PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so send them in obsessively. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and impress everyone by breaking Fabio down to his fashion-nightmare fundamentals.
In a development that should shake the world of hugely popular televised karaoke competitions to its very, off-key-warbling, deluded-contestant-abusing core, Us Weekly reports that rocker-turned-general-use-famous-person Courtney Love has received The Call from American Idol's producers, inviting her to hold forth on the lack of musical ability on display at the planet's favorite talent show of the damned:
Yesterday, we guided you to an Eater LA post about how Food & Wine magazine had accidentally published a feature spoiling the winner of Season 2 of Top Chef, the results of which were supposed to be kept a secret until tomorrow's finale. Today, F&W's website posted an announcement claiming they had "prepared profiles of both Top Chef finalists in advance of the last episode so that we had a story on the winner ready to publish immediately after the season finale." You'd think Bravo would keep F&W more in the loop than the rest of the general population, but no matter: What follows is two stories, one about each of the show's finalists, Marcel Vigneron and Ilan Hall. We're still not going to be the ones to tell you whose appeared yesterday, and whose was probably filed at 4 a.m. by an annoyed junior staffer forced into the cover-up activity after editorial fielded several hysterical calls from Bravo execs insisting, "We don't care how the fuck you fix it, you recipe-filing morons, just fix it—unless you want to hear the words 'Top Chef 3: Brought to you by Bon Appétit' in your future!" If you read them both, however, be warned: It becomes overwhelmingly obvious which feels authentic and which feels desperately slapped together—almost as obvious as the gag-reflex-inducing qualities of a chocolate-covered chicken liver.
· Studios aren't as horny as usual to pimp their event movies during the Super Bowl, preferring to spend their ad dollars on hit primetime shows instead of the year's biggest advertising orgy. But for those who change their minds, there's plenty of available space towards the end of the broadcast, when drunken football fans are less likely to pay attention to commercials. [Variety]
· More on the announcement of Gail Berman and Lloyd Braun's BermanBraun, which will either produce multimedia content or high-end kitchen appliances: leaking news about their venture forced them to come clean about their plans a few weeks early. [THR]
· Kiss finds yet another thing upon which to slap its name, planning a Kiss 4k comic book in which the band transforms from aging, whiteface-loving entrepreneurs into "world-protecting warrior spirits." [Variety]
· For reasons we might never understand, Paul Rudd consents to co-star with Seann William Scott in a comedy for Universal. [THR]
· Var invites charges of institutional anti-Sorkinism by pointing out that Studio 60 "retained less than half of its demo lead-in" in last night's Nielsen race. [Variety]
Perhaps Sacha Baron Cohen should have been more specific during his Golden Globes acceptance speech—not about Ken Davitian's rancid pocket of taint air, about which he was entirely too specific, but rather with regards to his comments thanking "every American who has not sued me so far." The heartfelt show of gratitude forgot all those international Borat audiences who might also have considered and rejected seeking damages, such as the Israeli comedian currently mulling a lawsuit over Cohen's adoption of his "wa-wa-wee-wa" catchphrase:
With Oscar front-runners like Helen Mirren, Forrest Whitaker, Eddie Murphy, and Jennifer Hudson scooping up virtually every tacky statue on the awards circuit to this point, the NY Times laments that their inevitable Academy Awards acceptance speeches will probably be nothing but predictable, slightly refined versions of the ones they've already inflicted upon us multiple times. While the Times credits Mirren with professionally executing the classy sentiments honed on various auditorium stages and talk show couches, they seem to dread more of the same on Oscar night:
From the moment that ParisExposed.com rolled open the corrugated steel door to its virtual storage locker jammed with Paris Hilton's abandoned bubble-bath videos, incriminating tampon-blunt photos, and various diaries detailing the day-to-day life of America's most accomplished practitioner of the celebutard arts, it seemed destined to be shut down by a lawsuit. The AP reports that Hilton filed suit yesterday to shutter the online swap-meet stall offering peeks at her expensively acquired crap:
There is little in this world more heartwarming than tales of how fascinating real-life stories make their way from touching Sunday newspaper features to full-blown Hollywood lust objects, complete with nasty bidding wars that create overnight millionaires out of good-natured souls engaged in acts of movie-ready charity. Today's WSJ recounts how NY Times reporter Warren St. John's article on Luma Mufleh, a Jordan-born woman who became a soccer coach for the "Fugees," an adorable collection of kids from various war-ravaged countries who were then displaced from their Clarkston, GA soccer field, made the journey from the Times' pages to big-screen-tearjerker-in-development. As all such stories must, this one begins with "mercurial" (read: blunt-object-hurling) uberproducer Scott Rudin given just cause to maim an employee, and ends with an acquisition by a big studio:
· Quite frankly, we're surprised that the YouTubes haven't been completely jammed up with videos of people lip-syncing to Dreamgirls songs.
· Please contact Kevin Costner immediately and direct him to If I Blog It, They Will Come.
· Today in Who Is And Who Isn't A Celebrity Scientologist: Posh Spice: Isn't. J.Lo: Isn't, but her father is. Tom Cruise: Still is.
· Why Hitchcock wouldn't talk to the kid who made the fish movie.
· And, just because: Priapic iguana has his penis cut off. But good news: He has two of them! [via BoingBoing]
The LAT reports that recently ousted Paramount lieutenant Gail Berman is joining forces with long-ago ousted ABC executive Lloyd "I Totally Came Up With 'Lost' And All I Got Was This Lousy, Short-Lived Gig At Yahoo!" Braun to form the creatively named multimedia (TV/internet/movies/short-wave radio plays, if that's what the kids are into) production entity BermanBraun (or the slightly jazzier Berman/Braun, if you listen to Variety; really, the jaunty little slash makes all the difference). But before you start placing bets on where their new company will make its home, there are at least two destinations you can scratch off the list for obvious reasons:
As Padma Lakshmi reminds us in her torpid speech patterns at the beginning of every Top Chef, the winner is awarded "$100,000 in seed money" (which, presumably, might also be spent on any other herbs, seasonings, or condiments of their choice), and a feature in Food & Wine magazine. Between 3 p.m. and 3:15 p.m. today on Food & Wine's website, that article, entitled, "Bravo's New Top Chef Tells All," accidentally went live, thus spoiling the outcome of a particularly engrossing season that came down to the final pairing of Marcel "The Hip-Hop Outcast" Vigneron, and his chief adversary, Ilan "Marcel's a virgin, everybody! Look at Marcel cook his virgin food! Ha ha!" Hall. We daren't reveal the outcome, but for those of you who simply cannot wait, Eater LA is happy to spoil it for you, with a post featuring the full text of the article. All you have to do is click here.
It didn't take Kevin Federline long to settle into his life's true calling as a career self-parodist, with his Nationwide commercial set to air during this Sunday's Superbowl. For those of you who can't wait, the ad is streaming at the insurance company's website, where you just might find K-Fed's rodent grin peeking out from under a snappy fedora while you unsuccessfully attempt to navigate your way to the page that might let you cash in on a deceased spouse's policy. As an added bonus, here's part of a Q&A sent to us from a flack assigned to the thankless task of stirring up as much K-Fed-related excitement as possible:
· Music round-up: The Submarines at the Echo (free); Lou Barlow at Safari Sam's; The Starlite Desperation at the Viper Room; The Broken West at Spaceland (also free).
· The New Yorker's Calvin Trillin discusses and signs About Alice, his tribute to his deceased wife and muse, at Vroman's in Pasadena.
· Join in a joyous celebration of one of America's most auditorially recognizable actors at All About Walken: The Impersonators of Christopher Walken at the Paul Gleason Theater. Warning: We can't guarantee you won't hear the phrase "more cowbell" many more times than you might like.
Upon hearing about how SAG trophy winners like Helen Mirren carried on backstage about how heavy the twelve-pound, yet modestly endowed, Actor statue feels ("'It's the heaviest of all,' she said. 'It's also the most beautiful.'"), an enraged and defiant Academy president Sid Ganis pledged to deliver this year's Oscar statuettes at a more impressive weight, "Even if we have to weld a ten-pound, gilded cock on each one."
While we're generally content to let our wrong-coasted siblings over at Gawker have all the adventures in contextual advertising, we ran across this Little Miss Sunshine For Your Consideration ad in rotation around today's story about What Went Wrong with Paramount/DreamWorks' Oscar campaign for Dreamgirls. (Refreshing the page a few times might also yield a peek at the Dreamgirls FYC spot fighting for too-little-too-late pageviews.) If you watch Fox Searchlight's animated attempt to rub in "Little Best Picture's" nomination triumph closely enough, you may be able to see a single, fleeting frame in which the Sunshine's drug-addled grandpa symbolically shoves Beyoncé out of the film's iconic VW bus.
· Winner Forest Whitaker remembers the lean days fondly: "I could live on somebody's couch and live on ramen. My friends and my family were more concerned than I was." Particularly the friends and family on whose couches he was dripping ramen broth for months at a time. [Variety]
· Curl up with Tom O'Neil, whose post-SAG awards video blog post delivered from his bed was only slightly less disturbing than the Carpetbagger's post in which he lamented Dreamgirls' best picture snub while sitting on the toilet. [The Envelope]
· Jonathan Dayton, co-director of Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture winner Little Miss Sunshine, explains his theory of good comedy: "For humor to really work, 25 percent of the people can't really get it. If it's really funny, not everyone will be in on the joke." So if you didn't find the movie hilarious, you now know it's because you're part of the quarter of the population incapable of getting it. [The Carpetbagger]
· Transcripts of some notable acceptance speeches, including Alec Baldwin's win for 30 Rock, in which he makes special mention of focus puller Jonathan, who "shaves six or eight years off my close-ups." [SAG Awards]
· Moments after a cloud of green smoke had dissipated, nominee and amateur illusionist Will Smith wowed red carpet photographers by successfully transforming his flamingo date into spouse Jada Pinkett-Smitt. [The Envelope]
· Asked if there's a chance of a Little Miss Sequel, screenwriter Michael Arndt admitted he "has been thinking of things," but that he wasn't sure audiences would want to go along for the re-animating grandpa ride. [THR]
Today's LAT examines the tensions that have been festering between Paramount emperor Brad Grey and the invading "dream team" that came along inside the $1.6 billion DreamWorks "Trojan Horse" he bought a year ago, whose superior moviemaking experience might enable them to "eventually topple management and grab control." The Times relates Grey's recent upsetting of DreamWorks colleagues team by making unwanted speeches at Dreamgirls' bicoastal premieres, behind-the-scenes efforts made by David Geffen to inject miniaturized DW operative Jeffrey Katzenberg into corporate parent Viacom's executive bloodstream, and a snit that developed over the way the Paramount chief handled the reorganization of the studio after the firing of Gail Berman:
· Sundance hands out its awards, with Padre Nuestro winning the dramatic competition's grand jury prize, the John Cusack-starring Grace is Gone winning the drama audience award, and Brazilian corruption film Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) taking the documentary jury prize. [Variety]
· Will Arnett joins Will Ferrell's ABA basketball comedy Semi-Pro as a "hard-drinking sports commentator," probably reducing the chances that audiences will get to see him in knee-high tube socks and nut-hugging shorts, but increasing the chances he will appear in a mustard-colored sportsjacket while openly swigging from a whiskey bottle at courtside. [THR]
· CBS is forced to cancel Armed and Famous after American Idol's Nielsen death ray disintegrates its audience, while ABC moves fledgling Knights of Prosperity out of Idol's competition-annihilating path. [Variety]
· Night at the Museum holds off Pursuit of Happyness to continue its five-week reign atop the international box office. [THR]
· Hoping to lock up the coveted Ron Silver endorsement, Rudolph Giuliani plans to visit L.A. to raise money for his exploratory committee for a 2008 presidential run. [Variety]
While his Grey's Anatomy co-star Isaiah Washington is currently excising his bullying demons in a 28-day gay-rage detoxification program, an unnamed "source" tells The Scoop that Ellen-tattling slur-victim T.R. Knight is still so incensed over the way the events were handled, he's plotting to depart the hit series:
