Koko, the gorilla who uses sign language, is capable of discussing almost anything that human beings might want to see Koko discuss. If you enjoyed the video that’s going around the internet in which Koko shares her thoughts on the global climate-change summit, you’ll definitely be wowed by her review of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. We couldn’t have put it better ourselves!
It had to happen: Whispers are speeding out of previews of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Revolutionary Road, leaving Paramount behind a breached embargo wall and knee-deep in mixed buzz for the former and generally glowing praise for the latter. Surely the studio's shrieking winged attack flacks are sniffing the most direct trail to the leakers' (mostly anonymous) domains, so make their sacrifices worth it! Hear the early word after the jump.The first Button item we saw was submitted by an "industry spy"; if it was published by anyone other that Anne Thompson, we'd assume it was just a publicity intern practicing her press-note chops:
T-minus 48 hours and counting until theater critics can officially digest the spectacle of Katie Holmes's Broadway debut in All My Sons. Can't! Wait! But while the amateur pundits have already gotten a jump on the show's previews and Anonymous protesters have hammered out the kinks in their own play in front of the Schoenfeld Theater, one perennially-trustworthy perspective has trickled out onto the Web this morning for everyone to parse: That of Fox crack gossip and drama wonk Roger Friedman, who hastens to note that today's column is a "report," not a "review," lest Holmes might have been saving her A-game for Thursday's premiere.Never mind that Friedman writes in detail about the "recently discovered" Patrick Wilson, who has been an awards-hopeful leading man for the last two Oscar seasons. Katie is the story here, however buried, and however non-committal:
Don't believe for a second that David Letterman really broke any studio embargoes last night to tell you he loves The Dark Knight (he's not even the first to do so), but that doesn't mean the pseudo-spoilers contained herein are likely to compel you any less. In fact, the film Letterman describes may prove to be better than the finished product Warners has so ingloriously pimped for months now, right down to Batman's protective ears and the franchise-ending climax we've been hoping for. Of course, as far as we know Heath Ledger is still in the film, so maybe it's all devastatingly true. It's not like the cast hasn't been preparing us. [CBS]
Seriously, there is such a thing as anti-comedy — the type of willful unfunniness we've been gleaning from every trailer, teaser and report emerging from the cultural black hole that is The Love Guru. Not that we require his validation, but the concept appeared again today in the highest-profile forum yet: A.O. Scott's slightly displeased NY Times review:
John Cusack's meander through his second-consecutive anti-war film is coming under heavy fire at the Tribeca Film Festival, where War, Inc. bowed this week to the kinds of reviews that made his previous Iraq entry — the $50,899-grossing Grace is Gone — positively shine in comparison. While he and his agent sift around for a more reliable rom-com follow-up, our preliminary poke through the wreckage yields yet more smoldering evidence that Iraq is officially over as a dramatic subject. We piece together the eyewitness testimony after the jump:
Middling designer Kenneth Cole is upset that tawdry media outlets these days spend all their time covering sensational stories, rather than important things like, you know, his blog, for which he is plastering ads all over NYC. It's not that his underlying point is wrong—the media does specialize in "fueling the paranoia." The problem is the cognitive dissonance involved in being lectured by Kenneth Cole in a blog post titled, "Is Responsible Journalism an Oxymoron?" I'll tell you what's an oxymoron: "Kenneth Cole... good." Yea, score one for the media!
Those wacky shoe-screening cards at the TSA started a blog! It's got a catchy name ("Evolution of Security"), a thriller trailer tagline ("Terrorist Evolve. Threats Evolve. Security Must Stay Ahead. You Play a Part." COMING THIS FALL.), and incredibly bitchy comments. Like "DHS and TSA are fundamentally broken. Disband both immediately and return our civil liberties." That's one of the mild ones! They deleted most of the not mild ones. Also it's hosted on Blogger. Some more entertaining of the remaining comments, below. [ThinkProgress, WP]
One of the stranger things we've come across in quite some time is this blog that John Mayer runs on Honeyee.com, some sort of Lower East Side-Japanese-product shilling site (might have something to do with Nike? We dunno! Confusion!). Anyway, his most recent post reproduces an analysis of the media called "Media Fear Tactics," written by "threat assessment" consultant Gavin de Becker, who wrote that book The Gift of Fear. Okay, now we're scared! Also, John Mayer probably hates celebrity tabloids. Just a hunch.
