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Monday Morning Box Office: Life Is Predictable And Orderly
mark · 11/01/04 10:40AMThe New Star Wars CT Poster Taunts Fans With Possibility They Won't Be Horribly Disappointed
mark · 10/29/04 04:37PM
If you thought we were going to use the occasion of George Lucas' tossing of this latest fan-kibble to bash nerds for their inevitable slobbering over the next to Star Wars movie, you'd be wrong. We just wanted to congratulate Lucas on resisting the impulse to cover pouty Hayden Christensen in retro-futuristic Snuggle detergent mascots and Rastafarian caricatures. Way to go, George! You're finally listening.
Hollywood Girds Against Menace Of Halloween Silly String
mark · 10/29/04 04:28PM
While the Hollywood No-Fun Police are cracking down on Silly String use with $1,000 fines, stun-guns, and headshot shredding for all offenders, we're pretty sure they'll still look the other way while everyone openly voids their bladders in the middle of the celebrating crowd. There are some proud traditions The Man can't afford to mess with.
Advertisers Give Us The Love Our Parents Never Could
mark · 10/29/04 04:20PMA Very Merry Night With Scientology
mark · 10/29/04 03:07PM
The L.A. Weekly's Steve Mikulan survives the local production of the A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant without being thrown in the back of a white van and beaten with bamboo sticks until all of his thetans fell out. He does admit that things seemed a little dicey before the curtains went up:
The Projectionist: Halloween Is For Movie Lovers
mark · 10/29/04 02:38PMMusto: Paris Is A Full-Blown Dyke, Hilton Theme Park Coming
mark · 10/29/04 02:16PMTrade Round-Up: DreamWorks Printing Money On Wall Street
mark · 10/29/04 01:05PM
· The DreamWorks Animation IPO uses the success of Shark's Tale to fuel a Wall Street feeding frenzy (please excuse the self-conscious shark pun—at least we didn't repeat THR's use of "swimmingly"). CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg is now considering wallpapering the DreamWorks Ani offices with twenty dollar bills, while saving the Ben Franklins for the toilet paper rolls in the executive washroom. [THR]
· Highly respected, Pulitzer-winning novelist Michael Chabon continues to attract Hollywood's filthy lucre, signing on to write Snow and the Seven, a martial-arts reimagining of Snow White, for Disney. [THR]
· Fox puts all of its promotional eggs into The O.C.'s basket, hoping that they can move in and crush some of Jeff Zucker's weakened Thursday night You May Want To See This, If You Aren't Busy TV lineup. Failure is not an option, lest Fox fall back on its trademark thrown-together, brain damage inducing reality shows.[Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas XIX: Paramount, Hollywood's home of lazy remake ideas, has Scott Rudin producing a new version of 50's schlock-horror pic The Blob, about a rampaging ball of jelly eats everything in its path. We're really dying to make a Harvey Weinstein (who is a fat guy!) joke here, but will take the high road and pass on the opportunity. (Harvey's fat! Like a blob!) [THR]
Travolta Can't Keep His Hands To Himself
mark · 10/29/04 12:35PM
Film Stew's Andy Jones returns to his "See Where Andy Goes" column after a craving for Pioneer Chicken goes terribly awry. (We think that God was just trying to save him from the far worse damage that eating there surely would have caused.) He spots Scientology's First Couple in the midst of some oddly conspicuous PDA at the Hollywood Film Festival:
Hollywood Trial Of The Century: Fish Out Of Water Edition
mark · 10/29/04 11:31AMThe Blind Item Guessing Game: Relapse Hotel: Your Guesses
mark · 10/29/04 10:42AMBREAKING: 60 Minutes Has Backstage Footage Of Ashlee Simspon SNL Disaster
mark · 10/28/04 04:15PMMeet Joel Stein, Your New LAT Entertainment Columnist
mark · 10/28/04 03:58PMTrade Round-Up: Networks Race To Exploit 9-11
mark · 10/28/04 03:16PM
· NBC and ABC race to be the first to exploit 9/11 for shoddy, ratings-boosting miniseries. The early lead goes to NBC for invoking 80s nuclear holocaust series The Day After in its concept description. Sounds classy and sensitive to national suffering already! [THR]
· Revolution Studios, fearless promoter of mind-rotting cinema, will produce the romantic comedy Made in Italy, in which an American has to win over the crazy, ethnic-stereotyped family of her boyfriend. Not since My Big Fat Greek Wedding has a Mediterranean people had such an exciting opportunity to be portrayed as backwards and annoying by Hollywood. [THR]
· King of the Hill/Simpsons writer Rich Appel mines his own unhappy marital history for laughs, getting a pilot commitment from CBS for a divorce sitcom. Appel also gets in the quote of the day: "I would love to do a show that does for divorced America what Will & Grace did for gay America." We wish him good luck in his quest to make everyone think divorcees are incredibly tiresome and petty eunuchs. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Hey, kids, more Revolution Studios news! At least this time they're only expending their crap capital on a remake of the John Carpenter horror flick The Fog. They wouldn't want to throw away too much money on original crap. [THR]
· Fox's Nielsen master plan is falling into place, as they ride big World Series clinching game numbers into the rollout of their fall season. Also, LAX continues to bomb, but now in a fresh timeslot. They should really bring in Heather Locklear to save that show. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
The Blind Item Guessing Game: Relapse Hotel
mark · 10/28/04 01:10PM
Wherein we invite our readers to bravely risk a likely prose-induced cerebral hemorrhage and guess the identity of humpy E! gossip Ted Casablanca's weekly blind item This week, Ted laments a lack of secrecy-shrouded gay orgies involving ostensibly straight actors as he sets the stage for One Flying Blind Vice:
Rip Torn's DUI Video: UPDATE
mark · 10/28/04 12:40PM
Celebrity Justice has a video from actor Rip Torn's DUI stop in January, footage that further proves our new theory that actors become infinitely more entertaining once they cross into their 70s. Is there anything funnier than a soused thespian bickering with cops while struggling to maintain his balance? We say: No, there is not. Observe the following exchange that took place when the police asked Torn to submit to a sobriety test, complete with the kind of rat-a-tat banter that wouldn't have been out of place on The Larry Sanders Show: