Child Services storms Chateau Jackson when Jermaine's kid puts Blanket's life in peril. Megan Fox announces she's only slept with two men. Jolie and Franco are shoo-ins for based-on-a-true-story suicidal artist roles. Wednesday gossip is full of surprises.
Larry King sold his suspenders. Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta saved young Haitians. And Jessica Yellin made a terrible earthquake-related pun. Welcome to the strangest night yet of CNN's unrelenting prime-time Haiti coverage.
"Real Housewife" Jill Zarin turns 46 today. Ben Stiller is turning 44. Actor Gael García Bernal is 31. Writer/director David Mamet is 62. Model Chanel Iman is turning 20. Director Ridley Scott is turning 72. TV legend Dick Clark turns 80 today. Billy Idol is 54. Elisha Cuthbert, the actress and ex-girlfriend of Sean Avery, is 27. Actress Amy Ryan turns 40. Performance artist Marina Abramovic is 63. Retired NFL and MLB star Bo Jackson turns 47. Watergate burglar-turned-radio host G. Gordon Liddy is 79. Clay Aiken is turning 31. And Joan Ganz Cooney, the Sesame Street creator, wife of billionaire financier Pete Peterson, and step-grandmother to PC Peterson, is 80.
Plenty of familiar faces were in the stands at Wimbledon over the weekend, including Justin Timberlake, Ben Stiller, Kate Winslet, Scarlett Johansson, and even Henry Kissinger, who "appeared to have trouble staying awake" at yesterday's men's final pitting Andy Roddick against Roger Federer. The most awkward juxtaposition in the crowd: Ralph Lauren, who was seated next to Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi, and directly in front of Russell Crowe. According to British press accounts, Allen looked "grumpy" sitting in the stands wearing a "flowerpot hat." Lauren and Crowe didn't look all too happy either, although that may have been because they were forced to sit next to a man wearing a "flowerpot hat." [The First Post, AP]
• How is Twitter going to make money? With a reality TV series, naturally. The show will involve "putting ordinary people on the trail of celebrities in a revolutionary competitive format," in case you were wondering. [Variety]
• The primetime lineups for next year "are chockablock with shows meant to make recession-weary viewers laugh and feel better." How encouraging! [NYT]
• Ratings are down for CNN's Anderson Cooper as well as for Roland Martin, who has been subbing for Campbell Brown recently. [Page Six]
• Bravo's next Real Housewives installment: Washington, DC. [Daily Intel]
• Fox News nut Greta Van Susteren may not be around for long. Rumor has it her contract won't be be renewed and Megyn Kelly will replace her. [NYT]
• New York lost close to $5 million last year; with ad pages down 37 percent thus far in 2009, "losses are expected to be even higher this year." [NYP]
• A Russian investment firm has dropped $200 million into Facebook's bank account in return for a 1.96 percent stake in the company. [NYT]
• Ben Stiller's Night at the Museum sequel beat out the fourth installment of the Terminator franchise with a four-day pull of $70 million. [Reuters]
That's the lesson for this big boffo box office Memorial Day weekend, which saw the further ascension of the Stills, as well as screenwriters/Reno: 911! costars Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, who just keep churning out the hits. Poor skull-busting Terminator, a film that seems to be in trouble.
• Lindsay Lohan is certainly having a good week. Not only did she finally land another acting role—she'll be appearing in The Other Side, along with Woody Harrelson, and Giovanni Ribisi—but she may be getting her own clothing line at JCPenny, too. And the cops are getting closer to figuring out who broke into her house, too, which has got to be good news. [NYDN, People, NYP]
• These are tough times for Jennifer Aniston, clearly: Bette Midler is now providing her with dating advice and says Jen should sign up on JDate and find "a nice Jewish boy" with "a lot of money." [NYDN]
• Rihanna is "convinced" it was Chris Brown who leaked nude photos of her last week as payback for not attending his birthday party. [NYDN]
• Chelsea Clinton has a six-pack! [P6]
Ben Stiller reportedly flipped out over his Oscar script the day before this year's show. But the Joaquin Phoenix impersonation he came up with as a replacement was hardly original.
• Jeffrey Epstein is a free man—sort of. The billionaire money manager, who was sentenced to 18 months for soliciting a minor for prostitution, is now working at the office of his non-profit foundation five days as a week as part of a work-release program. [P6]
• Mort Zuckerman became a dad for the second time on Friday with the birth of a daughter named Renee Esther. [NYDN]
• Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey's frosty relationship has turned into "outright contempt" since Baldwin mocked Fey's scar at a recent photo shoot and told the photographer to "get ready to do a lot of airbrushing." [Star]
• Suri Cruise gets 100 fan letters each day, you'll be creeped out to learn. [Star]
Vito Schnabel (son of Julian) and Olivier Sarkozy (half-brother of Nicolas) hosted Terence Koh's "Flowers for Baudelaire" exhibition on Wednesday night at Richard Avedon's former studio, where the unusual art was admired by the likes of Anna Wintour, Simon de Pury, Jeffrey Deitch, Allison Sarofim, Stella Schnabel, Olmo Schnabel, Lola Schnabel, Jacqueline Schnabel, Zac Posen, Ann Dexter-Jones, Nadine Johnson, Theodora Richards, Alexandra Richards, Byrdie Bell, Benjamin Cho, Cynthia Rowley, Salman Rushie, Lyor Cohen, Todd Eberle, Derek Blasberg, Genevieve Jones, Yvonne Force Villareal, Drena De Niro, Lisa Anastos, and Gilles Bensimon. [PMc, NYM, GoaG]
Yesterday, CHUD reminded of us one of the most outlandish projects percolating in Hollywood: the next film from director Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous), an untitled, semi-supernatural comedy set to star Ben Stiller and Reese Witherspoon. The former plays a disgraced weapons analyst who must journey to Hawaii to convince the islanders to put up with a new spy satellite — something they're perfectly willing to do if Stiller will secure a human sacrifice for their volcano. Along the way, the analyst has romantic entanglements with various women, including one played by Witherspoon. Cam, Cam, Cam (can we call you "Cam"?). This idea smells worse to us than Vanilla Sky, and here's why:First of all, you're opening yet another film with a professional in disgrace? While that worked fine in Jerry Maguire, the conceptual retread wore thin quickly in Elizabethtown. Ironically, the fact that Elizabethtown bombed might have given you new insight into the sort of character who suffers career ignominy and then struggles to pick up the pieces, but we'd still recommend against using that trope a third freakin' time. Also (and perhaps a bit more importantly), THIS IS THE MOVIE JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO. And, in choosing to pursue a logline so outrageously similar to that Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan film, you have unwittingly awakened the sleeping giant that is Defamer's love for that movie. Cam, we have been to Hawaii. We know Hawaii. Hawaii, sir, is no Waponi Wu. Thus, Cam, we politely ask you to take stock of your upcoming project. Does your "disgraced professional" undergo a freakout that can top this? Is he asked to become involved with a volcano sacrifice by a sparkly-eyed Lloyd Bridges? Are three of his love interests played by a pre-Restylane Meg Ryan, and is one of them a flibbertigibbet? If the answer to any of these questions is "no," perhaps it's time to shelve this project and pick back up with Singles 2: The VH1 Classic Years.
For those of you wondering how in the world Ben Stiller could possibly outdo his finely honed, full-retard character work in this summer's Tropic Thunder, fret not. The actor is pairing with Elton John for a movie musical that will require him to go full blown AIDS. John explained in a recent GQ interview:
Do you remember when Cameron Crowe, the writer and director of lovely little funny/sad movies like Say Anything... and Almost Famous (Kate Hudson! was good! in that movie!), made that thing Elizabethtown, that was essentially about how Orlando Bloom would be dead on the ground if a gun were pressed to his head and he was asked to act and about how Kirsten Dunst will take photos of you with her imaginary camera? Yeah, it was almost the worst movie ever made (poor, poor Judy Greer). So Crowe should probably try to hit his next one out of the park, considering E-town and his previous effort Vanilla Sky (actually kind of good, rewatch) both tanked, critically and at the box office. So with that comeback in mind, when you think of "guaranteed crowd-pleaser" you immediately think of Ben Stiller, Reese Witherspoon, and a volcano, right? Well, Cameron sure does! According to Chud, Crowe's new film incorporates all three of those things:
