Category Archives: Ephemera

Jon Stewart to Host Oscars

Ephemera

According to a report late Tuesday night on the New York Times web site, and picked up by Variety, The Daily Show funnyman Jon Stewart will host the 80th annual Academy Awards on February 24 — his second Oscars gig, and a return to the Kodak Theatre after a year’s absence. Ellen DeGeneres hosted last year’s ceremonies.

UPDATE 9/13: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has confirmed Stewart as the gig’s host, quoting him as saying, “I’m thrilled to be asked to host the Academy Awards for the second
time because, as they say, the third time’s a charm.”

John McTiernan Pulls a Larry Craig

Ephemera

It seems disgraced Idaho Senator Larry “I Am Not Gay” Craig isn’t the only public figure seeking to amend public records. Per The Hollywood Reporter, director John McTiernan has filed court papers
seeking to withdraw his 2006 guilty plea of making false statements to an
FBI agent in the wiretapping investigation into former celebrity sleuth
Anthony Pellicano.

McTiernan (Die Hard) filed the motion Monday in Los Angeles
federal court, the same day he was scheduled to be sentenced in the matter, which has now been rolled over to September 24. McTiernan’s new attorney of three weeks, Milton Grimes, said his client should have never pleaded guilty. “We don’t think, based on our preliminary review, he
committed a crime and violated federal law,” Grimes said.

The most interesting part of all of this? Wait… McTiernan was wiretapping someone over Rollerball? Show of hands — who else remembers that movie actually exists?

George Carlin Unmasked on XM

Ephemera

Good news for those with XM satellite radio, as the company just
announced the launch of Unmasked, a
new original comedy series that will feature one-on-one interviews with some
of the most talked about names in comedy. Stand-up legend George Carlin will be
the inaugural guest when Unmasked
premieres exclusively on “XM Comedy” (XM 150), on Saturday, September 22 at 8 p.m. “Whenever I do an in-depth
interview like this, I’m surprised that I learn things about myself and my work
I hadn’t realized before.  It always opens my eyes,” said Carlin.

Recorded before a live studio audience in the Performance
Theater at XM’s Washington, D.C.
studios, Unmasked offers up candid, one-on-one interviews with both
established and emerging comedic talent, for an uncensored look into their
creative process and the lives that shape their comedy. In addition to being
the series premiere, the Carlin interview will also be featured in the upcoming
career retrospective DVD box set George Carlin: All My Stuff.
Spread out over 14 discs and including shows from 1977 to 2005, the collection will
be released September 25 from MPI Home Entertainment.

“We at XM are thrilled that George Carlin, celebrating
his 50th year in comedy, will be the first guest as we launch this new
thought-provoking show that offers an inside look into some of today’s most
compelling comedic minds,” said Eric Logan, executive vice president of
programming for XM. “Since XM became the first to offer the 24-hour
uncensored comedy format anywhere on radio, our comedy programming has grown
from mere concept to include original shows like Unmasked and five dedicated
comedy channels with some of the strongest listenership on the platform.”

New episodes of Unmasked will air every other Saturday, with
future guests scheduled to include Jeff Garlin, Bob Saget, Brian Regan, Carlos
Mencia and others. Additional programming information and encore schedules are
available online by clicking here.

Indiana Jones Needs More Mer-Men, Opals

Ephemera, Musings

Sometimes what happens in Vegas doesn’t really stay in Vegas. Take, for instance, that out-of-wedlock kid you fathered in college who’s now extorting you to fund his poorly thought out business plan for a smoke shop and Phish collectibles emporium. Or, alternately, the jokey, hush-hush revelation from Shia LaBeouf that the fourth Indiana Jones flick will in fact be titled Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Or course, the latter — made during Sunday night’s MTV Video Music Awards, and confirmed by fan site SpielbergFilms.com, among many others — was never meant to stay in Vegas at all. Still, the selection of the title — one of five registered with the MPAA last month, the others being The Lost City of Gold, The City of Gods, The Fourth Corner of the World and The Quest for the Covenant — definitively nixes dreams of Indiana Jones and the Opal of the Mer-Man Prince, the dryly sardonic misdirection that star Harrison Ford had floated out there. Ahh, to dream…

I just got an advance media kit for the film from the Lucasfilm and Paramount folks yesterday, and while I have to scurry off in Gollum-like fashion to a full slate of stuff today, I’ll peruse the media kit for photos later tonight. Mostly, though, it’s a teaser and series refresher, with maps of real-world locations where the movies were filmed, tidbits about historical truths behind the legendary films… and even a maze and word find, people. That’s right, it’s like Indiana Jones and the Mysterious Case of Highlights Magazine.

Crackle Launches Moving Targets

Ephemera

Sony is getting into the online comedy biz… tangentially. Crackle,
a Sony Pictures Entertainment Company, today announced the launch of Moving
Targets, a programmed channel teeming with all sorts of sketches, digital shorts
and laugh-out-loud animation.

Moving Targets delivers laughs around the clock from the
comedy chops of veterans like Airplane!
director Jerry Zucker, animation innovators Starz and Jennifer Shiman (30-Second Bunnies Theatre) and Brian Dalton
(Mr. Deity), as well as open
submissions from today’s emerging talent. “Sketch comedy has been a launching pad for some of
Hollywood’s brightest stars, and with Moving Targets we’re giving content
creators the opportunity to shine, while comedy hungry audiences get quality
programming they desire,” said Tony Liano, vice president of programming
at Crackle. “Every generation has had a signature comedy program — from Laugh-In and In Living Color
to Saturday Night Live — Moving
Targets will be this generation’s.”

Crackle also produces a stable of original programs under
the auspices of Crackle Studios. Moving Targets combines licensed and produced
episodes as well as invited submissions from emerging talent participants. For more information, click here.

Variety, The Spice of Life

Ephemera

TV’s Grooviest Variety Shows of the ’60s and ’70s. That’s the author, above, and while this breaks with Shared Darkness‘ informal policy of linking and/or celebrating only hot chicks, it’s the exceptions that make the rule, and this is a worthy exemption.

With cable and 24-hour news cycles, the small screen of today is vastly different than television of yore — it might as well be another galaxy, really. So examining the histories of programs like The Lawrence Welk Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Flip Wilson Show and The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour is a daunting task, particularly for a young writer. But those shows and many more get a comprehensive workout in Davidson’s tome, which is full of warm anecdotes and behind-the-scenes detail but also keen analysis of the business landscape that rose up, sustained and ultimately felled these shows (and largely the entire variety genre). For more information, and/or to purchase the book via Amazon, click here.

Dick, Emmy Share Box

Amusements, Ephemera, Musings

The raunchy R&B parody “Dick in a Box,” from Saturday Night Live, has scored an Emmy victory at the recently held Creative Arts Emmy Awards, besting a couple songs from a musical episode of Scrubs, among other competition.

Last December’s fake music video about ornately wrapping up a part of the male anatomy and presenting it to a loved one as a holiday present, certainly aided in the meteoric rise of SNL cast member Andy Samberg, but an astute friend of mine pointed out — and I believe he’s right — that the piece could ultimately end up most helping out crooner/episode host Justin Timberlake, because it gives him a credibility with guys that he couldn’t buy, no matter the number of Alpha Dogs that he does. What’s most brilliant about “Dick in a Box,” of course, is the kernel of devastating truth at its core: guys really do wish that, 1) we could put that little effort into gift shopping, and 2) that women would be that enamored with our junk.

All Roads Film Festival Hits Egyptian

Ephemera, Screenings

The National Geographic All Roads Film Festival returns this
fall to Los Angeles, presenting contemporary stories of indigenous and underrepresented minority cultures
through a four-day showcase of film, photography and music at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood from September
27-30.

A dynamic, four-day multimedia event that includes live
musical performances and photography displays in addition to short- and
long-form features and documentaries, the festival is part of the All Roads
Film Project, which supports diverse cultural perspectives through the film
festival, grants, a photography program and other opportunities for filmmakers
and photographers to celebrate the vibrant cultural stories of our world. This
year’s festival will present four programming strands: “Women Hold Up Half the
Sky” shines a spotlight on female filmmakers; “Ancestors, Elders and Land”
highlights the connection between native people and their land; “Under the Same
Sun” looks at the struggle that people endure as they confront dual cultural
identities; and “Shorts from Around the World” showcases a wide array of global
cultures. In addition to its film screenings, All Roads will also feature
a walk-through photography exhibit in the Egyptian courtyard, open to all. To access a complete festival schedule and view the event’s trailer, click here.

Wanted: Vinessa Shaw, Nude

Amusements, Ephemera

Well, this has delicious potential: Deadline Hollywood
Daily’s Nikki Finke is reporting that… well, that would be too much
of a gloss, really. Straight to the point, she’s obtained an email from Hollywood-Elsewhere blogger/columnist Jeffrey Wells to 3:10 to Yuma director James Mangold, in which Wells
shares his thoughts on the movie and then solicits the filmmaker for nude and/or scantily-clad photos of Vinessa
Shaw, who shares a Yuma love scene with Russell Crowe. He even kind of pleads for said pictures, actually.

Tone and intent are the great mysteries of many Internet correspondences, having the ability to send everyone scuttling back to high school days of yore, when across-classroom glances and askance looks were dissected with a combination of fervor and fretfulness. So here the intent (at least from one side of things) is pretty clear, but without comment (yet) from Mangold and further context, the nature in which this was received is a bit hazy. Still, there’s the matter of professionalism (a perhaps silly notion when it comes to self-published entertainment journalists, I know), and while a quid pro quo is never explicitly proffered (nor, in my mind, really hinted at), at the very least this email seems exceptionally stupid and probably a little bit unethical to boot, because you’re asking a director to violate his trust with an actor and/or enlist others (per the email: “as one good hombre to another … you don’t have to be the guy who
passes along the stills — just tell the still photographer or the editor
or whomever caught her as she posed”) in a conspiracy to do the same.

Wells’ balls-on-table email response from the Toronto Film Festival, in which he sarcastically calls Finke’s post a brilliant, Earth-shaking exposé, leads with, “It
was seriously scummy of you to have run an off-the-cuff,
one-guy-to-another letter about wanting to get a jump on photos of a
hot actress that may or may not turn up on Mr. Skin a few weeks or months down the road,” and is reproduced in full under Finke’s original post.

Criterion Launches Redesigned Site

Ephemera

Tomorrow, September 6, Criterion will launch its new, redesigned website, giving customers a one-stop emporium for all Criterion products, including T-shirts, hats, posters, mugs and gift
certificates. And, for the first time since the days of laserdiscs, Criterion
will be selling its library of movies directly online.

Criterion, you’ll get 20 percent off all DVDs, free
shipping on orders of $50 or more and — if you’re looking to knock out some early holiday shopping and score a reward for yourself — a $50 gift certificate for every $500
you spend. Click here for more details.

Lene Lovich Does New York

Ephemera

An eccentric singer of mixed Yugoslavian and British heritage, Lene Lovich was one of the vaunted new wave’s most experimental and edgy singers, projecting her strong soprano with brilliance, and exploring
the limitations of her voice in a way other contemporaries could only dream about. A new, hour-long DVD concert disc, Lene Lovich: Live from New York at Studio 54, spotlights a rare performance from the always
intriguing Lovich, with the science-blinded Thomas Dolby, of all people, on synthesizer. Of this show, recorded on December 4, 1981, Stephen Holden of the New York Times
wrote, “Miss Lovich put on a fascinating show in which she sang, played
the saxophone and danced with a lurching spontaneity that seemed half-demented.
Her favorite mode is a wild, hiccupy vocal attack that often breaks into
semi-improvisatory bird calling that soars easily to an E-flat above high C.” The title’s track listing is as follows: “Details,” “Joan,” “Rocky Road,” “Too Tender (To Touch),” “Say When,” “Lucky Number” (her biggest hit single), “New Toy,” “Bird Song,” “Angels,” “Home” and “One in a Million.” For more information, or to purchase the title via Amazon, click here.

More Thoughts on Balls of Fury

Ephemera, Musings

In all the ways that movies are mis-marketed… errr, slyly peddled, one of the more curious disconnects in recent memory between elicited expectation and finished product has to be found in the new ping pong comedy Balls of Fury. Its title is vaguely juvenile (“Huh huh, he said balls…”), with an evocation of theatrical rage that stands as none-too-coincidental counterpoint to the recent hit Blades of Glory. If grandeur and achievement are part of sports, after all, so too are the flipside emotions — such as disappointment and anger — of presumed defeat.

So the movie looks, on the surface, to be another down-market tale of alpha male behavior on the fringe, with wildly colorful characters and plenty of slapstick situations. Yet overall Balls of Fury plays things surprisingly straight; it’s a rather shockingly low-energy treatment of such a colorful, willfully silly concept. Despite its advertising campaign (with shots of a weeping little girl punching a guy in the groin in heavy rotation), it really isn’t a comedy of rote physical debasement. But neither is the movie wholeheartedly about the competition at the core of its story, in a manner that would (potentially) allow it to blossom as a satire of muscle-bound sports flicks. No, instead, it’s not feelings of outrage that the movie most summons forth… just deep sighs of puzzled indifference. For the full review, from FilmStew, click here.

Also, while this holiday weekend looks to be a box office battle between Rob Zombie’s Halloween, Saw director James Wan’s Death Sentence and Balls of Fury, as well as an extra serving for big-budget holdovers, there are plenty of other, smaller, better films still at cineplexes that would love the vote of confidence that your dollars confer upon them. Narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, The 11th Hour is an important movie, definitively showing how the Earth is giving off symptoms of an infected organism, and how just unnatural many of our natural disasters and current weather patterns really are. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Meanwhile, Justin Theroux’s pleasantly barbed Dedication is still in limited release, I know, but Jeffrey Blitz’s Rocket Science is a great, skewed coming-of-age tale, and the documentary The King of Kong is deliciously fun — a reminder that high school’s shadow never completely disappears, it just stretches longer. Oh, and 3:10 to Yuma sneaks on Saturday night, I believe, in advance of its September 7 bow. All are definitely worth checking out.

An Aerial View of Halloween Series

Ephemera

To further whet the appetites of horror fans for this week’s release of Rob Zombie’s Halloween, FilmStew has up an excellent overview of the entire Halloween series by Telly Davidson, author of the legitimately groovy TV’s Grooviest Variety Shows of the ’60s and ’70s, which we’ve mentioned here before. I should have more on the film, meanwhile, over the weekend and/or on Monday. Because, you know, that’s how I honor the working man…

Lions for Lambs To Open AFI Fest

Ephemera

It’s official: after some swirling rumors for a good while, Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs will open this year’s AFI Fest, which kicks off November 1 and runs through November 11 in Los Angeles.

AFI Fest, really, given the wide national release date of the movie (November 9, from MGM) and the boffo publicity its feting will garner, particularly if Cruise and new BFF David Beckham hit the premiere together with their wives in tow. In fact, though, this “get” wasn’t that difficult to discern; when Lions pushed back its release from October, this pairing seemed a natural launch, actually.

Lesbian Sex & Sexuality

Ephemera

Refreshingly uncensored and uninhibited, Lesbian Sex & Sexuality is one show
no woman should miss. A docu-series that first aired on the cable channel here!
in early 2007, this groundbreaking six-episode series covers areas of lesbian
sex that have heretofore been unexplored. “This film is made for women, by
women,” says award-winning filmmaker Katherine Linton (AIDS: A Pop Culture History). “It’s a new style and a new
approach.”

In a nation where homosexuality is still considered a
controversial topic, lesbian sex, lust and sexual representation are even more
marginalized. This title takes viewers on a provocative journey that reveals
everything from the porn industry to exotic dancing and erotica. By visiting
writers, academics and “sexperts,” and going inside sex shops, erotic dance
clubs and lesbian-owned pornography companies, Linton’s film goes beyond mass
appeal to find out what really turns on out-and-proud lesbians, as well as
perhaps any woman who has ever had a girl-on-girl fantasy. For more
information, view the trailer by clicking here. To purchase the title via Amazon, click here.

Screenwriter Talks Fame Remake

Ephemera, Interviews


Allison Burnett (who’s a dude, for the record) is busy, but maybe not quite as busy as it may seem. He’s the co-writer of the just-released Resurrecting the Champ, but that was a script of his from a decade back, polished by Michael Bortman and readied for release by director Rod Lurie. He’s got the nudity-laden Feast of Love forthcoming in late September, but is at the moment busy at work on the remake of Fame, with Andy Fickman (Reefer Madness) attached to direct.

According to Burnett, the movie, which would shoot early next year for an early fall release, won’t be saccharine sweet like the High School Musical films. “When you’re that age, your problems are the most important things — you can’t imagine anything more dire,” he says. “So we’re sticking to that; it’s not going to be Bring It On versus American Idol, it’s serious.” For the full interview tidbit, from New York Magazine’s Vulture site, click here. Oh, and another heads up: it’ll be serious… but PG-13, and not rated R.

Halloween, Gossiped and Teased

Ephemera

The advance word on Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake/origin story hasn’t exactly been lighting things up, and the movie’s press day yesterday in Los Angeles was, according to one colleague, full of plenty of awkward silences. Another colleague, whose opinion I typically respect, laced into the movie for about a full 15 minutes recently. The gratuitous violence for violence’s sake was one aspect he found objectionable, but he also said it was riddled with lapses in logic, and basically suffered from a schizophrenic storyline that spends 50 minutes or so trying to explain Michael Myers’ actions by delving into his adolescence, then jettisons any potential causal relationship by having him snuff a sympathetic guard and deemed “just evil.” So which is it, my friend asked, seemingly justifiably. I’ll have more on the film next week, after I catch it. In the meantime, regardless of where this latest entry takes us or how it plays, this superb documentary on the series will whet your appetite anew.

Oh, Technology and Modernity…

Ephemera


One might have noticed a recent productivity gap here at Shared Darkness. Rest assured, Shared Darkness wasn’t sitting around drinking beer. No, instead there was a good, old-fashioned computer failure. Ahh, takes me back… Nothing erased, hopefully, but much information is held, hostage-like, on a hard drive that can’t currently be accessed. So that sucks. But hopefully this situation will be resolved soon-ish. Just a heads up…

Spike Jonze Finds M.I.A.

Ephemera


Coming from skateboarding videos and the like, acclaimed filmmaker Spike Jonze has always had an interest in quick one-offs and quirky side projects. This week, for VBS.TV — a broadband internet television site from the publishers of Vice magazine, launched in March and updated with 20-30 minutes of original content a day — Jonze offers up a video diary of a lovely day in London recently spent with M.I.A.

Spread out over six short episodes, Jonze and his handicam hook up with Maya Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., and travel around London talking about everything from immigration and the third world to iPod battles and Maya’s new haircut, which was given to her by a ketamine-addled Polish man. Spike and Maya also make a visit to her friend Afrikan Boy (the first signing to her new Zig-Zag record label), and later have a dance-off in the street outside Maya’s house. Jonze, the Creative Director of VBS.TV, looks to continue this series with an equally candid profile of Kanye West next week. For the piece, click here.

Jessica Biel To Go Nude

Ephemera, Musings

So the Internet is abuzz — and old media, too, as I already heard this on two drive-time morning shows on my recent coffee, post office and tire-slashing jaunt — with news that Jessica Biel has apparently agreed to bare breasts and ass for her role as a single-mom stripper in the now-instantly-more-popular indie flick Powder Blue. Egotastic and other sites have up production photos of Biel wandering around the streets of Los Angeles looking like some sort of Flashdance street urchin (let’s hope that’s not her stage costume), but hornballs should note the potential flaccidity factor of the fact that Biel’s character is working the pole to provide care for a terminally ill son.

The pleasantly jiggly bra-and-panties shots from I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry were certainly the best thing about that strikingly unfunny hunk of crap, and while I don’t know that Powder Blue is the right vehicle for this apparent newfound courage regarding screen nudity (his Oscar win notwithstanding, co-star Forest Whitaker has also not exactly made the most discerning choices lately), this is what I’ve been saying for months now needs to happen, as there have been movies and moments with Biel (particularly in the excremental London) where nudity would or should have flowed naturally from the scenes, only to be awkwardly shot around. Not to mention the possibilities of an erotic thriller that this opens up…

Donkey Kong Saga Continues

Ephemera

Documentary subject Steve Wiebe is in Los Angeles to help promote the damn entertaining videogame nonfictioner The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, which opens in limited fashion this week, and after the movie’s premiere last night at the ArcLight Cinema, he and others waded over to the nearby, unfortunately named Big Wang’s to continue festivities with a couple brews and Donkey Kong machines. No records were set, but per his appearance on the “Kevin and Bean” morning show on Los Angeles radio station KROQ this a.m., Twin Galaxies honcho Walter Day (the gentlemen to Wiebe’s left in the photo in the above-linked review) has made another change to the manner in which Donkey Kong scores will now be adjudicated. Moving forward, Day will have to be personally present for record submissions, due to some controversy surrounding scores submitted via videotape. For more information on the film, you can visit its web site by clicking here.

So… The Invasion Opens August 17

Amusements, Ephemera

several times before last night’s screening of The Invasion at The Grove in Los Angeles to make sure that journalists knew the embargo on reviews for the film was Friday, the date of the release. So, no reviews before then.

That’s Friday, August 17. That’s when The Invasion opens. Starring Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig and Jeremy Northam.

Just sayin’…

David Lynch Does Westwood

Ephemera

For those in the Los Angeles area, David Lynch will be feting the DVD release of his latest film by autographing copies of Inland Empire at the Borders Bookstore in Westwood tomorrow, August 14, beginning at 7 p.m. Naturally, “due to limited time with the featured guest,” only Borders-purchased copies of prior
titles will be allowed to be signed. For a map of this location and this store’s event list, click here.

Daddy Day Camp DOA

Box Office, Ephemera, Musings

I’ve written before about Cuba Gooding, Jr.’s ongoing debasement, and this was without even seeing Daddy Day Camp, which a couple publicists made repeated (and unsuccessful) entreaties for me to cover — even going so far as to (gasp!) phone, an extreme rarity in this digital age, and certainly so after a chain of email correspondence. Apparently, America pretty much agrees with my no-need-to-see assessment, as the aforementioned film arrived in theaters Wednesday with a thud, delivering just over $770,000, a $354 per screen average. It’ll conceivably pull in some family business this weekend, but the Wednesday opening was an attempt to expand and tap that market, to get them into theaters on less crowded off days before school started back up, and it failed miserably.

As for Gooding, deserved or not, he’s toxic, quite frankly. He has a dramatic supporting role in this fall’s hotly anticipated American Gangster, but the commercials and all the down-market crap are killing him. In fact, I had a fairly respected comedic actress tell me last year — off the record, but in no uncertain terms — that she pulled out of a project that turned an eye toward casting Gooding, tendering him an offer.

Rush Hour 3 Sponsors Sigalert?

Amusements, Ephemera

Lost amidst reporting on other forms of viral marketing is the fact that apparently Rush Hour 3 is advertising or sort of sponsoring, if you will, Sigalert, which is the coupled slang for the traffic and vehicular smash-up reporting service here in greater Los Angeles county. In addition to a little movie logo on their web freeway map, a couple days ago accidents — noted by differently colored diamonds on the screen — were also marked with a pop-up text card for the movie, in very small print. The latter no more — I guess someone made the point that you don’t want your movie literally associated with horrible accidents. Check it out by clicking here; who knows how long after opening weekend it’ll last.