AP - Near the end of the hit film "Avatar," the villain snarls at the hero, "How does it feel to betray your own race?" Both men are white — although the hero is inhabiting a blue-skinned, 9-foot-tall, long-tailed alien.
(Reuters) Reuters - John Malkovich has signed to star opposite Bruce Willis in "Red," an all-star adaptation of the comic-book miniseries. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 11 Jan 2010 | 1:33 am
File photo of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, who is being offered a two-month retrospective at the Versailles Palace from September. Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 11 Jan 2010 | 1:31 am
"Benefits supervisor sleeping" a painting by German-born British painter Lucian Freud. The inspiration behind some 60 works by Freud, now 87, including both his emblematic and unsettling portraits and... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 11 Jan 2010 | 1:31 am
The Paris art scene spotlights giants Lucian Freud, Claude Monet and even Yves Saint Laurent in 2010, but a chill air of death and destruction peppers many of this year's shows. Opening... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 11 Jan 2010 | 1:31 am
Workers put clothes to set up at the "Grand Palais" in Paris, the work of French artist Christian Boltanski for the Monumenta 2010. This event is a yearly artistic encounter. Each year, a leading international... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 11 Jan 2010 | 1:31 am
AFP - The Paris art scene spotlights giants Lucian Freud, Claude Monet and even Yves Saint Laurent in 2010, but a chill air of death and destruction peppers many of this year's shows.
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - The lush and iridescent forests of "Avatar," the sooty Victorian London of "Sherlock Holmes" and even the trashed, morning-after Vegas suites of "The... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 11 Jan 2010 | 1:28 am
Reuters - Director Oliver Stone's upcoming Showtime documentary miniseries "Secret History of America" promises to put mass-murderers such as Stalin and Hitler "in context." Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 11 Jan 2010 | 1:26 am
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Jerry Seinfeld defended NBC's late-night stumbles on Sunday, and said the network's apparent demotion of Conan O'Brien hasn't wounded the "Tonight Show"... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 11 Jan 2010 | 1:24 am
File photo of French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin awarding the French Legion d'honneur to Nobel-winning British playwright Harold Pinter (L) in London, in 2007. Pinter, one of the most influential... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 11 Jan 2010 | 12:08 am
British writer Lady Antonia Fraser smiles during the presentation of her book titled "Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter", in Mexico City. Fraser presented the memoir of her "very happy years" with... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 11 Jan 2010 | 12:08 am
File photo of British playwright Harold Pinter and his wife Lady Antonia Fraser. Just over a year after Pinter's death, Fraser is publishing a book on the 33 years during which the famous British literary... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 11 Jan 2010 | 12:08 am
On the first evening the acclaimed British playwright Harold Pinter met his future wife Lady Antonia Fraser, he asked her: "Must you go?" Fraser, a glamorous historical biographer, said... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 11 Jan 2010 | 12:08 am
Blake's Got a New Role:Blake Lively will star opposite Ryan Reynolds in Warner Bros.' The Green Lantern. She'll play Carol Ferris, the Lantern's lady and the owner of an aerospace company that hires Hal Jordan before he becomes the Lantern. Felicity alums Keri Russell and Jennifer Garner were also in the mix for the role, which calls for an older actress, but Lively beat them out after producers realized she had two unique assets. [THR]
Bald Spots:John Malkovich has joined Bruce Willis in Red, Summit Entertainment's adaptation of of the DC Comics series about a black-ops agent (Willis) who is constantly fighting off younger assassins attempting to kill him. Malkovich, who is replacing John C. Reilly, plays the agent's friend and a retired CIA agent himself who thinks everyone is out to kill him. Its like a spy version of The Bucket List. [THR]
Far(si) Out: Iranian comic Maz Jobrani will star in Barry Sonnenfeld's ABC comedy pilot Funny in Farsi. The show is based on the Firoozeh Dumas' memoir about growing up Iranian in Newport Beach. Jobrani will play the family patriarch, an engineer who moves his family to California from Iran. That's right, a Middle Easterner on TV who's not a terrorist. [THR]
KO:Channing Tatum has joined the cast of Knockout, Steven Soderbergh's spy thriller starring MMA-er Gina Carano as a spy who is convinced that her allies have betrayed her. Tatum plays a member of Carano's team who tries to bring her back after she's been double crossed. Antonio Banderas is also in talks to join the cast, which includes a whole host of men who are going to get their asses kicked by a woman. [The Playlist]
Memories:Frances McDormand and Maura Tierney are going to appear together in the Wooster Group' incarnation of North Atlantic. The play is a satiric look at the military and technology in the early 80s. The production "plays with nostalgia for the analog (pre-digital) 1980s through slang, song and dance." Hopefully this mean Frances McDormand in hammer pants. [Playbill]
Sometimes it seems like Rod Blagojevich is legitimately crazy. Other times it's blatantly obvious. Blago is in full Blago form in an Esquire interview in the upcoming February issue that just went online. Most of the article is taken up with the former Governor defending the actions resulted in his impeachment, recounting the things he's done support his family since then and talking about his childhood friend who looks like Fabio.
But the real juice starts when the topic turns to national politics.
First there's this:
"David Axelrod called me the day after John Kerry lost to Bush—Wednesday—and he said, 'You need to think about running for president in 2008. A new face from the Midwest to challenge Hillary Clinton.'"
"It's such a cynical business, and most of the people in the business are full of shit and phonies, but I was real, man—and am real. This guy, he was catapulted in on hope and change, what we hope the guy is. What the fuck? Everything he's saying's on the teleprompter. I'm blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived. I saw it all growing up."
Nicely done Blago. You've just guaranteed that people will be talking about you all week!
Who does Jerry Seinfeld side with: Jay Leno or Conan O'Brien?
Leno's longtime friend, and supporter, took the stage at NBC's winter Television Critics Association event to...
Dana Carvey, who has been M.I.A. since his turn as a Pistachio Disguisey in Master of Disguise, is on the comeback trail. Fox just picked up an untitled sketch comedy series that Carvey is currently developing with Spike Feresten. Details on the show are in short supply, but if all goes as planned, it will be funny. But if you don't like the show at first, give it some time to grow on you. Think of it like a new pair of underwear. At first it's constrictive, but then it will become a part of you.
AP - NBC said Sunday it decided to pull the plug on the Jay Leno experiment when some affiliate stations considered dropping the nightly prime-time show, and the network is waiting to hear if Leno and "Tonight" host Conan O'Brien accept its new late-night TV plans.
Most local news still flows from newspapers even as an Internet-driven upheaval diminishes the depth of their coverage, according to a study to be released Monday. The findings are based Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 10 Jan 2010 | 10:07 pm
AP - Most local news still flows from newspapers even as an Internet-driven upheaval diminishes the depth of their coverage, according to a study to be released Monday.
The Golden Globes may not be until next week, but the parties start tonight at the Sunset Tower hotel where Anna Paquin and Audi are hosting a kick-off bash.
Anna arrives without her...
With no pants and huge balls, some three thousand insane people ventured outside today with legs exposed for Improv Everywhere's 9th Annual No Pants Subway Ride. Judging by the comments on Improv Everywhere's website, the event was a rousing success. Oh yeah, today's high temperature was 28 degrees.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - NBC retreated on Sunday from its controversial bid to shake up prime time U.S. television, saying it was "going back to basics" with traditional dramas and comedies... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 10 Jan 2010 | 9:30 pm
Reuters - NBC retreated on Sunday from its controversial bid to shake up prime time U.S. television, saying it was "going back to basics" with traditional dramas and comedies to try to rebuild audiences and its reputation. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 10 Jan 2010 | 9:30 pm
Talk about a sheer top.
This celeb stopped off at a coffee place looking a bit like she'd backed into a shirt-shredder, not to mention running afoul of a can of white...
For much of the past four months NBC's local affiliates and their 11 o'clock news broadcasts have suffered from the low ratings of The Jay Leno Show. If viewers aren't watching the 10 o'clock broadcast, how are they supposed to see the teasers about deadly household products that keep them around for the news? On February 12th, the nightmare will end for local affiliates and Michael Fiorile, the chairman of NBC's affiliate board, couldn't be more thrilled.
It's "a great move for the affiliates, the network and, most importantly, the viewers," he said in a statement. "We admire their willingness to innovate, and their willingness to change course when it didn't work for us."
Obviously NBC didn't "change course" "for them," but as long as this leads to more people being aware of exactly which household chemicals might kill their children, it's a move we should all support.
Since you were probably wondering exactly how Eliot Spitzer feels about Kirsten Gillibrand (who, by the way, was among the first Democrats to call for Spitzer's resignation in 2008), the Luv Guv gave an interview with an Albany radio station this weekend spelling it all out. Spoiler alert: it wasn't nice.
According to the Times:
In an interview on WAMC, Mr. Spitzer said he would not have appointed Ms. Gillibrand "under any circumstance" because her "views on issues are either wrong or too malleable."
"We need people in leadership now who know what they believe, who are willing to stand up and state what they believe and make tough decisions on critical issues relating to the economy, civil rights, issues of crime and punishment, guns, same-sex marriage. And I just think on every one of those scores, she fails."
Yikes. Clearly Spitzer is not a Gillibrand fan, which is fine with her, because the feeling is mutual. In response to the former governor's comments, a spokesman for Gillibrand said that the Senator's appointment wasn't Spitzer's call "Because of his own actions." That is, of course, a reference to Spitzer doing a prostitute with his socks on.
Spitzer Calls Gillibrand’s Views ‘Wrong’ and ‘Malleable’ [NYT]
With Marvel Comics' adaptation of Thor set to start shooting tomorrow, Stuart Townsend, an actor best known as Charlize Theron's boyfriend, has dropped out of the film because of "creative differences." Townsend, who was going to play Fandral, one of Thor's buddies, has been replaced by Joshua Dallas, an actor best known for replacing Stuart Townsend in Thor. [AP]
Another day, another headache at Newark Liberty International Airport. Earlier today a United Airlines plane carrying 53 people landed without fully deploying its landing gear, damaging part of the plane and briefly shutting down the airport. Hopefully this scare will be dulled when a romantic comedy plot emerges. [NYT]
With David Hasselhoff off developing some top secret TV show of his own (probably some kind of tribute to hamburgers), NBC announced that Howie Mandel will be his replacement as the third judge on NBC's America's Got Talent. This is good news for Mandel. Unlike on Deal Or No Deal, he'll no longer have to touch contestants. [The Warp]
NBC has admitted defeat, and will be closing up shop on their Jay Leno primetime programming strip. Network bosses surrendered the experiment early under intense pressure from network affiliates...
Front Page: Comedian and partner Feresten develop sketch show for Fox -- Dana Carvey is plotting a TV comeback, partnering with scribe-turned-TV host Spike Feresten to develop and star in a new sketch comedy series for Fox.
Front Page: Lobell will produce thriller; Meyer to rewrite Miller's script -- Castle Rock has optioned "Playing Joe," a Hitchcock-style thriller script from Jeff Miller.
If there are any New Yorkers left who haven't starting buying their cigarettes on the black market, the time to start may be here. Governor Paterson said today that he hasn't ruled out the possibility of raising the state's $2.75 per pack cigarette tax.
"We're not increasing any personal income taxes," Paterson told 106.9 FM in Syracuse. "If things get rough, we might go back to a cigarette tax that would be devoted to health care. We would think about doing that."
A new tax would have the primary goal of raising money to prevent health care cuts. But it may also result in smokers spending their money in New Jersey, Indian reservations or on the Internet, which would be unacceptable. If anyone is going to make money off the backs of New Yorkers committing slow suicide, it should be New York!
Stuart Townsend may be Charlize Theron's leading man, but he's no longer the God of Thunder's BFF.
The 37-year-old Chaos Theory star has exited the upcoming Marvel...
After a Saturday night out, the always-embattled actress was involved in a car crash.
"Her car was involved in an...
Now that Jay Leno's 10pm experiment has been officially proven an idea so crazy it was just crazy and nothing else and didn't work, NBC is wasting no time in announcing that they've greenlit six new pilots (in addition to the two, J.J. Abrams' Undercovers and Rex is Not Your Lawyer, which had already been picked up by the network):
"The new pickups include Steinberg's remake of the icon British drama "Prime Suspect," Shore's updated version of the classic "The Rockford Files," Kelley's legal drama "Kindreds," the Bruckheimer-produced action procedural "Chase," as well as romantic comedy "Love Bites," from "Sex and the City" alumna Cindy Chupack, and thriller "The Event" from Nick Wauters."
Our prediction: Love Bites is the first to be canceled (or not scheduled.) NBC is also developing a Los Angeles-based version of Law & Order.
The New York Times put together a really cool interactive map of the top Netflix rentals by zip code for 12 U.S. metropolitan areas. Rachel Getting Married and Milk are huge in South Brooklyn and much of Seattle, for example. After you look up your own zip code, it's fun to look up the other zip codes you've lived in in the past, and the zip codes of your friends in other cities. (Actually, that last activity can be depressing -- you'll probably find that your friends' top ten lists are nearly identical to your own.) You can also look at shaded maps according to a movie's popularity. Have fun!
NBC has finally dispatched with Jay Leno at 10 p.m., but that means their troubles are just beginning. The Peacock now has to fill up those five hours a week with something. (NBC boss Jeff...
So, where is this going to end?
For the fourth straight weekend, Avatar was the top movie at box office. Its estimated $48.5 million helped it take Transformers: Revenge of the...
If you love Bethenny Frankel, you're going to love 2010 on Bravo.
The network announced today that not only is The Real Housewives of New York City returning on March 4 at 10...
According to the Times's Sunday Styles section today, there are people (specifically: 10 people) who call themselves "cavemen" or "paleos" who live in the city, but try to replicate in diet, exercise, and other lifestyle choices, the caveman lifestyle. They eat raw meat and leap around barefoot through the brush. They hate vegans, and judge each other for not being extreme enough cavemen. They have a "chieftain" named John Durant who makes them jerky from his deer organ-meat-holding meat locker. They only have one cavewoman, whom they presumably share. Here is what the Times found out about these people:
First, the basics:
"The caveman lifestyle, in Mr. Durant’s interpretation, involves eating large quantities of meat and then fasting between meals to approximate the lean times that his distant ancestors faced between hunts. Vegetables and fruit are fine, but he avoids foods like bread that were unavailable before the invention of agriculture."
That's not very weird. So far it just kind of sounds like Atkins. But what kind of treadmills do these cavemen prefer?
"These urban cavemen also choose exercise routines focused on sprinting and jumping, to replicate how a prehistoric person might have fled from a mastodon."
Can we watch them do this in Central Park one day, please? (Preferably with a real mastodon.) But, to be fair to the cavemen, at least they're probably a total joy to hang out with, right?
"Upon visiting Mr. Durant’s apartment for the first time, in August, Mr. Averbukh scowled at a tomato plant on his host’s roof deck.
“Cavemen don’t eat nightshades,” Mr. Averbukh, 29, said. He explained that tomatoes are part of the nightshade family, arguing that they are native to the New World and could not have been part of humanity’s earliest diet. Mr. Durant shrugged."
Meow! "Cavemen don't eat nightshades." They sound like the biggest assholes in the entire world! But wait! Here's another weird thing they do!:
"Another caveman trick involves donating blood frequently. The idea is that various hardships might have occasionally left ancient humans a pint short. Asked when he last gave blood, Andrew Sanocki said it had been three months. He and his brother looked at each other. “We’re due,” Andrew said."
So are they going to kill themselves at age 35 or what? The suspense is killing us!
Anyway, one of them eats only raw grass-fed beef, sometimes with a fork. And they all work on the internet (online advertising, web managing, running a design-based e-commerce site.) Oh, and one last thing about the cavemen, without which the Times' Margaret Mead-ing would not be complete:
"Several identify themselves as libertarians."
Of course they do! Someone should tell them that real cavemen didn't carry around worn copies of Atlas, Shrugged. We really just want to know what neighborhood these Cavemen live in so we can stay out of it. (We're going with two extremes: either Bushwick or Murray Hill.)
AP - The confession was dramatic and videotaped. The weeping woman described to a prosecutor how she fatally bludgeoned her boss — punk-rock pioneer and celebrity real estate broker Linda Stein — with a piece of exercise equipment. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 10 Jan 2010 | 1:53 pm
James Cameron's 'Avatar' continues to race up the box office charts, remaining No. 1 domestically for the fourth straight weekend with $48.5 million and placing second among all-time top-grossing films worldwide.
In the wee hours of yesterday morning on the southbound platform of the 23rd Street 4/6 subway station, Sean L. McCarthy, well-known to NYC comedy aficionados as the proprietor of the popular comedy blog The Comic's Comic, discovered a man lying on the tracks, apparently passed out. He alerted the station agent, who got on the phone, but not in time to stop a train from coming. So McCarthy frantically waved down the train, which stopped just in time, probably saving the man's life. McCarthy told the whole harrowing story on his blog and posted this picture, which he took at the scene. It's a pretty scary indictment of the MTA's communication system, which seems to have broken down in this case.
A 55-year-old woman named Renate Wilson lit up a cigarette in the lavatory of an Austrian Airlines flight from Vienna to JFK yesterday, and even after she got caught by the flight crew, she lit up again in her seat and continued to smoke. She was detained by Port Authority police, but federal cops told them to just let her go. But none of that is the best part of this story, as reported by the New York Post:
"Wilson's estranged husband, Fred, said he wasn't surprised.
"For years she'd sneak in the bathroom on planes to smoke, but she never got in trouble," said Fred."
Her estranged husband? Really? Also, the takeaway here is that you can smoke in plane bathrooms without getting caught, and if you do get caught, you don't get in trouble. Tell your friends, kids!
If you hate-read Deborah Solomon's "Questions for" column in the New York Times Magazine every week, today's interview with Michael Cera will stand out as a classic. The 21-year-old has the charming ability to exude politeness while giving stupid questions their appropriate answers. He's Solomon's perfect foil:
Solomon: In your new film, you’re more of a Holden Caulfield character, a kid of uncommon sensitivity in a disjointed, junk-filled landscape.
Cera: That’s very nice.
Solomon: Do you see yourself as fundamentally Canadian?
Cera: I don’t know. I’m not stereotypically Canadian. I don’t really follow hockey. I don’t feel like anything other than myself, basically.
Then Solomon criticizes Cera for skiing because it's dangerous and suggests that he owes his entire critically acclaimed career to a hairline fracture on his nose, because that's what she does. You can almost see Cera's eyes rolling while reading it.
Breaking (Twitter) news from the Television Critic's Association press tour, which is going on this weekend: Televisionary blog editor and TV writer Jace Lacob is tweeting the NBC Q&A right now, where NBC entertainment chairman Jeff Gaspin has reportedly confirmed that the great Jay Leno 10 pm experiment will end by February 12, and that the network is still exploring possibilities like Jay at 11:35, Conan at 12:05, and Fallon at 1:05. Gaspin wouldn't speak about conversations between the three hosts other than to say they were all gracious. No big surprises, but following the TCA announcements on Twitter is surprisingly fun.
[Televisionary on Twitter]
Top three: Avatar: $48.5 million; Sherlock Holmes: $16.6 million; Alvin and the Chipmunks: the Squeakquel: $16.3 million. Daybreakers, an actually new movie, was a close fourth place with $15 million. [Box Office Mojo]
The Post has gotten to the bottom of why police visited NY1 reporter Dominic Carter's New Jersey home this week: it seems Carter's son, 17, told a school guidance counselor that he'd seen blood and a broken hanger on the floor of his older sister's bedroom, and the counselor reported it to the police. Carter, who will face sentencing for attempted assault on Thursday that could lead to up to three months in jail, vehemently denies that another assault has taken place:
"When the report is released, you'll see that there's no allegation of violence. There's nothing. You'll see there's not a single allegation of me striking anyone."
We're actually inclined to believe Carter this time based on this report -- there's nothing about blood or a broken hanger in a teenage girl's room that points specifically to spousal abuse, and disgraced Carter has every reason to be cleaning up his act.
Michael Steele told Fox News Sunday today that he thinks Harry Reid should step down for his 2008 comments in which he used offensive words to praise Barack Obama, comparing Reid's statement to Trent Lott's assertion that the country would be better if it were still racially segregated. Steele was in the news recently for using the phrase "Honest Injun" to describe the Republican party. [FoxNews]
Front Page: Net wants to keep all three latenight show hosts -- NBC made it official on Sunday morning -- The Peacock's "The Jay Leno Show" experiment is dead.
Front Page: Sci-fi epic hits $1.34 billion worldwide in fourth frame. -- "Avatar" now has a shot at sinking "Titanic" and becoming the top grossing film of all time.
Kate Ryan's fiancé will not let her live down the fact that she chose a hotel for their weekend getaway from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to New York based on the teenage drama "Gossip Girl."
Who does Jerry Seinfeld side with: Jay Leno or Conan O'Brien?
Leno's longtime friend, and supporter, took the stage at NBC's winter Television Critics Association event to...
The Golden Globes may not be until next week, but the parties start tonight at the Sunset Tower hotel where Anna Paquin and Audi are hosting a kick-off bash.
Anna arrives without her...
Talk about a sheer top.
This celeb stopped off at a coffee place looking a bit like she'd backed into a shirt-shredder, not to mention running afoul of a can of white...
NBC has admitted defeat, and will be closing up shop on their Jay Leno primetime programming strip. Network bosses surrendered the experiment early under intense pressure from network affiliates...
Stuart Townsend may be Charlize Theron's leading man, but he's no longer the God of Thunder's BFF.
The 37-year-old Chaos Theory star has exited the upcoming Marvel...
NBC has finally dispatched with Jay Leno at 10 p.m., but that means their troubles are just beginning. The Peacock now has to fill up those five hours a week with something. (NBC boss Jeff...
So, where is this going to end?
For the fourth straight weekend, Avatar was the top movie at box office. Its estimated $48.5 million helped it take Transformers: Revenge of the...
If you love Bethenny Frankel, you're going to love 2010 on Bravo.
The network announced today that not only is The Real Housewives of New York City returning on March 4 at 10...
