· Megan Fox, speaking to British GQ: "I can't tell you how much bulls**t I've been through because I will openly say that I smoke weed. People look at it like it's this crazy, hippy, f**ked-up thing to do. And it's not. I hope they legalize it. And when they do, I'll be the first person in line to buy my pack of joints." [GQ UK]
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As I was passed yesterday by a bus with a wraparound advertisement for Showtime's Nurse Jackie, I was struck by two things...
1) How cleverly the ad managed to do all it needed to: it sold its star (Edie Falco) front and center, communicated the premise of the show clearly, and put forth a memorable tagline ("Life is full of little pricks") conceived with a healthy jolt of cable innuendo.
2) How few summer movie posters this year have been half as clever.
So which summer one-sheets succeeded, and which should have been sent back to marketing? Let's take a look.
It's not quite Fox vs. Warners, but it's kind of amusing nevertheless to see a couple of entertainment industry warriors fight it out over the rights to the Jack Black video game Brutal Legend. But this one's apparently worth it: A nation of stoners awaits Black's digital rendition as a heavy-metal roadie in a mythical land, if only Activision and their former partners can work out a deal by fall. The amateur lawyer in me thinks it's likely, but the trash-talking is already getting thick.
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· Zac Efron is supposedly neck-and-neck with Jake Gyllenhaal for the bigscreen adaptation of Broadway hit Rock of Ages, because if there's anything we've learned from Efron ditching Footloose , it's that he exclusively wants to star in musicals.
· The Wrap sent out a Big Story moments ago: "Kal Penn's D.C. Gig on Hold." Then, they immediately changed the URL, rendering their media blast about as useless as the article (which gets a single quote and then stretches for time as though its life depended on it).
· Aww, Britney Spears has passed down her indifferent dance moves to her children.
· The circle is now complete: much like fellow runner-up Adam Lambert, Susan Boyle is now embroiled in a calling conspiracy that may have cost her votes.
· Color pictures of Hitler! Like magic, the History Channel now has an entire year of programming.
In a seismic power shift that sees a talk show she-deity relinquishing her throne to an orphan-farming fertility goddess, Angelina Jolie has overtaken Oprah Winfrey in Forbes annual Celebrity 100 list. While Winfrey's Gross Harpo Product hovered somewhere in the vicinity of $275 million, several mitigating factors put Jolie over the top (eg. producing messianic twins; continuing to keep Brad Pitt around as her indentured Six-Child Turtle Bus stroller-pilot and diaper-mule).
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David Carradine was found dead in Thailand today, hanged in a Bangkok hotel room with the cord used to operate the room's curtains. He had been in the city since Tuesday to shoot a film, according to Thai newspaper The Nation. He was 72. Their report said he had missed a cast and crew meal Wednesday, and that a chambermaid discovered him at 10 a.m. the next morning.
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In a world of male-dominated feature film comedies, where dudeness and its gnarly idiosyncrasies tend to reign supreme, where do all the funny women go? This week at least two of them will unite onscreen in the underwhelming My Life In Ruins. Nia Vardalos and Rachel Dratch share a good, if unfortunate, amount of screen time in the season's preeminent ethnic mixer about an unhappy tour guide (Vardalos) and the group of stereotyped tourists (including Dratch) who tag along on her romantic journey to self-discovery. More important than its predictable plot, however, is Ruins's sidelong tale of comediennes faced with scant opportunity, capitulating to industry expectations for the sake of their careers.
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· James Cameron has closed a deal with CAA, his first with any agency in 15 years. The Death Star was already packaging his next film as producer, Sanctum; Cameron's next directing project has yet to be determined. Negotiations were said to be loud, sloppily written and about 30 minutes too long, but they also broke new ground in terms of budget and mind-blowing 3-D animation. [Variety]
But WME won't be outdone! Nor will Will Ferrell, nor... Jean-Luc Godard? They're all after the jump.
· Hey -- it's everyone's favorite Hawaiian-shirt-wearing, Millennium Ferrari-driving intergalactic investigator: Han Solo, P.I.!
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In the pantheon of Josh Brolin looks, where does the scarred visage of his upcoming Jonah Hex character rate? (Besides "not Happy Meal-friendly.") A full look and evaluation, after the jump.
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Like a single droplet of spilled blood turning a roomful of YAVvies (young, affluent vampires) into a pack of hungry predators, so too has the debut of the New Moon trailer ignited a rabid fan feeding-frenzy. No frame has gone unanalyzed, no Taylor Lautner-package unscrutinized.
· In this hilarious interview, closet werenerd Lautner cheesily beats the drum for the sequel. (Why do we get a feeling this dude's gonna be doing the Twilight convention and cruise circuit in 20 years?) Things grow more awkward from there, when Kristen Stewart struggles to find the words to express how proud she is of Taylor for hitting the gym so hard. Cringe. (But the good kind of cringe.) [via ONTD ]
Maybe it was short attention span, maybe it was just traumatic repressed memory. Whatever happened, I can't believe I omitted one of My Life in Ruins's worst transgressions from consideration in today's review. The Advocate didn't forget, though -- and even cornered the film's beleaguered co-star Rachel Dratch in an attempt to get to the bottom of it. Spoilers follow!
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If there's one movie catchphrase I've tried (with limited success) to make popular, it would have to be Samuel L. Jackson's weird line reading of "Hold on to your butts" from Jurassic Park. Now, though, I've discovered the perfect time to break his warning out from the mothballs: Eminem has some completely shocking news about Sacha Baron Cohen's ass from the MTV Movie Awards. So, hold on to your butts! See: thematically appropriate, and it gets you prepared for this startling revelation from RapRadar:
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It felt like it took forever, but Sacha Baron Cohen and NBC Universal finally have their first lawsuit to contend with from the making of Bruno. A Palmdale, Calif., charity director filed a complaint today arguing that Cohen didn't quite live up to his end of the "celebrity" bargain when he arrived in character to call a bingo game. But that was just the first indignity.
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Though it may seem unfair to kick a sequel when it's down, James Cameron couldn't help but toss a little dust on the underperforming, unliked Terminator Salvation this past weekend. The director talked to a sold-out audience at the Aero in Santa Monica in between 70mm prints of Aliens and The Abyss, and when an audience member asked him what it was like to see a franchise he originated continue with other directors, Cameron knew exactly what the man was getting at.
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