Amber Heard

Random Acts

Random Acts of Ali Larter: random charity work in leather pants

11 April 2011 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Well, Ali may have only had her baby three months ago, but already she’s randomly stepping out in leather pants and big boots to do things like go to random charity Baby Buggy Thursday. Impressive. But she’s also been meeting up with fellow randomeer, Katherine Heigl, at a wedding. Heigl, presumably at Ali’s instigation, ended up jumping in the swimming pool in full outfit.

Meanwhile, ScarJo, who’s randomly going out with a 50-year-old (that’s probably a bit too random), is busily trying to stop Republicans from destroying another random charity, Planned Parenthood, which helps to fund women’s healthcare centres:

And fellow randomeer Amber Heard would really rather like it if you supported the Million Women’s Heart Project, which is a campaign to get 1 million women in the US screened for heart disease.

Random Acts

Random Acts: the pilots are taking over Chicago

28 March 2011 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Amber Heard in Chicago

Chicago’s rapidly becoming a town where TV shows want to shoot. It’s been a while since The Loop and Prison Break‘s first season shot there, but The Chicago Code‘s there right now and a couple of pilots are shooting there as well. Cooper and Stone, starring Alex Breckenridge and Vanessa Ferlito (one of the original stars of CSI: NY), is randomly annoying the Chicago neighbourhood of Ravenswood Manor:

Cooper and Stone in Ravenswood Manor

“Go back to L.A.,” one resident complained

Meanwhile, The Playboy Club – NBC’s female-oriented answer to Mad Men that’s set in a 1960s Playboy club just as women’s lib and the Pill are about to hit the world – is currently giving the city a make-over. Eddie Cibrian (who, continuing the CSI theme, was in CSI: Miami for all of a season) is running around Chicago in a whole load of Jon Hamm’s cast-offs:

Eddie Cibrian in The Playboy Club

Eddie Cibrian in The Playboy Club

Eddie Cibrian

Since the show’s aimed at women much more than men, I imagine this will be happening a lot:

Eddie Cibrian

However, given the setting of the show and since Amber Heard’s in it, I imagine men* will want to watch it, too:

Amber Heard in The Playboy Club

You may ask where randomness comes into this. Well, guess where Amber gets her style advice from:

Amber Heard reading Lucky magazine

Yes, well known Mad Men envier and Lucky magazine’s “old reliable“, Ali Larter.

Ali Larter in Lucky magazine

I wonder if that’s why Amber took the role?

* And gay women, obviously:

Random Acts

Random Acts of Ali Larter: Town Hall meeting

28 February 2011 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

So, a lot of you probably think I’m making a lot of this up. Ali Larter (happy birthday, Ali!) may be very random, but no way has she been sub-contracting out that job to the various random actors and actresses I’ve been claiming while she’s been on maternity leave, you’re probably thinking. 

Well, how to explain this. Ali Larter’s favourite charity is The Art of Elysium. But she was busy this week at the Vanity Fair Campaign Hollywood 2011 – Chrysler Celebrates "The Fighter" Benefiting Communities In Schools and the Hollywood Domino Gala.

Ali Larter at the Dominos gala

So who did she get to go to the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas & The Art of Elysium Pieces of Heaven Art Auction on Wednesday? Scarlett Johansson, who took notes.

But she didn’t just send Scarlett. Amber Heard was there, fresh from assisting Amnesty International and some illegal
Immigrants, to randomly sign cars, too.

Amber Heard - Vanity Fair Campaign Hollywood

See? Anyway, this is Scarlett’s bit of randomness this week (she got a whole load of other actresses to help out, too, including Emily Blunt, Jessica Biel, Minka Kelly, Jessica Alba, Eva Longoria Sofia Vergara and Lindsay Lohan): the Hottie Body Hump Club.

US TV

Review: Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior 1×1

22 February 2011 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior

In the US: Wednesdays, 10/9c, CBS

(Very) long-time readers of the blog will know that I’m not a big fan of Criminal Minds. In fact, I dismissed it pretty much after the first episode, the second season opener didn’t make me recant and the replacement of Mandy Patinkin with Joe Mantegna lured me in for all of two episodes.

My basic problems with it are that it’s very dull, doesn’t really bother with characterisation beyond a couple of the leads, despite being an ensemble show, and although it pretends to be intelligent, largely that’s a thin veneer that covers up an entirely preposterous plot with as much resemblance to real-life as The Magic Roundabout.

Millions of people disagree with me, however. They’re wrong, obviously, but they do. To cater for “these kinds of people”, CBS has developed an identikit version of it called Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, in which a rapid reaction team called a ‘Red Cell’ heads off in Without A Trace stylee to deal with nastiness as quickly as possible.

However, despite the presence of Forest Whitaker, Janeane Garofolo, the red-headed nerdy one from Criminal Minds and Richard Schiff from The West Wing, Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior is just as tedious and stupid, yet without even the few hints of interest that the original had.

Here’s a trailer for the show that for some unfathomable reason doesn’t feature Amber Heard in a bikini (am I on SEO fire this week, or what?).

Continue reading “Review: Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior 1×1”

Today's Joanna Page

Random Acts: Amber Heard melts Twitter, Serene Branson has a complex migraine, Joanna Page designs a Welsh bra

21 February 2011 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Amber Heard on Top Gear

So yesterday was of course the day when thanks to Top Gear, British men en masse discovered there exists a woman called Amber Heard and that not knowing this fact had substantially impoverished their lives. Now our Amber didn’t come ex nihilo and had British men decided to watch Hidden Palms all of five years ago (despite – oh dear – my recommendations), they’d have known all about her. Here are a couple of her finest moments – she/Greta being easily the best thing in it – from the otherwise not that great pilot.

But they didn’t so have lived in terrible ignorance for five years. You could tell this because at 11am yesterday, a Twitter search for Amber Heard would have got you about one Tweet an hour of something like “Amber Heard is the SITRPC on Top Gear? Who’s she? I thought they were getting someone exciting.”

By about 8.35pm, Amber Heard had become the number one Google image search and first a UK then a global Twitter trending topic. And let’s just say The Informers was starting to get an awful lot of illegal downloads. If you thought Top Gear‘s ratings were sagging and it’s been losing its influence this series, turns out you were wrong.

Here’s the interview in case you missed it and want to know why British men went Amber-mad yesterday. Forgive Jeremy Clarkson – he’s Jeremy Clarkson.

Moving on, another of last week’s Random Acts participants, Serene Branson, who we all thought had a stroke live on air, fortunately only turned out to have a complex migraine.

And since this is TMINE, let’s let Joanna Page get in on the randomness this week by designing a Welsh bra. It’s for charity.

Joanna Page's bra