The First 100 Days Are Always the…?

“I am pleased with our progress, but I am not satisfied,” said President Barack Obama on his 100th day in office:

If You Read Amy

Funny lady Amy Sedaris is planning to write a follow-up to her successful book on entertaining, the quite funny I Like You: Hospitality Under The Influence (a copy of which she signed for me on my birthday a couple of years ago – jealous?).

The currently untitled tome by the Strangers with Candy star has been slated for fall 2010.

I know, right? But if I know Sedaris, it’ll be well worth the wait.

Photo: USAToday.com.

Just Because, Pt. 36

How long do you think before the powers that be announce a reboot of Baywatch?

I’d sure like to see David Chokachi swim again….

Photo: EPGuides.com.

A Beautiful Day to Be Beautiful

People magazine has announced its annual list of the 100 Most Beautiful, and Christina Applegate (TV’s Samantha Who?) has come out on top.

Let’s hear it for Kelly Bundy!

2009’s Most Beautiful star admits that after being diagnosed with breast cancer last March, she had “a rollercoaster of emotions, but there was a calm about what I had to do.”

Applegate underwent a double mastectomy, followed by reconstructive surgery. “It’s a decision that you made to save your life,” she said, noting one positive: “I don’t have to wear a bra! They don’t hang down to my knees like they did before. And the gals look good in tank tops.”

Also named Most Beautiful were list favorite Halle Berry, the girls from TV’s 90210, Zac Efron (natch), Christina Aguilera, Slumdog Millionaire’s Freida Pinto, Robert Pattinson, Michelle Obama, and SNL’s Kristen Wiig, among others.

Photo: People.com.

They’re Preggers-ish!

Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick are expecting twin girls this summer.

You wouldn’t have been able to tell, though.

Parker, who stepped out earlier this week at the Tribeca premiere of Broderick’s Wonderful World, where she shared casting news about the upcoming Sex and the City sequel, isn’t showing a baby bump, and that’s because the couple will become parents once again thanks to “the generous help of a surrogate.”

Parker and Broderick’s girls will join eldest son James Wilkie, 6, who, like his mama and papa, is said to be “overjoyed.”

Photo: People.com.

Plugging Back Into the Zeitgeist

MTV has announced that Grammy Award-winning British songbird Adele will be the first artist to appear on a revived version of its popular Unplugged show.

Adele may not be burning up the radio, but she’s on fire.

Grammys…fan and critical adoration…a mid-summer gig at the Hollywood Bowl with Etta James…. Yes – Adele’s It, It, It.

Photo: Zimbio.com.

The Call Girl Diaries

One of the Tribeca Film Festival’s sexiest films is Steven Soderbergh’s latest, The Girlfriend Experience.

Starring leading porn star Sasha Grey as an upscale Manhattan call girl, the partly scripted drama has the improvised feel of a fly-on-the-wall documentary, with plenty of dialogue devoted to the tanking economy, and blurs the line between fact and fiction:



The Girlfriend Experience opens (in limited release, I’m sure) on May 22.

It’s Getting Big Again

Sex and the City fans can breathe easy now that Sarah Jessica Parker herself has confirmed that Chris Noth will be back as Mr. Big in next summer’s sequel, after all.

“I don’t know anything yet [of what’s to happen],” she said yesterday at the Wonderful World premiere during the Tribeca Film Festival.

In other SATC casting news, Gilles Marini, who played Samantha’s tantalizingly naked neighbor in the first movie, may also reprise his role in the sequel – which oh-so-convenient now that Dancing with the Stars has broadened his fan base.

“I don’t have a clue,” Parker said about that. “I don’t know anything specific about a story for him, but it’s very possible.”

I guess we’ll find out at the end of May 2010.

Photo: Flickr.com.

Update: David Eigenberg, a.k.a. Miranda’s hubby, Steve, and Evan Handler (Charlotte’s husband, Harry) also have signed on for the sequel.

R.I.P. Bea

Maude and Golden Girls star Bea Arthur passed away over the weekend.

A family spokesman told AP the Emmy and Tony Award winner had cancer, and died peacefully at her home in Los Angeles. Arthur was 86.

I met Bea Arthur once a few years ago when she hosted opening night of the Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival. She had such...presence, you know. It was a true honor to shake her hand, for she’d made me laugh so much over the years.

She wasn’t the cuddly type (at least not with this perfect-stranger fan), but she was delightful and friendly and warm.

The world’s a little less bright now without her…a little less golden, indeed. But it remains a lot better for having had Arthur in it.

Click here to read some of her friends and colleagues’ reaction (including Betty White’s) to this sad news.

Photo: InsideSoCal.com.

Update: Click here to read a remembrance by Rue McClanahan.

Two Ifs By the Road

Playing tonight at the Miami Beach Cinematheque is one of 2008’s finest films, one that you probably didn’t see: a shining indie gem called Wendy and Lucy.

The film’s story is quite simple: Wendy (Michelle Williams) is driving to Alaska, hoping for a summer of lucrative work at a fish cannery, and the promise of a new life with her dog, Lucy.

But when her beat-up ol’ car breaks down in Oregon – and she loses Lucy – both the thin fabric of her financial situation and her emotions come apart, and so Wendy must confront a series of increasingly tough decisions, with repercussions for herself and Lucy that will change their lives forever.

See – simple. But no less fantastic.

Wendy and Lucy succeeds in that it’s such a beautifully shot and told film (remember the name of its maker, Kelly Reichardt). Williams is a reckoning as Wendy, really – she’s engaging, she’s graceful, and she’s vulnerable – a quiet dynamo.

This is a tender, nuanced poem that astutely comments, without compromise, on the down-on-its-luck mood of these United States of America, and the choices we have to make to survive.

Wendy and Lucy is a must.

My Rating ****

Photo: Oscilloscope Pictures.

The Music Man

Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement) is quite quickly becoming one of my favorite young directors.

His is such an unobtrusive, clean, beautiful style that his movies just beg to be watched.

His latest, The Soloist, may not have the Victorian whim of his retelling of Jane Austen’s love story that became his calling card, or the serene beauty that gives way to tragedy during the opening phases of WW II found in his adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel, but it remains engrossing throughout because of the dignity he affords the characters that inhabit it.

The Soloist, which was pushed back to today from an awards-bait-y schedule last fall, tells the true story of Nathaniel Ayers Jr. (Jamie Foxx), a musical prodigy who developed schizophrenia in his second year at Juilliard, and ended living homeless on the most un-Hollywood streets of L.A., where he performed a two-string violin and caught the attention of L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.).

The movie was written by Erin Brockovich screenwriter Susannah Grant, based on a series of columns written by Lopez, as well as a book he authored.

Wright took a social-realist approach to the movie, and populated his wonderful cast with actual homeless and mentally ill people, who, he says, provided a reality check for the stars.

As a result, it is easy to buy Foxx as man down on his luck. He portrays Nathaniel Ayers with a strength a lesser actor couldn’t or wouldn’t have mustered. And Downey delivers a most realized, true-to-life, nerve-hitting depiction of a man trying to do the right thing, and squirming when faced with the prospect of taking responsibility for his actions.

That is, after all, how we all tend to feel when we see a homeless person on the street.

This movie, with all its feel-goodness, is an all-too-real confrontation and a wakeup call for all to take a moment to listen to the sounds of life, but also to consider our fortunes and pay them forward.

Yes, it’s a little unfocused at times – we get it…the newspapers industry is dying. Now go back to the unlikely friendship between the street musician and the jaded journalist. But when Wright zeros in on the compelling human drama, The Soloist rocks.

My Rating ***

Photo: DreamWorks Pictures.

I Hope Ellen Asked Lindsay to Eat

Lindsay Lohan taped an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres Show airing today in which the troubled actress addressed her breakup with Samantha Ronson.

When DeGeneres asked L2 if she knew she and Ronson were bound for Splitsville earlier this month, Linds said, “I had no idea what was going on. I just hadn’t seen her in, like, a week. She, like, disappeared.”

And like, omigod, then you stopped like, eating?

Seriously-ish, though, Lohan also said she wants to get “my career back in shape,” and revealed she’s doing a movie in October.

I doubt Seth Rogen called her back, but I guess good for her, right?

Photo: UsMagazine.com.

Update: What a (sad) difference five years makes.

3rd Rock from the Sun

Today is Earth Day – so what better way to celebrate than to catch earth, a new Disneynature doc narrated by James Earl Jones.

That’s what I’m doing tonight.

One thing you should know, though: earth is a feature-length compilation from the BBC and Discovery Channel series Planet Earth, so if you saw that or own the DVDs, pop those in if you don’t want to spend the money.

Now click here to see what our planet could look like by 2100 if we don’t get it together.

Photo: Walt Disney Pictures.

Kelly, Dear…

Original Americal Idol Kelly Clarkson’s comeback (I don’t think she went anywhere, My December haters – for the record) just got a little bit stronger now that the second single off her new All I Ever Wanted, “I Do Not Hook Up,” has dropped (as the kids say).

Check out the video:

Kelly Clarkson - New Music - More Music Videos

Cute, huh?

I’ve only got one bone to pick with it: Can someone, anyone find Clarkson a new video shtick, please?

We get it: There’s a formula to her Kelly Clarksoness (for her to have a hit that everyone hearts the song must start slow, build up, and erupt into a rock chorus).

But can’t they get a little bit more inventive with the visuals, though?
I mean, do we really need to see her perform the song, wind blowing her hair, in the video? I’d rather get, I don’t know…a storyline.

Washington Confidential

I loved State of Play.

As a journalist – mmm, let me just call myself a writer.

As a writer who went to journalism school (I think that’s better, for I don’t write that many truth-uncovering pieces for my real job), I know the difference between what’s right and wrong in the fine art of storytelling.

There is an important line a journalist – mmm….

There is an important line a serious writer mustn’t cross in order to be fair to the story and its subjects, and in State of Play, Russell Crowe’s seasoned investigative reporter goes – to borrow a quote from Friends’ Joey – so far past the line, he can’t even see the line.

The line is a dot to him.

And that’s one of the things that I found so intriguing about the film: how it shone a light on the craft of journalism, while at the same time, offered commentary on the current sad state of affairs the newspaper world is facing in what I call the Age of Opinion (best exemplified by all the blogs out there that don’t so much as report but spew).

As Cal McCaffrey, a Washington Globe scribe, Crowe leads an all-star cast that includes Rachel McAdams (one of the finest actresses of her generation), Helen Mirren, and a never-more-beautiful Robin Wright Penn, in a blistering thriller about rising U.S. Congressman Stephen Collins (a steely and fine Ben Affleck), who is embroiled in a case of seemingly unrelated, brutal murders.

That line I was talking about earlier: When you’re a journalist, you can’t be friends with your story subjects. Cal and Congressman Collins were college roommates. That complicates things, you see.

Collins comes to ask Cal for help after his research assistant/mistress is offed. His secrets exposed, Collins needs help controlling the flow of information, but Cal has a job to do.

After all, like a doctor who took the Hippocratic Oath, he has vowed to do no lie.

Director Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland) did a tremendous job bringing to the big screen the six-hour BBC miniseries upon which State of Play is based, thanks in part by the taut, edge-of-seat pace of the screenplay written by Matthew Michael Carnahan (The Kingdom), Tony Gilroy (the Bourne series, Michael Clayton), and Billy Ray (Shattered Glass).

This is, perhaps, one of my favorite movies of the year. It’s topical, twisty, and quite entertaining.

My Rating ****

Photo: Universal Pictures.

Omigod, Like

It’s 8 p.m., so obvs, we should be watching Gossip Girl, but since here we are….

The Gossip Girl spin-off has a name – it’s Valley Girls, starring Brittany Snow – and it has a poster to help it build its crazy buzz.

The spin-off’s pilot will air on The CW on May 11. Omygod, I can’t wait.

Photo: EW.com.

Nostalgia, Pt. 29

I am sooo going to miss Nicollette Sheridan’s bitching Edie Britt on TV’s Desperate Housewives.

Sheridan’s character met her maker on last night’s episode, which served as a moving eulogy for one of the show’s most quotable, if underused characters.

Edie’s death took place in the first few minutes of the show, which left off cliffhanger-style a few weeks ago with her crashing her car into a utility pole, and then getting the shock of her life.

“To add insult to injury, I was electrocuted!” Edie said in a voiceover. “What can I say: it was one of those days.”

As all the housewives gathered around, Edie said, “I died just like I lived – as the complete and utter center of attention!”

Even in her final moment, Edie had to deliver a line that would put everyone back in their place. As a fan of her and the show, I wouldn’t have had it any other way, natch, especially because Sheridan relished it – you could tell.

Throughout the rest of the episode, we got to see, though various flashbacks, how Edie, may she rest in peace, either came to know some of the housewives (i.e. Teri Hatcher’s Susan) or surprisingly lifted them up from their lowest points (Felicity Huffman’s cancer-stricken Lynette).

And seeing her go cleavage to cleavage with Eva Longoria Parker’s Gaby for men’s attention at club (pictured at right)? Priceless.

It was sad to see her leave, but it was great to see her go that way.

Photo: ABCNews.Go.com.

Mandy Moore’s Going Back in Time

With her new album, Amanda Leigh, coming out next month – the cute first single off which, “I Could Break Your Heart Any Day of the Week,” I simply adore – Mandy Moore is getting all kinds of revealing, from a spread in Details magazine to a chat with EW.com.

In the latter, the singer, who describes her new album’s sound as “quintessential California ’70s pop,” says she wants people to give it the benefit of the doubt, and briefly considered releasing it under a different name.

“I [once] found myself in the company of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, who had really quality music, much more so than mine,” Moore said of her desire to break from bubblegum pop mold for which she first became known.

I’d say she’s doing one heckuva job at it.

Photo: Men.Style.com.

Update: Moore may not have wanted to do a video for “I Could Break Your Heart Any Day of the Week,” but she did one, anyway – and let me tell you: Girlfriend looks mighty sexy in a trenchcoat. Click here for the proof.

Sofia Rises Again

She didn’t go anywhere, but she’s back.

Lost in Translation Academy Award-winning writer and director, and all-around über-It Girl Sofia Coppola will team up with Stephen Dorff (who will be seen in this summer’s Public Enemies) and Elle Fanning to go Somewhere.

The film, which will begin production in Los Angeles in the next few months, is the story of Johnny Marco (Dorff), a bad-boy Hollywood actor stumbling through a life of excess at the Chateau Marmont.

With an unexpected visit from his 11-year-old daughter (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’s Fanning), Johnny is forced to take a look at himself, as well as at the questions we all must confront.

“I’ve wanted to film an intimate story set in contemporary L.A.,” said Coppola, “and I’m looking forward to working with Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning.”

I’m looking forward to liking Somewhere as much as I did Marie Antoinette (which, I admit, took me longer than necessary), and Lost in Translation.

Photo: EW.com.

Second Life

Watching the first half of the new Zac Efron vehicle 17 Again I had two thoughts: First, Efron needs to eat a burger. And second, did Burr Steers really direct this?

Note to self: I shouldn’t be jealous of a 21-year-old movie star. He gets paid millions of dollars to look like fat is just a concept to him. But I could’ve lived without Efron’s extended shirtless opening scene, I really could. I found it titillating to say the least, obviously designed for the tweenagers and the twifties out there, and completely out to make me feel bad about the sympathy weight I’ve gained the last few weeks.

But that’s neither here nor there.

More germane to this review was the realization that the director calling the shots of 17 Again was the same man who helmed the fantastic, if little-seen 2001 gem Igby Goes Down.

Steers, who did not write 17 Again, is saddled with a script that’s lacking in charm, fun, and insight. The movie’s cute, but it’s tame, and if you’ve seen Steer’s work then you probably can tell he’s reeling it in a lot of the time. This is a studio movie – starring a former Disney star/money machine! – so I totally think he agreed to do it in exchange of being able to do something with more bite next.

Preferably something starring the invaluable Leslie Mann (more on her in a sec).

17 Again follows the story of Mike O’Donnell (Matthew Perry), a thirthysomething former high school basketball star with quite the future ahead of him he forsook to marry his girlfriend and raise their child.

By doing the right thing, Mike gave up on his dreams. His marriage is a failure, his kids (Michelle Trachtenberg and Sterling Knight) think he’s a joke, and his job is going nowhere fast.

When he gets a chance to correct the mistakes of his past and change his life, though, after he’s miraculously transformed back into a teenager (enter Efron), he realizes that perhaps he didn’t have it as bad as he thought he did. The grass is always greener when you’ve through a time warp, I s’ppose….

And, of course, we see young Mike interact with his nerd-in-high-school-but-now-look-at-me-I’m-super-rich BFF (Thomas Lennon), who has to pose as his dad so he can enroll in his kids’ school, and family (which include the glorious, scene-stealing Mann), and figure out why he’s been given the opportunity to live the life he’s been missing out on because he’s spent the last 20 years “in a bad mood.”

The best part of 17 Again is seeing Mann on screen.

Yes, Efron is a beyond-charismatic fella, but Mann’s a star that’s just beginning to blind us all with her light. At last. Every scene she’s in she elevates, which happily also applies to this otherwise forgettable movie.

Note to the movie studio: Seeing Efron eat a sandwich with a caloric count that could satisfy some poor village somewhere’s weekly allowance is not funny. Neither is seeing his young female peers slutty it up but good to get close to him, or seeing him deliver a sanctimonious monologue on why the school bully (who’s dating his daughter) acts the way he does.

This movie’s clearly not for us tweeneverythingelsers. But you feel free now....

My Rating **1/2

Photo: Warner Bros.