There's more A-list casting goodness for Gus Van Sant's Milk, the late-70s biographical drama about San Francisco's beloved openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk, an American civics story that probably wouldn't have two major, competing productions in the pipeline had Milk and then-S.F. Mayor George Moscone not been shot to death at City Hall by political rival Dan White. Reports THR:
· Directors Bryan Singer and Gus Van Sant race to be first into production with their competing biopics about Harvey Milk (The Mayor of Castro Street and The Untitled Fuck Bryan Singer, I'm Doing This Anyway Project, respectively), the first openly gay elected official in America. [Variety]
· Appropriately cartoon-like actress Christina Ricci joins the cast of Warner Bros.' Speed
Racer adaptation, joining Susan Sarandon, John Goodman, and Emile "The Wachowskis Were Big Fans Of My Understated Work In 'The Girl Next Door'" Hirsch. [THR]
· A pick-up happy Showtime renews The Tudors and This American Life for second seasons, then greenlights a new Tracey Ullman series, State of the Union, in which the semichameleonic actress could disguise herself as "Arianna Huffington in her Los Angeles boudoir, David Beckham and wife Victoria with the L.A. Galaxy or Nancy Pelosi at her D.C. dermatologist" in any given episode. [Variety]
· NBC cleans house on its returning summer-schedule-filler competition shows, jettisoning the old faces of America's Got Talent, The Biggest Loser, and Last Comic Standing in favor of fresh hosting meat. [THR]
· Var philosopher-king Peter Bart asks deceptively "trivial" questions of Hollywood designed to melt the industry's collective, underutilized mind. [Variety]
· Last celeb DUI of the year: Mike Tyson takes the current trend of mug shot flippancy to its logical conclusion. Either that, or he was so coked out, he was chewing on his own tongue.
· Oh come off it, Ryan Seacrest. We know who you really want to kiss.
· TVGasm's J-Unit weighs the pros and cons of your two stay-at-home New Year's Eve options.
· Julia Roberts is pregnant. Thank God—we were concerned her twins would grow up as only children.
· Bryan Singer is nothing if not a hands-on director.
· You don't want to scare Tyrone.
· Sometimes, it's difficult to see the obvious signs that your relationship isn't working out. This short film might help.
There's still no script for the Superman Returns sequel planned for summer of 2009, but Warner Bros. has decided to give director Bryan Singer another crack at trying to break the $300 million budget mark he fell a little short of in his first attempt. [Variety]
Behind Desperate Housewives (that show's still on? We always thought that series ceased existing after we delete their TiVo season passes), ABC "tramples" the Sunday night ratings competition. [THR]
· Tori Spelling attempts to stave off destitution by renting herself to Oxygen for a reality series, which will chronicle her and her husband's attempt to buy and refurbish a bed-and-breakfast somewhere in SoCal. [Variety]
· The Devil Wears Prada wins its fourth straight week at the international box office. [THR]
Warner Bros. bumps up the release of Blood Diamond to December 8th, setting up a showdown with Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, which the studio hopes to defeat through an ad campaign focused around the phrase, "Hate Conflict Diamonds. Not Jews." [Variety]
PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, which we try to post several times per week. (Spaced out at utterly random intervals—the better to keep you all on your toes.) So send those suckers in, and send them often. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let the world know about the time you spotted an alleged McChoking victim speeding down the 101.
You were to be forgiven if, during Superman Returns' opening credits, you had assumed you had stepped into some kind of wormhole to the 1970s: The whooshing blue letters, John Williams' familiar score, and, most of all, the name Jon Peters listed as producer, were enough to instantly throw you back to a simpler time, when the men were ex-hairdressing superproducers, and the Barbra Streisands were afro'd. The LAT takes a look at one-time King of Hollywood Peters, a larger-than-life and reviled figure who, thanks to his 13-year attachment to the Superman project, finds himself in the unlikely position of having another shot at the game. While he refused to be interviewed for the piece, his ex-wife, Mindy Peters (who's now romantically back in the picture), was more than willing to share some insights into what she feels makes this loathsome, lovable man tick:
Even Brett Ratner knows that the only real way to gauge fanboy reaction to one's handling (or in his particular case, highly lucrative mangling) of a beloved superhero franchise is to take in a late, opening night screening at Hollywood's Geek Temple, the Chinese Theatre, where one can properly observe which cinematic moments cause obsessed audience members to soil their hero-themed footie pajamas with delight. We've received a couple of reports of Superman Returns director Bryan Singer (uncharitably pictured at left trying to avoid the icky, old-man advances of cast member Frank Langella at the official premiere) dropping by last night's inaugural showing at the Chinese, where the director, unlike his successor on the latest X-Men film, was smothered in Superfan love:
We'd long felt that there was something familiarly blank, shiny, and ovoid about Bryan Singer's face, but we'd never been quite able to place the resemblance. Luckily, the Smrtmnky blog connected the dots for us. Svedka vodka's friendly bartender of the future seems to split the difference between the menacing automaton army of I, Robot and the Superman Returns director nicely. Or at least freak us out a little less.
In the latest examination of the problem of the Man of Steel's super sexual preference, yesterday's NY Times talked to Superman Returns' screenwriters and director Bryan Singer, who claim to have reimagined the hero as a sensitive guy dealing with typical "chick flick" romantic problems. Maddeningly vague talk of "being who he is" and "going beyond the borders of who he was" follows:
· In an instant message interview with AOL Music today, Jared Leto announced to the world he's as "gay as a goose." He wisely waited until his fatty period was over, avoiding an embarrassing rejection by his new adoptive people.
· In further goose news, if you haven't seen this moment from last night's American Idol finale, in which one of their creepiest early rejects gets the panty-pooping shock of his life when Clay Aiken (who appears to have found a new best friend in Garnier Nutrisse) joins him on stage, well...you must. You simply must. And while we're at it, here's Kevin Covais, who's probably getting more puthy than you ever thought potthible, warbling through a Bacharach classic.
· And in even further goose news, we proudly present the following comic book movie headlines: "Superman' Director Bryan Singer Relates To Outcast Hero," and "The 'X-Men' come out."
· Our grandmother is a sexier, more coordinated dancer than Paris Hilton. Oh, and there's a nipple slip in there, which would really thrill and titillate us if we hadn't already been introduced to her clitoris on multiple occasions.
It's a relief to see that Warner Bros. decided to subtly address the Gay Superman issue in their blockbuster's one-sheet rather than just let unseemly questions about his sexual preference linger and shift the focus away from the product. And as we suspected, it seems clear that this won't be the movie where the caped hero grapples with the one supervillain he can't defeat with heat-vision or a powerful blast of icy breath: doubts about his heterosexuality. Yes, Jor-El's kid is suspended above an imposing geological representation of a phallus, but he's merely pausing for a moment before flying away from the peninsula penetrating deep into the "man" of the title, a sure repudiation of any cryptohomosexual agenda. This poster is, of course, merely the first in a series that will more clearly narrate the hero's journey of self-discovery, building to a final, powerful image of Superman flying confidently through the gapingly vaginal Gateway Arch, telling us all we need to know about this latest incarnation of the Man of Steel just before the movie's release.
The attention being lavished on new Superman Brandon Routh's Package of Steel™ has escalated from occasional tabloid scrutiny to full-blown press tour. Perhaps sensing that Routh's carefully engineered, now-infamous superjunk is the most compelling thing about the actor, the evil masterminds of Warner Bros. dispatched him to the WonderCon convention in San Francisco, where the topic of geek discussion quickly turned to the relative rigidity of the obsessed-about codpiece:
Just yesterday, Fox 411's Roger Friedman couldn't help spilling the dirty beans about his trip on Southwest, during which a flight attendant treated a cabin full of shocked passengers to a passionate defense of Kenny "A Capable Lover, Just Not With Renee Zellweger" Chesney's heterosexuality. Today, however, Friedman's clamming up and offering his readers nothing more than a paralyzing case of the gossip blue balls:
There are superheroes that forever have given off a faint whiff of the gay, particularly middle aged, single men who adopt young wards, and then there is Superman as red-blooded, American male and heterosexual as you can get (in blue spandex and calf-high red boots). So when openly gay Superman remake director Bryan Singer, who has a not-so-secret penchant for handsome, younger boys, hired square-jawed nobody Brandon Routh to play his Man of Steel, many a Kryptopurist eyebrow was raised and the rumors starting flying: could a Hollywood director have gasp! actually hired someone he wanted to bone? It simply isn't done! Today, Radar fans the fanboy flamer flames:
Pity Brandon Routh, the actor plucked from obscurity, liberally greased up, and squeezed into Superman's blue tights by director Bryan Singer. Warner Bros. is spending untold millions on the Superman comeback movie, Routh's Big Break, and all anyone can talk about is how painstakingly the costume department calibrated the Man of Steel's package:
While actor Russell Crowe is out promoting Cinderella Man by waging a very public, bloody battle against poor customer service in hotels, producer Brian Grazer is taking a more peaceful tack, turning the spotlight on himself (he's selfless that way) and discussing the superproducing process that single-handedly generates Imagine Entertainment's hits with the LAT:
Despite initial appearances and a bedeviling name, the Blue Tights Adventure Network is not a gay dating website. Still, Superman director Bryan Singer takes an interest and sends in some video from Sydney, featuring the superhero auteur himself fixing his hair, talking about his interests, and men flying around in harnesses. How clever of him to send a video that can easily be repurposed for that other kind of site!
A funny thing happened while we were checking on director Bryan Singer's supposed profile on the Australian gay personals site Gaydar: It disappeared! Luckily, we were able to stitch it back together from some screen-captures (click the picture to see it). We may never know if it's a prank profile or if Singer was conducting due diligence on his social possibilities while he shoots Superman in Sydney, but we've heard he's already Down Under doing some preproduction work.
