Link Narcissustic

Box Office Mojo The Tourist with Depp & Jolie will be opening in 2010. Time to adjust those Oscar charts? Yeah, yeah. I'll try to start this weekend.
Rope of Silicon mixes Inception music over Black Narcissus images for a 2010 trailer for the 1947 classic. Neato (if a bit spoilery)
Mighty God King P.S.A: Fozzy vs. Pac-Man (?!)
I Need My Fix pics from the premiere of The Switch. In a just world Juliette Lewis would be 1,000 times more famous than Jennifer Aniston. You know it's true.
Dennis Cozzalio just turned 50 and celebrates with a funny post. (Mmmm, brains.) Go wish him a happy 1/2 century year! I mean it.


Camp Blood True Blood "Rolling Stone" cover now made extra gay!
DListed Speaking of... Alexander Skarsgard cracks me up. So casual about his scorchingness. What would Daddy Stellan think of all of this?
popbytes has my favorite reaction to this whole sockless news. How do you really feel about this "news" Jeremy? Quit hedging!
Ginger Williams made nesting dolls of Golden Girls and Steel Magnolias. Wha...?
The Entertainment Junkie remembers Lost in Translation and thinks Sofia Coppola's Oscar is a bit of a cheat (in a complimentary way!)
BlogStage Jenelle meets Dennis Quaid. I love it when writers meeting their acting idols. Sweet.

Off Screen
Tom Scott I love these warning labels to place on bad journalism. My favorite is the press release one. So many blogs are like that. Sigh. Though you can't really stick stickers on a blog. Can you? You wouldn't be able to see your screen when you click away!
Just Jared Ricky Martin's memoir is called Me. That's all they could come up with?

And finally, for no reasons other than it made me laugh, excuse me, lol -- and I am the type that reads scifi/fantasy novels -- and I'm in a juvenile mood (sorry!) try this hilarious raunchy ode to sci-fi novelist. NSFW unless you're on headphones.

The Golden Girls. Rue McClanahan (1934-2010)

And then there was one. Rue McClanahan, best known as "Blanche" on the eternal sitcom The Golden Girls has passed away at 76 after years of health problems. That leaves only the increasingly popular Betty White as the last Golden Girl standing, there to receive all the love we have left for these awesome women.


Rose (White) was my favorite but Blanche (McClanahan) the runner up in the laugh-generation department for me (I've always loved the saucy dames). I was just thinking about The Golden Girls yesterday because my mind was drifting to the upcoming Emmy nominations. The Emmys are often quite terrible about divvying up the goods, giving way too many prizes to the same shows and performers over the years. But in the case of The Golden Girls, the Emmy voters seem to have a very welcome and secret conspiracy to spread the wealth; All four of the women won one statue for their famous characters. Betty won it in '86, Rue in '87 and Bea & Estelle both took it home in '88. Other famously strong ensembles (like Friends and Sex & the City) didn't have any such "you're all winners!" awards luck. Only Cheers comes to mind immediately as a similarly lucky recipient of "spread the wealth" mentality: Woody Harrelson, Shelley Long, Bebe Neuwirth, Kirstie Alley, Ted Danson, Rhea Pearlman all won that golden winged woman for their efforts.

<--- Rue co-starred with Dustin Hoffman in Broadway's "Jimmy Shine" in 1969 (photo src)

"Blanche" as a character seemed to fit Rue like a glove (though she was originally intended for Betty) and will easily dominate memories of her acting work. Maybe it was all those husbands (she married six times) that gave her such facility with that man-crazy character?

But Blanche is not the whole story. Rue had been a working actress since the 1950s when she first hit the stage. In fact, she returned to Broadway for a stint as "Madame Morrible" in Wicked just five years ago. She also appeared in 21 movies over the years including They Might Be Giants (1971), the early gay film Some of My Best Friends Are... (1971) and post-Blanche comedies like Out to Sea (1997) and, inexplicably, Starship Troopers (1997).

Blanche seemed to prize her body above all but Rue showed real heart. She fought actively for both the ethical treatment of animals and gay rights. Thank her for being a friend.
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Liz Lemon-Green

Today's Must Read: Brian Lynch has uncovered the truth about the brilliant 30 Rock. It's The Muppet Show reborn. Lynch really proves his thesis. No wonder I love the show so much! This has to be the best copy with no quality resolution lost since The Golden Girls shaved off a few decades, moved to New York City and started sipping cosmos.

Goodbye Dorothy Zbornak

Less than a year after we lost her television mother, Estelle Getty, television superstar Beatrice Arthur has passed away. We always knew her as "Bea" but her first name was actually "Bernice".

She'll live forever in reruns with both the trailblazing Maude and the blockbuster sitcom Golden Girls to her credit. She won EMMYs for both characters. Every once in a blue moon she lent her indelible sharp tongued comedy to the screen, most memorably as "Vera Charles" in Mame, a reprisal of her TONY winning performance for the screen.

Bea was born way back in 1922 when the movies were still silent. If it seems like she's always been an elderly woman, we can chalk that up to her unglamorous no-nonsense celebrity persona and the fact that she didn't become truly famous until she was in her 40s. It was a good long life and we have a very celebrated career to remember her by. The Boyfriend and I recently rented Maude (we'd never seen it) and were so impressed that everything we'd heard about its politics was true. You could never make a network television show like that today. We've regressed.

I last saw Bea on stage during her musical one woman show Just Between Friends in 2002. Today I'm wishing I'd clapped and whistled a little louder when she took her final bow.
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