A meeting of the minds between Lyons and Hasselbeck

Originally posted at Defamer:

Today on The View, Ebert usurper Ben Lyons took his place next to Elisabeth Hasselbeck in what could only have felt more like a Defamer-targeted Last Supper if Joaquin Phoenix had crashed it, rapping.

Lyons was joined by his At the Movies co-conspirator, Ben Mankiewicz, to walk the ladies through their Oscar prognostications. Here is the short version: Ben M. loves Marisa Tomei, on account of her breasts, and Ben L. loves Christopher Nolan and Slumdog Millionaire hottie Freida Pinto, neither of which are nominated. Also, Joy Behar hates The Reader. HATES it. If The Reader were, say, a perky blond co-host, she would scream at it, "I will burn you down," because of the hatred.

Also enjoyable: when the Bens are asked whether there's ever been a tie between actors at the Oscars (there has, famously), and they both sit there awkwardly drawing a blank until Whoopi Goldberg saves them. Guess they haven't added that trivia to the Scene It? Box Office Smash DLC yet.

Richard Dreyfuss - Worse than Ben Lyons?

Possibly, for this week anyway.

You rarely hear an actor--even a good actor--criticize the movie they are in while it is still out. Not that I entirely disagree with Dreyfuss--W. is 6/8 of a great movie (or, if you prefer, 3/4), and the ending is off, and it won't have a long-lasting historical impact. But I think it is a decent movie and calling Oliver Stone a "fascist" is a bit out of line.

HuffingtonPost won't let me embed video, as far as I can tell, but you can find the link here to his appearance on The View.

Most actors won't even attack an old movie they were in, unless it was a real dog, like George Clooney in Batman & Robin. I remember when the Beverly Hillbillies movie came out, Cloris Leachman did an interview saying how clever she thought the original TV show was.

At least Dreyfuss was honest enough to say that he only did the movie for money. Maybe we will hear a mea culpa from Dreyfuss in the next few days about how he smoked crack before going on The View and didn't mean anything he said. We'll see . . .