The family of a teenage girl who claimed she had been drugged and raped at Nick Nolte's notorious Malibu home—an alleged mini Sin City that hosted days-long, drug-and-alcohol-fueled underage parties presided over by his son Brawley—has settled with the actor just days before their civil suit was supposed to go to trial:
· Fox has cut back its episode order for The OC from 22 to 16, a move that will surely enrage fans still clinging to the idea that the show will eventually recapture some of its first-season, every-episode-a-party-and-a-fight glory. [Variety]
· Charles Gibson tearfully departs Good Morning America without instigating a blood feud with Barbara Walters. [THR]
· Good reviews and that paradigm-changing seven-day opening weekend for Superman Returns leave Warner Bros. executives confident that they will be blowing celebratory rails off the backsides of solid-gold hookers when the first box office numbers roll in. [Variety]
· Note to THR photo editors: No one should ever have to see an image of Brad Pitt crying—unless he's standing over a box containing Gwyneth Paltrow's head. [THR]
· Universal and Imagine buy Michael Straczynski's thriller The Changeling, with the intent of turning over the project to director Ron Howard for a ritualistic draining of nuance and complexity [Variety]
Like a heightened state of regular-people romance, celebrity romance offers its famous participants more of everything—more passion, more love, more cheating—and, should it ever be blessed enough to get to that point, far more artistry when it comes to popping the question. Patricia Arquette recently shared the creative circumstances surrounding Thomas Jane's marriage proposal, and while it was long in coming (the couple has been engaged since 2002 and have a three-year-old daughter), it was certainly worth the wait. From Page Six:
We're a couple of days too late to put in a bid of our own, but a lucky, deep-pocketed eBay bidder spent just under $3000 to win a private screening of Al Gore's global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, on the Paramount lot. The price includes seats for 20 guests and personally dedicated copies of Gore's book of the same name. Unfortunately, the winner and his pals have to pay their own freight to the Melrose lot, and Gore will not attend—though for three grand, the former Vice President should wander the theater with a bucket of cold water, occasionally splashing it on the viewers to vividly demonstrate just how unpleasant the melting of the polar ice caps and subsequent, cataclysmic coastal flooding will be.
While Superman Returns' Bryan Singer and Brandon Routh have taken every opportunity to dispel whispers that the Man of Steel might be ready to fly out of the super-closet, the maverick star of what might be the summer's biggest blockbuster openly invties the Gay Pirate Question in this month's Rolling Stone:
Amidst the cacophony of syrupy farewell tributes that seem to be clogging up the morning show rounds lately, there's something almost refreshing about the beyond messy thunderstorm of bile surrounding Star Jones' abrupt—yet somehow nine years too late—departure from The View. Nothing until now has quite reached the glorious levels of passive-aggressive, full-frontal cattiness of this morning's show opener, however (video above). On a very Star-free set (our closer-to-the-action sibling Gawker cites a source who claims Jones "refused to get into her towncar this morning,"), reigning View monarch Walters spills every petty, in-fighting bean: "We'd hoped she'd leave with dignity. But Star made another choice." Walters then reached behind the couch and retrieved a Bloomingdale's bag, spilling its contents on the floor in front of her. "But since our former colleague left us in this manner, I have absolutely no regrets about showing you the bag full of spare stomach staples and trimmed flesh from his last tummy tuck—God only knows why she saved it—that she forgot to remove from her dressing room. She chose this undignified path, not me."
If you have an internet connection, chances are you will gaze upon Britney Spears' preggers, unclothed body at least 128 times today, and if at least one of those times did not occur in this space, an enforcer dispatched by our evil Hungarian blogging overlord would be knocking on our door, more than happy to demonstrate how easily nipple clamps can be hard-wired to a car battery.
Nice guy Brandon Routh did his best to hide his disappointment when the folks at Madame Toussaud's decided to recast the role of Wax Superman with Scott Baio, who may also get the nod over Routh for the next feature film.
· Axl Rose bit a security guard on the leg in Sweden, but as that's the rough Swedish equivalent of the high-five, nothing much came of it.
· Something tells us that the Daddle might get put to a lot of unapproved uses.
· Time for a little fanboy nerd-out to some pics of Bumblee from the Transformers movie. Sadly, once the robot folds himself back into the form of a car, director Michael Bay will have no choice but to immediately blow him up.
· Get ready to have everything you thought you knew about Hell's Kitchen go to hell in a crockpot: A TVGasm investigative report reveals that there is no such thing as a Gordon Ramsay Dog at Pink's.
More information has emerged regarding Star Jones' earth-shattering sayonara announcement on this morning's The View. According to an AP interview granted by Barbara Walters after today's taping, it was ABC suits, not she, who had long ago decided not to re-up Jones contract, citing research which found that (surprise!) audiences mistrusted and disliked her. Meanwhile, those shouts of "Shocking!" and looks of feigned surprise from her co-hosts were in fact genuine, as Jones was supposed to hold off on making her statement until Thursday's show.
On the eve of Superman Returns' premiere, the LAT takes a moment to revisit the icon's various hairstyles over the years. Why, we're not exactly sure, though a comparative timeline highlighting changes in the size and style of the Package of Steel™ would have been inappropriate for a family paper. The piece even goes so far as to consult a "Hollywood stylist" on tips for achieving the looks at home. (Though it egregiously omits perhaps the greatest single coiffured Superman of all time, Indian Superman.)
· AFI hosts a screening of the Strangers With Candy movie at the ArcLight, featuring a post-show Q & A with deranged goddess Amy Sedaris and director Paul Dinello.
· A mere $30 will gain you entrance to tonight's "How Does She Do It?" seminar at UCLA's Dodd Hall, where Tia Carrere will share her secret formula for success. No, really, Tia Carrere will be there.
· Music round-up: Be Your Own Pet at the Troubadour; Mike Watt DJs at Amoeba; Beck at the Wiltern; Les Claypool at Avalon.
· You've only got about a half-hour left, but a certain movie is sponsoring free coffee at participating locations until 4 pm. If you live on the east side: tough crap, they obviously don't want you to see their film.
We're not in the habit of handing out free advertising space to studios, but we kind of like Sony's balls in releasing their Spider-Man 3 teaser on the day Superman Returns begins its marathon seven-day opening weekend. Nicely played, faceless multimedia corporation with a competing superhero-based product! We've already forgotten all about the silly man in the tights and cape.
In a surprise, sweeping move that will cause many thousands of Bahrani mothers to exhale loudly in relief, Michael Jackson has decided to leave his adopted home in the Persian Gulf and move to Europe. Meanwhile, a whole new set of hired "people" will try to figure out how best to retain what's left of Jackson's fortune, much of which the singer has squandered on sarcophagus shopping sprees and spray-on-chocolate kiddie-tan booths:
We'd long felt that there was something familiarly blank, shiny, and ovoid about Bryan Singer's face, but we'd never been quite able to place the resemblance. Luckily, the Smrtmnky blog connected the dots for us. Svedka vodka's friendly bartender of the future seems to split the difference between the menacing automaton army of I, Robot and the Superman Returns director nicely. Or at least freak us out a little less.
· Audiences already seem tired of Al Gore telling them of the cataclysms that await us because of global warming. Maybe they can add a meteor the size of Texas hurtling toward Los Angeles in the second act and revive interest. [Variety]
· J.K. Rowling announces that at least two main characters will die in the seventh and final Harry Potter book, and that their names are "Harry" and "Hermione." OK, we made that last part up because it's probably going to wind up being Ron Weasley's twin brothers once her publisher offers her $250 million to do one more book. [THR]
· Halle Berry teams with writer Angela Nissel to develop
an HBO comedy series about "a biracial woman and her two friends as they tackle racial and financial issues post-college." We're not even going to try and make that sound more interesting. [Variety]
· Hell's Kitchen wins Monday night for Fox, beating NBC's Treasure Hunters. We should note that we're officially changing our allegiance from Team Busty Grad Students to Team Busty Miss USA. [THR]
· The director and writer of The Devil Wears Prada film will reteam to adapt further chick lit evil for the big screen, this time for a I Don't Know How She Does It movie. [Variety]
