Just a few links before I close my laptop for the night.
1.) I had a fun little geek moment earlier this evening when I watched the first "webisode" from the set of "The Mist". Frank Darabont has come back home to adapt and direct yet another Stephen King story, this time one of the leaner, meaner, straight-up scary stories King's written this side of Richard Bachman. Anyway, click here to watch Frank Darabont have a lot of fun shooting the "earthquake scene".
2.) Fun clip from, of all places, CBS's The Early Show. It's a good indicator of what happens when you throw good facts into the wood chipper that is the Bush White House spin machine. Harry Smith is trying to get White House Press Secretary Tony Snow (he of former Fox News glory) to speak about Democratic complaints regarding subpoenaed testimony from WH aides Karl Rove and Harriet Miers. Bush has offered to let them talk to Congress so long as it's behind closed doors, no transcript is made, and no oaths are sworn to. If you listen to Tony Snow, however, you might be coaxed into thinking Bush is bending over backwards to be a nice guy to those mean ole Congressional Democrats. Of course, that's the opposite of the truth. Watching hacks spin is never fun, no matter what side of the aisle you're on, but it seems particularly soul-crushing in this clip. When Harry dejectedly says, "You bet," at the end of this clip, you can tell he's at the end of his rope. But Tony just keeps on smilin'.
3.) Yet another fun clip on a similar subject. This is Patrick Leahy explaining to faux-maverick Republican Arlen Specter what the Bush White House is really offering regarding the Rove and Miers testimony. In a word: "Nothing." Leahy's one of my favorite Senators. (Fun fact: it was Leahy who was at the receiving end of Cheney's legendary, "Go fuck yourself" comment. Anyone who pisses off Cheney has to be an okay guy.)
4.) Lily Tomlin has publicly responded to the recently published clips of her and David O. Russell's freakouts on the set of "I Heart Huckabees". You can read it here. She's good. After I saw those clips I was thinking Tomlin must be a really mean and selfish person. After reading this short item, however, I think Lily Tomlin's totally cool.
5.) Wanna see inside true "green living"? Check out this article from The New York Times. A couple of New Yorkers decided to live "green" for a whole year so the husband can write a book about the experience. The article's currently listed as the Times' most emailed article, and I'd say the fact that the couple have eschewed the use of toilet paper is the main reason why. What do they do, use their hands? Looks like the answer is yes. "Bowls of water and a lot of air-drying" is how the writer coyly alludes to the toilet-going process in the green apartment. (Shudder.) I guess I'll have to buy the book to find out more. Unlikely.
2 comments:
Anyone else having trouble getting the Tomlin link to open? If not, can someone copy and paste the text in a comment if it's not too long - I'd love to read it.
There's a pretty decent book out about O'Russell, Fincher, Tarantino, Soderbergh, Spike Jonze, PT Anderson by Sharon Waxman called "Rebels on the Backlot." Of the group, O'Russell comes across as by far the biggest nutjob. They even have a copy of a letter Clooney wrote one of the Warner's executives after some of the beef went down on THREE KINGS. Good stuff.
The weird thing about the Tomlin blow-up though is that she worked with O'Russell on FLIRTING WITH DISASTER so surely she knew what she was getting into before signing on for HUCKABEES, you'd have to imagine. And I thought she was great in both films! I can't defend a guy for flinging desk items in the direction of hapless crew members but I think this might be a case where his art might indeed actually suffer if he didn't take it so damn seriously. His movies could very easily be silly, sappy or both in the hands of lesser directors but there's a real energy in his work in my opinion. Some of that surely is a result of being kind of a dick, unfortunately. No?
Why is Leahy such a good senator/speaker? Because he's from Vermont, that's why.
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