Natalie Portman attempted to repair her relationship with the canine community yesterday afternoon in New York City. After a mini-marathon of The Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan (and at the behest of her hippie boyfriend, Devendra Banhart), Portman got back out there with her new puppy. Portman flinched slightly each time the dog went to the bathroom, but over time, Portman started to relax.
We're beginning to think that Larry Rudolph may truly be the master of spinning scandals into gold. Ever since reuniting with her former stardom wizard, Britney Spears has gone from umbrella-swinging, gurney-riding American Tragedy to a slimmed down working girl with vastly improved extensions to boot. Rudolph's latest strategy has been sending Spears to the gym to shed any leftover pounds from her previous diet of lollipops and Cheetos, in addition to making damn well sure she treks to the recording studio. But the news isn't all sunshine and rainbows: it seems tension between Spears and unicorn-rider Neil Patrick Harris, coupled with a return to some bad habits, are threatening the comeback we've been patiently waiting for.
Die-hard Will Ferrell fans who endured Semi-Pro will recall a set-piece in which Will's farm-league basketball team owner Jackie Moon wrestles a bear as a ploy to fill seats. That bear, a 700-lb grizzly named Rocky, fatally attacked a trainer at an exotic animal training facility in Big Bear yesterday. From the LAT:
Forget the movies. As any veteran festival goer knows, all the work is done at the parties, where film industry players swap their views on movies nobody has seen. Robert De Niro's Tribeca Film Festival-a recent and upscale addition to the movie maker's annual peregrination which starts this week-is no different. The party timetable is usually a closely guarded document, passed around in email with a strict injunction against sharing with the hoi polloi. Here's what we think of that. First, the grid; then, below, the list of publicists you need to bully or cajole.
The Cannes Film Festival announced this morning it will get four hours of Che Guevara after all — not to mention additional Oscar bait from Clint Eastwood, Angelina Jolie and Charlie Kaufman in this year's competition program. As recently as last Friday, the Steven Soderbergh/Benicio Del Toro all-or-nothing two-fer of Guerrilla and The Argentine was looking doubtful for the Cannes deadline, but the festival announced this morning that it is indeed in. Out of competition, meanwhile, world premieres Indiana Jones 4 and Kung-Fu Panda will do battle for the honorary Jerry Seinfeld Award For Shameless Publicity Hijacking.
After three-and-a-half years of wardrobe-sharing bliss, standing side-by-side through the good times (the Branded Wedding of the Century, brought to you by 1-800-Flowers, Smirnoff Ice, and the Portugal Tourism Board) and the bad (her Barbara Walters-issued View death warrant), ETOnline is now reporting that Star Jones has filed for divorce from husband Al Reynolds. From their Star! On! Her! Own! Exclusive!:
· Apparently How I Met Your Mother's Canadian mall-star of the 1980s Robin Sparkles had a disappointing follow-up called "Sand Castles in the Sand." Nope, still not funny. [CBS]
· Larry King's CNN contract is extended until 2010, at which point they'll figure something out involving brains in bell jars or cloned noses. [Media Bistro]
· Richie Sambora avoids a child endangerment charge, but will face two misdemeanor counts of drunk driving. Asked to comment, Sambora explained, "I ain't gonna live forever. I just want to live while I'm alive.
(It's my life.) " [CNN.com]
· Netflix will start charging a premium to rent Blu-Ray discs. Know what Netflix? Do that, we make it a Blockbuster night. [Gizmodo]
· Some nice shots from last night's excellent Kanye West: Metroid Prime Tour. [WOW Report]
Apropo of nothing save the fact that it's nearly quitting time and this is the funniest fucking thing we've seen in as long as we can remember, we offer you just a taste of the mightygodking.com blog's treasure trove of Atari 2600 cartridges, "discovered at a garage over the weekend." Who knows why we were squandering our youths on War and Night Driver, when we could have been delighting to the high-flying exploits of Gay French Mario Bros.? (And as an aside—we just noticed the striking symmetry between these covers and those of that other formative interactive entertainment of our youth, Choose Your Own Adventure books.)
After a brief fling with steamy Chinese art-core, director Ang Lee is heading back to the comfortable terrain of the Gays, the lauded director having already explored that topic's various themes in such previous Queer Cinema classics as Brokeback Mountain (doomed lovers on the Wyoming plain), The Wedding Banquet (a comedic take on Chinese family and tradition), and Hulk (roid-raging muscle queen never quite fits in). THR now reports that Lee will turn to the unlikely setting of the original Woodstock Music and Art Fair for his next emotionally frigid, magic rainbow carpet ride:
Ever since Mean Girls became a runaway success back in 2004, Tina Fey has been riding a wave of near universal acclaim. Her ability to ride that tasty wave of popularity for the last four years without succumbing to any nasty wipeouts has arguably turned her into the Laird Hamilton of the Writers-Turned-Performers circuit. But when Baby Mama hits theaters this weekend, all of that cred that she has built up will be put to the test. Not only has Variety's Todd McCarthy gone on record calling it "exceedingly predictable", but Videogum has been trumpeting the notion that "Tina Fey-Tigue" is about to set in for the last week and some change. Recognizing that this film doesn't exactly fit the mold of traditional studio comedies (namely, in that it stars two female protagonists), Universal has been throwing a bunch of dollars at Baby Mama television advertising over the last few weeks, alternately positioning the film as a Tina Fey Vehicle, a film In Which Amy Poehler Steals The Show and, gasp, as something that even sports-loving, beer guzzling men will dig (specifically, by scoring the spots with The Cars' dude-friendly power pop anthem "Just What I Needed").
While all three of these spots appear after the jump, we thought it would be fun to enlist Defamer's videographer par excellence Molly McAleer to cut a commercial for the film that would play to all the thrill-seeking teens who have made Prom Night one of this spring's surprise B.O. hits (above). Feel free to use our cut, Universal marketing team — all we ask for is a link in return. Enjoy!
Underneath that swarthy, dirty-haired facade that Hills heartthrob/bastard Justin Bobby exudes lies an astonishing ability to inspire the rest of the cast with his wildly profound life lessons. His highly anticipated return to the habitually bland "reality" show jump-started whatever brain cells our blonde professors possess after popping all those producer-supplied Adderalls. In one particularly Carrie Bradshaw-esque line, our antihero explains, "It's not nice when you fall away from people, but when you kind of regroup again, it's..." Sure, we don't learn what "it" is, but still. Sheer poetry. As you'll see in our clip masterfully crafted by Intrepid Defamer Videographer&trade Molly McAleer, there were lessons aplenty last night. One prime example from dearest dead-eyed Audrina? A Webster-worthy definition of the term "date like a date date." [MTV]
David Mamet is making fantastic time in his macho, myopic trot toward senility, first with his sloppy jeremiad against "brain-dead liberals" in a March issue of the Village Voice, and now in the new issue of Vanity Fair. In the magazine's traditional issue-ending Proust Questionnaire, the playwright / screenwriter / director brings his terse, complete sentences to bear on subjects from... well, Mamet can speak for himself:
Shirley Temple Black—not the integrated synagogue, but the biggest child star in history—is nursing a broken arm on the eve of her 80th birthday. We wish her a quick recovery, and offer her example—she went on to become the U.S. ambassador to Czechoslovakia and Ghana!—as a potential career path for Dakota Fanning, inconsolable since Abigail Breslin starting getting all her parts. [Reuters]
Actress/model Phoebe Price has been looking to increase her exposure and awareness in the media. Since Price isn't known well enough to appear on Dancing With The Stars, she figured that she would do the next best thing. Namely, she would follow former Dancing With The Stars contestant Mario Lopez. Price discovered that photographers would often follow Mario Lopez around and figured it wouldn't be that hard to up her profile by having her photo taken as well, just as long as she remains five to ten feet behind Lopez at all times. Mission accomplished.
· Fresh off his rousing, one night only performance at the Pellicano Playhouse, Chris Rock will be serving up the yuks tonight at the Gibson Ampitheater. Just don't ask him what he thinks of the "Chippendales" sketch.
· Tonight's concerts include Oliver Future at the Troubadour, Trainwreck at Spaceland and Kayne West's second night at the Nokia Theater.
· It’s the fourth Tuesday of the month. Therefore, it is time once again for the Cartoon Dump at the Steve Allen Theater.
· Did you know: “In terms of its ticket sales and the number of movies released, the Indian film industry is the largest in the world.” The Arclight celebrates this worthy contributor to the medium with the Indian Film Festival.
Megan Fox—whose coin-slot-baring performance in Transformers was egregiously overlooked by nearly all the major Hollywood awards (she did take Best Actress at the Golden Spankbaits)—is featured in this month's Paw Print Magazine. It's a publication for those who feel a little fenced-in by the rigid constraints of Dog and Cat Fancy, as demonstrated by the wide array of exotic photoshoot costars on display.
The last time we were allowed a brief glimpse into the mysterious lives of Tom Cruise's "other" kids, the news wasn't pretty. Harvey Levin and his TMZ minions were pointing out their awkward adolescence and homelessness, even going as far as to making a crack about their "frizzy" hair. But following in his defiant father's footsteps, 13-year old Connor Cruise is fighting back against all those media meanies by reportedly scoring a plum role in the upcoming Will Smith vehicle, Seven Pounds. And as happy as we are that Connor finally realized playing soccer while surrounded by paparazzi wasn't likely to turn into a full-time career, we're somewhat suspicious of Tom's claims that Connor scored the part of potential Scientologist/Cruise buddy Smith "all on his own"...
We liked Errol Morris's new film Standard Operating Procedure just fine, and we hope he's right about his Abu Ghraib exploration's chances to buck the persistent Iraq-film box-office curse. We can't say, however, we're as eager to see it popularize the trend in Oscar-Winning Documentarians Paying For Interviews — a surprising and fairly icky career pattern Morris revealed at an SOP screening last week.
The last two weeks have been rough on the friendship of one-time power duo Victoria Beckham and Katie Holmes. First, the meal-skipping, identical-haircut-sporting pair's friendship took a hit when Tom Cruise became concerned that Posh's influence was having a negative effect on Katie's health. Then, perhaps in retaliation, Victoria neglected to invite TomKat to her intimate pre-birthday dinner. Now, we hear that Katie has begun to distance herself from the Spice Girl-turned-professional partygoer, likely due to the assertions of the press that she's "morphed into Posh." So who's to blame? As Showbiz Spy reports, it seems that Katie Holmes is the culprit behind the fractured friendship:
