AP - Oprah Winfrey acknowledged in a newspaper interview published Saturday that she has made several mistakes at her elite South African school, but said she remains proud of its success. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 11 Apr 2009 | 12:21 pm
AP - Oprah Winfrey acknowledged in a newspaper interview published Saturday that she has made several mistakes at her elite South African school, but said she remains proud of its success. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 11 Apr 2009 | 12:21 pm
AP - Oprah Winfrey acknowledged in a newspaper interview published Saturday that she has made several mistakes at her elite South African school, but said she remains proud of its success. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 11 Apr 2009 | 12:21 pm
Woody Harrelson defended his clash with a photographer at a New York airport Wednesday night as a case of mistaken identity -- he says he mistook the cameraman for a zombie.
Reuters - From the bluesy sax solo that opens the album, to the inspired songs and performances throughout, it's clear that this one's for LeRoi. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 11 Apr 2009 | 1:44 am
NASHVILLE (Billboard) - From the bluesy sax solo that opens the album, to the inspired songs and performances throughout, it's clear that this one's for LeRoi. Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 11 Apr 2009 | 1:44 am
LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - With the summer music festival season just around the corner, leading international festival producers insist that the difficult economic climate isn't putting a... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 11 Apr 2009 | 1:06 am
Front Page: Economic crisis brings new business models -- They're not quite searching Craigslist or the 99 Cents Only store, but the broadcast networks are in serious bargain-hunting mode. And they're finding programming deals in more than just the reality-show aisle. Network execs are sending a message to the industry: "We can't live the way we've lived in the past."
If it still runs, why leave it out to rust?
In light of the green dust left swirling when Fast and Furious came roaring out of the gate with a record $72.5 million last weekend,...
Guy to present his distinctive blend of modernism and classicism LOS ANGELES, April 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Internationally acclaimed designer... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 11 Apr 2009 | 12:27 am
Reuters - Efforts to rein in the freewheeling secondary ticket market could soon come to a head on Capitol Hill. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 11 Apr 2009 | 12:17 am
Jared Leto wants kids in need to have more than a so-called life.
The actor-musician and his band, 30 Seconds to Mars, on Friday opened up their recording session in the Hollywood Hills...
Front Page: Musical uses to openings to hone material -- When a new musical ends up on Broadway, chances are it's been road-tested either in an out-of-town tryout or an Off Broadway warm-up. "Next to Normal" took an idiosyncratic path to the Rialto: It got both.
"Next to Normal" took an idiosyncratic path to the Rialto: It got both.
The $4 million tuner, opening April 15 at the Booth Theater, first played Gotham in an early 2008 run at Second Stage that raised commercial expectations. But the show made an unusual detour to a regional, Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., for a wintertime run that helped give creatives time to significantly rework the material.
The New York return of the ambitious, small-scale musical, a six-actor show starring Alice Ripley as a woman battling bipolar disorder, caps a development process that has seen creators Tom Kitt (music) and Brian Yorkey (book and lyrics) rethinking and retooling for about a decade.
It also lands the show in a Broadway season that has no shortage of large-scale new tuners ("Billy Elliot," "Shrek the Musical," the upcoming "9 to 5") and revivals ("West Side Story," "Guys and Dolls," "Hair") that could threaten to overshadow an intimate show with a more indie sensibility.
Such underdog fare has been scarce this season: So far, the list includes the summer's long-departed "[title of show]" and "The Story of My Life," the short-lived two-hander whose quick demise at the Booth opened up the venue for "Normal."
But creatives of the show, including helmer Michael Greif, and producer David Stone -- who scored a Tony-winning hit with the similarly small-scale "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" -- are hoping the improvements made over the atypical development process will lend "Normal" some unusual staying power.
"At Second Stage, we agreed we didn't quite know what the show was yet," Yorkey says. "The process has been making it more and more about the characters, and less about a bunch of ideas."
The storyline follows Diana (Ripley), a wife and mother whose manic depression unsettles her relationship with her family, played by J. Robert Spencer as her husband and Jennifer Damiano and Aaron Tveit as her teenage children. (Ripley, Damiano, Tveit and Adam Chanler-Berat, also reprising his role on Broadway, all appeared in the Second Stage and Arena incarnations.)
"Next to Normal" originated in the late 1990s as a 10-minute musical that was a first-year final project for the BMI Music Theater Workshop, in which Yorkey and Kitt were enrolled.
Early full-length incarnations were seen, circa 2002, in concert readings at the Villager Theater near Seattle and in Gotham at the Cutting Room. A grant in 2004 prompted further work that led to a summer 2005 stint in the New York Musical Theater Fest.
Stone saw the show at NYMF and brought it to the attention of Carole Rothman, a.d. of Second Stage, the org where "Spelling Bee" originated. After more developmental sessions, Greif ("Rent") was brought onboard in 2007 to helm the Off Broadway run, steering the growth of the piece more toward the characters' emotional lives.
At NYMF, the tuner was called "Feeling Electric," after a title song involving electroshock therapy -- one of the treatments Diana experienced.
By the time it played Second Stage the musical had been renamed "Next to Normal," but the song "Feeling Electric" itself, a rock anthem about electroshock, remained. That number, along with a tonally confusing segment about Diana's mental breakdown in a Costco, became two of the jarring elements most often cited by New York critics and auds.
The creatives didn't disagree. "Some of the things we had talked about were echoed by what the critical community was telling us," Greif says.
The Costco number was cut during the Second Stage run, and the success of that decision prodded Kitt and Yorkey to re-evaluate everything about the show.
Because Stone had partnered with Second Stage to move "Spelling Bee," legiters were eyeing "Normal" as another potential Rialto candidate. "There was a lot of commercial expectation it would transfer," Stone says. "By going out of town, it seemed like we would take any expectations off the table and just do our work."
Kitt and Yorkey did the bulk of rewrites during the run-up to the Arena engagement, with a total of nine songs either dropped or replaced by entirely new tunes. Among the casualties: former title track "Feeling Electric."
Strong critical reception to the reworked version that opened in December at Arena helped restore the tuner's Broadway momentum.
While creatives have continued to fine-tune the show between Arena and Broadway, marketing in Gotham plays up the elements that make the tuner stand out on the 2008-09 slate -- notably its subject matter and intimate emotional focus.
"The show fills a need among the season's musicals," Stone says. He adds that sales are pretty good, given that the musical is a largely unknown property despite its prior incarnations.
With opening night fast approaching, the natural question for the creators becomes: Is it finished?
"I think so," Kitt says.
"For now," Greif adds.
You know what time it is! It's Roll Credits time, where your friendly Vulture editors help fill in the blanks as to exactly what went down in the world of entertainment this week.
NASHVILLE (Billboard) - In a deal that seems as natural as biscuits and gravy, Dolly Parton and Cracker Barrel Old Country Store have partnered to release "Backwoods Barbie: The Collector's Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 10 Apr 2009 | 11:06 pm
President Obama today said that the nation's economy is showing "glimmers of hope." Then he backtracked a little because, he indicated, he didn't want to get anyone too excited. "We have always been very cautious about prognosticating and that's not going to change just because it's Easter," he warned. Okay. Wait, what's he talking about, Easter?
Why would he think that we think the administration was getting overly exuberant because it's Easter? That's weird. Is he making some oblique reference to Lazarus, and suggesting that people are hopeful that the economy could rise from the dead? Or is he saying, "Don't listen to us today; everyone in the White House is all hopped up on Peeps"? Holy crap, that's it! Look at Ben Bernanke!
He gave a speech today in which he was all excited about how the government's plan to bring down mortgage rates is working! But he was probably just high on sugar. We hope the comedown isn't too bad.
So Gossip Girl is moving on. The kids are all grown-up (in theory) and ready to enter the next chapter of their lives: college. That means their styles will also have to evolve, whether we are ready for it or not. Leighton Meester describes her character Blair Waldorf's style thus:
It’s kind of this updated Japanese schoolgirl look. Every other outfit is larger than life — even when it’s prim and proper — and heavily accessorized. I wear ties, bows, colored tights, heels and stuff that you could never get away with at school. But I think that the most important part of Blair’s look is her headband, which is like her crown.
Blair is going to a wondrous and magical place for the next phase of her education — downtown — free from the shackles that are school uniforms. But what will she wear instead?
It’s yet to be decided, but I’m definitely going to college — to N.Y.U. — and not wearing any more school uniforms. Thank god we’re not pretending we all get held back and just continue with high school like all those other high school shows. I guess I’ll wear magnificent clothes every day that don’t have anything to do with school.
All bets are off. What if Blair goes slutty like Serena, starts partying nonstop, and wears minidresses by labels like Preen and Alex Wang? Or what if she goes goth in Rick Owens and Gareth Pugh? Or what if she becomes a pothead, gives up on herself entirely, stops showering, buys plaid shirts from vintage shops in Brooklyn, and wears the same pair of Converse sneakers every day? And what if she stops wearing headbands? Well, that would be fine. She looks prettier without them.
In time for Good Friday, Tina Brown was finally able to conceive an ad platform for her Daily Beast. It wasn't an entirely bad day, but fittingly, it did feel a little downcast.
• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution laid off its entire news-graphics department, which happened to be only four people. [Charles Apple]
• Surprise, surprise. Sixty-five percent of journalist insiders, polled by The Atlantic and National Journal, said journalism has been hurt more by the Internet. And there seem to be no Band-Aids to cure their boo-boos. [Atlantic]
• After nine months of negotiations, management at the Albany Times-Union on Thursday canceled its collective bargaining agreement with a union representing about 240 of the newspaper's 450 employees. [Times-Union]
This (non-embeddable) video for “The Water” is so long — fifteen minutes, 29 seconds — that we’ve started writing about it even before it’s done, and we know exactly what we think: It is the most pretentious music video in history. It was directed by Broken Social Scene's Kevin Drew and features the acting talent of David Fox and freaky eyes of Cillian Murphy; the song itself, a completely forgettable ballad (the video just ended and we can’t even hum it), doesn’t start until near the end, after father and son have monotonously dragged a mummy across a frozen lake, into their house, and unwrapped it, revealing Feist. SPOILER ALERT! She’s the dead mom, brought temporarily back to life at the age she must’ve been when she perished, presumably bored to death by her mute, depressed husband and son.
AP - "Vicksburg 1863" (Alfred A. Knopf, 496 pages, $30), by Winston Groom: Many books have examined the Union siege of Vicksburg, Miss., over the years, but that's no reason Winston Groom should not lend his unique voice to the subject one of the most critical campaigns of the Civil War.
Kanye West cheated on Louis Vuitton and helped create a pair of Nike Air Yeezy sneakers. Fifteen pairs will go on sale at Undefeated Sneaker boutique in Las Vegas tomorrow, and, as of yesterday, fifteen people were already camped outside to buy them. "I'm having the time of my life," said sneakerhead Wesley Ramos, 30. "I can't feel my feet, but I'm having fun." Also camped out was Ron Dixon from Florida, who was on his honeymoon. "She was cool with it," the 29-year-old said of his new wife. "She knows I'm a sneaker addict." And we thought we knew what love was. [UPI]
As Eric McCormack told us last week, the chances of a second season of TNT's ad-company seriocomedy Trust Meseemed unlikely. And now it's official: Despite generally strong reviews and a product-placement-friendly premise, the show won't be back next year. [ArtsBeat/NYT]
Two days later, Woody Harrelson is recovering from what he remembers as some kind of zombie attack.
The actor, who is currently the subject of another investigation into a shutterbug...
We're mildly embarrassed to admit this, but we actually DVRed this week's episode of 90210. When we made the decision to do so, it was because we thought it was going to be the episode where unrepentant 90210 fangirl Diablo Cody finally made the appearance we've been hearing about for months. Alas, we jumped the gun by one week, but you know what? It wasn't an entirely terrible hour of television. It's not like we're going to be adding a season pass for the show or anything, but we've definitely watched worse this week (i.e., the first 60 minutes of Celebrity Apprentice). Now that you've let us vent a bit about our illicit and semi-shameful 90210 viewing experience, we'll give you a treat: Here's the Diablo Cody clip from next week's episode, the one in which Donna Martin — who apparently got over throwing up at prom and grew up to be a celebrity stylist of some sort — helps everyone's favorite hamburger-phone enthusiast get ready for the red carpet. It doesn't get much more thrilling than this on a Friday afternoon, people.
Stephen Colbert is still clinging to hope that NASA will name a new room at the international space station after him. The space agency said Friday it would announce the name of the... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 10 Apr 2009 | 9:41 pm
LAS VEGAS, April 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Electronic table games have quickly emerged as the fastest growing segment in the gaming products industry, and leading the way are... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 10 Apr 2009 | 9:38 pm
As the lifeboat in which Somali pirates are holding American captain Richard Phillips hostage inches toward the Somali coast, the stakes are getting higher in the battle of wills between the captors and Navy officials. The Somalis say they have no intention of harming Phillips, but will do so if they are attacked. In the meantime, they're just trying to get back to land, from where they say they will demand a $2 million ransom for his release. Sadly for them, they are now negotiating with the American government, and not with the shipping company who owned the Maersk Alabama. The shipping company may have paid a ransom for its crew member, but America will not.
This story has, over the course of a few days, changed from being a compelling diversion from the usual, repetitive bad-economic-news cycle into something that is equally exhausting and worrisome. Pirates are only fun in stories, after all.
MAKEUP
• British pop group Girls Aloud launched a line of false eyelashes, which includes five styles, one for each member. "It's every girl's dream to have your own (bespoke) false eyelashes," says Girls Aloud's Kimberley. [Daily Mail via Kiss and Makeup]
• Why do women wear makeup to sporting events? Because they're trying too hard. [Beauty Department/Glamour]
FRAGRANCE
• Uma Thurman is the new face of a Givenchy women's fragrance. Justin Timberlake also models for a Givenchy scent. [WWD]
SKIN
• Paul Rudd is looking a little more orange these days. But at least it looks natural. [Jezebel]
• Skindinavia, which is famous for its finishing spray that keeps makeup on all day, just launched Dance! Makeup Finish, which promises to keep makeup on all night during clubbing or dancing. It's supposed to prevent a makeup meltdown by chilling foundation, shadow, and blush by twenty degrees. [Daily Beauty Reporter/Allure]
Observe and Report’s dicey maybe-date-rape scene is controversial enough, but it’s not the scene dividing critics today. Instead, critics are fighting over Jody Hill's explosive, improbable ending.
Time's Richard Corliss rants: "Observe and Report eventually chickens out. The apparently unbreakable rule of modern comedy is that audiences not only have to laugh ... they must also leave with a smile, a glow that tells them all's right with the world, until they get back into the world. You can't have the cleansing anarchy and bile of classical comedy; that might sow sullen word of mouth and reduce the box-office revenue by a few dollars."
Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle raves, "The innovation of Observe and Report — its one small step for comedy — is that it finds its way to a satisfying ending without compromising an audience's (or its own) sense of truth."
Slate's Dana Stevens fumes: "[It] ends on a note of triumph that's curiously out of keeping with the movie's own logic. [...] For there to be even a hint of redemption (and depending how you read the last scene, there may be way more than a hint) throws everything that came before into question, and breaks an unwritten contract with the viewer. What's meant (I think) to be a "fuck you" to action-movie conventions reads instead as a "fuck you" to the audience."
Jeffrey Wells rants: "Hill is a copout compromiser … I found the Observe and Report finale infuriating for a film that is supposedly delving into the dark side and dealing with human derangement with at least a semblance of bluntness."
And the Post's Lou Lumenick cops out: "Is the ending a cop-out or welcome restraint? There will be debates about this."
Without spoiling anything, we'll just say that we agree that the ending is, as Stevens says in her sharp review, a "fuck you" to the audience — but maybe that's not a bad thing. To give Jody Hill some credit, the dreamlike ending is so audacious, it must be intended to make some portion of the audience do a double take and say, "Whoa: This happy ending is so wrong. These people should not be celebrating what Ronnie just did." That's what we were thinking, anyway — as the audience around us whooped it up and cheered, just like those implausible extras on the screen. We often go to the movies to laugh and cheer as one audience. But like these critics, nobody ever really feels the same way about a movie. And it's a rare studio film that doesn't just highlight this fact, but leaves you gawking at the dude next to you, thinking, "Christ, you're just as scary as what's onscreen."
"Okay. You mean someone else does it for you?" (We had asked the question, and we felt compelled to see it through to a full and complete answer.)
"Well, no, I mean — this year I worked in so many different countries, I'm not sure they're all done. You have to file different files when you work in different countries. I'm not quite sure how all that happens."
"Do you think you will be among the highest bracket that Obama wants to tax more?"
"I'm absolutely willing to pay more taxes if my country would work better for everybody."
Zoe Kazan is one of those annoying people who comes from an insanely connected family — she’s the granddaughter of the late director Elia Kazan and the daughter of screenwriters Nicholas Kazan and Robin Swicord — yet has talent enough that she’s made a name for herself in her own right. Following roles in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Seagull on Broadway, as well as after downing martinis and sleeping with Leonardo DiCaprio in Revolutionary Road, Kazan now stars in The Exploding Girl, a small-scale character study of Ivy, a young Brooklynite home from college for the summer. Vulture chatted with Kazan about movies, East Village mice, and her family's influence.
Your character, Ivy, lives in Brooklyn and goes to an Ivy League school. You also live in Brooklyn and went to Yale. How similar are you to her?
The director [Bradley Rust Gray] wrote the part for me. We would take these long walks and I would tell him things about my life, and he created the part based on that. But she’s definitely not me. For one thing, she's very different in how she processes the hard things in her life. I think she’s somebody who’s really selfless. She doesn’t really want to burden people with her problems. And she deals with everything without talking to people, without therapy. I have no problem expressing myself or dealing with my emotions.
What drew you to live in Brooklyn?
I’ve lived in Brooklyn for almost two years. But I’ve lived on the Upper East. I lived in Park Slope for a while. I lived in the East Village for a year, but we had really terrible mice. I really wanted some greenery, and I got really tired of living where everyone was going out all the time. I moved to Brooklyn just before I started a nine-month run on Broadway, which was probably the worst possible time for me to move to there. I should have moved to the theater district.
So you’re not much of a party girl?
I don’t have that much time of my own. Most of the time I’m working. But in the time I do have, I’d much rather go out to dinner with friends, or make dinner, or go for a nice long walk. Not to say that I never go out, but it’s not really my thing.
You’re from a family of screenwriters, and I heard you have your own writing plans in the works. Is that true?
It is. I’ve been working on a play for two years for me to act in, and I’ll find someone else to direct it. The idea behind it is that people can be really unknown to themselves. People can have a whole self that they try to suppress because of trauma, or who they want to be, or because of who they are. It’s a kind of mystery story about identities.
It must have seemed like a big shift to work on Exploding Girl right after Revolutionary Road.
If you’re making a movie you believe in, it all sort of feels the same. My job as an actor doesn’t change very much. I’m doing this Nancy Meyers movie right now, and there are people checking my makeup and hair every five seconds, and trailers, and all these great outfits. On Exploding Girl, we had no trailers, we were changing in bathrooms at Starbucks. They bought me one T-shirt, but other than that I wore all my own clothes. So if cushiness is important, then yeah, they’re really different. But as an actor, Exploding Girl is just a more bare-bones version of what I love doing.
To what extent did your family influence your decision to go into acting? Did you want to act as a child?
There was no way in hell my parents would have let me start working before I finished college. I knew acting was what I wanted to do. I spent years taking acting classes and writing classes. I took my time, in a way, but in another way, growing up in my family, it felt like it was really normal to not start working as a child. Though I guess it was considered more normal to go into arts, and my parents supported me. But they were totally freaked out when I told them I wanted to act. They weren’t against it, but it’s a hard life, and it’s completely unpredictable.
Don't forget, Best Week Ever with Paul F. Tompkins returns tonight with an all-new episode at 11:00 on VH1! Not sure if we'll be able to match Eminem's scathing pop culture commentary (Kim Kardashian's ass is SO BIG!!!) but we'll give it our best!
Meanwhile, the week on the 'nets:
Michelle compiles a list of 50 Animals That Are Huge Sluts, and BWE traffic triples because of the search term 'Huge Sluts'.
90s Movie Madness has officially determined the 90sest Movie of All Time, though we'll never truly know if the 250,000 people who came to the contest from Kevin Smith's Twitter impacted the voting in any way.
Read our tv recaps of Celeb Apprentice, American Idol, and Lost if you want to see what it's like to hang out on the couch with us watching the show together! (Only I don't keep yelling my dumb Lost jokes over the dialogue so you have to rewind it!)
Every week is the Best Week Ever for the New York Post; if you thought their Yankees losing headlines were awesome, brace yourself for their Pirates story.
Hey Japan, you're still remembering to be Japan, right? Giant pink penis? Awesome, just checking.
But we warn you: Only click if you can stand to look at the tanned, genetically blessed Daria Werbowy on a perfect beach. Because on this Good Friday — on which we are working while some of our friends are not, and when it is gray and chilly outside — it is not easy to accept that somewhere in the world right now people who look like Daria Werbowy are in bathing suits on tropical islands. [Nitro:licious]
How adorable is this picture from yesterday, when secretary of State Hillary Clinton and president Barack Obama decided, on the spur of the moment, to have their afternoon meeting outside in the White House playground? [Root]
Tia Cibani's Ports 1961 was an editors' favorite from the start. The label debuted to major buzz, and Cibani earned a following with starlets and socialites. But we, shockingly, didn't get a store here until just recently. The new flagship threw open its doors during Fashion Week (on Friday the 13th, no less). Located in the meatpacking district, the store surprised us with the level of cuteness on tap — sculptural jewelry, chic little dresses, and perfume that actually smells good. And the floor-to-ceiling skylight makes the space warm, bright, and welcoming. We picked some of our favorite pieces in the store.
What with it being Good Friday and the markets being closed, today has been light on the bad news. Except for this: "An eight-year survey of 218 couples found that children brought on a sudden case of the relationship blues, with about 90 percent of mothers and fathers feeling dissatisfied with their partner after the birth of a child, according to research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 'Sex almost ceases to exist,' said Diana Kirschner, a therapist from Manhattan. 'All their attention goes to the child.'" We knew it. This whole propagation-of-the-species thing is a bad idea. [Urbanite/amNY]
This is where the new store will be. We're too broke to shop there.
Retailers are closing stores on Madison Avenue in the recession because they can't afford the rent. This includes label we covet Jil Sander. In January, the label shut its doors at 1042 Madison Avenue, between East 79th and 80th Streets, but not because it couldn't afford the space. It's moving down the street to a better space at 818 Madison Avenue, between East 68th and 69th Streets, also known as the Gold Coast of Madison (the area between East 57th and East 72nd Streets). The new store opens tomorrow, but will only be open for a couple of years because the label wants to open an uptown store that looks more like the downtown Jil Sander store on Crosby Street. It is unclear why it couldn't accomplish this in its new Gold Coast digs, which you'd think it would want to hold on to. Madison Avenue's other tenants should consider themselves lucky that Jil Sander moved down the street. Brash, colorful places like Topshop could snap up these vacant spaces, which would not only bring downtown uptown, but would rip the fabric of Upper East Side life to shreds, put Olivia Palermo in a padded cell somewhere, and scare all the fur-coated ladies from venturing out to buy $200 Dolce & Gabbana socks for their husbands. Then this city would really be screwed.
February 4: Two weeks after Obama was inaugurated as president, Dick Cheney sat down with Politico to engage in his favorite pastime: fearmongering. The former V.P. claimed that the new president's policies might make a nuclear attack on American soil more likely. "When we get people who are more concerned ... with reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do everything they can to kill Americans, then I worry."
Photo: Getty Images
February 4: That same day, Card piled on Obama by once again harping on the Oval Office dress code, telling Inside Edition, "I wish that he would wear a suit coat and tie." The Huffington Post soon rode to the rescue with a slideshow proving that other presidents, including Bush, had gone without a coat and tie before.
Photo: Getty Images
February 15: David Axelrod defended his boss and called Cheney "irresponsible" on Meet the Press, suggesting that "the vice-president is having a hard time dealing with … the verdict of the American people."
Photo: Getty Images
March 15: Broken record Dick Cheney, in an interview on CNN's State of the Union, claimed that President Obama's policies, such as not torturing people and eventually closing Guantanamo Bay, have made America less safe. "He is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack."
Photo: Getty Images
March 16: Press Secretary Robert Gibbs wasn't having any of that. When asked about the comments at a press briefing the next day, Gibbs returned fire. "I guess Rush Limbaugh was busy," he said to scattered laughter, "so they trotted out the next most popular member of the Republican cabal." Get it? Because they're both really unpopular!
Photo: Getty Images
March 22: President Obama made a rare appearance in the inter-administration squabbles, asking Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes, "How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice-President Cheney? It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment." And with that, he once again ascended above the fray.
Photo: Getty Images
April 7: Joe Biden, in an interview with CNN, said that Dick Cheney's assertion that President Obama had made America less safe was "dead wrong." Biden also told of how he once boldly stood up to President Bush in the Oval Office: "He said to me, he said, 'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said, 'Mr. President, turn around and look behind you. No one's following.'"
Photo: Getty Images
April 9: Karl Rove, in an interview with Fox News, called Biden a "blowhard" (with "all due respect," of course) and a "serial exaggerator" for making up a fictional account of the Oval Office exchange. If he were going to be unkind, he'd say Biden was a "liar" — but Karl Rove would never be unkind.
Whenever you speak with Carlos Santana, you pretty much know what you're going to get: lots of talk about love and light. spiritual analogies, name-dropping of people like Marvin Gaye and Mother Teresa. But he has some strong opinions about the direction of the United States.
"I really want dads to enjoy this movie. That's what I'm going for." —Zac Efron on his plans to win over the entire world [Age]
"At one point my fiancé was like, ‘You feel distant.’ And I said, ‘I am! I can’t even talk to you!’ I was there at the Oscars thinking, What if I never left the Gap?” —Amy Adams spent the Oscars reminiscing about selling denim [W via Fox]
"I can't be that grown-up Shirley Temple girl wearing the stupid strawberry in her hair all the time ... because I'd kill myself or someone else would for me." —Katy Perry on the necessity of reinvention [MTV]
"Why don't you call up Chris and try to make it happen? Show me the Catwoman!" —Emily Blunt wants Christopher Nolan to hear her cry [Newsweek]
"I was more of a smoking weed behind the 7-Eleven guy. So yeah, didn’t go to the mall much." —Seth Rogen on not being a mall rat [Fox]
"I had a slight aversion to the sound of the German language. I needed to look at that, and by looking at it, even for a little, it started to dissolve." —Viggo Mortensen on confronting his imperfect politics for Good [Age]
• Even Zac Efron is sick of seeing Zac Efron all over the place. And Samantha Ronson is sick of the Lindsay Lohan drama. What's with everyone saying what we're already thinking...
Remember when Lil' Kim went to jail for ten months on perjury charges in 2006? Marc Jacobs was with her all along! "He's one of my best friends and was actually a huge supporter when I was in prison," Lil' Kim said. "He wrote me every week! I decided to buy a coloring book — I'm a huge Bratz fan — and I painted the Bratz and made them all wear Marc Jacobs, and sent it to him. He blew it up and framed it, and now it's hanging in his house. So Marc Jacobs is the best." [Stylelist]
I haven't read the New Testament completely cover to cover so correct me if I'm wrong, but I really don't remember the part with the Bunny Steeplechase:
I remember the bunny part, and the part with the chocolate eggs that also come in caramel and they're an event to eat and you feel bad afterward but they're so damn good (that was in one of the Corinthians, I believe), but bunny hurdle-race? Must've skimmed over it.
After the jump, two more pics of the Rabbit Steeplechase in Prague:
The gloomy skies bring such cheer to our hearts. No, we're not being maudlin or channeling Moz. The rain means flowers are about to bloom, and who doesn't love that? Of course, florals have already sprouted on spring clothes. But the pretty rose, lavender, and daisy prints have been catching our eye from the opposite end of the store — the men's side — blossoming amid hipster plaids and skinny jeans. Sure, florals popped up on the spring runways, winding up on tuxedo jackets at Dolce & Gabbana, splashed across trousers at Michael Kors, and paired with paisley and stripes at Etro. But we were surprised that the traditionally femme prints have become so mainstream: Everyone from Paul Smith to Tommy Hilfiger is carrying man flowers. Click ahead to check out a smattering of studly floral looks in stores now. Stylish, or swishy?
If non-horrifying workplace safety videos aren't quite getting the message across to your workers, or at least aren't amusing them enough, then just use the following video, which really goes above and beyond with its hilariously violent (and borderline impossible) workplace mishaps. The special effects and acting are actually on a fairly decent level of standard B-horror films, particularly the amazing hammer/nail mishap (there are about 9,000 ways to hurt yourself hammering a nail more likely to happen than this one...)
Since we love all films that make us feel better about our failed childhood dreams of becoming astronauts, we're just as excited as the rest of the blogosphere today about the new trailer for Moon, in which Sam Rockwell plays a lunar-based spaceman who suffers a freak accident and mental breakdown in the final days of his three-year assignment. Boding well, it looks to be equal parts 2001 and the "Space Madness" episode of Ren & Stimpy, and it's directed by Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie, who no doubt has seen the harrowing effects of space madness firsthand. According to those who've seen the movie, the trailer apparently gives away a central plot twist, so watch at your own risk.
Jenny may be from the block, but she's not going to let just anyone move onto her cyberspace.
Jennifer Lopez won her cybersquatting case against a Phoenix man who had laid claim to...
Apparently Burt Reynolds is cannonball-running away from the tax man.
He is joined by usual suspects Dionne Warwick and Sinbad on the annual rundown of California's most delinquent...
Front Page: Multiyear football pact follows lengthy dispute -- The NFL Network and satcaster Dish Network have resolved their ongoing dispute, sealing a new multiyear deal in the process.
Tonight marks the end of season three of Friday Night Lights, the vastly underwatched Texas-high-school-football drama. After a disappointingly melodramatic season two, this one returned to FNL’s quieter roots, delivering a well-written emotional arc without any fantastical turns (Tyra-and-Landry murder plotline, we’re looking at you). With the recent news that the show’s been re-upped for two seasons comes the inevitable question of what comes next for the cast and characters; Matt, Tyra, Tim, and Lyla are all graduating, and it’s unclear who’ll make it to college and who’ll stay in Dillon (and, thus, the show).
If you believe online rumors, both Minka Kelly (Lyla), and Adrianne Palicki (Tyra), are leaving the series for good. (Kelly’s even signed on to star in a new CW drama, Body Politic.) According to Taylor Kitsch, whom we met with for a recent magazine profile, his character, Tim Riggins, doesn’t go to college as planned, but instead stays behind in Dillon to work with his brother at their newly opened body shop.
Kitsch also revealed that Zach Gilford (Matt) is staying on the show; Matt will attend a college near home so as to be near his ailing grandmother (at the close of season three, Matt is contemplating going to art school in Chicago), and Minka Kelly will indeed be departing, as Lyla realizes her dream of going to Vanderbilt. An NBC spokesperson confirmed only part of this news. “We do know that the writers will be wrapping up Minka Kelly's character over a multi-episode arc, similar to what the writers did with Gaius Charles and Scott Porter this season.” But NBC remains mum about Palicki and the others, insisting that the writers themselves don’t even know what’s going to happen (the new scripts have yet to be written). We’re taking Kitsch’s inside knowledge with a grain of salt: he spoke with us in January, before the show was definitely set to continue. As for Kitsch’s hopes for the future of bad boy Tim Riggins, much reformed this season, he’s still looking for some tough love: “I’d love to do something where Tim learns the hard way about drinking and driving. Or goes into the Army.”
Chloë Sevigny showed her fall 2009 unisex collection for Opening Ceremony at London Fashion Week in February. She said she's not worried about sales in the recession, since the line is small and will probably go into limited production. But plans for another line are uncertain. "It always depends on my work with the show I do on HBO and movies. I have to be in New York at least for, like, four months at a time," Chloë told us at a Khiel's event last night. "I don’t want to do it every season. That gets boring. I want to do it kind of here and there." But who will make us pants out of carpet for spring 2010?
His mom is out, but Redmond O'Neal must stay in. So much for a happy Easter.
Hours after Farrah Fawcett was released from a Los Angeles hospital, her scofflaw son was back before a...
Front Page: NBC cop drama nabs 9.7 million viewers -- NBC's cop drama "Southland" led the pack of Thursday preems, posting respectable numbers as it moved into "ER's" old 10 p.m. slot.
Front Page: Ken Brecher held festival post for 14 years -- Ken Brecher has ankled as exec director of the Sundance Institute, which oversees the Sundance Film Festival, after 14 years in the post.
Well would ya look at this lil lady? A sea turtle named Allison lost her fins to a shark attack, meaning a life of up to 150 years only making left turns. So what did scientists do?
Why, they created a "special black neoprene suit with a carbon-fibre attachment" to allow little Allison to swim in both directions. Now, the flipper isn't actually replacing the one she lost, rather it's more of a rudder strapped to her back. Like so:
OMG, it's like Adorable Jaws!! Smalljaws. Aww. Can you imagine what the other sea creatures are thinking when they see this lil' guy? She's the goddamn Turtlenator:
As if Lindsay Lohan wasn't having a rough enough week already.
Fresh off her breakup from Samantha Ronson, her reported snubbing by Nicole Richie and Drea de Matteo and threats that...
Even though Heidi Montag promised Spencer Pratt wouldn't be shooting any more of her music videos, it looks like they lied to us. And they otherwise seemed so trustworthy.
Last...
And now let's journey to Louisiana to see how the recession has affected a small, oft-overlooked sector of the luxury industry: alligator farms. Gerald Savoie Jr. has over 60,000 alligators on his farm, but no one to sell them to. “This is the worst I’ve ever seen,” Savoie told Houma Today. “It’s never been this bad. Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Versace, they’re not buying. And if they’re not buying, we’re not selling.” The alligator business is a $60 million industry in Louisiana. Luxist reports that Vermilion Gator Farms Inc. generally sells 75,000 hides a year, but it hasn't sold a single skin in a year and expects to not sell a skin for a year on top of that. Alligators: the recession's cats.
Alligator skins are used for things like bags, belts, and shoes. But things made of alligator are expensive, so no one's buying them anymore. So PETA should be happy right? Wrong. Their hides are already on the market collecting dust. Last month 840,000 tanned hides were on the market in the U.S., waiting to be sold to tanners. Normally there are just 275,000 on the market. But if these farms won't make any sales for another whole year, now would be a great time for PETA to stage a great rescue mission and start a Clarissa Explains It All–inspired campaign to get the nation to take them in as pets.
Ted Nugent will reunite with his first recording band, the Amboy Dukes, on April 17 to receive a Distinguished Achievement Award at the annual Detroit Music Awards.
NBC's new Office spinoff Parks and Recreation debuted last night, and like all pilots, it was more of a "meet the characters" sampler platter than an earth-shattering laugh-fest (because I often describe tv shows that way), but given the wealth of talent at their disposal -- Greg Daniels exec producing along with Michael "Mohse" Schur, author of the best blog of all time, plus Amy Poehler, Aziz Ansari, Rashida Jones, Aubrey Plaza, and a bonus cameo from UCB alum Ian Roberts -- I don't doubt that the show could quickly find its footing and become Season Pass-worthy. After all, most of us British Office snobs dismissed the U.S. version after the pilot too, only to learn midway through Season 2 that it had gotten really funny (and Michael and Jim had stopped their respective Brent/Tim impressions).
That being said, I couldn't shake the following alarming realization during the Parks premiere:
Has the Office speaking cadence been played out?The most glaring example came on the Amy Poehler line (paraphrasing): "Mark and I... you get two interesting people together with similar dreams, things happen, you know... [PAUSE] we slept together." Not only was this line basically ripped from Michael Scott verbatim, but as an Office diehard, I've also grown so accustomed to the manner in which these characters speak to the camera, particularly in their testimonials, that my mind unintentionally predicts exactly when jokes are going to happen. The manner of joke-delivering is so specific and has been repeated so often, that you almost don't even need to hear the actual words to know when the punchline in a particular sentence has been uttered. I wasn't sitting there yelling "Here comes the joke right...now! See? Called it!" but the speech pattern causes the Office-familiar mind to unconsciously expect certain things at certain times, and as a result, the entire episode felt weirdly inauthentic.
Along the same lines, the requisite Office awkward, bit-over-the-line subtext interaction was jammed into the opening third of the episode, when Rashida Jones' character mentions her "boyfriend" and Aziz's character immediately leaps to hitting on her really obviously and goofily, which read more as a decision to just throw a little mini Michael Scott foot-in-the-mouth racial sketch equivalent into the episode rather than an honest character moment. I'm not making some sweeping argument against the role of exaggeration in comedy, nor am I suggesting that comic characters always have to act 100% rationally, but these specific exaggerations and these specific ways of speaking and acting are so synonymous with The Office (and arguably even played out on The Office), that it's hard to transplant them to an entirely new cast of characters without it automatically coming off as derivative.
As I said, it's one episode, and it wasn't bad, it just felt a little more stiff and forced than even your standard pilot. Still, I'm wondering if the Office speech mannerisms and the played-out documentary format are going to prove to be too limiting for Parks and Recreation to ever truly find its own footing and shed the inevitable Office comparisons that have already been predictably resorted to by persons like myself.
The episode's glimmer of hope? The amazing mural in the City Hall building:
Parks And Recreation premiere thoughts? Leave 'em in the comments. Source: Best Week Ever | 10 Apr 2009 | 5:15 pm
Green Day is set to appear at New York's Bowery Ballroom on May 18, just three days after the release of the band's hotly anticipated eighth studio album, "21st Century Breakdown."
Film version of Tom Wolfe's book on Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters
comes closer to reality
The onscreen version of Tom Wolfe's literary cult hit The
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is primed to hit theaters by 2010.
When published in 1968, the book shattered cultural perceptions of
the peaceful, passive hippie zeitgeist by introducing the Merry
Pranksters, author Ken Kesey's roving gonzo army of LSD-fueled
pioneers who tripped about the country, mixing it up with rowdy
Oregonians, Bay Area hippies, Hollywood rockers, Hell's Angels and
a flurry of left-handed characters that launched the...
Being fat is great. That is of course until it comes time to shower. Luckily the people at Body Snake have come up with a solution seen here in this clip from tonight's Best Week Ever:
Tune in to an all new Best Week Ever with Paul F. Tompkinstonight at 11pm on VH1 with special guest Martin Starr from the new movie Adventureland. Source: Best Week Ever | 10 Apr 2009 | 4:00 pm
Everything about the trailer for Gooby is unbelievable, but apparently it's a real movie. The deranged-looking monster teddy bear that befriends a lonely child is real, the voiceover that sounds like the director's dad helping out with his son's high school film project is real, and the movie is really playing at Cannes (albeit on the screen of a minivan parked outside a theater).
Also, Euegene Levy truly couldn't say no to having a vial of acid thrown in his face.
Dear Readers,
If you happen to be in or around the New York City area next Wednesday, April 15, and find yourself in a clapping mood, might I suggest you head over to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. Because it is there that my live talk show spectacular "CBS/NYC Presents: How Dare You? with Michelle Collins" will take place, beginning promptly at 8 PM.
This month, HDU? welcomes some very special celebrity guests, including the most charming supermodel in America Veronica Webb, as well as comedian and writer for Saturday Night LiveJohn Mulaney. I will also have with me some special artifacts found while on my Passover trip home to Miami, as well as a heated showdown between myself and a surprise guest. THE TICKETS ARE ONLY $5 EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE WORTH AT LEAST TWICE AS MUCH!
Please come! "CBS/NYC Presents: How Dare You? with Michelle Collins"UCB THEATER
307 W. 26th Street
btwn. 8th & 9th Ave.
Wednesday, 4/15
8 PMTICKETS ARE ONLY $5!!! Reserve them here! Source: Best Week Ever | 10 Apr 2009 | 3:11 pm
Radio and television comic John Safran has had himself crucified in the Philippines in the gory annual Good Friday rituals imitating the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. Source: FOXNews.com | 10 Apr 2009 | 3:02 pm
Wonder how New York City's bed bug epidemic got its start. Just stare long and hard at this man about to kiss pop singer Katy Perry, and try your best not to stop scratching for the rest of the day. He's given em away, given em away, given em away, given em away now. Source: Best Week Ever | 10 Apr 2009 | 2:46 pm
'CSI Miami' Star David Caruso's ex-girlfriend filed a multi-count suit against the actor Thursday, accusing him of fraud, domestic abuse and breach of contract/settlement agreement. Source: FOXNews.com | 10 Apr 2009 | 2:27 pm
Axl Rose may have spent 15 years fine tuning the 14 tracks on "Chinese Democracy," but it only took five months for the entire album to make its way into the "Rock Band" video game franchise.
For Miley Cyrus, star of Disney's popular television series "Hannah Montana" and its big-screen adaptation "Hannah Montana: The Movie," art is not far from real life.
Ronnie Barnhardt (Seth Rogen) has a dream. He believes his destiny is to be a cop. In reality, he's chief security officer at the mall. I know: You already saw this movie: "Paul Blart: Mall Cop." But "Observe and Report" is a much edgier film that dares to keep its mall cop at arm's length.
AP - "Admission" (Grand Central Publishing, 464 pages, $24.99), by Jean Hanff Korelitz: Over the past few months, high school seniors have been finding out whether they've been accepted or rejected by the colleges to which they'd applied. There's plenty of drama in their lives.
AP - "This Child Will Be Great" (Harper, 368 pages, $26.99), by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: Jailed, threatened with rape, torture and murder, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf refused to take a seat in the Senate of Liberia.
AP - "Dead Silence" (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 354 pages, $25.95), by Randy Wayne White: Doc Ford is in his 50s now, no longer the young man we first met 16 books ago in "Sanibel Flats" (1990). But he can still swim long distances and do a prodigious number of pull-ups. He's as lethal as ever with a gun, or nothing at all, in his hands. And he still has an easily aroused sense of vigilante justice.
Reuters - "17 Again" has a pretty original take on the "do-over" comedy -- you know, where someone, invariably a male, gets to go back in his life to do over a key moment or event that continues to bug him. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment Reviews | 10 Apr 2009 | 11:20 am
U2 and Lady Gaga continue their reigns on Billboard's pan-European charts. "No Line on the Horizon" (Mercury/Universal) starts a fifth week at the Top 100 Albums summit and "Poker Face" (Interscope/Universal) moves into a seventh week at No. 1 on the European Hot 100 Singles.
If it still runs, why leave it out to rust?
In light of the green dust left swirling when Fast and Furious came roaring out of the gate with a record $72.5 million last weekend,...
Jared Leto wants kids in need to have more than a so-called life.
The actor-musician and his band, 30 Seconds to Mars, on Friday opened up their recording session in the Hollywood Hills...
Two days later, Woody Harrelson is recovering from what he remembers as some kind of zombie attack.
The actor, who is currently the subject of another investigation into a shutterbug...
• Even Zac Efron is sick of seeing Zac Efron all over the place. And Samantha Ronson is sick of the Lindsay Lohan drama. What's with everyone saying what we're already thinking...
Jenny may be from the block, but she's not going to let just anyone move onto her cyberspace.
Jennifer Lopez won her cybersquatting case against a Phoenix man who had laid claim to...
Apparently Burt Reynolds is cannonball-running away from the tax man.
He is joined by usual suspects Dionne Warwick and Sinbad on the annual rundown of California's most delinquent...
His mom is out, but Redmond O'Neal must stay in. So much for a happy Easter.
Hours after Farrah Fawcett was released from a Los Angeles hospital, her scofflaw son was back before a...
As if Lindsay Lohan wasn't having a rough enough week already.
Fresh off her breakup from Samantha Ronson, her reported snubbing by Nicole Richie and Drea de Matteo and threats that...
Even though Heidi Montag promised Spencer Pratt wouldn't be shooting any more of her music videos, it looks like they lied to us. And they otherwise seemed so trustworthy.
Last...
NBC's new Office spinoff Parks and Recreation debuted last night, and like all pilots, it was more of a "meet the characters" sampler platter than an earth-shattering laugh-fest (because I often describe tv shows that way), but given the wealth of talent at their disposal -- Greg Daniels exec producing along with Michael "Mohse" Schur, author of the 
The most glaring example came on the Amy Poehler line (paraphrasing): "Mark and I... you get two interesting people together with similar dreams, things happen, you know... [PAUSE] we slept together." Not only was this line basically ripped from Michael Scott verbatim, but as an Office diehard, I've also grown so accustomed to the manner in which these characters speak to the camera, particularly in their testimonials, that my mind unintentionally predicts exactly when jokes are going to happen. The manner of joke-delivering is so specific and has been repeated so often, that you almost don't even need to hear the actual words to know when the punchline in a particular sentence has been uttered. I wasn't sitting there yelling "Here comes the joke right...now! See? Called it!" but the speech pattern causes the Office-familiar mind to unconsciously expect certain things at certain times, and as a result, the entire episode felt weirdly inauthentic.
Along the same lines, the requisite Office awkward, bit-over-the-line subtext interaction was jammed into the opening third of the episode, when Rashida Jones' character mentions her "boyfriend" and Aziz's character immediately leaps to hitting on her really obviously and goofily, which read more as a decision to just throw a little mini Michael Scott foot-in-the-mouth racial sketch equivalent into the episode rather than an honest character moment. I'm not making some sweeping argument against the role of exaggeration in comedy, nor am I suggesting that comic characters always have to act 100% rationally, but these specific exaggerations and these specific ways of speaking and acting are so synonymous with The Office (and arguably even played out on The Office), that it's hard to transplant them to an entirely new cast of characters without it automatically coming off as derivative.
As I said, it's one episode, and it wasn't bad, it just felt a little more stiff and forced than even your standard pilot. Still, I'm wondering if the Office speech mannerisms and the played-out documentary format are going to prove to be too limiting for Parks and Recreation to ever truly find its own footing and shed the inevitable Office comparisons that have already been predictably resorted to by persons like myself.
The episode's glimmer of hope? The amazing mural in the City Hall building:
Dear Readers,
If you happen to be in or around the New York City area next Wednesday, April 15, and find yourself in a clapping mood, might I suggest you head over to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. Because it is there that my live talk show spectacular "CBS/NYC Presents: How Dare You? with Michelle Collins" will take place, beginning promptly at 8 PM.
This month, HDU? welcomes some very special celebrity guests, including the most charming supermodel in America Veronica Webb, as well as comedian and writer for Saturday Night Live John Mulaney. I will also have with me some special artifacts found while on my Passover trip home to Miami, as well as a heated showdown between myself and a surprise guest. THE 
