Celebrities Category
Celebrity news & gossip from the world’s showbiz and glamour magazines (OK!, Hello, National Enquirer and more). We read them so you don’t have to, picking the best bits from the showbiz world’s maw and spitting it back at them. Expect lots of sarcasm.
When You Wish Upon A Star: Exploring the Spirituality of Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
THE second-highest grossing film of 1977 (right behind George Lucas’s Star Wars) was Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of The Third Kind, a science fiction film concerning mankind’s first official contact with alien life-forms.
Close Encounter’s narrative also involves the mystery behind alien abductions and the truth regarding a government conspiracy to keep the existence of UFOs a secret.
Throughout the film Spielberg cross-cuts between two major plot-lines: a scientist’s (Francois Truffaut’s) efforts to develop a language so as to communicate with the visiting aliens, and one blue-collar worker’s (Richard Dreyfuss) personal journey to better understand their uncomfortable — but growing — presence in his daily life…and inside his very head.
Importantly, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) was described by Science Digest as a film that is “tantamount to faith.”
The same publication noted too that Close Encounters’ sense of faith, so “wondrous and thoroughly spiritual – is registered in nearly every frame, reaching a climax in its messianic ending.”(Joy Boyom, Feb 1978, p.17).
Similarly, Gregory Richards’ monograph, Science Fiction Movies (Gallery Books, 1984, p.61) contextualizes Spielberg’s disco-decade UFO epic “as more of a religious film than a science fiction one.”
So the primary question that viewers must reckon with regarding this cult classic is: why have so many reviewers contextualized the Spielberg film as one of an overtly religious nature? Does an understanding of the religious allegory open up new avenues for understanding this work of art?
Or contrarily, does the religious explanation of Close Encounters only serve to cloud the secular, humanist message beating at the movie’s heart?
Close Encounters as Religious Allegory
In part, the categorization of Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a film about spirituality and faith arises because Steven Spielberg’s movie so abundantly features what David A Cook, author of Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970 – 1979, calls “an aura of religious mystery.” (University of California Press, 2000, p.47).
Roy Neary — much like the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus according to Paul Flesher and Robert Torry in Film and Religion: An Introduction — experiences a kind of spiritual dawning or awakening.
In particular, Neary sees a UFO and hears the call of the aliens (transmitted via a telepathically implanted, subconscious “message” or “vision.”)
At first he does not understand the alien message. What is the meaning of the strange thoughts in his head? Why does he feel compelled to undertake a pilgrimage –– a journey to a location of great importance to one’s faith — to some mountain he has witnessed seen only in his mind?
Eventually, however, Neary surrenders to the vision, to his faith. He forsakes all his worldly belongings and connections — including his family — in a devoted (and perhaps mad…) attempt to understand why he has been “chosen” to hear this call from a (literally) Higher Power.
Clearly, Neary seeks communion with the message’s sender…with a stand-in for God. His quest in Close Encounters thus reflects Scripture and Romans in particular. “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” Here, Neary has heard and honored that word, but it is the words of the aliens.
Neary’s hardship and trials are eventually vindicated. At last, he meets the aliens at the mountain of his vision (ironically at a place called Devil’s Tower), and then watches as a version of the second coming of Christ is re-enacted before his eyes.
According to Flesher and Torry (Abindgon Press, 2007, p.200), the returned abductees whom the aliens release from their landed mother ship symbolically represent the dead rising, or the resurrection of the dead as foretold in Scripture. And furthermore, the ascent of the alien craft to outer space with one of the faithful (Neary) ensconced aboard it similarly represents the Christian rapture, the trip to Heaven, essentially.
Even the physical appearance of the aliens in Close Encounters might be readily interpreted as strongly reflecting Christian apotheosis.
In form, the extra-terrestrial bodies “have no clear blemishes or gender, suggesting that superior beings transcend the normal categories of physical existence and approach the ethereal qualities associated with spirits and angels,” notes scholar Eric Michael Mazur, (Encyclopedia of Religion and Faith (ABLC-CLIO, LLC 2011, page 388).
In his final ascent to the stars, to Heaven, Roy Neary is wholly affirmed in his unyielding faith and belief in the vision he received, over his wife’s cynicism and stubborn skepticism, and over the U.S. Government’s attempt to “control” the meeting of man and alien.
In some sense, Close Encounters is all about taking a leap of faith, and that very idea finds resonance in one of Spielberg’s compositions. Confronted with the government lie about a deadly and toxic nerve gas spill in Wyoming (near Devil’s Tower), Neary chooses to “believe” his own narrative instead. He rips off his protective gas mask and breaths the purportedly contaminated air. But he is proven right…he survives, and his faith is replenished.
Given the alien angels, the metaphor for the Second Coming and even this leap of faith, the overall effect, therefore, of this cinematic journey is indeed, well, rapturous.
Strangely, however, there is a dark aspect to this story of religious awakening that one must also weigh.
While it is true that Roy Neary transitions from an unhappy and spiritually bereft life to one of faith and purpose, the cost of such knowledge of God (or God surrogate, in this case) is his very family. In the act of proving his faith and his worthiness of being “born again” in the stars, Roy abandons his family on Earth. This abandonment is literal, not metaphorical.
The non-believers — including his children — get “left behind” to toil in the world without his guidance or even presence. And again, the message could be interpreted as strongly religious.
If you don’t “believe,” you don’t get saved.
Lastly, even Close Encounters’ famous tag-line “We Are Not Alone,” could be easily parsed in a religious, “God is my co-pilot” sense.
Close Encounters as a Secular Film about Self-Fulfillment
An alternate reading of Close Encounters suggests this cinematic work of art from Spielberg is actually a humanist film, the secular tale of a man who chooses to no longer be enslaved to society’s destructive constructs (including government, career, and family), and to follow his own individual path instead.
The story, again, is of Neary breaking free of constraints, but the breaking free in this reading is from a society that lies, cover-ups, and demands his perpetual unhappiness for its continuance.
The fact that Spielberg plays the song “When You Wish Upon a Star” at the conclusion of Close Encounters of the Third Kind is the primary support for this reading.
One lyric in that composition suggests a direct rebuke of faith, or religious identification. When you wish upon a star it “makes no difference who you are,” the song goes. In other words, you need not be affiliated with any particular group or belief system if you hope to achieve your dreams. You need not believe in God or a higher power. Instead, if you must merely “wish” and voice your “dreams,” you will be rewarded for following the best angels of your — human — nature.
In terms of history, Close Encounters of the Third Kind followed closely on many frissons in American politics, and this context, likewise, suggests a more humanist reading.
President Richard Nixon had been toppled in the Watergate Scandal in 1974, for example. His resignation and culpability in illegal activity suggested that “faith” or “belief” in the pillar of leadership was not such a good idea.
Similarly, the Vietnam War had ended in ignominy for the U.S. in 1975. The cause that so many Americans fought for (and died for…) was lost, and this very idea seems reflected in Close Encounters’ final scene.
There, a line of carefully vetted and approved government officials (surrogates for soldiers in Vietnam?) are overlooked by the aliens in favor of the “Everyman,” Roy Neary.
By contrast to these seemingly emotionless, expressionless, thoughtless drones, he is a man who chose explicitly not to believe the fairy tales his government was peddling. He has thus established his independence and his resourcefulness outside of Earthly and national considerations.
In this reading, the “leap of faith” of taking off the gas mask is actually the dawning awareness that — because of Watergate and Vietnam — the U.S. Government could no longer be trusted, or be considered an agent for honesty.
But again, in this reading of Close Encounters, one must reckon with Neary’s pure selfishness, his very questionable decision to leave his children and wife behind for his own individual “self-fulfillment.” And again, one must note that very idea of “sweet fulfillment” is explicitly voiced in the lyrics to the song “When You Wish Upon a Star.”
Yet I would suggest that Neary’s act of leaving his family (and his government, and his job…) behind in 1977 would not have been looked at by many audience members as purely a bad thing.
One must recall that the 1970s was determinedly the decade of the “self,” a fact reflected in the hedonism of disco music, and the blazing ascent in popularity of the “self-help” book genre. Popular buzz-words of the day included “self-realization” and — sound familiar? — “self-fulfillment.”
Yet as the movement of “self” grew in the late 1970s, many people were concerned that the new ethos was merely one of “self-involvement. The consumption-oriented life-style of immediate gratification soon gave rise to President Carter’s notorious 1979 “Crisis of Confidence” speech, which warned against judging success on material wealth rather than intrinsic human qualities of character and morality.
Meanwhile, the nation kept building more shopping malls, and imagined worlds futuristic (Logan’s Run) and apocalyptic (Dawn of the Dead) set at these new shrines to materialism. he 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake deals explicitly with this notion too, of the idea of people “moving in and out of relationships too fast” because they wanted to be happy and fulfilled, all the time.
But in a way, this is what Close Encounters concerns as well. Roy Neary helps himself, finally, to achieve his “dream,” even if his family can’t share in that dream. He gets what he wants — to go with the benevolent aliens to the stars — and in the late 1970s, this result is what qualified as a happy ending.
In his text How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity (Three Rivers Press, 1997, page 291) author Bruce Bawer wrote of Close Encounters of the Third Kind that “salvation, meaning, and transcendence come down from the Heavens in a spaceship.” The question to ponder today involves the brand of salvation and transcendence.
Is it a spiritual reckoning, or a secular one that the alien spaceship brings with it?
It is a testament to Spielberg’s skill, perhaps, as a filmmaker and storyteller, that Close Encounters can be interpreted through two such opposite lenses or world-views.
Posted: 12th, February 2014 | In: Film, Flashback, Key Posts | Comments (3)
Who Wants To Hear The Worst Song Of 2014? You Do, Miley Cyrus
MILEY Cyrus has become a punchline, it’s true. However, the former Disney employee is slowly growing into a woman and making some clunky mistakes along the way, as well as some roaring successes. Recent photoshoots have shown a woman growing in confidence, less likely to rely on an awkward tongue sticking out, and on record she’s made some wonderful, sophisticated trappish ballads, masked by the behemoth – and not that brilliant, but neither that awful – hit, Wrecking Ball.
Fact is, she’s still working out who she is and, with that, she’s going to fu*k-up now and then.
Her father, on the other hand, is old enough to know better. However, he doesn’t and has, without doubt, contributed to the worst song of 2014 and, once you hear it, you’ll know that it is unlikely to be worsened by anyone else this year.
Billy Ray Cyrus has released a rap version of his 1992 hit Achy Breaky Heart.
Achy Breaky 2 features a rapper named Buck 22. His Twitter page says something about: “the new revolution of Country Music mixed with Hip-Hop. Join the movement.”
Someone’s heard Avicii’s ‘Country House’ (and we all know, nothing called ‘Country House’ is ever pleasing on the ear) and thought: ‘WE’LL HAVE SOME OF THAT!’
Anyway, Achy Breaky 2 takes something as wonderful as country and mixes it with something as wonderful has hip hop… but like someone mixing custard and sausages, the two wonderful things show that great things don’t necessarily go together.
The promo video kicks off with Larry King announcing “an unidentified flying object seen transcending over Europe,” before Cyrus and Buck 22 appear, only to be abducted by a spaceship filled with sexy aliens.
They then butcher music itself while some people twerk (they don’t actually ‘twerk’, but rather, ‘dance provocatively’, but people can’t be bothered finding out what’s different between ‘twerking’, ‘bogling’, doing the butterfly and all the other dances).
Enough chat. Dive straight in to the worst song you’ll hear this year.
Photos: The wonderful 14
Posted: 12th, February 2014 | In: Celebrities | Comment
On This Day In Photos: John Lennon Sings Instant Karma! With A Sanitary Towel On Top Of The Pops
ON this day in history – 1970: John Lennon performed his solo single Instant Karma! on Top Of The Pops.
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Posted: 12th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment
Natalie Wood’s Beef Stroganoff
“WHEN I entertain formally, it’s a place-card affair,” said Natalie Wood in 1966. She’d just finished filming Penelope. She was between her to marriages to Robert Wagner. Talking to The Press Courier, she added: “I seem to do most of my cooking on boats… I often whip up eggs ranchero.” In 1981, Natalie Wood drowned when she fell from a boat.
But at her Bel Air mansion, Wood made splendid dinners served in the buffet fashion. There were tiny quiche lorraine, piroshki and pelmeny. And there was her famous beef stroganoff:
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Posted: 11th, February 2014 | In: Celebrities, Flashback | Comment
Samuel L Jackson Takes Down Host While We Get All The Non-Whites Confused
“I BELIEVE that tape is going to have a life of it’s own”
And so spake KTLA reporter, Sam Rubin, after dropping a bollock so large in his new job, that everyone’s toes curled so hard, that the entire universe now has clubbed feet.
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Posted: 11th, February 2014 | In: Celebrities | Comment (1)
How Mary Quant’s Mini-Skirt Made London ‘Atwinkle With Thighs’ And Swing
Mary Quant in 1963 /AP/Press Association Images
EVERYBODY knows that Mary Quant invented the mini-skirt. Except she didn’t. In reality nobody really knows for sure who produced the diminutive garment first. Some say it was John Bates, famous for dressing Diana Rigg so memorably in The Avengers, while others say it was the French designer Andre Courreges, although Quant would later write: “Maybe Courreges did do mini-skirts first, but if he did, no one wore them.” There’s no doubt, however, that skirts were getting shorter each year in the early to mid-sixties but this was almost certainly to do with technological advances that enabled tights to be produced relatively cheaply more than anything else. Although Mary Quant is often credited with inventing, or at least popularising, coloured and patterned tights too.
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Posted: 11th, February 2014 | In: Celebrities, Fashion, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment
Stairway To Heaven? Six Genre Movies That Depict The After-Life
THE greatest unanswered question of human life is, paradoxically, about death.
What follows our duration on this mortal coil?
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Posted: 11th, February 2014 | In: Film, Flashback, Key Posts | Comments (2)
Anti-news: Clooney Won’t Be Joining Twitter
APART from sex scandals and tapping people’s phones, there’s little more the newspapers like doing than reporting on non-news. Now, that’s not to say they write about things that some might find uninteresting, but rather, stories about things that the stars won’t be doing.
So what’s the latest?
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Posted: 10th, February 2014 | In: Celebrities | Comment
IceJJFish Sings On The Floor In The Manner Of The Bar Mitzvah Boy Whose Voice Broke Mid Verse
SINGER IceJJFish sings On The Floor in the manner of the Bar Mitzvah boy who voice broke mind verse.
It’s out latest instalment of World’s Got Talent. Previous hits for the compilation album are here.
Never Meet Your Heroes: In 1984 A Teenaged Fan Met ‘Poofy’ Duran Duran And Came Away Unimpressed
ON January 19, 1984, 16-year-old Tracy Nolan met top pop act Duran Duran. Smash Hits magazine was there to record the “Special Night Out”.
Things we learn:
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Posted: 10th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment
70s Rock Bands: When It Was Cool To Look Homeless
Lynyrd Skynyrd in their Sunday best
FOR some reason, it became a thing of pride for 1970s rock musicians to look as homeless and ungroomed as humanely possible. We may have chided the ’90s grunge bands for wallowing in filth, but that was nothing compared to the unwashed hordes of unkempt ’70s rock bands.
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Posted: 10th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comments (2)
Lookalikes: Manchester United Fan Mick Hucknall Is Charlie Drake
WATCHING Manchester United’s Premier League match with (there’s only one ‘f’ in) Fulham, Anorak was struck by a figure in the crowd. Seated alongside Sir Alex Ferguson was flame-haired crooner Mick Hucknall. We couldn’t help but notice that Hucknall looks a lot like the late comedian Charlie Drake. His catchphrase was ‘Hello, my darlings’. It’s known that Hucknall has a way with the women, too. Can they be related?
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Posted: 10th, February 2014 | In: Celebrities, manchester united, Sports | Comment
You’ll Blow Your Mind Out In A Car: The Hellish Rolling Stone Mag Beatles Tribute Of 1977 (Video)
THIS might be the world’s worst Beatles tribute. In 1977, Rolling Stone Magazine booked Ted Neeley (Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar), Patti Labelle, Ritchie Havens, Yvonne Elliman (she was Christ’s Mary Magdalene) and more for A Day In The Decade, a rendering of A Day In The Life. The show begins with Neeley (bigger than Jesus?) singing about himself getting out of bed, dragging a comb across his head, looking up, realising he was late…
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Posted: 9th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment
Tainted Love Played By 13 Floppy Disc Drives and One Hard Disk Drive
RETRO tunes on retro machines: Ed Cobb’s Tainted Love played by 13 Floppy Disc Drives and one Hard Disk Drive. Stand down the kazoo orchestra:
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Posted: 9th, February 2014 | In: Music, Technology | Comment
Lookalikes: Pharrell Williams And Ken Dodd’s Diddymen
WHEN Pharrell Williams stepped out at the Grammies in a big hat, the fashion world cooed and ahed. America’s Headwear Association named Williams Hat Person of the Year. (Sadly, Williams has not been inducted into the 2014 Headwear Hall of Fame – this year’s honours go to Sophia Loren, Diane Keaton, Queen Elizabeth II, Bruno Mars, Spike Lee and Elton John. But next year, he is surely a shoo-in for the cloche corridor.)
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Posted: 7th, February 2014 | In: Celebrities | Comment
50 Years Ago, The Beatles Landed at JFK: 10 Great American Beatles Rip Offs
The Beatles face the media on arrival at JFK airport in New York City on Feb. 7, 1964. The British rock and roll group was also greeted by a screaming crowd estimated at 5,000. (AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi)
OF course, The Fab Four’s time in America is very well documented. No-one needs to know more about the whole Bigger Than Jesus thing and George Harrison’s ‘spotty youths’ comment when he visited the hippies on the West Coast.
However, less well documented are the mop-top knock-offs that The Beatles created. Garage bands and frat beat groups sprung up all over America after the mop tops played Ed Sullivan.
So, here’s 10 of the best American Beatle Bands or Fab Four rip-off records… and by the way, being a Beatle rip-off band is no bad thing at all! Feel free to chime in with your own!
1. The Byrds
The Byrds hit the jackpot when they took Dylan’s folk music and turned it into a Beatle beat. Perfect for the US market – homegrown lads (not like those British Invasion swine!) making Dylan’s nasal drawl more palatable. ‘Feel A Whole Lot Better’ is the choice here, but in fairness, it could’ve been picked from two dozen songs!
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Posted: 6th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment
Childhood’s End: The Five Most Terrifying Movies Made From A Child’s Perspective
ALFRED Hitchcock once remarked that every person understands fear, because everyone was once a child. “After all,” he declared, “weren’t we all afraid as children?”.
According to the authors of Monsters under the Bed and Other Childhood Fears (Random House; 1993, page 1), “childhood is a time of many fears” and children between the ages of six and twelve “experience an average of seven different fears.”
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Posted: 6th, February 2014 | In: Film, Flashback, Key Posts | Comments (4)
Hear How Ice T Read The’Deep Nerd’ Dungeons & Dragons Audiobook
Parental advice: This is not how to hold a sword
HOW do you follow Cop Killer and date night with the well upholstered Coco Austin? If you’re Ice-T you create an audiobook for Dungeons & Dragons.
In Ice T’s Final Level Podcast, the rapper tell how unprepared he was got the job.
“They didn’t tell me this was a motherfu**in’ Dungeons & Dragons book… [it’s] some of the most crazy, deep, deep nerd shit.Motherfu**ers talk like Yoda. They were talking about ‘pegasuses’ and ‘pegasi.’ That’s horses with wings. This motherfu**er got a sword that talks to him… Motherfuckers live in places that don’t exist, and it comes with a map. My God.”
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Posted: 6th, February 2014 | In: Books, Celebrities | Comment
Cee Lo Green: Don’t Leave Him With Your Girlfriend
Cee-Hi And Very Lo Green (allegedly)
REMEMBER Cee Lo Green? All happy and smiley and the voice of songs like Crazy and F- You? Well, Green it seems, is a bit of pest around the ladies and has again been called to deny that he’s up to no good with them.
The latest thing he’s refuting is that he spiked a women’s drink with ecstasy in LA. Popping Molly is one thing. Popping Molly into someone’s bolly while they’re not looking is something else entirely.
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Posted: 5th, February 2014 | In: Celebrities | Comment
12 Stupendous Movie Tagline Fails
THEY had one job. Just write a single sentence about a movie. It’s not quantum physics. After millions of dollars spent and many months of filming and editing, it comes down to the humble tagline writer to simply scrawl a few words together. Alas, this task is often too much to bear, and a movie poster is forever besmirched by a woefully inadequate blurb which undercuts all the hard work. Perhaps it’s not so easy to condense an entire film into a few words; whatever the case, here are a few examples where tag lines fail.
Loose Shoes (1980)
There won’t be a dry seat in the house.
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Posted: 5th, February 2014 | In: Film, Flashback, Key Posts | Comments (3)
Three Hats For Lisa: Swinging London And Sid James Gives The Greatest Musical Performance In Cinema History
IS this the greatest musical performance in cinema history?
Joe Brown, French-born Sophie Hardy (who played the eponymous Lisa Milan), Sid James, Una Stubbs and Dave Nelson hit the big screen – in colour – with the 1964 release of Three Hats For Lisa.
YouTuber RetrunerMan reveals the plot:
It’s a Swinging London romp as Joe (Johnnie) tties to help Lisa Milan, played by Sophie Hardy, to find three typically British hats for her collection. Probably not too difficult, only she wants to steal them instead of buy them. Oh, and one is a coppers helmet!
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Posted: 5th, February 2014 | In: Film, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment (1)
Inside Woody Allen: When The Comic Was A Syndicated Cartoon
Up for several Oscars in connection with ÂAnnie Hall, Woody Allen plays clarinet with band at New YorkÂs MichaelÂs pub Monday, April 3, 1978, as the academy awards ceremonies were getting underway in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ray Stubblebine)
BETWEEN 1976 and 1984, Woody Allen was the 2D star of Stuart Hample’s comic strip Inside Woody Allen.
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Posted: 4th, February 2014 | In: Celebrities, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment (1)
One Hit Wonders: When Ryan Paris Lived La Dolce Vita In A Giant Red Shoe
WHATEVER happened to… Ryan Paris, the singer born Fabio Roscioli in Rome who gave full throat to the 1983 smash hit single, Dolce Vita?
Before creep shots, there was this video of women walking about minding their own business. Ryan Paris was the embodiment of the City of Love:
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Flashback To1957: The McCormick Skiffle Group Freak Out
FLASHBACK to 02/11/1957: The McCormick Skiffle Group were, from left to right, Billy McCormick, Frank Healy, Wesley McCausland, Edward McSherry, and James McCartney.
