ISAAC HAYES R.I.P.

August 20, 1942 - August 10, 2008

PLUS - Bernie Mac - The New Invisible Man - Tom Cruise: The Twilight Years - Paris Hilton VS National Lampoon - The Misunderstood Lieutenant - Doris Day - Tropic Thunder VS The Mentally Challenged - Billy Bob Thornton, Son of a Hundred Maniacs - AND MORE!!!

From The Los Angeles Times:

Isaac Hayes, 65; innovative singer, composer changed pop music with hits like 'Shaft'
By Ann Powers and Valerie J. Nelson
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

Isaac Hayes, the musician, composer and producer whose innovative sound changed the shape of pop music and whose shaved head, bejeweled outfits and regal demeanor embodied African American masculinity in the 1970s, has died. He was 65.

Family members found Hayes unresponsive Sunday afternoon next to a treadmill in a downstairs bedroom in his home just east of Memphis, Tenn., said Steve Shular, a spokesman for the Shelby County Sheriff's Office.

Hayes' wife, Adjowa, told investigators that her husband "had not been in the best of health recently," Shular said. No autopsy is planned.

With albums including 1969's "Hot Buttered Soul" and the double-disc, Grammy-winning "Black Moses" in 1971, Hayes laid the groundwork for both disco and hip-hop.

His rich, baritone voice backed by gently unfurling, string-laden arrangements showed how R&B could be both funky and ornate. His famous ruminative interludes on such songs as his cover of Jimmy Webb's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" set the stage for rap's elevation of the black male speaking voice.

He was most famous for his 1971 soundtrack for the blaxploitation classic "Shaft," which brought him an Academy Award for best song as well as two Grammys, but Hayes had a long and storied career beyond that Hollywood high point. In 2002, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

His music and his image as a black artist had a titanic power, especially during the apex of his fame. With his shaved head, omnipresent sunglasses and equally ever-present gold jewelry, he cut a strong, marketable figure.

In the 1970s, he released a string of albums for Stax Records, a label that offered a grittier counterpoint to the Motown sound. Hayes' recordings expanded the playing field for soul and R&B artists, proving that an album-oriented market existed for his experimental sounds.

"Hayes' story is one of epic proportions," wrote ethnomusicologist Rob Bowman in "Soulsville U.S.A.: The Story of Stax Records" (1997). "In the first few years of the 1970s he single-handedly redefined the sonic possibilities for black music, in the process opening up the album market as a commercially viable medium for black artists such as Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Funkadelic, and Curtis Mayfield."

Before finding his own voice as a solo artist, Hayes was a primary architect of Southern soul as part of the Stax Records writing and production team. Stax was home to Otis Redding, Booker T. and the MGs and other hit-makers.

Hayes' collaborations with David Porter, a fellow session musician and lyricist at Stax, gave the Memphis-based label some of its biggest hits, including "When Something Is Wrong With My Baby" for vocal duo Sam & Dave and "B-A-B-Y" for Carla Thomas. "Soul Man," another of the songwriting duo's compositions for Sam & Dave, was an early statement of black power that later became a huge crossover hit in 1978 for John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd as the Blues Brothers.

The fact that Hayes projected such a powerful sense of African American dignity, yet also co-wrote a career-defining hit for two white comedians, illustrates the paradoxical range of his appeal.

Headlining Wattstax in Los Angeles -- the 1972 festival that some called "the Black Woodstock" -- Hayes took the stage in gilded warrior garb. The crowd greeted him as a king. As a performer, Hayes embraced this role of ambassador of Afrocentric cool.

The shaved-head look that was central to his image developed in 1964 when the style among some African Americans was to straighten their hair. Tired of the effort that took, Hayes told his barber to cut it off.

"People stared and pointed, but I liked the breeze on my head. It felt great," he told the Chicago Tribune in 1995.

After a concert one night, when the crowd was screaming for him, a former boxer named Dino who was part of his security team said: "These people love you, man. They'll follow you anywhere. . . . You're like Moses. Black Moses!"

A writer from Jet magazine picked up on the phrase, and Hayes had mixed feelings at first as Black Moses became his nickname. He came to like the fact that people "didn't say I'm the Black Moses of the black world, they said of the music world."

But the music Hayes offered was as eclectic as any pop artist's. He covered songs by the Carpenters, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and Jimmy Webb, transforming those "vanilla" hits into slow jams that would appeal to black and white listeners alike. Bacharach and David's "Walk on By" got a 12-minute reading from Hayes on "Hot Buttered Soul." Webb's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" ran 18 minutes.

"Music is universal [but] sometimes presentation will restrict you or limit your range," Hayes said in "Soulsville U.S.A." " Glen Campbell and Jim Webb were targeting the pop audience. But when I did it, I aimed to the black market, but it was so big, it went all over."

Hayes' popularity as a recording artist waned in the mid-1970s, and he filed for bankruptcy in 1976.

He found a new focus as an actor in the 1980s, landing a recurring role on "The Rockford Files" and appearing in such films as "Escape From New York," playing the lead villain "The Duke" in the 1981 film, and 1995's "Johnny Mnemonic."

A new generation came to know him from " South Park," the animated series that gave him his most famous role as the voice of Chef. Hayes used the role of the suave cafeteria master to poke fun at his macho image and broaden his audience.

When he was offered the part by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, "South Park's" creators, Hayes thought they were playing a joke on him, but they assured him they were not.

Hayes said he responded, "You all some crazy white boys!"

In 2006, Hayes quit "South Park" after an episode mocked Scientology, the religion that Hayes practiced. He felt the episode showed bigotry and intolerance toward his religious beliefs. Stone responded by saying that Hayes had no problem with the episodes that made fun of Christians. Later, the character of Chef was seemingly killed off.

At the same time he was rediscovered through "South Park," younger musicians such as soul singers D'Angelo and Alicia Keys and the hip-hop duo Outkast began making music inspired by Hayes. Already much-sampled by hip-hop artists, Hayes enjoyed a renewed influence as R&B artists came back toward his lush, adventurous style.

Keys called Hayes' effect on her "major."

"One of the reasons 'You Don't Know My Name' is six minutes and six seconds is because of Mr. Isaac Hayes," she once said on VH-1. "He's really changed the face of music in so many ways. . . . The way he just kind of extended songs to the point where they would be strings for three minutes before the song even began."

Hayes was born Aug. 20, 1942, in a tin shack in rural Covington, Tenn., the second child of Isaac and Eula Hayes. When he was about 18 months old, his mother died and his father left the family, so Hayes and his older sister were raised by his sharecropper grandparents.

At 5, he made his public singing debut in church.

Trying to pull themselves out of bitter poverty, his grandparents moved to Memphis when he was 6 but remained poor. To help support his family, Hayes alternated between going to school and working in the cotton fields on nearby plantations.

"I used to dream, just dream about being able to have a warm bed to sleep in and a nice square meal and some decent clothes to wear," Hayes told Ebony magazine in 1970.

For a while, Hayes lived on the streets after his grandfather became ill. Hayes spent one summer sleeping in empty cars in a junkyard, according to the 1972 edition of "Current Biography."

Self-conscious about his shabby clothes, he briefly dropped out of school in ninth grade to earn money to replace them. His teachers tracked him down and persuaded him to return to school.

A self-taught musician, he began to play piano, organ and saxophone. As a ninth-grader, Hayes won a school talent contest with his rendition of a song by Nat "King" Cole, whom he idolized.

By his late teens, Hayes was married and about to become a father, so he left school again to earn a living. But he earned his high school diploma in 1962 after attending classes at night.

After leaving school, he started appearing with local R&B groups on the Memphis club circuit in a series of short-lived groups with such names as Sir Isaac and the Doo-Dads, the Teen Tones, and Sir Calvin and His Swinging Cats.

One evening, a friend asked him if he could play piano in her brother's band at a New Year's Eve party because he was away in the Air Force.

"I said, 'Sure,' even though the extent of my musical knowledge was 'Chopsticks' and 'Heart and Soul,' " Hayes said in the 1995 Chicago Tribune article. "I felt like I was heading for the Inquisition."

He was told the band sounded "pretty good," a compliment Hayes later attributed to the noisy, drunken clientele who "were gonna dance to anything." But it led to a regular gig that made Hayes confident enough in his piano playing to move on.

In the early 1960s, Stax Records hired Hayes as a session pianist and organist. He teamed up with Porter and began writing songs.

It took them "about a year to get in a groove," Hayes recalled in 2001 in the South Bend, Ind., Tribune.

Once they did, they penned about 200 songs, some of them R&B classics.

"We'd get together the night before a session to write, and we liked to have the artist present -- especially Sam & Dave -- because we fed off them," Hayes told the Chicago Tribune.

Hayes' early method of calling out chord changes to the musicians who were fanned out around him remained central to the way he worked.

"It was record-making at its most casual and rough-hewn, yet it produced hit after hit," Chicago Tribune rock critic Greg Kot wrote.

At the time, Hayes later recalled that "nobody had any idea that we were producing legendary stuff. We were getting a check and royalties and having fun and trying to impress girls."

In 1967, he issued his debut solo LP, "Presenting Isaac Hayes," a "loose jazz-flavored effort" recorded in the early-morning hours after a raucous Stax party, according to the All Music Internet database.

Two years later, he broke through with his second album, "Hot Buttered Soul," considered adventurous for including only four -- albeit lengthy -- songs.

Unhappy with his royalty arrangement with Stax, Hayes had severed ties with the label by 1975 and started his own imprint, which didn't last.

After the 1975 album "Chocolate Chip," Hayes didn't release new material until "Love Attack" in 1986.

In the intervening years, he pursued acting, eventually appearing in more than 60 movies and television shows. He recently completed work on the film "Soul Men," with Samuel L. Jackson and Bernie Mac. Mac died Saturday at age 50.

Through the Isaac Hayes Foundation, Hayes built a school in Ghana. The country recognized his humanitarian efforts by crowning him a king.

Hayes was married several times and had several children.

From Slate.com:

The Afterlife for Scientologists
What will happen to Isaac Hayes' legendary soul?
By Nina Shen Rastogi


Singer Isaac Hayes died on Sunday at the age of 65. Besides being a sex symbol, a soul-music legend, and a beloved voice-over artist, Hayes was also a dedicated Scientologist. According to his religious beliefs, what happens to Hayes now that he's passed away?

His soul will be "born again into the flesh of another body," as the Scientology Press Office's FAQ puts it. The actual details of how that rebirth occurs are not fully understood by church outsiders, but some core beliefs of Scientology are that every human being is really an immortal spiritual being known as a thetan and that the "meat bodies" we inhabit are merely vessels we shed upon death. (Members of the elite church cadre known as Sea Org, for example, sign contracts that pledge a billion years of service throughout successive lives.)

When a body dies, its thetan forgets the details of the former life, though painful and traumatic images known as engrams remain rooted in its unconscious. In order to move up the path of spiritual progression—known as the Bridge to Total Freedom—one must eradicate these psychic scars, which cause a person to act fearfully and irrationally. Once a Scientologist has purged them through the counseling process known as auditing, he or she is said to be "clear."

 Where Scientology keeps the Funk.

According to an avowed Scientology antagonist who claims, on her Web site, to present factual information typically omitted from church press materials, the official Scientology publication Celebrity announced that Hayes attained "clear" status around 2002, though it is not known whether he progressed onto the highest parts of the Bridge, the "operating thetan" levels. Details about what happens in these advanced stages remain closely guarded Scientology secrets, but at the very end of the process, thetans are supposed to gain power over the physical world; consequently, according to founder L. Ron Hubbard, they "feel no need of bodies," ending the cycle of birth and death and becoming pure, incorporeal souls.

If Hayes had progressed high enough on the Bridge, he might have begun preparing for his next life in the final days of this one. According to former Sea Org member Chuck Beatty, some upper-level operating thetans are said to possess the ability to choose their next set of birth parents.

In a widely reprinted 1990 Los Angeles Times article, Hubbard was quoted (apparently from a lecture given in the 1950s) describing how, after death, a thetan is carried to a "landing station" on Venus, where it is "programmed with lies," put in a capsule, and then "dumped" back on Earth, where it wanders in search of a baby to inhabit. Yet according to Laurie Hamilton, who says she has been a Scientologist since 1968, adherents are "free to accept or discard" such stories so long as they embrace the "methods and practices" of Scientology. One of the church's official Web sites stresses that a belief in past lives is not mandatory dogma but, rather, a personal truth that most Scientologists come to as they go through auditing.

"Very Hyperbolicsyllabicsequedalymistic, Mr. Hubbard," She said. "VERY Hyperbolicsyllabicsequedalymistic..."

The Web site also stresses that Scientologists do not believe in "reincarnation." Unlike religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, in which reincarnation functions as a kind of justice system—i.e., an individual's behavior in one life determines the caliber of the next—rebirth in Scientology is a more mechanical process. Hubbard described it as "simply living time after time, getting a new body, eventually losing it and getting a new one."


From Entertainment Weekly:

Disability advocacy groups protest at 'Tropic Thunder' premiere
by Mike Bruno

A few dozen demonstrators showed up outside the Tropic Thunder premiere last night at Mann's Theatre in Los Angeles to protest the movie and its repeated use of the word "retard." The protest took place across the street from the theater, where people representing organizations such as the Special Olympics and the American Association of People with Disabilities were carrying signs that said things like "Tropic Thunder, Colossal Blunder," "We have abilities, not disabilities!", and "'R' word is hate speech."

A coalition of some 22 advocacy groups has launched a boycott of the film, which opens for wide release tomorrow, and Andrew J. Imparato, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities, reportedly called the film "tasteless" and said it was "offensive start to finish" after watching a private screening of the movie on Monday.

Director and star Ben Stiller -- who plays an actor portraying a mentally disabled character named Simple Jack in the film's movie-within-a-movie -- acknowledged the protesters' right to speak their mind, but also defended his film. "I did not set out to offend anybody, but sometimes, when you are making an R-rated comedy, that happens," Stiller said at the premiere. "That is not what I set out to do, but I think the movie is good and it speaks for itself."

Co-star Jack Black said he doesn't think any of the protesters have seen the movie yet and that he feels that once they do, they will understand that the joke is really on Hollywood, not people with disabilities. "The jokes are all in context of what some actors are willing to do to win an Oscar," Black explained at the premiere. "That is a longstanding joke in Hollywood — that certain types of roles, like the one joked about in the film, help put you in the minds and eyes of the Academy voters and to what lengths some actors will go to bring one of those gold bad boys home."

Co-writer/executive producer Justin Theroux added that he was surprised by the ire — then humorously (we hope) pointed the finger at other, ostensibly more earnest projects that deal with mental disabilities. "[T]here’s a part of me that’s a little puzzled and disappointed, like, ‘Where were you when Radio came out? Because that was pretty offensive," Theroux said. "Or where were they when they made that Rosie O’Donnell Riding the Bus With My Sister film? Because that was way worse in my eyes than our film." (Additional Reporting by Carrie Bell)



Stephen King's Guide to Movie Snacks

The Bard of Horror takes a gastronomical tour of the movie-theater concession stand -- all hail the cholesterol-lowering properties of diet soda
By Stephen King

For a magazine that prides itself on the many aspects of the movie business it covers, EW hasn't had much to say over the years concerning the important subject of snacks. Oh, an occasional piece about how much they cost, but few words on their culinary wonderfulness. This needs correcting, because, while some people eat snacks while they are at the movies, there are some who go to the movies so they can eat snacks. That would be me. So let me impart a few lessons years of snacking have taught me.

First, support your theater. Buy at the snack bar and damn the expense. You could probably sneak your own food in, but if you're caught, you'll be thrown out. As for bringing healthier snacks from home: Did you really hire a babysitter and drive six miles so you could snark cucumber slices half-drowned in buttermilk ranch out of a slimy plastic bag? Is that what you call living it up?

If you want to get healthy, there are places for that: They're called ''health clubs.'' And I find there's something giddy about tossing down $4.50 for a box of Gummi Bears or a bag of chocolate raisins. It makes me feel like a high roller, especially when the matinee ticket itself only costs 50 cents more.

I always start my order with the ritual drink — Diet Pepsi if possible, Coke Zero as a fallback, Diet Coke the court of last resort. A big diet cola sops up the calories and cholesterol contained in movie snack food just like a big old sponge soaks up water. This is a proven fact. One expert (me) believes a medium diet cola drink can lower your cholesterol by 20 points and absorb as much as one thousand empty calories. And if you say that's total crap, I would just point out I don't call it a ritual drink for nothing. Sometimes I add a strawberry smoothie with lots of whipped cream, but I'm always sure to take enough sips of my ritual drink to absolve me of those calories, too.

With my calorie-absorbent drink in hand, I can then safely order a large popcorn with extra butter. Of course it isn't really butter, it's some sort of mystery substance squeezed from the sweat glands of small animals, but I have developed such a taste for it over my years of filmgoing that the real stuff tastes wrong, somehow.

If the counter guy puts on the glandular butter substitute himself, I watch carefully to make sure he greases the middle of the bag as well as the top layer. If it's self-serve (at the beginning I didn't like this option, but now I do), I proceed to hammer on that red button until I have what I call a ''heavy bag.'' You know you have a heavy bag when the bottom starts to sag and ooze large drops of a yellow puslike substance before you even get into the theater. And don't forget the salt. Popcorn salt is a little strong for my taste (and it looks like powdered urine); I prefer plain table salt. Half a shaker is about right.

With a ''heavy bag,'' caution is a must. Don't put it on your lap; when the movie's over and the lights come up, people will think you wet your pants. Courtesy is also a must. Don't put it on the seat beside you, or the next person is going to sit on a seat that oozes. Not cool, bro.

My candy of choice is Junior Mints. And while I don't bring bootleg food into the movies, I do bring bootleg toothpicks. Then, as I relax in my seat, I take a toothpick and poke five or six Junior Mints onto it. It ends the dreaded Chocolate Hand, and it's also kind of fun to eat candy off a stick. I call them Mint-Kebabs.

And although it's a matter of personal choice, I myself don't eat movie meat (go on, snicker, I can take it). My motto is ''Never buy a hot dog that's been waiting in a foil Baggie under a heat lamp.'' For all you know, that stray dog could have been there since Revenge of the Sith. Nachos are good, but only if you get the reserve swimming pool of cheese sauce, because one is never enough.

Now that I think of it, the same could be said of snacks. But remember: Start with the ritual drink. After that, you're on your own.

From Showbizspy.com:

Thornton To Star In Nightmare On Elm Street Remake

BILLY BOB THORNTON will star as FREDDY KRUEGER in a new NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movie.

The 53-year-old actor will take on the chilling role in a remake of the 1984 original.

Robert Englund, who played the part in eight films, revealed that Thornton will star in the horror films and is an "excellent choice" for the role.

He adds, "A big budget should mean the film will look a lot better than some of the old movies."

The Trailer for Chuck Palahniuk's CHOKE

(Dir. Clark Gregg, 2008):

BAD LIEUTENANT REMAKE NEWS

from HOLLYWOOD ELSEWHERE:

Eva Mendes Joins Bad Lieutenant - Herzog Says It's Not a Remake

by Kevin Powers

We previously brought you the news that seasoned German filmmaker Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man, Rescue Dawn) would be remaking the debaucherous 1992 flick Bad Lieutenant, with Nic Cage stepping in for Harvey Keitel's original role. As it turns out, Herzog's film will not be a straight-up remake and will be titled Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans instead. Eva Mendes will star, as well, as a character not yet defined. Given the sultry actress' prior roles (like in We Own the Night), one can probably guess the supporting role she'll play - a hot, hanger-on that is at some point victimized (physically or emotionally) by Cage. Herzog himself also chimes in with what we can expect of this Bad Lieutenant.

Herzog told Hollywood Elsewhere that the film "is a completely different story in the same sense as the last James Bond is not a remake of the previous one." I suppose that means that Herzog will still have Cage playing the nameless character - he just goes by "Lieutenant" - but with a totally new storyline. That might make sense, but one has to wonder how much of the source material Herzog will draw from. Bad Lieutenant was originally rated NC-17 due to the gratuitous violence, sex and drug use, for which Keitel was the perfect abuser. Cage will never be as gritty as Keitel, and Herzog seems an unlikely candidate for such dank material. However, the original does have an undercurrent of redemption and Catholicism - a level of complexity which does feel worthy of Herzog.

So what direction might Herzog take the project and how closely will it follow the original? Herzog illuminates things a bit by saying, "There's an interesting screenplay, [and] it's a very, very dark story. It's great because it seems to reflect a side of the collective psyche — sometimes there are just good times for film noir." Sadly, as with the recently announced Knowing, I feel Cage's projects are destined to only go so deep. Perhaps Herzog can draw a compelling performance out of the 44-year-old washed out actor. Although, if Cage and Mendes' chemistry is anything like it was in the awful Ghost Rider, we're definitely in trouble. Will this Ghost Rider duo damage Herzog's career?

Val Kilmer and Xzibit Join Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant

by Kevin Powers

It was announced early last month that the Ghost Rider duo, Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes, would be starring in Werner Herzog's take on the 1992 cult classic Bad Lieutenant. Now we also learn today that a slew of others have now joined the cast, notably low-laying Val Kilmer and rapper-turned-actor Xzibit. Kilmer is set to star as Cage's sidekick, who will headline the movie as the cop with questionable morals, while Xzibit will play "a villain" named Big Fade; it's doubtful the X-Files supporting cast member will play the primary villain, however (at least I hope so). Production is scheduled to begin later this summer for an expected 2009 release of Bad Lieutenant.

I've always liked Kilmer and am glad to see him in a project of this scale. Last time I really took note of him was in the mediocre Mindhunters of 2004 and to a lesser extent 2006's Deja Vu. I doubt he'll ever reprise the edge he had in Heat, but it's cool to see him in a Herzog production. As for Xzibit, let's just say I've made my views on the "Pimp My Ride" host pretty clear. However, as the guy continues to get work (surprisingly), I'll keep an open mind and report back.

Joining the two is also Fairuza Balk (cool!), Jennifer Coolidge (odd), Vondie Curtis-Hall (not bad), Shawn Hatosy (ehh), and Denzel Whitaker (who?). All of these folks sit in solid supporting territory, and considering the subject matter, you can probably guess the kind of role they might fill (e.g. Balk as some kind of trashy street gal, Curtis-Hall as a fellow cop or neighborhood insider, Whitaker as an innocent). All in all, the cast for Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is looking fairly bland. But since this is a Herzog project, the 2009 film has a faint, but steady blip on my radar. Does this recent cast growth get you any more or less excited?

(Editor's Note: Um, Denzel Whitaker?) 

From The New York Times:

Bernie Mac, Comic From TV and Film, Is Dead at 50
By WILLIAM GRIMES

Bernie Mac, a stand-up comic who played evil-tongued but lovable rogues in films like “Bad Santa” and “Mr. 3000” and combined menace and sentiment as a reluctant foster father on “The Bernie Mac Show” on Fox, died on Saturday in Chicago. He was 50 and lived near the city.

The cause was complications from pneumonia, his publicist, Danica Smith, said.

Mr. Mac, an angry stage presence with a line of scabrous insults, parlayed his success as a stand-up comedian onto the big screen in a string of comedies that usually cast him as wily con men like Pastor Clever in “Friday” (1995) and Gin, the store detective in “Bad Santa” (2003). He also excelled playing short-tempered misanthropes, notably in his starring role as Stan Ross, the nation’s most hated baseball player, in “Mr. 3000” (2004).

In 2001, the Fox network took a gamble on “The Bernie Mac Show,” an unconventional family comedy in which Mr. Mac portrayed a childless married comedian who reluctantly takes in his sister’s three youngsters when she goes into a drug-treatment program.

The irascible Mr. Mac made a different kind of TV dad, “more Ike Turner than Dr. Spock,” Chris Norris wrote in a 2002 profile for The New York Times Magazine. Mr. Mac’s special style of tough love — “I’m gonna bust your head till the white meat shows,” he warned his surly teenage niece — set the show apart from other family sitcoms and raised a few critical eyebrows. But audiences saw enough of the character’s soft center to find the show touching.

“The success of my comedy has been not being afraid to touch on subject matters or issues that everyone else is politically scared of,” Mr. Mac told The Times in 2001. “It’s a joke, believe me. I’m not trying to hurt anybody.”

Mr. Mac incorporated aspects of his stand-up act in the TV show, and during each episode would break the “fourth wall” and address the audience. On one show, he swiveled in his chair and said, “Now America, tell me again, why can’t I whip that girl?”

“The Bernie Mac Show” show ran for five seasons, and Mr. Mac received two Emmy nominations for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series, in 2002 and 2003.

Bernard Jeffrey McCullough was born in Chicago to a single mother who inspired him to become a comedian. He told a television interviewer in 2001 that when he was 5, he saw his mother sitting in front of the television set crying. “The Ed Sullivan Show” was playing, and Bill Cosby was on the show. When Mr. Cosby began telling a story about snakes in a bathroom, she started laughing despite herself. “When I saw her laughing, I told her that I was going to be a comedian so she’d never cry again,” Mr. Mac said.

His mother died of cancer when he was 16, and he was raised by his grandmother on the South Side of Chicago. His two brothers also died, one in infancy, the other of a heart attack in his 20s.

At the Chicago Vocational Career Academy, Mr. Mac was voted class clown by his graduating class. But already serious about his intended profession, he turned down the honor. “I said, ‘I’m funny. I’m a comedian. I’m not a clown,’ ” he later recalled. “My humor had changed from foolishness to making sense.”

After high school, Mr. Mac worked as a janitor, a mover and a school bus driver before finding a job at a General Motors plant. In 1976, he married his high school sweetheart, Rhonda. He is survived by his wife; a daughter, Je’Niece; and a granddaughter.

Desperate to become a comedian, Mr. Mac told jokes for tips on the Chicago subway and performed at comedy clubs, many of them off the beaten track. “When I started in the clubs, I had to work places where didn’t nobody else want to work,” he told The Washington Post. “I had to do clubs where street gangs were, had to do motorcycle gangs, gay balls and things of that nature.”

In 1983, he was laid off at G.M., and for a time his family had to move in with relatives. The same year, he contracted sarcoidosis, an immune system disorder that can attack the lungs. In 2005, he announced that the disease had gone into remission.

Plugging away at his comedy career, he caught the attention of Redd Foxx and Slappy White, who invited him to do off-the-cuff material in Las Vegas in 1989. A year later, Mr. Mac won the Miller Lite Comedy Search, a national contest, with profanity-laced monologues.

In 1990, he was invited to do two shows with Def Comedy Jam, a tour featuring young black comedians, which was filmed for HBO. Small film roles followed in “Mo’ Money” (1992), “Who’s the Man?” (1993) and “House Party 3” (1994). He also performed on the HBO variety series “Midnight Mac,” and with the Original Kings of Comedy, a tour that showcased some of the most popular contemporary black comedians. The tour, which grossed $59 million, generated several HBO specials and a film of the same name by Spike Lee.

Mr. Mac made the move to television reluctantly. “The people come to see you, the person they fell in love with,” he said. “But when they see you on TV, you become a whole other character, another person, and they become disappointed, and I wasn’t going to allow that to happen to me.”

Nevertheless, he appeared in a recurring role as Uncle Bernie on the UPN sitcom “Moesha” beginning in 1996, and in 2001, he took the plunge with “The Bernie Mac Show.”

Praised by the critics for its fresh, irreverent take on the family sitcom, it became one of Fox’s biggest hits.

The show coincided with a spate of films that made Mr. Mac, if not a box office star, a welcome comedic presence with roles in “What’s the Worst That Could Happen?” (2001), “Ocean’s Eleven” (2001) and its two sequels, and “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” (2003).

Last month, Mr. Mac, a fervent supporter of Barack Obama, dismayed the candidate at a fund-raising dinner in Chicago. Delivering a stand-up routine, he told salacious jokes and drew a reprimand from Mr. Obama, who warned him, “Bernie, you’ve got to clean up your act next time.”

From The New York Post:

Statham Booted from Playboy Mansion

JASON Statham doesn't know Playboy etiquette. The "Bank Job" star showed up to Hugh Hefner's annual Midsummer Night's Dream Party at the Playboy Mansion dressed in a bathrobe, but when he refused to pose for pictures, a spy said, "he was escorted by five security guards off the property. It was rough."

A Statham rep declined comment.

Also at the party: Jon Lovitz, who "kept taking pictures of his face next to girls' bare bottoms," and Steve Coogan, who tried to "pick up chicks in the grotto before hanging with Matthew Perry in a corner."

From IMDB: 

Barr's Website Slams Brangelina...um, Angelpitt...uh, Brajolie...

TV star Roseanne Barr has reportedly launched a scathing attack on Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie - branding them "evil".

In a post on Barr's website, apparently written by the comedy queen, the writer slams the Hollywood couple for making millions while starring in "violent, psychopathic" movies - but only giving away a small part of their paycheques to charity.

In the message, titled Jon Voight in reference to Jolie's actor dad, the writer fumes, "Your evil spawn Angelina Jolie and her vacuous hubby Brad Pitt make about $40 million a year in violent, psychopathic movies and give away three of it to starving children, trying to look as if they give a crap about humanity as they spit out more dunces that will consume more than their fair share and wreck the earth even more.

"Miss Jolie says she likes John McCain too and hasn't decided who to endorse... Huh? Aren't you supposed to be somewhat enlightened, or do you not know that the African daughter you hold in every picture had parents who suffered and died because of the Republican party's worldwide economic assault on Africa over the last few decades since Reagan?"

The writer then takes a swipe at the pair for not publicly pledging support for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, before adding: "Now go back to making your movies about women who love to handle big guns that shoot hundreds of people to death."

From CNN.com:

Paris Hilton sued for ditching

National Lampoon promotional obligations

MIAMI (AP)  -- Paris Hilton didn't do enough pledging for a 2006 sorority comedy, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday. Worldwide Entertainment Group Inc. alleges Paris Hilton owes $75,000 for not fulfilling publicity obligations.

Worldwide Entertainment Group Inc. alleges Paris Hilton owes $75,000 for not fulfilling publicity obligations.

Worldwide Entertainment Group Inc. filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Miami, alleging the 27-year-old model-actress-heiress owes $75,000 in damages for not fulfilling promotional obligations.

Hilton entered into an agreement in 2004 for the production and distribution of the movie "National Lampoon's Pledge This!," according to the lawsuit. Hilton starred in the film and received credit as an executive producer.

The Miami-based concern said it paid Hilton and her company, Paris Hilton Entertainment Inc., $1 million for "Hilton's acting services" and for "reasonable promotion and publicity" for the movie, which was released in 2006 and featured Hilton as the president of an exclusive sorority.

While most famous for her tabloid exploits and reality TV series "The Simple Life," Hilton has appeared in the films "Bottoms Up," "The Hottie & the Nottie" and "House of Wax."

She's slated to next appear in the movie musical "Repo! The Genetic Opera" and the tentatively titled MTV reality series "Paris Hilton's My New BFF."

Phone calls and e-mails to Hilton's manager, Jason Moore, were not immediately returned Tuesday.

From The Statesman.com
(Leading English daily published from Calcutta, Siliguri and New Delhi)

Revealed: A Gene ‘That Makes Some Scream While Others Laugh’

LONDON, Aug 11: Ever wondered why horror flicks make some people scream or even faint in theatres at scenes of spinning heads and shaking beds while others laugh? Well, the answer lies in the genes.

A team at Bonn University in Germany has found that a gene, which affects a chemical in the brain that is linked to anxiety, is actually responsible for the two different kinds of behaviour in people watching the same horror movie.

According to researchers, people who have two copies of a particular variant of the ‘COMT’ gene are more likely to get disturbed when viewing unpleasant pictures ~ because that version weakens the effect of a signalling chemical in brain that helps control certain emotions. On the other hand, people who possess just one copy of the gene and one copy of another version could jolly well keep their emotions in check far more readily, British newspaper The Daily Telegraph reported.

The researchers have based their findings on a study of around 100 women who were showed three different types of pictures ~ emotionally “pleasant” ones of smiling babies and cute animals, “neutral” ones of items like electric plugs or hairdryers, and “aversive” ones of weapons or injured victims.
Lead researcher Christian Montag said that he thought the gene variant linked to scaring more easily only recently evolved as it was not present in other primates and propensity to scare more easily could have offered humans an advantage.

“It was an advantage to be more anxious in a dangerous environment,” he said, adding that a single gene variation can account for only some of people’s anxiety differences, or else up to half the population would be anxious.

Unveiling The Invisible Man?

LONDON, Aug 10: It may an illusion but scientists are close to creating a way which will make humans and objects invisible to the eye.

An international team has engineered a material that can control visible light's direction of travel ~ bending it around objects to render anything from people to large objects like ships and tanks invisible.

According to the scientists, bending visible light around an object will help to hide it.

“In the case of invisibility cloaks or shields, the material would need to curve light waves completely around the object like a river flowing around a rock,” lead researcher Dr Xiang Zhang was quoted by The Sunday Times as saying.

An observer looking at the cloaked object would then see light from behind it ~ making it seem to disappear.

Substances capable of achieving such feats are known as “meta-materials” and have power to “grab” electromagnetic radiation and deflect it smoothly, according to the scientists led by California University.

In fact, they engineered the material's elements to within about 0.00000066 of a metre as no such material occurs naturally and it is only in the past few years that nano-scale engineering has advanced sufficiently.

Their work followed an earlier work at Imperial College London that achieved similar results with microwaves. Like light, these are a form of electromagnetic radiation but their longer wave-length makes them far easier to manipulate.

Achieving the same effect with visible light is a big advance, the researchers said.

From Scientific American:

Light bent the wrong way--can an invisibility cloak be far behind?
By JR Minkel

Researchers have taken the next step on the road to constructing a cloak of invisibility or a powerful "superlens" capable of capturing fine details invisible to current lenses. A group from the University of California, Berkeley, this week is publishing the first demonstrations of materials capable of bending visible or near-visible light the "wrong" way in three dimensions.

Both are examples of metamaterials—specially designed structures that cause light to do things it normally wouldn't—in this case, bending backward, an effect called negative refraction. Researchers have built metamaterials capable of negatively refracting microwaves, but despite some successes bending visible light in two dimensions, they've had a harder time making three-dimensional versions.

In a study to be published in Nature, the Berkeley group, led by Xiang Zhang, bent red light using a fishnet-shaped stack of 21 layers of silver and magnesium fluoride, each a few tens of nanometers thick (see diagram). (One nanometer is a billionth of a meter.) The group will also report in Science that it bent near-infrared light using a thinner sheet of aluminum oxide containing silver nanowires. The researchers believe that the second material ought to work on red light as well.

Both devices absorbed relatively little of the incoming light—a problem in earlier metamaterials, the group says.

In school we learn that a beam of light passing from air to water or glass at a shallow angle will slow down and bend away from the surface of the denser medium it passed through. On the way out, that angle shrinks again. The result: A straw in a glass of water takes on a zig-zag shape as seen from outside.

But that only holds for materials that have a positive index of refraction—a measure of the speed of light in a material. The new metamaterials both exhibit a negative index of refraction. A straw placed in a glass of negative-index material would look like a ">".

One potential application of negative refraction is a superlens capable of picking up fine details in reflected light and magnifying them—another area where Zhang's group has had some success.

For invisibility, researchers need their metamaterials to have an index less than one (the index of air). That makes it possible to channel light around a region like air around an airplane wing. No light inside means no reflection to reveal the contents of the space, hence, invisibility.

In 2006 a group at Duke University demonstrated partial cloaking in two dimensions with a pizza-size disk of copper rings. Look for researchers to try that soon with visible light.

SUNSET BOULEVARD -- 

From Showbizspy.com:

Movie Bosses: 'Cruise Too Old To Play Action Star'

TOM CRUISE's role in forthcoming film EDWIN A. SALT has reportedly been recast for ANGELINA JOLIE because studio bosses fear he has grown too old to play a movie hero.

It was announced earlier this week that the script would be rewritten to cater for Jolie - well known for appearing in action films such as the Tomb Raider franchise and Wanted.

According to the New York Post, the Top Gun star, 46, is no longer as marketable to youth audiences and has become too expensive to cast.

A source tells the newspaper, "Cruise is begging for MI:4 (Mission Impossible: 4)' but Paramount wants a younger, cheaper guy. He had a tantrum and ran out of the meeting."


From IMDB News:

Day Slams Reports Of Memory Loss

Reclusive movie icon Doris Day has slammed reports her memory is fading following the release of a scathing biography of the star.

Author David Kaufman studied the enigmatic actress/singer - real name Doris Mary Ann Von Kappelhoff - for his book Doris Day: The Untold Story of The Girl Next Door, insisting she wants nothing to do with Hollywood and has lost touch with reality.

The actress, 84, has tucked herself away in an 11-acre estate on the California coastline - where she now goes by the name Clara Kappelhoff, a nickname she says was given to her by a former co-star.

Kaufman told the Los Angeles Times newspaper last month upon his book's release: "She feels so completely disassociated from who Doris Day was. She signs her notes as Clara, she answers the phone as Clara."

The on-screen legend was recently photographed looking fatigued while out shopping in Carmel, California - reigniting reports of her bizarre behaviour, including picking up stray cats and dogs to keep her company on her massive plot of land.

However, a spokesperson for the actress has denied the claims made by Kaufman, insisting Kappelhoff is as "sharp as a tack".

(Editor's Note: And, from the "Who asked you...?" file)

Johansson Slams 'Ageist' Hollywood

Scarlett Johansson has criticised Hollywood's treatment of older actresses - insisting many women see their careers "wilt" once they get past a certain age.

The 23-year-old star is furious that a majority of the film industry is dependent on looks, and blasts movie bosses for ignoring the talents of mature actresses.

And Johansson insists that the rule doesn't apply to men - as male actors don't lose popularity with casting directors as they get older.

She says, "Women kind of wilt as men achieve as they get older, like wine. It's like, 'Oh she's past her prime and can't play a sex symbol'.

"It's just a preconceived notion about women in general and particularly in this industry. It's a very, very vain industry."

And the Lost In Translation star is adamant that she is not as attractive in real life - because she is caked in make-up for all of her film roles.

She adds, "My hair and make-up artists spend hours upon hours plastering things on me to make me look sexier. I think it's rare that you feel beautiful."