· Sean Hayes has officially come out of the closet on the cover of The Advocate. "I feel like I've contributed monumentally to the success of the gay movement in America, and if anyone wants to argue that, I'm open to it. You're welcome, Advocate."
· In utterly unrelated news, has Zachary Quinto become Madonna's new best friend?
· Lenny Kravitz is joining Selma, the next film from his Precious director Lee Daniels.
· And why shouldn't Jonah Hill replace Demetri Martin in the role of a former athlete in Bennett Miller's rebooted Moneyball?
· Miley Cyrus talks about boyfriend Liam Hemsworth to Teen Vogue: "I think we're both deeper than normal people -- what they think and how they feel." Never stop delighting us, Miles.
Jimmy Kimmel welcomed the blue-tied Robert Downey Jr. to his post-Oscar special Sunday night, where the actor unveiled the latest trailer for Iron Man 2. I'm just going to slap a huge SPOILER ALERT on this because everything that can possibly be good about the movie -- Downey's wan heroism, his chemistry with Don Cheadle and Gwyneth Paltrow, Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell turning the villain knob to 11, new outfits and gadgets, guitar wankery beneath roaring gunfire, etc. etc -- is all given away right here in under three minutes. Oh, and look: Scarlett Johansson! And her stunt double! This is filthy!
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USA Today has a delightful look at this year's backstage Oscar shenanigans. Among the highlights: 1) Robin Williams attempted to wring a courtesy laugh out of Mo'Nique with a curling joke, 2) An ABC page enlisted the help of Oscar winner Geoffrey Fletcher to find...Geoffrey Fletcher, 3) The eternally self-effacing Sandra Bullock decided "Oh, I better double-check the name" and peeked into her envelope to make sure, 4) Jeff Bridges stepped on Carey Mulligan's dress, and 5) Helen Mirren and Miley Cyrus were backstage BFFs. As it should be. [USA Today]
One of last night's biggest Academy Award upsets came when Geoffrey Fletcher's name was called as the winner of the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, beating out heavily tipped frontrunners Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner for Up in the Air. Fletcher was clearly moved by the win, as he was on Friday when he won Best First Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards for his work on Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire.
Movieline spoke with Fletcher this weekend about his awards season ride, which ended with those two dramatic high points.
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There was only one real shock during last night's 82nd Annual Academy Awards -- more specifically, a shock of orange hair that bum rushed the Kodak Theater stage during Music by Prudence director Roger Ross Williams' acceptance speech for Best Documentary Short. Perhaps more stymying than the onstage assault was the one detail that separates the woman underneath the orange hair, Elinor Burkett, from the other delinquent stage-rusher she is being most compared to today, Kanye West. Unlike West, who crashed Taylor Swift's acceptance speech during this year's VMAs to proclaim that another artist deserved the honor, Burkett was actually attached to the category's winner, Music of Prudence, as a producer. So what's the big deal?
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You know which nominee is awfully hard to find on the post-Oscar photo wires this morning? One guess...
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Without question, Sandra Bullock's Oscar speech yesterday was the best of the night, incorporating laughs, class, tears, and a sad realization that the speech may have been better than the actual movie she was winning for. Then again, the more difficult acceptance may have been the one Bullock delivered the night before, when she showed up to the Razzies to collect her Worst Actress trophy in All About Steve. I mean, she produced the movie and starred in it (so she's a bit partial), but is it just me, or is Bullock utterly unable to admit the film may have been a bit disastrous?
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Aside from a surprise appearance by Music by Prudence co-producer Elinor Burkett -- the "Kanye of the Oscars" -- no more scandalous event occurred than the omission of Farrah Fawcett and Bea Arthur from the annual "In Memoriam" montage. Or... was it scandalous? While I've got to say their exclusion threw my In Memoriam pool ballot into a tailspin, there's a case to be made today for leaving out two actresses not exactly best-known for their big-screen work.
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In her role as Joseph Gordon-Levitt's little sister in (500) Days of Summer, the joke was that Chloë Moretz is wise beyond her years. We'd all better get used to it. The 13-year-old actress has lined up a series of challenging, mature parts over the next several months: She'll first be seen as the ultraviolent Hit Girl in Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass, then star as a child vampire in Let Me In (a remake of the recent Swedish sleeper Let the Right One In). In between, a more G-rated audience might catch Moretz in Diary of a Wimpy Kid, though the actress herself is no pushover.
As Moretz prepares for the release of the already controversial Kick-Ass, she talked to Movieline about her suddenly high-gear career.
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· If the cancellation of TNT's Raising the Bar left you heartsick, find comfort in the knowledge that Mark-Paul Gosselaar will resume the role of idealistic young lawyer in Franklin & Bash for TNT's sister network TBS. The erstwhile Zack Morris will play Steven Bash, alongside Breckin Meyer's Jared Franklin. The pair of lifelong friends are street lawyers who are recruited by the firm's patriarch after taking down a white-shoe law firm in a high-profile case. The hourlong comedy is from writers Kevin Falls (West Wing) and Bill Chais (Family Law). [THR]
Kathy Bates convinces David E. Kelley to consider a sex change, an Almost Famous alum weighs Wright vs. Wrong, and more TV Bites after the jump.
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· It looks like an Oscar bomb went off this morning at Movieline HQ, where a thick layer of discarded awards-pool ballots and flat cups of Champagne has settled like a blanket over every square inch of the office. As such, the usual trade-news round-up we bring you to start the day has been preempted by emergency clean-up duty, unearthing a variety of news and notes from the detritus. Among them: Multi-Oscar-winner The Hurt Locker will enjoy a theatrical renaissance of sorts this week, roughly doubling its current screen count of 274 while expecting a second wind in the home video market, where it has already moved 710,000 units (including downloads). Crazy Heart will expand less aggressively, tacking on another 200 or so screens to its current count of 1,274. Enjoy! [THR]
A word about the Razzies, a nominee resorts to party-crashing, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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Ahh -- the morning after the Oscars. Hollywood's brightest nurse Moet headaches on their chartered flights back to the set in Vancouver, underpaid assistants scrub champagne stains out of Marchesa gowns and Movieline staffers sweat off their Andre hangovers in a Hollywood & Highland storage closet. Alas, Movieline has a quick remedy for those of you that missed Movieline's live Oscarcast and even those mother's rights advocates out there who boycotted the show because of co-host Alec Baldwin -- the full list of winners from last night's 82nd Annual Academy Awards.
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The ballots have been tabulated, the rule-breakers have been barred, and Mo'nique has finally decided between three equally gorgeous gowns. That's right, everyone -- Oscar Night 2010 is here! Join the whole gang from Movieline as we parse, sass, celebrate and bemoan the choices made by the Academy electorate on this momentous day for movie history. And what the hey -- we'll throw in our expert armchair fashion critiques for free. It's all right this way...
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Oscar Day brings an abbreviated Weekend Receipts: Disney execs were doing a feverish funderwhack today, as the final tallies for Tim Burton's 3D take on Alice in Wonderland were in the vicinity of $116.3 million -- a frabjous haul for the record books! In a distant second place was Antoine Fuqua's Brooklyn's Finest, taking in $13.5 million, followed by Shutter Island, down 41.3% in its third session with $13.3 million. Kevin Smith's Cop Out fell 49.8% in week two, earning just over $9 million, while James Cameron's Avatar hung in at 5th place with $7.7 million. We'd look up the last time a Best Picture winner was in the box office Top 5 going into the Oscars, but we have a pitcher of potent blue cocktails to mix. Have a great awards, everyone! [BoxOfficeMojo]
Precious director Lee Daniels recently caused a bit of head-scratching when he talked to USA Today about his next film, the civil rights drama Selma: "I have to really start casting the movie because we're shooting it soon. The only person I've nailed in for sure is Hugh Jackman." Last night at the Indie Spirits (where Daniels memorably took home the Best Director prize), I asked if that meant that Robert De Niro had fallen out of the film, since the project had been announced with De Niro playing governor George Wallace. "He always has been cast, yes," Daniels clarified. "He's working."
