Monday, May 3, 2010
'Hachi: A Dog's Tale': *** stars
how does a richard gere and joan allen starer go straight to video? how does a lasse hallstrom. 'chocolate' 'cider house rules' film go straight to video. with all the crap released theatrically this heart warming adult yet family film gets kicked to rental. i've stopped wondering 'what the hell is hollywood thinking' i'm convinced they don't!
this is a heart warming tale of a man and his dog. it is not 'marley and me'. it is the exact opposite. my recommendation is rent it today and enjoy.
trailer
Sunday, May 2, 2010
'The Boys Are Back': ***stars
a sincere little film that does. it's moving, touching and simple. a recently widowed father has to learn to be a mother and father.
clive owen does a more than admirable job in a change of pace role. perfect film for a rainy spring day. rent it.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
May Rental Suggestions
what can i say...it's a good month for renting or buying videos this month. what makes it really great is that 'doctor zhivago' is finally available updated, upgraded and newly restored on blu ray
'The Young Victoria' ***1/2stars
it isn't often i give a film four stars simply because they don't deserve them. 'the young victoria' more than fits the bill as a four star movie. it's a beautiful costume drama, a slice of life portrait of the up and coming young queen and a love story. and what a love story. the historical union of two royals who really loved each other and not just fulfilling a royal obligation.
emily blunt amazes as the the young victoria and is most complimented by rubert friend as the young albert.
how the hell was this not nominated for best picture and best actress? answer: the independent film makers in hollywood and everywhere are nominating the critic's choices. they need the critics to bolster their films. therefore they nominate as many independent films as they can to satisfy those they are dependent on i.e. the critics.
this 'victoria' is a wonderful, beautifully made and scored film. it is now available on dvd and bly ray. you can rent it but i say buy it. you will want to re-watch it again and again.
trailer
'will you marry me?' due to protocol albert cannot ask victoria to marry him. so....
'only you' closing theme by sinead o'connor
Passed: April 2010
john forsythe - actor
'the forgotten' - series
christopher cazenove - actor
dixie carter - actress
'damages' - series
'ugly betty' - series
dorothy provine - actress
Friday, April 30, 2010
R.I.P.: Dorothy Provine
dorothy provine may best be remembered for her role as pinky pinkerton in the tv series 'the roaring twenties.
she did have a career in film appearing in 'it's a mad mad world', 'that darn cat', 'the great race' and good neighbor sam'
from the tv series 'the roaring twenties'
'you do something to me' and ' california here i come'
'tea for two' and 'swanee'
'black bottom' and 'don't bring lulu'
she did have a career in film appearing in 'it's a mad mad world', 'that darn cat', 'the great race' and good neighbor sam'
from the tv series 'the roaring twenties'
'you do something to me' and ' california here i come'
'tea for two' and 'swanee'
'black bottom' and 'don't bring lulu'
Sandra Makes The 2010 TIME Magazine 100
Sandra Bullock
By BETTY WHITE Thursday, Apr. 29, 2010
ILLUSTRATION BY JOE CIARDIELLO FOR TIME
I have always been a big fan of the lady, as has everybody else, but I hadn't met Sandra Bullock, 45, until we worked together on The Proposal. And the first time we sat down together, it was like we had known each other all our lives. Don't get me wrong, people can tense up around her without any trouble. But she puts you at ease; there's no movie star there at all. Well, she happens to be a bit beautiful, I'll grant, and a bit built, but the human being inside all that gorgeousness is just a delight.
I couldn't be with her in person the night she won the Best Actress Oscar for The Blind Side, but it was just so wonderful to see her be appreciated. (I've seen the movie twice, by the way.) What's so appealing about her in it is her honesty. She's been labeled America's Sweetheart, which sounds soft and sweet. Sandra is both of those things, but she also has a strength of her own. She never lets a scene get away from her. She's never just there going through her paces. And you can't take your eyes off of her. America, you wish she were your sweetheart.
White starred with Bullock in 2009's The Proposal
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Sandra Preparing for Move to Big Easy
Sandra is making her move.
Following her decision to divorce Jesse James, the Blind Side star and her newly adopted son appear to be putting the finishing touches on their relocation to the New Orleans, the city of his birth.
Trucks from El Sol Logistics, a moving company based in Bullock's hometown of Austin, Texas, were spotted carting furniture into the Louisiana home she and James had purchased before his cheating scandal erupted and shattered their lives .
The movers turned up at the $2.25 million, five-bedroom mansion on Coliseum Street around 7:30 a.m. and spent most of the morning unloading their haul. There were three vans altogether; among the items taken inside were sofas, chairs and paintings.
Neither Bullock nor infant son Louis (named after Mr. Armstrong) was anywhere to be seen. But the Oscar winner and new single mom said in her interview with People this week that she fully intends to put roots down in the Big Easy.
"New Orleans in his city, and he is going to know it inside and out, " she told the magazine.
"Without the spirit of the people who live there and take care of the city and honor its traditions, its love for music, its love for life, take those people out and you don't have why I love New Orleans so much."
There was no immediate comment from her publicist, Cheryl Maisel.
But Arthur Hardy, an official with the historic Warren Easton Charter School Foundation, hopes Bullock will be on hand for a summer ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new health clinic they're opening. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Bullock contributed large sums to the school for rebuilding and establishing a scholarship fund.
"The clinic's 95 percent done," Hardy tells E! News. "Her role has been rather passive, but by design. She gave us a huge check—she wouldn't let me say how much—when we inducted her into the Hall of Fame last year to finish it."
How Did Sandra Pull It Off?*
Talk about being blindsided. Today, every celebrity probably is thinking the same thing: If Sandra Bullock can do it, why can't I?
Not just adopt a baby — movie stars have been doing that for decades (e.g. Joan Crawford). Not just adopting an African-American baby — celebrities have adopted babies of different races before, too (e.g. Angelina Jolie). It was even the plot of Bullock's latest movie, The Blind Side.
No, what Bullock did, as People magazine revealed Wednesday, was pull off one of the most amazing coups in the history of celebrity media: She adopted a baby from New Orleans and took him home in secret in January, despite being in the white-hot spotlight for her hit movie, winning a best-actress Academy Award and suffering through a failing marriage.
Somehow, as reporters gawked at Bullock, 45, and cheating husband Jesse James outside their home in Los Angeles and her other home in Austin, they failed to notice the baby carriage slipping in by the back door?
"I wish I knew how she did it, and then maybe I'd learn for the next time!" half-jokes Brandy Navarre, vice president of the paparazzi agency X17. "It's a mystery to us how she was able to avoid us and the rest of the media."
Says Linda Bell Blue, executive producer of Entertainment Tonightand The Insider."We got blindsided, didn't we?"
"What's interesting is that she was dropping hints along the way — in her Oscar speech she wanted to thank 'all the moms who take care of babies and children no matter where they come from,' " Bell Blue says. Also, she says, by allowing pictures of the baby in People, Bullock has reduced the price tag and competition for photos of him.(People does pay for photos. However, the magazine does not discuss the specifics of any deal.)
"It's a remarkable, impressive head fake," says longtime Hollywood PR consultant Michael Levine. "I'm astounded because celebs have zero privacy in the modern world. I don't know how she did it, but I tip my hat to her."
Even Bullock was stunned. "I don't know how we got away with it," she told People, which reported that Bullock told only a few friends and relatives and employed CIA tactics such as "decoys and dark cars." After a four-year adoption process, she and soon-to-be-ex-husband James brought the infant boy home to Los Angeles in January and named him Louis (for Louis Armstrong), and even held a bris (Jewish circumcision ceremony) but kept it under wraps until after the Oscars in early March.
"We didn't want Louis pulled into the awards season energy," she told People. "I wanted him all to myself."
Just like 'Blind Side' character
She didn't want to take away from the Oscar, speculates Bonnie Eaker Weil, a New York family therapist and author of Make Up, Don't Break Up: Finding and Keeping Love for Singles and Couples. "She wanted to bask in the wonderful emotions of achieving in her career, and then go to motherhood."
Remarkably, even her young stepchildren knew to keep quiet, says J.D. Heyman, an executive editor at People. "She did it with a lot of support from a very close circle of people that she trusted. They kept the secret, and that includes her stepchildren, even the littlest one."
Weil says it's significant that Bullock has ended up imitating the woman she plays in The Blind Side, Leigh Anne Tuohy, by adopting an African-American child from a presumably disadvantaged background. It's "absolutely" a case of transference, says Weil. Tuohy touched Bullock's heart "literally. She didn't just play the part; she did it in real life."
But she never said so in countless appearances during awards season. Bullock wouldn't let anyone come to the house for fittings for her dresses. She told People that her makeup artist couldn't understand why she was always so tired she needed "copious amounts of concealer" to cover up.
Throughout awards season, Bullock looked rested and glowing. In interviews, she never let on about the baby at home, even after a little lime-green baby sock popped out of her bag on the red carpet; people would pick it up and hand it back to her without even asking why she had a baby sock in her handbag, she said in People.
Then she won the Oscar, and days after, the details of James' dalliances with a stripper spilled out. Bullock left L.A. with Louis, now 3½ months, and disappeared from view.
"All I remember thinking is I need to get Louis out of here before the vultures descend," she said.
Even now, there are still a few things Bullock has held back, like the circumstances of the baby's birth and the adoption. She did tell People she is "adopting as a single parent." TMZ reported Wednesday that Bullock filed for divorce in Austin last week, but the public document didn't surface until Wednesday because Bullock filed using her initials, backward. (Bullock's publicist Cheryl Maisel did not respond Wednesday to questions about the divorce filing and adoption.)
James issued a statement to People saying that losing his marriage and losing the baby has left a "huge hole in my heart." He also suggested the marriage and joint adoption might still be saved: "I believe that the steps I have taken in the last 30 days (in rehab for addictions) are the foundation for making this happen."
In Austin, the local newspaper had no clue about the divorce or the adoption; Bullock lives and owns businesses there but rarely talks to the media, says Michael Barnes, social columnist for The Austin American-Statesman's entertainment website, Austin360.com.
"She comes to Austin to chill ... she stays out of the spotlight," Barnes says. "We are working the story, but there's not a lot of fresh facts to report, other than the media craziness."
In Hollywood and its outposts, people were both incredulous and admiring of Bullock's savvy.
"It was a great call on her part — it changed the dialogue from the divorce to the new kid," says Howard Bragman, a Los Angeles celebrity publicist and author of Where's My Fifteen Minutes? Get Your Company, Your Cause, or Yourself the Recognition You Deserve. "It was played perfectly. She's a classy lady. ... The paparazzi respect her. She's got class and everyone knows it."
People wanted to 'protect her'
In fact, maybe Bullock succeeded because she is so well-liked, by the public and the entertainment media. At Walton's Fancy and Staple, Bullock's deli, bakery and café in Austin, Amanda Seiler of Houston and Sue Allen of Saratoga, N.Y., say they came in to the café for dessert Wednesday as a sign of support for Bullock. Seiler suggested the actress was able to keep the baby a secret for so long because "she is such a good person."
"People were not going to be selling her out," Seiler says. "She is lovable and kind and approachable and relatable. I think people truly, truly like her and protect her."
It's also a sign of how smart a businesswoman she is, Bragman says. "She's smart in business and smart in handling her public life," he says. "A lot of that is intuition and knowing how to play that."
But maybe any celeb could have done what Bullock did, Navarre says. "Not to give our secrets away, but if you want to hide, it's not that difficult," she says. "What's difficult is to avoid tipping off people that celebrities come into contact with on a daily basis ... everyone from the private jet company, the booker, the stewardess, the pilot, someone in the adoption agency."
And yet no one blabbed. "It seems like she has very loyal employees and friends and family and people around her," Navarre says.
"That's amazing, especially in this world, where every orderly or valet will sell their mother for the price of dinner," Bragman adds. "It really speaks to the kind of person she is and the kind of people she surrounds herself with."
In the end, the story of the Bullock baby may contribute to a rethinking about how celebrities can be smart about managing their PR image and still achieve some level of privacy, says Eric Dezenhall, a Washington crisis-management consultant. More and more celebrities, he says, are discovering that exposure leads to more exposure, not respect for privacy.
"While secrecy isn't easy in the celeb world, it's worth a shot if you really want it," he says. "My sense is that Sandra Bullock may be pretty sincere in her desire to lead as normal a life as possible."
*courtesy usa today
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Congratulations Sandra
Sandra Bullock: Filed for Divorce & New Baby!
Sandra Bullock has some very good news - she has filed for divorce from Jesse James and is the proud mother of an adopted baby boy!
Sandra began the adoption process with Jesse four years ago and brought baby Louis Bardo Bullock, 3 and a half months, home in January! She opted to keep the happy news quiet until after the Oscars, according to People, who broke the story.
As for her split from Jesse, Sandra tells People that she’s “sad and…scared” but that she has filed for divorce.
Sandra Bullock has some very good news - she has filed for divorce from Jesse James and is the proud mother of an adopted baby boy!
Sandra began the adoption process with Jesse four years ago and brought baby Louis Bardo Bullock, 3 and a half months, home in January! She opted to keep the happy news quiet until after the Oscars, according to People, who broke the story.
As for her split from Jesse, Sandra tells People that she’s “sad and…scared” but that she has filed for divorce.
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