Quirky Commentary Around The Clock
Next Saturday is the first day of summer and you know what that
means, don't you? Hollywood's summer movies! Well, er...sort of.
Several of the so-called summer movies have already been released
because in Hollywood summer starts around Memorial Day. But I refuse to
operate on Hollywood's timetable. Megan operates on her own
timetable---and er, BlogHer's---so here's your summer movie preview
based on my own strict movie going standards.
Tim Russert, arguably the toughest interviewer on television, collapsed and died at his office in the NBC Washington Bureau this afternoon, reportedly of a heart attack. He was 58 years old.
As Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell said during the breaking news coverage this afternoon on MSNBC, Russert's Sunday morning talk show "Meet The Press" was considered "the 'Meet The Press' primary" when it came to political campaigns. The big question was always what candidates would run the journalistic gauntlet that was Russert and which ones would survive it?
If you watched one of his interviews you could always be certain that whatever question you were thinking of asking the politician sitting opposite him, Russert would ask it. My favorite moments were always when a politico thought he or she could escape without answering the question by simply spouting political jargon.
It would be then that Russert would say in that distinctive voice of his, something like, "But Senator, that wasn't the question. The question was..." That was always good for a laugh. And also good for us as voters because Russert held their feet to the fire so that we could make more informed voting choices.
President Bush who's in Paris released a statement of condolence that said in part that he and Mrs. Bush were "very fond of him."
"Tim would want us to say he won the lottery in life." Brian Williams, "NBC Nightly News" anchor said. And referring to NBC's Washington Bureau, Williams said Russert was the political "go to" guy.
"If it had to do with politics the question that always followed was, have you run it by Tim?"
Russert's survivors include his son Luke and his wife Maureen.
David Gregory, also during this afternoon's MSNBC coverage talked about Russert's personal side. "He loved kids," he said. "He loved his own and anybody else's." There was nothing that he loved more than "providing for his boy."
"He was always teaching us to be as rigorous as he was," Andrea Mitchell said. "All of us are the better for knowing him. Our hearts are breaking.
RIP Tim.
I feel like I'm having an "Emily Gould" moment. That's because my post about Gould was quoted by Michael Weiss of Slate in his daily blog roundup.
I've hit the big time!
It's my own New York Times Magazine cover story, it's my own Gawker writing job, it's my own claim to blogging and internet and who knows what other kind of fame.
Aw, the power.
Thank you Michael Weiss for giving me this moment in the glare of the internet sun. If I can ever return the favor, please let me know.
This week the New York Times Magazine published an article by Emily Gould, a blogger who started her blogging career with her own personal blog and eventually ended up writing for Gawker, a very popular site that promises "media gossip and pop culture round the clock."
In the article, Gould talks about her lifelong tendency to "overshare" and how her original blog, Emily Magazine was an expression of that compulsion to overshare.
Her oversharing went into overdrive when she hit the big time, getting a job as a writer at Gawker. She was to be responsible for twelve of the forty posts the blog published daily and suddenly she felt like she had achieved her destiny.
Continue reading "Emily Gould: A Blogger More Than Exposed" »
As a follow up to yesterday's post "With Friends Like The Daily Kos, Michelle Obama Doesn't Need Enemies," I wanted to point out that Kim Pearson of BlogHer wrote an excellent post about the topic. In it she quotes several scholars regarding the depiction of black women in American history and she also included the following:
It doesn't help that this image hit the blogosphere not long after a Roswell, Georgia magazine published a cover showing Sen. Obama in a rifle's cross-hairs.
This image flips and merges two of the most emblematic images in our tragic racial history: the black (usually) male victim suffering unjustly at the hands of white racists, and the fragile woman (historically white) being violated by brutish (black, and often imaginary) men.
It's a post worth reading. And by the way, I still haven't heard anything from the Daily Kos. I doubt I will
The picture to the right was posted on the Daily Kos a liberal, political blog last Monday as part of an article called "The New Improved Southern Strategy."
In it, the writer One Citizen wrote in defense of Michelle Obama:
Right wing blogs and emails are suddenly all ablaze with half-truths and lies about Michelle Obama. One interesting rumor circulating is that she's disingenuous for having claimed to have been brought up in a one-room tenement when she wasn't. The fact is that she's never claimed it either. The closest claim she's ever made is that she's from a working class-neighborhood.
I can't link to the actual post because it was removed after what I'm assuming were protests about the accompanying picture. I read about this post at the blog What About Our Daughters. They linked to a screen shot of the post and that's where I got the quote.
This is what WAOD had to say about the picture:
I get the point they were trying to make, Michelle Obama is being criticized by the GOP for numerous things, but really what was going to your mind when you imagined Michelle Obama being tortured by the Klan?
I whole heartedly agree. It's offensive, disgusting and makes me sick. When I originally saw the picture I got a grapefruit sized knot in the pit of my stomach, but deep down I wasn't surprised. How sad is that? It appears anything goes these days and I'm just a prude when it comes to trying to be sensitive to others' feelings. After all, this is "edgy" and isn't edgy what everyone's shooting for these days?
It doesn't matter that the Daily Kos was defending Michelle Obama. The picture negates that. And seriously, if you're the editor of a blog, don't you have to ask yourself, when does the representation of an offense become part of the offense itself?
How is it that someone decided this was something acceptable to post? Could it be because whoever decided to post it isn't a black woman, and possibly doesn't know or care about any black women? Is it possible they thought the message was so important that the controversy was worth it? Or did they crassly decide the controversy would stir up more hits and that was all that counted?
If anyone from the Daily Kos reads this, I'd sincerely like to know. If the post was removed because the folks at the Daily Kos came to their senses, I'd like to know that too.
Just removing the post with no explanation isn't enough. How about an apology to all the black women out there who felt like I did? Sick, but not surprised.
I plan on sending the Daily Kos a link to this post and I'll let you know when or if I hear from them.
Last week Whitney Thompson became the first plus-sized model to win "America's Next Top Model." Or as one of her makeup artists said before the final runway competition, she was the "first juicy booty to make it on to the runway."
Of course the phrase "plus-sized model" is a relative term. Whitney says she's a size 10 and though in the modeling world, that's considered big enough to call for a forklift, in the real world that's considered, dare I say it...pretty normal.
ANTM is one of my personal guilty pleasures. All that strutting and pouting in high heels and expensive weaves gives me the giggles. The show also taught me a shocking lesson: models really have to know stuff. They aren't just breadstick thin hangers with no brains. They're highly trained professionals, skilled in a all kinds of important techniques. Like actors, they need to know their facial structure. Like dancers, they need to know movement. Like prisoners, they need to know how to live off bread and water.
Two weeks ago Tyra demonstrated the difference between a plain facial expression and the same expression except this time with her eyes smiling. The difference was simply a matter of how she squinted her eyes, but I tried to do it and I nearly dislocated my eye socket.
It's lots of makeup and hairstyles and pretty pictures. And as long as you don't take the whole enterprise too seriously, it's harmless fun.
Continue reading ""America's Next Top Model" Winner: Whitney Thompson, A Juicy Booty" »
Just because the Reverend Jeremiah Wright decides he needs to do a media tour across the country based on his new media status as "Rabble Rousing Flavor Of The Month," does not mean the media should be covering him 24/7.
Enough, already!
Yesterday Reverend Wright was at the Washington Press Club and over the weekend he did an interview with Bill Moyers
which aired on PBS, and made an appearance at an NAACP gathering. So for the last 24 hours, Reverend Wright has been exhaustively covered on every single television news channel. I half expected to see a
segment about whether or not Reverend Wright's choice of toothpaste
reflected badly on Barack Obama or not, because God knows I saw everything else.
I resent all this coverage because it smacks of so many things I abhor about the media. Number one, that this one black man speaks for all black people. As far as the media was concerned, it used to be Jesse Jackson who "spoke" for all black people, then Reverend Al Sharpton, and for a while there, film director Spike Lee was our "spokesperson." Now it's Reverend Wright.
But I got news for you. Reverend Wright does not speak for all black people. Reverend Wright does not speak for Barack Obama. Reverend Wright is using this spotlight as his bully pulpit. Good for him for trying. That doesn't mean he's news any longer. That doesn't mean his every breath should be televised.
Memo to the news channels: Reverend Wright is not running for president. Barack Obama is.
There are health care issues, and poverty issues, and war issues all percolating under the surface of the public consciousness, but all you insist on doing is throwing Reverend Wright at us and hoping you can whip up a good old 24/7 news cycle race war.
It's ridiculous. Obama has answered every question he needs to about Reverend Wright and from now on when asked about him, he should just give the reporter a copy of his speech on race from a few weeks ago and move on.
Just like I want to do.
Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote an article today where he speculates that Reverend Wright's recent forays in front of the spotlight have a lot to do with getting back at Barack Obama for not defending him. "What we’re witnessing now is Rev. Wright’s “I’ll show you!” tour," Herbert writes.
I don't know that I agree with that assessment, but I do know, I'd like to hear more critical assessments of the candidates positions and much, much less from Reverend Wright.
My friend Kay has been telling me for months how Dr. Phil McGraw’s show has been going downhill. I used to be a faithful Dr. Phil watcher, but then all his shows started to sound alike: bring on some people with horrendous problems, beat ‘em up for awhile and then send ‘em to Dr. Phil paid for therapy. It became too exploitive and as my friend Kay said, totally of no use to the average viewer.
Last week one of Dr. Phil’s “producers” bailed out one of the nutjob girls who beat up that poor girl in Florida and then posted a video of the beating on YouTube. You’ll notice I’m not linking to that video because as far as I’m concerned the only people who should be watching it are prosecutors.
WTF??
Dr. Phil disavowed any knowledge of this producer’s actions, but he can’t get off that easy. He got away with the whole barging into Britney Spears’ spiralling downward life, but the fact that a producer felt they could do this and actually feature this girl in a show, says to me there’s a culture on the Dr. Phil show that is screwed up. And that always comes from the top.
I used to give Dr. Phil a bit of a pass, because he was associated with Oprah Winfrey. But now, he’s dead to me. The only thing I want to hear about him is that he’s fired that producer, and after that---nothing.
Cross Posted From Video Runway.
Cross Posted From BlogHer
As part of BlogHer's focus on Women's History Month, this post is about amazing women in the history of film and television: women who inspired in front of the camera and women who crashed the Hollywood old boy network behind it.
When I sat down and thought about the women I might want to write about, I was overwhelmed with names. Like my fellow Contributing Editor Maria Niles and her post on Women Who Rocked American History, I felt the only way to do the subject justice was with a list. The list I came up with was as long as my arm.
By the time I'd whittled that down to something manageable, I'd immersed myself in the remarkable careers of a group of twenty-seven talented and pioneering women.
They're listed alphabetically and in two categories, movies and television.
Women Of Television
Lucille Ball: Actress, Comedienne, TV Executive.
Though she started out as a Goldwyn Girl and then a serious actress in B movies, Lucille Ball will always be remembered as the star of the classic TV comedy, "I Love Lucy." A comic giant, she was the first woman to own a film studio, Desilu, and with her husband Desi Arnaz, created the three camera sitcom technique that is considered a standard today.
As a kid, I watched the "I Love Lucy" shows over and over so often, my grandmother would beg me to turn to something else just to give her a break.
Gail Berman: TV Executive.
Gail Berman was one of the guiding forces behind one of my favorite TV shows, "Buffy The Vampire Slayer," but that's not the only reason she's on this list. Berman began her career as a producer on Broadway and eventually made her way to Hollywood. Once there she broke into television, eventually becoming executive producer of "Buffy" and its spinoff "Angel." In 2001 she was promoted to President of the Fox Television Network. During her tenure she developed such hits as "24," "House," and "American Idol," consequently presiding over Fox's most successful era since its inception
By 2005 she was President of Paramount Pictures and named one of Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women.
Continue reading "Hollywood's Amazing Women Of Film And TV" »
Paley Fest was the hot ticket in Los Angeles the last two weeks.
The Paley Festival is an annual two week event that according to a nice wrap-up by IGN.com "spotlights a group of noteworthy television series and television luminaries, with each night devoted to a different show or person."
The biggest draw was the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" cast reunion with Joss Whedon, it's creator. I literally would have sold my own first born for a ticket to that, but I had to hear about it from afar. I read the transcript kindly provided by the Futon Critic and it made me nostalgic for those halcyon days, eagerly waiting every week for each brand new episode. As you all know, "Buffy" is at the top of my list of best TV shows of all time and it was fun to relive some fun moments, even if it was via transcript.
One of the other evenings was a not so hot ticket, since according to the Futon Critic it wasn't very well attended. But if I'd had the chance and been on the appropriate coast, I would have definitely attended the "Damages" evening which included Glenn Close, Ted Danson, Tate Donovan, Anastasia Griffith, Zeljko Ivanek, Noah Bean and the shows creators. No Rose Byrne because she was off shooting a movie.
Topics discussed during the evening included Mr. Deep Fried Southern Charm's accent, Fatal Attraction's red herring stalker storyline, why the show had such a high body count, and Glenn Close on women and power.
You can read the "Damages" transcript at the Futon Critic as well, and as always, my own "Damages" recaps here.
You can see video clips of all the Paley Fest events at the Paley Center for Media website, but to see the complete videos you'll have to go to one of the centers in New York or Los Angeles.
Democratic Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama made an appearance on "The View" this morning. He's been on the show before, but this was the first time he's been on the show since he became this much closer to becoming President of the United States.
Here's my recap.
They start off the show with a clip from Jay Leno talking about how Barack is going to be on "The View." Leno says, "He thought his pastor was loud and opinionated. Wait 'til Joy gets hold of him." That's probably his funniest joke in years.
Moving on.
We start off with a lame "Hot Topics" segment. This show was supposed to have been taped yesterday when Barack was in New York for that speech at Cooper Union, so whenever the show is taped the "Hot Topics" are never but so topical.
Bizarrely they start off with a discussion about how some motel in Oregon is no longer going to leave a Gideon Bible in the nightstand of their rooms, but allow you to order your own particular bible from room service. Sherri didn't like that so much 'cause she'd have to wait 45 minutes to get her bible and then tip the bellhop who brings it. Dumb topic. Moving on.
We now get back to a rehash of the Reverend Wright/Barack Obama controversy, which as far as I'm concerned has run its course. It's time to drop it now folks. Obama answered everything he needed to answer about Reverend Wright with his speech on race. He condemned the comments, he said he doesn't agree with the comments, people...it's time to move on to issues like health care, the economy and how we keep those crazies who want to nuke us all from doing so.
Moving on.
Something that has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but which was very funny. There are now greeting cards for families with people serving time in prison. Cards like, "No More Promises:" that pleads with the prisoner to stop making promises they can't keep.
Sherri Shepherd read from the one called "Family:" "You may be behind the walls, but we are still family. That will never change." Heh.
Whoopi then reads from one of the Christmas cards that has a little pair of handcuffs and a picture of barbed wire as part of the Merry Christmas graphic. "You had a choice to be naughty or nice, and you chose. Now you have to do your time. But Christmas won't be the same without you here. Stay safe."
You think I'm making this up don't you? I swear, I'm not.
Moving on. Here comes Obama.
Sick of Britney Spears? Done with Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan? Check out "How Utterly Cool Is Natalie Portman" on MSNBC.com by Alonso Duralde about actress Natalie Portman. The article describes in witty detail the six ways Natalie is a big cut above the current Hollywood crop of ditzy dilettante dames.
An excerpt:
"In an age of starlets gone wild — and the pursuit of same by the insatiable scandal-sheet press corps — Portman has risen to the top of her profession with smarts and class. Even if all of her film choices weren’t the greatest — anybody remember “Where the Heart Is”? — she’s hit upon a winning formula for playing the fame game, and her peers would do well to follow her lead."
"The Other Boleyn Girl" star is getting a lot of buzz from her latest part as the doomed Anne Boleyn and even though the movie itself has its problems, there's no doubt Portman is part of the reason it rises above the usual cinematic royal romps.
But back to the "saintly starlet brigade." I'd add to that Portman list, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Raven Simone, Julia Stiles, Gabrielle Union, America Ferrera and Amber Tamblyn. You don't hear about any of these ladies running around flashing photogs while not wearing underwear. Though now that I've put them in this post, you can bet at least one of them will get into some kind of trouble in the next twenty four hours.
Until then, they're smart, they're publicity savvy and they're going about their business trying to do good work and stay famous without biting the head off a live chicken on TMZ.
The latest "Sex & The City" ripoff, "Lipstick Jungle" premiered last week on NBC. It stars a glammed up Kim Raver, recently of "24" and "The Nine," the Mabelline version of Brooke Shields, and Lindsay Price, an actress I know nothing about. NBC's website describes the show this way:
"Movie Exec Wendy Healy, Editor-in-Chief Nico Reilly, and Fashion Designer Victory Ford are modern New York career women supporting each other through triumphs and tears that are all part of making it in the Big Apple."
First we had ABC's "Cashmere Mafia" and now here comes another "hot women in the city making their way up the corporate ladder while wearing fancy shoes and cool nail polish" show. What I love about these shows isn't the glitzy clothes or hunky men, though hunky men are never a bad thing, it's their titles, "Lipstick Jungle," Cashmere Mafia," someone had fun coming up with those. Therefore in that spirit, I wanted to propose some other shows for the networks' fall schedule.
How about "Perfumed Gladiators?" A trio of hot women in the city run a couture perfume company until one of them breaks off on her own stealing the secret ingredient to their highest selling fragrance, "Come & Get It."
Or "The Mani-Pedi Gang." A trio of hot women in the city run an exclusive Mani-Pedi Spa until one of them breaks off on her own stealing the secret ingredient to their most popular treatment, the Cement Paste Pedicure.
Then there's always the potential of "Corporate Corsets." A trio of hot women in the city run a high fashion bra and corset boutique until one of them breaks off on her own stealing the secret designs for their most popular corset, the The Curvaceous Crusher.
I'm open to further suggestions, just make sure they're original.
Cross Posted At Video Runway
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