Wednesday, January 23, 2008
YouTube Clip Of The Day
4:18PM Jess McGuire | Oh lord. Ladies and gentlemen, meet theatrical wunderkind Royce G. Garrison.
As our startlingly handsome and clever friend Will Larnach-Jones put it when he gave us the heads up about this clip, “There is nothing I love more than child drag”. Touche.
Royce himself explains further -
This video was recorded by my father on November 29, 1991 in my grandmother’s basement in Centerpoint, AL. I pretty much look like an 11 year-old Drag Queen in Training, huh?? I think it’s totally hilarious. Enjoy!
THANK YOU ROYCE! THANK YOU FOR GIVING THE PEOPLE OF THE INTERNETS THIS VIDEO! YOU HAVE MADE A SHIT DAY A LITTLE BIT BRIGHTER! More » 
We Appreciate A Rhyming Headline As Much As The Next Person, But Surely The Age Could Have Come Up With A Slightly More Sensitive Headline?
2:39PM Jess McGuire | Reader Nerida pointed out to us that The Age’s online edition’s recent headline regarding Heath Ledger – “DEAD IN BED” – is perhaps lacking in sensitivity, all things considered.
We suspect the Dr Seuss approach may not have been the wisest choice. More » The Australian Response To Heath Ledger’s Death
1:45PM Clem Bastow | AAP have released some Australian “entertainment industry” reactions to Heath Ledger’s passing, which range from the dutiful to the political to the touchingly heartfelt.
We’ll stop short of providing all of the soundbites but we think Margaret Pomeranz (from At The Movies and the real OG version of The Movie Show, if you’ve been living under a rock) and Mel Gibson said it best:
“I am so upset, I just can’t tell you,” Pomeranz told ABC radio.
“I mean he is such a talented boy and really, I think a beautiful soul.
“And I think to choose the roles he chose shows such intelligence.”
…
”I had such great hope for him,” Gibson told the Entertainment Tonight website.
”He was just taking off and to lose his life at such a young age is a tragic loss. My thoughts and prayers are with him and his family.”
Ledger’s “devastated” ex-fiancee, Michelle Williams, is said to be flying to New York presently. More » 
Police Sources Confirm Heath Ledger’s Death Was ‘Accidental’
1:40PM Jess McGuire | TMZ are now reporting that the police have quietly confirmed the Ledger family’s belief that Heath’s death was ‘accidental’.
As we await further updates from New York, you may like to read UnderGroundOnline’s article “Ten Things I Loved About Heath Ledger.
10. His teen heartthrob role was in an actually good movie: Like any respectable non-Australian moviegoer, I first met Heath Ledger as the object of Julia Stiles’ affection in 10 Things I Hate About You. A teeny-bopper adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, the movie was smarter than the average bear and featured a young Heath at his brooding best.
9. His awesome Australian accent: Is it mere coincidence that some of the biggest stars of our time – Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Yahoo Serious – have come from a land down under? Perhaps, but we wouldn’t put money on it. Heath Ledger’s Aussie twang was a auditory badge of honor that branded him as part of an exclusive club…and made him sound cool, to boot.
8. “Hottest hot ever”: Let’s face it, you don’t get to be a hot Hollywood commodity without a certain…let’s call it “the look.” And Heath, according to an informal UGO poll that includes myself and TV Editor Brooke Tarnoff, had “the look.” He was a handsome devil, indeed, that Heath Ledger, landing in People’s Most Beautiful People List and on the walls of countless girls just crossing the threshold into womanhood.
7. He didn’t trade on his looks: Despite the above, you didn’t see Heath Ledger exploiting his good looks. After 10 Things, he could have become the next piece of hunky eye candy to be paraded through a series of romantic comedies. Instead, he made an effort to take challenging and interesting roles, including one (Ned Kelly) in which he had to wear a bucket on his head most of the time. You have to salute a guy who shuns the easy paycheck in favor of artistic credibility.
The rest is available here. More »
Heath Ledger ‘[Felt] Good About Dying Now’
1:36PM Clem Bastow | While the media whips itself into a frenzy trying to deny Heath Ledger’s family’s assertion that his death was accidental, they have uncovered a recent radio interview in which the actor discussed his feelings about dying with respect to his now being a father to Matilda, two:
“I guess you’re forced into kind of respecting yourself more, you learn more about yourself through your child, I guess,” he told WJW FOX in Cleveland, Ohio.
“You also look at death differently.
“It’s like a catch 22. I feel good about dying now because I feel like I’m alive in her.
“But at the same time, you don’t want to die because you want to be around for the rest of her life.”
We are very much inclined to think that, while Ledger was often reported as “troubled” or dark, this interview is nothing more than a man talking about how parenthood has changed him.
Hopefully this won’t be the beginning of a comprehensive raking over of everything he ever said about dying, drugs or depression for some “evidence” that his death was a suicide, in some sort of rabid media version of the search for ‘the golden ticket’. More » 
Heath Ledger’s Chilling Final Bow In ‘The Dark Knight’
11:43AM Seth | So how’s The Dark Knight for goodbyes? Give us anything – Brokeback Mountain’s heartache, Candy’s cautionary tale of – gulp – heroin addiction, even Casanova (OK, not Casanova) – but not the The Dark Knight. Not that disfigured creep in the trenchcoat. Heath’s last words to us can’t be a menacingly growled, “It’s all…part of the plan”. His last note, not “Why so serious?” scrawled across a theatrical one-sheet in fingerpainted blood. Warner Bros. has issued this statement in response to his death: More »
Heath Ledger Spent The Christmas Holiday With His Model Girlfriend, Gemma Ward
11:34AM Defamer Hollywood | Though recently spotted flirting with a roomful of celebrities in downtown New York, Heath Ledger was most recently linked to 21 year-old Australian model Gemma Ward. The blue-eyed blonde just wrapped her third feature film role (The Black Balloon, with Toni Colette) in Australia, but hasn’t been spotted out and about at an event since November, when she attended a gala in Madrid solo. First spotted together in Perth on December 20th, the new couple allegedly spent every day together through Christmas until Boxing Day, when Heath had to return to the London set of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. Reports that those dates and shopping sprees had been upgraded to full-on coupledom surfaced in the UK as recently as January 18th, only 4 days ago. With Gemma MIA since New Year’s, which she spent with her family in Sydney, her current whereabouts are still a mystery. More »
Heath’s Body Leaves 421 Broome
10:36AM Defamer Hollywood | Though pronounced dead at 3:45pm local time (7:45am AEDT), it took nearly three hours for the NYPD to survey the scene and ambulances to finally, morbidly, carry the body of Heath Ledger out the front door of his Broome Street apartment, currently on its way to the morgue. More »
Heath Ledger’s Friends In Shock, But ‘Saw It Coming’
10:15AM Mark | As unexpected as Heath Ledger’s death of an apparent overdose has been to anyone currently scouring the web for every incremental update on the still-unfolding tragedy (does knowing whether or not Mary-Kate Olsen owns that apartment actually help anyone make sense of the situation?), a “close friend” tells UsMagazine.com that the actor had been struggling with his sobriety and that things were “very dark”: “This is terrible and I’m in shock. But to tell you the truth… we saw it coming.” Meanwhile, the HuffPo has already identified the tackiest reaction to Ledger’s death, courtesy of the MSNBC reporter who remarked “In a lot of ways, this reminds me — we’ve almost had a dress rehearsal for this with Owen Wilson.” In fairness, however, the clip of the remark does reveal she did couch that statement with two “almosts.” [UsMagazine.com] More »
