“Here we believe in fate,” Tareq (Alexander Siddig) tells Juliette (Patricia Clarkson). In this film, what is fate, what is circumstance and what is choice is debatable, and is left to the audience to decide. This is a small and quiet film, but the two compelling lead actors kept me interested in the fate of the characters. [Read more →]
Before I hand out my weekly dose of celebrity advice, I’d like to thank the great people of New York for realizing that, as always, I was right and for choosing to view Manhattan over Serendipity at the Central Park Film Festival last week. I was worried but you pulled through for me. You’re a good bunch, NYC. Even you, Staten Island! Now, let’s talk about someone whom I am very proud to say is not a New Yorker: Paris Hilton. [Read more →]
A passing of note for me — and for all fans of anime, really. Satoshi Kon, a highly acclaimed Japanese anime director, died suddenly of cancer on Monday evening. He was 47.
Kon was not an early pioneer of the genre … nor was he its most prolific artist. But he had a special significance, a special impact, nonetheless. [Read more →]
I have mixed feelings about Todd Solondz. I loved Welcome to the Dollhouse, liked parts of Happiness and disliked other parts and Palindromes stayed with me, but in an uncomfortable way. As for Life During Wartime, some of the scenes are interesting and funny in a dark way. I like the parts, but the whole left me cold. But maybe that was Solondz’s goal. [Read more →]
By now, my faithful readership (all three of you) knows what this column is all about. Celebrities are crazy, and need good advice. I am awesome, and give good advice. Everybody wins. Today, though, I feel compelled to share my wisdom with a different type of celebrity: The people of New York City. Individually, we may not be much. Collectively, we possess the star power of Elvis in his heyday and Bono on any day combined. This week, we New Yorkers have the power to harness that brilliance and put it to good use. I am speaking, of course, about the biggest decision facing our city today, the importance of which is even greater than our inevitable future decision whether to re-elect King Bloomberg for a 15th term: The choice of whether to screen Woody Allen’s Manhattan or John Cusack’s Serendipity at the upcoming Viewer’s Choice Night of the Central Park Film Festival. New York, you need to choose Manhattan. [Read more →]
Our very own Fred Siegel will be performing at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. His first show is September 3rd. Get ticket information and a full schedule here. Fred has started a blog to promote his Fringe Festival participation: Man of Mystery. Please check it out.
10. Instead of freakishly large floppy shoes, the funniest shoes the clowns can afford are size 15
9. The ‘fire eater’ is just some guy chomping on extra spicy chili peppers
8. Their ‘clown’ is a transvestite Lady Gaga impersonator
7. The trapeze artiste has a seatbelt
6. The ‘bearded lady’ has a suspicious bulge in the groinal area
5. The supposed ‘baby elephant’ looks suspiciously like a bulldog that’s been ‘altered’
4. The cotton candy is guaranteed 100% cotton
3. Twenty clowns don’t pile out of a teeny weeny car, just one really fat clown
2. When you look closely at the tamer’s lion, there’s a zipper
1. Instead of popcorn, they sell trail mix made from tent sweepings
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
Director/screenwriter Ryan Murphy (Glee) and screenwriter Jennifer Salt faced particular challenges in adapting Elizabeth Gilbert’s popular book. Eat Pray Love spent over 182 weeks on the New York Times Non-Fiction Best Seller list, and both critics and fans were quite taken with Gilbert’s chronicle of her year long journey. Expectations for the film were high, and because it is a true story, Murphy and Salt were limited in what they could change. The filmmakers did not take many liberties, although some fans of the book may quibble with details excluded and embellished. The film is not perfect, but this fan of the book admires the effort Murphy and Salt made in Eat Pray Love. The filmmakers also get a big assist from a terrific cast. [Read more →]
I recently spent a week at the beach with friends. We ate ice cream, we swam, and we drank a truly inestimable amount of red wine. Jealous? You should be. Anyway, my beach read of choice this year was the chick-lit phenom Eat, Pray, Love. Was it good? Not even a little. (I think my friend Kevin’s assessment of the plot says it best: “White people have so many problems!”) Did 300+ pages of pontification get my advice-giving juices flowing? Oh, yes. Those juices flowed like the fat off of a slice of Neapolitan pizza. Maybe, I started to think, the self-absorbed heroine of Expedite, Photograph, Lunge is on to something. Maybe, just maybe, another insanely rich woman out there could benefit from taking a sabbatical to find herself through gelato and yoga. That woman, dear readers, is Jennifer Aniston. [Read more →]
In this film, twelve is a potent mixture of heroin and cocaine. It is expensive and highly addictive. The film Twelve (screenplay by Jordan Melamed based on the novel by Nick McDonell) is a straight up tale of drug dealing and violence among over privileged New York teens. But some sharply drawn characters and original direction elevate this film above others in its genre. [Read more →]
A little update for you faithful readers: Last week, Bristol Palin called off her engagement redux with Levi Johnston, no doubt because she read my advice and realized that, as always, I was totally right. You’re welcome, Bristol. Now let’s see, on whom shall I direct my magic wand of miracle-working advice this week? Ah, yes: Laurence Fishburne, I choose you! [Read more →]
Via dlisted, there is an interview from Vanity Fair in which Lady GaGa confesses that she believes the seat of her creativity can be found in her wondrous loins.
Lady Gaga tells Vanity Fair contributing editor Lisa Robinson that she tries to avoid having sex because she is afraid of depleting her creative energy — “I have this weird thing that if I sleep with someone they’re going to take my creativity from me through my vagina.”
Sex is a creative act in itself, if not procreative. It fans the creative spark; it does not deplete it. But how does a man take the creativity of a woman through her vagina? Copulation between a man and a woman involves penetrating the woman’s orifice with his penis. Does Ms. GaGa’s creativity travel into the hole in the tip of the penis, and up into his urethra, from there to his liver and eventually to his brain? [Read more →]
Dinner for Schmucks has two main problems. It is not very funny and not very interesting. This is a shame, because there is lots of comic talent languishing in this film. The initial idea has potential, but this film collapses under the weight of the poor screenplay by David Guion and Michael Handelman. Yes, it apparently takes two men to write a bad screenplay. [Read more →]
Birds flying high, you know how she feels. Sun in the sky, you know how she feels. Breeze driftin’ on by, you know how she feels. It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life…and LiLo’s feeling good. That’s right, kids, Lindsay Lohan is a free woman. So now that she knows why the caged bird sings…what’s next? There’s been a lot of speculation on what LiLo’s first move should be, post-prison. Sit on Oprah’s couch? Embark on a spiritual retreat? Take a wild, girlish stab at acting? Nay! The question, dear friends, is not what Lindsay should do; it’s who Lindsay should become. [Read more →]
The Internet Movie Database ranking of the 250 films its users deem the greatest of all-time has always fascinated me, partly because I’ve spent a disturbing amount of my life creating lists for various publications and also because it reveals America’s self-proclaimed movie snobs to be deeply perceptive and total cretins all at once. The rankings inevitably feature a few artificially high recent releases (you may not have been aware of it, but Inception and Toy Story 3 are both among the ten finest films ever). Then in a few weeks things stabilize, resulting in relatively constant master list. Here’s what I love and loathe about the rankings:
Having absolutely nothing better to do, the President of the United States appeared on The View yesterday where he made what I consider to be a rather startling claim for an American to make:
President Obama charmed the ladies on “The View” yesterday and confidently showed off his command of the big challenges facing the nation today.
But the name Snooki didn’t ring a bell.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know who that is,” the smiling but perplexed President said when asked about the big-haired “Jersey Shore” bombshell, according to several audience members interviewed after the show.
“We all liked that he didn’t know who she was,” said Nella Cerminara, 51, of Montreal.
That would be nice if the president didn’t know who “Snooki” was, I suppose.
Except he does know who Snooki is. He was lying. Check out this video from back in May: [Read more →]
A wonderful cast, an intelligent and funny screenplay and fine direction more than compensate for a few implausible plot twists in The Kids Are All Right. I found the characters compelling and parts of this film made me laugh harder than I expected. This film is not perfect, but it is very good. [Read more →]
Guess why the rock band Kings of Leon abandoned their gig in St. Louis after three songs. Bloody mosh pit? Misfiring dragon-shaped fireballs? Dragged off stage for lewd behavior involving honeybees and a flowering dogwood?
Nope. It was pigeons. Pooping pigeons.
The last Comic-Con I attended was way back in 2007, when I still had a comic book writing gig, a fairly big one, actually, and when I went to the bars and parties after hours I could say, “Hi, I’m Ricky and I write _____,” and people actually knew what I was talking about. I admit I felt like a big man. It was a fun time.
I mean, it was fun going to the bars and parties after Comic-Con had closed. Comic-Con itself had become the opposite of fun.
