Hugh Jackman's effortless ability to segue between hairy-chested machismo and honey-voiced vibrato has fed rumors for years that our Wolverine's gay subtext might not be so buried. A game Jackman nicely addresses the speculation in an interview with Parade, saying "I'd be happy to go and deny it, because I'm not [gay]. But by denying it, I'm saying there is something shameful about it, and there isn't anything shameful." Jackman clearly has no problem with that perception, as he goes on to prove with his impeccably-referenced description of his wife, Deborah:
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In The Soloist, Jamie Foxx convincingly transforms himself into a homeless musical prodigy suffering from schizophrenic dementia. But was it a transformation? He's made little secret on his recent press rounds that he suffered from a childhood fear of going crazy, further exacerbated by a mysterious and scarring college incident. (We suspect he may have been dosed by another student, and spent the next 12 hours wandering around campus wondering why everyone had a laughing Satan face.)
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· Rooney Mara has been cast as Nancy in the Jackie Earle Haley-toplined redo of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Today is just a Mara casting bonanza!
· In other remake casting news, James Marsden will don Dustin Hoffman's broken spectacles for Rod Lurie's Peckinpah reimagining Straw Dogs, making him the the most dashing, cheekboney wimp the film world has ever seen. Or maybe not, as Lurie has transformed the lead character from a passive professor into a successful Hollywood screenwriter. Seems a little bit on the nose, Y/N?
· Donald Trump is proud of you, Miss California. Proud of all the press your bigoted, ineloquent heart has given his pageant.
· Call off the cryptograph-sniffing hounds. That special, code-filled issue of Wired that was guest-edited by J.J. Abrams has been cracked.
· Lindsay Lohan dropped by Ellen to promote her latest project, Breaking Up With Samantha Ronson. Now that she's single again, Lohan plans to spend her spare time becoming insurable again working on her career.
Beginning this Monday, I, Mia Farrow, star of The Omen (the 2006 remake, not the original) and Be Kind Rewind, will embark upon a hunger strike to raise solidarity for the hunger-ravaged citizens of Darfur. My doctors have warned me against this, saying that a 64-year-old woman probably couldn't subsist on only water for 21 days, but I have told them there is no way to talk me out of it.
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In today's Hollywood Ink ... Twilight 3 seals the deal ... Evan Rachel Wood to sucky Sookie ... Paul Giamatti tackles Mordecai Richler ...
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Organizers at the Cannes Film Festival today announced their 2009 line-up -- heavy on international flavor, light on the Stateside offerings, and virtually all predicted in previous ruminations about the 62nd annual event.
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Happy Earth Day, everyone! Actually, to be totally honest, I kind of forgot about it until twenty minutes ago, when I had the misfortune of stumbling upon a Huffington Post editorial written by Shrek. Wait, what? Yes. Come enjoy the dumb things this fictional character had to say about a real holiday, all the while touting his Broadway show in kind of an ethically iffy way!
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It's been a while since we checked in on viral video superstar Carrie Prejean, whose unkempt hair and dowdy dresses have transfixed a global...oh wait, that's the other one. Prejean is the controversial Miss California who took what should have been an amusing thing (standing up to Perez Hilton) and had to muddy it up with anti-gay whatnottery! Now, though, beloved Baywatch Nights alumna Angie Harmon has come to Prejean's rescue, and she is ready to throw a life preserver (at night) down that deep, deep hole that Prejean has dug:
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· Here's a first look at the Spider-Man-reminiscent poster for the upcoming fifth season of Weeds, in which our heroine reaches her munchies nadir and starts chomping on juicy insect guts.
· Indian authorities say they've found no evidence that disgraced Slumdad Rafiq Qureshi intended to sell his daughter, Slumdog Millionaire star Rubina Ali. Lesson learned: sometimes, being polite actually does work in Hollywood.
· We can only imagine the audible gulp made by Mike Tyson's publicist when the documentary star was asked for his opinions on Chris Brown.
· If you want to know exactly how Lisa Rinna has oral sex with Harry Hamlin (and we do mean exactly), then by all means, click on the following link. We'll just be curled up in a ball, swearing off intercourse forever.
· Susan Boyle's eyebrows have been plucked! The ground is falling out from under us, people! CAN SHE EVEN STILL SING?!?
As we wait patiently for the Movieline vault to get up and running, we'll dip occasionally into our archives to highlight notable news items, columns, and interviews from the days when stirrup pants and yarn sweater tunics ruled the Earth.
And what better way to kick off this feature than with this perfectly preserved time capsule from the November 1989 issue, featuring Daryl Hannah on its cover. In it, contributor Ben Kallen weighs in on that evergreen Hollywood obsession, drying out:
The Sobriety Game
by Ben Kallen
Do you drink? Do drugs? Sleep with strangers? That's bad! Did you used to drink, do drugs and sleep with strangers? That's good! Welcome to Sobriety, a Hollywood game in which the most repentant former indulger wins.
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Today's hyped-up New York Observer story about the devolution of Variety's influence was notable for exactly two things: a ridiculous narrative framing device about Ashton Kutcher's million-man Twitter (which all news outlets are apparently forced to acknowledge) and a glorious, printed slap fight between some of Hollywood's top bloggers. This is the best part of reading online film columnists: their grudges! Let's review some of the most notable ones, including some the Observer never even touched upon:
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Adam Bhala Lough's Lil Wayne documentary The Carter debuted at this year's Sundance, where it proved to be an entertaining and mostly uncritical detailing of the New Orleans rap virtuoso's tipping-point. (That would be the release of Tha Carter III, current sales: 3 million and counting.) Somewhere between then and now, Weezy decided he wasn't entirely happy with the film's depiction of his sizzurp-sipping lifestyle, and sued to prevent Quincy Jones' QD3 Entertainment from releasing it.
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Happy Earth Day! Movieline HQ's efforts to go green largely failed this morning after our all-natural wheatgrass servers refused to boot up, but Plan B is almost as good for the planet. Take this high-quality, 100% recycled controversy about DisneyEarth's debut film Earth, which, according to Newsweek, features scenes of imminent danger, death and catastrophe too intense to warrant a G rating. Nonsense, writes Jeffrey Wells, who has vividly earthy reasons of his own to toughen the little buggers up:
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The first official photo to emerge from the set of The Twilight Saga: New Moon gives us a simmering glimpse at the four unknown actors who'll join 17-year-old Taylor Lautner to become the wolf pack -- a roving band of dreamy-eyed, Axe-body-spray-abusing lycanthropes who protect Bella from revenge-seeking vampiresses, while teaching her valuable lessons about the art of extreme manscaping.
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We all know Sharon Waxman's weakness for covering top-secret Hollywood powwows, especially the ones that didn't necessarily happen. But this one seems a little more realistic: Waxman reported late Tuesday that the board at William Morris convened for high-level discussions about its increasingly likely merger with Endeavor.
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