Death of the Movie Star

A few years ago I read an article in People or Entertainment Weekly or some such magazine proclaiming that George Clooney was the last real movie star. "Preposterous!" you might proclaim if you're melodramatic or a time-traveler from before the 1940's, but they have a point. Clooney has even stopped being a movie star at this point. Some time in the last five years movie stars have died off and celebrities have taken their place. While the golden age of film had Ginger Rodgers, Fred Astaire, and Humphrey Bogart, we've got Angelina Jolie, Johnny Depp, and Dwayne Johnson. I'm not saying that our current celebrities don't make entertaining films, because they do. But a movie star was a force on screen and off-screen. They had to be malleable for any role, but they also had to be full of movie star swagger, confidence, and sometimes lovable-yet-despicable qualities like alcoholism that they could get away with because they were a freaking MOVIE STAR!

Now that Everyone's Sick of the Subject: How to Make the New "Two and A Half Men" Work

If you've never watched "Two and a Half Men" before then you've clearly never watch TV live, because it's always on. Re-runs of the most recent season have been making the rounds on television since Charlie Sheen began his tour of crazy across the airwaves and got fired. Regardless of your feeling of Sheen as a person, he's a highly entertaining actor, and Chuck Lorre and CBS have their work set out for them replacing him in a way that gives them more than one more season of life.

Again, this is probably old news but Ashton Kutcher, the baby-faced boy-toy husband of Demi Moore will be filling the vacancy on the show. There are many different ways that the creators and writes can incorporate him into the family, but I see only one way in which all characters can work.