It's time to haul out our favorite "musty old claptrap": Defamer's Arrested Development Film Tracker™! Today, THR says that two important AD contracts have finally been signed, locking down a studio (Fox Searchlight) and paving the way for an actual script to be written. Then, though, the trade throws out a bizarre curveball about just who exactly will be directing the movie:
Early estimates say Twilight sucked $7 million from last night's sold-out midnight screenings, and Fandango sends word this morning that tickets are selling online at a rate of five per second. Here to break it down for you now are the authorities at Fox and Friends, who have their own expertly tweaked statistics and observations to help put the phenomenon in its appropriate perspective. Did you know, for example, that 81% percent of all females — "better known as babes," we're told — plan to see the the film? Or that teen girls were turned on to the franchise by their mothers, not the other way around? Watch now for a veritable windfall of revelations, and years from now, remember where you were when Twilight finally got the fair and balanced treatment it deserved.
· The CW dumped its Sunday night Media Rights Capital time buy, an experiment in third-party programming gone awry. From now on, all their schedule outsourcing will go to tween drama factories in India, with Rumor-Mongering Child Goddess and Maa Tujhhe Salaam 813223 set to premiere mid-January. [Variety] · SAG and the studios will meet in a marathon negotiation session—their first in four months—which should give them plenty of time to quibble over Hulu residuals as workmen repossess the desks, chairs, and office supplies around them. [Variety] · Universal inks a deal with the estate of Robert Ludlum that would give them exclusive rights to any more Bourne books coming down the pipeline, including but not limited to The Bourne Code, The Bourne Diet, and The Bourne's Just Not That Into You. [Variety] After the jump: Which former SNL shlub is now channeling some Justin Therouxesque, bespectacled sex appeal?
Well, that depends on how you define "undo." Ratings-wise, it's down a tenth from Jennifer Aniston's episode last week, which itself was down from Oprah's the week previous. (THR suggests that's not so much a bad sign for the sitcom as it is a natural settling after the season premiere bump it enjoyed following Feylinmania.) But if you define it as a return to form, then yes, something about Martin's presence—playing Gavin Volure, an agoraphobic Ted Turner type you later find out is actually under house arrest for embezzlement and racketeering—clicked the show back into all cylinders after a subpar third season start. Among its gems: the introduction of the term "away-toilet situation" into the popular lexicon, hand-puppet voodoo, and a description of Toronto as being "just like New York, but without all the stuff." Then there's the first date sequence above, in which Volure unwittingly presents himself as Lemon's sexless, TV show-goofing dream man. [30 Rock Full Episodes]
In the United States, an uncomfortable talk show interview usually involves an uncommunicative Twilight star or a vaguely gross suggestion of backseat nookie from Jay Leno. Across, the pond, however, restrictions are looser — or at least they were, until Russell Brand mucked things up in the ribald BBC voicemail scandal that we still don't fully understand (we think it involved Fawlty Towers, Satanists, and a giant bird's nest of hair). Now, British chat show host Jonathan Ross is being investigated for another example of bad language (shown in the above clip), in which he asks A-list actress Gwyneth Paltrow about her kids and then announces that he would like to fuck her and that she's clearly "gagging for it." Someone's been taking interview tips from The Advocate!
Are you a horrible camera flash-stained, fraying-at-the-edges tabloid media darling who mourns the loss of the recent American rococo decade? Is everyone being poor and complaining all the time just too much for you? Well worry not, dear inexplicably financed friend, because Dubai is waiting for you! Oh you know about crazy Dubai, don't you? Unlike this ailing and needy nation, the Arab Emirate is flush with sandy money and crazy man-made islands and, ooo, brand-new gaudy hotels! Like a beacon or a lighthouse calling to them out of the icky dark, American celebrities who had it better when the world was gold showed up in droves for the huge, $20 million dollar opening gala for the new Atlantis Palms megaresort in Dubai this week. Look who was there partying while we back here in the home country hopped boxcars and ate cold soup thickened with sawdust: Cocaine-snazzled actress Lindsay Lohan, who is now a gay person dating a gay woman who deejayed at the bash. Odious "actress" and model Mischa Barton (who, OK, was born in England, but she made her money here). Tax-dodging half-vampire Wesley Snipes. Too-bored-to-ever-know-where-she-is fashion plate Mary Kate Olsen. I guess things here in the patriotic old US of A got a bit too messy for them, a bit too elbow-greasy. So they flit on over to some twirling, towering desert city of steel and glass where the champagne still flows and the hotels are tacky and people still have the energy to celebrate it all. Fair-weather Americans if you ask me. While the country burns—literally and figuratively—these folks spent how much on dresses (and, um, banana-yellow suits in the case of Mr. Snipes), to go fete it up in the Middle East and had the audacity to smile?? Well I hope they like it over there in Terrorist Disney World, because they aren't allowed back here. All images via Getty
Coming off an Emmy win and a succession of dues-paying mainstream offerings, Paul Giamatti has clearly earned enough clout to call his next shot the way he wants it. And while some guys would just just wander off to make the "most awful movie they can find," Giamatti has his heart set on a surefire American classic: Bubba Nosferatu: Curse of the She Vampires.The film would cap a dream dating all the way back to 2002, when Giamatti stumbled upon the cult hit Bubba Ho-Tep in a New York art house, submitting his sizable imagination to the story of an over-the-hill Elvis (Bruce Campbell in the role of his life), a black JFK, and their joint battle against a mummy cowboy in the nursing-home showdown of the century. As Vanity Fair notes today, the closing credits jokily promised a sequel, but the overwhelmed Giamatti wasn't letting Campbell or director Don Coscarelli off the hook. There would be a Bubba franchise, and Paul Giamatti would kick-start it to life, attaching himself as Elvis's doomed manager Col. Tom Parker:
Now that ABC has finished canceling about half its slate, it's time to bring back the big guns. Lost producers have already teased us with a minuscule sliver of new footage and a secret-revealing, Century City-set poster, but now a whopping two-and-a-half minute trailer has been released, which eventually eschews clip showiness for a sustained glimpse of its upcoming season. Shirtless Desmond! Sawyer and Juliet holding hands! Everyone is shooting flaming arrows for some reason! All great stuff marred by this terrible song/music video/eye-and-ear hurty thing by The Fray, a band ABC once used for its Grey's Anatomy promos and now will never stop pimping. Hey, ABC: Coldplay has a single out now that's actually called "Lost." Why not try that? Oh no, we were just put in the terrible position of advocating for Coldplay. Now we understand why STV has been taking all those showers and muttering, "So dirty, so dirty," for the last month. Clip after the jump!
We don't quite think the was the rim job David Fincher had in mind in describing the Benjamin Button experience, but there you have it: Its "first major unveiling" at the DGA last night was marred by projection problems—one channel was out, giving the print a "brown and grainy look." D.P. Claudio Miranda could barely sit still as he saw his baby steep in the color-correction equivalent of raw sewage. In Contention was there, and delivers a report of what followed:
It's tough to really follow an act like Emma Thompson being bitten in the neck by a terrifying foxpire, only to later foam at the mouth and sprout orange fur as she joins their immortal, chicken-preying ranks. But come on—18-year-old Twilight star Kristen Stewart didn't even try on Late Show last night. What we're trading in here is not your garden variety stuck-up Hollywood ennui, however, but a sort of starlet savante social ineptitude that can swiftly put both audience and host on edge. (See: Farmiga, Vera.) We blame both parties for this mini-trainwreck, however, as Stewart is hardly a neophyte to the Hollywood scene—that was her cowering next to Jodie Foster in Panic Room—and Letterman should know better than to use his verbal flaying-knives on a chick who has the air of that cutter in the corner of your homeroom. Nothing really good could come of that—though there's no denying the brilliant scarlet splatter of "Let's hope it's Berlin." [Late Show]
Welcome back to Defamer Attractions, your weekly guide to everything new, noteworthy and otherwise avoidable at the movies. Today offers a little more variety than last week's Bond! Bond! Bond! World Tour, but only a little — a total of two major new offerings are crashing the multiplex this week, with a scrappy smattering of indies and upstarts shuffling onto screens behind them. And if that's not doing it for you, there are always a few thrilling DVD's to pick up the slack. As always, our opinions are our own, but you'll never see them schlepping off to Washington for a bailout. Invest wisely after the jump!WHAT'S NEW: Hopefully you enjoyed your mildly adult pleasures last week while you could, because it's an all-puberty weekend this go-around. Twilight finally crashes theaters after a hormonal, high-pitched tidal wave of anticipation, packing tween girls (and not just a few of their mothers) into as much as $70 million worth of sold-out shows. We don't have much to say about the vampire swoonathon that we haven't thrown your way already, but we will go ahead and call it for a $68.8 million gross, 237 fainting spells and a record 455 million shrieks drowning out the dialogue. Disney will represent as well with its 3-D canine superhero opus Bolt, voiced by John Travolta and Miley Cyrus among others. Tracking is close to $40 million, but with reviews well-above average and the imprimatur of ex-Pixar chief John Lasseter, we could see it overlapping quadrants a bit and maybe peaking around $45 million. Also opening: Actor Robert Davi's doo-wop/heist-flick directorial debut The Dukes; the imploding Irish marriage drama Eden; and the ethnically-charged lesbian love story I Can't Think Straight. THE BIG LOSER: For the second consecutive week, the box-office is America's last remaining growth sector. No losers to speak of here, though talk to us next week about Australia.
Paramount production president Brad Weston has had a squirmy few days since Patrick Goldstein outed him as the man who put Twilight in turnaround at the studio, deflecting blame where he can while watching the movie blossom into a potential billion-dollar franchise for Summit Entertainment. But listen closely through the heckles and snickers around town, and you'll hear a voice imploring calm, even understanding: Turnaround is a good thing!Or so argues an anonymous filmmaker who today sent word to Hollywood Elsewhere praising the timeless tradition of unloading book and script options, lest they moulder in middle management's closets instead of rocketing past a green light on another lot:
Oscar-winning Halle-smacker and notorious pressophobe Adrien Brody agreed to sit down with The Advocate for one of their Big Gay Following interviews—saucy, cheeky affairs that usually elicit a juicy pullquote or two. Well, after luring in the actor with a string of resume questions so obscure they would make James Lipton blush, the interviewer then went in for the kill. But Brody wasn't biting. Then things got really awkward, really quickly:
The Ends: A freakishly minded movie obsessive at Flickr has spent the last year compiling the closing-title cards from 133 films (and counting), providing hours of guessing-game fun and/or free procrastination material to close down your day and maybe even your week. A new one is up this week, and alas, we didn't know this entry either. Share the challenge with someone you love, but be warned: It's addictive. [Flickr via Cinematical]
Breaking news, as THR is reporting that ABC "has decided against picking up" struggling series—in decreasing order of belovedness—Pushing Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money, and Eli Stone. By not actually saying the word "canceled," the network leaves the door open to ordering future episodes, but THR puts the odds of that at "improbable." UPDATE: Scrubs lives.Still—you never know! Brooke Shields has chosen to go the full denial route with Lipstick Librarians, and it's been working out for her! (The studio custodians and security have been great about keeping up the charade that the show is still in production when she arrives on the lot every morning.) UPDATE: The network did pick up Scrubs, set to premiere in a one-hour episode on Jan. 6. WTF? They pluck Daisies but re-animate Scrubs? Why can't that show die? It's so irritating. And we're told that yes, Zach Braff comes with the package, for one final swansong season. [THR]
Since Roger Ebert's return to writing after the 2006 thyroid surgery that left him without part of his jawbone, he's been a notably more adventurous scribe, unafraid to toss off deadpan satire, rice cooker meditations, and a good Ben Lyons slam now and then. Now, though, after a thoughtful essay on the internal, decay-obsessed Synecdoche, New York, Ebert has been moved to write one of his most personal stories yet: a digressive, Charlie Kaufman-esque meditation on life, death, and his new, Phantom-like face.
It's another big-time star on 30 Rock this week. No, we're not only talking about Jack McBrayer, but also Kennedy Center honoree/banjo enthusiast/author/Marcia Brady rejecter Steve Martin. With NBC's guest-star wattage reaching capacity, it's no wonder Ben Silverman had to remove a couple shows from the grid. WATCH 30 Rock [9:30 PM, NBC] - First Oprah, then Jennifer Aniston, and now that dude from Cheaper by the Dozen 2. This week, Jack (Alec Baldwin) and Liz (Tina Fey) consider a proposal presented by Gavin Volure (Martin), a businessman who finds Liz irresistible. Meanwhile, Tracy (Tracy Morgan) is afraid that his kids are scheming against him.The Money Pit [10:45 PM, Encore] - Remodeling their dream house turns into a nightmare for Tom Hanks and Shelley Long. All of you screenwriters trying to adapt the original Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House for the post-subprime mortgage crisis world should think again, because this remake was as far as we needed to go. Sure, we didn't think this was funny when we were kids, but Hanks's early career broad comedy stylings just get better with age. This kid loves it, though.
Josh Brolin's World Candor Tour '08 stopped by MTV this week, where he announced that the script for his upcoming comic-book adaptation Jonah Hex is "awful." Except he means it in a good way, he insists, and how could he not — especially now that the writer-directors have been left the project citing "creative differences"?Crank fauxteurs Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor were originally slated to direct Hex from their own screenplay next spring. Variety reports today that DC Comics parted ways with them, however, while for his part Brolin was coy about the duo's role in the project. Of course, after an exchange that started with "I love it" before devolving to "It's awful," there was little else left to say:
Or a serial-killing Jackie Rogers Junior? To be honest, we have no idea what he was doing. But it was pretty awful—and in that sense, fit right in with this terrible CBS crime show we had no idea existed! Still, we're happy to see Ray Romano working. Or Joe Mantegna? We're so confused. Video after the jump. (Thanks to Lisanti Quarterly for the tip!)Click to view
[Criminal Minds]
