Cats or dogs: What's your pick?
Our cover story this weekend poses a question for the ages: Cats or dogs? It's a question that seems innocuous enough, but anyone who's been in a debate between cat lovers and dog lovers knows there are very strong opinions on both sides. We're almost afraid to ask, but what side of the battle do you fall on? Both Kathy and I are playing the neutral card: We're fine with cats, but would never get one as a pet (though Kathy does admit she can't get enough of LOLCats.)
So, let us know in the comments below -- are you on the side of cool cats or top dogs?
July 03, 2008
The 2008 fall TV season: A sneak peek
We're just a week or two away from some fresh scripted TV. Reader favorites Burn Notice, The Closer, Monk, Psych, Saving Grace and Mad Men all premiere this month, as do newcomers like The Cleaner, coming on A&E, and Flashpoint on CBS. They can't arrive soon enough for me.
However, I've been immersed in the fall season because we're working on a terrific Who's News page for Aug. 31 that will introduce you to many of the new stars and reaquaint you with familiar ones. Writer Gayle Carter, an avid TV viewer — do you know anyone else who has not missed an episode of ER in 13 years? — spent much of the last month talking with with the likes of Angela Bassett (at left, who called and caught Gayle shopping at Marshalls) Simon Baker, Jennie Garth (Jennie and Gayle chatted about their kids, 5 between them), Joshua Jackson and Niecy Nash, both of whom she found delightful. There's so much material we can't fit it all on the page you'll see soon. So we thought we'd tantalize you with a few "extra" quotes and anecdotes. Click on read more below and you'll find Gayle's tales.
Ben Kingsley's newest movie 'The Wackness'
If you're looking for something completely different, as Monty Python used to say, prepare yourself for The Wackness. Our L.A. writer Nancy Mills got an early look at this low-budget film, which won the Audience Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and opens in New York and L.A. today, then the rest of the country next Friday. She tells us about it:
If your memory of Ben Kingsley is in a white robe playing Gandhi, the 1982 film for which he won an Oscar, prepare yourself for a shock. In this dark comedy, he plays a psychiatrist who trades counseling advice for free marijuana from a high school student, who happens to have a crush on Kingsley's stepdaughter, who also buys marijuana from him. Got that? Josh Peck, from Nickelodeon's Drake and Josh, plays the drug dealer, but you may not recognize him because he has lost about 100 pounds. Kingsley and Peck spend a lot of time together in this odd-buddy comedy as they both try to get a grip on big changes in their lives. Watch for Olivia Thirlby as the stepdaughter/love interest. She played Ellen Page’s best friend in Juno and has another memorable part here. And seeing Gandhi with muscles in a sleeveless t-shirt is almost worth the ticket price.
Check out the trailer below, and let us know what you think.
Kathy's Weekend Outlook for the 4th
How will you be spending your 4th of July weekend? Barbecuing? Heading to the beach? Watching your local fireworks display? You might also make room to watch A Capitol Fourth on PBS. I'll have the pleasure of seeing the show live on the Capitol Mall, not far from where I live in Washington, D.C. The show is hosted by Jimmy Smits, who told Lorrie that he when he was growing up in New York he would go to Coney Island for the fireworks. No wonder he described as "joyous" the feeling he gets when seeing D.C.'s grand fireworks display against the backdrop of our national monuments.
Something about the 4th of July always makes me nostalgic for those long, lazy summers when I was a kid. This Time magazine article on drive-in movie theaters totally captures the beauty of spending a warm summer night under the stars, watching a film with your friends.
Last weekend we told you about the New York Times' magazine's article on Mad Men, but this weekend's Mad Men activity is even better: The Season One DVD came out this week, so pick up a copy and start watching! And, get this, AMC is running a contest where you can win a walk-on role! You have to submit a one-minute audition tape (scripts are available on their site), so start memorizing your lines now.
Another DVD I just got my hands on that's worth checking out is My Blueberry Nights. Watching it feels like you're watching a dream -- a way-more-attractive-than-real-life dream -- and although Norah Jones isn't as good at acting as she is at singing, Natalie Portman and Jude Law are easy on the eyes.
If you're looking to get active over your long weekend, consider starting your training for the first-ever The Office Games. Set for July 19, the Games will be held in Scranton, Pa., (where else?) and will include a 2K Fun Run and a beet-eating contest. Writer/actor Mindy Kaling, who I interviewed last year and who writes a hilarious shopping blog, will officiate.
Will this be the weekend Angelina Jolie finally gives birth? I hope so, and not just because I'm tired of reading all the false reports. I mostly feel bad for her because, wow, does she look ready to pop.
Celebrity birthdays: Tom Cruise, Montel Williams
Happy birthday wishes go out to Tom Cruise (at left), who turns 46 today, and Montel Williams, who turns 52. Also celebrating this 3rd of July are Barenaked Ladies' Kevin Hearn, 39, actor Thomas Gibson, 46, and actress Keri Houlihan, 33.
(photo via askmen.com)
July 02, 2008
'The Bachelorette' Deanna Pappas on her final 2
We're nearing the end of this season of The Bachelorette: Deanna Pappas (at right) has narrowed the men down to two, and next week the finale airs and we'll know which guy she's engaged to. Kathy just got off a conference call with Pappas, who dished about how she made her decision, her last interaction with Brad Womack, the former Bachelor who dumped her, and more. Click on read more below for her full report.
'American Teen' - another positive review
Our Kathy Rowings got the chance last night to catch an early screening of the much-buzzed-about documentary American Teen, and she adds her voice to the positive critiques we've been telling you about: "I'm from Indiana (where the movie was filmed), so perhaps I'm biased in that I saw so much of my high school experience in these kids' lives, but I think that anyone who's been in high school will relate. The kids are startlingly open and honest about what's going on in their lives and in their heads, which is a real feat considering how untalkative high schoolers can be. When their hearts get broken you feel the pain right along with them and when they reach their goals you feel a weird sense of pride. I particularly liked Mitch Reinholt (at left, with Hannah Bailey) -- the popular guy who tries to step outside the bounds and social pressures of his clique but ultimately can't -- yet all the kids' stories are moving. If I tell people to see one movie this summer, this will be the one."
(Photo by James Rexroad/Paramount Vantage)
Celebrity birthdays: Richard Petty, Lindsay Lohan
Who'd have thought Richard Petty and Lindsay Lohan (at right) have so much in common? In addition to their love of fast cars (he of NASCAR, she of Herbie Fully Loaded), they share the same birthday. He turns 71 today, she turns 22. Former MLB player (and current player in the baseball steroids scandal) Jose Canseco turns 44 today, and singer Michelle Branch turns 25.
(photo via askmen.com)
July 01, 2008
Aaron Brown debuts on PBS tonight
Former CNN news anchor Aaron Brown (at left) returns to TV tonight on PBS' Wide Angle. I know this is happy news for many of you news junkies out there because in the nearly two years since Brown was pushed out of CNN's nightly line-up to make room for Anderson Cooper readers have not stopped asking about him. The last time we tried to catch up with Brown, he was still being paid and under contract to CNN and couldn't talk to us (or anyone else) about what had happened. "It wasn't anything I was going to lose sleep over," Brown told our writer Gayle Carter, who interviewed him recently for Who's News. "At some point you look at these things as a mathematical formula. They're paying me a lot and I'm not stupid. OK, I can live with this. It was sort of silly for a news organization to do that but they were paying for their thrills. So they thought, let's get something for our thrills, let's annoy him."
Brown, 59, says two stories he missed covering during his "off" time were the primary campaign and the shootings at Virginia Tech in spring of last year. "I remember when (the shootings) happened. I had done a lot of those, especially at ABC, stories that are awful but always preventable. There's a breakdown in the system that can help kids who end up doing this." And the campaign: "Incredibly interesting. But, honestly, like everyone else I was wrong (in predicting the outcome). It would have been fun."
Brown has found a new calling since leaving CNN. He's teaching students at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He doesn't claim to be an academic -- just someone who knows the business. "I'm someone who likes to hold the newspaper but I have a 19-year-old daughter and she likes the news but she doesn't get that particular joy from actually holding it in her hand," he says. He says students tell him they can get the same news online, but he questions that. "Can you? Of course you can? Do you? I don't think so. People who read the news online, they don't get very deep into the paper. I even read things that I'm not interested in, like an opera review, but that's not how people use the Web." Brown says journalism students feel unsettled. "Newspapers, TV, what is that going to mean? New media, they wonder how will they get paid? Amusing since they don't think they have to pay for content. What I believe is that storytelling is unchanged: a beginning, a middle, an end... good characters, good stories... The medium part is going to sort itself out, without my help. I tell them to learn to be a storyteller."
(photo courtesy pbs.org)
Morgan Freeman on being an icon
Too busy to retire, Morgan Freeman, 71, has two big films hitting theaters this summer. In the action adventure Wanted (at right), out now with Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy, he trains assassins. Then in The Dark Knight (a sequel to Batman Begins),
opening July 18, he reprises his role of Lucius Fox, the head of Wayne
Enterprises, alongside that other very busy character actor Michael Caine. Our writer Nancy Mills talked to him about being considered an icon, his wide variety of roles and more. Click on read more, below, for her full report.
