Bride Wars, Programming the Nation?, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: The Making of the Motion Picture”, The Air Loom Mind Control Machine, and more...

“I’m working! I don’t go to your job and knock the dicks out of your mouth.” - Brilliant comedian Kathy Griffin to some drunk heckler while hosting CNN’s New Year’s Eve telecast from Times Square with Anderson ”The Silver Fox” Cooper.

It's a line from Mr. Show, but you have got to hand it to Kathy Griffin for using it on CNN!

BlindGossip.com.

Preacher Kneeling for More Than Prayer. Which celebrity pastor - who is pals with several noted dignitaries - better start praying that his hypocrisy isn’t exposed? Like many religious conservatives, he loves to preach about family values and he has spoken out against same-sex marriage. Meanwhile, behind his own family’s mega-mansion is a guest house where our preacher cozies up with his own special male companion.

Movies Opening This Week

“The Unborn” (NO)

 

“Bride Wars” (NO).

“Bride Wars” will make you hate brides.

 

Best friends forever (known as “BFF”) Liv (Kate Hudson, also, one of the movie’s producers) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) are obsessed about only one stated and defined ambition in life: getting married at the Plaza in June. This is not some shabby chic affair. A June Plaza wedding must cost in excess of $200,000, maybe more!

For Liv, a very successful, focused, and tough lawyer, the cost is within her financial range; for Emma, an elementary school teacher, she has saved for 10 years (and will be paying off it off for another ten). Liv and Emma have sweet live-in boyfriends. After both get engaged, their goals are on preparing the biggest, greatest weddings ever conceived by mortals.

I learned a lot about planning a wedding. Its ugly.

For brides-to-be, the Maid of Honor is very important. After meeting with one of the most expensive wedding planners in New York City, Marion St. Claire (weird faced Candice Bergen), their planned dates at the Plaza get double-booked and they are both set for the same date. Neither one will change the date or location so mayhem ensues. Life-long friends, Liv and Emma are hell-bent on ruining the other’s wedding. Silly antics, but nothing evil, vicious or funny, occurs.

These formula movies have absolutely no regard for the audience’s knowledge of the financial situation presented on the screen. Do you just blow off a wedding that cost $200,000? What about all the family members?

How much does Liv’s Vera Wang “Virginia Gown” cost? It looks like something Scarlet O’Hara would have worn to her first wedding. The gown retails for $18,000. That doesn’t include the sales tax.

Neither woman has other worthy girlfriends, so Liv has to ask her office assistant to be her Man of Honor and Emma has to ask fellow teacher from hell, Deb (Kristen Johnston), to be her Maid of Honor. Johnston does a terrific job with this self-centered, vile character. All comedies must have this slob that infects a lead’s life. Johnston goes balls out, and, just as long as she doesn’t demand to do a lead in a love story or Shakespeare, has a nice supporting player career. Currently reigning Jane Lynch, you now have some competition!

I hate myself for liking Kate Hudson. She’s smart and knows that she can’t play the dumb blond roles. I haven’t been kind to her in the distant past (“The Four Feathers”). I really liked “The Skelton Key” and I would love to see Hudson do more demanding roles. There are only so many “My Best Friend’s Girl” an actress can do.

As a producer, Hudson gave herself so much blond hair extensions that it is a leading character in “Bride Wars”. Hudson’s hair overwhelmed every scene she was in. It was intentional. I barely noticed Hathaway when she and Hudson’s hair were in ascene together. Hathaway was a good sport and maybe she needed the paycheck. And, with “Rachel Getting Married”, Hathaway knows she can do a chic flick produced by Kate Hudson without causing too much damage to her career.

Had the writers, Greg DePaul, Casey Wilson and June Diane Raphael (it took 3 writers to come up with nothing clever or funny?) or the director, Gary Winick, gone into “The Wedding Crashers” raunchy terrain, “Bride Wars” could have been a solid hit. Instead, we get two 30 year olds being childish and not being very good and truthful friends. And when they get nasty, it’s just a minor slip on the path to The Plaza.

What I’m Reading.

If you loved the movie, this coffee table book is sensational! “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: The Making of the Motion Picture” (Hardcover) by David Fincher, Eric Roth, and Robin Swicord. My special thanks to the staff at Allied Advertising (Lori, Aaron, Zared, Patrick, Eric and Jessica) and Paramount Pictures for the generous holiday gift of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: The Making of the Motion Picture”. This gorgeous book has all the “making of” elements: the costumes, makeup design, pages from the script with corrections, the set designs and the magical creativity that came together to make the stunning film.

Programming the Nation? Writer, director, producer Jeff Warrick is doing completion work on his documentary film, “Programming the Nation?” Among the prominent people Warrick has interviewed is John B. Alexander!

According to imdb.com’s summary, “many authorities, since the late 1950's subliminal content has been tested and delivered through all forms of media, at an increasingly alarming rate.

“Programming the Nation?” examines the purported uses, influences and potential subconscious side-effects of what's going on beneath the surface of advertising, film, music and political propaganda. Even the US military has been accused of using this technology in their Psychological Operations Unit (PSY OPS) campaign.

“This socially relevant documentary not only traces the history of this phenomenon, but seeks to determine the validity and potential threat that may or may not exist. Do you ever find yourself doing or buying things without any conscious reasoning? Why has consumer debt in America risen over 50% since 1990? How is it possible that the United States consumes about 25% of the world's resources while only making up 4.5% of the world's population? Are we all part of an elaborate scheme which has been programming the nation?”

I, for one, like being programmed to covet Louis Vuitton luggage.

Mind Control:

The Beginning. An 18th Century Mind Control Machine called The Air Loom. The first recorded human influencing machine (circa 1800) was the Air Loom. The Air Loom emerged from the mind of James Tilly Matthews, a bedlam inmate who had previously been embroiled in political intrigue during the French Revolution. Matthews believed the Air Loom ran on magnetic fluids and was operated by skilled pneumatic chemists who controlled the warp of the fluids that travelled out of the machine toward the intended victim.

The primary targets were MPs and the patients of mad houses (including Matthews himself). Targeted in coffee houses by “assassins” who worked the machine, their victims were primed with vapors, ready for the dreadful event-workings of the machine.

In 1810, the resident apothecary at the Royal Bethlem Hospital - Bedlam - wrote the first ever book-length psychiatric report on a mad patient's delusions. James Tilly Matthews has been called Patient Zero of the notion of mind control by an 'influencing machine'. I am familiar with many people who believe they are being harassed and having messages beamed at them through fillings, mysterious implants or TV sets, via hi-tech surveillance, MI5, Masonic lodges, UFOs, or my husband (for reasons not known to us or them).

Matthews was convinced that outside the grounds of Bedlam, in a basement cellar by London Wall, a gang of villains were controlling and tormenting his mind with diabolical rays. They were using a machine called an 'Air Loom' sending thoughts, feelings and sensations directly into Matthews' brain. As a result of the Air Loom, Matthews was tormented constantly by delusions, physical agonies, fits of laughter and being forced to parrot whatever nonsense they chose to feed into his head. http://www.nthposition.com/theairloomgangjames.php, http://www.amazon.com/Air-Loom-Gang-Matthews-Visionary/dp/1568582978, http://www.theairloom.org/