A priceless artifact from the long-mourned marriage of Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger has turned up, claims Perez Hilton. Allegedly, Stephen Baldwin commissioned this portrait of Alec for Kim during their courtship, and now it's on eBay for low fee of $200. Sure, this looks more like the product of a John Travolta/Claudia Schiffer tryst than Alec Baldwin, but it's the thought that counts. And lord knows that Stephen is not a thoughtless little pig. [Perez Hilton]
· HBO has finally given a greenlight to the much-anticipated fantasy series Game of Thrones, pictured here. Sean Bean! Peter Dinklage! Swords, horses, beards, and old-timey language! I'm there.
· Do you watch The Forgotten when you've forgotten that you can change the channel after Lost? Now there will be less episodes to accidentally catch the first act of.
· In the bid to finish The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, Summit has replaced David Slade's longtime editor Art Jones with Nancy Richardson, who edited the other two Twilight films.
· Megan Fox has only slept with two people in her life, she tells Bazaar, meaning the likelihood of her tattooing your name onto her body after sex is at least 50%. Good to know!
You can say this for Mo'nique's reluctance to do press this awards season: It's made her upcoming Oscar night interview with Barbara Walters kind of interesting. Not only does she dish on her unshaven gams, but she also discusses her open marriage with husband Sidney Hicks: "Let me say this: I have not had sex outside my marriage with Sidney. Could Sid have sex outside of his marriage with me? Yes. That's not a deal-breaker. That's not something that would make us say, 'Pack your things and let's end the marriage.'" Former adultress Barbara Walters was scandalized, asking how often Mo' would allow that. "What if it's 20 times?" the actress responded. "So what? We've been best friends for over 25 years, and we truly know who we are." [NYDN]
Woody Allen's completed film, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, has been picked up by Sony Pictures Classics for a fall release. Shot in London last year and financed by Mediapro, the Spanish company that also funded Vicky Cristina Barcelona, not much is known about the film beyond its strong cast -- Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Freida Pinto, and Naomi Watts -- and a vague logline: "The film revolves around the members of a family, their tangled love lives and their attempts to solve their problems." Translation: Either Watts or Pinto won't be able to keep their paws off a nebbish, hypochondriacal Hopkins. [Sony Classics]
Some stories have more staying power than others in this lightning-fast news cycle of ours, and Tuesday's "Sumner Redstone is Dating Tom Cruise" is one of them. Behind-the-curve apologies are due to you and to its writer Roger "Scoopy" Friedman, who has the stunning inner workings of a deal that was begun, oh, last June and consummated almost a month ago. To wit, "Cruise and Katie Holmes, mother of Suri, were seen once again dining with Redstone over the weekend." Wha-wha-whaaat? Insert urgent Morse Code sound effects here -- and keep it going, because there's more!
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· Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov quickly optioned the novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Killer upon its publication Tuesday, bringing the latest revisionist-historical horror novel by Seth Grahame-Smith (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) into the larval stage of the development cycle. Neither filmmaker is expected to direct -- yet -- Grahame-Smith's tale of a president whose mother was killed by bloodthirsty creatures of the night (abetted by their slave-owning accomplices, natch) and who will stop at nothing to eradicate the savages while saving the Union. And yet they'll still probably get this made before Steven Spielberg ever gets his Lincoln biopic off the ground. [Deadline]
More vampires (of course), Space Invaders to be adapted for the screen (obviously), and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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· From @ConanOBrien: "This is how many people it took to write today's tweet: 'Jumbo' shrimp? WTF!!" Hey, don't sweat it, Coco. This is how many it took to write Leno's "Cheney-O's" joke.
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The Seth Rogen tragicomedy I'm with Cancer keeps having to import new blood to stay alive. First, original director Nicole Holofcener dropped out in January due to "locations differences"; she was replaced by Jonathan Levine. Now, lead actor James McAvoy has left production after the first week of shooting for "personal reasons," says MTV. He'll be replaced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Check your parking spot, Rogen. It may already be painted over. [MTV]
To build anticipation for Friday's debut of the first Tron: Legacy trailer, Disney has made available to the film's Facebook fans this incredibly exciting image, suitable for framing, using as wallpaper, or just squinting at and going, "Huh?" And yet, amazingly enough, it's not even close to being the lamest film still ever released. What is? Here are some leading candidates:
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· Slashfilm's got a sneak peak at brand new Toy Story 3 character Twitch. Click over for a closer look.
· Cameron Crowe may direct an adaptation of the novel We Bought a Zoo, which is about...well, that, basically.
· Meanwhile, Dean Parisot will helm Central Intelligence, starring Ed Helms.
· John Lasseter post-mortems the underperforming The Princess and the Frog: "[It] had a perception problem -- that it was for little girls and kids. It was nothing to do with the technique, and when my career's over, I think it'll be in the Top 5 of the ones I'm most proud of."
· Stephen Moyer misses filming scenes with Anna Paquin in the upcoming season of True Blood. He's been practicing his "Sook-ehhh" for nothing.
Everything seems to be coming up Betty White these days, aside from that Jay Leno appearance last night that we'll just all agree to forget about. The latest feather in her cap? The ardor of Robert Pattinson, who used an appearance on The View to douse the fan frenzy that started when rumored girlfriend Kristen Stewart showed up to yesterday's Remember Me premiere. "I think Betty White is probably one of the sexiest women in America," he told the View panelists this morning. "She's vibrant, it's sexy. I think the more age, the better." [E!]
See! It really was just that troublesome 10 pm timeslot and those faulty lead-ins. Last night, Jay Leno returned to the driver's seat of the 11:35 PM Tonight Show and not only trounced CBS, but got twice the ratings of David Letterman. The Tonight Show with Jay Leno's second premiere scored a 2.0 rating among adults 18-49 compared to Letterman's 1.0 rating. Temporary rating surge thanks to ConanGate rubbernecking, boost in viewers because of NBC's Winter Olympics coverage, or is America just ready to forgive Jay Leno? [TVbytheNumbers]
Want to be moved, quite possibly to tears? Then watch this preview footage of the courageous and infallible Roger Ebert on today's Oprah. In the clip, he debuts his new computerized voice for his equally amazing wife, Chaz Hammelsmith Ebert, who hasn't heard him speak since July 1, 2006.
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USC has conducted a study of the 100 top-grossing movies of 2007 -- a year boasting such wrecking-ball-betesticled he-fests as Transformers, 300 and Wild Hogs -- and found that women made up only a small percentage of the Hollywood workforce who made them. Only 30% of the 4,379 speaking characters identified in the films were female, while 83% of the writers, directors and producers were male. On the bright side, when female executives were shepherding the films, it tended to increase the number of female characters in them. The same held when a woman was listed as at least one of the screenwriters. Said Geena Davis, founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media (I really want a T-shirt that says that): "These important findings provide valuable insights that we will utilize as we continue to engage content creators to improve gender representation and portrayals." [USC News]
Last night, Tom Bergeron and Melissa Rycroft interrupted ABC's three-hour Bachelor finale extravaganza to announce the 11 new celebrities who will compete on the tenth season of Dancing with the Stars. Per usual, the list includes a few unrecognizable names, some overexposed reality personalities, a couple professional athletes and one senior citizen. Click through for the complete list (including their professional partners) and Movieline's own predictions.
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