Every Friday, as another week reels, stumbles and flops to a close at Movieline HQ, a familiar sound can be heard floating from the conference room. Down the hall it winds and soars, the silken roar lifting heavy spirits and brightening bleary eyes. And when that door opens, and the naked cry is heard -- Say whaaaa? -- you could almost deal with another five straight days of pop culture's most outlandish, appalling absurdities. Almost. Instead, let the Say Whaaaa? Singers lull you into the weekend. Hit it, fellas!
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· Kirsten Dunst doesn't have any dated films this year and she's fallen out of the Spider-Man franchise, but somehow, she scored the cover of V. Her karaoke video must have clinched it!
· "Mickey Rourke's Sex Marathon: 14 Women, One Night." Click.
· You know what the recent Tonight Show kerfuffle needed? More murder. ABC's Castle is happy to provide it.
· The Jam baby helped The Office beat Grey's Anatomy in last night's ratings.
· THR: "What are some of the potential titles for Shit My Dad Says?" CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler: "Um, one is Shat My Dad Says." Brilliant.
You saw it in this morning's trades: Adam Scott, so poignant and funny on Starz's Party Down as a struggling commercial actor who returns to the depressing milieu of cater-waitering to pay the bills, has joined the cast of NBC's Parks and Recreation. If ever a show didn't need more cast members, Park's bloated ensemble, which also now includes Rob Lowe, would be the one. Scott's loose contract with Starz requires that he only appear on three episodes on Season 3 -- a similar arrangement that led to the show losing Jane Lynch to Fox's smash-hit Glee this season. (Lynch does return for the Party Down season finale -- an episode revolving around her wedding.) When Movieline spoke to Scott in December, he seemed to be down with Down, calling it "my favorite job, I just love it," and telling us "he could keep doing it forever." So what happened? Probably a mixture of money and visibility -- though it would be presumptuous to assume Scott, who has a producer credit on the series, is gone for good.
Meanwhile, his costar Ken Marino, who plays the dimwitted cater supervisor Ron Donald, was forthright when we asked him yesterday how he felt about losing Lynch to a network series:
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Life is full of disappointments, the old Lutheran church hymn goes, but nothing seems to let people down more often than Saturday Night Live. Even long time fans of the show who have been burned by stale characters, poor acting and basic unfunniness still come back every week hoping for the best but usually getting something short of that. Zach Galifianakis did his best to raise expectations last night on Late Night with jokes about walking offstage mid-show and a bizarre "skitch" in which Jimmy Fallon did not even break character. Those clips, as well as the other highlights you missed last night while listing 40 pairs of Aiaiai headphones on eBay, after the jump.
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After an energetic but brief blast of a teaser, Apparition has released the full trailer for The Runaways, and it's much closer to the tone of the movie than that first clip -- they even added appropriately Quaaluded Dakota Fanning narration to drive home that "drowsy rock movie dream" vibe. What else is there? Would you settle for some underage lesbian shenanigans?
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If you've not yet experienced the internet phenomenon that is Chatroullette.com, a sort of Metropolitan Museum of Self-Diddling and Guys Looking for Breasts you can access for free online, you might want to join Jon Stewart on his guided tour. Along his encounters, Jon runs into countless other journalists covering the same beat (Brian Williams' was investigating the site as part of NBC Nightly News's ongoing series, Felched By America), Daily Show correspondent and noted Nintendo-addict Jason Jones, and other surprises we won't give away here. Strangely absent from the proceedings? Sen. Roy Ashburn. Enjoy!
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During last night's Idol, Ryan Seacrest asked four more contestants to pack their knife-like vocals and go. While none of the castoffs seemed like contenders for the crown, they offered all-American showmanship and -- as first piano teachers everywhere call it -- pizzazz! We mourn the four lost souls after the jump.
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It's true! Conan O'Brien has cleared his busy schedule of Twitter brain trusts and dolphin meet and greets to perform a live show in April, fulfilling Megan Mullally's prophecy that Coco will "have the last laugh". TMZ broke the story an hour ago, with confirmation of one show from Ticketmaster.
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The casting shortlist for Captain America has gotten even shorter. A few days after onetime candidate for the role Scott Porter took the lead in the CW pilot Nomads (apparently indicating that he'd missed out on the Joe Johnston-directed film), now actor Michael Cassidy (pictured) has confirmed via his Twitter that he's been cut from contention as well. Still potentially in the mix? John Krasinski, Mike Vogel, Patrick Flueger, Chace Crawford, and Garret Hedlund. There's still time, Angus T. Jones! [Slashfilm, EW]
Once too big for the same autoporn franchise that made him a star, Vin Diesel eventually learned to re-embrace his inner whale-tailed Mitsubishi Eclipse, and found career viability with last year's hit, Fast and Furious. He's now taken to his Facebook fan page (ahem -- 7,645,390 and counting) to give an update on the status on the fifth film in the series: "Had a meeting with Justin Lin today regarding the Fast saga... some daring but fascinating thoughts in terms of action set pieces... and relationships, old and new. The team is on their way to Brazil this evening, to scout, and to see what selection of cars there are." Carna-Vin! [Vin Diesel via /Film]
There are just two sleeps to go to the big night! The odds have been calculated and the prognostications made! The votes are in and now can't even be changed by Harvey's semitic signage, Nicolas's nincompoop e-natterings or James revealing that the Na'vi aren't actually CG but real genetic freaks he cooked up in his garage. Yet we can't keep having the same conversations for the next 48 hours. What we need is something to feed the appetite and stoke the fever -- something that's of the Academy Awards but not about their 82nd iteration. And The Oscar is that filmic fondue, a cauldron of cheese cooked up by director Russell Rouse, writer Harlan Ellison, stars Stephen Boyd and Tony Bennett, and a who's who of Hollywood donating cameos.
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More than month after Tyler Perry's executive-produced labor of love Precious was nominated for six Oscars, the media impresario finally sent a fan message recognizing the film's standing at the Academy Awards. Also: He's presenting! "So strange," Perry wrote. "I became an Academy member last year and, this year, I'm asked to present. How cool is that?! Catch it this Sunday night if you can. 6 Nominations for PRECIOUS -- I'm so happy for them." If I can? If I can? Yeah, well, Bad Boys II is on NBC that night, I guess, so... If I can. God, I love this guy. [TylerPerry.com]
In a shocking bit of interspecial backlash, an intransigent rabbit named Smokey begs to differ that Inglourious Basterds is "the thing that happened in cinema this year." In fact, the real thing that happened in cinema this year is that a rabbit has more of a clue than our psychic pals and much of the Hollywood establishment about what will win the Best Picture Oscar come Sunday. Maybe it's just Smokey's savant-like understanding of the preferential ballot, or maybe he took Nicolas Chartier's impassioned e-mails to heart -- it really could be anything. But this is as informed and credible an Oscar forecast as any we've yet seen at Movieline HQ, so consider yourself advised. That said, Smokey also chose David Carradine as a dark horse on my "In Memoriam" Montage Pool ballot, so grain of salt, etc. Click through for the most adorable Oscar prognostication ever.
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· Ryan Gosling is reportedly set to join Warner Bros.' untitled Steve Carell comedy, featuring the Office star as a father struggling in the midst of a marital crisis. Gosling will play Carell's "suave best friend," which admittedly isn't much to go on but could mean anything from "sidekick" to "gay leg of a bisexual love triangle." Or maybe just "paycheck." We'll see. [Variety]
Oliver Stone turns savage, Benicio Del Toro goes undercover, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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Headbands off to uber-producer Mark Burnett for shopping two reality series featuring alpha females this week. In addition to the untitled Sarah Palin-Alaska project, Burnett has reunited with domestic goddess Martha Stewart to produce an eight-episode series, Help Me, Martha, in which strangers encountering last minute social event disasters find Stewart and a team of eight experts at their doorsteps. The hour-long show, which does not have a network yet, will find crisis-prone contestants via nominations by friends. [Variety]
