Friday, June 6, 2008

Teaser Poster for Oliver Stone’s W.

The first teaser poster for W., Oliver Stone’s upcoming bio-pic on George W. Bush, is now online. It gathers all of the President’s famous quotes, and seems to suggest that Stone is definitely going for a more comedic approach. The film is currently shooting and is scheduled to come out this October.

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Who Killed Marilyn Monroe? Bobby Kennedy, Says New Book

Marilyn Monroe was tricked into killing herself by Bobby Kennedy.

So says Dr Jack Hattem, who, backed up by secret FBI files, says the Hollywood bombshell was somehow fooled into believing she would be revived in time as part of a plot involving Senator Robert Kennedy, the brother of JFK, who was gunned down 40 years ago this week.

Instead, Monroe, who staged many fake suicide attempts throughout her life to gain sympathy, was left to die by staff and friends. It’s all in Hattem’s new book Marilyn Monroe: Murder By Consent.

Certainly, Marilyn Monroe may have been dead for 46 years, but that doesn’t mean that people have stopped speculating about the circumstances of her death. We spoke to Dr Hattem and listened to some of his more compelling claims, including where Kennedy was on the night of Marilyn Monroe’s death and why the recently unearthed Marilyn Monroe sex tape might not be the only one knocking about.

This is turning out to be quite a big year for Marilyn Monroe. Not only has Lindsay Lohan aped her by getting naked and covering herself with a net curtain, but a Marilyn Monroe sex tape has also apparently been uncovered in recent months. So with sex dealt with, what about death?

While it was ruled to be suicide, theorists have long had their doubts about the way that Marilyn Monroe died - and thanks to a set of FBI records released 20 years ago that have been inexplicably ignored until recently, those doubts seem to have some substance.

According to Dr Jack Hattem’s book Marilyn Monroe: Murder By Consent, Monroe died because Robert Kennedy, along with Monroe’s close ‘friend’ and Hollywood actor Peter Lawford, convinced her to make another fake suicide attempt.

Caught between his family, who wanted to play down its relationship with Marilyn Monroe and the fact Monroe was threatening to shop a red diary containing ‘pillow talk’ between the pair and confidential secrets about the Cuban Missile Crisis if he ever left her, Robert Kennedy and Rat Pack member Lawford hatched a plan to visit Monroe on the day of her death. Hattem said:

“It is my guess that they had discussed with her, in no uncertain terms, that they needed for her to fake a suicide attempt. They guarantee she would be woken up, and that the fake suicide attempt would gain her so much sympathy from 20th Century Fox - who had fired her - that she would get her job back. But they threatened her somehow. She could be talked into things, because she wanted desperately to be cared about.”

At the time, Kennedy denied the visit, claiming he was in San Francisco. Which he might have got away with, except for the fact the FBI just happened to be busy tracking both Robert Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe at the same time. Hattem explained:

“The CIA had long considered Marilyn Monroe a threat to national security from the time she had married Arthur Miller, because they thought of him as a leftist. Then the FBI started listening in on her phone calls and tracking her - even to Mexico, where Bobby Kennedy had a fling with her. A private detective took an audio tape of Bobby Kennedy and Marilyn in an ‘affair’. The FBI was tracking Kennedy, their boss, all over the place and listening in on his conversations, possibly because Hoover wanted something on Kennedy - and he certainly got it, because as she was dying, they were listening in.”

Adding to the muddle is Marilyn Monroe’s housekeeper Eunice Murray, who found her face down on her bed, and her psychiatrist Ralph Greenson.

Apparently, Monroe fired Murray on the day of her death - which Hattem suggests is why she didn’t rush to try and revive Monroe; and was sleeping with Greenson - who allegedly gave Monroe an extra-large dose of barbiturates on top of what she already had been given.

What’s most interesting, though, is Dr Hattem’s story of the conversation between Bobby Kennedy and Peter Lawford at around 4am the following morning:

“In the FBI files, the FBI is recording Kennedy saying to Peter Lawford ‘Is she dead yet?’”

Throw in the fact that all of Marilyn Monroe’s phone message disappeared, to later be discovered in the chief of police’s private files, and that her red diary could not be found - Hattem’s guess is that Kennedy had a large hand in it. He said:

“I’m certain Robert Kennedy stole it when he came by her house after she was dead.”

But if Robert Kennedy’s involvement in Marilyn Monroe’s death is rooted in fact so firmly that there’s even an FBI file on it, why hasn’t more been made of it?

“I think the reason is that everybody already believes the Kennedys killed her.”

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Colbert's Lost O'Reilly Tapes

People these days cannot get enough of unearthed footage of Bill O'Reilly being a sock-sniffing douchebag. I know it, you know it, and you better believe Stephen Colbert knows the shit out of it. And being that he lives to serve mankind (It's a cookbook!), on last night's show, Stephen aired a snippet of never-before-seen footage from his 2007 interview with O'Reilly. As Stephen says, out of context, the clip makes Papa Bear O'Reilly "[seem] like a real tool."




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Weezer Music Video


10 Web Stars From Weezer's Music Video And Their Legacy


Thanks to sites like YouTube, any average Joe Sixpack with a funny idea can shoot a video, post it, and have college campuses around the country talking about it. It's a relatively new phenomenon (about 3 years old), but in that short time, a special handful of "web stars" have already established themselves as legends that aspiring newbies look up to. In this article, we'll spotlight ten such web stars and the videos that made them household names. These people were also recently incorporated into Weezer's latest music video. (Note: Featured here are our favorites from the mashup, if you have others you like more, feel free to contribute them.)



1) Gary Brolsma

You might know Gary as the dancer/lipsyncher extraordinaire behind the smash YouTube hit "Numa Numa." In addition to being voted number 1 on VH1's "40 Greatest Internet Superstars", the video spawned a contest in which people could submit their own Numa Numa spoof videos for a chance at winning a $25,000 grand prize. When it comes to do-it-yourself Internet video hits, one could say that Numa Numa and it's 9 million plus views have paved the way for everyone!



2) Chris Crocker

While most of us got a good chuckle out of Britney Spears' follies, Chris Crocker made himself famous by having a different view! Armed with nothing but a small video camera and some makeup, Crocker poses as an angry teenage girl begging the world to "leave Britney alone!" After all "her husband turned out to be a liar, a cheater, and now she's going through a custody battle!" Whether the 5 million plus views Crocker's video got indicates public sympathy for Britney or just more laughs, we'll let you decide!



3) Judson Laipply

If you don't know Judson Laipply's name, you may have been in a coma for the last couple years. Laipply's hillarious "Evolution of Dance" video sees the comedian and motivational speaker seamlessly shifting between over 2 dozen songs and dances in a 6 minute span. Categorized as "inspirational comedy" by Laipply, who dances to such well-known hits as "YMCA", "Shook me all night long", and "Walk Like an Egyptian", the video has recieved over 85 million views and counting on YouTube. Wikipedia claims that this makes "Evolution of Dance" the most popular video on the website. Accordingly, the YouTube description reads "the funniest 6 minutes you will ever see."



4) Afroninja

Clocking in at a very respectable 2,950,678 views, "Afroninja" features a black man with a huge afro trying (and failing) to pull off a ninja-style backflip. After landing flat on his face, Afroninja gets up. flails around widly with his nunchucks and eventually sails offstage into some scaffolding. Afroninja is proof positive that there will always be a place for silly, slapstick humor, even on YouTube!



5) Tay Zonday

One of my personal favorites, Tay went from no one to someone in a matter of weeks. His video (below) has received over 23 million views and earned him guest appearances on the Opie and Antony Show, G4's Attach of the Show, VH1's Best Week Ever, Jimmy Kimmel, and many others. The video also won him an award from YouTube. The video is simple enough, showing Zonday in a studio wearing plainclothing and recording his song. Words, however, cannot capture the magic of this video.



6) Blendtech - Will it Blend?

The beauty of the Blendtech videos is that they aren't really user-generated in the spirit of the phrase but these short, to the point, and fun to watch infomercials are so addictive that it's easy to forgive the fact that they are a manufactured viral marketing campaign. Once you start watching one episode, it's hard to click away before you've seen Tom Dickson (founder of Blendtech) blend everything from expensive gadgets to household items you would never think of putting in a blender. Check out the Blendtech blender demolish the iPhone below.



7) Caitlin Upton

You are probably reading this and wondering who that is. You've probably never heard that name before but you most likely know her as the ill-fated Miss South Carolina from the Miss Teen USA 2007 pageant. Best known for her intellectual prowess, not only is she beautiful but she has a brain that would put Einstein to shame. Watch her as she masterfully tackles a simple question.



8) All Your Base... Are Belong To Us

Some things are so bad that you have to watch them over and over again. It's like a train wreck but no one died, and it's fun to watch. AYB is one such video. What started out as a cult hit has over the years garnered more mainstream attention especially among hardcore and enthusiast gamers. Don't be left out of the loop, and make sure you haven't been set up the bomb, by watching the video below.



9) Peanut Butter Jelly Time

This video is so bloody annoying that it is hard to believe 6,661,115 people actually watched the video. I have yet to watch the video from start to finish but perhaps you're more man than me.



10) Matt McAllister

You know how they say actions speak louder than words? Well for McAllister they certainly do (and that's why this video has no voiceover, just him, doing what he does... best?) Matt McAllister is most well known as the Guinness World Record holder for the most t-shirts worn at one time by a single human being (a record he broke by wearing 155 shirts at one time).



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For Our Eyes Only: A Look At Fleming...Ian Fleming

El Mayimbe here...

I get criticized a lot for liking everything I read. That is not true. I only write about the stuff I like. Most of the stuff I read dissapoints on some level. I get to share with all you fans the gems. My MO has always been to stay positive and it isn't fair for a script if it gets dissed online because that script is always a rewrite or even a polish away from being great - hence the development process. Trust me folks, I put more than half of the scripts down before the midpoint. If you don't get me by the end of Act 1 then I move on. I'll give you a 2nd chance by the midpoint if it has potential. But like I said in the Grayskull script review, it has been a good year so far for scripts.

A couple of weeks ago, Jay Fernandez wrote in his last scriptland column for the Los Angeles Times about the developments behind Fleming which DiCaprio is producing. The article mentions that DiCaprio is looking to move forward with another writer. Based on what my reader CAXE said below, I can see why. I have a lot of fans in Britain who requested this script review since Ian Fleming just had his 100th birthday yesterday and a new Bond book called DEVIL MAY CARE just recently came out.

So let's see what my guy said below. Hopefully DiCaprio finds the writer who can nail this because the Fleming story has a lot of potential.

Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, was a pretty interesting guy. He was a British officer during WW II who created a covert unit of highly trained spies to infiltrate enemy territory and conduct reconnaissance missions – and afterwards, he wrote a ton of books, most of them about the soon-to-be-famous Bond.

Now it seems this guy’s crazy adventures would have been the perfect fodder for a film. Well, they have served as fodder – for numerous biographies and not just one film, but two. Granted these were smaller productions; however, it’s been done. But when has this ever stopped Hollywood?

For attempt number three at conveying Ian Fleming’s life, we have first-time-writer Damian Stevenson’s Fleming, snatched up by Leo DiCaprio’s production co as a possible starring vehicle for him and set up over at Warner Brothers for a possible 2010 – 2011 release.

Now this sounds like it could be a pretty nifty idea. Leo playing the dashing Commander Fleming as he concocts plans to foil the Nazis and traipses off to Jamaica to write about James Bond.
London. 1944. COMMANDER IAN FLEMING, 36, makes love to the beautiful ANN. They are interrupted by the sound of typing – a ticker-tape machine spits out orders to report in.

Ann asks Ian if she’ll see him that evening but Ian says he never makes plans that far ahead. She mentions that TEDDY proposed again and she may take him up on his offer if Ian doesn’t settle down with her.

He leaves and heads into HQ to report but is tailed by some spies. A car chase ensues. Suddenly, we freeze and go to…

Jamaica. 1952. Fleming and Ann are together, dancing and enjoying one another before their wedding. Fleming chats with his author friends, relating how he’d like to create a famous spy. They all tell him it will come with time.

An old friend, ADMIRAL GODFREY appears and tells Fleming that his old Nazi enemy KRUPP has surfaced in South America. Fleming examines the photos of Krupp at a casino – a RED-HAIRED WOMAN is with him, her features obscured with glasses and a shawl. Fleming knows it’s “her” but Godfrey tells him not to jump to conclusions.

Godfrey says he wants Fleming to go with a team but just to identify Krupp, not to take part in any action. Fleming agrees despite Ann’s protests and leaves with the assurance he’ll be back right before the wedding.

As Fleming sits on the plane to Belize, we are taken back to…

…the car chase. Fleming evades them and reports in where Godfrey asks if he knows about Operation Valkyrie, the secret plan by a group Nazi higher-ups to assassinate Hitler and take over leadership of the Nazi party. Valkyrie is led by a man named Krupp who will take over as the leader. It is explained that Krupp and his men would be worse for the world since they want to end the war by making peace with the Soviets, allowing them to maintain total control over their empire and not be held accountable for their evil deeds.

So Fleming is assigned with the mission to foil Krupp and his plan – to essentially protect Hitler, in this case, the lesser of two evils.

Fleming balks at the idea at first but eventually agrees after he is introduced to his partner, the beautiful red-haired MAJOR LANA MIROSLOVA, a Russian spy who has managed to infiltrate the Third Reich. Together, Fleming and Lana must take out all the Operation Valkyrie members before they can kill Hitler.

As one might expect, Fleming and Lana run into complications, but not before getting involved romantically, all while Krupp begins to formulate plans of his own…

As I pored over Fleming, I thought, “Wow, this reads like a James Bond flick,” all while thinking that the guy had a pretty impressive life and that I now understood where he got his inspiration for the character.

I was on the fence about Fleming at first – great story, but a lot of script issues. Beyond Fleming, the characters are all fairly flat clichés we’ve seen in Bond films before – but hey, this is a true story, so I let that one go. Fleming also spouted off a number of one-liners that got on my nerves, but I let that one go as well.

Another big issue was the pacing and the overall structure of the story. While we have wartime antics peppered with the flash to the future for the first portion of the story, we delve into a rather oddly placed lull about what happens after the war between the Operation Valkyrie mission and life in Jamaica with Ann that should have been trimmed or placed in other areas across the story instead of simply interrupting the action for a good twenty pages. Finally, the final mission to Belize is anti-climactic, clichéd, and a fairly big let-down.

I was, however, willing to forgive these faults all because it conveyed such an intriguing story. It wasn’t until I did some background research that I realized that most of what I had read was total fiction. This WASN’T REAL – it was all made up, with only a few of the most basic facts ringing true: the dates are roughly accurate, Fleming did marry a woman named Ann, he did create James Bond, and he was a Commander during WW II – but that’s where the truth ends.

So all the crap I was willing to forgive because it was true was simply a made up story, the writer’s attempt at crafting a James Bond film without actually calling it James Bond. And it isn’t even a good James Bond script at that. It’s reminiscent of the direction Bond was going after Die Another Die – explosions out the ass, bad guys who are bad just for the sake of being bad, cheesy and unfunny one-liners, and two guys who give the hero unbelievable mechanical toys. (Yes, that’s right: there are blow torch lighters and dart-shooting watches in this.)

I get the idea – Fleming may have wanted to have the exciting, womanizing fantasy-like life of James Bond – but he didn’t, and trying to say that he did is a crock. Imaginary biographies are obnoxious and unnecessary unless they are well done and actually convey something deep or interesting about events or people – something Fleming does not accomplish.

It isn’t all bad – there are some amusing action sequences, including a nice bit at Krupp’s mother’s birthday party and an amusing moment at, of all places, a funeral. But even with the idea that this is “based” on a true story, it’s flat-out unnecessary. The man had an interesting life – do a straight biography, or borrow from one of the earlier films and convey his real life along with a fantasy life. Do anything but this.

As far as this script, simply imagine a mediocre Bond film set during WWII and you’ll get Fleming.

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Indiana Jones' Crash Course in Wooing Women

Harrison Ford has played an endless string of studly characters over the years, but none more dashing than Indiana Jones. What exactly is it about Indy that drives women wild?

Is it the bull whip? the hat? the ability to dodge rolling boulders?

More importantly, what can we learn from his success to increase our own luck with the ladies?

Is it the Fedora? Maybe. Not many men can pull off a hat and women love a man who can do so with style. Wearing a baseball cap backwards doesn’t count—that’s ended a few dinner plans for me in the past.

Is it the adventure-loving part of his personality? Well, maybe not adventure loving, but he has a habit of attracting trouble; a gravitational pull not unlike the bad boy’s — and we all know about women and their love of bad boys.

Therein lies Indy’s #1 lure: Will you be the woman who can keep him teetering back and forth solely between books and sex, ending the crypt-robbing and the mummifying, taking him from a tomb to your womb. Damn, I could go on and on!

A recent Gallup poll showed that the extraordinarily popular “Dangerous Book for Boys” was one of the top choices purchases by women for the man in their life last year, whether he’s 13 or 30. One woman states, “Every female loves a man who can do some of the stuff in this book. All of it? You can have any woman you want!”

I own a copy and can do nothing listed in the book. Plus, it has three rings on the cover from where Red Bull cans sat atop it. “Dangerous Book for Boys” details how to do such things as building a fire and making smoke signals, filing stones to fashion your own arrows, etc. It’s basically Boy Scouts 2.0.

It’s no surprise women want to feel safe with a guy- if their car breaks down he’ll be able to identify edible blackberries rather than rely on his Blackberry to get them out of a jam. Roughing it is not vacationing somewhere without a Starbucks. Well, really it is, but you get my point.

Here’s why women “dig” Indy:

1) He’s passionate. Sure, it’s about humdrum hieroglyphics but it’s something, and it ain’t video games.

2) He’s intelligent. Even the hardest-partying, easygoing woman prefers a guy who can, say...okay, maybe not read a map, but at least a fortune cookie.

3) He has fears and isn’t afraid to cop to them. Indy has a thing about snakes—they terrify him and are the only things that do. Cop to a fear in front of a woman and let the swooning begin. Just don’t let it be clowns—that’s played out.

Even the most teenage boy-driven fictional hero, someone created solely with a male demographic in mind, can still teach you a thing or two about the opposite sex. In fact, the only thing that could make Indiana Jones sexier to women is if Johnny Depp played him.


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