SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010
NAMES & FACES
Kal Penn leaving D.C.
Kalpen Modi is trading the White House for White Castle. The actor-turned-associate director of public engagement at the White House, better known by his stage name Kal Penn, is headed back to Hollywood, his reps tell Entertainment Weekly. The White House opted not to comment, telling us Modi “has no announcements to make about his tenure here at this point.” Up next for the erstwhile wonk? Another
“Harold and Kumar” movie! This one, due out in 2011, will be Christmas-themed; the studio is weighing whether to film it in 3-D. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Shortly after starting his White House
job in July, Modi was vague about his plans, saying he had no “specific timetable” for sticking around Washington. The 32-year-old cut a low profile in town, only occasionally being recognized by fellow pedestrians on his short commute from the Logan/Dupont area. But he caught some good stuff while he was here: the health-care debate, last year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner and the November state dinner for the prime minister of India — at which he managed to avoid being photographed with party
crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi.
Jesse James a ‘broken man’
Dying to hear how Jesse James is feeling right now? Okay, then: He’s “a broken man” who hopes that rehab and some privacy will help save his marriage to Sandra Bullock, his attorney tells the Associated Press. James checked into rehab after weeks of
reports that he cheated on Bullock throughout their marriage. His lawyer, Joe Yanny, declined to say what James is being treated for, but said people shouldn’t assume it’s sex addiction. Yanny also wouldn’t say whether the couple plans to divorce. “The allegations back and forth about
what happened — those are private matters to be resolved between a husband and a wife,” the lawyer said. “It’s not appropriate for a public airing.”
Stephanopolous’s house sells
George Stephanopolous and Ali
Wentworth have sold their Georgetown
SOPHIE GIRAUD/NEW LINE PRODUCTIO
A NEW CRAVING?Penn and John Cho in “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.”
home for $5.45 million, the Wall Street Journal reports. The couple recently moved the family to New York, where Stephanopolous has a new gig co-hosting “Good Morning America.” The four-story, five-bedroom brick manse, which includes three fireplaces, a flagstone patio and a private elevator, was listed for $6.35 million in January. It was $5.2 million when they snatched it up in 2006.
End Notes
For the record: “I’m bisexual,”
and Oscar winner, now engaged to “True Blood” co-star Stephen Moyer, 40, had not previously commented on her sexuality. Quoted: “I did a movie a long
Anna Paquin: By the by, she says she’s bi.
says actress Anna Paquin, 27, in an online video for the Give a Damn Campaign (it promotes gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality). The former child star
time ago where I had to fly in a glider. . . . It’s exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. That’s where I am now.” —
Susan Sarandon, 63, to
Entertainment Weekly on her newly single state (she split with longtime love Tim Robbins in December). No comment on rumors that she’s romantically
involved with Jonathan Bricklin,
31, her business partner in a
New York Ping-Pong club.
—Marissa Newhall, from staff, wire and Web reports
LIONSGATE/QUANTRELL COLBERT
WHY INDEED: Janet Jackson with Tyler Perry on the movie set.
The second time around, ‘Married’ is too familiar
(At one point, Marcus actually
by Jen Chaney
Let’s say that alien beings came
to Earth on a mission to learn about marriage among humans. Let’s also say those aliens chose to base their education on “Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too?” Here’s what the ETs would as- sume about what’s involved in the daily struggle to remain husband and wife: Lots of yelling. Routine- ly suspecting and/or accusing your spouse of having affairs. And joining fellow married friends on annual, opulent vacations involv- ing copious alcohol consumption and end- less gossip about everyone’s
relation-
ship woes, followed by additional yelling. In other words,
says, “Why did I get married?” to which Angela responds: “Why did I get married, too?” Why, to create amovie sequel title, of course!) But the film is so pretty to look
RATINGS GUIDE
News magazines atwitter over Apple’s latest star
ipad from C1
clear call.” Even veteran Apple-watchers who have seen the company make headlines with mere prod- uct upgrades are shaking their heads. “Their ability to get press all out of proportion to news val- ue has amazed me for decades — and I say that as a former Apple beat reporter, longtime fanboy and someone who’s counting the minutes until UPS shows up with my iPad,” says Mark Potts, chief executive of the online technology company Growth- Spur and a former Washington Post reporter. “The level of hype is insane. There’s simply no oth- er company that gets coverage of product launches like this.” The same media outlets cov- ering the phenomenon are also hoping to profit from the iPad. The Wall Street Journal and New York Times struck nondis- closure agreements with Apple in exchange for early samples for their development teams. “We’ve been allowed to work on one, and it’s under padlock and key,” Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. owns the Journal, said last month. “The key is turned by Apple every night.” The Journal is offering a stand-alone subscription to its iPad content for $3.99 a week. Time, USA Today, CBS, NBC,
ABC, National Public Radio and many other media organiza- tions have also rushed out their new iPad applications. The Washington Post, which did not receive advance access to the de- vice and has not published a de- tailed review, is working on its iPad app. Print reviewers might harbor
a deep-seated wish that this tab- let computer proves capable of rescuing their battered busi- ness, thereby preserving their way of life. What’s more, the folks who write about technol- ogy adore fancy gizmos. Many are Mac users. They revel in the Apple-orchestrated drama of these rollouts.
Apple is widely credited with making elegant products, from the iPod to the iPhone, that have lifted the level of consumer technology. But there is some- thing about the company — and the secrecy cultivated by Jobs, who famously refused to talk about his own health problems —that makes some of the smart- est tech writers go weak in the knees. Keep in mind that Jobs unveiled this thing back in Jan- uary. The first wave of reviews has been overwhelmingly positive. Newsweek’s Daniel Lyons
(who blogs as Fake Steve Jobs): “The iPad could eventually be-
come your TV, your newspaper, and your bookshelf.” Wall Street Jour-
nal’s Walt Mossberg: “After spending hours and hours with it, I believe this beautiful new touch- screen device from Apple has the poten- tial to change port- able computing pro- foundly, and to chal- lenge the primacy of the laptop.” Time’s Stephen
The iPad made the cover of Newsweek, above, and Time.
Fry: “I have met five British Prime Minis- ters, two American Presidents, Nelson Mandela, Michael Jackson and the Queen. My hour with Steve Jobs certainly made me more ner- vous than any of those encounters. . . . I do believe Jobs to be a truly great fig- ure, one of the small group of innovators who have changed the world.” But some have also pointed out flaws. New York Times col-
umnist David Pogue delivered a mixed review, noting: “When the iPad is up- right, typing on the on-screen keyboard is a horrible experi- ence; when the iPad is turned 90 degrees, the key- board is just barely usable. The bottom line is that you can get a laptop for much less mon- ey. . . . Besides: If you’ve already got a laptop and a smartphone, who’s going to carry around a third machine?” Rather than relying on news coverage alone, Apple marketers also landed a high-profile product place-
ment. Wednesday’s episode of the ABC sitcom “Modern Fami- ly” was devoted to the iPad, with
the striving-to-be-hip dad ex- claiming: “Oh my God, you got it! All this time I said I didn’t care but I do care! I care so much!”
OMG indeed. Apple has logged 240,000 ad-
vance orders, but the question is whether the media blitz will convince millions of ordinary people that, recession or no re- cession, they simply must have a product that they didn’t know they needed. “It’s amazing how we all get caught up in this,” Stengel says.
kurtzh@washpost.com
“Why Did I Get Mar- ried Too?” covers pret- ty much the same his- trionic territory as Perry’s 2007 picture “Why Did I Get Married?,” picking up our core group of at- tractive, dysfunctional African American couples three years af- ter we last left them in snowy Colorado. This time they gather for relaxation and renewal in the Bahamas, at a beach house so massive and Pottery Barn-cata- logue-stunning, it makes Angela Bassett’s pad in “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” look like a thatched hut. As in the prequel, most of the comedy comes from the most volatile of the four pairs: the lunk- headed Marcus (Michael Jai White) and the wife you can hear coming from 99 miles away, An- gela (Tasha Smith). For the first hour or so, “Married Too” — which, in Perry tradition, did not screen in advance for critics — plays like an empty but diverting beach read. Your brain recognizes that the dialogue, for example, doesn’t come from any place that remotely resembles relationship reality.
BBBB Masterpiece BBB Good BB Pretty good B Not so good
No stars: Failure
at, and its soap opera-style plot- lines — especially the one in- volving the always empathetic Jill Scott as Sheila, a recently remar- ried new mom attempting to emotionally support an unem- ployed husband — are just engag- ing enough to hold our interest. Then everyone leaves the Baha- mas, and the film shifts in tone: Janet Jackson, who made this movie while grieving the death of brother Michael, takes center stage as the mad black woman whose repressed an- guish over the long- ago death of her only child threatens to blow up her perfectly picture-framed mar- riage.
Translation: If you happen to live with Janet Jackson in a house filled with a ludicrous amount of glass furniture and you really, really tick her off, do not let that woman anywhere near a set of golf clubs. Perry throws in melodramatic
plot twist after melodramatic plot twist in the last 10 minutes, all of which serves as a heart-tugging preamble to a surprise, movie- closing cameo appearance that drew gasps and giggles from the audience at an early morning screening in Georgetown. It’s an ending not just from left
field, but from outer space.
chaneyj@washpost.com
BB
references and some domestic violence. At area theaters. 121 minutes.
VIDEO ON THE WEB To watch
the trailer for “Tyler Perry’s Why
Did I Get Married Too?” go to
washingtonpost.com/movies.
PG-13. Contains thematic material including sexuality, language, drug
KLMNO
S
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