Us Magazine really, really wants you to know that Tom Cruise is 47. (And that he'll be 48 next year! I mean, who can even stand to see a 48-year-old on a movie screen, am I right? He's certainly no Kim Kardashian.) In fact, Us's new post on Cruise's deal for Mission: Impossible 4 is so absurdly stocked with age non sequiturs that we're left fumbling for a motive. Does this have something to do with the Us editor who just sold an action drama with a very A-list friendly lead? Regardless, here are five headlines Us surely rejected before picking the eventual winner:
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Last night, Chatsworth, CA became the center of the universe, when a test screening of The Expendables unleashed a tidal wave of aging '80s action stars upon an unsuspecting audience. Reception was mixed. The first (and far better written) of two reviews on AICN dismissed its hokey genre elements and terrible script. ("One of the bad guys in the beginning actually says 'I would rather die than hear that joke again' after Dolph tells a nearly unintelligible bit o' humor during a terrorist hostage pre-credit intro.") The second reviewer called it "kick ass" and "overpowering," and was glad he wasn't late for the screening because he "couldn't find a damn envelope." Phew! Envelope -- and a dozen flailing careers -- recovered! [AICN]
Everyone pretty much assumed John Hughes didn't quit writing when he quit Hollywood, and eventually some archive would burst open with nearly 20 years of stockpiled Hughesian goodies. But good luck finding anyone outside the late filmmaker's inner circle who knew he'd been publishing in our midst all along -- not as John Hughes, alas, but as the pseudonymous, prolific short-story craftsman JL Hudson. Like, really short. But also, as a few newly published samples prove, pretty damned excellent.
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A Discovery Channel star has passed on. Phil Harris, the crusty fishing boat captain whose Alaska coast adventures were captured on Deadliest Catch, died Tuesday night. He was 53. Harris, who started working on fishing boats at the age of 7, suffered a massive stroke Jan. 29 and underwent emergency surgery in Anchorage earlier this week; as recently as last weekend Harris was said to be talking to friends and family and showing gradual signs of recovery. He is survived by his sons Jake and Josh, who worked on their father's boat as deck hands. [AP]
· The previously announced Tom Hanks/Julia Roberts project Harry Crowne has found a domestic distributor in Universal, which also released the pair's earlier collaboration Charlie Wilson's War back in 2007. This time around Hanks is directing from a script he co-wrote with Nia Vardalos -- just another tasteful A-list drama about man, a woman and a midlife crisis, which Roberts will no doubt promote with exciting, drunk-aunt aplomb when the time comes. [Deadline]
Summit invests in a tandem of its own, a defunct New York institution returns to life, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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· Newsradio/Fear Factor veteran Joe Rogan, who currently hosts the Mensa-unaffiliated Ultimate Fighting Championship, took time out of his schedule to videotape and exploit a boy who looks at his "hog" in the UFC locker room. Set to the lilting sounds of pig snorts. Joe Rogan: An American treasure, ladies and gentlemen. Anyone got any contacts at the Kennedy Center Honors, 'cause this guy's way overdue. [Defamer]
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Primetime experiment The Jay Leno Show ends tonight, and TMZ has a spy on set ready to report every last, hacky detail. Like this one: Donald Trump just appeared via satellite to tell Jay, "You're fired!" Timely, synergistic, and accurate to the end, though we suppose it would have taken a little punch out of the joke to have Trump say, "You're not fired, actually Conan is fired and you've been promoted, but I know that doesn't work with your victim narrative so I'll save that one if Kimmel can come through with an appearance fee." [TMZ]
Deadline reports this afternoon that Tom Cruise has officially closed a deal to star in and co-produce Mission Impossible 4, thus officially burying the hatchet with Sumner Redstone beneath a stack of newly minted $100 bills. The good news (depending on your perspective): A script's on the way, and shooting could start this summer! The bad news: There's no director! Someone fire up the auteur roundelay again; what's Werner Herzog up to these days? [Deadline]
Of all the alumni from Vanity Fair's legendary Doomed Class of 2000, it was Wes Bentley that provoked the most head-scratching. A Juilliard graduate, his performance in 1999's American Beauty as a teen pot dealer obsessed with the girl next door catapulted him to worldwide fame, and positioned his career in a way that would make any young actor envious. But the follow-ups never came (he turned down several major parts, including suicidal prison guard Sonny Grotowski in Monster's Ball, which went to his Four Feathers costar Heath Ledger), and the heat eventually faded. There were rumors that drugs were the culprit. In a rare and ballsy move, Bentley, who is currently starring in an Off Broadway production of a new play, has confirmed them all to The New York Times.
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God bless Julia Roberts. Sometime during the past year, the A-lister decided to start just stone-cold saying whatever popped into her head at that moment (no matter how crazy, aggressive, or lunatic it might seem to others), and in an age of buttoned-down actors, we kind of love her for it. Sure, there were signs before that whatever internal filter Roberts possessed was being eroded, like when she did that weird "Aloe Vera" thing on her t-shirt, or when she somehow won and accepted Denzel Washington's Oscar. Still, we think you'll agree that over the last year, Roberts has brought her uncensored A-game. Here are some of her best moments:
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· "You've Never Seen Oscar Like This," promises the Academy Awards key art. They're right, I've never seen comedians sit on an oversized Oscar statuette as though this was Ghostbusters 2 and they were about to control it with an NES Advantage joystick.
· If you hate Avatar, you must be a communist. No, really!
· Jeff Probst has signed on to host two more seasons of Survivor.
· 24's Renee Walker has been up to some highly illegal SuperPoking.
· "I have very large features on a very small head," Anne Hathaway tells People. "But, you know, I'm not going to beat myself up. It's my face. I'm not very pretty." This crippling self-doubt is why we've lost an armpit, people.
Warner Brothers has reportedly arrived at an executive decision on what to do with the man from Krypton, nearly four years after Bryan Singer's limp-fisted, Maury-rrific knockoff of the original did little to reinvigorate the brand. Deadline says Christopher Nolan will serve as a "godfather" figure on Superman Reboots 2. But who will be kissing his ring and pledging to darken things up by detonating Lois Lane with 500 tons of plastic explosives? Here's five directors who could save the seemingly hopeless franchise:
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The Oscar-nominated documentary The Cove hasn't been so warmly received by the Japanese commercial fishing industry, members of which the film features brutally, secretly slaughtering scores of dolphins off the country's coast. And now, after a year of battling threats and intimidation, the film's producers have released a statement announcing a deal to take the film directly to the Japanese people in April. It's the first time many Japanese will have heard about the mercury-poisoned dolphin meat that results from the annual "dolphin cull" in Taiji; the country's Flipperburger market will never be the same. Oh, and awards oddsmakers take note: This is the kind of real-world impact that stretches Oscar leads to virtually insurmountable lengths.
OK, maybe he's a little bitter. After Super Bowl XLIV eclipsed the 1983 M*A*S*H series finale to become the most-watched television broadcast ever, the show's former star acknowledged, "If they broke our record, I'm happy for New Orleans and I hope it gives even more to cheer about to a city I love." If, Alan? "I know it sounds evil to mention," Alda continued, "but how does Nielsen know how many actual people were watching either broadcast?" At least he toed a classier company line than former co-star Wayne Rogers, who commented, "That Super Bowl is never going to earn what M*A*S*H earned, that's for sure, because there's no reruns for that Super Bowl -- nobody's going to be interested in that, and M*A*S*H reruns have been on for 30 years." Don't tell that to the NFL Network, which is already rerunning the game today. [LAT]
· Seemingly half the A-list actresses in Hollywood got new projects Monday, with the most amusing casting news potentially pairing Penelope Cruz with Lars von Trier for his disaster-psychology film Melancholia. Not much is known about the lead role itself, and von Trier's apparent acknowledgment comes through translations of European media sources, so who even knows? In any language this would be spectacular, particularly reading and hearing Cruz's subsequent comparisons of the misogynistic Dane with actress's-best-friend Pedro Almodovar. Make history, Penny! [The Playlist]
Kate Winslet, Katherine Heigl, Cate Blanchett and others sign on elsewhere, Terminator is sold (and not to whom you'd think), and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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