Because If An Actor Doesn’t Toe the Line, It’s Clearly a Journalist’s Fault

Myles Mcnutt has a thoughtful, detailed response to Sons of Anarchy showrunner Kurt Sutter’s latest outburst, this time targeted at Fred Topel from Screen Junkies:

While I think that Sutter could criticize the interviewer for pissing off his star, even if that still might seem a tad bit overblown, to then position this smaller site as the cause rather than the symptom of his larger problem is highly unrepresentative. Sutter’s kneejerk responses are rarely particularly nuanced, often lumping together large swaths of individuals (often critics) when only a small subsection are actually at fault, and this seems another example where the real story gets buried beneath a larger crusade.

There are problems with this interview. There are problems in entertainment journalism. However, the problems with this interview are not necessarily the problems which exist in entertainment journalism, and they are not grounds on which to suggest any sort of malicious intent on the part of the individual in question.

She Married a Murderer

Amy Friedman has written an article for every one of us who’s ever heard of a woman marrying a convict in prison and wondered, “What was she thinking?”

I don’t regret it, but being married to Will was hard and painful. Being a prisoner’s wife requires mighty resistance — to the mind-numbing, bureaucratic prison system itself, but even more, to those who so casually dismiss us as less than, those who see us not as people who deserve support and respect but who deserve contempt.

It’s a touching, well-written piece that certainly does a lot to inform my conception of these marriages. But I feel like the story was just getting interesting right as it was ending. Still, worth your time.

I’m Not Dead, But I Play Dead on TV

The WSJ has an in-depth look at the life of working stiffs:

The Screen Actors Guild doesn’t keep figures on corpse roles, but currently, seven of the top 10 most-watched TV dramas use corpse actors, including CBS’s “CSI,” “NCIS” and spinoff “NCIS: Los Angeles.” The new ABC series “Body of Proof” revolve1s around a brilliant neurosurgeon turned medical examiner who solves murders by analyzing cadavers.

It all means more work for extras, casting agents and makeup artists who supply corpses in various stages of decomposition. Matthew W. Mungle, who won an Oscar for his work on the 1992 film “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” does special-effects makeup on “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and “NCIS.”

The Real-Life Story of Scumbag Steve (AKA Blake Boston)

You may not have even known that Scumbag Steve was a meme, but Blake Boston certainly does; it’s his photo that has appeared on countless internet message boards, bearing occasionally amusing messages about what a douchebag he is.

Now Know Your Meme has an interview with Blake Boston in which he describes the real-life horrors of being an internet meme.

Q: On the down side of internet fame, I hear you’ve been getting harassed by Anonymous pranksters left and right. How’s that going? I imagine you’re in a glass case of emotions right now.

A: Sucks man. I guess people can’t separate the meme from the real me in some cases. Like people got my name, my phone, my Facebook, started callin’. Callin’ me all kind of racist shit, callin’ my girl and my family all hours of the night. Some asshole put up an ultrasound picture of my unborn kid and wished it would die. How fucked is that? My girl cried all night. She felt molested by that. Lot of racist shit being said, lot of haters. But truth is man, even with d-bags like that, I have it good really cuz I’ve got my family and my friends who know me. And no one can break that.

AOL Acquires The Huffington Post

This should go well. Because Arianna has consistently demonstrated that she’s interested in supporting high-end premium brands like Cinematical, a support demonstrated through the Post’s lavish payments to its multitude of talented bloggers, right? Right?

Om Malik has a take that I agree with:

AOL’s moves are much like the ending scene from Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. Surrounded by the Bolivian Army, Dos Hombres have no choice to make a gallant dash to their horses, guns blazing, hoping against hope as thousand guns blaze around them. The ever-increasing web inventory is like the Bolivian Army firing on AOL and others who have not yet come to terms with the futility of chasing page views…

In a chat with The New York Times, charming and always quotable Armstrong quipped “I think this is going to be a situation where 1 plus 1 equals 11.” Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, for in this case one plus one ends up equaling none – as we might soon see!

Time will tell.

My Favorite Commercials from Superbowl XLV (2011)

I’m not going to include any of the movie trailers, because we’ve covered them much better at /Film (my take: Super 8, Transformers, and Battle: LA were great. Thor was not). Excluding those, here are some of my favorites

CarMax – Takes a turn of phrase and expands it until its breaking point. Fun visuals.

Chevy Volt – A beautiful commercial for what I’ve heard is a legitimately revoluationary car.

Bridgestone – Hilarious take on the accidental reply-to-all phenomenon. Love the “Do Not Attempt” subtitle at the bottom.

Volkswagen – Sure it already has over 13 million views and was released prior to the game, but that doesn’t make it NOT adorable. That child(?) actor does a ton of emoting from behind a mask.

And some of my least favorites:

Chevy Cruze – For those who can’t even wait to get home to begin the stalking (side note: Why the hell is she updating her Facebook status about him when they’re Facebook friends?)