The Second Horseman of the Blockbuster Sequel Apocalypse is now galloping through your local multiplex, so dive behind the candy counter and pray he harvests the souls of that bickering family of four in line behind you. Your weekened box office numbers:
· Your 2007 Upfronts Round-Up:
NBC: Quit staring at Kevin Reilly's mass. Studio 60 snuffed. Trump sweats. A Bionic teaser.
ABC: Goodbye, George, we have to make room for Cavemen. Andy Gump and Oprah make an appearance.
CBS: The Tiffany network wants to tarnish its image. Those citizens of Kid Nation better take the arcade over the library.
FOX: Choke on their reality.
· One Week in Paris: Candy Spelling offers some tough love. Kathy Hilton sees the bright side. 23 is the magic number. The French connection.
· SpectorWatch: Elmer Fudd makes an appearance. A swarthy witness for the prosecution. The bubbe look.
· Schlepping to Cannes: By the Numbers.
· The Bee Movie stunt: You're never too rich to look like an asshole. Jeffrey Katzenberg's dry run.
· Britney beams us her love!
· The Splitsville Times: Heche crazy. Phillippe almost free.
· Bud Bundy booked.
· Sylvester Stallone sorry about the whole growth hormone mix-up, Australia!
· Pinkberry only uses the freshest ingredients, which shall remain nameless.
· S Day is finally here, and Tim and Eric couldn't be more excited about it. Really.
· Posthumous note to Jack Valenti: If you're playing Truth or Dare with the 1991 Madonna, you always take dare. Always.
· Ah, we knew there something wrong with the way Britney Spears dresses, and now we can put our finger on exactly what it is. [via goldenfiddle]
· Worn down by months of unironic posts about Matthew McConaughey's abs, Reese Witherspoon feeding parking meters, and Hyde's guest list, a writer at TMZ finally loses her shit.
·Hey, unicorns! Flying ones!
Friday
· Music round-up: The Germs at Safari Sam's; Aimee Mann at Largo; Eskimohunter at El Cid.
· At the UCB Theatre, Howard Kremer, Natasha Leggero, and Patton Oswalt tear new blogholes for crappy MySpace bands in "Waste of Space."
Saturday
· More music: The Sea and Cake with Robbers on High Street at the Troubadour (first of two nights!); Stevie Nicks at the Greek (first of two nights!), The Binges at Spaceland.
· The Natural History Museum hosts its 21st Annual Bug Fair: Live spiders! Scorpions! Hundreds of squealing little kids touching gross creatures! What could be a more relaxing way to spend a weekend afternoon? [via flavorpill]
Sunday
· Celebrate All Things Santa Monica at the sleepy, up-and-coming little beach community's annual festival. In an exciting twist, this year's event will be zero waste, so your half-eaten funnel cake will be composted.
· The Skirball hosts "Forbidden Fruit: Readings From Banned Works of Literature," an event to benefit PEN USA's Freedom to Write programs. Famous person bonus: Kirk Douglas will be honored for authoring no fewer than thirty-five memoirs.
Earlier this week, someone e-mailed to suggest that we post examples of the "fake," publicist-supplied celebrity sightings that we try to filter out so that they don't render our cherished PrivacyWatch feature even more hopelessly tainted by PR shenanigans than it probably already is. Because we like nothing better than to make our loyal readers' tragically unambitious dreams come true, here's one from just a few hours ago that's obviously not trying too hard (if at all) to fool us:
Famous People Care!™ Day continues at Defamer with the announcement that Nick Carter, late of the Backstreet Boys and of having sexual relations with L.A. County's sparkliest prisoner-to-be, is partnering with the United Nations so that you'll know more about dolphins and junk! Really, that's all we've got on this one, as the random pairing of obscure cause and D-list personage should provide more than enough entertainment without further commentary.
PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so put down that hamburger and/or baby in desperate need of changing, and send them in! Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and tell everyone about the time you spotted Paris Hilton training for her upcoming incarceration by forcing herself to spend 15 minutes in a book store.
Things may not have ended well between America's Current Sweetheart Reese Witherspoon and her caddish, underemployed ex-husband, Ryan Phillippe, but the couple appears to be moving on: Reese is reportedly in fake-love with Jake Gyllenhaal, and the divorce proceedings appear to be humming along smoothly:
· Gerard Butler, still red-hot following his career-making, washboard-ab-spotlighting turn in 300, will join Jodie Foster and Abigail "Im in Dakota's career, steelin her rolez" Breslin in the family adventure film Nim's Island, based on the popular children's book. [Variety]
· Out-of-work and aspiring comedy writers, it might finally be time to pull the ripcord and float to the safety of law school: the networks ordered precious few comedies for the new season, are terrified of the expense of still-faddish single-camera shows, and want to squeeze the life out of established sitcoms for fear of a writers strike. Get out while your LSAT scores are still valid. [THR]
· MGM is dangerously close to getting into the Rob Schneider business. [Variety]
· ABC declined to pick up their Mr & Mrs Smith adaptation, triggering a contractual option that will allow studio Regency TV to start shopping the Alphabet's sloppy pilot seconds to other networks. [THR]
· Mexican filmmaking BFFs Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro, and Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu have signed on to do five movies with Universal and Focus Features, establishing a production company called (really) cha cha cha. [Variety]
Yahoo's homepage is currently attempting to lure visitors to its Answers section with Crash star Matt Dillon's instantly recognizable face, which seems to grimly bear the burden of knowing that our planet is teetering on the brink of environmental disaster—unless. of course, you click through, spend a couple of minutes reading up his past and present projects, and then offer your own tips, like, "Turn off lights. Do not use incandescent bulbs but fluorescent bulbs. Do not over-use or waste water," "Cold water wash gets the clothes as clean as warm or hot water. I am using only cold water now for quite a while," or, "Drive a Prius to your next movie premiere—you'll use less gas and get more red-carpet tail than Leo DiCaprio at a 'save the rainforest' rally."
It's been reported that accused closet-raider Lindsay Lohan won't be charged with felony grand theft for allegedly boosting clothes from a local woman, as there's insufficient evidence a crime was committed and the Los Angeles County justice system has already dedicated all of its celebrity-prosecuting resources to the ongoing Paris Hilton case. With this avenue closed to her, the accuser, model Lauren Hastings, has taken her case to the internets, dropping by the offices of Buzznet to describe (in painstaking detail—get comfortable, you're going to be here for a while) how the supposed theft went down—and, far more chillingly, revealing the ensuing campaign of Blackberry-enabled terror (there are photos!) waged against her by Lohan, Nicole Richie, and Samantha Ronson for Hastings' choice to go public with the matter. We applaud her willingness to stand up to this intimidating, wardrobe-pilfering triad, a brave effort that calls to mind the sage words of entertainment newsmagazine philosopher William Hall Bush, "All that is required for the triumph of celebutard evil is that good models do nothing."
While finding an anonymous tip about Paris Hilton in our inbox is certainly not an uncommon experience, it's rare that we receive one composed entirely in a foreign tongue, from a self-professed "guardian angel" who signs their correspondence, "The french." We're suckers for some Euro-style cloak and dagger, however, so we put our best minds to work translating the contents of the cryptic message:
When we first heard about Jerry Seinfeld's big Bee Movie publicity stunt at Cannes (bee costumes, wires over the beach, mobs of gasping spectators, etc etc), the whole affair seemed incredibly reckless: had a strong gust of wind or a Pixar saboteur interfered with the delicate proceedings, the world easily could have lost its finest, semi-retired observational humorist and Porsche collector. As it turns out, our fears were at least partially unnecessary, as THR notes that a far more expendable member of the Bee Movie team volunteered for zip-line-test-dummy duty to ensure the star's safety:
· We want to believe in the existence of crazy, neverending, shoot-your-wife-in-the-face love as much as the next guy, but we dunno...something about these two isn't quite right.
· That little kid is never going to learn not to wander too close to the street dancers, is he?
· The auctioning of Michael Jackson's "sex toys" sounds a little gross, until you realize they're just talking about the GI Joes and Pokemons that help get kids in the mood.
·Behold the majesty of the lambda.
·Hey, zebracorns!
While we would estimate that we are between five and thirty times more tired of Paris Hilton news than you are at this juncture, do you know what we're not even a little bit sick of? You guessed it: Photographs of adorable babies lovingly nestled within the hollowed-out womb of ironic Paris Hilton sculptures! We imagine that Hilton's fellow inmates would probably enjoy this photo as much as we did, but given the earlier report that she'll be isolated from those who are most likely to make her prison term more uncomfortable than it has to be, we doubt they'll be able to get close enough during their daily group-shower time to ask if they can sit on her stomach and recreate the amusing tableaux for themselves.
If the name Coley Laffoon means nothing to you, that's probably because you've not been breathlessly following the developments in the ongoing kook parade that is Anne Heche's life. Laffoon was the cameraman that turned Heche off lesbian comic dance-Nazis and brought her back into the hetero fold. Five years and one child later, Laffoon is now filing for divorce, and dragging with him all of Heche's dark, tinfoil-hat-wearing secrets as they battle over custody of their five-year-old son, Homer:
· Music round-up: Co-ed panty-melter Ben Gibbard at UCLA's Royce Hall, Ozma at the Troubadour; Paramore at Avalon.
· Flavorpill and GOOD magazine are hooking for Fair Trade LA: Party with a Purpose at the Vanguard, celebrating the 'pill's five-year anniversary by raising some money to help create of sustainable water supplies in Africa.
· Mc5 guitarist Wayne Kramer hosts Rock and Roll Bingo at Crane's, where your $5 per card will go to benefit The Lifelab.
Perhaps depressed that his evil, publicity-boosting plan to cut Jerry Seinfeld's zip-line with a comically oversized pair of scissors and send the Bee Movie star hurtling into the sea was foiled by a last-second bout of conscience, DreamWorks Animation head cheerleader Jeffrey Katzenberg refrained from making any bold predictions about Shrek the Third's shot at topping Spider-Man 3's box office record this weekend:
