LA.comfidential's Laurie Pike reports this breaking news on Mary-Kate's first public meal since getting sprung from rehab. You can't just drop such a bomb and walk away without answering some questions: How many pieces of sushi did she eat? Did anyone check the napkins for half-chewed yellowtail? Did anyone monitor the bathroom for more than one set of feet per stall? Oh, wait—she wasn't on "vacation" for "drugs."
· The industry is on pace to top last summer's box office grosses, setting new records for both box office receipts and actual admissions. Hollywood can't be stopped! We've done this to ourselves: even mega-bomb Catwoman makes $17 million in the first week. Next weekend Fox will empty a dump-truck full of elephant shit into the local megaplex and it will do around $15 mil, just from people trying to see what "all the fuss is about." [THR]
· Billy Bob Thornton to star in comedy Mr. Woodcock. Now that Thornton is set, casting kicks into high gear to find his love interest, Ms. Splintersnatch. [THR]
We're not even going to pretend that we've seen one second of CBS's Big Brother 5, even flipping around between commercials on our usual romp through TV trash. However, TV Gasm is watching, and turns Big Brother's boring footage into a short film about the blossoming love between two of the show's trapped "house guests," Scott and Jase. We'd say the editing seems a little unfair, but this isn't the first year of The Real World—every bad waiter trying to stretch his thirty seconds of gobbling bovine rectums on Fear Factor into a walk-on role on King of Queens knows exactly what they're signing up for.
A reader with a bird's eye view of a XXX sequel (variously and complexly titled as XXX Squared, XXX2, and XXX2: State of the Union) location shoot in Long Beach sends a brief report, with a cliffhanger: Will our spy finally get some flaming action out of Vin Diesel?
Ben Affleck is on the loose in his native Boston, serving as standard bearer for liberal Hollywood's largely ill-informed celebrities with a burning desire to share their political opinions with each and every camera pointed in their direction. The NYT quotes him as outraged that Bush's tax cuts have provided his burgeoning gambling career with ante money: "I saved more than $1 million in taxes last year."
—Britney Spears is planning her big day—no, not the monster truck pull—and both the Kabbalists and the Baptists want a piece of the fake-Jewish/white-trash hybrid action. Also, Britney discovers the wonderful world of ironic t-shirts. How about one that says, "I'm marrying for money"?
—Bernard Weinraub, NYT Hollywood reporter and husband of Sony movie exec Amy Pascal, quits. LAW's Nikki Finke has the scoop, but we kind of miss the East Coast vs West Coast war rhetoric of earlier columns.
—David and Kyle Get Blue Balls at the White Castle (with pics!)
—Commie pinko Hollywood liberals deny attempt at brainwashing Americans with The Manchurian Candidate remake.
—We think it's Chris Noth's body fat, and not the peculiar salination of the Dead Sea, that allows him to float effortlessly in its waters.
—The real news from the convention: Is bloated, pink-nosed Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy drunk yet?
We can't say for sure if handing out One. Tiny. Fucking. Burger. per person is going to make people go see Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, but Sunset Boulevard freeloaders seem less than happy with the portions and quality of their gratis beef. If they gave out more than one burger, all of LA's regular and boring homeless would converge on The Strip, driving away the crowd of homeless actors and rock stars who have rightly claimed that turf as their own. A reader even points out that Harold & Kumar is at best going to stake out a place as only the second-greatest White Castle movie ever made:
To fully appreciate the performance of the film that Roger Ebert called "unbelievably bad" and "truly bad," resident statistician Andrew Krucoff puts Catwoman's box office numbers in historical perspective with his chart.In addition to finishing a distant third in its first weekend of release, it had only the fourth-best opening of any "cat" movie in recent history, and the competition isn't exactly fierce; Mike Myers' reviled The Cat in the Hat and Fox's Reagan-defiling Garfield both put Halle Berry's light S&M feline offering in a burlap sack and tossed it off a bridge.
It hasn't even been a week, but it looks like Lindsay Lohan's interest in Kabbalah hasn't waned. She's so dedicated to the mystical practice that she enlisted boyfriend Wilmer Valderrama (whose previous starlet conquests include Mandy Moore and Jennifer Love-Hewitt, for those keeping score) to test her red string bracelet's resiliency to the chlorine in swimming pool water. Looks like she's safe from the evil eye even when she throws on a bikini and goes for a dip. But how will the bracelet stand up to the unique pressures of the bathroom stall at Bliss or a menage in a mansion in the Hills? Obviously, more tests are needed.
The Defamer correspondent on Heiress Doggystyling Amateur Pornographers in A-list Actor Posses reports on the company that Tobey Maguire's keeping during his international Spider-Man 2 press tour. Maybe Tobey appreciates Rick Salomon's sophisticated sense of irony in celebrating his settlement with sex tape co-star Paris in Paris:
· George Lucas tosses a piece of raw meat to the Comic Con's pack of salivating nerds, announcing the title of the last Star Wars installment: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. The overheated superfans then returned to their hotel rooms, regretting that they hadn't included easy-access panels in the crotches of their Boba Fett and Darth Vader costumes. [THR]
After an intensive six-week "food"-reintroduction program, Mary-Kate Olsen has left rehab. We're sure that she made some valuable friendships during her time at Cirque Lodge, and she'll be popular with her fellow NYU freshmen when they're partying all night and need a little extra "food" to keep their blood sugar up. And we don't mean to suggest that Ashley's following in her sister's skinny steps, but there's probably enough time for her to take a turn at the Lodge to prepare for the rigors of the coming semester.
The LAT examines pocket-sized DreamWorks head Jeffrey Katzenberg's hidden motives in taking their animation wing public. Says an analyst, "He wants to show Eisner what a mistake he made." The jilted Katzenberg's quarter-of-a-billion-dollar lawsuit against Disney wasn't enough to get Eisner's attention, and 'lil Jeff's appearance below Mike's window holding a boombox blasting "In Your Eyes" was similarly ineffective, so he's resorting to an IPO. This time Eisner will notice, and he'll beg for Jeff to come back after seeing the first two projects on the DreamWorks Animation development slate: I Miss My Lion King and Shrek 3: Mike, I'm Lost Without Your Spooning.
The media really gets cute when they're covering the gays, don't they? Check out this Reuters headline about Logo's (the MTV gay-and-lesbian channel): "Gay Channel Coming Out With Cher, Cumming Projects." We suppose the editors stayed up all night wondering if "Formerly Closeted, Buttfucking Gays Whip Out Gay Television Schedule" stood up to their institutional standards of headline-writing subtlety. In any case, MTV's programming geniuses have signed up Cher, Chastity Bono, Alan Cumming, and Kathy Griffin for shows. If you're wondering how they could have left out exiled fag hag Margaret Cho and Sandra Bernhard, no worries; Logo is in talks with them, too. The best of the new shows: Mary Cheney's election special for the network, Silently Cooperating With Daddy's Plan To Legislate Your Lifestyle Out of Existence.
The numbers are in, and Catwoman is a hit! Well, it is if your understanding of "hit" runs counter to the one accepted by most speakers of English.
Can we please have one fucking day away from Britney, Kevin, and paparazzi photographs that absolutely cannot be allowed to pass without comment? (To make sense of this picture, you're going to need to see the whole series at Vividblurry) Sure, Kevin, taping some Cheetos to your penis may have been an easy way to lure Britney into a balcony blowjob, but you're going to have a hard time explaining the orange dust and bite marks to the emergency room doctor.
—Catwoman bashing continues: An open letter to Sharon Stone and Halle Berry's hearing problems as an excuse for bad career choices and Catwoman vs. Cavewoman.
—The unthinkable happens: Gays turning their back on fag hag All Century Team captain Margaret Cho.
—Mets bottom catcher Mike Piazza dodging another kind of rumor: Was he a Teen Wolf actor or wasn't he? [via Proximity]
—"Women Behind Bars:" This should be a lot sexier than it is.
A Seattle superfan/probable nymphomaniac stalker posts her subtle, romantic entreaties to a newly-single Jake Gyllenhaal in the Los Angeles Craiglist "Missed Connections." We at Defamer are committed to bringing together easy eager fans and Hollywood's hottest stars. We hope they can make a "connection," in whatever form that takes.
Friday
1. Hipsters, forsake the PBR for one evening and look like a slightly classier kind of drunk with a glass of wine in your hand: Extreme Wine Tasting at the Echo
2. We thought that they killed most of the hippes at Kent State, but some apparently escaped to create inspirational rock collectives: Polyphonic Spree play the El Rey.
3. Chuck Klosterman reads at Skylight Books. Some says he's the voice of his generation, but that's sort of like being a wooden dick on a land-mine victim.
Saturday
1. Create:Fixate is artsy photography, conversation, and all manner of things we pretend to like in order to get laid.
2. And if getting laid through art appreciation doesn't work there, try the Scion Art Auction at Bergamot Station, with KCRW DJ Garth Trinidad.
Sunday
1. Break the Cycle fundraiser on the Fox Lot:This festive celebration features gourmet foods, activities, entertainment, live and silent auctions, and an amazing raffle all to end domestic violence by working proactively with youth. What's Fox trying to sell here. They must be releasing a domestic violence movie soon.
