You learn something new every day!

In his documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore made the decision to not use actual footage of collapsing ice shelves in Antartica, but instead to use special-effects shots created for the movie The Day After Tomorrow:

Al Gore’s “traveling global warming show,” the award-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” includes a long flyover shot of majestic Antarctic ice shelves. But this shot was first seen in the 2004 blockbuster “The Day After Tomorrow.” Sculpted from Styrofoam and later scanned into a computer, the ice shelf “flyover” looks real.

Karen Goulekas, the special effects supervisor for “The Day After Tomorrow” said the shot is a digital image. She was glad Al Gore used it in the documentary since “It is one hell of a shot.” Both movies use the shot to convincingly portray global warming, but it is left to the audience to decide if this created image can both entertain and educate us about our changing planet.

Wait, what was that again?  Styrofoam?

Well, it’s fake but accurate, you might say. “Just because Big Al manipulated my emotions with spectacular Hollywood fakery doesn’t mean we’re not ALL GONNA DIE FROM GLOBAL WARMING!!!” If you really believe that, there’s no point in arguing with you. But you’ll have to forgive me for laughing at the look on your face when you find out what the effects guys used to make all those “glaciers”:

Sculpted from Styrofoam and later scanned into a computer, the ice shelf “flyover” looks real.

That’s right, Styrofoam! You know, the evil, evil stuff that’s being banned all over the place because it’s destroying the environment. Wonder what the studio did with it when they were done with their dumb movie? Five hundred years from now, will the last few survivors of the human race stumble upon those beautifully sculpted glaciers, completely intact, in some forgotten landfill?

Uhm…mmmmkay.  I ain’t sayin’, I’m just sayin’.

hattip Deceiver

Have the folks over at Today gone off their rocker?  When I first heard this, I thought it had to be a joke…but no, it isn’t, the news is true:  Kathie Lee Gifford is joining Today:

Kathie Lee Gifford, right, the former longtime co-host of “Live With Regis and Kathie Lee,” is returning to morning television as the host of the fourth hour of NBC’s “Today” program, the network confirmed Monday. […]

 The assignment, beginning April 7, will be Ms. Gifford’s third morning show stint: she reported for “Good Morning America” before becoming Mr. Philbin’s co-host on “Live” for 15 years. Ms. Gifford was introduced on “Today” by Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira, the hosts of the first two hours. “I’m 8 years older, 10 pounds heavier and a half-inch shorter, just in time for HD television,” Ms. Gifford joked. […]

Ms. Gifford will join Hoda Kotb, her co-anchor for the fourth hour. Ann Curry and Al Roker, two members of the 7 to 9 a.m. team, will continue as co-hosts of the third hour but will no longer contribute to the fourth. Natalie Morales, who was named a co-anchor of the fourth hour last September, will become a host of the third hour.

Apparently the fourth hour of Today focuses more on “soft” news, things like fashion and makeup and women’s health and children and whatnot.  It’s news to me…I didn’t even know they had a fourth hour on Today.

Will anyone even tune in to see this woman?  Does anyone care?  Has there been a dearth of mindless, inane chatter in the morning shows that I was unaware of?  I know I had enough of Kathie Lee and her obnoxious voice back when she was with Regis.  The woman Never. Shuts. Up.  And while I’m at it, I’ll ask this…does anyone really watch four hours of Today?  I know when school is going on that’s what is playing in the background, but once I come back home the TV gets turned off.  It gets to be about eight o’clock and I’ve had all I can take.

Matt Lauer is okay and I hope he stays, but as far as the rest of the show…pfft.  Boring.  I can’t see how adding a blowhard like Kathie Lee doing segments on how to seasonally organize your kitchen towels and just what method of Botox application is ‘in’ this season is going to help matters any.

But, at least we can be thankful it isn’t Katie Couric!

Will this woman never stop?  She’s still convinced that she can be as big of a force on the silver screen as she was in music.  Madonna has her sights set on remaking the classic war-time movie Casablanca, and she wants to set it in modern-day Iraq.  Oh, and did I mention she wants the starring female lead for herself?

The singer, whose previous film career has been littered with critical and commercial turkeys, is also planning to take the lead role of Ilsa Lund, which originally made a star of Ingrid Bergman.

A source at a major Hollywood studio that was recently approached by the 49-year-old star said: “She is still determined to make it in the movies.

“She and her representatives have been touting around a project which is a remake of Casablanca. The reception has been lukewarm to say the least. No one can understand why she wants to redo what many people consider the greatest film of all time.” […]

The source said: “Madonna is talking about taking the Ingrid Bergman role for herself, even though Bergman was in her 20s when she played Ilsa and Madonna is nearly 50.

“She wants to update the story and maybe set it in a modern war zone such as Iraq. There is no script yet.

“Madonna and her people are testing the waters to see if this is the right vehicle for her and if a major studio will get behind the project.”

Hmm…if you take the story out of Casablanca, and put it in Iraq, and modernize it, do you really have a remake, or just an entirely new film with a few plot similarities?  You could say that about any movie that’s been made in the last forty years.  Let’s hope that, for once, studios will show some restraint and turn Her Madgesty down flat. There’s no need to remake one of the most famous classic films of all time, unless it’s to try and show off the size of Madonna’s ego.

What is it with famous people, anyway?  They can’t be happy with the talents they have?  Madonna has conquered the music world, but she still feels this need to branch out into acting.  Well, I’ve seen her act, and trust me…Casablanca isn’t going to be remade any time soon.  Besides, no matter how much touch-up work she has done to her face, and no matter how much she exercises, and no matter how much Kabbalah water she drinks, ain’t no way she’s passing for a twenty-year-old, or even a thirty-year-old.

Don’t be too upset, Madonna…we’ll always have Shanghai Surprise.

We just aren’t sure what it is that’s broken.

For one thing, I’m not crazy about the animation.  Yes, I know it’s supposed to be anime, which I don’t have a problem with.  But this brings to mind comparisons with Aeon Flux, and that particular style just isn’t my thing.  If they’re trying to make Brit sexy in this vid, I don’t think they succeeded.  Anime Brit breaks into a building where a dual anime Brit is being held in some sort of cryogenic state, along the way kicking some anime butt.  But I don’t get it…she kisses the glass holding back her twin self?  She kills the baddie with what, her sex appeal?  He self-destructs because she broke his…ice?  Too confusing.  In short, they made anime Brit do all the things real-life Brit can’t (or won’t) do any more in videos.

So let’s move on to the song.  First, what is it with starting songs with spoken lyrics?  She already tried that in “Gimme More”.  Basically, the song is about, you guessed it, sex.  She spends the song breathily panting about how ”You ain’t gotta be scared/We’re grown now” and “Can you rise to the occasion/I’m patiently waiting…I can’t get enough/So let me get it up.”  It’s techno pop, the sort of thing clubs ought to eat up, but that will seem hopelessly dated in a few years (Rick Astley, anyone?).  Then again, this album wasn’t made to stand the test of time, but to earn some bucks.  In that, it’s probably succeeding.

It takes longer than a few weeks to animate a video, so maybe she just wasn’t capable, interested in, or together enough to make a video for this song.  Jive has to make their money back on this CD some way, so an animated video was undoubtedly the next best thing.

The song is very much about Britney taking control of a sexual encounter, and I wonder if it is a metaphor for her wishing to take control of her life.  I know the song was written, recorded, and produced a long time ago, but she also took steps a while back to cut herself off from everyone who had previously helped her and took “control” of her own life.  Or it could just be another generic song about sex.

It’s not horrible…it’s just not all that great.  Meh.  However, if you like it, more power to ya.

Break the Ice

According to some French actress who won an Oscar, the 9/11 attacks were just the United States wanting to destroy a couple of big buildings that were simply too expensive:

Referring to the two passenger jets being flown into the Twin Towers, [Marion] Cotillard said:

“We see other towers of the same kind being hit by planes. Are they burned? They [sic] was a tower, I believe it was in Spain, which burnt for 24 hours. It never collapsed. None of these towers collapsed. And there [in New York], in a few minutes, the whole thing collapsed.”

She added that the towers, planned in the early Sixties, were an outdated “money-sucker” that would have cost more to modernise than to rebuild altogether, which is why they were destroyed.

She said: “It was a money-sucker because they were finished, it seems to me, by 1973, and to re-cable all that, to bring up-to-date all the technology and everything, it was a lot more expensive, that work, than destroying them.”

She also doesn’t believe a man walked on the moon, although I include that more as a sad attempt at comic relief:

She said: “Did a man really walk on the Moon? I saw plenty of documentaries on it, and I really wondered. And in any case I don’t believe all they tell me, that’s for sure.”

Okay, Marion.  I get that we shouldn’t swallow every line of bull that comes down the pike and that you’re a quirky revolutionary thinker who thinks on a level above the rest of us peons (heretofore to be known as “Citizens Of The Real World”), so here’s a cookie.

I suppose the almost 3000 people killed that day were just “collateral damage”.  The attacks on the Pentagon and the downed plane in Pennsylvania, reportedly on its way to another attack site, were both red herrings designed to take the focus off the demolition of the Twin Towers.  The widespread panic, air pollution, injuries, and aftershocks in New York were just because the planes didn’t hit the buildings at the optimum angle for a clean implosion.  The firefighters and first responders who were injured and killed attempting to rescue those trapped in the buildings should have stayed out of a demo site.  All the people, including children, on the four airplanes involved were expendable and needed to be on the planes to give the impression that these were just routine flights.  I suppose one could say that the towers collapsed in “minutes”, because Tower 2 stood for 56 minutes before falling and Tower 1 stood for 102 minutes.  Nearby buildings that were damaged in the attacks, such as the other WTC buildings and St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church?  Well, maybe they needed to be torn down too, and it was just gravy that they happened to be damaged.

I’m not gullible.  I know that there are many things about the attacks that horrible day which have yet to be explained, and there are many things we will never know.  I understand that we shouldn’t believe everything we hear, and not all is as it seems when it comes to politics and those involved in making it digestible.  Many, many mistakes were made both during and after the attacks, mistakes with long-term ramifications.  But for some actress to tell us that the planes full of innocent passengers flew into the towers because the buildings were outdated and needed to be torn down is at best stupid, and at worst…stupid.  She, of course, knows how the buildings properly should have burnt and fallen because she recieved her engineering degree at acting school…the same school that graduated Sean Penn with a degree in economics and Angelina Jolie with a diploma in world affairs.

Her insinuation that the towers were a “money-sucker” and it would be cheaper to fly planes into them in a form of demolition-via-aircraft are ironically laughable in the knowledge that the economy of Lower Manhattan was devastated after the planes flew into the buildings.  This doesn’t even include the effect the attacks had on the economy of New York as a whole, not to mention New Jersey and Washington.  She also hasn’t taken into account that the attacks and the ensuing aftermath have already cost New York almost $95 billion dollars, the Pentagon around $500 million dollars, and the incalculable cost it has taken on the lives and psyches both of those who lost loved ones and those who survived.

All that to tear down two buildings in a cost-effective manner.

The actress later insisted that it was all a misunderstanding, and that her remarks should in no way affect her acting career, in particular the new movie she’s making with Johnny Depp:

Her Paris-based lawyer Vincent Tolesano said: “Marion never intended to contest nor question the attacks of September 11, 2001, and regrets the way old remarks have been taken out of context.”

The apology coincided with Cotillard preparing to fly to Chicago next week to start filming Public Enemies with Johnny Depp - a movie that was set to become the first big money spinner for the previously unknown actresses .

In fact Cotillard, a green activist for Greenpeace, had used an interview with the French channel Paris Première to make her views abundantly clear.

Speaking on the cinema discussion programme Paris Dernière in February 2007, Cotillard had said: “I think we’re lied to about a number of things”, even claiming the Americans had destroyed the Twin Towers themselves because the were an outdated “money sucker”.

Expanding her conspiracy theory, Cotillard said it would been “a lot more expensive” to rebuild the towers “which is why they were destroyed”, with the loss of thousands of American lives.

Never intended to question the attacks?  Remarks taken out of context?  It’s amazing how people can backpedal when millions of dollars are at stake.  Lives, however, apparently are expendable.  If you don’t like it here, then go make your little movies somewhere else.

Her ignorant words and arrogant attitude are an insult to all those who perished, survived, and overcame those horrific attacks.  Yet another reason why actors shouldn’t be involved in politics…they need to stick to what they know best, which is pretending to be something they are not and living in alternate realities.

Oh wait.

Or at least the photographic representations of them.

News today is that JLo has finally checked into that suite at North Shore University Hospital (you know, the suite specially outfitted for her, with a brown leather couch and furnishings untouched by the blood or amniotic fluid of the little people otherwise known as the “non-famous”) to deliver her babies, widely reported to be twins, and it seems that staffers on that floor are all in a tizzy because, well, it’s JLo, and apparently she used to be somebody.

“Sources” also say that she’s sold the first public photos of the little tykes for $6M, to be split between People and OK!, who will distribute the pics in their international magazines.  And finally, the babes will snooze in style in nurseries which cost over $120K to outfit in high style, including chandeliers and 18-karat trim.  In three homes, nonetheless.

Okay, I gotta stop.  Huh?  First of all, what makes Jennifer Lopez so special that she gets a special, unsullied room and nobody else is allowed to touch it?  It’s a hospital, I’m sure they clean the delivery rooms extremely well between birthings.  Had the room been used even the day before, I’m sure it would have been sanitized in time for Jennifer’s arrival.  Yeah, the argument could be made that a room needed to be kept ready for whenever she went into labor, and I’m sure there needs to be things taken into account such as security measures and privacy.  But still…she couldn’t use the room as it was, it had to be specially outfitted just for her?  She’ll be in the standard issue hospital bed anyway, I don’t see what difference it makes.  And I’m sure they have more than one room which could have accommodated her.  What makes JLo and her babies so much more special than any other mother who comes in to give birth?  And will she change her mind and have a silent birth after all?

And all that money, for nurseries for babies who’s eyes can’t even focus properly?  What is that about?  I’m not against having nice things, but why not donate some of that money to mothers who NEED it?  Last time I checked, babies eat, sleep, and poop…sometimes all at once, many times not in a neat and orderly fashion.  What does any baby need with nurseries that have gold trim and chandeliers?  Sounds more to me like indulging the egos of the parents.  I wish I could be a little fly on the wall (yeah, like she’d allow a fly) when those babies spit up or get runny diapers all over their expensive sheets.  I’m not trying to be mean, just pointing out that babies will poop on anything, from $116 organic blankets to $5 polarfleece from Wal-Mart.  And no matter the price of the materials, baby poopy stains, stinks, and generally makes a mess.

And lastly…$6M for baby photos?  Of what?  Little wrinkly babies?  Let’s face it, newborns pretty much look the same.  They may have different color skin depending on their ethnicity, but they’re usually wrinkled little monkey-looking things.  Hey, I’ve had two babies, and while I thought they were the most beautiful babies in the world (and they were…I dare JLo to produce babies as beautiful as mine), the truth is that they were also little wrinkly, red-faced, slobbering lumps.  You know why?  Because they’re BABIES.  This practice of doling out small fortunes to celebs who are already full of themselves just for some baby snapshots is the most greedy, ridiculous thing I’ve seen yet (and I’m not just talking about JLo and Marc here).

Can’t Marc Anthony do something with her?  He’s never said anything (he’s probably too scared) but I’d hope he’d be embarrassed by his wife’s ostentationess.

But, having said all that, I do wish her a good delivery and healthy babies.  I just wish she’d grow up and live in the real world, not Jenniferland.

I’ll personally give $100 of my hard-earned money (and to me, that’s a huge amount) to the charity of choice of any celebrity who will come out of their house to greet the assembled paparazzi throng (behind a gate or fence, of course), ask if they’d like to see the baby, and then bring out Junior for photos.  They can stand at a reasonable distance for a few minutes (again, probably behind a gate or fence…gotta have a barrier between the paps and the baby), and then go inside.  Or they can snap a picture of Little Missy, print off a bunch of snapshot-sized prints, and go hand them to the press outside.  No big money, no huge fanfare, and it wouldn’t look like they’re greedily selling their kids for cash that they don’t need anyway.

I’ll start holding my breath now.

Here’s a video for Kanye West’s song, “Flashing Lights”.  Yep, this stuff is what Kanye recieves Grammy Awards for.

And Natalie Cole had the balls to say Amy Winehouse didn’t deserve her Grammys?  I mean, they’ve actually given Kanye awards for this sort of thing?

“I feel like a brand-new artist that just signed yesterday,” West said before playing his video on a large wall via projector. West, who co-directed the clip with Spike Jonze, said that “every piece of the video is me, what I represent now.”

The video is a hodgepodge of sex appeal, brashness, grace and humorous storytelling. Basically, the short revolves around a lady taking out her frustrations on a bound-and-gagged West in the harshest way.

Let’s just say that in the part where Kanye raps about his girl saying, “Where are you, Yeezy?,” he apparently didn’t have a good enough answer.

“The video is f—ing incredible!” Nas said. “Nobody wants to be different. Everybody wants to be the same, and Kanye always comes with some other sh–. He’s not afraid to be different.”

So exactly just what is it that you represent now, Kanye?  Fur coats, half-naked women, material excess, violence? 

(btw, they’re saying this isn’t the “real” video, just a teaser.  Still.)

UPDATE:  The always zexy Michael from dlisted has this little article about the girl featured in the video.  Apparently you can buy her dirty panties, straight off her website.  (what did you think I was gonna say?)  She’ll wear them long enough to impart her “natural scent” to them and then let you purchase them for your viewing pleasure.

Oh yeah, I’ll bet Kanye’s mother is so proud of him right about now.

Do not get me wrong.  I think it’s great that Britney is doing something with her life besides wasting her life chasing Frapps and driving around aimlessly buying lipsticks at Rite-Aid at 3AM.  She taught a class of 4-7 year-olds at Millennium Dance Studio, doing simple routines to songs like Madonna’s True Blue and Material Girl (I always liked that song) and spent time preparing for an upcoming music video and supposed world tour:

In addition to choreographed routines to vintage Madonna songs “True Blue” and “Material Girl” and “Holiday,” Spears – wearing ripped fishnets, red boy-shorts and a blue top – also allowed her pupils to free-style dance.

“She even played age-appropriate games in a circle, pretending to be a choo-choo train,” [director of Millennium Dance Studio Robert] Baker said. “Britney was just amazing with the kids and everyone ended up having a blast. At the end of the hour class, all the kids hugged Britney and she seemed very happy.” […]

The kids, aged 4 to 7, were selected from the studio’s junior program. “The parents gave their permission,” Baker said. “They were thrilled. One parent summed it up: ‘It’s a once in a lifetime event.’”

Well, maybe not. Spears had so much fun, “She asked to please teach a class tomorrow,” said Baker, a longtime Spears friend. “We plan to put together a group of about 20 kids for her.”

After the class wrapped up at 7 p.m., Spears – who has rehearsed at Millennium three times since Friday – spent another hour and a half working on a dance routine for her single “Hot as Ice.”

“She seems very focused about getting back into her old life,” said Baker. “[She’s] focusing her energy on creating and dancing.”

But wait, there’s more…

Because you know they are going to need therapy after this little tidbit got out:

On being made fun of:
“Those are sort of formative experiences. I wouldn’t want my children to miss out on any of that teasing and bullying. Don’t you think it kind of makes you who you are — when you don’t make the soccer team?”

On kids today being overpraised:
“That’s the thing that drives me crazy about today: Everybody wins the award, everybody’s the MVP? No! They’re not, OK? I distinctly recall the two weeks of crying because I didn’t make the volleyball team. But it made me interesting, you know?”

No, Reese, it made you weird.

Are all parents in Hollywood crazy?  I actually kind of liked Reese until I read that.  I understand the point of not wanting to protect your kids from everything that comes down the pike, because that just produces kids who have a very warped view of life and what they feel it owes them.  As much as we as parents might want to, we can’t–nor is it healthy–to protect our children from everything.  And yes, I agree with the not every kid is an MVP part.  I mean, when they’re little, it’s one thing…everybody plays, everybody wins.  But by the time they get to teenage years, they should be well versed in the fact that not everybody can win, not everybody is cut out for every sport, and somebody has to lose.

However, while most parents recognize that a certain amount of bullying is inevitable, it isn’t something that is desirable.  We don’t want our kids to be bullied, and will even go so far as to stop those actions in some way, whether it be dealing with the other person in some way or teaching our kids ways of coping (and yeah, in my case that meant my dad teaching me how to defend myself).  And this is like comparing apples to puppies, because not making the soccer team is a far cry from bullying behavior…unless, of course, the bully is coaching the soccer team.  Yeah, run into a few of those.

What possesses people to say these things in public?  Um…HELLO?  Those kids are certainly going to get bullied now, because after all, it’s what their Mommy said she wanted.  And what’s she going to say when her kids get home and tell her about an incident?  “Well, honey, you’ll thank me for it later.  It builds character!”

Congratulations.  If your goal was to make sure your kids have a normal childhood, welcome to Fail.

After all the trouble she took to try and get a US visa so she could perform at the Grammys this Sunday, now that they’ve decided to grant her a visa after all Amy Winehouse has decided not to show up:

But because of the tight timing, reps for the nominee say she’s going to stick to her plan to perform live via satellite from London.

“Unfortunately, due to the logistics involved and timing complications, Amy will not be coming to the U.S. this weekend to perform at the Grammys in Los Angeles, however she will still be performing via satellite broadcast from London as previously announced this morning,” her label says in a statement.

The statement adds: “Amy would like to thank all of those people, and in particular the staff involved at the U.S. Embassy in London, who have all worked so hard to expedite her application. She is very sad not to be attending the prestigious awards in person, but wishes to express her heartfelt gratitude to all of those involved in the process.”

Why go to all that trouble just to say, “Oh, well, thanks, but I changed my mind,”? Do Amy’s people not own calendars over there in the UK? Do they not understand things like time zones and travel schedules and the concept of days and hours and the passage of time? Girlfriend has to schedule, make plans, pack suitcases, wrap up that beehive!

So let’s see. The Grammy Awards are this Sunday. Okay, it is approximately 3PM in Los Angeles right now, and that makes it almost 10PM London time. So if she leaves in the morning at 8AM London time, which is 1AM Los Angeles time, and flies to Los Angeles, which takes almost 11 hours, but you’re going backwards in the time zones, and LA is 7 hours behind London, she’d arrive at noon tomorrow. That’s enough time, isn’t it?

Well…okay, that’s too much maths for today. My head hurts. Stick with your original plan, Amy, and perform via satellite. I’m afraid trying to do all the maths is going to disrupt your rehab process.