Sunday, 30 August 2009
Saturday, 29 August 2009
Friday, 28 August 2009
Thursday, 27 August 2009
Wednesday, 26 August 2009
Ted Kennedy
Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009) was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. In office since November 1962, Kennedy served nine terms in the Senate. At the time of his death, he was the second most senior member of the Senate, after Robert Byrd of West Virginia, and the third-longest-serving senator in U.S. history. He was best known as one of the most outspoken and effective Senate proponents of liberal causes and bills. For many years the most prominent living member of the Kennedy family, he was the youngest brother of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, both victims of assassinations, and the father of Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy.
Kennedy was born in Boston and raised in Massachusetts, New York, Florida, and England. He was educated at Harvard College, where he was expelled for cheating on an exam but later readmitted, and the University of Virginia School of Law. His 1958 marriage to Virginia Joan Bennett produced three children but ended in divorce in 1982. He was a manager in his brother John's successful 1960 campaign for president, then worked as an assistant district attorney for Suffolk County, Massachusetts. Kennedy entered the Senate in a 1962 special election to fill the seat once held by John. He was seriously injured in an airplane crash in 1964 and suffered from lifelong back pain as a result. Kennedy was elected to a full six-year term in 1964 and was reelected in 1970, 1976, 1982, 1988, 1994, 2000 and 2006.
In the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident, the car Kennedy was driving ran off a bridge and plunged into water, resulting in the death of passenger Mary Jo Kopechne. Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and was given a suspended sentence; however, doubts about his account of the accident significantly damaged his chances of ever becoming President of the United States. Kennedy's one run for the office, in the 1980 presidential election, ended in a primary campaign loss to incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Kennedy was known for his oratorical power, with his 1968 eulogy for his brother Robert and his 1980 Democratic National Convention rallying cry for American liberalism being his best-known moments. Kennedy's early opposition and heated rhetoric helped lead to the defeat of the 1987 Robert Bork Supreme Court nomination on philosophical grounds and usher in an era of intense political battles over federal judicial nominations. Kennedy's personal behavior following his divorce became the subject of tabloid scrutiny in the 1980s and early 1990s, but his 1992 marriage to Victoria Anne Reggie stabilized his life.
Kennedy was the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Due to his long history and influence in the legislature, he became known as "The Lion of the Senate". More than 300 bills that Kennedy wrote have been enacted into law, and he was known for his ability to work with Republicans and to find compromises among Senate members with disparate views. Kennedy played a major role in passing many pieces of legislation that have affected the lives of all Americans, including the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the National Cancer Act of 1971, the Federal Election Campaign Act Amendments of 1974, the COBRA Act of 1985, the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the Ryan White AIDS Care Act in 1990, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, the Mental Health Parity Act in 1996 and 2008, the State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997, the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, and the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act in 2009. During the 2000s, he was a leader of several failed efforts at immigration reform. Over the course of decades, Kennedy's major legislative goal had been enactment of universal health care, which he continued to work toward during the Obama administration. Kennedy battled a malignant brain tumor first diagnosed in May 2008, which greatly limited his appearances in the Senate; though he survived longer than doctors first expected, he died just before midnight on August 25, 2009 at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
Monday, 24 August 2009
Saturday, 22 August 2009
Joan Cusack; Genre: Comedy; With: Joan Cusack
Joan: Bob D'Amico
Which doesn't mean she's an easy fit for television stardom. Look how other actors have failed to adapt their big screen personas to TV sitcoms this season: Bette Midler, who seemed to feel the medium was beneath her, worked against its ensemble work ethic and was canceled for her hubris; Gabriel Byrne trusted the medium too much and merely walked through his ''Madigan Men'' role: Bye bye. And when will ABC put Geena Davis out of her misery?
Now let's look at how Cusack's skills are being deployed on a weekly basis. In ''Joan,'' she plays Joan Gallagher, a Chicago high school teacher -- by all evidence, a good, caring educator. That may be one trait that draws Jake (''Early Edition'''s chiseled Kyle Chandler) to her, and in a nice twist on the standard ''let's drag this out'' sitcom chronology, Jake proposes to Joan in the very first episode, supposedly after a scant nine dates. But Joan is so rattled, so racked with self doubt (''I'm not the kind of girl that sweeps guys off their feet -- I'm the low maintenance, dependable one that guys call after they've gotten dumped by the girl that sweeps guys off their feet!''), she refuses. (Had she agreed, the series could have borrowed the title from a 1950s sitcom: ''I Married Joan.'') Indeed, Joan's immediate reaction is one of querulous suspicion: ''Are you trying to break up with me?'' she asks.
That's the best joke in the pilot -- the most poignant, and the one that suggests what could have made ''What About Joan'' a distinctive show instead of a frustrating one. The Joan that Cusack plays is insecure about her looks and comfortably straitlaced: In the second episode she says, ''I'm very modest about sex.''
Unfortunately, the writers are maddeningly inconsistent in creating punchlines for Joan that jibe with this image. In fact, the second episode's assertion of modesty is contradicted in this week's debut, wherein, to relieve the tension of Jake's proposal, Joan shouts, ''We need medicinal sex!'' -- i.e., intercourse as a stress reducing exercise. And soon after the April 3 episode's modesty line, there is some all too typically sitcommy sex talk, from ''Family Matters''' Kellie Shanygne Williams (all grown up as a no nonsense student teacher), who compares various orgasm inducing moves to places in Florida (''The Magic Kingdom'' as a euphemism for the G spot? Does ABC overlord Michael Eisner know about this?).
Joan's supporting cast is uneven. ''Veronica's Closet'''s Wallace Langham is a lecherous colleague (will the sly Langham ever again get a role as good as Phil the comedy writer on ''The Larry Sanders Show''?); Jessica Hecht, from ''Friends'' and ''The Single Guy,'' plays a teacher involved with Langham's character, and the slashingly smart Broadway actress Donna Murphy is Joan's psychiatrist friend.
Only Williams and Murphy show any promise as personalities capable of working at Cusack's level. Unfortunately, I'm afraid the nice but blank faced Chandler isn't much of a romantic or comedic match for Cusack, who wrenches laughs from limp lines by scrunching up her eyes, wringing her hands, and generally contorting her Olive Oyl body in a neurotic anguish that's new to TV.
Probably too new. Unless series creator and producer Gwen Macsai can quickly cobble together a better showcase for Cusack, I predict the actress will get tagged as a movie second banana who shouldn't have been plucked from the bunch to be a lead actress, and that's not accurate. It's TV that is failing Cusack's talent by stuffing her into the kind of snickering, ordinary sitcom audiences are increasingly tired of watching.
I'd be doing Joan Cusack a disservice if I merely said that her foray into weekly television, the sitcom What About Joan, is pretty much a bust and let it go at that. Cusack deserves better, on every level. You've probably seen her steal scenes in feature films like 1997's ''In & Out'' (playing a perplexed girlfriend engaged to Kevin Kline's sexually ambivalent lead) and especially 1988's ''Working Girl,'' as a perfect wiseacre pal -- a latter day Eve Arden or Thelma Ritter -- to Melanie Griffith's title character. With her long, rubbery face, Cusack has the gift of seeming both vulnerably soft and prickly smart. Her ability to transform needy fear into fearless funniness is one of her most original, appealing traits.
Which doesn't mean she's an easy fit for television stardom. Look how other actors have failed to adapt their big screen personas to TV sitcoms this season: Bette Midler, who seemed to feel the medium was beneath her, worked against its ensemble work ethic and was canceled for her hubris; Gabriel Byrne trusted the medium too much and merely walked through his ''Madigan Men'' role: Bye bye. And when will ABC put Geena Davis out of her misery?
Now let's look at how Cusack's skills are being deployed on a weekly basis. In ''Joan,'' she plays Joan Gallagher, a Chicago high school teacher -- by all evidence, a good, caring educator. That may be one trait that draws Jake (''Early Edition'''s chiseled Kyle Chandler) to her, and in a nice twist on the standard ''let's drag this out'' sitcom chronology, Jake proposes to Joan in the very first episode, supposedly after a scant nine dates. But Joan is so rattled, so racked with self doubt (''I'm not the kind of girl that sweeps guys off their feet -- I'm the low maintenance, dependable one that guys call after they've gotten dumped by the girl that sweeps guys off their feet!''), she refuses. (Had she agreed, the series could have borrowed the title from a 1950s sitcom: ''I Married Joan.'') Indeed, Joan's immediate reaction is one of querulous suspicion: ''Are you trying to break up with me?'' she asks.
That's the best joke in the pilot -- the most poignant, and the one that suggests what could have made ''What About Joan'' a distinctive show instead of a frustrating one. The Joan that Cusack plays is insecure about her looks and comfortably straitlaced: In the second episode she says, ''I'm very modest about sex.''
Unfortunately, the writers are maddeningly inconsistent in creating punchlines for Joan that jibe with this image. In fact, the second episode's assertion of modesty is contradicted in this week's debut, wherein, to relieve the tension of Jake's proposal, Joan shouts, ''We need medicinal sex!'' -- i.e., intercourse as a stress reducing exercise. And soon after the April 3 episode's modesty line, there is some all too typically sitcommy sex talk, from ''Family Matters''' Kellie Shanygne Williams (all grown up as a no nonsense student teacher), who compares various orgasm inducing moves to places in Florida (''The Magic Kingdom'' as a euphemism for the G spot? Does ABC overlord Michael Eisner know about this?).
Joan's supporting cast is uneven. ''Veronica's Closet'''s Wallace Langham is a lecherous colleague (will the sly Langham ever again get a role as good as Phil the comedy writer on ''The Larry Sanders Show''?); Jessica Hecht, from ''Friends'' and ''The Single Guy,'' plays a teacher involved with Langham's character, and the slashingly smart Broadway actress Donna Murphy is Joan's psychiatrist friend.
Only Williams and Murphy show any promise as personalities capable of working at Cusack's level. Unfortunately, I'm afraid the nice but blank faced Chandler isn't much of a romantic or comedic match for Cusack, who wrenches laughs from limp lines by scrunching up her eyes, wringing her hands, and generally contorting her Olive Oyl body in a neurotic anguish that's new to TV.
Probably too new. Unless series creator and producer Gwen Macsai can quickly cobble together a better showcase for Cusack, I predict the actress will get tagged as a movie second banana who shouldn't have been plucked from the bunch to be a lead actress, and that's not accurate. It's TV that is failing Cusack's talent by stuffing her into the kind of snickering, ordinary sitcom audiences are increasingly tired of watching.
I'd be doing Joan Cusack a disservice if I merely said that her foray into weekly television, the sitcom What About Joan, is pretty much a bust and let it go at that. Cusack deserves better, on every level. You've probably seen her steal scenes in feature films like 1997's ''In & Out'' (playing a perplexed girlfriend engaged to Kevin Kline's sexually ambivalent lead) and especially 1988's ''Working Girl,'' as a perfect wiseacre pal -- a latter day Eve Arden or Thelma Ritter -- to Melanie Griffith's title character. With her long, rubbery face, Cusack has the gift of seeming both vulnerably soft and prickly smart. Her ability to transform needy fear into fearless funniness is one of her most original, appealing traits.
Which doesn't mean she's an easy fit for television stardom. Look how other actors have failed to adapt their big screen personas to TV sitcoms this season: Bette Midler, who seemed to feel the medium was beneath her, worked against its ensemble work ethic and was canceled for her hubris; Gabriel Byrne trusted the medium too much and merely walked through his ''Madigan Men'' role: Bye bye. And when will ABC put Geena Davis out of her misery?
Now let's look at how Cusack's skills are being deployed on a weekly basis. In ''Joan,'' she plays Joan Gallagher, a Chicago high school teacher -- by all evidence, a good, caring educator. That may be one trait that draws Jake (''Early Edition'''s chiseled Kyle Chandler) to her, and in a nice twist on the standard ''let's drag this out'' sitcom chronology, Jake proposes to Joan in the very first episode, supposedly after a scant nine dates. But Joan is so rattled, so racked with self doubt (''I'm not the kind of girl that sweeps guys off their feet -- I'm the low maintenance, dependable one that guys call after they've gotten dumped by the girl that sweeps guys off their feet!''), she refuses. (Had she agreed, the series could have borrowed the title from a 1950s sitcom: ''I Married Joan.'') Indeed, Joan's immediate reaction is one of querulous suspicion: ''Are you trying to break up with me?'' she asks.
That's the best joke in the pilot -- the most poignant, and the one that suggests what could have made ''What About Joan'' a distinctive show instead of a frustrating one. The Joan that Cusack plays is insecure about her looks and comfortably straitlaced: In the second episode she says, ''I'm very modest about sex.''
Unfortunately, the writers are maddeningly inconsistent in creating punchlines for Joan that jibe with this image. In fact, the second episode's assertion of modesty is contradicted in this week's debut, wherein, to relieve the tension of Jake's proposal, Joan shouts, ''We need medicinal sex!'' -- i.e., intercourse as a stress reducing exercise. And soon after the April 3 episode's modesty line, there is some all too typically sitcommy sex talk, from ''Family Matters''' Kellie Shanygne Williams (all grown up as a no nonsense student teacher), who compares various orgasm inducing moves to places in Florida (''The Magic Kingdom'' as a euphemism for the G spot? Does ABC overlord Michael Eisner know about this?).
Joan's supporting cast is uneven. ''Veronica's Closet'''s Wallace Langham is a lecherous colleague (will the sly Langham ever again get a role as good as Phil the comedy writer on ''The Larry Sanders Show''?); Jessica Hecht, from ''Friends'' and ''The Single Guy,'' plays a teacher involved with Langham's character, and the slashingly smart Broadway actress Donna Murphy is Joan's psychiatrist friend.
Only Williams and Murphy show any promise as personalities capable of working at Cusack's level. Unfortunately, I'm afraid the nice but blank faced Chandler isn't much of a romantic or comedic match for Cusack, who wrenches laughs from limp lines by scrunching up her eyes, wringing her hands, and generally contorting her Olive Oyl body in a neurotic anguish that's new to TV.
Probably too new. Unless series creator and producer Gwen Macsai can quickly cobble together a better showcase for Cusack, I predict the actress will get tagged as a movie second banana who shouldn't have been plucked from the bunch to be a lead actress, and that's not accurate. It's TV that is failing Cusack's talent by stuffing her into the kind of snickering, ordinary sitcom audiences are increasingly tired of watching.
