Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
March Madness nears its close this weekend with the matchups of the Final Four men’s college basketball teams, with only one emerging Monday night as the NCAA titleholder. Hoop dreams don’t have to end, though. Thanks to hardworking video game programmers, another season is as nearby as your video game system.
Oprah Winfrey had better start taking some tips from Suze Orman, the financial whiz who writes for Winfrey’s magazine. Seems our billionairess is so cautious about investing her own money in the stock market that she once hoarded $50 million in cash, calling it her personal “bag-lady fund.”
Jamie Kennedy is nowhere to be found. At first, you wonder whether he’s wandering around in disguise as a bellhop, waiting to fool you as he does on his TV series, “JKX: The Jamie Kennedy Experiment,” which airs at 7 p.m. Sundays on WGN-Channel 9. On this twisted homage to “Candid Camera,” Kennedy dresses up as different characters and fools people into thinking he’s some funky Valley Boy taking their daughter out on a blind date or an insensitive boss who makes his temp fire the entire staff.
The Winter Olympics come to a close on Sunday. But the competition can live on in a slew of games for Playstation 2, GameCube and XBox. Our distinguished panel of international judges (OK, there are only two of us–but we’re of Irish and Korean descent) evaluated the games and awarded them with gold, silver and bronze honors. In one heated tie, there were two winners for the gold. But then, that precedent already has been set.
“I didn’t always make the smartest choices, but I also wasn’t afraid to fail,” says Cher, phoning from her Los Angeles home. “If you make a mistake, you pick yourself up and move ahead. If I didn’t do that, I’d be crawled up in a ball on my sofa for the rest of my life.”
Jinkies! The Scooby gang is up to it again in this delightful theatrical production of “Scooby-Doo! in Stagefright–Live on Stage.” Presented as a long-lost episode of the late 1960s cartoon series, the production no doubt was concocted to drum up interest in the film version of the series, which will premiere in June. A trailer for the movie starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. was shown during intermission.
Aaron Carter is 14 years old, looks like a carbon copy of his big brother Nick of the Backstreet Boys and works the crowd with the savvy and finesse of a Vegas showman. That’s a dangerous combination when you’ve got an arena full of young girls who are hopped up on sugar and adrenaline. But guess what? This kid delivers. Give him a couple more years to pick better songs that cater to his rock ‘n’ roll sensibilities and there’s the potential for a career beyond the kid-pop phase.
The opening sequence of “Shiri” is so frenetic and violent that some filmgoers may wince at the unrelenting brutality. But if you can make it through the first few minutes, there’s cinematic eye candy waiting to enthrall you. One of the fiercest soldiers on an elite North Korean force is Hee, a young female sniper who shoots to kill and never misses. When enemy soldiers are hunted, she shows no feeling as she decapitates her prey. When she retires, she is given a solemn, heroic sendoff.
The first time Jason Schwartzman was on David Letterman’s show, the young actor had a case of the nerves. “I walked out there and it was like being on a roller-coaster ride,” says Schwartzman, now 21. “He’s awesome! I love him. I want to campaign for him to be on Oprah. I don’t know why she won’t have him on. He’s great.” The feeling must be mutual. Schwartzman is scheduled to appear on Letterman’s gabfest twice this week. On Wednesday, his band, Phantom Planet, will perform a song from the new album “The Guest.” The following evening, Schwartzman returns solo to hype his latest film, “Slackers,” which opens Friday.
Sitting in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Benjamin Bratt–who is polite, funny and easy on the eyes–isn’t oblivious to the effect he has on the women fluttering nearby. Dressed in grey trousers, a tight black pullover and black ankle boots, Bratt looks every bit the movie star he is about to become. His almond-shaped eyes are liquid and chocolate brown, and the few strands of grey hair flecking his sideburns are his only concession to age.
The footage in “Grateful Dawg” is raw, the camerawork is iffy and the sound bites aren’t compelling enough to warrant feature film treatment. But the music of the late Jerry Garcia and David “Dawg” Grisman–the stars of this documentary–makes this 81-minute excursion worthwhile.
“Snow Dogs” is a cute Disney movie that youngsters most likely will enjoy. There are enough adorable dogs and cartoonish antics to keep the Saturday morning cartoon set giggling. Is it as good as the old “Benji” films? No. It’s not even as entertaining as a really good “Scooby Doo” rerun. But we tolerate the silly plot because the film’s got a lot of heart, the scenery is gorgeous and the dogs are pretty darned likable, as is lead human actor Cuba Gooding Jr.
The year is 2079. For more than a decade, earthlings have battled an alien force that is stronger, smarter and more deadly than anything the human race has encountered. To protect themselves from further destruction, most of the planet has been covered by an electromagnetic force-field dome designed to prevent aliens from infiltrating earth and masquerading as human beings.
What’re you doing New Year’s Eve? Let’s take a guess. You don’t have a date for the big night. Or, if you do, the two of you are dreading the thought of dealing with booked restaurants, inebriated revelers and couples trying just a little too hard to prove they’re having the best night of their lives. Then again, who wants to spend $300 for a night on the town when the economy is so iffy?
The film features hip-hop stars Method Man and Redman as a pair of pot-smoking fiends who find refuge at Harvard University. The catch is they have to maintain a 2.0 average to remain there, and without studying, they can do this only with the aid of a friendly ghost who appears when they smoke joints rolled with his ashes.
John Lithgow has grown accustomed to hearing fans tell him how much they loved his stage productions in Chicago. The funny thing, though, is the stage-trained actor has never performed onstage here. Until this weekend, that is, when he stars in “Sweet Smell of Success” at the Shubert Theatre.
Videogame players in this country spent nearly $8 billion last year on consoles, software and accessories. That figure is expected to increase dramatically with the introduction of Nintendo’s GameCube and Microsoft’s Xbox, which are giving Sony’s year-old PlayStation 2 a run for its money.
Just before Blink-182 stepped on stage to headline the Q101 Twisted 8 Ball Thursday night at the United Center, Barry Williams–best known to pop culture fans as the eldest son on “The Brady Bunch”–weaved through the audience making like Eminem. “Will the real Greg Brady please stand up?” Williams chanted as he hopped around on stage. It was a funny moment, but what followed next was weird in the context of a holiday rock show. Q101 personality Mancow Muller appeared onstage to introduce the Portage, Ind., honor guard. The men stood at attention as Wayne Messmer sang a searing rendition of the “Star Spangled Banner.” And then one of Muller’s cohorts led the crowd in a chant of “USA!”
Kong is a deaf-mute assassin unable to hear his victims begging for mercy or the cacophonous roar of his gun as he completes his assignments. He quickly and meticulously silences his victims in “Bangkok Dangerous,” a beautiful, gory film in which there are no heroes–just bad guys and not-quite-as-bad guys. Directed and written by twins Oxide and Danny Pang, the film assaults your senses with its stylized brutality. Set in Bangkok, the picture depicts the squalor of the characters’ lives. There is no beauty in this Bangkok–just dank despair.
The video-game console war between Microsoft’s Xbox and Nintendo’s GameCube heated up this week, with each side declaring itself the winner. Both companies introduced their systems within days of each other in mid-November. Sifting through the rhetoric to actually declare a champion is more challenging than game play on either controller.