Remember Sex and the City? Where writing a dating column for a living supported Carrie's extravagant lifestyle? Well, those days are over. As is your hope for a luxurious life. The middle class is back!
Today in shockingly vague celebrity gossip: a "disturbed loser" with a kinky ex, a divorcing TV actress, a singer who enjoys sex, and an actress who wants publicity. Get right out of town!
Ok, great, this is happening now: Drudge Report operative Andrew Breitbart wants to pay Matt Damon $100,000 to "debate Bill Kristol," for serious, about the war. This is to prove that liberals are stupid.
The fight over the impending SAG strike has gotten uglier, now with an anonymous emailer urging the Hollywood community to awards-boycott eight well-known actors who do not support a referendum that would authorize a strike.
Unconspicuous consumption is the hot new thing. That $300 million megayacht? Tacky, what with the layoffs. Private jet? Forget about it, after Detroit's debacle. Even the celebrity goodie-bag business is endangered.
Palm Pilots were the epitome of cutting-edge cool — in 1998. By 2004, when the movie came out, the PDA market had entered terminal decline, as people switched to keeping their contacts on increasingly advanced cell phones. And the best part?
The director of Pirates of the Caribbean is planning Second Life: The Movie. Too late! The lonely virtual world lost its buzz two years ago. Why is Hollywood always so behind the times?
Although the business of journalism is currently in the process of imploding, the romance of journalism remains. So while journalists can't find jobs any more, they can at least take comfort in the fact that they are very attractive subjects for Hollywood! The Sundance Film Festival released its lineup today, and there are no less than three documentaries that are all about the drama of the A-list press. They could all conceivably be good, although Anna Wintour sounds like a far more compelling subject than Nick Kristof:
Are you quite enthusiastic about the upcoming release of the new Tom Cruise WW2 thriller Valkyrie? We are, if only for the myriad Tom Cruise posts it will inspire. And you know who else is? The Razzies people, who pick the worst movie of the year. Early reviews have them thinking they just might have a surefire winner here!: Choice quotes from an early MSNBC review:
Remember Eugene Allen, the White House butler? The Washington Post put his story on the front page the Friday after Election Day. Allen, a black man, worked at the White House for 34 years, starting during the days of segregation and retiring during the Reagan years. He cast his vote for Barack Obama the day after his wife of 65 years died. It was a wonderful little piece of journalism that made everyone in the country cry. We're choking up just thinking about it again. So now it will become a mawkish, sentimental movie, probably starring Morgan Freeman. Sony purchased the rights to the story and Allen's life. It will be produced by Laura Ziskin, who is behind such classics as As Good As It Gets, Pretty Woman, and Spider-Man. We're thrilled Allen will get yet more recognition, and a little money, but still, ugh. We can't believe we weren't cynical enough to predict this quiet, moving story would soon become yet more manipulative pop trash. [THR, Variety]
LA Times columnist Patrick Goldstein used his blog yesterday for the entertaining purpose of viciously mocking Variety and its Hollywood fixture editor, Peter Bart. Mocking them for being poor! This column is awesome for the following reasons: because media outlets don't usually air their dirty laundry like this; because Peter Bart and Variety certainly deserve the mocking; and most of all because Patrick Goldstein seems totally unconcerned that his own paper does the same exact thing he criticizes Variety for, and that that very thing keeps him employed. Ha: Peter Bart wrote a column of his own (Headline: "Will fiscal funk trip kudo contenders?" WTF) bitching about the lack of Oscar-related ads from the studios in Variety. Patrick Goldstein appropriately tells him to shut it:
Attention Americans, it's almost time to travel to your local movie theater to take in Nothing But the Truth, the ironically-titled Hollywood dramatization of the Judy Miller story! Miller, the former NYT correspondent (now with Fox!) who went to jail unnecessarily to protect Scooter Libby's right to plant fake stories with her concerning nonexistent Iraqi WMDs, is reportedly pleased with the film because it captures the "moral ambiguity" of her situation. It did so by casting Kate Beckinsale as (the much older) Miller, then "dramatizing" the story in order to make her a heroic, martyred "devoted mother of a seven-year-old" who "faces starker physical and personal consequences in jail." So, just how Judith Miller sees herself! Click through to watch two clips, exclusively featuring people who are far too attractive to be journalists:
On some level we knew there'd be Obama impersonators, but we thought they would be more like the tiny Japanese guy who impersonates Obama, or Fred Armisen's bland but comforting impression, or Jordan Carlos. But now someone has taken up as our presidential-elect, and is roving around L.A. with bodyguards. Close your windows and doors, and put your daughters in underground shelters. This is not The One. He is a false One. But who is he?L.A. blogger YasmiNYC claims this grotesque effigy to The One is a Hollywood local, and she reports his growing popularity is a gruesome sight:
