In a highly droll, deliciously phrased 6.1 piece in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Dave White assesses “Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars.” The Old Hollywood tell-all by Scott Bowers and Lionel Freidberg has been out for about four months. Read my riff about it, which was posted last January, and then savor White’s article, which is called “Town Pump.”

The book claims, says White, that Bowers and his “horniest, neediest, most open-minded pals, both male and female, serviced en masse all manner of Hollywood hot shots, names both above and below the title, with Bowers using his legendary penis to satisfy more of the rich and famous than anyone could count, himself included. The way he tells it, the scene was a non-stop, barely contained bacchanal. Orgies of every stripe, down-low gangbangs arranged in a wink, you name it. Right out in the open. Vice squad eluded. Everybody getting all the hot monkey sex any human being could want or even contemplate handling. Then everyone got up at five o’clock in the morning to make their call time.

“Sound impossible? No. It’s a big world, anything’s possible. But implausible? Hell yes.

“Think of it like this: you happen to live in Los Angeles where casually noticing celebrities in the supermarket, at the multiplex, at the gym is just something you’re used to. Now imagine each and every one of those celebrities not only noticing you in return, but laser-focusing their sights on you, hitting on you, offering you money for the sex, then becoming your close pal and subsequently fixing you up for more money and more sex with all of their famous friends, as well. If my life worked that way I’d have already been paid for sex by Jody Watley, Jennifer Beals, Patton Oswalt, Sandra Bernhard, Adam Sandler, Werner Herzog, Reese Witherspoon, Miranda July, Jim J. Bullock, and Johnny Mathis. But every one of those people ignored me, just like they’ll ignore you. In return I allowed them to buy their pork chops in peace.

“It’s a story of revelations — Tony Perkins was gay, Errol Flynn was drunk — that don’t feel revelatory any more. Stalker-y internet gossip site TMZ is its own TV show now and they’ve got a bus that runs all day long so tourists from Indiana can see where Chris Brown beat up Rihanna. Those tourists will pay attention to it for a few moments, walk away, forget it and then shop at the Hard Rock Cafe store, provided none of it makes them late for their shuttle ride back to the hotel in time for the Cirque du Soleil show at the former Kodak (now Dolby) Theatre.

“It’s a time in Hollywood history when Mel Gibson takes up with his mistress, puts a baby in her, screams weird racist things on the phone, they laugh about it on The View and then Jodie Foster turns around and puts him in her next movie. Charlie Sheen chases hookers around hotels and gets endorsement deals and a new sitcom out of it. Actors like Neil Patrick Harris simply announce their gayness and move on, rightly separating their professional, personal, and private experiences — no shame, no worries, no big deal.

“Scandal isn’t scandal anymore unless there’s murder involved, and Bowers’s book, out now these past few months, is just a badly-written blip in the entertainment news cycle, another tell-all sex book by someone you’ve never heard of. No lids ripped off. No eyebrows scorched from the burning shock of the page. It may all be true, but Gore Vidal is wrong when he calls it ‘startling’ on the jacket. It’s just repetitive, empty and, because the dead can’t be offended, harmless.

“If it has any value, it’s in its unstated, unexamined theme: That life used to be much, much harder for anyone whose desires fell outside the norm. Unless they were rich, of course. Then they called Scotty Bowers and he kept them in orgasms until the sexual revolution kicked in for everyone, including run-of-the-mill nobodies.”

I’ve never seen Ivan Tors and Herbert L. Strock‘s Gog (’54) but that title is perfect. There’s just something about that sound, that vibe….gog! The story is about fears of technology taking over everything — a sci-fi variant of The Desk Set. In this sense it’s almost a forebear of John Badham‘s WarGames.

It contains standard ’50 sci-fi characters — a handsome, thoughtful alpha male (Richard Egan) who’s new to an unusual scientific situation, an older, somewhat eccentric scientific authority figure (Herbert Marshall), an attractive, sexually seducable blonde or brunette (Constance Dowling) who either works for the scientist or is his willful daugfhter, a brilliant but posslbly malevolent lone wolf scientific figure (John Wengraf), etc.

You can’t tell from snippets, but I’d say the dialogue is reasonably intellligent sounding. It feels almost but not quite as well-written as Them! At one point a guy visiting a woman lying in a hospital bed says, “The doctor says it isn’t serious, just too much radiation. ” At a later point somebody says, “Can you hold off the robots until we get there?”

The trailer makes the story look fairly comical, of course, and the bargain-basement effects and cardboard-fortified sets seem to be almost Plane Nine From Outer Space-level, but I’m thinking of getting the DVD just so I can say I saw it.

From the Wiki page: “Gog was shot on two sets at Hal Roach Studios, with exteriors done at George AFB, a former Air Force base near Victorville, California. It took just 15 days to shoot all of the footage needed, and the film’s final cost was estimated at a quarter of a million dollars.

“Shortly after filming of Gog was completed, Constance Dowling married Ivan Tors and retired from acting.

“Although shot in 3-D, Gog was released at the tail end of the 3-D fad of 1953-54 and was therefore shown ‘flat’ in most venues, despite being available in its stereoscopic format. Gog was also filmed in flat widescreen at an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, which had become standard among US studios the year before.

“Critical response was generally positive, with many critics noting the story’s basis in science fact, rather than science fantasy. The film was previewed for the press at United Artists’ screening room in 3-D.”

“It’s tempting to blame the peculiar leadenness of Snow White and The Huntsman on its casting,” writes Slate‘s Dana Stevens. “Charlize Theron isn’t a terrible choice to play the evil queen, though the poignancy of the queen’s obsession with youth might register more deeply if she were played by an actress who showed any visible signs of aging. But Twilight‘s Kristen Stewart as Snow White — especially this particular version of Snow White, a Joan of Arc-like medieval action heroine? Not gonna happen.

“Stewart’s whole manner, her slouchy bearing and general aura of sulky passivity, make her ill-suited to play a deposed princess whose irresistible charisma enables her to lead a peasant revolt. Stewart may have a limited range, but I don’t mind her in contemporary roles — she’s just right as the moony Bella in the Twilight movies or Jesse Eisenberg‘s object of desire in Adventureland, and she even made a passable Joan Jett. Still, the image of her leading a castle siege in full battle armor is so incongruous it might come from one of those parody trailers that opened Ben Stiller‘s Tropic Thunder.”

In a 12.5.11 piece called “Stewart Needs To Dump CG Flicks,” I wrote that “I’ve admired Stewart’s work in The Runaways, Welcome to the Rileys and Adventureland. And I’m looking forward to her reportedly upfront Marylou performance in Walter Salles‘ On the Road. I used to think KStew might be evolving into Sean Penn. Now I’m not so sure.”

If LexG wasn’t banned I’m not sure he’d have a whole lot to say beyond the usual erotic fixation stuff. It’s probably just as well.

It seems obvious that Richard Shenkman‘s Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies (out now) is a cheesy Asylum attempt to cash in on the awareness levels for Timur Bekmambetov‘s Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (20th Century Fox, 6.22). But it’s not as if the Fox version, produced by Tim Burton, is a David Lean film. I’m presuming they’re both crap — the Bekmambetov is just costlier. I have an idea that the Shenkman will be funnier. I’ll be catching it this weekend.

Some IMDB Asylum crony from Denmark named Paul Haakonsen wrote on 5.28 that in the making of Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies, “I can honestly say that [Asylum] went all in this time, guns blazing and digging deep into their pockets. This movie is such a major step up the ladder, production-wise, for Asylum, and just looking at the movie on the screen is a testament to them suiting up and stepping up to join the major league of movie production. The cinematography was great, the effects were great, and the people they had cast did great jobs. So it was really a refreshing touch to Asylum’s production value.” Sure thing!

I didn’t arrive in time for the Prague all-media press screening for Snow White and the Huntsman, so I guess I’ll be humping it over to the Cinestar Andel (site of yesterday’s Prometheus screening) to catch it later today or tonight. An English language-with-subtitles version is showing only once at 8:15 pm.

If big news happens, it’s safe bet that the Huffington Post will have it bannered on the front page within five minutes or less. News of the sentencing of former Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak to life imprisonment broke sometime between 10:30 and 10:40 am Prague time (1:30 to 1:40 am in LA, 4:30 to 4:40 am in New York), and there was no Post headline 10 minutes later, and none 20 minutes later. It’s now 11:25 am in Prague and the Huffsters still don’t have the story headlined. [Note time on screen capture — 2:18 am.] 50 minutes of front-page silence on the biggest story of the day? Somebody needs to get whacked.

Update: Three minutes ago (11:34 am Prague time) the Huffington Post posted an AP link: “Mubarak to be transferred to Cairo prison.”

Mubarak was sentenced to life this morning for his role in the killing of protesters during last year’s Egyptian revolution that led to his ouster.

“The harsh sentence against the 84-year-old former leader appeared aimed at defusing tensions ahead of a divisive runoff presidential race that pits Mubarak’s last prime minister against the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate,” an AP story said.

Egypt’s former interior minister Habib el-Adly was also sentenced to life in prison for the protester killings. But the acquittal of other senior interior ministry figures plus Mubarak’s sons suggests that Mubarak the Elder is being put forth as a sacrificial lamb in order to save those still living high off the corruption and repression that are still in place within the Egyptian government.

This is a day or two old, but it’s revealing, I think, when Bill Clinton tells Harvey Weinstein (who was guest-hosting for Piers Morgan) that he’s never given any thought about who might play him in a film. Not Brad Pitt (“too good looking”), he said. George Clooney “is at least more my size. He’s good-looking but, you know, you could put bulbous things on his nose and you could do makeup with him.”

The best Clinton so far has been John Travolta‘s in Primary Colors — he had that laid-back folksy charm. Dennis Quaid‘s Clinton was better than decent, I thought, in HBO’s The Special Relationship.

Clinton singled out High Noon as his all-time favorite film, having seen it “25 or 30 times.” Dwight D. Eisenhower was also a seious fan; I read somewhere that George Bush also swears by it. Clinton talks a bit more about High Noon on the two-disc special edition DVD that came out in ’08.

About five years ago I wrote that High Noon “is not about the Old West, obviously — it’s a metaphor movie about the Hollywood climate in the early ’50s — but it walks and talks like a western, and is angry, blunt, honed and unequivocal to that end. It’s about the very worst in people, and the best in a single, anxious, far-from-perfect man. I’m speaking of screenwriter-producer Carl Foreman, who was being eyeballed by the Hollywood right for alleged Communist ties when he wrote it, and receiving a very tough lesson in human nature in the process.

“Foreman wound up writing a crap-free movie that talks tough, cuts no slack and speaks with a single voice.

“You know from the get-go that High Noon is going to say something hard and fundamental about who and what we are. It’s not going to poke along some dusty trail and go yippie-ki-yay and twirl a six-gun. It’s going to look you in the eye and say what’s what, and not just about the political and moral climate in some small western town that Gary Cooper’s Willl Kane is the sheriff of.

“High Noon may seem a bit stodgy or conventional to some and perhaps not as excitingly cinematic to the elites, but it’s a far greater film than Rio Bravo.

“Both are about a lawman (Cooper in High Noon, John Wayne in Rio Bravo) facing up to bad guys who will kill him if he doesn’t arrest or kill them first. The similarities pretty much end there.

“High Noon is about facing very tough odds alone, and how you can’t finally trust anyone but yourself because most of your ‘friends’ and neighbors will equivocate or desert you when the going gets tough. Rio Bravo is about standing up to evil with your flawed but loyal pallies and nourishing their souls in the bargain — about doing what you can to help them become better men. This basically translates into everyone pitching in to help an alcoholic (Dean Martin) get straight and reclaim his self-respect. High Noon doesn’t need help. It’s about solitude, values…four o’clock in the morning courage.

“We’d all like to have loyal supportive friends by our side, but honestly, which represents the more realistic view of human nature? The more admirable?”

I consider myself a ‘populist’ movie critic/reviewer,” a critic friend wrote a couple of hours ago. “I can enjoy a smart, well-done studio comedy (21 Jump Street) as much as I can savor a superb, foreign-language movie (A Separation). My top 10 list of 2011 included a mix of big Hollywood movies (Moneyball) and imports (Melancholia) and crowd-pleasers (War Horse) and indie-style fringe pictures (Drive).

“But this year’s crop of summer movies is draining the life out of me, and seriously making me consider hanging it up and switching beats or quitting journalism and changing professions altogether. Factory-line swill such as Men in Black 3 or What to Expect When You’re Expecting or Battleship is one thing. But when filmmakers I admire and respect — Ridley Scott, Joss Whedon, Sacha Baron Cohen — crank out bottom-feeder, soul-sucking swill, I start questioning myself. Is it me? Have the movies left me behind? I’m 45. Am I too old for this game?

“I keep thinking about what Janet Maslin wrote when she hung up her movie critic hat at the New York Times, specifically when she said she had run out of ways to say something was ‘hilarious.’ I keep seeing movies I was anticipating, made by people I admire, and keep coming away disappointed and agitated. And I’m starting to doubt my judgment — starting to wonder if it isn’t the movies that are the problem. Because how else can you explain the avalanche of shit that we’ve been getting this summer?

“In other words: Is it just me, or are mainstream American movies worse than they’ve ever been?”

Wells to critic friend: I was generally pleased by SBC’s The Dictator (particularly the political speech at the end about how Americans can’t understand what it’s like to live under a dictatorship) but otherwise I hear you. Yes, the despair over dreadful summer fare has become routine and yes, it seems to be getting worse each year. It’s corporatism, the plague of the ComicCon mentality and a general refusal to respond to subtlety or depth or delicacy among the under-30s. But being 45 shouldn’t be any kind of impediment to grappling with this. One way to cope is to adopt an absurdist “merrily we go to hell” attitude. Works for me, at least.

…but I don’t know about this trailer. The opening repeats three times, which is nervy but a little…what, spazzy? And not much personality. Maybe I’m wrong. Verdict?

I truly enjoy listening to N.Y. Times sophistos A.O. Sott and David Carr kick it around for their “Sweet Spot” series, but those awful Times tech guys refuse to make embed codes available. Not on YouTube (which features Scott’s “Critics Picks” videos) and not on Hulu, which the Times recently cut an output deal with. So just click on the link and watch. It’s about Carr trying to get Scott for being snooty and cruel.