Suited or Booted?

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• R.I.P. Steve Jobs – There’s nothing wrong with being snarky but let’s remember this sort of thing.
• US Network Drama – Or rather, why it’s rubbish.
• Movie Posters - If they told the truth, this is probably what they’d say.
• When Bad Films Happen To Good Actors – There’s not a lot of arguing with Shortlist’s exhaustive list.
• Kismot Killer Curry – A curry that hospitalises the people who eat it? Where do we sign up?

Creased

• Celebrity Reporters Are Like Political Correspondents – Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Oh… wait a minute.
• Movie Stars Are Vampires?! – No, they’re not. Especially not John Travolta. He’s an alien. D’uh.
• If Walls Could Talk – If you’ve got a Smeg fridge, an Aga and a middle class superiority complex then this show is for you. Although hearing Lucy Worsley say ‘wrought’ and ‘proliferation’ is worth the license fee alone.
• Steampunk – Ruined by Wild Wild West & the impending release of The Three Musketeers, you can buy these Star Wars interpretations. If you want. No pressure.
• The Human Centipede II – It’s a video nasty! No, it’s not.

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John Travolta, who looks alarmingly like Ke$ha, has had a baby. Of course, he hasn’t developed a womb and birthed the thing himself. If that were the case, the headline wouldn’t be quite so dismissive. Naturally, it is his wife Kelly Preston who squeezed the child out of her front bum.

If you’re interested, the child is a boy and they’ve called him Benjamin and he was born in a Florida hospital weighing 8 lbs. 3 oz.

Of course, both the parents are tremendously happy and all that hokey junk, but we’re more interested in his future, which will no doubt be riddled with jealousy of another celebrity child.

A statement from Travolta and his wife says:

“John, Kelly and their daughter Ella Bleu are ecstatic and very happy about the newest member of the family. Both mother and baby are healthy and doing beautifully.”

Kelly Preston said earlier a couple of months ago:

“I’ve been cleaning out everything in the house. Ella has been helping too. She’s looking forward to being a big sister.”

Aside from the usual sibling jealousy that blights all families, this one is a little different.

As we all know, John Travolta is a Scientology devotee. There’s many celebrities in that church/school of thought/cult/youth club for rich people. As such, slebs are the most shark-eyed, ambitious swines you’ll ever have the misfortune to meet.

And, looking in from the outside, it seems that Tom Cruise is being set-up to become the next big cheese of Scientology (or, the new David Koresh if you prefer). This means that Cruise’s child, Soupy (or whatever it is called) will be granted some kind of religious grace by other Scientology quacks.

Of course, Travolta has been in Hollywood a lot longer than Cruise, meaning that, his professional jealousy… and dare we say it, his Scientological jealousy… might rub off on his new kid who will grow up wanting to become some Chosen One ahead of Snaffles Cruise (or whatever it is called).

And so, let hecklerspray be the first to congratulate the Travolta family on their latest addition to the Church of Scientology! Long may he jump up and down like a mad fucker on the sofas of American chatshows!

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For many people, their  interest in John Travolta began and ended with his starring role in the disco-dancing, parent-upsetting, tight-panted 1970s movie Saturday Night Fever.

These people have no desire to learn more about The Trav’s later career as a man looking after a talking baby, or a man who carries around a briefcase full of Christmas lights, or a man who swaps faces with the wooden-faced Jodie Foster impersonator Nicholas Cage.

But we can’t all be rational adults with problem-strewn lives of our own and no time for monitoring the affairs of yesteryear’s celebrities.

Which is good news for hecklerspray, as today we report that John Travolta’s wife, Kelly Preston, may or may not be about to squeeze out a Scientologically-enriched sprogling. Oh, the excitement/slight interest/almost painful need to escape this bullshit.

Here’s the deal: earlier this week, reputable British gossip magazine The Daily Mail broke the news that John Travolta was flying his enormous penis-shaped plane out of Australia earlier than expected. The reason? Because, they explained, his wife – Kelly Preston – had gone into labour.

While the Mail were explicitly told at the time by a spokesman that this wasn’t true, they decided to run with it anyway. After all: who gives a monkeys about the the veracity of a story concerning the fourth most important actor in Get Shorty?

Well, now it turns out that the whole thing was a sack of balls: Kelly Preston is still pregnant, the Scientology lovechild is still hanging in there, and John Travolta flew home from Australia because…well, we don’t know. Because he grew sick of drinking awful beer?

Let’s see if the Mail can help out:

Mr Travolta had been due to arrive in Perth as the main celebrity at a charity event, at which he was to receive the key to the city from Lord Mayor Lisa Scaffidi.

You’re off to a bad start when the title for your latest John Travolta starring blockbuster is a play on one of James Bond’s more reserved offerings.

From Paris With Love is another movie from the Luc Besson production line (story credit obligatory), this time involving some secret agents, terrorist plots and John Travolta looking like something Marlon Brando ate.

At its core, it’s a continuation of his character from The Taking of Pelham 123 (except playing for the other side now) still unhinged, erratic and clearly having a ball. It’s the most fun he’s been on screen for quite a while.

The story focuses on bleary-eyed Oirishman, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, an undercover CIA agent hoping to make it big in the agency. While not the most likeable of actors, it’s an unsure start for Meyers’ Reece, living an idyllic life with a perfect girlfriend.

When Travolta’s Charlie Wax comes along as his partner, it shakes things up a bit, reducing Meyers to nothing more than a straightman to Wax’s antics. He’s an audience’s way in that’s serviceable to the plot, which in itself is a maze that there’s no point getting lost in.

Moles, drug lords, terrorists, it all seems too baffling incoherent to take seriously, so the action takes precedence. The variety of boom is engaging, a decent freeway scene, gun fights and Travolta throwing his weight around. Taken director Pierre Morel clearly has one of the best eyes for action, just not for characters.

It’s a worrying trait, considering that he’ll next be helming the Dune adaptation – a story that remains closely tight to many a geek’s heart. Not that this is solid evidence to go on, it’s a buddy-cop movie after all. One moment the duo are bickering about some semantics, then next they’re blowing up a group of drug dealers in a car. It’s not quite Lethal Weapon but it follows the formula: unhinged, borderline psychotic cop is paired with by-the-book do-right.

It doesn’t grow tired, though, pacing along so that anything inconsequential like characterisation, subtlety and plot are unneeded. This is pure popcorn action entertainment, delivered with a sprinkling of star power and an eye-catching backdrop – what better place to fire a rocket launcher than in the heart of Paris?

The film isn’t trying to be the super-sleuth of the new generation. It isn’t concerned with cunning gadgets, sharp suits and gorgeous women, this is about firepower, stunts and a central conceit built around fun. This shouldn’t be From Paris with Love; it’s more like Casino Royale with Cheese.

‘Spray Rating: 3/5

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Christians around the world will be marking the day that Jesus casually strolled out of his tomb and blew everyone’s minds, by frenziedly heaping great big handfuls of chocolate egg into their mouths, whilst enjoying Mel Gibson’s rather angry take on The Life of Brian.

Yes sir, it’s going to be a great few days.

Anyway, in honour of this chocolatey holiday, we thought it high time we paid our respects to some other historical figures – more specifically, famous people – who have also risen from the dead. Only in a slightly less literal sense. They weren’t actually dead. They were just jobless for a wee bit.

John Travolta

After driving everyone wild with his groovy walking technique, and that odd hole in the middle of his chin in the late 1970s, John Travolta was the toast of Hollywood. And then he vanished. No one knew where he was. A hunch suggests that he was busily filling in Scientology questionnaires, and begging pilots to let him sit in the cockpit, but nothing is for certain. What is for certain, however, is that Quentin Tarantino kindly plucked him from retirement, and turned him into the new Marlon Brando. In that he was a bit fat.

Mickey Rourke

Rourke famously turned his back on acting in the 1990s to have his face repeatedly punched instead, and after some rather clumsy reconstructive surgery, he returned to acting looking a little bit like the Bride of Wildenstein’s husband. Hence, he has moved from playing kinky lotharios or charming gangsters, and now only chooses films which are subtle variations on the Quasimodo story. As it happens, there are lots of these.

Robert Downey Jr

Robert Downey Jr’s life – it’s a classic tale of boy becomes famous, boy takes lots of drugs, boy owns gun, boy goes to prison, boy takes drugs again, boy goes to prison again, boy takes more drugs, boy guest stars in Ally McBeal, boy has sex with people, boy takes drugs, boy pretends to sing Elton John song, boy becomes man, boy stops taking drugs, boy fills void from drugs with acting, boy gets acting roles, boy is Iron Man. All rather predictable really.

Kiefer Sutherland

With his long feathery Rod Stewart hair, Kiefer Sutherland enjoyed a wonderful 1980s – Lost Boys, Young Guns, Stand By Me, Bright Lights, Big City – and then suddenly, from nowhere, absolutely no one wanted Kiefer Sutherland any more. Not even Julia Roberts, who had agreed to marry him before cancelling the whole thing with less than a week to go. It was pretty bad. But then, of course, Kiefer had the last laugh, by rising from the ashes like a phoenix with a very husky voice to land the lead role in 24. And where’s Julia Roberts now? Does anyone even know?

Take That

As reinventions go, Take That morphing from topless young boys having their buttocks smeared in jelly, to stubbly grown men in expensive M&S suits is up there with the time MC Hammer decided that, actually, he’s a gangsta rapper. Unfortunately for Hammer, that comeback didn’t really work out, whilst the gentlemen in Take That are enjoying another warm blast in the sunshine. On the downside, it’s all gone slightly to the little one’s head, and he just can’t stop himself having it off with people who aren’t his wife. Every cloud… oh no, hang on, that doesn’t work here…

This was a guest post by Josh Burt from Interestment Comedy. Hooray!

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The quality of John Travolta’s output can usually be attributed to the amount of facial hair he attaches around his dialogue hole.

Face/Off was ace/clean shaven; Swordfish was fairly good with his little happy trail and Battlefield Earth was a cesspool of sci-fi gobbledygook and ZZ Top beards. So with his German porno moustache, you know The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 isn’t going to be an easy ride.

Similarly, you can usually tell the quality of recent Denzel Washington productions by which Scott brother is directing him (in this case the rubbish one). So, Tony Scott remakes the 70’s heist thriller, set on a train with Travolta going all batshit at every available opportunity, while Washington throws his gut around in the face of adversity.

Many critics (if not all of them), have made comparisons to the original version of the same name, and as it may come as a shock to many but we haven’t seen it. Sure, we caught a bit of the subsequent first remake starring Battlestar Galactica’s Eddy James Olmos on late night television but, like this sentence, that was mainly irrelevant.

Going into Pelham with a clear and empty mind – maybe the type of audience they aimed for – made reviewing it refreshing. Unfortunately, going into this latest slice of kinetic moviemaking from Scott, it appears that he hasn’t toned down his new millennia fondness for eviscerating the senses. Pelham is stylised to the point of mundane, forcing the film to come to a halt along with its characters.

While much of the action is locked down to a couple of settings, this seems ideal for a slow-burning thriller, the type that more restrained directors would have handled more competently. Instead, it seems heavy-handed and completely devoid of anything remotely approaching tension, like some modern teen slasher flick. Trying to shoot, blow-up or create action out of a static setting. This should be a verbal tete-a-tete. Instead, it’s just Travolta gurning like the tit of tits.

The cast is fairly watchable, added friends John Turturro and James Gandolfini pop-up, not just to confuse our spell-check, but also to show exactly how to make nothing out of supporting roles.

With a few plot contrivances chucked in for good measure, this film fails to get moving. One annoyance that sticks in the mind is the character who managed to get a perfect wireless signal inside the New York subway system. Baffling, when we can’t even piggyback off of our neighbours.

This film is just uneven – performances are either dull or over-the-top, while the plot meanders when it should intrigue. Unsettling facial fuzz aside, this appears to be a film that forgot its objectives, trying to make an action film out of a story that doesn’t lend itself to the genre.

Its only achievement is its constant use of the term ‘motherfucker’. It couldn’t be more out of place if Travolta burst into an elderly relative’s funeral and repeatedly screamed it at the coffin. Which he’d probably do – he’s bloody bananas!

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10 – HILARIOUS OR DISTURBING? A 19-year-old boy crying and punching a wall because he doesn’t like Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 very much – Geekologie

9 - That Channel 4 3D season. Not great, is it? – Watchwithmothers

8 - Kim Kardashian with her mouth taped up. Make the most of it, folks – AmyGrindhouse

7 - Boy, Chris Rock‘s dinner parties sure sound fun - Monsters And Critics

6 - Holy crap. Olly Murs from X Factor did Deal Or No Deal once. Good job he’s better at doing godawful Jamiroquai impressions than he is at saying some numbers to a man with a crap beard, eh? – Interestment

5 – Literally everything you could ever wish to know about John Travolta‘s Saturday Night Fever suit – Clothesonfilm

4 - A chair, floating into space. Marvellous – Asylum

3 - A list of the 30 greatest action figures from the 1980s. We had 11. Anyone care to beat that? – Gunaxin

2 – But who wants to see a teddy bear stitched together from a placenta? – ABC

1 - We may have said this many times before, but Robert Popper is possibly the best man who ever lived…

Some people just don’t quite know how to correctly behave when they’re famous. Yes, we’re talking about you, Sarah Michelle Gellar! And you, Freddie Prinze Jr! Don’t try to hide away from our steely gaze. You both once had the world at your feet. For Christ’s sake, you could have been the next Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. But look at you, so totally normal, it’s disgusting. You’ve even given your child a standard everyday name – Charlotte Grace. Charlotte Grace? What the hell is wrong with you people?

As literally everyone else on the planet knows, if you’re going to live in the limelight, every single aspect of your life must be thrilling and unusual. Your diet, your choice of deity to worship, your outfits, and especially your children. They should be given freaky made-up names that sound stupid, like Suri, Maddox, or Brooklyn. Names guaranteed to see them cornered in the playground, and eventually home schooled.

They should have hairstyles almost as soon as they exit the womb, and their baby outfits should consist of hilarious designer trainers, and jeans! Celebrity babies MUST wear jeans. After all, these kiddies are not delicate souls ready to be nurtured and loved, they’re extensions of your personality, who will eventually blow most of your money on crystal meth, because they could never live up to your phenomenal successes. Might we suggest changing the Charlotte bit to Willem? It’s a small gesture, but funnier. More Hollywood.

Unfortunately, it’s not the first time Michelle Gellar has failed to play the Hollywood card correctly, having previously responded to a simple question about religion by claiming to believe that there might be some kind of God, but going on to point out that she doesn’t affiliate herself with any of the organised religions. Oh, for the love of GOD, woman! What kind of weedy, flannel-like response is that? It’s one of the first rules of celebrity that you choose something outrageous, pluck it from thin air if you must, and then just go with it. Macho men like Cruise and Travolta have been doing this very well for years. And Madonna found, to her enormous benefit, that wearing a thin red cotton bracelet made her somehow more alluring and impressive. These are the people to watch and learn from, Gellar and Prinz Jnr. The kind of people who would only acknowledge someone called Charlotte Grace had she just finished wiping down their car for a few bucks.

The baby, by the way, was born on Saturday. Poor little blighter.

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We don’t know about you, but the tragic death of a youngster sure does make us salivate for money.

And we’re not the only ones, either, thanks to the genius of Tarino Lightbourne. Tarino Lightbourne was the first paramedic to arrive following the fatal seizure of John Travolta and Kelly Preston‘s 16-year-old son Jett earlier this month. And then, it’s alleged, he tried to extort $25 million from the boy’s grieving parents.

For apparently masterminding this John Travolta plot, Tarino Lightbourne has been charged with conspiracy to extort. Paramedic? Pah – the man was clearly born to be a bloody Bond villain.

Right, that’s it. We’re never going the Bahamas. Seriously. Especially if we have children. The Bahamas is not a good place for children. Look at Anna Nicole Smith – one of her kids died in the Bahamas, and it was claimed that she was only allowed to stay in the Bahamas because she may have had a roll-around on a bed with the island’s immigration minister.

But that’s just a one-off – Daniel Smith died because of a drug overdose, and if we’re honest we can all admit to sleeping with a government official at one point or another. Or at least it would be a one-off if the Bahamas wasn’t now primarily famous for breeding paramedics who’d happily try to extort you out of your life savings in the days following the death of your 16-year-old son.

Earlier this month Jett, the 16-year-old son of John Travolta and Kelly Preston, died in hospital following a seizure at his home. Which, sure, is sad for the Travoltas – but it’s a once-in-a-lifetime golden business opportunity for whoever got to arrive first at scene. And that man was paramedic Tarino Lightbourne.

According to People, Tarino Lightbourne has just been formally charged for allegedly trying to extort $25 million out of John Travolta in the days after Jett’s death:

Lightbourne, 47, pleaded not guilty to charges of attempting to extort and conspiracy to extort from Travolta after the death of the actor’s 16-year-old son, Jett, according to Bahamian Magistrate Carolita Bethel. So far, details of the alleged plot have not been made public. However, prosecutor Bernard Turner says police are looking for a “certain document” and believe they may not find it if Lightbourne is released.

We don’t know who to feel sorry for more, really – John Travolta or Tarino Lightbourne. OK, John Travolta has lost a son in genuinely tragic circumstances – but if Tarino Lightbourne is found guilty of extorting John Travolta out of millions of dollars, where does he go from here? Surely holding a family to ransom for enough money to buy a hundred gold-plated Ferraris at the height of their most unbearable grief is the extreme outer limit of his wankery.

There’s simply nowhere else he can go after that, apart from possibly sneaking around filling fire engines’ water tanks with petrol and shards of magnesium or literally taking a crap in Baby Jesus’ eye. The man has just peaked too soon. So, again, we’re not sure who deserves our pity more.

What’s that? John Travolta does? Right you are.

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Of all the terrible ways to start a new year, losing your 16-year-old son on New Year’s Day has to rank among the worst.

So there can’t be a person on the planet who’d want to trade places with John Travolta at the moment. As you’ve probably already heard, John Travolta’s 16-year-old son Jett died at some point between January 1 and 2 from a seizure brought on by his Kawasaki syndrome.

And now John Travolta has released a statement about Jett’s death, thanking the public for its support and describing how ‘heartbroken’ he and his wife are. Horrible news.

The investigation into the death of John Travolta’s son Jett in the Bahamas on Friday, while profoundly sad, seems like it might drag on for a while. Jett Travolta, who suffered from the rare heart condition Kawasaki syndrome, died after apparently having a seizure in a bathroom and hitting his head.

Now, however, it has emerged that John Travolta and his wife Kelly Preston are to be questioned by police after suggestions that Jett’s body was left unnoticed for up to 10 hours, alongside rumours that the Travoltas didn’t give Jett medication for his condition because it went against the tenants of Scientology. John Travolta, for what it’s worth, denies these claims.

In the meantime, though, John Travolta has broken his silence over Jett’s death with a statement released on his website:

We would like to extend our deepest and most heartfelt thanks to everyone who has sent their love and condolences. Jett was the most wonderful son that two parents could ever ask for, and lit up the lives of everyone he encountered. We are heartbroken that our time with him was so brief. We will cherish the time we had with him for the rest of our lives.

The Bahamas, a teenager’s death, a drawn-out investigation, suggestions of the misuse of medication – the whole thing has horrible shades of the death of Anna Nicole Smith’s son in 2006. Hopefully, though, Jett Travolta’s death won’t become the same gruesome pantomime that Daniel’s did.

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Whether it's Will Smith's freaky near-conversion or Tom Cruise's weird garbled video, it's not a great time to be a Scientologist.

Especially if you happen to be John Travolta. As a minor Scientologist, John Travolta has escaped a lot of the recent backlash against the church, but now his luck appears to have run out. Michael Pattinson, an ex-Scientologist who signed up at the same time as John Travolta, has claimed on video that Travolta joined the church to be 'cured of homosexuality' while adding that he knows one of John's ex-boyfriends.

The video of the interview is after the jump.

There are many reasons to want to join Scientology, be it because you want to be just like your hero Tom Cruise from The Last Samurai, because you know that if you progress far enough your wife will be artificially inseminated with dead man's spoo, because you hate psychiatrists so much that you want to kick all of them in the shins, or because you're gay and Scientology is the only thing that can cure you.

But be warned – if you do become a Scientologist, you'll be beaten and bashed at every turn. Look at Tom Cruise – being a Scientologist got him sacked from Paramount, it got books written about him, it's meant that embarrassing nine-minute videos of Tom Cruise's creepy cackling have been leaked onto the internet and it means that nobody is sure what sort of radiator Tom keep Katie Holmes chained to.

And now there's another book on Scientology about to be released – Hollywood Undercover by Ian Halperin, which chronicles his Scientology-joining adventures posing as a gay actor. While Halperin claims that during these adventures a Scientologist recruiter told him that Barack Obama and Condoleeza Rice "should not be allowed to run for office, they should be sweeping the office,” the real trouble is reserved for John Travolta.

For the book, Halperin interviewed Michael Pattinson, a gay ex-Scientologist who joined the church at the same time as John Travolta. Pattinson claims that they both only joined to try and cure themselves of homosexuality, and adds that he knows John's ex-lover Paul Baressi. Here's the video…

Now, how much of this is true and how much of this is embittered former Scientologist mouthing off is something we don't know. We just wish that Scientology was able to cure John Travolta of wanting to star in Be Cool. That would have been a win-win for everyone.