As we welcome the nascent new year, laid out before us is an assemblage of days with a depth of potential that few before it have shared; In just over two weeks this country will welcome the first black President in its brief but colorful history. The change he has promised, and seems determined to bring should see this land returned once more to the level of justice, dignity and worldwide acclaim it so richly deserves after the malfeasant gang rape of the last eight years.

One symptom of the current malaise is our imploding economy. Every major sector of business has been scarred by decline and thousands of decent, hard-working people are now fighting the financial hardships of working less hours, while an uncountable legion of innocent workers have watched both their jobs and their homes disappear overnight.

Illness can touch even the strongest of bodies, and the collective body of the American people has sadly proved no exception. But the fault is not yours, it belongs to your leaders. The billions wasted pursuing war-mongering delusions in the Arabian world could have protected this country from the current decline; But apparently, murdering innocent people in a sovereign nation took obsessive priority over protecting and serving those of your own. And the risks of redress against those who committed this barbaric crusade seem as high as the level of truth  in the redacted reports that were used as its motive: None. And that in itself is a crime.

This is a great and glorious land; Of that fact there can be no debate or dissension. The last few years have inflicted some scars and ruined some lives, but ultimately the body will rise, recover and triumph. Beneath its bloodied surface lies a country whose boundless capacity for opportunity, innovation, growth and success has secured the abiding and rightful admiration of every sentient nation on Earth; And stretched before us is a fresh new year in which those of you so blessed as to call this wondrous land your natural home can reaffirm this truth to the world.

The year is new; Its pages so far unwritten. Resolve to play your rightful part in their active creation and the resultant work could astonish the world. I await the outcome with assured expectation, and leave the last word to Longfellow…

“Sail on, Oh Ship of State!
Sail on, Oh Union strong and great.
Humanity with all its fears;
With all the hope of future years;
Is hanging, breathless, on thy fate.”

“The Building of the Ship,” by Longfellow.

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Well, the year is almost over [Hands up if you can believe it yet?] and that means time to prepare ourselves for that glorious annual schmooze-fest known as ‘The Academy Awards.’ This year’s marathon is scheduled for February 22nd and voting ballots went out to the 5,800+ members last Friday, with the official announcement of the nominations due on January 22nd.

Despite the financial gloom it’s been a strong year for movies, with some serious contenders emerging even at this late hour. So, as the Academy seems to have [accidentally] overlooked us again, let’s have a vote of our own…

This year’s top-five contenders for ‘Best Picture’ are:

• Slumdog Millionaire
• Frost / Nixon
• The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
• Batman - The Dark Knight
• Milk

Which gets your vote, and why? The official nominations will be greatly anticipated - and usually wrong -  but tell us your choice and why it should win, and let’s see how close we get. Last year’s awards scored the worst ratings in 34-years, so we couldn’t really do much worse.

Photo by Pedro

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BeAnElf.org shows you how to obtain letters to Santa, written by children who need and deserve a better, brighter Christmas. At participating Post Offices in NYC and Chicago you can read the letters, then choose which ones you’d like to help and send the gift. There’s no middle man or wasted expense - it’s direct philanthropy, from you to a child.

This is a chance for you and your family to enjoy the real spirit of Christmas, and if just the idea of making a child you don’t even know ecstatically happy and improving their life doesn’t make you feel better, you might want to check for a pulse. Watch this video, then visit the site…

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So if I’m reading this correctly, an entirely unelected and increasingly extraneous group of attention-addicted political pundits are demanding immediate action and complete supplication from an industry by whom they are owed no compliance at all, requiring what they clearly regard as their indentured subjects to begin loading their shows with Actors of color, regardless of talent or fitness for the roles they might then acquire.

Were this baseless obligation to be met with anything other than tactful indifference the entire TV industry would then be compelled to choose a show’s cast by ‘the color of their skin, not the content of their character’…Which is exactly the same kind of bigoted, ethnicity-based favoritism the NAACP would be falling over each other to decry and denounce - in front of as many news cameras as they could possibly find - were its literal opposite to be enacted instead.

Is it me, or do you find it strange how hypocrites only complain when the act they despise is done to them, not by them?

Photo by Cliff1066

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The press release for the whole celebration makes it painstakingly clear that she will not sign autographs, do any photos with fans, attend an integral Cabaret or even lend her presence to the in-house promotion of her next, forgettable film.

So for exactly what, might I ask, is this forthcoming has-been receiving her fee?

Some Hollywood legends had reputations for ego-indulgence like this, but Ms. Lawless is not even close to their league: An utter unknown with no prior awards or perceptible credits receives worldwide exposure, the worship of millions and a great deal of money for one simple part, then rewards the legions of fans whose love of her work was the singular cause of such blessed good-fortune with a personal appearance that’s as meaningless, shallow and imbued with disdain as is humanly possible for her to achieve.

Other than developing an excessive interest in children or collecting the fiscal rewards of success and snorting it all up your nose there are very few traits that can turn a nascent career and boundless potential into a fading and irretrievable memory with greater success and more dazzling alacrity than treating your audience like this. With tickets at over $300, the effort required by them to earn the cash to attend is a great deal more than hers to receive it. Yet this is to be their reward.

I have Actors on file who could challenge Ms. Lawless to a thespian’s duel and eclipse her best work without breaking a sweat; Yet they are unknown, while she is a ’star.’ Given such heartless, uncaring behavior, the logic behind this just gets more opaque.

If any of you have plans to attend, I hope you’ll now reconsider. The best reward for such an arrogant insult is for the audience to focus elsewhere. Nothing shrivels an ego with more painful effect than for its indulgent owner to face a room full of crickets.

And in this case, that’s long overdue.

Photo by Mudeth

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All remakes are an onanistic exercise in creative and intellectual bankruptcy, but already pretentiously referred to by Fox as ‘a reimagining’ of the 1951 original, this risible re-tread is a shameless, avarice-fueled evisceration of both the overall plot and the unquestioned esteem in which the original [well done] version is rightly and universally held.

And the critics have been remarkably kind: So far, they only hate one part of the movie – The segment between the opening titles and the closing credits.

While you have to admire the courage and stamina that enables them to endure some of the turgid creations they’re contractually obliged to review [like this one!], as a rule I dislike critics. If they  know with such omniscient clarity how to make a good movie, how come they’re not all Directors??

While it cannot be questioned that this unwelcome, discordant, CG-infested fiasco is a train-wreck, looking for somewhere to happen, my biggest regret is that the tiny percentage of meaningful plot that Fox didn’t defile doesn’t employ modern technology, If it did, the cranial anorexics who green-lit this disaster could be packed in that spaceship and blasted to Mars, and we could finally look forward to an era of films that are not greed-driven insults like this one.

Photo by Ryaninc

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In the rarefied air around Burbank, Johnny Carson is considered a legend. And not only is Jay Leno his worthy successor, he’s also [as his ratings so often prove] the most successful and popular host of his kind. In his hands the Tonight Show earns NBC $250m a year; Which you’d think would be enough, even for Jeff Zucker. Not so.

In 2002, NBC gleefully sabotaged this golden goose, basically firing Jay so they could use his show as bait to make Conan O’Brien – who earns them $100m less - stay with the team.

Today, with his cold-blooded eviction now getting closer, NBC decided to keep Jay on board [Basically so the other networks can't beat them over the head with the results of their witless stupidity.] The new plan is to ditch the 10pm dramas and build Jay a new home there instead. Why? Well, this is NBC remember, so the answer is ‘Money’. A one-hour drama costs around $5m, and Jay would earn +/- $45m a year, for which they get five hours a week.

So this is not being done from respect for his talent, or even to correct their mistake – They did this because he’s the cheap option.

Jeff Zucker has often said that NBC doesn’t care about ratings, just the bottom line. Under such glaringly myopic guidance NBC recently achieved the lowest ratings in the history of American TV. And the echoing void of creative enrichment so often displayed by him and his peers is the clear, unequivocal and sole reason why.

Jay Leno is not the one NBC has need to remove. Escort Mr. Zucker and his pals to the curb and you’d save millions in profits and audience IQ’s. But despite increasing evidence that’s a viable plan, I expect to see ‘Ice Dancing from Hell’ in the Winter Olympics before the NBC suits find the guts to enact this overdue change.

Photo by Respres.

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In welcome [and long overdue!] news from the, ‘Yes, Scarlett, there is a God!’ department, we read that one of the most shameful insults ever visited upon the collected intellect of an innocent and unmedicated audience, has finally been put out of our misery – Knight Rider has been canceled.

Undeservedly resurrected by NBC’s new, and seemingly unassailable wunderkind, Ben Silverman, and a thinly-veiled butt-schmoozing for one of Michigan’s bankrupt bastions, this repugnant parade of nonsensical plots and prosaic performance has lingered in Nielsen’s ICU for weeks. Today, the NBC suits finally pooled their anemic IQ’s and did the same to the show as it did to all six of its audience – They put it to sleep.

No longer wasting time or capital on producing this motorised turkey should certainly help NBC save the $500m it apparently needs to survive a drop in ad revenue, but listening to your audience and not cramming your schedules with the personal fetishes of your new corporate darling might have had better results; The surest way to overcome losses is not to indulge in the stupidity that makes them a risk in the first place!

This is proof, yet again, that NBC does not read the script. The entire fiasco was incurred at the behest of Mr. Silverman. He green-lit the show and okayed its costs. And it failed…Miserably. And NBC’s solution – right before Christmas – is to let 500 other, hard-working people pay for this flop with their jobs.

If such witless indifference doesn’t make you feel sick, you should ask NBC for a management post.

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According to USA Today, Fox Sports [who else??] are currently in discussions with some of the larger theater chains to screen live coverage of College Football in 3-D. Their Chairman, David Hill, says he’d also like to offer coverage of NASCAR races in the same format, which he regards as television’s next logical evolution after Hi-Def.

Hi-Def is a revolution, of that there’s no doubt; The definition and clarity are immeasurably better, and 3D may indeed be a complimentary aspect in the case of a very few shows. But format is not the big problem, content is the problem; American television does not need to go Hi-Def, American television needs to go low crap. The balls they need are not oval, but crystal. Most current TV would demean the IQ of a comatose gerbil and people simply don’t want to watch. And last time I checked, that’s not the idea.

Until those in charge of TV acknowledge this truth and derive the same onanistic fulfillment from upgrading the content as they currently do from just tweaking the view, the ratings will fall, their profits will fall, and somehow we’ll get the blame.

And that’s not what we deserve.

Photo of UCLA v Cali by PicDrop

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The remake of ‘Fame’ I mentioned a while ago is still in development, and things seem to be going quite well; Despite a remarkably modest budget of just $25m, the cast list is almost impressive:Megan Mullally, Kelsey Grammer and Bebe Neuwirth will all appear, and Debbie Allen is [so far] due to be the sole participant from the 1980 original, playing the Principal of the School where the movie takes place. Shooting starts on Wednesday, with a scheduled release date of September 25th.

Skipping over the fact that watching a musical is an act in which I will only indulge if I’m currently devoid of the energy and verve to gnaw off one of my own limbs, and ignoring the inconvenient truth that creating a remake that was not demanded by either the paucity of the original nor the will of its fans is conclusive confirmation of intellectual anorexia, would somebody please explain to me how Kelsey Grammer keeps getting a job??

The press release for this movie states that he ‘attended Juilliard.’…which is true. What it demurely omits to mention is that he was, [as Mr. Grammer rather coquettishly puts it,] ‘uninvited’ from that fine institution for not being up to their grade. Yet he was a fixture at ‘Cheers’, subsequently inflicting the same superficial performance in ‘Frasier,’ garnering staggering salaries despite the clear and unequivocal absence of a single, visible vestige of talent.

I have Actors on file who could erase all recollection of his existence or work from the public’s perception, even from the depths of a coma. Yet they are invisible, while he is a star.

If you can explain the logic in this, I’d be intrigued to hear such a flawed rationale.

Photo by Faery Boots

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