True, Avatar swept up nine Academy Award nominations including Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Directing, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Picture, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects.

But it was also ousted from the top spot at the box office over the weekend by Nicholas Sparks’ Dear John, a schmaltzy, uninspired excuse of a rom-com starring Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried. (Who? Exactly.)

Most critics attribute this surprise takeover to Tatum’s chiseled abs. (Queue quiet snickering, finger pointing, etc.)

No, but seriously, back to the Oscar nominations thing. Along with the Academy’s totally hue-ist snubbing of so many blue-tinted virtuoso performances, there was one category that seemed conspicuously absent from the above list: Best Adapted Screenplay.

Now obviously I’m not the only one who noticed some major similarities between Avatar’s clichéd, paper-thin plot and a handful of other films/stories including (but not limited to) Fern Gully, Pocahontas, Halo, and of course Costner’s 1990 tatonka-and-loin-cloth epic, Dances With Wolves.

But now Ecorazzi is reporting:

[T]he entertainment website Heavy.com is making a case for the uncanny resemblances between James Cameron’s Avatar and a comic book series titled Firekind.

Firekind ran weekly in 2000 AD, a British science fiction comic anthology best known for its Judge Dredd stories. Created by John Smith and Paul Marshall, the comic series features a human botanist named Hendrick Larsen who travels to Gennyo-Leil, a jungle alien world with a toxic atmosphere, large dragons, blue-skinned natives, and floating rocks.

Heavy charted a table of comparison and described the plot similarities noting that, “If you were to sell Firekind or any kind of fire today, you’d be told it was a rip-off of Avatar – even though it predates the earliest 1994 ‘scriptments’ of Avatar by a year.”

Hmmmm. Fascinating.

And now poor Cameron is reported as having told Larry King that while a sequel to his mega hit was in the pipeline, he’s . . . um . . . struggling a bit with the plot.

BettyConfidential reports:

Avatar writer/director James Cameron provided fans with a midweek boost on Wednesday evening by announcing that he plans to pen a sequel to the Oscar-nominated film.

Cameron went on Larry King Live to chat about the project, and noted that although the plot is still fuzzy he and his creative team “have had some technical discussions” regarding how it would play out.

Well, quelle surprise.

So anyway, I thought that since we folks at Deceiver have given The Greatest Director In The World such a hard time lately, it seems only fair that we offer him a bit of support in his hour of need.

Come on people. We owe him one!

So . . . how ’bout it, guys? Any suggestions for new source material for Camy-Baby?

My vote? Twilight crossover.

Blue space people, fangs, broody heroes and sighing young damsels? Star Trek meets Dear John?

Cha-ching!

Remember this?  Because I sure do, even though I never really made it past the picture … so who knows what it says? But now Meghan McCain is complaining about… big fake boobs?

…lately I’ve noticed a more celebratory and mainstream acceptance of women who undergo augmentation surgery versus those of us whose breasts come from nature.

I guess she was upset with People magazine because they put Heidi Montag and her new magnificent breasts on their cover. Because, as she put it:

Growing up, I always thought of People magazine as the classiest of the tabloids.

Really? People?

And then Meghan got a little miffed by New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn, who wrote about Christina Hendricks — the chick in Mad Men (that hit TV drama that I can’t be bothered to watch):

As one stylist said, “You don’t put a big girl in a big dress. That’s rule number one.”

And then Meghan is all, “Would Christina Hendricks still be considered “big” if she had fake breasts instead of real ones?

Yes. I saw the pictures, and yeah she’s got some big boobs, but I hate to break this to Meghan: I think that was a nice way of saying you don’t stuff a size 15 into a size 10 dress. If you want my opinion, and you know you do, I think Meghan’s biggest problem is that you can now buy a gift from God. You don’t have to be born with it.

Oh, but wait … there’s more from Horyn:

Similarly, Jessica Simpson recently went out to dinner in a low-cut dress, leading to instant drama in the Twitterverse.

US Weekly even ran a story about it: “Jessica Simpson’s Big Breasts Are the Butt of Internet Jokes.”  In 2004, Jessica’s creepy dad Joe told an interviewer, “She’s got double Ds! You can’t cover those suckers up!” Amen brother.

But Jessica insists hers aren’t fake. So… What?

Here’s Meghan again:

Women with small breasts feel shamed or pressured into having cosmetic surgery to increase their breast size. Once they do, they are seemingly allowed to display them for all the world to see—as though we, too, are actually invested in this investment. Meanwhile, women with real breasts are shamed and pressured into only wearing high-cut dresses and blouses (or better, yet, turtlenecks!) lest they be ridiculed.

Really? Because I thought all women were pressured into showing cleavage, whether it came from God almighty or Dr. 90210. Are we from the same planet?

Meghan seems kinda all over the map here.  Or maybe it’s all this talk of big boobs that’s got me disoriented.

And this story went on way to long for me. Is this what it’s like to have a baby? I bet it is.

Big real boob cleavage good. Big fake boob cleavage bad. I started doing some research to clarify this, but it’s the Internet and, well… you know. Hey — you do a Google image search for Jessica Simpson Big Boobs.

What am I, made of stone?

To her credit, Jessica was freaked by the news, offering this consolation:

“I think you should never have to change yourself like that,” actress Alba said. “If somebody loves you, they’ll love you no matter what.”

A noble sentiment, but a marked departure from Jessica Alba’s previous stand on plastic surgery. First off, here’s what she had to say about nipping and tucking in 2007:

“As an actress, you express emotion with your face and if you have plastic surgery, you lose that spark.”

I’m interrupting this quote to say that I’ve never before noticed that Jessica Alba acts with her face. Um, anyway:

“I’m not going to say never for sure, though,” she told Elle Magazine in a recent interview.

The Fantastic Four starlet says that she may have work done if she has excess wear on her tummy as a result of pregnancy.  “I don’t know if, for example, having babies will stretch my stomach beyond what is acceptable,” she said.

Because if you bear someone’s child, they won’t love you anymore unless you have an “acceptable” stomach? Sad.

And second, in my inexpert opinion, those are not her original boobs. They can’t be, right?

Postscript to Jessica Alba’s biggest fan: Heidi Montag tells People “I’m not in a great place right now” but also “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life” following her buttload of plastic surgeries in November. Food for thought — sometimes this stuff turns you into a crazy person.

People try to put us d-down (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
Just because we g-g-get around (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)

Pete Townshend in 2010 at the age of old:

Talkin’ ’bout you’re geriatric.

I won’t lie, though. I completely agree with what DeGeneres said when she told Couric in a recent CBS web-only interview:

“It’s a double standard” when it comes to women and body image.

“There are men with really beautiful women that don’t have great bodies,” she said. “Yet nobody is saying anything about that.” [Ed: Except Pasta.]

“It’s not fair,” Ellen added. “The way that magazines airbrush everything, women are looking at bodies like that going, ‘my stomach doesn’t look like that. I’m supposed to look like that?’ So they starve themselves and they work out like crazy . . . We put the wrong emphasis on what beauty is, and what health is.”

True. Buuuuut …

In their own small ways, couldn’t both DeGeneres and Couric be seen as just a teensy bit complicit in perpetuating women’s unhealthy obsession with body image? Perhaps, as NewsBusters’ Candance Moore notes:

. . . the reason for [women's obsession with body image] is not because of domineering men. Maybe girls feel pressure to look better because their Idols like Ellen DeGeneres tell them to.

Hmmm. Let’s see if Ellen can explain to her fans how her decision to become a CoverGirl spokeswoman (complete with airbrushed photos) fits in with that whole healthy body image thing. Isn’t trying to make a 52-year-old look like a 22-year-old kinda the same as airbrushing a little cellulite off a celeb’s thighs?

Or perhaps she would care to comment on what exactly it was that she found so attractive about the tall, leggy, and formerly anorexic Portia de Rossi? I’m sure it was her taste in books. Or movies. I mean, is it just me, or doesn’t the Better Off Ted blonde bombshell sort of epitomize our sexist society’s female ideal?

Oh, it’s just me? Oh, okay.

And, yes, I realize this ad is tongue-in-cheek, but I also know there are plenty of young women out there who idolize Ellen. (Don’t ask me why.) They might not completely get the joke. And, well, judging from other CoverGirl ads I’ve seen — she’s not really too far off-base with that first line anyway.

And Couric? Didn’t Her Perkiness take Ellen to task for this blatant double-talk? Peel her like “a raw carrot,” as Phoebe Eaton of Harper’s Bazaar said she did in her interview with Sarah Palin? Not so much.

Sadly, as NewsBusters explains:

. . . the hard-hitting news anchor Katie Couric went right along with [Ellen's] rant, even piping in herself to bemoan the unhealthy lengths some women go to.

Meanwhile . . . Couric is currently featured in Harper’s Bazaar bragging about her shapely legs that helped her succeed in broadcasting. No word on whether a fat girl might starve herself to have legs like Katie Couric.

Like Katie Couric? Eh.

Like Portia de Rossi? Now we’re talkin’.

But seriously, fair warning.

Over the past several months (hell, days) Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri has been working hard to secure his status as a bona fide international laughingstock by warning us about the not so rapidly melting Himalayan glaciers, using Climbing magazine and a student’s dissertation as “peer reviewed” sources for IPCC reports, and — Oh! — telling the Financial Times just yesterday that climate change skeptics:

are people who deny the link between smoking and cancer; they are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder — I hope that they apply it (asbestos) to their faces every day.

Isn’t that sweet?

So in a brave move to salvage what’s left of his tarred and feathered, Mel Gibson-esque reputation, Pachauri thought it would be an awesome idea to release … wait for it … a smutty bodice-ripper novel. Based, oh-so-transparently, on his own life.

The Telegraph reports:

In breathless prose that risks making Dr Pachauri, who will be 70 this year, a laughing stock among the serious, high-minded scientists and world leaders with whom he mixes, [Ed. -- Too late!] he details sexual encounter after sexual encounter . . .

“Sanjay saw a shapely dark-skinned girl lying on Vinay’s bed. He was overcome by a lust that he had never known before . . . He removed his clothes and began to feel Sajni’s body, caressing her voluptuous breasts.”

And just in case your head wasn’t already awash in horribly disturbing images, here’s another bit I’m sure you wouldn’t want to miss out on, courtesy of a review in The Times of India:

Pachauri is engagingly candid about his protagonist’s urges; Sanjay is always noticing breasts and masturbating (once into a red silk hanky purloined from a train co-passenger).

Um. Ewww. That’s probably not carbon-neutral.

In all seriousness (okay, yeah, it’s really hard to type that with a straight face), isn’t one of the easiest ways for politicians to get around campaign finance laws the old trick of writing a book and then asking supporters to buy it? Sometimes in bulk?

So — couldn’t Pachauri’s farcical foray into the realm of “literature” be the very same sort of back-door tactic he’s been so critical of when it comes to climate change policy?

Here’s what Pachauri had to say about it during that “asbestos” interview with the Financial Times:

FT: In the past, you have talked about big business interests that you believe are trying to create confusion over the issue of climate change.

RP: It’s only a surmise. I have no evidence. But there is enough documentary evidence to show that, for instance, in Washington DC, the number of lobbyists (trying to influence US climate change policy) has increased many fold and from what I read from the Centre for Public Integrity, 770 companies are supporting some of these lobbyists. And certainly some of them are active on the other side of the Atlantic as well.

The presumption is since these people are spending so much time trying to write all kinds of malicious articles and indulge in invective, there would probably be some resources that are flowing to them. It’s all part of a pattern. But let me clarify. I have no proof. I can only presume something like this is at work.

Hmmm. Well, I “have no proof” either, but seeing as how that’s not even a requirement for scientists anymore, I don’t really see why I should have to give any. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

At least all of this sheds some light on why Pachauri was always “irrationally” flying off someplace just for the day to “play cricket.”

What? Isn’t that what the kids are calling it these days?

Not at all.

Annie Dugourd of Oooh La La Couture (I can’t with that name) tells CNBC that Noah is not designing teddies for tykes or bras for babies. Annie went on to say, “It’s been devastating for our little company. We’re two stay-at-home moms who make tutu dresses. We would never do anything inappropriate.”

I’m man enough to admit that everywhere else I read this was wrong. Happy?

**cranks Ace of Spades, flips the bird, peels out**

Heidi Montag followed suit a few hours later, so now my suspicions are confirmed: Heidi and Spencer are reading about themselves on Deceiver, y’all. (Trust me — it’s not because I’m wildly popular on Twitter, probably due to my penchant to only tweet about what I’m about to order at Starbucks. But to my nine followers: Love you guys.)

So anyway, it didn’t take long to find an angle to make this worth blogging about and add more content to their resume here. The Pratts seem to be on some kind of Kundalini yoga kick, with Spencer dropping new-age wisdom bombs like the following:

“The awakening of the inner Kundalini is the true beginning of the spiritual journey” Swami
1:16 AM Feb 3rd from Echofon

Ah, so true, young grasshopper. Which clearly does not explain this photo:

Because when I think “inner yogi,” I think “firing large semi-automatic weapons at targets resembling people.”

Oh right, and if you want to be cool like Heidi and Spencer, you can follow me here.

What?! You didn’t even know she’d left in the first place? What’s wrong with you?

After deleting her twitter account on Monday because she was sick of all the media attention (*cough*), Tila made it 4 whole days — yup, count ‘em, 1, 2, 3, 4… before starting a new, tippy-top secret “need to know only” site @TheRealTila. But shhhhhh! Don’t tell those mean ‘ol bloggers. ‘Cause they be hatin’!

On Thursday, Tila Tweeted:

Damn Twitter was f***ing BORING without me huh? I would be bored as hell if I were U and I wasn’t on twitter anymore! hahhaha jk xox.

And then:

Did ya;ll miss me?? I see all the OG’s here! YAY! No more filthy haters and Media peeps following! Secret page! xox

And of course:

Dont tell anyone I made a secret page ok?? Get the media & haters away from me! They like leeches!

But then, awww, you know what happened? Somehow her “secret” page leaked out to the media & haters. Could it have been, hang on… gimmie a second here… I can figure this out…. Oh yeah!

The public announcement on her blog?

Which she then deleted.

Lucky for us, Disgrasian got a screen shot before Tila got wise to how the haters were gettin’ wise.

And then she wondered how everyone “found” her so easily.

And then she announced that she would be deleting this new account and going back to her old account.

And then …

Oh dear god. Someone shoot me already. Please. This is just sad. It’s like a car wreck or that damn squirrel catapult. Awful, yet we can’t look away.

Honestly this girl needs an Amish intervention or something. Maybe Lily Allen can give her some “neo-luddite” tips. Oh wait.

]]> http://deceiver.com/2010/02/05/tila-deletes-twitter-page-starts-new-seceret-one-deletes-that-one-aw-it/feed/ 17 http://deceiver.com/2010/02/04/it-wasnt-dragons/ http://deceiver.com/2010/02/04/it-wasnt-dragons/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:42:27 +0000 Pastafarian http://deceiver.com/?p=12998 You might think I’m following the Brittany Murphy story a little too closely, but no one ever complained about that back in the salad days of Simon Scowl and John Edwards. I’m just sayin’.

I was fascinated with the idea that a sexy, young Hollywood starlet type could fall for a schlubby, unkempt, unshaven type. Especially one who would defend her against the scurrilous, absolutely untrue allegations that her purse was a portable pharmacy.

Not me of course. I wear a monocle and top hat for breakfast. More for you, really.And my purse is a portable — well, never mind.

Admit it: some of you laughed when I suggested it might not have been a dragon attack that killed her.

Surprise!

The L.A. County coroner’s office says actress Brittany Murphy died of pneumonia complicated by an iron deficiency ( Ed.-I guess she never stood at the business end of my rifle), anemia and multiple drug intoxication.

Coroner officials said Murphy had gone into sudden cardiac arrest because of “drug intake,” and the Dec. 20 death was classified as an accident. They said an autopsy report would be available in two weeks.

It really is all very sad. But let this be a lesson to you. Next time some beefy, sexy, and unshaven Lothario offers you unconditional love if you’ll just let him have a credit card and your bank account number, don’t give it to him.

I wouldn’t. Not again.