CBS's comedy power block (The Big Bang Theory through Worst Week) is all repeats tonight, so that leaves an opening for Britney Spears and Christina Applegate to attempt to reconnect with their pasts. Look for lots of mid-season cliff-hangers, series conclusions (Pushing Daisies, Boston Legal), and holiday specials this month. Also, begin the loin-girding process for a spring of American Idol.
· The Movies play Spaceland, big band awesomeness The Herbaliser plays the Echoplex, while The Hanson Brothers are upstairs at the Echo! (The Canadian punk band, not the "Mmbop" ones.)
· Denis Leary answers all your questions regarding his new book, Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid, at Book Soup. Hopefully nothing in that sentence will earn the commenting ire of a nation of fierce Learyites.
· Colleen Dunn Bates and a cast of foodie thousands guide you through their brand new L.A. restaurant atlas, EAT: Los Angeles. At Vroman's.
Holding Out for a Hero: Sure, Transporter 3 features a scene where Jason Statham takes off his clothes so he can hit bad guys with his shirt, but is that gay? Yes! says series mastermind Louis Letterier. "If you watch the movie and you know he's gay, it becomes so much more fun," Leterrier told the LAT. "Action fans in general are pretty homophobic. You see these tough guys who say, 'The Transporter, that's such a great movie!' If they only knew they're really cheering for a new kind of action hero." Sadly, Letterier handed off the Transporter 3 reins to the amazingly named Olivier Megaton, who added a very heterosexual make-out scene for Statham. "Haha, I haven’t seen it," Letterier said in response. "I can’t wait." [LAT]
Courting Controversy. When the question is, "How long is long enough before it isn't considered too insensitive to present the side-by-side you've been dying to post since William Balfour was first identified as a person of interest in the nightmarish Jennifer Hudson family killings?" we're afraid the answer is, "There exists no sufficient length of time." With news that Hudson's estranged brother-in-law was finally arrested today, however, we could resist no longer. [Yahoo/AP]
Back when Arianna Huffington founded the Huffington Post, she promised a blogging free-for-all where Washington D.C.'s best and brightest would rub virtual shoulders with megawatt Hollywood movie stars. Three years later, the site's political promise has been fulfilled, but HuffPo can boast little in the way of celebrities aside from ponderings written by the other brother on Wings, pre-emptive "I Didn't Do the Nanny" missives from Rob Lowe, and the occasional drop-in by Charlotte's husband from Sex and the City. And then, for some reason, there is Candy Spelling.
We made fun of NYC's latest teen sybarite socialite (the Brooklyn version) Peaches Geldof, for barely having a "real job," what with her Nylon fashion mag columns and "modeling," etc. However, the U.K.'s Guardian reported she is launching... oh God... a magazine. It's called Disappear Here and co-edited with former GQ editor James Brown. It'll be handed out for free in New York (in secret places) this Thursday! How do they pay for it? Listen, cutting-edge hip freemag editors can't stoop to talking about money.
What's this—monetary distress for Donald Trump, the richest man in the universe? Trump is being sued by Deutsche Bank for failing to pay off a loan for his new Chicago high rise tower, which he personally guaranteed to the tune of $40 million. That makes it a great time to raise the perpetual question, "How much is Trump really worth?" A safe guess: far less than he was the last time anybody took the trouble to calculate:
Nottingham Lives: Mere days after we moved our old Nottingham files to the basement, leave it to Brian Grazer to revive talk of his presumed-dead Robin Hood retelling for another round of casting speculation. To wit: It'll make everything easier if Russell Crowe just plays all the roles himself. "[W]hat Robin Hood does is he sees Nottingham in battle very early in the movie and Nottingham dies," Grazer told MTV News. "And Robin Hood takes over the identity of Nottingham. That's how it plays out." Call it a spoiler alert, if films opening 10 years from now can have such things. [MTV]
If we had to list the worst things a celebrity could do in a nightclub in order of ascending dumbness, they would go like this: 1. Bring a gun to a nightclub. 2. Get arrested for bringing a gun to a nightclub. 3. Get shot at a nightclub. 4. Get shot at a nightclub and also arrested. 5. Shoot yourself accidentally with a gun you brought to a nightclub illegally, and then get arrested for it. So New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress truly achieved the pinnacle of nightclub stupidity last weekend by accomplishing #5. And the felony complaint against him shows he damn sure can't claim self-defense:
Earlier this year, Leah Culver appeared on the cover of a tech magazine blowing an enormous pink bubble. But the shrill-voiced San Francisco programmer no longer desires fame — even the modest sort afforded Silicon Valley's microcelebrities. The turnabout seems odd, considering how aggressively she once courted notoriety.
Just days after we learned the kinda-sorta true details of a secret summit called by SAG president Alan Rosenberg and attended by the A-list dons of Hollywood's acting Cosa Nostra, tensions between the union and producers have reached a rolling boil. With 120,000 strike-authorization ballots being readied for mailing—each sealed individually by the scarred, arid tongue of Rosenberg himself—both sides have issued blistering written attacks accusing the other of the kind of selfishness typically associated with junket reporters asking innocuous questions of Philip Seymour Hoffman. First came a Rosenberg-penned missive on Thanksgiving eve, in which the blustery thespians' rights crusader rebuked producers for relying on that old "there's a gigantic recession coming" excuse:
The Obama team has released its first transition donor list! Among the usual gang of employees of the nation's largest defense contractors (Boeing, Lockheed, and Raytheon have four donors between them!), trial lawyers, radical academics, and government employees, we found this transparent example of yet more illegal donations. Just look at who "Doug Berman," $500 donor, claims to work for.
The Oscar-blog circus officially opened its third, classiest ring today at the NY Times, where David Carr returned for a fourth go-around as The Carpetbagger. Not to be outdone, resident Envelope clown Tom O' Neil honked out a new batch of hype, followed by another cluster of animals trotting around the tent with prognostication tricks of their own. It's a loud, occasionally aromatic free-for-all, but we'll show you where best to watch after the jump.
Are you ready for a PR quiz? Okay! If you were a marketing executive at the nation's largest retailer, and an employee got trampled to death at the big holiday shopping sale at one of your stores, might you consider pulling an ad that trumpets your holiday sales with the line, "We're opening more lanes than ever to make Christmas shopping easier!" We're just saying. People could get the wrong idea about your stance on trampling. And Adrants points out that the ad below was still in heavy TV rotation throughout the entire weekend:
♦ Christian Siriano plans to make it work with Payless: The Project Runway winner is teaming up with the company on a line of footwear and handbags that will launch next fall. [NYP]
♦ Today was Cyber Monday, the day when online retailers kick off the holiday season with super-steep discounts. It didn't turn out to be a great day for Bloomingdale's and J. Crew: both watched their websites crash this morning. [Crain's, USA Today]
♦ In case you forgot to issue your congratulations, Anna Wintour headed off to Buckingham Palace last week to pick up whatever is it you are given when you're named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. [Vogue UK]
Between giving date rapes the thumbs-up and tarring other women as "jealous bitches," Helen Mirren hasn't done much for womankind lately, though she did plenty for mankind when jaw-dropping bikini photos of her hit the web months ago. Mirren has repeatedly protested that her seemingly blemish-free physique was simply the result of a good angle, and this past week she again hit the beach, this time offering a much more human swimsuit body.
Have you heard that gay people are angry? It's true! They are so angry because California has decided it likes them as a couple, but it just doesn't see them getting married. (And other states don't think they'd be very good parents). Now there is a movement a rumbling in bathhouses and L.L. Bean stores across the nation calling for a Gay Boycott. On December 10th of this hallowed year, A Day Without Gays would like everyone to "call in Gay" to work. To not shop, to not participate in civics in any way. As a form of protest. We think it's kind of an interesting idea, and wonder, if it really was pulled off, what would happen? (131,000+ have already joined the Facebook Event!) What would this windblown nation of ours look like if for one 24 hour period, the gays let their absence do the talking? We'll conjure up some visions after the jump.
