Tag Archives: Entertainment

DEVIL SEQUEL

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They’re doing a sequel to The Devil Wears Prada. Prada Two.is a much different movie from ONE. Anne Hathaway stars as the rising egghead of journalism.

The old magazine is struggling and is in an atrocious state. like fashion in the USA. No one wants to tell Meryl that the publication is in the dumps. It has had trouble shifting to an on-line world. There are no more scenes of delivering the book to the house; no one has time to read. Fashion’s creative side today has taken inspiration from the alley behind the New York Police Department.

The magazine needs fresh blood. Meryl, entrenched and wrinkled, trying on clothes to hide her belly is tiring. No one has the capacity to anticipate each whim. Of course, Anne is Meryl’s favorite despite less-fat Emily’s attempts to stab her in the back all the time.

The story has to go somewhere, so Stanley Tucci has been demoted to the kitchen, the chef of the business. Who cares about shoes when risotto con cream de aspirate rovennoti is in the offing. The food portions of DEVIL TWO  are fantastic. Super secret spoiler alert. In One Anne has a spoiled boyfriend who goes to Boston to be a sou-chef. He’s no longer on the scene, but Anne has always liked Stanley and romance over the food makes for an interesting counterpoint. 

They’ve brought in Meryl’s husband (which number) played by Kenneth Branagh. There’s no way to make DEVIL TWO a family film: The audience won’t watch an old white couple having to remind one another to tie shoe laces. With additional writing, someone might be able to make DEVIL TWO, an Alzheimer’s comedy.  

cover -19, reopening theaters

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Orange County, CA is reopening movie theaters. Social distancing, five theater seats between viewers. No one behind one another. Everyone wears a mask – that will muffle laughter, quiet gasps of horror, and suppress awe when the monster on the screen does something disgusting. The real social setting in movie houses is when the monster in the theater actually does something.

Look at what Covid-19 has done to America! Teenagers once sat in back and necked – explored, and did other things – there are plenty of verbs in the language to describe their activities. NO MORE! Any pair that wants to sit next to one another, honeys touching and thereupon, a creep in uniform and a flashlight will shine a beam in eyes and say, “SOCIAL DISTANCE!” How can anyone social distance and do what is necessary in dark theaters. Don’t talk about prostheses. A first learning experience, learning more about the partner while offering directions and instructions. The glory of learning and satisfaction reinforcing everything public education needs. ALL THAT IS GONE!

The activity, the wandering, the imagination – American teenagers will be crippled forever! Something tells me no vaccine will improve these circumstances for good, soon. 2025 sounds all right after health security is fixed. And a whole slew of teenagers will be stunted, unable to act impulsively, intrusively: Boys and girls, young men and women, will wonder what is wrong and what they should do as a species.


I say, KEEP THE MOVIE THEATERS CLOSED1 

MEGYN KELLY SHOW

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Brenda Starr has returned. She’s covering the big issues of the day.

One issue is demystifying self-proclaimed truths repeated by people who are mentally ill. In Megyn’s recent interview of Alex Jones, he claimed that the Sandy Hook shooting was perpetrated in conspiratorial fashion in part, by the parents of the victims.

A program with such headlines and ramifications would be definitive, if the sources were identified and verified, like once-upon-a-time happened in the newspaper world. It was Ronald Reagan who advanced the standard: Verify and trust. Americans have to learn whether Brenda Starr ignores all that and goes for the exclusive.

For himself, Alex Jones said he “looked at all the angles of Newtown.” What was the view from one hundred eighty-three degrees? Jones also asserts, “Thirty years ago they began creating animal-human hybrids.” Do you think it’s true? I’ve heard countless women describe Don Trump as a Neanderthal.

Perhaps Alex Jones cannot help himself. He is photographed wearing a tin-foil hat. He looks sad, a pouty face like a kid at a birthday party who didn’t get a piece of the cake. I notice, though, in another photograph while he’s talking, he looks like he has eaten the whole damn cake.

Reactions of the Sandy Hook parents are predictable and justified. If Jones gets to spit out his conspiracy theories and Brenda Starr only argues with him, the parents have a mighty point. If Jones is one of 300 such people spewing these theories, is Jones the most representative spokesman? Why? Ask him to distinguish facts which make his presentation better. Ask about his experience and depth of knowledge. Ask, ask, ask. Most of those people do not have the background to answer. What they know are the cliches and catch phrases known by their audience and followers.

Brenda Starr is correct about one thing: The more that is known about these people – how they collect their facts, conceive their opinions, rely on biases and prejudices, believe intuitions, chose the correct or inflammatory word, and depend upon instinct – the better for the American people. The American people should judge the TV program based upon reason, logic and common sense, as well as common decency.

And Brenda Starr, herself, should strive for a newsworthy program, not one that is entertaining: A “riveting exchange,” she is quoted.

JANE FONDA – HANOI OR HOLLYWOOD

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This week’s Internet has carried reports that Jane Fonda is sorry for the 1972 picture and film of her sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft battery, laughing and otherwise joyously carrying on. North Vietnam was the enemy during the Vietnam War, itself a huge, costly mistake that never needed to be fought. That War with more than 58,000 deaths brought out the super stupid in two Presidents, Johnson and Nixon, and their stooges – generals, secretaries of state, national security advisors…

Now Jane Fonda says the pictures and the film were huge mistakes. What was her first clue?

Jane was in the movies, going from glamour puss to excellent actress while arising from a gaggle of Hollywood brats. She believed in the Hollywood hype – I’m on film. I have money. I am famous. Everyone loves me. Nothing can happen to me. In early 1972 she won an Oscar for her role in the 1971 film, Klute. Thereafter, she went to North Vietnam for her photo shoot.

The current Internet has incorrect and omitted quotes of Jane Fonda and boyfriend (eventual Hubby), Tom Hayden. This list is incomplete but it represents her state of mind after returning from Vietnam and after the return of American prisoners of war e.g. John McCain. “Walking through the streets of Hanoi with their heads bowed in front of a woman with a bayonet might be torture,” Jane said, Daily Californian, April 12, 1973, p. 1; see Berkeley Barb, April 13, 1973, for more Jane Fonda opinions on the torture of American POWS; Holzer, Henry Mark and Erica, Aid and Comfort: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam, McFarland & Co. Hayden, Reunion, p. 455: Either Tom or Jane about the time of the 1973 Peace Treaty, “the POWS were ‘liars, hypocrites and pawns in Nixon’s efforts to rewrite history.’” Jane and Tom were among a group of myth-makers, see Susan Sontag, Styles of Radical Will, NY, 1969, “Trip to Hanoi,” p. 205, 208, “The North Vietnamese genuinely care about the welfare of the hundreds of American pilots and give them bigger rations than the Vietnamese population gets ‘because they are bigger than we are…’ and ‘they’re used to eat more meat than we are.’”

[These citations are from my novel, Bitch., 2013, iBookstore.]

The time to correct misimpression’s, miscommunications and mistakes was when the quotes first appeared in 1973, or whenever they were made. 2015 is too late to go on TV and apologize. I cannot take Jane Fonda seriously. She is not sincere. She acts like the same stupid little Hollywood girl she was in her first movies in the early Sixties.

Entertainment disapproved of that war. John Wayne’s Green Berets is the most ridiculous pro-war movie from the mid-1960s. There were no similar films except for POW and POWS-left-behind films after the peace and departure in 1975. I imagine in Jane’s own family, brother Peter, a fine actor whom I’m always happy to see on film and her father, the venerable Henry Fonda opposed the War. I doubt if Henry let his views to break up his long friendship with Jimmy Stewart. Both Henry and Peter had a maturity in 1970 which Jane has yet to exhibit.

Jane left Tom Hayden in the early 1980s, did the exercise tape thing  and was the subject of wonder on supermarket tabloids: Which sexual orientation did she want? It’s publicity. She ran off to Ted Turner but wasn’t sure she wanted to do the tomahawk chop at Atlantic Braves games. CNN, the Braves, buffalo ranching and Time-Warner were all too much. She left Ted.

Now it’s all make up and plastic surgery. Today Jane looks like she’s forty years old. But what’s in her brain? She’s in her mid-seventies, and it appears she wants to compete with Anne Hathaway and Heather Graham, actresses born after Jane made her most damning statements.

Jane Fonda is not a little Public Relations’ problem. She wants to be known and respected as a good person, although much she had done has left her living on the same street as Charlie Sheen, Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus, and Jane is the most notorious of the neighbors. Jane cannot write another book, like the one she released in the last decade: Throughout it, anyone could read I’m lying; I’m a dishonest person. I want you to love me.

This is her conundrum.

EMIGRATION

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Dear President Obama,

You must act immediately with pen and telephone because Congress cannot be quick. Deport Justin Bieber. What sort of name is that? Sounds Canadian.

If you are serious about foreign nationals living in the United States of America, you should also expect each of them to comport himself according to the law and following traditional social norms. In other words, those foreign nationals can not act like Americans today. There should be no second chance. Send offending foreign nationals home, and give others a chance to live here.

Canadians were once polite, civil and fit for American society. This reputation comes from their origins. It is reported in some historical circles that when the French “discovered” Canada, native Canadians said to them “Aca nada.” The French explorers were polite and listened, and Frenchified the word, “A Canada.” The French did not know that the Spanish had arrived earlier in that land and looked around. They repeated to one another. “Aca nada,” which in Spanish means, “There is nothing here.”

However, Canadians are much changed.Rob Ford has demonstrated that. (Notice the Canadians are so polite to overlook Ford’s faults; he’s even running for reelection.) Justin Bieber is Rob Ford’s soulmate, and is proof that Canadians should remain north of the border, living in their igloos, playing ice hockey and dancing with polar bears. These are their preferred activities. Give some sun, warmth and the protection of the red, white and blue, and a Canadian cannot control himself.

With the stroke of a pen and a short telephone call today, you can take the most decisive action of your Second Term and rid the country of a foreign irritant and leave Americans with home grown varieties: Lindsey Lohan – excuse New York City birth – and Miley Cyrus – now show her naked tongue rather than a naked body and Americans can wonder which is photoshopped.

“GRAVITY” – Sequel, Duh!

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The movie, “Gravity,” got the largest U.S. box office last week. It is about two astronauts [George Clooney and Sandra Bullock] floating in space after their space craft or the space station is destroyed, or after their Virgin Atlantic spaceflight went awry. Ed Harris is in the movie as flight control, Houston, I suppose. After being in “The Right Stuff,” Harris adds credibility to any space movie. I have not seen the movie, but after the big October box office, it’s never too early to talk sequel.

Missing from Movie One because I’ve heard no ditties, is a song. This is outer space so Andy Williams or Perry Cuomo have to sing it. No one can have Janis Joplin belt it out – she’s too down to earth. The song not in the movie but should be is, “Dancing on the Atmosphere.” When an object enters the Earth’s atmosphere, it burns up. When “Gravity” causes our astronaut duo to get close to the atmosphere, they perform movie tricks, bounce off and don’t burn. That move and song are called “Dancing on the Atmosphere.”

The atmosphere is separate and apart from the burning, the chemistry, that the youngsters, Sandra and George have for one another. [This is all from press reports. We know how accurate that is. Marriage tomorrow, divorce by the weekend.]

The SEQUEL. George and Sandra have not been impaired or traumatized enough. They’re on a second space flight together, which is also jinxed. A sun flair destroys their spaceship, but [a contrivance] they avoid death by riding a wave of energy. [The accompanying music and song “Radiation Waltz.”] During the waltz they are protected in a thermal blanket, where fortunately everything including all movement remains uncover. The audience never sees the ill-effects of gamma [not grandma] rays.

Passing by a comet and our astronautic duo grabs the tail and rides. [SONG – Catch a comet by the tail.] Two songs, they ought to make this a musical. JOB OPENING: Seeking songwriter. Good platform. Lyric and music for movie/musical. Contact this blog.

After the music ends George and Sandra realize they’re going the wrong way and they’ve gone too far. They are in the Astroid Belt beyond Mars. They got off on an astroid and disagree. He wants to put all the rocks in the Belt together and form a planet; she want to return to mother earth. It’s the first time George has taken a good look at Sandra; she is shriveled. [Song: Summer Peach in the Fall] They locate a supply of oxygen in the astroid. With released energy the rock races toward Earth, the only bullseye in the Universe.[SONG: Target Earth] As they fly by the moon, hydrogen bombs explode near them. The countries with nuclear capabilities are sending bombs to blow up the astroid.

ALTERNATIVE ENDINGS:

1. George and Sandra die in a nuclear explosion. [Song: Direct Hit – I love you.] This is a bad way to kill off a movie franchise. The audience wants to see George and Sandra in space again, and again, and again. Also, there’s no happy ending for a big musical flourish. 

2. It’s a nice astroid, darting among H-Bombs. It finally stops and drops George and Sandra off near a space station. [Song, Welcome Home] The astroid becomes a new earth satellite which hosts network equipment from Time, Warner Cable & Internet.

3. The most exciting ending [Song: Jump Off] As they approach Earth, George and Sandra jump off the astroid and float to a space station where they knock. They get on and watch: The astroid skirts the Earth and the atmosphere and heads for the Sun. It smacks that burning orb, [Song: Space is a Blast] causing a massive flair to stream toward earth but missing it. However, the Space Station/craft? Sequel 3.[Song: History Repeats.]

If all this sounds silly and stupid, remember it is the magic of Hollywood, and we’re talking big bucks: Platforms, actors and sequels!

 

 

 

TELL THE TRUTH OR BE LAZY

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Today’s news: Matt Lauer says media is lazy about Ann Curry firing. 

Unwittingly, Matt Lauer has identified and responded to his own complaint, The Media is lazy. Duh! The Media has been lazy for a long time, and Matt is at the head of the pack. He’s so slow he fails to realize the truth is the only way to clear up his “troubles” (psychological, popularity, professional).”

Journalism once had standards. They’ve been lowered over the decades. It once was if a journalist didn’t acquit herself to the standards, she’d be gone. Today it is easy to observe the standards are not there. Few journalists are quick and intelligent. It is easy to tell they were once “C” students in high school, always talking in class, running around collecting gossip, and vying for the inside secrets which they never got but they passed off any gossip as gospel.

Enter Ann Curry. She was presentable and competent when doing serious news, go out, interview people, tell what happened in sixty seconds, smile. She could also read the news. Smile. But give Ann Curry the freedom of an interview show, and her attitude changed. Her voice changed. She believed he had to be empathetic and sympathetic with everyone, except those she despised.  She would fawn over guests and their problems – get the story from the patient because doctors don’t know crap and can’t explain it. And there were ridiculous episodes:

“Your goldfish went for a swim in the New York City sewer system?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever get them back?”

“No.”

“You must have felt horrible.”

On the Today Show Ann Curry became an entertainer suited for a sit-com waiting for the laugh-track to kick in or for violins to fill the moment.

To be fair Diane Sawyer had the same temperament and style, pleading personality, looking with doggy eyes wanting a treat, please give an answer dripping with emotion so we can cry together. But Diane had an advantage. She never cried. She had experience, being in broadcast TV. She met Richard Nixon once when he was president and never kicked him around.

So Matt Lauer was unable to fess up and say this is why Ann was canned. He’s lazy.