The induction of a new Royal at Walt Disney Parks is always a grandly ceremonious affair, involving the unfurling of comically oversized scrolls and the bellowing of decrees by stately Magic Kingdom spokespeople in tri-cornered hats, the various members of their adoptive family looking on in delight. (And, in select cases -- specifically at Disneyland Resort Paris -- they celebrate afterward with a two-day orgy.)
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Last month, Courteney Cox threw her former Friends co-star under the bus when a benefit concert audience member requested 'Smelly Cat' and now, the pair will reunite again when Kudrow guest-stars on Cougar Town. A week after Kudrow completed the Friends Employment Phenomenon, it was announced that the actress who once embodied Phoebe is thisclose to signing on for a November sweeps episode, in which Kudrow would play a dermatologist who provides addicting services to Cox's character. In the same TV Guide article, the Cougar Town star revealed that she failed to persuade Matthew Perry to guest as her boyfriend, and is praying for the perfect part for Jennifer Aniston. [TV Guide]
Classy, Attack of the Clones-surviving ingenue Natalie Portman is everyone's unimpeachable dream girl, but apparently the actress has an inner vegan activist waiting to get out (I blame you for this, Devendra Banhart). In a HuffPo editorial, Portman wrote today about how a read of Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals turned her from a timid vegetarian to an ardent vegan who's not afraid to confront her meat-eating friends. Though such a sentiment might be a little insufferable in a "Williamsburg sliding scale" kind of way, somehow, online pundits have divined from this fairly unremarkable argument that Portman loves rape, or something.
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Hey, maybe Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis picked up a few pointers from our intervention! In an EW report addressing Paul Haggis's leaked, Scientology-blasting email, Davis took the high road: "It was a private letter between me and Paul. I've known Paul since I was a kid...I would never comment on anything having to do with Mr. Haggis or his wife or his family. I don't talk about other people's private lives, ever." You know there was some tongue-biting action there as the newly on-message Davis restrained himself from blurting out, "But just guess who he banged while writing Casino Royale!" [EW]
Yesterday, we wondered why Ricky Gervais would squander his talent on hosting the upcoming 67th Annual Golden Globes, an event better known for its "party atmosphere" than its actual awards. Today, the cheeky British comedian confirmed our suspicions -- that the job is a low pressure introduction to award-hosting-duties.
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· Your inappropriate worship of young Taylor Lautner's physique is really getting to him. "I don't want to become known as just a body," said the actor. "If I had to choose, I would never take my shirt off again in a movie, but I guess that's not very realistic. I certainly won't be asking to do it, though."
· Actress Jennifer Esposito, who split from four-months-wed husband Bradley Cooper in 2007, has gotten engaged to tennis star Mark Philippoussis. I guess that means she'll finally have to learn how to spell his last name.
· Even Ice Age 3 director Michael Thurmeier has no idea how his movie became the third-highest grosser of all time: "[It] did really, outlandishly well, internationally. It's sort of shocking to everybody."
· Lost star Henry Ian Cusick has settled his inappropriate motorboating lawsuit.
· Rosie O'Donnell was this close to becoming Angelina Jolie's most notorious fling after some sexually charged phone calls back in the day. You decide: upgrade or downgrade from Billy Bob?
The Producers Guild of America has announced the winner of its Norman Lear Award, a TV producers' award that in years past has gone to Lorne Michaels, Jerry Bruckheimer, Dick Wolf, and, last year, David Chase. And the 2009 winner, to be presented at a gala ceremony Jan. 24th is ... drumroll please ... Mark Burnett. It's a bit of a stretch to get worked up into a lather over the man who brought you Pirate Master, but there you have it. [The Wrap]
Usually, when an established international institution encounters the threat of public scandal, it rallies the troops behind crisis PR and modest, protracted silence. Not the Church of Scientology, however, which, for all its megastar clientele proselytizers, doesn't appear to have a single power-flack among its ranks. And even if it does, that authority has left Scientology's image to the hands of Tommy Davis, the 37-year-old spokesman who has spent the last week walking out of network-TV interviews, fielding resignation letters from boldface church names, and now salvaging what he can of his reputation in an interview with The Daily Beast.
This isn't necessarily the guy we'd entrust our billion-dollar religion to, but he's a guy we'd hate to see pulled any more helplessly into the pop-culture meat grinder than he has to be. For that reason, Tommy Davis, this is your Movieline Intervention.
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One of the most interesting things about the fallout from Paul Haggis's blistering Scientology kiss-off is how quiet it's been. Haggis has issued no further statement, and the church hasn't gone to great lengths to rebut him. Even Kirstie Alley, who occasionally addresses Scientology in her frequent Twitter posts, appeared to go into radio silence for a little while. Never fear, though: Alley is back up and ready to take this issue on! Well, mostly.
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In the month since David Letterman admitted to doing "creepy" things with female staffers, news outlets feasted on the Late Show host, producing thousands of reports and articles on the danger of workplace relationships. And then sometime last week, in spite of whispers of a surveillance sex tape, the scandalous story lost its legs. Now, Vanity Fair contributor and former Late Night with David Letterman writer Nell Scovell is taking advantage of the lull in LettermanGate to recount how her own "dream job" took an uncomfortable turn towards sexual favoritism at Late Night.
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You'd think Oren Peli, whose $11,000 horror film Paranormal Activity has ballooned into a $62 million-and-counting megahit for Paramount, would have no trouble finding deep-pocketed suitors to back his next project. You'd be wrong. His Area 51,a sci-fi thriller shooting now in Utah, has a budget of $5 million, and is reportedly searching for bids of $10 million for domestic distribution rights. So far, Paramount, Lionsgate, Overture and at least three other studios have passed. Foreign rights, meanwhile, will be put up for sale at the American Film Market in Santa Monica next week -- a harder sell if no one is ready to pony up for U.S. rights. Does this all have to end like The Blair Witch Project? We'd prefer to think that in Hollywood, talent prevails. But as we well know -- chaos reigns. [NY Times]
Network line-ups are bursting at the seams with detective dramas, set in almost every U.S. metropolis and centering around every imaginable form of crime fighter, from the hard-boiled FBI detective to the bored hipster to the hard-living Oklahoma City floozy/detective and supernaturally-assisted mothers. So just how do you engineer a new strain of detective drama when nearly every precinct and private eye persona has been explored? Allow Academy Award-winning actor George Clooney to show you.
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Hayden Christensen and his brother Tove have filed suit against the infamous Philippe Martinez, claiming that the disgraced Hollywood financier owes them and their production company Forest Park Pictures $2.6 million apiece for the unproduced actioner Crash Bandits. The brothers reportedly went into business with Martinez at Cannes '05; their first-look deal soured soon after, and the actor's pay-to-play contract for Bandits was never honored. Martinez, who said earlier this year that he has neither filed for bankruptcy nor is in debt to any actors, is all but certainly readying his "Hayden who?" defense as we speak. Cheap shots exhausted, then he'll file bankruptcy. [THR Esq.]
· A month and a half ago, moviegoers' eyes alit at the news that the Coens wanted to re-adapt Charles Portis's classic Western novel True Grit -- with Jeff Bridges in the Rooster Cogburn role that won John Wayne an Oscar in 1969. Now it looks like they're getting especially serious, with Matt Damon and Josh Brolin's names arising as front-runners for the supporting roles of a lawman and a killer (respectively). All that's left is to pin down a young girl to play the daughter of the slain man whom Cogburn is seeking vengeance for; if anything, this sounds like the role Kiernan Shipka -- a/k/a patricidal Sally Draper -- was born to play. [BFDealMemo]
A remake you didn't want, Augusten Burroughs shrinks, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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· That's OK, neither did we. But our Man in London remembered, and that was enough to send us hunting down the evidence. And there it was: Mr. T and Boy George, together at last.
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