Bret Easton Ellis: Notes on Charlie Sheen and the End of Empire (The Daily Beast)

In getting himself fired from Two and a Half Men, this privileged child of the media’s sprawling entertainment Empire has now become its most gifted prankster. And now Sheen has embraced the post-Empire, making his bid to explain to all of us what celebrity means in that world. Whether you like it or not is beside the point. It’s where we are, babe. We’re learning something. Rock’n roll. Deal with it.

Post-Empire started appearing in full-force just about everywhere last year while Cee Lo Green’s “Fuck You” gleefully played over the soundtrack. The Kardashians so get it. The cast (and the massive audience) of Jersey Shore gets it. Lady Gaga arriving at the Grammys in an egg gets it, and she gets it while staring at Anderson Cooper (Empire!) and admitting she likes to smoke weed when she writes songs—basically daring him: “What are you gonna do about that, bitch?” Nicki Minaj gets it when she sings “Right Thru Me” and becomes one of her many alter-egos on a red carpet. (Christina Aguilera starring in Burlesque doesn’t get it at all.) Ricky Gervais’s hosting of the Golden Globes got it. Robert Downey Jr., getting pissed off at Gervais, did not. Robert De Niro even got it, subtly ridiculing his career and his lifetime achievement trophy at the same awards show.

I don't get this article.

Read the full article here.

Christopher Nolan's Inception Oscar Snub (The Daily Beast)

Nolan's Oscar snub remains awards season's biggest head-scratcher. It arrives as a kind of slap in the face for a filmmaking wunderkind whose meteoric rise from art house auteur to Intelligent Action Ace has made him, arguably, the hottest director in town. ...

Nolan's exclusion from the Best Directors Club throws into stark relief some of the tricky social mores and you-just-haven't-earned-it-yet-baby groupthink governing the annual popularity contest that is the Oscars.

Personally, I think this is the reason that the Oscars seem to be less relevant every year. (Am I allowed to say that?) Joe Public doesn't want politics and snootiness - he just wants the actual best movie/actor/director to win. Why is that so hard to understand? But, I guess that's why we have the People's Choice Awards.

The article goes on to examine a few other possibilities for why Nolan may not have been nominated - take a peek.

Read the full article here.

NBC, You've Blown It Again! (The Daily Beast)

NBC needs to start thinking like a first-place network again and, instead of following the pack, look to lead it. The first step is to formalize something resembling a brand. CBS has crime procedurals (CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds); Fox is bombastic (House, Bones, Glee); ABC has soapy dramas (Grey's Anatomy) and family entertainment (Dancing With the Stars, Modern Family). NBC is the odd one out, looking like a patchwork quilt.

I have to agree. My TV is for DVDs only, so all of my television watching is done online, which means I have to make a conscious choice to watch any given episode - and NONE of the shows I'm making time for are on NBC.

But this article is also worth reading because of how the author breaks down ways the network could improve - and could actually be good advice for every channel.

Read the full article here.

Wes Craven's Favorite Scary Movies (The Daily Beast)

I didn’t watch movies as a kid because my family was a member of a church that didn’t think movies were a good thing—they thought they were the work of the devil....

Anyone else see the irony here?

Regardless, I can't think of a better person to help us all put together our Halloween film marathons!

Read the full article here.

Harry Shearer’s New Orleans Documentary ‘The Big Uneasy’ (The Daily Beast)

I’m not sure we stressed that enough: This [levee] system was not only crappy; after four and a half decades, it wasn’t even done!” ...

The documentary — which features voice-over work by Shearer’s fellow New Orleanean, Brad Pitt, as well as an appearance by resident John Goodman — is a meticulous study of what went wrong, and why, guided by a team of independent scientists and engineers who investigated the levee failures in the immediate aftermath of the storm.

Given my love of NOLA and my disgust with what happened there before, during and after Katrina, this is one movie I absolutely will not miss. I hope you'll check it out too.
Read the full article here.