Let us consider the facts for one moment:
Way back in 1929 Janet Gaynor won the first Oscar for Best Actress, she ended her career playing Violet Hooper on THE LOVE BOAT. Sure, she managed to sneak in A STAR IS BORN and STATE FAIR, but let’s face it; she ended her career playing Violet Hooper on THE LOVE BOAT.
Of course, no one really gives a rat’s ass about old movie stars anymore, so let’s look at just the past ten years, shant we?
Last year Javier Bardem won Best Actor honors for NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, he followed that up with LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, a romantic ‘drama’ that was so boring it had you rooting for Cholera to win half way through, and then the vapid Woody Allen travelogue VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA. However, English is not Javier’s first language, so maybe whomever read him the scripts tricked him into thinking they were good.
Tilda Swinton gets the Best Actress award last year and then goes on to make THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON or FORREST GRAMPS as I like to call it. Of course, she also made BURN AFTER READING, so that one is a wash.
But let’s look at 2007: Forest Whitaker got jobbed out of an Oscar for 1988’s BIRD, so he gets his make good Oscar for THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND and then disappears up his own ass with THE AIR I BREATHE, RIPPLE EFFECT and THE GREAT DEBATERS in 2007, VANTAGE POINT, STREET KINGS and WINGED CREATURES in 2008 and by 2009 he’s reduced to doing a voice on AMERICAN DAD.
2007 was also the year Helen Merrin won the Best Actress award for THE QUEEN and makes NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS as her Oscar turn follow up.
In 2006 Philip Seymour Hoffman follows his Oscar win for CAPOTE with MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III. Sure, it’s the best of the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movies, but it’s still a MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movie!
2006 sees Reese Witherspoon ‘Minnie Pearl’ her way into an Oscar with WALK THE LINE and follow that up in short order with JUST LIKE HEAVEN, PENELOPE and RENDITION. Of course Witherspoon has had a lot of practice making bad choices after showing so much promise in ELECTION, so it came as no shock; but how do you explain Jamie Foxx?
2005 Foxx shocks the world by actually being pretty good in RAY and picking up an Academy Award for his own bad self. Then, as quick as you can say ‘Tookie Williams’, Foxx goes out and makes STEALTH, MIAMI VICE, THE KINGDOM and who can’t say THE SOLOIST doesn’t look like a huge pile of self-congratulatory crap?
Hillary Swank, 2005’s Best Actress for MILLION DOLLAR BABY, almost escaped unharmed, but THE BLACK DAHLIA should have been a lot better and did anyone actually see P.S. I LOVE YOU?
2004 Sean Penn climbs on my shoulders for an Oscar win MYSTIC RIVER. 2009 he’s playing Larry Fine in THE THREE STOOGES movie. It’s also the year Charlize Theron is honored for looking like the before picture in a ProActive commercial in MONSTER and then pounded out THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PETER SELLERS, HEAD IN THE CLOUDS, AEON FLUX, IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH, BATTLE IN SEATTLE and HANCOCK.
Had the lessons of Adrien Brody and Nicole Kidman been lost on all of them? 2003: Brody wins for THE PIANIST and Kidman wins for THE HOURS. Brody follows up with THE SINGING DETECTIVE, THE VILLAGE, THE JACKET and KING KONG. Not to be out done, Kidman answers with DOGVILLE, COLD MOUNTAIN, THE STEPFORD WIVES, BEWITCHED and AUSTRALIA (there’s more, but I feel sorry for Nicole because her marriage is sham, so I won’t rub them in).
2002: Denzel Washington makes an Oscar with TRAINING DAY. Perhaps they should have had an extra couple hours of training where they taught him how to read a script before say ‘yes‘, then we might have spared JOHN Q, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, INSIDE MAN I & II, DÉJÀ VU and AMERICAN GANGSTER.
It was also the year Halle Berry got the pity Oscar for having to have sex with Billy Bob Thornton in MONSTER’S BALL. What did she follow up with? GOTHIKA and CATWOMAN. Shocking that she didn’t repeat the win.
It goes on and on. Kevin “K-PAX” Spacey, Susan “THE BANGER SISTERS” Sarandon, Helen “PAY IT FORWARD” Hunt, CUBA “EVERYTHING ELSE HE’S EVER MADE” Gooding Jr. (to be fair, Gooding was only a Supporting Actor winner, but he has made so many bad movies since the win I just had to bring him up here).
We are really left with just two possible conclusions: the people who vote on the Academy Awards really have no idea what they are doing, or winning an Oscar makes you stupid. I prefer to think the later. We’ve all got phony baloney jobs to protect after all.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
Still More Precitions Come True
Still more of my chillingly accurate predictions for this year have already come true:
I predicted that Michael Phelps would get his nipple caught in the wringer of fame, and look; he gets busted taking bong hits in South Carolina. Now that shouldn’t be a big deal. We’ve got a president that freely admits that he used to do coke back in the day, but Kellogg’s is talking about dropping Phelps as a spokes model, just be cause he smokes a little pot. Kellogg’s!
Stop me if I’m wrong, but 60 to 70% of the cereal in this country is eaten by stoners. Kellogg’s shouldn’t be dumping him. They should move him off the Corn Flakes box and stick him on something good like Coco Crispies.
In fact, it’s high time Kellogg’s got a little edgier with their ads. Stick Phelps in his little fey Speedo with a huge Rastafarian wigs on, sucking off a huge pipe made out of the skull of Amy Winehouse on the front of a box of Apple Jacks.
Aim right for their P1 demographic. How about a nice picture of Robert Downey, Jr., his pants caked in vomit, the phone number of pre-op tranny craved into his arm, mistakenly passed out in the bed of his neighbor’s 10 year-old daughter on the front of box of Mini Wheat’s.
Take that lame ass frog off the front of the Honey Smacks box and throw a shot of Lou Diamond Phillips, hiding in the bushes, waiting to OJ jump his ex-wife and Melisa Etherege as they come out of their Lamaze class… Alright, maybe I’ve gone overboard here, but you get the idea.
Now another one of my predictions was that our esteemed Governor, Duval Patrick, much like the Ground Hog, would stick his furry little head out this February and do something asinine, and look; just the other day Gov. Patrick announces he wants a tax on Candy, Booze and Juice Boxes… Candy, Booze and Juice Boxes? You know, it’s a good thing Michael Jackson doesn’t live in Massachusetts, because he’s already have fanatical problems and if he lived here the price of his typical Saturday afternoons in the park just went through the roof!
Hey, every other gaggle of worthless crap in America has an advocacy group; who’s looking out for the pedophiles?… I mean besides the Pope. You know? When FBI digs up your back yard with earth movers to look for bodies, they don’t put the dirt. You have to do that yourself… I’m told.
Another of my predictions came to fruition this week as well. Last year I predicted that not only would Obama win, but he would lead the charge for the international douch-a-fication of America, and what happens this week? Iran announces that they are sending a weapons satellite into space, so the Obama Administration responds by announcing they are sending the US Badminton Team to Iran. That’s true. The US Badminton Team is going to Iran. That’ll fix their little red wagon.
Actually, I can see what he’s doing here. Rather than take some the macho George Bush approach, and start bomb them back to the Stone Age (not a long trip, I might add), Obama figures if he shows our enemies what a huge bunch of douche bags Americans really are, they’ll figure we’re not worth the bother and just leave us alone.
Iran put in place the technology to rain death down from above and we respond with freshly scrubbed co-eds that serve a mean shuttlecock. And if North Korea wants to jump ugly with us, let’s just unleash our Mathletes on their shores to show them what for.
And I pity poor Iraq. Our troops are going to be withdrawn, but Obama is giving serious consideration to replacing them with a wicked good Dungeons and Dragons squad and if that does prove to the world what a bunch of douche bags we are, he’ll unleash his Ace in the Hole: a legion of self-important, smug face book bloggers with nothing better to do with their time and run their greasy, type 2 diabetes swollen fingers over their keyboards, humping prose no one will bother to read. That’ll show ‘em.
Christian Bale was right, stay the fuck out of my sight line, would ya?
I predicted that Michael Phelps would get his nipple caught in the wringer of fame, and look; he gets busted taking bong hits in South Carolina. Now that shouldn’t be a big deal. We’ve got a president that freely admits that he used to do coke back in the day, but Kellogg’s is talking about dropping Phelps as a spokes model, just be cause he smokes a little pot. Kellogg’s!
Stop me if I’m wrong, but 60 to 70% of the cereal in this country is eaten by stoners. Kellogg’s shouldn’t be dumping him. They should move him off the Corn Flakes box and stick him on something good like Coco Crispies.
In fact, it’s high time Kellogg’s got a little edgier with their ads. Stick Phelps in his little fey Speedo with a huge Rastafarian wigs on, sucking off a huge pipe made out of the skull of Amy Winehouse on the front of a box of Apple Jacks.
Aim right for their P1 demographic. How about a nice picture of Robert Downey, Jr., his pants caked in vomit, the phone number of pre-op tranny craved into his arm, mistakenly passed out in the bed of his neighbor’s 10 year-old daughter on the front of box of Mini Wheat’s.
Take that lame ass frog off the front of the Honey Smacks box and throw a shot of Lou Diamond Phillips, hiding in the bushes, waiting to OJ jump his ex-wife and Melisa Etherege as they come out of their Lamaze class… Alright, maybe I’ve gone overboard here, but you get the idea.
Now another one of my predictions was that our esteemed Governor, Duval Patrick, much like the Ground Hog, would stick his furry little head out this February and do something asinine, and look; just the other day Gov. Patrick announces he wants a tax on Candy, Booze and Juice Boxes… Candy, Booze and Juice Boxes? You know, it’s a good thing Michael Jackson doesn’t live in Massachusetts, because he’s already have fanatical problems and if he lived here the price of his typical Saturday afternoons in the park just went through the roof!
Hey, every other gaggle of worthless crap in America has an advocacy group; who’s looking out for the pedophiles?… I mean besides the Pope. You know? When FBI digs up your back yard with earth movers to look for bodies, they don’t put the dirt. You have to do that yourself… I’m told.
Another of my predictions came to fruition this week as well. Last year I predicted that not only would Obama win, but he would lead the charge for the international douch-a-fication of America, and what happens this week? Iran announces that they are sending a weapons satellite into space, so the Obama Administration responds by announcing they are sending the US Badminton Team to Iran. That’s true. The US Badminton Team is going to Iran. That’ll fix their little red wagon.
Actually, I can see what he’s doing here. Rather than take some the macho George Bush approach, and start bomb them back to the Stone Age (not a long trip, I might add), Obama figures if he shows our enemies what a huge bunch of douche bags Americans really are, they’ll figure we’re not worth the bother and just leave us alone.
Iran put in place the technology to rain death down from above and we respond with freshly scrubbed co-eds that serve a mean shuttlecock. And if North Korea wants to jump ugly with us, let’s just unleash our Mathletes on their shores to show them what for.
And I pity poor Iraq. Our troops are going to be withdrawn, but Obama is giving serious consideration to replacing them with a wicked good Dungeons and Dragons squad and if that does prove to the world what a bunch of douche bags we are, he’ll unleash his Ace in the Hole: a legion of self-important, smug face book bloggers with nothing better to do with their time and run their greasy, type 2 diabetes swollen fingers over their keyboards, humping prose no one will bother to read. That’ll show ‘em.
Christian Bale was right, stay the fuck out of my sight line, would ya?
Monday, February 2, 2009
I Dream of Jeannie: THE MOVIE
I DREAM OF JEANNIE ran on TV from 1965 to 1970. That’s 139 episodes of putting up with Larry Hagman’s Prima Donna bullshit and trying to find ways to give us pre-pube fans little tiny peeks at Barbara Eden’s post-pubes.
For what seems like ever since 1970, Sid Ganis and his Out Of The Blue Entertainment company have been trying to get a movie version of JEANNIE made. Ganis is the genius producer behind BIG DADDY, DEUCE BIGALOW: MALE GIGOLO, MR. DEEDS (the remake) and THE MASTER OF DISQUISE, so yes, I DREAM OF JEANNIE will more than likely suck.
Sid is also the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the ass-clowns that give out the Oscars. That should tell you more than enough about that awards show.
Over the years names like Gurinder Chadha (BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM) was going to direct the JEANNIE remake and stars like Jennifer Garner (DUDE, WHERE‘S MY CAR?), Kate Hudson (PARTY OF FIVE) and even Lindsay Lohan (PUNK’D) were kicked around to star as America’s favorite indentured servant.
Keira Knightly (THUNDERPANTS) and a pre- ‘Tony’s Cheating On Me, Where’s the Ben & Jerry’s and My Mom’s Jeans’ Jessica Simpson (THE LOVE GURU) were going to tackle the role too, but it didn’t happen.
Recently Rita Hsiao, a former assistant on THE WONDER YEARS who punched up the scripts for 13 GOING ON 30 and ENCHANTED as well as writing the script for MULAN, was asked to give the JEANNIE script another over-haul. Rita plans to ‘contemporize’ the story. I shutter to think what that even means.
While you can just bet that the producers are hoping to get Will Ferrell (NIGHT AT THE ROXBURY) or Adam Sandler (MIXED NUTS) to take over the Larry Hagman role (because casting one of them is a hell of a lot easier than making a funny movie), if they had any sack at all they would cast a relative unknown as Jeannie.
I say ‘relative unknown’ because I know just who they should get: Sue-Anne Webster.
She is an Australian actress (don’t hold the fact that an Australian actress help goon up the BEWITCHED movie against her) and magician who look more like Barbara Eden than Barbara Eden does these days. Sue-Anne is also the official 'Jeannie' look-alike for http://www.idreamofjeannie.com/.
So, how do you help, because I know you are just chomping at the bit to see justice done in the casting of I DREAM OF JEANNIE? Well, you could go to IMDB and start demanding she be given the role on the discussion boards, and maybe someone reads those, but I prefer a more proactive approach.
Lou D’Esposite is the real money man behind the film. Lou has produced a lot of movies in his day. Most of them crappy movie versions of TV shows like SWAT. Lou was also the 1st AD of the second unit in a little film I was in called GLORY. The only problem is, Lou was also the 2nd AD on a ISTAR, a fact I never let him forget while we were making GLORY, so I don’t think he wants to hear from me again after all these years.
How-some-ever, Lou’s assistant is Rachel Kielborn. Rachel’s email is rachel880@gmail.com. I’ll bet if you were really nice and told Rachel how great Sue-Anne would be in role, she’s pass it on to her boss, because that’s what good assistants who don’t want to go back to bearding for Ty Pennington do.
Once we get this problem licked we can turn our awesome power towards getting Ridley Scott (G.I. JANE) not to mess up THE A-TEAM MOVIE too badly. He’s already signed Joe Carnahan to direct, and while the first 15 minutes of Carnahan’s NARC were great, the rest of the movie was as thin a Jeremy Piven’s (LUCAS) hairline.
One war at a time. One war at a time…
For what seems like ever since 1970, Sid Ganis and his Out Of The Blue Entertainment company have been trying to get a movie version of JEANNIE made. Ganis is the genius producer behind BIG DADDY, DEUCE BIGALOW: MALE GIGOLO, MR. DEEDS (the remake) and THE MASTER OF DISQUISE, so yes, I DREAM OF JEANNIE will more than likely suck.
Sid is also the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the ass-clowns that give out the Oscars. That should tell you more than enough about that awards show.
Over the years names like Gurinder Chadha (BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM) was going to direct the JEANNIE remake and stars like Jennifer Garner (DUDE, WHERE‘S MY CAR?), Kate Hudson (PARTY OF FIVE) and even Lindsay Lohan (PUNK’D) were kicked around to star as America’s favorite indentured servant.
Keira Knightly (THUNDERPANTS) and a pre- ‘Tony’s Cheating On Me, Where’s the Ben & Jerry’s and My Mom’s Jeans’ Jessica Simpson (THE LOVE GURU) were going to tackle the role too, but it didn’t happen.
Recently Rita Hsiao, a former assistant on THE WONDER YEARS who punched up the scripts for 13 GOING ON 30 and ENCHANTED as well as writing the script for MULAN, was asked to give the JEANNIE script another over-haul. Rita plans to ‘contemporize’ the story. I shutter to think what that even means.
While you can just bet that the producers are hoping to get Will Ferrell (NIGHT AT THE ROXBURY) or Adam Sandler (MIXED NUTS) to take over the Larry Hagman role (because casting one of them is a hell of a lot easier than making a funny movie), if they had any sack at all they would cast a relative unknown as Jeannie.
I say ‘relative unknown’ because I know just who they should get: Sue-Anne Webster.
She is an Australian actress (don’t hold the fact that an Australian actress help goon up the BEWITCHED movie against her) and magician who look more like Barbara Eden than Barbara Eden does these days. Sue-Anne is also the official 'Jeannie' look-alike for http://www.idreamofjeannie.com/.
So, how do you help, because I know you are just chomping at the bit to see justice done in the casting of I DREAM OF JEANNIE? Well, you could go to IMDB and start demanding she be given the role on the discussion boards, and maybe someone reads those, but I prefer a more proactive approach.
Lou D’Esposite is the real money man behind the film. Lou has produced a lot of movies in his day. Most of them crappy movie versions of TV shows like SWAT. Lou was also the 1st AD of the second unit in a little film I was in called GLORY. The only problem is, Lou was also the 2nd AD on a ISTAR, a fact I never let him forget while we were making GLORY, so I don’t think he wants to hear from me again after all these years.
How-some-ever, Lou’s assistant is Rachel Kielborn. Rachel’s email is rachel880@gmail.com. I’ll bet if you were really nice and told Rachel how great Sue-Anne would be in role, she’s pass it on to her boss, because that’s what good assistants who don’t want to go back to bearding for Ty Pennington do.
Once we get this problem licked we can turn our awesome power towards getting Ridley Scott (G.I. JANE) not to mess up THE A-TEAM MOVIE too badly. He’s already signed Joe Carnahan to direct, and while the first 15 minutes of Carnahan’s NARC were great, the rest of the movie was as thin a Jeremy Piven’s (LUCAS) hairline.
One war at a time. One war at a time…
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