The trailer to the upcoming Michael Jackson concert film This is It premiered last night during the MTV Video Music Awards, and frankly, it's a little hard to know how to feel about the clip without Madonna first telling us her own reactions. Still, there's two-and-a-half minutes of footage here of something that had been unglimpsed and speculated about for weeks. What do we see?
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It's one of the weirdest moments in a movie full of them: Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried's lingering, very close-up lesbian kiss in Jennifer's Body. Debate its merits or lack thereof all you want (I think it makes sense), but it's there for all time. And to hear the co-stars tell it at today's Toronto Film Festival press conference for the film, that's fine by them. In video after the jump, Fox and Seyfried share their thoughts on how and why they found their inner lesbians for Jennifer's sake.
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Yesterday, we reported that Oprah Winfrey was already calling her interview with Whitney Houston "one of the most powerful [Oprah's] ever done." To prove it, Winfrey released a clip from the two-day season premiere interview today, in which a surprisingly noncombative Houston describes the time her mother, singer Cissy Houston, arrived at her house with a court order and threatened her then-husband, Bobby Brown.
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Ed Westwick, the man behind Chuck Bass' happenin' brood on Gossip Girl, appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last tonight to prove that he and his role are two separate identities. The biggest aid in his thesis was a game staged by Fallon, where the actor spun a wheel of scenarios and exhibited how Chuck Bass would react to each selection. I didn't see Ridiculous Photo Shoot on the wheel, but that could be an actual storyline. Clip after the jump.
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As we learned from Kathy Griffin this week, there is no family secret too dark and no eating disorder too sacred to exploit in the name of selling a few extra copies of your memoir. Still, now that she's out of her own dirty secrets to peddle shamelessly, Griffin's been forced to find herself a Kate Gosselin wig, eight Asian children, and George Takei to create an attention-drumming Jon & Kate Plus 8 parody called Kate is Enough: The Kate Gosselin Story.
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Following Fox's announcement last night that Ellen DeGeneres would join American Idol as a fourth judge, Paula Abdul's Twitter account was strangely inactive. Abdul did rely on the networking site to deliver her farewell American Idol bombshell, so wouldn't the supportive-to-a-fault woozette click out a quick "Best Wishes Ellen!" or "All you can do is the best you can do!" before returning to her aerobic dance class? No, but she did find time to tweet a lone, self-promotional message, relieving thousands of Paula-fans from their 24-hour suicide watch.
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Shape-shifting! Dodgy Southern accents! Swampy mysticism! For a moment there, while watching the new trailer for Disney's The Princess and the Frog, you might be forgiven for thinking that Disney had been feasting from the same magic gumbo that HBO uses to fuel True Blood. Only this time, instead of leavening the proceedings with occasional glimpses of Alexander Skargard and Anna Paquin's breasts, Disney's offering fart humor and some slightly off-putting racial whatnot.
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Telluride exports Paranormal Activity and The Red Riding Trilogy certainly have their devoted partisans, but it seems like everyone was a fan of Jason Reitman's George Clooney dramedy Up in the Air. As we wait to see whether the film's Toronto debut will throw at it any turbulence (otherwise, a smooth landing in Oscarville seems assured), Slashfilm's got its first teaser trailer, embedded after the jump.
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You know a series is hot when it is parodied for Jewish, animated and children's demographics. And with yesterday's addition to the Don Draper imitation market, we decided to sort out these copycats once and for all, for your own ranking pleasure.
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OK, so, help me out on this one. When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore. But when a gay man strips down to his underwear and crashes George Clooney's press conference at the Venice Film Festival to declare his undying love for the actor, that's...what, exactly?
The 2009 Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon brought in $5 million less than 2008's festivities, but one priceless artifact was salvaged: the talent of Charo. With her cover performance of Rihanna's "Don't Stop the Music," Charo spent Labor Day proving the following: 1) She is alive; 2) Her performance style still combines the agility of Shakira with the delirium of Count Chocula; and 3) She can terrify Jerry Lewis in a way not seen since Sandra Bernhard's dinner scene in The King of Comedy. Clip after the jump.
Well, this is interesting: In preparation for the first volume of Brett Ratner's Shooter Series -- a new DVD collection gathering music videos, short films, commercials and other early-career odds and ends of directors including himself, the Hughes Brothers, F. Gary Gray and others -- the filmmaker unearthed some '90s era footage of Mickey Rourke explaining his transition from Hollywood to the boxing ring. The resulting short doc, Meet Mickey Rourke, was edited and produced by none other than nonfiction pioneer Albert Maysles; it hits shelves a week from today along with some of Ratner's other work from his pre-Hollywood days.
Movieline caught up with Ratner last week to get the scoop behind his decades-old acquaintance with Rourke and how he came to film the future Oscar-nominee's de facto farewell to Hollywood. That story -- and an excerpt from the film -- follow the jump.
For many women, the character that John Krasinski plays on The Office is their idealized man. "OMG," they type (even the seventy-year-old women type this, on account of Krasinski's dreaminess). "Can you beliiiieve what Jim did for Pam last night? When am I gonna find a guy like that, amirite?" The marketers of Krasinski's directorial debut have an interesting challenge, then: They want to woo as many Jim fans as possible, but the film Krasinski has made is positively filled with anti-Jims.
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Just how painstaking was production on The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson's stop-motion adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic about a vulpine family man facing a minor midlife crisis? Perhaps it would be easier to show, not tell, and this official featurette does just that. Narrated by Jason Schwartzman, who voices young Fox family member Ash, the mini-doc features Anderson holding court over his miniature sets with the same giddy and particular authority he displayed marching through the grounds of an English manor house in that amazing American Express ad.
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In the past two years, Levi Johnston has ascended from the Wasilla dating scene to become the most reticent crush-object in America. On one hand, he seems to enjoy the attention of being Kathy Griffin's scripted boyfriend and skyping into Watch What Happens, with seemingly no knowledge of who host Andy Cohen is (we don't really know either), and on the other hand, he always seems to be glancing sideways, looking for the nearest can of Skoal.
Johnston recently graduated the Bravo talent ranks when he was chosen as the subject of an upcoming Vanity Fair feature (on newsstands Sept. 8) -- "Me and Mrs. Palin," an assignment that required a complete makeover and photo shoot with Mark Seliger. In the video after the jump, watch as Johnston holds his breath as he is tressed, appears to check for his wallet each time a stylist comes near him and uncomfortably poses with a Sarah Palin cut out in the backseat of a limo.
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