Here’s a post guaranteed not to get any likes on Facebook, and probably the worst follow-up to a post about Zac Efron’s sun-dappled eyebrows on national let’s-get-super-baked day one could imagine, but here we are. Bollywood actress Meenakshi Thapar was kidnapped and beheaded by two aspiring actors she met on the set of her latest movie. She did not survive.

Meenakshi Thapar, 26, who had appeared in the Indian horror film 404 last year, met the two aspiring actors who allegedly later killed her on the set of her latest film, Heroine.

That’s terrible. And now I can’t even make a joke about an Indian horror film being about the code for a missing web page.

Famed Hollywood publicist Michael Sands, described as “the brains behind Mr. Blackwell’s Worst Dressed List,” who also claimed to be a CIA operative, died recently after choking on a beef sample at a Gelson’s Deli Counter in Century City, California. According to his son, Sands had narrow airways caused by Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, leaving him more susceptible to choking. Or as I like to call it, The Opposite of Your Mom Disease. He was 66.

Best known as the brains behind Mr. Blackwell’s annual Worst Dressed List, Sands also was an inveterate self-promoter who claimed to be an undercover CIA operative who may have helped in the capture of Abu Abbas, the terrorist behind the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985.

I admit I don’t know much about this guy, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that part’s not true.

Sands also handled a lineup of Beverly Hills plastic surgeons, defense attorneys, family law practitioners and Hollywood private eyes. He also sold designer cheesecakes — based on his own recipes and sold at several dozen franchised stores around the country. A tireless promoter of his own career, he once appeared partially nude in carefully orchestrated photo of himself in People magazine to promote his cakes.

I feel bad about the way this guy died, especially how it’s almost impossible not to joke about, but at the same time, so far I’m pretty jealous of his obituary. “He once appeared partially nude in carefully orchestrated photo of himself in People magazine to promote his cakes,” is up there with “Died Tragically Rescuing His Family From The Wreckage Of A Destroyed Sinking Battleship.”

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Jesse Farrelly, 20-year-old son of director Bobby Farrelly and nephew of Peter, died this week of an apparent drug overdose in Orange County, CA. He’d had bit parts in a few of the Farrelly Brothers’ movies, including There’s Something about Mary and Hall Pass.

According to law enforcement … emergency personnel responded to an apartment in Costa Mesa, CA late Wednesday night after getting a call about an “unresponsive young male … possible overdose.”
We’re told 20-year-old Jesse was transported to a nearby hospital … where he was pronounced dead a short time later.  The coroner has completed the autopsy and has ruled out foul play.
The Farrelly family has released a statement saying, “It is with profound sorrow that we accept the passing of our beloved Jesse following his struggle with addiction.  We fully trust that he is now in the hands of our Lord.”
The statement continues, “We are immeasurably grateful for the abundance of happiness and laughter he brought into our lives, and we will rejoice eternally for all the moments we got to breathe in his wondrous spirit.  The family thanks you for your well wishes and kindly asks that you respect our privacy during this difficult time.” [TMZ]

So yeah, not the most hilarious news, I apologize. I suddenly feel like saying nice things about Three Stooges.

When he wasn’t busy scoring 3-4 holes in one every time he played golf or coaching North Korea’s soccer team via invisible cell phone, Kim Jong-Il was an avid movie fan, whose favorite films were said to be Rambo and Godzilla. He even wrote a book about filmmaking, On the Art of the Cinema, which contained such passages as:

“Actors must be ideologically prepared before acquiring high-level skills,” he writes, recommending a kind of communist method acting. “No revolutionary actor has ever actually been a Japanese policeman or capitalist . . . To effectively embody the hateful enemy, the actor requires an ardent love of his class and a burning hostility towards the enemy.”

Additionally, you may be required to wash Michael Bay’s Ferrari. In 1978, Jong-Il kidnapped South Korean director Shin Sang-ok, imprisoned him for four years feeding him grass and rice, then abruptly let him out and gave him millions to make propaganda movies. One such movie was Pulgasari, a Godzilla-like monster of capitalism who, like all capitalists, had an insatiable hunger for iron. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Guardian has a more than adequate rundown, and SPOILER ALERT, it includes something called “a lion gun.” God, propaganda is the best.

Pulgasari is a monster of the people. When the wicked king oppresses the people, a jailed blacksmith moulds a tiny character out of rice, declaring he will use the last spark of his creative power to bring the doll to life.

As the farmers are starving under the king’s rule, the doll, Pulgasari, eats iron and grows. The cherubic toddler Pulgasari soon becomes a horned beast whose clawed foot is the size of a person. And since this is a movie made under the guidelines of On the Art of the Cinema, there are seemingly endless shots of the people’s folk dances.

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In the annals of cinematic male rape, even before Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, there was Deliverance, which forever entered “Squeal like a pig!” into the national lexicon. Today, the world mourns as the man who uttered that famous line, Bill McKinney (above right), is dead at 80 from lung cancer. Ladies and gentlemen, today, we lost a titan of buttrape. (*solemly pours out KY*)

McKinney was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He had an unsettled life as a child, moving 12 times before joining the Navy at the age of 19 during the Korean War.

Discharged in Long Beach, California, in 1954, McKinney settled in southern California, attending acting school at the famous Pasadena Playhouse in 1957, where his classmates included Dustin Hoffman and Mako. McKinney supported himself as an arborist, trimming and taking down trees, a job he continued into the 1970s, when he was appearing in major films. McKinney has had a life-long love affair with trees since he was a child. [*stifles snicker* -Ed.]

After his time at the Pasadena Playhouse, McKinney was admitted to Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio. He made his movie debut in the exploitation picture She Freak (1967) and was busy on television, making his debut in 1968 on “The Monkees” (1966) and attracting attention as Lobo on “Alias Smith and Jones” (1971). But it was as the Mountain Man in John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972), a movie nominated for Best Picture of 1972 at the Academy Awards, that brought McKinney widespread attention and solidified his reputation as one of moviedom’s all-time most heinous screen villains.

In his autobiography, Burt Reynolds (whose character dispatches The Mountain Man with an arrow in the back) said of McKinney, “I thought he was a little bent. I used to get up at five in the morning and see him running nude through the golf course while the sprinklers watered the grass….”

McKinney denies this, and also disputes Reynolds contention that he was overly enthusiastic playing the infamous scene where his character buggers Ned Beatty.

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