Images: Robin Platzer/PRPhotos/Robin Platzer
Foolish comments on foolish subjects from Letterman to LiLo to Julia and more.
Lindsay Lohan/Photo © PR Photos
Yikes! They were out in force over the past four days. I do mean people who have nothing to do but essentially wish bad luck on those whom they’ve never met, and of whom they are secretly envious.
Chelsea Clinton got married. She wed her longtime boyfriend in a big ceremony that she didn’t want, but her parents did. The price tag came in at less than $2 million, which is nothing considering the wealth of the bride’s parents. They had it, they spent it. But the haters had begun even before the couple took their vows. The celebrity-heavy guest list (a fiction) … the cost (mostly a fiction and none of anybody’s business) … the dress Hilary Clinton wore to the rehearsal dinner (Mr. wOw thought it fresh and summery – Mrs. Clinton is no sylph – so what?). Once the wedding pics were posted there was horrific traffic on lowbrow websites such as Perez and TMZ (and even on Huffington Post) criticizing Chelsea’s looks, the faith of her husband (he is Jewish) and almost anything else one could throw at a person whose last name is Clinton. Or at a person who has more than you do. (That means you, if you begrudge people who have made it big, the right to live big. Like you wouldn’t?)
Chelsea looked great. I loved her dress and the only thing negative I can find to say is that Bill Clinton needs to put on a pound or two.
Lindsay Lohan released from jail after serving 13 days of a 90-day sentence (which was maybe three more days than expected right from the start). Her release and admittance to rehab was just a hilarious episode for so many. The “Morning Joe” crew of morons were especially tickled. But they are all too busy posing for the artsy black-and-white photographs that illustrate the show, to actually not comment on a story that has no genuine significance. Or perhaps they are too up their own asses to comment in some humane manner. Because, as we know, everyone on the “Morning Joe” show has lived liked Christ.
Good luck, Miss Lohan.
Bristol Palin has called off her second engagement to her baby daddy Levi Johnston because of rumors that he might be the baby daddy of some ex-girlfriend he might have slept with in the many months between their first breakup and recent makeup. The ex has denied any such thing is possible – the story broke in the National Enquirer – but the humiliation was apparently too much for Bristol. Hmm … Mr. wOw was pretty sure the reconciliation of Bristol and Levi was part of Sarah Palin’s plan to settle her personal issues before officially running for president in 2012. Perhaps not. (Even Mr. wOw can be wrong.)
I feel bad. Bristol and Levi are a cute couple and from what I’ve seen of both of them, they are sweet and sincere and of similar limited intelligence. Neither will do much better.
Think it over.
The Food Network used to be Mr. wOw’s oasis of tranquility and fantasy. Something about watching people prepare beautifully lit food has always had a relaxing effect. I don’t cook much myself – not anymore, not after 33 years – but the various chefs and their habits and recipes sometimes gave me hope I’d return to being more a more loving person. (Well, they always say cooking for one’s family/boyfriend/etc. is a great sign of love. I say it’s a great way to mess up a clean kitchen.)
But in recent years The Food Network has gone the way of all TV. Now there is so much competitiveness. Various challenges in the form of “The Next Food Network Star” or “Chopped” or (most loathsome of all) “Bobby Flay’s Throwdown.” What?! Why do I need to see people cry or agonize or be embarrassed? I go through all that at the beginning and end of my own day. I find it ugly.
The “judges” are just entitled bitches and bastards (much as they are on “Project Runway”). The point is not the food, but how far to push people to make them break. I mean – let’s concoct a meal with an emotional theme? Or let’s make something in 40 minutes with an ingredient you hate? Or … whatever. Ridiculous.
I have a particular hate for Mr. Flay’s “Throwdown.” I hope at this point people understand that when they are approached for a “special segment” on the Food Network that no such thing exists – that it is a setup for Mr. Flay to come swaggering in (and a man with less reason to swagger I have never seen!) and announce: “Are you ready for a throwdown?” These unsuspecting, hardworking people have gathered family and friends to their “special segment.” I long for the day somebody up and pulls Mr. Flay aside and says, “My children are here. You sucker-punched me. Give me my special segment or I am going to bust your smirking face in.”
Now, that would be a delightful medley of sweet-and-sour ingredients with just the right amount of spice for a good kick.
Shutterstock
“Pablo, it sez here in de weather report … it say: a front of warm air is moving in from …
Where?
“Jamaica! Moderately high barometric pressure will cover the north end and … the deep south!”
“Small danger of what …?”
Fruit frost!
“Hot and humid nights can be expected.”
That’s a bit of campy dialogue between Marilyn Monroe and her chorus boys – the patter preceded Monroe’s scorching rendition of “Heat Wave” in “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” This number shocked 1954 audiences and even today one wonders how it passed the censors. (When Marilyn says “deep south,” she thrusts the flaming Technicolor flounces of her open-front flamenco skirt between her legs. Honest, Mr. wOw is still astonished!)
Mr. W. had a tropical heatwave on his mind last weekend because, well – we’ve been having a tropical heatwave. I hate warm weather. I hate to sweat. I hate to change my shirt three times a day. It’s bad for my skin. And with that attractive image conveyed ….
So, last weekend I gave up totally. I wouldn’t even try to walk half a mile to the gym … I wouldn’t go to the store … I would draw the blinds in every room and keep the place as dark and cool as possible. And – I would watch TV. Reading, my usual weekend escape, seemed too effortful.
I was glued to my set, and these movies are what deterred me from even setting one foot outside – I present them in no particular order.
Three Hitchcock classics: “Vertigo,” “To Catch a Thief” and “Marnie.” A disappointment when released, “Vertigo” is now considered one of Hitch’s greatest films, with James Stewart as an unpleasantly obsessed detective and husky-voiced, hesitant Kim Novak as his object of desire. (Some say this is Kim’s best performance. It’s not, but she is very good indeed, especially in the heartbreaking last 35 minutes.)
“To Catch a Thief” is just good fun, with Cary Grant as a reformed criminal and Grace Kelly as the earthy society girl looking for kicks. Filmed in Monaco, where Kelly would preside over shortly as princess, the movie contains the now famously morbid high-speed chase along the very roads on which Grace would meet her death in 1982. “Marnie” – the story of a frigid, pathological thief – is the role Grace promised Hitch she would come out of retirement to film. But the subjects of the teensy principality of Monaco objected, and Grace returned to the stifling life as a minor royal.
Tippi Hedren, whom Hitch had thrown to the birds (literally!) in “The Birds,” took the role of Marnie. Hedren was no Grace Kelly – she was awkward, in a fascinating way, but her very deficiencies as an actress worked for the movie, which co-stars Sean Connery as the hot but somewhat sadistic man who wants to “save” her. “Marnie” was one of Hitchcock’s failures – in fact, it was the beginning of his decline as a consistent moneymaker. But the film – criticized for artificiality – looks a lot better now than it did then. I think Hitch was maybe bit ahead of his time.
“Darling Lili” – Blake Edward’s big 1971 musical disaster that put the final nail in his wife Julie Andrews’s career coffin. (He would revive her some years later with “Victor/Victoria”) Mr. wOw went to see “Darling Lili” on opening day at Radio City Music Hall – an ominously uncrowded Music Hall. I loved it! All two-and-a-half languid hours of Julie as a World War I spy and Rock Hudson as a hero flyer. I knew as I watched it that it didn’t have a chance in hell at the box office, but that certainly didn’t deter me from seeing it twice again during its run at the Music Hall. It is, from beginning to end, charming, low-key and jammed with delicious, nostalgic songs. Julie’s opening and closing numbers, “Whistling in the Dark,” the star emerging from the shadows, are superb, and so is her strip number, which, if you look carefully, reveals Julie’s pert left breast for a second. (This is what frame-by-frame was invented for!)
Mr. wOw also had several hours with Miss Monroe – two of her most uncharacteristic roles, back to back – “Don’t Bother to Knock” a noir-ish black and white with Marilyn playing a deranged babysitter, and “Niagara,” a lush Technicolor noir, in which MM is for the first and last time, a stone-cold bad girl (still, her natural vulnerability can’t help but peek through). Though she was at this point hampered by the teachings of her Russian acting coach who in insisted on en-un-ci-ation – coming down too hard on her Ds and Ts – Monroe handles both these roles quite well. “Don’t Bother to Knock” seems, in retrospect, a semi-autobiographical sketch – her character has come from poverty, gone mad, attempted suicide, been institutionalized. She even attempts to murder a child! In her final scene, taken away to yet another hospital, Marilyn evokes a young Blanche DuBois, and one wonders what she might have done with that character, in later years, had she lived. (For film fans, “Don’t Bother to Knock” has an excellent Richard Widmark, as the guy who just wants to get his rocks off, but gets considerably more than he bargained for from the nutty Miss Monroe, and young Anne Bancroft, as a nightclub singer.)
“Niagara” is an overripe celebration of Monroe’s over-the-top sensuality, which would never again be tapped seriously – she would be muted in comic roles thereafter. Here, she wants to kill her nice hubby, Joe Cotton. The movie is worth a look if only for Monroe’s ten-minute segment in which she struts, lounges, wisecracks and sings a husky ditty, “Kiss.” She wears a tight, blazing red dress, and when she walks toward the camera, pelvis thrust out, a bit of a womanly belly obvious, it is her most erotic screen moment. (Later, she would look sexy – all butt and bust – but not be sexy.)
“This Property Is Condemned” – minor Tennessee Williams, major Natalie Wood! This movie about a fantasy-obsessed Depression-era Southern belle and the man she falls for, Robert Redford, is probably Natalie’s most compelling and complete big-screen performance. (She would be brilliant in the much later TV movie, “The Cracker Factory.”) Miss Wood is so ravishing, so invested, so intense. This is one of several films Natalie did that incorporated severely challenged mother/daughter conflicts (“Splendor in the Grass,” “Gypsy”). That she had her own real-life mother issues imbues these films with a striking reality. Natalie reaches her peak here in an incredible drunk scene with her on-screen mom Kate Reid and an up-and-coming Charles Bronson. “That hard liquor you’re drinkin’?”
“Yep, hard as your heart, mama.” (It gets even better after that!)
The movie failed in 1966, but like so many dismissed films, it has been re-evaluated. especially in regard to Natalie, who died far too young and far too tragically. (Mr. wOw, who resists all tales of conspiracy and cover-ups in the matter of that fabled misfit, Miss Monroe, is much more cynical in regard to Miss Wood’s passing.)
Jean Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast.” Mr. wOw cannot begin to do justice to this ravishing and extraordinarily moving 1946 film. Suffice to say, watch this and then try to get through the animated treacle of Disney’s version.
.
But it wasn’t all classic fare, as Mr. wOw huddled in his dark den, avoiding the sun and heat. I caught two recent films on cable – jailhouse-thriller “Felon” with Stephen Dorff and Val Kilmer and horror film “Jennifer’s Body” with Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried.
“Felon” strained credibility as to Mr. Dorff’s incarceration, but once he was in jail, cohabiting with mass murderer Kilmer, the movie is compelling, nail-biting to the max. Mr. Dorff is really a very, very good actor (often caught in crappy projects) and Kilmer is great here, nicely underplayed – especially for a character who has murdered 16 people!
As for “Jennifer’s Body,” I have to admit a weakness for horror films, though I don’t like excessive gore. (The “Saw” movies are not for me.) This was pretty gory, but I stuck it out to see Miss Fox, a controversial tabloid fixture, and Miss Seyfried, whom I’ve admired on HBO’s “Big Love” and who was the saving grace of the execrable “Mamma Mia!” Also, I wanted to see what else screenwriter Diablo Cody (Oscar-winner for “Juno”) could do.
Anyway – surprise! – Miss Fox was very good, though her role as a demon-possessed vixen didn’t travel too far off the range. And Amanda was close to brilliant as the nerdy best friend.
Ms. Cody’s script? Everything’s a wisecrack, cynicism reigns. I’m not super-impressed. I really feel “Juno” was a triumph of performance (the fabulous Ellen Page) over writing. As for Diablo’s “The United States of Tara,” which airs on Showtime, this too benefits from the efforts of a fabulous actress – Toni Collette. I think that show is hampered by its half-hour format. “Tara” needs to go longer. The Academy gave Diablo Cody the Oscar because of her back story – stripper-turned-screenwriter. Then again, this is encouraging to all of us with sordid back-stories. Whoever said Oscar was fair?
And the rest of Mr. wOw’s weekend viewing? History Channel (good stuff on the Mayans, the “real life” of Jesus and the lost books of the Bible), lots of “Law & Order” reruns, a few “Reba” mini marathons and “Golden Girls” wherever I can find them – Hallmark or the WE channels.
I emerged on Monday morning, dreading the weather, already wet at the pits, avoiding direct sunlight, projecting what bad news awaited me on my desk and wondering who in the hell invented the concept of working for a living?
My boyfriend of 33 years insists I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t work.
Silly boyfriend.
© Getty Images
A legally grave start for ‘Braveheart’ as allegations from Oksana Grigorieva abound.
Continue reading “Mr. wOw: Mel Gibson and What Women Don’t Want” »
The Bush bashing has already begun in anticipation of Laura Bush’s new memoir Spoken From The Heart and George W. Bush’s Decision Points Continue reading “Mr. wOw Braces Himself for Bushbookmania” »
© Shutterstock
Mr. wOw knows a lot of different kinds of people – Democrats, Republicans, religious, agnostic, atheist, straight, gay, tolerant, intolerant, highly intelligent, not so swift. I tend to like them all, love many of them and can find always a common ground; an in-between place where differences can be put aside, and we can enjoy one another as human beings in a confounding world.
Recently, however, Mr. wOw’s deeply evangelical acquaintance has been working his last nerve. The earthquakes in Haiti and Chile and now the Icelandic volcano, with its harrowing ash cloud, have convinced my friend that The End Is Near. She believes in The Rapture and the Armageddon that will happen in the mid-east, and Final Days and all that. Generally, we steer clear of those subjects. In other ways, she is a delightful luncheon companion and not at all alarming. (Quite sophisticated, worldly and funny, in fact. I don’t think she’s your typical evangelical.)
Now, we’ve been down this road before – the last time was after the great tsunami of 2004. My friend was certain a disaster of such global proportions had to signal The Beginning of The End, and more or less told me to prepare, “within a year, you’ll see.” Well, a year came and went, and then a few more. When we met for a bite in 2006, I said, “OK, if you suddenly vanish before dessert, I’ll know you’ve been taken and I’ve been left behind. Can I have your ice cream?” She laughed. (We’ve also discussed the Antichrist. She does not believe it is Barack Obama, she says. I didn’t wish to press on this.)
But she’s not feeling humorous these days. The volcanic ash cloud has truly convinced her that The Four Horsemen are galloping our way. She believes she is saved, but worries about friends who aren’t. Like Mr. wOw.
When we first met, and I learned of her convictions, I gently tried to point out that there have been earthquakes and volcanoes and floods and terrible disease from the beginning of recorded history. “You know, during the Middle Ages, everybody thought the End of Times was at hand because of the plague. The Chilean quake in 1960 generated seismic waves that shook the world for a week. Really, this is nothing new; we are given more information these days, that’s all.”
Of course that didn’t work — and I didn’t expect it to. Nor even did I want to convince her. Her faith gives her a great deal of comfort and, having it, she is able to deal with some of the tragedies she has suffered in life. I would never really try to dissuade her. What if I succeeded? With what would she replace her faith? The shallow musings of Mr. wOw?
Still, Mr. wOw is perplexed by religion that foments such fearsome images and terrible punishments for those who don’t believe in Christ as the Son of God. “What about your Jewish friends?” I asked her once. “They believe in God, what happens to them?” She said, “I hope all the signs will convince them to accept Christ. Then they’ll be saved.” She said this sadly, but with certainty. Like most evangelicals, she has sent funds to support Israel. They believe only when the Jews possess their own country in the Holy Land, will Jesus return. They’re just supporting the geography, not the Jews.
Mr. wOw knows a lot of different kinds of people – Democrats, Republicans, religious, agnostic, atheist, straight, gay, tolerant, intolerant, highly intelligent, not so swift. I tend to like them all, love many of them and can find always a common ground; an in-between place where differences can be put aside, and we can enjoy one another as human beings in a confounding world.
Recently, however, Mr. wOw’s deeply evangelical acquaintance has been working his last nerve. The earthquakes in Haiti and Chile and now the Icelandic volcano, with its harrowing ash cloud, have convinced my friend that The End Is Near. She believes in The Rapture and the Armageddon that will happen in the mid-east, and Final Days and all that. Generally, we steer clear of those subjects. In other ways, she is a delightful luncheon companion and not at all alarming. (Quite sophisticated, worldly and funny, in fact. I don’t think she’s your typical evangelical.)
Now, we’ve been down this road before – the last time was after the great tsunami of 2004. My friend was certain a disaster of such global proportions had to signal The Beginning of The End, and more or less told me to prepare, “within a year, you’ll see.” Well, a year came and went, and then a few more. When we met for a bite in 2006, I said, “OK, if you suddenly vanish before dessert, I’ll know you’ve been taken and I’ve been left behind. Can I have your ice cream?” She laughed. (We’ve also discussed the Antichrist. She does not believe it is Barack Obama, she says. I didn’t wish to press on this.)
But she’s not feeling humorous these days. The volcanic ash cloud has truly convinced her that The Four Horsemen are galloping our way. She believes she is saved, but worries about friends who aren’t. Like Mr. wOw.
When we first met, and I learned of her convictions, I gently tried to point out that there have been earthquakes and volcanoes and floods and terrible disease from the beginning of recorded history. “You know, during the Middle Ages, everybody thought the End of Times was at hand because of the plague. The Chilean quake in 1960 generated seismic waves that shook the world for a week. Really, this is nothing new; we are given more information these days, that’s all.”
Of course that didn’t work — and I didn’t expect it to. Nor even did I want to convince her. Her faith gives her a great deal of comfort and, having it, she is able to deal with some of the tragedies she has suffered in life. I would never really try to dissuade her. What if I succeeded? With what would she replace her faith? The shallow musings of Mr. wOw?
Still, Mr. wOw is perplexed by religion that foments such fearsome images and terrible punishments for those who don’t believe in Christ as the Son of God. “What about your Jewish friends?” I asked her once. “They believe in God, what happens to them?” She said, “I hope all the signs will convince them to accept Christ. Then they’ll be saved.” She said this sadly, but with certainty. Like most evangelicals, she has sent funds to support Israel. They believe only when the Jews possess their own country in the Holy Land, will Jesus return. They’re just supporting the geography, not the Jews.
Amazon
Thoughts on the adopted mother who returned her Russian orphan son
Continue reading “A Very Brief Musing From Mr. wOw” »
Warner Bros Publicity Photo Label: TPD/Turner/Rhino
On the heels of Gov. Bob McDonnell’s gaffe, Mr. wOw takes a closer look at an American classic Continue reading “Mr. wOw Reconsiders ‘Gone With the Wind’” »
A sweet reminder of a sweeter time … 
Continue reading “Mr. wOw’s Favorite ‘Kitty’ Cat – Paulette Goddard” »
© PR Photos
Here’s to the Grammy Award winner’s recent confession … Continue reading “Mr. wOw: Ricky Martin ‘Livin’ La Vida Gay’!” »
