Tag: hollywood

The McBournie Minute: I demand an apology

I apologize in advance if I offend any of you with the views, opinions or jokes in this column offend you. Actually, I don’t apologize. I just ask you to grow up.

We had another award show last night, and with it, the calls for apologies over something that was said or some perceived slight turned into hyped-up beef. The Oscars last night, hosted by Seth MacFarlane, got mixed reviews. There were good performances and bad ones, there were jokes that soared, and jokes that flopped. And William Shatner reminded us how old he is by putting on the Star Trek duds and making a cameo as Captain James T Kirk.

It was a good skit, but I don’t like being reminded how old Shatner is. I demand an apology! Continue reading The McBournie Minute: I demand an apology

May he fingerbang our daughters’ hearts forever

It’s Friday, which means only one thing: news from Tinseltown! For those of you who didn’t lose your virginity in a depression (and recessions don’t count), we mean Hollywood: land of dreams and stained casting couches, home of the neediest waiters and baristas in the world!

Did your parents ever explain to you where Hollywood leading men come from? They’re made, just like mafia dons! For instance: Mark Wahlberg and Leonardo DiCaprio made Taylor Lautner yesterday, just as Tom Selleck and John Stamos once did to them back in the ’90s. And they received their nods from Burt Reynolds and Henry Winkler and so on and so forth, et cetera, et cetera.

Let’s hear it for Taylor Lautner! May his abs never congeal into a gunt, his face never wrinkle or develop jowls and his career never end as an Old Spice spokesperson!

You may now return to your dumpster-diving, and thanks for reading this on stolen Starbucks wifi.

The McBournie Minute: The one where I care about famous people

Before we begin, I’d like to apologize for the lack of You Missed It last week. I was actually in the process of writing it up when my laptop died. Not like the battery died or it just froze up and I had to reboot. I mean, dead. It’s being sent back to the nice people at Toshiba because it’s under warranty, and for the time being I am on my crappy old laptop, hence forth known as the craptop. Now, on with the show!

As much as I hate the entertainment industry, I can’t avoid it all the time. Sometimes it comes to find me. I guess that’s OK, because I know where to find it, and just because it knocks on my door with its big, hairy fist doesn’t mean I have to answer it. That being said, I’m going to give a run-down of a few Hollywood items that came across my desk which has more or less confirmed my suspicion that I’m not missing out on things I’m missing out on.

Also, I figure I need to try to appeal to more than just my usual demographic, the white male 20-somethings who have a thing for excessive use of punctuation. Here I come, tweens! Continue reading The McBournie Minute: The one where I care about famous people

Scientist tells Hollywood to knock it off already

Hollywood has always been fairly … liberal with their application of science, even when they get it right. This is not a new revelation, as some of you might point out. Well, physicist Sidney Perkowitz is tired of it and wants it over and done with-now. As such, he’s decided to to ask them nicely: please break the laws of physics only once per movie.

The Emory University scientist believes that good science in science fiction is beneficial for both scientists and filmmakers. Scientists can rest easy knowing pop culture isn’t purveying crap science, and Hollywood wins by not insulting the audience’s intelligence. Now, he’s not totally against science used in movies, he just wants it to be good science.

“I am not offended if they make one big scientific blunder in a given film,” Perkowitz added. “You can have things move faster than the speed of light if you want. But after that I would like things developed in a coherent way.”

“If you violate that you are in trouble. The chances are that the public will pick it up and that is what matters to Hollywood. The Core did not make money because people understood the science was so out to lunch,” he added.

As friends of mine can attest, the reason I think The Core didn’t make money was because it was a crappy movie. But I digress.

Ah, the life of an LAPD officer

Consider, if you will, Los Angeles.

Aside from its normal population of people who aren’t involved in Hollywood, it’s full of aspiring actors, current actors and has-been actors who are all insane. And that’s not even including the non-celebrity celebrities that are out-crazying the Arquettes.

Now, imagine you’re an LAPD officer. You’ve got to arrest these entitled people for DUIs, drug charges, public indecency, assault, chaining themselves to trees and the occasional murder.

Sounds like the toughest job in the world, right?

But, then you have to watch a sex tape because of possible “images that could link celebrities engaging in illegal activity.”

As long as it’s not the Screech tape, we say that’s a decent trade … this week.

Take it from Snee: Hollywood’s shameless legacy

You know, considering the events of last year, I really thought we had turned a new page in America, that hate was to become a thing of the past.

But now there are not one, but two movies in theaters about the indiscriminate killing of Nazis. There’s Valkyrie, of course, and now there’s Defiance. This winter, it is a veritable holocaust of German fascists on the silver screen.

I wish I could say I expect more out of Hollywood, but I can’t. We have a long, inexcusable past when it comes to bigoted depictions of Nazis in our film history, starting with Casablanca to The Incredible Mr. Limpet to Raiders of the Lost Ark. Continue reading Take it from Snee: Hollywood’s shameless legacy

Take it from Snee: Why does Hollywood have a closet?

As a junkie for hard-hitting, earth-shattering news, I was floored yesterday.

There are drama queens who think they are floored, and then there was me: F-L-O-O-R-E-D. “Floo” and “red.” Julie came home to find me a quivering ball of twisted manflesh, unable to lift a hand from the office carpet. For lack of a better modifier, I was f–king floored.

What had me in such a gravity-conscience predicament? Clay Aiken and Lindsay Lohan came out of the closet. On the same day.

No, not with each other. Straight people don’t live in closets. Aside from the occasional pantry-dweller, us breeders live in rooms.

Fortunately, yesterday’s news was enough to raise one nagging question, which in turn got me off the floor and back to the keyboard: why is there still a closet in Hollywood? Continue reading Take it from Snee: Why does Hollywood have a closet?

The McBournie Minute: Save me from the superheroes

It’s not exactly news to anyone that Hollywood is out of ideas creatively. They have been for at least a decade now. Television and cinema are quite possibly the best examples of how we as Americans love having our favorite shows repackaged and sold again to us. There are so many tangents on this point, but I am going to stick with one that is especially topical this summer: superheroes.

Iron Man. The Incredible Hulk. Hancock. The Dark Knight. I myself am guilty of wanting to see these movies. In May I said I wanted to see them this summer because they looked good, but in truth, of the three out so far, I have only seen one. It is not that they suddenly lost their appeal to me, it is just that I can only watch the same thing so many times in a row and justify paying for it. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: Save me from the superheroes

Great Ledger’s ghost!*

The ghost of Heath Ledger still refuses to move on.

While alive, he lingered around, making us watch horrible movies like 10 Things I Hate About You with our girlfriends (or A Knight’s Tale with our boyfriends).

In death, he haunted the Internet through creepy necrophiliac fans. Then he nightstalked his ex-girlfriend. (Sorry, Heath. If marriage ends at death, then dating ends at the pill coma.)

Now, he’s angling for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his performance as ICP in The Dark Knight. Look, it’s bad enough that Hollywood is dangling his reanimated corpse in front of us this summer, but rewarding zombie labor? They’re stealing our jobs (and accolades)!

*Bonus Headline:

Take it from Snee: Scarves are not enough

I’d like to start this week’s TifS by congratulating Michelle Malkin and her fearless campaign to scare Dunkin’ Donuts into dropping an ad because she’s afraid of a scarf. If you’re just tuning in (leave those dials on your monitor alone!), Ms. Malkin was offended by an ad featuring Rachel Ray wearing a keffiyeh, the scarf traditionally worn by Islamofascicommuvikings. She threatened a boycott and Dunkin’ Donuts proved that doing things is what they like to do. (In this case, caving.)

However, I can’t leave it at congratulations. You see, Ms. Malkin just didn’t go far enough to assuage my fears of terror, terrorism, terrorists and terry cloths. Continue reading Take it from Snee: Scarves are not enough