Poet Nick Flynn deserved better than BEING FLYNN.

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2012/02/being-flynn-and-nothingness.html

Glenn Kenny's review is perceptive in pointing out that poet/author Nick Flynn's BEING FLYNN (adapted from the memoir ANOTHER BULLSHIT NIGHT IN SUCK CITY) has obviously been run through the nibbled-to-death-by-development-notes Hollywood homogenization process.

As coincidence would have it, BEING FLYNN director Paul Weitz' brother Chris' recent A BETTER LIFE (with Damian Bechir's excellent lead performance) seems a model of how to hit a balance between realistic character observation and the demands of commercial narrative filmmaking.

I haven't read ANOTHER.... but I want to now in order to have an idea of what was sacrificed between page and filming.

However, I did read Flynn's poetry volume SOME ETHER, which is a stark, moving tribute to his mother (another great Julianne Moore performance in the film) and the loss young Nick felt after her suicide.

And I sincerely hope at least a few of the theatrical viewers of BEING FLYNN will take the time to seek out/buy SOME ETHER.

Even if JOHN CARTER makes money later on, it's been tagged as box-office bomb.

http://tomshone.blogspot.com/2012/03/when-bombs-dont-explode.html

Tom Shone's article is worth reading, but the "bomb" tag will stay with Disney's JOHN CARTER.

Since The Walt Disney Company decided awhile back to only make blockbusters (with Touchstone now merely a distributor for DreamWorks live-action product), they put themselves in a vulnerable position when they decided to pump at least $250 million into a film based on a series of novels not widely known to today's audience.

Wondering if the same kind of nail-biting is going on in Burbank over the currently-filming THE LONE RANGER (it's been over thirty years since the last attempt at reviving the old Western TV series as a feature film).  Perhaps not, if current Disney studio head Rich Ross is secure in his belief that the casting of Johnny Depp as Tonto guarantees a big box-office take.

Flattered by a famous poet's visual homage to me.

And here's a visual homage to it from a local poet (I recently paid tribute to him with a YouTube video) who has regional and national fame:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=3159917671842&set=a.2262570518724.2127129.1082292046&type=1&theater

Physical violence and poetry readings should never mix.

Over a week ago, a poet was punched and injured by an audience member at the Cobalt Cafe in Canoga Park.  I attended that reading, but left as soon as the closing "group poem" was concluded.  So I missed the incident--not hearing about it until a couple of days later.

Am guessing last night's Cobalt reading was a more civil occasion (I was at Coffee Cartel in Redondo Beach).

Nonetheless, I very much hope that the Cobalt Cafe owners will once again (as in past years) pay for either a bouncer and/or someone to work the counter on Tuesdays.  It isn't fair to ask longtime host Rick Lupert to do everything on those evenings.

Jennifer Lawrence's simple-but-profound remark about today's Hollywood.

Unlike, say, TWILIGHT's Kristen Stewart, Jennifer Lawrence is eager to embrace being a star of a big young-adult series ("franchise") of movies based on a group of young-adult novels.

To show you how willing she is to be noncontroversial, here's Jennifer talking to SPIN's Phoebe Reilly in a column relating to Ms. Lawrence's tastes in music:
[PHOEBE REILLY]: What were you listening to the first time you smoked pot?
[JENNIFER LAWRENCE]: I so cannot answer that question.  I'm in a franchise.

The Rush Limbaugh Questionnaire

The sort-of-apology for the words used towards Sandra Fluke while refusing to lose face with his core audience--it didn't stop the continuing loss of advertisers for Rush Limbaugh. So, here's a trio of questions about what the Titan of right-wing talk radio should do next: A. Should Rush have Sandra Fluke on as a guest to make a sincere personal apology? B. Can Rush learn enough about the non-reproductive uses of birth control to talk about it knowledgeably on-air? C. Would Rush be better off if he confesses that he's engaged in distortion and name-calling because he doesn't think his audience would stick around for intelligent talk about conservative beliefs? Feel free to add any further questions/comments to this post.

Rush Limbaugh and his latest outrage.

Link reprinted from the right-leaning ATLANTIC magazine website:
Why Does Rush Limbaugh Get Away With Calling a Young Woman a 'Slut'? - The Atlantic

From the article:
I run through this history -- there are more examples -- so that Limbaugh apologists cannot portray these latest remarks as an aberration. They are not. This is what the man is like. He is nevertheless invited to the White House by Republican presidents, praised by conservative magazines, given honorary titles by conservative think tanks and defended by conservative bloggers.What confounds me most about it is that Rich Lowry and Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review, Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon, Glenn Kessler of The Claremont Review of Books, Arthur Brooks at the American Enterprise Institute, Edwin J. Feulner of the Heritage Foundation, fellow talk-radio host Bill Bennett -- none of these people would ever dream of going before a national audience and calling a female law student half their age a slut and a prostitute. None of them would ever dream of joking that if she wants her health insurance to cover birth control she should put a sex tape on the Internet. If a deranged gunman held a loved one hostage and forced them to make those remarks, as if of their own volition, they'd feel deeply embarrassed and ashamed doing it. Yet when Limbaugh says these things -- when he said other things as indefensible in the past -- he remained and remains a frequently celebrated, seldom criticized figure within the conservative movement. The Dittoheads are kept happy, but discredit is brought upon the movement. No leader of the conservative movement is willing to defend Limbaugh on the merits. They just stay mum. It's embarrassing.

Andrew Breitbart, trickster/distortion artist of the right and the dark art of Winning Ugly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbycMtTUDfE
[Breitbart speaking to CPAC 2012]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDksDm3uOjo
[Cenk Uygur of THE YOUNG TURKS on Breitbart the public person]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yCn_g9_Btg
[London remix of 1986 Rolling Stones track "Winning Ugly"]

Irony: In the 1960s, Breitbart's father-in-law Orson Bean was a regular panelist on a game show.

The show's title: TO TELL THE TRUTH.