DAVID EDELSTEIN: The Green Hornet at least is likable, a refreshing change from all those heavy, angst-ridden superhero movies. The director is Michel Gondry of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a virtuoso at making childish fantasies take wing. And I’m not the first to notice a Bob Hope-Bing Crosby road-movie vibe between the two stars, Seth Rogen (as Britt Reid, aka The Green Hornet) and Jay Chou (the kung fu master Kato), who are both smitten with Cameron Diaz in the Dorothy Lamour role. Rogen’s Britt is a ne’er-do-well rich kid, the son of a disapproving media mogul played […]
LIT: Whatever Happened To Norman Mailer?
COMMENTARY: By this point, Mailer had jettisoned his first wife, college sweetheart Beatrice Silverman, and clearly traded up in the sexual-allure department by marrying the painter Adele Morales in 1954. With Adele’s all-too-willing complicity, he cultivated the ugliest part of his nature and called it high moral adventure. Threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes became a regular feature of their sex life. Mailer especially got off watching his wife with other women; when he could provoke her to duke it out with her lesbian partner, his night was made. The spectacle was even better than naked mud wrestling. Marijuana lubed the orgiastic […]
Six Students Slashed During Punch-Up Under The El
INQUIRER: Six high school students have been taken to hospitals, five of them with knife wounds, after a melee at a Market Street El station in West Philadelphia this morning, police said. A witness said a fight between two youths quickly escalated into five different fights about 7:40 a.m. at the 46th and Market Street station. Police said the students were from Boys Latin Charter and West Catholic High School. Four Latin Charter students suffered knife wounds and one had a cut mouth, police said. They were taken to Mercy Hospital, apparently by school officials. Investigators are trying to determine […]
OW, MY BALLS: Larry Platt Testicle Photos Leaked To Gawker, Along With Not-Funny Black Nurse Joke
GAWKER: A former Philadelphia staffer provided the below email, which Platt sent to his then-assistant while recovering from having a testicle removed. Platt makes a questionable joke about a black woman, then instructs the assistant to forward his testicle pictures to “the ball girls,” a group of five current and former staffers. MORE RELATED: IN HIS reporting of my leave-taking as editor of Philadelphia magazine, Dan Gross included in his description of my “un-bosslike” behavior “tackling in the hallways.” To be clear, there had been no tackling in the hallways of Philadelphia magazine since 2003, which is when I rescinded […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
SETTLEMENT: Shep Fairey & AP Declare Truce
ASSOCIATED PRESS: The Associated Press and the artist who created the Barack Obama “HOPE” image announced Wednesday they have agreed to settle their copyright infringement claims against each other and will work together again in projects that use the news agency’s pictures. Both sides disclosed the agreement in a joint release, ending a fight that began after Shepard Fairey’s art based on a 2006 AP photograph became an iconic image in Obama’s presidential campaign. The red, cream and light-blue image shows a determined-looking Obama gazing upward, with the caption “HOPE.” Fairey sued the AP in 2009, seeking a court declaration […]
MEDIA: Dave Davies Goes After Larry Platt
DAVE DAVIES: I was working at the Philadelphia Daily News when the company filed for bankruptcy, and I was there when an earlier corporate parent, Knight-Ridder put the paper up for sale. I dare say there was less dismay in the newsroom on those days than yesterday, when the company’s CEO named former Philadelphia Magazine editor Larry Platt as editor of the Daily News and announced the “the transformation of the Daily News into a loud, irreverent and fun tabloid.” I wasn’t at the paper yesterday, but my friends there tell me the atmosphere in the newsroom when the changes […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Real AZ Shooting Victims
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] ANDREW SULLIVAN: “This message—even at a time of national crisis—was a base-rousing rallying cry, perpetuating her own victimhood and alleged bloodthirstiness of her opponents. One would have thought that Palin, like any responsible person in her shoes right now, could have mustered some sort of regret about the unfortunate coincidence of what she had done in the campaign and what happened afterwards. Wouldn’t you? If you had publicly defended a map with cross-hairs on a congresswoman’s district, and that congresswoman had subsequently been shot, would you not be able to express even some measure of regret […]
RECORD REVIEW: Kanye & Jay-Z’s H.A.M.
According to internet jabber, Jay-Z and Kanye West are in the south of France polishing up their collaboration EP, Watch The Throne, due mid-2011. They leaked three tracks from the EP. The first two tracks “That’s My Bitch” and “The Joy,” produced by Pete Rock and Q-Tip respectively, were promising, to say the least. However, on Tuesday, Kanye announced that a third leaked track, “H.A.M. (Hard As A Motherfucker,” would be the lead single for the EP. In a nutshell, “H.A.M.” is a remake of Rick Ross’ summer hit “BMF.” Sure, the beat has changed mildly to include choral dynamics, […]
MEDIA: Platt Named Editor Of The Daily News
THE POST: Platt resigned as editor of Philly Mag in June after a nearly eight-year tenure. If he were to be named editor of the DN, the position would come with some built-in irony. Prior to his resignation, the Daily News reported that Platt had given a framed photo of a cyst he had removed from one of his testicles to a departing female Philly Mag staffer as a gift. Now, he could be the paper’s boss. MORE PREVIOUSLY: Philadelphia magazine on Thursday parted ways with editor Larry Platt, who was at its helm for nearly eight years. Platt’s contract […]
Plumbing The Depths Of An American Psycho
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] SLATE: Act I of the politicization of the Tucson shooting was pundits and liberal politicians asking if right-wing rhetoric contributed to the violence. Act II was conservatives rejecting this and pointing out, by the way, that the media did not rush to judgment when Nidal Hassan killed 12 people at Fort Hood. Act III is the conservative fightback, as exemplified by this message from the Tea Party Express to its members. MORE SARAH PALIN: “If you don’t like a person’s vision for the country, you’re free to debate that vision. If you don’t like their ideas, […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR In addition to casting actors, the Coen brothers were faced with the difficulty of casting horses in True Grit, a task they initially approached with great trepidation. (For most of the movie, the actors are on horseback.) Equine actors “are difficult to deal with for a number of reasons,” says Joel Coen. “But we were lucky to work with probably the best horse wranglers in the business. And they do extraordinary things with the horses. The horses will often hit their marks in ways you sometimes wish the actors were capable of doing. But we were doing a […]
EARLY WORD: All Aboard The Love Train
MURAL ARTS PROGRAM: A one-of-a-kind [Valentine’s Day] experience for singles and couples! Reserve your spot now–this tour sells out fast. All new this year, one lucky couple will be married on the Love Train. Passengers tour Philadelphia’s renowned Love Letter Project, a series of 50 rooftop murals painted by legendary artist, Stephen Powers (aka ESPO), and crew. The murals collectively express a love letter from a guy to a girl, from an artist to his hometown, and from local residents to their neighborhood of West Philadelphia. A lovely reception at with gourmet treats and a special screening of the Love Letter movie follows […]