Don’t Fight With Your Wife About George Clooney

In retrospect I think that I failed to understand a couple weeks back when my wife said that George Clooney was her type. My wife is good on personalities, and we were talking about actors so I started testing her on types. Spencer Tracy. “Short, angry, pugnacious.” Humphrey Bogart. “Wounded. Secretive.” Steve Martin. “Ironic, overly Read More

Hollywood Holidays: Box-Office Blues, Paunchy Celebs

And so it’s Christmas in Los Angeles, 2004.

The gifts have been sent, the tips have been disbursed, and, as the rest of the country contemplates filing all those computer-rebate forms, the focus here has shifted to the Oscars.

Among the chatterati, the current conventional wisdom is that the best picture nominations will go Read More

Oscar’s Morning Line: Don’t Bet on Shakespeare

The Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, founded more than 70

years ago by L.B. Mayer and his fellow movie moguls, was conceived as a

guild-busting company union with an award ceremony tacked on almost as an

afterthought.

Since then, the ceremony has been inflated into the globally televised

Super Bowl of movie Read More