Yes, this link is going to send you to playboy.com, but it's OK. There are no breasts, and more importantly, there is no John Mayer. Instead, you'll find an article called "The Man in the Bomb Suit," Mark Boal's original piece for Playboy which spurred, to some extent, his screenplay for The Hurt Locker. Read it, and evaluate Jeffrey Sarver's charges for yourself. [Playboy]
The joy of cruising the movie margins is that one thing leads to another. So, a few years back, after I'd suffered through the 1952 Poverty Row comedy Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla for my bad-movie book, I couldn't help but get Googling to find out what happened to its leads, Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo, whose comic act in the movie aped Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis to the very limits of copyright infringement. Turned out that Sammy did not much moviewise after that (he died last year), but Duke burned bright in the last years of his life. Mitchell's first film as writer-director was 1974's Massacre Mafia Style, aka The Executioner. While it didn't make him a household name or set the box office aflame, in 1975 Mitchell set about making a second flick, then called Kiss The Ring, later given the awesome title of Gone With The Pope. One viewing of the trailer on YouTube (embedded after the jump) had my jaw on the floor.
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Breaking! James Cameron would be totally fine with Sacha Baron Cohen dressing up like a pregnant N'avi at the Oscars and angrily accusing him of knocking "her" up! Because, like, ROFL! "If they want to poke fun at Avatar Sunday, that's OK by me," Cameron told a party reporter Wednesday. "The Oscars are a celebration of movies... even the gaffes and out-of-bounds stuff are all part of the fun." How else would Cameron react after the fact? "I'll be damned if some blue dude in drag is gonna pull some Dada-gibberish prank on me in front of a worldwide TV audience, get the eff outta here"? Anyway, as of this writing there will still be no Sachatar. Sorry. [E! via PopEater]
We're at T-minus 96 hours and counting until the 82nd Academy Awards blitz us with glamour, drama and all the cut-off acceptance speeches you can bear. Who's excited? Woot! But do you know what would make the preening spectacle all the more watchable (at least if you're in New York City)? If you were to attend Movieline's Oscar Viewing Party at 92YTribeca. And now, because all this cascading glory is wasted on Mo'Nique, we've even got things you can win. And you won't even have to stand around backstage waiting to get them engraved!
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Sure, conventional Oscar pools are fine ways to impress your friends and make a few bucks on the side. But when it comes to leveling the playing field for even the least film-savvy attendees at your soiree, there's only one pool that does the trick: Movieline's "In Memoriam" Montage Pool.
The Hurt Locker broadsides kept coming Tuesday, as the man with whom writer-producer Mark Boal was once embedded as a journalist in Iraq has filed a lawsuit claiming Locker was based on his life and work. The charges were first revealed in a press release sent out by lawyers for Master Sgt. Jeffrey S. Sarver, the bomb-defusion expert whom Boal profiled for Playboy in 2005. So wait a second: After alll that crap saying The Hurt Locker was inaccurate and disrespectful, another veteran steps forward on the last day of Oscar voting to say it was so close to life it ripped off his identity? What the hell is going on here?
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Word emerged yesterday that Sacha Baron Cohen would no longer present an Oscar at Sunday's Academy Awards. Reasons were offered and rationalizations were made, all having to do with Baron Cohen's rumored Avatar sketch and just how little tolerance James Cameron might actually have for self-deprecation. Fine. But here's another, even likelier theory to consider: The bit wasn't funny.
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You can say this for Mo'nique's reluctance to do press this awards season: It's made her upcoming Oscar night interview with Barbara Walters kind of interesting. Not only does she dish on her unshaven gams, but she also discusses her open marriage with husband Sidney Hicks: "Let me say this: I have not had sex outside my marriage with Sidney. Could Sid have sex outside of his marriage with me? Yes. That's not a deal-breaker. That's not something that would make us say, 'Pack your things and let's end the marriage.'" Former adultress Barbara Walters was scandalized, asking how often Mo' would allow that. "What if it's 20 times?" the actress responded. "So what? We've been best friends for over 25 years, and we truly know who we are." [NYDN]
From smear-mailing to blackballing to suspiciously timed LAT investigative pieces to that ugly incident in which The Blind Side's campaign headquarters were pelted with dozens of prune hamentashen launched from the window of an unmarked white van, 2010's Oscar season has been by all accounts one of the ugliest in recent history. And yet these kind of tactics are certainly nothing new, as Matt Damon reminded The Carpetbagger at The Green Zone's New York premiere:
"My first experience with that was 'Good Will Hunting,'" Mr. Damon said. "The week of the voting there was a story that came out in Variety that [Silence of the Lambs writer] Ted Tally had written 'Good Will Hunting." [...]
Nicolas Chartier will not be made an example of! Despite being disinvited and banned from Sunday's Oscars ceremony, the aggressive-campaigning Hurt Locker producer will be the guest of honor at a party thrown by a WME boss, his wife, and producer Lynette Howell (whose Blue Valentine just sold to Harvey Weinstein at Sundance. Awkward!). Guests can expect a red carpet, French cuisine, about 100 fellow partygoers and, of course, an impassioned, hastily written, Avatar-bashing invitation via e-mail. [Deadline]
Hurt Locker co-producer and ill-advised e-mail campaigner Nicolas Chartier was banned this afternoon from attending the 82nd Academy Awards. His revoked invitation was the result of a note sent to friends and peers in the Academy urging them to vote for his tiny indie Locker and avoid the "$500M film" better known as Avatar. If the Academy wanted to make an example, mission accomplished; a few of its official comments follow the jump.
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If it's Oscar spoilers you want, the internet abounds -- but why rely on rumor and hearsay, when you can go directly to the Psychic Source for your 2010 Academy Awards predictions? An e-mail from the friendly, telepathic tarot readers at "the nation's most respected psychic service" arrived in the Movieline inbox today, and its longshot picks raised more than a few eyebrows around HQ. Among them: Morgan Freeman for Best Actor, Woody Harrelson for Best Supporting Actor, and Harvey Weinstein's best Purim-hijacking efforts would be richly rewarded, as Inglourious Basterds was pegged to take the top trophy. We were intrigued, and immediately arranged for a consultation with Maxine, their resident Oscars expert. Come now as we gaze into her crystal ball and the near, Shankman-colored future comes into focus.
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Loath as we are around here to give away free advertising, the last lunge of Inglourious Basterds' sprint to the Oscar-race finish line is something that both awards-season campaigners and observers will be studying for a while. Sure, the suspicious Hurt Locker takedowns and the rabbi-recruitment drives are one thing, maybe even kind of standard in the historical scheme of things. But this new, crunch-time banner ad wields its own scintillating magic -- the kind of magic that springs one to attention, tilts your head in curiosity and coaxes that most profound purr of reactions: "Say whaaaa?"
While we're facing a dreadfully slow news day ahead, don't worry: We've got comedy! Thank ABC for the laffs this morning, with the network threatening to pull the network's plug on more than 3 million Cablevision subscribers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Which isn't so funny in itself, except that after two years of haggling over carriage fees and extending its Cablevision deal on month-by-month terms, ABC has set its new contract deadline for March 7 -- you know, Oscar night?
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Even though the Oscars are taking steps to be younger and hipper this year, there's only so far they can go in making things contemporary. To that end, producers have decided on many show elements that would have been popular not this year, but in 2006; how else to explain the puzzling selection of former Good Charlotte frontman Joel Madden as "house deejay" at the show (!!!) or the Oscar.com contest to select a dress for the on-stage award escorts that's reminiscent of Project Runway?
Still, since all the acting categories at the Oscars are locked up and voting in the escort designer challenge ends today, we thought we'd try our hand at a little outfit prognostication. Meet the contenders!
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