To erase the scarring mental images left by yesterday's chimp victim episode, Oprah Winfrey welcomed reclusive Twilight author Stephenie Meyer to her couch. The author had promised her fan base a never-before-shared secret about next week's New Moon, and delivered just that, revealing that her mom was responsible for the explosive ending. Meyer showed the original draft to her toughest critic who said, "Stephenie, maybe you need a little more action at the end." [USA Today]
There's a terrific prize waiting for the authors of our best comments this week: a wild Tasmanian Lautner! Each Lautner will be shipped first-class to your doorstep (in a crate with air holes, of course), whereupon it will burst from its box in a flurry of precocious martial arts moves and a whole lot of "YAAAAAH! EEEEAAAAH! OOOH, OOOH, YAAAAAH!" Just make sure not to feed him after midnight, and don't make him take off his shirt unless the story really calls for it.
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Patrick Goldstein's column today is about Universal's creative marketing campaign for alien-abduction movie The Fourth Kind. No, not the part about making it look like Paranormal Activity, but rather the part where they posted fake newspaper articles on the film's website attributed to real Alaska newspapers, all in an effort to play up the film's bogus documentary mystique. The papers sued for having their reputations undermined with headlines screaming Anchorage Fisherman's Salmon Haul Doubles After Extra-Terrestrial Anal Probe, and Universal settled, paying $20,000 to the Alaska Press Club (twice their annual revenues). [LAT]
· Lita Ford feels better about the Runaways movie after meeting the starlet playing her, <a href="
http://www.movieline.com/2009/08/halloween-iis-scout-taylor-compton-we-still-have-halloween-fans-second-guessing-what-were-doing.php">Scout Taylor-Compton. Said Ford, "She has a heart and soul, unlike some of the people behind the movie. She also hawks a mean loogey and really is a lot like me. We both cried the first time we spoke. Scout rocks." Aw. Kiss my feelings deadly.
· The romance between Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart was "a long time coming" according to the new Gladys Kravitz of teenybopper speculation, Catherine Hardwicke.
· Independence Day may spawn not one, but two sequels.
· Werner Herzog tried making amends with Bad Lieutenant director Abel Ferrara by casting him as an actor in the remake. Ferrara was still "not cool" with the project.
· Rambo V's plot has changed entirely. Now Rambo will be defending justice in a city where a bunch of women have either vanished or been kidnapped. Luckily, none of the kidnappers can outrun an army-issue geriatric scooter.
While 2009 came and went without a single feature-length film devoted to the life and times of Jack Abramoff -- the duster-and-black-fedora-favoring lobbyist and huckster who became a poster child for Bush-era government corruption -- 2010 will have two. One is a documentary from Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, the director of Taxi to the Dark Side and Enron: The Smartest Men in the Room; the other is a biopic starring Kevin Spacey, from doc-turned-features director George Hickenlooper. Both are titled Casino Jack. And that's where there's a problem.
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· The Gus Van Sant drama formerly known as Restless began shooting this week in Portland, where Bryce Dallas Howard (daughter of Ron, who's co-producing) has joined Henry Hopper (son of Dennis) and Schuyler Fisk (daughter of Sissy Spacek) for the tale of two teens with a possibly unhealthy preoccupation with mortality. (We checked out the script a few months ago.) Watch your back, Mia Wasikowska! It's still early yet, and don't think Rumer Willis isn't ready to go if you aren't pulling your weight as the lead. [THR]
Greenpeace gets a biopic, Michael Caine's vigilante valedictory gets a U.S. buyer, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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Welcome back to Movieline Attractions, your regular one-stop guide to everything new, noteworthy and/or cataclysmic at the box office. This week, a summer blockbuster comes to autumn, Wes Anderson makes his way to the coasts, and Philip Seymour Hoffman takes to the high seas. And then there's Precious, which will finally arrive in a theater near pretty much everybody. Lots to do! Let's get to it.
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· Puke-covered aspiring reality star Richard Heene -- aka Balloon Boy Dad -- turned himself in today, resulting in this mugshot... which bears more than a passing resemblance to Treat Williams? Click here for full size.
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For some reason, there's a NY Magazine cover story on Megan Fox this weekend. (Because the Transformers 2 DVD just came out? I got nothing.) "Women tear each other apart," complains Fox, burned from the rejection of Jennifer's Body. "Girls think I'm a slut, and I've been in the same relationship since I was 18. The problem is, if they think you're attractive, you're either stupid or a whore or a dumb whore. The instinct among girls is to attack the jugular." Someone wants her own Self-Parody Danger Zone! [NYT]
Things were going so well for Ron Grover in his piece about MGM's slow plunge toward insolvency. There was the news that the studio's creditors declined an equity stake in the company as part of its restructuring, and then, once again, there were those mind-blowing figures we're so used to reading in any discussion of MGM's flagging fortunes: $3.7 billion in debt, with the creditors balking at another $1.2 billion in new debt to help get the studio's production slate going. Instead, they want a buyer -- and they're not above selling the Lion for parts, including The Hobbit, the vast film library and the James Bond franchise. Which is where it gets a little tricky.
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In what will hopefully become a cautionary tale for future daredevils looking to conquer Japanese game show-inspired challenges, a Wipeout contestant passed away last week during production on ABC's hit show. Tom Sparks, 33, a recent graduate of USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, complained of knee pain and shortness of breath while completing one of Wipeout's obstacle courses. He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors learned he had suffered a stroke and could not be saved. Sparks had just returned home from his European honeymoon and was competing on the show with his wife of two months. [The Wrap]
· Bright Star's Ben Whishaw models his usual around-the-house getup for Wonderland magazine.
· Top Model's Miss J has introduced the New York Times to the concept of a "fladunkasaurus." Can Kimora Lee Simmons bring the same slang game?
· The Early Show attempted to get in on Today's drunken Ewok viral appeal, but a peeing beaver is simply not the same.
· "Alec Baldwin is incredibly sexy," says Broadway star Cheyenne Jackson, on the eve of his new recurring role on 30 Rock. "He's an alpha male."
· Elizabeth Hurley's diet plan: vodka and one meal a day. Sold!
If there's one thing I'm anticipating almost as much as Avatar, it's the James Cameron press tour in support of Avatar. Our irrepressible King of the World has been off the scene for ages, but he's come back with a quotable vengeance, delivering line after vainglorious line to the New Yorker and, now, Playboy. What better time to introduce the James Cameron Self-Parody Danger Zone, a metric that graphs Cameron's bon mots on a scale from relative modesty to boastful self-mythologizing? The Playboy interview was the first to go through our wringer. Enjoy the results:
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Last week brought a studious browse through this year's American Film Market catalog, revealing some of the must-see Luke Perry offerings and Val Kilmer double features populating the annual sales confab. While a few more accomplished titles have stirred domestic buyer interest, the search continues for international distributors seeking just the right Z-movie to take home as a souvenir from Santa Monica. Today, another on-site observer reports with at least one more spectacular candidate from the wreckage.
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Taylor Swift took home four CMAs and became the youngest performer ever to win "Entertainer of the Year" at the Country Music Awards last night, which scored 17% higher ratings than this year's Emmys. This means the singer-songwriter can now settle in for another 20 straight years of CMAs, a ceremony whose record of re-rewarding performers matches only the Daytime Emmys and Nickelodeon's Kids Choice Awards. To be fair, Susan Lucci and Will Smith have glossy assassin stares, and these shows do good work to barter with their not-so-jiggy demons. [THR]
