Everyone knows mainstream news outlets have files full of pre-written obituaries for prominent living celebrities (“Gerald Ford was mauled by wolves today…”), but never before has the phenomenon been illustrated so perfectly as it was today, when the New York Times ran an Elizabeth Taylor obituary written by a reporter who died six years ago.  A “zombituary”, if you will.  In their defense, this level of fawning is timeless:

In a world of flickering images, Elizabeth Taylor was a constant star. First appearing onscreen at age 9, she grew up there, never passing through an awkward age. It was one quick leap from “National Velvet” to “A Place in the Sun” and from there to “Cleopatra” as she was indelibly transformed from a vulnerable child actress into a voluptuous film queen.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who directed her in “Suddenly Last Summer” and “Cleopatra,” remembered seeing her for the first time, in Cannes, when she was 18. “She was the most incredible vision of loveliness I have ever seen in my life,” he said. “And she was sheer innocence.”

Marilyn Monroe was the sex goddess, Grace Kelly the ice queen, Audrey Hepburn the eternal gamine. Ms. Taylor was beauty incarnate. As the director George Stevens said when he chose her for “A Place in the Sun,” the role called for the “beautiful girl in the yellow Cadillac convertible that every American boy, some time or other, thinks he can marry.” [via TheDailyWhat]

Playwright and reporter Mel Gussow died in 2005, and no, not of AIDS, you insensitive bastard. Ironically, it was just last night that I was reading Playboy’s interview with veteran political journalist Helen Thomas, who was lamenting the decline of print journalism:

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Most of the critics thought Clash of the Titans was either sucky, or fun in a really sucky way (like your sister), and that the post-converted 3D was kind of pointless because it actually looked better without the glasses. But it also earned $61 million dollars and broke an Easter weekend record.  How could both of these things be true??!?  Why, this must be proof that elitist film snobs are out of touch with your average Joe Sh*tferbrains.  Writes the NY Times:

But what about regular moviegoers — would they even notice anything amiss with the movie’s 3-D?  Early feedback indicates that Joe and Jane Moviegoer don’t really see what all the fuss is about.

“I thought the 3-D quality was really good,” said Eric Shimp as he left a showing of “Clash of the Titans” at the AMC Century City 15 in Los Angeles. Mr. Shimp, who works in the automotive industry [*cough* Jiffy Lube! *cough, cough*], added, “The ticket prices are ridiculous, but it does leave you feeling like you’ve just seen a spectacle.”

Sharle Kochman, a cosmetologist, said as she left the theater that she thought the 3-D quality was on a par with “Avatar,” and Lauren Shotwell, a music executive, said she noticed none of the tell-tale signs of a 3-D conversion: blurriness, double images (called “ghosting”), flat backgrounds. “During the computer-generated parts the 3-D looked totally fine,” Ms. Shotwell said.

So what you’re saying is, one group of people think one thing, and another group thinks someone else? My stars, I’ve never seen a mainstream newspaper article take shape in such a way.  Wait, don’t tell me how it ends!

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Party Dog still wants to know where the bitches at

I haven’t seen Hot Tub Time Machine yet (or as I like to call it, “Hot Tub Time Machine: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire”).  But especially after reading AO Scott’s review in the New York Times, I almost wish I didn’t have to put it off for another day to see Birdemic.

The undercurrent of misogyny and homophobic panic that courses through most arrested-development, guy-centric comedies these days is certainly present here. But unlike, say, “The Hangover,” which sweetens and sentimentalizes its man-child characters — allowing them to run wild and then run home to Mommy — “Hot Tub Time Machine” is honest in its coarseness and pretty tough on the fellows who are the agents and objects of its satire.

The cultural detritus piled up everywhere, to be recycled, cherished, mocked and travestied, provides small — but nonetheless real — compensation for the spiritual deficits of modern life.  Is it crazy to write that sentence in a review of “Hot Tub Time Machine”? Not really: the movie itself proves the point. [NY Time]

The use of five-dollar words, the scribe’s given name needlessly done up in pretentious initials — not to mention the  elaborate sentence construction — is it crazy to enjoy such things when one’s profession involves posting trailers to Jerry Bruckheimer movies accompanied by *fart*?  Perhaps.  But when it’s for a review of Hot Tub Time Machine, it’s pretty awesome.

Easily the stupidest part of my job is having to put red-band trailers behind “age gates”, where users have to enter a birthdate in order to see a trailer.  Why?  Because someone in it says a naughty word!  And all because a few idiots have devoted their entire lives to making sure other peoples’ children be shielded from words that were deemed “naughty” during medieval times.  It’s such an important issue, the NY Times wrote a feature on it:

“Studios hide behind the notion of an age requirement for these trailers, but it’s pure fiction,” said Nell Minow, a lawyer who reviews films for radio stations and Beliefnet.com under the name Movie Mom. “It’s easy for kids to access, and that’s exactly how the industry wants it.”

God forbid an ad for a movie actually show you what’s in the actual movie.  We should just change the trailer to Knee-Deep in Asian Cream Pies 6 to a Teletubbies video so no one gets hurt.

One R-rated trailer in particular [Kick-Ass] has become a Web phenomenon. In it, Hit Girl salts her conversation with language so graphic that it would make a biker blanch;

She says “cunt.”  If you actually think a biker would “blanch” at the word “cunt”, you should resign from the Times and apply at The Daily Retard.

…it’s well beyond the kind of garden- variety profanity that has seeped into mainstream culture.

Spoken like a true cunt.

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I missed this a couple days ago, but the New York Times made this interactive Netflix map that charts rentals by region.  It doesn’t sound that cool at first, but I’ve been on it for a good hour now, and it’s almost as fun to fiddle with as my wiener.  You can see the top ten in each zip code — see what people in hipster Williamsburg rent as opposed to Inglewood, for example (really? black folks like Eagle Eye?) — or see the areas where any of the top 100 rentals are strongest.  They do it for New York, Boston, Chicago, DC, the SF bay, LA, Seattle, Minneapolis, Denver, Atlanta, Dallas, and Miami.

If you know the areas (I focused mainly on NYC and the Bay since that’s where I’ve lived) , you can see fun stuff like Obsessed or a Tyler Perry movie, which are like Megan’s Law maps to help you avoid black people.  Or Rachel Getting Married or Mad Men, which do the same for white intellectuals.  Or Paul Blart Mall Cop and Nights in Rodanthe, which tell you where the neutered husbands or middle-aged white women is at, respectively.  The only way they could make this better is if it was an interactive map of unattended chocolate cakes.