The Gossip Girl star would like some awards recognition, please. Also today: Leo DiCaprio taps into his murderous side, yet another CSI departure, and a Noah's Ark movie might be imminent.

  • It seems that pretty Gossip Girl actress Chace Crawford has gone and submitted himself for a Lead Actor in a Drama Series Emmy nomination. So that's... Sure, OK. I mean, why not? We do live in a country of various freedoms where people can do as they please so long as they're not hurting anyone else, and I guess this isn't hurting anyone. Unless your sides hurt from laughing so hard! :( Poor Chace Crawford! I mean, he could be going up against some really tough competition here. Off the top of my head some people that could potentially beat Chace are the two vampire boys from Vampire Diaries, Spinner on Degrassi, and of course one of the direwolves from Game of Thrones. But you never know! Maybe the Emmy committee will finally recognize quality and go with Ms. Crawford. And if they do he'd better enjoy it, because I hear next year Tony Shalhoub is joining the cast of 90210, so you know he'll have that award sewn up for the next decade or so. [Vulture]
  • Former prettyboy turned serious man Leonardo DiCaprio has a history of working with some of the movie world's best directors, from Martin Scorsese to Martin Scorsese and all the way to Martin Scorsese, so it's only fitting that one of his next big projects would be with a directing notable. No, not Martin Scorsese. Quentin Tarantino! Yes, DiCaprio is supposedly in talks to play one of the villains in the San Fernando savant's Django Unchained, an homage to spaghetti Westerns. Now, DiCaprio has already gone Western before, in the overlooked trash gem The Quick and the Dead, so we know he's capable. But this part is a little different. He'll be playing the owner of a plantation called Candyland, a place where he sex-tortures women slaves and makes male slaves fight each other to the death. So between this and his rumored role in Devil in the White City, Leo DiCaprio is going to be real creepy for the next few years. [THR]
  • Laurence Fishburne has announced that he is leaving his post at CSI after two years, leaving a big hole in CBS's stalwart (if dwindling) megahit. So who should replace him? Some ideas are being floated about, people like Jimmy Smits and Terry O'Quinn and Ethan Hawke. All decent choices, though unless they need piles of cash (and who doesn't?), I don't see why any of them would take the gig. No, I think we need to think more outside the box. I think CBS should think a little further afield than usual, maybe look at some younger actors who are up and coming, who have shown themselves recently to be hungry and ambitious. Who I'm suggesting is, if you haven't figured it out already, is Chace Crawford. Who's going to start the Facebook petition?? Betty White, I Mean Chace Crawford On CSI Now!! [EW]
  • A few weeks back I wrote about Bill Murray getting cast as Franklin Delano Roosevelt in an upcoming biopic and joked about oh boy who's going to get cast as Eleanor, that's sort of an insult right, ha ha, get it?, whatever. Well, now we know! And that unfortunate woman is... Olivia Williams? Yeah, apparently she's in the running to star in Hyde Park on the Hudson as FDR's main squeeze, opposite Murray and Laura Linney as the president's distant cousin and paramour. But Olivia Williams is lovely! Well, as some commenters pointed out that day, Eleanor really wasn't some beast or anything. She was just kind of a regular lady. That's all. Olivia Williams is a very pretty famous actress, but I guess as famous actresses go, she's not ANGELINA JOLIE or something. So, fine. The most important thing is that she's very talented and she is great (so fun in Hanna for those few minutes) so good for her. [Deadline]
  • Interesting. Darren Aronofsky is currently shopping around a movie based on the ABC family drama biblical myth of Noah's Ark that he wants to make for $130 million. Clearly Aronofsky is in high demand after the boffo success of Black Swan, and after dropping out of the next Wolverine movie he's looking for something to do, but... Remember the last big sweeping epic he made, The Fountain? That was sort of an unmitigated disaster? I know the studio totally fucked him over and slashed his budget and stuff on that one, and he'd probably get a bit more autonomy now, but in general his strengths really seem to lie more in the micro than the macro. Though to be fair, this Noah project is being pitched as "edgy" so maybe it'd be a lot of tight closeups of the back of Noah's head while around him the floods come and the animals roar? That could work! As long as Chace Crawford plays Noah, it actually could be just fine. [Deadline]
  • It's been announced that Michelle Obama will be played by Olivia Williams in an upcoming biopic guest starring on the hit Nickelodeon show iCarly, which is about a robot named Carly who is trying to kill Will Smith. Obama is reported to have beaten out Chace Crawford for the role. [THR]

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