? VELOUR SHORTS? This will be the first time this blog will utter the following sentence but where the F**K is PETA? GET OFF YOUR VEGAN ASS AND DO SOMETHEEN! No animal deserves this kind of cruelty.
PS:
Nicholas Hughes, the son of poet Sylvia Plath, has killed himself, 46 years after his mother committed suicide Source: FOXNews.com | 23 Mar 2009 | 4:16 pm
Just when you think Hollywood has spit out Lindsay Lohan like a piece of ginger-infused gristle, another industry has opened up withered, bony arms up and air-embraced her. It seems that LiLo is putting all her career eggs into the fashion basket. Lindsay was quoted as saying that if acting doesn't hold up (note from last year: it hasn't), she would love to become a full-time model, because standing around getting photographed in between jaunts down the ol' cokey snort n' slide is "fun":
"I love doing photo shoots. I mean, if I could just sign with IMG and do ad campaigns and model more, I'd do that . . . because that's fun for me. That's not work."
Elvis Costello's newest album, "Secret, Profane & Sugarcane," sees the prolific singer-songwriter-composer returning to acoustic American roots music for the first time since his 1986 album "King of America." "Sugarcane" will be released June 2 on Hear Music.
The members of the band Naturally 7 are experts at blowing their own horns -- and they do it without a trumpet or trombone in sight. In fact, you won't see a single instrument when they hit the stage. They are the instruments.
I happened to catch Guy Ritchie's latest foray into the "two-dozen heavy-accented thugs eventually interacting in various violent ways" genre on a plane this past weekend and walked away largely disappointed despite intellectually not being able to rationalize why I was disappointed, as it seemed like a perfectly ok film. Ritchie more than your average director is clearly battling the old "try something different and fail vs. try the same thing and get ripped on for doing the same thing" lose-lose dilemma, but RocknRolla seemed like a largely obligatory and self-aware attempt to re-create the chemistry of his other stylish dark action-comedies. Perhaps that's not a fair judgment to pass on Rocknrolla, cause if I'd just randomly seen this movie on its own without knowing the director or his prior films I would have enjoyed it, but, well, that's not the case.
The film centers around the shady backroom of the real estate world, but the opening sequence -- which declares that real estate has surpassed drugs as the premiere London underworld -- comes off sounding like a very conscious attempt by Ritchie to declare "See! They're not thieves! It's not just Snatch again, it's a new movie!" to buy some credence to then trod out almost the same characters and same situations as his first two films. The Gerard Butler main character even directly says to one of his thugs "get receipts - this isn't the mafia." They might as well have had him look directly into the camera and yell "REAL ESTATE!!! NOT LOCK STOCK AT ALL!!! No-siree Bob!"
I don't mean to sound like some gruff pessimist; all the characters were likable, the acting was solid, Tom Wilkinson is amazing in everything he does (not news), and the movie held my attention throughout and contained a few legitimately funny parts. I just had three distinct problems with the film that kept me from coming away deciding that I really enjoyed it:
First, the entire subplot that an "informer" was loose within the group quickly set the film up for an underwhelming, Shayamalan-esque twist at the end; I immediately assumed the rat was either the Gerard Butler main character/narrator or the Tom Wilkinson character, and ended up being proved disappointingly correct when Wilkinson was ultimately revealed to be the double-agent (didn't The Departed use that exact plot one year ago? Is that DVD still stuck in Ritchie's Netflix queue or did he just rip it off?) What other possible twist could there have been with the informant? It wasn't gonna turn out to be like, "Oh, Tom Wilkinson's bodyguard in the background of two scenes was the rat the whole time! Crazy twist!"
Second, the synopsis of the film called it a "sexy thriller about sex" (paraphrasing), and the movie's intro described a "Real Rocknrolla" as someone interested in sex, drugs, and money, and yet the entire film contained exactly one sex scene that was exactly two seconds long and served little plot significance beyond getting two characters in the same place together. This bothered me, not because I went into the movie craving boobs (though this is always somewhat the case), but because it seemed like another hollow, self-conscious attempt to stylize the film by pretending the film was all about sex and sex-crazed characters and sexy Thandie Newton and sexy sex sex when in reality, there was one semi-horny Russian dude, a creative gay subplot (but no gay sex), and otherwise completely cold characters who didn't mention or look at females the entire film. It would've been like opening the film with a montage of crazy skateboarding tricks with a voiceover talking about how EXTREME all the thugs are, then one character walks past a skateboard once in the movie and that's it. The film contained less sex than your average Axe commercial.
The single lamest aspect of the film by far, however, was the stylized "Johnny and the Wild Bunch WILL RETURN" sequel-guaranteeing ending. This bothered me not so much because it was an incomplete and unsatisfying conclusion to the hastily-wrapped up story, but because it just seemed overwhelmingly arrogant of Ritchie to assume that you just fell in love with these characters so damn much based on the prior hour and fifty minutes that you were already dying to see them in another film. I honestly couldn't care less if his next film includes these same characters or a different group of interchangeable wacky thugs who take me another forty-five minutes of the film to sort out which is which. I enjoyed the characters, and they fit the story briefly, but I didn't come out saying "I cannot wait to witness the future exhilarating adventures of Handsome Bob!"
Also, why didn't we get to see the painting? Was it the frickin' briefcase from Pulp Fiction? And the words appearing when the two characters are dancing at the party? Was that the frickin' "square" from Pulp Fiction? Wait a minute - maybe I just watched Pulp Fiction and accidentally clicked the British language option. Then why didn't I love it? Source: Best Week Ever | 23 Mar 2009 | 3:00 pm
Band plans its most ambitious tour ever behind new 'No Line'
Toward the end of U2's last tour,
in November 2006, longtime show director Willie Williams presented
the band with sketches of a four-legged monster — a massive
structure with speakers mounted on each side that would allow the
group to play stadium shows in the round. On the new U2 360°
Tour, which hits the U.S. beginning September 12th, in Chicago (and
kicks off in Barcelona, on June 30th), Williams' vision will
finally come to life. "The band is just sitting in the palm of
the...
One of the original Kings of Comedy, Steve Harvey is the host of one of the most popular radio shows in the country, "The Steve Harvey Morning Show." His first book, "Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man," is shooting to the top of the best-seller lists, and Oprah Winfrey says she loves everything it has to say!
We did it, world! Jessica Simpson has heard your desperate pleas for her to shed the 3 pounds of bloating she happened to put on while wearing long-crotched shorts, and showed up at a red carpet event this weekend looking slim, spanxed and fabulous. Which, of course, caused our world's greatest newspaper to cobble together a headline worthy of Websters:
For the record, The Sun, Google would like you to know... It's not "Slim-pson":
It's Slim-person. Because she has feelings too. Source: Best Week Ever | 23 Mar 2009 | 2:42 pm
A coffee shop in a Detroit suburb has started a 10-day continuous live musical tribute to the American auto industry. The 240-hour "Assembly Line" show at AJ's Music Cafe in Ferndale kicked off Friday with Motown star-turned-Detroit City Councilwoman Martha Reeves singing the "The Star-Spangled Banner."
When Hendrix performed February 18 and February 24, 1969, at Royal Albert Hall, a camera crew followed him for a month, yielding candid footage of him at home, about town and hanging out backstage. The result, Hendrix says, will be a "reality TV" glimpse of the legendary guitarist.
Depeche Mode is still a force to be reckoned with. Together, Gahan, Gore and bassist/collaborator Andy "Fletch" Fletcher have almost broken up, almost died and almost been declared obsolete. Along the way, they've sold more than 100 million records worldwide, according to record label estimates. And they remain one of the world's biggest live acts, reaching 2.8 million people in 31 countries on their last tour alone.
Gary Kemp, former guitarist and chief songwriter for Spandau Ballet seen in London in 2007. Spandau Ballet are to become the latest ageing stars to hit the comeback circuit, two decades after their bitter... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 23 Mar 2009 | 11:28 am
Does Octomom have six hands that we can't see? Or a pot o' gold, perhaps?
If not, why would she fire the nurse-nannies that were charitably provided for her by the nonprofit...
Who says you can't teach an old dog some new, not so stupid tricks?
David Letterman swapped vows with longtime love Regina Lasko Thursday afternoon in a no-frills courthouse...
Yes, it's true. Chuck and Blair are over. But could there be a silver lining for us Gossip Girl fans? Could there be something in tonight's rough-and-tumble fights between the two worth...
A star has already been born, but apparently Anne Hathaway's Oscar-nominated role as a tempestuous recovering addict in Rachel Getting Married was just a warm-up.
The 26-year-old It...
90210 costars and onscreen couple Jessica Lowndes and Adam Gregory may have ended their real-life romance, but they're still bumping into each other off the set.
The former...
With the filming of New Moon under way in Vancouver, the newest batch of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart romance rumors should start rolling out any day now.
Even though the two...
Footloose is now Zac Efron-free.
The teen dream has shimmied out of his Kevin Bacon-channeling role in the long-gestating remake of the classic '80s musical.
Efron was...
Are Todd (Barry Watson) and Samantha (Christina Applegate) the next great TV will-they-or-won't-they couple? Christina herself seems to think so, and we couldn't agree more. When Samantha...
This season of Donald Trump's ongoing televised psych experiment The Celebrity Apprentice is beginning to pick up steam, as the teams are whittled down to their most competent celebrity masterminds (we're looking at you, Joan Rivers). However, there remains one player still on board who most Americans are probably tired of -- a player who hasn't contributed much in the way of helping the men's team, but who has contributed plenty to celebrity death threats (we're looking at you, Clint Black.) We speak, of course, of piercy-faced basketball player Dennis Rodman, who has managed to hang in there despite week after week of doing basically nothing, other than drinking and yelling. His drinking is so out of hand, actually, that it's highly possibly Ken Seeley himself will roll into next week's A&E sponsored boardroom.
But you know, we think businessman and former multi-millionaire Donald Trump knows better than to keep dead weight on his show. In fact, the more we think about it, the more we realize that Dennis Rodman deserves to win that entire damn show. Here are 12 Reasons Why Dennis Rodman Should Be The Next Celebrity Apprentice:
12. He has serious Hollywood connections:
• Aw, guys, Chris Brown can't focus on making his record because he's too torn up about this Rihanna stuff. At least, that's the word from Tyrese—his friends really...
In honor of March Madness, BWE is holding a two-week event to answer a question which society has yet to properly determine:
Which is the 90s-est movie of all time?
The winner will be selected via a single-elimination bracket format in which the winners are determined by YOUR VOTES. Remember, the question isn't "What is the best movie from the 90s?", it's "Which movie best represents 90s-ness."
The films have been selected and seeded based on the following highly scientific criteria:
1) Representation of 90s cultural themes, people, styles, music, and language.
2) Features actors/actresses synonymous with the 90s.
3) Overall popularity in the 90s / cultural impact.
Voting on the first bracket will open at 2:00 - After the jump, check out The Brackets:
Bracket C:
Bracket D:
The toughest group to cut were the really awesome 90s movies that weren't really that funny in their 90s-ness; Pulp Fiction, Big Lebowski, Terminator 2, The Matrix and a handful of others are just really awesome movies that could probably be released today with almost zero changes and fit perfectly. A film like Silence of the Lambs, however, while it's also a great film, is just so synonymous with the 90s with its characters, quotes, the billion of crappy knock-offs it inspired, and so on (again, very scientific).
The other tough group to cut were ones that made us laugh just by mentioning them but that just weren't popular enough to make the list -- Cool As Ice, Cool World, Toys, Wolf, Little Giants, and a bunch more also fell into this category. There were too many funny but at least semi-memorable films that just pushed ones like Andre off the list.
Anyway...hopefully this gives you some idea of the tough decisions I wrestled with when cutting literally 190 movies (Sophie never faced anything close to this). Feel free argue on behalf of any that I left out in the comments (or even, maybe, compliment the bracket? Anyone?) My conclusion from this process: A lot of movies were really frickin' 90s.
Just when you think Hollywood has spit out Lindsay Lohan like a piece of ginger-infused gristle, another industry has opened up withered, bony arms up and air-embraced her. It seems that LiLo is putting all her career eggs into the fashion basket. Lindsay was quoted as saying that if acting doesn't hold up (note from last year: it hasn't), 
I happened to catch Guy Ritchie's latest foray into the "two-dozen heavy-accented thugs eventually interacting in various violent ways" genre on a plane this past weekend and walked away largely disappointed despite intellectually not being able to rationalize why I was disappointed, as it seemed like a perfectly ok film. Ritchie more than your average director is clearly battling the old "try something different and fail vs. try the same thing and get ripped on for doing the same thing" lose-lose dilemma, but RocknRolla seemed like a largely obligatory and self-aware attempt to re-create the chemistry of his other stylish dark action-comedies. Perhaps that's not a fair judgment to pass on Rocknrolla, cause if I'd just randomly seen this movie on its own without knowing the director or his prior films I would have enjoyed it, but, well, that's not the case.
The film centers around the shady backroom of the real estate world, but the opening sequence -- which declares that real estate has surpassed drugs as the premiere London underworld -- comes off sounding like a very conscious attempt by Ritchie to declare "See! They're not thieves! It's not just Snatch again, it's a new movie!" to buy some credence to then trod out almost the same characters and same situations as his first two films. The Gerard Butler main character even directly says to one of his thugs "get receipts - this isn't the mafia." They might as well have had him look directly into the camera and yell "REAL ESTATE!!! NOT LOCK STOCK AT ALL!!! No-siree Bob!"
I don't mean to sound like some gruff pessimist; all the characters were likable, the acting was solid, Tom Wilkinson is amazing in everything he does (not news), and the movie held my attention throughout and contained a few legitimately funny parts. I just had three distinct problems with the film that kept me from coming away deciding that I really enjoyed it:
First, the entire subplot that an "informer" was loose within the group quickly set the film up for an underwhelming, Shayamalan-esque twist at the end; I immediately assumed the rat was either the Gerard Butler main character/narrator or the Tom Wilkinson character, and ended up being proved disappointingly correct when Wilkinson was ultimately revealed to be the double-agent (didn't The Departed use that exact plot one year ago? Is that DVD still stuck in Ritchie's Netflix queue or did he just rip it off?) What other possible twist could there have been with the informant? It wasn't gonna turn out to be like, "Oh, Tom Wilkinson's bodyguard in the background of two scenes was the rat the whole time! Crazy twist!"
Second, the synopsis of the film called it a "sexy thriller about sex" (paraphrasing), and the movie's intro described a "Real Rocknrolla" as someone interested in sex, drugs, and money, and yet the entire film contained exactly one sex scene that was exactly two seconds long and served little plot significance beyond getting two characters in the same place together. This bothered me, not because I went into the movie craving boobs (though this is always somewhat the case), but because it seemed like another hollow, self-conscious attempt to stylize the film by pretending the film was all about sex and sex-crazed characters and sexy Thandie Newton and sexy sex sex when in reality, there was one semi-horny Russian dude, a creative gay subplot (but no gay sex), and otherwise completely cold characters who didn't mention or look at females the entire film. It would've been like opening the film with a montage of crazy skateboarding tricks with a voiceover talking about how EXTREME all the thugs are, then one character walks past a skateboard once in the movie and that's it. The film contained less sex than your average Axe commercial.
The single lamest aspect of the film by far, however, was the stylized "Johnny and the Wild Bunch WILL RETURN" sequel-guaranteeing ending. This bothered me not so much because it was an incomplete and unsatisfying conclusion to the hastily-wrapped up story, but because it just seemed overwhelmingly arrogant of Ritchie to assume that you just fell in love with these characters so damn much based on the prior hour and fifty minutes that you were already dying to see them in another film. I honestly couldn't care less if his next film includes these same characters or a different group of interchangeable wacky thugs who take me another forty-five minutes of the film to sort out which is which. I enjoyed the characters, and they fit the story briefly, but I didn't come out saying "I cannot wait to witness the future exhilarating adventures of Handsome Bob!"
Also, why didn't we get to see the painting? Was it the frickin' briefcase from Pulp Fiction? And the words appearing when the two characters are dancing at the party? Was that the frickin' "square" from Pulp Fiction? Wait a minute - maybe I just watched Pulp Fiction and accidentally clicked the British language option. Then why didn't I love it?
