Hollywood's big gay Olympics are approaching, and the annoying "film buff" in your office is probably pestering you to enter his Oscar pool, which he's convinced he's going to win. We want you to beat the ittle nerd. Here's how!
The Golden Globe Awards, Hollywood's second-goldenest night (and certainly its globiest), will go down on live TV this Sunday night. Who will win? Who should win?? After the jump we'll break down the big categories to figure it all out.
David Paterson unveiled a new look today. Gone is the salt-and-pepper beard which has long been the governor's trademark; it's been replaced by a much trendier mustache. Could the change have had anything to do with the 'stache that Brad Pitt insisted on keeping for Inglourious Basterds, which the Times suggested has helped to revive interest in the look? If so, the governor isn't saying. "When asked Monday why he shaved the beard he's had for as long as anyone remembers around Albany, he joked it came down to "more cutbacks." [NYP]
• Harvey and Bob Weinstein are breathing a sigh of relief today. Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds did better than expected at the box office this weekend, raking in $37.6 million in sales. Not that one good weekend will be enough to lift the studio out of the financial mess it is in. [NYT, THR, WSJ]
• Related: In what may be a first for a movie opening, Inglourious Basterds seems to have benefited by a "crest of tweeting goodwill." [THR]
• Some 48 years after it was first published, Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking is now No. 1 on the New York Times' best-seller list. [NYT]
• Has the Glenn Beck brouhaha made advertisers skittish about buying commercial time during political shows in general? [AdAge, Politico]
• Jared Kushner's New York Observer is launching a new paper called The Commercial Observer. It's about commercial real estate, naturally. [NYT]
• Magazine newsstand sales continue to suffer, not surprisingly. [AdAge]
• Last night's long-delayed premiere of the sixth season of Project Runway—on Lifetime, not Bravo—earned the show its highest ratings ever. [NYT, THR]
• Breathe easy: Anna Wintour's travel itinerary for the fall fashion shows in London, Paris and Milan will not be affected by the recent round of budget cuts at Condé Nast. She'll be staying at the Ritz in Paris, as usual. [NYP]
• The cuts have claimed Condé's supply of coffee stirrers, however. [P6]
• Another member of the Sulzberger clan is joining the New York Times. [NYO]
• News Corp. has been meeting with newspaper publishers to discuss forming some sort of "consortium" to charge people for access to news online. [LAT]
• News Corp. is also in talks to sell its Dow Jones stock market index. [NYT]
• Harvey and Bob Weinstein have a lot riding on the success of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. How is the movie expected to perform at the box office this weekend? Not too bad, per early estimates. [THR]
We're Tarantino fans for sure, but a WWII movie about Nazi-killing Jews? We're a little skeptical, and the critics aren't helping our confusion.
Have the Weinstein brothers done anything lately that doesn't signal a desperate need for cash? Now Bob Weinstein, the less violent and insane half of the pair, is trying to unload his Central Park West duplex for $34 million.
Out of fairness to Quentin, Harv, and the whole Basterds gang working so hard to bring you all the Nazi-scalping excellence you deserve, we bring you now the official HD Basterds trailer.
Never mind our concerns about Inglourious Basterds [sic] being the equivalent of a World War II-themed Abercrombie & Fitch shoot; a new video leaked from the set reassures us that Quentin Tarantino is upholding only the most rigorous authenticity standards from the era. For starters, the auteur teaches a pair of actors proper drink-spitting methods of the Third Reich — not to be confused with the straight-spined expectoration perfected by the British, or the far more complex "Kamikaze Spray" that Japanese pilots blew in their own faces during suicide missions over the Pacific. And to their credit, the Nazi pupils pick the technique up quickly and proficiently, reassuring us that Tarantino hasn't lost a step with actors, Kill Bill 2 notwithstanding. This is why he's paid the big bucks. [YouTube]
