If [it] was up to me I would classify Southland Tales as Torture Porn, for how painful this 140mn film was to me – fortunately I was able to sleep through parts of that mess, courtesy of the Absolut bar on the rooftop.ø Hollywood Joe has a post about bold-face names spotted on the WGA picket lines.
The writers strike already has some big-name support with Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, America Ferrera, Marg Helgenberg and Tina Fey (also a writer on "30 Rock") joining writers on the picket lines Monday in a show of solidarity. Jay Leno brought Krispy Kreme donuts to the writers outside NBC while William Baldwin served coffee outside Paramount studios.ø Patrick Goldstein bemoans the art-house slump in today's LA Times. Of course, this being LA, he's not talking about the artistic qualities of recent releases, but (you guessed it) the box office numbers. He claims there are just too many good shows on TV now anyway, so why not skip the cinema and stay in to catch, say, Pushing Daisies or The Closer. And whatever you do, don't watch anything icky like the news or PBS.
These new series not only have the kind of alternative vibe you get from indie movies, but they also seem more in sync with the mood of the country than the bleak dramas tanking in the theaters. At a time when many Americans are depressed about the horror of Iraq, brooding over the economy and worried about America's place in the world, they seem less eager to embrace movies that offer more grim tidings.ø Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was asked blunt questions by LA Times editorial pages editor Jim Newsome on LA36's Zócalo recently. (I caught it last night but it can be streamed on their site.) It was a one-hour interview (and Q & A with audience members) with the salacious questions first before moving onto the struggling LAUSD, traffic congestion and other quality-of-life issues. Newsome didn't hold back or play nice and Villaraigosa, ever the smooth politician, was confident and held his ground when giving what could have been uncomfortable answers for others. The mayor even managed to take a few swipes at the troubled LA Times, saying it was "a paper that's losing its soul and doesn't know that it's in LA."
ø Gridskipper has begrudgingly supplied a limited and poorly researched map of Pasadena bars, all along or just off a three-block stretch of Colorado Blvd. Then they go on to confuse it with the east side of LA.
