We lost an icon last week. 50’s pin-up girl Bettie Page passed away from complications from a heart attack. She was 85.
Page had a rough childhood, according to her website, but managed to get a college education (and later a master’s degree), and rose to stardom as the 50’s most ubiquitous pin-up girl.
She mysteriously disappeared from the public eye in 1958. The details of that time are all now available, from her religious epiphany to her eventual mental breakdown.
But, here, in all her glory, is Page exhibiting the uninhibited sexuality and enjoyment that made her famous (along with all the naked pictures):
Hugh Jackman (Australia, Wolverine) has been tapped to host the Academy Awards this year! It’s a big change from the comedians who have hosted in the past, but Jackman has experience as an emcee, hosting the Tonys for three (very popular) years. Expect some singin’ and dancin’, but the opening monologue will likely be cut (don’t cry!). As a commenter on The Carpetbagger wrote:
All Hugh Jackman has to do—anywhere at all—is stand there and look delectable and smile (he has a brilliant smile). My God, what a gorgeous man. Double-dipped eye candy. Mmmmmmmm
My thoughts exactly.
In box office news, The Day the Earth Stood Still blew away the competition, bringing in $31 mil over the weekend. Runner-up Four Christmases came away with a third of that. ($13 mil). A familiar trio rounded out the top five: Bolt, Twilight, and Australia, with $8, $7.5, and $4 mil, respectively.
The weekend was down 50 percent from last year. The problem is that the newest releases just aren’t performing. Australia was a disappointment. Punisher 2 was barely a blip on the box office radar. Nothing Like the Holidays (which I couldn’t place at first, but is the cute-looking Debra Messing/John Leguiszamo xmas comedy) came in seventh in its opening weekend. The animated Delgo (heard of it?) made a small history this weekend, as the least-grossing film to ever open on over 2,000 screens. Congratulations?
That said, there are a lot of limited releases out now which might be making an appearance at that Jackman event in February. Milk, Frost/Nixon, Doubt, and Gran Torino are all performing well.
Speaking of Jackman, the Wolverine trailer just launched on MySpace. Take a peek:
Although having someone look at the bottom of your shoe is one of the BIGGEST insults in Arab culture, Bush says he was not offended when an Iraqi journalist (Muntadhar al-Zaidi, a reporter for the TV channel Al-Baghdadia) threw his shoes at him on Sunday. The journalist also called Bush a “dog” for all of the death and terror he imposed upon the Iraqi people. Is Bush simply not aware of the meaning of the shoe throwing? Or does Bush still refuse to believe that the war has done more harm than good in Iraq? For some Iraqis, Bush’s farewell visit couldn’t come a moment too soon.
Although everyone in the world seems to be on bated breath waiting for President-Elect Barack Obama to select a dog for his daughters, Vice President-elect Joe Biden recently chose a new dog for his family. Apparently, Biden also had a similar “election doggie” promise. A writer for the Christian Science Monitor reports that if Obama and Biden won the election, Joe promised to get him and his wife a dog.
However, not everyone is happy about Biden’s decision. Animal rights activists are making a big bark about Biden buying a dog from a commercial breeder instead of getting a rescue or shelter puppy. There are an estimated four million dogs that are euthanized each year because they don’t have a home.
“We are surprised that Sen. Biden chose to purchase a dog from a commercial kennel since he has been a leader on animal-protection issues and has championed a number of important animal-welfare reforms in the Senate,†Michael Markarian, executive vice president of the Humane Society of the United States, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “President-elect Obama can send a stronger message of hope and change for animals by adopting a homeless dog from an animal shelter or rescue group.â€
Even People for the Equal Treatment of Animals (PETA) came out with a statement about Biden’s breeder pup.
“I was extremely disappointed to read that Vice President-elect Joe Biden and his wife bought a dog from a breeder instead of adopting one from an animal shelter,†writes Dore on the PETA blog. “Obviously he or his wife blanked on Ingrid’s letter, which asked him to consider adopting,†she wrote. â€Every year, U.S. animal shelters are forced to euthanize millions of wonderful, deserving dogs and cats because of the lack of good homes.â€
Animal rights advocates are still holding out hope that Obama gets a pound puppy. Meanwhile, check out Biden’s cute puppy on the video below.
Blago’s Football: if you’ve been hiding under a rock, perhaps you’ve missed the single greatest passage to appear in an American newspaper in the last 10 years, maybe forever. It’s in a piece entitled, “Two Sides of a Troubled Governor, Sinking Deeper,” by Monica Davey in the New York Times. It concerns the disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevitch, the man who is under investigation for trying to sell Pres-Elect Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat. The piece talks about the Governor’s egomaniacal and narcisstic demands, which were at odds with his everyman public persona.
The passage reads:
And yet, Mr. Blagojevich, 52, rarely turns up for work at his official state office in Chicago, former employees say, is unapologetically late to almost everything, and can treat employees with disdain, cursing and erupting in fury for failings as mundane as neglecting to have at hand at all times his preferred black Paul Mitchell hairbrush. He calls the brush “the football,†an allusion to the “nuclear football,†or the bomb codes never to be out of reach of a president.
Seriously, just read that paragraph over and over. You don’t even need to read the rest of the article. This is what perfection looks like.
Bush got shoe-ed away. Lame duck loser—i.e. Georgie W. Bush Jr.—went to Iraq this weekend for a non-victory lap and thought he was going to come away with some sentimental fluff pieces about how he really cares. Instead, he got a different sort of photo-op: an Iraqi journalist—and now, hero to the world—threw his shoes at Bush during a small press conference. Bush—like he’s been doing for the duration of his two terms—ducked. Lame.
The world’s biggest Ponzi scheme just got worse.Bernie Madoff, the Wall Street legend who bilked “hundreds and possibly thousands and include major banks, hedge funds, charities and pension funds” has ripped off everyone from bank HSBC, a Steven Spielberg foundation, and Mort Zuckerman. His ponzi party was brought to an abrupt halt when he admitted to two employees that his fund was “just one big lie,” with “absolutely nothing” left and that he planned to distribute the remaining $200 million to family and friends before turning himself in. The whistle was blown before he got a chance to do that.
Senator Kennedy, the sequel. It looks like Caroline Kennedy has tossed her hat in the ring for Senator Hillary Clinton’s seat in New York. The New York Times points out that she would be filling a seat once held by her uncle, Robert F. Kennedy. Should she get the post, this could be an interesting political play. Imagine a day, 8 years into the future, say, and we’d have another possible female presidential candidate with even bigger name recognition than Clinton.
