Since the last post was such a downer, we thought we would lighten the mood a little with a Defamer operative's full report from an evening of old-fashioned fun: last night's Just Friends premiere party! Smiles, people, smiles!
· Lions Gate makes a deal with Panamax Films to produce a slate of Spanish language telenovela films aimed towards a growing Hispanic population, proving the time-tested studio technique of underestimating your audience s intelligence knows no cultural bounds. [Variety]
· Robert DeNiro returns to familiar mob territory in The Winter of Frankie Machine, playing a bait shop owner who upon finding out that he's "been targeted for a hit, gets back in the business. Ari Emanuel excitedly anticipates future opportunities to trot out his hilarious just when I think I m out, they pull me back in! Pacino impression. [Variety]
· NBC renews E-Ring when the show gets a modest ratings boost after a timeslot switcheroo with Martha Stewart s lame duck Apprentice, which in turn pits her against ABC s unstoppable Lost. Martha learns the hard way that audiences would much rather see a dirt-smeared Michelle Rodriguez blow Shannon away then watch a room of semi-retarded candidates slap-fight over flower arrangements. [THR]
· Al-Jazeera is having a tough time selling its English language network to the US, with a rep explaining, There is still a negative perception of the Al-Jazeera brand." Apparently America is just not ready for the next razzle-dazzle reality sensation, Dancing With The Suicide Bombing Stars. [Variety]
· Mandy Moore will play daughter to Diane Keaton s meddling mother in Gold Circle Films' Because I Said So, hotly buzzed to be the best forgettable, mediocre meddling-mother /daughter movie since Anywhere But Here. [Variety]
The WGA's recently installed leadership is ushering in a new era of militancy at the Guild. Not content to demand that writers get a say (and a cut) of their participation in product placement activities and call it a day, they kept their momentum going yesterday by unleashing some guerilla maneuvers on unsuspecting network executives:
Today's Scoop suggests that the presence of Tara Reid's mother at the former Taradise host's 30th birthday party might not have been conducive to the debauchery typically on display in Reid's critically acclaimed movable performance art installation about the dangerous combination of fame and open bars:
· Former movie star and current monied, vigilante freedom fighter Bruce Willis is offering a million-dollar bounty for the head of Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants. This selfless act of patriotism should bring no attention to his current acting projects whatsoever.
· We don't like to get into our personal lives too much here, but one longtime hobby of ours had been spelunking in prickly caves of danger. But after reading this dispatch from our beloved ladies of Fug, we're abandoning all danger-cave adventures immediately. Sure, you might make it past the saw blade booby trap at the entrance to Omarosa Cavern, but then you've got to deal with the three-ton boulder bearing down on you, all the bleached skeletons of your predecessors, and the chance that you'll lose your hat and whip.
· We don't know what's got the TV Gasm guys so bent out of shape. That hot dog looks pretty good to us.
· Someone has given the Worth 1000 crew unfettered access to our nightmare tapes from the sleep clinic.
· This Harry Potter countdown clock is not at all creepy because Daniel Radcliffe is a teenage boy and it was set up by a woman.
The countdown has begun to Brokeback Mountain, the movie that will test the outer man-on-man tolerance limits of even the most admiring of Ang Lee's straight, male cineaste fanbase. Much is made in the current Newsweek of the, for lack of a better term, balls-out content of the Jake Gyllenhaal-Heath Ledger gay cowboy love story, and how that will play in Gay Pride Parade-free Peoria. But nothing would divert the filmmakers from the message this story set out to tell, not even in its marketing:
· Post-weekend music round-up: Something for Rockets at Silverlake Lounge (free, just how we know you like it); Urge Overkill at the Viper Room.
· A real, live practitioner of the dark publicity arts hosts the seminar Public Relations Insider Secrets Revealed at the Global Business Centers HQ in Beverly Hills. Those who stay for the entire presentation will learn how to maim a nosy reporter with a "no comment" from fifty feet away.
· The MOCA's ongoing Ecstasy: In and About Altered States exhibit, in which artists explore "altered states and alternative modes of perception," seems like a fine way to pass some time while you wait for your dealer to return your page. Note: MOCA staff will not sell you drugs just because one of the installations reminds you of your best shroom experience from college.
Sacha Baron Cohen's comic creation Borat is perhaps Kazakhstan's most influential cultural ambassador, which is precisely the problem. Travelling the world with an unseen camera man, Borat is known for enthusiastically proffering phony pellets of cultural exchange ("In Kazhakstan we have many hobbies: disco dancing, archery, rape and table tennis...").
It seems that Jude Law and Sienna Miller have put all sexual extracurriculars involving child care professionals and iconic super-spies behind them, as the AP reports heightened levels of conciliatory cuteness at the Casanova premiere on Sunday. The night before, one of our operatives spotted them healing over some gutterballs:
"Listen, Pipi Flavor-of-the-Month-Stockings. You're not going to be 12 years old and adorable forever, you got me? I'd say you've got about 18 months before people start saying, 'Get me a Dakota Fanning in Dreamer type,' your princess phone stops ringing like crazy, and your agent asks if you wouldn't mind sleeping in a veal pen. Look, I'm not suggesting this now, because that would be creepy and wrong, but one day, me and you should do a movie together. You know, when you're 18. Let's not be gross. And I'm definitely not promising anything beyond your name above the title with mine, but look what hanging out with me has done for Jennifer Aniston. I saved her life, basically. Think about it. Oh! My food is here. Run along now, I think someone's making balloon animals over there for you."
· Warner Brothers and AOL team up to create the web television outlet IN2TV, which will air library titles (read: Chico and the Man) for free on demand, though with four 15-second commercials per half hour. The webnet will also be able to offer interactive features with the programming, like the indispensable ability to win prizes if a viewer can correctly guess how many secret Christian references Kirk Cameron slipped into late season Growing Pains episodes. [Variety]
· ABC continues its predictable, yet oddly comforting, Sunday night ratings dominance. It's kind of nice to know that no matter what ludicrous plot twist surfaces on Desperate Housewives (this week: the gay-seeming pharmacist moves ever closer to becoming a serial killer), people will still tune in in massive numbers. [THR]
· More Aquaman news: The WB will give Aquaman the Smallville treatment, but it won't be a spinoff launched by the recent fish-boy cameo on that series. The new producers promise that the character won't "won't be talking to fish or riding a seahorse," which will basically reduce him to an above average swimmer who wears orange spandex to class. [Variety]
· Greg Coolidge, the man behind Cockblockers, is set to write the script for 5-0, a single-camera comedy about a short, 18 year-old cop. For NBC, exactly the hit-starved place we'd expect to greenlight Doogie Howser PD. [Variety]
· New Line will keep star Will Arnett busy in the rapidly approaching post-Arrested Development era, casting him as the lead in comedy Jeff the Demon. [Variety]
In the end, it was Martha Stewart herself who "just didn't fit in," or "needs to leave now," or "sorry, it just isn't working out," or...what was her kiss-off phrase, anyway? If she had just listened to us and used "Bite the doily," she might not have found herself the latest addition to the NBC compost heap:
The Guilds are advocating full disclosure of "brand integration" the growing trend by which advertisers are slyly embedding their messages directly into reality and scripted television content (though you might start getting suspicious the sixth time Donald Trump mentions how Star Wars' Luke-Obi Wan relationship was in essence the first incarnation of The Apprentice).
