Wednesday, July 22, 2015

The Entertainment Weekly Annual Comic-Con Party

Once upon a time, Comic-Con was a niche event for fanboys and fangirls only. Cue 2015, when the multi-day powwow is an A-list draw with plenty of juicy movie news to boot. So if the starlets were sharply dressed for the annual Entertainment Weekly Comic-Con part at the Hard Rock San Diego hotel this weekend, they were certainly there to impress. See: Lea Micheleas the lady in red, with this unforgettable fiery red silk gazar jacket and matching shorts from Zuhair Murad Spring 2015 collection.

Michele wasn't the only refreshing vision, there was plenty of variety on the red carpet from Emma Roberts skinny column toSarah Paulson's tea-length number. In fact, Paulson was checking out the San Diego skyline, while snapping photos with Once Upon a Time's Lana Parrilla. Meanwhile, Community’s Yvette Nicole Brown caught up with pal Aisha Tyler in the hot dog line, whileSharknado star Ian Ziering was in an animated conversation with Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe, by a roaring fire pit.

Even Jennifer Lawrence, looking gorgeous in a body-hugging white knit dress, came to put her feet up after a busy weekend, chatting with friends in a cabana until 1:30 a.m. While a glance around the room proved that the once casual convention had turned into a fashion forward affair – Katie Cassidy rocked a black and gold number by Balmain, Ashley Madekwe sparkled in Saint Laurent, and Maisie Williams rocked a custom made Alexander Lewis—Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D’s Adrienne Palicki noted you can never be too overdressed for the Con. “You can do anything and nobody will notice, because there's somebody with horns next to you,” laughed the actress, who wore a sparkling Alice + Olivia dress to the fete. “It's fun!”
See all the top looks below! (And we included Sam Heughan from Outlander too just for the eye candy.)


Ashley Madekwe glimmered in Saint Laurent gold.


North AmericaSarah Paulson wore an edgy tea-length number.


North AmericaLily James went for a longer hemline.


Emma Roberts chose an Old Hollywood sinuous dress.


North AmericaBella Heathcote chose a dual-colored party frock.


North AmericaMaisie Williams's slim dress by Alexander Lewis flaunted cut-outs on the back and sides.


North AmericaJaimie Alexander worked separates. She's wearing a Elisabetta Franchini skirt, Rebecca Minkoff jacket, A.L.C. top and Saint Laurent heels.



North America And Sam Heughan was...red carpet eye candy.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

To fight Isis in Last Blood


PRINTA A ARambo's unquenchable thirst to shoot things whilst wearing a headband has previously taken him to Vietnam, Thailand, Afghanistan and Burma, but in Last Blood he is reportedly set to head to Syria, where he will face his toughest enemies yet: Isis.
UPDATE: A rep for Stallone has denied the rumour, which it seems stemmed from a fake new site. "Sylvester Stallone did not attend Comic-Con 2015, and consequently there was no official remark from him regarding Rambo made there at the event," they said. "This is not an accurate report."
If nothing else, the rumour might have stirred the project back into action, which was been gestating for some time.
"We have teams scouting Iraq and parts of Syria where Isis have their greatest strongholds," Stallone reportedly announced at Comic-Con. "We're working with the locals there to help deliver the most intense and realistic Rambo movie experience ever."
If it's realism he's going for, I guess this means Rambo will get caught in a lengthy war of attrition with the militant group (or a fictionalised version of them), or else Stallone is going gonzo and will mount an assault on these 'strongholds' himself with the cameras rolling.

Thursday, July 9, 2015

Beautiful women be funny is true?


Tina Fey poses with her Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series for
Commentary
“In the history of the motion-picture business, the number of beautiful, really beautiful women — a Lucille Ball — that are funny, is impossible to find,” former Disney CEO Michael Eisner said in a conversation about mindfulness, of all things, with Goldie Hawn at the Aspen Ideas Festival. “The hardest artist to find is a beautiful, funny woman. By far.” Then he added: “Boy, am I going to get in trouble.”
Eisner is not really in trouble. He’s merely the catalyst for the latest round of a tired, long-running discussion about women and comedy.
“Are women funny?” is one of those questions with an obvious answer that, nevertheless, works reliably as click-bait and talk show fodder.
Are funny women beautiful? Are beautiful women funny? Is there traffic on the 405? Are you spending too much time on your phone? Do America’s gun laws need reforming? Is Hollywood going to reboot that superhero franchise again? Is there a pill for that? Is racism still a thing? Should you call your mother more often? Is Christopher Hitchens dead? Do we still need feminism?
I’d prefer we dedicate our conversations, both digital and analog, to far thornier questions. Should I spend $12 on that smoothie? Is this sexism or does that man just hate me personally? What’s the deal with gluten? How do we solve entrenched income inequality? Do open relationships work? Are humans alone in the universe? How relevant are the opinions of that dead white guy? How relevant are the opinions of that still-breathing white guy?
Alas, we are not discussing any of these pressing issues today. We are, once again, being forced to address whether women can be both desirable and humorous.
The perpetual recycling of this nonquestion has its roots not in genuine confusion — which can be interesting — but in entitled bloviating. And such entitlement is, by this point, dreadfully boring.
“It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don’t like something, it is empirically not good,” wrote Tina Fey in her autobiography, “Bossypants.” “I don’t like Chinese food, but I don’t write articles trying to prove it doesn’t exist.”
If there’s any truth to what Eisner said, it’s on the level of truism: Most people are neither really beautiful nor really funny; almost no one is universally regarded as both. Humor, like beauty, is subjective.
Is the world full of really beautiful, really funny women? I happen to think so. But I am not bound by casting norms. I don’t think a woman needs to meet Hollywood’s exacting physical standards in order to tell a sidesplitting joke or even to carry a feature-length comedy. Given the box-office performance of movies such as “Pitch Perfect 2” and “Spy” this summer, I am not alone.
In essence, Eisner wasn’t saying beautiful, funny women don’t exist. He was admitting that he, along with many of his peers in Hollywood, have a problem finding funny women sufficiently beautiful and beautiful women sufficiently funny.
Seen in this light, his comment was less a sweeping statement on the status of women in comedy than it was a cry for help. He should be dealing with this on a couch in his therapist’s office, not on a stage in Aspen with Goldie Hawn.
Even Christopher Hitchens, whose 2007 Vanity Fair essay, “Why Aren’t Women Funny,” is a must-read for cultural critics seeking a lesson in disguising their personal shortcomings as trenchant commentary, admitted that his analysis was personal.
“The achievement of my essay (was) to make sexier women try harder to amuse me,” he said later. “Well, that was my whole plan to start with.” Turn your head if you feel yourself starting to vomit.
Humor is power, as columnist Meghan Daum noted on the occasion of Hitchens’ death in 2011. Usually the extent to which men find women funny is correlated with the extent to which they’re comfortable with women wielding power that goes beyond their physical beauty or sexual appeal.
It’s not surprising that Eisner cited Lucille Ball as an exception to his rule that funny and beautiful rarely coexist. “No, I’m not in favor of women’s liberation,” Ball told the Free-Lance Star in 1970, at the height of the feminist second wave. “I don’t have anything I want to be liberated from.”
Some women are able to meet Hollywood’s exacting beauty standards. Many are not. Both groups, I can assure Eisner and his colleagues, are capable of hilarity. The hardest thing to find is actually a Hollywood power broker who realizes physical perfection is not a prerequisite for telling a good joke.