Why Do I Like Her SO Much?

........

This is turning into a real red-letter Gay Day here - first I post about Dolly, and now Janice Dickinson. Still, how could I ignore these delightful pics of J-Dick doing what she does best - terrifying the paparazzi (and us all) like an one-person plastic-surgery float in the Los Angeles Annual Botox Day Parade.

(more over at ASL)

The Trouble With Crash

.....

Over at Salon, Andrew O'Hehir introduces The Guilties, his lovingly dead-on awards season swipe at the Oscar nominated films this year and their heavy dosage of Liberal Guilt. What he says about Crash pretty much sums up my opinion perfectly:

"Look, it's not like Crash is a war crime or something. A lot of the acting is quite good, and the honorable intentions of this achingly earnest sermon ("Racial Pain: Los Angeles, America, the World?") are obvious. But it's exactly the kind of portentous, piss-elegant middlebrow trash that many critics (and, unhappily, many viewers) see as Important Cinema. The only difficult part about identifying the preaching and speech-making in Crash is finding the places when it stops. No one in this movie ever talks like an identifiable human being, starting with the notorious early scene where two young African-American men who are about to carjack the L.A. district attorney get into a philosophical argument about the prevalence of white racism. (I had high hopes for that scene when it appeared they might have to shoot Sandra Bullock's eterna-whiny rich-bitch character. After that, it was all downhill.) This entire film is a spinach-flavored schematic, going from one overloaded symbolic encounter between angst-ridden people of different ethnicities to another. We've got a little girl in a bad neighborhood who is magically saved from death by a fairy cape, and the one decent, non-racist white cop in all of L.A., who ends up shooting a black kid for no reason. You could say that Crash is aware of the ironies and contradictions of race in America, but that's literally the only thing it's aware of. It's grasping you by the lapels, like that uncle you generally avoid at family gatherings, and screaming into your face: "My God! The contradictions!" It virtually throbs with meaning, and it's the kind of migraine throb that approaches meaninglessness."

I just do not get why Roger Ebert is on such a war path above this movie.

Read the article, it's funny and quite astute (course, he's awfully kind to Brokeback, which may account for my positive opinion).

Dolly Loves Us All

.....

And we love her back.

I'm stealing all this from Towleroad - Dolly recently told USA Today, about her Oscar-nom'd song "Travelin' Thru", from the film TransAmerica,

"Some things are strange to me, and some things are odd. But I don't condemn. If you can accept me, I can accept you. Having a big gay following, I get hate mail and threats. Some people are blind or ignorant, and you can't be that prejudiced and hateful and go through this world and still be happy. One thing about this movie is that I think art can change minds. It's all right to be who you are."

You can get "Travelin' Thru" for free at iTunes today.
.

It's A Great Day!

.....

Bush job rating falls to all-time low: poll

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
President George W. Bush's job rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, amid strong opposition to the Dubai Ports World deal and increasing pessimism over the war in Iraq, according to a CBS News poll released on Monday.

Bush's overall job approval fell eight points from 42 percent last month. Fifty-nine percent of respondents said they disapproved of Bush's performance on the job, the poll found.

Bush's previous low job approval rating of 35 percent came last October, a month after Hurricane Katrina laid waste to the Gulf Coast and shortly after the U.S. death toll in Iraq reached the 2,000 mark, CBS said.

Long among his strongest suits, ratings for Bush's handling of Iraq fell to a new low of 30 percent, down from 37 percent in January, the poll found.

In addition, 62 percent of Americans said they think U.S. efforts to bring stability and order to Iraq were going badly compared with 36 percent who said things were going well.

In recent days, the Bush administration has faced increasing sectarian violence and fears of civil war in Iraq as well as strong bipartisan congressional opposition to a deal allowing an Arab state-owned company to operate six key U.S. ports.

According to the poll, 70 percent believe the Dubai Ports World transaction should not be allowed to go through while only 21 percent did not see the ports deal as a problem.

One surprising bright spot for the administration in the polls was that Americans appeared ready to move on after Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident. Seventy-six percent said it was understandable that the accident could happen.

However media coverage of the accident may have made the public's generally negative view of Cheney a bit more so, CBS said. The poll found that 46 percent hold a negative view of Cheney and 18 percent hold a favorable view, down from a 23 percent favorable rating in January.

The telephone poll of 1,018 adults was conducted February 22-26 and had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Rochester's Subway?

.....

Rochester, New York, my semi-hometown (I grew up about 40 min's away, but went to college there and if anyone asks I say I'm from there because if I say I'm from Newark they think I mean New Jersey... which I don't), had a subway? Apparently so. I hadn't a clue.

Rochester was the smallest U.S. city to ever have a subway. I guess there was a time when people needed to gget to downtown, when it wasn't the ghost-town it is today. They mostly stopped using the system in 1956, though it was still used for the transportation of goods (such as newspapers) through the mid-70's. These days it's pretty much hobo-central.

And now there's talk of filling the thing in with dirt. Because that's how Rochester always deals with possibly cool landmarks, really. Gotta love the brains running that town.

Anyway, why haven't I made a horror film in them tunnels? Where's my brain???

An Equation

..........

+ SUBTLETY

+ A VOLCANO
(no, Sandra Bullock doesn't count)

=

I mean, don't you remember how, when the ash fell on the bruthas and racist cops in that L.A. neighborhood in Volcano, they were all now the same color and could set aside their racial differences to work for the common good (i.e. getting the hell out of the way of the lava)? Not to mention Volcano had Anne Heche in her lesbian-phase helping to save the day.

That was real nuance there, or at least compared to the hammering about the face Crash gives its audience. And not one psuedo-lesbian (again, Sandra Bullock doesn't count) saving the day in Crash either.

Forrest Gump Hates Women!

//////

Did anyone else catch Forrest Gump on TV this weekend? I hadn't seen the movie in years, and found myself caught up and watching the entire thing again. I have such a soft spot for maudlin heart-tuggery. Anyway, yes the movie's shamelessly hammy, but I still enjoy it. And my crying count was probably in double-digits. Why they gotta go and give Jenny the AIDS? Sigh.

A couple things were floating around my head while watching it this time. First, I saw Robin Wright Penn on the street a few months back, and she has not aged well. She needs to stop using husband Sean's jizz as a facial cream because it's sapping the life out of her. I liked her so much back in the mid-Nineties, she was Jenny and, earlier, Princess Buttercup! "Assssss Yoooooouuuuuuu Wiiiiiissssssshhhhhhhh..." Then.... nuthin. A shame.

Second. So, the film is basically a way for the baby boomers to look back at everything they lived through that was traumatic about their times, from racial desegregation to the Vietnam War up through AIDS, and identify with a guiltless moron who changed the world without ever knowing or trying. That I got. But what I really noticed this time, which I'm sure has been the thesis of many a film-studies paper, was what a raw deal the female half of the equation, Jenny, gets. I always knew she was the dark side to Forrest's light, but for some reason I really got to wondering about what it means that it's the female half that the entire film spends its time degrading, punishing, and ultimately killing. First, she's molested. Then she's unable to deal with that so she ends up living her entire life as a victim, bouncing from man to man, taking drugs, and generally wreaking havoc on our guy Forrest's heart. She's beaten here and there for good measure, and then finally comes around once she knows she about to die. Hmm. Something tells me somebody had some issues with the modern women's movement. But the film was a massive hit so it obviously fulfilled somebody's needs. And I myself like the film, so I can't take it too far to task. Just interesting.

Greetings, Monday

//////

I'm tired.

Wherefore Art Thou, Sydney?

/////

I was cleaning up my calendar just now and noticed I'd written in that Alias was supposed to start again next week. Funny enough, having not seen a single preview anywhere, I found myself skeptical. And sure enough, ABC's being a bunch of cocksuckers and there's no word whatsoever on when the show's final half season is gonna run. It may not show again until the summer.

WTF ABC? Alias, while never having been a ratings stunner, was, for a good chunk of time, the only respectable show on your sucky network. It also, funny enough, gave you the gift of JJ Abrams, a lil' fellow who brought you Lost as his next gift.

So maybe, jackasses, you wanna stop dicking around the fans and give us the final run of episodes? Maybe you wanna not get my foot up your ass? I didn't stick with this damned show through the past 2 mediocre seasons to NEVER find out how the fucking thing would end.
.

Spidey 3: The 1st Poster

/////

Go to Superhero Hype! for a huge version.

Radiohead In Studio

?????

Thom & the gang seem to be working hard on their new album. Here are some pics of them from their blog:

This album cannot get here soon enough.

RIP Next

.........

My goldfish Next died yesterday. I came home to find him sunk to the bottom of the bowl, motionless, deceased. Next was seriously the coolest, spazziest goldfish ever. He was my friend.

I know, I know, how lame that sounds. Goldfish are supposed to be complete ciphers as pets - they aren't supposed to have personalities.

Next was different. He was a total freak, and I was very fond of him. If you waved at the bowl he would point at you with his nose and wiggle all around. If you were even in the same room as him you could see him following you around with his eyes.

He was my friend. Rest in peace in that big bowl in the sky, Next, you lovable galoot.
.

Faggot Cowboys

,,,,,,,

The translation of the Turkish Brokeback poster reads, "Faggot Cowboys".

I'd love to get a copy.

The Hills Have Eyes

........

I think I may actually be getting excited about the upcoming remake of The Hills Have Eyes. Wes Craven's original film was not that great; it had its moments of disturbing audacity but otherwise, shrug. And the remake's director, Alexandre Aja, made Haute Tension which was a really terrifying film until the godawful twist ending that infuriated me into hating the entire film. The word is good so far on screenings of the new Hills, and the trailer's interesting.

So... I'm excited. I'm easy like that.

And if Hills does turn out to be decent, then I'll really be excited for Aja's reported upcoming adaptation of Charles Burns' graphic novel Black Hole, which my friend Sean can't stop raving about, the screenplay supposedly to be written by none other than geek-maestro Neil Gaiman. I have a copy of Black Hole at home and it's next on my list for reading; so far, flipping through, it looks pretty damned impressive, I must say.
.

Snarf

........

Snarf.

Narnia Blahs

.........

I've forgotten to mention that I went and saw The Chronicles of Narnia this past weekend. I've forgotten, probably, because the movie itself was actually pretty forgettable.

It wasn't bad, really, and some sequences were downright amazing. I mean, the final battle scene with Minotaurs and Gryphons and every other fantastic creature you can imagine in battle? Very cool. And Tilda Swinton was, as expected, awesome.

But the film felt kind of, sad to say, been there, done that. The story itself has been bastardized in so many forms over the years, and the visuals, while cool, had nothing on the LotR films. Director Andrew Adamson is no Peter Jackson, that's for sure.

So I find it really ridiculous when I read articles as of late about the upcoming Oscars, how the "Hollywood establishment" is "politically motivated" by their "liberal credentials" to ignore "good Christian entertainments" like Narnia in favor of "satanic propoganda" like Brokeback.

Narnia, while pretty and mostly diverting, was just not that fantastic. And god forbid that the Academy look at things like "artistic merit" instead of "box office grosses" when judging an award for... ARTISTIC MERIT.

"Ex-Gays" Can Suck My Ass

.....
Actually no they can't, I reserve that priviledge for people with a modicum of self-esteem and intelligence.

Anyway, a big ol' group of self-hating faggots are getting together in St Louis this Saturday to obsess about gay sex and talk about gay sex and think about gay sex but surely, this huge group of "heterosexuals" will do nothing coming close to touching each other's private parts in these filled-to-the-gills hotel rooms for days alone with each other. They just want to get together to gang-bang, I mean "pray".

St. Louisians, get ready, a river of repressed semen is about to swamp your city!

Happy Birthday, Rachel Dratch!

.......

My pretend best girlfriend turns 40 today. Now I'll never be real friends with her, telling everyone she's turning 40, will I? Oh something tells me Rachel isn't vain like that. Maybe, just maybe, it's the lasting image of her with a bald cap and baby doll arm attached to her head telling me that.

Love you, Rach!

And I heard a rumor this is Rachel's last year on SNL. I only hope she doesn't disappear a la most of the female graduates of the show (wtf ever happened to Molly Shannon anyway?). Give this woman a sitcom! Something like Mama's Family - Rachel in a granny wig is COMEDY GOLD.

I'm Very Unhappy With You, Karl

......

I read yesterday that The Ricky Gervais Show podcast is going to start charging for download come next season.

Suck!!!

I love the podcast, it's a great bridge from work to home on the subway, though I do most likely look a bit daft in the corner of the E-train giggling like one of Karl's deranged monkeys.

Anyway, I must insist, Ricky, Steve and Karl, that you do not allow this to happen. I know the unemployed Karl needs some funds too, but can't you just sell mugs or something? Giant round-headed mugs. Bobbleheads would be genius. I'd buy a Karl Pilkington Bobblehead.

But I'm too cheap to pay for the show. As much as I enjoy it, if it were costing me money I'd begin judging the show for it's occasional moments of unfunniness and silence more harshly. And that would lead to nothing but ugliness for all parties involved.

I've been sittting on the last two podcasts in the first series, saving them for a rainy day or subway ride. Now the thought of listening to them fills me with despair. Et tu, Monkey News? Et tu???

In related news, I squealed like a hypnotized pygmy when I saw the cable I'll be getting hooked up on Friday in the new-to-me apartment will have BBC America. Ricky's show Extras! Yay!

In The News

.....

White House Had Prior Knowledge Of Cheney Threat

February 20, 2006

WASHINGTON, DC—Government documents declassified today reveal that President Bush was briefed last summer of "a substantial risk" that Vice President Dick Cheney would shoot an elderly male in the face sometime in the next several months.

In a Presidential Daily Briefing given to Bush in August 2005, the CIA warned that the vice president was a potent threat to the senior population at large, and in particular "possessed the capabilities and intentions to spray a senior citizen with projectiles fired from a shotgun or other weapon." A second brief identified the population at risk as those "between 70 and 80 years of age," and warned that the vice president posed the greatest threat to "seniors in close proximity to the vice president when he is armed."

The brief, which urged the White House to take "the most thorough possible precautions to disable this threat to the faces, necks, and chests of the nation's elderly," was issued a full six months before the events of Feb. 11.

The emergence of the document is causing many to question whether Bush and his staff adequately understood or appreciated the the risk posed by Cheney.

"To learn that the president's own people advised him in advance of the strong likelihood that Cheney might spray a helpless geriatric victim with bird shot, and still he did nothing, brings to light very serious concerns about this administration's Cheney-containment policies," said Victor Steinberg, director of the Froman Institute, a D.C.-based organization that monitors vice-presidential violence.

Further investigation revealed that reports of potential Cheney violence have surfaced since the early '90s, but were given higher priority in the Clinton Administration. In January 2001, outgoing Clinton Administration officials made specific warnings to Colin Powell, emphasizing the vice-presidential threat.

In a statement released Monday, White House press secretary Scott McClellan pointed to the number of times that random Cheney attacks have been prevented or stopped by the administration.

"The president routinely deals with any number of reports concerning the vice president's assaults on our nation's elderly, such as ear-biting, clubbing, or in one case, the hurtling of a photocopier," McClellan said. "In each case, the president has seen that appropriate steps are taken, whether that means close monitoring of the vice president, adjustments in his medication, or the removal of heavy equipment from his offices, to ensure the safety of those around him."

"We assure you that protecting senior citizens from vice-presidential shotgun blasts was, is, and will remain the highest priority of this administration," he added.

(from The Onion, sillies)

Brokeback Lego

.......
Oh dear. This thing's really entered the cultural zeitgeist, huh?

Del Toro's "Nerve Ghost"

.....

I've already expressed awe at the trailer and poster for Guillermo De Toro's upcoming flick Pan's Labyrinth, but this piece of concept art for the film from AICN is too freaky not to share:

Wow. More over here.

Kid Dakota

.........

A new (to me) musical discovery: Kid Dakota.

Okay so I've only listened to one song so far. But it's highly recommended! It's called "10,000 Lakes". Download it right here, bitches. I downloaded some more this morning at their website.

Gothamist, whom I have to thank for turning me on to them, says Kid Dakota are for fans of Radiohead and John Vanderslice - which seems apt, since I'm big fans of both.

They're playing the Mercury Lounge here in NYC tonight; I very well may have to go.

I Love Chloe

......
24 is one of those shows that I've always meant to watch, but never really gotten a chance to. The seasons speed by so quickly, sans interruptus, and while I might see an episode here or there I usually miss too much to really keep up. I felt especially bad about it last season, when it featured two of my favorite actresses, Aisha Tyler and Shohreh Aghdashloo.

But the rise of the wonderful Mary Lynn Rajskub as Chloe? Has changed all of that. I don't miss a single episode these days. I worship her. I kneel before her and her balls-out strange mannerisms and delivery. She is amazing.

Also, it doesn't hurt that Jean Smart's roaming around the White House. I've always had a special, guilt-riddled place in my heart for Designing Women.
.

Jake Gets Poked...

.......

From an article about the BAFTA's this past weekend, where Jake won Best Supporting Actor for Brokeback:

"A shocked Mr Gyllenhaal thanked the British public and British film industry for all the support they have given him since his early experiences on the stage in the UK. In reference to the huge downpour, he joked, 'I have never had the experience of being poked by umbrellas on the red carpet before. I may have been poked in other places, but that is a different story.'

On a more serious note, he thanked his co-star Heath Ledger and referring to his comment on the podium - that the film meant more to him socially than just as a role - he said that 'when a film can engage an audience on a social level and actually say something to people that is so important... I have been waiting for this film my whole life.'"

Why's he got to toy with me like that? Sigh... anyway, here are a couple more pics of Jake being Jake. Sigh...

Jake Wins BAFTA!

.....

Wino(na)

......

I don't care what anyone, including Johnny Depp, says - I still LOVE Winona Ryder. I've read a lot of shit about her performance in The Age of Innoncence, specifically, and it's all bollocks - she was GREAT IN THAT. So f- you, stupid people.

I miss her so. Come back, Winona! I don't care how many things you steal or how many prescriptions you're on or how many drummers you fuck. Come back!!!

(more pics over at JJ)

Liz Cho

......

Liz Cho is a newscaster on the local ABC station here in NYC, and I am convinced that she is using her strangely frog-like pulsating neck muscles to hypnotize the world to do her evil bidding. We must be careful! Do not look directly at the Cho.

She reminds me of Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty:

Totally!

Boys Beware!

Oliver Stone's WTC

.....
Here's the poster for Oliver Stone's upcoming film World Trade Center:

Like most people, I don't know how I feel about a film about 9/11. It's too close still, and seeing or reading anything about that day still makes me cry.

So... will I go see this? I just don't know. I'm curious, as it is Stone and he's always interesting, if a bit deranged.

The Dodo Lives!

......

Slate's got a gallery of photographs by Harri Kallio of the Dodo in it's "natural habitat" up that I found amusing, and beautiful.

Yes, the Dodo's been exctinct for well over a century.

Mads Mikkelsen

......

I haven't said much about the new James Bond flick because, really, I usually couldn't care less about James Bond. I've never sat and watched an entire Bond film from beginning to end, something the boyfriend found out to his horror, himself being a huge fan of the Sean Connery films.

Anyway, I couldn't care less. Babes, guns, cars... not my cuppa tea.

But I am a fan of Daniel Craig, so there's an outside chance I might be interested in the new film. And now they hire this guy for the villain and... well, consider me curious. Hello, Mads.

.

Wild Things Reunited (Feels So Good)

.......

Oh, I looooove Wild Things. It is the trashiest trash ever, and soooo fun.

(Sidenote: It's driving me crazy right now, maybe someone can help me - what does Denise Richards scream in the courtroom scene? I can't remember. She flings a pitcher of water at the same time, I think, and it's just something simple she screams, like "Whore!!!" but I can't remember.)

Anyway, the director, John McNaughton, is bringing Neve, Denise annd Matt Dillon (What? No Kevin Bacon penis?) back together for his next movie called Backstabbers, which is described thusly: "a sexy caper about a rich New York man who masterminds his wife's kidnapping unaware that his mistress and bodyguard are going to double-cross him." In other words, trashy trash central.

Color me intruiged. Hopefully there'll be tons of gratuitous everything.

Not In My Name

.......

Not really the first thing you want to look at in the morning, but a bunch of new pictures from Abu Ghraib have been released and I really do think it's important that everyone look at these horrors and see what the Bush Administration have been fighting tooth and nail to be able to keep doing freely.

Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld have done their best to assert that this was the work of a few "bad apples" but THAT IS NOT THE TRUTH and the approval for this sort of behavior, which is as anti-American as anything al Queda could dream up, sits squarely on this Administration's lap.

The people running our country are criminals and ought to be put in prison for the rest of their lives. Have no doubt, they are murderers, and have shamed this country and every single one of us.

Sickening.

3 Options

......

The boyfriend's out of town, and I have three options for what I'll do this evening. Here, for no one's viewing pleasure, they are:

A) Go see a friend's boyfriend's band in midtown, drink alcoholic beverages, watch said friend canoodle with boyfriend, feel lonely.

B) Go home, drink alcoholic beverages, watch depressing foreign film.

C) Go home, drink alcoholic beverages, read semi-okay but not all-consuming book.

I am leaving out the obvious choice, which would be to begin and never end weeping. Sigh. Happy Lover's Day everyone!

Jake Looking Cute

........

Awwwwwwwwwww.

That's all.

Happy V Day

.......

I give you my heart.

(And those of several others! Enjoy!)