With “The Pinky,” my name for McDonalds’ latest TV ad campaign (see screen caps below), advertising’s fascination with the hipster lifestyle comes to its final vulgar climax. Co-opting youth culture’s propensity for sign language (e.g., the finger-figurations for signing peace, west-side, hang-ten, etc.), the campaign introduces viewers to a world where pretty twenty-somethings sashay down streets wagging pinkies at each other, inviting fellow in-the-know model-types to join them at McDonalds. “Now when I’ve got a craving for a fancy restaurant style chicken sandwich,” a female voice tells viewers, “I head to my favorite place for McDonalds’ all-new Premium Chicken sandwiches.”

Both campaign spots (introduced fifteen minutes apart in last week’s Veronica Mars broadcast) finish off with couples holding up their newly acquired chicken sandwiches — but, before the boy’s allowed to bite, the girl instructs her suitor in cutting-edge McDonalds-eating etiquette. McDonalds’ Premium Chicken sandwiches, much like a porcelain cup of tea, should give well-cultured hands erections-of-the-pinky, stiffening the littlest finger while curling in the others. The girl’s voice-over continues: “Juicy chicken breast, crispy or grilled, in my kind of flavors … It’s a five-star taste worthy of my two-finger salute.” And the boy, his fingers now correctly salutory, finally gets the go-ahead to eat.

The campaign, one presumes, is aiming to depict McDonalds’ newest offerings as simultaneously up-market (hence, the effete pinky) and affordable (hence, the street-credified — albeit imaginarily so — hand gesture). In that sense, the pinky functions like marketing’s beloved hipster: well-educated and artistically-inclined but also shaggy and of-the-people. Fortunately, the diminutive pinky can’t bear so much symbolic weight, and McDonalds’ idea of a slogan-ified finger only comes across as laughably — and proportionately— short-sighted.

Continue reading "And This Little Pinky Went to McDonalds"

Most Emotional Car Commercial Ever.

Continue reading "Tonight's Six Feet Under:"

Courtney Peldon has a penis on her nose.

(Updated: picture link now works.)

(I don’t like getting away from it all. I like my email, my feeds and bookmarks. I feel strung out without an IV drip of data. I go ADD-wol without screens.
But, that being said, there are advantages to time apart from my computers. Online offerings are usually introduced over time, like Chanukkah gifts’ slow dribble; but time away and Chanukkah becomes Christmas. Every website is a windfall.
Today, for instance: I calmed down my sense of information deprivation by watching the 30+ new movie trailers up at Apple. And, to calm down my need for useless productivity, I thought I’d take down thoughts on the latest trailers.)

——————————-

Taxi: The back of my high school yearbook was reserved for senior ads, the rich suburban teen’s equivalent to graffiti. Groups were aesthetically demarcated, their ads’ “look” determined by their social status. The most popular girls made collages of beach cleavage, group hugs, and baby photos; the popular boys, meanwhile, wore wife-beaters, crossed their fingers into “west side,” and kneeled in front of Beemers.
Taxi reminds me of those ads, partly because, in comparison to Taxi, they seem somewhat creative — and partly because Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah, posing for this photo, nail those ads’ gendered expressions. He’s struggling to keep his mouth open, because open mouths intimate the snarls and swearing he wants to pretend he’s capable of doing. On the other hand, she’s looking slightly to the camera’s right, pretending her fashion shoot’s a candid snapshot (“Oh, you caught me with my makeup on!”). The result is a photo that looks like a pantomime of amateurism, if only because the movie’s budget precludes the real thing.
As for the trailer: this is what it looks like to flunk Marketing 101. One question, multiple choice: make the trailer about Giselle in a tear-off suit, or Jimmy Fallon talking? Even a Women’s Studies major won’t dispute the correct answer.

First Daughter: I’m guessing Katie Holmes prepped for the role by watching West Wing repeats. The result: her eerie, age-inappropriate facsimile of Stockard Channing’s smile. As for Katie’s missing ribcage, I have no explanation.
But the real question is, does the remake of the trailer for Chasing Liberty improve on the original? Chasing Liberty starts with Mandy Moore primping for a date, just like a normal teenage girl, but then — oh, shit — the camera zooms out of her bedroom and she’s in the fuckin’ White House, man! First Daughter, on the other hand, starts with a V.O.. “Samantha McKenzie,” we’re instructed, “is America’s princess. She has fame, she has glamour, and she lives —” And only then does the camera zoom out of her bedroom to a framing of the White House. But, come on: by this point, she was either the first daughter or an Olsen Twin.
Since my computer is an elitist Mac, it refused to load the remainder of the trailer. But I can guess that there’s a secret service agent, the whining of “I just want to be normal!” and a romantically available male lead (in First Daughter, played — it looks unwillingly — by Buffy’s college ex). First Daughter, though, introduces one more trope: the black/latino roommate, who gets to go on Air Force One and live a life — this schoolyear, at least — of affirmative-action glamour.

Team America: World Police: Too bad the more accurate subtitle for this lampoon of American politics is wasted on the earnest Muppets-meets-Matrix fantasy flick, Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars.

Continue reading "trailer marks"

With the pending release of the Donnie Darko director’s cut, which those of here in independent-movie-free Iowa City are likely to miss, comes Salon’s Mulholland-Drive-style reinterpretation of the DVD (you might need a day pass for these). It’s interesting stuff, but if both my understanding of the article and memory of the original movie are correct, it wouldn’t be possible to understand the director’s intentions for the film without a) the website, b) the extra scenes included in the DVD and presumably the re-release, and c) the director’s actual thoughts. Or perhaps this.

Continue reading "And on the topic of movies... [guest poster]"

I started college as a film major, but quickly discovered it wasn�t for me. I liked movies as whole things, but once they were broken down into their component parts (lighting, sound, etc.) I lost interest. I had no affinity for the technical stuff. Later, I realized that the main thing I�d learned in the film department was how not to take pleasure in movie-watching. A shot that might�ve once seemed magical was now only a simple camera trick, or a clever piece of editing. I was forever taking myself out of the audience, imagining I was on the set, and it was no fun.

Eventually all that stopped; any film knowledge I�d acquired in my brief stint fell away, and I began to see movies with an (more or less) innocent eye.

But when I began to study fiction writing seriously, the same thing happened with books. Now when I read, I read to understand how an author uses point of view, or how the prose contributes to tone. I look for the seams in every novel. Somehow though, this has increased, rather than decreased, the pleasure I take in reading fiction.

I went to see M. Night Shyamalan�s new movie, The Village, the other night. In attempting to articulate my problems with it, it occurred to me that I�m now dissecting movies using the tools of a writing workshop, rather than a film class. The phrases that spring up in my critique of The Village belong to former writing teachers and fellow students. (This is perhaps understandable considering M. Night may have stolen his premise from a novel. Via Bookslut and Stephany at Maud.)

Caution: Big Village spoilers ahead�

Continue reading "Village, Schmillage [guest poster]"

An anonymous reader has directed my attention to successwhosmydaddy.com � which, despite its title, does not reunite children with their deadbeat fathers. Instead, the site tracks the genealogy of fame and fortune, proving that success is strictly relative.

A sampling from its numerous star-crossings:

-Moby (Richard Melville Hall) is the great-great-grand-nephew of Herman Melville; his famous nickname comes from Moby Dick.
-Isabella Rosselini has an identical twin � Isotta Ingrid, a professor of Italian literature at Columbia University.
-Will Ferrell’s father, Lee, was a keyboardist and saxophonist for the Righteous Brothers.
-Robert De Niro ‘s father, the painter Robert De Niro Sr., was the lover of poet Robert Duncan and may have had affairs with both Tennessee Williams and Jackson Pollock.
-Sean Astin is the son of Patty Duke and John Astin, who played Gomez Addams on “The Addams Family” sitcom.
-LeeLee Sobbieski is the great-great-granddaughter of King Jan Sobieski of Poland. “Says LeeLee, ‘If Polands Monarchy is restored, I’m in line for the throne.’” (And then we launch a Revolution with beheadings.)
-Jules Asner (host of E!’s “Wild On”) is director Steven Soderbergh’s wife. (Is that still true?)
-And Wallace Shawn’s father is none other than William Shawn, longtime editor of the New Yorker.

While googling terms related to my previous post, I came across this: Rory’s Book Club. (Literally everyone on TV’s got one.)

Want to be more like [Gilmore Girls’] Rory? Read a book! Need help choosing one? Join Rory’s Book Club! Every other week we’ll be adding two more amazing books, so you’ll never run out of great choices.

Surprisingly, the reading choices are agreeable, ranging from Brick Lane to The Portable Dorothy Parker.

I’ve complained before about network TV’s stance on reproductive rights: as much as shows shy away from pro-life rhetoric, they effectively reverse Roe v. Wade by banning abortions from their plotlines. To quote from a recent NY Times article on abortion, primetime’s “last taboo”:

On TV, most women and girls who contemplate an abortion make up their minds, often at the last minute, that they’re keeping their babies (‘Beverly Hills, 90210,’ ‘Dawson’s Creek,’ ‘The O.C.’), even if they happen to get as far as a clinic or doctor’s office (‘Felicity,’ ‘Sex and the City’).

But, before we take note of the unrealistic number of female characters choosing not to terminate their pregnancies, we should take note of the unrealistic number of pregnancies resulting from safe and/or infrequent sex on teenage dramas. I can only name three dramas¹ that headline sexually active teens � Everwood, One Tree Hill, and The OC � and, with a synchronicity too exact to be coincidence, all three ended last season with episodes about unplanned conceptions.

Teen sex, going by these shows, occupies the niche now vacated by HIV-soaked toilet seats �playing paranoia off as caution, and bestowing the microscopic with anthropomorphic persistence and sci-fi indestructability. On Everwood, two weeks of safe, de-virginizing sex results in pregnancy � though, statistically, most couples using birth control with a 66.7% frequency achieve conception after 18 months.² Meanwhile, a one-night stand on The OC shackles a character to the responsibilities of fatherhood � though, on average, couples in their early 20s achieve conception only after 4 - 5 months of unprotected sex.³

On the occasion that teen sex doesn’t result in pregnancy, the missed plotline becomes a missed or deferred period � a phantom pregnancy, elaborating sex’s consequences without enacting them (as on One Tree Hill and, further back, Beverly Hills, 90210).

Continue reading "teenage conceptions"

Does anyone else find this ad � accompanying page two of today’s NY Times article on Elliot Smith � a bit too suggestive of the singer’s fatal stomach wounds? Or do I need to bump up my meds (again)?

In case the similarities between plastic surgery victims, with their puffy lips and orbed breasts, and manga girls weren’t clear already, Tokyopop has, according to USA Today, based a three-part manga series on the life and looks of Courtney Love. From the article:

“Courtney has proven herself as a flamboyant and talented individual, but has been personally hurt by the various attacks on her,” [writer] Milky says. “In a similar fashion, Princess Ai is hounded by enemies in her world and even criticized by her own people, mainly because she is misunderstood.

“Her goal is to save her people, and the only way she can do this is by getting to know herself. It’s something we all struggle with … even though the consequences are not as epic.”

The idea of “Crossballs,” which premiered last week on Comedy Central, goes something like this: in a partly staged debate, comedians masquerading as experts assert increasingly absurd positions on issues such as obscenity, reality TV, and animal rights, while real, unknowing, experts become increasingly bewildered and fight to steer debate back into the realms of sanity.

Watching tonight’s episode, though, I found the opposite to be more true. Public discourse is so dependent on worthless catch-phrases and moral hysteria that the comedians, fumbling for counter-intuitive positions, prove more thought-provoking and sympathetic than the “Crossballs” experts.

Tonight’s show, for example, focused on obscenity and featured two comedians � a Christian film producer and a rapper named Truth � as well as two “obscenity” experts, barely distiguishable in their bottle-blond conservatism. While Truth defended Janet Jackson’s Superbowl performance, claiming she had helped black women in the media assert their right to female sexuality, Blond Expert No. 1 turned language into a binary code consisting of two words: “children” and “family.” “Babies see breasts all the time,” Truth responded. Expert No. 1 shook her head and again made a sentence out of “children,” “family.” Her moral opinion was so “expert” it precluded support � and so, the figure of the non-expert, assigned the task of passing off “absurd opinions” as earnest, became, in comparison, the more logically inclined.

Or take, for example, the episode’s next segment on religion and obscenity: Expert No. 2, a Christian, believes in moral standards and appropriateness, while Comedian No. 2 argues that the Bible, with its passages of depravity and violence, resembles Pornography more than it does the “white-washed,” “fuzzy” products conservative media endorses. Comedian No. 2 goes on to describe a Nativity scene she helped produce at her local Church; in her rendition, baby Jesus was half-visible � and bloody � between Mary’s legs. The Experts are aghast; “that’s sick,” says No. 1; “there has to be decency,” says No. 2. The Comedian argues that birth is natural and a rightful part of the Nativity story.

Of course, in my opinion, mistaking words like “decency” for an argument is the real absurdity, along with talk TV’s inability to move past reiterations of “common sense” without the excuse of fakery and comedy.

(picture: Chris Tallman, host of “Crossballs” and winner of the “Jayson Blair Award for Creativity in Journalism.”)

Today, Variety’s reporting that UA has picked up the film adaptation of Susan Minot’s Evening. I don’t have a subscription to Variety and could only read the first line of the article, but some quick internet sleuthing reveals that Minot is collaborating with Michael Cunningham on the screenplay, and Tony Goldwyn is set to direct. In an older report, Joaquin Phoenix and Samantha Morton are mentioned as likely leads. Another article claims Jane Fonda is considering launching a comeback with a role in Evening, presumably as Morton’s older self.

See other posts that mention Susan Minot here.

A friend recently borrowed my copy of 2001’s O. Henry Prize Stories to read David Schickler’s “The Smoker”; it’s a memorable story, and I wasn’t surprised to learn a classmate of ours had recommended it to him.

But, as I handed him the book, I said some nasty things about the story � and that did surprise me. I remember enjoying the story, and I didn’t realize until I’d started talking that my opinion had changed. In 2001, I thought “The Smoker” was charming, and as fun as it was unrealistic; now, I think it’s a silly wish fulfillment fantasy, with “fantasy” twice underlined.

And that’s probably why Hollywood loves it. Currently, its filmic twin is set to star Owen Wilson (as English teacher Douglas Kerchek), Natalie Portman (as the curvy, 5’10” Nicole Bonner), and Nick Nolte (as Nicole’s boisterous father). Also, after some contradictory reports, it looks like Richard Linklater’s on board to direct. Gothamist comments,

The premise of The Smoker is simple - a thirty-one year old English teacher, Douglas Kerchek, at an all girls school is proposed to by a student - but the casting of Owen Wilson is intriguing. He’s lovable and we’d be proposing to him if he taught us, but when reading Schickler’s description of Douglas � “Also, he had short black sideburns with streaks of gray in them, a boxer’s build, a Ph.D. in English literature from Harvard, and no wife or girlfriend” � we sort of imagine Colin Farrell, or at least brother Luke. We’re willing to suspend the Ph.D. part, because he was great as Eli Cash. Anyway, Gothamist is certainly intrigued, especially since this may be Owen’s second movie that involves cats going to the bathroom on toilets�

Also, according to several news sources, Universal has bought the rights to Shickler’s upcoming novel, Sweet and Vicious, which Schickler himself will adapt for the big screen.

On a “strange, but true” note: the toilet trained cat may have been “The Smoker“‘s most realistic detail.

Sometimes, reading what passes for “praise” on Rotten Tomatoes feels like listening to a desperate friend misinterpret another date � except that the latter elicits pity and the prior, just confusion. Despite the film site’s explanation of its Tomatometer ratings, I still can’t figure out why some films get assigned a tomato (“fresh”) and others, the Cingular logo (“rotten”). See if you can tell the difference between fresh and rotten reviews of three newly released films, Dodgeball, White Chicks and The Notebook (answers, beneath the fold):

1. “It’s an interesting and emotional movie, but a simple one.”

2. “There haven�t been so many shots of guys getting hit where-it-counts since the heyday of America�s Funniest Home Videos.”

3. “A crude comedy that aims low and hits its mark.”

4. “Manages to touch a chord, even if it�s a minor one.”

5. “It’s not a good movie by any means, but it’s well aware of that fact, and periodically takes advantage of it.”

6. “If you’re the sort who enjoys shedding [tears] in darkened theaters, your must-see summer movie has arrived.”

7. “If a festival of flatulence is your idea of fun, you’ll think you’ve died and gone to heaven.”

8.�”If you hold a perverse soft spot in your heart for straight-to-video underdog junk like Ski School, you’re going to love Dodgeball.”

9. “…half of it was funny.”

10. “White Chicks is a slapstick, silly, sometimes crude comedy with some jokes that leave you laughing, and others that fall very short of the mark.”

11. “�”Not sure where the producers get off implying that this sports-movie satire is in any way true, but it’s so preposterous, few are likely to be confused.”

12. “Aims low — and happily hits its target.”

13. “Atypical in every sense of the word.”

14. “The movie doesn’t just pussyfoot around conventionality — it hits it square in the stomach and then leaps around shamelessly in a smug victory dance.”

15. “If not for some inspired moments of breathtaking beauty and heartfelt performances, it would just be one of those tired love stories that you quickly forget.”

(You can read more overtly snarky reviews by searching Rotten Tomatoes for films that scored < 10% and 0% on the Tomatometer.)

Continue reading "Fried Green Tomatoes"

These days, if the word “banishment” shows up in an article, it’s 95% certain the article’s about reality TV. From yesterday’s NY Times:

This fall the A&E cable network is rolling out “Intervention,” a reality show in which viewers are invited to witness an addict’s decline and then participate in the crucial moment when family and friends confront that troubled soul with a life-altering choice: rehabilitation or banishment.

The article also mentions other upcoming reality TV fare, including “The Real Gilligan’s Island,” “a reality version of the 1960’s sitcom that will strand a real professor, a real movie star and the rest on a real desert isle.”

Other reality TV news:
-VH1 reveals identities of ‘The Surreal Life 3’ housemates, begins filming (Article spoiler: housemates include Charo, Alannis’ ex [aka, Uncle Joey], and Flava Flav.)
-Reality TV “pioneer” bride Darva Conger returns as GSN’s ‘Vegas Weddings Unveiled’ host
-UPN to rebroadcast ‘America’s Next Top Model’ Season One (That’s the season which starred Shins girlfriend � and perpetual Chicha girl-crush � Elyse Sewell.)
-‘Apprentice’ Bill Rancic no longer dating ‘Bachelor 3’ finalist Jen Schefft, now seeing Amy Henry

-According to Teen Hollywood, “Sharon Stone and Demi Moore have been targeted by movie bosses to star as ‘Cagney and Lacey’ in a remake of the hit TV cop show.” Unlike most actresses I dislike, Stone and Moore have always seemed not so much untalented as menacing � more plainly, evil. (Not smart and evil, but heartless and retarded, their eyes like birds’ � uncomprehending, yet plotting.) (And, now that I think about it, Ashton has always seemed like a Disney villain’s sidekick.) So, if this movie does get made, and bring the two together, I half expect —-> the set to implode —> and form a black hole —> that swallows L.A. and then —-> the world<—- . On the other hand, no movie boss should pass up the opportunity to send Sharon and Demi flying into a canyon :

“� Movie-makers are set to drop the comedy aspect of the original program. A studio insider said: ‘It won’t be a comedy. It will be more like a “Thelma and Louise” storyline.’”

- *news flash* . Some girls are bigger than others.

-What word shouldn’t Lindsay say in response to this article � and yet, what word springs to mind too quickly?

“Fame carries with it some grave responsibilities,” Arc President Lorraine Sheehan lectured Lohan. “I’ve read some recent reports of your using the phrase ‘That’s so retarded’ on several occasions in response to journalists’ questions about your personal life.”

For instance, Lohan has bandied the politically incorrect expression to describe everything from rumors of breast implants (“That’s retarded”), to her recent tiff with Hilary Duff (“retarded”), to an unpleasant encounter with paparazzi (“So retarded!”).

Sheehan scolded: “[T]here are few more deeply wounding words than these, which are painful reminders that people with disabilities are still not fully welcome in our society.”

(Wait, so the retarded understand our language?) (And, for the record, Duff is a very sweet, but very retarded young lady who always shoots her music videos on “rainy” nights to hide her drooling.) (And we already know celebs kick in the heads of paparazzi. The obvious result: some paparazzi get brain damaged � and more willing to take risks for celeb photos. It’s a cruel cycle, but that doesn’t make Lindsay’s word choice incorrect.)

I consider myself a big fan of Woody Allen � not the recent Allen, but the Allen of 1977 -1989. So, this factoid about Annie Hall, tucked into a NY Times article on editing room remedies for sickly films, took me by surprise:

While the prognosis may be uncertain, history suggests that “The Stepford Wives” isn’t necessarily a lost cause. A surprising number of movies have been saved in the editing room. Exposed film is merely raw material; stories are shaped and brought to life after the cameras stop rolling. Directors have many tools to work with: characters can be deleted or enhanced, subplots can be dropped or expanded, endings changed, special effects added or taken out. This is especially true with comedies, whose delicate alchemy is often achieved only after multiple revisions. “Annie Hall,” one of the most beloved of American romantic comedies, was originally shot as a murder mystery. In the editing room, Woody Allen decided to drop the murder and concentrate on the romance between his character and Diane Keaton’s.

But maybe it’s much harder to know about facts when they’re inccorect. According to this write-up of Annie Hall’s production history, the film’s murder mystery subplot was cut during the writing process and not during editing:

[Annie Hall] was originally conceived as a murder mystery, with Annie Hall and Alvy Singer as the two main characters, amateur detectives who believe that an apparent suicide was actually a homicide victim. The story then evolved into a period farce that took place in Victorian England. And Annie Hall might very well have become a murder mystery, had Woody Allen not questioned the undertaking with co-writer Marshall Brickman, asking, “Do we really want to write this? Do we want to go to Boston to shoot this and work on costumes and deal with all those problems? Let’s do a contemporary story.” (Woody eventually did tackle a period mystery with Shadows and Fog (1992), his comic homage to German Expressionist cinema.)

So after abandoning the murder angle - this concept was later developed and produced as Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) - Allen and Brickman wrote a story about what went on inside the mind of Alvy Singer, a chronically insecure comedy writer. There was also a subplot concerning Alvy’s romantic problems. After test screenings though, it became obvious that audiences preferred the focus of the film to be on Alvy’s relationship with Annie and not the writer’s professional career. The Alvy-Annie relationship was also particularly intriguing because it was inspired by Woody Allen’s past romance with Diane Keaton (they were now just good friends) and incorporated some personal experiences from both partners into the storyline.

Allen’s next feature, by the way, is Melinda and Melinda and stars Will Ferrell � who looks a bit like how a tourist-trap portraitist’s sketch of Tony Robert’s Rob (Annie Hall) might turn out.

Stephin Merritt on Morrissey:

His new album, “You Are the Quarry” (Sanctuary), demonstrates more than ever that the best lyricist in rock, Morrissey, still surrounds himself with dull musicians incapable of properly filling out his introspective kitchen-sink dramas. Plodding generic rock ‘n’ roll accompanies “Where taxi drivers never stop talking, under slate-gray Victorian sky: Here you’ll find despair and I.” At this level of lyric artistry, these warmed-over arena rock backdrops are a waste. One longs to lock him up for a year with, say, the pop orchestra the High Llamas, so lyrics like “I’ve been dreaming of a time when to be English is not to be baneful, to be standing by the flag not feeling shameful, racist or martial” can be matched by equally thoughtful arrangements.

In my last “ad-verse” post, I wrote, “If there’s any commonality to bad commercials, it might be this: they aim for humor, but imply violence.” I should have replaced “commercials” with the broader category of “advertisements,” because, according to this NY Times article on the marketing of tampons, this print ad � included in a previous ad-verse rant � was only meant to be funny.

“Young women have a different attitude about this,” said Karen Houppert, author of “The Curse: Confronting the Last Taboo: Menstruation” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 1999). Girls - 11 years old and up - are more comfortable with their bodies and the topic of their periods, she added, and are “less inclined to sort of accept those mores,” associated with a female’s cycle including secrecy, shame and embarrassment.

Recognizing the shift, the major players in this intensely competitive category have begun tweaking their marketing approaches. Procter & Gamble, for instance, recently introduced another humorous installment of ads, created in Chicago by the Leo Burnett Company, part of the Publicis Groupe, building on the success of a commercial for its Tampax Pearl brand. In that ad, a couple are on a date in a rowboat when the boat springs a leak. The man is at a loss for what to do when the woman pulls out a Tampax Pearl tampon and plugs the hole.

“It’s definitely something that the audience relates to and I think because the topic has been a topic that is a little bit private or taboo or sensitive, when you poke a little fun at something it makes it easy to break through and to talk about it,” said Mary Aikenhead, the brand manager for Tampax at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati.

A quick round-up of gross TV ads I’ve seen this week:

1. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
   Three new ads, literalizing common weight loss verbs like shedding and dropping, envision a public landscape littered by dieters’ fat droppings, loosened from their bodies by diets and shed during the course of excercise. Increasingly unsurprised passers-by discover the droppings, sacked like saline implants, shaped like love handles, double chins, and bellies, and, depending on the shape, thick and limp like uncooked steak or pliant like a mass of play-doh. In the most disturbing ad, two boys playing on the beach approach a shored object: “Check it out, man!” “What is that?” “Looks like someone’s belly.” The belly, kidney-shaped and unnaturally pink, is half buried in the sand (not attached to a dead owner, presumably); the boys prod it with s stick, puckering and quivering the skin, and growing bored, leave it behind to continue playing.

2. 1 800 CALL ATT
   About a year ago, some friends and I were discussing the rationale for involuntary sterilization: Carrot Top. We’d noticed that, in recent ATT ads, the Carrot was looking increasingly, intimidatingly muscular, like a clown that could rape you.
   Others might think the Carrot’s comic impotency makes him pitiable, harmless, and sexless, but the ATT ads have always had one clear message: American men, Carrot Top wants your women. And, on the tenure track to ATT spokesman, the Carrot’s finally getting them. In the most recent ad, he tricks a beach stud into taking a fake call from a pay-phone; as the stud takes the call, the Carrot takes his girlfriend. The ad ends with the girl and Carrot Top flirting in the background; the cuckolded boyfriend frowns into the phone’s reciever, and the Carrot’s hand moves towards the girlfriend’s hair. The gesture, cut in mid-action, creates an after-image of the Carrot Cock approaching, the threat of contact imminent and continuing.
   According to a FAQ page for 1 800 CALL ATT, Carrot Top “attended Florida Atlantic U. in Boca Raton, where he says he ‘majored in skirt chasing.’” I’ll be wearing pants until he’s fired.

3. Sprint PCS Video Mail
   If there’s any commonality to bad commercials, it might be this: they aim for humor, but imply violence. The detached chins and bellies recall leprosy instead of Gogol, and Carrot Top is too physically aggressive to be funny. A more obvious example of humor gone awry arrived earlier this month, just in time for Mother’s Day; in the Sprint commercial “Sharing,” a Sprint customer sends his mother a deeply passive-aggressive video message, an accusation in the guise of gratitude. Here’s the transcript:

   “Sharing”
   a :15 film by Mark Sweeney

   Mark: Hey, mom. You’ve told me many times how painful my birth was 30 years ago, so, to sort of share in your experience, I’m going to take my hand and put it on this hot stove.”

   He sets his hand down on the stove and screams.

   Voice Over: Introducing Sprint PCS VideoMail. Shoot it and send it instantly.

   Mark (waving burnt hand): Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!

4. Dominos and Mountain Dew
   Recently, Dominos launched a series of ads (see one here) depicting men’s Pavlovian reaction to doorbells. In one spot, a man teases his dog with a dinner bell — stupid dog, running on command, he says to his friends — before a doorbell rings and he and his friends, expecting Dominos, clamber to the door on all fours.
   Mountain Dew, in a new TV spot called “Dog Sled Men” (available here), plays with a similar idea. A pack of men, tied to a sled and running with their hands and legs, move across a snowy field. Dangling just beyond the men’s reach is a Mountain Dew, tied to a stick held by the sled’s driver, a self-satisfied white dog. A man watching them pass by grumbles, “They win every year.”
   The point is, Mountain Dew is tasty enough to deserve such effort, and we should take advantage of our comparatively easy access to it. But both the Mountain Dew and Dominos ads portray the men who want their product as slaves to it, rendered dumb and too easily manipulated by their desire for it.
   Commercials often encourage the idea of rebellion: a new freedom from societal restraints via a new purchase. You’re not supposed to laugh at the idea of a rebellious consumerism, or view the commercials as hypocrisy. But the Mountain Dew and Dominos ads depict desire as domestication (humans turned into dogs) or enslavement (to habit or a sled); the difference is, while the first type of ad encourages consumerism with a critique of societal restraints (most likely brought on by consumerism), the second type is a critique of consumerism made more obvious by the total absence of intended critique.

I haven’t seen The Swan since its premier, but my thoughts keep coming back to it. (Thought of the moment: a SAT-styled analogy. Beauty: television:: Dorian Gray: Dorian’s portrait.) This morning, I also went back to The Swan’s website for the first time since writing my review, and found it stocked with new features: a “history of beauty,” a “timeline” of beauty pageants (“1854: P.T. Barnum tried unsuccessfully to host a beauty contest, discovered no ‘self-respecting lady’ would participate.” Why is “self- respecting lady” in quotes?), and, oh my, a fan club.

And, of course, the “gallery,” showcasing contestants’ makeovers, has been updated. Look what happened to Kristy:

Continue reading "the ugliest show on television"

I used to like ads, especially TV ads. I thought there was an artistry to caricature: a visual semiotics testing how much can be thrown out while retaining signification. And, while political cartoons essentialized a politician’s features, TV ads caricatured everyday expressions: particularly, looks of discomfort, exasperation, and embarrassment. Over time, these caricatures became a cultural anthropology, tracking trends in expressions and body language.
But, sometime in the past two years, I’ve stopped liking ads. I feel like one of their characters when I’m watching them: my eyebrows rise with surprise, then plummet with annoyance, and I mouth to anyone nearby, what the hell? The ads are like the ridiculous and offensive characters they contain. But I’m not sure if I’ve changed, or the ads have. And so, I keep meaning to start a regular column here (Ad-Verse), in which I try to summarize the most offensive trends in ad campaigns. (My last attempt at Ad-Verse was in March.)

Today’s trend comes courtesy of Andrea, who has “been badly wanting to develop a lecture series on tampon ad campaigns.”

Continue reading " red tide"

This week, Freaks and Geeks finally made it to DVD, prompting Slate’s Alex Abramovich to ask if the show was simply “too real” to have made it on network TV.

How could a show that meant so much to so many disappear so quickly? Watching the DVDs, a better question presents itself: How did a show like this get made in the first place? As it happens, Freaks and Geeks was green-lighted by NBC’s West Coast chief Scott Sassa during a lull in which the network found itself temporarily bereft of a programming director. It was written, cast, and filmed with little guidance from network executives, and its roster of mathletes, midgets, bullies, and burnouts had little in common with the Vogue-worthy stars of shows like The O.C. “The problem with TV now,” Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig told LA Weekly not long after the series was canceled, is that “you have to make friends immediately�which is why the network wants actors to be beautiful. � You become infatuated with them, and you’ll watch week after week because they’re beautiful and they’re your surrogate boyfriend/girlfriend.”

�When NBC did appoint a programming director�the preppy Garth Ancier, who would go down in infamy among the show’s fans, and go on to run the WB�word filtered down to producer Judd Apatow that the executive was bewildered by Freaks and Geeks’ worm’s-eye view of life at a blue-collar public school. For Ancier, it seems, television served not to reflect reality, or intensify it, but to offer ways in which we might escape it: “He would like the kids to have more victories,” Apatow wrote, in a show diary published in the Los Angeles Times. “I tell him the point of the program is to show how our characters survive the obstacles of high school with their compassion and sense of humor intact.” Somehow, Apatow failed to get his point across: “I just want the work to be truthful,” he continued. “Why do you want it to be truthful?” Ancier is supposed to have replied. “It’s TV.”

John Lennon has sold (about a million times) more records. David Bowie has gone through more dazzling reinventions. Kurt Cobain is the grunge James Dean. Elvis Presley sums up an entire narrative about what is meant to be rich and famous in 20th century America. Michael Jackson has the best moves and is way, way weirder. None of them, however, is Morrissey. To be Morrissey is to be the most feverently worshipped pop star of all time, the man whose song ‘Meat Is Murder’ turned a generation vegetarian, an icon who promoted celibacy, Oscar Wilde and ’60s kitchen sink dramas when all around him was empty ’80s flash.

This Charming Man transcribes NME’s interview with Morrissey.

Bunsen previews FOX’s latest foray into the reality TV genre: Celebrity Swan.

Amanda: Ok, team, what are we going to do with Pamela?

A woman in a lab coat, the team’s therapist, steps forward.

Therapist: Pam’s had a lot of turbulence in her personal relationships. I think this makeover can make her feel like she deserves all the love that’s showered on her.

Video: Tommy Lee sits on the edge of a waterbed.

Tommy: Yeah, we’re thinking of getting back together. She’s a great chick, really, she is. Her tits could be bigger though, you know? I mean, they’re big? But like, they could be… [inflates his cheeks and pantomimes juggling two beach balls] You dig? Also, I got her when she was a lot younger. Can we do anything with those little wrinkle things around her eyes? I’m banging this chick that pees on people in Penthouse, and she doesn’t have those. Whaddya think? Also, fix her ass. I don’t think I need to explain that one.

Amanda points to a team member with a stethoscope around his neck. He’s the plastic surgeon, and he’s trying to look down the therapist’s blouse.

Amanda: Doctor, what do you think we can do for her?

Surgeon: This is gonna be a total home run. We’re gonna blow up those fun bags like the Underdog float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. We’ll do the same with her lips, because Tommy looks like a lip man. I’ll lipo the inside of her thighs so that there’s the official four-inch clearance between them. We’re gonna settle for nothing less than Hollywood perfection, Amanda!

Amanda: Anyone else?

Nutritionist: Pam’s already on the Atkins, so we’re gonna go ahead and cut out all of those proteins. Nothing but water and sawdust for two months!

Amanda: Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us, team! Let’s meet our next lucky girl!

The mansion’s double doors burst open, and Kathy Griffin enters. [more>]

I watch American Idol very infrequently, but I’m always ripe for reading nasty take-downs of Idol performances. Which gets me thinking: If “snark” is wrong, is it wrong because it’s easy, or because it’s disrespectful? I think the intelligence that cruelty requires is often underestimated, so my only objection to “snark” could be its disrespect to an artist’s effort and intelligence. Luckily, American Idol has never required, nor encouraged, respect for its contestants.

And that brings us to Linda Holmes’ article from Thursday:

�American Idol� gives too much power to the People
Rabid fans help untalented performers

�Unfortunately, more and more, “Idol” is not about the people. It is about the People.
Who are the People? You know them if you’ve been where rabid “Idol” fans gather. They are the Ruben People. The Kelly People. The Jon Peter Lewis People. And, of course, the People who perfected Peopledom: the Clay Aiken People. They scream. They go to war with opposing factions � They trade low-quality MP3 files of contestants’ bootlegged high school choir practices and try to give away sample CDs to unsuspecting strangers on the subway�

Linda observes that the singers loved by People generally have two things in common: youth (which attracts youth, the only ones “blessed with large [enough] quantities of free time” to redial their votes “for the entire time that the phone lines are open”), and a high-pitched loser vibe.

Jon Peter Lewis is a perfect example of a guy who really isn’t very good, but has People anyway. They’re the ones who fell in love with him during his bizarre performance of “A Little Less Conversation,” which featured bad singing, apparent loss of motor control, and quite possibly appendicitis.
�The problem with People, of course, is that they don’t respond to talent so much as to the ability to attract vaguely obsessive personalities. A cynic might argue that “A Little Less Conversation” was no accident � it was a well-planned effort at People recruitment. If it was, it was brilliant, because one of the rules of People is that People love geeks. They love underdogs, they love losers, and they love everyone who is picked on by Simon Cowell. Many mid-level performers struggle in the early rounds, but the real stinkers? The ones it hurts to listen to? They’ve always got People.

We love to hate reality TV, and reality TV knows that. It cues our hate to keep us watching, like a bullfighter taunting a bull: waving red to draw our attention and anger. Usually, the red flag — the brandished target for our hate — is a loathsome character, the best example from this season being The Apprentice’s Omarosa. And, for the joy of the game, we pretend that the flag is live prey, rather than a manipulation introduced and controlled by the bullfighter.
But The Swan, which ran an encore debut last night, drapes the red around the bullfighter and knots it like a cape. Other shows have had equally shallow and enraging premises — remember Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? But the premise always drew equally shallow and enraging contestants, while the contestants on The Swan don’t seem shallow so much as insecure and clueless. The show itself is the villain, the only target for our hatred. But the question is, is The Swan purposefully loathsome, or just deeply hypocritical?

According to The Boston Herald, Swan creator Nely Galan thinks of The Swan as the “most loving ‘lottery for women’ show in the world.” (In each episode, the show gives two contestants a three month makeover, worth about $250,000, and awards one of the two contestants a spot in “The Ultimate Swan “pageant.) “The competition,” Galan told the Herald,” serves dual purposes: to motivate the contestants and to ‘demystify’ the pageant process for viewers.”

If you still have doubts that The Swan is hypocritical rather than intentionally loathsome, it’s worth mentioning that Galan has also cast herself as a “Swan Coach,” placing herself on the “panel of experts” responsible for guiding and performing the contestants’ makeovers. A producer aware of her show’s dubious morality probably wouldn’t award herself a starring role.

Continue reading "swan dive"

I’m still going to mention that, Saturday night, I dreamt I was a gay man with a crush on Choire. And that, soon after waking, my subconscious was disabused of that crush by Choire’s appearance on VHI’s “Hottest Couples.” Choire, oh God, called Nick & Jessica “adorable,” and I can only hope that this is meant as an apology.

Gibson’s ‘The Passion’ a Hit Among Arabs

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Hanan Nsour, a veiled, 21-year-old Muslim in Jordan, came out of “The Passion of the Christ” in tears and pronounced her verdict: Mel Gibson’s crucifixion epic “unmasked the Jews’ lies and I hope that everybody, everywhere, turns against the Jews.”

�Jesus is also a prophet to the Muslims, yet “The Passion” was OK’d by Egypt’s censors with no changes. They have not explained why “The Passion” was allowed.

Governments and Islamic clerics are also sending mixed signals.

Kuwait bans any movies depicting any of the prophets recognized by Islam, but one of its top Shiite clerics, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Mehri, has urged an exception for “The Passion” because it “reveals crimes committed by Jews against Christ.”

“Cut to Trump, who’s seen all he needs to see, sharpening his Downsizing Pinky of Death on a whetstone.”

Aimee (scroll down past the ugly dolphin photo) reports that Robert Downey Jr. is a Lorrie Moore fan. That’s enough to resurrect my crush on him, which hit its peak back in 1992 with the release of Chaplin. That, though, had more to do with my mystifying, erotic love of Charlie: for any psychoanalysts out there, that’s me serving you my id on a platter.

We all expect teen pop stars to swap STDs, but who knew bad hair was also making the rounds?

(Shouldn’t Avril’s stylist be on top of this? Hair styles always give away a girl’s real ideology.)

Jersey Girl looks so lame I haven’t even bothered reading the reviews. Except for Stephen Holden’s, which gives good visual summaries of the film’s two leads. Affleck struggles “in vain to twist what has become a natural sneer into a semblance of a smile.” And Tyler’s “monotone matches a face that’s the equivalent of pasteurized milk.” Now, no more on that.

From Page Six:

March 24, 2004 — RYAN Seacrest couldn’t handle Janice Dickinson on his show yesterday, so he went to a commercial and asked her to leave. “He’s a big wuss,” said Dickinson’s manager, Graham Kaye. “These West Coast guys can’t handle the Alpha Dog,” Dickinson told PAGE SIX. The former supermodel, gorgeous in Dolce & Gabbana, went on the Fox show to promote “America’s Top Model,” on which she is a judge. But Seacrest panicked as soon as she came onstage, sat in his lap, and purred, a la Mae West, “Is that a rise in your Levi’s?” Dickinson later asked Him, “What does your girlfriend call you in bed, Ry, Sea, or Crest? Does she call you Ry? I call you toast.”

What I don’t understand, though, is why Janice is so quick to admit she’s a dog.

Caution: spoilers ahead.

It’s been half a week since I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and my relationship with the film has turned into the film’s premise: I love it, I’m forgetting it, I’ve forgotten it, and when I see it again that initial love will return swiftly.
Memory, according to the film and current brain research, is an emotional process, which might explain Sunshine’s transience. I found the film oddly touching, sweet, beautiful, inventive, but not especially passionate, given its subject matter. In Joel’s last (or, really, first, since the erasure worked backwards) memory of Clementine, he was about to witness, in a sense, her death. But the script didn’t convey any hysteria; it seemed to ask us to invest emotion in the idea of her disappearance, rather than experience the emotion via Joel’s reactions to it.
But that’s a small complaint, given how much this film was the type of film I long for. And, in some respect I wonder if what I’d label the film’s one weakness isn’t a necessary or at least highly probable weakness. In my opinion, the most interesting or appealing speculative (sci-fi) fiction turns theories of emotion into facts. Feelings are transformed into something tangible and obvious: a break-up, for example, becomes a memory-wipe. And, while this narrative technique can, in turn, inhibit — or lessen the need — for conventional displays of feeling on the part of the story’s characters (my complaint), it also can flesh out feelings’ structure and logic.*
After a one-sided break-up, we cry because of our partners’ emotional amnesia, not their literal amnesia. But in making Clementine’s shift in feeling literal, or ‘factually’ justified, Sunshine refines common observations on the pain of breaking-up. The pain is a mourning for ourselves as loved ones, and the memory-wipe makes that personal, subjective experience external and inarguable.
The doggedly human aspects of Sunshine’s sci-fi work particularly well because the sci-fi, other than as metaphor, makes so little sense. High-budget films break their backs trying to explain the workings of crazy technology, but Sunshine never bothers making the memory-wipe seem plausible. The helmet Joel wears during the procedure is like the cardboard box a kid uses as a car. Whimsy and crudely aplied imagination are much more charming than seamless special effects. And, in some sense, we’re more willing to go along with a crazy premise when it doesn’t try so hard to convince us, so hard we feel obligated to resist it.
Sunshine has, as Anthony Lane put it in his review, an “unlovely elegance,” a so-casual-it’s-dirty beauty. It may not be a film for all eternity, but it is, in its best moments, as bright and warm as sunshine.

————————————-
*A good contrast/comparison to Sunshine is The Time Traveller’s Wife: it’s shoddily written and its sci-fi premise doesn’t mirror and enlarge any aspects of human psychology. The premise’s sole point, rather, is to enable a passionate love story.

From This Afternoon in Drama:

For two weeks now I’ve been hearing about this “orgy,” this debacle so shocking, so nasty, that [Tyra Banks] had to go back and re-edit the episode in the wake of Janet Jackson’s nipslip. While I haven’t seen the lost footage, unless it contains buck-wild, naked partner swapping and double penetration, I’m going to have to call a spade a spade. There are eighth graders in Irvine having a nastier time in the Woodflower hot tub than the girls of Top Model.

But, as is always the case on reality TV, it’s the abundance of stupidity, not sex, that’s shocking. Selon Stereogum:

This was allegedly the big draw of this episode: The America’s Next Top Model “hot tub orgy” where Shandi fucks a stranger. But there was BY FAR a better moment that you might’ve missed. � While shopping alone in Milan, Shandi comes across an item of clothing she likes. The vendor tries to sell it to her, but she doesn’t speak Italian. SO SHE STARTS SPEAKING ENGLISH WITH AN ITALIAN ACCENT. “No, it’s-a … toooo-beeeg,” she explains to him. WTF? Shandi, if you don’t speak Italian, speaking English with an Italian accent is not a passable alternative.

Reality TV may have the thematic heft of cotton candy, and linger in the memory about as long as uncapped soda keeps its fizz. But despite its newness, its postmodern ditziness, its sensual triviality, reality TV has an ancient and recognizable cosmology: a metaphysics not organized by logic but by faith. For reality TV contestants, laws come from above and are accepted without protest; a higher intelligence promises to guide them to the Holy Land. “Forever Eden” spells it out: for those willingly trapped inside reality TV, it is TV — and its profiteering producers — who are God.
Like the God of the Old Testament, reality TV’s God can be unsympathetic, even malicious. What other adjective could possibly describe the premise of “The Swan,” Fox’s upcoming reality show?

WOMEN GIVEN UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO REALIZE THEIR DREAMS
IN “THE SWAN” PREMIERING MONDAY, MARCH 29, ON FOX

FOX will debut THE SWAN, an unscripted series that turns a fairy tale into a reality and mirrors the classic tale of the ugly duckling that transforms into a beautiful swan. The series, produced by FremantleMedia North America and Galan Entertainment in association with A. Smith & Company, will premiere Monday, March 29 (9pm/8c) on FOX.

THE SWAN takes women who are stuck in a rut and revitalizes them by restoring their beauty and confidence. It offers women the incredible opportunity to undergo physical, mental and emotional transformations and follows them through the process. This groundbreaking idea culminates in a pageant in which one woman will be crowned “The Ultimate Swan.”

Each of the contestants will be assigned a team of specialists — a coach, therapist, trainer, cosmetic surgeon, dentist and stylist — that will work together to design the perfect individually-tailored program. The final reveal will be especially dramatic because the contestants will not be permitted to see themselves in a mirror during the three-month transformation process.

This chance of a lifetime comes with a price: hard work. The show does not end once the cosmetic surgery and physical transformations are complete. Rather, contestants must go through an intensive “boot camp” of exercise, diet, therapy and inspiration to achieve their goals. [Ed. note: “Excercise” and “diet” result in something different from “physical transformation”?]

Each woman’s work ethic, growth and achievement will be monitored. Two women will be featured in each episode and at that show’s conclusion, one of them will be selected to move on to The 1st Annual Swan Pageant and one will go home. The challenging and emotionally charged journey from ugly duckling to superstar-looks will culminate in the selection of “The Ultimate Swan” on the glamorous two-hour season finale on Monday, May 24 (8:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX.

Participating in a reality game show, accepting its cosmology, its rules, requires such a large ideological shift that I wonder if reality shows aren’t unlike cults. (“This man is our leader. All females must be willing and ready to have sexual relations with him.” A description of a cult or “The Bachelor”?) “The Swan” looks for women “in a rut,” and then seeks to “transform” them in a “boot camp” setting. Mirrors — as tools of self-reflection — are banned from the competition. Women are reminded that without the competition/cult, they will remain “ugly ducklings.” “Each woman’s work ethic, growth and achievement will be monitored” and judged according to the competition/cult’s philosophy and goals. “Therapy” and “inspiration” are made mandatory, and any rebellion results in rejection from the community.
Any therapist worth her degree would help smuggle her patients out of there. At the very least, their attempts at escape would make for more engaging reality TV.

From the shoulders up, still pretty. From the shoulders down: demonic possession by SNL’s Pat.

On the heels of Terry’s savaging of Annie Hall, The Reading Experience sums up the experience of watching Anything Else: “very painful.”

The film’s main characters are young—even younger than Allen and his own co-stars in their “younger” days in the 70s—and Allen seems to have no clue what to do with them other than rehearse the old routines in what is only a superficially similar mileu.

How much more interesting it would be to see Allen attempt to portray—comically, of course—characters of his own age (60s) dealing with the kinds of problems they still confront, rather than, as he does in this film, trying to keep up with the kids.

There’s no link for this, so I’ll just quote Maud:

I heard on WNYC this morning that police have found the body of a man wearing black corduroys in the East River. The pants are similar to those Spalding Gray wore when he disappeared. Most witness sightings after Gray’s disappearance place the actor on the Staten Island Ferry. A coroner’s report will be available this afternoon.

UPDATE: NY Post link.
UPDATE, 7 PM: Spalding Gray’s body idenitified. Really, horribly sad.

But we don’t stop there. Tiazinha, a sadomasochist personality wearing a mask and brandishing a whip, created a program for teenagers. In this show, Tiazihna, in a bra and panties, menacingly asks an adolescent (who happens to be lying on a bed), “What’s the capital of Australia?” If he gets it wrong, Tiazinha depilates a portion of the poor youth’s body. [more>]

The NY Times interviews Michel Gondry, whose much-anticipated Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind opens March 19. Here, Gondry discusses his next feature length project:

[Gondry] has put more of himself in each new film, and he promised that “the next one will be 100 percent me.” For the first time, he has written the script himself, which seems a natural progression. After all, he said, “There’s a little story in all my videos.” He is lining up the production now, probably to be filmed in Paris, partly in French and partly in English. “It’s about conquering your dreams,” he said of the story, in which the hero “can’t wake up any more because the people in the dream don’t want him to leave the dream, and they hold him as a hostage.” This does sound 100 percent him, right down to the sweet-tempered murder. As he described it: “There’s a guy who commits murder in his dream but with an electric shaver. An electric shaver becomes huge and shaves everything in sight.”

Sarah Jessica Parker Turns To Writing

Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker is swapping acting for writing, after taking inspiration from journalist character Carrie Bradshaw.

The actress has just recently finished the last ever episode of the hit TV series and has already started penning her first novel.

She says, “I’ve written about half of it already and I’m looking for a publisher who will take it.

“The basic story is about an over-the-hill TV actress who gets a shot at a comeback, but lies about everything from her age to her acting credentials. Then, one by one, they all come out.”

And Sarah has even bigger plans, she adds, “I would like to write full-time, but who knows what the future holds? It would be fun to turn this book into a movie, too.”

“Dunst: I Would Have Been a Better Sylvia Plath” (fourth item)

Actress Kirsten Dunst regrets not grabbing the rights to make Sylvia Plath’s biopic for herself, because she feels her portrayal of the poet would have been more convincing than Gwyneth Paltrow.’s The Spider-Man star admits she always wanted to play the suicidal writer on the big screen - and slams Oscar-winner Paltrow for failing to capture the essence of Plath in Sylvia. Speaking to American style magazine Nylon, she explains, “Even though I think Gwyneth Paltrow is an amazing actress, I think that Sylvia was a girl who wanted to hurt. She wanted to feel terrible. I felt like, in the movie, it was more like, ‘I’m the victim!’ It should have been more that she liked to create all this s**t in her head. She was crazier.” Dunst is now hoping to play another real-life tragic figure - actress and activist Jean Seberg, who died from a drug overdose in Paris, France, in 1979. Dunst reveals, “I’d like to produce a movie about Jean Seberg and her whole thing with the Black Panthers… I want to play her.”

You’ve been playing — or should play — the OC Drinking Game, brought to v.2 by Jessica Lee Jernigan:

When Kaitlin, Marissa’s make-believe sister and Julie Cooper’s pretend daughter shows up? That’s one drink for you. If a new child actress shows up in the role, take three. If the new child actress is conspicuously older or younger than the current child actress: shotgun a six-pack.

Trailer Trash interviews Don LaFontaine, “father of the modern trailer.”

Is “The Voice” something that you have to adjust your voice to do, or is that deep rolling b