The publicists of Shane West and Ashton Holmes are denying earlier reports that that the two were making out at a GQ event a couple weeks ago. In fact, Shane’s flack isn’t just denying it - he finds it “laughable.” A gay actor?! Outrageous!!!
(In case you’re not as down with hot, minor celebrities as we are, Shane has been doing time on ER for a couple years, and Ashton played Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello’s son in A History of Violence, a character that was pretty strongly implied to be gay. Ashton is heavily gayfaced and looks about 17, though IMDb lists his age at a birthday-cake-immolating 29.)
Next to these two, the ever-semi-closeted Jodie Foster looks like a model of pride. She and longtime partner Cydney Bernard were spotted with the young ‘uns at the premiere of Disney’s Meet the Robinsons. Lesbians are so wholesome.
Shane West and Ashton Holmes ‘aren’t’ fucking [Queerty]
Celebrity babies meet the Robinsons [JustJared]
Click on this photo to get the full effect.
Now, I understand that the tome of gay-directed advertising isn’t exactly anything to brag about. There are a few golden moments (and the Commercial Closet does a fantastic job of cataloging them), but for the most part, we’re reduced to shirtless, hairless, beaded necklace wearing men walking along a P-town beach, sometimes with a reptile thrown carelessly over the shoulder. No matter the product. Most of the time, the message is something along the lines of, “Despite your AIDS, our obscenely expensive drug will help you do this!”
I’ve learned not to expect much from the drug companies or the pop and pop B&Bs with low ad budgets and even lower creative inspiration.
But when an ad monolith such as Pepsi devises something so terribly insulting that I virtually can’t get any work done, I’ve got to say something. Take a look at this ad for Diet Pepsi. And if you’re not outraged, allow me to tell you why you should be.
The Backstory
What you’re looking at is a picture of an old Diet Pepsi ad attached to someone’s refrigerator. Closer inspection reveals that the ad on the fridge appeared in Out magazine in April of 2005… on page 24. This led me to believe that the ad is fake, recreated for this new ad, because when’s the last time you saw a print ad in a magazine with a page number on it?
I was wrong. This ad did appear in 2005 (sans page number). And even then, it’s headline “Number of Diet Pepsi six packs consumed a week to keep this ’six pack’: 2″ sucked. Is Pepsi trying to suggest that drinking Diet Pepsi will actually give a guy a six pack? All I know is that I’m more bloated than Al Gore after a single Diet Pepsi.
Continue reading ‘How not to advertise to gays’
The latest news in the ongoing saga of Terry McMillan’s failed marriage to her young, gay husband: She’s suing him for $40 million. The idea is that the DL dude, Jonathan Plummer, owes Terry for damage to her reputation: namely, that the author of Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back would be dumb enough to fall for the wiles of a golddigging young homosexual (who is, sadly, far less attractive than Taye Diggs, who basically played him in the movie; he looks more like the barback at an Al Reynolds toga party).
Uh, Terry, if you’re so concerned about the details of your marital flameout (so to speak), why did you talk about it (with Plummer) on Oprah? I’m still a little surprised that the Big O devoted a show to this topic anyway - wasn’t she concerned that it would give Stedman ideas?
Terry McMillan sues ex-husband for $40 million [People]
Jesse Metcalfe, he of the wooden line readings and voluptuous man-rack, becomes the latest twentysomething celeb to indulge in Rehab Chic… [Just Jared]
…while his former Desperate Housewives co-stud James Denton shells out seven figures for a baseball team. That’s an awfully audacious display of job security for someone who spent most of this season in a coma. [TMZ]
A suicidal six new movies open nationwide this weekend, and the Adam Sandler vehicle is the best-reviewed one. Shudder. [Rottentomatoes]
Goya’s Ghosts hasn’t even been released in the U.S. yet, but the geek fanboys are already drooling over Natalie Portman’s character’s nude torture scenes. You can turn your attention back to BSG, boys: It’s a body double. [IESB.net]
You may best know Mary-Louise Parker as the pot-dealing suburban mom on Weeds, or as one half of cinema’s most overtly coded lesbian love affair in Fried Green Tomatoes, but we enjoy her most as the jilted ex of that douchebag Billy Crudup. The breakup wasn’t just bad, it was Shakespearean (if you recall, Billy left the pregnant MLP practically in the stirrups, and for terminally bland Claire Danes, who has since dumped him).
Now, Mary-Louise has gone from spurned single mom to cool single mom with this Esquire piece about, among other things, why James Blunt is a douchebag. It’s actually about how she’s trying to instill decent music taste in her son, even though he’s only 3, and how she’s genuinely worried that there’ll be nothing decent for him to listen to by the time he comes of age.
Don’t bother asking her former rival Claire for her opinions on the pussification of pop culture, though. She’s too busy being upstaged by Patrick Wilson’s calves (and Ethel Merman’s pipes) in that infernal Gap commercial.
Why are singers such pussies? [Esquire]
Claire Danes/Patrick Wilson - the Gap commercial [YouTube]
Okay, so we’re up against OMG Blog, which even we like more than the PEN15 Club, but still – help us put up a good fight, would you?
The Malcontent, whose site is once again Mac compatible (woo hoo!), is staging a Battle of the Blogs, which surprisingly has a lot more in common with a basketball tournament than you think. They both leave me holding a towel in my hand at the end of the game.
So show us your love and help us score a few 3-pointers to give OMG a run for its funny, eh?
Karen Allen. Kate Capshaw. Alison (heh heh) Doody.
What do these women have in common? They’ve all played the female lead in Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones movies, and faded promptly into obscurity (with the minor exception of Capshaw, who smartly married her director and has settled into a long career of red-carpet arm candy).
So now that Spielberg, possibly seeking to shake off the grimness of Munich, is resurrecting Indy and its paleolithic star, Harrison Ford, which doomed starlet has he selected to follow, lemminglike, off the cliff of Indy-babedom?
Uh, Cate Blanchett. That’s right. The brilliant, chameleonic Oscar winner, last seen fending off Judi Dench’s lady-advances in Notes on a Scandal and pissing herself in Babel, has been chosen for an unspecified role in the next Indiana Jones film. This is also the same Blanchett who’s been talking about eschewing films in order to focus on her role as Artistic Director of the Sydney Theatre Company.
Way to blend art and commerce, Cate. Just beware the Doody curse.
Blanchett on crusade to ‘Indiana Jones 4′ [Hollywood Reporter]
The CG-heavy lube-and-sandals epic 300 made tons and tons of money this weekend. It apparently had the biggest opening ever for a March release, and the third-biggest R-rated opening of all time (behind…ick…The Passion of Mel’s Anti-Semitism). It’s good to see dreamy Scottish actor Gerard Butler expanding his fan base from the mouth-breathing queens who worship Phantom of the Opera to the mouth-breathing closet nerds who love violent video games featuring musclebound, codpiece-wearing heroes.
300 isn’t the only new movie featuring scores of barely clad male actors. Terrence Howard’s new high school swim team drama Pride looks extremely Speedo-heavy. But if you go expecting a boyflesh bonanza, don’t tell Terrence - his Christian upbringing (and, presumably, gayvoice) has forced him to struggle to tolerate homosexuality as he would other ’sins.’ On behalf of gays everywhere, Terrence, thank you for your sensitivity (insert eyeroll here).
‘300′ bows to $70 million, sets new March record [Hollywood Reporter]
‘Pride’ trailer [Apple Movie Trailers]
Actor Terrence Howard: ‘There will never be a gay rapper’ [Post Chronicle]
If the thought of Jared Leto in his tighy-whities makes you swoon, think again. These shots of Leto’s DeNiro-esque weight gain to play Lennon assassin Mark David Chapman in the indie Chapter 27 look like B roll from the gluttony scene in Se7en.
Massive, unhealthy weight gain or loss in the service of one’s acting is one of the most desperate pleas for Academy attention available. Unfortunately, Chapter 27 (co-starring Lindsay Lohan!) still lacks a theatrical distributor, and if its reception at Sundance was any indication, it’s unlikely to see any exposure outside of your local Netflix queue anytime soon.
Oh, and Jared: Can you ditch the douchebaggy eyeliner already? It doesn’t make us forget that you used to be a YM coverboy.
Jared Leto’s weight transformation [JustJared]
Just a week or so after we’d recovered from that Qantas stewardess’ extremely graphic account of joining the kilometer-high club with sexy-pasty Ralph Fiennes, the British actor has gone and frolicked nude in a hotel pool with four comely lasses. Which means that, on the set of the upcoming film In Bruges, Fiennes is the Official Poonhound Movie Star plundering the locals in his insantiable quest for ‘tang, and the movie co-stars Colin Farrell.
Fiennes spent the last several years in a relationship with a 60-something woman (not Helen Mirren), so it’s no wonder he feels the urge to dip his wick in the available (and in the stewardess’ case, somewhat cheap and crusty) ink. Unfortunately, we find both The End of the Affair and The English Patient far less romantic because of this.
Fiennes caught in ‘pool romp’ [IMDb]
Air stewardess: Secrets of my five mile-high sex romp with Ralph Fiennes [Daily Mail]
