Did absence make our hearts grow fonder of late-night TV's hosts, missing in action for the last two months? I suppose it's possible, though I doubt anyone's preferences were changed by what they saw Wednesday night, when all of the network hosts finally returned to work, all but David Letterman and Craig Ferguson without writers. (If anything grew, it was facial hair, at least on Dave and Conan.)If you're the sort who for whatever reason prefers affable Jay Leno over cranky Dave, or chooses to stay up late for the delectable derangement that is Conan O’Brien, nothing about Wednesday’s opening night would likely have shaken you from your long-ingrained after-hours habits. The strike beards sported by Dave and Conan in solidarity with the still-striking writers (“and to prove that I still have some testosterone,” joked Conan) were the most noticeable changes on the late-night landscape.Here’s my report card on late-night’s opening night, keeping in mind ...
read more
-
Dec 23, 2007 11:19 PM ET
- by Ken Fox
It seems Jessica Simpson's new movie, Blonde Ambition, may have set some sort of record. With an opening day gross of $384, it may be one of the lowest grossing theatrical films ever. In what sounds like a shamelessly uncredited remake of Mike Nichols' Academy Award-winning comedy Working Girl, Simpson stars as a sweet, small-town gal from Oklahoma who climbs the corporate ladder at a construction firm in big, bad New York City. My guess is that a credited Luke Wilson stars as the Harrison Ford character. Now in all fairness, Blonde Ambition, which was produced by father Joe Simpson's ickily named Papa Joe Productions, was only released into eight theaters, all in Simpson's and Wilson's home state of Texas. To put this in perspective, I Am Legend opened across the country on over 3600 screens, and Blonde Ambition, which is scheduled to come out on DVD on January 22 anyway, arrived with none of the ad muscle accompanying its holiday season competition, like this week's box-office cha...
read more
Thankfully tonights episode brought us back to the interesting cases and patients that draw out the best and the worst in our favorite ER doctors and nurses We were also treated to some more superlative guest-acting Sean Young is certainly no Forest Whitaker but she was poignant and sympathetic in her portrayal of the mother suspiciously dying from liver failure Though I wasnt the least bit surprised that the hateful older son was complicit in her scheme to slowly kill herself without jeopardizing the insurance money for her sons I did think this was an interesting way to once again call Gates moral compass into question Lukas assessment of Gates ability to lie without a second thought was spot-on It was interesting to juxtapose this story against Neelas refusal to participate in Manishs surgey due to her own reservations about his motives for donating a kidney Frankly I was somewhat surprised at Dubenkos pragmatic approach
read more
Never has the word "Andy" been such a game-changer, eh?At this past Friday's taping of Jimmy Kimmel Live, comedian Andy Dick had to be forcibly removed from the stage when he ignored repeated requests to cease touching/poking/caressing Guest No. 2, Ivanka Trump. (Video here.) Even despite the talker host's warning that, "Donald Trump will kill both of us," the possibly inebriated Dick persisted in pawing the titan's pretty offspring, requiring security guards to literally drag him off stage, down the hall, past hair-and-makeup, and back into obscurity.
read more
Question: Obviously there are tons of Christmas movies, but how about Hannukah movies? I don't want episodes of TV shows – I'm looking for real movies.
Answer: All I can come up with are two comedies: The Hebrew Hammer (2003), starring Adam Goldberg as hardboiled Jewish private eye Mordechai Jefferson Carver, who teams up with the Kwanzaa Liberation Front to defeat evil Santa Damian's (Andy Dick) plot to enforce holiday hegemony, and Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights (2002), an animated feature. Eight Crazy Nights is family-friendly (assuming your family isn't too uptight), while The Hebrew Hammer is not — it's pretty damned funny, though.
read more
