Cate Blanchett is just fine after getting clocked in the head last night with a prop radio during a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire. After using what reports describe as a "prop nightie" to stop her bleeding cut, Blanchett received medical attention and was deemed fit to perform again as early as tonight. Feel free to bring flowers, but please, no throwing. It's just too soon. [E!]
· Coming Soon's got a clutch of new Nine pictures, including this one of unlikely screen partners Daniel Day-Lewis and Kate Hudson.
· Why haven't we seen Alan Rickman's Caterpillar from the upcoming, 3-D Alice in Wonderland? According to Tim Burton, the film is so unfinished that even he hasn't seen it.
· New 2010 release dates! The kiddie cut-em-up Kick-Ass is set for April 16, and Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables is slated for August 20th.
· Why wasn't Sarah Jessica Parker's married Carrie wearing a wedding ring on the set of Sex and the City 2?
· AfterElton has put together a list that proves that True Blood is just Buffy the Vampire Slayer, only with the added benefit of Anna Paquin's breasts.
Two comediennes have joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in time for its 35th season, says The Comic's Comic, who first reported last season's SNL recruits. Is it just us, or do new cast members Jenny Slate and Nasim Pedrad both resemble Michaela Watkins? Sure, Michaela tracked well with bored high school kids, stoned college students and aspiring improvisers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, but wouldn't Lorne Michaels want to find doppelgängers for Kristin Wiig, the only SNL-er maintaining the show's faint pulse?
No, that's not Frida Kahlo's wedding photo. It's Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon, Madonna's first born, channeling the iconic image of a tartily made-up, lace-gloved bride that first launched her mother to superstardom with 1985's "Like A Virgin." (It's from a video for her upcoming greatest hits compilation.) While impressive, it's nothing compared to the shot-by-shot reenactment she has planned for "Vogue," featuring a cast of arm-flinging background fops composed entirely of her adopted African toddlers. [Towleroad]
Hardest working man in show business Steven Soderbergh is finally opening up about the one film that got away out of the roughly 8,512 he has made over the last year: Moneyball. You may remember Sony pulled the plug on the Brad Pitt baseball film in June, allegedly because Soderbergh planned to take things too far afield in an improvisational direction (though it's questionable whether Major League Baseball ever truly signed off on it). So is Soderbergh busy licking his wounds?
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The wide-set, feline eyes. The strong jaw. The warrior posture. The floral jewelry and hand-braided ornamentation. We've been reminded of many things since being introduced to the Na'vi of James Cameron's Avatar -- animated flops, vampire dreamboats -- but it took a Livejournal commenter scanning some new images in a French cinema magazine to spot their uncanny resemblance to Encino Man and The Mummy star, Brendan Fraser.
Living as we do in these technologically sophisticated times -- one in which the most popular movie in the country features a young man having his innards sucked out by a swimming pool filtration system in glorious three-dimensionality -- it's becoming more and more common for the studios to revisit their release slates in search of projects that might catch on better were a "3D" placed after the title: Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself 3D. Coco Avant Chanel 3D. Iron Man 2 3D.
Record scratch! Did somebody say Iron Man 2 3D?
A Sydney performance of A Streetcar Named Desire had to be stopped today after star Cate Blanchett was accidentally struck in the head with a prop. Trouper that she is, the show went on -- or it did, anyway, until the blood streaming down Blanchett's neck prematurely ended the play and sent the Oscar-winner to the hospital.
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Thanks to dogged firefighter labor and a little bit of luck, the home featured as E.T.'s earthly hiding grounds in E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial was saved from immolation in the treacherous Station Fire. The owner of the Tujunga Canyon residence best known for its steep street and eventual quarantine cocoon said the scorched hill behind the house "looks like the surface of the moon," but that the structure itself incurred no damage in the wildfire, which has burned over 127,000 acres and claimed 62 homes to date. [AP]
· Jon Favreau is the latest director in talks to take over Cowboys and Aliens, DreamWorks and Universal's adaptation of the 2006 graphic novel. Robert Downey Jr. was previously attached to star, and the concept is pretty much what it sounds like: Cowboys fight Native Americans, and both fight aliens after a spaceship crashes in the Arizona desert in the 19th century. The 'Works acquired the rights based a single preview panel more than a decade ago, a quainter era when Steve Oedekerk was the first attached director. Oh, the '90s. [Variety]
The Three Musketeers reach their logical 3D conclusion, Stephen Frears finds his own comics inspiration, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
· Wondering what Kid of late '80s hip-hop crossover act Kid 'N Play has been up to since his House Party movie days? He's gittin' you two double-breasted rayon suits for da price of one! [via Best Week Ever]
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Inspired, perhaps, by Mark-Paul Gosselaar's late-night resurrection of Saved By The Bell's Zack Morris, actress Soleil Moon Frye dressed up as Punky Brewster and shouted at Demi Moore for five minutes in a web video (after the jump) in order to acquire a million Twitter followers. Meanwhile, somewhere, Vicki from Small Wonder whispered at a Sav-On pharmacist for ten seconds and got nothing in return but some tropical-fruit-flavored Rolaids. Is this fair?
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· The Playlist's found a still of the upcoming Don Roos film Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, which stars Natalie Portman as an "other woman" who wins her lover away from his wife (Lisa Kudrow), but then must deal with his stubborn young son.
· The Office has cast Pam's mom, and she's actress Linda Purl (who romanced Fonzie in the waning seasons of Happy Days).
· When Robert Pattinson was grazed by a speeding taxi, we titled our concerned post "Near-Death Cab for Cutie." Now, the first single from the New Moon soundtrack has been announced, and it's by Death Cab for Cutie. Coincidence? (Yes.)
· Congratulations to David Boreanaz and his wife Jamie Bergman, who welcomed the birth of their new daughter Bardot Vita yesterday.
· Courtney Cox Arquette talks to People about cougars, which is worth a read just for the barely literate (yet lusty) comments posted underneath: "As a pretty cougar I can tell you that men do not want us, lol. I am always told how great I look 'for my age' and they look, they drool,they call me MILF, but they do not DO...all men want younger. All."
In a stunning development reminding us of that one time NBC renewed The Cosby Show, AMC announced today that it has picked up its ugly duckling of a series Mad Men for a fourth season. This, after consecutive Golden Globes and last year's Emmy for Best TV Drama, and a ratings-record for this year's premiere. And sure, a protracted contract squabble with show creator Matthew Weiner prior to Season 3, but that was nothing, really. Official comment after the jump.
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Filming has officially begun on the Sex and the City sequel, an endeavor that will put hundreds of NYC-based paparazzi (and Kim Cattrall) in business. Producers have been impressively cagey about revealing any casting announcements or plot details, though Us claims that a Dubai-set subplot had to be scrapped. What are they going to do with that Marchesa hijab now? [Us]
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