Results tagged “rogerfriedman”

We thought Cate Blanchett was cool ever since we became fans of hers after Oscar and Lucinda, but she even manages to remain interesting while talking to Fox News' Roger Friedman, the pandering gossip columnist. After the premiere for her new film, The Missing (in frontier America, she teams up with estranged father, played by Tommy Lee Jones, to rescue her daughter), Blanchett tells him, "I didn't know how to shoot a gun or hold it. So my husband said, 'Just hold it the way that Sonic Youth holds their guitars.' And it worked." Her husband is cool, too.

P. Diddy managed to make good on his desire to complete the ING NYC Marathon in under 4 hours yesterday. An impressive job, considering that he has only been training for eight weeks (people train for months, if not a year) and the Times reports that his legs seized at mile 12 and that his sports physician says "he's hurting right now" (but he made his post-marathon press conference, of course). Also in the Times coverage of Diddy's running of the city: "[S]everal runners also had signs on their T-shirts — 'Where is P-Diddy?' and 'I want to beat P-Diddy.'" Diddy tells the Post today that the fundraising was not a publicity stunt and that he won't be back next year.

Everyone is trying to get to the bottom of David Gest's claims that Liza got stronger when she liquored up. Times reporter Michael Brick takes his assignment seriously and asks the New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services, a bartender at Russian Samovar, and a country singer in Brooklyn if vodka really can make someone super strong. Bartender Joseph Volovnik says, "It can make you fearless, not stronger. Why not stronger? Well, I'm just a bartender. I would say crazier." Gothamist loves this kind of journalism! And we must get back to the Russian Samovar soon.

Hyperbolic, Miramax bandying, egotistical and frankly hysterical gossip columnist Roger Friedman reports that Jerry Orbach may be moving over to a potential fourth Law and Order spin-off, which would be about juries. A fourth L&O comes as no surprise, but Gothamist wonders what Detective Lennie Briscoe would be doing with juries all the time - is he constantly on the stand, trying to convince juries that even though he didn't have a warrant, the search's evidence, though inadmissable, is very damning? But we do agree with Friedman about Tamara Tunie who we got to know as Jessica Griffin on As The World Turns and plays the coroner on L&O SVU: She deserves a spin-off of her own - Law and Order: Medical Examiner's Office. [Via readers Samae & Alison]

Roger Friedman who writes a sort of gossip column at Fox News's website has always struck me as the music and entertainment industries' Dominick Dunne: incredibly well-connected, smart, hysterical, self-important, and above all, totally biased. He's great for the music industry's insider perspective - he was on the pulse of the Alicia Keys publicity machine, as well as was a willing messenger for it. But I can't take his tastes seriously - especially when he thinks that Chicago is the best movie of the year. He also thinks the About Schmidt screenplay was better than About a Boy, but maybe that's because he's old. (Yeah, I'm being ageist, but About Schmidt is a huge boring downer and Jack is basically doing his usual schtick. Who cares?)

As a hopeless cinephile, I feel that the year I spend watching movies is like having a crush on some unattainable person. It makes me feel alive, with all the planning and dreaming and effort I put into it, and somehow, even when I see a bad movie, it’s okay, because it’s one of the knocks I take in wishing that maybe this in time, after paying $10+ for a movie, it might reward my desperate passion with an enlightening moment that can transcend time and place. (For the record, that includes Owen Wilson’s goofiness, Katharine Hepburn trying to hit Cary Grant, and the way Christopher Doyle moves a camera.)