by Lee Camp
Looking to make out with a stranger in a tent only feet away from squads of angry police? Then your time is finally here! …Okay, maybe there are other reasons to celebrate the Occupy anniversary that’s coming up. They might not be as fun as that reason, but they probably matter more.
by A.J. Focht
A year ago, NBC buried their Wonder Woman pilot and all hopes of seeing the Amazon princess during prime time. The CW, known for their superhero television series such as Smallville and the upcoming Arrow, is now in talks to revive her with a Wonder Woman origins series. The prelude to the legend of Diana of Themyscira’s is being penned by Allan Heinberg. The CW is only working on a script now; the pilot has yet to be greenlit.
Henry Cavill, who will be playing Superman in the upcoming Man of Steel film recently spoke about the project in an interview. He wasn’t able to relay much, but he did say that beyond making Superman easier to identify with, they wanted to take a realistic approach to the movie. It seems likely that Man of Steel will be the first feature in the new DC movie universe, leading into the Justice League movie, and there have been rumors that it may cameo other Justice League members – namely Wonder Woman. Man of Steel will premier in theaters in June 2013.
Kick-Ass 2 is bringing back most of the main actors from the first film, including Chloe Moretz, Aaron Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and even Nicolas Cage. And a new big name has also joined the crew; Jim Carrey has been confirmed playing the part of The Colonel in the sequel. Kick-Ass 2 is set for a summer 2013 release.
With the release less than a year out, Star Trek 2 has wrapped up filming and is headed for post-production. In recent interviews, actors Chris Pine (Captain Kirk) and Zachary Quinto (Spock) both gave their opinions of the project. Pine insists he can’t give the movie enough hype, and that the threats are even greater this time around. Quinto said the project was more challenging, but bigger and bolder than the last. We will all know soon enough as Star Trek 2 is set to release on May 17, 2013.
J.J. Abrams’ new NBC series Revolution has released the full first pilot online early. The series deals with events fifteen years after a post-apocalyptic scenario where all electricity on earth shuts off. The pilot delivers tremendous performances and is a great hook into the series. It’s a must see for all fans of post-apocalyptic stories. That’s not all Abrams is working on though, he is also currently developing a ‘android buddy cop drama’ for FOX.
Last week’s premiere of Doctor Who, “Asylum of the Daleks” broke records for BBC America. The long awaited return of the Time Lord brought in record numbers, with 1.6 million tuning in to see the premiere. In a recent interview, Matt Smith discussed the upcoming season and the future of Doctor Who in general. On a final Doctor Who note, Neil Giman announced at his Hugo acceptance speech that he will be writing a second episode, which is slated for the second half of season seven.
by Fred Topel
“Working is vacation for me”
– Ashley Bell
Ashley Bell literally bent over backwards to entertain us in The Last Exorcism. The film marked her major movie debut in a leading role, and quite an impressive debut it was as a small down girl possessed by a demon. Even though it was called The Last Exorcism, they’ve made a sequel and Bell is back.
Bell also gets to step up her physical work in the film The Day. The post-apocalyptic thriller casts bell as Mary, the toughest most fierce survivor in the wasteland. It may have become a cliché to see a woman kick butt in an action movie, but Bell makes it primal and vicious. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011, where WWE Studios picked it up and is now distributing it.
Of course, that’s all acting. In real life she’s a total sweetheart. She even dresses up to meet reporters and look good on camera, even though her biggest roles have been stripped down and natural. Bell is a trained actor with a background from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and Cambridge University, so she shared with us all her tricks and secrets in a sit down interview that could have gone on forever.
Read our exclusive interview with Ashley Bell on SuicideGirls.com.
Get to know Meshah better over at SuicideGirls.com!
by Laurelin
Disappointment is one of the worst feelings in the world. I vividly remember experiencing it as a little girl who so badly wanted a cat for her birthday; my parents had a huge wrapped gift on the table when I woke up, and as I tore through the paper I was so sure it must be something for my new cat. It was a birdcage, and as it took everything in me not to break down in tears. I forced a smile, and I named my first pet parakeet Buttercup.
Later on in high school I would pick out my favorite outfit just to have my crush be out sick that day. I would do something out of line at home and have my parents so upset that they weren’t even angry, just disappointed, and I wished with all my heart I could take it back but I never could.
As I get older I notice that a lot of the time the fierce optimism I associate with my bright demeanor has faded. When one always expects to be let down, it almost makes the inevitable disappointment more manageable. That guy you liked, it never would have worked out anyways. He would never like someone like you. Things would be too complicated, too messy and it’s probably better this way, even though inside I’m screaming because I want so badly for just one person to prove me wrong.
I remember the moment I realized my last relationship was over, the black cloud of disappointment just washed over me like a wave and I was shaken to the core with the realization that this was really it. I was back to being just me, not me and him. It was the day after his birthday, and we were supposed to meet for a drink at the bar we worked at. I wanted to see him so badly, our schedules were tough and we rarely had days off together. I waited…
Every time the door opened I looked, and it was never him. A lifetime spent watching the door, and he never came, my cell phone eventually glowed with a text that simply said, “I’m sorry.” I walked home and I watched the trains go by under the overpass and I knew it was over, this was the last time he would let me down.
We all have baggage. An expected crash and burn after so many before seems only right; but maybe, just maybe, this time things will be different. As someone new comes into your life, there’s that fine line between great expectations and where they’re going to fall. I can’t help but find myself waiting for a storm, holding my breath, forever waiting for disaster.
It’s exhausting and I wish for something different. Outside it starts to rain, and I quicken my pace as I head for the bar. I wonder if he’s there yet, and I wish for sun briefly before realizing I don’t even care. No matter how grey the sky becomes and how rarely the sun seems to shine, maybe I’ve been going about things all wrong. Maybe the key is just to learn to dance in the rain.
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by ChrisSick
In which we dissect the epidemic of Werewolf Disease, chairs what talk back, and why four-day-long political infomercials are entirely useless.
There’s nine weeks left until this horrible, grueling, vile campaign is over. 63 days, 10 hours, 45 minutes, and 10 seconds, as of this writing. Now, 9 seconds. 8.
Yes. I am counting all of them.
It has, thus far, been officially No Fun. There was some dim hope, previously, that the introduction of Paul Ryan — the acknowledged Big Idea man of the Republican party — would dramatically shake up the race, and introduce some much needed debate of the issues. Which is the word talking heads on television use to describe median tax-rates for middle-class wage earners and average Social Security payments. As opposed to meaningless Culture War arguments that only affect unimportant things like whether or not a woman’s less important, legally, than the fetus she carries, or if those people should be allowed to get all married up.
Paul-motherfucking-Ryan, as he shall be known henceforth (having inherited the title of Big Idea Man of the GOP along with the “motherfucking” honorific from Newt-motherfucking-Gingrich), turned out to be surprisingly disappointing. As the media’s anointed Serious Policy and Pretty Face Conservative, he broke the hearts of many a Neutral Arbitrator when he took the stage in Tampa with a mouth just full of goddamn lies. For those of us who’ve read his budget proposals and seen the non-partisan analysis of same, the fact that the man is a compulsive liar wasn’t all that shocking. That he lies about facts that can and will be immediately fact-checked by even friendly media sources is a bit disconcerting, but such are the risks of politics in the post-truth era.
What was surprising was learning that Paul-motherfucking-Ryan did not, in fact, lie. At least, according to reliable media shills. Jennifer Rubin, Knight Templar of the Romney Media Crusade, got out ahead of the story to tell the twelve people who read her WaPo column (mostly employees of Media Matters and Alex Pareene over at Salon) that the left was totally losing their shit:
“The crowd loved it. So nearly en masse the left decided that Ryan ‘lied.’
“For starters, that is the ultimate compliment. It is in effect saying the speech worked so well and was received so well that the only thing to say is that it was a con job.
“But the ‘lies’ turn out not to be lies at all. They are not even misrepresentations or exaggerations.”
Which is true, given that only leftists count lies by omission, lies by misrepresentation, and, well, straight-out-factually-incorrect statements as, y’know, actual lies. Oh, also, Actual Grown-Ass Adults not stricken with a severe case of Werewolf Disease.
Werewolf Disease, according to various medical experts, is a Real Thing. And this is one of the clearest cases I’ve ever seen. Symptoms of Werewolf Disease include being full of lies and false equivocation, not giving a single shit about anything resembling truth or facts, and generally having a smile made of knife blades and hatred.
And, apparently, the entirety of the right wing has been stricken.
Which, really, should shock no one. Of the themed nights, one was, naturally, about rebutting a statement Obama never actually said, and another was about “Loving America,” since Democrats clearly do not.
Because apparently you can take the I-4 from Tampa International directly to the Tampa Bay Times Forum and bypass truth entirely. Select highlights of the convention include:
Yes, did you think I had somehow forgot about that? Did you think anyone, ever, anywhere, could somehow forget about that?
Clint Eastwood stood on stage at the Republican National Convention and argued with a chair. Then Mitt Romney took the stage and no one was listening to a single word he said, because we were all busy thinking about Clint Eastwood arguing with a chair.
It was, to use a classic Hunter S. Thompson description, deeply weird. And, if you were watching at home and felt unsettled by the whole thing, you were not alone. Within hours the New York Times had the story on high-level finger-pointing and blame-shifting within the Romney campaign. The speech was panned by liberal commentators and Republican politicians alike.
But!
Within hours of that, The Romney Media Crusade marched forth to bravely deny that there was anything even remotely weird about the speech, and if you thought there was, well you’re just far too coastal elite to get what Clint was laying down. As Derek Hunter of the Daily News observed:
“In the convention hall, Eastwood talking to an empty chair was huge hit. In homes across the country, the reaction was the same. Inside the lefty bubble was the only place it wasn’t well received.”
Polling data released so far is split, with Public Policy Polling finding narrow disapproval in Florida and North Carolina, and Survey USA noting widespread approval among Floridian voters. Both firms are noted for having a left-leaning house effect, for more information on in-house polling biases, see Nate Silver here.
None of which matters worth a damn, Clint Eastwood’s angry chair is to this cycle what Sarah Palin’s debate performance was to the 2008 race. It doesn’t matter what the polling says, any conservative with a keyboard will tell you to shut your stupid, liberal piehole, because Clint’s speech was pitch-perfect, and he wasn’t talking to you, anyway, silly liberal. He was talking to Real America.
After the dust settled and the President ordered the hurricane to dissipate, the polling came in. The Real Clear Politics average of polls has the race at a complete tie, but it only includes two daily tracking polls that closed after the end of the convention, Gallup and Rasmussen. Gallup‘s is a seven-day registered voter poll that shows Obama with a +1 advantage, while Rasmussen‘s three-day likely voter poll gives Romney a +4 advantage for a net bounce of +5 post-convention. (Note: A late check of the polls show Rasmussen giving Romney only a +3 advantage as of 9/4/12)
Nate Silver has, as is his wont, posted an incredibly complex analysis of post-convention polling to try and determine a standard baseline for convention related bounces. If you can actually find such a number within that web of regression analysis and multi-column tables, god bless, but I’m far too tired to sort that out, so for sake of argument we’ll take the Rasmussen’s three day/likely voter poll at face value (here’s a quick list of reasons why we probably shouldn’t take Rasmussen at face value).
A five-point bounce isn’t bad, but historically it seems soft, and as the Clint Eastwood jokes filter out into the land of memegenerator and the like, we’re left struggling to see a post-VP announcement bounce, and the softest possible post-convention bounce. Meanwhile, hot on the heels of Tampa comes the DNC in North Carolina which will most likely negating any potential gain.
Assuming George Clooney doesn’t get drunk and challenge Clint Eastwood to a fist-fight (he’d lose), it’s hard to imagine that by this time next week the race won’t have returned to its status of statistical dead heat with a small, but consistent, lead showing for Obama. Worth noting: none of the outside indicators — such as Nate Silver’s chance to win, or Intrade’s prediction market — have shown any dramatic shift away from the odds of Obama winning reelection.
Which seems to indicate these conventions are a gigantic waste of time, television coverage, empty chairs, and, of course, the $136 million in taxpayer dollars spent subsidizing the political conventions this year. The campaigns themselves will spend roughly $3 billion this cycle and at the end we’ll have learned the Mitt Romney really is exactly as boring as his haircut would suggest, and that the country’s first black President is still viewed as a metaphorical antichrist by a disturbingly large number of troubled individuals, and a literal one by some that are quite famous.
All of which is bringing the Werewolf out in me, but for the sake of your edification and entertainment, I’m postponing treatment until after the election. Sixty-three days, 7 hours, 53 minutes, 7 seconds…6…5…
Tieranny Suicide in Da Barbie Shop
Get to know Tieranny better over at SuicideGirls.com!
