'TBH Politoons'
Jazz From Hills
Trimmed Bush and Hedges
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Cynthia Tucker : Little girl finds good times in the Big Apple. Children can teach us to enjoy the little things
I should have known better. For all the money I spent to make sure she enjoyed her first trip to New York City, her favorite thing was the revolving door at the hotel.
BY ROBERT WILONSKY: Cuts Like a Knife
But for the second film in a row, director Zhang Yimou is concerned less with the story than in the telling of it, and so the merits of House of Flying Daggers cannot be boiled down into discussions of plot points and performances. To do so, to merely reiterate key moments of storytelling while informing you that actress Ziyi burns like a young sword-wielding Audrey Hepburn, would slight a masterpiece that must be seen to be believed. House of Flying Daggers, the second movie from Yimou to be released stateside this year, isn't mere product to be pondered and peddled and consumed and passed through the system. It's something that should be hung on a wall and marveled at -- all those beautiful colors and beautiful faces and beautiful costumes and beautiful poses, begging to be savored and lingered over by those not in a hurry to catch a late dinner or pay the baby sitter. A movie so widescreen it often seems to bleed into the neighboring theater; its exquisiteness can overwhelm in a single sitting.
ROGER EBERT: Clint Eastwood pulls no punches
"I'm going to make the movie regardless of whether you want to or not," Clint Eastwood told the suits at Warner Bros., when they balked at financing "Million Dollar Baby." They'd read the screenplay, Eastwood recalls, and they said "we don't think boxing movies are very popular right now." You can imagine Eastwood's eyes narrowing as he responded, "This to me is not a boxing movie. It's about hopes and dreams, and a love story.
Elaine Dutka: Drug firms are on the defense as Michael Moore plans to dissect their industry
America's pharmaceutical industry is putting out an advisory about the latest potential threat to its health: Michael Moore.
Robert Scheer : Sabotaging Social Security
Just my luck: I finally get to be a senior citizen only to discover that the president considers my longevity a grave threat to the nation. Apparently, my collecting Social Security checks for as long as I have left on this Earth is going to help bankrupt the economy and/or be an unbearable burden on young Americans.
Arianna Huffington: Will The GOP Nuke The Constitution?
Right now, somewhere in the White House, administration strategists are hatching plans to go to war. Battle plans are being drawn. Timing and tactics are being finalized. A nuclear option is even being openly discussed. The designated target? Iran? Syria? North Korea? No, much closer to home: the United States Senate.
Mark Morford: Buy Blue
What can you do? You can skip the Marriott or the Holiday Inn (76 and 73 percent to the GOP respectively), and stay at the lib-friendly Hyatt. Skip Yahoo.com (a shocking 92 percent to the GOP -- what the hell?) and head over to Google, which gave 100 percent (!) of their donations to the Dems (side note: Google rules).
Danielle Allen: Turning Strangers into Political Friends
One study after another has reported declines in U.S. citizens' trust of their government and other institutions of authority since the '60s. Most recently the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center announced that whereas 53 percent of U.S. citizens in 1964 thought "most people can be trusted," by 2002 only 35 percent of them thought so.
This may be a good time to email your elected officials about Social Security
The Irascible Professor
Felice Prager: Comic Writer
A Few Starving Authors
Out of the Blue: Essaya by Tina Blue
Official Kwanzaa Website
Purple Gene Reviews
'Last of the Dogmen'
Purple Genes' review of the movie "Last of the Dogmen" (1995):
I was looking for some escape....and I found it..."Last of the Dogmen" (Directed by Tab Murphy) came out in 1995 to mixed reviews...but I remember that there was something about the film that drew me in.....I guess I could call it a preposterous poor mans' "Dances with Wolves" with a little "Lost Horizon" thrown in! A perfect winter night diversion....me all wrapped up in a buffalo robe with my remote..........We get the Disneyesque Narration by Wilford Brimley ("Electric Horseman" - "Borderline" - "Country") taking us into the "roughest country God ever put on a map".........
Up on the edge of the Montana Wilderness, three desperate convicts have escaped, and the local sheriff needs the best tracker around to find them...so he calls for Lewis Gates (Tom Berenger - "Big Chill" - "Training Day" - "Peacemakers") a man the sheriff hates because he is a drunk and a shitty son in law (Gates accidently let his wife - the sheriffs' daughter - drown) but knows he can get the job done. So Gates the bounty hunter makes an initial trek up into the Ox Bow area and finds all three convicts dead...but he also finds an unusual broken arrow. He takes the arrow to a local professor who tells Gates that the arrow look like a facsimile of the old Cheyenne style.....Gates runs into an old article in the local newspaper about a native "Wild Child" that had been found wandering out of the mountains a long time ago.....Cheyenne? Lost Tribe? Maybe remnants of the fabled "Dog Soldiers"??????
So Gates gets hold of a Cheyenne-speaking Antiquities expert named Lillian Sloan (Barbara "Seagull" Hershey [with a son named "Free" {*note from marty - 'Free', her son with David Carradine now goes by the name 'Tom'}] - "Boxcar Bertha" - "Hoosiers") who reluctantly goes on a research trip into the Ox Bow with Gates...which turns into a journey of discovery....
They arduously travel high up into mountains and find a secret passage into a lost wilderness.....yes...inhabited by the descendents of the ancient Cheyenne "Dog Soldiers" who had escaped from a massacre in the late 1800s and the "Wild Child" is now the chief! They have been living here in harmony with nature for almost 100 years....unknown to the outside world....and willing to kill anything or anyone that would threaten their survival........
Well, Gates and Sloan fall in love (warm chemistry) and go "indian" and realize that by finding this lost paradise they were putting the tribe in jeopardy because ......they were being followed!
So Gates has to go back out and divert the posse and get dynamite to blow up the entry to the hidden valley and shut the Cheyenne off from the outside world forever.......He succeeds and makes his way back to the tribe where he Lillian will live happily ever after.........
Purple Gene gives "Last of the Dogmen" 7 broken arrows out of 10 for taking me out of this modern day madness and back to the "old ways" !
Purple Gene
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny but cool.
December 23
Happy Festivus
Plans New AIDS Concert
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela announced plans on Wednesday for a second concert to raise money to fight HIV/AIDS, bringing rock group Queen and other artists back to South Africa in March for a televised show.
Mandela, 86, has made fighting Africa's AIDS pandemic one of his major campaigns since stepping down as South Africa's first black president in 1997.
Next year's show, dubbed "46664 South Africa" after Mandela's onetime prison number, is scheduled for March 19 at the Fancourt golf resort near the southern town of George, organizers said.
Queen and singer-songwriter Paul Rodgers, who helped found the groups Free and Bad Company, have signed up to play and other international stars are also expected, organizers said.
Nelson Mandela
Buying Clintons' 1970s Home
University of Arkansas
The University of Arkansas has agreed to buy the house where Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton lived when they worked in Fayetteville in the 1970s.
The university said it would pay $249,950 for the property and structure at 930 California Blvd.
The Clintons were married in the house.
The house was built in 1931 and has one bedroom and one bathroom. The Clintons lived there from August 1973 to December 1976 while they taught at the UA law school.
University of Arkansas
CNBC Plans Tribute
Louis Rukeyser
CNBC will look back on the career of one of the most famous financial journalists, Louis Rukeyser, with a special tribute Friday.
Rukeyser, who hosted a PBS show for more than 30 years and also had a show on CNBC, decided this year to stop production of "Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street" while battling cancer.
CNBC said the special will feature reminiscences by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Forbes CEO Steve Forbes, Fidelity vice chairman Peter Lynch and Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D-Md. It also is being picked up by PBS stations nationwide.
Louis Rukeyser
All Things French in Vogue
Woody Allen
In Woody Allen's America, Bordeaux or Burgundy wine and other things French are always in vogue. But he admits his European sensibility makes his films less popular back home.
The bespectacled filmmaker was in Paris to promote his new film "Melinda and Melinda," which explores both tragedy and comedy through two separate and parallel lives of a young woman - each played by Radha Mitchell - that are the subject of a dinner conversation.
Allen said he liked Michael Moore's anti-Bush film "Fahrenheit 9/11" - which won top prize at the Cannes Film Festival this year - but insisted filmmakers face limits in changing political attitudes.
"I don't think that it made any real difference in the outcome of the election," Allen said of Moore's film. "It's no question that I was disappointed in the outcome of this election."
Woody Allen
Named Top Star of 2004
Britney Spears
"Access Hollywood" has named its "Top Ten Stars of 2004," with Britney Spears in the No. 1 spot. The rankings are based on the number of stories the syndicated entertainment television show aired on each star. Spears - who was married twice, canceled a summer tour because of a knee injury and released a greatest hits album - topped the list with 119 stories.
Beyonce is in the No. 2 spot, with 102 stories, followed by Donald Trump, 94 stories; Michael Jackson, 84 stories; Tom Cruise, 72 stories; Jessica Simpson, 69 stories; Paris Hilton, 63 stories; Nicole Kidman, 62 stories; Jennifer Lopez, 54 stories; and Whitney Houston, 52 stories.
Britney Spears
Two Radio Stations Face Decency Fines
Entercom
Two Entercom Communications Corp. radio stations in Kansas that aired sexually explicit language could face $220,000 in total fines for violating federal decency standards, U.S. communications regulators said on Wednesday.
The Federal Communications Commission said it proposed fining the two stations $110,000 each for four incidents in April and May 2002, which included airing references to female genitalia and sexual arousal.
The FCC has been cracking down on indecent antics on broadcast television and radio since pop singer Janet Jackson bared her naked breast earlier this year during the National Football League's Super Bowl championship game.
Entercom
Low Pay No Laughing Matter
New York Comedians
The pay's a joke and it's not funny any more -- New York comedians have had enough of working for peanuts and are threatening to walk out if the city's top stand-up comedy clubs don't raise their wages.
Comics Ted Alexandro and Russ Meneve have rounded up more than 300 funny men and women to form the New York Comedians Coalition and they have sent a letter to the city's top comedy venues demanding a raise.
The bottom line is that $60 to $75 for weekend set is not enough to survive, while the weekday rate of $15 to $25 for a 20-minute set is beyond a joke, Alexandro said.
"We've been making the same wage since 1985," he said.
New York Comedians
Takes on Tradition
'Friends' Lawsuit
Television shows, especially comedies, are created in an often brutal atmosphere. "It's one of the few places on earth where everybody says exactly what's on their minds," says veteran writer Dennis Klein. "It's as dark and nasty as possible."
But if the tradition of the raucous, freewheeling "writers room" is the Hollywood status quo, Amaani Lyle is fighting it. The 31-year-old former writer's assistant for "Friends" has filed a lawsuit that has landed before the California Supreme Court.
Lyle alleges the raw sexual remarks that peppered writers' work sessions and conversations added up to harassment, even though they weren't aimed directly at her or other women in the room.
Lyle worked for four months in 1999 before she was told she was a poor typist and fired. But Lyle, who is black, claims she was let go after pressing for black characters on the sexually charged NBC comedy about six pals in New York. It ended a successful 10-year run last season.
For a lot more, 'Friends' Lawsuit
Stolen Discs Retrieved
Black Sabbath
Stolen gold and silver discs won by Ozzy Osbourne's band Black Sabbath were recovered after thieves dumped them behind trash cans.
The discs were reported missing last week after a burglary at the home of Osbourne's former manager Patrick Meehan, in Edenbridge, Kent, southeast England.
Kent Police said an anonymous tip led them to the eight discs, found Wednesday in a plastic bag dumped behind recycling bins.
Black Sabbath
Lurks in Finland's Christmas Past
Scary Santa
The forefather of Santa, known in Finland as Joulupukki, was not dressed in red, did not greet children with smiles and he certainly brought no gifts.
Instead Joulupukki, literally "yule goat,"ukki, literally "yule goat," donned horns and an animal hide and covered his face with soot or a bark mask. He traveled from house to house frightening children with his wild dancing and singing and expected offerings of food and booze.
The form this Christmas-time character took varied greatly in different parts of the country. According to some versions of the legend he also brought sticks with which to whip naughty children. Stingy households suffered the goat's insults.
For a lot more, Scary Santa
More Family Friendly Programming From Faux
'Who's Your Daddy?'
Plans to air a television game show in which an adopted woman picks out her father from a panel of impostors have thousands of people deluging Fox TV with letters and e-mails to get the show shelved.
The "Who's Your Daddy?" show, in which a young woman given up for adoption as a child gets a $100,000 prize for picking out her biological father from a line-up, is the latest in America's obsession with reality TV programming.
Fox, a unit of News Corp. Inc., has yet to respond directly to its critics but said in a statement that although the title was "attention-grabbing" it was not indicative of the content.
'Who's Your Daddy?'
Top 5 of 2004
Bushisms
The Dumbest Things resident Bush Said in 2004
5) "After standing on the stage, after the debates, I made it very plain, we will not have an all-volunteer army. And yet, this week - we will have an all-volunteer army!" -Daytona Beach, Fla., Oct. 16, 2004 (Watch video)
4) "Tribal sovereignty means that; it's sovereign. I mean, you're a - you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities." -Washington, D.C., Aug. 6, 2004 (Watch video)
3) "I hear there's rumors on the Internets that we're going to have a draft." -second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004 (Watch video)
2) "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." -Poplar Bluff, Mo., Sept. 6, 2004 (Watch video)
1) "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." -Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004 (Watch video)
Top 10 Bushisms of 2004
In Memory
Freddie Perren
Grammy Award-winner Freddie Perren, who produced records for Gloria Gaynor, the Jackson 5 and the "Saturday Night Fever" album, has died. He was 61.
Perren, who lived in Chatsworth, died Dec. 16 after a long illness, said his wife, Christine Yarian Perren. He suffered a major stroke 11 years ago, she said.
Perren shared an Album of the Year Grammy in 1978 for producing two songs on the "Saturday Night Fever" album.
With Dino Fekaris, Perren produced "I Will Survive," sung by Gaynor, which won the Grammy for best disco recording in 1979.
Perren was a member of the Motown Records production group the Corporation, which wrote and produced the Jackson Five's first hits. The Corporation - including Motown founder Berry Gordy, Deke Richards and Fonce Mizell - produced the group's "I Want You Back," "ABC" and "The Love You Save."
Perren also produced the Miracles' hits "Love Machine" and "Do It Baby" while at Motown.
His post-Motown records include Peaches and Herb's "Reunited" and "Shake Your Groove Thing"; the Sylvers' "Boogie Fever" and "Hot Line"; and Tavares' "Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel."
Freddie Perren
