According to a memo just sent around HBO by Chris Albrecht, he started drinking again a few years back and then everything went wrong and then he was in jail this weekend in Las Vegas for allegedly harming his girlfriend and now he has to take a leave of absence from HBO which is all so totally crazy that we can't wait to watch it on HBO. Holy smokes. The memo follows.
· Aging, erstwhile megastar Kevin Costner will produce and star in the "indie election comedy" Swing Vote, in which he'll play a guy who, through the kind of incredible plot contrivance from which hilarity will inevitably ensue, discovers he will cast the deciding vote in the presidential race. Also: Does anyone have any idea what Mr. Brooks is about? We keep zoning out during the commercials before we can figure it out. [Variety]
· Rapper Common's acting career is, as we're told the kids like to say, "blowing up." He'll join Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie in Universal's Wanted, and is in talks to outact Keanu Reeves in The Night Watchman. [THR]
· Superstar legal pundit Nancy Grace jettisons her Court TV show so that she can focus all of her crazy energy on being shrill on her higher-profile CNN showcase. [Variety]
· Roughly 19 million viewers tune in to Dancing with the Stars to simultaneously wonder if Billy Ray Cyrus's moves might be improved if he had a prosthetic leg. [[THR]
· Veronica Mars showrunner Rob "Not the Matchbox 20 Guy, We Think" Thomas poo-poos chatter that his show's already been given up for dead by The CW. [Variety]
As do-gooding canine detectives Lucky and Flo crisscross Asia-Pacific, sniffing out tell-tale polycarbonates used in the multibillion dollar movie pirating industry, a menace of similarly devastating proportions lurks right outside our back door. That's right: Canada, our "friendly" 49th-parallel-adjacent neighbor, some of whose citizens conceal their dastardly plans to plunder our precious commodity of easily digestible mass entertainment behind an unsettling wall of maple-syrup-decayed smiles:
In today's LAT column expressing profound dismay that even a gifted* and wildly successful filmmaker like Steven Spielberg has proven unable to resist the creatively bankrupt siren call of the sequel in signing up to direct Indy 4, a despondent Patrick Goldstein, unsatisfied by the self-serving explanation of Spielberg DreamWorks collaborator Stacey Snider, turns to the Voice of a Hacky Generation for some straight answers:
We'll admit—with no small amount of shame—that we've fallen woefully out of touch with humpy E! gossip-potentate Ted Casablanca, whose weekly, incomprehensibly worded blind items we once inspected with the wide-eyed confusion of a jeweler who has been presented a half-eaten cheese doodle for appraisal. (Does that make no sense? How quickly we fall back under his spell!) While our Ted-translating neurons have atrophied from disuse, the Stony_Curtis blog assures us that there's a significant Casablanca life update contained in the following passage:
By now you know the drill, but for those showing up late to the Phil Spector B-actress shooting trial/wigstravanganza, it goes something like this: 1. Prosecution calls woman to the stand. 2. Woman testifies that she and Spector were friends, until the night the Wall of Demon Voices (and her reluctance to put out) convinced him to threaten her with a variety of firearms. 3. Woman inexplicably remains friends with Spector until a recurring pattern begins to suggest he may not have their best interests at heart. Certainly, all of this holds true for Dianne Ogden, whose damning testimony yesterday is reduced to its essential points in one of those convenient Story Highlights boxes. Thanks to your time-management-sensitive friends at CNN.com, you can quickly get the "forced sex at gunpoint" overview, without ever having to delve too deeply into all the "icky" details.
Unkillable superflack Elliot Mintz, the auburn-haired Rasputin to soon-to-be incarcerated hotel-chain tsesarevnatard Paris Hilton who publicly tendered his resignation on Sunday for his tragic failure to communicate the impossibly complicated nuances of a suspended driver's license to his easily confused charge, is already back at Paris's side. To celebrate the not unexpected reunion, Mintz and Hilton stepped out to the Sober Day USA event (as many of her fellow inmates will soon tell her, it's never too late to get religion) at Paramount last night, where he assured Us that the self-perpetuated rumors of his demise were premature:
· Just in case the recently unveiled "Paris Hilton Autopsy" didn't fulfill all of your Hilton-related ironic-sculpture needs, we direct your attention to "Suicide Socialite," on display this weekend at the Venice Contemporary. [Photo: TheVeniceContemporary.com]
· Today, a fairly gross "news of the weird" item; tomorrow, a misguided viral Spider-Man marketing campaign aimed at raising awareness among 9-year-olds.
· Ellen Barkin laments her decision to become billionaire arm-candy.
· Celebrity charity endorsements: worth all the substance-abusing, bisexual make-out trouble? Of course they are.
· Maggie Gyllenhaal's breastfeeding ignites online momtroversy.
Lately, we've found that if we don't check in with leading fauxteur Michael Bay's infrequently updated web presence on a daily basis, we sleep fitfully (if at all), so tormented are we by thoughts that we've somehow missed out on important developments in the Bayniverse during our distressing periods of neglect. Our late afternoon visit uncovered news both good and bad; on the positive side, we've now been officially introduced to Bonecrusher Bay, the director's new mastiff, but this happy news is balanced by the troubling revelation that some total dickwad online predator has gotten all up in the director's MySpace:
Bravo's Andy Cohen detailed his weekend activities in today's post, which included a screening of Sony's box office behemoth, Spider-Man 3. And while there should have been plenty there to please the blogging executive wunderkind (James Franco, grown men in Spandex...that about covers it), apparently the movie left his stinker senses tingling:
· Music round-up: Gliss at Spaceland (free, as per usual on Monday nights); Phantom Planet at the Roxy; Bodies of Water and Western States Motel at the Echo (also free).
· Joan Didion will be at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to alternately depress and uplift you in discussing the acclaimed The Year of Magical Thinking; meanwhile, Fight Club's Chuck Palahniuk will sign Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey at Vroman's in Pasadena.
· The Exorcist and The French Connection director William Friedkin screens John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre at the Skirball.
After finding out that her mega-budgeted Spider-Man 3 had, as many expected, shattered virtually all of the opening weekend box office records anyone cares about, no one would have begrudged head Sony cheerleader Amy Pascal a little celebratory gloating when the media came calling for comment. But to her credit, it appears that she decided to play things humble rather than declare she would be dedicating a large portion of the movie's proceeds to the hunting down and killing of any critic who dared doubt the project's inevitable, benchmark-setting success:
At last, hope: Paris Hilton's legal team has filed a notice that they will appeal Friday's sentence (a process that could go on for a year), taking the crucial first steps towards reversing the egregious miscarriage of justice currently tearing our fair city apart. We know that each update brings a fresh wave of nausea to those who can't bear the thought of 45 straight days without a new TMZ video of Hilton entering one of West Hollywood's most exclusive drinking establishments, but do your best to swallow down the hot bile of empathy rising in your throat, knowing that some very capable, very expensive lawyers will do their best to make sure that their too-trusting client's summer isn't sacrificed to a justice system trying to make an example of someone too innocent to even know she was repeatedly breaking the law.
Sure, pressing one's extremities into wet pavement outside the Chinese Theater provides a certain level of immortality for an aging movie star hoping to leave something behind besides Walmart bins full of marked-down copies of The Guardian, but there's nothing quite like the doughy, powder-scented palpability of a freshly sired newborn to fully reinvigorate one's faith in one's own enduring legacy:
According to a Weinstein Co. source, everyone who's headed to the Cannes film festival to support the many projects they've got in competition there, including the Quentin Tarantino half of Grindhouse, will be flying to France economy-class. Well, everyone except Harvey, who's flying there in his private plane, of course. So is the big bossman feeling the pinch of Grindhouse, Factory Girl and Breaking and Entering's respective floppy openings? Well, in other areas, it doesn't seem like he's hurting—he was just yesterday crowing to the Post about how much money he plans to pump into Halston, the "iconic brand" he bought as a present for his girlfriend. And we also hear that "50% of the Cannes budget is just his hotel, his plane." So maybe he's just still a huge jerkface! Making his staff travel with the common people!
As it turns out, Paris Hilton's late Friday sentencing to 45 days in a tragically unfashionable Lynwood jail would kick off something of a blockbuster weekend in Hollywood jurisprudence: The Smoking Gun reports (with unflattering mugshot!) that HBO CEO Chris Albrecht was arrested for suspicion of an assault against his girlfriend in the valet parking lot of Las Vegas' MGM Grand hotel following the Oscar De La Hoya/Floyd Mayweather fight on Saturday night, a physical altercation that we're sure will be explained away as nothing more than the pay cable chief getting a little carried away in excitedly demonstrating a dramatic domestic dispute that will transpire between Tony and Carmela in one of the remaining four episodes of The Sopranos. Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition star Ty Pennington took a more traditional path to the police blotter (sadly, no booking photo is available) by getting popped for a DUI in West L.A. Pennington's people have already issued a public statement of apology aimed at restoring his fans' faith in their favorite primetime toolbelt model:
With Paris Hilton reportedly blaming Elliot Mintz in open court for her failure to understand the finer implications of a suspended license, it was unsurprising that the trusty PR manservant would be swiftly dispensed with. The flack's shitcanning instantly elicited a conundrum: Who issues the P.R. statements for disgraced P.R.-statement-issuers? (That would be Mintz himself, who holds no ill will towards Paris, her family, or anyone else associated with those backstabbing motherfuckers.) As for Paris herself—the wonky eye at the center of this particular celebrity shitstorm—well, she feels it's just not fair:
· Lost's producers officially get three more years to pretend that they have any clue what's happening on that island, as ABC gives the series an advance order for three more 16-episode seasons. As currently scheduled, all loose ends involving smoke monsters, polar bears, and Jack and Kate finally getting it on should be tied up in early 2010. [Variety]
· Did we mention that Spider-Man:3's $227 million overseas was an international box office record? Well, it was! Unless you don't think it should count because it includes a six-day total from some early-opening foreign territories. [THR]
· DreamWorks wins the bidding war for Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones adaptation, committing at least $65 million to the project. Now that the deal is closed, perhaps Jackson's lawyers will calm down about assistants sharing the script. [Variety]
· Fans of the The OC who think the show was mercy-killed prematurely should be heartened by creator Josh Schwartz's pilot season buzz, which indicates that his projects for NBC and The CW are looking like strong contenders for pick-ups. [THR]
· In other pre-upfront pick-up news, NBC has already greenlighted Medium for a fourth season, ensuring that at least one network will have a juggsy psychic on its primetime schedule this Fall. [Variety]
Paris Hilton, as you may have heard from a pretty local news correspondent trying to explain why the boutiques of Robertson Blvd. were set aflame by pro-celebutard rioters on late Friday afternoon, was recently sentenced to spend 45 days in jail for violating her probation by driving on a suspended license. If you're anything like us, you immediately took to the web to find a t-shirt that would succinctly express your outrage over this miscarriage of justice, but, after some more soul-searching on the matter, you decided that this unexpected summer vacation might teach Hilton a valuable lesson about listening to publicists, rendering your FREE PARIS impulse buy suddenly unrepresentative of your feelings.Take heart, for the Gawker Shop now offers its own t-shirt to reflect your change of heart about the heiress's upcoming incarceration: the DON'T FREE PARIS, available in wide array of sizes, allowing Hilton fans of virtually any body-shape to let the world know he or she has Hilton's best interests at heart. Consume.
