The New York Times: [emphasis added]

Ms. Streep said, laughing: “We’re not interested in King Lear’s politics. We’re not saying we would have voted for him.” She added: “What interested me was the part of someone who does monstrous things maybe, or misguided things. Where do they come from? How do those formulations begin, how do they solidify, calcify, become deficits? How do a person’s strengths become weaknesses? Look at me. I tend to go on too long. I’m a little dogmatic, and that could get really awful over time. If you are self-aware, as actors are, you let these things go into your pores, including criticism. I hate being criticized.”

Ms. Lloyd said: “So did Margaret Thatcher. But that’s understandable. She couldn’t show weakness. Imagine what the men would have said.” She added: “In parts of England now it’s a transgression even to consider her as a human being. She’s that monster woman, the she-devil. For me the point of the film was to find the human side.” And though hardly a Tory, she said she vividly recalled the moment when Mrs. Thatcher came to power. “Just as I remember not voting for her, I remember sitting in my room at university when the radio announced that she had been asked to form a government, and I went ‘Yes!’ It felt like one for our team.”

Ms. Streep nodded and said: “I did the same thing. We all thought if it can happen in England, class bound, socially rigid, homophobic — if they can elect a female leader over there, then it’s just seconds away in America.”

Gee, I really want to run out and support the movie now.

What about you English “homophobes?” Don’t you want to support Ms. Streep? After all, she is so much better than you.

Guess who is responsible for the above quote. Is it:

a.) Jacques Chirac
b.) Fidel Castro
c.) Vladimir Putin
d.) Captain Jean-Luc Picard

(Hint: The answer can be added to the list of reasons why Kirk was the better Starship captain.)

The answer is of course d., Captain Picard, lesser known as accented actor and British bore Patrick Stewart. The quote is from an interview Stewart gave to the now-defunct George magazine back in 2000. His candid comments inspire a few of my own: “A lot of your movies stink. Your career focus is based on money. TV viewers found your robot more interesting than you.”

I had remembered part of Stewart’s old George quote while researching actors and the irritating things they say. Originally, I had a different piece in mind entirely, but for some reason when I was finished I found that I’d wound up with a list top heavy with British actors who have made lots of money in America. The rest, lamentably, is not silence.

We nerds who grew up before VCRs had to learn Monty Python routines by heart from grainy PBS reruns. In addition to Python we had Leonard Rossiter’s brilliant title character in both The Rise and Fall and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, The Goodies, Fawlty Towers and, later on, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Blackadder. In those days all we had were the actors and their shows; there wasn’t an Internet to memorialize their every dopey off-screen utterance. Now all I can say is these guys sure make it tough to be an anglophile TV viewer in the 21st Century.

Monty Python’s Terry Jones, a once very funny man who has become the worst kind of dull, aging comedian, writes occasionally for The Observer in England. In a piece from 2002 entitled “Okay, George, make with the friendly bombs” he turns his tired satiric eye on President George W. Bush, Iraq and the larger War on Terror.

“To prevent terrorism by dropping bombs on Iraq is such an obvious idea,” he sarcastically begins, “that I can’t think why no one has thought of it before.”

The article takes the Bush Administration’s Iraq strategy and transplants it to Northern Ireland, thus proving… Actually, I don’t know what it proves, because the situation in Northern Ireland is entirely unlike that in Iraq and the larger Middle East, circa 2002. Except, inasmuch the terrorists in Northern Ireland share a cozy relationship with those in the Mideast, bombing Iraq could actually have helped to promote peace in Northern Ireland. But I don’t think that’s what “Fat Boring Old Git” (Python fans will get that, as will anyone who has seen Terry Jones lately) was going for.

Jones ends his sidesplitting piece, “So, sock it to Iraq, George. Let’s make the world a safer place.”

He did and, nearly a decade on and no thanks to Jones and his fellow travelers, it is.

At least Jones had the decency to mostly disappear thirty years ago, so we can remember him for what he was and not for what he has become. Unfortunately, his fellow Python John Cleese still lingers and occasionally flares up like a stubborn social disease that penicillin just won’t cure. In a recent interview (available on YouTube) Cleese reveals himself to be not only the condescending, irrelevant gasbag he’s been for decades, but a sufferer of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Basil Fawlty decided in the waning days of the Bush presidency that “the world is treating America now…like the village idiot of the international community” and that “the world thought (the 2000 election) was probably stolen.” He then launches into the usual black helicopter lunacy about Jeb Bush helping to steal Florida and sinister Bush 41 being the former head of the “Secret Service” (sic). But not to worry. The problems the world has with the US can be, Cleese says, “almost fixed like that by electing Obama, because it really indicates that this is not a backwoods, redneck, racist” country. Apparently Manuel’s frying pan and that falling moose head caused more than just a mild concussion to Mr. Fawlty.

It pains me to include the great Alan Rickman here but, thanks to a nasty comment he made about ill and long-retired Margaret Thatcher on a talk show a few years back, I knew I’d hit pay dirt. A little searching found an interview in Venice Magazine back in 1992 while Rickman was filming Bob Roberts. Rickman agrees with costar Gore Vidal and sums up their shared attitude thus: “We have to create monsters and war in order to justify the arms budget; this year it was Saddam Hussein, before that it was Noriega, before that Khadaffi and before that Castro. It looks like it might be Castro’s turn again soon.” So, Lord Voldemort really isn’t evil to Professor Snape, he’s just been created as a bogeyman by the Ministry of Magic to justify its polyjuice potion budget.

Hugh Laurie has found fame in the U.S. thanks to House, but it’s Blackadder’s idiot Prince George who took the stage to accept his People’s Choice Award in January 2009. From the UK’s Daily Mail:

And in a reference to the November’s election victory by US President-elect, Barack Obama, the 49-year-old actor said: “It’s a particular honour to be the people’s choice especially because the people have been choosing pretty well recently….I don’t know who won this award eight years ago, but that would be sort of double-edged, I think.”

Thank God Laurie’s ego is on the West Coast and Obama’s is on the East. The nation depends on keeping these two enormously inflated heads from meeting on a beach in Malibu lest the entire country flip around and start spinning like an out-of-control gyroscope.

It’s disappointing that so many British actors share the opinions of their battiest American counterparts, but an English accent only makes one smart in the movies. As for real life, is it too much to ask them to button their stiff upper lips when it comes to our politics?

To get back to that old George interview with Patrick Stewart. The erstwhile Professor X also has a final doozy of a quote. It is, he says, “laughable that the U.S. considers itself the land of opportunity.”

I assume, Locutus of Borg, that means you’ll be beaming back those millions of American dollars any day now.

Today’s Daily Mail:

Friends of Margaret Thatcher last night expressed their revulsion at a new film that shows her having nightmares about the miners’ strike and the Falklands War, while her late husband Denis appears as a ghost in a pink turban raging at her -‘insufferable’ selfishness.

Viewers invited to an early screening of the film, The Iron Lady, starring Meryl Streep as the former Prime Minister and Jim Broadbent as Sir Denis, were aghast at the way that it mocks her frail condition in recent years.

One called it ‘insulting’. Another said: ‘I didn’t come here to see a film about granny going mad.

One person who attended the event, organised by Anglo-French film-makers Pathe to test audience reaction, has given a detailed account to The Mail on Sunday.

In the film, Lady Thatcher constantly hallucinates, under the impression that her husband, who died in 2003, is still alive.
Pathe says the story is about ‘power and the price that is paid for power’ and claims her health is ‘treated with sensitivity’. It concedes the film is fiction but says it is ‘fair and accurate’.

Made by Mamma Mia! director Phyllida Lloyd, The Iron Lady is based on a script by UK screenwriter Abi Morgan, whose television drama credits include The Hour and Sex Traffic.

Friends of Lady Thatcher are also furious at the timing of the film, which is due to be released in January. The former Prime Minister has been forced to give up ¬public appearances following a series of strokes and is so poorly she was unable to attend the unveiling of a statue of her political ally Ronald Reagan in London last month.

Read full piece here.

It claimed, “Once you cut expenditure by more than 2% of GDP, instability increases rapidly … especially in terms of riots and demonstrations.”

The conclusion: governments fear austerity programs for this reaon.

Meaning, riots. Bloodshed. looting. And so on.

Which is a sad and scary point: what protects bloated government and entitlement is a visceral fear that if you take candy from a baby, that baby will hang you in the square.

I suppose that’s one reason to avoid cutting programs, if you’re a coward.

Bottom line: you cannot be held hostage by fear of unrest. You must always do the right thing, no matter the risk. For in a free country, the expectation should be for civility at all costs.

What guarantees that civility? Punishment? Fear of death?

Maybe.

I lived in London for three years, and the cops were great. But without guns, they seemed helpless against thuggery, and more inclined to give directions to drunks like me. It’s not their fault.

But couple that with idiots equating looters to victims, and it’s no wonder riots are manufactured purely for lurid fun.

Looking at England, it seems we’ve hit the edge of civilization – where left unprotected, a city will burn, because there is no will to prevent it.

Letting it happen, seems to be all we have left.

And if you disagree with me, you’re a racist homophobe.
Tonight:

Jim Norton

Matt McCall

Mahsa Saeidi aquis

Alec Baldwin has called on Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron to resign over his handling of the ongoing News of the World phone-hacking scandal.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has been at the centre of claims reporters at his now defunct U.K. tabloid, which he closed earlier this month, used a private investigator to illegally access voicemail messages belonging to royals, celebrities, and the families of crime victims.

Britain’s leader Cameron has been dragged into the controversy because he hired the newspaper’s former editor Andy Coulson as his communications director. …

In a post on his Twitter.com page, the actor writes, “Cameron should resign. England is filled with people who could do a better job.”

Full story here.

Coogan has built a rabid cult following in the U.S. to go with his more noticeable British stardom by alternately immersing himself in characters and impersonations so thoroughly he’s compared to the legendary Peter Sellers. Yet he’s also wildly popular back home for letting himself play the fool, Larry David-style, in a series of awkward and embarrassing filmed misadventures. And now he’s put both approaches together quite winningly in the new comedy “The Trip,” which has been doing strong and growing business at arthouses nationwide for the past couple of weeks.

In “The Trip,” which is actually a tightly edited mix of highlights from a BBC mockumentary series of the same name, Coogan teams up with his friendly rival and fellow comic Rob Brydon for a tour of Northern England’s finest restaurants. The idea is to combine humorous insights with genuine culinary opinions for a TV series, but while their stops at gourmet restaurants and deluxe bed and breakfasts offer up plenty of delicious  imagery, the actual focus of the film and their journey within it is to create a framework for the two leads’ non-stop and hilarious banter.

Coogan and Brydon are genuine friends and fantastic at one-upping each other here on screen. While director Michael Winterbottom – who previously directed Coogan as a wild British concert promoter in the cult classic “24 Hour Party People” – is at the helm, he knows that these two are at their best when they’re cutting loose with an endless string of hilarious impersonations, climaxing in a tour de force battle royale of who can do the best Sean Connery.

Yet “The Trip” does offer some surprising detours as well. In its rare quiet moments it serves as a thoughtful meditation on the price people like Coogan pay for putting so much of their personalities out into the public. Wherever he wanders on his own seeking a moment of peace and quiet, someone – even in the most remote of villages – is ready to jump out from a corner and scare the daylights out of him with impersonations of his comedy bits.

The film also manages to draw a subtle portrait of the differences that grow between even the best of friends when one takes on the commitment of marriage and family while the other continues trying to live the immature life of a playboy. Brydon is the family man and gradually shows the emotional strain of being away from his loved ones, while Coogan engages in emotionally empty one-night stands that are unseen yet end with the women sneaking out on him in the morning.

Adding the icing of genuine emotions to the rich cake of their zesty performances, Coogan and Brydon have created a film in which longtime fans and those who are new to their charms will all be amply rewarded with 90 minutes of laughter.

So over in England (a country), some gay activists want to cancel a gay pride parade because it will cause “community tension,” between gays and Muslims.

The march was a response to anti-gay stickers placed around town, but some worry this event could hurt Muslim feelings.

Here’s part of a letter from a group of concerned types, who claim the march will “oppress other marginalized groups.”

“We want both homophobia and Islamophobia addressed as a collective problem and not feed one against the other, we do not recognise these as distinct categories.”

So, let’s rewind: homophobia and Islamophobia are the same thing.

Okay..I gotta ask: do you think they would also group homophobia and anti-Christian attacks as one and the same? Do they see crude jokes aimed at Mormons as no different than anti-gay jokes?

No way.

So why are they embracing Muslims as marginalized brethren – and not others?

Well, for one, it’s HARDER to protest around people who “really” hate you.

So better to stay out of Islam’s way, and target the gentler dissenters, like white pudgy Christians – the people who remind you of dad, and don’t want you dead.

And so here we have fear, masked as tolerance, forcing gays into contortions even circus performers wouldn’t try.

I mean, how can the gay left defend a religion whose practitioners want gays punished? They’re joining hands with folks who, in other more extreme lands, might cut off theirs.

Anyway, let me remind you that I hate all parades, so I don’t mind if it’s cancelled.

Marching to celebrate something you “are,” as opposed to ” have achieved,” seems odd. And later, I often wake up naked in a bush.

And if you disagree with me, you’re a racist homophobe.

Tonight,

Jill Dobson

Paul Mecurio

Dana Vachon.

 Great show!

The problem with Paltrow taking on the role of a troubled country-western singer is that she’s vying for an award portraying the very people she has openly expressed contempt.  That being hard working people who live in the states she flies over traveling to New York and Los Angeles.

In 2006 Paltrow, talking to a Portuguese newspaper said, “I love the English lifestyle, it’s not as capitalistic as America. People don’t talk about work and money, they talk about interesting things at dinner. I like living here because I don’t fit into the bad side of American psychology. The British are much more intelligent and civilized than the Americans.”

Elitist snobbery like that knows no bounds when unchecked, so when you’re a Hollywood star it’s easy to follow up your asshat view with a second musing on your country.

In 2009, while in Spain doing a TV show about food for PBS, she told the Spanish press this “(Spain) is so different from the United States. It seemed to have a history, and the buildings are years and years and years old. Here in the United States an old building is about 17 (years old), and over there it’s from 500 B.C., it’s incredible,” said Paltrow. “Also, the way people live over there. They seem to enjoy life a little bit more. They aren’t running around as much as in New York. They enjoy time with the family.”

Gwyneth Paltrow wraps her self in pretty clothes and names he children after fruit, while conveniently forgetting that without all that filthy-capitalist-American-money, she’d be known only as that waify blonde girl who dated Brad Pitt instead of the snotty blonde girl who married a prepubescent Muppet. When Hollywood stars aim to enrich themselves by portraying the very people they hold in contempt, its time movie goers start calling “Bull Shit!”

Here’s a rule to remember: someone who still thinks the anarchy symbol is an edgy sign of revolutionary bravado, is also someone who still sponges off mummy and daddy – and yet never pays for a drink. In short, they are babies.

So, yeah – tuition limits are going up to 9,000 pounds – in our money that’s $14,500. Which, as Americans can attest, ain’t much. That’s a used Jetta with 70 thousand miles. Or three hours with Ashley Dupree.

The gov also wants to scrap some subsidies for students, which will definitely cut into their hair gel.

So, how did this happen?

Well, the West is witnessing the continuation of the first real global tantrum – stretching from Greece, to France, to Berkeley, to London. The babies in every country – so used to entitlements – are now being told that the piper must be paid. But because no one taught them the basics of finance – their only reply is “wah, wah,” and “wah.”

Thanks to education fetishists, there’s a belief that there should be no price tag on classes like “Lady Gaga’s Effect on Transgender Truckdrivers,” and that the only limits to your education is your desire to be educated.

Sounds like something you’d see stuck on the bumper of a Prius, but that’s because most political views on entitlements are based on sticker sloganeering: feel good sentimentality unattached to the consequences of cost.

Anyway, they should be rioting over stuff that matters – like the doubling of cheap alcohol to curb binge drinking. I mean, what’s the point of an education if you can’t remember it?

And if you disagree with me, you’re a racist, homophobie, anarchophobe.

Tonight: 

Brooke Goldstein!

Ryan Reise!

Father Jonathan Morris!

other stuff, too (hopefully, my mom)

HYPOCRITES

Torrent Freak reports on what’s going on and where things are headed over in England, but it’s all about protecting Hollywood’s product, isn’t it?:

For most people going to a cinema is a good night out. Only a few realize that they are often subjecting themselves to extreme and privacy invading security measures that most airports could only dream of. Filmgoers are already being carefully watched for suspicious behavior by Big Brother’s cameras, but soon this technology will be upgraded with sophisticated emotion recognition software.

Hindering piracy is priority number one for movie theaters nowadays. In dealing with a tiny minority, theater owners are slowly alienating their customers by employing measures such as metal detectors, night-vision goggles, bag and body searches and audio watermarks. Everyone is treated as a potential pirate. …

One of the available anti-camcorder solutions is offered by Aralia Systems, an Orwellian company that specializes in monitoring services and technologies. Besides traditional CCTV cameras, Aralia Systems offers elaborate piracy tracking devices. One of their products is an anti-camcorder system that projects infrared light beams onto a cinema audience. These beams are reflected back off camcorders and will trigger several alarm bells. …

TorrentFreak spoke with project leader Dr. Abdul Farooq from Machine Vision Lab, who told us that their main goal is to extend the functionalities of the current anti-piracy systems. Basically, it comes down to extracting as much information from movie goers as possible, by adding analytics software that can read people’s physical reactions as well as their emotions.

“We want to devise instruments that will be capable of collecting data that can be used by cinemas to monitor audience reactions to films and adverts and also to gather data about attention and audience movement,” Dr. Farooq said.

So the next time some cynical cop in some procedural decides to take a cynical shot at the Patriot Act or some woman-in-jeopardy film puts that woman in further jeopardy through the abuse of the same or you hear some movie star mouth off about civil liberties, be sure to make a mental note that the movie you’re watching might be watching you, and is most certainly the product of an industry more interested in protecting “Eat Pray Love” than innocent lives — is more interested in selling popcorn than your family’s security — puts a higher value on their own bottom line than the stopping of terrorism.