Thursday, July 18, 2013

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

 
"The arrest of Los Zetas leader Miguel 'Z-40' Trevino Morales marks the most significant capture involving a Mexican organized crime leader since 2008. On July 15, Stratfor sources confirmed Mexican and U.S. media reports saying that Trevino was arrested in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state, and that he was being transferred to Mexico City. Reports indicate that he was arrested late July 14, though that has not been confirmed. At least one source claims Trevino's nephew was also arrested.
Trevino became the leader of Los Zetas, one of Mexico's most prolific and most territorial organized crime groups, sometime in 2012 shortly before then-leader Heriberto 'El Lazca'  Lazcano Lazcano was killed by the Mexican navy. Trevino's arrest could change Mexico's criminal landscape substantially if Los Zetas begin to unravel in his absence." (STRATFOR)
 

"Netflix today became the first digitally distributed outlet to score an Emmy nomination in the series categories, with House of Cards landing one of the Best Drama slots and Arrested Development's Jason Bateman earning a nod for Best Actor. This is a big deal: The TV Academy didn't even allow cable shows to be nominated for Emmys until 1988. Once it did, it was five years before HBO's The Larry Sanders Show became the first cable show to get a series nomination, and fourteen years until Michael Chiklis became the first actor to win an Emmy for a basic cable show. Netflix managed to land a whopping fourteen nominations in only its second year of streaming big-budget scripted shows (Lilyhammer was eligible last year). Not surprisingly, Netflix's chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, is very, very happy about this development. 'Big change usually comes very slowly,' he told Vulture today. 'House of Cards, the way it came together, releasing all the episodes at once … those are big changes. A single nomination in any category would have been a victory.' Instead, House and Arrested both landed in the big categories, while horror series Hemlock Grove got some tech noms.
Sarandos does not deny Netflix wanted these nominations, not that he really could, given the aggressive Emmy campaign it launched. 'We went after it, for sure,' he says. 'We did everything you're supposed to do, and I think we did it well — including the facilitation of the creation of great television.' Just as HBO and Showtime use their Emmy hauls to build their brands as quality entertainment hubs, Netflix should also benefit from the TV Academy love." (NYMag)
 
 
"At a premiere of her movie 'Red 2,' Catherine Zeta-Jones wouldn’t comment about her husband, Michael Douglas, connecting his throat cancer to HPV. When she was asked at Tuesday night’s Cinema Society screening, “Have you been mortified that your husband, in some ways, has become the poster boy for the dangers of oral sex?' the classy actress smiled, and said, 'Next question.' Zeta-Jones was more open about Douglas’ HBO film on Liberace, in which he shares love scenes with Matt Damon. 'I loved everything about it,' she said at the MoMA event. 'It was so lush and wonderful . . . I feel like I’m part of it, but I’m not.'" (NYPost
 

"The Michael's lunch was a typical Wednesday lunch. A madhouse. All kinds of people doing business even if that means social. The list; around the room. David Thalberg, Exec Director of Krupp Kommunications (K2) with Diane Clehane, the Brenda of Mediabistro. The ying and the yang. Nearby, Joe Armstrong, Duh Mayah and his pal David Zinczenko; Miki Ateyeh and Diane Fogg; Stu Cantor; Alexandre Chemia; Joanna Coles, E-I-C of Cosmo, with Michael Wolff, media columnist for The Guardian; Lisa Dallos of the HL Group with Nicole Purcell and Suzan Gursoy of Adweek; Alice Mayhew; Ellin Delsener, Bettina Zilkha, Annette Tapert; Lee Eastman (son of John; Lee's aunt was the late Linda McCartney, and his cousin is Stella); Bob Gutkowski; Bruce Paisner and Cathie Black; Shelly Palmer; Alan Patricof; Eddie Pollack; David Poltrack; Newell Turner, editorial director of the Hearst shelter magazines .." (NYSocialDiary)


"In 2009 I first came to Pamplona to run with the bulls. I was terrified in that complete and overwhelming way that total ignorance brings, standing on a street corner and waiting for death to come. I comported myself honorably but not brilliantly and did so again two days later before boarding a train to Barcelona and vowing never to come to the city again. The relentlessly loud and bad music, the all-day drinking by people who clearly hadn’t washed in some time, and the fact that the corridas were made abysmal with music played by multiple bands in the audience in apparent competition with one another, all combined to set me firmly against this Navarran Fiesta. The place seemed crude, cruel, and uncouth compared to the sun-blasted, deathless dignity of Andalusia where my aficion for the bulls was formed. My two earlier runs in ‘09 to one side, I had spent the year of 2010 dodging toreando cattle around Spain and Portugal, leaping into the streets with a confidence I have not since recovered, running directly between two bulls in my old high-school athletics blazer.
This year I returned for the Festival of San Fermín, the summer fair dedicated to Pamplona’s first bishop. The obvious advantage of having a bull in front of you in the street is that he clears a path through the 2,000-4,000 people packed into that half a mile. The one behind is the real problem: The picture linked above was snapped at the moment the bull’s horn was cracking the screen of the iPhone in my right pocket, a contemporary variant of the cigarette case stopping the opponent’s bullet in a duel. (I had the detail image as the screensaver on that cell phone, which I never had repaired, as a memento until it was stolen a year later at a bar less than a hundred yards away from that spot. Such is Pamplona. This year I took an actual silver cigarette case in its place just in case.)" (Alexander Fiske-Harrison)


"New Yorkers seem to be going along with this heat despite its intensity. Last night some friends took me to dinner at Sette Mezzo. The place was jammed; lots of friends and friends of friends; a New York local. One of my dinner partners had just finished a book I recommended 'Citizens of London,' and loved it. Everyone I know who has read that book has loved it. There’s a reason they do. All those historic characters whose names are household words are presented with warts and all (yes, Churchill; yes, FDR), and you can 'get' them. You can see how much we are who we are All of us. This is positive bad news. I was asked what else. I told them 'The Patriarch' the Joe Kennedy biography. Big. I think 800 pages. An emotional experience if you take it seriously. You like him, you don’t like him, you’ve met people like him, known people like him, you get how he could be charming, you see how he was very shrewd, driven and clever, and cut-throat  in business. He was an operator, a horse’s ass at times; a schemer, a publicity hound, a world class fooler-arounder, a devoted husband, and most of all a devoted father. You see how Roosevelt could outfox him and he couldn’t do a thing about it (except pretend to try). You see how this man accomplished what he did. The fatherhood was it for me. He gave his love to his children. And his money too, but that’s another part of the forest; love was first. Now you know what I think. I tell this story because right after describing the man to my friends, I looked up, and sitting at a table directly across the room, waiting for her dinner partners, was the surviving child of that father and his famous brood – Jean Kennedy Smith. (who was dining with Phyllis Newman and Joe Armstrong). This is New York." (NYSocialDiary)


"Carla Bruni needs no introduction. The singer, model and ex-First Lady of France is one of Mr. Mickey's biggest idols and also one of the classiest dames alive today. While in town to promote her new record, Little French Songs, Mickey was lucky enough to sit down with the always belle Bruni and chat with her about stage fright, the language she uses for love, and Edith Piaf ... MB: And you're a French citizen and an Italian citizen? CB: I'm both, yeah. MB: So do you relate more to your French side or your Italian side? CB: I've been Italian a good third of my life, or even half of my life. And then I became French when I got married, and my grandmother was French so I was always very connected to French culture and French language. I think I write in French because my grandmother must have been talking French to me [my] whole [childhood], because she wasn't speaking very much Italian. She was married to an Italian man, but still French was her language. So, I feel Italian but maybe my language is French because I came to France when I was six ... CB: And did you play when you were a kid? MB: A little bit. I wish I could sing, but I really have no musical taste except to dance along to little French songs. CB: It's also an education. They took very young kids in Romania once, like one to two-year-old kids and they educated their ears and they realized that actually every human being has a [good] ear. It just has to be taught. Some people have it spontaneously. You know, I can write with rhymes but if I had to be a journalist it wouldn't be easy. When I have to write without rhymes it is very confusing and slow, like when I have to write a letter to someone. If I could write a letter and rhyme it, it would be faster. Everyone has their skills and I don't think it's good to force. There's not enough time, you know? You can really do something well when you do it with desire. " (Mickey Boardman/Papermag)


"Denise Rich threw a lavish carnival-themed party in St. Tropez harbor last night. The songwriter, whose fugitive ex-husband, Marc Rich, died last month, threw the rager on her yacht the Lady Joy, with guests including casino mogul Steve Wynn, Joan Collins, Ivana Trump (who’s back with her much younger ex-husband Rossano Rubicondi), Star Jones, Dori Cooperman, Magic Johnson and Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman. Denise recently dumped her US citizenship for tax reasons. A spy told us, 'The entire dock is covered in red carpet. Huge stars are hanging like balloons. Women are doing circus acts above the dance floor, which is rotating in a circle with a big top over it. Oh, yes.'" (PageSix)

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