WTF?

Amber Rose, the hanger on, sponge, and girlfriend of stage rusher Kanye West has been seen with him in Paris at various events and shows during fashion week wearing some pretty hideous clothing, and I mean HID-E-OUS.

This outfit takes the grand prize (so far).

Is it a hazard suit to protect herself from Kanye’s ego?  It looks like she stole it from the costume department from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Scarier still, you just know this thing probably set Kanye back at least a several grand (the outfit, not Amber).  

Lord only knows what she’ll be wearing when they fly back to the states in order to make an “enterance” at the airport. 

Can’t wait.

Tweet This Post

This actually sounds like it would be a lot of fun to read, if not experience first hand.

Let’s face it, watching wretchedly awful, horrendously acted, and unintentially hysterical films are a lot of fun (at least in small doses).  Mommy Dearest, Plan 9 From Outer Space, Showgirls and Die! Mommy Die! (although in all honesty that one was probably intentional) remain some of my all time favorites to hate on.

Enter film critic and Movieline contributor Michael Adam’s search to find the worst movie ever made (think the plot of Julie & Julia, except with grade Z movies instead of great recipes) in his book Showgirls, Teenwolves, And Astrozombies.

If nothing else, you have to admire the guys resolve, not to mention guts, risking his sanity and I.Q. watching some of these things.  After watching The Perils of Gwendolyn in the Land of Yik-Yak (don’t ask) years ago, I couldn’t do math.  In fact, I still have problems with it to this day.

Tweet This Post

Be afraid Conan, be very afraid.

TMZ is saying that NBC is planning to move Jay Leno back to his old 11:30pm time slot after the Winter Olympics, thus ending one of the most spectacularly bad decisions in network programming history.  

Thinking that a late night talk show would be more cost effective than the scripted dramas that normally air during that time, NBC basically renamed The Tonight Show to The Jay Leno Show and gave him the Monday to Friday 10pm slot. 

Leno handed the keys to The Tonight Show over to Conan O’Brien, who started his new hosting duties in June.  Leno’s new show started in mid-September, and it’s been circling the drain ever since. 

Leno signed on for four years, with NBC having the option to pull the plug after two years.  In other words, Jay Leno gets paid for two full years whether his show airs or not, which explains why NBC has stuck with the wretched thing for as long as they have.

Interestingly, NBC released a statement in response to the TMZ story, saying “Jay Leno is one of the most compelling entertainers in the world today. As we have said all along, Jay’s show has performed exactly as we anticipated on the network.” (who’s kidding who?) “It has, however, presented some issues for our affiliates. Both Jay and the show are committed to working closely with them to find ways to improve the performance.”

Guess it’s pretty obvious with that statement who the favorite is at the network between the chin and the ginge.

TMZ says one of their sources at NBC has told them network execs have given Conan O’Brien a choice.  He has the option to take the one hour slot following Jay at midnight, in which case Jay’s show will be 30 minutes (which is really 30 minutes too long).  If Conan bails, Jay gets his full hour back.  Conan’s “people” are apparently considering the offer. 

More on this behind the scenes drama as it unfolds.

Tweet This Post

Oh Lindsay Lohan, what hath thou wrought this time?

New Year’s Eve plans of the uber rich, powerful, and somewhat shady (Beyonce, Marc Jacobs, Harvey Weinstein, Roman Abramovich, among others) were somewhat scuttled when heavy storms landed on the vacation destination, forcing many with yachts to head for calmer waters.

It was arrival on the island of Lindsay Lohan (left) and her assertation to Jessica Alba’s husband Cash Warren (also both there) via Twitter  ”St Barths we GO HARD LOL.”  That may have instigated the whole thing.  Divine intervention or something else?  

So much for Lindsay’s “no drama“ resolution for 2010.

.

Tweet This Post

It’s hard out here for a ginge.

Word out on the street this morning that the Peacock Network is seriously thinking of giving Conan O’Brien the pink slip and handing the reins of the Tonight Show over to their golden boy, Jerry Seinfeld.

Ratings for the Tonight Show have slipped 52%since the NBCmade the bone-headed move to give Leno his own talkshow during the 10pm weeknight spot, replacing him with O’Brien.

The ratings for that have been dismal as well to say the least, but the high foreheads, determined not to admit they screwed up or blame Leno, now seem to be looking for a scapegoat to slaughter.

Conan’s people are denying this is what NBC is planning, but with losing more than half the audience since the change in hosts, the suits must be looking at their various options. 

More on this as it develops…

Tweet This Post

Told you she’d change her story within the space of a week. 

After denying vehemently that she had an affair with Tiger Woods earlier this week, Faithless Hussy (Rachel Uchitel) changed her tune yet again, saying that she and Tiger did hit it on occasion.  She and her lawyer, Gloria Allred, also announced yesterday they were holding a press conference for this morning at 11:30am.

Strangely enough, it was cancelled at the last minute, with Allerd citing “unforeseen circumstances” (cough-payoff-cough).

TMZ claims Woods and Faithless Hussy (or more likely their lawyers) spoke on the phone last night for about a half an hour, and Radar Online is reporting that the Woods camp is supposedly offering her $1 million dollars to keep her mouth shut.  What do you think the odds are that she asks for and gets more? 

This follows other reports that Woods has offered his wife a huge amount of money to stay with him.

Tweet This Post

It’s that time of year again.  List time.  The best of this, the worst of that, in every magazine, blog, and entertainment show.  Even more so this year because it’s the end of the decade.

Strange, it seems like only yesterday the looming possibility of Y2K was everywhere you looked.

Speaking of things that don’t live up to their hype and fizzle, here’s a list of the biggest flops in film for the past ten years as per the Hollywood Reporter.  While any list is of course subjective at best, these 10 contenders kept the movie going public away in droves, lost studios money, and actually destroyed some business partnerships and careers.  Now that’s  bad.

#10 – The Spirit (2008)     cost $60 million/domestic gross $19.9 million 

Maybe it was the dialogue.  Maybe it was the acting.  Actually, it was probably both.  Brought to us by Frank Miller (Sin City, 300), the premise sounded good on paper, but the result was an extremely over the top, melodrama heavy on the camp (Personally, I loved it).  The partners at the company behind the production, Odd Lot Entertainment,  went their separate ways after 23 years.

#9 – Grindhouse (2007)      cost $67 million/domestic gross $25 million

Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s ode to early 70′s era drive-in B movies clocked in at over three hours, and since there’s only so much purposely bad, well, everything people can take, people stayed away.  The two films within a film, Death Proof and Planet Terror,probably would have actually found an audience had they been released individually (which is what Harvey Weinstein did internationally with it/them to recoup losses).

#8 – Rollerball (2002)        cost $70 million/domestic gross $19 million

Some remakes are better left unmade.  The original 1975 movie was a comment on violence, spectacle, and corporatism (we call it reality TV now) whereas the remake was just a misconceived mess.  The studio behind it, MGM, likely knew what they were dealing with too, changing the release date four times and re-editing it from an “R” to a “PG-13.”

#7 – The Invasion (2007)     cost $80 million/domestic gross $15.1 million

Audiences weren’t too keen on seeing a fourth retelling of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and having Nicole Kidman star in it after appearing in a string of movies that got a response of “meh” both commercially and critically, didn’t help matters any.

#6 – Catwoman (2004)     cost $100 million/domestic gross $40 million

This is why we still don’t have a Wonder Woman movie in the works, and probably won’t for quite some time to come.

#5 – Town & Country (2001)      cost $90 million/domestic gross $6.7 million

Warren Beatty tried another stab at a sex comedy, some 25 years after Shampoo.  The movie took well over a year and ten months to complete. Filming actually started in June 1998, but filming took so long stars Diane Keaton and Gary Shandling had to leave to  fulfill other comittments, putting production on hold.  Once finally done, no one cared.

#4 - Gigli (2003)       cost $54 million/domestic gross $6.1 million 

Some  have blamed the plot, ”boy meets girl meets the Soprano’s”, others the hard to pronounce title, but it was probably constant over-saturation in the media of “Bennifer”, co-stars and then real life couple Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck that did this one in.  It’s taken him years to get his career back on track, J-lo is still trying.

#3 – Land of the Lost (2009)     cost $100 million/domestic gross $65 million

Based on the ultra cheesy mid-70′s Syd and Marty Kroft show of the same name, this movie failed to find it’s audience by trying to appeal to everyone.  Parents were concerned over the PG-13 rating and when word got out about some of the toilet humor and body part jokes, so they stayed away with their kids, older movie-goers simply weren’t interested in what seemed to be a kids movie, and purists of the original show (really? purists for that?) didn’t like the tongue in cheek tone. 

#2 – Battlefield Earth (2000)      cost $75 million/domestic gross $21 million

Travolta put his name and some of his own money on the line when he promised that the film adaptation of Scientology founder Ron L Hubbards 1972 novel would be “like Star Wars, only better“.  He should have used Plan 9 From Outer Space instead.  Even then, still a bit of stretch.

#1 – The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002)     cost $100 million/domestic gross $4.4 million

The release date being pushed up by 14 months indicates the studio knew what it was dealing with, the type of bomb anyone associated with making can’t recover from.  However, not only does Eddie Murphy still get hired, he also gets his asking price for salary.  Those Shrek films have proven to be his salvation.

Tweet This Post

Adam Lambert was right.  There is a double standard in the media in that a gay guy kissing another guy = unacceptable, a straight girl kissing another girl = acceptable (or at least more acceptable). 

CBS proved that this morning when they blurred his now infamous kiss with a male member of his band during his AMA performance, but had no qualms showing footage of Madonna laying one on Britney Spears from the MTV Video Awards a few years ago.  

Extra boos also go the eye network for trying to make the lame excuse in justifying their decision by saying that the Madonna/Brittney kiss has already been out in the media (so basically people were used to seeing it) whereas Lambert’s kiss hasn’t, is still a point of controversey, and that someone might even try to sue over it.  (If the lawsuit regarding Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction couldn’t fly, then neither will this, CBS).

As Lainey put it, this isn’t about alleged lewdness, it’s about factual gayness.

As I’ve previously stated, in some circles, gay men are tolerated as long as we don’t demonstrate anything that actually makes us gay.

What century is this again?

Tweet This Post

They may be trying to help his career, but all their really doing is creating a problem where none existed in the first place.

Adam Lambert, the American Idolrunner up that just released his solo album was choosen as one of Out magazine’s Out 100 for 2009.  The only catch is Adam’s team apparently doesn’t want him to appear as being too gay, fearing it could impact the bottom line.  

What are they, headless?  Have they seen his album cover?  Too little, too late folks.  That particular gay cruise ship has already sailed. 

There was the Details magazine interview with photos of Lambert making out with a female model, and some of the content of the Out interview seemed odd for a gay publication, asking the singer about his experiences with women, how he feels about it and how far hes gone in the past.  TMI.

It looks like the handlers are trying to paint their product as bi, rather than gay, and while I get that the kids these days don’t like labels, this is more of marketing ploy.  They feel Adam is too gay for the straights, but in doing so not letting him be gay enough for the gays. Out’s editor in chief, Arron Hicklin, wrote a blunt letter to the singer in the very issue he was on the cover of .  A portion of it below….

We’re curious whether you know that we made cover offers for you before American Idol was even halfway through its run. Apparently, Out was too gay, even for you. There was the issue of what it would do to your record sales, we were told. Imagine! A gay musician on the cover of a gay magazine. What might the parents think! It’s only because this cover is a group shot that includes a straight woman that your team would allow you to be photographed at all — albeit with the caveat that we must avoid making you look “too gay.” (Is that a medical term? Just curious). Luckily, you seemed unaware that a similar caution was issued to our interviewer.

Perhaps we should have had you and Cyndi in a tongue lock. That would be radical. It’s odd, because this magazine has done covers with Pete Wentz and Lady Gaga — getting straight men and women to do Out is easy these days. It gives them cred. Getting gay stars like yourself is another matter. Much easier to stick you in Details, where your homosexuality can be neutralized by having you awkwardly grabbing a woman’s breast and saying, “Women are pretty.” So are kittens, Adam, but it doesn’t mean you have to make out with them. Imagine how much more radical it would have been to go down on a guy instead of that six-foot Barbie. We don’t think you would have a problem with that — why should you? — but your record label would, and letting them dictate the terms is the very opposite of rock ’n’ roll. And did you read the article? You would think your entire fan base was made up of women and heterosexual men, or “straight dudes” as the writer describes them, just so we can all be clear. No mention of your gay fans, which is kind of disappointing, don’t you think, given what your success represents?

Out has since got a lot of flack from Adam’s fans over this.  While I get the editor’s point, the tone of it implies Lambert is in on it.  Perhaps he’s merely compliant, but if that’s the case, then he and his team are doing everyone, including Lambert himself,  a disservice.  Frankly, I think his fan base is composed mostly of people who could care less or one way or the other.  It’s simply not an issue for most people, perhaps the thought process behind how he’s allowed to come across should follow suit.

Tweet This Post

We have a new entry for the “What were they thinking?!” award for 2009.  As the blogosphere all a buzz about this by now, you may have already heard how the posters for the movie Couples Retreat which apparently totally sucks in the UK were conspicously missing the black characters from the movie.  Uh-oh.

Per the handy “compare-if-you-dare” diagram above by the Huffington Post, complete with arrow for those who are either visually impaired or just plain stupid, you can see for youselves the difference.

Of course the usual groups are gathering on either side of the scandal/debate, business decision vs blatant racism.  For the record, I can see why they did it (neither of the missing actors is as well known across the pond as their co-stars, and you can see everyone more clearly) but it was still a dumb move to make.

Even more dumb?  The producers and casting directors of Couples Retreat thinking movie goers would buy Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau landing  the likes Malin Akernman and Kristen Stewart (unless they’re playing millionaires and gold diggers).  I thought this was a supposed to be a comedy, not a fantasy.

Tweet This Post