AFP - Quentin Tarantino's bloody World War Two revenge flick "Inglourious Basterds" won the top honor at the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards Saturday, a key indicator of possible Oscars contenders.
AFP - Quentin Tarantino's bloody World War Two revenge flick "Inglourious Basterds" won the top honor at the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards Saturday, a key indicator of possible Oscars contenders.
Reuters - Quentin Tarantino's World War Two movie "Inglourious Basterds" won its biggest award so far on Saturday, taking the top prize at the Screen Actors Guild awards.
NORTHAMPTON, Mass. - Folk singer Arlo Guthrie has headlined a sold-out concert that raised more than $10,000 for the victims of series of arson fires in western Massachusetts. Saturday Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 24 Jan 2010 | 12:37 am
LOS ANGELES - Betty White accepted a lifetime achievement award at Saturday's Screen Actors Guild Awards with the wit and grace that have punctuated her six-decade career. White was... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 24 Jan 2010 | 12:36 am
The latest feature film on the 1994 Rwanda genocide, which premiered here at the weekend, shows in excruciating detail what day-to-day life must have been like for those who survived beyond Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 24 Jan 2010 | 12:05 am
Makeshift shelters cover a hill as Rwandan refugees who fled the fighting in Kigali settle in a camp near the Tanzanian border in May 1994. The latest feature film on the 1994 Rwanda genocide, which premiered... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 24 Jan 2010 | 12:05 am
Rwandan refugees wait church in Kabgayi, 65kms south of Kigali in May 1994. Some 600 children coming from the Rwandan capital and its surroundings, took refuge in this church in a bid to escape the civil... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 24 Jan 2010 | 12:05 am
Rwandan president General Juvenal Habyarimana is seen during a OUA (Organization of African Unity) summit, in Kampala, Uganda in 1975. Habyarimana was president of Rwanda from 05 July 1973 until he died... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 24 Jan 2010 | 12:05 am
Kazimiera Wasiak is a 76-year-old Polish pensioner who will forever remain a child of Auschwitz. When she was only 11, Wasiak spent six months in Nazi Germany?s largest and most infamous Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 23 Jan 2010 | 11:46 pm
Leokadia Rowinska, 86-yeasr-old, who was sent to Auschwitz from Warsaw in August 1944 in the third month of pregnancy. Rowinska gave birth to a boy on January 21. She named him Ireneusz. But starving,... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 23 Jan 2010 | 11:46 pm
Kazimiera Wasiak, a 76-year-old Polish pensioner who spent six months in Nazi Germany's death camp Auschwitz when she was 11 years old. Now, as treasurer of an Auschwitz-Birkenau survivors' association... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 23 Jan 2010 | 11:46 pm
Stanislaw Przeradzki, 78, who was sent aged 13 to Nazi Germany's death camp Auschwitz from insurgent Warsaw in August 1944. Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 23 Jan 2010 | 11:46 pm
Jan Kazimierz Bokus, 90 years old, the oldest surviving founding member of Auschwitz association suvivors. Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 23 Jan 2010 | 11:46 pm
AP - While Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock's chances for Academy Award gold were advanced with their trophies at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the blockbuster "Avatar" may have felt a touch blue.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - For Sandra Bullock, sweeping up Hollywood awards is something new, but the actress said on Saturday after winning a SAG trophy that she didn't want to be just a... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 23 Jan 2010 | 11:08 pm
File photo of Medellin drug cartel leader Pablo Escobar. The anguished son of the Colombian drug lord has reached out to the victims of his murderous father in a compelling documentary being screened at... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 23 Jan 2010 | 11:02 pm
The anguished son of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar has reached out to the victims of his murderous father in a compelling documentary being screened at the Sundance Film Festival. ... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 23 Jan 2010 | 11:02 pm
File photo of Pablo Escobar (L), his wife Victoria Eugenia Henau (R) and his son Pablo Escobar. Over the years Sebastian Marroquin -- formerly Juan Pablo Escobar -- has rejected dozens of offers from Hollywood... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 23 Jan 2010 | 11:02 pm
In legal papers signed this month, the world's most famous couple has also agreed to share custody of their six kids, sources say. "The document was signed in early January," a source told the British tabloid. The contract, signed by Pitt and Jolie, is similar to a pre-nuptial agreement. "It seemed clear they want the world to know they'll both play a part in the upbringing of the children," the source said. "But Angelina will actually be the one who lives with them full-time." Pitt, 46, will have full access to their three biological children - Shiloh and twins Knox and Vivienne - as well as the three adopted children - Maddox, from Cambodia; Zahara, from Ethiopia; and Pax, from Vietnam.
We have but one concern.
What do we tag it? Ideas:
CELEBOCUPLYPSE
CELEBUCLYPSE
APOCELEBUCLYPSE
2010>2012
IN THE PITTS
SAD PITT
THE MAD PITT
JOLIE ROLLERS
DOMESTRUCTION DERBY
YO GABBA DIASPORA
SESAME DIASPORA
DIASPORA STREET
UNDER THE DIASPORA TREE
ANGEMEANA
INGLORIOUS BASTERDS
*CRYING SELF TO SLEEP*
asdfjkl;
ALIJOLIE
Here's how things like that work: a flack tells Perez they aren't breaking up, and whether or not it's true, Perez runs with it, so he can get the exclusive advance on an item with that publicist later, regardless of whether or not the publicist is doing it to take heat off of the story while reps work a strategy. Or it's true. But this couple's had long-rumored problems for a while, and when there's smoke, there's fire.
Just sayin'.
[Photo via Getty Images]
The Hurt Locker's chances at Oscar just got a little hurt. Of course, what more can you expect from a team of Inglourious Basterds?
Quentin Tarantino's band of...
When Drew Barrymore won her Golden Globe for best actress in a miniseries last Sunday, we kind of ignored her on the fashion front. We just weren't sure what to do with those sea urchin things...
Sandra Bullock pimped for Meryl Streep. The Inglourious Basterds bunch interpreted for Brad Pitt. The cast of Glee voted for Jane Lynch. And Tina Fey promoted peace and harmony at...
AP - Police say fans of MTV's "Jersey Shore" deluged a New Jersey nightclub, forcing the closure of a thoroughfare and leading to the arrests of four people. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 23 Jan 2010 | 9:01 pm
Looks like Tinseltown's finest fashionistas have been inspired by all the rainbows that hovered over Hollywood this past week.
From Mariska Hargitay's hot-pink halter gown to...
If you guessed "TOLDJA" and "inane trademarking," you'd be correct. A tipster noted that Elizabeth Swanson, a lawyer for Deadline Hollywood Daily's moneypeople, Mail.com, filed a trademark on Finke's catchphrase of "TOLDJA" on August 12, 2009. On November 17, 2009, a non-final action was mailed to Finke's lawyers noting that they've received "a letter from the examining attorney requesting additional information and/or making an initial refusal. However, no final determination as to the registrability of the mark has been made." That was the most recent development. Curiously, the filing also notes that the company the trademark is being filed on behalf of is...
...a website featuring on-line publications in the fields of sports, entertainment and lifestyle.
Does that mean Deadline Hollywood Daily is looking to expand their brand to Sports and "lifestyle," maybe?
And often, with an exclamation point, which makes her filing the "TOLDJA" and not "TOLDJA!" that much funnier. [Ed. Note to Gabriel, Nick: Maybe we should grab?] But is it really necessary to trademark TOLDJA?
Certainly, we've done some boasting around here, but none as patently obnoxious and brash as Finke's TOLDJA. Besides being phonetically irritating—the mixed, mouthy, hard "oldj" sound, followed by the tawdry "ya"—it's the kind of shit most third graders would manage to note as a relatively blase, pedestrian boast, even for them. It's downright stupid, consistently annoying, and would only be funny under a circumstance in which Finke employed some degree of irony with it, which she doesn't. Finke's TOLDJA exists for the precise reason of being irritating towards the many various, imaginary detractors of her scoops in order to lend her voice a combative quality to it. In Hollywood, this kind of simian chest-pounding is more or less the norm, so maybe she can be excused on that front.
But the point that's hard to get past? The actual trademarking of TOLDJA. Not because the catchphrase sucks—which it does—but more because Finke, a vehement hunter of Hollywood's hypocrisy, has rallied against this kind of thing before, when Disney tried trademarking a princess name:
The problem is that, if the Disney Company is successful, it will effectively control the legal right to all future performances of the ballet. The move also could sink any movie about the ballet or that uses a scene of the ballet in another movie. "This would be like a film studio trademarking the character name "Ebenezer Scrooge" for all media (no one has) and then no one could perform "A Christmas Carol" on a stage, TV, in a film, radio, etc without first securing the right to use the name from the trademark owner," a critic emails me.
How 'bout that? Either way, Nikki "Don't Give a Fuck" Finke, with all of her supposed no-bullshit-bravado, doesn't really strike me as the kind of person to be concerned with the minutiae of her annoying catchphrases. Then again, this is Nikki "I Bitchslapped David Remnick" Finke we're talking about, here, and it's exactly the kind of wrecking-ball-to-a-birdhouse over-the-top approach to her own narrative her readers should be used to at this point. Now that Finke's gone corporate, it looks like she might have a little extra time on her hands (or a few extra hands with some time) to take care of her unfinished business. Like trademarking TOLDJA.
That said, this is a win-win situation for everyone.
If the paperwork goes through, Finke gets her trademark. The rest of us get one of the most annoying phrases in the history of the King's taken off the table for good. In fact, in her spirit, we hereby call for Finke—and you—to vigorously enforce Finke's trademark with the same moxie with which she polices her beat. If you see or hear anybody using TOLDJA without the express permissions of Mail.com/Deadline Hollywood Daily/Nikki Finke and all parties related, please, for the love of all that is sacred and trademarked,let her know. We wouldn't want anybody else to have what's rightfully hers.
(Reuters) Reuters - Here's a plot twist worthy of any Hollywood movie. To save independent films from extinction, the time may be near for some low-budget movies to play outside theaters, instead of in them. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 23 Jan 2010 | 8:57 pm
AP - Inside the Shrine Exposition Center, banquet tables filled with A-listers sat side by side as stars of TV and film honored their peers at Saturday night's Screen Actors Guild Awards.
AP - Folk singer Arlo Guthrie has headlined a sold-out concert that raised more than $10,000 for the victims of series of arson fires in western Massachusetts.
While NBC catches grief for the Jay Leno-Conan O'Brien controversy, its Alec Baldwin-Tina Fey comedic combo brought the network some honor at the SAG awards.
Cast in a Motion Picture: Inglourious Basterds
Male Actor in a Leading Role: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
Female Actor in a Leading Role: Sandra Bullock,...
The Madonna episode of SAG Award-winning show Glee is coming up soon, and there are rumors that Jennifer Lopez has her own ep in the works. So who else are the producers eyeing as a guest...
Another day, another awards show and yet another opportunity for Sandra Bullock to grace the red carpet. At tonight's SAG Awards, the actress, who took home the trophy for her acclaimed...
While some stars went for over-the-rainbow gowns at the 2010 SAG Awards, Marion Cotillard and Katrina Bowden went for flirty, feathery frocks. So which glamour girl makes the angelic look...
The rumor sounds crazy, but super fun, right? That the Academy was "secretly" looking to spice up their two-white-guy Oscar hosting lineup of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin? Even more fun...
Apple lawyers haven't yet filed any specific complaints about Fujitsu's "iPAD" mark yet, they've just asked for time, and then more time, to put together arguments against the name. So it's entirely possible Apple just wants to preserve the option of naming its tablet the "iPad" up until launch, expected to come at a press event Jan. 27.
IP Application Development LLC, a company linked to Apple that has filed patents in internationally for the iPad mark, has now filed an application to trademark "iPad" in the United States as well. The application is dated January 16, and appears to have been posted to the US Patent and Trademark Office website today. The application was filed under Filing Basis 1(b) and 44(d). According to the USPTO website, Filing Basis 1(b) refers to the "bona fide intention to use a mark in commerce" and 44(b) refers to the "claim of priority, based on an earlier-filed foreign application under §44(d)." Looks like last week's international filings were a precursor to this filing under 44(d).
Fun! Apple thinks they have the god-given right to iPad. Despite the fact that they couldn't file even though they didn't go after it until now, which is funny, considering they've had the iPod out in stores for, what, seven years? And it sounds a whole hell of a lot like the iPod! Anyway! Even more revealing is this:
The application covers hundreds of goods and services including: computers, books, games, and telecommunications. Interestingly, one service being applied for "enables users to program the scheduling of audio, video, text and other multimedia content, including music, concerts, videos, radio, television, news, sports, games, cultural events, and entertainment-related programs as they will be aired".
Don't know what that is, but it sounds dangerously awesome and Jesus Tablet-y! Or iPad-y. Or whatever. The point is this machine is called something and that something is probably "iPad" and if you name your kid "iPod" so help you god because they will not stop until his soul is sucked out his ass or his name is changed or he belongs to Steve Jobs. Bottom line.
This ruling opens the floodgates for an unlimited amount of special interest money into our democracy. It gives the special interest lobbyists new leverage to spend millions on advertising to persuade elected officials to vote their way – or to punish those who don't. That means that any public servant who has the courage to stand up to the special interests and stand up for the American people can find himself or herself under assault come election time. Even foreign corporations may now get into the act.
By "act," he alludes to sex. And by "sex" he alludes to the Supreme Court moving aside while corporate entities use their constitutional right to take their big dick money and slap around an election with it. Because money wins elections. And corporations have money. Which means corporations win elections. Unless they assemble a bad ass crew, maybe.
According to the New York Times,Obama's bringing back (among others) campaign manager David Plouffe to school suckas and ensure that the Democrats don't lose any more seats in the upcoming Fall elections. Also, he's dispatching his A-Team across the country to advise on hotly contested battles.
The president summoned Mr. Plouffe to the Oval Office hours before the polls closed in Massachusetts and asked him to assume the new role because of the implications the midterm elections hold. Mr. Plouffe built a reputation in 2008 as a master of the nuts and bolts of campaigns, and will assemble a team to provide unfiltered political information that serves as an early-warning system so the White House and party officials know if a candidate is falling behind.
(AP)
AP - Hermes stepped back from the fashion fray on Saturday by delivering a collection of timeless pieces that willfully snubbed trendiness.
As the stars hit the red carpet of the 2010 SAG Awards, they weren't at a loss for things to say. Luckily for you, we pulled together the best bits. Check 'em out.
"Morgan...
That shana punim's deceiving! Note the costume of the Goyim Gift Devil and the Evil RedEyes! Clearly, this man caused some shit. But really: no.
Not everybody thought so, however. Via the Kvetcher, Rabbi Avi Shafran, an Orthodox Rabbi-Blogger and spokesman for Orthodox congregation and advocacy group Agudath Israel, noted in an essay entitled "The Earth Trembles" that...
The very week of the recent catastrophe in Haiti, a national Jewish newspaper published a comic strip featuring grotesque depictions of religious Jews and aimed at disparaging Jewish outreach to other Jews. Those are examples of anti-Orthodox invective. But ill will and its expression, tragically, know no communal bounds – in fact, the offensive comic strip seized upon intemperate statements made by Orthodox Jews about others. Had we only eyes like the Chofetz Chaim's, we would discern that hatred and the misuse of the holy power of speech are not small evils. We would understand that they shake the very earth under our feet.
Chofetz Chaim = The Book on Jewish Speech, or the Rabbi who wrote it, which or who I doubt covered comic books, but regardless, Valley's comic isn't by any means grotesque. That's neither here nor there, though, because the point is that it didn't start an earthquake. All Shafran really manages is to serve as irrefutable evidence that all bigots, regardless of race, ethnicity, or religious beliefs are all just the same indistinguishable ignoramuses whose words and rhetoric only make the world worse, and only serve to push humans in the opposite direction they should be moving: apart.
A timeline, for those of you who don't want to sit through the entire thing:
-7:28 to -0:34: Olbermann plays the entire Daily Show clip of Stewart impersonating him in full.
-0:33 to -0:19: Olbermann goes for "hip-dig" points by calling Short Attention Span Theater the "professional apex" of Jon Stewart.
-0:18 to 0:00: Finally, the apology: "Eh, you're right. I have been a little over the top lately. Point taken. Sorry."
This isn't thefirsttime Olbermann's found himself apologizing, but for a guy who calls on others to do it so often, you'd think he'd do it more, and somewhat sincerely? Right, not so much.
But this is Keith Olbermann we're talking about: Jon Stewart is, at the very least, a self-aware clown. Keith Olbermann, on the other hand? An assclown by any measure, but particularly this one. He ended his show by playing seven minutes of Jon Stewart's routine, and took less than a minute and a half to actually try to manage the issue—which he didn't—in toto. Especially fun was the noting that Olbermann didn't go on Stewart's show, which is practically begging for an invitation back, which will naturally prompt Olbermann to ask Stewart to come as a guest on Countdown. Olbermann gets press for a feud, press from his Daily Show appearance, and ratings from when Stewart inevitably goes on Countdown. If this happens, we can only hope Stewart does what he did to Tucker Carlson and to Bill O'Reilly, which is: eviscerate him on his home turf. If anything, to echo a sentiment widely held to Keith Olbermann's face, which would go something like, You, sir, are an asshole. And nothing but.
South Carolina's Lt. Governor Andre Bauer, who is running for Governor of the state on the Republican ticket, said a bunch of monumentally stupid and ignorant things that would shock even the most cynical person at a luncheon the other day, like:
"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."
Let's be absolutely clear, here: Bauer's remarks are not appalling because they're offensive or "un-PC" or a Biden-esque "oops!" They're reprehensible because this man who currently holds office in South Carolina and is making a bid to run the state is demonstrating beyond a shadow of a doubt that he doesn't possess even the very most basic understanding of the biggest problem in his state, which is poverty. Deep, ingrained, historical-legacy style poverty. The kind of poverty where, forget about college, nobody in your family has ever owned a telephone or a car or a TV or known how to read. The kind of rural poverty that at its worst is invisible to most Americans, because the only way to see it is to accidentally get off I-95 at a no-gas-station exit and drive twenty or so miles from the highway. That is what this still, in 2010, very segregated state is dealing with. And then their Lt. Governor said something even worse:
"I can show you a bar graph where free and reduced lunch has the worst test scores in the state of South Carolina. You show me the school that has the highest free and reduced lunch, and I'll show you the worst test scores, folks. It's there, period."
Yeah, no shit. The fact that Bauer is presenting the correlation between poverty and low test scores as his own magical "aha" discovery and not something every high school student who has ever taken a sociology class understands should strike nothing less than mortal fear in the hearts of anyone who lives in or cares about the state of South Carolina. Poverty, especially of the Southern kind, is an extremely complicated and difficult and frustrating issue, and so far nobody, Democrat or Republican, has been able to solve it. But South Carolina deserves a leader who at least knows what it is.
Bauer: Needy 'Owe Something Back' for Aid [Greenville News]
Preliminary ratings info for Conan's farewell show last night are "blockbuster," according to the New York Times Media Decoder, particularly in the 18-49 demographic. The upshot seems to be that if Coco can just find a way to say a bittersweet star-studded goodbye every night on his next network, he can be bigger than American Idol. [Media Decoder/NYT]
Just before the polls closed in Massachusetts on Tuesday, president Obama called in his former campaign manager David Plouffe and asked him to oversee Democratic house, senate, and governor's races this year, in hopes of preventing party catastrophes like Tuesday's Massachusetts Senatorial election. So, get ready for more emails from David Plouffe. [NYT]
The spirit of economic populism is everywhere in 2010, from Massachusetts to late-night TV, and Sundance is no exception. Programmers have been attempting to tone down the deal making, get-rich-quick reputation of the festival and rebrand it as rebellious. We know this because the word "rebel" is stamped everywhere, usually in bright red, rather corporate fonts. So, who's a rebel? On Saturday, the most persuasive radicals were Ben Affleck, Chris Cooper, and Tommy Lee Jones as the white-collar execs of The Company Men, a sterling drama about corporate downsizing in Boston that rattled nerves, stoked anger, and sparked Oscar gossip.
The Company Men Perfects the Downsizing Drama
Despite the grim material (or perhaps because of its timeliness), the Q&A after the 9:30 pm world premiere of John Wells’s film was regularly punctuated by bursts of applause. The loudest and warmest response of the night came when co-star Cooper got choked up talking about how his brother, a builder of fine houses in Georgia who has been hit by tough financial times, has had to prevent some of his employees from taking their own lives (Wells himself based the story on the life of his brother-in-law, an engineering executive who was downsized and forced to move his family into his parents‘ home). Surprisingly somber and complex, the film nails the quiet desperation of joblessness with minimal cloying and very few attempts at artificial uplift. It’s the movie Up in the Air should have been. (B.E.) Hesher's Downtrodden Stars Fail to Convince, But Fascinate
Steven Susser’s wild, exciting debut film, about a nutso anarchist trickster figure (Joseph Gordon-Leavitt) who charges into the lives of a father and son in mourning, has understandably split critics and will likely never reach a broad commercial audience. Here’s why: Natalie Portman is just not believable as a grocery store cashier who can’t get more than 15 hours of work a week. Even in granny glasses and ill-fitting shirts, she looks like a starlet on the L train. Despite a full-throttle performance, Gordon-Leavitt’s character is also almost totally implausible: reckless and violent but with a grandma-loving heart of gold. And it’s probably too early to take Rainn Wilson seriously as a grieving dad. Still, something about this off-kilter, amped-up dreamscape works. Susser’s tone is pitched so high it would blow out your speakers, but he’s found an incredible kid actor in Devin Brochu, and the shrieking, hysterical atmosphere does work in the context of grief, which can make the most rational among us go crazy. (L.H.)
Sitcom Star Tweaks Woody Allen in Happythankyoumoreplease
Halfway through the charming writing-and-directing debut of How I Met Your Mother's Josh Radnor, Zoe Kazan delivers a hilarious riff on Woody Allen, essentially saying his movies would improve if he made less of them and got out a little more. It’s a bold swipe from a star who's spent most of his life on CBS sitcom backlots, but it’s funny, and that’s pretty much how this film works: Radnor’s three interlocking Lower East Side stories set the bar high (finding meaning, trusting others, finding family) but he takes a spritely leap and just about clears it. There’s a plot involving a desperate young black kid who is essentially used as a prop (despite a few self-aware jokes), and occasionally, it feels as if Radnor is skimming stones across deeper waters, but compared to most recent rom-coms, this is practically Bergmanesque. Warm, excellent performances from Kazan, Kate Mara, and a surprisingly sexy Tony Hale cannot be denied. (L.H.)
Wealthy New Yorkers Suffer Too in Please Give
Speaking of contemporary New York dramas, Lovely & Amazing and Friends with Money director Nicole Holofcener is back at Sundance with another terrific ensemble (Catherine Keener, a fantastic Oliver Platt, Amanda Peet, Rebecca Hall, and Maddie Corman) and another wry take on gentrified Manhattan. Keener gets a meaty part as a vintage furniture storekeeper who feels guilty about buying the furniture of dead people and marking it up to Soho prices. The short takeaway: If you don’t like dramas about the dilemmas of wealthy, Manhattanites who search their souls while searching for the right pair of $200 jeans, you will not love this film. But if you love Holofcener and Keener together, as I do, it‘s irresistible. (L.H.)
Comedian and actor Michael Ian Black took to his blog this morning to write a well-thought-out screed on Conan's cultural martyrdom, arguing that the millionaire talk show host who quit his job because he didn't want to air at a later time is hardly the same as working-class heroine portrayed by Sally Field in 1978's Norma Rae:
"How did a Harvard-educated, multi-millionaire late night talk show host magically transmogrify into a guy who got laid off at the local car plant? The overreaction to Conan’s departure has been kind of astounding; as a nation, are we really that concerned about who hosts “The Tonight Show,” a television program that stopped being culturally relevant around 1986?"
Conan himself would actually probably agree with the entire thing.
TMZ reports that comedian Andy Dick, who is on probation for assault in a 2008 pizza joint incident, was arrested early this morning and charged with two felony counts of sexual abuse. He was in Huntington, West Virginia to perform at a comedy club called The Funny Bone. TMZ has local news video of Dick's perp walk in which Dick answers the question "Why are you being arrested" with "People grabbin' on me." [TMZ]
After a week of squabbling between Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough and Countdown's Keith Olbermann, MSNBC president Phil Griffin has issued a memo telling his talent to cut it out:
"I encourage you to keep doing what you do best. Give the viewers your perspective and a vigorous debate on the issues they care about. But do not turn substantive differences into personal ones."
The memo comes after Scarborough took to his Twitter to compare Olbermann to Glenn Beck after Olbermann called new Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown:
"An irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, tea-bagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees."
Hope For Haiti Now, the multi-channel, global, live telethon last night organized by George Clooney to benefit Haiti was an appropriately somber affair, with the focus firmly on Haitians who need our help. The biggest surprise, and arguably the best performance of the night was by Justin Timberlake, who, along with singer/songwriter Matt Morris sang a haunting interpretation of the much-covered Leonard Cohen ballad "Hallelujah." Other performances (Bono, The Edge, Rihanna and Jay-Z's "Stranded," Madonna's "Like a Prayer") stood out, but it was Timberlake's risky performance that rendered even the haters (of that beautiful song being covered ever again) speechless.
Acclaimed actress Jean Simmons, best known for her work in Guys and Dolls, Spartacus, and The Thorn Birds, died yesterday of lung cancer. The LA Times has a loving retrospective. [LAT]
AP - Designer eyewear, cool black jeans and a range of T-shirts specially designed for a charity auction adorned models at the Berlin fashion week Saturday.
In his weekly address to the nation this morning, Obama did not hold back in condemning the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision this week to allow corporations to directly finance election campaigns. In an impassioned speech, Obama seems incredulous that the Supreme Court would take such a step backward, calling the ruling "A powerful blow to our efforts to reign in corporate interests." He also points out what many have seen as the most insidious and frightening implication of the ruling: corporate revenge: "That means that any public servant who has the courage to stand up to the special interests, to stand up for the American people, can find himself or herself under assault come election time." Watching this, we wonder if Obama has seen the underrated Mike Judge film Idiocracy, which, with this ruling, just got a hundred times more prophetic.
AP - Models in Amish-looking suits skulked the catwalk at Dior Homme on Saturday, proving that wide-cut vests and high-water trousers can be the height of Parisian chic.
Fashion Wire Daily - They say that religion and politics don't, or should not, mix. But what about religion and fashion? Well, in the hands of Givenchy's designer Riccardo Tisci it can lead to all sorts of witty and thought-provoking fashion, especially for men, as he showed Friday, Jan. 22, in Paris.
Family members of YaVaughnie Wilkins, the lady who plastered those billboards of herself and Oracle president (and economic adviser to the Obama Administration) Charles Phillips in Times Square and elsewhere this week, tell the Post that Wilkins and Phillips lived together for years as a couple and that Wilkins was unaware that Phillips was still married. A cousin of Wilkins said: "The only time he wasn't with her was when he was traveling on business. I have no idea now whether he really was on business trips. It's all very upsetting. He was a real part of the family." Okay, but what about those billboards, the indisputable work of a crazy person?:
"She wanted to show that she was not insignificant to him, that the relationship was real," Davila said. "She thought friends and family would go to the site. She didn't expect it to turn into what it is."
Obviously it's called getting over a breakup gracefully while preserving one's dignity and self-respect, but if that's not an option, as it clearly wasn't here, it's called Facebook!
24 is set in New York this year, but look closely next time you watch, because chances are, that iconic building in the frame wasn’t really shot here. When we ran into Jennifer Westfeldt at Sundance — where she’d come to support her boyfriend, Jon Hamm, who plays the defense lawyer for Allen Ginsberg’s obscenity trial in Howl — we told her how cool it was that the U.N. had let her shoot a scene in which her nefarious journalist character gets past security. "Oh," she said, laughing. "I wasn’t at the U.N. I wasn’t in New York. I was in some field in Valencia." Westfeldt told us she shot all her scenes on green screen. "I think they wanted to shoot three weeks in New York and my part wasn’t budget-approved. I was standing on the street in front of the U.N. and I had to imagine cars and taxis. They’re like, 'It’s loud! It’s the din of the taxis, and New York street noise!’' And you’re like, ‘I feel so stupid. I’m alone in a field in Valencia.’"
Still, Westfeldt, who’d never done green screen before, walked away with a new appreciation of the process. “It makes me think that every actor who has played in movies that are all CGI is amazing. They’re amazing." Westfeldt said the closest she got to being in a New York setting was “when they take me down. They found a nice location in Los Angeles so we could run through some courtyards and there were lots of extras.” In any case, she’ll have more time to practice her green-screen skills very soon. “I’m going back to shoot more 24 in two weeks,” she said, then quickly covered her mouth. “Spoiler alert!” Then she shrugged. “Well, I mean, my character didn’t die.”
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"Morgan...
