Some exciting movie ads before the trailers.

Yesterday, I attended Steve Carell's latest mainstream comedy DAN IN REAL LIFE (as films directed and partially written by Peter Hedges go, it's an improvement over PIECES OF APRIL, which included Katie Holmes as the world's most mild-mannered punkette) and was fortunate or unfortunate enough to see these advertisements:

1. A 3 Doors Down video meant to promote the National Guard, with intercut footage involving Guard members saving disaster victims, fighting in the Revolutionary War and kicking ass and rescuing a downed guard member in Iraq.  The most fascinating aspect to this video (besides the craven commerciality of 3 Doors Down) is the attempt to sell mainstream youth the vision that joining the Guard is now another viable military option--just like the Army, Navy and Marine Corps.  And if the ad inspires enough recruits, a draft will be again avoided and the Iraq and forthcoming Iran wars will continue being fought in a sort of stealth fashion, with affluent youth staying in their iPod and Halo 3 bubbles and not being forced to think about war and its consequences.

2. A crappy Honda commercial for a new van that uses 1960s graphics but decides instead to use a few bars from Heart's one-decade-later "Barracuda."  Obviously, ad agency reps don't remember (or, if they do, don't care to pay the rights for) Sammy Johns' 70s single "Chevy Van", which, in my mind, is a perfect encapsulation of the 70s middle-class travel-the-country-and-let-the-one-night-stand-out-in-the-next-town ethos.  But it's probably too mellow-sounding for a target audience sitting in a theater waiting for (most likely) SAW 4.

Or maybe Honda couldn't meet Pete Townshend's price for the use of The Who's "Going Mobile" from WHO'S NEXT.

Tags: National Guard, 3 Doors Down, Heart, Honda, The Who, Pete Townshend, rock and roll used in commercials, Sammy Johns

One more day for the Random List Entry motif.

Here's another day of homages to Larry King-style free association.

1. I watched Olbermann and saw a clip from the Larry "I'm not gay" Craig interview with Matt Lauer.  Perhaps I might be wrong, but I saw Lauer (who once played golf with George Butch Sr.) roll his eyes as Craig gave off the odor of self-righteousness and kept rattling off his "as long as my vote counts for the party, I'm not resigning" schtick.

2. It's obvious that Borders, like all good corporate bookstores, needs to sell mass quantities of books that are intended as Preordained Bestsellers.  But I'm currently reading the book SCHULZ AND PEANUTS--the biography of cartoonist Charles M. Schulz--and it's amazing that a Borders e-mail ad is trying to sell it as escapist entertainment.  The book is actually a fascinating and sad tale of an inhibited man who only really came to life when creating Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus, et al at his drawing board.  Inevitably, Schulz faltered when it came to sustaining relationships with real people.

Sounds like a laugh riot that will appeal to those who buy PEANUTS comic strip compliations, doesn't it?

3. Having read about the Ellen DeGeneres-passing-dog-to-member-of-staff mess, I can't help but say that the dog adoption agency's rigidity in terms of taking the dog away from the staff member and her children is a perfect example of California behavior (both business and social)--think in abstract, these-are-the-rules terms, ignore the human factor and nurse your anger over being criticized in a public forum.

 

 

Tags: Keith Olbermann, Larry Craig, Matt Lauer, closeted Republicans, Ellen Degeneres, SCHULZ AND PEANUTS, David Michaelis

Time for another random list entry.

Here's another homage to the old Larry King USA TODAY columns.

1. Isn't it a perfect epitomy of the age we live in when the old euphemism "the f-word" has been replaced by the new euphemism "the f-bomb"?

2. Yes, I downloaded the new Radiohead album IN RAINBOWS and found it to be the most listenable and accessible since Thom Yorke spent most of a decade in the wilderness of experimentation.  But I wonder sometimes about the way Radiohead and its management have trained the rock press to applaud everything the band does as sheer unadulterated genius.  And, given the recent exodus of veteran artists from traditional record labels to controlling their own careers (it's probably considered irrelevant to have a memory of John Prine doing exactly this over two decades ago), it's kind of amusing to see Radiohead treated as if they're the first band to think of such a radical notion.

3.  Tim Rutten, in Saturday's LOS ANGELES TIMES, paused in the middle of an article about Ann Coulter's anti-Semitism (another in her periodic "everyone should convert to Christianity" rants which began after 9/11) to mention the current belief system that offensive speech must be silenced.  Unfortunately, the Left and Right won't let go of this notion.  And don't get me started about certain members of the Los Angeles poetry community--where the bar for "offensiveness" tends to be set according to whether or not you're talking about someone universally regarded as "popular."

4.  Having been to San Francisco last week, it's quite sobering to observe the gentrification going on in the poorer neighborhoods (just like neighboring city Oakland and my city Los Angeles) where mayor Gavin Newsom is hot to lock up homeless people for "quality of life" violations (meaning "get them out of the eyelines of the affluent and the tourists") and even hotter to build more housing for the Priveleged Classes at the expense of the less well-off.  At this rate, maybe Alcatraz could be razed to build luxury condos for those who like the idea of island living and safe isolation from the little people--becoming the equivalent of BLADE RUNNER's Off-World Colonies.  

Tags: Tim Rutten, LOS ANGELES TIMES, Gavin Newsom, San Francisco, BLADE RUNNER, Radiohead, IN RAINBOWS, Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar on THE VIEW 10/16/07

A few words about Clarence Thomas and Britney Spears.

Clarence Thomas, the "I'm here to be a strict constructionist and nothing else" member of the Supreme Court, is back with a new book I'm not planning to read.

I remember the fall of 1991 when the confirmation hearings took place.  My reaction to Anita Hill's sexual harassment testimony was that it needed a public airing because Thomas' allegedly-boorish behavior (remember the mentions of the porn star Long Dong Silver and the pubic hair on the Coke can?) would be relevant in terms of how he voted on issues pertaining to women.  A friend of mine disagreed, saying he thought that Thomas' confirmation needed to be opposed, but not by dragging in alleged sexual misconduct.

But Thomas managed to utter the magic words about the hearings being a "high-tech lynching" and George Butch Sr. (who appointed Thomas) made a lasting contribution to American jurisprudence--and one that came in handy when the Supreme Court appointed George Butch Jr. to the Presidency.

And the door was opened wide for both political parties to play "gotcha" regarding private sexual behavior from public officials for the next decade-and-a-half.

Regarding Britney Spears losing her two sons to Kevin Federline: it would have been more merciful for the children to be put in foster care than to be handed from one irresponsible jerk to another.

But perhaps Star Jones was right when she mentioned on Larry King's show recently that, no matter how good or bad Britney's behavior is, the kids will be pretty much raised by the nannies.

Tags: Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill, Supreme Court, Britney Spears, Kevin Federline, child endangerment, parental custody battles

You just can't make a tasteful upscale film about vigilantism.

Here's a comment I left on the Hollywood Elsewhere blog, expanded here:

I'm sorry to say this but THE BRAVE ONE is the worst film Neil Jordan (best known for MONA LISA and THE CRYING GAME) has made to date--even worse than WE'RE NO ANGELS (the now-mostly-forgotten "escaped convicts on the run" period comedy/drama with Robert De Niro, Sean Penn and Demi Moore).

And Jodie Foster needs to get off her ass and work in a film each and every year--even if it's a five-minute role in a nonstudio indie (or even as a voluntary PA for AFI student video projects). This might rid her of the "I'm prestigious" curse that can sometimes mar her acting--plus the carefully-choreographed press she does with each film.

If Jodie Foster has to do a commercial film to pay the bills for herself, her significant other and the kids, far better it be something like PANIC ROOM or FLIGHT PLAN--unapologetic genre films that don't try to make Important Social Statements while being tippy-toe cautious about avoiding the risk of causing the "unsophisticated" (Jodie's description of some potential audience members in at least two THE BRAVE ONE junket interviews) to cheer for the death of one-dimensional "bad guy" characters.

Basically, THE BRAVE ONE was, in terms of pretentiousness, NELL with guns:
chick-a-pea bang bang.

Tags: Jodie Foster, Neil Jordan, vigilante films, action movies, Joel Silver

Sarah Silverman on Paris and MTV Movie Awards.

From a sort-of-edgy kiss-kiss exchange between Sarah Silverman and George Wayne in the current VANITY FAIR--Sarah offers insight into her future fang-and-talon attack for laughs re Britney Spears' subpar appearance on the MTV VMAs.

George Wayne: Everything I read about you seems to call you "the hostile comedienne."

Sarah Silverman: I am not hostile or mean.  You made a good point about the MTV [movie] awards.  I was great, but I was out of my element.  You are forced to talk about pop culture and make jokes about specific people and things.  My comedy is a lot more general. [keep in mind that THE SARAH SILVERMAN PROGRAM airs on Viacom property Comedy Central and MTV is another Viacom property]

George Wayne:  I was upset that you so took on the poor hapless victim Paris Hilton.  Not that I am a fan of Paris Hilton's, but it wasn't in good karma.

Sarah Silverman-If I had gone out there and not done a joke about Paris Hilton right before she was to go to prison, then I would have been considered a cop-out.  Whether you like it or not, she is an icon of pop culture.  I had to do the strongest joke, and I had no idea she would go to the MTV Movie Awards two days before prison.  When I did the setup, the crowd went insane.  My heart just sank for her, and when I looked in the audience and saw some guy with a camera right up in her face, it was sad but I couldn't not move on.  I went on with the joke.  And she is a tough cookie, too.

Update (10/3/07): Sarah, on THE VIEW, repeated the above defense, saying that she didn't do jokes re Britney not done on late-night comedy series.

Tags: Sarah Silverman, Paris Hilton, MTV, MTV Video Music Awards, MTV Movie Awards, Britney Spears, celebrity gossip

What's your favorite recent Deja Vu moment?

While the corporate media wants you to pay attention to Britney's alleged subpar performance at MTV's VMA awards show (plus the Kid Rock/Tommy Lee smackdown), these Deja Vu moments have been occurring in plain sight:

a. George Butch Jr. in emulation of dad George Butch Sr. uses a phrase involving the words "kick ass".  But Jr. went Sr. one better by attaching the phrase to the Endless Iraq War rather than a mere Presidential campaign.

b. General Petraeus offers what will be just a small withdrawal (required by law) amid a big dose of WE CAN'T LEAVE propaganda--shades indeed of Vietnam.

c. People protest the Administration-orchestrated Petraeus appearance and get arrested (and subjected to mockery on cable news) for their too-spontaneous free speech--more shades of Vietnam.

Feel free to add to this list.

Tags: George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Vietnam, anti-war movement, civil disobedience, Cindy Sheehan, Iraq War, troop withdrawals, the surge 

Owen Wilson--why he might be where he is now.

Having been out of state recently, I'm only now getting to write about the attempted suicide of Owen Wilson--which, as irony would have it--propelled his visage onto various celeb magazine and tabloid covers 4-5 days after the Incident occurred.

To me, Owen Wilson is another in the line of people who go to Hollywood hoping for some degree of control over career (remember Owen made his name as a screenwriter/actor in quirky Wes Anderson films) and found that Hollywood was only interested in a minor portion of his prodiguous talents (i.e. amiable leading man in broad, mass-appeal comedies, with maximum star wattage only when paired with Ben Stiller, Jackie Chan, Vince Vaughn, etc. etc.).

An educated guess: when Show Business only wants you to be a profitable one-trick pony and not "fuck with the formula" (in the immortal words of Beach Boy Mike Love), a cocktail of depression and creative inertia sets in (see also the last decade of Billy Joel's career---where the only real productivity was the FANTASIES AND DELUSIONS classical album and allowing Twyla Tharp to use his old music to create the dance show MOVIN' OUT).

It would have been good if Owen avoided alleged heroin and cocaine use and spent time writing plays, novels and more screenplays.  But perhaps he strolled along the Third Street Promenade in his hometown and wandered into, say, the Barnes and Noble or Borders Bookstores.  There, he would have discovered that novels by film directors as diverse as Gus Van Sant, Oliver Stone and Barry Levinson were being outsold by more "popular" fare---and soon to be bound for the dreaded "remainder" section.

Shallow showbiz writers have bleated the "why would a happy-go-lucky guy who had it all do such a thing" groupthink about Owen Wilson.

But the real question is this:

Can you get up each morning and live with yourself if you're not able to achieve everything you've dreamed for as an artist and a human being?

Hopefully, Owen Wilson can find away to live with himself and combat depression with help of family and friends before he climbs back inside the hamster wheel to crank out the entertaining-but-unchallenging movies that Hollywood execs and most of the public only want to see him in.

Tags: Owen Wilson, celebrities, gossip, Hollywood, movie stars, screenwriters, Wes Anderson