celebutarded

If You Read One More Story About Britney In Your Life Ever...

Asra Nomani is best-known today for imploring the press to just forget about fucking Britney Spears already. But Asra Nomani was best-known last summer for being the former best friend of Mariane Pearl who had basically been dropped by Mariane for Angelina Jolie, who played Mariane in the movie A Mighty Heart, and was, for that and various other reasons, declared by Esquire to be the "best person in the world" (in a piece notably criticized as the worst celebrity profile in the world.) I thought hard about ALL THESE THINGS when I read this week's Rolling Stone cover story on Britney Spears, which is sort of the logical sequel to the Angelina Jolie profile; overwrought, over-intellectualized and really fucking good rumination on the transformation of a troubled young girl estranged from her father. Is any of it true, though? Well, at the beginning, Britney gets approached by a nervous fan, who says she's "from the South too" and could she maybe get a picture for her little sister? Lips "almost vibrating with anger," she stares the girl "deep in the eyes" and says "I don't know who you think I am, bitch." (Um, Britney, bitch?) "But I'm not that person." In a way, it's the same thing Nomani is trying to say! More »

a really long and earnest post, redeemed only by mention of blowjobs

Why We Don't Blame Angelina For This Mighty Piece Of Crap

On Wednesday night one of us attended the premiere of the most intriguing product of the Hollywood "stop paying attention to our traffic violations and start paying attention to us heroically shedding light on international hotspots" wave that was the movie A Mighty Heart. It was not a very good movie, though Angelina Jolie acted the shit out of it and Michael Winterbottom's direction so autistically true to life that we could practically smell the streets of Karachi. (Scent: not so fresh!) No, what seemed to be wrong was the story. It was teeming with requisite ingredients — love, terrorism, horror, goodness, nuance, spies, counterspies, nebbishy journalists, conspiracy theorizing brown people — so teeming you would forgive it if the teemingness was the problem. But it was hollow and small and annoyingly unambitious, and you had trouble caring about Mariane Pearl, who in the final scene of the movie gives birth to her and Daniel Pearl's son alone. (She gives birth alone — why? Because she is a semi-insufferable woman who romanticizes and dramatizes her every action and giving birth alone is supposed to symbolize some great triumph of the human spirit? Or because no one really likes her all that much? Or because putting an Eason Jordan character in the movie would be kinda distracting?) After the jump, Moe weighs in more on the movie and the book that inspired it. More »

the 'brombast' of brangelina

Either Angelina Jolie Is Subtly Disapproving Of The Murdoch-Dow Jones Deal Or She Doesn't Really Understand Freedom Of The Press

Angelina Jolie apparently shut out Fox News from covering the New York premiere of A Mighty Heart last night. (Hey even we were there!) But we find this annoying because, one, we kind of love Shepard Smith, and two, the whole point of the film is to depict a super-nuanced situation wherein an innocent Wall Street Journal reporter who is good and brave is beheaded by a guy who is kinda cold-blooded and evil but everyone else is just sorta, you know, human. As for the movie itself, it's not that great because the screenplay isn't really strong enough to make you care about any of the characters — and we have the suspicion that Brangelina sorta got wooed by the charisma and the tragedy of Mariane Pearl, who is not that great a writer, as we know from her work in Glamour — so we're thinking Angelina maybe just isn't that smart, because if she was, she might understand that, you know, when you are doing this movie where you are supposed to portray a journalist, who is married to a much better journalist, you sort of have to allow that maybe freedom of the press is something that apply to all journalists, and not just the journalists you actually like. OK, we're working on a better way to phrase that. A review of the film is also forthcoming.

Related: Angelina & Mariane's Powerful Bond [Glamour]
Angelina's Freedom Of The Press, On Her Terms [Fox411] More »

rag trade

Limited Brands Would Like You To Buy An Angel Bra

• Gisele got out just in time: Limited Brands — the owner of Limited, Express, Bath & Body Works, Victoria's Secret and probably some other highly-fragranced mall-type stores — is floundering, trying to sell off parts and blaming weak sales on gas prices, cold weather. [WSJ]
  
• But Target is so just not having that problem! [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• The ever-ailing Gap taps Patrick Robinson as design chief. Who? Just another notoriously tempestuous designer whose two greatest accomplishments are a Target collection and a Vogue connection (his wife is fashion market director Virginia Smith). [WWD]
  
• Mighty Heart, mighty bad memory: Angelina, uh, "forgot" to wear St. John — the house that tapped her to replace its own crazy Kelly Gray — to her movie's premiere in Cannes this week. [LA Times]

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