Bravo announced a slew of new projects today, including the newest iteration of their signature Real Housewives franchise in Beverly Hills. Predictable, no? It sounds like a colorless hybrid of Orange County and NYC, with the added cupcake empires and Rodeo Drive visits for singularity. At least the upcoming Washington D.C. branch offers politics, the military, and legitimate scandal; Beverly Hills just repackages the well-explored lives of Bethenny Frankel and Vicki Gunvalson. Bravo is missing potential in five smaller metropolitan areas, which all offer sinister qualities like international flavor, religion, or complete isolation.
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Playing the impish title call girl of Chloe, Atom Egoyan's luscious erotic drama and his most accessible film in years, Amanda Seyfried insinuates herself into the life of a Toronto gynecologist (Julianne Moore) whose marriage to a handsome professor (Liam Neeson) has run ice cold. It's the kind of performance that might inspire a new generation of young actresses with similarly bodacious aspirations, just as a technicolor Baz Luhrmann romance did for Seyfried back when she was a pre-teen playing dress-up in her bedroom. She told us all about it yesterday, when we asked her to play My Favorite Scene.
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Previously on Lost: Jack smashes some lighthouse mirrors because he's angry and confused. Smokey throws a massacre party, and everyone at the Temple is invited. Ben Linus is suddenly impotent in whatever cosmic game Jacob and Smokey are playing. Hurley makes a Star Wars reference, and then an Indiana Jones reference. And somewhere in a makeshift camp deep in the jungle, an abandoned skullbaby mewls for the insane momma who's left it to join the Crazy Army.
Now sling your rifle over your shoulder, push your filthy, but still jauntily styled, hair our of your face, and plunge onward into the island's thicket of secrets with us as we again attempt to answer 23 questions about last night's episode.
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Conan O'Brien may not have officially announced his upcoming vengeance tour yet but Ticketmaster pretty much has. First, with their premature posting of a stop in Phoenix, AZ, which had fans counting down the hours until ticket-take-off, only for the event to be mysteriously pulled from the distribution site. When Movieline contacted Conan's publicists at 42West, they cryptically told us that "It's too premature to comment on anything at this point. There will be an announcement this week." We begged for a head nod, a wink, a telling blast from Andy Richter -- anything that would confirm the Cocopalooza. And God Ticketmaster finally conceded, by revealing another stop on O'Brien's eagerly-anticipated comedy tour -- that proves the comedian might be cutting a wider tour swath than fans had hoped.
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Oh yes, this exists. Presenting Mad Men Barbies, part of a part of a premium-price collectors' series for adults ($75 a pop!) entitled the Barbie Fashion Model Collection. You'll have to act quick to pick up your own, multi-jointed version of Don, Betty, Roger, and Joan, as there will be 7,000 to 10,000 copies of each doll (sorry, no adult accessories like cigarettes or alcohol). The Don Draper Fingerband Threat Level just got adorably diminutive and diorama-friendly. [NYT]
· Benicio Del Toro has taken over spokesmodel duties for the Magnum ice cream campaign, replacing Eva Longoria and Eva Mendes. Let's just enjoy that key art over there. Very nice.
· Forest Whitaker will not be starring alongside 50 Cent in a remake of Jekyll and Hyde. Let's just have 50 play all the roles, hm?
· Dina Lohan says Lindsay cried to her after watching the E*TRADE ad with the milkaholic baby that resembles her, reportedly pleading, "Mommy, help me." Well, she's definitely making her case!
· Is Vera Farmiga really going to star for Madonna in W.E.? "She approached me," Farmiga confirmed to E! "We sat for a cup of tea and again for a cup of tea. Hopefully, it will all come together."
· Katy Perry will be playing Smurfette in the upcoming Smurfs film. Oh, no.
That perilous tick-tock that you hear this morning over Los Angeles isn't the final seconds running out on Elinor Burkett's fifteen minutes of post-Oscar-crashing fame, but instead 20th Century Fox's countdown to the end of its super-drama series 24. Still, the decision -- which has been on the minds of Fox executives since the beginning of the series' current, eighth season, when the network hired scribe Billy Ray (State of Play) to pen a feature film for Jack Bauer -- is not so cut and dry.
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The Tribeca Film Festival is preparing for its ninth iteration to launch next month in Manhattan, today announcing this year's competition lineups, Showcase selections and special presentations. Among the most notable, find:
· James Franco as a man attempting to rescue the woman he loves from a crime syndicate in William Vincent (formerly known as In Praise of Shadows);
· Vincent Gallo as the lead voice talent in the animated futuristic-Euronoir Metropia, also featuring Juliette Lewis, Udo Kier, Stellan Skarsgård, and Alexander Skarsgård;
· A work-in-progress screening of Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney's new, untitled study of fallen New York Gov. and hooker enthusiast Eliot Spitzer;
· A 45th-anniversary screening of David Lean's Doctor Zhivago, which I guess is New Yorkier than I remember.
And dozens more selections you'll find after the jump, with more to come in the days ahead. Shrek Forever After gets the festival underway April 21.
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It wasn't just Didi Benami's version of "Rhiannon" that asked the titular question -- it was us too, responding to the realization that we have two months of competition left before an inevitable winner is chosen from these three ladies: Will you ever win, Didi, Siobhan, or Crystal? We rank last night's eight razzle-dazzling girls from bottom to top, after the jump.
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While it's right and just that B-movie aficionados everywhere today celebrate the 70th birthday of Chuck Norris, it'd be tough to argue that any of the conservative chop-socky master's efforts actually belong on any list devoted to the best -- or worst -- cinema has to offer. The exception is 1982's Silent Rage, which even three decades on stands as a strong contender for the most bizarre tagline in Hollywood history. It's not so much a marketing blurb as a short synopsis that also manages to blur actor and character. And like the poster, the trailer leads us to think it's all about Chuck.
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The full, 90-second teaser for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is due tomorrow, but why not tease the teaser with a 10-second version today? Here's what you get: two full lines, one of which is a howler. Shots of the Pacific Northwest! Bella and Edward on a bed, not in a bed. And, of course, the Taylor Lautner torso. Sadly, no one is marrying vampire babies or cracking rib bones yet. Give it time, kids. Give. It. Time.
VERDICT: If they're going to tease tomorrow's trailer, I'm going to tease tomorrow's verdict. Oh, who am I kidding: I loved it so much, I don't want to have sex with it til marriage.
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Now that Hollywood is done with that yucky business of the Oscars, it can go back to honoring what it really does best: superhero movies! Here are all the latest updates on some of the biggest franchises over the last 24 hours:
Captain America: Though Fox 411 reported a few days ago that John Krasinski was the frontrunner for the title role, both Deadline and Heat Vision say he's out of the running (which could explain why he just picked up another hiatus project), as are the bulk of the other contenders rumored. Still in the mix: Garrett Hedlund and Mike Vogel, plus new names Chris Evans and Wilson Bethel (The Young and the Restless).
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Let's return now to Movieline's roving video powerhouse Carly Steel, who had the happy fortune recently to catch up with Clash of the Titans co-star Izabella Miko. The actress plays the film's Athena, goddess of wisdom and war -- and apparently the repository for a massive python that Miko wasn't quite ready to share the screen (and especially her shoulders) with. But that was just the beginning of her animal problems. Carly gets the full story from Miko -- along with an appeal for environmentally conscious single men with a spare $100,000 lying around -- after the jump.
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On the third day of the Music by Prudence Oscar speech fallout, Elinor Burkett, a.k.a. the "Kanye of the Oscars," spoke to Joy Behar. Unlike the previous night's humiliating CNN segment, in which Larry King pulled a one-two-re-interrupt-punch on Prudence director Roger Ross Williams, Burkett immediately asserted good will among viewers and host by heartily agreeing that "yes, the Oscars were so dull that I spent most of the ceremony chain-smoking outside." Charmed, Behar leaned in as her Academy Award-winning doppleganger lurched ahead with a tale of Sunday's events which would pit the raspy documentary producer as the first victim of acceptance speech "bigfooting" in the Academy's history.
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You may have thought you'd heard everything from the Annals of Moviegoing Violence after that 2008 incident involving a chatty moviegoer and the man who shot him. Then along comes this: A man was stabbed in the neck with a meat thermometer at a recent screening of Shutter Island in Lancaster, Calif.
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