South African actors want to stop Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson from playing Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in a new film on the ex-wife of the nation's first black president, reports said... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 7 Dec 2009 | 2:52 am
South African actors want to stop Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson (pictured in October) from playing Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in a new film on the ex-wife of the nation's first black president, reports said... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 7 Dec 2009 | 2:52 am
AP - Nearly 40 years ago, a Kenyan father was visiting his son in Hawaii and took him to his first jazz concert. The boy was Barack Obama and the performer was jazz great Dave Brubeck.
AP - Nearly 40 years ago, a Kenyan father was visiting his son in Hawaii and took him to his first jazz concert. The boy was Barack Obama and the performer was jazz great Dave Brubeck.
Nearly 40 years ago, a Kenyan father was visiting his son in Hawaii and took him to his first jazz concert. The boy was Barack Obama and the performer was jazz great Dave Brubeck. "I've... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 7 Dec 2009 | 1:06 am
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - "Monk" ended its eight-season run with a bang, becoming the most-watched hourlong series on basic cable. Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 7 Dec 2009 | 12:55 am
Reuters - There's one major difference between "Seinfeld" and its star's stand-up act. The TV show ostensibly was about nothing, but it thrived on the comedy of coincidence; onstage, Jerry Seinfeld mines the comedy of annoyance. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 7 Dec 2009 | 12:53 am
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - There's one major difference between "Seinfeld" and its star's stand-up act. The TV show ostensibly was about nothing, but it thrived on the comedy of... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 7 Dec 2009 | 12:53 am
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - New Line has picked up a pitch from Darren Lemke, the writer behind the studio's Bryan Singer-directed project "Jack the Giant Killer," that reimagines... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 7 Dec 2009 | 12:51 am
NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Fans of the television series "Boston Legal" would be well advised to head to David Mamet's new play "Race," in which James Spader is once again doing a... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 7 Dec 2009 | 12:12 am
Reuters - Fans of the television series "Boston Legal" would be well advised to head to David Mamet's new play "Race," in which James Spader is once again doing a crackerjack job of portraying a ruthless lawyer.
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Jack Black, who provided the lead voice in DreamWorks Animation's' "Kung Fu Panda," is once again heading into the land of animation. Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 7 Dec 2009 | 12:11 am
Viva Gibson: A Mexican governor spilled the beans on a new Mel Gibson film that will be shot in Veracruz, where Apocalypto was filmed, next year. According to Gov. Fidel Herrera, part of the Ignacio Allende prison will be emptied to accommodate the filming of Gibson's next project. No details about the film are known, except that Gibson will labor endlessly to make sure it's filmed in some archaic language. That guy loves his archaic languages. [THR]
Jerry Is Your Lawyer: Just days after Sendhil Ramamurthy was cast as an ambitious lawyer in NBC's pilot Rex is Not Your Lawyer, the Heroes regular has dropped out and will be replaced by Jerry O'Connell. The show is based on a lawyer (David Tennent) who loses his mind and teaches his clients to represent themselves. Ramamurthy canceled because of scheduling conflicts. Luckily, Jerry O'Connell hasn't had anywthing scheduled for years. [THR]
Black Ness Monster: No stranger to animation, Jack Black has jumped on board Jason Micallef's latest pitch, which has been picked up by Illumination Entertainment. Exact details of the story aren't known but we do know it will involve Cryptozoology, the study of creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. Black is set to produce but not voice any characters, though that could still happen. Obviously, he'd make a fantastic Yeti. [THR]
Who's Writing About J.R.?: Cynthia Cidre, the creator of the short-lived ABC drama Cane, has signed on to write TNT's remake of the biggest prime time soap opera ever, Dallas. The network is refusing to say anything about the plot. Previously, the show was to revolve around the son of J.R. and Sue Ellen and the adopted son of Bobby and Pam, but the studio is waiting to see Cidre's take. This sounds like a project James Franco should be involved in. [THR]
Picture This: David Permut, who produced Michael Cera in Youth in Revolt, is bringing the Joshua Friedlander written Pictures of You to the screen. Set in a Florida resort town, the story centers on a teenage boy who finds a camera on the beach. He develops the film and sees the girl of his dreams, the he sets out to find her. We're assuming this is set in 1998, because all cameras that use film are now either in museums or time capsules. [Variety]
NEW YORK (Billboard) - New Orleans' multi-tasking funk outfit Galactic is set to return February 9 with its sixth studio album, entitled "Ya-Ka-May." Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 6 Dec 2009 | 11:49 pm
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - TNT might know drama, but does it remember how to launch a hit show? Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 6 Dec 2009 | 11:49 pm
Obama: "Let's spend the money on jobs." Boehner: "That's dumb."
The projected long term cost of the Troubled Asset Relief Program will be cut by more than $200 billion thanks to speedy repayments by large banks and government spending on efforts to help stabilize financial markets. Back in August the Treasury department said TARP would cost $341 billion over the next ten years but a new estimate puts that number at $141 billion, meaning the government now has $200 billion to play with. The White House has expressed interest in using that money on a jobs bill. Republicans, who want to use it to pay down the deficit, think spending the money on a jobs bill is a bad idea. Or, in the words, of House Minority Leader John Boehner: "The worst idea I've ever heard."
Last night at the British Independent Film Awards, Duncan Jones, the son of David Bowie, took another step toward no longer being best known as the son of David Bowie. His movie Moon, a sci-fi thriller starring lots of Sam Rockwell, won the award for best picture. He was also awarded best debut director. Last year, Slumdog Millionaire won best picture at the BIFA. So Jones should probably start working on his Oscar speech now.
Next time you have the misfortune of entertaining out-of-towners you might want to prepare yourself for more than the usual trips to the Empire State Building and Magnolia Bakery. Apparently a mural in the Bronx dedicated to the memory of Amadou Diallo, the unarmed black man shot by police in 1999, is the city's hottest new tourist destination. "Amadou Diallo is like the Disneyland of the Bronx," a tour guide told the Daily News. [NYDN]
In a new series of public service announcements, CBS is encouraging people to give the gift of healthy lady parts. "Want to do something special for your woman this Christmas?" actor Chris Beetem asks. "Schedule her pap smear. Pap smears save lives." It's hard to argue with CBS's intentions here. Saving lives is great! But if anyone actually gives his lady friend a Pap smear for the holidays, he'll be the one in need of medical care.
After a run of almost five years, the Off Broadway production Altar Boyz will close in January. Once closed, the musical satire about a Christian boy band, will have played 2,032 performances. Like everything else, the show was done in by the bad economy. [Variety]
Tareq and Michaele Salahi may have squeaked by a Secret Service checkpoint and gotten close enough to the president to smell his hair, but they are by no means the first. In 2003 the Secret Service compiled a report of every time crazies breached its lines since 1980 and the number totaled an astounding 91. According to the Washington Post, the list includes:
officers mistakenly admitting to the White House grounds a family in a minivan, a man believed to be a delivery driver, and a woman previously known to agents after she had falsely claimed a "special relationship" with Bill Clinton.
It might be getting harder to tell them apart on paper, but we have exclusive photos of the fourth alleged "other woman" in the Tiger Woods saga just for you!
Jamie Jungers, the...
You may think we're taking a jab at the latest lady to join the Tiger Woods alleged mistress train, but seriously, it's all just a part of her gig.
E! News has learned that Jamie...
Two contestants from the British version of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! are facing charges of animal cruelty after killing, cooking and eating a rat on the show. Chef Gino D'Acampo and actor Stuart Manning were in "exile" (whatever that means) when they decided they needed some meat to add to their rice and beans. A rat became that meat and now Australia's animal rights watchdog is raging mad. The two contestants aren't expected to face jail time but they may be forced to endure an even worse punishment — watching their own show.
Yes, The Blind Side is still inexplicably sitting atop the box office, but Jason Reitman's much-hyped Up in the Air had an even more impressive weekend. Showing at only 15 theaters, it brought in an impressive $1.2 million, the third biggest opening in limited release this year (behind the Princess and the Frog, which sold some tickets for $50, and Precious). The movie will roll out to a wide release at Christmas, by which time you'll be so tired of hearing about it you'll want to see Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel instead.
Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo was hospitalized Sunday morning after his tour bus slipped on an ice patch in New York and crashed.
The 40-year-old "Beverly Hills"...
President Obama made a rare Sunday visit to Capitol Hill today to rally Democrats behind the Senate health care bill. He spoke to the Democratic caucus about how the bill is the "most significant social legislation in decades," and, according to Sen. Joe Lieberman, "cost-containment provisions ... the insurance market reforms and ... enabling 30 million more people to get insurance." One thing he didn't talk about: the public option. [NYT]
UPDATE: According to a People report, Alexa Ray Joel was "distraught over a fight with her boyfriend" when she injested too many pills.
According to her MySpace page, Joel has...
It was as inevitable as a Taylor Lautner reference: New Moon wasn't going to stay No. 1 forever; The Blind Side wasn't going to stay No. 2 forever.
Sandra Bullock's...
Depending on your perspective, Blake Lively is either best known for starring on what our siblings over at Daily Intel refer to as The Greatest Show of Our Time or for her unparalleled ability to still look classy while seemingly never wearing a bra. However, one thing that Blake Lively is not really known for is her comedic ability. That's not to say that she has none, only that with the exception of a few zingers when she co-starred alongside Justin Long in Accepted, she's never really had the opportunity to strut her stuff. Well, all that changed when she got a chance to host Saturday Night Live last night. So how did she do?
From the moment that she strode out on the stage of Studio 8H to deliver her monologue, Lively seemed committed to compensating for either her nerves or lack of chops by flaunting her considerable assets. In fact, of the seven sketches that she appeared in throughout the course of the night, there were only two, "Ladies' Bowling" and "Potato Chip," in which she didn't put either her tits or ass on display (although, in the former, she did grind her crotch mock-seductively over an air dryer at a bowling alley). Not that we're complaining, mind you, it's just that it's been a long while (maybe Lindsay Lohan's famous Harry Potter sketch?) since a guest host rely so heavily on their sexuality as a means of delivering their material. Take, for example, the following ten seconds of her performance as Virginiaca's slutty, pantles, mallrat daughter:
Okay, we're not exactly saying that was sexy, per se, but we were in a mall as recently as Friday night and didn't see a single solitary soul sans pantaloons, that's all.
That said, Lively didn't rely solely on her sexuality throughout the course of the evening. As expected, the writers of the show penned a Gossip Girl sketch that would allow Lively to shine. Only this time around, instead of setting the show on the Upper East Side, they set the show in Staten Island:
A few things about this sketch surprised us. First, in light of the sheer volume of "friggins" that the cast used, it was somewhat shocking not to see resident SNL bad girl Jenny Slate make an appearance; are we to assume that Lorne Michaels has trust issues with Slate and fears that she can't hold her tongue on live television? We see no other reason why she wouldn't be in this sketch. Second, we wonder if the people at SNL are aware that MTV is, at this very moment, developing a show based on the lives of young people in Staten Island? (Though, in the wake of Jersey Shore's success, it remains to be seen what the network will do with it.) Third, Lively's portrayal of Chandelier was actually pretty funny in this sketch (though it didn't reach the heights of Scarlett Johannson's Jersey-flavored "Chandeliers" sketch from Season 31)!
Sadly for Lively, this sketch was pretty much the highlight of her evening. Although she was competent in everything she appeared in (unlike the dreadful January Jones), she didn't manage to elevate the level of anything that she appeared in to the kinds of comedic heights that, say, Taylor Swift reached a few weeks back. In fact, when you compare her best work to the effort that Rihanna turned in in the "Shy Ronnie" digital short, one would think that Rihanna was the professional actress, not Lively:
Rihanna has caught a lot of shit over the years for being an emotionless robot when it comes to her singing (and that sentiment was not changed during either of her mostly staid performances), but in this sketch, she proved herself to be a more than capable comedic accessory (if not quite the next Anna Faris or anything).
While most of the episode rode along at a fairly average level as compared to recent seasons of SNL, there was one delightfully absurd moment to close the show. In it, Jason Sudeikis played a Colonel Sanders type with an insatiable appetite for potato chips and whose one goal in life was to become an astronaut. Only before he could "dance around the moon in a puffy suit," he had to pass an interview with a NASA agent, portrayed by Will Forte. As you might expect, things go horribly awry for Sudeikis when Forte leaves him alone in a room with a bowl of potato chips:
While we can't exactly say that this skit was a pinnacle moment for this season, there are few things that delight us more than seeing the masterful Will Forte lose his shit in front of a live audience (see: "Fart Face"). Forte's influence hasn't been as strong this season as it has in others, and more than the actual laughs that this sketch generated for us, it represented that Forte has been able to refocus his writing and performance game after spending a grueling summer working on the MacGruber movie. Welcome back, Will!
So, Gossip Girl fans, how would you rank Lively's performance this weekend? Feel free to drop any appropriate plus/minus rankings into the comments and we'll be sure that Pressler and Rovzar take note!
Front Page: Meledandri's Illumination draws in toon -- Jack Black, whose last foray into animation was the hit "Kung Fu Panda," is the centerpiece of an untitled animated film pitch that Illumination Entertainment, Chris Meledandri's Universal-based family film unit, is acquiring preemptively.
Top three: : The Blind Side: $20 million; The Twilight Saga: New Moon: $15 million ; Brothers: $9 million. And The Blind Side is playing in nearly a thousand fewer theaters than New Moon. Something very strange is going on! [Box Office Mojo]
Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo was hospitalized for rib pain this morning when his tour bus slid on ice on the New York State thruway en route from Toronto to a show in Boston. His wife and daughter were on the bus, but were uninjured. [CNN]
Mel Brooks, Robert De Niro and Bruce Springsteen partied Washington D.C.-style this weekend with President Barack Obama.
And they didn't have to party crash to do...
Skank week '09 continues: another lady, Mindy Lawton, has come forward to say she had sex with Tiger Woods. This one says stuff like: "Sometimes I looked like a rag doll after we'd made love." The whole story is pretty gross, so we're just going to assume it's not true. [News of the World]
Rudy Giuliani has taken a job helping to fight crime in Rio de Janeiro. Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes says "He's going to help us in day-to-day security and, especially, with an eye toward the [2010] World Military Games and the Olympic Games." [New York Post]
You didn't think Saturday Night Live would go easy on Tiger Woods, did you? Skewering the week's most scandalous stars is par for the course on the late-night laughfest. (Sorry, we just...
The woman purported to be Tiger Woods' fourth mistress has been identified as Las Vegas cocktail waitress and Trashygirls.com model (check back soon for exclusive pics) Jamie...
A 22-year-old Chicago woman was slapped with a rarely-invoked felony and faces up to three years in prison after a movie theater employee saw her using her camera during a screening of New Moon. She claims she was just taping her sister's birthday party and that "you can hear [her] talking the whole time." While it's hard to feel sorry for a movie talker, this is a bit excessive. [Chicago Sun-Times]
An article in the Times today focuses on Nick Thune and Mikey Day, two of the young comedians Jay Leno hired to make his show funnier. To be honest, we've never lasted more than five minutes into The Jay Leno Show, but after learning that the extremely talented Mikey Day (who was a revelation on the sadly canceled, completely misunderstood Kath and Kim) is part of the mix, maybe we'll watch it someday. And we admire the two comedians for hanging onto their cred despite working for such a, um, mainstream show.
Jay Leno's Comic Youth Brigade [NYT]
Sarah Palin was one of the guests at the annual Gridiron dinner for D.C. journalists, and while the dinner is usually a strictly off-the-record affair, this year organizers made an exception. Politico reports that the Maverick joked that being there was like being in front of a death panel, and made frequent references to her book and book tour, comparing it to the McCain/Palin campaign: "The view is so much better inside the bus than under the bus." Then she sang a parody of "The 12 Days of Christmas" about Rush Limbaugh. She's definitely getting slightly better joke writers.
The New York Times reports on the growing controversy surrounding the verdict in the Amanda Knox trial. A Senator is now getting involved:
"Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, said, “I have serious questions about the Italian justice system and whether anti-Americanism tainted this trial.” She added, “The prosecution did not present enough evidence for an impartial jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms. Knox was guilty.”
Contestants on 'I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here' are charged with animal cruelty after activists lodged a complaint about a segment in which stars cooked a rat to eat.
An album of psychedelic and folk-tinged pop songs jointly created by the celebrity French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg (pictured in February) and the cult US musician Beck is set to go on sale in France... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 6 Dec 2009 | 4:23 am
People arrive to find the Orsay museum in Paris closed on December 2. The Orsay Impressionist art museum has reopened after a strike shut it down for four days, staff said, but more disruption at major... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 6 Dec 2009 | 3:38 am
It might be getting harder to tell them apart on paper, but we have exclusive photos of the fourth alleged "other woman" in the Tiger Woods saga just for you!
Jamie Jungers, the...
You may think we're taking a jab at the latest lady to join the Tiger Woods alleged mistress train, but seriously, it's all just a part of her gig.
E! News has learned that Jamie...
Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo was hospitalized Sunday morning after his tour bus slipped on an ice patch in New York and crashed.
The 40-year-old "Beverly Hills"...
UPDATE: According to a People report, Alexa Ray Joel was "distraught over a fight with her boyfriend" when she injested too many pills.
According to her MySpace page, Joel has...
It was as inevitable as a Taylor Lautner reference: New Moon wasn't going to stay No. 1 forever; The Blind Side wasn't going to stay No. 2 forever.
Sandra Bullock's...
Mel Brooks, Robert De Niro and Bruce Springsteen partied Washington D.C.-style this weekend with President Barack Obama.
And they didn't have to party crash to do...
You didn't think Saturday Night Live would go easy on Tiger Woods, did you? Skewering the week's most scandalous stars is par for the course on the late-night laughfest. (Sorry, we just...
The woman purported to be Tiger Woods' fourth mistress has been identified as Las Vegas cocktail waitress and Trashygirls.com model (check back soon for exclusive pics) Jamie...
