Wednesday, February 12, 2014

MEET ME IN MONTAUK:  Vulture attempts to rank the twenty-five best romcoms in the twenty-five years since When Harry Met Sally.  Most shocking omissions? The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Never Been Kissed, and that British film where all the dudes hit on women who work for them.
OH! WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNING:  Given that NPH will be appearing on Broadway this season in Hedwig, I suppose Hugh Jackman is an acceptable replacement to host this year's Tony Awards.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

SOMETHING CHANGED THAT DAY INSIDE LOTSO. SOMETHING SNAPPED:  A New Jersey manufacturer is claiming that Disney/Pixar stole from it the concept of a bear who dispenses "lots of hugs," though it's unclear whether theirs is an evil bear who smells of strawberries.
AS LONG AS OUR COUNTRY HAS SHIRLEY TEMPLE, WE WILL BE ALL RIGHT:  FDR said that during the Depression, and assuredly he was right. She was an icon, the first child star of the celluloid era, an honorary Oscar winner at the age of six, and an immortal before she reached puberty. As Jack Lemmon said during her Kennedy Center Honors tribute, she was "a child who will ever define the magic of the movie screen."

Watching her with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Bert Lahr in this 1938 number may give some sense of the talent and charisma she had, but even if you had never seen her work you still knew her by reputation—over thirty years after her peak, Cindy Brady still had dreams of being "the next Shirley Temple," and long after we are all gone there will remain a child's cocktail named in her honor. Her adult career as a diplomat, and as one of the first women to speak publicly about surviving breast cancer, only furthered the high regard in which so many held her. She passed away yesterday at the age of 85.

Monday, February 10, 2014

FERECITO:  The bandleader for Late Night with Seth Meyers will be Fred Armisen; "Fred will curate and lead the band, and continue to run it even when he's off shooting Portlandia."
ALSO, THERE SHOULD BE A SKI-JUMPING-FOR-ACCURACY EVENT:  Having seen its inaugural run, I'll say it again: can we all agree that if there is to be a "team figure skating" Olympic event, it should look like this?
WE DON'T ALL LOOK ALIKE!  Samuel L. Jackson does not like being confused with Laurence Fishburne.