*in my humble opinion

Like many people, especially of my age, I have to say that my favorite Christmas movie is A Christmas Story which is about Ralphie and his quest for a “carbine action two-hundred shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time” that will shoot his eye out. This movie, with its sweet dysfunction, really holds up over the course of time. Whether it was his cruse filled father or his gut wrenching desire for that perfect gift, I could relate to Ralphie a lot.

But over the Holidays I began to think what other Holiday movies do I still love? I, of course, still love Charlie Brown and his pathetic tree, and Rudolph with his nose so bright, but those aren’t movies; they are specials. Most  “Christmas” movies are for kids and aren’t that great. Some are just awful (see Dudley Moore’s “Santa Claus the Movie”). Most of the Holiday movies I do still love are just “kind of holiday movies” as they really could take place at anytime of year. But Christmas makes a nice backdrop, and the movie studios love to release films at Christmas time when all the kids are off.
 
So here are my Top 4 favorite (kind of) Christmas Movies:

4) Home Alone 2; Lost in New York
Ok. I know what you are saying, “Why not Home Alone 1?” Well, Home Alone 1 is still a sweet family movie and a holiday favorite of everyone. Home Alone 2 I now enjoy on a different level. Home Alone 2 shows us what a truly demented sociopath Kevin Macalister really is. This time he’s not defending his home and himself from dangerous criminals; this time, he’s conning his way into the Plaza Hotel, purposely baiting the criminals to follow him so that they can fall into numerous traps that are skull-smashing and brutally violent. All in good fun, but had this been reality and not a Tom and Jerry inspired fun family romp, he’d basically be facing serious jail time and most likely manslaughter charges as numerous concussive blows to a head will actually kill a man. [Read more →]

Fame Poster from Cinematical

Most people that know me - know that #1 - I have 23 Barbra Streisand Record Albums, and #2 - I have a dance movie collection complete with accompanying soundtracks. I’m one of those  - Oh! I wish I had continued at Miss Jan Estrella’s School of Dance when I was 10 instead of dropping out to play 10 other sports kind of people. If only I’d had the opportunity to attend Performing Arts High School - oh the places I could have gone. (although my lack of vocal talent and my inate inability towards self-discipline probably would have caused some problems)

I went to a free screening of Fame last week at Loews Theater on 42nd Street. Any true dance nut knows that this movie has been in the works ever since the 1980 original version. (yes, 1980!!!) its directed by Kevin Tancharoen, who’s cut his chops on dance videos.

And indeed - the best features of the film are the moments when these talented young whippersnappers sing, rap and leap across the stage. The sheer brilliance of the dancing and choreography, the spectacular grittiness that is still New York and some beautiful Chicago-like montages make this film a must-see for anyone in entertainment. These kids have so much heart and so much talent - I got teary smack in the middle. Naturi Naughton plays a classical pianist whose real dream is to sing and Kay Panabaker plays a young actress all too eager to fall prey to creepy guys. Even though their storylines are barely fleshed out, the montage of teen angst and the spectacular dance scenes carry the energy throughout the film. [Read more →]

This article by Mark Walsh from Online Media Daily poses that very question. Analyst Laura Martin, who works for Soleil Securities, estimates that Hulu will cost TV networks $920 in advertising dollars.

The continued success of Hulu and others will increasingly tempt people to give up their $100 cable subscriptions and just go with what’s online. The funny thing about it, is that Hulu is owned by NBC Universal - a network which had to scrap all of its network 10pm programming for the Jay Leno show because of declining ratings.

I haven’t had cable for almost 7 years - which is incredibly funny considering that I’ve WORKED in cable for the past 7 years at Lifetime and Oxygen Media. I even have a hard time watching regular television because I will not watch a 1 hour television program that is 17 minutes of commercials (YES, 17 minutes at the very LEAST). An online program has maybe 4 commercials in it - 1 at the top and bottom, and maybe 1 if you have to refresh the screen. So yes, I missed SUnday’s VMA’s and I had to hear all the gossip from people at work.

When you pay a $100 cable bill - that money is divided between the provider (Time Warner or Cablevision i.e.) and each cable network. For instance, ESPN gets $2 a month, Lifetime -  maybe $1.00, Golf Channel - maybe .40 cents. No way I’m paying for cable channels that I have no interest in watching. I’d rather pay for the channels that I will watch.  Since the cable networks won’t allow for a scenario like that, I’d rather just watch the programming I want to watch online or even at the gym.

I’m about to catch Beyonce teaching Kanye West a lesson in respect by going online to MTV or Youtube and watching her speech at Sunday’s VMA’s. Kanye - please, stop drinking Henessey in public. Your little 10 year-old self would not be happy if someone had done that to New Edition 20 years ago.  [Read more →]

I’ve been awaiting Julie and Julia since I first heard about it a year ago. Food, Love, Writing, Julia Child - it’s like Nora Ephron read my 12 year old dreams and created this movie just for me. And I’d like to thank her for all the great food porn and the shots of Paris in the 50s. She even borrowed some of Julia Child’s kitchen to put you right smack in the world of French Food in the mid-century.

And for the Julia Child part of the story - I think anyone will find an inspirational and lovely little piece. But the modern day story left me unsatisfied, despite some smart moments and the immensely adorable boyfriend played by Chris Messina. (there’s a slight chance you’ll remember him from Vicky Christina Barcelona)

Julie and Julia is 2 stories side by side - the story of Julia Child and her ascent to bringing french cuisine to the common housewife, and Julie - who spent her 20s writing a half-written novel no one wanted to publish before spending her days talking to 9/11 asthma victims from a cubicle.

You’ll be awfully surprised, as I was, to find out that Julia Child didn’t marry until she was almost 40 years old (she blames her height - so do I JULIA! So…do…I…). [Read more →]

It’s been almost a week since SciFi became SyFy and the world hasn’t ended. Legions of SciFi fans with access to light sabers, nunchucks, swords and pet dragons have not risen up to destroy the network.

Instead, they chose to mock the network (not an illegal action). There were a whole bunch of logo mock-ups made (my favorite was Imagine Grammar) but now I can’t find them!

Apparently they chose the new logo because not only was it phonetically the same, but more importantly it could extend the brand, its something the channel could own (rumor is the word SciFi is a genre and therefore cannot be owned by anyone)

And it turns out - syfy is a slang term for syphilis. Somewhere out there, an ex-marketing person is laughing.

The Good News about this? Networks have the freedom to alienate their audience and change their names, because they think changing their name doesn’t matter so much. Which may actually be true since their ratings were not down last week.

My garbage disposal just started gurgling, unprovoked. I’m scared.

Apparently I am the only person who never knows where those

wacky photos come from that get emailed around everywhere. If YOU are also one of those “ONLY” people, than

you can find those photos at the site below, email them to all your friends and look like you are the original, cool, one.

http://www.funpic.hu/en.index.php

Here is one just in time for summer, care of my cousin in France, Delphine. I’m sure those guys were hanging around watching an episode of MTV Cribs and thought - “We can watch movies in our pool, too!”:

We all have our favorite movies; some of us love these movies so much that we can’t let go. I am one of those people. To deal with my inability to deal with letting go of my favorite characters and stories I’m creating a reoccurring feature here called “Sequels that don’t exist, YET”

The first of these soon to be theatrical gems is “Back to the Future IV; The Future is Now!” directed by Darren Aronofsky produced by Michael Bay [Read more →]

Goldman Sachs - which owns Burger King - used part of their bailot money to pay their employees some of the highest bonuses in the industry. If they’d shared their bailot money with their Burger King workers they could have given every employee in America an extra $18,000.

This is kind of old news by now. But Goldman Sachs has actually screwed over many, many people in all sorts of companies and Brave New Films wanted people to have their say. They had a video competition asking people how they would SACK it to the people at Goldman Sachs (ehh..heehhh…).

Carolyn Bear’s husband was one of the people screwed over by Henry Kravis at Goldman. After working for 30 years, he lost his pension and all. Carolyn had a great idea for how to get a little of her pride back - rather creative, too:

Brave New Films, which made this documentary, sits at www.warongreed.org - a truly awesome website sent to me by my very aware friend, Jessica.

Thank you, PC World. We here at Stillgoodnews.com love, love, love lists. And this is one to love. Top 11 Lamest Blogs in the world. Included in top honors - A Paris Hilton Fan Blog, the Pepsi Obsession blog, Kim Kardasian’s Personal Blog (what DOES she do again? I’m sorry, it’s so lame… I can’t even link to it) and this one below (opening a cupboard? sounds interesting to me…)

http://tech.msn.com/products/slideshow.aspx?cp-documentid=13523062