That striking, haunting poster for Black Swan -- featuring a wing-eyed, facepainted, selectively focused Natalie Portman -- has been revised just in time for the long Oscar haul to come. You could expect nothing less from the micromanaging marketers at Fox Searchlight, especially after the lightning strike of Oscar hype that greeted Black Swan's premiere this week in Venice. But: Is it actually any better? Judge for yourself after the jump.
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Poor Kristen Bell. If she would have just listened to Movieline, she'd know better than to once again resurrect the hopes and dreams of Veronica Mars fans the world over. Last night, the You Again star tweeted about the possibility of a feature film version of the long-canceled series, causing a ruckus of hashtags and Facebook groups. Seriously.
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Liz Lemon and Don Draper. Fred Armisen and Elisabeth Moss. Jason Sudeikis and January Jones. What's going on with the casts of Saturday Night Live and Mad Men? During an interview with Vanity Fair, Sudeikis describes the bizarre and growing connection thusly: "It's just a mess. It's like an orgy made in Entertainment Weekly heaven. [...] What's that old phrase? Something makes strange bedfellows? With our two casts, you could substitute the word 'drinking.' The SNL cast can party with the Mad Men cast in a mutual fashion." Paging Kiernan Shipka. [Vanity Fair]
Click through for the shocking disclosure found among the publicity materials for the otherwise unremarkable Justin Long/Drew Barrymore rom-com Going the Distance. Let it suffice to say that John Hodgman could persuade anybody. [via IMDB]
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Good news and bad news, Jay Leno haters. Ratings for The Tonight Show reached an all-time low in the advertiser coveted 18-49 demographic this summer, down 22 percent from the mark Conan O'Brien set a year ago. Hooray! Ready for the bad news? Leno still had more overall viewers than Conan did over the same time period last summer, and The Tonight Show still easily defeated The Late Show with David Letterman. The moral of the story: Late night television is doomed. [THR]
Also in this morning's Hollywood Ink: Jamie Bell is out on the Ledge... An Olsen Twin relative gets an indie... the Miramax sale is possibly still on course... and more ahead.
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O, Labor Day, you lazy long weekend, you musty farewell. And seriously, summer: Good riddance. The holiday frame offers up a storm-shattering tandem of films well worth your time, money and consideration after a gruesome August, as well as one stinker to help balance out the cosmos. (Or something. I don't know why it exists, to be honest.) Grab a lawn chair, pop open a beer, and meet me after the jump to talk it over.
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· The best part of 90210 -- the opening credits -- have been retooled in a magical 2010 way. As we end 90210 Day, watch as the cast of Gossip Girl tries on the show's fancy-free opening sequence and even cops some of the original font. [YouTube]
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Tyler Perry could get used to this awards season thing. After attaching himself to Precious as a producer last year and earning a prestige bump in the process, the director's own adaptation of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf has been shuttled from its January debut to November 5, smack in the middle of Oscar season. Now he'll never get to finish that Mai Tai. [Cinematical]
Are you a TV network in the market for an Emmy-winning news producer? Can you schedule around his 1,000 hours of community service and occasional check-ups with the parole officer? If so, Robert "Joe" Halderman is out of prison and ready to get to work! Halderman, who served four months of a six-month sentence resulting from his attempt last year to extort $2 million from David Letterman, was released for good behavior from Rikers Island and needs a job, according to his lawyer. Anyone? [AP via Vulture]
Would you buy tickets to a film festival without knowing what it had to offer? You might if it were the Telluride Film Festival, which begins in Colorado tomorrow but didn't announce its lineup until just now. The modest but prestigious fest has launched several Oscar contenders in the past, so what can it boast this year?
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· To celebrate Chris Colfer's scene-stealing on Glee, Rolling Stone took his character Kurt to a leather bar for this photoshoot. (There go all of Ryan Murphy's season three plotlines.) Also in Buzz Break: Jon Hamm makes his girlfriend's dreams come true, and Freida Pinto struggles in Miral.
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Here's some disconcerting news for those who hope constant vigilance will help find cancer before it spreads. In an interview with People excerpted by the Denver Post, Catherine Zeta-Jones says that Michael Douglas spent months seeking medical attention for constant throat pain, only to be rebuffed. "It makes me furious they didn't detect [his throat cancer] earlier," said Zeta-Jones. "He sought every option and nothing was found." [Denver Post]
It seems like only yesterday we were sitting around the office wondering what went wrong with Kick-Ass, the story of a downmarket superhero that did mid-market business (at best) at the box-office. But $96 million worldwide -- plus whatever it has coming to it on video -- is reportedly enough for a follow-up to the modestly-budgeted original. Or so its source's author says.
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Uh-oh. According to Variety, Disney's hopeful -- and thought to be written in ink -- sale of Miramax has hit a major pothole. Apparently Morgan Creek founder James Robinson and philanthropist Jerome Swartz have back out of their "financial agreements," leaving the deal short of capital. Disney has yet to comment, possibly because they're too busy trying to get the Weinsteins back on the phone. [Variety]
