Weeds, well, it's just a sad, self-indulgent mess. It's like a clown that stopped being funny, so he put on more and more makeup to try to get the laughs back, but instead of laughing we're just sitting at home thinking, "That clown looks ridiculous. Remember when he used to be funny?
Salon
There's another side to that equation, though, beginning with the much-publicized fact that Kurt Wimmer's screenplay was written with a male star in mind, very likely Tom Cruise. (Indeed, "Salt" is conceptually pretty close to Cruise's underperforming summer release, "Knight and Day.") Very little of the script was rewritten when Jolie was cast - an intriguing move toward Hollywood gender equality, blah blah blah. But that also means Jolie is stuck in a Tom Cruise role, playing a character who seems borderline nuts, who exhibits no sexuality and hardly any psychological life, and whose personal history consists of plot points with no emotional impact.
Before I say anything about Whitney's epic two-day interview on Oprah, let me get this out of my system: 
Oh boy, is this woman amazing. Enthralled for the full two hours Oprah rightly devoted to Whitney, a lot of things came to mind, but nothing more forcefully than these two words: consummate entertainer. Her story of drug addiction, co-dependency, getting sick of fame to the point where she really thought that part of her life was over, playing her status as an icon down so as not to emasculate her husband, doing Being Bobby Brown just for his sake (but thinking it was an accurate portrayal of their dysfunction) and on and on and on -- it was all so compelling, and the way she told it only made it more fascinating. I didn't think for one second that Whitney was anything but entirely honest -- at this point, what does she have to lose, anyway? This was the specific counterpart to her vague (but good) "comeback" album I Look to You, and I'm seriously in awe of Oprah's skills. I guess you don't get to be Oprah by accident.
The only thing I was a little bit disappointed by was that Whitney dodged the question of whether she lost her voice -- she was always confident it was there, but she made no reference to the fact that it's no longer near the condition it once was. Oh well, her performance of "I Didn't Know My Own Strength" at least restored some faith in her ability to perform live after her disastrous showing on Good Morning America. I guess she has her good days and her bad days (and indeed, in the first part of the interview, taped just the day before Central Park, her speaking voice was thin and raspy). After all, she's only human -- that seems to be her primary message these days, anyway.
Oh, and fuck Wendy Williams for taking Whitney to task for "not owning" her addiction, whatever the fuck that means. Whitney did not appear on Oprah to discuss the addition gene, but the circumstances that surrounded her drug problem (and they had everything to do with Bobby), and she certainly didn't go on Oprah so that Wendy Williams could tearfully address America and prove that she's the better recovering addict. I loved Wendy up till this. It could be a deal-breaker for me. I think ultimately she's just salty that she didn't get the exclusive, and she's trying to force her way into Whitney's spotlight. What a pig. I think we all know the appropriate response. Ahem.
Anyway, I'm not going to recap the interview or anything, just rip shit from context for maximum hilarity, because this woman is really something else. First up is a soundboard of my favorite quotes from the interview:
And then below, some gifs. They are sooo necessary...
For the premiere of the fifth season of her talk show today, Tyra wore her real hair. Then she sat down to interview Perez Hilton and pretended like she doesn't read his site or hate his guts.
OK, first of all, this:
Tyra came out with her natural hair completely wet.
And she had audience members come up and touch it.
The lesson here was: "Wigs and weaves are options, not something that you need."
Then she got a blowout and had it styled, and continued on with the show.
Perez came out.
I know, right? For real:
(That's cereal milk on his chin, BTW.)
Tyra referred to him as "The King of Blogging," even though she told him, "I'm not very familiar with your site…" Bull. Fucking. Shit.
That post was the seed that her manure developed into the tree of knowledge that is "Kiss my fat ass!"
She even knows his nicknames for her.
Tyra tried to get Perez to admit that he'd been teased as a child and that's why he grew up to be such an angry asshole. He wouldn't though. Then she tried to strike a deal with him. She asked him to not make fun of the underage children of celebrities for one year. He refused.
Then she knocked it down to three months, but he wanted an "out clause."
Then they agreed that he would only post "newsy" content about celebrities' children, and he'd leave opinion out of it. He would have to do this for three months, and if he followed through, he would get to appear on a future episode of ANTM.
It would seem that he didn't stick to the deal. It's kind of a relief though, that he won't be appearing on Top Model, though.
Coming up this season on Tyra:
Holla for clip-ins!
What a weird series of contradictions Inglourious Basterds is. It's epic in look and feel, but it ends on a whimper and wisecrack. It never stops explaining itself (creating the illusion of complication), but at the end of this simple tale of revenge, it feels like the line from A to B has been a straight one. It's a Quentin Tarantino film about atrocity, yet none of the violence feels gratuitous (at least to desensitized me). It was as brutal as its story demanded, no more and certainly a lot less than the much-maligned original trailer suggested.
Despite my gorehound tendencies, I'm not disappointed about that. It felt mature, as did the dialogue, which was deficient of the fast-talking, pop-culture worship that has defined Tarantino up till now. In that respect, making a period piece must have been something of a personal challenge. I guess he got some references in by saluting things like spaghetti Westerns and the French new wave. That stuff's off my radar, and I can't imagine how far it is off the average teenager that I shared space with on Friday. It made me chuckle that these kids came expecting a bloodbath and were instead presented essentially a reading assignment, given the amount of dialogue and the fact that it's almost all in French or German. It felt like a very gentle fuck you. That's yet another contradiction.
At this point, you can't really amputate a Quentin Tarantino picture from his body of work -- it's all part of an ongoing discussion (and sometimes that discussion feels like one long declaration of self-satisfaction). More than any other working director, I can't help but judge all of his movies against his past work. I wonder how Basterds would be taken on its own, not as Tarantino's grown-up quasi-historical epic. For one thing, I suspect it would have been made to come in at under two hours. Basterds didn't feel bloated to me, save the entirely expository scene, in which a pointless Mike Myers explained Operation Kino (the military plot to assasinate Hitler and other important members of the SS). Still, I can see how it is patience-testing, as it is a lot of sitting around and talking for relatively obvious pay-off (although Mélanie Laurent laughing at her oppressors via a projection on thick smoke is about as good of cinematic imagery as any I've seen this decade -- that alone was pay-off to me). I felt like the whole thing was tense, though. It affected my physiologically -- my pulse elevated, my hand strained from clenching. The movie is essentially a series of uncomfortable conversations, in which some powerful bad guy doesn't and can't know the secret of the good guy he's talking to (whatever it may be). I think it did a tremendous job of conveying the claustrophobia of occupation.
I just have one more point, but it's a major spoiler, so it's going under a cut...
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