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The problems people are having signing up for the health insurance exchanges are almost comical — or at least they are to comedians Damon Williams…
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Tagged almost-comical, bennyhollywood, details, developers, discontinue, efforts, extraction, health-insurance, Hollywood, national, newsone now, red grant, Yahoo
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Jeff Johnson says people shouldn’t give up on Obamacare in 3 Things You Should Know. There have been numerous reports of glitches with the new Web site…
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Tagged 3 things you should know, bennyhollywood, details, developers, government, health-insurance, johnny storm, News
Statistics Show Black People Most Affected By Obamacare Rejection The statistics are surfacing in the wake of the recent government shutdown that occurred earlier this week when Congress failed to reach an agreement on implementing The Affordable Care Act, among other things, and it seems that African-Americans will feel it the most if something is not done sooner than later on Capitol Hill. via Think Progress Republicans’ refusal to fully implement the Affordable Care Act will leave more than half of the nation’s uninsured working poor, approximately 8 million people, without access to health insurance, a New York Times analysis of census data finds. The 26 GOP-controlled states not participating in the law’s Medicaid expansion are home to a disproportionate share of low-income Americans who aren’t poor enough to qualify for the existing Medicaid program and make too much to be eligible for subsidies in the ACA’s insurance marketplaces. As a result, hundreds of thousands of cashiers, cooks, nurses’ aides, waiters and waitresses will still struggle to afford coverage. “Blacks are disproportionately affected, largely because more of them are poor and living in Southern states,” the New York Times reports. “In all, 6 out of 10 black [people] live in the states not expanding Medicaid.” Despite the slightly shady nature of these statistics, this is huge problem. What will it take for the GOP to stop allowing millions of Americans to suffer just so they can have their way??? Continue reading
“Well, we do provide care for people who don’t have insurance”… “If someone has a heart attack, they don’t sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care.” We’re sure a lot of you can relate to us when we say this has got to be the most ignorant comment Robney could make on his solution to cutting off “Obamacare”. In an interview on “60 Minutes” this past Sunday, Money Mitt couldn’t give a good answer when asked if it was Uncle Sam’s job to make sure we all have health care. According to The Huffington Post , this bullisht stance contradicts everything Mitt’s shady azz had to say about healthcare reform a few years ago: This constitutes a dramatic reversal in position for Romney, who passed a universal health care law in Massachusetts, in part, to eliminate the costs incurred when the uninsured show up in emergency rooms for care. Indeed, in both his book and in high-profile interviews during the campaign, Romney has touted his achievement in stamping out these inefficiencies while arguing that the same thing should be done at the national level. When asked in a March 2010 interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” whether he believes in universal coverage, Romney said, “Oh, sure.” “Look, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to have millions and millions of people who have no health insurance and yet who can go to the emergency room and get entirely free care for which they have no responsibility, particularly if they are people who have sufficient means to pay their own way,” he said. And in a 2007 interview with Glenn Beck, Romney called the fact that people without insurance were able to get “free care” in emergency rooms “a form of socialism.” “When they show up at the hospital, they get care. They get free care paid for by you and me. If that’s not a form of socialism, I don’t know what is,” he said at the time. “So my plan did something quite different. It said, you know what? If people can afford to buy insurance … or if they can pay their own way, then they either buy that insurance or pay their own way, but they no longer look to government to hand out free care. And that, in my opinion, is ultimate conservativism.”Getting rid of high numbers of inefficient emergency room visits was actually a key goal of Romney’s health care reform in Massachusetts,Six years after he signed health reform into law, visits to emergency rooms in Massachusetts are decreasing and the state has the highest rate of residents with health insurance. Thank God for fact-checkers…SMH Images via WENN
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Money Mitt Tells The Uninsured To Get Their Azzes To The ER
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Tagged bolitics, chitchatter, health-insurance, invalid, News, opinion, out of pocket, time, TMZ
Anyone who’s ever seen or used a rabbit vibrator can attest to the device’s utter adorableness as a totem. Whoever designed this miraculous pink rubbery thing, with its Peter Cottontail-worthy quivering ears, probably thought, Why does a vibrator have to be ugly? Why not make it cute? Tanya Wexler may have had the same idea when she was making Hysteria , a romantic comedy and highly fictionalized history of the vibrator. The picture is, in places, too adorable for words, and when it’s not adorable, it suffers from an excess of neo-suffragette preachiness. But the picture is at least spirited, a jaunty trifle that’s low on eroticism but high on cartoony coquettishness. Like the little motorized whatsit that is its subject, it does have its charms. The picture is set in Victorian London, a time and place where the women’s ailment known as hysteria — caused, allegedly, by an overactive uterus — was treated by some rather, um, direct and interesting methods. (According to the movie, they involve two kinds of oil and a doctor’s fingers.) Hugh Dancy plays Mortimer Granville, a physician who, unlike his whiskery colleagues, keeps up with all the latest developments in modern medicine — he’s hip to the idea of germs while all the other docs are still hung up on leeches. Because of his radical beliefs in these invisible microscopic destroyers, no hospital will have him, and he feels lucky to land a job in the office of one Dr. Robert Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce), who specializes in de-overactivating the uteruses of his patients. “It’s the plague of our time!” he tells his young colleague. “Half the women in London are afflicted!” Only half? Anyway, many of the afflicted make their way to the good doctor’s office, including an opera singer who’s too sad to sing (Kim Criswell) and a minxlike sexagenarian (Georgie Glen), all clamoring for treatment. In fact, handsome young Dr. Granville attracts so many new patients that he begins suffering desperately from hand cramps. Luckily, his closest friend, a layabout aristocrat played by a marvelously louche Rupert Everett, has invented an electric feather duster that, with a few tweaks, actually serves as a handy hysteria treatment device. The thing catches on like wildfire, and everybody’s happy. Well, not quite. There’s plenty of trouble in Dr. Granville’s paradise, mostly in the love department: He thinks he’s attracted to Dr. Dalrymple’s brainy but meek daughter Emily (Felicity Jones), but his real match is her sister, headstrong Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who works with the poor and has some very progressive ideas about the equality of women, which she spouts freely at every turn. The script, by Stephen and Jonah Lisa Dyer, give Charlotte’s ideas free rein, and enough is enough already. Their grinding insistence only weighs the movie down, preventing it from getting on with the business of getting it on. But Wexler — director of two previous features, Ball in the House and Finding North — strives to keep things buoyant, and her efforts mostly pay off. Gyllenhaal’s presence helps — with that bright, expressive, acorn-shaped face, she carries on valiantly, despite the pedantic nature of the material. The movie’s offhand moments are the most fun, as when the two doctors, plus Everett, try the device on their first patient: They put a drape across her legs and don swimming goggles, peering expectantly into the abyss before — huzzah! — achieving victory. Hysteria is most delightful when it slips into its naughtiest groove and just purrs. Editor’s note: Portions of this review appeared earlier, in a different form, in Stephanie Zacharek’s Toronto Film Festival coverage . Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
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REVIEW: Hysteria, a Sort-Of History of the Vibrator, Hums Along Cheerfully Enough
Posted in Celebrities, Gossip, Hollywood, Hot Stuff, News
Tagged Actors, business, device, earth, film, health-insurance, Hollywood, hugh dancy, New Movie, office, recreation, review, time
Also in Thursday morning’s round of Biz Break: Philip Seymour Hoffman is in the running for a spy thriller, The Dictator comes under fire as a modern-day minstrel show, and more… Cannes: First Saudi Feature Nears Completion Wadjda , the first feature-length film ever shot in Saudi Arabia, has completed principal photography in Riyadh, the Cannes Market News reports. Written and directed by the country’s first female filmmaker Haifaa al-Mansour, Wadjda revolves around an 11-year-old girl growing up in the capital’s suburbs who challenges the restrictions of Saudi Arabia’s traditional society in order to own and ride a green bicycle. Al Mansour previously directed three short films. The Match Factory is set to begin pre-sales of this Razor Film production. Eli Roth’s Latest Horror The Green Inferno Gets Green Light New York-based Worldview Entertainment will finance and produce the latest from the horror maestro behind Hostel ; details on the story are being kept under wraps. Production will begin in this fall in Peru and Chile from a script co-written by Roth and Aftershock co-writer Guillermo Amoedo from an original story by Roth. Phase 4 Nabs Rights to See Girl Run Starring Robin Tunney ( The Mentalist ) and Adam Scott ( Parks and Recreation ), the film centers on what happens when a 30-something woman allows life’s “what ifs” to overwhelm her. Disregarding her current obligations, she digs into her romantic past in hopes of invigorating her present. Phase 4 Films will distribute the film by writer/director Nate Meyer in North America. Around the ‘net… Cannes: Distributors to Watch Buying in Cannes has already been underway even before Wednesday’s opener Moonrise Kingdom . Deadline offers up its distributors to watch at the festival including some usuals: The Weinstein Company, Lionsgate, Sony Pictures Classics, FilmDistrict and LD Distribution. Philip Seymour Hoffman Set for A Most Wanted Man The actor appears to be headed to star in the Anton Corbijn-directed adaptation of the John Le Carre spy thriller of the same title, Deadline reports . Cannes: Buyers Get Early Jump into the Fray On Tuesday, two key deals were announced for IM Global and Alliance Films’ Ends of the Earth , with CBS Films taking domestic rights and Sony Pictures Acquisitions buying rights to multiple international territories. The film uses both found footage and narrative to tell the story about two best friends traveling through Europe and encounter life-altering “impossible phenomenon,” THR reports . The Dictator Gets Arab-American Criticism Sacha Baron Cohen has come under fire from an Arab-American group that says his portrayal of the Wadiyan leader Aladeen reinforces negative stereotypes about their community at a time when prejudice towards US citizens of Middle Eastern origin has never been more prevalent, The Guardian reports .
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Eli Roth Gets Green Inferno, Saudi Arabia’s 1st Film, and News from Cannes: Biz Break
Posted in Celebrities, Gossip, Hollywood, Hot Stuff, News
Tagged earth, eli roth, film, health-insurance, House, in development, north, recreation, russia, the green inferno
Go ahead and tell me you didn’t see this coming: The Russian government is underwriting a biopic of the late-19th/early 20th-century ballerina and tsarist “femme fatale” Mathilde Kschessinska, and its cultural ministers have enlisted Paul Schrader to write the screenplay for “an internationally acclaimed director to be announced soon.” OK, fine — I didn’t see it coming, either. Read on for full details, by which I mean an explanation from all involved. I mean, between Raging Bull and Mishima , the guy knows from international historical figures of varying renown. But this… Anyway, if it sounds unprecedented, that’s because it is. Anyone have any casting suggestions? ============ PAUL SCHRADER PENS BIOPIC OF NOTORIOUS RUSSIAN BALLERINA Acclaimed screenwriter-director will write the story of Kschessinska, legendary prima ballerina and mistress to the last Russian Tsar, for film financed by Kremlin-backed Culture & Arts Fund May 17, 2012, Los Angeles — Paul Schrader has signed on today to write the story of the ultimate femme fatale, “prima ballerina assoluta” Mathilde Kschessinska, for Russian entertainment powerhouse Vladimir Vinokur and his partner the Russian ballet impresario Vladislav Moskalev, in collaboration with American producers David Weisman and Anatoly Davydov. The film is financed by the V. Vinokur Fund for the Support of Russian Culture & Arts under the auspices of the Kremlin. Never before has a renowned American screenwriter written a Russian film about an iconic figure from Russian history. The film will be shot in English with mixed Russian and American Star cast, and will be helmed by an internationally acclaimed director to be announced soon. “Kschessinska’s life is a powerful metaphor for Russian culture and evokes the best of Russian arts,” said Schrader. “She was a first native prima ballerina in the country that saw the highest achievement in that art form. She was not only a witness to the critical period of Russian history, she was a player in that history, only to be thrown aside.” As the Russian Empire was falling apart, a tiny ballerina caused scandal, heartbreak, and intrigue among the royal family. Kschessinska played mistress to at least four aristocratic men who controlled the crumbling Romanov dynasty, including Russia’s last Tsar, Nicholas II. Rising from poverty, through her extraordinary gift for ballet, Kschessinska lived a life of mind-boggling luxury during a time of monumental despair and chaos. Despite her relentless ambition and charismatic power, she never got what she really wanted. Although her son certainly had Romanov blood, his paternity remained in dispute—and her dream to become mother of the Tsar would never be realized—due to revolution, murder, and unrequited love. “Kschessinska’s story gives me an exciting opportunity to create historical fiction not only through direct narrative—but also through the ballets she danced and defined,” Schrader continued. “Oftentimes, the most interesting perspectives on history come from those seemingly off to the side but actually in the center—its artists.” “Kschessinska was worshipped and reviled,” said Weisman. “Nicknames such as ‘Black-eyed She-Devil of the Imperial Ballet’ and ‘Mathilde the Magnificent’ echo the seething jealousy and boundless admiration Kschessinska provoked during her time. Having narrowly escaped the Bolshevik bloodbath, for fifty years she taught ballet in Paris where she died only a few months before her hundredth birthday, in 1971.” “Kschessinska’s life begins in the world of Imperial St Petersburg—Russia’s window on the West—where Russian culture attained arguably the highest achievements in both lyric epic and in the novel,” Schrader added. “I’ll draw on all that to explore the inner-life of Kschessinska at the same time I explore the splendor of Russian culture. Russia, which like the Romanov imperial eagle looks both east and west, is uniquely positioned to take a dominant role in the renaissance of global cinema.” “This project is not just about making a movie for the international market; It is a window into true understanding of the Russian soul,” said Moskalev. ###
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Paul Schrader Going to Work For the Kremlin (Really)
Posted in Celebrities, Gossip, Hollywood, Hot Stuff, News
Tagged films, health-insurance, House, in development, paternity, paul schrader, project, russia, russian, time
Hollywood, a humble request? I realize that abortion is has become too divisive a topic these days to drop into a mainstream movie product like What To Expect When You’re Expecting , especially in what’s an overall innocuous ensemble comedy based, somehow, on a bestselling pregnancy guidebook (between this and Battleship , it’s one strange week for source material). It’s also a tough topic from which to wring laughs. And in something carefully calculated to be as broad in appeal as possible, any mention of the option of terminating a pregnancy is just going to be one more thing that could isolate potential movie audiences, like an ugly poster, being in a foreign language or attempting analysis of the Iraq War. But when you have a young female character who gets pregnant, who’s not in a stable relationship and who’s in an economically tenuous position, can’t you slip in some mention of why she wouldn’t consider the A-word? Religion, personal conviction, future fertility concerns due to some inherited condition, story revealed to be actually taking place in an alternate universe in which Roe v. Wade has been overturned and women are given no choice but to have Chace Crawford’s impeccably handsome babies? Just something to save her from looking nuts, which is the case for Rosie (Anna Kendrick), a 23-year-old food truck worker (guessing that doesn’t come with health insurance) who lives with two roommates and ends up with a little surprise after a spontaneous hookup with former high school classmate and fellow foodie Marco (Crawford). Naturally, those crazy kids decide to stick it out, and things briefly bumble along in Knocked Up -lite fashion until Rosie loses the baby. She has the misfortune of being stuck with What to Expect When You’re Expecting ‘s miscarriage storyline — the other three Atlanta-based and one Los Angeles-located couples in the Kirk Jones-directed film each shoulder a different first-time child-bearing experience, from a post-35 pregnancy (Cameron Diaz and Matthew Morrison) to twins (Dennis Quaid and Brooklyn Decker) to adoption (Jennifer Lopez and Rodrigo Santoro) to a physically taxing gestation (Elizabeth Banks and Ben Falcone). Also checked off the list are issues of whether or not to circumcise, of money, of breastfeeding, of fertility, of balancing work and of being a good father. It’s a lot to fit into one film, and some of these themes, particularly in the case of Rosie and Marco’s thread, get such short shrift that Jones might have done better to leave them by the wayside — it’s hard to have a serious contemplation of post-miscarriage depression slotted in next to a gag about how pregnancy gives you cankles. It’s not impossible to make an engaging film out of an advice tome — Think Like a Man managed to be lively and funny , because its characters emerged as more than just vehicles for its source book’s ideas. That doesn’t happen here, though the ensemble is at least notably odd in its spread of professions, which include a breast-milk advocate, an aquarium and baby photographer, the aforementioned food truckers, a NASCAR driver and the host of a Biggest Loser- style weight-loss show. The variety seems there to make up for the fact that in other ways, the film’s showing a fairly narrow range of childbearing experiences — these are all straight, working couples in the middle- to upper-class range. It’s only in Lopez’s story that the economic crunch of preparing for a child is mentioned, and even then it’s an issue of having to keep living in a fab apartment rather than moving into an even more fab house. What to Expect When You’re Expecting centers on the belief that having children is the only way to know real fulfillment in life. “When I was young, I thought I was so happy. Now I know that I’m happy,” says Chris Rock, the leader of a weekly gathering of dads who walk around the park enjoying their no-judgment zone. This leads to moments in which the film touches on fears of feminine inadequacy that it doesn’t have the space or depth to process — Banks’s character being so sure she’d have that “glow” and instead finding herself waddling, gassy and miserable; Lopez getting drunk and crying about how she isn’t able to do “the one thing a woman is supposed to do.” The cheerily childless out there don’t get any screen time, not just because this is a film about having kids but because they wouldn’t fit into the overall worldview, which is that you haven’t lived until you’ve spawned, or, barring that, snagged a cute infant from Ethiopia. In the realms of pregnancy comedy, What to Expect When You’re Expecting doesn’t find new laughs, just layers on attempts at the tried-and-true ones — think one scene in which a woman howls and makes funny faces during labor is funny? How about many of them together? Its sharpest segment is the opening, in which we see Diaz’s celebrity trainer compete on Morrison’s dance show, writhing through ridiculous choreography next to fellow contestants Whitney Port and Dwyane Wade. The film’s skewering of reality show competitions is far more surefooted than any of its celebrations of the joys of parenting, which seem, despite the specificity of the manual that inspired it, more theoretical than sincere. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
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REVIEW: What to Expect From What to Expect When You’re Expecting? A Bunch of Barren Gags
Posted in Celebrities, Gossip, Hollywood, Hot Stuff, News
Tagged elizabeth-banks, expecting, films, health-insurance, Hollywood, House, jennifer-lopez, mma, stars
Jionni LaValle is Snooki’s baby daddy and apparently her fiance too. Despite the fact that the Jersey Shore star hasn’t confirmed either life development, the cat’s out of the bag that he got Snooki pregnant (a Jersey City baby store has already been tipped off) and she’s engaged to Jionni LaValle (she’s wearing a ring). Anyway, here are a few things we know about the “lucky” guy … Not a big fame seeker. Emilio Masella or Jeff Miranda, he’s not. No tabloid deals, revenge hook-ups, no interest in Jersey Shore . Pleasantly surprising. Not a juicehead. Snooki even admits she “wasn’t sure about him at first because he isn’t the typical gorilla.” Yes, this was a potential negative factor. He gets along with her family. Jionni went on a family vacation with Snook to Disney World and a road trip to Pennsylvania, fitting in with the Polizzis. He’s studying to be a teacher. Seriously. Like his two older brothers, Jionni is studying to get his teaching degree. Contributing to society? Amazing. He cooked her pickle pancakes, she Tweeted. That may beat a diamond ring. Case closed – time to wife this guy up, Snooks. Talk about a keeper.
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Jionni LaValle: The Man Who Put a Baby in Snooki
Posted in Celebrities, Gossip
Tagged Celebrity couples, emilio-masella, Georgetown, Gossip, health-insurance, Hollywood, invalid, jersey, jersey-shore, limbaugh, pennsylvania, teaching
Rush Limbaugh has apologized to Sandra Fluke for referring to the Georgetown Law School student as a “slut” and a “prostitute” because she believes her health insurance plan should pay for female contraception. But might the conservative talk show host still be in major trouble for those remarks? Rush Limbaugh Goes Off on Birth Control, Sandra Fluke Fluke told The Daily Beast that legal experts have informed her she “might have a case” against Limbaugh for slander, but bringing a lawsuit against the blowhard is “not something I’ve made any decisions about at this point.” Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York, seems far more committed to this goal than Fluke, as she claimed on Friday that “we will be filing a slander suit against Rush Limbaugh. What he’s really trying to do is silence a young woman. It’s unfair, it’s un-American.” To come out on top in any slander suit, a victim must prove that the accused made a false statement, “published” it to at least one other party and also that said statement caused injury. This does seem like it could apply to both Limbaugh and actress Patricia Heaton for her comments . But should Fluke go through with such an action? You tell us:
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Will Sandra Fluke Sue Rush Limbaugh for Slander?
Posted in Celebrities, Gossip
Tagged Georgetown, Gossip, health-insurance, Hollywood, invalid, Lady GaGa, limbaugh, maria-menounos, sandra-fluke
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