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The Autumn of George Clooney

Gratuitous Ewan McGregor and George Clooney photo (via Perez Hilton).

Best tweet of the day:

@vanityfairmag This is shaping up to be the Autumn of George Clooney.

 I can't wait to see what Georgie Boy is up to.

Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2009/09/george-clooneys-flying-high.html

To quote an unnamed bff (ahem @kristiliz):

I would (bleep) a fat Clooney, a bald Clooney, a toothless Clooney, heck, even an elderly wheerchair-bound Clooney.

-on Clooney's method weight gain in Syriana

Everybody Knows a Little Place like Kokomo

Sometimes you wanna go to a neighborhood establishment full of good cheer and even yummier bites.  Everybody knows a little place like Kokomo, and I'm lucky enough to live down the street from it, just a block away from The Village Idiot, no less.  If I had deeper pockets, that's where I'd wanna go to get away from it all, for at least for an hour once a week.


As I drove past the popular bruncherie among LA's foodie elite, and the new home to 90210's The Peach Pit, on my way to work the other day, I hit a screeching halt upon the sight of this sign (above) realizing that the Beach Boys' hit single "Kokomo" off the Cocktails soundtrack, is (gulp) 20 years old!


I can't believe I'm old enough to remember buying a record, or rather, a cassette, that is TWENTY years old!


I have so many fond childhood memories listening to the Cocktails soundtrack in my parents unfinished basement (before the big screen, bar, pool table and Seinfeld-influenced Native American statue were introduced) with one of my oldest (and still closest friends) Natalie, raving on to John Cougar Mellencamp and imitating Chevy Chase and Robin Williams' Walk Like an Egyptian "Don't Worry, Be Happy" dance moves.


Wow, where has all the time gone? 


For now, I'll enjoy watching Uncle Jesse from Full House bang on the bongos in the official "Kokomo" video (below), now that I'm legal!  Now don't all those Beach Boys guest spots on Full House make sense?

Port au prince, I wanna catch a glimpse.

Come Home Catholics

The Los Angeles Times ran a story about the "Catholics Come Home" ad campaign the archdiocese of Sacramento is undertaking to reignite churchgoership in a community of 1 million Catholics with only 137,000 regularly attending services. 

Are Catholics the next latter day saints?  I knew the world's largest religious organization, of which I belong, had dwindling numbers and let's face it, we could use some good PR but TV commercials?  Seems a bit, what's the word I'm looking for, swift.

Not to mention the above ad, one of three to be broadcasted, isn't exactly the most comforting of messages. 

"There won't be a chance for any do-overs, no time to rewind our lives, no chance to choose a different ending.  For the movie of our life can be used to judge us.  We will sorrowfully relive the bad times.  And joyfully revisit the good.  It is then we will fully realize how our unkind thoughts and selfish thoughts wound others and lead us away from God, our loving Father."

I could go on, but it is a little, pentacostal at best.  I'm surprised the archdiocese would approve this non-profit group's Old Testament-heavy fear-filled tactics to scare its parishoners into going to church.  (Chicago, Omaha, Providence, R.I., and four other cities will also launch the “Catholics Come Home” advertising blitz during Advent, the period before Christmas; and four others will follow during Lent.)

Here's an idea, Church, how about remind us of the traditions, shared community, love and friendships, songs and fond memories we developed over the course of a lifetime of receiving sacraments, welcoming family members into our lives and yes, even (painful) years spent carpooling in minivans to CCD? 

In short, the only way people will feel more encouraged to attend and even participate is by feeling welcomed.  All are welcome, is the motto my Santa Monica-based church employs, and I have never seen a church this packed for even the late bird 5:30 p.m. liturgy, other than on Christmas and Easter (the Chreastern holidays most attend).  Maybe I have too much Catholic guilt but I am not going to give up so easily.  It's in my blood.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lapsed-catholics6-2009sep06,0,1156881,full.story

 

Next Tarantino Movie An Homage To Beloved Tarantino Movies Of Director's Youth

(via The Onion)

Next Tarantino Movie An Homage To Beloved Tarantino Movies Of Director's Youth
September 7, 2009 | Issue 45•37
 
MADRID—While attending a European press junket Monday for his film Inglourious Basterds, director Quentin Tarantino announced that his next project, Jack Rabbit Slim, will go into production this fall, and will be an homage to his favorite director and screenwriter of all time: Quentin Tarantino.
 
"I've been a Tarantino fan for as long as I can remember," said Tarantino, who repeatedly referred to his hero as "The Master." "Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Br own—those movies were basically my film school. I mean, the ability to take a genre or a subgenre, embrace it to its core, and then blow it up and make it your own is something that has to be admired."
 
"We're talking about the quintessential writer-director of our time," Tarantino added.
 
A self-described "Tarantino geek," Tarantino said Jack Rabbit Slim was conceived as a tribute to his idol, and is deeply influenced by Tarantino's blaxsploitation movies of the late 1990s, Tarantino's classic multi-volume kung fu pictures, and the grindhouse films of the late 2000s that Tarantino made famous.
 
Tarantino has already cast the once-popular actor Eric Roberts to play Slim, in a role director believes will resurrect Roberts' career.
The film will reportedly feature elements and techniques lifted directly from Tarantino's past works, including numerous point-of-view shots from car trunks, and references to Tarantino's favorite cult films, My Best Friend's Birthday and From Dusk Till Dawn. 
 
In one sequence Tarantino called "distinctly Tarantino-esque," Slim delivers an unexpectedly poetic monologue on cheeseburgers while dancing to an Ennio Morricone instrumental with a drug-addled Uma Thurman. And in the film's stunning climax, Slim remembers his training with a martial arts expert in China and then exacts revenge on the film's antagonists: a Nazi colonel, a Hollywood stuntman, and a Los Angeles syndicate of 88 yakuza warriors.
 
As an homage to Tarantino, Tarantino said he also plans to give the famed director a minor role in the film.
 
"If nothing else, I hope Jack Rabbit Slim makes moviegoers want to go back and explore the complete filmography of this great, great American artist," Tarantino said. "I really can't think of another living director who has made as large a contribution to the evolution of world cinema, and I feel it is my duty as a filmmaker to remind people of that."
 
Added Tarantino, "God, I love Quentin Tarantino."
 
The filmmaker, who became more and more excited when talking about the films of Quentin Tarantino, admitted that he has an autographed Reservoir Dogs poster signed by the director hanging in his living room. He also bragged about owning the syringe that John Travolta used to give Uma Thurman an adrenaline shot in Pulp Fiction.
 
"The actual one," Tarantino stressed.
 
Tarantino went on to say he was pleased to see that, almost 20 years into his career, director Quentin Tarantino was still going strong with his latest film, Inglourious Basterds, which Tarantino felt was one of the legendary filmmaker's "very best."
 
"If Jack Rabbit Slim is even a third as good as Basterds, I might just make a movie so good

Taking Woodstock

Last night, I finally took Woodstock and I really enjoyed it. No, It was not a great film, but it was quite good. Having grown up not terribly far away from the original festival grounds (and having gone buckwild back in the time-trapped city's vintage shopping district), I have always daydreamed about what it would have been like to have experienced those three days of peace and music firsthand. My mother grew up not far away (1 hour to be exact) but was too young (or too afraid, as her college nickname "Two Beer O'Neill" would later imply) to attend the storied rock festival to both start and end all rock festivals. But such was life in the conservative shadow of West Point in the height of (gasp) hippie warfare.

I was able to catch Ang Lee on The Colbert Report discuss the film and his choice not to portray say, a droopy hatted, braless charicature of Janis Joplin espouse wisdom upon the starry-eyed organizers (like Jim Morrison's nude Native American spiritual guide, fantasized in The Doors and later parodied in Wayne's World 2, in Wayne's quest to build Waynestock, natch), which I respect, but I really would have loved to have felt more connected to the music of Woodstock for that is the reason we all fell in love with the idea and the message of Woodstock in the first place, even decades later. What would it have been like to see Hendrix, The Dead, The Who, Guthrie, Joplin, and even Sha-Na-Na(?) all in one place.

One can't help but think that the shooting complexities of restaging a 100k-strong audience and many a legal challenge in licensing the music (let alone the organizers' in-fighting on royalties due, humorously noted in the film) held Lee, admittedly exhausted from his heavy on the Kleenex latest offerings (Lust: Caution and Brokeback Mountain), to choose an easier route to get to the jam-packed sold-out concert two hours up the Thruway. It was oddly refreshing, in a way, though that Taking Woodstock was presented as a lighthearted comedy and not as anything more for all the tension the Vietnam-era typically conjures up in celluloid. (Emile Hirsch, by the way, does a fantastic job, as was to be expected, as a discharged vet, who even takes jokes at his expense in good humor.)

Despite the glaring (or blaring) omission of the live event, Lee expertly shows just what happens when an ambitious go-getter starts a revolution from his backyard, not an easy feat for anyone, let alone a broke motel owner in the Catskills just trying to stay afloat. Demetri Martin, in his first starring role, finely represents the titular concert organizer who holds it all together for his debt-raddled elderly folks while trying to make peace with his repressed homosexuality, in what Liev Schrieber's drag queen calls, the center of the universe.

I guess, if you really want to hear and see all that happened, watch the four hour Director's Cut of Woodstock (which was Marty Scorsese's first film gig, as assistant director/editor), just re-released to coincide with its 40th Anniversary, but don't write off the story of what it took to put on such a massive, world-changing event. In the end, what would it be like to experience those three days of peace and music firsthand? See for yourself. It doesn't have to be a daydream away.

Matt...Damon is...

The Informant THE PERVERT!

Thanks, Javaccino Jay for your mad Photoshop skillz.