Friday, August 31, 2007

I see sunshine on a cloudy day...

As part of NBC's international promotional tour for Heroes, they've divided the main cast members into three groups; British fans of Sendhil Ramamurthy (there surely must be some) are out of luck as he went to Asia with Greg Grunberg, Masi Oka and Ali Larter, while James Kyson Lee, Zachary Quinto, Noah Gray-Cabey and season two newbie Dania Ramirez stayed in the US (and Canada). Paris, Munich and London drew the long straw with Milo Ventimiglia, Jack Coleman, Adrian Pasdar and...







From yesterday's photocall at the London Eye (also visited by The Alba in fictional form during 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer). Red really suits Hayden. And this dress also prevents any almost-nipslips like in Paris.

Sunday (when she, Mr. Bennet and Nathan Petrelli are at LFCC) cannot get here soon enough.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

The glory that is Cindy Crawford.

MTV Award-winner, chart-topping MILF and Gilmore girls scourge Gwen Stefani used to have a chest closer to Sandra Bullock than Keeley Hazell; but since she spawned Kingston, Gwen's developed a detectable rack (somehow I can't see her going the Christina Aguileraisacunt route to bust improvement). This might also explain the startling measurements shown by the Queen in these candid shots - what with her having been out and about recently they can't be implants. Regardless, stunning as ever. Not for the first or last time, thank you Cindy...

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Screwing the score again.

Dear Lakeshore Records,

You couldn't have included one Aaron Zigman track on the
Good Luck Chuck soundtrack? Even a short suite would have done; then I could have gotten the album and had an excuse to have a CD with Jessica Alba on the cover (especially since I can't seem to get the cover art on the blog).

That you guys are usually so good with these things - if not separate CDs, at least giving the composer some space - makes it worse. It's not like she's on the cover of Commotion's album for The Ten...


Yours,
Victor

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Tuesday morning, 3:21am

Start of another four-day week. (Monday is a holiday for me because I feel I may want to recover from being in the same room as Hayden - as part of NBC's publicity jaunt the cheerleader, Mr. Bennet and the brothers Petrelli are going to be in the UK towards the end of the week; La Panettiere is due to be with Chris Moyles, Jack Coleman's on GMTV and Milo Ventimiglia is on This Morning, so where's Adrian Pasdar?) And meanwhile, I'm discussing future stories with my partner Brandon, and getting ready to... sign off and watch another episode of season six of Gilmore girls. No stress, thanks.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Seven days between each bar.

Since being diagnosed with the D-word lo these many years ago (well, not all that many), I've been trying - not always successfully - to reduce sugar intake. (This is admittedly dreadfully self-indulgent, but I defy you to name a blog that isn't.) Some areas are roaring successes - the days when I could put away entire packets of Crawford's or Fox's best in one go are behind me - but one thing I've tried to do has been a problem.

I like chocolate. Not all kinds (NO NUTS!), but I like the stuff. And I tried in the past to ration myself to one bar a week. But I can't keep track of the damn things, and when I'm miserable and I'd rather not have Nutri-Grain Raisin Bakes (tasty though they are, they can have a rather... um... smellable side effect, if you know what I mean), it's hard to keep from popping over to the corner shop and getting a Double Decker or Kit Kat. So now I'm just going to note when I get them on this blog. For no one's benefit but my own.

A whole week without Cadbury's or Ritter's, or Hershey's if I'm in Selfridges at the time, stretches ahead. Is it bearable? Yes.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Bring on the weekend.


Ken, who updates his blog about as often as Michelle Williams has a hit record, sent me clips of Paula Marshall on Californication - since he doesn't update, and since this blog doesn't do NSFW pictures, see snaps here. You now know how she could have done something about her reputation as a show killer (plus copious nudity would only have made the already-good Cupid even better. Granted, Channel 5 ran all fifteen episodes in an afternoon slot (and they've never been repeated), but...).
Meanwhile, even though Hayden Panettiere's FHM spread is all over the Net, I've decided to save myself and wait until actually buying the magazine (and only in the version with her solo cover - no offence, Masi Oka [a rare case of FHM having a guy on the cover, even if he shares space on one with her] ) ... the last time I did something like this, even unto deleting pictures unopened in my inbox, was with Cindy's last Playboy spread. That says a lot about the young lady. In fact, what with her magazine shoot and a Blades of Glory score CD coming out (and not download-only like some Lakeshore albums) it's all good.
Finally managed to get Cindy and her offspring up. That family must need a whole forest's worth of sticks to beat them off with.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Yes, but does she pass the Timberlake test?

Whatever Popoholic might say, Lee Hyori is unquestionably a babe, but...

Let's put it this way - Justin Timberlake's joined the cast of Jessica Alba's flick The Love Guru, alongside star Mike Myers. Hyori's charms wouldn't quite atone for JT if she was in it, and it was his involvement that ensured there is no way in hell I'll view Shrek the Third... but the movie doesn't have her, it has The Alba! And if Justin freaking Timberlake can't put me off going to see a movie with Jessica Alba, no one can.

End of.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Scandalous Saskia, the Sequel

What she had to say about it.

What another blogger had to say about it.

And the
it in question.

Suffice to say that as Bajegirl noted, had this happened in America (or in the UK) it would have most likely launched Saskia on a modelling career. She's certainly foxier than some glamour models...

The moment has come...

Not only has my blog been unlocked, but as I write this in just over four hours (or six minutes, depending on where you stand, as she was born in New York) Hayden Leslie Panettiere will finally be 18. Which means she can legally drink - I think - and, for other purposes, also means that those men whose fantasies about her have been tainted by guilt can officially perv without getting told off (and also means that when she appears on Chris Moyles's show next Friday it'll be a bit less creepy for some).

Of course, for those who were already fantasising about her it'll be business as usual.

All we have to do now is hope she turns out to be more like Jessica Alba and less like one of the Olsen Twins... I'm an optimist at heart.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Four not-vital but annoying questions for a Friday.

1. Why did Joel Madden go from Hilary Duff to Nicole Richie?
2. Why are more people in the UK watching Big Brother than Heroes (at least on BBC2)? Are you lot high, or just incredibly stupid?
3. Why does Stardust have a song by Take That (which is at least not on the soundtrack album)?
4. Why are none of the pictures of Cindy Crawford with Vanessa Hudgens at the High School Musical 2 premiere available in a format I can put on this blog?

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Yay!

At last, my debit card came! One less thing to worry about...

Crawford walked her kids down the carpet, introducing them to the film's stars. "We met Vanessa (Hudgens) already — so mission accomplished," said a relieved Crawford, just before introducing her daughter to (Ashley) Tisdale. "She's just dying right now!"

When Crawford was a girl, her first crushes were Shaun Cassidy and Willie Aames. Did she ever get to meet the former '70s heartthrobs? "No, and I don't want to," she said. "At this point, it's best to let it live in memories."


C/O USA TODAY, from Cindy at the premiere of High School Musical 2. If you don't think pictures of her, Presley and Kaia from the event will be on this blog, you don't know me very well. (Why are there none of Cindy with Vanessa or Ashley?)

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Right, so it's Wednesday...

...and things can't be better. Well, they can - what with shopping for food having to be done, and my right elbow being a bit achey. And with it coming closer to the time when Googling "heroes nbc" will be fraught with danger of spoilers again. Gah.

On the upside, it's only a month or so until High School Musical 2 arrives.

Okay, that's today's post done. Strictly to make up the numbers. See you tomorrow.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Girls, yes. Booze, no.


Even Barbadian beer companies aren't immune to the lure of sex, eh? The Nation reports today that this year's Miss Banks/calendar girl, a 20-year-old bartender called Saskia Griffith (that's her up there), got stripped of her honour after being at a sponsored event and being lathered with chocolate in a tub at said event. Details here, with Saskia's picture from the calendar as well - sadly pulled from Banks' site now - and while it's hardly in the same league as Danielle Lloyd's misdeeds (look her up) or anything done by Paris Hilton, it's still not the kind of thing I heard about when I was younger. Then again, I was a very sheltered child.

You heard me, Agnes.

One of those names that irks me for some reason. Along with Neil (and any spelling variation thereof), Nell (and any spelling variation thereof), Denise, Gretchen, Ian, Irene, Esther (apologies to Miss Baxter), Hermione, Harriet, Olive, Owen...



I don't know why.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

iHate iTunes.

Misunderstand me not, I

BONUS FELTZ: Me, for opening a packet of Asda chicken, recoiling at the pungent smell, throwing it away, forgetting to wrap it up securely before doing so, and thus making the flat smell yucky and incurring the wrath of Sharon. Pillock that I am. END OF BONUS FELTZ

As I was saying - I don't have any real problem with people buying music online in download form, and I'm certainly not going to be rushing out to see Underdog when it comes out here (or if it comes out here)... but when I see the ad says "Soundtrack Available on Hollywood Records," I naturally assume it'll be out on old-fashioned physical media. Nope - like all too many of their recent OSTs it's download only. In keeping with the forward-thinking House of Mouse, maybe, but a pisser for those of us who aren't iTunes subscribers. Considering MovieScore Media's moved into CD from download-only, it can't be that much of a problem. (For the record, the Underdog OST has Kyle "Cory Baxter" Massey doing a rap with the rest of it being Randy Edelman.)

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Roger Ebert writes...

Remember the scene in A Clockwork Orange where Alex has his eyes clamped open and is forced to watch a movie? I imagine a similar experience for the architects of our catastrophe in Iraq. I would like them to see No End in Sight, the story of how we were led into that war, and more than 3,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of other lives were destroyed.

They might find the film of particular interest because they would know so many of the people appearing in it. This is not a documentary filled with anti-war activists or sitting ducks for Michael Moore. Most of the people in the film were important to the Bush administration. They had top government or military jobs, they had responsibility in Iraq or Washington, they implemented policy, they filed reports, they labored faithfully in service of U.S. foreign policy and then they left the government. Some jumped, some were pushed. They all feel disillusioned about the war and the way the White House refused to listen to them about it.

The subjects in this film now feel that American policy in Iraq was flawed from the start, that obvious measures were not taken, that sane advice was disregarded, that lies were told and believed, and that advice from people on the ground was overruled by a cabal of neo-con goofballs who seemed to form a wall around the president.

The president and his inner circle knew, just knew, for example, that Saddam had or would have weapons of mass destruction, that he was in league with al-Qaida and bin Laden, and that in some way, it was all hooked up with Sept. 11. Not all of the advice in the world could penetrate their obsession, and they fired the bearers of bad news.

It is significant, for example, that a Defense Intelligence Agency team received orders to find links between al-Qaida and Hussein. That there were none was ignored. Key adviser Paul Wolfowitz's immediate reaction to Sept. 11 was "war on Iraq." Anarchy in that land was all but assured when the Iraqi army was disbanded against urgent advice from our people in the field. That meant that a huge number of competent military men, most of them no lovers of Saddam, were rendered unemployed -- and still armed. How was this disastrous decision arrived at? People directly involved said it came as an order from administration officials who had never been to Iraq.

Did Bush know and agree? They had no indication. Perhaps not. A National Intelligence report commissioned in 2004 advised against the war. Bush, who apparently did not read it, dismissed it as guesswork -- a word that seems like an ideal description of his own policies.

Who is Charles Ferguson, director of this film? A one-time senior fellow of the Brookings Institute, software millionaire, originally a supporter of the war, visiting professor at MIT and Berkeley, he was trustworthy enough to inspire confidences from former top officials. They mostly felt that orders came from the precincts of Vice President Cheney, that Cheney's group disregarded advice from veteran American officials, and in at least one case, channeled a decision to avoid Bush's scrutiny. The president signed, but didn't read, and you can see the quizzical, betrayed looks in the eyes of the men and women in the film, who found that the more they knew about Iraq, the less they were heeded.

Although Bush and the war continue to sink in the polls, I know from some readers that they still support both. That is their right. And if they are so sure they are right, let more young men and women die or be maimed. I doubt if they will be willing to see this film, which further documents an administration playing its private war games. No, I am distinctly not comparing anyone to Hitler, but I cannot help being reminded of the stories of him in his Berlin bunker, moving nonexistent troops on a map, and issuing orders to dead generals.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Happy birthday Rosanna.

Today marks the 48th birthday of Rosanna Arquette. Has it really been that long?

It would have been unthinkable twenty years ago that I'd almost have let it go unmarked. But I did.

But only almost. If I still take peeks at What About Brian, it's for her. That's worth something.

Thursday, August 09, 2007

I hate stress.

Flooding delayed my new debit card. Postal strikes delayed it as well. And I have to wait until after work to get paid tomorrow because they didn't get to do the direct payments into our accounts again. This is not good. Things have to swing upwards soon.

Everybody sing along...

The way you see, if I move the t.v.
she looks so good, and she's not make believe
She's black, and white, and Sin City
C'mon now honey, just do it for me
She's good, she's bad, everything I need
I need you here now to put me to sleep
Into the blue, we touch so deep
I'm hoping that one day you will

Walk with me, let's walk into the night
Jessica, come home with me tonight
Superstar, you mean so much to me,
To me,
I'm never giving up

Let's fight, tonight you're my dark angel
Let's go, and run 'til we trip and we fall
So take, the sky, 'coz the world's too small
Let's follow you with the fantastic
For the first time I kept staring down across the floor
Now walk with me tonight

Walk with me, let's walk into the night
Jessica, come home with me tonight
Superstar, you mean so much to me,
To me,
I'm never giving up

*Instrumental*

I'm never giving up

Walk with me, let's walk into the night
Jessica, come home with me tonight
Superstar, you mean so much to me,
To me,
I'm never giving up
Walk with me, let's walk into the night
Jessica, come home with me tonight
Superstar, you mean so much to me,
Walk with me, let's walk into the night
Jessica, come home with me tonight
Superstar, you mean so much to me,
To me...


Elliot Minor wrote "Jessica" because, according to them, she's fit. No arguments from this corner. Listen to the song here.

Monday, August 06, 2007

Another day, another disappointing film music look (apparently).

As you might have noticed (unless you're reading this anytime after Monday), the last thing I listened to was Gary Chang's Under Siege, the score for Steven Seagal's most successful movie (and one often mistaken for a good movie on account of it having proper actors like Gary Busey [in drag] and Tommy Lee Jones [leading a rock'n'roll band!], but then again it does have Erika Eleniak popping out of a birthday cake topless...). Unfortunately apart from the main title the rest of it is a textbook case of "Great with the film, not so good away from it" with some shameless ripoffs of other scores not helping at all. Bleh.

Anyway, it's safe to say that it wouldn't get into Lights! Action! Music!, which was reviewed in today's New York Times by Stephen Holden thusly. It does sound less Music from the Movies: Toru Takemitsu and more that episode of Lights! Camera! Action! which somehow went from Hans Zimmer to 1930s British musicals...

Classical music for people who are afraid of classical music: that’s one way of looking at traditional film scores, which bring symphonically orchestrated music to more people than most serious composers are ever likely to attract to concert halls. As movie audiences are emotionally swept up in the synergy of photography, acting, settings and costumes, it is music more than any other element that effects what the director Francis Ford Coppola calls the “fusion” of these ingredients into “a critical mass.” It usually works best if it is only half-heard.
Those are among Mr. Coppola’s insights in Lights! Action! Music!, a fluffy, disorganized, woefully incomplete compendium of interviews and film clips about movie music that begins this month on public television stations. (It is shown tonight on WLIW in New York.)
In a show that flits among more composers and directors than it has the time to accommodate, Mr. Coppola offers the most trenchant commentary. Many of the rest of the comments by various composers are reduced to hyperbolic sound bites included to give viewers a chance to connect a director or composer’s face with a few shallow observations.
Mr. Coppola recalls the Academy Award acceptance speech of the composer Dimitri Tiomkin, who wrote the thundering heroic scores for westerns like Red River and High Noon. In his speech upon winning best film score for High Noon, Mr. Coppola recalls, Mr. Tiomkin mischievously ran down a list of classical composers from whom he had stolen.
The show offers a tantalizing glimpse of Mr. Coppola’s forthcoming Youth Without Youth, with music by Osvaldo Golijov, an Argentina-born composer who grew up in Eastern Europe, won a MacArthur fellowship in 2003 and teaches in the United States. A snippet of the movie, in which the director instructed Mr. Golijov to evoke a mood of personal regret, is shown and analyzed by the composer. As fleeting as the moment may be, you feel it.
The composer David Shire recalls how Mr. Coppola asked him to write piano music that evoked “the subtext” of Gene Hackman’s character in The Conversation. The tricky, obsessive piano motif reveals a nagging psychological complexity that only music could distill so precisely.
The survey jumps awkwardly from subject to subject. One section, called “Obscurity,” seems to have been created simply to bring in the name of Henry Manciniwho is otherwise unacknowledged; his tango from a flop 1969 film, Gaily, Gaily, though catchy enough, is far from Mancini’s best. In another section the director Ang Lee offers a fascinating tidbit about instrumental sounds and particular actors: Tobey Maguire, he says, is best underscored by a clarinet.
One promising section, “Collaboration,” focuses on the long-running relationships between Federico Fellini and Nino Rota, and between Spike Lee and Terence Blanchard. But it is far too short. The relationships of Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, or of John Williams and Steven Spielberg, go unmentioned. A fragment of Ennio Morricone’s music from Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western For a Few Dollars More is seemingly shoehorned in just to mention that composer’s name. But who’s in and who’s out ultimately seems completely arbitrary.
Beyond its relationship to classical music, the history of film music is given no historical context. The rise of the contemporary pop soundtrack in movies like The Graduate should at least have been noted. And no one describes the grinding drudgery endured by film composers sitting in front of a Movieola and completing the painstaking, moment-by-moment synchronization of sound and image.
The best way to appreciate Lights! Action! Music! is as a sampler for a larger and deeper exploration. Even on its own terms, it is a frivolous diversion.

Sunday, August 05, 2007

Harry, meet Rory. Rory, Harry.

Apparently some of my online friends like these Harry Potter books, but I've yet to read any of them or see the movies. I'm still waiting patiently (sic) for Hallmark or Nickelodeon or somebody in the UK to air the final two seasons of Gilmore girls, but as far as I know Mike (possibly), Gugs (definitely - he doesn't watch anything :) ) etc don't tune into Lorelai the Elder and Younger. Some enterprising YouTuber married footage of the former to the signature tune for the latter, and here's the result.



Many thanks to AnneUK for getting me DVD copies of all of season six (and part of season seven, even if I can't get DivX to show on screen for the latter), by the way.

Cindy is amazing.



Here's my Cindy after a night out in St. Tropez earlier this week. Even drunk (or maybe just sleepy) she's utterly divine. Now that is what I call classy.

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Perez Hilton is a dick and Hayden Panettiere is emphatically not.

That is all.

Okay, maybe I should expand on this. If you

a) put up a photoshopped picture of an underage -
until August 21, that is - woman hefting a dildo and claim it's the real thing,

b) have a history of regularly slagging off said young woman for no reason at all,

c) have said picture watermarked so everyone who reproduces it will know it's from YOUR site,

d) later try and cover it up when you get called on it by other sites,

and e) have a reputation for being so loathsome even other celebrity bloggers want to knock seven shades of shit out of you...

Hayden often comes across as wiser than her years. This does not seem to be the case with him.

Rubber bands.

One of the things I do at work is clean up (after a fashion). Unfortunately the workers on the polywrapping machine fling the rubber bands that keep the letters together on the floor - and there are a lot of letters. And a lot of bands. And it's usually your friendly neighbourhood muggins who has to pick them up in the mornings. And it drives me completely insane. So messy (the place generally is, but the bands are the worst). Cleaning up if I'm there late on Fridays helps get the weekend off to a really bad start, but at least when I go in there on Monday morning it won't be so fucking depressing. Maybe that'll be the thing that drives me to move on; I'm not really sure I should be a glorified janitor. Then again, keeping places tidy is nothing to be ashamed of, and it makes you feel better if it's straightened up a bit.

Meanwhile, my bank card's expired and my new one hasn't come yet (according to the lady in the Abbey National up on Muswell Hill - cough, spit - things have been delayed because of the flooding, and the Royal Mail strikes can't have helped). You wanna hurry up?

Going back to work, I'm on one of my listening-to-everything-I-have jags (go to and from work listening to tapes... yes, children, before iPods there was an invention called a Walkman which allowed people to listen to cassettes, and since I have a hefty amount of soundtracks on cassette a tape player is of more use to me... and CDs at work), but annoyingly I decided to try and synchronise the tapes and CD, subject-wise. CDs are up to the great Danny Elfman, tapes up to Bruce Broughton, and it's one disc a day at work until I catch up. And it's very painful to put up with playlisted Radio 1 (the other stations are even worse). Especially with Scott Mills, the twat.

At least the sun's out.

Thursday, August 02, 2007

Reixedyri, Cindy and Hayden.

IM catchers kept alerting me to someone called "Reixedyri." I thought it was another piece of spam. It turned out to be Mike's new ID... which serves me right. Anyway, we're now back in touch. Reixeyri is his name translated into another language - he'll enlighten you if you ask him.

And now, a bit more of Miss Crawford and (because I said I would) Miss Panettiere.






Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Dear Megan Fox, No offence but Cindy owns you. Love, Victor

MuffinMan writes: Seeing your two goddesses, CindyC AND Hayden P., looking beyond scrumptious in bikinis (and from what I've heard re. the former, in even less than that! ;D )...mmmmmm bet you'd have no problem imagining BOTH of them undressing, preferably each other (or is that a given? ;) )... I know I have no problem with that :))

Unsurprisingly these and many other pictures of Cindy on a yacht in St. Tropez (which, if Alba/Hewitt fan par excellence Darren Lockhart is reading this, is not in the Caribbean) have been all over the Interweb, especially the topless ones. Sadly rules prohibit my inclusion of those, but this place and many others have them. Still wonderful... just... wow.

Hayden, you'll have to wait till later. But so will everyone else, so don't take it personally.