Like every emo kid that came before him, Pete Wentz thinks his son's name, Bronx Mowgli, is above everyone else's comprehension.:
'I feel weird — people have all these ideas of what it means now,' Wentz says of his offspring's name during a phone call today to E! News' Ryan Seacrest. 'I think it's kind of cool to leave the narrative the way it is. People are stoked or pissed or whatever … I don't think anybody knows the real story of why or how.'
After the jump, the origins of the ROFL name that is somehow not based on the movie Gremlins:
When even the giants are having to scrape by and Hollywood is only making money off of Beverly Hill Shithuahua or whatever, what makes you think that Walt Disney's namesake would be immune?
Sure, Pixar is great and everything, and High School Musical is a juggernaut of acceptable tween sexuality, but those movies come out once or twice a year, max. And with less money to fill up their car and eat out with, how many families are going to have to cut back on their trip to the money pit Disneyworld this year?
The only thing that would have been surprising then, is if Disney hadn't reported a 13% loss this quarter.
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After 80 years of selling garbage adorned with the characters of a viciously anti-Semitic cartoonist, the Walt Disney Company has arrived at a conclusion: sticky kids and country folk in Donald Duck t-shirts don't have lots of money for the taking, elitists do. And elitists don't like their overpriced, useless crap to be covered with Goofys. Move over, Vera Wang, and say hello to Disney Couture!
Barack Obama's soaring election to the nation's highest office didn't just inspire millions of little boys and girls, millions of young people, and millions of seniors who thought they would never live to see the day when a black man became president. It also inspired Wall Street! Gearing up for an Obama sweep, investors rallied behind media stocks, sending Sumner Redstone's Viacom up 9 percent, along with Disney, CBS, and News Corp. Funny, because these are the very media companies that, now that the election is over, are expected to suffer huge audience losses. [MediaPost]
High School Musical, that insanely popular tween juggernaut, finally (finally?) made it into theatres with its third installment, High School Musical: Senior Year. Great?
But whether or not you care about Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens and um, whoever else is in that series, Disney is still able to milk approximately $100 million from these dancing, singing, annoyingly versatile Miley Cyrus wannabes and their franchise, but not for much longer.
See, as you get older kids, you start to grow hair in funny places, your voice cracks, and not even the most die-hard HSM fans can be expected to suspend their disbelief that Zefron still hasn't graduated high school yet (he is already 21, btw).
So the big question for Disney execs is: Can they replace the cast of High School with some more Disney-made stars, or will we have to follow the same kids till Retirement Home: The Musical?
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Raven Symone, a Cosby Show alum and former Disney star (before Miley Cyrus came along), is evidently a paparazzi target. Why any publications would want to run pictures of Raven is beyond us — this girl typically keeps to herself and doesn't do anything scandalous or exciting. Until now.
See, Raven has some sort of issue with her eyebrows. They don't look like typical eyebrows, so she normally has to fill them in. One day she got lazy and didn't take the time to do that (understandable), and the paparazzi snapped away, which led to people making fun of her eyebrows and weight issues. Up until this point we're on Raven's side — but then she had to take to her MySpace, of all places, and give us a Kanye-esque caps lock tirade of epic proportions. There's lots of exclamation points and typos, just to keep it real.
Hey as long as we are outsourcing Disney to the Middle East, can we send Miley Cyrus to Afghanistan?
Disney is in advanced negotiations with Lebanese helmer Chadi Zeneddine to finance and produce "The Last of the Storytellers."
The Mouse House's first feature in Arabic will mark the start of an expansion drive by Disney execs into the region.
Disney has big plans for the Middle East. The Arab world has a population of some 300 million people, and with two-thirds under age 30, the market is a natural for family-friendly Disney fare. Disney expects to announce two more Arabic-language features in time for the fifth edition of the Dubai Film Festival, which unspools in December.
Well, Dubai is already like a giant Disneyworld for the super rich and famous, but what about the rest of the Middle East? "The market is a natural for family-friendly Disney fare?" Which countries are we talking about here, exactly?
Oh, the ones with all the money that America no longer has. Mickey Goes to Iraq it is!
That whole Being John Malkovich field of comedy, where you get celebrities to play some grandiose, pompous version of themselves, was good for a laugh as far as Ricky Gervais' Extras, or maaaybe even Entourage (depends on who's making the cameos).
But in itself, the celebrity-as-self joke doesn't play unless the person in question is legitimately, and recognizably famous, or Neil Patrick Harris.
So it's a problem when Michael Eisner, once king of Disney, but now just another speculator in web videos and trading cards, has his boys combine his two favorite interests to make a vanity project based around his life:
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Perusing through IMDB, you might start to notice a trend for upcoming films: 3-D is back in a big way. The once-gimmicky (well, it's still gimmicky) trend is the latest move by theaters in the wake of lagging sales to cash in on some of that super-lucrative nostalgia bucks.
Disney has at least five films slated to come out in 3-D in the upcoming year or so, and another 16 in development, including a Tim Burton adaptation of Alice in Wonderland starring Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. Depp will also star in a 4th Pirates of the Caribbean film and a Lone Ranger, playing Tonto. Which should be great for your little sister and all her impressionable friends. Grownups, not so much.
Depp is a sure bet in terms of getting tweens into the theaters, but Disney is taking a gamble with the money needed to create 3-D films without the need for those hokey glasses. (Which, we'll admit, are totally awesome.)
And once you get past the general shtick, how many viewers can actually be expected to fill theaters to see the wonders of Miley Cyrus coming out of the screen? You know, beside Vanity Fair's newest subscribers?
Because no one got sick of those damn Pirates movies, or Johnny Depp talking like a drunk Keith Richards, Disney execs got it into their heads that people need to see more 10-minute rides stretched putty-thin into two hours in a dark theater.
Despite the fact that it's ass-backwards to make a ride first and then turn it into a film, Disney would like to introduce you to Tommorowland, starring The Rock:
It's something out of Grimm's fairytale: The fox and the peacock team up to steal the mouse's gift of laughter. At least that's the idea that seems to be propelling crafty old King Murdoch in his green-lighting of the tentatively titled dramedy, Georgia and the Seven Associates. At the show's helm are producers Chris Brancato and Bert Salke, whose previous work includes NBC's The Office, and who say they got the idea after looking out from their offices overlooking the Disney.
As NBC cuts down dramatically on their comedy fare for the upcoming season, Fox is jumping at the bit to fill up their prime time schedule with Jeff Foxworthy cartoons and Georgia, which is billing itself as "The Devil Wears Prada meets Taxi set in Los Angeles' legal circles."
Could go either way in the ratings (will it be the station's next Alli McBeal orArrested Development?) but it's nice to see that even when they're idea-poaching, Fox still sees some business in being funny.
For the last few idiots left who look to Lynne Spears for parenting advice, consider this: The woman just leaked some of the "shocking" revelations from her new tell-all disguised as a celebrity parenting how-to in an effort to garner some publicity. The revelations include stories about Britney's sex life and drug and alcohol abuse, which would be surprising if the wise Road Kill Willie hadn't already spilled the beans.
Apparently Lynne claims that Britney began drinking alcohol at the age of 13, when she joined the Mickey Mouse Club. By 14, she had lost her virginity to an 18-year-old football player from her hometown, and by 15 she was taking drugs. Lynne details "the horror when Britney, just 16, was caught with cocaine and cannabis on a private jet."
Seinfeld bus? Check.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles bus? Er, check.
Pushing Daisies, ABC's love after death rom-com, gearing up for it's second season, bus? You betcha.
"The Walt Disney network is promoting the show by bringing a version of its central setting, The Pie Hole restaurant, to ten major U.S. cities. An Airstream trailer made to look like the eatery will make its way from downtown Disneyland to Times Square. Visitors will be able to eat free pie and enjoy décor from the show's set — not to mention an "outgoing" restaurant staff."
Someone please explain the promotional bus idea. Is it because television networks that aren't HBO can't afford things like mile-high premieres for their fall season lineups? Or maybe the stations are trying to cash in on a little election fever, hoping that potential viewers will run outside their houses hoping to catch a glimpse of the Straight Talk Express, and instead find only a decorated trailer serving cherry pie in promotion for a show they haven't heard of.
'Film credits from the 1920s revealed imprecision in copyright claims that some experts say could invalidate Disney's long-held copyright, though a Disney lawyer dismissed that idea as "frivolous." Although studio executives are not yet hurling themselves from the parapets of Sleeping Beauty's castle, the unexpected discovery raises an intriguing question: Is it possible that Mickey Mouse now belongs to the world — and that his likeness is usable by anybody for anything?" [LAT]
The dearth of diversity in television and movies is a constant topic of discussion, but one genre might not be getting the props it deserves for its casting practices. Perhaps prime-time network television should take its cues from youth programming on Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel, both of which have a history of casting kids of all hues and ethnicities. Take the red carpet for the premiere of the latest Cheetah Girls movie, for instance:
Have a friend that's done you wrong? Disney is now providing you with an unintentional revenge opportunity: a five a.m. wake-up call from their controversial tween money-machine Miley Cyrus.
The back-to-school site Hannah Montana Calls is a Wall-Mart campaign purportedly for parents trying to woo their kids out of bed in the morning with a semi-personalized phone call from the singer.
But since you can type in any phone number into the website, it has a great potential for misuse. Like sex predators hounding their prey. CONTINUED »
"Richard Roeper said in a statement late Sunday that he will leave television's "At the Movies With Ebert & Roeper" next month after eight years, having failed to reach agreement with Disney-ABC Domestic Television on a new contract." [Chi-Tri]
Miley Cyrus‘ Good Morning America performance today in Bryant Park further cemented the theory that she is a miniature Britney Spears in the making. The choreographed dance moves, the giggly interviews — she’s a pro at the ripe age of 15, which means she’s due for a rehab stint within the next three years.
"A small but growing number of YouTube videos depict people reacting in horror to the jubilant trailer. One woman, sitting with her Yorkshire terrier on her lap, pretends to gag, then protectively covers her dog’s eyes. In another video, two men look at each other in disgust and then one slips a noose over his head." This has been the reaction to a YouTube video that Disney posted to hype Wall E, its new live action blockbuster about what happens when humans binge to the point of retardation. The clip, titled "Beverly Hills Chihuahuas," "depicts several dozen computer-generated chihuahuas performing a Las Vegas-style showstopper, dancing in formation and wearing elaborate headdresses. 'We’re the real hot dogs,' they sing. 'Yo! Hold the bun.'" It is less an exercise in the risk factor of embracing Web 2.0 marketing and more so what happens when marketing execs reach the point of retardation. CONTINUED »
Having just wrapped the third edition of High School Musical, stars Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Monique Coleman, Corbin Bleu, and Lucas Grabeel will not return for the fourth installment of the Disney blockbuster. Neither will their faux-mances. [USA Today]
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