With terrorists attacking London and scaring most of the Western world shitless (there really was no way to avoid mentioning this), we instinctually cling to the bosom of Ari Emanuel and The Agent Dance, seeking solace underneath the warming wattage of that inimitable smile. Radar Online seems to confirm what we heard at the close of last week, reporting that ICM is ready to spread its legs for the suitor with the fattest wallet:
· Good news for Universal and theater owners: People seem to like Cinderella Man enough where they're not asking for their money back afterwards.
· Publicist swears the sky is yellow, yet people persist in trusting the eyes that tell them it's blue. People—what's up with them?
· Blogging.la hears that parking at the ArcLight is about to jump from $1 to $2.50, bringing the cost of a movie date at the theater to $217.
· With Angelina's adoption news, it's looking less likely that she's knocked up, but what's going on with the betting line for the naming of Brangelina's theoretical lovechild?
· Is Jessica Simpson too sexy? Ananova dares to "go there."
· We love the pic of the stuffed penguin in the military hat (and yes, it's supposed to remind you of this) so much that we're attaching it to this post, apropos of nothing but the happiness it brings us.
· Albert and Allen Hughes, sometimes dramatically referred to as The Hughes Brothers, are the latest Master Storytellers to stop by for a chat at the ArcLight. They'll answer questions following a screening of 1993's Menace II Society. Do you think they know that since Menace came out, Samuel L. Jackson has been in about 60 movies? That's today's fun fact, kids.
· It would probably be illegal for us to recommend drug abuse in conjunction with an event listing, but is there any chance you could sit through the Donkey Kong music and laser show of Video Games Live at the Hollywood Bowl without being really, really high? No, there is not.
· Other music that may or may not invite the use of controlled substances: Moving Units at the Fonda; Oohlas at Spaceland; Darci Cash and Big Japan at the Troubadour.
The official site for The Wedding Crashers has a fun (though very ripe for abuse) promotional widget allowing the user to insert a picture of him/herself into the movie's trailer—and yes, just as you might have expected, it's called Trailer Crashers. We briefly considered inserting our own pic into the trailer and fantasizing about what it might be like to scam some wedding reception-quality tail with Vince Vaughn or Owen "The Butterscotch Stallion" Wilson, but then we thought that Wilson looked a little lost without his frequent onscreen partner. And via the magic of the internets, voil ! Wilson and Ben Stiller were reunited, restoring some balance to the studio comedy universe.
If you haven't heard by now, the NY Times' Judith Miller is going to jail, while Time's Matthew Cooper has decided to testify about his confidential source rather than join Miller in the slammer. Whenever big news like this breaks, we always like to do our part by helping CBS cast its inevitable, fast-tracked television movie. We think Jason Alexander will make a fine Cooper, while Tomlin will bring an offbeat sensibility to Miller. Please remember that we're dealing with TV casting budgets—there's no way that Les Moonves is going to meet Paul Giamatti's quote for a MOW.
Defamer is committed to connecting independent, ambitious women getting their start in our fair city with the affordable housing options offered by anonymous Craiglist benefactors looking for open-minded roommates. Today's CL listings present a veritable cornucopia of such low/no-cost housing opportunities (and since none brag about their industry ties, they must all be on the up-and-up, how refreshing!) available to hot-tub friendly females (and in one case, being biologically female doesn't seem to be a deal-breaker):
Hollywood PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are sent in by our readers. Send yours to tips@defamer.com (putting “privacywatch” or “sighting” in the subject line helps immensely) and let the world know that you have an amazingly ability to differentiate between the Olsen twins.
· Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's coyly-handled and tabloid-friendly smoldering sexual relationship seems to have helped Mr. and Mrs. Smith at the box office, while the Insincere-Seeming Publicity Theater of whatshisname and whatshername seems not to have damaged War of the Worlds. [Variety]
· Legendary screenwriter Ernest Lehman (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and many more) died Saturday at the age of 89. [THR]
· Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way will produce an adaptation of Cat's Cradle, hiring the writer of the Joycian masterwork Sahara (and his son) to tackle the Kurt Vonnegut classic. [Variety]
· Tommy Lee Jones joins the cast of thousands in the Robert Altman-directed adaptation of Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, will be lovably grizzled alongside Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Virginia Madsen, Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly, Lily Tomlin and Maya Rudolph. [THR]
· Oh, and by the way: Paris is snubbed as London wins the 2012 Olympics. [Variety]
Angelina Jolie is extending her family the old-fashioned way, by jetting into Ethiopia, proclaiming, "I want that one!", and assimilating a poverty-stricken infant into her steadily-growing brood. Once the quicky adoption of her new daughter is complete, Jolie and newly politically-conscious man-friend Brad Pitt will next (private) jet off to Tibet to select a third delegate of the Security Council for their planned alternate United Nations (comprised entirely of adopted offspring educated solely on international location shoots), which will one day replace the decaying, ineffectual institution and usher in a new era of peace and unity.
The NYT breaks down Disney's recent, completely non-cynical revival of its Love Bug franchise, Herbie: Fully Loaded, into its constituent parts: product placement and shitergy. The movie's chock-full of Nascar-real advertiser bombardment and shameless ESPN (owned by Disney, naturally) tie-in buggery that encroaches into virtually every scene:
Our glossy cronies over at Gawker have pointed out the Yahoo Personals ad of an enterprising young man who's trying to get laid in NY by borrowing the instantly recognizable face of Hollywood's favorite fauxteur, Brett Ratner. Lest anyone think the director's e-trolling for companionship, the ad doesn't even make token stabs at Ratner-verisimilitude. (6'2"? Athletic body? 28 years old? Only looking for white chicks?)
We know that the last thing that anyone wants to do is think about agents as the work day drags to a close, but there's chatter that Endeavor's John Lesher might be thisclose to ditching the agency to take over Paramount Classics. In fact, some of the rumors make it sound like it might happen any minute now. While we're always in favor of a member of the Brotherhood of Ten Percent moving on up and out of the WIlshire Boulevard ghetto, we must ask: What about the children? Potential ex-clients like Martin Scorsese, David O. Russell, P.T. "Paul Thomas" Anderson, Matthew "Have You Seen Layer Cake Yet?" Vaughn, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu could be ripped limb-from-limb in the ensuing fight to be their new best friend. Russell's not going down until someone can disengage his patented headlock, but Scorsese's not a spring chicken anymore. Developing...
· Writer James Frey, whose scripting of the David Schwimmer vehicle Kissing a Fool began a downward spiral of catastrophic drug addiction—and eventual literary redemption with the bestselling recovery memoir A Million Little Pieces, reads from his new book, My Friend Leonard, at Vroman's. (OK, we don't know for sure about Kissing a Fool being the catalyst for his drug use, but every story needs a hooky inciting incident, doesn't it?)
· The first-ever rock-n-roll feature, Rock Around the Clock, hits a double bill with Don't Knock the Rock, the first-ever rock-n-roll sequel, at the Egyptian for the opening of the Mods & Rockers film festival. Expect more pompadours than you can shake a pair of cuffed jeans at.
· Normally, we feel guilty about recommending an activity that keeps you on the couch, but tonight is the premiere of MTV's The 70s House, in which "modern" kids are deprived of their PlayStations, Adderall, and cellphones in an attempt to simulate the technology-free horror that was life in the 70s. Fortunately, 70s houses still had liquor cabinets, so maybe these kids will be able to replicate some Real World-style drinking binges and get an anachronistic rainbow party going.
Do you think that prison didn't make house-arrested domestic diva Martha Stewart (that's M. Diddy to you, bitch) a lot tougher? In the new issue of Vanity Fair, Stewart (other prison nicknames: "The Plunger Princess" and "Switchblade Stewey") openly brags about her plans to escape from the hard time at her maximum-security mansion, from which she gets a mere 48 hours a week of work-related relief:
Ah, there's nothing like Independence Day as celebrated inside the super-privileged gates of the Malibu Colony, where underwhelming fireworks displays crackle above (no one wants a stray bottle rocket turning their home into a $15 million tinderbox), the A-list cavort patriotically without fear of holiday-related peasant contact, and bags of blow flutter happily to the ground like unexploded blooming flowers. The Defamer Special Fourth of July Correspondent files this report from the 'Bu Colony:
