This morning on the Today Show, Matt Lauer introduced Meredith Baxter, America's beloved Family Ties matriarch, and immediately asked her to "reveal something about herself." Wait what? The camera turned to an uncomfortable Baxter who admitted that after three marriages (that resulted in five children), she has realized that she is a lesbian. The actress explained that she lives a "very out" life in Los Angeles, is happily committed to a general contractor named Nancy, and recently vacationed on a cruise with 1,200 lesbians. So what was the impetus for the sudden announcement?
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It would take five more years for Sterling Cooper's glass-ceiling-nudging star copywriter to toke away her burning curiosity, but by the late 1950s, the most recognizable woman in the world had already dove headlong into the deep waters of Reefer Falls. This home movie of Marilyn Monroe kicking back with friends, laughing, and smoking a joint has been sitting in a New Jersey attic for 50 years. Of the weed, the filmmaker who sold the footage to a collector for $275,000 said, "I got it. It was mine. It was just passed around. It was not a party. It was just a get-together. You know, come over and hang out."
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The International Animated Film Society's Annie Awards nominations are out. Here's the shortlist for Best Animated Feature:
· Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs -- Sony Pictures Animation
· Coraline -- Laika
· Fantastic Mr. Fox -- 20th Century Fox
· The Princess and the Frog -- Walt Disney Animation Studios
· The Secret of Kells -- Cartoon Saloon
· Up -- Pixar Animation Studios
Most notable here is the omission of Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo and the $879 million-earning (not a typo) Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and the inclusion of The Secret of Kells.
The what?
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In January, Lionsgate will release the vampire movie Daybreakers, and the trailer for the film is after the jump. Before you take a look, though, why not peruse the equation used to develop the movie?
New Moon
plus
The blue tint from the original Twilight
minus
Abs
(continued)
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Big Love was originally positioned to be HBO's next great drama, and though it certainly hit that high bar of quality in its second and third seasons, it hasn't quite gotten its due. Part of the problem was the epic, WGA strike-induced break that wrecked the momentum between those two seasons (Season Two premiered in 2007, but Season 3 didn't come on until this past January), while somewhere along the way, the sexier, messier True Blood usurped it in buzz. Still, it did manage an Emmy nomination for Best Drama this last fall, and the imminent Season Four might finally offer Big Love a shot at the big time. (At the very least, can it score one of its actresses an Emmy nom? Chloe Sevigny is ridiculously overdue). The arty Season Four trailer, after the jump:
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Do you know how Tennessee Williams died? He choked on an eyedrop bottle cap. True story. It was February 24, 1983, and he was staying at the Hotel Elysee. He had a habit of opening the bottle, placing the cap between his teeth, then leaning back and placing a drop in each eye. Only this time, the cap fell into the back of his throat and got stuck there, blocking him windpipe and killing him. His body was found the next morning; he was 71. I bring this up because one, it's sad and interesting, but also because we are soon to receive a rare new Williams work from beyond the grave -- and one that chillingly has the word "teardrop" is in the title.
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Slowly but surely, MTV has transformed The Real World from a house full of diverse young people to a laboratory that creates drunken meatheads for use in the Real World/Road Rules Challenge. Given that, perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised that the channel took the format to its logical extreme with next month's Jersey Shore -- a docudrama about, and I quote, "the hottest, tannest, craziest Guidos" that New Jersey has to offer -- but one group of Italian-Americans is up in arms about the show (the trailer is excerpted after the jump).
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A couple months ago, Mark Duplass told us that part of the fun of making Noah Baumbach's Greenberg was that he got to be "a dick" to Ben Stiller -- something that's usually reserved onscreen for Robert De Niro or a talking statue. Now that the trailer for Greenberg has debuted we can see why Stiller's character might incur some wrath: He's jobless, ornery, and (worst of all) a fastidious letter-writer! Fortunately, he has pretty good hair, so he might get laid regardless.
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Oprah Winfrey, the biggest personality on network television, made her anticipated announcement just minutes ago that she will forfeit her daytime programming choke hold on September 9, 2011. In front of a live audience, Winfrey delivered the news and explained her departure, curiously leaving out any mention of her new Oprah Winfrey Network venture.
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Once upon a time, Robert Pattinson was God, nervously running his hands through his hair, then flicking that filmy follicular residue into a vast galactic expanse to create suns, solar systems, and human life itself. Then, our new deity seemed to vanish, handing over his media appeal, and screen time to the underage boy-king Taylor Lautner. With the trailer for Remember Me released today, will our absentee Lord return to us once again?
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For the legion of Twilight fans who had never seen their beloved Bella rocking back and forth uncomfortably during a promotional appearance, yesterday's Today Show-Regis and Kelly double header was a brutal reality check. Upon seeing this Bella doppelgänger named Kristen Stewart squirm, tap her feet and mumble responses while hunched over, Twi-fans stormed Twitter to revolt against this ungrateful, awkward, so-called "actress." Who cares that she was being tag teamed by four overly-cheery correspondents while sick and tired from her 72-hour ride on the talk-show bull? Who cares if she is in this "for the acting?" Uncross your arms and moonwalk for us, K-Stew.
Meanwhile, can you count each brazen offense after the jump?
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A fantasy film like Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief has a tricky marketing task ahead of it, mostly because there are so many ways it could go. Should it play up the fact that it was made by Chris Columbus and aim for the Harry Potter audience, as its first trailer did? Should it take a page from Twilight and turn teen lead Logan Lerman into the next Rob Pattinson? Or should it intently study The Vampire's Assistant: Cirque du Freak for a case study on what not to do?
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As trailers go, The Last Song's new one has a few disadvantages right from the get-go. For starters, as the second Nicholas Sparks adaptation planned for release in 2010, Song is automatically guaranteed to shrink in the long, hulking shadow of the Channing-tacular Dear John. Second, it opens with expository narration that could have been lifted from an ESL divorce class. Third, there's no Touchstone logo at the top -- the studio equivalent of wearing Groucho glasses and a mustache to its daughter's coming-out party. Fourth, it turns out to be Miley Cyrus's coming-out party. Need I go on? All right, if you say so.
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During yesterday's Oprah Winfrey Show, Sarah Palin mistakenly called Levi Johnston's upcoming Playgirl spread "porn," a claim that Oprah immediately corrected for her television audience. There was a slight smirk and glint in the host's eye as she said the four-letter word; a reaction that hinted that today's "Porn and Erotica"-themed episode might be a carousing raunch-fest --Oprah Gone Naughty. And when today's show opened with a warning that the following material might not be appropriate for children (note: there was no such warning before the show about the woman whose face was chewed off by a chimp), it seemed that Oprah might finally be finding her freak.
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When Movieline dropped by the Museum of Modern Art a while back for a preview of the Tim Burton exhibition opening there this weekend, the director offered up a bounty of fun insights about everything from Mars Attacks! to his recently unearthed Hansel and Gretel. Also among them was Burton's recollection of his youth in sunny Burbank, where he grew up cultivating his artistic side in a suburban hell he couldn't wait to escape. "Have you ever seen Dante's Inferno?" he rhetorically asked the MoMA gathering; Burton elaborates in a video after jump.
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