How much for a Yahoo accolade?

I noticed something over the weekend. Yahoo had a little blurb on the top movie stars of 2008. It was an interesting photo selection for one big reason. Almost every one of the people they were touting had a flop in 2008.

The list starts with Gong Li. You may not recall her name. Then again you probably didn't recall Hannibal Rising, with good reason. The list moves on to Nicole Kidman. She has become synonymous with Hollywood failure, which the film Australia confirms yet again. But then the list loses all perspective. It goes into a tailspin of stupidity.

The next "actress" on the list is Paris Hilton. A woman so without talent she couldn't make sex look interesting to watch. Her claim to fame was the film the Hottie and the Nottie. The hottest thing about the film is akin to the apparent intelligence of Hilton - just not being there at all. Is the possibility she will inherit a major company really that important to Hollywood?

The list moves on to Jennifer Lopez. Who is lauded for giving birth to twins. Which does deserve notice. But not on a list of top movie performers. Even when some thought she had a movie career she was bad. And she hasn't gotten better.

To disguise the fact that there were so few good movies and to bolster the huge number of movie stars with flops the list then goes international with Aishwarya Rai. She is a top Bollywood actress. I've never seen her in a film and have no comment.

But the list jumps back to the ridiculous with Hillary Duff and her performance in the mega-flop War, Inc. I reviewed that movie and to summarize both her performance and the movie, disappointing and a waste of time.

The list goes on to name Mary Kate Olsen, The Wackness, Lindsey Lohan, Chapter 27, Jessica Alba, The Love Guru, right up to Angelina Jolie. Jolie is the only actress on the list with a film the average person can say they saw, and actually liked. She is the only woman on the list (perhaps excluding Rai) that had films that made real money. In effect only she and perhaps Rai deserve to be on a list of top movie stars. The rest need to be on the top of a pile of dung for their performances.

The list then turns to men. And the choices are only moderately better. The star is with Tom Cruise because of his appearance in the flop Tropic Thunder, but more likely the Valkyrie movie that has yet to show. Next we get Patrick Swayze - because he has pancreatic cancer. Like Lopez I have to wonder how that has anything to do with movies. It's sad, but it does not go to the top of a list of movies.

Then the list does another odd change of direction. They pick Denzel Washington, who did not have a film in 2008. But at least he was nominated for an award this year. That's closer to a reason to be on this list then most. The list then flies off with failures like Bankock Dangerous (remake) with Nicolas Cage, Orlando Bloom - also without a movie this year. At this point we finally get to someone who was in a movie that made money and most people saw (for the men).

Will Smith is 5th with Hancock and the upcoming Seven Pounds. And right above him on the list is Brad Pitt with a flop - Burn After Reading - and the nominated Benjamin Button arthouse film. Leonardo DiCaprio broke even as I recall with Body of Lies but took 3rd. Next is Johnny Depp who like Bloom and Washington didn't have a film, and like Washington was nominated. And of course 1st went to the dead guy Hollywood can't stop talking about - heath ledger.

This entire list is Bollocks. Of the entire group Aishwarya Rai, Angelina Jolie, Will Smith, and Heath Ledger deserve to be on it. Maybe an honorable mention to Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. That's it.

I don't know what pipe the people at Yahoo are smoking, but it must be powerful. Either that, or there must be one hell of a kickback coming from advertising for Yahoo to tout this kind of rubbish as a top list of anything. Maybe if they named it the Top Movies Stars of 2008 - whose companies gave us a lot of money. Or is that too long.

And people wonder why the quality of movies is dropping faster than the average IQ of a high school graduate. When you can buy accolades who needs writing. It's just sad.

Celebrities and entertainers that should retire

Things in Hollywood tend to happen in 3’s. Whether it’s a franchise of movies (before everyone stops caring about the series of films), celebrity deaths, or now early retirement. The current news flash about the silver screen is that Joaquin Phoenix, Angelina Jolie, and Nicole Kidman have all lost the acting bug. But does it matter?

What happened to the old days where good actors and actresses worked until they stopped getting roles or just sucked so bad that they stopped trying? When did entertainers publicly announce the fact that directors and Hollywood execs had lost faith, or found them too problematic, and stopped taking their calls?

Now this may not be true of each of the above movie stars. Angelina Jolie still packs in the crowds and her movies have been quite good of late. WANTED was a good film and made decent money (though she was way too skinny). Changeling seems to be doing alright in theaters, Beowulf and Kung Fu Panda don’t count as they were animated. And she was nominated twice for her work in A Mighty Heart. So to see her give up film work is a bit of a loss. Then again no one is really looking forward to Lara Croft 3.

Joaquin Phoenix is still riding high off of his work on Walk the Line (which was excellent). But his work on Gladiator, Ladder 49, and Hotel Rwanda easily cover the lesser known Two Lovers and Reservation Road. And the fact that he is Puerto Rican (which most do not seem to focus on) is a bonus to me at least. But like many actors, music is a drive that is currently consuming him.

Nicole Kidman though needed to retire years ago. Seriously, her retirement is more the fact that she does not deserve the pay she makes. The last success she had was Happy Feet, which was animated. It could be argued that Cold Mountain was a hit, but you really need to go back to The Hours or Moulin Rouge – roughly 8 years ago. Her career seriously peaked in 1990 with Days of Thunder, which former husband Tom Cruise (and the NASCAR cars) had more to do with.

But if every one of these actors stopped making films, who would care? Besides their fan clubs, not many. These are not the Humphrey Bogart’s, John Wayne’s, Lucille Ball’s, Lena Horn’s, or Katherine Hepburn’s of film. 2 of the 3 are very good, but not a single one is great. Their loss really amounts to nothing.

It’s not like the masses are losing anything. And telling the world that you won’t make another bad film we wouldn’t watch on DVD (mostly in Kidman’s case) only means we have something to look forward to, not lament.

No what this really says to me is that Hollywood is sitting on it’s laurels too much. That too many are overhyped. That the dearth of real talent is more obvious today than perhaps at any point in movie history. And that many of the more bankable and successful actors and actresses are still not going to get the attention they deserve.

If anything I hope this leads to a flood of retirements among the current crop of entertainers out now. Perhaps the following could retire and save us the movies, trailers, and DVD’s that flood the market now. I’d love to hear that the following are going to avoid smiting my eyes in 35mm

Johnny Knoxville
Vince Vaughn
Jennifer Lopez
Halle Berry (yes she has an Oscar, but name the film she won for. Or a great role she has done? Or a great film she was in.)
Jennifer Aniston
Ashton Kutchner (he was bad on television. Take away Demi Moore and you have nothing worthwhile about him)
Topher Grace
Ben Stiller
Leonardo DiCaprio (over-hyped)
Jessica Alba (looks but no talent)
Hillary Duff
Lindsey Lohan
Jean Claude Van Damme
Steven Segal (his time is passed)
Beyonce Knowles (stick to singing)
DMX
Ja Rule
Virtually every gangsta rapper
Cedric the Entertainer
Ben Afflect

The list is not perfect (there should be more on it) but in each case it is clear that the people here are each in need of serious acting classes, or at least better screening of the scripts they agree to.

I’m sure some will not agree with at least a few of these choices. Every actor that makes it to the big screen has a few fans. And looks trump talent these days. But not one of these actors or actresses can match up to real talent – thankfully they don’t even appear in movies where real talents appear. As I recall none of the above have performed with

Denzel Washington
Jamie Foxx
Robert Downey Jr.
Terrence Howard
Michael Douglas
Al Pacino
Benicio Del Toro
Johnny Depp
Kiera Knightley
Susan Sarandon
Tom Hanks
Forest Whitaker
Morris Chestnut

I don’t think I need to go on.

But if you could pick anyone to remove from movie screens and television forever who would you pick? Do you agree with my choices, and who might I have left out?

Teen pregnancy: the Hollywood connection

I recently noticed a couple of things about various celebrities and entertainers that are either giving birth, pregnant, or otherwise in an issue with their children. It’s been hard to not notice this of course, just scanning cable channels will give you all the facts you could care less about (or at least I do) in 15 seconds or less.

But there is a bit of other news that factors directly with that. Far less covered or mentioned is the fact that teen births are up. Not a lot but up all the same.

In the past year we got to hear about Jamie Lynn Spears. Very young, unwed, and now a parent. The fact that she is currently engaged to the father of her child does not change the fact that she was unwed when she got pregnant at 16. The fact she is looking to live in Louissianna to give her child a “normal life” belies the fact that it’s really not possible since she is so young, no matter what money she has made or her celebrity status. In fact, if we look at most young Hollywood entertainers, the money and celebrity status make them even less normal than their peers. Adding a baby just ups the ante on this.

Yet she is being placed on magazine covers like she won an Oscar Award.

Of course there is always the older Britney Spears. Hollywood fame, money, and celebrity status has done wonders for her. I’m sure her children won’t be the least bit screwed up, nor have any affect on their cousins.

Then there are the older celebrities. Matthew McConaughey just received a healthy 7 lb 4 oz son. He is unwedded to the mother. Nicole Kidman just had her 6 lb 8 oz daughter. She is unwedded to the father Keith Urban. Jessica Alba had her daughter recently and is unwedded. Nicole Ritchie and Halle Berry can say the same. And Clay Aiken can’t even say that he has a girlfriend he got pregnant. His friend/producer Jaymes Foster was artificially inseminated and though they are not a couple will share parenting.

Can Hollywood get any more screwed up?

Now I know there are feminists and others that will say this is all positive. That it shows women can raise their kids without help. That each of these couples love each other (with the exception of Aiken I suppose) and that is all that matters.

Bullshit.

I know women can be great mothers and raise children by themselves. I know because my mother is a strong Black woman that raised me and my siblings. Her 4 children have all gone to college, 2 own houses, all are well-employed and successful. And she did this on an income most would be shocked to know of. Suffice to say there were days mom did not eat.

But that is a great success story. And my mother had her first child (me) in a world that was far different than today [and my mother is still 30, don’t you dare question her age]. Then the world was kinder, people cared and helped to a degree. Kids playing on the block had every parent on the street watching out for them. Today you’d be lucky to have someone notice your kid exists (if they aren’t doing something wrong to that person’s property).

And children today are having kids in numbers that are unprecedented. It’s not just a few girls having kids without any fathers. It’s most of them. And they don’t have skills, unless you consider text messaging a skill. And like most of the youth today they are clueless. [Sorry to my young readers, but on average the youth of today have the common sense and abilities of 6th graders back when I was young.]
And their numbers are increasing.

“In 2007, 57 percent of children were white, non-Hispanic, 21 percent were Hispanic, 15 percent were black, 4 percent were Asian, and 4 percent were of all other groups. …

The report describes a long-term increase in the unmarried birth rate between 1960 and 1994, followed by a "relatively stable" unmarried birth rate between the mid-1990s and 2002 and a rapid rise since 2002. A related measure, the proportion of births to unmarried women, also saw an increase; 38 percent of all births were to unmarried women in 2006, up from 37 percent of births in 2005….

The adolescent birth rate (among married and unmarried adolescents) increased from 21 births per 1,000 teenage girls ages 15–17 in 2005 to 22 births per 1,000 girls in 2006. The 2006 increase was the first seen in this measure since the increase between 1990 and 1991…”

Do the numbers sound huge? Well look at in a different way. There are roughly 22,500,000 teenagers in the nation right now (my quick math). If we just look at girls we get about 11,475,000. That means about 546,000 are pregnant right now. That is larger than virtually every city that I have a reader in, across the globe.

Is this all the fault of Hollywood? Of course not. But when children are making pacts because they want attention and think being pregnant is cool, and Jamie Lynn Spears is on the cover of magazines I see a correlation.

50 years ago there was a shame to being an unwed mother. That was wrong. But Hollywood supported that image. Today Hollywood supports the thought that being a teenager and pregnant is the new James Dean. That is equally wrong.

Maybe it won’t sell as many magazines, or get people to watch the latest celebrity news show, but how about we admonish this reckless action in Hollywood. Just a little. Or do we have to wait for the unwed daughters of the Hollywood moguls and Congress to get pregnant (or god forbid infected with an STD like AIDS – another factor that is connected) before anything is said??