Don’t Say a Word: Douglas let’s his breath do the talking, Nov. 30, 2004.
Congratulations to Michael Douglas on his “Walk of Fame” star! You’ve earned it, big guy.
Now, who’s up for pizzas at Spago?
Categories
Category: Shallow
Categories
Bitten by the Humbug
Christmas Time in Ames, Iowa: Leslie Hall and a friend.
Yes, Christmas begins before Thanksgiving. Yes, it’s a marketed, commodified celebration of consumption. Yes, the true meaning of the holiday has been forgotten. (Some Jewish kid was born in a barn, or something…) Yes, it’s just totally cheesy.
But it’s kind of awesome, too. Like, when hardcore heads get into the Christmas spirit and release holiday raps. Remember Run-DMC’s “Christmas in Hollis,” or Doug E. Fresh, The Treacherous Three, and The Magnificent Force’s “X-Mas Rap” in Beat Street, or P. Diddy’s “Bad Boy for Life (Santa Gave Me a Lump of Coal, Yo)”? Classics, all.
Add to the hip hop Christmas canon the latest from the Canadian rap ‘n’ racism bible-approved Iowa-reared MC supergroup, Leslie and The LY’s. Watch “Christmas Rap” and prepare to have your planet rocked.
If the Missy Elliott-inflected lyrics don’t make you smile, the Flash-meets-Rodney Alan Greenblat video will. And if that doesn’t put you in the Christmas spirit, your soul is dead and you embody everything that is wrong with this country, and shame on you.
Today’s ‘let’s git’ high concept pitch comes courtesy of Done Deal:
Title: Jersey Dukes
Log Line: A New Jersey mob boss sends a crew over to England to check on his daughter’s impending wedding to a royal. The mobsters discover that England is perfect for mob expansion, especially once they are offered help by some dukes and duchesses in need of money to hang on to their country estate.
Writer: Fred Wolf
Agent: UTA
Buyer: Paramount Pictures
Price: High six against low seven figures
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Logged: 11/30/04
More: Pitch. Lorne Michaels will produce.
So, we’re looking at James Caan, Jim Broadbent, Kiera Knightley, Vanessa Redgrave, jokes about bad English food, a scene where a New Jersey chef is flown in to make ‘gravy’ in an old Manor House kitchen, an uptight British dude handling a gun with ease (since he dueled back in Oxford), and a set piece inside Big Ben? Works for me.
Categories
An Eye For Trends
One’s a Trend: Gwen Stefani on i-D‘s Dec./Jan. cover…Val Kilmer as Philip in Alexander.
Related: Sammy Davis, Jr.; Murray Wilson.
Categories
Don’t Look Back
The Life Aquatic poster… Milton Glaser‘s Bob Dylan poster.
Gothamist is running a contest to promote Wes Anderson’s cruelly under-hyped film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou this week.
What caught my eye immediately was the excellent poster for the film (above left), an obvious homage to Milton Glaser’s iconic Bob Dylan poster from 1966 (above, right). Since the Zissou image didn’t link, I don’t know its provenance, but I was surprised that there was no mention of Dylan or Glaser, since just last week, Gothamist was singing Glaser’s praises in a piece about the new New York Magazine logo.
I guess Glaser‘s just one of those artists whose work is so ubiquitous, it’s become wallpaper for the culture. It’s like “Happy Birthday to You”: Everyone knows that song, but can anyone name its composer? It’s a shame, too, since Glaser created so many excellent, memorable designs, like the beloved logo for Grand Union.
Related: “When I went upstairs, my bedroom felt like an overwarm sickroom. The clearest remaining vestige of Tom was the ‘Don’t Look Back’ poster that he’d taped to a flank of his dresser where Bob Dylan’s psychedelic hair style wouldn’t always be catching my mother’s censorious eye.” The Comfort Zone, by Jonathan Franzen, The New Yorker, Nov. 29, 2004.
Categories
Isn’t That A Clear Conflict of Interest?
High Court to Hear Medical Marijuana Issue.
“Session” to begin promptly at 4:20.
Aerosmith’s Tyler Visits Women’s Rehab Center
Related: Aerosmith: You Gotta Move DVD, released Nov. 23, 2004.
Categories
World Peace, TK
Categories
The New York Times: Obsessed with Vaginas
From The Most Private of Makeovers (Nov. 28, 2004):
As millions of women inject Botox, reshape noses, augment breasts, lift buttocks and suck away unwanted fat, a growing number are now exploring a new frontier, genital plastic surgery. They are tightening vaginal muscles, plumping up or shortening labia, liposuctioning the pubic area and even restoring the hymen, sometimes despite their doctors’ skepticism about the need for such cosmetic measures.
From Trying to Avoid 2nd Caesarean, Many Find Choice Isn’t Theirs (Nov. 29, 2004):
Women around the country are finding that more and more hospitals that once allowed vaginal birth after Caesarean, or VBAC (commonly pronounced VEE-back), are now banning it and insisting on repeat Caesareans. About 300,000 women a year have repeat Caesareans. The rate of vaginal births in women who have had Caesareans has fallen by more than half, from 28.3 percent in 1996 to 10.6 percent in 2003.
From Wes Anderson’s Faithful Diving Team (Nov. 28, 2004):
It is a question that Mr. Anderson, 35, has been fretting about of late. “The only thing I worry about is that I’m going to have my same exact audience that I’ve had, which I’m lucky to have in the first place,” he said, while dissecting a plate of branzino at the same table at Bar Pitti restaurant in New York where he and Mr. Baumbach invented their cranky underwater patriarch.
Categories
