BuzzSugar

Are You Interested in Reading Russell Brand's Book?

BuzzSugar — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:15:18 -0700

After introducing himself to American audiences playing a smug British rock star in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Russell Brand went on to host the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. Still, he's not quite yet a household name on this side of the pond.

So it's interesting to find his memoir on bestselling lists here in the States. Apparently My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up is a good read, thanks to Brand's honest and humorous writings about his troubled childhood and struggles with addiction. America's eating it up!

So what do you think? Are you interested in reading this funny guy's book?

Katherine Heigl to Take On Carolyn Jessop's Polygamy Story

BuzzSugar — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 11:31:10 -0700

Carolyn Jessop's memoir Escape will be adapted for the big screen, with Katherine Heigl attached to star and produce, Variety reports. Jessop, whose testimony helped convict polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs, "was born into the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints sect. At 18 she married a man 32 years her senior; at 35, she fled with her eight children."

Another memoir focusing on this same Warren Jeffs case was also recently acquired by a movie studio, Elissa Wall's Stolen Innocence. Apparently this particular case is becoming a favorite headline for filmmakers to rip.

Do you think Heigl will do well with this weighty drama?

Source and source

What's Buzzworthy: Must-Read Memoirs

BuzzSugar — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:17:52 -0700

Last week's Buzzworthy bookmarking challenge focused on must-read memoirs, and for some reason, these were some of my favorite Buzzworthy picks ever. As I mentioned before, memoirs are pretty hit or miss; the good ones read like novels, but the bad ones can be painfully bad. You guys managed to find an intriguing mix of books I love and books I've never heard of but now really want to read! I hope everyone else gets some good book ideas from the list, too. Here are the Buzzworthy picks I found most noteworthy.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris, bookmarked by Missyosigirl, who gives it this endorsement: "I don't know how David Sedaris does it, but he can turn stories that you would think will traumatize a kid or depress the hell out of someone into stories that warm your heart."

Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War by Deborah Copaken Kogan, bookmarked by SaraSmile. I have often considered checking out this memoir by an adventure-seeking photojournalist; now, I definitely will.

Three more, so read more

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, bookmarked by Linda McP with this description: "'Life changes fast. Life changes in an instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.' With those lines, Joan Didion opens her book in which she recounts her efforts to make sense of life in the year after her husband's unexpected death. Book reviewer John Leonard says: 'I can't think of a book we need more than hers...I can't imagine dying without this book.' I couldn't agree more."

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, bookmarked by Mainly Obsessed, who says, "this is a good read. If anything you should read it just because the great Maya Angelou wrote it."

The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness
by Simon Wiesenthal, bookmarked by Xxbrittney. I wasn't familiar with this memoir, written by a Nazi concentration camp survivor, but it sounds like an interesting rumination on forgiveness.

What's Buzzworthy? Must-Read Memoirs

BuzzSugar — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 10:37:00 -0700

Personal memoirs are all the rage in publishing these days, for better or for worse. The great ones prove that truth really is stranger than fiction: Some of my personal favorites include Augusten Burroughs' Dry and Mary Karr's The Liars' Club. Other, meanwhile, have actually turned out to be fiction - I'm looking at you, James Frey.

Whether they're sentimental or just plain scary, memoirs can be a great read. The challenge is sorting out the good from the bad. So tell me: What memoirs do you think are must-reads?

Using BuzzSugar's cool Buzzworthy bookmarking tool, just find the books you love on the Web, bookmark them as Buzzworthy, and tag or title your choices with the word memoirs. Then, I'll post the readers' favorites next week.

To find out how to create a Buzzworthy bookmark, read more

Don't worry: TeamSugar makes it easy to bookmark and capture anything on the Web that you consider "Buzzworthy." If you already have a "That's Fab" button on your browser's tool bar, you can use that to bookmark your Buzzworthy items. If you don't have the TeamSugar bookmarking button on your toolbar, you can learn how to get it by watching this video.

Buzz In: Which TV Star's Memoir Would You Love to Read?

BuzzSugar — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:30:53 -0700

I've admitted before that I'm a bit of a Saved by the Bell fanatic. I followed Zack Morris and the gang from Miss Bliss's classroom to Malibu Sands to Vegas, and I was pretty excited about a possible reunion. They spent so much time on my TV, I felt like I knew them. Well, perhaps not. This week's issue of Us Weekly gives us a sampling of Dustin Diamond's upcoming memoir Behind the Bell and man, is he digging up dirt - everything from alleging that Mark-Paul Gosselaar used steroids to the spit-swapping between Tiffani Thiessen and Mario Lopez.

Saved by the Bell hookups?! I know most of you have said that you're not interested in the book, but I sort of want to get my hands on that magazine issue.

Confession: I read sTori Telling - and loved it for the behind-the-scenes goings on of the '90s cast of 90210. I always want to know what really went on inside my favorite TV shows. I'd read one on Gilmore Girls, Punky Brewster, whatever. And I sort of want one about the real reality that takes place behind the cameras of The Hills.

So tell me: Which TV star's memoir would you most like to read?

(P.S. My vote is for Heather Locklear. Now that she's coming back to Melrose, the timing is right!)

Buzz Gift Guide: Mommy Dearest

BuzzSugar — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:30:44 -0800

What to get the woman who raised you? She may not be as hard to shop for as grandma or dad, but I still have a few ideas. Mine is a Dancing With the Stars fanatic, so I'm snatching up their new workout DVD. Also on the list: Valerie Bertinelli's memoir and a cute Liz Lemon tote to take to the grocery store. I'm considering a TiVo, too - that way, she doesn't have to decide between The Amazing Race and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on Sunday nights anymore. (Really, it's like Sophie's Choice.)

But if my suggestions don't strike your fancy, check out all of the gift guides across the Sugar network. You're sure to find something!

The Boys Are Back: A Quiet Film With a Few Heart-Tugs

BuzzSugar — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 08:30:26 -0700

Has Clive Owen - a man who's best known for playing con artists, spies, and other brooding alpha males - gone soft? It appears so, and he's surprisingly good at it. In The Boys Are Back Owen plays Joe Warr, a recently widowed sports reporter raising two boys in the Australian wilderness. And thanks to his understated performance, what could've been an overwrought tearjerker worthy of a made-for-cable movie turns into something quietly moving.

Based on the memoir The Boys Are Back in Town by Simon Carr, the film opens with Joe driving on the beach with his son Artie. Did I mention Artie is sitting on the hood of the car with Joe at the wheel?! Parental guidelines haven't been a priority in the Warr household ever since Joe's wife passed away from cancer. Now, he has to explain her death to Artie, while his older son Harry from his first marriage moves into the house. Left to their own devices, the two boys play soccer in the hallway, zip line across the yard, and even defrost a chicken in the bathtub.

Typical parenting? Not so much. For more on the film, read more.

These moments of chaos are fun to watch and add levity to the heavier subject matter, but the movie really shines in the conversations that Joe has with his sons as he helps them grieve - Artie for his mother; Harry for a childhood void of a father. Neither boy really knows how to mourn his loss, but then again, neither does Joe. Instead, he relies on the parental guidance of his deceased wife in the form of visions and voice-overs to help rebuild his family. (This felt very heavy-handed to me, but luckily it was really the only part of the film that crossed over into overly contrived.)

Does it seem out of place to have man's man Owen pillow fight with a 6-year-old and shed tears? A bit. But because he almost seems uncomfortable with the sentimentality, he ends up playing the role with the light touch needed for the part.

The young actors who play his sons are brilliant, even at times stealing the spotlight right out from underneath him. (Not an easy feat when you act - and look - like Owen.) Their performances feel very real despite their ages, and they give us some of the film's most tender moments.

I also must mention the fourth character of the film: the Australian landscape. Oscar-winning director Scott Hicks (Shine) beautifully captures the countryside from sweeping fields to oceanside beaches strewn with rocks, and when paired with music by Icelandic group Sigur Ros, every frame feels almost like a sleepy dream.

All in all, The Boys Are Back is a nicely done portrait of the relationships between fathers and sons. It's not out to be a huge blockbuster, but if you appreciate a good character study kind of film, it's a solid choice for a subdued Saturday afternoon.

Photos courtesy of Miramax Films

What to Download: New Music Today

BuzzSugar — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:30:32 -0700

Tuesdays are big in entertainmentville: not only do all the new DVD releases hit Netflix, but new music also pours into stores. So I take a spin through each week's music releases and pick out some albums and tracks worthy of a download.

Queen of the dance floor: I pretty much murdered my cassette of Madonna's greatest hits, The Immaculate Collection, which came out in 1990. Now, with Celebration, her third hits compilation, Madonna brings the party again. The title track is an upbeat dancer, but what you really want are her older songs that are mixed in with more recent hits, including "Hung Up," "Music," "Vogue," "Into the Groove," "Don’t Tell Me," and "Like a Virgin."

Divas are doing it for themselves: Even if your tastes aren't Mariah-level mainstream, you probably won't be able to escape most of the singles off of Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel for the next few months. Mariah wrote and executive produced the entire album, which includes her stalker jam "Obsessed" which has already been getting lots of airplay. If you tend to like her pipes more on ballads, look out for "H.A.T.E.U." and "I Want to Know What Love Is."

See one more release when you read more.

Alt rock out: Paramore sprung on the scene last year with prime placement on the Twilight soundtrack. Since then, they've been nominated for a VMA, and today they release their third album, Brand New Eyes. The first single, "Ignorance," is a hard rocker, while the slower, bittersweet "All I Wanted" will please devoted fans and new listeners. I also predict "Brick by Boring Brick" will go places.

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell: An Unfunny Waste of Time

BuzzSugar — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:30:13 -0700

You're supposed to think that the jokes in I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell are so shocking, so offensive, that you laugh because you forget being PC for a moment. And if you don't laugh, you're the kind of square that Tucker Max, the lead character, takes aim at.

The real story is that the movie is offensive, but not because it's just so edgy. It's offensively unfunny - that is, the movie's jokes are not so offensive that they're not funny, they're such bombs you're shocked someone got paid for this. To see why I thought this movie was so terrible, just read more.

The Tucker Max of the movie (played by Matt Czuchry) is based on the real-life Tucker Max, who wrote the memoir the film is based on, which was based on his blog. I read the blog a bit and found it mildly amusing - so what changed in the film version? Nothing, really, I just think the larger scale of a movie can't validate the boringly immature Max. There's a plot, here, sort of: Tucker wants to give his best friend an epic bachelor party and whisks him out of town, where hijinks ensue (sound familiar? More on that later).

Tucker is supposed to be totally boorish and offensive, but his crudeness and raunchy jokes are not shocking; they're just lame. He talks about killing a fat girl and brags about having sex with a deaf girl. Yeah. Laughing at the inappropriate is not the new territory this movie acts like it is; five minutes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia provides more laughs than this movie does in its 105 minutes.

The one emotion I had watching I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell that wasn't disgust or boredom was sympathy. I felt bad for the poor actors, especially Gilmore Girls' Matt Czuchry, whom I've rooted for - I hoped he would land a great role that would invigorate his career. This is not that role. (All is not lost: he's in this Fall's The Good Wife.)

Even the adorable Czuchry can't make Max charming, nor can cute Jesse Bradford make Max's best friend Drew anything but abhorrent. It's painful watching him force out such pathetic one-liners. By the time Max and Drew are supposed to be redeemed, you don't believe any of it (but it does signal the end of the movie, so that's a relief). And I have to mention: there's the grossest fecal scene I've ever seen in a movie (it puts the poop monster in Dogma to shame).

Pouring salt in the movie's unfunny wounds is timing - The Hangover was released earlier this summer with a similar storyline, and it was a huge hit. But to call it a poor man's The Hangover is too generous; The Hangover was funny.

What movies are you seeing this weekend? Review them in our Movie Review Group!