My favorite from the list: Russell Brand & Dame Helen Mirren (???)
Category: Entertainment
The great Bill Shatner in Captain Kirk’s finest hour
Shat was perfect in this sketch, playing Kirk as straight as if he were in Star Trek. Bill may have his flaws as an actor, but his ability to memorize lines is not one of them. He is known as one of the quickest studies ever. It’s great to see an SNL host who came totally prepared and didn’t have to read off the cue cards in one of the show’s longest sketches (8 minutes).
Also …
I must have gotten a little dust in my eye while watching the great Phil Hartman, seen here as “Bones.”
Bill Maher will get the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor
It was announced officially on March 26
The chronology:
- The Atlantic reported this last week.
- The White House flatly denied this to be true. “This is fake news. Bill Maher will NOT be getting this award,” said secretary Karoline Leavitt.
- But on Thursday, the center confirmed Maher was the pick.
- The White House explained: “This was false reporting at the time of the Atlantic’s reporting, but the situation changed.”
So they lied, then lied about whether they lied!
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I wondered how Maher would react to receiving something that is officially named “The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor,” but he seems to be OK with it.
Thank you to the Mark Twain people: I just had the award explained to me, and apparently it’s like an Emmy, except I win. I’d just like to say that it is indeed humbling to get anything named for a man who’s been thrown out of as many school libraries as Mark Twain.
Trump, of course, has never been thrown out of a library. That would require him to enter a library.
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The capper on the story:
According to several sources, outgoing Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell wanted to give the prize to Fox News talk show host Greg Gutfeld. Then he actually watched Gutfeld’s show and asked, “When does he get to the funny stuff?”
R.I.P. – Montana Wildhack
Valerie Perrine, ‘Superman’ and Oscar-Nommed ‘Lenny’ Star, Dies at 82
Nostalgia: Remembering Valerie Perrine in Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), and one of my more eloquent movie reviews.
Rarity: Valerie Perrine (and Shelley Winters!!!) topless in The Magician of Lublin (1979)
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Videos:
Valerie Perrine – Steambath (1973)
Valerie Perrine, Kathryn Witt, Cindy Embers – Lenny (1974)
The new SNL UK, and the History of SNL’s international versions
An official UK version of SNL, overseen by Lorne Michaels, debuted Saturday, with guest host Tina Fey. The show had some rough edges. The Weekend Update segment, normally a highlight of the American version, was a glaring weakness, but the Brits are better than anyone at making fun of the news, so I think they’ll probably figure out the proper rhythm for it.
The cold open was pretty good:
Here’s Tina’s monologue:
These YouTube creators did an outstanding job of researching the history of all the international versions:
By the way, their channel is terrific, one of the very best on YouTube. They have produced a summary show for each season of SNL from 1-25 and counting. (They have released an additional season every month or so, although there was a long gap between #24 and #25.) I discovered the channel a couple of years ago, and found it a wonderfully nostalgic experience to view the recaps year-by-year, not only for memories of the show, but also to see the changes in American pop culture over the years, a subject for which SNL is our time capsule.
I hope you and your family have a merry and blessed Shatmas Day
“You! You there!” he shouted to a boy on the street. “What day is this?”
The boy gave a puzzled look. “It’s Shatmas, sir.”
“Good! I haven’t missed it. Here, lad. There’s a big, juicy turkey of a Shatner movie in the bargain bin at Walmart. Buy it and deliver it to my house.”
There are those who, with apologies to pretenders like Alexander Graham Bell and the not-as-great Gretzky, call Bill Shatner the greatest of all Canadians.
That’s true, but is such limited thinking. Why restrict his importance to a single frozen land with only about 40 million inhabitants? He is simply the greatest HUMAN, possibly excepting the anonymous inventor of the wheel, and of course Bobby Troup.
Today is his 95th birthday. I celebrate his birthday as both Shatmas and New Year’s Day. Different people reckon the start of the new year with different methods, and have varying ways to calculate how many there have been. At the end of September in our calendar, the Jewish community will welcome the year 5787. The Chinese just celebrated the beginning of 4724. In a site dedicated to crap, we have no choice but to count the birth of William Shatner as the beginning of time (or at least any time worth living in), so today is the beginning of the year 95 A.S.N. (Anno Shatner nostri).
Referencing the great day to the common calendar, the day known to most of the world as March 22, 1931 was the greatest day in history, for it marked the birth of the promised one … the golden child … the chosen one. Know him. Embrace him. For as surely as crapped is the past tense of crap, Shat is the past tense of shit.
Like most of his followers, I celebrate by getting into costume and re-enacting one of his many career highlights. I normally choose this all-time classic:
During the pandemic I could not re-create that fight, since the scene requires two actors, which was inappropriate in the era of Coronavirus and social distancing, so that year I chose to re-enact the fight scene from White Comanche, since Shatner plays both parts.
This year: The Scoopy Players, my community theater company, will present a stage version of Incubus, Shat’s offbeat 1966 movie performed entirely in Esperanto.
I did not make that film up. The entire movie is below.
Further study from the ancient archives of Other Crap: decades of Shatner curiosities.
From the proprietor of a site that worships crap, happy birthday and stay crappy, Bill. You have already lived long and prospered, so just keep up the … er … good work.
Kidding aside:
There are those who say that Bill Shatner sucks. But did you know that there was a time when Shatner received unanimous acclaim from high-brow critics for a major Shakespearean performance? No, not ironic praise, but sincere encomiums.
My parents started taking me to the Stratford Festival in 1962 or 1963, too late to see Shatner, but his picture was in their halls, and I have read about his one magical night. The big draw in the 1956 festival was Shakespeare’s Henry V, starring Christopher Plummer. Shatner had only a minor role, but was also Plummer’s understudy. Plummer suffered from kidney stones, and his pain became so intense one night that he couldn’t perform. It was June 18, 1956. Enter Shatner.
This is an understudy’s greatest dream, and greatest nightmare. Shatner was going on for Canada’s most acclaimed young actor, and had to play Henry the Fucking Fifth, one of the best roles Shakespeare ever wrote (you have probably heard of the Band of Brothers speech). His career could have ended right there. Instead, it was a triumph. He got the greatest applause from the rest of the cast, professional actors who understood how difficult it was to do what he did at all, let alone to critical and audience raves!
Shatner’s other work at Stratford was nothing more than workmanlike. Here he is as Lucentio in a modern-dress staging of The Taming of the Shrew
I assume he took his wardrobe home with him after that role, because he wore the same outfit about 20 years later in that notorious screen triumph Big Bad Mama
Same haircut as well!
I never got to see Bill as Henry V, but I absolutely love him as Marc Antony in a hip-hop production of Julius Caesar within Free Enterprise, a wonderful, underrated film.
Shatner also played Marc Antony in a serious production – a CBC broadcast, pre-Trek (December, 1960). I like the hip-hop version better.
Gwyneth Paltrow popped out just a bit in Marty Supreme
UPGRADED to 4K
(IMDb: 8.3, Tomato Meter: 94%, Popcorn Meter: 83%)
Timothée Chalamet was once considered the likely winner of the Best Actor Oscar for his role in this film. His likelihood on the betting markets was 78% on February 9th. The bloom disappeared from his rose, however, for a variety of reasons, while Michael B. Jordan’s popularity kept increasing to an eventual victory. Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, an aspiring table tennis champion, fiercely determined to be the best in the sport. Although the story is fictional and original, the character was inspired by real-life table tennis player Marty Reisman.
Marty Supreme was nominated for nine Oscars, winning none. That is not the record for futility, but it’s close. There are now ten films with nine or more nominations without a win.
The Color Purple – 0-for-11
The Turning Point – 0-for-11
The Irishman – 0-for-10
True Grit (newer version) – 0-for-10
Gangs of NY – 0-for-10
American Hustle – 0-for-10
Peyton Place – 0-for-9
The Little Foxes – 0-for-9
The Banshees of Inisherin – 0-for-9
Marty Supreme – 0-for-9
All of those films are rated at least 7.0 at IMDb except The Turning Point (6.8), which gets the same disrespect from IMDb voters that it got from Oscar voters.
Incidentally, when Chalamet went down on Gwyneth in that scene, he reported that her vagina smells just like a candle.
Conan’s Oscar monologue
A commenter noted that the woman next to Ethan Hawke seems to have a nip-slip at 02:10. I think that is his wife, Ryan.
What happened:
Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” which was nominated for 13 awards, dominated the show with six awards, including the grand prize. PTA also won as the best director.
Michael B. Jordan won his first Oscar for his dual role as twin brothers. I was happy to see that. I like him a lot more than I like Chalamet. Oh, hell, I like Stephen Miller more than I like that twerp Chalamet.
Spicoli won his award as the best supporting actor, but didn’t bother to show up. He is apparently overseas, fighting for some cause or another, doing something he thinks is more significant than picking up a trinket. I have guilty feelings about disliking this, because I know he is actually right. Award shows are merely swanky bullshit with arbitrary winners and losers. They distract us from genuine crises in the world. I know I should respect his willingness to walk the walk when others only talk the talk. After all, this is a guy who rents a boat and rescues flood victims. I should admire that. And yet I dislike the fact that he’s right, and I still think he’s a total douche.
10 of the most cringe-worthy celebrity moments caught on TV
Perhaps the worst from the list – Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway giving the Oscar to the wrong film.
Apparently Warren was handed the Best Actress envelope, saw the name of “La La Land,” and handed it to Faye, who read it aloud. The poor schmucks from La La Land were already making their acceptance speeches when the error was reported.