Another icon gone

Coretta Scott King has died.

When I heard this, I thought, Where are all the activists to replace the ones we've losing, who are both moral and brave?

God, I hope they're not just watching as much TV as I am.

Sad

Wendy Wasserstein made me want to be a playwright. Damn.

Happy!

Angela Bassett and Courtney Vance parents to twins!

They've got her biceps and his lawyerly glare. Awesome.

Oscar Noms -- Chock!Full!O!Surpises!

Okay, not so much.

Brokeback nomination streak unbroken.

So far, I'm still mostly looking forward to the host. I certainly won't be watching for the suspense of the winners.

Nominees react.

Cue more spooky music

Pixar devoured by Disney.

Perhaps this explains the decline of the Gilmore?

The WB and UPN to dissolve in the acid of a new network.

I find this ominous. Does this mean Kirk will be on next season of America's Next Top Model???

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11006886/

Edited to add: MSNBC is already picking over the spoils.

The reason to see Capote

As if my crush on Phillip Seymour Hoffman needed encouragement, a charming interview in the NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/movies/redcarpet/15edel.html

P.S. Not so much with the truthiness, XO, James Frey

A note from the author regarding the content of the "memoir" will be included in future editions of A Million Little Pieces.

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=1500552

Insert 'Doctor Who' pun here

I couldn't come up with anything witty about the Tardis right off the top of my head.

But for those of you for whom sci-fi nerdiness intersects with Anglophilia, join me in the glee that is the new Doctor Who premiering on the SciFi Channel in March.

Christopher Eccleston, wheeeee!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10842073/

MeiMei's TV Husband

I think that's the offical term, yes?

Daniel Dae Kim sounding waaay too approachable in an interview at MSNBC.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10840422/

Redundant

Gwyneth Paltrow is pregnant with second child. For the two human beings on the planet who didn't know that.

Just as long as it keeps her from making more movies . . . too late.

http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,18150,00.html

The Frey fretting continues . . .

And as the LA Times is probing every painful angle, they get a little cocky with "facts" themselves:

Journalists, novelists and memoirists agree that there is no such thing as objective reality.

Did I miss a meeting? When did that vote come down? Then again, maybe it's my belief in an objective reality (ca pipe est un pipe, I might say) that's standing between me and a novel right now.

http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-et-memoir13jan13,0,7730094.story?track=tothtml,0,5387615.story?track=tothtml

Starbucks to pander -- oh, wait, is that news at all?

Starbucks will begin promoting films at its stores -- but discreetly. No, really, they say that:

Starbucks would tread carefully so as not to offend customers who might be turned off by an aggressive sales pitch.

Starbucks, so not about the aggressive sales pitch.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-starbucks13jan13,0,6608835.story?track=tothtml,0,2639965.story?track=tothtml

Also, does this mean the writing on the cups will finally make some kind of sense?

Archeological update on celebrities of yesteryear

Apparently, the latest archeological evidence suggests that it was all about location, location, location -- only one camp of the infamous Donner Party went all Argentinan-soccer-team on each other. The other camp ate the family dog, instead.

Okay, I feel better about the whole thing now.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-donner13jan13,0,1109457.story?track=tothtml,0,7397636.story?track=tothtml

A sorbet for the soul, if you will

I know M&C is not exactly supposed to be about the love, but sometimes, you have to cleanse the palate, no?

So, I'll just say that if you'd like to see a movie, the craftsmanship and heart of which will woo you and make the world seem a marvelous, marvelous place, please go rent this:

http://www.meandyoumovie.com/?referer=%2Fmeandyoumovie

Then go here for Miranda July's film-related blog:

http://meandyou.typepad.com/

This movie made me want to go around hugging strangers for almost two straight hours after. Even if the StepBrad had crossed my path, I would have considered it, despite the smell.

(The effect might even have lasted longer if it hadn't been for that woman who decided that, out of a gazillion empty tables in the tea shop, she had to sit behind my table and slurp her soup and bang her cutlery and crunch toast in such a way that she is lucky to be alive at all right now.)

What else are you going to do with your movie-watching time? Watch Robert DeNiro's career finally, finally die? If that is your pleasure, please see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382077/.

Why we should always balance states' rights with federal

Because local wisdom sometimes ain't.

City of Detroit grants Eminem and ex-wife Kim a license to remarry. What, because the dress rehearsal marriage was so spectacular?

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=1499442

Frey's fictions? No big whoop

Oprah has spoken. We're all making a big deal out a nuthin.

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=1499278

Well, phew, I feel set straight. My ado has officially been adjusted to minimal, rather than much, now.

Acrimonious Hollywood splits just aren't what they used to be, dangit

Renee and Kenny seen having amicable sandwiches together, and nobody ended up with pickle in their hair. Dulllll.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10824658/

Reeer

Catfight between the Associated Press and Stephen Colbert.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10826561/

Like she wasn't one of our blogging heroines already

Dooce nails our life's (lives's?) goal.

http://www.dooce.com/archives/thinking/01_11_2006.html

P.S. MeiMei -- I just looked at her contact address and found out she lives by my mom. Does that reflected glory make me cool (er than I am already)?

A sense of perspective

On James Frey's lapses of "memory" in his "memoir."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/11/opinion/11carvell.html?th&emc=th

Hee, hee. Awesome.

Brangelina brood burgeons

Angelina Jolie is pregnant with Brad Pitt's baby, per People.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10802574/

Also, as we knew earlier, she's petitioned to have her current children's names changed to incorporate Pitt's.

http://www.zap2it.com/movies/news/story/0,1259,---27592,00.html

Look, I know that I shouldn't have expected much from the girl who decided to marry and adopt a child with multi-married lunatic, Billy Bob Thornton (I'm pretty sure he married the same stripper twice), a decision that was proved rapidly and decisively wrong, when he left her the second Maddox got on the plane for the U.S.

But I did. I expected better.

Maybe I felt that the marriage to Johnny Lee Miller, which even as it failed still felt sweet and hopeful, balanced out the Thornton madness. Maybe I was swayed by the canny self-marketing she did via the United Nations and that clearly transparent "feed the world" ethic she selfishly champions. I think that maybe all that propaganda had convinced me that she had that extremely rare quality in a Hollywood lifer -- judgement.

Nope.

When Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow broke up, I was sad -- not for them, but for us. If they'd married each other, it would have confined their boring, smug, condescending genes to a single bloodline. They wouldn't have gotten their Pittness or Paltrowness all over the rest of us. But now, it's everywhere. Gwyneth's taken out Coldplay, whose albums I would have had to burn now had I ever purchased them. And, thanks to Brad, I will never, ever again be able to enjoy the simple pleasures of Tomb Raider, because his dullness, his blankness will have leached out Angelina's color.

I hope they're "happy."

(P.S. Still watching Tomb Raider, however, because Noah Taylor, enough said.)

Color me sad but not surprised

We all knew this day was coming the moment she forgot to thank him in her first Oscar acceptance speech.

http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,18112,00.html?fdnews

Chad will always have a special place in my heart for being Jesse McKenna in "Life Goes On." He and Kellie Martin knew how to sizzle with just one perfect look of longing. *sigh*

What? And also -- what?

Author JT LeRoy apparently unmasked as fictional.

Seriously. Read the details.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/09/books/09book.html

Is this not a punchline?

In case you were wondering -- yes, everyone and his dog are publishing children's books.

Well, Ted Kennedy and his dog, anyway.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10774725/

Raise your hand if you're remotely shocked

Utah movie theatre declines to show Brokeback Mountain. Shocker.

What seems weird is that they contracted to show it, but then decided not to at the last minute. So that it would make the headlines, perhaps?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4595322.stm

And wasn't it just about this time last year that Brokeback premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, just up the canyon from Jordan Commons? Full circle, I guess.

That thing with Marisa Tomei? Forgiven

Jon Stewart to host the Oscar ceremony this year!

Mr. Stewart, 43, was appropriately humbled by the invitation. "As an avid watcher of the Oscars," he dead-panned in a statement, "I can't help but be a little disappointed with the choice."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/05/movies/05cnd-oscars.html?hp

Now, Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences, if you make him your Host-in-Perpetuity, I will work on my Erin Brockavich-related anger.

Oh, please, oh, please, oh, please, oh, please!

MSNBC reports TomKat wedding may be . . . off?!?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10696085/

Long live the . . . Walmart ad?

Walmart ads don't usually do it for me. Corporation of evil and all that. Their marketing approach is usually one part rah-rah patriotism, one part sentimentalism, and two parts blatant propaganda to prevent another round of employee lawsuits.

But the latest one depends solely on the comic timing of the most excellent Queen Latifah. Have you seen it? A woman is at the checkout, and Queen Latifah comes by, all smiles, and asks her if she's enjoying the gift card she gave her. And then Queen Latifah (can I say just Queen, or is that too familiar?) looks in her cart and frowns. She tilts her head towards the impulse-buy rack, where one of her movies is displayed. The woman (also brilliant in her way), who's been looking incredibly nervous, grabs the DVD and puts it in her basket. Queen smiles her cat-in-cream smile, says something like, Okay, then, and the commercial ends.

Okay, so I've been sick and watching too much TV and there's a self-pity quotient and a boredom element -- but this commercial was pretty much the funniest thing I saw all day. The set-up's not particularly inventive -- it's all in the performance.

I'm not running out to the new Walmart that just opened near me (creeping ever closer, ever closer -- soon I'll wake up and my apartment building will have been incorporated somewhere near the garden department) -- I'm just saying, the Queen has got the goods.

Oh, and she just got her Hollywood star.

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=1471823

Despite what VH-1 told me last night

Denise Richards is sticking to her guns. Sheen to be legally booted.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10711188/

But -- Parent Trap

I can't hate Lindsay Lohan. I've tried, and lord knows, girl's given reason enough. The blondeness. Pining after Wilmer Vilderamamaaaa for way too long. Every movie she's made since The Parent Trap. But -- Parent Trap. Best friends with Nicole Richie, but -- Parent Trap. How awesome was her British accent? Please. Watch it and be amazed.

And now, it turns out that Lindsay may be facing up to something the rest of us saw all too plainly: an eating disorder and a wee drug problem.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10712316/

Go, Lindsay! Come back to us with your awesome accent-faking and preternatural maturity!

And she's doing it thanks to an intervention by Tina Fey and Lorne Michaels, of SNL. Lorne, this almost makes up for A Night at the Roxbury. Almost.