· Eventually we'll draw up a Movieline Tournament of Champions to select which of Bryan Singer's many in-development projects (Battlestar Galactica? Excalibur?) should take priority, but until then, add the series SelleVision to that swelling list. The filmmaker will join no less than Bryan Fuller to adapt author Augusten Burroughs's home-shopping-network comedy for NBC; Fuller will get the writing underway, and both will executive produce. As they say on television: This offer won't last. [THR]
Zac Efron and Viggo Mortensen make for odd Thanksgiving buddies, your A-Team casting rumor du jour, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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Fox announced tonight that Ellen DeGeneres will take Paula Abdul's seat on American Idol next winter. The Emmy-winning daytime talk show host will join Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and Kara DioGuardi as the sympathic panelist. While she won't have any anecdotes about working with various musical acts of the 1980's, as least Ellen will understand that the current decade is not the 1980's.
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· Courtney Love's had a busy Twitter weekend, between tweeting that she was going to sue over Guitar Hero 5's "Spit on Kurt's Grave" bonus features and this musical tribute to John Hughes. Her voice is like a fine wine -- it goes kinda rancid if it's exposed to oxygen for too long. (Just kidding, Court. ♥U4EVR!!!)
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The Britain's Got Talent superstar will make her long-awaited U.S. debut on the show's American counterpart during its September 16 finale. Boyle's seamstress confirmed the news to People: "It's going to be sensational, really wow. But it's obviously under wraps." Smart money is on Boyle reprising her "I Dreamed a Dream" performance, but there is an off chance she'll go for shock value by covering Madonna's "You'll See." Boyle handpicked the tune for her upcoming I Dreamed a Dream album, which has already topped Amazon pre-order charts. [People]
During a Fox News segment today, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs slammed Fox Broadcasting Company for electing to not air President Obama's health care address tonight: "I know that the network, instead of dealing with the reality of millions of people on health insurance reform, have decided to show a reality show called something like, So You Think You Can Dance. [...] I do hope that people will check into the reality of what's going on in America rather than the distraction of a reality TV show." While we wish he was right, 62 percent of TVGuide.com voters will probably buckle in for a night of low-stakes dance programming. Fox's sister networks (Fox News and Fox Business Network) will air the address in its entirety. [The Hollywood Reporter]
Playboy founder and chief pajamas wearer Hugh Hefner is 83, and showing no signs of slowing down. Just kidding. He's actually showing a lot of signs of slowing down -- that's what happens when you turn 83. But he manages to retain that impish grin through whispers of financial ruin, and holds prostate troubles at bay by cycling through a roster of interchangeable bottle-blondes kept track of via the help of a seven-day pill dispenser. He's also the subject of Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel-- a documentary set to premiere publicly this Saturday at TIFF -- and is the star of his own Guitar Hero 5 endorsement, directed by Brett Ratner himself!
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Though it'll screen for the first time at the Toronto Film Festival, the just-announced U.S. premiere of the Coen brothers' A Serious Man is bound to provide a more appropriate venue for the film's mix of nostalgia, screwy comedy, and Judaism: the Friars Club. According to Focus Features, Serious will open the inaugural Friars Club Comedy Film Festival in New York on September 24. Here you go, Jeffrey Ross: "What do you get when you slam some guy's head into a chalkboard over and over? The trailer to A Serious Man...and Joel Coen's face!"
The 2009 Kennedy Center Honors winners have just been announced. Mel Brooks, Robert De Niro and Bruce Springsteen were named -- three American cultural icons, to be sure, plus jazz pianist Dave Brubeck and opera diva Grace Bumbry. Mel, Bobby and Bruce are perhaps an unlikely trio, but there is common ground: All are true patriots who enjoy uncommonly enduring careers and have been accused, to some extent, of having sold out -- Springsteen with his recent Ticketmaster foibles, Brooks with his ongoing efforts to turn his classics into Broadway cash machines, and DeNiro with arguably every movie he's made since 1996.
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· Can a poster be deemed "cheeky" by coyly referring to its already-notorious scene of sexual mutilation? If it can be, Antichrist's is!
· I hadn't realized that Robert Rodriguez had actually begun shooting Red Sonja with Rose McGowan, but no matter, because they're not anymore.
· Does the Sex and the City sequel find Stanford and Anthony tying the gay knot in Connecticut?
· "Cute Casey Wilson and glamorous Michaela Watkins have concurrently left [Saturday Night Live]," says the Washington Post's Tom Shales, adding, "Watkins may have been just too classically pretty to be hilarious." Sure, that's a thing.
· Then again, alleges E!, perhaps Wilson was simply too heavy for television. Certainly their looks is what we should be analyzing right now!
Anna Camp, best known for playing Reverend Steve's wife Sarah Newlin on True Blood, is reportedly set to play Pam's sister Penny on The Office. While I'm sure the opportunity is cause for great celebration in the Camp camp, I question whether her Ryan-Kwanten-handjob techniques will be utilized fruitfully at Dunder Mifflin. Think of the potential for confessionals! Awkward and funny! [Premium Hollywood]
Charlie Sheen makes $860,000 per episode of Two and a Half Men. Let that number roll around in your head for a bit as you consider the unusual story of "Twenty Minutes with the President," a fictitious fireside chat with President Obama -- conceived, written, story and based upon a theory championed by the sitcom star -- that has been loosed upon the Internet by radio host and 9/11 conspiracy theorist-in-arms (the politically correct term is Truther, or Cover-Up-Enabling-Challenged), Alex Jones.
Of course, were you to stumble haphazardly upon the transcript hosted on Jones' website, perhaps after a night of drinking too much and Googling a hazardous search-term cocktail of "Cheerleaders + Bush + Manly men, men, men," you'd be forgiven if you had assumed the conversation had actually taken place. Sheen chooses to preface it with this introduction:
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The ratings are in for The CW's heavily hyped Melrose Place redo, and they're...perfectly average. The series premiere brought in 2.3 million viewers (a loss from lead-in 90210's 2.6 million), a rating that the network probably hoped the show would settle into, not debut with. Guess they should have hired D&D Advertising. [EW]
The thriller Paranormal Activity was another one of the big noisemakers at Telluride '09 -- not just because it "scared the bejeezus" out of a crowd at a rainy outdoor screening, or because director Oren Peli shot the whole haunted-house story on one stationary camera with two actors for $11,000. Both factors helped, though, especially when it came to Paramount acquiring the micro-indie for US distribution. Is it the studio turning over a new, inexpensive leaf, or is it a cynical attempt at catching some of The Blair Witch Project's lo-fi lightning in a bottle? Audiences -- and not just a little marketing -- will decide when the film opens Sept. 25. [TOH]
For an event that programs seemingly every film slipped over its office transom, the Toronto Film Festival has a conspicuous vacuum growing a little more severe by the hour: The British crime thriller The Red Riding Trilogy found a distributor last spring in Cannes and the makings of a massive cult following last weekend in Telluride, but no love from the Canadians who left the triptych off its voluminous list of What Matters This Fall. Surely the 302-minute running time -- and unabating bleakness -- couldn't have deterred them?
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· Halle Berry is close to a deal that will cast her in Dark Tide, about a diving instructor who returns to the scene of a near-fatal incident she once had with a great white shark. Word is the beast casually asked her about taking up diving instructing after winning an Oscar, she got mad, he said, "Well, at least it's not Gothika," and she beat it into a six-week coma, the end of which is apparently where Tide picks up. Swim, shark, swim! [Variety
Ne-Yo engages in Battle, Jerry Bruckheimer brings his act back to NBC, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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