A tipster wasn't naming names when s/he sent word of one film critic's rather vocal dissing of another, more "highly respected" critic at a press screening earlier this afternoon. But the math seems easy enough, even for us: A father, a son and a "pathetic old putz" who's no longer on the air? Show your work after the jump.
Unholy Unions: When we heard today that Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt had gotten married, we knew there would be pictures, and we had only one question: did Spencer shave off his abominable snowbeard for the wedding? As revealed by this cover of Us Weekly, no, he did not! The magazine and Life & Style are both reporting that Montag's parents were less than thrilled that their daughter went ahead and got married without her family present. Settle down, Montags: we're sure the dynamic duo is planning a second, blowout wedding at Les Deux as we speak. Will Lauren crash the ceremony to object? Will Brody Jenner be "best bro"? So many questions, so few cumulative brain cells. [Us]
Choosing our list of what to watch was difficult today, and the fact that Sara Rue on The Big Bang Theory (part of a multi-episode arc) and James Van Der Beek as a film director on One Tree Hill did not make the grade, shows how fertile the Monday TV landscape is for beloved TV actors. WATCH The Tonight Show with Jay Leno [11:35 PM, NBC] - Ron Howard, Jonas Brothers - Former and current teen idols unite in Burbank. Ron Howard promotes Frost/Nixon and will hopefully address the white hot rumors about the Arrested Development movie.Valkyrie: The Plot to Kill Hitler [10 PM, History] - This documentary covers the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler and take control of the German government through re-enactments, newsreel footage and interviews with historians, survivors and witnesses. Times are tight, so catch the raw history on basic cable and hold out for Valkyrie to come to a sketchy second-run multiplex. TiVo
· The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra comes to Disney Hall, The Decemberists are at The Wiltern, Monolators close their residency at Pehrspace, and Electile Dysfunction Tour featuring GWAR with The Return of Sleazy P. Martin and Kingdom of Sorrow is at the House of Blues. · "Psycho-funk folkster" Pop Levi premieres his first film, You Don't Gotta Run, which documents his recent tour of Europe. He'll perform after the screening, at the Silent Movie Theater. · Clippers vs. Hornets at the Staples Center.
Though he may be hard to recognize when he's not brandishing two samurai swords, this is Mario Majorski, the man who hopped out of a red convertible and attempted to cut a swath through the Scientology Celebrity Centre yesterday in Los Angeles. TMZ has the mugshot from one of Majorski's earlier arrests in Oregon, and more information is coming to light about Majorski's complicated relationship with the religion, which he was once a member of:
Pictured on a Disney premiere red carpet is fraternal showbiz sensation the Emanuel Brothers—Ari (the sexy brooding one, and the brains of the operation), Rahm (the cute, vocal one), and Zeke (the goofier-looking older one who you'd still totally be thrilled to settle for)—sending their throngs of young admirers into screaming fits and fainting spells.Unlike so many other Hollywood stars, parents approve of these upstanding young men, who wear their good intentions right on their heads in the form of Purity Yarmulkes. Catch them next in The Emanuel Brothers: The 3-D Experience, the poster of which features the boys clutching Fendi bags on the steps of Air Force One as they jet off to play a command performance at President Elect Barack Obama's Inauguration. [Thanks to NOTFAIL blog for a Photoshop we really wish we'd thought of ourselves.]
No explanation of the Twilight Phenomenon™ would likely be complete without such sizable insights as Kathie Lee Gifford's and the authoritative cultureklatsch at Fox and Friends. The latter group's ownership of the story — as evidenced by last Friday's extraordinary investigative study of "babes" headed to the multiplex in droves — continues today with a more think-y survey of how the chaste-vampire genre trumps the more occult flavor of the Harry Potter series, but over on TodayKathie Lee diclosed the real trick nudging Twilight toward box-office immortality: Teen girls are more into romance than sex. And those who aren't will be after the dressing-down delivered here. Failing the ready availability of another tween-friendly franchise, Hollywood would do well to bottle this and sell it.
When we broke the news that Fox had canceled MADtv, we also cited rumblings that Fox was going to keep its other late-night offering, the little-watched Talkshow With Spike Feresten. At the time, we assumed that Talkshow wasn't long for this world either, since it has now aired for two years (with top-tier guests like Vanilla Ice!) safely out of the public eye. Au contraire, say Fox spokespeople, who are attempting a new strategy designed to grow the series into their own Tonight Show. So what's their plan, and what is this show anyway?Says Broadcasting & Cable:
What complex feelings we have towards M.I.A. The Sri Lankan-British rapper (sort of) has said some bone-headed things about missing the days when she used to get shot at and made crazy contract demands, and married a rich guy. So that was annoying! But then there's her music. The music. It's really good. Like the soundtrack in the new Danny Boyle film Slumdog Millionaire. It's kinetic as ever and, unlike when her song "Paper Planes" was featured in Pineapple Express ads, the tales she spins of third-world ghetto kids actually make sense within the context. To the extent that Slumdog feels like it's a different view of the Bombay slums, M.I.A.'s music throughout the film deserves plenty of the credit. "If I was painting a picture of that part of the world, it’s not that I’d make it more glum, but I would try not to involve all the positive stuff from it, like the singing and dancing and easy stuff," she tells the LAT's Pop & Hiss blog. "I think we’re already used to that, and comfortable with that part." Those Pineapple television spots made M.I.A. a star (not unlike Feist's iPod Nano ads), but when the visuals match the aurals, you can get a better sense of her lyrics and beats and crazy sounds and all that good stuff that almost makes us forget about her cave-aged Gruyère needs. Almost.
So, yes. Heidi and Spencer got married. The worst couple from MTV's cavalcade of reality miseries The Hills dashed off to Mexico to "elope" (luckily Us Weekly happened to be vacationing on the same beach and had their cameras with them). What this means for their private lives isn't clear and doesn't matter—her parents will be miserable, the thing is fake anyway so who really cares, stock in Happiness Inc. just soared because it is now in such short supply and everyone wants it—but what does matter is what this means for the rest of the season of the soupy series. I think it's going to stink! I mean it always, always stinks but now it will stink even more and make us feel even more post-millennial angst than usual. For a while it seemed like maybe this whole thing was screeching to a halt, with, among other doomy looking things, Heidi and Spencer appearing to be on the brink of a break-up. Heidi seemed to be realizing that her do-nothing layabout Fleshbeard boyfriend is a terrible, terrible person and he increasingly seemed disinterested in the modest fame rays he was getting off of her. It was the most awful, wanly haunting depiction of a fake relationship in real decline we've ever witnessed and now? Now?? Now we just have to slog through the miserable shit with the ever-boring-a-hole-in-our-souls knowledge that these two thundering idiots are going to fart off into the sunset together for six more weeks of awful, unearned fame. What a shitty ending for us! I was hoping for something far, far better. Not that the marriage is going to last or anything. At least we'll maybe get to watch it implode next season. HEIDI: Spencer can you pick up your dirty socks? SPENCER: What? I want a divorce. or SPENCER: Can you hit an E above C? HEIDI: What? I want a diborce. I mean a D-I-V-O-R... Wait. SPENCER: Heidi, who were you spelling that for? HEIDI: What? Pick up your socks. SPENCER: I want a diborce.
Thousands of companies large and small have gone under in recent months as the economy has spiraled downward. Here are just a few of the banks, real estate firms, retail outlets, magazines, websites, manufacturing businesses, and restaurant chains that have filed for bankruptcy, been sold off for pennies on the dollar, or shut down operations since the beginning of the downturn. Click here to expand the image. [Cityfile]
How convenient that former $2,000 an hour girl Natalie McLennan's escorting memoir is being released tomorrow, hot on the heels of Spitzer escort Ashley Dupre's tearful Dianne Sawyer interview! Sometimes, it's just synergy, sometimes it's just luck. Kind of like the time a website sprung up "accusing" her of ratting out her former friend/call girl comrade Ashley Dupre to law enforcement officials, which resulted in a nice Page Six item. (The guest column a few days later was gravy.) For someone who's in a line of work that makes publicity dangerous, McLennan has always known how to work the press; she made the cover of New York magazine in 2005. Now that her book is finally out pretty much the only thing anyone cares about is the Ashley Dupre stuff. So, what does it say? Well. Frankly, it's mostly pornographic! So if you're offended by hottt XXX lesbian action, please do not click here.
Photo evidence has surfaced online (and since been removed) of a recent Hugh Hefner-hosted Playboy Mansion soirée: the always enchanting Mid-Autumn's Dress Like You Just Raided the Hustler Store With Your Grandfather's Black Card Party. And lest you worry that his small army of pneumatically enhanced arm candy serve purely decorative and/or walk-stabilizing functions, we invite you to scrutinize the photo above.In it, Hefner engages in a vigorous oral exploration of one of his guests (one of his bar-brawling twins?) while nearly smothering another couch-dweller to death (her sister?) in the process. According to the Oh No They Didn't contributor, whose friend is a Playboy model and took the photos, Hefner "'just grabs girls faces and kisses them, he's such a bitch' and 'he really is an old pervert' and that he smokes pot all the time and that 'all his girlfriends really do fuck him.'" Go, Hef! Below is a group photo, in which one model's attempt at using her cleavage as a human billboard doesn't go quite as planned. Still, we encourage all forms of out-of-the-bustier commerce during these trying times.
So the other day, Alaska Senator Sarah Palin staged her traditional "pardoning a turkey" photo-op standing directly in front of a man engaged in slaughtering turkeys, because, hey, a team of mavericks won't always agree on where to hold the easiest photo-op of any politician's career. Maybe she can stage the ribbon-cutting of an orphanage at an abortion clinic next time? (Haha as if Alaska had any of those.) Then, because life isn't bizarre enough these days, shouty MSNBC political pundit Keith Olbermann discussed the issue with daytime TV's soft-spoken criminal mastermind Martha Stewart. Martha was not happy. "That was an especially gruesome scene back there," she says. Why is Keith Olbermann in Martha Stewart's cozy stage kitchen wearing a comfortable black sweater, maybe pretending to cook something? We don't know! Though Inside Edition, America's Best Peabody-Award-Winning(?) Syndicated News-Resembling Program, tracked down the guy who actually slaughtered the turkeys, back there behind Sarah Palin, for a heartwarming Thanksgiving tale of redemption and Man's Dominion of the Earth.
New Frontiers in Tortured Ledes! This week's award for "worst first sentence" goes to TMZ, which began a Britney Spears story with this uniquely overwritten, not exactly timely lede: "Britney Spears wants daddy Jamie to become more like Barack Obama, and forget the words, 'No You Can't!'" We'd like to forget too, TMZ. Thanks for playing! [TMZ]
Embattled Porfolio editor Joanne Lipman interviewed embattled Tribune publisher Sam Zell recently, in a dynamic meeting of the embattleds! Zell is a well-known asshole, but kind of lovable too (if you don't work for him), because he tells the hard truth no matter what. He admits that newspapers' business model was screwy and outdated. He admits that newspapers will never again be able to "break news" in print on a regular basis. He talks shit to Arthur Sulzberger. And he charmingly scoffs at the expensive pursuit of Pulitzers by newspapers that can't even cover daily news in their own cities:
