Pop Culture Petri Dish

I'm not in the mood to waste your precious time painting a pretty introductory picture here, so enclosed please find a Whitman's Sampler of the media I've been imbibing in of late. TV: America's Next Top Model --Masterpiece Theater? Ha! Some critically-ballyhooed HBO tele-series? Feh! ANTM serves up some of the most entertaining drama and silliness to be found on the boob tube. It ain't art, but it's taught the missus and me mucho about the fashion industry (ringleader Tyra Banks knows the modelling biz like nobody's business), and always serves up prime TV reality characters: looks-like-a-drag-queen Dominique is just begging to be smacked hard, but she does make for great TV. For the record, I'm rooting for soft-spoken nice girl Anya. Film: Robin B. Hood (on DVD from Dragon Dynasty)--Regular visitors to the Dish know that yours truly harbors much love for the great Jackie Chan, but even this hardcore fan has gotta cop to the man's spotty track ...

Hearing of the death of movie legend Charlton Heston at 84 , from this corner at least, is tantamount to seeing one of the tallest, most majestic trees in the cinema forest felled. The hell with his oft-paradoxical political views : Heston was loved and highly-regarded by co-workers, and he leaves behind a formidable legacy of film work. His unconventional but striking looks, his intensity and the rich cadence of that voice indelibly etched itself on the collective consciousness. I've literally known the man's work as long as I've known life, and his passing feels like the loss of a member of the family. Charlton Heston represented one of the last sustained links between the glamour of the traditional Hollywood Studio System and the modern dream factory we know today. Unlike many of his peers, Heston sustained his relevance through some of American Cinema's most radical upheavals. Yeah, he could gnaw scenery with the relentlessness of a swarm of locusts, but his longevi...