Actors Who Will Star in Anything

So Balls of Fury comes out this weekend which stars Christopher Walken as some sort of evil Asian MC for a ping pong tournament. Its a bit of stunt casting that feels REALLY stale. The general assumption is that there is something inherently funny in casting Christopher Walken in a comedy. However, he's done this SO many times that there is no tension or dichotomy in his role choice/star persona anymore. What baffles and fascinates me though is the incredible amount of good will he seems to generate from the general movie going population. He can star in basically anything and come out of the picture unscathed. Some of the normally career ending films he has stared in the past decade include; Joe Dirt, The Country Bears, Kangaroo Jack, Gigli, Envy, and The Stepford Wives.
However, do a youtube search of Christopher Walken and you'll get thousands of amateur impersonations which are basically loving, gentle, adulatory spoofs. In viewing his IMDB credits, he always has seemed to alternate somewhat between serious and light fare until around 1999 when he made a surprise cameo as The Headless Horseman in Sleepy Hollow. From there onward his film choices seem to take a serious nosedive. Paycheck seemed to become paramount over script, film premise, or personal integrity.
There are quite a few actors from his generation who seem to have followed a similar career path including his very famous co star from the very serious and intense The Deer Hunter, Mr. Robert Deniro. Perhaps he is an even more painful example. While Christopher Walken always seems to be in on the joke, Mr. Deniro does not. I don't think he realized the full camp potential or horribleness of Hide and Seek, where he went toe to toe with a then 10 year old Dakota Fanning. Some other recent career lowlights of Mr. Deniro include, Godsend, Showtime, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, and Stardust in which I've read he plays a cross dressing outer space pirate. Interestingly enough, 1999 seems to be the turning point for Deniro as well. He starred in Analyze This, where he spoofed his own tough guy mafia persona and the film was both a critical and commercial success. He did in this post 99 period star in the very lucrative Meet The Parents and Meet The Fockers films but at what expense?
So basically these are two men who in the third act of their careers had a mini renaissance by making fun of themselves. What started as a surprising and clever play on audience expectations has devolved into sad clownish pantomime that feels desperate and cynical, with the only motivation/explanation being a paycheck.
Questions to ponder. At what point does an actor become an icon and immune to box office success or failure? Who are other examples? [Mr. Pacino I'm looking in your direction]

Rotting in Oblivion

Clever

Clever- superficially skillful, witty, or original in character or construction; facile: It was an amusing, clever play, but of no lasting value.

Song of Summer

From Jay Z's opening declaration, "Rhianna, good girl gone bad!" (is there anywhere else they can go?) to the closing refrain "Come into me" which the video illustrates, this has been the song of summer. I myself am a fan. The lyrics are so simple and vacuous they seem to hint at greater depths. Sadness also seems to creep into the vocal delivery of the song regardless if it is intentional or not, its there, at least for me anyway. Everyone goes on and on about the sad state of the music industry. Many claim its a fractured niche market driven mess on its last legs. So maybe I find monster size inescapable hits as comforting and reassuring in these uncertain times. You have a problem with that?

Vague Malaise

Some sociology theorists such as Jerry Mander see television programming as being deliberately designed to induce self-hatred, negative body image, and depression, with the advertising then being used to suggest the cure





They crack themselves up!

Dictionary.com

con·form·ist

1. a person who conforms, esp. unquestioningly, to the usual practices or standards of a group, society, etc.
2. (often initial capital letter) a person who conforms to the usages of an established church, esp. the Church of England.
–adjective
3. of or characterized by conforming, esp. in action or appearance

mo·ral·i·ty

1. conformity to the rules of right conduct; moral or virtuous conduct.
2. moral quality or character.
3. virtue in sexual matters; chastity.
4. a doctrine or system of morals.
5. moral instruction; a moral lesson, precept, discourse, or utteranc

eth·ics

1. (used with a singular or plural verb) a system of moral principles: the ethics of a culture.
2. the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc.: medical ethics; Christian ethics.
3. moral principles, as of an individual: His ethics forbade betrayal of a confidence.
4. (usually used with a singular verb) that branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions.

passivity

noun
1. the trait of remaining inactive; a lack of initiative
2. submission to others or to outside influences

Greed Trumps Love?

American pill-popping has doubled

Sales of US painkillers, such as Vicodin and OxyContin, have exploded — up 90% between 1997 and 2005. Analysts say an aging population, aggressive pharmaceutical marketing, and less-tolerant attitudes toward pain explain the boom (CN)

I Drank This

Fruitopia is a fruit flavoured, non-carbonated drink introduced by The Coca-Cola Company in 1994 and targeted at teens and young adults.
According to New York Times business reports, it was invented as part of a push by Coca-Cola to capitalize on the success of Snapple and other flavored tea drinks. The most common flavor of this drink was "Strawberry Passion Awareness". This flavor was available at most drink fountains as well as McDonald's as Coca-Cola pushed this drink to market in many places. Fruitopia vending machines were also popular in schools and college campuses, in addition to, or as a replacement to soda. After Fruitopia was introduced in the United States, TIME magazine named it one of the Top 10 New Products of 1994. Much of the success of the drink is credited to famed beverage brew master, Steven A. Ricci, who was able to not only brew the recipe for the fruit drink, but create so many great tasting culminations. Steven A. Ricci left the Coca-Cola Co. in late 2000-early 2001, thus forcing Coca-Cola to discontinue the product without their heralded brew master.

Other flavors included The Grape Beyond, Tangerine Wavelength, Citrus Excursion, Fruit Integration, Pink Lemonade Euphoria, Lemonade Love & Hope, Raspberry Psychic Lemonade, and Beachside Blast. These flavors were available in the United States. A much wider array of flavors was available in the UK. In a drive to remake the brand and remarket it as more relevant to Generation X, Coca-Cola dropped several flavors in 1996 and added and renamed others.
Fruitopia's unusual commercials were quite interesting despite the simplicity of the product behind them. The commercials were animations, using images of fruit arrayed in brilliantly colored spinning kaleidoscope patterns, accompanied by idealistic aphorisms reminiscent of hippie poetry of the 1960s, such as might be found in advertisements which ran in underground press newspapers of the period. Background music on several of the ads was provided by The Muffs, Kate Bush, and the Cocteau Twins also contributed.
There is a beautiful person
living inside you!
Please share a Raspberry Psychic Lemonade
with him or her.

THANKS WIKIPEDIA!

Its Official

I started a blog. I've decided to jump on the already painfully crowded bandwagon. What I lack in talent, wit, or style I make up for with ambition [look where it got Madonna!]. There will be no consistent theme or subject matter to this blog. It will be characterized by abnormal frequency and fluidity of verbal evacuations. So I've decided that if I could choose my god parents they would be Kim Gordon and Michael Stipe.