“Jon & Kate” Breakup Wins Large TV Audience
If misery loves company, then reality TV couple Jon and Kate Gosselin had plenty of both Monday night when millions of viewers watched on television as the parents of eight announced they were breaking up.
Cable channel TLC, which airs reality show “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” on Tuesday said that the previous night’s episode attracted its biggest prime-time audience ever at 10.6 million total viewers with 6.5 million of those in the key 18-49 age group, a demographic sought by advertisers.
The episode aired the same day Kate Gosselin filed legal papers for divorce in the couple’s home state of Pennsylvania.
The Gosselins are famous for having twins and sextuplets, which made for a crowded house, and the show documented their family’s trials and triumphs as the kids grew up.
But their relationship had increasingly turned sour, and the Gosselins became fodder for celebrity press and paparazzi that speculated about extra-marital affairs in the weeks leading up to Monday night’s telecast.
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Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/06/23/arts/entertainment-us-gosselins.html?_r=1
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No More ‘Celebrity’ for Patti Blagojevich
Illinois’ former first lady won’t be queen of the jungle.Patti Blagojevich on Tuesday was voted off NBC’s reality series ”I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!” She lasted 23 days in the Costa Rican jungle as a replacement for her husband, who was barred by a judge from leaving the country amid his pending corruption charges.
Patti Blagojevich said during Tuesday’s episode that her favorite moments on the series include being tossed into a river and making her way out, and speaking to her family over the Internet.
Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich has pleaded not guilty to wide-ranging federal charges, including attempting to sell an appointment to Barack Obama’s Senate seat.
Patti Blagojevich has said she did the show because of her family’s finances.
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Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/06/23/arts/AP-US-Patti-Blagojevich-Reality-TV.html
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Perez Hilton Not Backing Down for Using Gay Slur
Perez Hilton isn’t apologizing for using a gay slur.The openly gay gossip blogger said in a statement Tuesday that he would continue to say things upsetting to gay and straight people alike. The comments came after the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation called for Hilton to apologize Monday for unleashing the word during an altercation at a nightclub with Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am.
”I wish none of it had happened,” said Hilton, whose real name is Mario Lavandeira. ”I can’t take it back. I did what I thought was best at the moment to stand up for myself in a nonviolent yet still assertive way. Clearly, I am not homophobic. Also, I am not nor have I ever claimed to be a spokesperson for the gay community.”
Hilton said he used the gay slur because he thought it would be the worst thing he could possibly say to will.i.am. after the musician told the blogger not to write about his band on his Web site. Police charged the band’s tour manager with assault for allegedly punching Hilton during the confrontation at a Toronto nightclub early Monday morning.
”For someone in our own community to use it to attack another person by saying that it is ‘the worst possible thing that thug would ever want to hear’ is incredibly dangerous,” said GLAAD media programs senior director Rashad Robinson. ”It legitimizes use of a slur that is often linked to violence against our community.”
Earlier this year, Hilton incited a brouhaha when he asked then Miss California USA Carrie Prejean if every state should follow Vermont in legalizing same sex marriage. Her response that ”marriage should be between a man and a woman” received more attention than the winner. Prejean, who was later dethroned, said she lost her crown because of the comment.
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Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/06/24/arts/AP-US-People-Perez-Hilton.html
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Dick Cheney Working on Memoir
Former Vice President Dick Cheney has signed a book deal with a conservative imprint of Simon & Schuster and said he hopes readers of all ideologies will be interested in his story. The memoir by Cheney, widely considered the most powerful vice president in history, is expected to be published in Spring 2011, a few months after President George W. Bush’s book comes out.Cheney’s work is currently untitled and will cover his long career in government, from chief of staff under President Ford to vice president under Bush, from Vietnam and Watergate to the first Gulf War and the Sept. 11 attacks.
In a telephone interview Tuesday with The Associated Press, the 68-year-old Cheney noted that he had never written a book about his years in government, which dates back to the 1960s.
”I’m persuaded there are a lot of interesting stories that ought to be told,” Cheney said. ”I want my grandkids, 20 or 30 years from now, to be able to read it and understand what I did, and why I did it.”
Financial terms were not disclosed. A publishing official with knowledge of the negotiations, but not authorized to publicly discuss, said the deal was likely worth at least $2 million. Cheney’s literary representative, Washington attorney Robert Barnett, declined comment.
Known for his secrecy while in the Bush administration, Cheney has made it clear since leaving office that he was planning a memoir. He is working on the book — in longhand and on computer — at his home outside of Washington, D.C., and in collaboration with his daughter, Liz Cheney.
Books by former vice presidents rarely attract a lot of interest unless the author is likely to run for president (Richard Nixon had a best seller in the early 1960s with ”Six Crises”), or claims an expertise outside of electoral politics (Al Gore’s ”An Inconvenient Truth,” released in 2006 and the companion to the Academy Award-winning documentary about global warming).
But Cheney’s influence is like no other vice president’s and his side of the story should at least catch the attention of the general public, including the many who don’t like him. An architect and aggressive defender of Bush administration policies, from the Iraq War to the treatment of suspected terrorists, Cheney has consistently had low approval ratings, sometimes under 30 percent, but he is deeply admired by those that stand by him.
”He appeals very strongly to the conservative side of the political spectrum. That’s absolutely true,” said Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy. ”But what also fascinates me is the sheer breadth of his experience.”
The book will be published by Simon & Schuster’s Threshold Editions imprint, founded in 2005 and headed by a longtime Cheney friend and former aide: Republican strategist Mary Matalin. Threshold has become an unofficial publishing home to the Cheney family, releasing memoirs by Cheney’s wife Lynne Cheney and by daughter Mary Cheney.
Matalin has not only reaffirmed her Washington connections, but tapped into — like few others — the current conservative market. She has published one of the most popular works of 2009, Mark Levin’s ”Liberty and Tyranny,” and recently released ”Glenn Beck’s Common Sense,” which on Tuesday ranked No. 1 on Amazon.com.
”A lot of those kinds of books were selling well before, but they’ve certainly been enhanced by this environment, where conservatives feel a certain urgency; the future of the party feels uncertain,” Matalin said. ”Cheney’s book may play into that — it can’t not, I think. But it will also be about the policies that played out under that philosophy of government, over almost half a century.”
Cheney said his book will reflect his conservative outlook, but that he has no plans to write ”a screed” and sees no reason why liberals shouldn’t want to read it, ”because it covers some of very interesting and important events in our recent history.
”I would hope it has an appeal to anyone who has an interest in these developments,” Cheney said.
Interest in Cheney can be measured by how many books have been written about him. It is a vast, diverse and mostly unflattering library, from parodies such as ”Dick Cheney’s Diary” and ”Duck! The Dick Cheney Survival Bible” to Barton Gellman’s investigative ”Angler,” in which Cheney is portrayed as a virtual law unto himself in the Bush administration.
Cheney said Tuesday that he was aware ”there have been quite a few (books) about me as vice president,” and added, ”A couple of them I have looked at,” mentioning Stephen Hayes’ sympathetic ”Cheney: The Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President,” a 2007 release written with his cooperation.
Cheney said that he has a ”stack of books” by his bedside, accumulated while he was vice president, and ”wanted to read at least some of them.” Asked if he might have a look at the Gellman book, or another critical take, Cheney said, ”I expect I would.”
He has made sharp comments over the past few months, not just about the Obama administration, but about former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who often differed with Cheney when they served under George W. Bush. But when discussing his book Tuesday, Cheney said, ”In terms of carrying grudges or trying to settle grudges, that’s not my purpose. If it had been, I wouldn’t have lasted very long in politics.”
”He knows he’s called Darth Vader,” said Simon & Schuster’s Carolyn Reidy. ”He’s aware of how he’s been portrayed. But I didn’t feel any defensiveness when I met with him. I remember thinking, `I can see why four presidents gave him very responsible jobs in their administrations.”’
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Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/06/23/arts/AP-US-Books-Cheney.html
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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Megan Fox and Shia LaBeouf escape destructive calamity caused by robots in “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”
The creative people behind the cretinous “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” the second blockbuster inspired by the popular Hasbro toys, have segmented their demographic into four discrete categories:
1. Young teenage boys who still play with Transformer toys (or keep them under the bed).
2. Older teenage boys who identify with the professional doofus Shia LaBeouf.
3. Somewhat older teenage boys who would like to play with the professional hottie Megan Fox.
4. Boys of all ages who think it would be cool to go to war and run around the desert shooting guns.
Of course, viewers can embrace several categories at once; say, those who collect toys and liked Mr. LaBeouf in the last “Indiana Jones” movie. Or those who fantasize about having sex with Ms. Fox while shooting guns, a vision that distills the auteurist ambitions and popular appeal of the movie’s director, Michael Bay.
And make no mistake: Mr. Bay is an auteur. His signature adorns every image in his movies, as conspicuously as that of Lars von Trier, and every single one is inscribed with a specific worldview and moral sensibility. Mr. Bay’s subject — overwhelming violent conquest — is as blatant and consistent as his cluttered mise-en-scène. His images, particularly during the frequent action sequences, can be difficult to visually track, but they are also consistently disjointed. (And proudly self-referential: the only director he overtly cites is himself, with a shot of the poster for his movie “Bad Boys II.”) The French filmmaker Jacques Rivette once described an auteur as someone who speaks in the first person. Mr. Bay prefers to shout.
The shouting here commences just as Sam Witwicky (Mr. LaBeouf) heads off to college having ridden shotgun on a battle royal between extraterrestrials in the first flick. While fighting over the fate of the planet, the heroic Autobots and the villainous Decepticons hang out on Earth disguised as machines with cute nicknames, mostly fast cars, big rigs and military planes. The Autobot leader, Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen), usually rolls as a Peterbilt truck tricked out with shiny chrome and red painted flames, while the car parked in Sam’s family garage, a screaming if now voiceless yellow 2010 Camaro, goes by Bumblebee. Every so often, the aliens convert to their true shapes, their articulated parts opening up like metallic origami.
Given Mr. Bay’s predilection for action over introspection, it’s no surprise that he plucks Sam out of school right after he cracks his first textbook. Along with his unlikely girlfriend, Mikaela (Ms. Fox), Sam heads off to an adventure that reunites him with many of the first movie’s characters, including an embarrassing John Turturro as Simmons, who provides some wincingly unfunny comic relief, and some military beefcake in the hardbody forms of Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson. Also back, if not for long, are the Autobots Ratchet (a Hummer H2) and Ironhide (a GMC TopKick pickup), which have suffered a fate more terminal, at least to the brand, than any meted out by the Decepticons: General Motors has sold Hummer and discontinued the TopKick.
There’s a serious disconnect in the movie between the image of power that those GM brands are meant to convey and the bankrupt car industry they now signify. That disconnect only deepens with the introduction of two new Autobot characters, the illiterate, bickering twins Skids (Tom Kenny) and Mudflap (Reno Wilson), both of which take the shape of Chevrolet concept cars. The characters have been given conspicuously cartoonish, so-called black voices that indicate that minstrelsy remains as much in fashion in Hollywood as when, well, Jar Jar Binks was set loose by George Lucas. For what it’s worth, the script, by Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, also includes a crack about Simmons, who’s coded as Jewish, and his “pubic-fro head.”
You’re not meant to take that seriously, of course, just like there’s nothing to the reference to President Obama being whisked out of danger instead of standing tall like Optimus Prime and the rest of the robotic heroes. But that’s the perverse genius of Michael Bay. Despite the tediousness of his stories and inanity of his visual ideas, he always manages to keep you laughing and shaking your head in disbelief at the outlandishness of his cinematic spectacles, with their orange explosions, armament fetishism and even their noxious stereotypes. The man just wears you out and wears you down, so much so that it’s easy to pretend that you’re not ingesting 2 hours and 30 minutes of warmongering along with all that dumb fun.
“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Bloodless violence.
TRANSFORMERS
Revenge of the Fallen
Opens on Wednesday nationwide.
Directed by Michael Bay; written by Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, based on Hasbro’s Transformers action figures; director of photography, Ben Seresin; edited by Roger Barton, Paul Rubell, Joel Negron and Thomas Muldoon; music by Steve Jablonsky; production designer, Nigel Phelps; visual effects and animation by Industrial Light & Magic; produced by Don Murphy, Tom DeSanto, Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Ian Bryce; released by DreamWorks Pictures and Paramount Pictures. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes.
WITH: Shia LaBeouf (Sam Witwicky), Megan Fox (Mikaela Banes), Josh Duhamel (Major Lennox), Tyrese Gibson (U.S.A.F. Master Sgt. Epps), John Turturro (Simmons), Kevin Dunn (Ron Witwicky), Julie White (Judy Witwicky) and John Benjamin Hickey (Galloway).
WITH THE VOICES OF: Peter Cullen (Optimus Prime), Hugo Weaving (Megatron), Tom Kenny (Wheelie; Skids), Reno Wilson (Mudflap) and Tony Todd (the Fallen).
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Full article and photo: http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/movies/24transform.html?hpw
