Hollywood magazines: Glossy spin on Tinseltown

The Oscars are coming Sunday night and the greatest show on Earth will be taking place in the back seat of Hollywood limos.

As Hollywood Life magazine points out in a story that is almost semi-believable, the stars use the back seats of their limos to ease their pre-Oscar jitters with champagne and cocaine and sex. Mostly, they have sex with each other, the magazine says, but in a pinch -- as in the case of “one ultrafamous actress in her 20s” who is “known for her fine dramatic work” -- they’ll have sex with the limo driver.

Hey, why not spread the wealth?

Alas, Hollywood Life doesn’t reveal the name of this fun-loving actress. Nor does it reveal the name of the “groovy stud” famous for his “gritty, sexy roles” who swallowed a hit of acid in his limo in a valiant attempt to “cure his ADD” so he could sit through the entirety of the interminable Oscar ceremony. In fact, Hollywood Life doesn’t even reveal the name of the author of this delightfully quasi-believable story, identifying him or her only as Anonymous.

Hollywood Life is America’s cheesiest movie magazine. I can say that with some confidence because I have just read every movie magazine I could find on newsstands -- from MovieMaker to Filmmaker, from Film Comment to Film Score, from Cineaste to Make-Up Artist, the magazine designed to “promote movies that feature important makeup work.”

Now, after careful reading and due deliberation, the Academy of Motion Picture Magazines (that’s me, folks) has voted its own Academy Awards, which have been counted and tabulated by the former accounting firm of Arthur Andersen.

The envelopes, please:

Best Magazine About

Movie Music

And the winner is:

Film Score

OK, it’s the only magazine I could find about movie music. But check out this letter to the editor: “I love your magazine. It’s the only film-music magazine I can actually find on a regular basis. Not only that, it’s made here in the States, so I don’t have to suffer through articles with words like ‘twee’ ... “ Who can argue with that logic? Also, I loved the column of news on “Who’s Scoring What for Whom,” which reveals that Julian Nott has earned the coveted job of scoring “Wallace & Gromit Movie: The Curse of the Wererabbit.”

Best Magazine About

Screenwriting

And the winner is:

Creative Screenwriting

Not only does this mag feature smart analysis of the scripts of 2003’s best movies and a realistic portrayal of the typical screenwriter’s diet (“tuna sandwiches and macaroni and cheese”), it also has a hilarious column called “Spec Scripts and Pitch Sales.” I can’t figure out if this is an account of recent script sales or a devastating parody. I mean, did somebody really sell a script called “Fat Man,” in which “an 800-pound bedridden man falls for a nurse and drops 600 pounds, hoping she will fall in love with him”? And is Adam Sandler really considering the title role?

Best Magazine About

Movie Makeup

And the winner is:

Make-Up Artist

You gotta love a mag that publishes a column in which Dick Smith -- who is apparently a makeup genius -- discusses the latest makeup tips, then dispenses amateur medical advice. In the latest issue, he reveals how to give an actor lifelike wrinkles, then recommends that his readers take low doses of lithium, which can, he says, “protect the brain from mood-altering drugs, alcohol, coffee, cigarettes.” Another columnist, Michael Westmore, suggests the best way to celebrate when you’ve done a particularly great job of makeup: “Russian dance up and down the makeup trailer while raising your hands over your head and shout, ‘Score, score, score.’ Spike any makeup tools onto the ground next to the makeup chair. Suggested items can include a powder puff, white sponge, brush or left-over breakfast burrito.”

Best Foreign Film Magazine

And the winner is:

Cahiers du Cinema

This venerable French magazine -- whose title means “Cahiers of the Movies” -- is the mag that sparked the famous nouvelle vague movement of the 1960s. It’s no longer very nouvelle but it’s still plenty vague. In fact, I couldn’t understand a word of it. That’s because it’s written in French. Can you believe that? I mean, how pretentious can you get? Who do these guys think they are, Shakespeare?

Hey, dude, where’s my subtitles?

Best Performance by a

Critic Writing About a Dumb Movie in an Intellectual Movie Magazine

And the winner is:

Chuck Stephens in Film

Comment

This was a tough one to call. The sentimental vote went to James Niebaur, who pondered the oeuvre of the Three Stooges in Cineaste. But in the end, Stephens seized the award with his over-the-top prose about “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle”: “If ‘Jackass’ seems the model for the movie’s twin impulses toward exxxtreme peril and ultracretin recklessness, then it should be noted that demonlover indulges just as ambitious a panoply of similar enticements regarding narrative meltdown and the post-Surrealist potential of hanging ten over a perpetual channel-surf.”

Chuck, baby -- maybe it’s time to switch to decaf?

Best Performance by an

Actor in a Movie Magazine

Interview

And the winner is:

Jude Law in Premiere

Law, who starred in “Cold Mountain,” manages to hit every possible note of Hollywood pretentiousness. First he orders lunch: “Please bring a glass of this wine,” he tells the waiter, “but not with the salad only with the chicken.” Then he discourses on everything from existential novels (“They’re not just stories but a way one can manage mental chaos”) to self-love (“One thing I’m trying to do at the moment -- because I realize I haven’t spent enough time in my life doing it -- is trying to learn to love myself”).

Best Performance by an

Actress in a Movie Magazine

Interview

And the winner is:

Elisha Cuthbert in Premiere

Cuthbert -- star of “The Girl Next Door,” in which she plays a porno actress -- explains why she gave her director Polaroid shots of herself naked: “I wanted him to know that I had a very strong vision.”

Movie Magazine of the Year

And the winner is:

Fade In

Fade In, which bills itself as “The First Word in Film,” has it all. It has a gallery of pictures of Quentin Tarantino and his actors with captions by Quentin Tarantino. It has a story in which a psychotherapist analyzes “The Hollywood Personality.” It has an essay lamenting the lamentable state of Hollywood comedies. It has sage advice on -- among other important topics -- how to tell if your personal assistant is about to leave you. (“You can tell because they’re looking at porn all day on the computer, or they’re playing fantasy league baseball.”)

And, best of all, it has a long interview with Billy Bob Thornton, who ponders the nature of the universe and comes up with the single greatest comment ever made about infinity: “Infinity makes me feel claustrophobic.” Wow! That’s deep. In fact, it pretty much sums up the human condition, doesn’t it?