Guess The Golden Globes

I've been snickering at the phrase 'Golden Globes' since Drew Barrymore wore this dress way back in 2006. Last year I featured Mariah Carey and Christina Hendricks. But this year the amount of pulchritude on parade defied definition. So to see how many of you keep your eyes on the prize, I have developed the Golden Globes Quiz. Just match the celebrity with her hooters and you can declare yourself the master of the red carpet. Maybe next year I will do quiz where you have to guess the celeb by the size of their shoes. Naaah.

1. Halle Berry	a.
2. January Jones	b.
3. Sofia Vergara	c.
4. Christina Aguliera	d.
5. Eva Longoria	e.

And just to double down on the silliness of this post, this year we also have the Baby Bump Division. Match these preggers celebs with their belly.

6. Natalie Portman	f.
7. Jane Krakowski	g.

Just leave your guesses in comments or give your own fashion advice.

Best Golden Globes

Last night was the kick-off the awards season with the Golden Globes which liquors up its nominees for three hours and then shoves them on stage. And the awards very name lets me bludgeon this joke to death:

How about these Golden Globes?



That's Mariah Carey on the left doing her best Queen Latifah impersonation and on the right is Christina Hendricks revealing what made all those men mad.

I've been doing some variation of this joke since 2006 (yes, I've been blogging that long). But four years has classed up Drew Barrymore. Check out the before and after:



As for the awards themselves, meh. Avatar won and James Cameron cemented his placement in the Dork Hall Of Fame for giving part of his best director speech in Na'Vi. He also wins the Passive Aggressive Award for claiming he was sure his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow was going to win for Hurt Locker. Way to twist that knife, jerk. And anybody that thinks his bit about thanking everybody was magnanimous needs to check up the concept of 'false modesty'. It takes big egos to make big movies and Cameron is the King Of The World.

Update: For my tirade on the Washington Post coverage of the Golden Globes, read this article.

Another Update: For more Golden Globes coverage (or lack thereof) check out the HuffPo slide show where I stole found my pictures.

Undie Bomber Goes To Eleven

EXCLUSIVE: MUST CREDIT FOMA*

Here is confidential footage of failed terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab nearly getting caught at security with his secret tighty whitey ordnance.



Thank goodness that Umar wasn't one of Spinal Tap's drummers because the spontaneous combustion would have set off the bomb for sure.

Liveblogging The Oscar Live Blogs

Tonight I am going to go for the ADD award by following several websites that are liveblogging the Oscars and posting the best of the comments. The ones I am following are:
Jez: Jezebel
Ablog: Achenblog
WaPo: Washington Post
EW: Entertainment Weekly
Def: Defamer

Here goes nothing.

8:22
Ablog (CqP): Matthew Broderick looks fine in his grey steaked hair.
Jez: Tracie: marissa tomei's forehead=botox
WaPo: Liz Kelly: Ick -- that Vanessa Hudgens dress looks like a cast off from "Too Wong Foo." What was she thinking?

8:38
Me: Hugh Jackman does a pretty fair Billy Crystal complete with a Wolverine plug. And Anne Hathaway is a good sport.
WaPo: Jen Chaney: Yes, this number isn't very X Men. [snip} He's clearly taking a page from Billy Crystal.
EW: Thom: Ah, a Wolverine plug. But somehow I don't think any of the X-Men fanboys are still watching. They must have decided this was the Tonys and flipped the channel.

8:47
MyWife: Goldie Hawn has had a few surgeries. Look at how tight everything is.
Jez: tracie: this will sound weird, but goldie hawn looks so much like my aunt maryellen, particularly in the chest/boob area.
EW: Mandi: Goldie Hawn as Worst Dressed?
WaPo: Jen Chaney: I don't know, I think Goldie's dress is a little snug.

9:00
Me: I am so hot for Tina Fey.
Ablog: (Raysmom) Tina Fey's dress is absolutely gorgeous.

9:07
MyWife: OMG! Jennifer Anniston.
Me: So?
MyWife: Brad and Angelina are there too. They just cut to them. You miss everything doing that (referring to my blogging)
Jez: hortense: Headline on US Weekly tomorrow: "Angelina Laughs At Jen's Joke"
Anna: or it will be: "Was Angelina Faking Finding Jen's Joke Funny?"
hortense: "Angelina: Laughing With Jen, Or At Her?"
Def: JenniferLina CatfightWatch: Jennifer Aniston moves from stage right to center stage—withing queef distance of Angelina Jolie.
WaPo: Jen Chaney: A little tacky. And yet, it's what we all secretly wanted, isn't it? {snip} And do we really need to explain why they cut to Angie? We all know why. At least they wanted until a moment when Angelina was smiling.
EW: Mandi: Brad and Angelina laughing at Jennifer having to talk about animated pandas instead of saving the world and its children.

9:33
Me: Natalie Portman is getting more and more Audrey Hepburn every year.
Def: For some reason they're allowing Natalie Portman to present with her boyfriend Devendra Bernhardt.

9:41
MyWife: (about Jessica Biel) They don't look in a mirror first?
Jez: hortense: Jessica Biel= worst dressed list?
WaPo: Jen Chaney: And if I may quote a previous chat commenter, here is Jessica Biel in her "diaper." She is doing a salute to the scientific and technical Oscars, which she hosted a couple of weeks ago. Presumably in a different diaper.

9:58
Me: Why does 'Mama Mia' need a drumline. And they better cut to a reaction from Meryl Streep.
EW: Thom: Ah, so Baz Luhrmann is responsible. That explains a lot. I think he was trying to do a musical montage like "The Elephant Love Song" from Moulin Rouge, but this so didn't work.
Def: Wow. Baz Luhrmann just mounted the worst Oscar number since this disaster. It was like something you'd see on a cruise ship hosting the AVN Awards.
Jez: i like the drumline in white tie
ABlog (rd): It certainly is an interesting production. Hugh Jackman gets kudos for pulling out all the stops. Still, somehow it thematically reminds me a bit too much of Rosie O'Donnell's variety show. All over the place.

10:30
MyWife: Sound editing is the only category we've seen all the movies in.
WaPo: Smith is now presenting sound mixing. This is one way they are saving time, P.S. By having the same presenters rattle through several categories in a row. Which makes sense.

10:39
MyWife: You had Heidi Klum followed by Tim Gunn back to back.
Jez: tracie: two project runway-ish commercials in a row?

10:55
Me: The Slumdog sweep is in high gear. I keep thinking 'Jai Ho' is 'Tally Ho'.
Def: An insomnia-curing medley of best scores results in WINNER, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE's A.R. Rahman bringing down the house with a prepared bit about his wife, followed by a slow burn that would make Jack Benny envious. Just kidding—that was really awkward. Rahman redeems himself by throwing off his Nehru jacket, displaying a surprisingly ripped physique, and launching into song.
EW: Mandi: I think the only thing that will save this show now is Hugh making a joke about how slow it feels, and taking off his shirt to give it a jolt. Who's with me?
EW: Thom: And the Slumdog sweep continues. For those of you counting at home, that's five awards so far.

My comment used on the WaPo chat:
Fo, MA: Peter Gabriel not singing is also known as the Phil Collins snub since he didn't sing it when he was nominated. The Academy must hate Genesis.
Jen Chaney: As far as the Academy is concerned, they do not seem to have an invisible touch.

11:11
Me: The Death Pool Montage! Finally! Oddly tasteful. Best applause in descending order: Paul Newman, Sydney Pollack, Harold Pinter.
Def: The In Memoriam segment finally enters the HD era. We begin with Cyd Charisse—begin scoring your 'In Memoriam' Oscar Montage Pool accordingly. The Grieve-O-Meter seems to be functioning, with the needle flipping right towards the end with Sydney Pollack, Paul Newman. WHERE'S HEATH? He was squeezed in last year, but is there some Academy law about not double-dipping? He died in January 22, 2008. Also—no George Carlin. And Charlton Heston barely registered with the audience. But wait—no George Carlin?! That's an outrage! Oscar controversy!!!
Jez: Sadie: I hate how it's an applause popularity contest!
WaPo: In Memoriam: I thought I heard (or maybe it was wishful thinking) that producers were going to drown out audience applause for this montage, because it really is the cruelest popularity contest ever. Jen Chaney: It is. But they didn't.

11:28
Me: This Best Actress bit is like an American Idol vote-off.
Def: The ActorTron 2000 spits out five more amazingly well-preserved Academy Award winners.
Jen Chaney: Okay, the one flaw in this multi-presenter thing is the thanking goes on a little long.
A-Blog (mudge): I gotta say, I really like this format of having five presenters and their doing a direct address to the nominees. Although I do miss seing a minute or so of the clips.

11:49
Me: This thing might actually be over by midnight.
Jez: dodai: How much over are we? It was supposed to end at 11:30 right?
Jez: tracie: 25 minutes over
EW: Thom: The show clocked in at three and a half hours exactly. Is that what you guessed in the office pool
A-blog (fb): Ok, time for lights out. Toodles boodle and sweet dreams.

12:06
Me: And that goes double for me.

He's Just Not That Into Baltimore

My wife dragged me kicking and screaming to see He’s Just Not That Into You this weekend. I actually don’t mind chick flicks, especially when they star Scarlett Johansson as a voluptuously predatory (to use a phrase from the WaPo review) aspiring singer/yoga instructor that sets her sights on a married Bradley Cooper (whom I am still so gay for). As a bonus, the movie is ostensibly set in Baltimore, but it’s clear that a vast majority of the film was shot on a Hollywood soundstage.

They tried to slip a few Bawlmer sights in when they could. One of the extravagantly trendy apartments these yuppies live in had a clear view of the Domino Sugar sign. Another window looked out over that waterfront high-rise building that looks like a spaceship landed on top of it.

The movie has a lot of little snippets where random people dispense relationship horror stories and advice. One had a guy standing on the Fells Point dock with the fireboat behind him. That said Baltimore to me. Another establishing shot had some characters walking down Thames (and it took me a few years to learn that ‘Thames’ rhymes with ‘James’ and starts like ‘Thane’) and walk into a bar that looks like it could be Coopers but had some other name in the movie. A few outdoor scenes were clearly shot on the marbled stepped streets of Baltimore, but others just screamed back lot.

The Baltimore Sun has a great article explaining that Baltimore was originally going to have a bigger part, but the budget wouldn’t allow that much location shooting or clearances. I guess Jennifer Anniston and Ben Affleck’s salaries chewed all that up.

Even the product placements were all over the map. For example, when Bradley starts hitting on ScarJo in the grocery store, he’s buying a six pack of Clipper City beer, but they walk outside and its some generic grocery store name that I’ve never heard of. The group of girls that the guys just aren’t into all work at World Spice Company, which at least acknowledges Baltimore’s heritage, but it just seems odd not to hear mention of McCormick.

At least it is nice to see Baltimore recognized as a real place. For a lot of movies that are set in Washington, DC, the film crews do a bunch of establishing shots of the monuments and then move up the B-W Parkway to film street scenes in cheaper and simpler Baltimore.

So Drew, Jennifer, and Scarlett, next time you film a movie set in Baltimore send more than the second unit. I’d be glad to show you around. Just leave Ben, Justin, and Kevin behind. But bring Bradley.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: How much of city should a movie show?

Celebrity Shots

In addition to my duties as lead blogger here at Foma* Central and my role as a Boodler on the Achenblog, I am also a part-time Liz-ard at Celebritology, the Washington Post’s celebrity gossip blog written by the lovely, talented and ever so sarcastic Liz Kelly. Lately I have been amusing myself with some of my particularly clever bon mots over there. I’ve decided that these asides are too precious to not be recycled in complete defiance of Rule 7 of the washingtonpost.com User Discussion and Submission Guidelines which states:

For any content that you submit, you give us permission to use such content. You hereby grant to Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC a royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, exclusive [emphasis mine], and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, incorporate into other works, distribute, perform, display, and otherwise exploit such content, in whole or in part in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.

In flagrant violation of that rule I now present some news items and my reaction:

News Item: 45-year-old Lisa Rinna will be shooting a nude layout for Playboy this year.
My Take: Early this week I expressed alarm at finding out just how far Lisa Rinna has taken her lip-enhancing collagen shots. Mind bleach, pronto.

News Item: Fandango published a list of the Ten Sexiest Women that inexplicably omitted the true Hottest. Woman. Ever.
My Take: Clearly they retired Angelina Jolie’s jersey to give other hotties a fighting chance.

News Item: Jeremey Piven dropped out of the Broadway production of Speed the Plow because of an illness brought on by eating too much mercury-laced sushi and Chinese herbs.
My Take: Poor Jeremy Piven. I hope they find the sleezeball that is selling all that mercury-laced cocaine, er, sushi. I meant sushi.
My Further Take: It doesn't take a genius to figure out just which 'Chinese herbs' are included in a Colombia roll.

News Items: Tom Cruise is garnering very bad reviews in his new World War II era action flick.
My Take: The general buzz on Tom Cruise's Valkyrie performance is that it lacks the subtlety and gravitas of the late Werner Klemperer.

Bonus News Item: Michael Jackson turned fifty this week.
My Take: When asked for a comment, Jacko paraphrased Matthew McConaughey and said, “That's what I love about these preschoolers, man. I get older, they stay the same age.”

We now resume our regular holiday blogging.

Zack and Miri Make A Meme

Get yours here.

I'm a big Kevin Smith fan. I've seen all his movies except Jersey Girl. I think he'd understand. Over the weekend his latest ViewAskew production, Zack and Mimi Make A Porno debuted. According to Defamer, it cased out with a Disappointing™ ten million dollars. Let's see what might have gone wrong:

• It was a Kevin Smith movie.
• It had "porno" in the title.
• It starred relative unknowns.
• It was a Kevin Smith movie.

Let's explore that last factor. According to BoxOfficeMojo, here's how the last five of Silent Bob's movies did:

Year	Title	Opening Weekend	Total Gross
2008	Zack and Miri Make a Porno	$10,065,630	$11,249,866*
2006	Clerks II	$10,061,132	$24,148,068
2004	Jersey Girl	$8,319,171	$25,268,157
2001	Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back	$11,018,543	$30,085,147
1999	Dogma	$8,669,945	$30,652,890

*still in release

There is no more consistent money maker in Hollywood that Kevin Smith. As long as you are willing to make it in thirty million dollar increments every two years.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that the final gross of the theatrical release of Zack and Miri will make between 25 and 30 million dollars. That now makes me a savvier guru than the entire development team at the Weinstein Company.

And I did contribute about 0.00056% of that films gross. And I do mean gross. If you like your movies with jokes about sex, shit, masturbation, Star Wars, gay sex, drinking, and sex, but also want a tender love story about a schlubby guy in a dead-end job that realizes he is really in love with incredibly hot girl right in front of his face, go rent Clerks II. Because it's the same damn movie. It's a Kevin Smith movie. What did you expect?

Sally Forth On Film

Updated: 10/31/08
The Sally Forth Expo was a big success. Every rabid fan of the coolest working mom in comics was there. The big announcement was that Sally and her family and friends will be following in Garfield’s illustrious pawprints and make the move to the big screen. While a few minor details need to be worked out like filming, casting, financing, and negotiating rights, the producers feel confident that they can work with King Features Syndicate to get Francesco Marciuliano’s indentured servitude contract transferred cheaply enough to get the script on the way.

And while there was a lot of buzz, the titular (my very favorite word) role has yet to be cast. Unfortunately some very talented stars had to be crossed off the list because they are getting a little long in the tooth. Sorry, Sally Fields. As much as we would love to make the tagline “And Sally starring as Sally”, the powers to be decided that Gidget just didn’t work it with the target Atari Generation demographic.

But here are the actresses that have made the short list:

	Terri Hatcher Having never made the successful jump to the big screen, this desperate housewife would make a very sexy mom to a big screen Hilary. Less convincing would be that any potential Ted Forth could have landed her.
	Sela Ward While at 53, she is a little older than Sally’s youthful 40, her canonical performance as a harried divorcée in "Once And Again" keeps her in the running. If Meryl Streep can play a near-convincing aging hippie in Mamma Mia, Ward could pull off baby-boomer Sally.
	Anne Hathaway As she outgrows The Princess Diaries, Hathaway is breaking out of her Disney-fied squeaky clean roles. While a little young for the part, she has the lanky awkward figure necessary to play the smirky businesswoman.
	Alan Cumming This thespian chameleon can disappear into any role, and who better to mix Sally’s soft femininity and savvy business persona into a single character.
	Angelina Jolie If you are going to dream, dream big. And is it really that big of a stretch from Mrs. Smith to Mrs. Forth? This could be her return to the Oscar podium.
	Lauren Graham I've added this write-in candidate as late entry. The Gilmore Mom knows plenty about cracking-wise and making obscure pop cultural references. Her TV character even had a toxic mom to deal with. What better experience could you ask for?

I haven’t done a poll in a while, so make your picks and we will forward on our results to the studio. (Be patient with the vote counter, it lags a little, but your vote is being counted. You get what you pay for.)




BlatantCommentWhoring™: Any one else deserve to sit on the casting couch?

Educating Mamma Knight

What do the two presumptive top movies of this weekend have in common? Both The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia! feature one star each from the 1983 art-house hit Educating Rita. In her first film role, Julie Walters plays a hairdresser that takes a lit class from an embittered failed poet played by ubiquitous thespian Michael Caine.


They were both nominated for Best Acting Oscars, but neither took home the trophy. Now twenty five years later they've moved on to supporting roles. In the Abba-tastic musical, Walters (left) is the former Dynamo to Meryl Streep's Donna.


Michael Caine has gone from being the man who ogled Demi Moore's pre-Striptease tassels to being Bruce Wayne's faithful manservant.


I saw Educating Rita when I was in college and now a quarter century later, both actors are still going strong. I just find these odd coincidences utterly fascinating. Who would have guessed that both would have big hits in the same week?

Anyways, here's my Mamma Mia! (Remember: Two m's in 'mamma' and an exclamation point) story: As Broadway hounds, we knew of the Mamma Mia musical soon after it debuted in London. Then we heard that it would be making a Toronto debut about six months before hitting The Great White Way in New York. Always in need of a destination for a driving vacation, we bought tickets for the show and then planned our vacation around it.

We went through the Niagra Falls area before heading up to Toronto. While there we also saw the Canucki production of The Lion King since we were in the neighborhood. So when the Broadway run opened to rave reviews with the Canadian cast's Donna in the lead, we smugly bragged of our North American gun-jumping. It's not everybody that will plan an entire vacation around an Abba tribute.

The stage version has a fresh, clean production style that gets lost in the movie adaptaion. And as one movie critic mentioned, Pierce Brosnan did not get the part on the strength of his singing.

And while I unabashedly love all things ABBA, my wife takes it to a higher level. She called me this afternoon just to tell me that at the 11:15 show this morning, the audience was at best 20% guys. I told her, of course. Real men have to go to work rather than hit musical matinées.

And when we got home from the movie, our son was zonked on the couch from his all-night Dark Knight bash with his friends. Our local cineplex was dumping poorly attended screenings of other movies to add additional shows of both Dark Night and Mamma Mia!

Let's hope those Educating Rita alumni are getting a cut of the gross.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: Share your Abba-riffic memory. I know you have one.

Genealog-E

+

=

Related Rant: I coaxed my wife into going to see Wall-E Saturday afternoon. She was a little reluctant to go see a G-rated movie. We had the choice of the 4:40 or the 6:00 showing. She insisted on the later one on the theory that being at dinner time and at the higher price bracket, there would be fewer tykes in the audience. Everytime a childless couple walked in, I nudged her and said, "See, we aren't the only ones."

Then about halfway through the movie a pre-schooler got out of his seat and started playing in the aisle. Mom was sitting at the end of the row but made no effort to sit him back down. Then he started stomping up and down the the steps. After about ten minutes, an usher came in and talked to the parent. The kid was put back in his seat but got back out pretty much right away. The person behind the mom tapped her on the back but it wasn't until a few minutes after that that the mom and the kid left. About five minutes later, the they came back in for the other two kids and left for good.

At this point I could rant for days about parents and kids and manners and public behavior, but it would just demonstrate my incipient geezerdom. I don't mind at all when kids at a family movie react to the film. If fact, it's pretty charming to hear kids laugh or gasp at the right places. But to use a theater seat as a babysitter is just unconscionable.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: At what age should kids be allowed into a theater? What age range would you recommend Wall-E to?

Movie Blow-Out Sale

My wife showed up at home the other day with a bunch of DVDs from the local OtherBigBoxOfMovies store. I asked why so many rentals all at once and she said she bought them because the store was closing. This was on a Wednesday and the inventory clearance had started on Monday. She asked the manager how quickly the good movies had been snapped up. He told her that corporate had made one pass at the stock for things that could be sent to another store. So the movies that were left were the ones not valuable enough to throw onto a truck. And there were a lot of them.

Knowing a good thing when we saw it, my son and I headed over to make our own selections. It took us nearly an hour to browse the whole place. New releases were going for $11.25 and back catalog was $7.50 each. These prices put things at a very narrow but interesting price point. The movie had to have been something I had never bothered to see in the theater or even buy new but still interesting enough to want to watch multiple times in order to justify paying more than a standard rental. When all was said and done, our family's picks included:

• The Prince & Me
• Little Miss Sunshine
• Happy Feet
• Mad Max
• Hairspray (2007)
• Empire Records
• Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
• La Vie En Rose
• Paris, Je T'Aime
• Hero
• Thank You For Smoking
• How I Met Your Mother - Season 1, Disc 1 and Disc 2
• Weeds - Season 1, Disc 1 and Disc 2

I’ll let you figure out which each of us had selected. I will confess that I was the one that picked out the discs of television series episodes. My son just shook his head at me and said, “Dad, it’s just easier to get these off the web.” He had a point. Movies look good on the new HDTV, especially with the upconverting home theater DVD player I got to go with it (see this post for my latest contribution to the health of the consumer electronics industry), but there is no special cachet to seeing a regular TV show in high-def full screen quality.

Except for Father/Son Nerd Night, I don’t think my son has seen a regular network show on a real television in years. He downloads literally hundreds of hours of fan-subtitled anime off the internet and he can often be heard at his computer chuckling at muted japanamation shows late into the night. Most of these shows are unavailable in the US until months or years after they’ve originally aired in Japan. And my son despises the American actor dialog redubbings on aesthetic grounds. When they do finally make a cable network schedule, they have often been edited for content and length beyond recognition. On the other hand, the pirated labor-of-love “fan-dubs” hit BitTorrent within a week of the original international airing with astoundingly predictable precision.

I told my boss about the OtherBigBoxOfMovies closing and she said, “That’s a shame. I used to go there all the time before I joined Netflix.” Exactly. This is why the traditional methods of A/V entertainment distribution are withering. In addition to the OtherBigBoxOfMovies that is now closing, the OriginalBigBoxOfMovies nearest me closed over a year ago. I now have to drive over five miles if I want to bother find a new release completely rented out so that I can come home with my second or third choice of movies to watch.

With the HD-DVD format throwing in the towel, my wife is wondering how long until we are forced to get a BluRay player because she thinks the studios will eventually quit releasing standard DVDs. I don’t think this will ever be an issue. The convergence of high speed broadband, cheap DVRs, and terabyte sized hard drives is just screaming direct digital downloads, bypassing any real physical manifestation of the movie. As this Wired article posits, digital downloads are the inevitable next step and movie companies can either ride the train or get run over by it.

Still, the psychological fetish for a tangible totem of ownership is strong. I have dozens of movies I own because I want to say I have them rather than out of any real desire to watch it over and over again. But someday these too will become yard sale remainders. And until some other rising retail chain needs the space, the now defunct OtherBigBoxOfMovies store will stand empty as a silent tombstone on the grave of the ever-changing media marketplace.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: Are DVDs dead?
BonusBlatantCommentWhoring™: Which disc should I watch first and which should I have avoided?

Whatever Happened To Fey Ray?

Saturday Night Live returned from the writer's strike with a vengeance, especially since the host was former headwriter and Weekend Update hottie Tina Fey. If Hillary immediately doesn't change her official campaign slogan to "Bitch Is The New Black" she has no hope.



You will notice that that clip is from the official NBC site and not YouTube. The YouTube version of the clip disappeared within 24 hours. They must have Jack Bauer manning the copyright violation desk at Universal.

But when it was on YouTube, the next video linked was an appearance Tina Fey made on Rachel Ray's talk show. RayRay admits to having a girl crush on Tina which made me wish I was the meat in that ragu. Yummo.



And if you need a soundtrack for that fantasy, Tina Fey and current Weekend Update host Amy Poehler play sexy tennis as part of a writer's strike improv performance.



Finally, just because we are on inappropriate metaphors, after watching this trailer featuring Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman, I want to be the baloney in a Boleyn sandwich. Eric Bana is one lucky actor.



Time for a long cold shower.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: Comment on any of the clips or explain why you are geeky enough to "get" the post title.

Nutjobs and NaJuReMoNoMo

Way back in October of 2005 I named a certain Scientologist movie star Hunkiest. Nutjob. Ever. Since then he has done everything possible to cement his crown. I have long spun an elaborate theory that the break-up between him and a certain redheaded Australian was due to her infidelity being discovered as a result of her pregnancy not being his since he was impotent. This theory refuses to die and was recently rehashed complete with a not entirely convincing timeline and official denials in Defamer.

A side conspiracy theory of mine implies that the child of his with his current starlet wife is not his own and is part of a cover-up when she needed to protect her squeaky clean image and he could use some positive publicity as cover. Now a new book is out alleging things that even my imagination is too tame to invent. Let’s just say that L. Ron Hubbard lives. Why have I written this without naming said nutjob? Because Scientologists are not just nuts, they are highly litigious. I guarantee I will receive at least one comment accusing me of religious intolerance for besmirching such a noble respected religious institution.

The parody newspaper of record, The Onion, has inadvertently commemorated National Just Read More Novels Month with this article (ht to kb) about a town upset at the oddball behavior of one of its inhabitants. He read a book. If you want to be among the many, many winners of NaJuReMoNoMo, you only have four more days left to get that novel read. I’m going to be combing through the comments, e-mail, and Google Alerts for as full a list as I can. I know that Marg and raidergirl are two of the many participants closing in on the coveted Gold Badge.

And for the record, while Dianetics is a complete work of fiction by a second rate hack, it does not count as a novel for NaJuReMoNoMo.

BlatantCommentWhoring™:: Does the couch jumping lunatic hurt or help himself with his constant libel lawsuits?

Pregnant Pause

I noticed an alarming trend in my choices of entertainment lately. I seem to be drawn to works involving unplanned pregnancies. A week or so ago, we rented Waitress with Keri Russell playing the titular small town diner waitress that gets knocked up by her abusive husband. Then, based on critical acclaim, we went to see Juno, which is also about an unplanned pregnancy, this time to a smart-mouthed tom-boyish high school kid. And just the other night I finished Nick Hornby’s foray into Young Adult fiction, Slam, which is also about teenage out-of-wedlock pregnancy, this time from the point of view of the unlucky dad.

Of the three, as the parent of a seventeen-year-old, I found Waitress the least distressing because at least Keri Russell was playing a married woman as opposed to real life where she married the father of her kid a scant four months before the due date. The other two works feature characters my son’s age or younger and that is more frightening than Saw IV followed by a power outage.

Kids have been having sex in books since at least 1975 when Judy Blume published the forever-banned Forever. And teenage sexual exploits on the silver screen were old hat when I saw Porky’s back in my own teen years. These newer works are different in that they deal with the consequences of all that hormonally charged activity. And they confront the issues in a non-hysterical un-“Afterschool Special”-ish way.

Some of the concerns these kids having kids face are an inability to express emotions, trouble dealing with parents, and difficulty navigating social scenes. In other words, being knocked-up is just like regular high school except in maternity clothes. Also, in a contemporary twist, both works have the girl being the initiator of the ultimately unwise act. I think that is a smart narrative angle because it peels away the guy-bashing that would otherwise over shadow the other points of the story. Also, the actual procreative act is dealt with perfunctorily and with a minimum of prurient appeal. Neither of these is going to appeal to the Girls Gone Wild fans out there.

What they do emphasize is the absolute and total embarrassment this condition results in. In Slam, Sam and his preggers ex-girlfriend go to a birthing class only to run into one of his teachers. Similarly, Juno has to awkwardly cross an abortion clinic picket line that consists of one of her classmates. The take-away message is that having a baby is an incredibly humiliating hassle. Juno refers to her inflated self as a “cautionary whale.”

And cautionary tales these are. Depending on how you read the stats, teen pregnancy rates were actually much high a half century ago. But back then they gave out wedding rings instead of condoms. Not to throw out any spoilers, but there aren’t any wedding marches in either of these stories. That is another modern touch. Nowadays, having a kid doesn’t always lead to a matrimonial union. Some of the strongest marriages I know were conducted with moonlight glinting off a shotgun barrel, but times have changed for the most part.

And from a parent’s perspective, these stories have a strong “but for the grace of God go I” ring to them. Until my son is out of college and established in a career, I have to whistle past the maternity ward. One thing both Slam and Juno make clear is that even the dorky kids get laid. And that anyone can make a baby, but not everyone is cut out to be a parent.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: Shotgun weddings – a terrible idea we are glad to be rid of? Or another fine forgotten American tradition?

Update: Ellen Goodman saw Juno too and bothered to look up facts and shit.

Quick Hits

To break my blogger-block, here are some quick hits to refresh the feed:

Led Zeppelin is reuniting with 87.5% of the genetic material of the original line-up. If a friend had seats either on the floor or in the first 10 rows of the lower bowl, how much would you pay to see them play?

"Torqueberto" Gonzales has been named Lawyer Of The Year by the American Bar Association. In other news, Michael Vick has been named Pet Owner Of The Year and Lindsay Lohan is Motor Trend's Driver Of The Year.

The definition of chutzpah: Drew Peterson, the former cop whose fourth wife disappeared after she wouldn’t eat her toadstools, has set up a website for donations so that his kids can have presents this Christmas.

Jessica Alba is now added to the list of celebrity MILFs-to-be that failed to include me in their plans to start a family. I feel like revoking her Hottest Movie Stripper award.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: What scary street corner preacher does Robert Plant resemble in that photo?

Pretty Portman

National Blog Posting Month Day 20

Maybe I'm a little too worked up about Natalie Portman doing a nude scene for Wes Anderson in a 17 minute prequel for The Darjeeling Limited called Hotel Chevalier. And I still fondly remember her work as a movie stripper in Closer. So when I saw the movie poster for squeaky clean kiddie movie Mr Magorium's Magic Emporium, I was reminded of the pose by that famous movie hooker.



Yeah, It's just me.

3D: The Eyes Have It

National Blog Posting Month Day 19

I don’t do a lot of movie reviews here on Foma because not only am I not very good at it, there are a lot of people that do it very well. I saw Beowulf this weekend up in Pennsylvania and the Stephen Hunter review in the Washington Post is very good. There is no way I could match a line like "Ma is Angelina Jolie as interpreted by someone who apprenticed by doing airbrush portraits on custom Harley gas tanks." For a ordinary viewer’s opinion, Ivansmom at the Achenboodle sums up my opinions pretty well.

What I will discuss is the technical features of the movie. I had seen The Polar Express in 3D Imax a few years ago and was a little creeped out by the woodenness of technology. Part of my desire to see Beowulf had improved the state of the art. My other purely prurient reason was to see if it was possible to make Angelina Jolie look hotter than she does in real life.

Eyes

I was tipped off to the movie over a year ago when Neil Gaiman discussed it while at Balticon. He mentioned that the motion capture software had been improved by at least two generations. In particular he mentioned the eyes. The eyes in Polar Express were cold and soulless and made all the characters look like zombies. In Beowulf, not only are the eyes much, much better, they actually do some extreme close-ups just to show off the verisimilitude.

Hair and skin

Hair and skin are the bane of CG movies. That is why Pixar tends to stick to things like toys and cars that are supposed to be shiny and smooth. In Beowulf, the male characters tend to be suitably craggy and hirsute. The female characters and the queen in particular still suffer from a botoxed Princess Fiona sheen.

Photorealism

The real irony of motion capture animation is that it tries to be realistic, but the point of animation is to do things that can’t be filmed in real life. In Spiderman 2, anytime Spidey had his hood on, I feared I was watching a cartoon instead of an actor. And it looked it. In Beowulf, the level of detail keeps shifting back and forth.

Motion Capture

The alleged advantage of motion capture and rotoscoping is too add a level of realism pure animation can’t attain. Even with the finest actors lit up like a Christmas tree and Tron, they can’t capture everything. Every now and then a “character” will jerk around like an extra in a Thunderbirds puppet movie.

3D

Three-D is and always will be a gimmick. The scriptwriters of anything 3D always think of as many was as possible of having things point or fly at the viewer. This always breaks the forth wall and disrupts the suspension of disbelief.

Depth of Field

A problem related to 3D imaging is that the “camera” seems to have an infinite depth of field. This ends up making the screen have a layered look that reminds me of prismatic books I used to read as a kid. When the background is as sharp as the spear pointing out over the audience, the emphasis becomes fuzzy instead of the scenery.

Peripheral Vision

The Imax screen has its own issues. The screen is so huge, it’s hard to see everything going on at once. In particular, things in the foreground at the edge of the screen catch the eye. At times the glasses (especially, if like me, you have to wear them over regular glasses) don’t cover enough of the field of vision to avoid fuzzy artifacts at the edge of you field of vision.

I really liked Beowulf, especially the meta-epic subtext that questions the entire mythmaking process. The motion capture technology is really maturing fast. Animation lets directors tidy up even Angelina Jolie’s few flaws. Her fluid gold skin is really no more revealing than Mystique in the X-Men movies, which is to say she is easy on the eyes. And the eyes are the windows to the soul.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: Will CGI ever get so good it will replace real actors?

Imax In Demand

National Blog Posting Month Day 18

This weekend was time for the Fall Philly Road Trip. Last year we went to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Fair. This year we went to catch Beowulf in Imax 3D. My son began broadly hinting that he wanted to take some friends to see the movie a week or so ago.

We usually take him out to a fancy steak dinner for getting a good report card, but we decided a road trip with three of his friends was an excellent alternative. Since none of the vehicles in our current fleet will fit six, I got a Grand Caravan for the day and we all hit the road. And just so we didn’t neglect the steak part of the tradition, we hit Pat’s in South Philly to school the kids in what real cheesesteaks taste like. They all agreed they were infinitely better than the pale imitation the school cafeteria serves.

But why did I rent a minivan and drive two hours to see what is showing just down the street? Because the closest theater with an Imax screen is in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, home of what must be the biggest mall on the eastern seaboard.

I can’t believe that the greater Washington/Baltimore area can’t support a commercial Imax theater. There is no shortage of museum affiliated screens including the National Air and Space Museum, the National Museum of Natural History, the Udvar-Hazy Center, and the Maryland Science Center here in Baltimore. Some of these dabble in commercial releases after hours, but none show them on a regular basis.

A few years ago while killing time during the holidays down in Tampa we caught The Polar Express in 3D Imax at the otherwise nearly deserted Channelside Complex. If Tampa can support an Imax theater, I don’t know why this area can’t. You expect to find Imax theaters in big cities like New York, San Francisco, and Dallas, but according to Wikipedia, other US cities with commercial Imax screens include Nashville, Fresno, Colorado Springs, West Palm Beach, Boise, and dozens of others.

The movie chains need to get a clue and tap a market that demands it. If I can drive a hundred miles to see an Imax movie, think of the thousands that would drive across town.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: Would you pay more to see a movie in Imax? Would you drive a hundred miles?

Dumbledore's Closet Mates

J. K. Rowling has outed Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster (snicker, snicker) of Hogwarts School in the Harry Potter novels, as being gay. In hindsight this is forehead slappingly obvious. Here was an elderly bachelor whose calling in life was teaching young wizards how to control their wand. And not to give away any spoilers (and the Harry Potter Spoiler Free Period has long expired), but Deathly Hallows (which I reviewed here) has a very touching and even more tragic backstory on the tale of Dumbledore's one true love (which wasn't Harry and calls into question the whole relationship with Snape).

The reaction has been mixed, mostly lining up against Rowling for revealing details outside the canon of the printed works. I defend her on the grounds that she had to stop a line from getting into the next movie that would have been untrue to the character. Still, I am uncomfortable with having to reveal the sexual orientation of a character where it plays no significance to the story. Besides we shouldn’t be spreading rumors about the deceased (and that WAS a spoiler).

Normally I eschew outing celebrities against their will, but this revelation has made me wonder about other fictional characters. I did a survey on ambiguously gay comic strip characters earlier this year, but there are some characters in popular movie and television series that I wonder about just a little.

	Scotty – While wishful thinking fans literally invented the slash fiction genre with their Kirk/Spock fantasies, Scotty is the one that seemed married to the ship. He always had some excuse to tend to the warp cores while Kirk ran around chasing every skirt in the quadrant. I’m no Star Trek: TOS expert, but I’m not sure our favorite engineer ever got some trim that wasn’t related to the navigational systems.
	Chewbacca – Making fun of the prissy ways of C3P0 is just too easy, but we shouldn’t confuse effeminate with gay. When it comes to a big hairy critter, nobody is a bigger bear than Chewey. His unrequited crush on Han is what kept him on board the Millennium Falcon and saving the galaxy’s ass more than once. While the non-canonical Holiday Special hints at a family life, can you really tell Wookie genders under all that fur?
	Starbuck – I mean Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica: The Original Series with Dirk Benedict, not Kara Thrace from the remake (not that that wouldn’t fulfill some fantasies as well, but I think we have too much on screen evidence of Kara’s proclivities). Between the blinged-out uniforms and the feathered hairdos, Apollo and Starbuck would have looked as home in Studio 54 as they did in a Viper. It doesn’t help Dirk’s case that he went on to be “Face” on The A-Team. Talk about typecasting.
	Gabrielle - There isn’t even subtext here. The blatantly Sapphic trysts on Xena: Warrior Princess became a running joke. I just needed an excuse to Google a picture of Reneé O'Connor so that this post doesn’t look like a complete sausage-fest.
	Pikachu – The love between a Pokemon and its trainer dare not speak its name. Pikachu! I call you! A closet case.

For more suspect fantasy characters see this post on Cup Of Joe or the thread on ExtremeSkins (the fact that this is a football message board worries me just a little).

BlatantCommentWhoring™: What otherwise innocuous characters have been hiding in the closet?

SciFi Countdown

Entertainment Weekly in one of its frequent paeans to its inner geek has compiled a list of the top 25 science fiction movies or series of the last 25 years. The time limit keeps Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back out of the running and the three prequels don’t make the cut. Being a little discriminating and not quite a total a complete nerd, I am only familiar enough with about twelve of the list. Here are my opinions on ones I can give a valid opinion on. Click on the links to see what EW had to say.

24. Galaxy Quest: The best fanboy homage ever. Non-fans can view it as mocking the genre. True believers recognize the truth. The meta-casting of Sigourney Weaver alone is brilliant.

21. Futurama: Unevenly funny. It takes a real shotgun approach to the cultural references by throwing everything against the wall, but only a few things stick.

19. Starship Troopers. Despite it’s attempt at social satire, it’s still a bunch of kids shooting at giant bugs.

18. Heroes: Right now, one of my few must-see shows. The real test will be in Season 2 to see if they can hold the momentum.

15. Firefly/Serenity: Avery good show that suffers from raised expectations by its rather rabid fan base. It’s a very entertaining series, but it’s not THAT good.

13. Terminator/Terminator 2: As a pair, perhaps the best time travel paradox story ever filmed. And plenty of great kick-ass action.

12. Back To The Future: Another excellent time travel story that appeals to all genders and generations. This one was marred instead of enhanced by the sequels.

8. Star Trek: The Next Generation: In quality, breadth, and scope the TNG franchises eclipse TOS. The mid-run episodes (Seasons 3 to 6) were often great 45 minute long mini-movies that were better than most theatrical releases. I prefer Deep Space 9, but I know I’m in the minority. Voyager is where the concept ran out of gas and they should have never attempted Enterprise.

7. ET: A Citizen Kane level work of genius. “Happy” Spielberg at his pinnacle.

5. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: I actually prefer ST:IV, but without the second movie showing that a good Star Trek movie can be made, the series would have ended here.

3. Blade Runner: A paradigm shifting work of art direction. The sheer denseness of the look inspired a lot of good (and bad) cyperpunk literature. It’s not often cinematic science fiction affects the written versions this significantly.

2. Battlestar Galactica: The Best Show On Television™. As I mentioned in a previous blogpost, it shows what ST:Voyager should have been and then kicks it up another level. For gritty political intrigue and commentary it tops even The West Wing. Season 3 stretched on a little long, but the first three episodes and the season finale are worth the entire season.

1. The Matrix: Another paradigm shifter from a special effects point of view, but not a lot of new grand was broken storywise. The legacy of the original movie will be forever marred by the increasingly awful sequels.

The notable omission on the EW list is Babylon 5. I never watched it enough to become involved in the storyline because the truly dismal acting drove me away. I know Deep Space 9 was a complete rip-off, but the Federation folk did it better. Also missing are Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Dark Angel. I guess the editors at EW have something against kick-boxing hotties.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: What would you add to the list or demote?