Hollywood Playbook: Today's Top 5 News Items

Hollywood Playbook: Today's Top 5 News Items

1. Mark Ruffalo’s Mother Sought Illegal Abortion of Mark Ruffalo?

“Avengers” star Mark Ruffalo celebrated the 41st anniversary of Roe vs. Wade with a video that tells the tale of his own mother seeking out an illegal abortion. Ruffalo doesn’t reveal if his mother was successful or not in ultimately obtaining the abortion — and if she was not, he doesn’t reveal if it was him she was trying to abort:

Ruffalo doesn’t strike me as the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I wonder if he ever stopped and thought about the irony of wishing his own mother would have had the access to kill him in the womb. My God, who would play the Hulk?

 

2. ‘SNL’ Promos: Jonah Hill Drops Flurry of F-Bombs

Our popular culture has already reached a terrible place where Miley Cyrus was able to rise to superstar status through a performance where she intentionally portrayed herself as grotesque. And for years now, the fastest way to get some extra media attention out of whatever appearance you were making was to drop a “bleeped” F-bomb, as Jonah Hill recently did.

That’s the way the world is now. What I always wonder is what comes next.

Eventually, the media will become bored with twerking and F-bombs. That kind of behavior just won’t garner the attention it once did. So how far will those desperate for attention go next time, and the time after that…?

 

3. Liberal, Compassionate, Tax-The-Rich, Obama-Loving Hollywood Chases Tax Credits to Vancouver

Apparently, Hollywood believes that Reaganomics only works for the film industry. How else do they justify killing American jobs to chase tax credits in Canada:

Sony Pictures Imageworks — headquartered in Culver City with additional facilities in Chennai, India and incentive-friendly Vancouver, BC — held a staff meeting Tuesday afternoon signaling that it intends to move even more of its workforce to Vancouver, while leaving jitters surrounding the potential for layoffs.

Lecture us some more about how tax cuts don’t create jobs, Hollywood.

 

4. MGM Celebrates 90th Anniversary (Not Really)

According to the press release, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer will celebrate its 90th anniversary with, among other things, the release of a number of its title in 4K resolution Blu-ray, Leo the Lion setting his paw in cement at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and running the trailer embedded below in theatres and various television networks:

I gotta tell you, that trailer kind of breaks my heart. It is as though Louis B. Mayer and MGM’s true Golden Age never existed.

For around 30 extraordinary years MGM was the crown jewel of Hollywood, a studio that could rightly brag that it brought to America “More Stars Than There Are In Heaven.” Below is a piece of film that celebrated MGM’s 25th anniversary. The clip is from “That’s Entertainment,” a successful theatrical film released on MGM’s 50th anniversary that really did celebrate MGM’s rich history, especially its second-to-none musicals:.

I understand that with that 90th anniversary trailer MGM is trying to sell Blurays, but then advertise it as such. Don’t pose as a history of the studio if you’re not going to include Mickey Rooney, Clark Gable, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Joan Crawford, Ava Gardner, Esther Williams, Howard Keel, Cyd Charisse, Debbie Reynolds, Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, William Powell, Wallace Beery, Buster Keaton, John Gilbert, Myrna Loy, Ann Southern, Jeanette McDonald, Nelson Eddy, Frank Sinatra, Greta Garbo, Tom and Jerry…

Sure, between “Some Like It Hot” and the latest James Bond installment (the films covered in the trailer) MGM has made some good and even great  films. But the real artistry and timeless legacy of MGM is found in the decades that came before.

 

5. Weather Channel Ramps Up Crybabying Campaign Against DirecTV

The sense of entitlement these cable channels have knows no bounds. Who the hell needs a Weather Channel in the age of the Internet or, for that matter, the printing press and local newspaper. TWC is just another left-wing network (Global Warming hysterics) that hardly anyone watches that needlessly and artificially boosts the price of our satellite and cable bills:

The spat between The Weather Channel and DirecTV just got a lot uglier.

In a scornful full page ad published in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, Weather Channel CEO David Kenny slammed DirecTV’s chairman and CEO Michael White’s decision to drop the channel and insisted that DirecTV not punish viewers who decided to unsubscribe over the squabble.

Yes, DirecTV viewers are being PUNISHED without The Weather Channel because it is such a hardship to turn to MSNBC and CNN when you want to see some idiot outside holding a microphone during an electrical storm.

As people move to streaming, cable and satellite providers are going to have to thin the channel-herd in order to be competitive price-wise. The utterly useless Weather Channel is as good a place to start as any.

 

 

QUICK HITS:

The entertainment industry’s rush to cash in on Anne Frank begins…

Fox Ready to Cast ‘Fantastic Four’ Reboot…

Fox Wants to Kill Pilot Season…

‘Murder, She Wrote’ Reboot Idea Dropped by NBC

‘Good Times’ Creator Norman Lear Hated Catchphrase ‘Dyn-o-mite!’

Don’t miss “Humoresque” on TCM Thursday at 10 p.m.

 

Please send tips, requests to jnolte@breitbart.com

Follow  John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC            

 

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.