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Avatar and the Vocabulary of Evildoers -- Or, Why James Cameron's Script Isn't as Bad as You Think
31 minutes ago
While critics have unanimously agreed that the visual spectacle that is James Cameron's Avatar is beyond compare, there has been less enthusiasm for the plot line, which has been called out by some critics as flat and unoriginal. It's quite true that the movie's script -- which centers on a tribe of indigenous creatures whose ancestral arboreal homeland is being destroyed by contracted soldiers in service of a resource extraction company -- has its weak points, perhaps most notably in the endless stream of one-liners that emanate from the film's primary antagonists: corporate evil bad guy Parker Selfridge (played by Giovanni Ribisi) and the muscle behind his operation, Col. Miles Quarritch. In one memorable moment, Ribisi's character (who apparently keeps a hovering chunk of the hilariously yet somewhat profoundly named mineral "Unobtanium" on his desk at all times just so he »
- Josh Schrei
Lindsay Lohan's Fall From Private Jet To Commercial Airline Nightmare (Photos)
4 hours ago
After a busy holiday weekend of photographing herself in a bikini and partying with Moammar Gaddafi's violent son in St. Barts, Lindsay Lohan is back in New York. The trip home wasn't easy on her. A private jet delivered Lindsay to a private yacht last week, so how did she end up braving flight delays, security checkpoints and crowded terminals with the masses? Last Thursday Lindsay flew to St. Barts in luxury with now-former best friend mop-haired stylist Patrick Aufdenkamp and another friend, Jessica Schul. The trio rang in the New Year together, but Lindsay's resolution for a drama-free 2010 fell through before the trip was over. Patrick allegedly betrayed Lindsay by stealing her sketches for her upcoming 6126 line. He denied the charges, claiming he is "way too creative of an individual" to do something so foolish. "Everyone will »
- Katy Hall
A Morning Ramble Through the Idiocracy
4 hours ago
I remember the first time I saw Mike Judge's Frog Baseball sometime back in the 90s. The idea of two stoner/metalheads laughing about playing baseball with frogs as the ball might seem a bit tame in today's extreme-animation world, but sandwiched between all the Liquid Television fluff, it stood out as completely amazing and memorable. A few years later after Beavis and Butt-head had already run its course, some guy on my soccer team was telling me about a movie he'd seen in the theatre that week called Office Space. I remember it so clearly because of his reserved-yet-gushing assessment that he may have (surprisingly) just seen one of the greatest movies of all time, and I like to think time proved him right. In my opinion there is no denying that Mike Judge is a man of vision. Which »
- Steven Nereo
James Cameron: The Brilliant Replicant
5 hours ago
If you don't go to see Avatar you will be depriving yourself of an amazing experience. James Cameron has reached a new level for cinematic genius and breathtaking technology. That said, soon after leaving the theatre (3-D only please), your mind should soon decompress from the emerald and shimmering moon world of Pandora, its altruistic Na'Vi population guided by an eco-religion and snap back into gear. At that point, you might say to yourself, "Gee, now that I think about it, the script seemed less than original and a bit hackneyed." Some of my fellow conservatives have voiced concern that Cameron is using a heavy hand to demonstrate that greedy corporations or executives use superior technology to take advantage of -- or attempt to wipe out -- indigenous people »
- Douglas MacKinnon
It's the Beatles' World (We Just Live in It)
5 hours ago
"We were four relatively sane people in the middle of madness."--George Harrison The Beatles -- with two members of the group deceased -- were, by the end of 2009, projected to make over $1.6 billion from the release of their 13 remastered albums, as well as the video game, Beatles Rock Band. As one commentator notes, "In one master stroke, the Beatles address falling sales of CDs as well as grab a new generation of Beatlemaniacs." Writing for Guitar Legend magazine, Alan di Perna explained, "The products are big sellers with people who were born long after the group's breakup or, for that matter, Lennon's death." It's as if the Beatles never left us. But that's the point -- they haven't. In fact, they seem to be everywhere. The Beatles were much more than a rock group that changed pop music. »
- John W. Whitehead
Benjamin Millepied: Natalie Portman's Boyfriend? (Photo, Info)
5 hours ago
Does Natalie Portman have a new boyfriend? In Touch Weekly is reporting that for months the notoriously private actress has been quietly seeing the choreographer of her new movie, Black Swan. Benjamin Millepied, 32, is a classically trained ballerina who was born in France and studied at the Conservatoire National in Lyon and the School of American Ballet as a teen. He is now a principal dancer at New York City Ballet. In Touch released the following statement: Natalie stepped out with her fellow New Yorker for the first time in public at a low-key New Year's Eve party in Tribeca. "She has been subletting Sarah Michelle Gellar's apartment and she wanted to celebrate the New Year with a few close friends and introduce them to Ben," says an insider. "They have actually been a couple since the fall, but she »
- Katy Hall
HuffPost Review: Leap Year
6 hours ago
Leap Year is the kind of movie that shows up weekly, if not daily, on the Lifetime, We and Hallmark channels. Apparently, the public has an insatiable appetite for unfunny romantic comedies about opposites, who attract after first repelling each other. And, apparently, Hollywood has a bottomless pit of this drivel from which to feed that gaping, witless maw -- with films like 27 Dresses, The Ugly Truth, New in Town -- and now this film. Women of the world -- unite against brain-dead chick flicks. Written by the dread team of Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont (authors of such classics as Made of Honor, Josie and the Pussycats, and The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas), Leap Year (opening Friday 1/8/10) stars Amy Adams as Anna, a control freak from Boston who, in the early scenes, is disappointed when her drippy doctor boyfriend »
- Marshall Fine
Kate Gosselin's Hair Extensions - How Bad Are They? (Photo)
7 hours ago
Kate Gosselin got herself some hair extensions for the new year, (scroll for full photo and poll) and she's posing on the new cover of People modeling the 'do. The hair took 20 Hours to do. Gosselin, she of the late "Jon & Kate Plus 8," tells the magazine: "I'm starting over. It's good to have hair again. I never thought I'd have short hair for as long as I did. I feel like this is a fresh start, a fresh me, a fresh life. I'm rebuilding. There's no option for this not to be a good year. Now I get to start over with a new self and new goals." Entertainment Tonight got Jon's ex Hailey Glassman's reaction to Kate's new look: "I like it! It's a little shocking due to how short it was before. I think a new look is a »
- Katherine Thomson
Miley Cyrus In Bazaar: Talks Parents' Reaction To 'Topless' Vanity Fair Photo
8 hours ago
Miley Cyrus covers the new Haper's Bazaar and inside she talks about her parents' reaction to her controversial Annie Leibovitz shoot, the pressures of growing up in the spotlight and her new chest tattoo. Miley spent the summer in Georgia filming 'The Last Song,' a movie based on a Nicholas Sparks novel, in which she plays Greg Kinnear's renegade daughter. This year she shoots the fourth and final season of 'Hannah Montana.' On posing in a bed sheet for Vanity Fair: "Here, my parents are thinking they're seeing a beautiful photograph by a major photographer, and the people of America want to see something dirty in that? It doesn't make sense to us because [my family] doesn't look for negativity. But people don't want to say 'What a great performance' or 'What a great shot." No one wants to look »
- Katy Hall
Cera vs. Cera: Youth in Revolt
9 hours ago
In Youth in Revolt -- a Catcher in the Rye meets Fight Club coming-of-age film -- Michael Cera does what many have wanted to do to Michael Cera themselves personally: whup his own sorry ass. And that is definitely worth seeing. For me, personally, Cera's jig was up. What I found so endearing about him in Juno and amusing in Superbad became down right annoying in Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist and positively ridiculous in Year One. In a mere two years Cera had become over-exposed playing that same dry-witted, bumbling, reluctant hero. Cera's trajectory was enough to make one feel sorry for actor Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale). He was Michael Cera before Michael Cera became Michael Cera. Except after Michael Cera became Michael Cera, Jesse Eisenberg was reduced to a poor man's Michael »
- Zorianna Kit
Advice to Tiger Woods: Ignore Brit Hume
9 hours ago
Brit Hume, a conservative commentator serving as an analyst for Fox News, said that Tiger Woods's recovery will be possible only if he converts to Christianity. Specifically, Hume said with a straight face, "The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. My message to Tiger would be, 'Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.'" That obvious Christian bias would be astounding if not so disturbingly common. Hume goes unchallenged in a society in which 70% falsely believe the country to be a Christian nation. If the intolerance inherent to Hume's statement »
- Jeff Schweitzer
Casey Johnson's Daughter Ava-Monroe (Photos, News, Info)
9 hours ago
**Scroll down for video and photos** Fallen heiress Casey Johnson leaves behind an attention-hungry fiance and, sadly, a three-year-old daughter. Casey adopted Ava-Monroe (named after her idol Marilyn Monroe) from Kazakhstan in 2007. Last year Casey's mother, Sale, took custody of Ava when she became concerned over the little girl's safety. In December Casey and Tila Tequila flew out to New York in an attempt to reclaim Ava from Sale but came back empty-handed. Ava remains under her grandmother's care, although other bizarre custody offers have been forthcoming. In the 2007 video below Casey sat down with MTV correspondent SuChin Pak to talk about the as-yet incomplete adoption process and her ideas about caring for little Ava. Like Angelina Jolie, Casey first tried adopting from Cambodia. She fell in love with a 2-year-old named Lavissa there in 2005, but the country's »
- Katy Hall
Nixon, Elvis and Me: Remembering the King at 75
10 hours ago
It was more than 39 years ago when Elvis Presley ushered him into the Oval Office to meet President Nixon, but it seems like only yesterday to Sonny West as he thinks about what might have been if the King was still around to celebrate his 75th birthday on Jan. 8. "I was asleep at Graceland at seven in the morning when Elvis called and told me to get up to Washington right away because we were going to the White House to meet the president," said West, a Presley bodyguard who was living at Presley's estate in Memphis when he received the call on Dec. 21, 1970. West relived the memory of one of the most unlikely events in the history of the White House in a telephone interview Monday from his home in Nashville. In fact, the photograph of »
- Al Eisele
Is There Finally Some Oscar Hope for Star Trek?"
10 hours ago
We're well into Oscar season and I've been despairing for Star Trek, a sensational reboot of the sci-fi franchise that offers the smart, broadly appealing entertainment that Hollywood does best. it's garnered nary a peep despite being one of the best reviewed movies of the year. (Rotten Tomatoes shows a 94% overall and 92% from Top Critics.) I know, I know. It's sci-fi, it's a long-running franchise, the cast is mostly unknown, helmer J.J. Abrams is from TV, the plot is very geek-centric and so on. The Dark Knight had many of those strikes against it but unlike that nihilistic film, Star Trek is positive and fun. The film has been out for a few weeks on regular DVD ($29.99; Paramount) and in a BluRay Special Edition ($39.99; Paramount but only $20 on sale at Amazon and just $5 more than »
- Michael Giltz
Is ABC's The Bachelor/Bachelorette Racist?
10 hours ago
Critics of ABC's 6-year-old reality franchises The Bachelor and The Bachelorette argue that the programming lacks quality, depth and genuine purpose, having produced only one marriage, that of 2003's Trista Rehn and Ryan Sutter. There's also something else very noticeably missing: black people. Wat up with dat, ABC!? On Monday's season premiere of The Bachelor, hopeless romantic Jake Pavelka was presented with 25 beautiful, sexy gals from which to select his future wife, as he calls her. One after another they made their highly anticipated limo exit and awkwardly walked towards their dream-man (who unfortunately appears to have as much charisma as a gnat). One hopeful paramour even cheesily tripped right into Prince Uncharming's arms in what was clearly a staged damsel-in-this-dress moment. But not one sista in the whole entire bunch. Not a one. Not even a Hispanic chick. »
- Andy Ostroy
Knife in the Auteur
10 hours ago
I don't mean to scratch open an old wound here (well, maybe I do), but I wanted to take advantage of the present calm in the Polanski business to underscore a point that seems to have gotten lost in the endless backandforthing. Roman Polanski is arguably the world's greatest living filmmaker. Who else, since Hitchcock, has managed to mine terror from the most seemingly innocuous sources? There have been others (the director Michael Haneke, for instance, has proven himself a nimble sadist), but few have matched Polanski's record - and it goes far beyond Chinatown (1974) and The Pianist (2002). Try to remember with me: In Rosemary's Baby (1968) we got nervous just from watching a shot of an empty hallway. What, on the surface, could be more innocent than that? In Tess (1979), a silent, long take, held past its »
- Sam Wasson
Mariah Carey Drunk? Gives Bizzare, Loopy Acceptance Speech At Palm Springs Gala (Video)
11 hours ago
**AP Text, scroll down for video** Palm Springs, Calif. - Mariah Carey lived up to her sometimes loopy reputation at the Palm Springs International Film Festival awards gala as the teetering diva gave a long, rambling acceptance speech after being named Breakthrough Actress for her performance in "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire." Carey, in a skin-tight, black-beaded full-length Herve Leger gown, was escorted onto the stage Tuesday night, and at the podium, greeted her presenter and "Precious" director Lee Daniels with a little dance and a big hug. Carey hesitated for a few seconds, looked to the ceiling, sighed and said, "Please forgive me, because I'm a little bit, um ..." An audience member finished the sentence for her with an obscenity, to which Carey replied, "Yeah!" adding a long, hearty laugh. "Oooooooh, my goodness!" she bellowed. For the next few minutes, »
- Katy Hall
Hannibal Gaddafi Pays Beyonce To Perform In St. Barts
11 hours ago
Beyonce performed in St. Barts at one of the most star-studded New Years Eve bashes this year for the likes of Lindsay Lohan, Russell Simmons, her husband Jay-z, Usher and Jon Bon Jovi--and the family of Libyan strongman Moammar Gaddafi footed the bill. Mediaite.com first reported on Sunday that the Gaddafi family threw the party, and Tuesday Page Six confirmed that the host was Moammar's youngest son, the aptly-named Hannibal, who has been involved in a number of violent incidents in recent years. Just Christmas Day Hannibal, 33, reportedly beat his wife, Libyan model Aline Skaf, 29, until her face was bleeding heavily and her nose was clearly broken. Three of his security guards were arrested and Hannibal got off on diplomatic immunity. In 2005 he was arrested, but not charged, for punching Skaf and wielding a handgun in a »
- Katy Hall
Stop Trading Good Sleep for Great TV: DVR John Stewart and The Colbert Report
11 hours ago
Americans love television. Me too. (Especially when its time for Mr. John Stewart who is so funny he could almost be British and his erstwhile colleague, the inimitable Mr. Stephen Colbert. Both are (in my opinion) potent non-pharmacologic mood boosters- really sometimes I think they should be 'doctor-recommended'! Indeed, in this economy, staying in to watch a favorite show trumps more expensive activities but even TV in new formats like hulu.com is rapidly growing in popularity. In sum, more Americans love television than ever before. What is less known is that all this late night entertainment can have a significant impact on healthy sleep, one of our most fundamental biologic needs. Ariana and Cindi in their recent blog coined a phrase I shall use in my office tomorrow when I talk to my patients about their 'wicked TV addiction'. Indeed, it »
- Qanta Ahmed, MD
Porn Star Karaoke (Video)
11 hours ago
Sparrow Songs is a project in which filmmaker Alex Jablonski and cinematographer Michael Totten make and exhibit one short documentary per month, every month for one year. This Month: Episode 3 - Porn Star Karaoke Every week porn performers, fans and others from the adult industry get together at a bar in the San Fernando Valley to sing karaoke. This is one look at one of those nights. Sparrow Songs - Episode 3 - Porn Star Karaoke from Sparrow Songs on Vimeo. All of the films are available for free on our website, www.thesparrowsongs.com. The website is also iPhone compatible so you can watch the films on the go. They are also available on Vimeo at vimeo.com/sparrowsongs. There's a blog about the project as well, sparrowsongs.wordpress.com »
- Sparrow Songs
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