Wasilla More Gritty Strip Mall Than Palin Lets On

And Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin is still pretty scary: reactions

(NEWSER) - If you thought Julianne Moore's Sarah Palin was terrifying in the first Game Change teaser , wait until you see her in the full trailer, where she utters lines such as, "We have to win this thing. I so don’t want to go back to Alaska." Watch below, then read on for some reactions:

• This will clearly be "a Frankenstein-esque story about McCain’s staffers coming to regret the choice they made in bringing a little-known governor into the limelight," writes Jon Bershad at Mediaite . "The full trailer ... gives us even more famous actors getting their turn to stare in horror at the 'monster' they’ve created."

'I wasn't into the Hollywood thing,' says Sarah Palin's daughter

(NEWSER) - Bristol Palin has finally thrown in the towel on Hollywood fame and is back home in Alaska. “I wasn’t really into the Hollywood thing,” she tells In Touch . After her Dancing With the Stars gig, she lost celebrity traction, and a pending reality show was canceled. The incident that finally convinced her to head north was an ugly confrontation with a Palin hater in an LA bar. Besides, son Tripp will soon be in preschool and "we need to settle into a routine," she says. For now, Bristol is staying in an apartment beneath her mom's TV studio on the family's Wasilla property. Something she hates back home: seeing baby daddy Levi Johnston tooling around town in his truck as carefree as you please. “He’s not using his visitation, and he’s not paying his child support,” Bristol snaps. More»

HBO debuts first teaser

(NEWSER) - For all of you who have spent the past nine months wondering how Julianne Moore’s Sarah Palin impersonation will stack up against Tina Fey’s , you finally have your answer. HBO debuted its first teaser trailer for Game Change, the film due in March that's based on the Mark Halperin-John Heilemann book about the 2008 presidential election. Neither Ed Harris as John McCain nor Woody Harrelson as top adviser Steve Schmidt sound much like their real-life counterparts, notes David Jackson in USA Today , but Moore’s Palin is spot-on: Numerous publications including People , New York , the Huffington Post , and Jezebel are fairly impressed. More»

'Petty' Palin book is full of unsubstantiated gossip, says NYT

(NEWSER) - Joe McGinniss has been writing about presidential politics since 1968, but his new book on Sarah Palin, The Rogue, is "dated, petty, and easily available to anyone with Internet access," writes Janet Maslin in the New York Times . With allegations of cocaine use and sex with basketball stars , The Rogue deals in leading questions and "unsubstantiated gossip," and is "too busy being nasty to be lucid," she writes. More»

Guess what famous family he's friends with?

(NEWSER) - A burned hotel room mattress, ruined bedding, a urine-stained chair, vomit on the carpet … but no, this was not the handiwork of a rock star on tour. Rather, Wasilla City Councilman Steve Menard apparently got a little crazy on a business trip—then slipped the city the bill for the damages. Menard, who has had alcohol-related problems in the past, apologized publicly Monday night and said he is now “11 days sober and working on a program.” More»