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Media
September 25, 2007
Good Luck, Movie After 'Chuck'
Few movies of late have been met with such universally terrible reviews as the Dane Cook/Jessica Alba vehicle Good Luck Chuck. (It's the third-worst among current releases at Metacritic). While an extremely negative review can sometimes bring out a critic's creative side, many of those who reviewed this movie give it as little thought as those who greenlit the film.
Media
September 24, 2007
Turgid Movie Reviews
David Germain is the Associated Press's go-to guy on all matters cinematic. He writes movie reviews and covers the box-office side of Hollywood, as well. As far as Gelf can tell, one of the few aspects of the celluloid business Germain avoids is the porn industry. Which is strange, considering how often he uses the word "turgid" in his reviews.
Varsity Letters
September 20, 2007
October 3: Varsity Letters Reading Series
New York's Varsity Letters sports reading series returns on Wednesday, October 3 at 8 p.m. At this free monthly event at a Lower East Side bar, hosted by Gelf, John Bacon, Michael O'Keeffe, Teri Thompson, and Jon Wertheim will read from and talk about their work, and take questions. In their new books, Bacon shares leadership lessons from the late Michigan coach Bo Schembechler; O'Keeffe and Thompson expose the wacky collectors and shady behavior in the world of baseball-card collecting; and Wertheim tells the delicious tale of a present-day pool hustler.
Media
September 19, 2007
Return of the Bronco
In the fourth quarter of Monday night's Redskins-Eagles game, ESPN commenter Tony Kornheiser remarked, "The Packers are 2-0, the 49ers are 2-0, the Cowboys are 2-0, and O.J. is back in jail. It's like we're back in the mid-'90s again." The flashbacks didn't stop there. In the same week, Hillary Clinton unveiled her new health-care proposal; an earlier, failed effort defined her role in the early years of her husband's presidency. With the recent opening of the New York Times's archive to the general public, Gelf takes a look back at how the stories have changed—and remained the same—since that memorable low-speed chase.
Media
September 18, 2007
Cursing at the Emmys
You'd be forgiven if you were watching the Emmys on Sunday night and thought that Ray Romano said "fucking." That's because in the middle of Romano's joke about his former on-screen wife Patricia Heaton sleeping with her new on-screen beau Kelsey Grammer, the Fox censors used their seven-second buffer to cut awkwardly away from the presenter. While some articles that mention the incident reveal that the actual term used was "screwing" (and thus not particularly offensive), many media outlets are so worried about the delicate sensibilities of their readers that they fail to clear up the confusion. Here are a few examples:
Sports
September 17, 2007
Gaining Perspective on Oden
One of the old standbys in the sports columnist's arsenal is to occasionally step back from courtside and proclaim that the sporting world needs to be put in perspective. In the wakes of 9/11 and Katrina, for example, journalists tried to outshout each other while declaring how trivial the baseball playoff races and the upcoming football seasons were. But Oregonian writer John Canzano has taken what was a shaky premise to begin with—assuming your readers are too dumb to know the difference between sports and real life—and has totally outdone his peers.
Law
September 5, 2007
Is Ladies' Night Legal?
In June, Manhattan attorney Roy Den Hollander filed a federal lawsuit against a variety of New York nightclubs arguing that "Ladies' Nights" violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. This case is the latest in a string of lawsuits raising the question of whether businesses should be able to charge gender-specific admission or prices. Is it paternalistic or anti-capitalistic to set legal guidelines dictating identical prices for the genders, especially when there is unequal demand for certain services? Gelf checks the precedents to see if sex-based rates are Kool and the Gang.
Varsity Letters
September 4, 2007
Varsity Letters 9/5 Interviews
Three sports-book authors will be speaking at a free Gelf event in New York on Wednesday, September 5, at 8 p.m. Come by the Happy Ending Lounge to hear writers Frank Deford, Scott Price, and Neal Thompson read from and discuss their writing.
Media
September 1, 2007
His Own Idaho Privates
For a movie that was made 16 years ago, took in less than seven million dollars at the box office, and is around the 20,000th most popular DVD for sale at Amazon, My Own Private Idaho is getting more than its fair share of press these days. That's due less to Gus Van Sant and River Phoenix's brilliance than to the irresistibility of cheap puns to writers and bloggers weighing in on a political scandal.
Sports
August 31, 2007
One Mississippi, Two Mississippi
Fox Sports…oops, ESPN, mistook the home of the Rebels, Archie Manning, and self-important tailgate parties for the home of the Bulldogs, Sylvester Croom, and, once, John Grisham. In last night's LSU-Mississippi State game, the network showed the usual ads touting each school, only it ran the Ole Miss ad, complete with Faulkner references, instead of the one for MSU.
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