It's true there are no new ideas left in Hollywood, and even the old ideas are starting to not look so good. Ah well, we soldier on in spite of (or because of) it anyway.
Went to the Polo Lounge this past Friday for lunch with a friend, fancy I know, but it was on his work account. Anyway...
Marky Mark was snapped once again by a creepily urine-curious paparazzo, this time on a golf course. The tinkle-splattered bush in question was then pruned by an industrious caddy, who'll later put the Ziploc-sealed clipping up for sale on eBay in a bogus charity auction for the nonexistent "Mark Wahlberg Incontinence Research Fund." Don't be fooled.
• Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson got into yet another public spat while heading home to LA after spending New Year's in Miami. Lindsay eventually got so upset a flight attendant suggested LiLo disembark. [TMZ]
• George Soros reportedly spent New Year's partying with "two young brunettes" on Paul Allen's yacht, Octopus, off St. Barts. Now at least we know where son Alex gets it from. [P6]
• Queen Latifah was robbed of $10,000 worth of jewelry while on vacation in Trinidad and Tobago over Christmas. [Us]
• Kathy Griffin made a dick joke during CNN's live NYE broadcast with Anderson Cooper. The video is here, in case you care. [NYP]
Time to unzip your Happy Weekend Suit and step back into your Monday Morning Iron Maiden: The work week is again upon us. Quick—jumpstart your productivity with some box office numbers before someone finds your position detrimental to the bottom line: 1. Max Payne - $18 million Fresh off his ass-whispering turn on an especially excruciating, Sarah Palin-boosted episode of SNL, it's Mark Wahlberg who's doing most of the laughing today: The actor's latest cinematic foray clicked with young male moviegoers, despite being dismissed by most critics as being hyper-stylized junk, like some spiraling turd floating in the Wachowski brothers's septic tank. Still, not all were left unimpressed, as a giddy Colin Powell, his eyes reflecting a steady downpour of slo-mo bullets, gushed to his wife that the "transformational" third-person-shooter adaptation who would "electrify" our country's fanboy electorate.2. Beverly Hills Chihuahua - $11.2 million Audiences continued to roll onto their backs and squirm in delight as they had their bellies rubbed by Disney's bat-eared superstars. Not surprisingly, then, the hit's microscopic sequel—Fleas of Beverly Hills Chihuahua, about a poor, parasitic insect family that hops from rich chihuahua to rich chihuahua so that their children can enroll in the area's public schools—is being rushed into production. 3. The Secret Life of Bees - $11.05 million Gracefully developing, is-she-or-isn't-she-stroppy? superstar Dakota Fanning and friends balanced out the vast gender divide for Fox, giving their Searchlight label the women who avoided Max Payne like the plague. "We had something for everyone," explained Fox VP Bert Livingston, temporarily forgetting about the 99.999999% of the world's population interested in neither. 4. W. - $10.55 million Let's run down W.'s numbers: It's Oliver Stone's fifth-best opening ever, right behind Natural Born Killers. Exit polling showed 47% of audiences were over 40, 90% don't like the President, 80% were voting Obama, and 6% McCain. A round 100%, however, thought the movie was intermittently engaging, but by and large a cojones-deficient mess. 5. Eagle Eye - $7.343 million "If you want to live, you'll do as I say. Now get wasted, hook up with Adrian Grenier's girlfriend, and lose a pinkie nail in a near-fatal car accident at the corner of Hollywood and La Brea. You'll get your next instruction there."
If the people who comprise the American electorate ever doubted the power of their influence, they need look no further than this season of Saturday Night Live. They wanted Tina Fey as Sarah Palin. Done! So done, in fact, that we don't even have 30 Rock yet! Drunk with their newfound power, every "Joe the Plumber" and "That One" in the U.S. of A. went into last night's episode of SNL demanding two things: a cameo by the real-life Sarah Palin, and a battle royale between Mark Wahlberg and his livestock-friendly impersonator, Andy Samberg.Did they get it? Well, kind of! Sarah Palin did indeed cameo — across two sketches, even — though she uttered barely more than two dozen words. In the weekend update, she threw limpid hands in the air as Amy Poehler indulged in a Palin rap, and in the cold open, she interrupted (with the help of Walhberg and Alec Baldwin) a press conference by Fey-as-Palin that was made all the more ironic by the fact that Palin herself will ring in Election Day as the only major ticket candidate to never hold a press conference. Comedy or tragedy? You decide! Click to view
Yeah, so, this happened. The real Sarah Palin and Mark Wahlberg opened last night's Saturday Night Live, with help from Lorne Michaels and Alec Baldwin. Stiff discomfort reigned. But at least Tina Fey was still her usual hysterical self, and was only exposed to the actual Palin in passing. That, plus Palin on Weekend Update, after the jump. Click to view
Say Hi To Sarah Palin For Us, OK? Just as predicted by a jaded and/or savvy Defamer commenter, Mark Wahlberg's threats against Andy Samberg's nose may in fact be part of an elaborate set-up for the actor's appearance on SNL. Says Usmagazine.com: "A source hints that Wahlberg will appear on SNL this weekend to get his revenge in person." Add that to a confirmed appearance by "Sling Blade" Sarah Palin, and we'll have a real pop culture hall of mirrors tomorrow night. Perhaps all four will be squeezed into one sketch that involves Andy-Mark trying to make conversation with a moose recently felled by Tina-Sarah, a scenario interrupted when their real-life inspirations saunter along to register their disapproval and bust some big, Jewish noses. [Usmagazine.com]
Having already made it clear that he was less than amused with Andy Samberg's take on him as an amateur goat-whisperer from the mean streets of Mass (an impersonation we've hailed as pure genius—but Marky, if you're reading this, we hated it!), Mark Wahlberg upped the stakes considerably on a Jimmy Kimmel Live! appearance last night.After Kimmel ran a clip from the offending sketch, the actor—in a studied bit of business borrowed from any number of Scorsese-DeNiro collaborations—fastidiously plucked a stray thread off his dress shirt as he pledged to "crack [the Hot Rod star's] big fucking nose." The only thing better than a celebrity feud is a celebrity feud with lightly anti-Semitic undertones and the potential of skull fragmentation. Still, we think his tough-guy bark is worse than his bite, and Samberg needn't start truly panicking until Wahlberg pledges, in a clever twist on one of Samberg's greatest hits, to deliver the young comic his own nuts in a box.
Welcome back to Defamer Attractions, your one and only guide to everything new, noteworthy and potentially noxious at the movies. This week sees Oliver Stone officially establish the land-speed record for producing an Oscar contender, joined by skull-cracking Mark Wahlberg, sex-driving Seth Green and our diva-colored underdog. As always, someone's gotta lose; we'll call our shot there, too, along with cherry-picking through a new crop of DVD's. As always, our opinions are our own, but we have little doubt they would look great on you. Try them on after the jump.WHAT'S NEW: No one would argue that Mark Wahlberg's video-game adaptation Max Payne won't win the weekend, but with Beverly Hills Chihuahua still barking in theaters (it actually expands by 32 screens this week), the sour-cop actioner might see a tiny bite out of its margin of victory. Still, $20.8 million is a reliable bet, with Disney's purse dog settling settling with around $11.5 million. The X factor is W., the Bush biopic which some forecasters see sneaking into second place with as much as $12 million. But to project any more than $10 million, maybe $11 million max is to overestimate it as anything more than a curio, an election-year stunt that wields neither the bite nor the influence that even we thought it would when the fall movie season began. Josh Brolin drawls and squints in fitful, fascinating bursts, and certain imagined powwows leading up to the 2003 Iraq invasion make for riveting ensemble drama. On the whole, though, W. connotes the rush job it was — undisciplined, tonally dissonant (Stone's professed empathy for Bush repeatedly knocks its head on low-hanging satirical fruit) and way, way too long. The American people deserve better, and at least until Nov. 4, they'll vote with their dollars. There will be no stealing this election. Also opening: Seth Green's R-rated romp Sex Drive; Roy Disney's boat-race vanity project Morning Light; critic Godfrey Cheshire's acclaimed doc filmmaking bow Moving Midway; the indie tolerance drama Tru Loved; and for those of you in New York (and the rest of you on VOD), Madonna's directorial debut Filth and Wisdom. (L.A. will get its theatrical engagement Oct. 31.) THE BIG LOSER: The Barry Levinson-directed/Robert De Niro-starring Hollywood satire What Just Happened is one of the year's finest case-studies in meta: A troubled, pedigreed film about troubled, pedigreed filmmaking, following in the flatlining tradition of every industry saga that preceded it. It false-started out of Sundance last January but finally found a taker at Cannes, and to its credit, Magnolia Pictures has aggressively pushed the film everywhere from baseball playoffs to presidential debates. Still, one half of that audience hates Hollywood, and the other half is off to see W. As recipes for disaster go — even in limited release — this one is ready to serve.
♦ Is Lauren Bush supporting Barack Obama? Maybe. The niece of the president praised the Democratic nominee in a recent interview and she decided against using her family name for her new clothing line, Lauren Pierce, taking her grandmother's maiden name instead. [P6]
♦ Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson are either engaged or splitting up, depending on what you read. [Daily Mail, MSN]
♦ Marc Jacobs is supposedly jealous that his ex, Jason Preston, is dating someone else, even though he has a new boyfriend of his own, too. [P6]
♦ He can't afford a plane, but Diddy did get to upgrade to a new Rolls-Royce last week. [P6]
♦ In a new memoir, Maureen McCormick (Marcia Brady from The Brady Bunch) says she used to trade sex for coke. [NYDN]
While we found Andy Samberg's SNL impression of Mark Wahlberg as a sort of less-successful Dr. Doolittle overly preoccupied with sending his regards to farm animals' mothers to be flat out hilarious, not everyone was as amused. For starters, there was Wahlberg himself, who was asked about the sketch several times on the Max Payne interview circuit. In the audio clip above, set to a series of modeling shots and film stills by Defamer videographer Molly McAleer, the Robitussin-abusing star of The Happening seems mildy irritated by the caricaturization:He tells them, "Maybe it was a little jab because I refused to do the show so many times...[It's] not as funny as Hot Rod, but the kid's gotta do what he's gotta do to make a living. I ain't knockin' it. It's all good." Wahlberg hits official Pissed Off levels, however, in an interview with the NY Post:
Deep gratitude to Videogum for guiding us to this scene from The Happening—M. Night Shyamalan's surprisingly lucrative eco-thriller, originally pitched to skeptical studio execs as, "A lot like the The Birds, but instead it's The Trees. Well, there's birds in the trees, but they aren't scary. I dunno, maybe they're already dead. Hello? Are you still with me? What are you scribbling on that notepad? Do you want this or not, because there's plenty of studios who do."The Happs got its DVD release yesterday, bringing us to the above Mark Wahlberg/Zooey Deschanel exchange. For those left confounded by Andy Samberg's brilliant Wahlberg impression on SNL last week, we encourage you to watch both, then imagine Manoj's crackling dialogue replaced with: "Hey pharmacist, how's it going? I like your lab coat and name tag, that looks really great. So you're a pharmacist, right? What's that all about? Where's the cough syrup? OK, well it was great to meet you. Say hi to your mother for me, OK?"
While much has been made of Tina Fey's return to SNL this season—starring as Sarah Palin in a series of pitch-perfect cold-opens that could well be the only things preventing a frayed America from tumbling off a flat Earth's edge—this week's episode also brought two other hilarious and viral-worthy sketches we thought we'd share. The first involves a Lawrence Welk Show-era sister act with a dark, attic-bound secret, played by Kristen Wiig. The second features Andy Samberg as Max Payne star Mark Wahlberg, in conversation with a variety of farm animals. Look—us explaining it is just delaying the funny. They're both after the jump.
So many people in the Tina Fey thread were talking up the skit "Mark Wahlberg Talks to Animals" from last night's SNL, that I had to see what all the fuss was about. And... Holy shit that's good! It feels almost like that moment 20 years or so back when some genius suddenly realized that a Christopher Walken imitation was needed in the world. Don't believe it? Click through and see!
♦ Martha Stewart has been busy wielding the ax. First she fired one of her show's directors; now she's cut her longtime hairstylist/makeup artist, allegedly because the staffer was spending too much on makeup and hair dye. [P6]
♦ The doctor who has been treating DJ AM and Travis Barker since their plane crash on Friday says both men should make full recoveries. Four others died in the wreck and investigators now suspect a blown tire was the cause. [People, LAT]
♦ Ron Perelman and Pat Duff are still fighting in court over their daughter Caleigh. It seem the teenager is still skipping out on those court-ordered visits with her mom. [P6]
♦ Lindsay Lohan will be a judge on the first episode of next season's Project Runway. [NYDN]
♦ Tina Fey was a big winner at the Emmys last night. You can check out a full list of winners here. [ET]
Oh, look. Gossip Girl's Leighton Meester was on Entourage last night, recurring her first season role as a virginal (sorta) singer and love interest for Vinnie Chase. We're not sure this exactly counts as a cameo, considering this was already an established role and Leighton Meester isn't exactly a cameo-worthy household name yet. But there were three other big cameos on last night's episode. And that, maybe, is three cameos too many. I mean, yes, one of the major conceits of Entourage is that it is an inside look at Hollywood, which is full, duh, of celebrities. But it's begun to feel like a desperate stunt to mask the show's flailing quality level. Trotting out Tony Bennett, Giovanni Ribisi, and series exec-producer Mark Wahlberg in one episode? Too much distraction from an already cobbled-together plot. Especially that Wahlberg bit, which was self-deprecating in a kind of depressing way. A show like Gossip Girl has placed its handful of cameos more sparingly. The Jay McInerney and Tinsley Mortimer bits were wry winks to its New York audience base. Entourage's used to be the same way—an occasional "look who's willing to make fun of themselves" or "look how silly LA is" kind of thing. Lately though they come off as slathering over-showmanship. Kind of like Ari's swearing and Turtle's horniness and Drama's now-cartoonish buffoonery, come to think of it.
Outside of Matuhisa, Mark Wahlberg managed to confound as well as entertain a large group of onlookers when he appeared with a mystery box. Some assumed that Wahlberg's box contained leftovers, but The Happening star quickly denied those accusations. Then Wahlberg began to painfully toss the box into the area as he did a singsong chant of "it's something real cool." After a few minutes of the taunt, a man yelled, "What's in the baaaaahxxx? What's in the box?" Wahlberg opened the box and revealed that it contained the DVDs for The Happening.
