The children’s book, “Go The F**k to Sleep,” by Adam Mansbach reached #1 on the Amazon bestseller as a result of becoming a huge viral hit. For the audio book version, the publisher hired both Samuel L. Jackson and German director Werner Herzog to narrate prose such as the following:

The cats nestle close to their kittens now.
The lambs have laid down with the sheep.
You’re cozy and warm in your bed, my dear
Please go the fuck to sleep

I wonder how Morgan Freeman feels about being left out. He can always hold out hope for, “Go the F**k to Sleep 2.”

When I went to see Woody Allen‘s Midnight in Paris at Landmark Century City last week, I was appalled by the pre-show “entertainment” as they so call it. I had entered the theater with a smile. I had buttery popcorn with ranch seasoning, it was a cool 72 degrees,and I was excited to see the new Woodman flick, which had garnered his best reviews since Mia Farrow was still one of his stock company actors. But when the lights went down, instead of trailers, the audience was greeted with TV commercials, including one of those sanctimonious ads for MSNBC with Rachel Maddow where she Read more…

It’s hard to believe, but director Steven Spielberg once slapped his name on a project lamer than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The year: 1996. The project: a game –or a CD-Rom, rather–aptly titled Director’s Chair, developed by Knowledge Adventure, where YOU the player got to help write, produce, direct and edit a major motion picture starring Quentin Tarantino, in his bad acting heyday, and Jennifer Aniston, back when Friends was still new and fresh. This was supposed to be a tool for aspiring filmmakers. The problem was that the game had no stakes. Everything felt predetermined, as if you were watching a bad movie unfold on your desktop. Read more…

Long before Lady Gaga‘s big monster hit ruled the airwaves, Dusty Springfield recorded a song called titled “Born This Way” as part of her comeback album “Reputation” in 1990.

To target Emmy voters. Pee-wee Herman and Jimmy Kimmel have both aped Melissa Leo‘s self-financed Oscar ads. The question is, if either of them win, are they also going to imitate her expletive laden acceptance speech?

Lars Von Trier‘s “shocking” behavior has become a Cannes Film Festival tradition almost as much as the unrolling of a red carpet or attention seeking women posing topless for the scores of paparazzi that descend on the event every year. In 2009, the press conference for his film Antichrist, devolved into a yelling and screaming match between several journalists and the director, who was irritated at some of the pointed questions that were asked. At this year’s festival, during the press conference for his film Melancholia Von Trier took the opportunity to tell a captive audience of journalists:

I understand Hitler.

Read more…

At the corner of Schiller and Clark in downtown Chicago, the bus stop for Green Lantern achieved a level of marketing synchronicity a studio can only hope for.

Whether you like it or not, writer/director Kevin Smith, of Clerks fame, seems to be in the news more often than Kim Kardashian. Whether he’s  buying season hockey tickets, fake-protesting his upcoming self-distributed thriller Red State, or tweeting about a possible new flick, the man knows how to get attention. Remember his Twitter feud with Southwest Airlines, where he tried to rally a social movement after being kicked off a plane? That was all his doing. He wrote the word “fat” to describe himself and set his rant free. Then the media attention kind of backfired on Smith, and he downplayed the feud. But there’s one feud that lives on; one grudge that will never die. That’s Howard Stern. Read more…

Last fall, Angela Bromstad the President of Primetime Entertainment at NBC released a statement following the network’s decision to give several new series full season pickup orders:

We are pleased with the quality of The Event, Law & Order: Los Angeles and Outsourced, and feel they are an important part of helping to re-build our schedule and our studio pipeline. We believe in these new series and the creative auspices behind them.

So much for all the goodwill. All of the above mentioned shows have since been cancelled. Although it struck out this season with the controversial and ratings challenged, Outsourced, the network is getting right back into the old fashioned sitcom business with two high profile shows that are set to debut this fall. Read more…