Tag Archives: celebrities

Live-blogging the Golden Globes?! Stay tuned, gentleladies and gentlemen.

  January 12, 2015 - 12:36 am |
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Giuliana Rancic can’t stop fan-girling over the prospect of Amal Alamuddin on tonight’s red carpet. Are you kidding me? This woman (human rights lawyer, bee-tee-dubs) has more going for her than a thumbs-up from your network or a stint as arm candy during a superficial industry’s masturbatory main event. Then again, maybe not. She did marry George Clooney. (Yes I realize that’s the POINT of a red carpet pre-show. I get it. I just can’t justify Giuliana’s celebrity. I can’t.) … in case it wasn’t obvious, I just remembered the Golden Globes were tonight. But! I remembered in time to catch. . . keep going →

This Simpsons producer is dying, so he’s using the rest of his life (and money) to save animals. What are you doing?

  November 12, 2014 - 11:13 am |
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Did you know that Taxi and The Simpsons owe much of their success to a hardcore animal welfare advocate and philanthropist? Until I read this article from yesterday’s Washington Post, I didn’t. But now I think this man’s story is pretty remarkable, and his generosity got me thinking about the way we value and ration our time and money. Six months to live and millions to give Sam Simon, co-creator of the longest-running TV comedy of all time, is currently making headlines for the way he responded to a terminal cancer diagnosis. He has colon cancer, but he also has. . . keep going →

“Angry Black Woman”? Try Angry White Man

  September 22, 2014 - 1:24 pm |
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I managed to catch Melissa Harris-Perry on her eponymous MSNBC show yesterday, while waiting for two friends to stop by for a day of downtown Tampa sightseeing. To introduce her brilliantly titled “Now in Color” segment (which pitter-pattered my 90′s kid heart with a panel that included Theo Cosby and Harriette Winslow), she covered a recent New York Times piece that I won’t acknowledge with a hyperlink. In it, Alessandra Stanley analyzes the upcoming Shonda Rhimes production How to Get Away with Murder, starring one of my favorite (and one of the most under-used and underestimated) actresses of our time,. . . keep going →

Blame depression, not Robin Williams: Why suicide isn’t selfish

  August 12, 2014 - 7:33 pm |
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The sudden absence of Robin Williams from this planet has shaken several generations in a surprisingly severe way. No one’s holding back this time, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it; we’re all suffering, and we’re all reliving the childhood memories that wouldn’t exist at all if it weren’t for him. With some exceptions: those who think he deserves no sympathy because he chose the “selfish” and easy way out. Robin was never that insensitive about suicide. In fact, the movie that caused him the most pain during filming, What Dreams May Come, shed a beautiful light. . . keep going →

Has society progressed AT ALL since literature’s “Ten Best Sentences” were written?

  March 27, 2014 - 5:17 pm |
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You’ve probably already read The American Scholar‘s list of the “Ten Best Sentences“.  It went instantly viral in a way that only lists can these days, following me in the form of NPR spots, e-mails, workplace small talk, and newsfeeds.  (And sadly, you know “viral” isn’t an exaggeration when a literary magazine gets more traffic than its servers can handle.) Of course, there’s almost no real merit in such a subjective ranking.  Even the biggest awards don’t actually determine which book or film is “better”than the rest.  That’s what makes art so enduring: how intimate it feels, how much its power relies. . . keep going →

Is Angelina Jolie trying to represent refugees through the plot of Maleficent?

  January 19, 2014 - 4:23 pm | ,
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That clever vixen. I have a sneaking suspicion that Angelina Jolie slipped something serious into her delicious new role as the most unapologetically evil Disney villain of all time.  I’d be excited even if she didn’t, of course. I haven’t seen her on a big screen in almost four years.  Even when she was working regularly, her face was a rare theatrical treat, so I’m already looking forward to this summer.  See for yourself: Now, not just any old movie can get me into a theater seat — the last actual movies (vs. one-off Rifftrax or Doctor Who specials) I saw in. . . keep going →

Tabloid, guillotine, whatever, whatever…

  July 10, 2013 - 6:00 pm |
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Amanda Bynes

The hive mind is at it again, delighting in the downfall of one more member of the young, rich, famous elite.   I’m guilty too; for my moth of a sleep-deprived or overworked mind, celebrity gossip is a delicious flame, just attractive and distracting enough to replace my own flaws and burdens with a superficial narrative, played out by fake faces and their string-pulling publicists. Sometimes it’s not so fake, though.  Sometimes someone is so uncomfortably raw that it can’t be an act, but the public forgets not to treat it as such.  No one trapped behind the gloss of. . . keep going →