It's more than just a knife in the water! (Sorry.) The Crocodile Dundee star is not allowed to leave Australia because he owes millions in back taxes. Hogan was served with a "departure prohibition" by the crafty, ready-to-pounce Australian Taxation Office last week when he traveled to Sydney for his mother's funeral. Where have we heard this before? "The process of detaining Paul in Australia away from his wife and child in Los Angeles has devastated Paul," said Hogan's lawyer Andrew Robinson. Now that's a tax evasion! Nyuk, nyuk, gunshot, etc. [Reuters via NYT/ArtsBeat]
Not only that, according to a new open letter on Bay's blog, but the filmmaker doesn't even have bodyguards to go on the clubbin', drinkin', pistol-whippin' romp alleged yesterday by a pair of plaintiffs n L.A. This is all so much "bullsh*t," Bay writes -- and he has the alibi to prove it.
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According to vaguely scientific new calculations by The Hollywood Reporter, the vampire genre in movies, TV, publishing and other media makes up a $7 billion industry all by itself. That's more than the annual GDP's of Greenland, Mongolia and Samoa combined. Team Edward -- it's not just a slogan, it's sound fiscal policy. [THR]
Matthew Wilder must be psyched. Lindsay Lohan has been released from her court-mandated stay in UCLA Rehab Center after just 23 days. Lohan's attorney is due in court today to discuss what happens next, but if all goes according to plan -- there are rumors of continued outpatient treatment -- the star will be free to make sexual advances toward a German shepherd in Wilder's Linda Lovelace biopic, Inferno. Added bonus: Lohan's also free to participate in the press push for Machete. Everyone wins! [TMZ, Huffington Post]
Also in today's edition of Hollywood Ink: Tom Cruise has a headline of his own... Magnolia closes a deal we told you about weeks ago... and more...
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· In Funny or Die's newest offering, James Franco's adorable brother Dave attempts a sexy time with Jamie-Lynn Sigler while Franco's cat menaces them from the nightstand. Note the Flyboys poster on the wall, in what I'm guessing is a poke at James. Good thing he'll never watch this video. [Funny or Die]
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Not to make light of a situation in which three teens have died, seriously, but holy crap have you heard about these Facebook "hit lists" in the small Colombian town of Puerto Asis? The ones comprising 100 names now reportedly targeted by a shadowy killer promising to murder any and all still remaining in the village this week? It's like a movie -- like several movies made by one guy, in fact.
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When did it go wrong for Michael Cera? Once upon a time, he was the hippest comic actor in the room, yet to judge from the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World box office, the audience has turned on him. The most common complaint is that Cera too often plays himself (literally, in the case of Paper Heart), so to judge that claim's validity, Movieline has assembled a graph of Cera's most frequent filmic characteristics.
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Sure, Little Fockers wrapped filming months ago, but it's not too late to add a major cast member, is it? Deadline is reporting that the Meet the Parents sequel finally reached a deal to bring Dustin Hoffman back, and they'll add his scenes via reshoots. "Universal continues to spin that Little Fockers could have gone out 'as is' since it scored an '85' for the top 2 boxes with test audiences," says Deadline, but the studio would not rest until the film was as good as it can be, which makes me wonder if anyone at the studio actually watched Meet the Fockers. [Deadline]
· Grizz Chapman just tweeted a photo of Jack McBrayer at work on the new season of 30 Rock, and it looks like our favorite NBC page Kenneth has moves on to higher-rated waters. Spoiler alert? Click through for the photo and more Buzz Break.
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The aesthetes at n+1 always seem to come back to movies in their long history of cultural criticism. (Come on; six years is forever these days.) And now look at them with their brand-new film section led by A.S. Hamrah, who delivers nothing but the finest takes on The Kids Are All Right ("only slightly less conservative than Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds"), Sex and the City 2 ("a low point in the history of American pop culture"), Inception ("People whose dream movie is a bad movie about dreams that are like bad movies are f*cked"), and more. At least they liked Winter's Bone. [n+1 via Looker]
Sean Penn is playing a past-his-prime, Nazi-hunting rock star in the upcoming film This Must Be the Place. This is either the first picture of him from the set, or a rare, pre-Botox photo of any number of Real Housewives. Take your pick! [via DListed]
Perhaps the second season, too. Many have wondered what the Chinese version of The Office will look like, but with ripped-from-the-headlines material like this, the producers will certainly have enough to work with. Via NPR: "A massive traffic jam in north China that stretches for dozens of miles and hit its 10-day mark on Tuesday stems from road construction in Beijing that won't be finished until the middle of next month. [...] Some drivers have been stuck in the jam for five days." And you thought your commute was bad. [NPR via The Awl]
So Fox has unveiled the first official poster for Tony Scott's long-gestating runaway-train thriller Unstoppable, featuring Denzel Washington and Chris Pine as an unlikely duo charged with halting said train -- loaded with chemicals, natch -- before it jumps the rails, barrels into a bus full of children and/or achieves any number of other cataclysmic scenarios. All of which raises the question: Where's the train?
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It's kind of a depressing morning out there for movie fans, what with the preponderance of useless development news or recycled old nuggets about everyone from Doug Liman to Ben Stiller. This isn't déjà vu; it's just a faintly defined outer circle of Hell. And then there's this: Robert Rodriguez wants to make a fourth Spy Kids film, rebooting his hit franchise with Jessica Alba despite the fact that the original kids are in their early 20s. Naturally it'll be in 3D... and so the apocalyptic End of Ideas proceeds. How to grapple with this? How about some haiku?
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