It's not often that we run tips from maids, but something about this e-mail from a woman who purports to be a cleaning lady temporarily employed at the manse of American Idol's muscle-shirted dream-douser Simon Cowell instantly caught our attention:
Dying to watch the poorly edited yet highly scandalous Tom Cruise indoctrination video but don't have nine minutes to kill? We understand. That's why we put intrepid Defamer videographer Molly McAleer on the case, and the 108-second compilation clip she turned in is bound to have the SPs roaring in the aisles (or, more accurately, cowering in a corner somewhere). We've gone through the tech and run our PTSSP drills, now it's your turn.
In the second entry of her new(ish) Binge Thinking column for Entertainment Weekly, Diablo Cody wisely decides not to use the column space to discuss how homeskillets really need to shut their gobs when using burger phones to discuss doodles that can't be undid. Rather, she (perhaps unwisely) decided to fall back on a tried and true journalistic crutch for churning out a piece without actually having to formulate that strong of an opinion on something ... she makes a list! Sort of. Her innovatively (or not) titled thesis, "Heroine Chic", revolves around "killer onscreen heroines who weren't too cool to care about their hair, complexion, or wardrobe." Like Andie from Pretty In Pink and Uncle Jesse from Full House. Yeah, we're kind of lost, too.
· Steve Jobs announced at Macworld that every major studio would now offer movies for rental on iTunes. $3.99 per new release gives you 30 days to start it, then 24 hours to finish it, and a virtually limitless amount of time to bitch about how you just blew $3.99 of beer money on Norbit. [THR]
· At last, Oprah Winfrey gets her OWN network: The Oprah Winfrey Network. (Get it? OWN?) When it debuts in 2009, look for her to select it as the Channel of the Month for her newly formed Oprah's TV Club, ensuring boffo launch ratings. [THR]
· With the one-two foam-baton punch of Deal or No Deal and American Gladiators, NBC easily swept up in the ratings last night, a victory they have a few hours to savor before Fox unleashes a rampaging, 70-foot Abdulosaur upon the TV landscape. [THR]
An update to the seriously depressing Roger Avary fatal DUI car accident story: Avary's wife Gretchen is now expected to survive. His publicist released this statement: "Roger wishes to publicly convey his heartfelt condolences to the family of the deceased. Words cannot express how sorry he is, and this tragic accident will always haunt him." He faces his arraignment Friday. [AP]
A rumor posted on unitedhollywood.com, and substantiated by an article in Variety, suggests the DGA is on the verge of having reached a deal with the AMPTP, if not having done so already. What this means for the WGA isn't entirely clear: United Hollywood cautions that "everyone stay calm," and give WGA negotiators an opportunity to "analyze the terms of that deal and see if they're acceptable to us as a guild or not," but picketing writers have already begun to express optimism that it will provide an acceptable template for their own. Certainly, it should hearten anyone to know that the same union that reps such highly opinionated and demanding artists as Michael Bay was able to reach a swift and workable solution, without the Transformers director even once leaning over the bargaining table to suggest to Nick Counter through a megaphone that his offer was, "BEEEEEEEP...a FUCKING JOKE, OLD MAN."
Ever since we called shenanigans on Katie Holmes' involvement in the New York City Marathon just over two weeks ago, conspiracy theorists have come out of the woodwork at a rate not seen since Ollie Stone introduced a nation to the ravings of Jim Garrison. As other news organizations started to poke around the highly sensitive hot button issue of marathon integrity, they found the story was a tough nut to crack. Even our nation's most dignified and respected journalistic outlet, US Weekly, <a href="http://defamer.com/343570/us-weekly-blog-post-goes-mysteriously-missing-after-poking-around-into-katie-holmess-involvement-in-boston-marathon
">was forced to mysteriously removed a blog post that dared to investigate Katie's alleged involvement in the upcoming Boston Marathon. Just when we thought the trail had gone cold, our cause reached its zenith last night when Katie Holmes appeared on The Late Show With David Letterman and addressed the issue that has kept millions of earth humans on the edge of their seats.
Here's what we know about the Gwyneth Paltrow Mystery Ailment Hospitalization Shocker currently shaking the celebrity-health-monitoring tabloid news establishment to its core: Usmagazine.com reports that the actress was admitted to the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York yesterday afternoon, "slumped over in a wheelchair pushed by [husband] Chris Martin. She looked not well." Then, at 6:30 p.m. a bag—clearly labeled "Gwyneth Martin"— arrived from a local organic produce store.
Sunday's New York piece on Bourne director Doug Liman was basically your typical boilerplate profile of the weird genius. Annoying-but-brilliant, healthily despised, and-for the purposes of this here piece-highly redeemable. That is, if you don't count the debasing way the director, son of a hero of civic litigation, treats his assistant. Less relevant to his character, but still a major put-off, we hear Liman doesn't brush his teeth!
Didn't get a chance to watch the terrifyingly creepy Tom Cruise video yesterday before Scientologists pulled it off YouTube? Well, we've managed to get our hands on a copy and now we'd like to invite you to watch in all its technicolor glory. Nevermind the orgs, nevermind the SPs and nevermind David Miscaviage, Defamer won't hesitate to put our ethics on ANYONE! Don't miss out, over one billion earth humans have been served. KSW and KFC forever (or something). This is must-see. Do not pass go without watching this video.
· Wondering how Tracy Morgan is spending his downtime from "30 Rock"? Dave Letterman asks the tough questions, the audience gets the uncomfortably honest answer.
· Honest to blog, we can't wait to see Juno Jr.!
· LAist has a strong to very strong interview with our longtime friends/cohorts, The Fug Girls.
· The terminally boring Harry Potter saga may have just gotten one film longer. We're going out on a limb here, but we're going to guess that Voldemort doesn't end up defeating Harry in this one, either.
· Now we know what Justin Timberlake sees when he wipes the sleepy crust away from his eyes each morning.
· We almost ralphed just typing this. We can't imagine what will happen if you actually watch it. That's right, it's the Tiffany "New York" Pollard sex tape.
· And to close the day on a bit of unfortunate but necessary news, tomorrow's Ben Silverman Prom has been postponed. Not cancelled, mind you, just postponed.
We can think of no better way to cap off this splendiferous Monday than with a ribald discussion among the ladies of The View on a topic the French might call a ménage à trois, but Americans more commonly refer to as a delicious McThreeWay. Things quickly get ugly, as family values traditionalist Elisabeth Hasselbeck declares a threesome witchhunt, fingering audience members she suspects of concealing group-sex-tainted pasts.
Outspoken proponent of 5150-hold survivors' rights Courtney Love has, according to NME.com, settled on the two actors she think could most accurately bring her tumultuous marriage to life in a movie version of Kurt Cobain biography Heavier Than Heaven. In the part of her Tormented Musical Genius and Voice of a Generation husband, she wisely, if rather safely, elected Ryan Gosling, who in Half Nelson proved how effectively he can crawl into the skin of a barely functioning but brilliant drug addict, and, in Lars and the Real Girl, made it somehow believable that someone could fall in love with a mostly-plastic spouse that required constant propping.
Hot off the triumphant and record-setting B.O. run of "Blonde Ambition" ($6,422 and counting!), Jessica Simpson attempted to channel her patented blend of moxie and can-do spirit into being a dutiful girlfriend to new(ish) boyfriend Tony Romo, who just so happens to be the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys. Unfortunately for Romo and his teammates, Simpson's runaway success at luring everyday joes to our nation's cineplexes did not translate into good luck for America's Team yesterday. The Cowboys were eliminated from the NFL playoffs by the New York Football Giants, a team eager to prove their mettle in the last days before Giant Fucking Monsters attack the isle of Manhattan. Now Cowboy fans are directing their wrath towards Miss Simpson, claiming that her double Ds distracted Romo when he should've been preparing for the game. Um, duh? [US Magazine]
In lieu of Golden Globes awards speeches, our East Coasted sibling site posted a memorable video package, via Hollywood Interrupted, fêting messianic Scientology mouthpiece Tom Cruise as he accepted their 2005 Freedom Medal of Valor. Like most of Scientology's sacred babblings, the text was never meant to reach outside eyes; the video quickly disappeared from YouTube, soon to shake off from the temporary effects of the tranquilizing serum plunged into its neck and find itself buried alive beneath a patch of carefully attended petunias on the grounds of Gilman Hot Springs HQ.
The New York Post is reporting that The Animal may have been sippin' on a few Purple Monsters — a nastariffic homemade concoction of Red Bull, vodka and NyQuil — before she got carted off to Cedars-Sinai last week after refusing to turn the kids over to K-Fed's handlers. This explains a lot. `Cause there have been more than a few times that we've hit The Tuss and The `Quil a little too hard. Trust us, it turns everything into the scene in Knocked Up where Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd go to Cirque Du Soleil high on 'shrooms. Not fun.
During an evening lacking any sort of true (or even manufactured) sense of excitement, we found ourselves giddily mesmerized by the grainy home video that Nikki Blonsky shot of her family's reaction to the news that she had been nominated for a Globe for her work in Hairspray. After all, it's one thing to trash a hotel room, but it's another thing entirely to trash your parents' living room. In a viral video era where capturing a "real" reaction becomes harder and harder, it's impossible to argue that Nikki's spontaneous flip of the Blonsky family coffee table was anything other than a pure moment born from a rush of adrenaline and emotion. More simply put, we just paid witness to one of the most ecstatic moments of this young woman's life to date. We love everything about it, unironically and unapologetically. Now if only John Travolta were able to show this kind of range...
In the six days since news broke that Axium, payroll company to a number of Hollywood studios, ceased operations after declaring emergency Chapter 7 bankruptcy, we have received countless tips about the company's spotty business practices over the last six months or so. Many of the tips revolved around John Visconti, one of the firm's principal owners and a former chair and CEO of the company. He sounds like a real peach! His CV is full of bizarre fun facts allegations like this: there's a possibility that Visconti isn't his real last name (still digging on that one) and that he used to have bullet proof glass in his office on Wilshire. More goodies, including a handy cheat sheet of the events that led to the company's demise and loss of up to $500 million in liabilities, after the jump!
