Bloomberg'a Lady Gaga Kiss Tribute; A South African Cheetah in London
We realize there's only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today: Michael Bloomberg reminds you that he did in fact kiss Lady Gaga, what an Andy Serkis performance looks like before the computers get hold of it, and a cheetah is trying to remake The Terminal in London.
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It's been almost two weeks since New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg kissed Lady Gaga on television and life as we know continued to resemble life as we know it, but he's still getting mileage out of it for stiff, pretaped comedy bits like this one for today's Sate of the City speech. All in all, the comedy is very New York, which is to say, very concerned with on-going civic and municipal standoffs. [New York Post]
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The cheetah detained by security at Heathrow Airport in London is going to stay in the United Kingdom until officials can determine why he was travelling without his special identity-tracking microchip. (The two other cheetahs that came with him from South Africa had their tracking chips, and were cleared to complete their crushingly sad journey to Russia.) This bears a passing resemblance to the plot of The Terminal, a tender and touching Steven Spielberg film starring a broadly-accented Tom Hanks as a man from a made-up country who gets shanghaied in an airport and accidentally starts bringing out the best in people. It's doubtful the cheetah will have the same impact, since he's a cat and the English have a reputation for being somewhat stand-offish, but we could see him building a fountain he likes, provided the "International Vets" give him a clean bill of health. [AP]
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Here's a video of Andy Serkis delivering his Rise of the Planet Apes performance before computers came in and added the effects to make him look like a computer-generated ape. Serkis has been floated as a possible dark horse nominee for Best Supporting Actor for his work in the film, which we think is a bit of a stretch. We still feel that way after seeing his performance in human form. It's the technology people want to give the nomination to. Serkis is undoubtedly a nice guy and committed to his craft, but Gary Oldman would have strapped on a two-buck mask and done this (and Grendel and King Kong) without the bulbs and green suit. [Hitfix]
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, the third in the documentary series about the West Memphis Three, debuts on HBO tonight. By now, the ending of the story is known -- all three were released from jail in August. Watching Jason Baldwin in this clip, it's clear the documentary isn't going to have a particularly inspiring portrait of the justice system, even when it does spring into action to admit to an error, Baldwin makes it painfully clear that time served is time lost. [AOL]
