Kate Moss turns 35 today. Page Six's Richard Johnson is turning 55. Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl is celebrating her 61st. Republican fundraiser (and cosmetics company founder) Georgette Mosbacher is 62. Strokes guitarist Nick Valensi is turning 28. Dr. Laura Schlessinger is 62. And the singer Sade is 50. Weekend birthdays appear after the jump!
• Did Lindsay Lohan split up with Samantha Ronson? Is she now in "complete denial" about it? And what's going on with her and Sean Penn? All good questions! [P6]
• Graydon Carter's plan to win over neighborhood critics of the Waverly has been revealed: He gives them tables at the restaurant and puts their pictures in Vanity Fair and, sure enough, his foes magically turn into friends. [P6]
• On the View yesterday, Tom Cruise described the death of Jett Travolta as "horrific," but said that Scientology had absolutely nothing to do with it. You've been warned, people. [People]
• Remember Lisa Bonet? Well, she just had a baby girl who she named Nakoa-Wolf Manakauapo Namakaeha Momoa. Yes, she stole the name you were planning to use. [NYDN]
Click to viewBoomp3.com Swing Vote star Kevin Costner’s moment of pleasure quickly turned into regret as Costner began to wonder where the ice cream would end up. After the ice cream cone failed to answer his question, Costner assumed that the ice cream would go to his thighs. Costner paused for a moment and continued to plow through his cone. Using his regular guy charm, Costner said, “I guess I’ll just have to swim extra lap at the pool in the morning.” [Photo Credit: X17] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.
♦ Now that Madonna and Guy Ritchie have officially split, the focus is now on her relationship with Alex Rodriguez: Some say he knew that the separation announcement was coming, which is why he's been "lying low" in a five-star Beverly Hills hotel for the past few days. [Us, NYP, E!]
♦ How's Guy doing? Don't worry about him: He could walk away with as much as $250 mil. in a settlement since he and Madonna never had a prenup. [NYP]
♦ A sex tape starring Peter Cook and Diana Bianchi may be out there, although Cook's lawyers are still saying he has "no knowledge" it exists. [P6]
♦ David Duchovny and Tea Leoni have officially split up. We're as shocked as you are [E!]
♦ Raffaello Follieri didn't just swindle adults. He also tricked a 15-year-old girl by promising to get her Anne Hathaway's autograph and then never coming though. Now she's suing him. [NYDN]
· Jimmy Kimmel will return to host his fifth American Music Awards in November; confirmed musical guests include Pink and the Jonas Brothers, who will honor the institution with a Grobanesque medley of songs by influential winners like Kris Kross, New Kids on the Block, Kool and the Gang and many others. [AP] · HBO just picked up Entourage for a sixth season, thus ensuring at least two more years of Emmy retribution against host-bashing awards perennial Jeremy Piven. [THR] After the jump: Michael Douglas has a party, Woody Harrelson has a complex, and Bull Durham plots a return by Costner demand.· Eighteen years after giving the hardware to his father, the American Film Instutute selected Michael Douglas to receive next year's Lifetime Achievement Award. [BBC] · Kat Dennings is in talks to co-star in Defendor, featuring Woody Harrelson as a man who believes he possesses superhero powers and Dennings as the ADD-afflicted, poor-spelling neighbor girl who gives him his name. [THR] · Kevin Costner, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon are all reportedly in talks to return for Bull Durham 2: The Beer League Years. [Page Six] · Crisis averted! After less than a day of protests, Bollywood's dancing girls and nearly 100,000 other actors, filmmakers and crew concluded their big-budget production Kuchi Kuchi Pay Us Bitches in record time. [NYT]
Ay yi yi: inspired, perhaps, by the evocative mashup that is The Dark Cock, Disney has decided to retool its controversial comedy Beverly Hills Chihuahua into an empowering political fable worthy of Manohla Dargis. No longer simply a slapstick stereotype-fest, it's now the story of a lone chihuahua birthed Athena-like from the head of Kevin Costner and thrust into that most awe-inspiring of responsibilities: casting a vote to decide the fate of the U.S. presidential election. After two hours of sturm and drang (and the advice from his precocious liberal daughter), will he make the right choice? Spoiler alert: after a persuasive lobbying from surrogate Tinkerbell, he picks Paris Hilton. [Beverly Hills Chihuahua]
Welcome back to Defamer Attractions, your regular guide to new hits, misses and dead ends this weekend at the movies — and considering our sudden passage into the August filmgoing doldrums, we could use all the guidance we can get. Still, Batman's dark shadow stretches into its second week while another, stinkier franchise will do all it can to vanquish The Dark Knight at the box office. Meanwhile, we fear for Kevin Costner, have a film-festival darling in mind for this week's Underdog pick, and have a bleary-eyed glance at the latest DVD releases as well. As usual, our opinions are our own, but they're also essentially failsafe, so read them and weep! Literally!
Perhaps it's due to all those episodes of Behind the Music we watched back in the day, but we've always assumed that no matter how big a fortune a megastar may amass, he or she will eventually waste it all on hookers or blow. Not so, apparently, for Kevin Costner: though far removed from his Waterworld earning power, he's socked enough in the bank to still be worth over $20 million. Unfortunately, he spent that $20 million self-financing the dire-looking comedy Swing Vote. Says the LAT:
Viewers who tuned in Wednesday to Late Night With Conan O'Brien were treated to very special vacation slideshow by Mummy 3 star Maria Bello, who, during a recent visit to China, skipped the Great Wall and the Forbidden City in exchange for the more fantastic tour of Misconceived Bathroom Placards. It's not just the mangled English ("handicapped" = "deformed") and malaprops that make the show-and-tell special, however. Just take a moment to enjoy O'Brien's play-by-play, abetted by headlining guest Kevin Costner's awkward sidekick chuckle. If it's not enough to make you forget Andy Richter, it's at least enough to make you forget this man once won an Academy Award. In any case, we genuinely wouldn't mind if they revived this segment every week. [NBC]
A disturbing revelation has come to light today about Swing Vote, Kevin Costner's election-year opus about the alcoholic schlub on whose shoulders the entirety of presidential politics rests via some fluke of electoral nature. It's about as disappointing as its midsummer dumping implies, writes NY Post critic Lou Lumenick, but that hardly seems as unexpected as his observation that the whole film rips off is an "uncredited remake" of a 1939 John Barrymore film called The Great Man Votes:
· Why does it take the threat of a strike for people to start cranking out the truly genius ideas? Fox has ordered a script that could generate a Prison Break spin-off set in a women's penitentiary, a project that would be perfect for Michelle Rodriguez once she concludes some previous obligations. [THR]
· ABC's Cavemen inches ever closer to joining Viva Laughlin in the Fall season's "bold TV experiments canceled too soon to see how terrible they could eventually become" club, drawing its lowest key demo ratings to date. Somewhere, Hugh Jackman's wife sheds a tear in sympathy. [Variety]
After seven months of suffering through the unrequited love of their favorite actor, the proprietors of If I Blog It, They Will Come finally entice Kevin Costner to visit their online shrine to the Field of Dreams star. Tears are shed and new friendships are forged in what will doubtlessly prove the feel-good link of the day. [If I Blog It They Will Come]
· Dennis Hopper, Nathan Lane, Kelsey Grammer, Stanley Tucci, and George Lopez join the cast of Swing Vote, the "populist" comedy in which a presidential election hilariously rests on Kevin Costner's ballot. [Variety]
· Despite the occasional drop-in by environmentally conscious Hollywood megastar Cameron Diaz (wow, we're really picking on her today, aren't we?), NBC's coverage of the Live Earth concerts draws even worse ratings than the network's typical summertime Saturday night slate of reruns and NHL playoff games. [THR]
· Hoping to spur weak sales, Sony drops the price of the Playstation 3 by $100. Fuck you, early adopters! [Variety]
· Jennifer Esposito will star opposite Val Kilmer in the indie drama Conspiracy, gaining a lifetime of junket-enlivening anecdotes about what it's like to work with Hollywood's most lovably batshit castmate. [THR]
· Here's a link to a detailed summary of the WGA's annual report on guild member compensation in 2006. Enthralling? You bet! [Variety]
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:
As far as major milestones on the great playing board of the Celebrity Game of Life go, nothing quite matches the divorce in terms of pure, spectator deathsport value. Forbes, always at the ready with some variation of a list of famous people and their mindboggling fortunes, now presents the Most Expensive Celebrity Divorces. A drumroll, please, as we reveal the top ten:
The time: 9:30 p.m.
The date: April 4th
The place: Butter, 415 Lafayette Street
Sighted: "Kevin Costner drinking and dining at Butter. Boy oh boy was he enjoying that food. He is a FAT, HUGE WHALE. I actually didn't believe it was him until I heard him talking. What happened? I'm traumatized."
Because no aging actor's tumble into middle-age and the looming specter of obsolescence is complete without the forming of a musical vanity project available for booking at your next wedding, bar mitzvah or corporate event, it should surprise no one that Kevin Costner has a band, dubbed, for maximum movie star name recognition potential, the Kevin Costner Band. Spoiled perhaps by the white-gloved treatment to which he is accustomed from the LA-based Hollywood agents and managers handling his film career, Costner is suing the East Coast music promotions company he hired for failing to put his signature Costner sound on every iPod in America:
In honor of Zodiac, the long-awaiting release from director David Fincher opening today, the LAT has a little fun by taking some of America's other legendary serial killers and playing one of Defamer's favorite parlor games, "casting the CBS movie of the week." (Only in this case, it's something more akin to "casting the $85 million Paramount/Warner Bros. co-production.") Some of their choices are mind-numbingly obvious (gee, we guess now that you mention it, Vincent Gallo does kinda look like Charles Manson), and some we just don't really see (we're not getting Green River Killer from Kevin Costner, sorry. He always gave us more of a Scott Thompson-vibe.) But one pairing was so inspired, it instantly chilled us to the bone: Forgetting for a moment that Dahmer was about a half-foot taller than his red-carpet-stationed doppelganger, something about the glassy-eyed smile, the boyish good looks, the laid-back, charming demeanor that lulls you into a state of trusting complacency, instantly said to us "human pancreas in an empty Blue Bonnet margarine tub."
Besides owning the bragging rights to the title of "co-star of the second-highest-grossing Ashton Kutcher vehicle currently in theaters," Kevin Costner also has a significant stake in the Midnight Star casino in South Dakota—a pit-stop on the way to Vegas where Clark W. Griswold-types can drag their families and enact lifelong Old West gambling fantasies before loading up on souvenir fleeces and Costner DVDs in the gift shop on their way out of town. Costner is now attempting to squeeze out his two business partners, who may only own a grand total of 6.5% of the business, but who are making the buyout as painful as possible:
