It's so upsetting watching two men knock Green, who's just precious, to the ground, where he was probably covered with dirt and germs and general ickiness. Oh, and they took his bag, which we're sure irked him more than the aforementioned ickiness.

First, we can't really imagine Green throwing a Christian Bale-sized tantrum. Second, though we love all things Green, he's not the best dramatic actor and, sadly, this comes off as a bad bit. Initially we thought perhaps this was to publicize something, but Green's above that, right? Maybe he's just taking the piss to see what happens.

Whatever the reason for this video, it seems phony to us, but why don't you offer your own take. We're easily influenced.

Not that people should be forced to come out of the closet, but fool keeps calling himself a role model, and then won't acknowledge the fact that he's the gayest thing since Jody Watley got lost in the Tenderloin that one time. You can't really call yourself a role model, I don't think in this post-Prop 8 bullshit era of codified homophobia, while completely playing "tee heeeeee" with the press about something as fundamental and unchangeable as who you like to put your junk into. Is it anyone's business? Of course it's not. But would it be nice, just for fucking once, for a clearly gay, currently popular (and that's fleeting, Mary. Don't think it isn't. You're gonna be whistling the national anthem at state fairs come this time next year) to step up to the plate and say "You know what? Forget my own career, I'm gay. I'm well-liked (currently) and visible and I'm a proud gay American"? Yes that would be really nice. Because it would be honest and brave and true and exactly what (in some small part) the struggling gay youth of America needs. A person who everyone loved who also just happens to be gay.

So, Mr. Lambert, I know the coy shit is fun and cutesy and oohhh hoo hoo don't you chuckle to yourself between gulps, but it's all starting to come off a bit latent and scaredy-cat and lame. And the more you're teasing and "Maybe I'll come out in Rolling Stone, maybe I won't..." the more it becomes something that should be teased about, something that should be hinted and whispered. And it's not. It's a fact like any other fact. So please, either be honest and forthcoming about yourself, or just shut the hell up, make way for the real men, and stop calling yourself a role model. Because right now the only person you're a role model to is the kids who want to be what they want to be, but also don't want anyone to know about it. And that's sad.

Update! Yes, I know he's supposedly coming out on the cover of Rolling Stone next week. So, good for him! And good for Rolling Stone! How wonderfully this whole thing has been parlayed into a money-making endeavor. The gay community is so grateful to you, Adam.

The Sundance Film Festival has a new director. John Cooper, a 20-year veteran of the festival who worked in programming, has been moved up to the top spot. Cooper is responsible for instituting many of Sundance's new technological pursuits, including releasing indie shorts on iTunes, Netflix, and for the Xbox 360. Asked how he feels about those particular initiatives, festival founder Robert Redford smiled strangely, nodded his head, and said "Well... sure. Those." [Variety]

Though it's been in the can for four long years, the movie Sahara is still losing people money. Clive Cussler, the author of the novel on which the tale of a swashbuckling adventurer named Matthew McConaughey who's looking for a Civil War warship in the Sahara desert with the help of a lisping Spanish lady and that dude from Out of Sight is based, sued the movie's production company, Crusader, awhile back, claiming that they didn't give him final script approval as promised. Crusader sued back saying that Cussler had lied about the sales figures for his series of books, which they had hoped to turn into a franchise. Crusader won the suit in 2007, the jury awarding them $5 million. Now Cussler has been ordered to pay for their legal fees as well. All summed up, the total cost of Sahara for Cussler? $27 million. A fair price to pay for foisting that film's miseries upon the world. [Variety]

Juan Antonio Bayona, a young apprentice of Guillermo Del Toro's, might be directing the third movie in the Twilight fuckmeplease vampire series, creatively titled Eclipse. It's about an enchanted Mitsubishi that a girl and her sparklenaif undead boyfriend dry hump in and then he gets mad at her and then she eats mushroom ravioli and then he smolders and jumps into trees and then she falls down because she's clumsy and then he smiles and then—I'm sorry little girl, would you like some coffee with that cream? [THR]

Like ants who keep crawling into your house every year to complain a lot, Mormons are once again angry with the current best show on television, Big Love. This time it's because the show is going to depict a sacred, and secret and magical, 'endowment ceremony' in an upcoming episode. It's a long held tradition that the particulars of the ceremony, which prepares you and other people for the eternal afterlife or some such nonsense, be heavily guarded. HBO states that "it was not our intention to do anything disrespectful to the church." Hah, really? Have you seen your show, HBO? Frankly, I don't give a shit what the Mormons are whining about. Actually, I'm going to start sending money from this state into their shitty, wasted desert of a hellhole in an effort to get MORE endowment ceremonies depicted on every TV show possible that has anything remotely to do with Utah. Then I'll laugh at them and ask them how it feels to be meddled with. [THR]

Oh angel Moroni, make it stop. We're just making Nadya 'Octomom' Suleman more powerful. Her two-part appearance on Dr. Phil's Program for Shut-Ins brought the daytime hamfest a 14% rise in ratings. Oprah Winfrey's show for secret alcoholics and lonely gay men living in Coral Gables saw a 22% bump when she showed up for an interview. Feeding off of and growing from this buzzing success, Suleman is next expected to destroy downtown Tokyo. [Variety]

As near as we can tell, it's because of a lazy media that takes its story cues from Perez Hilton, of all people. The gossip frequently attacks celebrities for smoking—most notably, Katherine Heigl, and most recently, Salma Hayek. In fact, it's the latter instance that appeared to inspire the Daily News article, which goes on to boldly note that all sorts of celebrities light up:

Teen idol (and frequent smoker) The Hills star Lauren Conrad never appears on her hit reality show with a cigarette - and goes to great lengths to abstain from puffing in public. "She avoids it," says [X-17 owner Frank] Navarre.

Onetime closet smoker Britney Spears now openly flaunts her Marlboro Lights, while Anne Hathaway just admitted she was a smoker for years - before she quit this summer.

And new mom Ashlee Simpson-Wentz was a top-secret smoker who went to great lengths to hide her habit before she became pregnant, even ducking behind a pal when one of our reporters caught her in the act last year.

Much like Perez, the Daily News is weirdly focused only on actresses who smoke, not actors. Surely, they would be able to find just as many male celebrities that light up—and why? Because (in news that may shock anyone who has never set foot in Hollywood or been in a high school drama club), actors smoke. All of them. Yep, even him. And her! In fact, that's probably the least of their vices (we've also heard that they fornicate!).

Don't get us wrong: smoking is grody, and you shouldn't do it. Hell, we have a grandma who died of lung cancer, and that sucks! But why should we care that Katherine Heigl (in particular) lights up? Why is it that if we mention running into Heigl on the street in Los Feliz, a friend will inevitably ask, "Was she smoking?" Yes, she was smoking. She is an actress.

At least the Daily News kind of eventually admits to this reality, in the form of this final quote from X17's Navarre:

"A lot of celebrities smoke - a lot," he said. "Young Hollywood is still a big smoker. The [anti-smoking] campaign has no effect on them."

Yes, no duh. They're also doing cocaine at the wrap parties for their Disney channel television shows. Is this news?

[Photo Credit: X17]

• Gotcha! Salma Hayek, more star smokers try to hide the habit [NY Daily News]

So Bad it's Good: The Spirit (Dec. 25). Perhaps it's best to know as little as possible going into this adaptation of Will Eisner's classic 1940s comic series, written and directed by Eisner acolyte Frank Miller in the arresting visual style of his debut (with Robert Rodriguez) Sin City. But the silhouettes, snow and sooty (if green-screened) Central City backdrops are less-convincing a reason to have a look than the gleeful pageantry of Miller's bad taste: The Spirit (Gabriel Macht), essentially a zombie cop turned oversexed masked-vigilante enforcer, introduces himself by way of an epic fight with equally unkillable Central City crime lord The Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson). Mud is thrown, balls are crushed, toilets are slammed, and expectations are dashed. "This," you should expect to mutter to yourself and/or your incredulous date, "is fucking terrible."

Well, kind of. Your first impression — that Miller has no idea what he's doing — eventually surrenders to an intrigue with what he'll do next. Will Scarlett Johansson put her beguiling badness to work as Octopus right-hand Silken Floss, or simply stand around like a line-reading cleavage prop? Will Eva Mendes (as jewel thief Sand Saref) test the PG-13 rating with her de rigeur gratuitous nudity? Will doctor Sarah Paulson ever tire of her male-slut superhero crush? Will Jackson's fat, annoying cloned henchmen ever shut up? And is that actually Sam Jackson up there in Nazi regalia, shouting about eggs?

By the time Miller answers most of these questions, you're already barreling toward The Spirit's climax — a convergence of the hero, villain and their intimates for a hyper-violent This is Your Life variant for the soul of Central City. With spectacle to spare and absolutely no interest in Iron Man's optimism, The Incredible Hulk's self-seriousness or The Dark Knight's social criticism, The Spirit instead emerges as the comics genre's semi-lucid inbred cousin. Hating this movie would be like booing at the Special Olympics.

So Bad it's Bad: Seven Pounds (now playing). At some point one might expect an ebb to the extraordinary critical tsunami that helped devastate Will Smith's morality play. Or at least a backlash of some kind, anything pledging some redeemability to the story of a purported IRS agent making a set of mysterious rounds to help an ensemble of sick, blind and otherwise downtrodden strangers.

Alas, we won't be the ones inaugurating that movement. Seven Pounds is everything its detractors say, with baffling plot contrivances and dramatic ineptitude compounded by the cardinal sin of utter boredom. As Smith's mission crystallizes and his motivations surface — in a twist so random it really does defy spoiling here — the likelihood of any emotional payoff diminishes behind the vast horizon of its star's ego. We imagine Seven Pounds' final 40 minutes may someday acquire some esteem in the Cult-Classic Canon for its adroit interweaving of printing-press repair, bone-marrow transplants, bad sex and killer jellyfish. But for want of anything worthwhile preceding them, it begs the question: If Will Smith falls in the forest and the audience walked out around the one-hour mark, does he make a sound?

So Bad it's Ugly: Revolutionary Road (Dec. 25) . While novelist John Cheever traced the glide path of America's fall from post-WWII euphoria to disillusioned ennui, his contemporary Richard Yates was the black box that captured every primal, panicked cry in the seconds before the crash. Nearly 50 years on, Sam Mendes likely fancies himself to share a little of each man's qualities, with his decade's worth of moodily revisionist entries surveying suburbia (American Beauty), crime and the Depression (Road to Perdition), the first Iraq War (Jarhead) and now Revolutionary Road, Yates's debut novel about an idealistic young couple's suffocation in the Connecticut suburbs.

But Mendes crafted not so much an adaptation here as he did a stunt. It was one thing to reunite wife Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, tricking the Titanic generation into a bit of po-mo awards-season whiplash; it was another entirely to impose his semi-literate condescension on Frank and April Wheeler, Yates's doomed ad man and his housewife, whose shared yearning for a life beyond the social constraints of their titular street capsizes in devastating slow-motion. Their unraveling was a symbolic end to the optimism of Eisenhower's '50s, no less nightmarish for its yowling, virtually unprecedented depiction of complacency's costs. It created a stir that never altogether faded, influencing American Beauty itself and prompting no fewer than a dozen failed screen attempts before Mendes and Scott Rudin coaxed around $40 million of DreamWorks' money to smear their quasi-pedigreed patina over the Wheeler family's implosion.

It would have been bad enough with screenwriter Justin Haythe digesting Yates's piercing dialogue into compact, Oscar-clip-compatible bursts. It would have been bad enough with DiCaprio and Winslet, each miscast, delivering those bursts in furrow-browed, you-shout-now-I-shout order. It would have been bad enough with Michael Shannon dropping by as the neighbors' candid loony son, the Connecticut equivalent of Southern dramas' "magical Negro" whose cruelly omniscient nuggets coincide conveniently with key junctures of the Wheelers' dissolution.

But Revolutionary Road's real failure transcends tone-deafness. Here, Mendes actively perverts his source's vanguard qualities — grossly commodifying the Wheelers, fetishizing their anguish, and in fact reveling in the excruciating emotional turmoil that tormented Yates until his death in 1992. We knew Mendes was a bit of a serial masturbator, but a necrophiliac? Moreover, a cold-blooded cultural murderer? Quick — someone save Kate.

Clearly it depends on whom you ask. By at least one person's standards Batman is already Turkish, and Hancock recently depicted cinema's first drunk, misanthropic superhero as a black dude living on the streets. Global audiences threw $624 million at Will Smith in the latter film, and according to Craig, may be color-blind enough to greet a black Bond with similar largesse:

"After Barack Obama's victory I think we might have reached the moment for a coloured 007. I think the role could easily be played by a black actor, because the character created by Ian Fleming in the '50s has undergone a great deal of evolution and continues to be updated."

Yes, he said "coloured," it's how they roll in the UK, calm down. Craig noted as well that the politically incorrect (at best) Fleming probably wouldn't approve were he alive — a qualification hardly as significant as whether or not viewers who voted in a black president would approve. And even that is an impossible dynamic to parse considering how — if we are the "changed" nation we say we are — Obama's victory owed more to economic and political factors (not to mention pure timing) than the color of his skin. Do we really think we've "reached the moment," or will we only know when the right black Bond comes along?

Beyonce's Wonder Woman scenario is simultaneously simple and more complex. Moviegoers and critics were decidedly stingy to Halle Berry's Catwoman, yielding only $82 million in 2004. Warner Bros., which released Catwoman and whose president Jeff Robinov drew fire last year after allegedly suggesting the studio was done with female leads, has Wonder Woman in limbo (along with Joel Silver) since Joss Whedon abandoned it last year.

So that settled it, we thought, until Beyoncé came along — appropriately Amazonian and looking for her next opportunity coming off her turn as Etta James in the forthcoming Cadillac Records.

"I want to do a superhero movie, and what would be better than Wonder Woman? It would be great. And it would be a very bold choice. A black Wonder Woman would be a powerful thing. It's time for that, right? [...]

"After doing these roles that were so emotional I was thinking to myself, 'OK, I need to be a superhero.' [...] Although, when you think about the psychology of the heroes in the films these days, they are still a lot of work, of course, and emotional. But there's also an action element that I would enjoy."

"It's time for that, right?" Is it? Seriously, we're asking: Is it time for an epochal presidential election to influence Hollywood casting? This town may have helped get Obama elected, but does it have the balls to prove it wasn't a fluke? And are women invited to the party?

• Discuss: Is the World Ready for a Black James Bond? [Cinematical]

• Beyoncé wants to lasso the role of Wonder Woman [Source]

It was a good run while it lasted! For years Tara Reid, an actress whose only talent was to remind you of that one babysitter you had that used to sneak menthol cigarettes in the back yard, made a whole career out of dousing herself in Blue Curacao and setting herself ablaze. Lindsay Lohan, a slightly more chaste version of that same babysitter, became famous not really for her roles in movies like Mean Girls and A Prairie Home Companion, but for her hard partying, her various automobile accidents, her splendiferous fire crotch. Sure she eventually banked steeply, the left side of her fuselage ripping off, and exploded over the Andes, but it was a glorious journey for a while. And these ladies, along with Paris Hilton and every dim bulb heir to something or other boy who creaked after them, helped create a new industry of Perez Hilton bloggasm and InTouch magazine shriekery. Everyone was dancing and dancing as fast as they could, spinning themselves into Butter and then suddenly! Poof! It feels kinda over, right?

For one, the economy is in the pile of shit that's buried under the shitter. And to mirror that, Poor Tara is doing sad, "mistakes were made" magazine interviews. Lindsay Lohan is comfortably dating a deejay named Samantha Ronson (yes, dear readers, that's a woman! Maybe they'll get "married!" Keep reading Page Six to find out more!) and she's partying like a lot, lot less than she was before. And Britney is making a quiet little comeback and caring for her kids as best she can (one of them almost exploded last night, but whatevs). Doesn't it seem kind of passe now, all of that crazed going out and drunken slurring for the wobbly cameras of TMZ? It does to us! All the celebrities these days are about causes and whatnot, and so what if it's just bandwagon trendiness. If it means less reality shows about dumb idiots getting their hair dyed and chewing gum and more about people with jobs, then we're OK with it. These are very troubled days, and (finally!) the jewel encrusted partying doesn't just seem silly, it seems irresponsible and unforgivably tacky. Which means, maybe, that the terrible Perez and TMZ monsters will be slain by this economic Bellerophon once and for all and we Gawker people will just start offering tips on, like, urban gardening or something (I know a guy). They've been the ones fueling this whole wickedness. They should go first.

For further proof, just look at the mega success of the most recent High School Musical movie, which opened in actual movie theaters this time and has raked in $75 million in just three weeks. It's a rolling-up-the-sleeves tale of good kids being good and putting on a show. There's nary a swear, swill, or sex moan to be seen or heard in the squeaky/freaky clean enterprise. And for once that kinda feels OK! At its frizzy, tired, Cheez Whizzy heart, that party culture felt awfully cynical and lazy. Though there's plenty to be cynical about these days, there is also, um, Hope! and Change! and the chance—for the first time, I'd argue—for the younger generations to begin the work of making their mark, of rubbing Tom Brokaw's nose in it and saying "there's no Greatest, Tom. They're all Great in their own way."

So—maybe a little early, there's probably some defrib still to be done—we're calling it: the greasy rococo party culture of the early aughts is dead and gone. Replaced by a new can-do, a spirit of hope, change, lesbian relationships, shuddering babies, and reality shows about people doing things. Not quite a Brave New World, sure, but it's something.

[In no particular order]

· The Thomas Crown Affair: The 1968 original was rated R simply for its suggestive chess match between Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway.

· The Panic in Needle Park: An early, ugly example of the MPAA's screenplay-vetting process talked up by Graves last summer. The 1971 Al Pacino starrer had its script rated X before going into production; the filmmakers revised drug-addiction and sexuality plot points to earn an R for the finished film. Pure censorship, and a process that continues to this day.

· Lost In Translation: Scarlett Johansson's sheer-pantied ass notwithstanding, Sofia Coppola's Oscar-winner was rated R for one brief scene of nudity in a Tokyo strip joint.

· Saints and Soldiers: This 2004 Mormon-produced WWII drama featuring no sex and minimal language and violence, but was threatened with an R-rating for one scene where a main character is shot and killed. The scene was cut; Saints received a PG-13.

· Facing the Giants: The producers of the 2006 Christian-themed football film battled with the ratings board after it ruled Giants' evangelical content was too emphatic for a G rating. It was the first and only time the MPAA had looked at spiritual themes as a basis for a more restrictive rating.

· Requiem For a Dream: Hit with an NC-17 for the climactic "ass-to-ass" orgy featuring Jennifer Connelly. Distributor Artisan released it without a rating, thus limiting its exposure in theater chains and advertising outlets.

· The arbitrarily-enforced "Tobacco Rule": The MPAA announced in 2007 that it would weight scenes featuring smoking when considering its rating. Yet a study last spring reported that 38% of G- and PG-rated movies and 58% of PG-13 movies got away with featuring tobacco use. Moreover, in 2003, the Oscar-nominated New Zealand film Whale Rider earned a PG-13 just for a brief shot of pot paraphernalia its makers refused to cut.

· The Passion of the Christ: Two years before Giants, the MPAA had used the same religious themes as its rationale for allowing The Passion of the Christ through uncut with an R-rating.

· Saving Private Ryan: Received an R-rating and a "history exemption" from the ratings board despite graphic war violence including dismembered bodies, disembowelments, exploded heads and close-ups of Nazi-on-Adam Goldberg homicide.

· Boys Don't Cry: Threatened with an NC-17 for a lingering shot of a topless Chloe Sevigny experiencing an orgasm, but allowed to keep the climactic rape scene and gunshot to Brondon Teena's head.

· Eyes Wide Shut: Received an NC-17 for explicit sexuality and nudity in a masked orgy sequence. Warner Bros. was forced to add digital obtrusions for an R, certainly just the way the late Stanley Kubrick would have wanted it.

· Dawn of the Dead: George Romero's second film in the Dead series was all but banned upon its release in 1978, when he avoided an X by agreeing to a conspicuous advertising disclaimer noting the film's graphic gore and violence — at least in the theaters that would have him.

· Showgirls: United Artists decide to embrace the NC-17 rating handed down for graphic nudity, sexuality and language in 1993, despite the resulting banishment from mainstream theater chains and advertising outlets. The critical evisceration was even more graphic, relegating the film to purgatory until its cult-canon renaissance in recent years.

· Basic Instinct: Another notorious Paul Verhoeven/Joe Esterhazs collaboration; cut huge chunks of graphic sex and violence for an R, but was allowed to keep Sharon Stone's infamous crotch shot.

· Henry and June: The first film to be released with an NC-17 rating, was an instant pariah among theater owners, newspaper publishers and audiences.

· The Dreamers: Nearly 30 years after his X-rated Last Tango in Paris featured Maroln Brando in an Oscar-nominated performance, Bernardo Bertolucci's '60s sex-cinema-politics fantasia died in the American arthouse ghetto with an NC-17.

· The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover: Helen Mirren (and pretty much everyone else) bared all in Peter Greenaway's controversial 1990 sex-and-cannibalism drama, which was released unrated by Miramax. Harvey Weinstein made the most of the controversy, and actually made $7 million theatrically despite the MPAA making a permament enemy of Greenaway.

· Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer: Another 1990 scandal that didn't pan out for its independent distributor; despite near-unanimous critical plaudits, its X rating and eventual unrated release died instantly in theaters, barely cracking $600,000 before finding eternal life (and an unlikely franchise) on video.

· Lust, Caution: Though Graves cites Ang Lee's graphically sexual Chinese espionage drama as an example of an ideal application of the NC-17, the film earned less than 8% of its $66 million worldwide gross in the United States. Worse yet, latching on to moral objections made loudest by the MPAA, the Chinese governement later banned star Tang Wei from acting again in her native country. (Co-star and Hong Kong legend Tony Leung Chiu Wai, though, experienced no such problems.)

· Waiting For Guffman: A classic example of the "Fuck Rule"; a Christopher Guest mockumentary with no sex or violence but featuring the F-word used one too many times in an actor's audition using the scene from Raging Bull. Its R-rating was upheld on appeal. (You can use "fuck" in a non-sexual way up to four times in and retain a PG-13 — maybe.)

· The Cooler: Threatened with an NC-17 for a brief glimpse of Maria Bello's pubic hair after receiving oral sex from William H. Macy. The shot was edited down for an R.

· L.I.E.: The 2001 indie drama was smacked with an NC-17 for its focus on the relationship between a pedophile (Brian Cox) and a teenage boy (Paul Dano). Its distributors lost an appeal and released the film unrated; it disappeared from theaters and was eventually re-cut for video to obtain an R-rating.

· Orgazmo: Trey Parker's Mormon-missionary porn comedy earned an NC-17 that — granted, along with its title — doomed it to a $602,000 box-office run in 1998. Sliver lining: Parker's MPAA battles became the basis for his and Matt Stone's instant classic South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, which faced more ratings hurdles but emerged with an R — and a $52 million gross — a year later.

· Captivity: The MPAA took the unprecedented step of suspending the ratings process for Roland Joffe's torture-porn opus after distributor After Dark Films ran advertisements the board deemed inappropriate. The film was eventually cut and released with an R-rating.

· The Hammer: The "fuck rule" again; Adam Carrolla's sexless, mildly violent boxing comedy was hit with an R for a single F-bomb.

· But I'm a Cheerleader: Jaime Babbit's drew an NC-17 for its depictions of lesbian sexuality and satirical treatment of gay-conversion therapy.

· A Dirty Shame: Long-time ratings-board nemesis John Waters released his raunchy 2004 comedy with an NC-17 after the raters insisted only a heavy re-edit could earn an R. Unable to procure advertising space or key theatrical venues, the film bombed.

· Where the Truth Lies: Atom Egoyan refused to cut a long, unedited take of a sex scene featuring Kevin Bacon and Rachel Blanchard, forcing him to release the film unrated. It made $872,000.

· This Film Is Not Yet Rated: Kirby Dick submitted his MPAA expose for a rating in 2005; having featured every cut scene from dozens former ratings-board target (not to mention a searing indictment of the board's hypocrisy), it drew an irrevocable NC-17 and was released unrated.

· Scream: Was first rated NC-17 for graphic violence but eventually trimmed by director Wes Craven to obtain an R rating.

· American Psycho: The combination of sex and violence in the satirical Bret Easton Ellis adaptation earned an NC-17 and was cut for an R.

· Billy Elliott: The endearing tale of a working-class 11-year-old boy's coming of age in a ballet class was a worldwide sleeper hit for all ages depite earning a ridiculous R-rating in the US for incidental language.

· Trainspotting: Required cutting of drug-induced depravity and violence to shake off its initial NC-17.

· Zack and Miri Make a Porno: Another Harvey Weinstein controversy special; Kevin Smith's raunchy comedy earned an NC-17 that was reduced to an R on appeal.

· Jersey Girl: Fours years earlier, Smith was required to tone down some of the frank sex talk between Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler to obtain the PG-13 he sought.

· The Dark Knight: Got away with a PG-13 despite featuring a character with half his face burned off, violent onscreen murders by the Joker and scads of other disturbing imagery.

· Max Payne: Required significant cuts of scenes of violence and disturbing imagery for a PG-13; director John Moore famously cited more severe material that appeared in The Dark Knight, accusing the ratings board of "sucking Warner Bros.' cock."

· There Will Be Blood: Also featured less blood and gore than The Dark Knight (and virtually no strong language) but received an R rating for "some violence."

· Crash: David Cronenberg refused to cut his perverse paean to car-wreck sex, stump-fucking and other depravity, releasing the film with an NC-17.

· Titanic: Received a PG-13 despite long, "artistic" topless shots of Kate Winslet and a (literally) steamy sex scene between Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio

· Gunner Palace: The Oscar-nominated Iraq documentary was faced with an R-rating for strong language; its filmmakers fought for a PG-13 and finally earned it on the basis of its journalistic nature.

By "starfucking" we mean more than just dating Whitney Port (which, let's be honest, is more like "radar-blipfucking"). We mean his Zelig-like proximity to celebrities and events where no mere blurb-whore has gone before. Take Christopher Mintz-Plasse's publicity-tour stop last week at the University of Michigan, where the Superbad co-star was accosted by a street preacher who said he was going to hell for his work in Hollywood. And look who was with McLovin, natch:

It's probably worth noting here that Lyons named Superbad among his top 10 films of 2007, a distinction made easier by the fact he was in the movie. But still, the Michigan incident was incidental; the consummate nepotist Lyons (who didn't graduate from any college, let alone Michigan) was taping an interview segment for his father Jeffrey's syndicated show Reel Talk when the mess went down. Things likely got more perverse later, when we imagine Lyons and Mintz-Plasse had a little more intimate encounter like those Lyons features in a blog gallery actually entitled "Ben Lyons Poses With Famous People."

Quite the professional, right? Seriously — who would you rather have sharing his cogent takes on new movies: Michael Wilmington or the douchebag below with the beer bong glomming onto Lauren Conrad?

Shia's face says it all: "I need a cigarette." Don't. We. All. How much longer can Ben Lyons get away with getting paid six figures annually to suffocate a beloved institution like At the Movies and document his stalking adventures for E!? And who will stop him? Act fast, America — your celebrities need you.

Over at Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeff Wells titled his post about the matter "Not Supposed to Say," claiming that "movie critics haven't come within 20 feet of mentioning this [unremarked-on interracial marriage] in their reviews." We're not sure what critics Wells is reading, but a boatload of the ones we've looked at mention exactly that — and they do it in a way that seems to beg for someone to bestow an aura of au courant hipness on their courageously un-PC observations.

Both EW's Owen Gleiberman and New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane take great pains to mention the film's unmentioned racial diversity, though to hear Lane discuss it, it sounds like he'd rather be watching a blunt parable like Crash. "The wedding party is the ultimate guide to Demme’s benign vision: the groom is black, the bride is white, she and her bridesmaids are dressed in saris, [and] nobody so much as mentions race," says Lane. "I don’t know if there were any Republican voters involved in this movie, but, if so, it must have been a lonely time." Ok, yes, some Republicans are racist — but damn, Anthony! Are you really implying that conservatives can never be bred within a cultural melting pot?

Worse is Wells, who virtually calls Demme a fetishist of all things African, rattling off some of the black characters Demme has previously included in his oeuvre before concluding:

So it feels very Demme-ish that the union that's endlessly celebrated in Rachel Getting Married, his latest feature, is between a very alabaster lassie (Rosemarie DeWitt, playing Rachel) and a handsome Afrique-ebony guy (musician Tunde Adebimpe, playing Sidney the groom). It's also a very Demme thing that nobody so much as mentions this.

You can say "well, why would anybody mention it?" and I'd take your point, of course. We all like to see ourselves as color-blind. My point is that in real life someone in the wedding party would at one point or another throw some kind of slider ball — something anecdotal, flip, netural, whatever— into the proceedings. In the same way someone would say "oh, it's raining" if a cloudburst were to happen. My other point is that such a remark (which wouldn't necessarily be coarse or gauche ) is verboten in a Demme film because it doesn't reflect his values or sensibilities.

...If the blunt-spoken alcoholic played by Howard Duff in Robert Altman's A Wedding (1978) had been invited to Rachel and Sidney's wedding, he would have said something or other, trust me. Because he was the kind of wealthy middle- aged guy who didn't give a shit because he was always half in the bag.

Why, though, does it need to be said? One might think that by the time Rachel and Sidney had gotten married, their families would have gotten used to the idea that they were of separate races (in fact, Rachel's divorced father has since remarried a black woman, and screenwriter Jenny Lumet is the product of an interracial marriage herself). Are these critics really unable to set aside their apparent discomfort with the idea unless an on-screen surrogate points out the obvious? What if Rachel's family were Latin (imagine Penelope Cruz donning Anne Hathaway's smudged eyeliner instead) — would their non-white, mixed marriage suddenly become less of an issue for these older, Caucasian film critics?

Guys, there's plenty of actual criticisms to be made about Rachel Getting Married (won't someone address the interminable sequence that is the dish-washing competition?). Why don't you stick to film critique and leave the awkward investigation of racial dynamics where it belongs — at a Sarah Palin rally?

Why do I hate it? How could I possibly hate a movie that features the lovable sameness of another Cera performance, a hip and faggy supporting cast (there's a dude from Spring Awakening in it!), and a whole senior year road trip to Six Flags' worth of jangly and twee pop rock thinkin' muziks? Well, actually, I hate it for those reasons and I hate it because it's all a big lie. And, also, I'm maybe getting older and no longer feel represented by movies about "young folks." It's like that movie Juno (also starring Cera!) which was so grating and cloying and icky-sticky about disaffected yoots and their homogenized, leafless, generic-brand environs—why am I watching an advertisement for something a sane person wouldn't want to buy? The banality of suburbia isn't relatable when it's stereotyped. It's only relatable when it's real, and in the real world, people don't put living room sets on people's front lawns. Plus, when at any point in high school did you want to hang out with the music kids? They were just as pretentious and stupid as anyone else—they didn't possess some wise, warm knowingness about the world that prompts adults to learn things about themselves. They were pimply and ugly and unwashed and gruff and annoying, just like the rest of us! They didn't drive charming little Yugo cars and say funny, stammery things. I mean, they said funny stammery things, but it was like only a joke to people three rings out of their circle.

I guess I just wish that kids could still be kids, and not slinking, faux-riot grrl ciphers or minnowy virgin boys with soft mushy hearts. Seventeen-year-olds just aren't that complex. The funny thing about a rebellious, anti-establishment man movie like this is that it's actually the exact same thing as Gossip Girl—silly, aspirational garbage about grownups in kid suits—only funked up and dragged downtown to appeal to arty teenagers that will be saddened by the film (because they'll never have that, never ever! I promise!) and to people in their 20's and 30's who will falsely remember high school as being just like that when, in fact, they had three friends (their names were John, George, and Judy) and on Saturdays they went to the movies and on Sundays they did their homework and they got drunk at Cindy Mitzner's party that one time and man oh man it was wild. Y'know? It's all one big lie, this movie I haven't seen yet and only know a little about.

Sure John Hughes lied and Richard Linklater lied and Amy Heckerling lied, but they did so with style and without that sort of savvy young hipshit wearing jeans and a skinny tie in a sprawling loft office on lower Broadway making a coy marketing pitch kind of thing. Do I make any sense here? Am I just pissing into the wind? Probably not and probably yes, respectively.

Either way, I'm totes seeing it on Sunday.

Part 1: How Pamela Anderson Ruined Sex
You may remember, especially you craven young men, that in 1998 Playboy posette and Baywatch star Pamela Anderson was filmed by her new husband, Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, while they did the nasty on some sort of houseboat. Her iconic status at the time, combined with the sheer amazement over Lee's substantial manhood, created what was really the first modern sex tape craze. Perpetuated by the newly discovered internet, the tape became an international phenomenon. It's not just that everyone heard of it, everyone saw it, too. Both Anderson and Lee still enjoy some strange mutation of fame, though they've long since separated and gotten back together and separated again and gotten back together again, etc. What this tape really did, aside from aid these two people, was ruin sex by finally and viscerally commodifying it. Sure there has always been pornography, but this was something different. Famous people who were not hardcore porn actors, but regular (albeit frequently nude on Pam's part) celebrities. Famous people, however (un)intentionally, caught while engaging in the most basic and carnal animal harmony. And now, without the nuisance of seeming like a hooker or a porn star who entered into the act with the intention of making money, one's lovemaking could at some point turn a profit. And the public was both more interested in and more perilously desensitized to the whole idea. Some fourth wall cracked and crumbled that day, opening a hole through which slithered a whole different dimension's worth neo-celebrities.

Part 2: How Paris Hilton Ruined Celebrity
Encouraged no doubt by the crazy zeitgest of the Anderson/Lee tape, budding socialite and headline-grabber Paris Hilton recorded her sex-making with famous dater-of-trashy-celebrities Rick Salomon. It was first leaked, in 2004, onto the internet by (public opinion seems to hold) Mr. Salomon and Hilton initially tried to block it from being released. But, you know, then she saw that it was popular and said 'fuck it' and agreed to its release and now makes money off of the tape, which was eventually titled One Night in Paris. And that, really, was that. Hilton was, yes, already sorta famous, but this sent her into an entirely new strata of celebrity. Suddenly she was the infamous darling of late night jokesters and burgeoning gossip bloggers. Her name was even co-opted by Mario Lavandeira, who assumed the identity Perez Hilton to start his odious gossip rag in 2005. And that's where the already-rickety wheels of the celebrity-industrial complex began to spin off and clatter down the mine shaft ahead of us. An entirely new set of rules about how famous people are made and what keeps people famous and Why We Care was beginning to form, all because Hilton seemed to be becoming one of the most famous people in America simply because she wore pink clothes and let some grody guy from Neptune, New Jersey fuck her with the nightvision on. She possessed no discernible talent other than the uncanny ability to make people, against their better judgment, pay attention. She rewrote the manual, and many other people would follow.

Part 3: How Kim Kardashian Ruined America
And then came Kim Kardashian, whose mother is married to athlete Bruce Jenner or something. She had a large butt and was dating Ray J, the little brother of former celebrity Brandy. She and Ray J boffed in like 2007, I think, and the tape was released. And oh my god. Kim was so freaking mad that she sued the company, Vivid Entertainment, that released the tape. Eventually she dropped the lawsuit and settled for a measly ol' five million dollars. And then. And then she became famous. She was on red carpets and people talked about her and she embarrassed herself on The View (just like a real celebrity!) and she got her own reality show and somehow helped make her even less interesting sisters sort-of-famous, too. Where Paris Hilton developed a coy relationship with magazine creations of this bleak new millennium like Us Weekly and InTouch, teasing things at them to keep everyone interested, Kardashian just barnstorms through things, ass-bellowing and demanding attention for the stupidest of events and occurrences, flaunting the fact that, to paraphrase Soup host and possible savior of pop culture Joel McHale, she is famous simply for having a big butt and a sex tape. So how does this large-caboosed blip on the radar get blamed for the ruination of these United States? Well, maybe she and her sex tape didn't necessarily ruin it themselves, but they do represent everything that is wrong and broken and bankrupt and ill of this "uh oh, everyone put your goggles on!" experiment. Kardashian's success proves that Hilton's new rules do, in fact, work in some inexplicable way. And, more importantly, the whole boondoggle suggests that many of us care (even if we're doing it ironically, we're still paying attention) as much, if not more, about the frivolous self-exploitation of a stranger's body as we do about fractious and dangerous political landscapes, about holes we've torn in the very fabric of the sky, about people dying from all imaginable kinds of neglect. Nah, we're too busy watching Access Hollywood scream at us that Kardashian cut her toe in a New York City hotel room (this was an actual top story) to pay attention to the fact that the rug, upon which they (and we) are fucking for the camera, is being pulled out from under our sweaty, writhing, desperate selves.

So let this Britney tape—the Holy of Holies, the culmination of all things—sing us sweet tidings of eternal rapture. Or damnation. Or whatever. I just can't watch any more promos for Dancing With the Sex Tape Stars.

And it's not like rookie distributor Variance Films didn't have a trailer (follow the jump), a decent cast (Liv Tyler, Dax Shepard, Mike White) or even a fun poster to market. So what happened?

Part of it is Keaton's own fault. After a tandem comprising Something's Gotta Give (her most recent Oscar-nominated role) and The Family Stone, Keaton has coasted chronically through paycheck after paycheck. We'd seen hints as recently as 2001, when her mob comedy Plan B went straight to video, but her reputation as a selective stateswoman of American cinema slid for real with Because I Said So and the heist flick Mad Money. They combined for $62 million domestically but were generally reviled as beneath their star. And they were beneath Keaton; The Family Stone wasn't going to make anyone forget Annie Hall as a whole, but as late-career matriarch roles go, she was as good as she'd ever been.

Then came the DVD- (and hell-) ready Mama's Boy, co-starring Jon Heder and essentially remade as Smother with a date-movie-palatability quotient bumped up. Neither found traction with critics, but Variance didn't bother with press or preview screenings at all. That settled it for critics, with Ebert-thwacking indie grump Lou Lumenick positing "Diane Keaton Scrapes the Barrel" and another reviewer asking: "Does Diane Keaton owe some loan sharks a considerable amount of cash? Are there incriminating photos of her that she’s insistent never see the light of day?" We wouldn't rule it out.

And the thing is, she's still so smart and funny and beautiful — too much so for all of this. Smother, Diane? Really? The optimist in us has to move ahead assuming it's a rough patch, but so help us, if we her selling credit reports in a miniskirt on Pimp Ed McMahon's arm, we'll come save her ourselves. This is serious.

But mostly McMahon has fielded one bone after another thrown his way by the advertising industry — which is turning into a bit of a problem if the new, pimptastic pitchman now being rolled out for the highest bidder is any indication.

Obviously this is not new terrain for McMahon; by his own admission the man has "spent my whole life doing commercials," all the way back to having paid his way through college selling vegetable slicers. When he required hospitalization last year for treatment of a broken neck, he all but summoned the Publishers Clearing House prize van before cooler heads dialed 9-1-1. The guy is a born huckster. We get that.

We also know that under the circumstances, McMahon probably isn't using the soundest, most selective judgment. Exhibit A: This recently released still from the set of his latest commercial, featuring McMahon — a prodigiously generous man who sat at Johnny Carson's right hand for three decades — as a pimp selling... Hey, you know what? Fuck them. If you wanna look the vultures up, go for it. We know the contradiction that comes with covering this in the first place, but we understand debasement even better, and the long-term potential here outweighs the immediate scourge. Again: Ed McMahon is dressed like a gangsta. Where is Don Draper when we need him? Is this really the best you can do, Madison Avenue?

Moreover, where is Hollywood when McMahon needs it? Just when things were looking up, the guy requires someone, anyone to fend off the vampires sucking away what remains of his dignity. Remember, people: Ed McMahon. Any volunteers?

[Photo: ETOnline]

We knew it at the time, attributing a "weirdly riveting" quality to Groban's performance as we liveblogged. Nearing the end of the day after, we're still pretty much alone in our estimation. But that doesn't mean we're wrong. Anything but, in fact.

Let's face it: The failure of this year's Emmys was systemic, not individual. Even Don Rickles (!), arguably the funniest presenter of the evening, faced a down crowd still nursing its shellshock from the opening bit. On both sides of the proscenium, too few of the components required to make the show move had any impulse or incentive to do so. The Nokia was a tank of vulnerable, cynical sharks — most too gutless (e.g. all five hosts) to rock the institutional boat on its surface while too bloodthirsty (e.g. Jeremy Piven, Neil Patrick Harris) to swim away without reminding the Academy that it got away with its life. And the Academy, adrift, responded simply by rowing faster — in circles. On the night when good TV was the coin of the realm, bad TV was the gold standard. What are you going to do?

That's not likely the kind of rhetorical question Josh Groban asked himself before he went onstage, but it's the one he answered throughout the number. What are you going to do, really, when the ineptitude of the Emmys is such that you can't possibly surmount its ingrained, enduring awfulness? And the producers are cutting set changes, acceptance speeches... everything but your performance? While the world around him — including the very concept of the number — melted down, Groban, for whatever reason, and for better or worse, went for it.

And as far as we could tell, he pulled it off. Say what you will about his talent, his popularity, his banality, his backstory, whatever, but the guy isn't stupid. He knew the position he was in, he knew the job he had to do, and unlike the hosts, writers and producers who pumped (and tape-delayed!) three hours' worth of bullshit into America's beloved televisions, he did his job. And he pretty much meant it — every outlandish segue into a condescending gospel choir or Muppet guest appearance seemed to nudge his energy incrementally higher. It was genuinely stirring, as in: We might not have finished our liveblog without it.

Moreover, take his riff on South Park —absurd to the extent it was sincere, momentarily elevating his medley to the level of performance art. It returned with the Animal/X-Files cameo and the COPS bit, and when he closed out with Carol Burnett and Cheers, he was among the two or three others onstage all night who could hold his head up opposite Rickles. Was he great? Probably not. Was he essential? Without a doubt.

There's the philosophy that says the harder you try, the stupider you look, and we're not wholly averse to it. But it applies to Groban's Emmy haters, too. Lighten up a bit. If he could do it under the circumstances, God knows we can, too.

And while we can't and/or wouldn't argue any of these points, a ceremonious Warners rimjob also seems untimely. After all, what did Meyer do with his Speed Racer faxes on opening weekend? That and a few more pressing questions after the jump.

1. What about Speed Racer? Warners' legacy is one of adventurous flops and sturdy gambles, not messianic cultural events like TDK. If the point is a "content" state-of-the-union, then it's worth noting that the studio also dropped the summer's biggest bomb. For which, by the way, we love them; Where the Wild Things Are isn't likely to fare much better, but it is nice to know it's there.

2. What about Warner Independent and Picturehouse? The slimmed-down New Line earns a cursory mention, but its return to genre-junk roots is one of Time Warner's signature (and slightly desperate) content revisions since the AOL merger. And the axed Picturehouse — which had a strong summer of Mongol and Kit Kittredge after winning three Oscars in February — was all about "content" that's hit and missed just as regularly as the mother ship.

3. What about Get Smart? Again, the sturdy gamble is the thing: A hit that's grossed $200 million worldwide, will land equally hard on DVD and VOD and has sequels on the way. Screw TDK, really — Bewkes needs more like this, and he needs them recognized.

4. Did you know that Charlie Sheen makes $800,000 per episode of Two and a Half Men? A bit of rehash of an earlier question here at Defamer, we know, but a phenomenon we've come to now grudgingly accept knowing that T&HM is the flagship of a $4 billion television empire. Not that we get it; feel free to continue discussing below.

5. Whither questions and actual answers about new media revenues? Just because Tim Arango is writing all about Warners' precious "content" doesn't mean Bewkes can get away without answering his own query, "[T]he consumption of entertainment products is growing rapidly... The question is how do you offer it, and how do you get paid for it?" And this guy wonders why TW stock still hovers around $16. Come on, Jeff.

• Holy Cash Cow, Batman! Content Is Back [NYT]

Before you think we're getting too carried away here, let's make it known right away that we don't do this for just anybody; it takes a special kind of affront for us to sit down and hammer out correspondence amid so much more compelling news of the day. (Like have you seen Michael Jackson recently? Holy shit, right?) But like your contemporary Paul Thomas Anderson, who so annoyed us by signing off on a There Will Be Blood DVD skimpy enough to have been a costume in Death Proof, your transgressions seem to require a little more direct attention than those of say, Brett Ratner or Uwe Boll. You're Quentin Tarantino, after all — QT! You stole made Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction! You are a living legend, an artist among artists, and you deserve everything that's coming to you.

Which is why we think it's time to ask you directly: When will you and Harvey Weinstein stop inflating the world's interest in Inglorious Bastards?

Look, it's not like we don't want to see your riff on World War II actioners — your Dirty Dozen, your death-defying, ensemble mission flick. To the contrary, we'll probably be first in line (on the second or third Friday of its release, but whatever), and we'll probably enjoy it. You've always entertained us, and even as your returns diminish, you're one of the few filmmakers on whom we always bestow the benefit of the doubt.

But that benefit does not extend to your pandering on behalf of Inglorious Bastards. We know what you're thinking, and we don't wholly disagree: There's interest in you, and by extension, interest in the project. This much is obvious. So when you showed up in Provincetown last month to receive your "Filmmaker on the Edge" award — the one distributors pay for at festivals when they need some press, and fast — and pimp out your recently finished script, it made sense. That's the game, and you and Harvey have played it expertly (if not always profitably) for years.

We even tolerated you supposedly tipping Anne Thompson around the same time about the script's length and Harvey's patronage. The rest would follow like it always does: You'd get a blank check; recruit some hip, testosterrific cast of A-listers and has-beens; and we'd see you next year at Cannes. Alas, you elided a key point: Harvey isn't paying for it.

No one is, in fact. It'll probably be made, maybe even by your May 2009 deadline. Meanwhile, in a move pulled unusually early from the dogeared Weinstein Textbook, the press is doing your fundraising for you. We'd give you Provincetown if not for the embarrassing leaks that followed this week, one after another — the kickdowns to Nikki Finke ("Quentin Tarantino is talking to Brad Pitt"!) and now this Inglorious Basterds [sic] script over at Vulture, itself the venerated "basterd" offspring of your insolvent patron's public studio-shopping. Mission accomplished, we suppose, if overexposure is what you had in mind. The anonymous media saturation is supposed to come just before the release, not just before the money runs out.

So while we know it's a slow news month, and while we know you've got a deadline, really, QT — is this what it has come to? Is your loyalty to the Weinsteins worth suffocating your work in the crib or pulling the rug out from under your own persona? We always knew you loved exploitation, but come on. Dump those chumps and reclaim a little pride; you deserve it. And if you determine you don't, fine. Just quit bringing us down with you.

Love,

Defamer

[Photo Credit: AFP]

The day on which the Thank God We're Working Summer TV Press Tour got its start was one of singular euphoria. ...

So thrilled were the critics with the whole still-employed/Beverly Hills/expense-account thing, they generously overlooked TV One following its first session, on racism in America, with one that kicked off with homophobic remarks made by a guy who appears to be one of the new co-hosts of TV One show Black Men Revealed.

And, hours later, they also graciously let it slide when Florence Henderson — born 1934 — slipped in a reference to herself as being part of the baby boom generation...

*GUNSHOT*

And this is one of the good items — a self-effacing glimpse into the abyss of modern culture, where ex-SAG president Ed Asner predictably wheezes on behalf of an actors strike, the Hallmark Channel cannibalizes the very bones of cable television and Ted Koppel fakes what little funk remains beneath his ever-thickening species of wig. Sign us up, seriously. How did we ever overlook the credentialing process?

We think we know, actually: Having proven its irrelevance after nobody — not readers, not viewers, nobody except perhaps the overextended networks and publishers who pay for it all, and certainly not us — even noticed when the WGA strike necessitated its cancellation last January, the TCA press tour is but a holdover of entitlement and uselessness, all but invisible, little but dead. Which is to say: Make it stop. Dogs, ponies, shows — drown them all, pocket the money, make better TV and hire back the swaths of critical dead who gave half a fuck before polishing network turds became the law of the land.

Or just call it even. We don't even care at this point as long as the publicity reach-around in TV, film, politics and pretty much any measurable media ecology makes so few people happy or even remotely intrigued. Just make it stop. Katherine Heigl doesn't need your defenses, Chandra Wilson. Olivia Munn and Kevin Pereira's "romantic tension"? Kill yourselves. Mark Cuban on day-and-date film releases for the trillionth time? He can afford to be wrong for 20 lifetimes, but beat writers fall for it year after year after year.

So, TCA press tour attendees? Hello? We love you as people, support you as peers and just want to see you happy. Really. And we know your editors will take it rough, but they'll get over it, and anyway, it's time: Put this dog down.

• That Sputtering Sound You Hear? Another Press Tour Revs Up [Washington Post]