Headline of the year thus far, re 'Smurfs' in TheWrap: "Cheesy Reboot Will Annoy & Disgust Audiences of All Ages. Obnoxious blue imps..."

http://youtu.be/6CloK28bXtD

A few months ago after hearing that a new feature film called Green With Envy was coming out that featured an actor whose TV show I watch every week, Jason Segal of CBS-TV's How I met Your Mother, I looked for any teasers or trailers of it at the usual places.

I eventually found one, above, and discovered the female lead was someone I really liked, too -the radiant Amy Adams.

So far, so good.

The first 51 seconds or so seemed okay, but then... Muppets.

Ugh-h!!!

What a train wreck!

And I'm here to tell ya, Smurfs are even worse!

http://youtu.be/ku40DEMg57k

Poor Neil Patrick Harris!

Smurfs, Bratz, Strawberry Shortcake and My Little Pony are just some of the toy world's diabolical offerings that have literally given me the creeps and made me shudder for as long as I can remember whenever I've walked thru a retail store like Target, Walmart, CVS, et al, and see something from their evil empire.

So banal, so uninspiring, so unambitiuous...

All I could think was that some poor kids were going to be stuck getting this junk when some confused older relative of theirs freaked-out as a birthday or Christmas approached and they realized they had nothing for seven-year old Britney, Brittany or Chloe, so rather than showing some originality, they panicked and simply let their fear take over and became one of the consumer lemmings who took the easy way out.

(When they were younger and not the ambitious college students they are now at Washington & Lee and UVA (University of Virginia), yours truly, in his doting uncle mode, bought his two oldest nieces stuff from the Smithsonian Museum shop on The Mall at the American Museum of History -my favorite!- or, The National Geographic Scociety store at their HQ on 17th Street, N.W., a few blocks north of The White House.)

Which is the predicate for understanding why, so far, the headline of the year, seven months in, comes from Sharon Waxman's The Wrap:

Alonso Duralde reviews 'Smurfs': "Cheesy Reboot Will Annoy & Disgust Audiences of All Ages. Obnoxious blue imps do for children’s entertainment what lead paint does for children’s toys."

I smiled when I saw that and knew immediately that I would have to share it with you here, so pleased was I to see anything like it.

TheWrap

'Smurfs': Cheesy Reboot Will Annoy & Disgust Audiences of All Ages

Published: July 28, 2011 @ 10:17 am

By Alonso Duralde

Call your Congressman and demand that Central Park be federally protected from Hollywood.

This cherished New York institution was already overrun by Jim Carrey and a gaggle of pooping seabirds in this summer’s “Mr. Popper’s Penguins,” and now it’s being invaded by obnoxious blue imps in “The Smurfs,” a film that does for children’s entertainment what lead paint does for children’s toys.

Read the rest of the post at:

http://www.thewrap.com/movies/column-post/family-entertainment-goes-bad-worse-smurfs-29534

His previous columns at: http://www.thewrap.com/deal-central/column/alonso-duralde

See this gem involving the creator of The Simpsons, Matt Groening, whose books of cartoons I bought so many years ago at the Olsson's Books at Dupont Circle:

Fishbowl LA

eBay Gem: A Pre-Simpsons Matt Groening and His ‘Smurf House’

By Tina Dupuy on September 2, 2009 10:25 AM

http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlla/ebay-gem-a-pre-simpsons-matt-groening-and-his-smurf-house_b9370

MEDIABISTRO'S FISHBOWL LA

Mediabistro's Fishbowl LA -Click the icon to see what's new inside Hollywood U.S.A. and the Left Coast.

After lunch today, I came across this in my inbox, my daily Snowmail email from London and Channel 4 News, with Carl Dinnen writing the news preview today:

Carl Dinnen here and I'm looking at Smurfs.

Smurfette, Papa Smurf and Clumsy Smurf to be precise.

Someone at the New York Stock Exchange thought it would be a swell idea to have them ring their opening bell today. But just four days and a few hours before the US federal government runs out of money due to a political squabble between the White House and Congress, putting the Smurfs in charge on Wall Street looks somehow appropriate. President Obama has been speaking this afternoon and Sarah Smith will have the latest from Washington while Siobhan Kennedy will be here to explain what happens to your mortgage (or pension or savings) if the US can't get its act together by Tuesday.

Obama 'running out of time' to solve US Debt crisis

http://bit.ly/pCGh28

USA Today commercial from mid-1980's reminds me of the girl who got away: How I (Almost) Met Your Mother -and she was a newspaper industry executive

La Bilson is very definitely the Gold standard with me... Rachel Bilson



USA Today commercial from mid-1980's.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3LiURnoFzk

I was living in Evanston Illinois, just a few blocks from Northwestern University and Lake Michigan when this USA Today commercial was heavily promoted on TV.

A few years later, after I moved to the Washington, D.C. area and was living in Arlington County, VA, where I remained for 15 years, I constantly lived within three miles -and often eyesight of- the twin towers in Rosslyn at 1100 Wilson Boulevard, formerly called the Gannett/USA Today building, with its great views of D.C. and the Potomac River.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosslyn,_Arlington,_Virginia

That is, until they foolishly moved away from being only one block SE of an underground D.C. Metro train station, which was incredibly convenient for employees and people needing to go over there, and headed west to auto-centric Tyson's Corner in Fairfax County.

http://www.gannett.com/http://www.usatoday.com/
http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/
After doing some research projects for the paper starting with a 1988 election project, I eventually fell in love with a Gannett middle-manager whom I constantly kept running into in the morning and at lunch at one of the many little stores and restaurants located in the lobbies adjoining the huge escalators.
These stores made the building feel more like a small city, unlike so many of the bland office buildings with atriums I've seen in South Florida that are SO uninviting and have a bad retail mix.

The object of my affection bore a striking resemblance to an actress I particularly liked, and had a very friendly and endearing voice on the few occasions I'd heard it, so my radar was finely tuned whenever she was nearby.
I was absolutely convinced I could recognize her laugh from across a crowded room!
Plus, she loved college basketball!
Like the way an IU or UK fan loves college basketball, but she didn't go to a big sports school, which made it all the more endearing.
One fall morning I swung by one of the small stores in the building I frequented on my way to the area I worked out of when I was there and the owner noticed me subtly looking around while I had some newspapers under my arm, and was trying to decide what sort of drink to buy -cold or hot.
Yes, Mr. Obvious!

He looked at me and said, "I think I know who you are looking for."

Then, like he'd been rehearsing it for hours, he handed me a business card with her contact info on it, with a note in an envelope attached by a small black metal binder clip, like the millions of them I had in my desk drawer and would toy with while talking on the phone.

On the note she had written that she'd been doing some detective work on me and heard some very good things about me from people she trusted, would be going out-of-town for about a week for some newspaper industry-related shindig, then would be visiting her family... and, oh by the way, would I be interested in going with her to the big Eagles-Redskins game at RFK in two weeks time?
You could have knocked me over with a feather!

And the rest is history... well, at least for a few years anyway.
Yes kids, that's how many great romance stories start in Washington -with an educated and calculated move- he said, sounding like Ted Mosby doing the voice-over narration from an episode of "How I Met Your Mother."

That doesn't seem to be the style down here, which is a pity for all concerned.
Fickle fate is nobody's friend.
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/how_i_met_your_mother/





The "How I Met Your Mother" season premiere is Monday, September 20th at 8 p.m. Eastern. (The ESPN Monday Night Football game that night is Saints at 49ers.)
I genuinely hope there's much more Rachel Bilson in the show's future other than a few minutes here-and-there, as Hallandale Beach Blog loves, loves, loves La Bilson!

First Look: Rachel Bilson Heads Back to HIMYM For Season 6http://www.buzzsugar.com/Rachel-Bilson-Pictures-From-How-I-Met-Your-Mother-Season-6-Premiere-10528284
New York Post's Page Six Magazine
The Fashion Issue starring Rachel Bilson

By Amy Spencer
Rachel Bilson's Divine Inspiration

On The O.C. and in real life, Rachel Bilson launched a million fashion crushes with her unique but subtle sex-bomb style. Now the actress—who talks to Page Six Magazine about everything from Coco Chanel to Hayden Christensen—is making it easy for copycats to steal her look, in her new role as a designer.

Read the rest of the story at:

http://www.nypost.com/pagesixmag/issues/20080907/Rachel+Bilsons+Divine+Inspiration

The photos are great, oui?
ooh la la la Bislson

Great Neil Patrick Harris recap as 2009 Tony Award telecast bows out

After all my years of watching The Tonys, over and over,

with good hosts and bores and the just in-betweens

just waiting for... well something, to capture a mood

perfectly, it happened Sunday night.

Behind the Music: The True Story of Neil Patrick Harris’s

Final Tony Awards Number (with Bonus Lyrics)

By Dave Itzkoff

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/behind-the-music-the-true-story-of-neil-patrick-harriss-tony-awards-number-with-bonus-lyrics/?scp=2&sq=Neil%20Patrick%20harris&st=cse

See also: Live Blogging the Tony Awards

By Dave Itzkoff and Charkles Isherwood

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/live-blogging-the-tony-awards/

Shout out to the Signature Theatre back in Arlington,

and Artistic Director Eric Schaeffer and Managing

Director Maggie Boland for winning the Tony for

outstanding regional theater.

------------------

The NBA Finals? That's funny.

Why would I waste two-and-a-half perfectly good

hours watching that, when as everyone knows, you

only have to watch the last two minutes of an NBA

game, which takes six minutes to slog through

with commercials.

There's nothing but nothing more boring in sports

than the intentional foul in the last two minutes of

an NBA game, finals or not, especially the way most

NBA players clank their crucial free throws.

I haven't watched more than 20 minutes of an

NBA game since the Heat beat the Mavericks for

the title.

NCAA Field Hockey, Lacrosse and Soccer on the

other hand... I'm there from beginning to end.

And to conclude... the original Browadway El Gallo,

Jerry Orbach singing a song that a former dramaturg

girlfriend of mine in D.C. used to play all the time

from The Fantasticks album, with us singing songs

from the cast album, with her as Luisa and me as Matt.

We even sang the songs on the way to and from

Oriole games in Baltimore, esp. on Sunday drives.

I recommend the Michael Ritchie feature film

version, though it's not for everyone.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113026/

http://www.mgm.com/title_clip.php?title_star=FANTASTI

That's when I first realized how scary talented

Jean Louisa Kelly was!