I think Barack Obama is making me question my sexual orientation. There’s been a flurry of conversation over the holidays as pictures of a “topless Obama” from Hawaii have appeared on the internet and elsewhere.

To my recollection I’m not sure I’m aware of a President this buff? He obviously works out and isn’t a McDonald’s patron like his democratic predecessor Bill Clinton. It’s a good thing he’s not a ladies man like him either or Obama would be getting plenty of action; power plus pecs is a lethal combination to slay the hearts of babes.

Much of the criticism over the photographs have been if a photographer can get close enough to take “sexy” shots like these couldn’t an assassin or nutjob get close enough to shoot the president-elect?

This particular photo was shot by a photographer for The Bauer-Griffin Agency located in California. According to Eurweb.com, Frank Griffin is the co-owner and said his guy did nothing wrong. All photographers were checked by the secret service and the beach is public. The agency’s photographer simply had the luck of getting the best shot.

The other criticism I saw on some comment boards was one of jealousy. One person on Topix.com actually said this and I quote: “Big deal. I’m 45, I’m in better shape than this guy and I don’t smoke. He’s not all that special people, and he STILL has done nothing of substance. Writing books in Bali and golfing in Hawaii…. There’s a man-of-the-people for you!”

“Big deal”? I’m not exactly a hardcore defender of Obama but the big deal is that this guy keeps in shape and maintains the schedule it takes to become President of the United States, you idiot. Currently Obama is on holiday because he’s not yet in charge and if you don’t think there’s anything going on behind the scenes where he’s studying up on his new position then you truly are an idiot. Let’s reserve judgment for when he gets into office and starts screwing up. Until then comments like these are petty.

Sorry, just had to say that.

As a member of Kennedy royalty, Caroline Kennedy has her eyes on Hillary Clinton’s New York senate seat; but to start off her campaign right she has to stop saying “Ya Know.”

First of all, with a Kennedy it doesn’t matter if they have a speech impairment or not, they can usually get what they want. Robert Kennedy, Jr. hosts “Ring of Fire” on Air America Radio and his voice is terrible. He has no business being an orator of any kind, or frankly telling the average American to conserve on their driving when he flies in a jet (I’m not a fan of Hannity but RK got called out on that one). With Caroline Kennedy she will be elected based upon being a “Kennedy” and not her own merit–whether that’s fair or not, I believe it’s true.

That’s not to say Caroline isn’t smart.  To be in that royal family it looks like a requirement as long you stay to the same idealogical path. All she needs is a Palin makeover to curb her “Ya Know”s and she’s on her way.

Most of what counts for intelligence is the appearance of intelligence and part of that is being able to speak. Possibly Bush is a rogue maverick in this department and is so smart he feels he doesn’t have to appear to be such in public. At last we may have figured him out, if it weren’t for a botched war, a bad economy, and numerous government scandals.

You would think Oprah Winfrey would have a top notch research staff that would do some fact checking on her guests. Especially considering the earlier James Frey debacle. But nope. She’s been hoaxed a second time.

According to Access Hollywood’s site, Oprah endorsed the touching love story of married couple Herman and Rosa Rosenblat. Herman, a holocaust survivor, claimed that his future wife secretly gave him food through a fence in a Nazi Concentration Camp. Later, after the war they met on a blind date. A perfect story of romance escaping a dictatorial German regime–too perfect to be real.

The New Republic questioned the story saying it was an “impossibility” and brought doubt onto the authenticity of Herman’s words. Parts of the story were true: Herman was a Holocaust Survivor and he did meet Rosa on a blind date. It is the entire combination of events that does not add up.

 Herman says he did it to bring happiness to people’s lives once they heard the romantic tale. More likely it was for a publishing deal with Berkeley Books that has now been canceled.

As some of you who have read this blog in the past week know, I commented on John Hughes. Yes, I pulled my John Hughes collection out for the holidays and currently have Uncle Buck playing on my office TV. I never noticed it before but young McCauley Culkin swears a lot in the opening scenes.

In 2004, the powers that be decided to pass more regulations on how to protect child actors. The added measures included banning exposure to nudity, swearing, smoking and drinking.

The smoking bit I get. Secondhand smoke, though overblown on the statistics, can get into a young person’s lungs and cause some possible damage, especially if the kid has asthmatic problems to begin with.

The drinking? Do we really have to protect a kid from participating in a scene where an adult actor is drinking? And was it really a necessary rule to begin with? Most likely the adult actor is drinking grape juice because if the scene is done ten or more times they would be drunk and useless to work with. Obviously no sane adult would force a kid to drink real alcohol if the scene called for it and there are already laws on the books that would prevent that.

The nudity? I’m torn on that one. First of all it depends on the age of the child. A baby isn’t going to give a damn if an actress is showing her breast, except that it might make them hungry. Boys who are around 13 and get to see live breasts are just plain lucky. Young girls exposed to male genitalia might be one instance when it’s best to use separate shooting schedules and keep them away from the offending member though I still question why plain male nudity should be detrimental in the first place. Overall we’re so prude about nudity in America and children are more curious than by nudity than sexually turned on. It’s when sexual aggression occurs, that’s when we get into the problem areas.

That leaves us with the swearing and here I think it should be left up to the parent as to whether a child is allowed to swear on camera or hear other adult actors swearing on camera. Kids, when they’re away from adults, swear worse than I do when I stub my toe–generally speaking, and what constitutes a bad word is usually a matter of opinion. Swearing has more to do with being polite than psychological damage as the result of hearing a specific sound–which is just another superstition we perpetuate in the English language: the idea that one word is more taboo than another based solely on its sound.

I’m going to keep an eye out for children swearing in newly released movies. I’m sure there must be some loopholes in the regulations. Maybe a parent can sign a permission slip for them to say the word “s**t.” I’d also like to see the list of swear words that are deemed to be “swear words.” Does it include the word “Damn” or “Crap”? Two words that while vulgar, seem to be more acceptable these days.

These petty regulations do not do what they’re intended to do which is to protect young actors. Young actors don’t need to be shielded from swearing and nudity, what they need are good lawyers to protect their money from greedy Hollywood parents; and they could use a therapist to protect them from the illusions of fame.

Have you ever gone to the theater, plunked down eight bucks or more, plunked down another twenty for popcorn and soda and then sat down only to have a bunch of chatterboxes sit right behind you and ruin the entire experience?

According to CNN.com one man had had enough. Twenty-nine year-old James Joseph Cialella shot a chatterbox.

It happened during a showing of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” starring Brad Pitt. A family near Mr. Cialella began talking and apparently wouldn’t quiet down. He took action by first throwing popcorn at the son and then walked down the aisle and shot the father in the arm with a Kel-Tec .380-caliber handgun.

Thankfully the shooting wasn’t fatal and the father survived “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” movie rampage. He was taken to a nearby hospital to attend to his wounds. Mr. Cialella is under arrest for assault and weapons violations.

While we would never condone shooting another person, it’s hard not to sympathize with Mr. Cialella. We’ve all had the experience of settling into a theater chair, the previews are over, the movie has officially started and there’s someone still talking above your head for no reason. Some people cannot keep quiet because somehow they think they are part of the movie dialogue.

When I was in my early twenties and needed a job to get my first apartment in Downtown Seattle, I took a job at a local theater–and I can tell you how rude people can be. The worst offenders do tend to be families where the parents refuse to control their kids. College kids sneaking beer in are the second worst.

So when you go into the theater the next time with your buddies or your kids remember to turn off your cellphones–and shut the hell up! Otherwise, there could be copycat shooters who just aren’t going to put up with your chatter anymore.

Over the holidays it is most likely that you watched “Home Alone,” either on cable or a new DVD or that ratty old VHS tape you dug out of the basement. I chose the VHS route and hooked up an old VCR to my TV in the living room. For some reason I’ve never picked up a DVD copy.

Home Alone is now a bonafide Christmas Classic surviving the test of time. It makes you wish John Hughes would return to making movies. Where did he go and with it where did his sense of humor regarding family life go?

It seems that Mr. Hughes is satisfied with retirement. He now lives in the same Chicago Suburbs that he featured in his films, with those brick houses you could never understand someone being able to afford–the one in Home Alone is huge! He no longer spends time in the Hollywood arena and leads a very quiet life at age 58.

There are very few holiday films that can survive to become classics. Many of them, like A Christmas Story, take a roundabout way to acquire that status, but Home Alone was a hit with audiences as soon as it entered the theaters. It has all of the sentimental holiday elements and then it threw in slapstick to clinch the deal.

And it showed us an imperfect family, which is often what John Hughes did with his writing. Kevin’s family is downright mean to each other and Kevin’s final remarks to his mom before he is grounded up in the attic are pretty terrible. But that’s what families do, if we were to be honest. One moment a kid is telling his parents he hates them and the next moment he’s looking for a hug.

I can’t think of any recent Holiday family comedies that have the potential to become a classic like Home Alone. Yes, the blockbuster is dead, and yet I would think some writer/director somewhere would be putting down his nostalgic thoughts into a script that could stand the test of time. After all, cable reruns of A Christmas Story made that movie a classic; a recently made sleeper film could run the same course.

Popped Culture News wants to applaud the star of The Day The Earth Stood Still, a remake of a sci-fi classic. With the confidence of one who knows their destiny is to be a star from the day they were born, Keanu Reeves has never had to change his acting style.

Proof of this is the holiday TV treat “Babes In Toyland” where Keanu plays Jack-Be-Nimble. I watched it last night because I could not believe the made-for-TV movie was done in 1986. It was the same Keanu from a legion of films he would do in the late eighties to nineties up until the recent 2000’s.

The man simply knew he was good back in 1986–why change his acting style? No improvement was necessary and rumors are that Keanu becomes so involved in his character roles that you can’t tell when he’s acting and when he’s not acting. It’s brilliance. 

Now if only Keanu would remake his 1986 classic Babes In Toyland (and yes Drew Barrymore could star again too since her acting style also has not changed) because that way we could compare the two films and see if there were any noticeable differences. This would be an experiment that Film Historians would be talking about far into the future.

Christmas Evil is a little known cult classic I discovered recently while searching for Christmas horror movies. Besides Black Christmas it is the best holiday horror film I’ve seen. John Waters agrees with me–or rather I agree with John Waters, let not my ego supersede his. According to Wiki, John Waters believes Christmas Evil is  the “greatest Christmas movie ever made.”

I wouldn’t go that far, but Christmas Evil is surprisingly well done for a low budget holiday exploitation flick. It was released in 1980 and I find that seventies to early eighties horror films are all creepy just by the nature of them being filmed in that time period. That of course is when I was a kid growing up and my whole neighborhood seemed creepy in rainy Oregon.

If you’ve seen the other Santa cult classic Silent Night, Deadly Night about a Santa with uncontrollable gas–I kid, it’s about a slasher Santa–you might think Christmas Evil is more of the same. Not true. Christmas Evil, despite some descriptions is not a slasher flick.

 It’s about an emotionally disturbed child named Harry who grows up to embrace the idealism of Santa while in reality everything around him protests against the warmth of the Christmas spirit: his job is crap, co-workers are jerks, he’s single, no friends, and his future looks dim.

It is this dark reality that begins to cause Harry to lose himself in the Santa mystique until he “becomes Santa.” That’s when everything goes wrong and people start to die.

There’s nothing typical about the storyline except for the beginning scene with the traumatized child. We’ve seen that before in several horror movies. And Christmas Evil is filled with some rather funny to hilarious moments if you have a dark sense of humor. In some ways I’d almost call it an “office” horror/humor film because of his job situation and the scenes of the employee Christmas party which seem so drearily familiar.

I’m not sure I’d share Christmas Evil with your family on Christmas Eve, but if you’re having your geek friends over on Christmas Day then pop it in so everyone can cheer on Santa Harry in his quest to find out who’s naughty or nice.

BTW: On the special edition DVD of Christmas Evil, John Waters is on the audio commentary. How cool is that?!

It is surprising to what lengths Chinese officials will go to in order to control the flow of information on the internet. This includes material they deem obscene and in China, despite being godless communists, they are extremely conservative about sex.

Those who post porn or what is deemed to be pornographic downloads can receive jail time. If you want to protest a totalitarian communist regime and piss off The Chinese Authorities for all of their human rights abuses, go grab your partner, make a sex video and dedicate it to The Chinese Government.

A recent example of China’s prude police is reported by GossHollywood.com where Shanghai authorities are now holding a woman who posted a 12 minute sex video of herself entitled:  “Kappa girl at Shanghai No 1 Department Store’s east building.” If she hadn’t used Shanghai in the title maybe things would not have gotten out of hand. However, the video became popular and was downloaded enough times that this girl decided to profit from it.

Her real name is Huang and she started a blog where she offered to do interviews and provide bio information for a price–a porn star in the making. Too bad the authorities now have her in custody and are deleting the video and any information about the video wherever they can find it on the internet. Good luck, guys.

Whether or not you agree with Huang showing her goodies, it brings up the issue of whether China can survive pop culture. What happens when a Chinese film star, or maybe a better example would be a ping-pong champion, has a sex video leaked to the worldwide web? Much like our Pamela Anderson sex vids and our Paris Hilton vids it will be an unstoppable force. The more China tries to eliminate it the more popular the video will become.

Of course, according to some articles–see this one from 2005 on China and Internet Porn–Chinese women are too frigid to begin with. This may be a cultural effect where individualism is squashed by any means necessary and to be sexually active means “putting yourself out there.” Sex is an expression of confidence and individualism which often frightens those in charge because if you are not afraid of sex you are often not afraid to call “bulls**t on politics.

This begs the question as to why American activists are still even bothering to suggest that porn oppresses women. If it was forced, yes, but the opposite seems to be true too: if you force a woman not to express herself in sexual entertainment then oppression again occurs. Freedom to be in sexual entertainment is the logical choice, regardless if some American women will make stupid mistakes or be leered at by Chinese men who have obtained their videos through the blackmarket.

One could say that this is a pointless sequel considering that the first wasn’t that terrific. It will be a night that never ends with Night At the Museum 2. The worst tagline ever: The Battle of the Smithsonian — ???

You can’t blame the producers of Night at the Museum for wanting to make a sequel. It made 600 million worldwide. And watching the trailer, the second one looks better than the first or rather it has the imagination and humor that maybe the first should have integrated.

I feel like I’m being too harsh on the first movie but there seemed to be so many missed opportunities in the script and the whole parental plotline with the kid felt way too familiar. I came out of the theater feeling like it was a great movie idea but it was incomplete.

The director Shawn Levy recognizes that he has to beat the expectations when doing a sequel because the plot surprises were already exposed in the first movie. The sequel will be a series of gags that build on the same idea that museum pieces can come to life.

So they will expand the magical abilities to paintings that come to life. I almost wonder if the third sequel will be Night at the Museum - Touring The Louvre.  The fourth sequel of course would be Night at the Museum meets the Da Vinci Code with Jesus coming down off his cross to explain what the hell Dan Brown is talking about.