Adam Lambert's American Music Awards performance was historic for more than just its prime-time mainstreaming of homoerotica. He was also the first American Idol runner-up to register more than 5,000 angry complaints to the Federal Communications Commission -- a record sure to stand until someone spikes David Archuleta's water at a forthcoming Idol reunion, resulting in a spew of Simon-centric epithets that will rattle the Mormon Church to its squeaky-clean core. Or until Lambert rocks the Oscars, whichever comes first. Read on for a few of the most adoring new Lambert devotees (the best of which, if your boss has bionic eyes, is decidedly NSFW).
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It was reported recently that James Cameron visited Hiroshima survivor Tsutomu Yamaguchi in December, and now we know why, as Variety says the Avatar director has optioned the The Last Train From Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back using his own cash. The Charles Pellegrino book charts the double bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from both sides of the experience, and will hopefully give Cameron a whole other era of intentionally dated slang to play with. [Variety]
Summit Entertainment announced this morning that it will release Roman Polanski's new film The Ghost Writer on Feb. 19, just a few days after its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. The news coincides with word that a Swiss appellate court will likely have a ruling on Polanski's pending extradition to the U.S. within the next month. Which means, if this in absentia sentence-dismissal goes down Jan. 22, someone might be on the Ghost Writer red carpet here in February. Just saying. [NYT]
Somewhere on the NBC Universal lot, in a bunker constructed from orange Ford Foci and recycled Headlines cards, a Peacock with a denim tourniquet is frantically trying to pin down an exit strategy. The network's late-night realignment negotiations have stalled as they wait for Conan O'Brien to accept a white flag from NBC -- hold onto the Tonight Show at a new midnight time slot or walk. Meanwhile the length of Jay Leno's 11 p.m. show remains undecided. And not surprisingly, both hosts are pissed.
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· The Dwayne Johnson action thriller Faster is close to locking down its leading ladies, with Maggie Grace having signed on in an undisclosed role and Salma Hayek reportedly close behind. Billy Bob Thornton had previously joined the cast as a veteran cop who follows Johnson's ex-con on his quest to avenge his brother's killing; shooting begins next month in L.A., so watch for falling Rocks. (Sorry, it's Friday.) [Variety]
Your favorite Sonic Youth album becomes a movie (kind of), Thor recruits yet another Oscar alum, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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Welcome back to Movieline Attractions, your regular guide to everything new, noteworthy and/or ignominiously dumped at the multiplex. This week, Hollywood delivers your genre fix, Michael Cera overcomes and a one-man Rambo remake finally reaches viewers. There's hope for January moviegoing yet! And we explore it after the jump.
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· Knocked Up star Jay Baruchel will front his first feature with She's Out of My League. In the trailer, Baruchel's friends designate him a "moodle" (that's short for "man poodle"), a nice guy that women don't want to sleep with. Of course, he shows them up by winning the affection of a regulation hottie. This is a plot device film scholars call "the Apatowian Imperative."
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Who knows why someone decided to ask Law and Order: SVU guest star Sharon Stone about Meryl Streep, but thank God they did. "Meryl Streep is working so much because she looks like a woman we can all relate to," Stone told Tatler magazine. "I look at her and I think, 'I'm chasing my kids, I've moved my parents in with me, I'm coping with food spills -- that looks like me in real life.' Meryl looks like an unmade bed, and that's what I look like. To me, that looks true." Miranda Priestly is not having that. [Telegraph]
Rozlyn Papa, the contestant on this season's The Bachelor who was pegged as having had an affair with a producer, is lashing out at the ABC show, claiming she never had the described relationship that got her kicked off the program. "What [the show] meant by inappropriate relationship is not what inappropriate relationship means in the real world," she told RadarOnline.com, adding, "I know that things on television weren't always as they seemed, but I had no idea the extent of the show manipulation." The amount of damage to Jake Pavelka's sunny disposition has yet to be tabulated. [Radar]
Minutes ago, TMZ reported reported the unthinkable -- or, some might say, the inevitable: That NBC brass, their faces smeared in Peacock egg, would cave to affiliates and return Jay Leno to his 11:30 perch after a disastrous run at 10, while the fate of Conan O'Brien remained uncertain. NY Times' Media Decoder delved deeper into the matter, and found that while meetings were held today to address the matter, "no final decision has been made," but they also "did not deny" the story. We're hearing something different though.
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According to several viewers on hand last night at a James Cameron-attended screening of Avatar, the director claimed his original cut of the film ran an eye-melting 258 minutes. (The theatrical version is 162 minutes.) Among the elements removed -- and presumably forthcoming on the Avatar DVD: "A fair amount of Sigourney Weaver's scenes were deleted and other secondary characters were pared down. A sizable number of special-effects scenes were also excised including a battle between Jake's Avatar and some howling Pandoran animal. In fact the beast itself was excised completely from the final theatrical cut." If anyone happens to know the the Na'vi expression for "overkill," please pass it along in the comments. [Hollywood Elsewhere]
TMZ is reporting that Jay Leno will abandon prime time when the Winter Olympics begin on February 1 and return to his beloved 11:30 PM time slot when the games finish later that month. Although both Leno and Conan O'Brien know about the time shifts, it is uncertain whether Jay Leno's 11:30 PM show will be a full hour or a half hour and if the Tonight Show host will stay at NBC. The breaking story comes after NBC made a statement this morning in defense of Leno, calling him one of the "most compelling entertainers in the world today."
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Dear President Obama, television viewers understand that sometimes your public addresses conflict with their regularly scheduled programming. You proved your ruthless dedication to communicating with the public when you postponed a A Charlie Brown Christmas just to discuss Afghanistan policy last month. But really, you are considering bumping the the last two-hour Lost season premiere for a State of the Union address on February 2? Especially when your chief of staff is related to the Lost executive producer?! That's just harsh. Please reconsider. [Washington Post]
· In addition to its Cera-ific stills for Scott Pilgrim, Universal has also released a picture of James Franco and Danny McBride in the medieval stoner comedy Your Highness. Not that genre again.
· Rumors are flying that NBC intends to reduce The Jay Leno Show, and the network's weak statement of support isn't helping.
· Ugly Betty's last-ditch time-slot change brought in weaker ratings than the canceled Eastwick.
· Congratulations to 30 Rock's Jane Krakowski, who's engaged to British businessman Robert Godley.
· And the first 3-D Blu-ray is...Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs! I was really pulling for My Dinner with Andre.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is the next hotly buzzed movie from Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz writer/director Edgar Wright, based on the series of graphic novels by Canadian Canadian cartoonist Bryan Lee O'Malley. A sort of slacker-romance-cum-superhero-fantasy starring Michael Cera as a guy who sets out to defeat all the super-exes of the girl he loves, a recent screening of a rough-cut inspired Superbad director Greg Mottola to write this on his Twitter:
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