Month: April 2010

This pic is more than a month old (snapped at Vanity Fair‘s post-Oscar bash) and no big deal, but I was struck by (a) Katy Perry‘s look of tingly delight and transportation and (b) a thought that it’s awfully nice to be the recipient of such a gaze. Then again these inner-light expressions tend to happen more often within the first few months of a relationship than after a year or two or three. Perry has been with Russell Brand, a three-time winner of the Sun‘s shagger of the year award, since September ’09, so that fits.

Then again Perry may have spotted the photographer, knew a shot was coming and decided to slightly “act” the part of a love-struck, recently engaged fiance. Just as Brand decided to act the part of a cool hawk-eyed hustler, scanning the room for his next opportunity.

President Barack Obama‘s likely nominee to replace retiring Chief Associate Justice John Paul Stevens is said to be solicitor general (and former Harvard Law School dean) Elena Kagan. The general understanding is that she’s (a) quite brilliant, (b) ideologically centrist if not conservative (Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald wrote yesterday that “replacing Stevens with Kagan would shift the Supreme Court substantially to the right on a litany of key issues”), and (c) openly gay.

If Kagan is in fact nominated Team Obama will be viewed as having gone the cautious if not vaguely chickenshit route, considering that Kagan’s conservative leanings will make it hard for Republicans to sqawk all that loudly and will deprive them of an election-year issue. Unless, of course, they want to play the anti-gay bigot card.

Yesterday’s posting about that Nike/Tiger Woods ad led me to an anonymously-penned piece about infidelity in the current Esquire. The opening reads as follows:

“I’ll tell you why I cheat. I need to. Infidelity makes me remember things. The details that expand to fill my life (my upcoming performance reviews, the aches and pains of training, the recovery of my 401(k) ) and the ones that deaden it (my guilt, my smug self-satisfaction, my fake epiphanies about my progress in this life) — all of that drops away when I look down at the naked spine of an unfamiliar woman, twisting slightly in the late-afternoon sunlight streaming onto the sheets of a Hampton Inn in some nameless suburb.

“This is the most absolute choice I can make. I am there on my own. Against every code, rule, and set of mores I pretend to obey. Against better judgment, against every lesson of hindsight and every shard of wisdom that comes with age, I have no regrets in that moment, because I am naked, or without pants, and I have chosen to be there. I have voted by my presence, declared it, and I feel the blood moving in me again. So it’s the blood. That’s who I am. That’s why men cheat.

“Men don’t cheat because they can. Men cheat because they must, because they need to. This is the male struggle. Need compels us to try again. Because copulation is not in any way about fate. It is not about two individuals destined to meet on some dark night. It’s about random collisions.

“If you cheat, you must believe this much: that fated love is a lie, and monogamous love a deception. If you cheat, these two sentiments are your guiding light. Doesn’t mean you’re incapable of love, doesn’t mean you don’t want what love — or even marriage — can offer. It’s just a paradox. You have what you believe, and it is never the lie. You train your sentiment to fit inside the lie. Your rules fit right inside that sentiment.”

“The odds greatly favor death coming with a sudden terrible shock,” a friend once told me, “or from a long agonizing illness.” Polish president Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria, and several Polish political and military leaders have ducked the second scenario. Their plane hit a treetop as it attempted a landing in heavy fog this morning near Smolensk, about 225 miles southwest of Moscow, and then broke apart and exploded into flames. Awful. The mind reels.

Polish president Lech Kaczynski, Barack Obama in 2009.

Kaczynski, 61, was arriving in Smolensk “for a ceremony commemorating the murder of more than 20,000 Polish officers by the Red Army as it invaded Poland,” a N.Y. Times story reports. TV footage “showed chunks of flaming fuselage scattered in a bare forest. An official with the Russia’s Investigative Committee said possible causes were bad weather, mechanical failure and human error.

“The crash came as a staggering blow to Poland, killing what may be a tenth of country’s top leadership in one fiery explosion.”

Polish president Lech Kaczynski and wife Maria

Russell Crowe is credited as co-producer of Robin Hood (Universal, 5.14) alongside Brian Grazer and director Ridley Scott, and is nothing if not proud of the on-screen result, writes the Sydney Morning Herald‘s Peter Fitzsimons.

“So proud that this will be the first of his many films that he will allow his sons, Charlie and Tennyson, to watch. ‘I think it would be confusing for them to see me in films, just as it is confusing for them to see people stop me on the street and ask for autographs,’ Crowe says. ‘But I want them to see this one. Really, all kids have gotta see Robin Hood. It is important to grow up with that thing in your mind.'”

A concept, he means, of a “really normal” fellow with an aptitude for exceptionalism.

“Robin is not a superhero,” he explains. “He doesn’t have a cape. He’s normal. He’s just a bloke. But he’s a man who’s seen a lot of things and understands how it all works. [Going back and forth to the Crusades] he’s been through France, been through Italy, seen the control of the church, been through Greece and he understands that democracy works. He’s seen all of the great empires of his time, come back to his own country and realizes that his own people are the poorest of all, and that things must change.”

In short, Robin Hood is not a film for the likes of Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, etc. For Robin Hood is about nothing if not a certain economic fairness, the redistribution of wealth, forcing the moneyed elite to do the right thing by society’s lessers. Sounds an awful lot like socialism to me!

The pump don’t work ’cause The Vandals took the handles. On top of which they’re being sued by Daily Variety for appropriating the font and style of the Daily Variety logo for a parody logo used on the cover of their tenth album, Hollywood Potato Chip, which they decided upon as “a commentary on the materialistic culture of Hollywood,” a statement on the band’s website says.

Anyway, the band reports that Variety attorneys are claiming “it is still on the internet and they are suing us for this. We agreed not to use this logo anymore and we have no product for sale with this logo so their claims that we are intentionally using it and harming the Daily Variety are ludicrous.”

Intrigued by the news (via a Jon Favreau tweet) about Harrison Ford being cast in Favreau’s Cowboys & Aliens, I flipped through 100 pages of the online version of the original graphic novel, looking for an Uncle Festus character whom Ford might play.

Ford would have played Zeke Jackson if the film had been made in the early to late ’80s, but this ain’t the early to late ’80s. (Daniel Craig has the part.) I haven’t read a recent draft of the script, but the only guy in the comic whom Ford could possibly play is a 60ish U.S. Cavalry Colonel who refers to Native Americans as “filthy savages” and is soon after wasted by the aliens. A cameo, in short — two or three minutes and hasta la vista.

Of course, the screenwriters (Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Damon Lindel) could always expand his part.

Cowboys & Aliens “begins with a nice prologue comparing the European invasion to an alien invasion,” a Bluecorn Comics summary begins. “For Indians, that’s just about what the European invasion was. Between guns, germs, and steel, they had no idea what hit them. They learned fast, but that wasn’t enough to stave off eventual defeat.

“But the comic immediately subverts this message with the main story, which opens with…I kid you not…an Indian attack on a wagon train. Most of your basic Native stereotypes quickly appear. The Indians are Apaches…riding horses…with a Plains-style chief…half-naked braves…and a ‘shaman.’

“The Indians have no culture or religion other than dancing around a fire before a big fight. The text refers to them ironically as ‘savages,’ but the story portrays them as actual savages.

“Apaches on horseback attacking a wagon train at the behest of a chief in a warbonnet? Taking place ‘in and around Dodge City, Kansas, just after the Civil War’? Um, I don’t think so.

“So the movie will ‘keep it real,’ and the graphic novel has more ‘layers and history’ than the movie will? Scary. Judging by the graphic novel, the movie will be completely divorced from the Native American reality.

“In other words, a hundred times zero is still zero. You do the math.

“There are only a few saving graces. One, the Indians live in wickiups rather than tipis, which is the only accurate cultural note I saw for a supposed band of Apaches. Two, a few of their names aren’t stereotypical. Three, the Indians learn the alien technology as quickly as the whites do. And they’re just as quick to cease hostilities and join with their fellow humans against the bad guys.

“Both the story and art are unsubtle and (to me) not especially interesting. I’d say Cowboys & Aliens is more for younger, action-oriented readers than adults. Save your money and read it online instead.”

In a 4.9 Politico piece, columnist Michael Calderone reviews how “legacy publications are recruiting and lavishly rewarding a new breed of journalist” who “offers an edgy style and expertise in a particular field but has never spent a day covering cops or courts or county boards — traditionally the rungs of the ladder all reporters had to climb.”

Calderone also quotes Daily Dish columnist Andrew Sullivan, to wit: “I think this is the way forward for what was once called old media. Voices matter. Trust in the old media brands is largely over. Everything has an individual character or [it] dies.”

I don’t think it’s stretching the point in the slightest to say that this same rule applies in the coverage of Hollywood and entertainment.

My dream is to see a movie in which the four Sex and the City ladies are dropped into some ghastly situation and made to suffer over a period of weeks if not months. Brought down to earth and made to taste bitter herbs. Forced to deal with whatever unfortunate circumstances can be imagined or devised. I would not only pay to see this film but would run free advertising on Hollywood Elsewhere to support it. Tell me where to sign.

I could also roll with a movie about their spiritual redemption. Let’s see…an angel named Clarence — a short old guy in his 70s — is sent down to earth to help them save their souls. He tries to persuade them to think about adopting a somewhat less egocentric approach to life — new thoughts, new priorities. They giggle and wave him off, of course.

They all wake up the next morning in Bumblefuck, Idaho, each weighing about 50 or 60 pounds more and with bad skin and horrible jobs at K-Mart and fast-food joints, and with pot-smoking, anal-sex-loving, large-bellied ayholes for boyfriends. And then when the girls have reached the end of their ropes, they all scream out, “Clarence! Clarence! We want to be human beings! We’re not the women we once were….Clarence! Help us!”

And they’re suddenly sitting back in their Manhattan apartments, and are indeed changed women. Those monster incarnations of yore are but an indistinct memory.

Five’ll get you ten that the synthetic female fans of the last two Sex and the City flicks would boycott the Clarence movie….whaddaya think?

I’m sorry to say that Remember Me and a clip from that Salvador Dali biopic has led me to conclude that Robert Pattinson (a.k.a. “R-Patz”) isn’t a very persuasive or inventive actor. And for this reason alone today’s Sun report about his being cast as Kurt Cobain in a Universal biopic called All Apologies sounds — if true — like a terrible idea.

I asked a Universal spokesperson if the story is true to the best of his knowledge, and he said “I don’t believe so…in fact, wasn’t it already denied? Check out Vulture, I think.” There’s a denial on the Spin website, actually.

Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson tweeted this morning that Ryan Gosling would be a better choice. I agree completely.

But on the slight chance that the Pattinson story might be half-legit, isn’t he too tall to play Cobain? Cobain was 5’10”, and Pattinson seems taller than his reported height of 6’1″. (I’m speaking as a 6 foot 1/2-incher who’s stood next to him at a party.) Pattinson will seem way bigger if he’s paired in the film with Scarlett Johansson, who’s been spoken of, the Sun story claims, to play Courtney Love, Cobain’s wife.

But let’s forget Pattinson-Cobain. It was just a silly tab thing that lasted five or six hours.