Believe it or not, Joel Schumacher movies don't just get slapped together in a couple weeks on the Warner's lot. (At least not any more.) There's evidently a process there, and you can see for yourself in dailies making the rounds as a "leak" from his new film Creek (nee Town Creek. Indeed, the scenes' lack of sound editing, narrative coherence or virtually any other post-production application implies some skulduggery, but there's precedent for us to be wary. Judge for yourself after the jump.
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Now that Oksana Pochepa has come forward to introduce herself to the British tabloids as Mel Gibson's "other woman" a sham-concocting opportunist (with the sliiiightly wishful-thinking money quote, "I hope that our union will be real and strong and long-lasting"), only one question remains.
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Looking back through the 1989 debut issue of Movieline, it's striking to read critic and biographer David Thomson's take on "The Culture of Reincarnation" -- a contemplation of Hollywood's obsession with remakes, revivals, sequels and the like. Yet while Thomson and I share a healthy skepticism about what's essentially the End of Ideas, I doubt his prescience extended to the vast, unkillable franchise epidemic afflicting moviegoers today. As such, an updating is in order. And you're going to help.
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Many have called Sacha Baron Cohen brave for some of the stunts he pulled in his upcoming gaystravaganza Bruno (including a same-sex kiss at a cage match that riled the audience of rednecks into a state of Coors-throwing fury), but to us, the gutsiest set piece Cohen engineered was roping failed presidential candidate Ron Paul into a bedroom for an uncomfortable, aborted seduction. Now, Paul is revealing all about the brief encounter that will have Cohen dogged by red-faced Paul supporters for the rest of his days.
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In today's Hollywood Ink ... Jenkins visits Julia ... Blagojevich outshames himself ... a Trekker is dead ...
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Two days after going nuclear with his (among other things), Jamie Foxx offered his apology during an appearance on The Tonight Show. Jay Leno broached the subject with care, lest Foxx reactively fall back on a burst of more race-bait rhetoric, but the Oscar-winning actor and comic expressed quick, unequivocal regret. And then he blamed the real culprit: the Internet.
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Conventional industry wisdom doesn't exactly point to 2009 as the ideal year to open a new distribution shop. There are exceptions, I guess -- maybe you've somehow wrested the James Bond franchise away from Sony or enlisted Will Smith to work for free. Or, more realistically, you're Bob Berney, the bona-fide genius who's reportedly about to reenter the indie mix. And it's about time.
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· This is a promo for Johnny Depp's upcoming guest-voice appearance on SpongeBob Squarepants that, we're amazed to say, actually ran on Nickelodeon. It will probably fly over your kids' heads, but they really couldn't make it any more obvious how much SpongeBob and friends want to wax Captain Jack's longboard.
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Movieline was not to launch for another 48 hours, but it made a strong impression as the final table at the 2009 edition of the Hollywood Assistant Beer Pong Tournament. With the hopes of teammates from studios, agencies and production companies rising and falling like the fate of a new spec script on the tracking boards, El Guapo Cantina was alive with the tapping of ping pong balls and the odor of spilled beer and any number of Axe products. If you missed the action or would like to piece together your memories of the magical night, we have all the sights and sounds you desire.
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As much as it was a pleasure to introduce this site yesterday, it came as even more of a thrill to be the first! Site! Anywhere! to point out Jamie Foxx's charming Easter rant against poor, defenseless Miley Cyrus. Now that the story (and the corresponding soundtrack from Foxx's radio show) are slathered from Hell to Creation, the last 24 hours have provoked a period of intense reflection. But not too much reflection.
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The film industry reels today from the news that area location shoots have plunged -- a lot -- since 2007. The Los Angeles Times offers humbling data showing an record-low number of permitted production days in 2008, noting also the number of features shot on location has dropped more than 55% since this time last year. (Commercial shoots fared slightly better, plummeting only by a third.) Between long wheezes of grief, the city's legions of actors, technicians, and honeywagon drivers are wondering what happened to their paychecks -- and who to blame. Let's point some fingers!
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Last summer, Shia LaBeouf found himself involved in a near-fatal collision at the busy L.A. intersection of LaBrea and Fountain; an oncoming vehicle ran a red light, sending his Ford F-150 rolling onto its side. While he walked away from the accident, it wasn't a completely happy ending: LaBeouf refused a breathalyzer at the scene of the crime, leading to a DUI charge, and his hand -- which it turns out was hanging outside the truck's window -- was severely injured after being crushed into the pavement. Surgeons operated that night for four hours, saving his digits from amputation and a summer tentpole from a stumpy lead. But besides presenting Jay Leno with his molted pinkie nail as a trophy, LaBeouf had yet to open up about the ordeal, until now.
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It took a little over six years and two trials for justice to be served for the murder of Lana Clarkson. By now, the story is Hollywood legend: Clarkson was a struggling actress ("Not a B-actress. An actress" one friend would later testify) whose biggest success came playing the title character in Roger Corman's 1985 shlock effort Barbarian Queen, but who found herself working less and less as she progressed through her 30s. She had turned 40 just a month before making a fatal error, and taking Phil Spector up on an offer to accompany him to his Alhambra mansion after a hostessing shift at the West Hollywood House of Blues.
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In today's Hollywood Ink ... McG comes of age ... HBO dramatizes the election ... Wahlberg and Franco feed off each other ...
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Wind down your day -- every day -- with The Last Word, Movieline's regular late-afternoon news digest:
· We were extremely impressed with the Seinfeld porn's slavish attention to detail. That was until we realized that Newman's strikingly similar stand-in was actually Wayne Knight, who appears to have dropped a few notches on the showbiz totem since his Must-See TV peak. Any way you slice it, however, Elaine's losing this contest.
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