FRESH AIR Meryl Streep is known for completely enveloping herself in her characters, capturing their nuances, speech patterns and personalities. In her films, she’s transformed herself into such disparate people as the chef Julia Child, the writer Susan Orlean and plutonium-plant worker Karen Silkwood, winning countless honors and awards along the way. In her latest film, the biopic The Iron Lady, Streep once again fully inhabits a real-world figure — this time former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Her performance has already won her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination, and has earned rave reviews from critics, including Charles […]
The Homo-Hating Church Lady Who Singelhandedly Destroyed The Susan G. Komen For The Cure Brand
HUFFINGTON POST: Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the nation’s leading anti-breast-cancer charity, has insisted that its since-reversed decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood arose from a routine change in criteria for grant eligibility that had nothing to do with abortion politics. But a Komen insider told HuffPost on Sunday that Karen Handel, Komen’s staunchly anti-abortion vice president for public policy, was the main force behind the decision to defund Planned Parenthood and the attempt to make that decision look nonpolitical. “Karen Handel was the prime instigator of this effort, and she herself personally came up with investigation criteria,” […]
SPORTO: Superbowl XLVI Ad Game Play By Play
BY MIKE WOLVERTON SPORTS GUY So the Giants won. I hate them. At least the Patriots lost. Hate those cheaters too. Now let’s review the commercials. A true Super Bowl Ad can only air while the game is being played, so pregame and halftime ads are out. Forget the “straight” ones too…the car commercials, movie trailers, TV promos and others that just aren’t going for a laugh. The rest were trying to be funny or cool, and I’ve given them a ranking from 0-10. Anything that scored a six or higher I considered funny. The strategy now is to try […]
MIA: Bad Girls
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Perhaps most outraged is the Parents Television Council. PTC President Tim Winter released a statement taking NBC to task for the slipped finger. “NBC fumbled and the NFL lied because a performer known as M.I.A. felt it necessary to flip off millions of families,” Winter said. “It is unfortunate that a spectacular sporting event was overshadowed once again by broadcasting the selfish acts of a desperate performer.” Sunday night, a source close to M.I.A. said the performer had been struck with “a case of adrenaline.” “She wasn’t thinking,” the source said. “It wasn’t any kind of statement. […]
WES ANDERSON: Moonrise Kingdom
In theaters May 25th, just in time for camp.
NO PLACE LIKE HOME: Wish You Were Here
[Photo by JONATHAN VALANIA]] We’re out in Portland for a few days to interview The Shins and the Mayor Sam Adams. More on this later. We’ll be back in action Monday!
SPORTO: The Tao Of DeSean
BY MIKE WALSH One complaint about Andy Reid and the Eagles during the Donovan McNabb era was that Reid never provided McNabb with the quality wide receivers needed to win a Super Bowl. That’s a legitimate complaint as Eagles fans and McNabb suffered through season after season with sub par receivers like Charles Johnson, Torrance Small, Todd Pinkston, James Thrash, Greg Lewis, L J Smith, Kevin Curtis, Freddie Mitchell, and Reggie Brown. Of course, 2004 was the exception when the Eagles signed Terrell Owens. Owens went on to have one of the best years for a wide receiver in Eagles […]
CHEECH & MAHJONG: Joan Rivers Gets High On TV
[via ABC NEWS]
HOT DOC: FBI Flyer Helps Baristas Smoke Out The Terrorists From The Caves Of Starbuckistan
[Click to enlarge] PUBLIC INTELLIGENCE: A flyer designed by the FBI and the Department of Justice to promote suspicious activity reporting in internet cafes lists basic tools used for online privacy as potential signs of terrorist activity. The document, part of a program called “Communities Against Terrorism”, lists the use of “anonymizers, portals, or other means to shield IP address” as a sign that a person could be engaged in or supporting terrorist activity. The use of encryption is also listed as a suspicious activity along with steganography, the practice of using “software to hide encrypted data in digital photos” or […]
MEAT IS MURDER: You May Never Eat Pork Again
MOTHER JONES: The remarkable thing about Humane Society of the United States’ latest factory farm video exposé is how banal it is. No illegal acts like “downer” animals being forced down the kill line with fork lifts, or getting their brains bashed in with a pickax. What we have here is the everyday reality of pigs’ lives on a factory farm, without regulations flouted or spectacular violence committed. It is abuse routinized and regimented, honed into a profitable business model. The video looks at two aspects of the dirty business of raising thousands of pigs en masse in close quarters: […]
ARTSY: The Great Beyond
You might not know it from the recent media focus, but there are photographers living and working in South Philadelphia not named Zoe Strauss. One of them is Ted Adams, who just unveiled an overview of his work stretching back to the 80s at the Robin Rice Gallery in the West Village. The small exhibit is an overview of Adam’s photography, some pieces dating back to the 90s. These’s nothing digital in this exhibit. Adams shoots with a vintage Leica and Kodak Tri-X film. He also processes his own film and prints in the darkroom at his house. In fact, […]
NPR FOR THE DEF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR It’s no coincidence that Baratunde Thurston’s new memoir and satirical self-help book How to Be Black was slated for release on the first day of Black History Month. “I feel great about that,” Thurston tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “I think we have a moment every year in our country where everyone buys black stamps and thinks more explicitly about black people and blackness, so it was a perfect month to release a book on this subject.” Thurston, a stand-up comedian and The Onion‘s digital director, says that he doesn’t get as many gigs this month as one […]