Completely random observation

Can I just say, New Zealand has the prettiest money I think I've ever seen?

Two directors

1. Director "McG," on Terminator Salvation:

After a lengthy courtship, he cast Christian Bale, “the most credible actor of his generation”, as John Connor, the leader of the human resistance in its war against the all-conquering android Terminators.

I can't accept that.

Apparently McG's forgotten about Donnie Wahlberg.

2.

Unsettling his audience comes naturally to [Terry] Gilliam, but it’s a high-risk strategy. His frustration is still raw that Tideland (2005), a twisted portrait of childhood innocence and a movie Gilliam regards as “one of the better films I have made” failed to find an audience. “Nobody went to see it!” he rages. “I was hoping people would get angry about it but those that saw it didn’t want to talk about it. This is the world we’re living in, people don’t want to discuss things that are actually worth discussing.”

For what it's worth, Terry, I talked about it.

And again.

R. Ebert, on Change

I look around this town or every town I know, and it's as if architectural shape-shifters have been operating overnight. No wonder "Dark City" rang a bell. Low becomes high, old becomes new, quaint becomes crass, tradition becomes the future of Tomorrowland. It's getting to where the oldest thing you can find is a monorail. Disney World may tear theirs down and replace it with traffic congestion. On the pedestrian market street in Cannes, I want that little rubber stamp store to still be there. You never know. I may have to buy some more rubber stamps. I got a handsome stamp there once in the shape of an upturned thumb. In those days I sent out snail mail. I rubber-stamped my envelopes with the thumb up, and they were all Returned to Sender. Funny. That's what thumbs down means.

In which I begin to understand just how vast is this Twilight thing, really

It's connected to everything. Here we find teen hearthrob Robert Pattinson walking with actress "gal pal" Shannon Marie Woodward, AKA the woman I'd like to get to play my character Keitha.

Worthy of note

Leonard Maltin on the passing of Dom DeLuise:

Seemingly all of older show business was in attendance [at the memorial service] (after all, Dom worked on stage and television as well as movies for the past forty-five years) but what struck me most was that three of the funniest men on the planet —Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, and Larry Gelbart—all spoke of Dom as the funniest man they knew. That’s really saying something.

Not even my favorite color can save this dress

I blame Marilyn Manson, clearly, he drove Rose insane.

There's always room for a good Bugs Bunny cartoon

...and this is one of the best-animated (dig especially the scene where Bugs rolls his own cigarette) ones ever.

Bugs Bunny Rides Again
Uploaded by Channel_Zero - Classic TV and last night's shows, online.

PS: A bit of trivia: The punchline to Yosemite Sam's joke upon his first entrance was originally "And I ain't Mahatma Gandhi!" It was changed to "namby pamby" after Gandhi's assassination.

Okay, the Wanda Sykes thing

Holy shit.

As you've probably heard by now:

While entertaining before a group including President Obama at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, comedienne Sykes took a couple of shots at Rush Limbaugh that were, pretty objectively, low blows.

Even Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann--no amateurs at taking shots at Limbaugh themselves--have raised objections on their respective television shows.

Stewart also pointed out that the same people who have their panties in a bunch because of something Sykes said, are perfectly all right with everything Bush & Cheney did. Quite right.

But that's not the Holy shit part.

As someone on the Aaron Sorkin mailing list just reminded me, in a second season episode of West Wing, "The Drop-In," the c-story was:

A comedian who kills in front of an audience including the President, but there was a joke the White House isn't happy with.

But that's not the Holy shit part either.

The Holy shit part is...the comedian's name on the show?

Sykes.

Aaron Sorkin is Jesus.

Speaking of House...

Serious spoilers for the season finale, but if you don't watch the show, this won't mean anything to you anyway. If you do, it's way-cool.

Actor Thomas Dekker, who was brilliant as John Connor on Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles, leaves a message for his fans...

In a jovial mood.

I wish I could forget...

(Fair warning: This post contains spoilers, however vague, for the season finale of Bones (and House, but mostly Bones.)

That's it. I am so done with Bones. The season finale was not just an hour-long "fuck you," it was an hour-long "fuck you" that, by the end, made absolutely no sense at all.

They made mincemeat of a character trait of Brennans--she's supposed to be a bestselling writer, but now we know she's actually not a very *good* one. Not that you have to be good to have a bestseller, but it's depressing to know this about her: As a scientist, she may be world-class, as a writer, she's a hack.

This was before leaping head-first into one of the biggest soap-opera clichés in history. Amnesia? I mean c'mon, really, amnesia?

They are officially out of ideas.

At least on House, the "it was all a dream (or hallucination)" ending worked because of how good an actor Hugh Laurie is, and because it didn't violate the series or the character. Here...

Oh, I think I'm going to hurl.

Jay Leno: A company man to the bitter, fucking end.

Fascinating, Captain

I haven't seen the new Star Trek movie, and probably won't until it hits cable, so I can't say whether or not I agree with Jennifer Weiner's take on it. But it certainly is--well, y'know. Excerpted:

Honestly, I didn't have a problem until about midway through the film...at which point I realized that every single lady on screen was either a mother, a ho, or an intergalactic hood ornament.

We begin with mama Kirk. As the film opens, she screams and grunts her way through labor, pops out young James T., bids her doomed husband a weepy farewell, and is never seen or heard from again. How does she feel when her reckless son runs off to join Starfleet? We don't know. The movie doesn't ask.

Finally, there's Uhura...and what Abrams and company do with the Enterprise's communications officer will not be warming the cockles of any feminist hearts.

We are told, rather than shown, that Uhura is an extraordinarily capable linguist. We are told, rather than shown, that she's intercepted an important transmission, the plot device that jump-starts the film's action...as soon as Kirk tells Captain Pike about it. But Uhura's primary function isn't professional. Her job, in this brave new universe, is to look cute in a red dress, and to humanize (and by "humanize" I mean "mack on") her coolly logical, eminently reasonable mate.

In other words, she's Michelle Obama in outer space.

I gotta say...I think Jennifer looks very natural with a kid in her arms here

On-location shots of Ms. Aniston shooting a new film in which she'll play a mother.

I knew something was up!

You know, for whatever problems I may have, one thing I can say is that I never got into drugs. Or so I thought. Because...

Cheerios Are a Drug, FDA tells General Mills

Hey watch out, baby who's that, don't look now there's a monkey on yer' back...

Maybe that's why I find the show more depressing than funny

The whiff of failure makes Party Down the flipside of that other Hollywood series, Entourage, whose ordinary guys get to live large — cool cars, hot chicks, fancy restaurants. Where that fizzy HBO series was an almost perfect expression of a bubble economy, Party Down seems just right for an economic downturn in which people still harbor oversized American dreams but know they need a job to survive. And though the show has fun with the characters' foibles and limitations — they're all slightly deformed by their ambitions — it avoids what we might call Day of the Locust Syndrome. It doesn't look at them as Little People or treat them with fear and disdain. It's affectionate.

NPR reviews Party Down. I wish I could say I thought they were right. If I wasn't waiting for Mr. Klemow's appearance (god, I'm a good friend), I'd have stopped watching a few episodes ago.

But the show NPR describes sounds like one I'd like. I wish I could see it.

Everything turns around Henry, who, as episodes spin out of control, remains the show's still center. Beautifully underplayed by [Adam] Scott, he reveals himself in bone dry quips and almost imperceptible inner crumples that betray his mortified sense of his place in the world. Alone of the six, Henry has abandoned his hopes of the bigtime, but what's great is that this has made him humane, not cynical: Even when his coworkers are being foolish, he never looks down on their dreams. Wised up and sad, he's Party Down's hero and melancholy heart. He knows that he's not an actor. He really is a bartender.

Oh yes...There will be milk.

Jazz Dancing Girl with Cows | Viral | SPIKE.com

Ok. This is um...this is twisted, is what this is.

I've got to cut out the You-Tube before bed...

To shock of all, torture may have been medically unsafe

A CIA inspector general's report from May 2004 that is set to be declassified by the Obama White House will almost certainly disprove claims that waterboarding was only used in controlled circumstances with effective results.

But there is no need to wait for the report's declassification. Information from its pages was already made public in the footnotes of the Office of Legal Counsel memos written by Steven Bradbury in 2005 and released by the current administration less than one month ago.

And the conclusion seems pretty clear: Not only did interrogators, for a period of time, use waterboarding that was deemed by U.S. officials to be more frequent and intense than was medically safe, it did so to apparently limited results.

Medical personnel at the detention facility protested the use of the waterboard in that form, stressing that "there was no a priori reason to believe that applying the waterboard with the frequency and intensity with which it was used by the psychologist/interrogators was either efficacious or medically safe.'"

I'm as surprised as you are...

To quote the immortal Simpsons...

Ha-ha!

Miss California Pageant Officials Pick An Alternate Miss California!

The Miss California USA pageant heads held a press conference at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills to discuss the issues surrounding the current Miss Cali embarrassment, Carrie Prejean.

The pageant officials claim that Carrie is no longer doing events with the Miss California officials and has not made herself available to them. So, in response, the heads have chosen Tami Farrell, the 2009 Miss California First Runner-Up, to be the new Miss California Ambassador.

Quote of the Greek

"Last weekend, I kissed a girl. And I liked it. Does that make me a lesbian?"

"No, it just means you can write a pretty crappy pop song."

-Dilshad Vadsaria, Paul James - Greek

This one's for the ladies!

Although, I have the feeling posting a video that includes scenes from Pretty Woman, A Lot Like Love, Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd and When Harry Met Sally will keep me out of heaven when Christ comes back...