While Corey Haim was being laid to rest yesterday, no-show Corey Feldman blogged an open letter to his late friend and former co-star. "Nobody will ever understand the brotherhood we shared," Feldman wrote. "Nobody will ever get the inside jokes we told. Nobody will understand the magic of 22/222." Probably not, though reducing it to 11/111 would likely simplify things. Undaunted, Feldman paid tribute to Haim last night with a "222" tattoo. If anyone does happen to understand this magic -- or any brilliant guesses as to its meaning -- let's hear it in the comments. [TMZ]
Congratulations to this year's award-winners at South by Southwest, where Movieline watched from afar as director-actor Lena Dunham's self-discovery dramedy Tiny Furniture (right) took the fest's top prize. Read on for more works by Guy Maddin (Night Mayor), Gaspar Noe (Enter the Void) and a spectrum of up-and-coming titles hopefully heading soon to an art house/DVD distributor/cable box near you.
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NBC may have banned Conan O'Brien from performing on TV airwaves until September, but the comedian is quickly making his presence known across nearly every other platform: First with Twitter, and then with a Web site promoting his 30-city Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour, and now with plans for a documentary that could put Coco in a nation of rejoicing multiplexes before he's allowed back on television.
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Forcing past stomach butterflies is apparently a difficult trick on American Idol. The more fortunate performers conquered their nerves for "Rolling Stones Week" and emulated Mick Jagger by strutting, rooster-dancing, Tyler Grady-conjuring, and daring to sing. Their success was sometimes so grand that Johnny Depp threatened to base his next film character on a kooky old coot somewhere in the room. Hide, Lacey Brown! We rank the night's renditions one by one -- with helpful visual aids -- after the jump.
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Some people use their vacation days to catch up on the DVR, finally test out that freebie foot massager or pick up the last of the dry cleaning. Jimmy Kimmel uses his vacation days to fly across the country and drum up some anti-Leno sentiment on the Late Show with David Letterman. At least that's what he tried to do last night, when the ABC host recalled every high and low of ConanGate: Kimmel's episode-long impersonation of Jay Leno, that devastating 10@10 sucker punch and Leno's self-pitying interview on Oprah. Surprisingly though, Letterman refused to engage in the very bashing he participated just two months ago, calling the Late Shift Deux a "just a whole lot of fun" -- like at the old Comedy Store! That clip, as well as the other highlights you missed last night while dreaming of an RJ Berger solution to your hellish high school year, after the jump.
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· The man behind that legendary Magnum P.I. mustache, Tom Selleck, is in final negotiations for a leading role on CBS' untitled Burgess/Green drama pilot. The project, formerly known as Reagan's Law, centers on a family of New York cops who struggle to balance political demands with their sense of duty to the community. Selleck would play Michael, a dashing NYPD chief of police who lives with his father (Len Cariou), the ex-chief in Brooklyn. Donnie Wahlberg will round out the clan as Michael's detective son. [THR]
The president books a last-minute cable gig, Tracy Morgan teams up with Syfy, and more TV Bites after the jump.
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· Lee Daniels appears to have found his man -- David Oyelowo -- for the pivotal role of Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, the drama set around the town's historic civil-rights march of 1965. It's the first mainstream film to depict King, but the 34-year-old Brit has reasonably strong period biopic creds including stints as Muddy Waters (Who Do You Love), as one of the Tuskegee Airmen in the upcoming Red Tails and a Ugandan doctor in The Last King of Scotland. Obviously the stakes are a little higher with this one. Hugh Jackman remains attached to play the town's racist sheriff, and Daniels assures us that Robert De Niro will appear as Alabama Gov. George Wallace. [THR]
Paul Thomas Anderson finds a new money man, Sigourney Weaver is (vampire) queen for a day, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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· The trailer for David Simon's HBO series Treme is meaningfully edited, smart, and evocative. But most touching of all: That is a grinning, shirtless Steve Zahn. [Videogum]
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In this A Nightmare on Elm Street virtual game, you can ply a frightened girl with any number of stimulants, from coffee to cutting to showers to fire, to prevent her from falling asleep and falling prey to Freddy Krueger. Oddly not as fun as it should be, though should be very popular among the budding serial killer set. We'll hold out for the Darfur first-person genocider. [Keep Her Awake via Vulture]
It looks as though Syfy's most popular franchise is spinning off once again. The network's executive VP of development Mark Stern told The Hollywood Reporter yesterday, "We're looking for other ways to spin off Battlestar beyond Caprica. That world is so rich. We're sitting down with (executive producer) Ron Moore and his team. It would not necessarily be a traditional series." More details about a future space opera are expected to emerge at the network's upfronts. [THR]
Once in a great while a press release miracle will float gently to our desks here at Movieline HQ, still glowing as if dispatched from the office of the Recording Flack-Angel himself up in Insane PR Announcement Heaven.
This, friends, is one of those moments:
PHASE 4 FILMS ACQUIRES NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS TO THREE UWE BOLL FILMS:
"DARFUR"
Starring Billy Zane, Edward Furlong & Kristanna Loken
Keep reading. It gets better.
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Jessica Simpson's VH1 series The Price of Beauty, wherein the pop star visits different countries and investigates cultured ideas of attractiveness, is not quite the National Geographic expedition you had in mind. In last night's premiere, Simpson showed us five qualities that make her a societal observer, with five quotes that will leave you feeling super-proud of our international relations. Read her musings from Thailand after the jump.
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Apologies again for subjecting you earlier to the trailer for Iron Cross. It was for your own good, I swear -- newsworthy, topical and emblematic of a larger issue at hand with bad cinema. More and more bad cinema has entitlement issues, from crummy, lazy romantic comedies worth a fraction of the $10-$12 they coax from you to overwrought dramas that barely hide their contempt for viewers. And bad cinema begets bad trailers like the one mentioned above. They can all take pointers from the admittedly NSFW preview for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls, which spins camp, satire and genre comprehension into a splendid little whirlwind of publicity worth probably 1,000 times its budget. And it doesn't even sell a movie.
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Hey, Washington Staters! Any interest in buying this charming Dutch Colonial that's best known as Laura Palmer's house on Twin Peaks? It's a steal at only $459,500. No BOBs allowed. [Redfin]
Have you ever walked down the halls of your high school feeling lonely and dejected, like your life just could not get any worse? And then you slipped into eighth-period gym class, a bully pantsed you, and your entire class realized that your penis was abnormally large? Like, so abnormally large that it was about to change your fortune in life? Well that is the tale that MTV's first single-cam comedy The Hard Times of RJ Berger is telling -- or as we here at Movieline have been calling it -- Hung For the Young.
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