From measuring-contest-obsessed Hollywood, where studios regularly unzip their pants and flop their bounty on the pages of Variety in deluxe gatefold ads, comes yet another story of an impressive box office performance, this time from a Katherine Heigl-Tom Sizemore vehicle we're almost certain you haven't seen, Zyzzyx Road:
· Music round-up: Anna Karina at the Scene; Duchesses and Mr. & Mrs. Tribute to Ugliness at the Smell.
· It's Harold Night at the UCB Theater! While improv nerds need no explanation of what The Harold is, those less acquainted with watching comedy troupes stretch their spontaneous magic to its theoretical breaking point can find a brief explanation here. Hey, five bucks.
· Remember the guy from Tourgasm who wasn't Dane Cook, Gary Gulman, or Robert Kelly? He hosts his own show at the Laugh Factory tonight, should the long-form improv thing not float your comedy boat.
A couple of weeks ago, we unfairly criticized Tara Reid's involvement as host of a Chicago New Year's Eve party, suggesting that the gig somehow seemed beneath a celebrated performer whose name was once synonymous with "getting paid to get drunk in exotic locales." As you can see in the above video, the event was clearly well-attended and prestigious enough (note the presence of Efren "Vote Pedro" Ramirez, whom a reader informs is sharing the clip with his MySpace friends) to merit the onetime actress's attendance. Moreover, whatever appearance fee the organizers paid to secure her services (read: open bar tab [well drinks only], one-way ticket on Southwest) was money well spent, as a presumably inebriated Reid remembered many of the numbers between 60 and 1 during her playfully prolonged countdown to 2007.
· The Oklahoma Film Critics Circle name United 93 last year's best film, Martin Scorsese best director, and Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker best actress and actor. They stray from the pack with the addition of two unusual categories, "Obviously Worst Film," and "Not So Obviously Worst Film," which go to Basic Instinct 2 and Bobby, respectively. [Oklahomafilm]
· Utah Film Critics Association also award United 93 their best film prize, but opt to give Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón the best director nod for Children of Men. Best actor goes to Sacha Baron Cohen—the only category not to feature a runner-up, proving Cohen had unanimously astounded Utah's tastemaking elite with his Jew- and Gypsy-leery character's picaresque adventures. [Variety]
· The African-American Film Critics Association lavishes their love upon Dreamgirls, naming it best picture, Bill Condon best director, and giving best supporting acting awards to Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson. Forest Whitaker wins best actor, and in the "one of these things is not like the other" slot is Helen Mirren for her work in The Queen. [The Envelope]
Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry will be the first to host the traveling "The CSI Experience" exhibit, an interactive experience in which children will learn about forensic science by imitating their favorite moments from the TV franchise, like passing a blacklight over a defiled corpse for evidence of sexual battery. [Variety]
ABC greenlights a pilot for a TV version of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which will pick up six months after the events of the film and center on the show's married assassins settling in a new 'burb and backsliding into their bickering, fighting-or-fucking ways. No word on casting, but the network and studio hope to find two leads willing to become romantically involved during the pilot shoot and publicly break up their marriages right before the upfronts. [THR]
Cheeky Var topper Peter Bart encourages our hobbled Governator to liberate his previous Caleeforneeyah from the tyranny of American statehood. [Variety]
Time-stopping, "breakout" Heroes star Masi Oka is in talks to play a supporting role in the true-story inspired blackjack card-counting drama, 21. [THR]
CBS locks up Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! through 2012, confident that TV viewers will never tire of watching Alex Trebek chide contestants who make the unforgivable mistake of forgetting to phrase their answers in the form of a question, or of waiting for Vanna White to finally snap and take out everyone on the Wheel set in a hail of gunfire. [Variety]
Having opted out of the 7-second delay in order to give viewers at home the most accurate countdown possible was a programming decision that will ultimately come back to bite MTV corporate parent Viacom, when the FCC gods high on Mount Decency throw down multimillion dollar fines* like thunderbolts, followed by a series of executive meetings over the financial feasibility of keeping on a foul-mouthed Minnillo, versus shitcanning her for another disposable Jessica Alba-type talking head who can effectively drum up the requisite TRL excitement about Fall Out Boy's latest without relying on an arsenal of four-letter descriptors.
For Harrison Ford fans who've generously looked the other way while the actor made a solid decade's worth of regrettable career choices (a creatively arid period occasionally enlivened by puckishly crapulent awards show appearances), today brings the news they've long been waiting for: George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have finally approved a script and Indiana Jones 4 will start shooting in June, allowing Ford to indefinitely shelve Doggy Door, the project he'd planned to topline while waiting for Indy to come together. In a statement heralding the sequel's emergence from nearly twenty years of development hell, Ford self-deprecatingly addresses the age issue:
Things have been relatively quiet in the months since the international uproar that followed Madonna's adoption of a Malawi boy. The courts have opted to monitor little David Banda over a period of 18 months, scanning all the while for any areas for concern such as involuntary Vogueing or references to an "Auntie Donatella," whereupon a final decision will be made as to his permanent absorption into their clan. Meanwhile, the child's single, surviving parent, father Yohane Banda, has recently expressed concern over a lack of updates. Reports Reuters:
We secretly feared that we'd return from our all-too-brief vacation to find the entire landscape of brain-smoothing tabloid gossip rendered unrecognizable by a new cast of characters spawned in the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, but luckily for us, Hollywood's Celebutard Continuity Department was hard at work ensuring that the earliest moments of 2007 were nearly indistinguishable from those of late '06. Depending on which account you read, serial vagina-flasher Britney Spears "collapsed," "passed out," or "decided to take a little cat nap" in the middle of Caesar's Palace's Pure nightclub in Vegas (motto: "What happens here, stays here, unless we can use your drunken antics for publicity purposes"), with an unconscious/sleeping Spears either being dragged out of the venue by her ankles or floating out peacefully on a pink, fluffy cloud while dreaming of teddy bears serenading the pop star and her well-cared-for babies with soothing lullabies. Even though Britney's reps have maintained that Child Protective Services hasn't been monitoring her well-publicized return to the club circuit (they've already written off Sean Preston and the other one as losses), that's no guarantee that its Pre-Neglect Division won't view her New Year's Eve misadventures as a red flag and swoop in to tie Spears' tubes before she and an opportunistic bouncer with dreams of a short-lived music career can produce a new litter of ignored offpsring.
Congratulations! You've survived 2006. Now sit right back down at that desk and do the same soul-crushing things for another 365 days, beginning with your morning review of the weekend box office results. (We present the 4-day grosses, because bigger numbers are more fun than smaller ones! Especially if you're a studio distribution executive!)
Groom at right, not-bride at left. Both the Sun and Daily Mirror have eerily identical "exclusives" claiming that rocker, clothing designer, and invincible narcotics machine Pete Doherty wed his coke-friendly impregnated fianc Kate Moss on a beach in Phuket, Thailand. Supposedly this is just another playtime nonbinding "'bizarre' Buddhist" symbolic marriage thing, a la Anna Nicole Smith and her lawyer. Won't get fooled again, eh tabloids? So don't despair ladies — Doherty may still be technically on the market, if he's your type.
· Last celeb DUI of the year: Mike Tyson takes the current trend of mug shot flippancy to its logical conclusion. Either that, or he was so coked out, he was chewing on his own tongue.
· Oh come off it, Ryan Seacrest. We know who you really want to kiss.
· TVGasm's J-Unit weighs the pros and cons of your two stay-at-home New Year's Eve options.
· Julia Roberts is pregnant. Thank God—we were concerned her twins would grow up as only children.
· Bryan Singer is nothing if not a hands-on director.
· You don't want to scare Tyrone.
· Sometimes, it's difficult to see the obvious signs that your relationship isn't working out. This short film might help.
Friday
· Friday night music: The Oohlahs play the Echo, Blackalicious are at the El Rey.
· For those who just can't shake the Christmas spirit, Rudolph the Red-Hosed Reindeer gives the old TV classic the Real Live Brady Bunch-style camp treatment. At the Elephant Theater.
Saturday
· Blondie (yes, Blondie!) play the Canyon Club in Agoura Hills.
· King of Sleaze Mario Diaz's ongoing homo-and-friends dance party Hot Dog at Club 7969 provides all the condiments: You provide the meat.
Sunday
· Dutton's Beverly Hills is being threatened with closure by the city. Go show your support for this island of literacy smack dab in the middle of big agencyville from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., where champagne will be provided.
Your New Year's Eve options:
· USC's Galen Center hosts The Flaming Lips, Gnarls Barkley, and Cat Power.
· The Little Radio Warehouse party features live performances by Autolux, Dead Meadow, and Bloodcat Love.
· Gridlock NYE on the Paramount lot features The Killers and your host, Carmen Electra. No CBS staffers without wristbands!
· Manny Lehman spins the gay circuit thing at the Hollywood Palladium. Rock out with your cock out, fellas.
· Serious house music lovers might want to check out Together As One 2007 at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, where Paul van Dyk, Deep Dish, Marco V and Danny Howell will be spinning, among others.
· Giant Maximus promises to deliver on its XXL name, with three tents downtown, featuring a six-hour set from Sasha & John Digweed, a three-hour DVDJ set from Sander Kleinenberg, and another three-hour set by Armin Van Buuren. Enjoy melting your brain into the new year, folks.
Ah, the 90 degree weather and glorious autumnal foliage—still green, still on the trees. Yes, it must be fall in L.A. Let's continue on our skip down 2006 memory lane, shall we?
September
· The world meets Suri—a shaggy, kind of Asian looking baby.
· Tom Freston gets the boot.
· The Barney Greengrass brawl was one for the ages.
· Rosie's first day at The View.
· Anna Nicole Smith's nightmare begins.
· We can't decide if Sean Penn is a Player's or DuMaurier man.
· Studio 60 is pretty bad, but Defaker is way worse.
· Jim Carrey jumps to CAA.
· Banksymania!!! (Totally overrated.)
· Steve-O's red carpet tinkle.
· Let's make this simple: Here's all the Studio 60 you can handle, in one convenient link.
· Ditto, Anna Nicole.
Let us savor these last moments of 2006—kind of a crappy year, but hey, it's over—by toasting its one endlessly renewable source of hope and high spirits: the goods and services of Defamer sponsors. We only wish we could drop them from a UN cargo plane onto those who need them most. If you'd like to join their ranks, everything you need to know is right here.
· Monday's Rose Parade will feature George Lucas and hundreds of nerds fans dressed as Stormtroopers marching alongside a "Star Wars Spectacular" float "inspired by the landscape of the planet Naboo." Also: The Grambling State U. marching band from Louisiana dressed as Imperial officers, playing "Main Title," "Imperial March" and "The Throne Room," with a "New Orleans Twist." OK, now we kind of want to check this out. [Variety]
· A look at ten "sure thing" stories predicted for 2006 that never panned out, including "Pellicano scandal is Hollywood's Watergate," "Kevin Reilly is on his way out," and all those agency merger rumors that ultimately went nowhere. [Variety]
· It was the year of the midrange budget movies, from Borat to Jackass: Number Two. Look for many more wobbly Handicam movies featuring even more testicles and homoerotic pranksterism in 2007. [Variety]
· The networks are grappling over whether or not to air Saddam Hussein's execution, with Fox reportedly looking at compromising by running a reality special entitled, Saddam Hussein: If We Hanged Him, Here's How We Did It. [THR]
· "Paging Mr. Boll. Mr. Uwe. Boll. Could you please approach the critic-pummeling, hacky video-game-movie director counter?" Capcom partners with Hyde Park Entertainment for Street Fighter: The Movie. [THR]
Disney's $3.26 billion box office take is due in no small part to the talents of chameleonlike Actor of his Generation Johnny Depp—more specifically, his Captain Jack Sparrow, whom he claims is a riff on Keith Richards, but whose effete posturing, let's face it, heeds somewhat closer to Elton John after five too many Cointreautinis. Fitting, then, that the actor should now be in talks to play another gay British rock icon, Queen's handlebar-mustachioed lead singer, Freddie Mercury:
We know many of you are concerned about the legitimately scary turn of events that saw a tree fall on, then start a fire in, Manka's Inverness Lodge in Marin County (pictured), forcing the early morning evacuation of its guests—among them Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal and Frances McDormand and Joel Coen. Well, thanks to a Defamer operative in the vicinity, we can now report that Maggie and family have emerged unscathed, with sandwich-eating appetites intact:
