Correction: Lou Reed’s Collaboration With Metallica And Lulu

WHAT did the Metro newspaper have to say about the death of Lou Reed, who is un-we-e-e-e-eeellllll:

Christina Martin

Posted: 29th, October 2013 | In: Music | Comment

Rocketman: Tom Hardy To Play Obvious Doppelganger, Elton John (Eddie Murphy Busy)

IF you were given the job of finding an actor who looked like Elton John, one of the last people you’d choose was Tom Hardy. You’d inevitably go for Eddie Murphy before him, as at least he could play the entire cast of the film with a variety of masks (and he’s got previous when it comes to making soulful pop).

Yet, here we are, looking at a musical biopic called Rocketman, which will feature the man-mountain who played Charles Bronson and supervillain Bane in the last Batman movie, as the little Candle In The Wind singer.

Mof Gimmers

Posted: 28th, October 2013 | In: Celebrities, Film, Music | Comment

RIP Lou Reed – A Symphony In Sound

LOU Reed has died. He was 71.

Take it away Lou Reed – with Andy Warhol’s Symphony in Sound and the mighty Velvet Underground:

Photo: Lou Reed, Mick Jagger and David Bowie share a joke at a party at Cafe Royal thrown by David Bowie. Date: 03/07/1973

Anorak

Posted: 27th, October 2013 | In: Music | Comments (4)

Skigi: The World’s Youngest Critic Sees The Rise Of Motion Pictures At New York’s Vaudeville Show

IN December 1905, the first issue of Variety magazine featured an article by Skigie. Who he? He was the magazine publisher Sime Silverman’s 7-year-old son. The boy genius reviewed a vaudeville show. The best bit about it? The moving pictures. The boy was prescient. Moving pictures became big; vaudeville shrivelled.

Silverman’s son Sidne (1901–1950), succeeded him as publisher.

The first issue was sixteen pages long. It sold for a nickel.

Spotter

Anorak

Posted: 27th, October 2013 | In: Celebrities, Flashback | Comment

Russell Brand, Ignorant Poseur Or Just Posing As Ignorant?

SO. We’ve seen the earnestly Teenage Trot Russell Brand trot out his ignorance of economics for us all on Newsnight. This is the one line that made me cringe the most:

David Cameron said profit isn’t a dirty word, I say profit is a filthy word. Because wherever there is profit there is also deficit.

Oh Dear God that’s nonsense.

Tim Worstall

Posted: 25th, October 2013 | In: Celebrities, Money | Comment

Mod Cinema: Hard-To-Find 60s, 70s And 80s Films

ANORAK loves Mod Cinema, a home for hard-to-find 60s, 70s and 80s films you never knew you were looking for. The Mods put these movies on DVD. They are blasts of my youth, when everything at the cinema sounded echoey and on American TV shows the camera focused on a person’s face when they weren’t talking. And everyone looked a bit sweaty.

Anorak

Posted: 25th, October 2013 | In: Film, Flashback | Comment

Miranda Kerr and Orland Bloom Pack Up The Milk Jugs And Divorce

ORLANDO Bloom and Miranda Kerr are to divorce. Their three-year marriage produced on child and lot and lots of news; some of it promoted by themselves.Who can forget this touching picture Bloom posted of his and wife and son:

Adolescents took a sudden interest in the miracle of life. But they won’t see the likes again. Says their spokesman (and who gets to keep him in the divorce?):

“In a joint statement, Orlando Bloom and Miranda Kerr have announced that they have been amicably separated for the past few months. After six years together, they have recently decided to formalize their separation… Despite this being the end of their marriage, they love, support and respect each other as both parents of their son and as family.”

In other news, you might have missed, the Mail’s SOPHIA CHARALAMBOUS told readers in mid-October:

They are both busy with their high-flying model and acting careers, but Orlando Bloom and Miranda Kerr still manage to make time for family night’s out.

No. They don’t.

Anorak

Posted: 25th, October 2013 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Gertrude Stein: A Great Rejection Letter And A Study Of The Back Of Her Head

ON April 19, 1912, Gertrude STrine received this letter from Arthur C Fifield, Publisher.

Anorak

Posted: 25th, October 2013 | In: Books, Celebrities, Flashback | Comment

Scarface Meets Seinfeld (With Canned Laughter)

I HATE Canned laughter. It shreds  TV’s show’s soul. How bad can it get? Take a look at this – Scarface Meets Seinfeld:

Anorak

Posted: 24th, October 2013 | In: Film, TV & Radio | Comment

Kanye West Proposes To Kim Kardashian With A Teddy Bear Tied To An Orchestra

KIM Karadashian and Kanye West are engaged to be engaged in a TV and internet multimedia spectacular leading to a low-key wedding. Before the mountain top can be hired and Prince Harry booked to serve the rings on Prince George’s plumped rump, here’s the proposal. It adheres to Anorak’s Teddy Bear Holding A Heart-Shaped Balloon Rule: the boyfriend who makes a big show of his love is not reassuring you; he’s reassuring himself.

This is Kanye who broke the news of his wife’s womb carrying an embryonic project by yelling at a crowd of strangers: “Can we make some noise for my baby mama right quick!”

Anorak

Posted: 24th, October 2013 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Terrible Taglines: The Day Of The Dolphins (1973)

TERRIBLE Taglines: The Day Of The Dolphins (1973):

“Unwittingly He Trained A Dolphin To Kill The President Of The United States”

Anorak

Posted: 23rd, October 2013 | In: Film, Flashback | Comment

Coreyography: Corey Feldman On Growing Up One Step Down From Slavery

IN Coreyography, former child star Corey Feldman tells of his life. Parts of it sound awful. Although, as he said:

“I had a terrible childhood. I can only compare it to someone born in Ethiopia, or Iraq, or who is born into slavery, or gang life. Well I haven’t lived through that, but the next step down.”

Anorak

Posted: 23rd, October 2013 | In: Books, Celebrities | Comment

Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore: A Film About Clubbing In The 70s, 80s And 1990s

IN Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, British artist Mark Leckey produced what one critic called “the finest portrayal of British nightlife ever captured”.

Jonathan Jones added that “(Leckey) haunts the secret parts of modern culture, where memory and emotion linger”.

What he did was to capture the feeling of dancing in a night club in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Says Leckey of his 1999 film:

“It took two years to create, but it was made of 30 years of repressed desire.”

Anorak

Posted: 22nd, October 2013 | In: Flashback, Music, The Consumer | Comment

Poto And Cabengo: In The 1970s Grace and Virginia Kennedy Were Bigger Than The Loch Ness Monster

POTO and Cabengo were Grace and Virginia Kennedy. In 1976, these San Diego twins were eight years old. Jean-Pierre Gorin created a study of the girls who spoke in their own secret language. Time magazine produced an extract of their dialogue:

Pinit, putahtraletungay”(Finish, potato salad hungry)

“Nis, Poto?” (This, Poto?)

“Liba Cabingoat, it”(Dear Cabengo, eat)

“la moa, Poto?” (Here more, Poto?)

“Ya” (Yeah)

But was it a secret language? Their father thought the girls’ gibbering fools, mentally negligible and not worthy of educating. He was wrong. Advised to place them in speech therapy, their teacher realised they were speaking a language only they understood.

In July 22, 1979, the LA Times Reported:

…

…

…

Gorin explained his film to Bomb magazine:

A low-budget independent film, shot in San Diego in 1979, in 16mm color negative. It’s an investigation, a film “around” an event—the case of the Kennedy twins. They were front page news at the time, as it was believed they had invented a “private language,” a private mode of communication, with a syntax and a vocabulary of its own. But this kind of an answer seems to frame Poto and Cabengo as a classical documentary…

 I got hold of the event through the press. It was the middle of the summer and news was sparse. The Loch Ness monster had been nowhere in sight that year, and I suspect the journalists felt the twins would be a good substitute. They built up a case which reeked of Wild Child mystique. The very day I saw the first article on the twins, Eckardt Stein from ZDF was passing through town and I sold him the idea of a film. I lied through my teeth, told him that I had seen the twins, seen the therapists who took care of them at Children’s Hospital, secured the rights to the story. I assured Stein that they spoke a “private language.” He agreed to do the film. But when I saw the twins for the first time I immediately realized that the story as the press—and by then, myself—had cast it was not there. There was no private language and never had been. All along the twins had spoken a Creolized language, some densely unintelligible American/English, a patchwork of southern lingo spoken by their father and of the deformations imposed on the English language by their German-born mother.

The story had become bigger than the girls.

I got excited by the idea of inquiring about something which had never been there in the first place, which had been so completely misconstrued. It seemed like an eminently dramatic premise: two kids who moved and sounded like hummingbirds, who for years had been privately deciphering the world for each other, who did not know why they had suddenly become the object of so much attention, and who by now were for the therapists and linguists just two rather “ordinary” kids with banal problems of auditory information processing, while the press was still “Ripleying” their case to death. At the same time their parents were desperately hoping to convert their 15 minutes of Warholian celebrity into some hard cash. It seemed pretty interesting to try to unravel all these conflicting interests at work below the surface of this event. And don’t forget to add me, the filmmaker, to the stew: me, with my own agenda, trying to get a film out of this whole situation.

What happened to the girls?

The only clue is from a show about twins that aired on TLC around 2000, which reported that Virginia and Grace were still developmentally disabled. We are told this:

Now approaching 30, the twins continue to experience speech problems and mental delays. Grace, who has achieved a higher level of functioning than her sister, works at a McDonald’s cleaning tables and mopping. Virginia works at a job-training center and performs assembly-line work.

Anorak

Posted: 22nd, October 2013 | In: Film, Flashback, Strange But True | Comment

Notes On Trudie Styler’s Removal To New York

TRUDIE  Styler, the jet-set eco-warrior and Mrs Sting, is planning to up her “occasional use of aviation fuel” and leave the UK for good. She has told the Times’s Helena de Bertodano from her home in New York:

“I don’t want to criticise my country but there are times I feel that Sting and myself have been treated unkindly [by the British press]…  feel much more relaxed here, not having to second guess myself.

“Sting and I need to think what our relationship is to England in the long term or whether we will make a permanent move here. There are a lot of things we love about England but I do like the optimism of the US, the feeling that whatever you make of yourself is ‘good on you’.”

Anorak

Posted: 22nd, October 2013 | In: Celebrities | Comments (4)

What Did Mike Myers Say To His Newborn Child? Local News Knows (Video)

WHAT did Mike Myers say when he discovered his wife Kelly Tisdale was pregnant with their second child? He said… We’ll let them tell you:

Quoting film lijns is never a good idea – unless you’re in a film:

Anorak

Posted: 22nd, October 2013 | In: Celebrities, TV & Radio | Comment

Rihanna Dry Humps Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque (Photos)

PROFESSIONAL stage grinder Rihanna has been upbraided by officials at Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. Why? For these photos, that’s why.

Anorak

Posted: 21st, October 2013 | In: Celebrities | Comments (2)

Courtney Stodden Stars On FashionMINGA.Com Red Carpet

WE are indebted to D-listed for pointing us towards  LA’s FashionMinga.com.

WHAT IS FASHION MINGA?

Is it a fashion site for mingas?

Fashion Minga is a collaboration of designers, performers, and tastemakers coming together to celebrate the various components that inspire fashion: music, dance, color, shape and visual elements.

But Minga..

“Minga” is an Ecuadorian term for “a community coming together to work for the benefit of all”. 

So. It isn’t just a British term for, as the Urban Dictionary defines:

a male or female who fell out of the ugly tree at birth and hit every branch on the way down
God that girl/boy is so minging she really needs to work on her personality

Anorak

Posted: 20th, October 2013 | In: Celebrities, Fashion | Comment

Frank Sidebottom: Statue Unveiled In Timperley Village At Precisely 11.37am

FRANK Sidebottom has been immortalised in bronze. The 5ft 8in tribute to the papier-mache alter ego of Chris Sievey has been installed in Timperley, Greater Manchester. It was unveiled on Stockport Road at precisely 11.37am.

Anorak

Posted: 20th, October 2013 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Alex Reid Says Katie Price Became Lady J To His Lord Heaven Above

DAN WOOTTON, Head of Showbiz –  no small title when you grew up in New Zealand – has news on Katie Price’s marriage to Alex ‘Reidinator’ Reid, the walking Toffee Crisp.

We learn that Alex would dress as a woman called Roxanne. Katie would become Lady J.

In an exclusive interview, Alex tells The Sun on Sunday: “Katie says there were three people in our marriage, but there were actually four — me, her, Roxanne and Lady J. When she was Lady J, I had to stop her from doing things. She became very smutty and was an exhibitionist. I’d have to hold her back to stop her from taking her clothes off, even if we were in public.”

Anorak

Posted: 20th, October 2013 | In: Celebrities | Comment (1)

Tamara Mellon On Jimmy Choo, Mr Mellon Head And Her Therpay Bashing Mother

IN My Shoes: a Memoir by Tamara Mellon with William Patrick, tell the story if the woman who helped Malaysian cobbler Jimmy Choo become a to-die-for brand of the well-heeled. The book might be subtitled Putting Leboutin (geddit?) because Mellon has a few bon mots about her business partners and lovers.

A few highlights from her chat with the Times’s Stefanie Marsh:

She tweeted:

“In the New Year. I will give interviews and talk about the MONSTER Private Equity has become and the VULTURES that operate in it.”

Anorak

Posted: 19th, October 2013 | In: Celebrities, Fashion | Comment

Manchester United: When Erica Cantona Nixed Morrissey ‘Like A Fatty At The Church Steps’

ANOTHER gem from Morrissey’s new autobiography, Autobiography, is this wonderful little tale regaling the gladioli-whirling Smiths frontman’s incredibly brief encounter with one Eric Cantona in the foyer of a Parisian hotel…

Spotter: @BeardedGenius), Pies

Anorak

Posted: 18th, October 2013 | In: Celebrities, manchester united, Sports | Comments (2)