A Little of the Old In and Out



(image via linsdomain)

In: John Hurt. As the biggest fan in the world of I, Claudius (and the inspired sickness of John Hurt's Caligula), it was fun to see the master thespian, still up and about, albeit doing smaller, more sophisticated projects, interviewed by Moviehole:"'It's very strange, I'm always working. I mean I'm always doing something,' (Hurt) says, speaking with that quiet eloquence of his. 'I think certain films take on a kind of attraction, while certain films seem to slip by without people noticing.' In particular, he muses, is one of his favourite films of recent memory, Love and Death on Long Island. 'I'm a huge believer, for instance, in Richard Kwietniowski as a director, I think he's a wonderful director, though he had a very considerable profile in a way, got sort of disregarded and totally ignored by every single establishment, which I find intriguing.

"Further, on the former Caligula playing a Catholic priest:

"In comparing 'Shooting Dogs' to last year's 'Hotel Rwanda,' Hurt frankly says 'there's no comparison. It's a much better film. It's a completely different aspect of the war and doesn't have any escapism in that sense. I play a catholic priest whose school it is where the whole incident takes place. Also at the time of the beginning of the film he's sharing it with the United Nations, who have one of their bases there, and eventually of course, it's when the troubles really start firing up, and it becomes a refugee camp as well.'"

And, Finally:

"Hurt also spent some time in the Australian outback filming 'The Proposition,' written by musician Nick Cave and featuring Guy Pearce and Liam Neeson. 'Oh, I love that film, I must say. I've just saw that recently for the first time and I think it's terrific, a super film. It's a very, very good script and a western. It's only possible to make it in Australia because it wouldn't be suitable to the American myth. It seems to me that you can't make a western outside of that myth. But being Australia, it's such a different frontier there because they were pushing into an interior that was utterly impossible, certainly for a white man. I mean it was difficult beyond belief for the Aboriginals, but impossible for a white man. They hadn't even got it together at that time to understand that you had to drink water. I mean they were drinking whiskey not water, and you'd turn around and you're talking somebody and they'd drop dead on the floor."

Sounds positively Caligulesque; we're so there. The whole interview here.



(image via movies.ying)

Out: Joe Simpson. Never hire family to manage your career (Ask Tom Cruise if you don't believe The Corsair). That Jessica Simpson is as dumb as a jar of pig's knuckles is a given. It is not common knowledge, however, that the cause of her phenomenal stupidity may be congential. (The Corsair sips some Appleton rum) According to those intrepid Page Sixxies:

"MAGAZINE insiders are snickering at the deal Jessica Simpson's manager/father, Joe Simpson, made with OK! magazine. Simpson graced the inaugural U.S. issue and got $200,000. But insiders say the $200,000 was a package deal in which Simpson will be on six more covers and host the magazine's Sept. 20 launch party on the roof of the Cornelia Day Spa on Fifth Avenue. 'The deal also precludes Jessica from giving any other magazines major features until all the covers are done, which will be in like two years. So basically, Joe sold his daughter out for $200,000,' the insider said."

She's in the number one movie in America, and she doesn't rate "Hasselhoff Money"? Que pasa, Joe? Even Dennis "I put the 'ho in HBO" Hoff could have pimped her out for more cheddar.



(image via cku-gda.ids)

In: Immigration and Education. With Texas becoming the fourth state with a non-white majority population, immigration will be a major -- if not THE major -- issue in the 2008 election (link via drudgereport). Already Tancredo is positioning himself, and Southwestern border-state candidates like John McCain and Bill Richardson will, no doubt, have advantages on this so-very-close-to-home issue. As the AP writes, "Five other states - Maryland, Mississippi, Georgia, New York and Arizona - aren't far behind, with about 40 percent minorities."

Immigration and educaticompetitivenesss future competetiveness are all issues that are inextricably linked. Keeping this in mind, the utter failure of public education in the United States makes me pessimistic about the future in this new, and -- to borrow a concept from Thomas Friedman -- "Flat Earth." That having been said, and leaving aside the brain-dead institution known as the teachers' unions, who are all about pay raises and nothing about curricula: Could we, post haste, institute the Paideia Propsal into the nation's public schools? And not just "magnet" schools where only a tiny amount benefits. Allowing each district to plan their own curfallacym presupposes the falacy that different children need different qualities of schooling.

Let's do this if only just so that we could at lecompetitivenesslance of competetiveness in the global economy in the future. The education going on in American public schools at present is naught else but incoherent piffle, and if we are honest with ourselves, we all know that already. When was the last time a President allowed their children to attend a public school? I thought so. And since politicians don't have the intelligence to think out organic educational solutions, which, admittedly, requires a lifetime of considering, why not just leave it to the professionals and not the policy pimps.

Here are some of the principles of the Paideia Proposal, which was put together not by "educators" (Averted Gaze) -- whatever the fuck a graduate degree in education is supposed to mean -- but by "philosophers" (like the late, great Mortimer Adler, founder of Saint John's College), particularly philosophers who study the cognitive development of the mind, the Great Books, the Eastern classics -- now, doesn't that sound better than the K-12 curriculum of your local asbestos-ridden public schoPrinciplest:

"Paideia Princiles:

"1) That all children can learn;

"2) That, therefore, they all deserve the same quality of schooling, not just the same quantity;
That the quality of schooling to which they are entitled is what the wisest parents would wish for their own children, the best education for the best being the best education for all;

"3) That schooling at its best is preparation for becoming generally educated in the course of a whole lifetime, and that schools should be judged on how well they provide such preparation;

"4) That the three callings for which schooling should prepare all Americans are (a) to earn a decent livelihood, (b) to be a good citizen of the nation and the world, and (c) to make a good life for oneself;

More of The Paideia Principles here.



(image via fajkowsky)

Out: The Trump Blog. Blog hard, Donald Trump! We cannot wait until Mark Cuban duly responds with an electronic blogosphere pimpslap. But until then, it's all about the Trumpiversity blog (The Corsair launches a falcon).

No doubt, we can expect some no nonsense straight shooting from The Trumper. That, and, ehr, he loves to pick up pennies off of expectorant-laden New York City streets. Eew. For his first blog (link via gawker), Trumpie takes on Dennis Kozlowsky, man-to-man:

"Recently former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski was convicted for stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the company. It was his second go-round in court--the first one ended in a mistrial. You may remember Mr. Kozlowski from the original trial. A video of his lavish party on an Italian island, allegedly paid for with company funds, was last year's scandal du jour.

" ... For a couple weeks it was all over the news, so most people saw at least a snippet of this cinematic atrocity, including a giddy, red-faced Kozlowski dancing amid ice sculptures and costumed models posing as ancient Roman courtiers."

As opposed to prancing amid icy assistants, eh? More Trumpie here.




(image via segginger)

In: Jamie Lee Curtis. Agree or disagree, it takes a considerable amount of moxie to speak out -- in Hollywood, no less -- against the institution of plastic surgery. Half the breasts, chins, calves and cheeks in that town have been surgically-altered in some way or other (The Corsair assumes the Vajrasana Yogamudra position). Ah, well, they can't all be as perfect as our blog wife, Miu Von Furstenberg. Kudos to Jamie Lee Curtis, Lady Haden-Guest, who told ThisisLondon:

"Saying she did not want 'the unsuspecting 40-year-old women of the world' to be deceived, the star who played a stunning aerobics instructor in the 1985 film Perfect and did a famous striptease in True Lies, said of the resulting images: 'I don't have great thighs. I have very big breasts and a soft, fatty little tummy. And I've got back fat.'

"... '(Plastic surgery and botoxing) is an epidemic which is out of control,' declared the 46-year-old. 'The way they are injecting things and freezing things. People are looking like aliens.'

"Miss Lee Curtis herself is no stranger to surgical enhancement - having in the past had Botox jabs and liposuction. But the star of A Fish Called Wanda, Trading Places and True Lies swears she would never do it again.

"'It didn't work when I tried it because it didn't work emotionally - it felt fraudulent,' she said. 'It felt like the act of doing it made me feel ashamed of myself that I would even try.'

"It was not just the psychological effects of plastic surgery that left her unimpressed. 'I tried the lipo and that comes back in other places. And I tried the Botox and that doesn't work because you have no expression. All these actresses now have foreheads like Madame Tussaud's wax museum."

Tell us how you really feel. The full story here.



(image via wow)

Out: Porn Candy. Shame on the London Theater mentioned here! Shame! In a post entitled "Suck on This," the gang at WorldofWonder write:

"Stephanie Calman, the muse behind The Bad Mothers Club was being a good mother indeed when she took her children to the cinema to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in London. But during the show, the projection got all wonkie and the film kept slipping and stopping and having to be restarted. Eventually, red lollipops were handed to the cranky kids as they left the theater. But Calman's little daughter had hers whisked out of her hand and the sticker on it torn off before she got it back. Seems the theater was off-loading its overstock of Inside Deep Throat promotional suckers. It was only afterward that Calman noticed the lollies were slightly longer than usual."

Freaks.