We're as Sad as Hell and We're Not Gonna Take This Anymore! - R.I.P. Sidney Lumet

By now any of you out there with any sort of connection to the wider world will have heard the news that legendary director Sidney Lumet passed away this weekend at the age of 86. He leaves behind one of the most solid and astonishing filmographies of any Hollywood director in the past half decade. 12 Angry Men, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, The Verdict, the list goes on. Lumet established himself as one of the best directors for confronting capital i Issues through the use of cinema. And yet he never won an Oscar (except for a lifetime achievement award from the Academy a couple years ago, which is nice I suppose).

By far the most iconic and oft-referenced of Lumet's movies is 1976's television satire Network. Owing much to Peter Finch's famous-for-a-reason "Mad as hell" speech, you see this one get brought out every couple years or so at Oscar montages, and like I said, it's famous for a reason: it's so damn good.

Network is centered around the story of Howard Beale, the primetime news anchor at "UBS" the lowest-rated network in the country. When he receives the word that he's been fired, he suffers what seems to be a nervous breakdown; or is it a prophet's revelation?

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Bonus Saturday Morning TV: The Governator

Questionable celebrity decisions abound!

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Saturday Morning TV: George “Spider-Man” Takei

Ooooh myyyyy.

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Charlie Sheen: Vatican Assassin Warlock

Two nights ago, we saw a lavish celebration of the best and brightest movies from 2010. Stars were interviewed on the Red Carpet, badly timed jokes were cracked by the ceremony's younger-skewing hosts, the network's five second tape delay came in handy during Melissa Leo's Best Supporting Actress acceptance speech, and gold statuettes were handed out to some of Hollywood's most deserving artists/entertainers. But one significant figure in the entertainment industry was nowhere to be found during the proceedings: Charlie Sheen.

Despite his absence (court-ordered or otherwise), Sheen's presence could be felt in two instances throughout the night: once when a drag-clad James Franco cracked a passing joke, and once when a promo for Sheen's upcoming interviews with Good Morning America and 20/20 aired during the telecast. Gee, given his recent epic BIFF on a radio interview with Alex Jones - leading directly into the announcement that Two and a Half Men is no longer a viable television program - you'd think he would stay away from public exposure for a while. But prudence was clearly never the Sheen way...

Selections from said epic BIFF can be found in this article - I wanted to give it its own paragraph, lets it get lost in the shuffle. You can find the full audio here. It really is some pretty amazing stuff. I don't know where he found the inspiration for such powerful vitriolic rants (my first guess would be the drugs he was taking, and my second guess would be a reaction from quitting said drugs cold turkey), but I think he could be on to something, both in style and in substance.

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A Treatise Concerning the 2011 Academy Awards and the Continuing Retrenchment of the Tastes and Values of the Middle-Aged in Cinema Culture

Another year, another Oscars.

I've always been a great fan of the Academy Awards. Maybe it's because I've never felt at ease in the overly-macho, chest-thumping world of the NFL (or maybe it's because my team never wins) but the Oscars have always been my Super Bowl. I buy lots of beer, spread out the chips and salsa, and all my rowdy friends are coming over to try and calculate who will that the most little naked men home with them.

Of course, any film buff will tell you that the Oscars are a sham. Half the time the Academy votes for the wrong film, the other half of the time they vote for an obvious bit of Oscar bait clearly made to inspire the old fogies to accolade it with the title of Best Picture. And then sometimes you get a pretty good movie year chalk full of perfectly fine movies but the whole event is muddled by the oftentimes self-important ceremony of the whole thing.

This year borrowed liberally from the latter two categories, which I suppose ranks it somewhere in the middle of the eighty-three years of Academy Awards.

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The 2011 Grammys: Where the Points Don't Matter

I don't go to many live music shows. In fact, I think I've been to just three concerts in the past four years - and two of them were Rush. Going to see live music just isn't my "thing" - in the same way that going to live baseball games IS my "thing." So, naturally, I was excited about Sunday night's Grammy Awards telecast, as it afforded me the opportunity to see some live (on tape) performances from some of the biggest names and most important players in the music industry.

The Grammys have long ceased to be an "awards show" in any significant way. The "honor" of receiving a Grammy inspires more lampoon than praise nowadays. The award categories themselves are so confused as to basically not mean anything anymore (as expertly spoofed by Dave Letterman in a mid-broadcast "Top 10"). And the the format of the show reflects this opinion, focusing on the big performances, while sneaking in an awards presentation right before the commercial break.

That being said, the Grammy Awards themselves can have cultural implications, such as when Esperanza Spalding's win over Justin Bieber in the "Best New Artist" category sparked a spree of Wiki-crime from fans crazed with the Bieber-fiever. (I guess synchronizing the release of his big movie with the Grammys didn't help his award chances.) However, the Grammys are and have been about the performances, some of which I saw, and will relate here.

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Going Out While Still On Top

The White Stripes broke up on Wednesday, or at least they broke up as much as a band that hasn't released new material in four years can break up. Their website announced that the group was calling it quits, "for a myriad of reasons, but mostly to preserve what is beautiful and special about the band and have it stay that way."

This is a nice sentiment, particularly because Jack White could easily write a dozen short riffs, get a drum machine with Meg White's face pasted on it, and call it a new White Stripes album. While few would argue that the band's last album, 2007's Icky Thump, was their best, it's safe to say that the White Stripes never released a bad record, let alone an embarrassing one. I'd be willing to be money that a new White Stripes release would sell reasonably well, so it's refreshing to see the duo opt to not continue. 

In this age when many artists manage to stretch their fifteen minutes of fame into fifteen years, when long forgotten celebrities start popping up on reality television, it's nice to see some figures who willingly choose to end their career before senility or overexposure sets in. It certainly doesn't hurt that the White Stripes have a handful of platinum albums to provide a good financial cushion (and that Jack White has a seemingly endless supply of other bands to fall back on), But the band is breaking up, not due to internal acrimony or somebody's death, but because they said all that they need to say and now they're done. The number of major acts who do this are rare enough that I can probably go through them all in this one post. 

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Fist-Pumping All Over Again...

Remember last year between August and October? For me, it was all a blur of fake tans, rippling muscles, and drunks falling all over themselves trying to put on a show for the camera. Because for those three glorious months, I reviewed every single episode of the second season of MTV's The Jersey Shore. I was so engrossed in that world that it wasn't at all out of the ordinary to hear me burst into song about T-Shirt Time or exclaim for all the world to hear that the "Cabs ah heah!" So imagine my surprise when I heard that Season 3 of SallyAnn Salsano's megahit premiered to record numbers, and I didn't even notice!

I know, I know, for someone who works in the reality television field, I'm hopelessly (blissfully?) unaware of what's going on in the industry. It was mostly by accident that I stumbled upon the first season of Jersey Shore and a pure act of will to stick with my "Fist-Pump Gazette" feature for an entire season. I mean, after my experience watching Season 2 cover to cover, I've had enough guidos and guidettes to last a lifetime. But when I heard that episode 301 was MTV's highest rated broadcast EVER, I decided I had to check it out via the magic of MTV.com.

What did I discover? Hit the jump to find out.

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A Look Back at 2010's Celebrity Departures

In an age where every star worth his salt is expected to have a Facebook page, a Twitter feed and a personal blog, it's easy to be inundated in the culture of celebrity gossip. Through the magic of the digital age, these celebrities are now omnipresent, no longer confined to the screen or the stage but instead coming into our personal computers on a daily basis. It seems as though they will never leave us alone.

Alas, this is not the case. 2010 brought a lot of great celebrity gossip, from the late-career renaissance (Betty White) to the falling-off-the-deep-end conspiracy theories (Randy Quaid) to the batshit-crazy-meltdowns (Mel Gibson). But the saddest stories are the figures that we lost this year, the figures who manage to garner one last tabloid headline before retreating into darkness. 

Below, we pay our respects to those figures who passed on in 2010. It's been said that all celebrity deaths come in threes, so the deceased have been divided into trios.  There's no figure as big as Michael Jackson to bite the dust this year, but that doesn't make their loss any less heartbreaking. Please take a moment to reflect on their varied contributions to pop culture, and also to mourn their passing.

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Saturday Morning TV: “I Might Actually Turn Into Kevin Bacon.”

“His best movie is probably a tie…between all of ‘em.”

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Music Review: Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

You wouldn't hesitate to call Kanye West a narcissist, an egomaniac, a douchebag, or just stone-cold crazy. But would you call him a bad guy? I don't mean "bad guy" as in "villain"; that's a role Kanye's been more than willing to play, time and again. He revels in it all over My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy ("I thought I was the asshole") and on a number of his G.O.O.D. Friday tracks: "I figured out I'm not a nice guy/Shook hands, kissed babies/Gave it a nice try." But to call him a truly "bad man," an amoral rock star in the vein of Ginger Baker or Lemmy Kilmister? That's a different question altogether.

Kanye's new album is an expansive, galaxy-conquering masterpiece, a feat of wild musical and lyrical experimentation that is without precedent in Kanye's own catalog or, indeed, rap's entire canon. It is his best album since Late Registration and maybe of his whole career. And, I think, it's pretty convincing evidence that his heart, if not his mouth, is in the right place.

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Sunday Reading: A Phone Call with James Franco

James Franco has achieved full-blown meme status at this point.  I can’t seem to stop writing or reading about him, and it seems like the rest of the world can’t either.

Thought Catalog – another one of those hot new Internet culture zines – tried to get an interview with Franco.  Well, they say they tried.  That might just be a clever excuse for an even cleverer article: an exclusive, fake interview with the star.

The piece’s primary concern is Franco’s short story collection Palo Alto, published by Scribner.  Franco wrote most of it while in one of the eighteen different graduate schools he’s somehow finding the time for when not appearing on soap operas, getting paid to read poetry, or laying around under a rock all day.

TC pulls few punches in its spar with the fake Franco, prodding at not only some of his writing but his penchant for manufacturing postmodern art out of his pretty sweet life:

[Thought Catalog]: Oh. You’re really hot, James Franco.

[fake James Franco]: Thanks.

TC: Can we, like, have sex?

JF: Maybe. You’re a dude, right?

TC: Yeah.

JF: Only if we can videotape it and then submit it to The Whitney.

TC: Cool.

JF: (Silence)

Somehow, I think a small pop culture site running a fake interview with him fits perfectly into Franco’s artistic mission.

You may also want to check out Thought Catalog’s thoughts on Franco’s Oscar potential.  Soap star and Oscar nominee in the same year?  Crazy talk.

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The Fist-Pump Gazette #13: "We're healthy, we're not hurt, and we're not handcuffed. And that's all that matters."

Well, that's one more season of Jersey Shore for the books, ladies and gentlemen. You can tell because all through episode 213, everyone kept going on about how this was their "last [insert activity] of Miami." Their last (and first) airboat tour of the Everglades. Their last time going to the club and hooking up with mad bitches. Their last romantic dinners with significant others. Their last knock-down, drag-out fight over who called who fake or who ratted who out or who said what to whom.

But as one door closes, another one opens, and in January 2011, we'll see our favorite Guidos and Guidettes once again taking the stage back at Seaside Heights, NJ. I mentioned this last time, but it seems like some of the hype has definitely died down. There's no real anticipation for new episodes because there's no mystery anymore. Anyone who has a facebook or a twitter or a google knows that Season 2 ends without incident and the Season 3 will follow fast on its heels. The only reason to tune in episode to episode is to see how the minutiae plays out and maybe to catch some memorable quotes here and there.

And maybe it's just me (I've remained blissfully unaware of the ratings this season), but I'm getting just a little tired of the schtick we see on the show week to week. It's almost like they're going through the motions - I know GTL is in itself a routine, but they used to execute it with just a little more flair.

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The Fist-Pump Gazette #12: "If you're lookin' good, you're feelin' good. If you're feelin' good, you're gettin' good resuts."

These Jersey Shore fellows sure know how to deal with a little drama. We left last week's episode all concerned about Mike and his mood swings and his controlling attitude. I mean, he ruined Snooki's night when her BEST FRIEND was in town. That's pretty low and destructive behavior. But then all it takes is a well-placed apology and a "smile for the camera" the next morning, and they're a family again. While it's true that The Situation has turned himself into a pretty successful global brand and rumors are swirling about a spinoff involving Snooki, everyone involved realizes they're more valuable as a group than as individuals.

But things are far from peaceful in New Jersey, FL - Snooki and Mike's antics get the group bounced out of Miami's hottest club (Space), Sammi and Ronnie are back to their old mindless arguing, and Situation cockblocks his roommate Pauly D not once, but twice. It's almost as if the cast loses more and more control as they approach next week's season finale.

And who could blame them, really? We're at 9.6 percent unemployment nationwide. I know these seven people have no immediate danger of losing their livelihood or falling out of the public spotlight any time soon. But now that they've been bitten by the acting bug, they're subject to the stress and anxiety that comes from being "between gigs at the moment." And it's obviously taking its toll.

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Dispatches From New York Comic Con 2010- Day Three: "Hail to the king, baby."

My experience on the third day of New York Comic Con was much shorter than the previous two for a number of reasons. First of all, there were fewer things scheduled, there was just less to do. Also, after forty-eight hours packed to the brim with comic conning (not to mention writing these reports and doing my other work for this site, oh and I sleep sometimes as well) I was about as exhausted as man who regularly sleeps until noon could get. Therefore I welcomed the reduced schedule on "Kids' Day" at the con.

However, what the events of the day lacked in number they more then made up for in intensity.

I'll proceed out of order for the sake of my art. Sunday marked the highlight of the many panels put on this weekend: AMC's Walking Dead. I made my way towards the IGN Theater with a healthy forty-five minute lead on the scheduled start time, more than enough; I even considered grabbing a coffee first because I didn't want to arrive too early.

Boy oh boy, did that forty-five minutes come in handy. When I came downstairs to the theater's entrance, a massive line had already assembled itself across the lobby and pretty much into the neighboring food court. I found myself a spot at the back that seemed cozy enough and when the line started moving I noticed that we were not going through the theater doors at all, we were advancing down a back hallway and into, of all places, a large loading dock.

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Dispatches From New York Comic Con 2010- Day Two: Long Lines, Heartbreak, and Synergy

I rose bright and early Saturday morning, ready to face the trials and tribulations of another day at New York Comic Con. After a long ride to Midtown Manhattan on the 2 Train, I emerged on 34th Street and made my way to a confounding sight: there were a lot more people this time.

Owing to the fact that most people work/attend school on Fridays and not Saturdays, the Javits Center was packed to the brim with humanity. A line stretched down the block as far as the eye could see. Worthy volunteers corralled and bally-hooed the crowd into some semblance of order and instructed attendees with weekend passes to avoid the colossal line and make their way to the main entrance. Being a credentialed member of the fourth estate, I advanced passed the great unwashed and entered to yet another huge crowd inside.

I was in a bind. I had arrived just in time to catch James Franco and Danny McBride speaking on a panel to promote their upcoming medieval(!) stoner comedy Your Highness in the IGN Theater at 10:30, but I also desperately wanted to visit the Venture Bros. signing event. I figured, with the event beginning at 11:00, the con having been underway for less than an hour, and with so many people still waiting outside to pick up their tickets, I had a pretty good chance to get a good spot in line.

I was very wrong.

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The Fist-Pump Gazette #11: "One day, there will be the pimp of all pimps, and his name will be The Situation."

Well, after 10 episodes, Angelina has officially left the show. Of course, she had mentally checked out as soon as she signed the contract to appear on Season 2, but she rode it out as far as she could possibly go, we got some good drama out of it, but now it's the end of an era. Of the seven remaining Shore house members, only Sammi appears somewhat distraught at the departure of the Staten island Dump, seeing as she's totally alienated from the other two girls in the house as a result of note-gate.

As expected, with Angelina gone, we return to the one other source of conflict that we've seen this season: the Sammi and Ronnie story, or at least its aftermath. Since Sam and Ron are back together, the only part of the saga left to focus on is the girls' side of the story, which revolves around such girly topics as betrayal of trust and being honest and straightforward with your friends. Snooki wants to kiss and make up, but Sam and JWOWW want no part of each other.

Actually, what I said before isn't exactly true: there have been other dramatic storylines throughout Season 2. Vinnie was tragically stood up by the girl of his dreams. Mike has seemingly been letting his fame and wealth get to his head. And Snooki... well, let's just say that Snooki tried to rescue one of the lobsters from the stove by putting it into a fishbowl filled with tap water.

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Dispatches From New York Comic Con 2010- Day One: "A Four Hulk Christmas"

On a rainy August afternoon, I was browsing the stacks at a Brooklyn bookstore when I received a phone call from Charge Shot!!!'s own Rob Kunzig. "How would you like it if we sent you to Comic Con, with a press pass?" he asked me. I was head-over-heels. San Diego Comic Con is the geek event of the year, a Mecca for people like myself. And now I would finally get to go, as a credentialed professional. I willingly gave Rob my information as requested by the con's management. I looked forward to summer 2011! Sand Diego, here I come!

Then I realized that Rob meant the New York Comic Con, no relation, which is in October. And New York, where I live.

NYCC isn't quite as prestigious as its West Coast cousin, lacking the main stream name recognition, but it's basically the same thing. The one con I've ever been to was at the age of twelve, when a friend and I attended some sort of Upper Midwest regional convention at the Thunderbird Hotel near the Mall of America. Since then, I've largely come to view big cons like San Diego with a bit of disdain. As far as I can tell, they represent what I will dub "Big Geek": the institutionalized commoditization of nerd culture. What started off as a way to meet fellow comic book aficionados became, since the rise of the comic book movie, a way for movie studios to sell us trailers months before their films premiere. From what I could tell, the art of the comic convention had been lost.

I am pleased to report that my findings from my first day at New York Comic Con proved my prejudices wrong. Sure, there was tons of whoring of licensed movie properties, both comic and non-comic related, but there was enough old school comic focus and geek love to make it a blast.

Plus, I get to go for free.

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The Fist-Pump Gazette #9: "How the hell did I wake up and my hair's still done?"

If the recap of last week's show is to serve as any indication of what plotlines are to come (as it always has before), it appears that we're finally through with the Ronnie and Sammi drama. It's been replaced with Angelina drama, which has always proved dependable and entertaining. But now we get to focus less on how much her roommates hate her and more on how she plays her sometime boyfriend Jose for a fool by first leading him on, then refusing him birthday sex... then lying about it later, telling everyone in the house that they had smashed.

File this one under "It seems like a bad idea now, and will definitely be revealed as a bad idea later." But before Ang reaps the full consequences from her actions, it's time to explore some more relationship drama. We are presented with a sampling of one in every capacity: failed (Vinny), burgeoning (Pauly and Rocio), and advanced (Jenni and Tom, who arrived just for the week). And then of course there's Sam and Ron, who appear to have fully fallen back into their old habits. Who knows, maybe some people are capable of real change. And sometimes Miami's just the place to inspire it.

The only ones left out of the couples party are Mike (who's making the most of the situation) and Nicole (who only succeeds in getting drunk, interrupting Jenni and Tom, and ending up in Vinny's bed again). Read on to find out what scandal ensued!

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Sunday Reading: Celebreadymade Art

I’ve already shared my fascination with James Franco’s bizarre career-slash-performance-art thing he has going on, but now it seems there may be a movement larger than just one man’s transformation into living art exhibit.

To examine this trend, Slate’s Ben Davis fashioned a slide show of what he dubs “celebreadymade” art.  His term marries Duchamp’s “readymade” art with the celebrity-focused work of Andy Warhol.  “Today’s artists,” argues Davis, “take Warhol’s affection for the tropes of celebrity culture to its logical conclusion, using famous people themselves as found objects.”

The beau of Davis’s pop art ball is Italy’s Francesco Vezzoli.  His modus operandi is putting celebrities in parodies of celebrity-like situations: Courtney Love and Helen Mirren in a promo for a film version of Caligula that isn’t real, Sharon Stone in a satire of political advertising, and Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams fighting over a nonexistent perfume dubbed Greed.  After Vezzoli staged an absurdist musical performance starring Lady Gaga, he told MTV, “My wish is that the entertainment industry makes love more often with the art industry.”  So he’s basically playing the role of postmodern matchmaker.

Perhaps why I’m so intrigued by this wave of pop performance art is that, after all, crafting a successful piece of entertainment is in itself an art.  Why can’t we frame that and put it on display?

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