New Year, new jobs: Tom Cruise has assigned Katie Holmes reproductive duties, Alec Baldwin's famous voice finally got him his dream job and Lauryn Hill is testing new mounts.
• It looks like Ashley Dupre's 15 minutes of fame isn't entirely over jet yet: She was spotted at HarperCollins' offices and is now reportedly trying to sell a memoir. [P6]
• Hijinks at the Golden Globes: Leonardo DiCaprio asked CAA to construct a ladder so he could sneak into the agency's dinner last Friday and avoid the press. Adrian Grenier and Paris Hilton were denied entry to another event. And Harvey Weinstein appears to be smoking again: He was spotted taking cigarettes out of Hilary Swank's purse. [P6]
• It's not easy being a Forbes: The family is taking its Highlander yacht out of commission until summer and has fired the ship's crew in the meantime. [P6]
• Eddy Curry is being sued by his former chauffeur for sexual harassment, after the Knicks center allegedly tried to "solicit gay sex" from the driver and forced him to "perform humiliating tasks." [NYP]
• Yes, Karolina Kurkova does indeed have a weight problem, but that's because she suffers from hypothyroidism. Satisfied now? [Fox News]
• Brooks Brothers' Fifth Avenue flagship is closing at the end of January. [Racked]
• Searle has gone bankrupt. [Fashionista, CNY]
• Peter Som won't be showing at Fashion Week, but buyers and the press may still get a peek. [NYM]
• Tag Heuer has tapped Leonardo DiCaprio as its new ambassador. [WWD]
• A look at 100 years of bob haircuts. [Pipeline]
• Daisy Fuentes is starting a hair care line. [WWD]
• A fire broke out at Topshop's future Soho location last night. The damage was minimal, but presumably it will serve as a handy excuse if Topshop needs to push back the opening once again. [Nylon, NYM]
1/8 — Saw who I sincerely believe was LEONARDO DICAPRIO (i think a little new weight threw me off) sitting with beautiful woman (girlfriend?) and parental units enjoying a meal and quiet conversation at Local restaurant in Silver Lake. [Hollywood PrivacyWatch is written by and for Defamer readers; send your sightings to tips@defamer.com.]
Sean Penn could woo Lindsay Lohan with an Oscar invite and Graydon Carter can woo a Waverly Inn neighbor with a spot in Vanity Fair and museums can. Seduction is everywhere.
Though Hollywood reserves the holiday movie season for its annual harvest of ambition, prestige and clout, even the most painstaking Oscar husbandry can often fail. For three much-anticipated films in particular, the damage varies.
♦ Haven't seen Giuseppe Cipriani around town lately? There may be a reason for that: He's believed to be outside the U.S. since he's on probation and because Andrew Cuomo is investigating how the family managed to keep its liquor license earlier this year. [P6]
♦ Angelina Jolie has been undergoing secret fertility treatments in the hopes of becoming pregnant with twins within the next two years. At least that's what Star says. [Star]
♦ Everyone on Gossip Girl may be hooking up with each other, but at least one relationship isn't going so strong: Blake Lively was spotted making out with a guy who was not Penn Badgley. [E!, P6]
♦ Leonardo DiCaprio lost his wallet at Rolf's on Third Avenue, and Tom Cruise lost his Blackberry somewhere in Toronto. [P6, P6]
It's another day to keep your head down around Scott Rudin's office: was snubbed once again in the latest fiery belch from Awards-Season Hell. This time, it was the Broadcast Film Critics Association Critics' Choice Awards issuing the diss among its 2008 nominees, a list where seemingly anything even casually mentioned as Oscar bait in the last three months was recognized — with not just one Revolutionary exception.
It's kind of comforting that, amid economic collapse and a new political order, Ron Burkle is still a dirty old billionaire luring teenagers onto his jet and caressing distracted girls in clubs. Why, just this weekend he was out with Leonardo DiCaprio again, at Cipriani. Close personal friend Bill Clinton was not in attendance this time, but there's been no public sign of a split. Which, actually, is kind of a problem for president elect Barack Obama, particularly now that another of Burkle's sketchy business ventures has spectacularly exploded in scandal, this one involving large amounts of cocaine.
♦ Guy Ritchie and Madonna's marriage came to an official end in the High Court of London courtroom this morning. Neither "Ciccone ML" or "Ritchie GS" actually showed up in person for the proceedings, but Madonna had drinks with ex-husband Sean Penn on Wednesday night, possibly as part of an early celebration. [People, The Sun, P6]
♦ The longest pregnancy in history is finally over: Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz welcomed a son named Bronx Mowgli Wentz into the world last night. Yes, that's Bronx Mowgli. [People]
♦ According to The Sun, Michael Jackson has converted to Islam and has changed his name to "Mikaeel." [The Sun]
Sam Mendes' adaptation of Richard Yates' perfect novel Revolutionary Road hits theaters this Christmas with every Oscar pedigree imaginable. The new trailer, set to Cat Power's "Sea of Love", shows off the full range of conceivable Leonardo DiCaprio acting faces from Confused Leo to Angry Leo, to Constipated Leo. Kate Winslet, the other half of the film's unhappy marriage, likewise spends the whole film angsty and pained. While we appreciate being able to imagine how unpleasant it would have been if the two had gotten together in Titanic, the movie more closely resembles a certain period drama that won an Emmy. Could awards voters really love the late '50s and early '60s that much, and will their love translate into box office? Trailer after the jump.Click to view After waiting so long to see Yates' masterpiece brought to the screen, the casting of Titanic duo DiCaprio and Winslet had a chance to look like a gimmick, and while Mendes is a talented director, previous trailers have hewed dangerously close to American Beauty with period costumes. This tremendous preview may put some of those questions to rest, but it raises a few more. The original Revolutionary Road wasn't a period piece — published in 1962, it was Yates' dramatic verdict on the entire decade of the 1950s, and the first and most important such appraisal to hit bookstores. Now that we've had time to reflect further on the decade, the themes of Road will still ring true on an artistic level. And frankly, it's going to be tough to make anything bad out of this book. Will being a serious film for adults be enough to carry it to success at the box office, though? One of the problems Mad Men faced in attracting an audience through its first two seasons, though, was the fact that some older folks aren't as eager to be reminded about their formative years as others: the show did it best ratings in young, wealthy demos. Although Revolutionary Road and its Yonkers-born author are more well-known now than ever, the book's built in audience couldn't match the standard Obama rally. Road will have to appeal on its own merits, and even if it gets the entire Mad Men audience, that won't mean much for the film's receipts. Basically, it better be just as good as this preview indicates it might be and grab an Oscar nod, or else.
It had to happen: Whispers are speeding out of previews of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Revolutionary Road, leaving Paramount behind a breached embargo wall and knee-deep in mixed buzz for the former and generally glowing praise for the latter. Surely the studio's shrieking winged attack flacks are sniffing the most direct trail to the leakers' (mostly anonymous) domains, so make their sacrifices worth it! Hear the early word after the jump.The first Button item we saw was submitted by an "industry spy"; if it was published by anyone other that Anne Thompson, we'd assume it was just a publicity intern practicing her press-note chops:
♦ Don't get your hopes up, but supposedly Madonna and Guy Ritchie are hoping to settle their divorce by early next week. Until then, though, we'll be treated to lots more gossip about their wacky marriage, including the set of rules Madonna posted on the wall of their Central Park West apartment and how she wanted to fill up their Olympic-size swimming pool with Kabbalah water. [NYP, Daily Mail]
♦ You think your house is complete chaos? For their stay in Berlin, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have six full-time nannies and a fleet of 20 Volkswagens (provided to them by the car company gratis, of course). [NYDN]
♦ Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former presidential contender John Edwards, was spotted without her wedding ring at an event Monday night. Now the talk is that the couple isn't living together anymore either. [P6]
♦ Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are supposedly feuding because Ashley wants a boob job, but doesn't want to get one unless Mary-Kate goes under the knife at the same time. [Star]
Economic meltdown or not, certain nightclubs still seem to be blessed with celebrities who will show up for free drinks, supermodels who will show up for the celebrities, and billionaires who will show up for the supermodels, black Amex cards at the ready. We know this thanks to writer and costume-lover Hud Morgan, who bravely traded his fruitinis for passionfruit shots and infiltrated 1OAK on behalf of Men's Vogue (a scan is after the jump). Illustrating how magazine publishers, too, are defying the recession and financing the posher forms of writerly hobnobbing.
♦ Not only did Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony renew their vows at 3:15 a.m. in Las Vegas on Sunday, they did it in a joint ceremony with Mets outfielder Carlos Beltran and his wife Jessica. [E!, People]
♦ Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson tell friends they're planning on dressing up as Todd and Sarah Palin for Halloween. [NYDN]
♦ Jay-Z couldn't get any London clubs to pay his $50,000 appearance fee this weekend. [This London Blog via E!]
♦ Is Suri Cruise lonely and sad because has no friends her own age? [P6]
Welcome back to Defamer Attractions, your regular guide to everything new, noteworthy and potentially hideous this week at the movies. Today we see another fistful of titles tossed on the fall-release glut, none of which may have the stamina to outlast Disney's purse dog in a three-day race at the box office. We also have our refined eye on the weekend's most disappointing opening as well as our official art-house underdog, plus a few cherry-picked new DVD titles for the shut-ins among you. You know how this works by now: Our opinions are our own, but with free, near-gemological precision like this, why go anywhere else?WHAT'S NEW: Yesterday we broke down some of our problems with Body of Lies, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a CIA operative entangled in the boilerplate "web of intrigue" when his sketchy boss (Russell Crowe) dispatches him to Jordan to zzzzzzzzz... Critics aren't behind it, and it's too late in the year for Warner Bros. to push this as anything more than the beach-reading it is. Which doesn't mean it can't finish in first place, of course — even though it won't. Beverly Hills Chihuahua will sprint out the stretch over Body's lumbering, wheezing frame, narrowly outgrossing Warners' $16 million for the week's biggest dogtrack upset. Warners will do much better distributing RockNRolla for Guy Ritchie and Joel Silver on a smattering of screens in LA and New York before going wide on Halloween, but that's pocket change below Universal's football biopic The Express (should open strong around $15.2 million), the B-horror Quarantine ($11.9 million), the family adventure City of Ember ($6.6 million) and finally in wide release, Keira Knightley nifty bodice-ripper The Duchess ($5.2 million). Eagle Eye and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist will skim off everyone's top as well with a combined $16 million for the weekend. Also opening: Mike Leigh's latest annoyance Happy-Go-Lucky; the quirky microbudget romance Good Dick; the gay family dramedy Breakfast With Scot; Daddy Yankee's gangland redemption saga Talento de Barrio; and the self-explanatory biopic Billy: The Early Years of Billy Graham. THE BIG LOSER: Equipped as it is for international support and a long life on DVD and cable, $20 million is still the low end of studio expectations for Body of Lies. It won't come anywhere close.
Tracking on Body of Lies isn't dazzling anyone today at Warner Bros., which has spent the last two months trying to push Ridley Scott's $100 million Leonardo DiCaprio/Russell Crowe war-on-terror thriller onto the top of this weekend's congested slate of new releases. Most forecasts place its opening gross around $17 million — likely enough to dispatch mildly aromatic new competition like Quarantine, City of Ember and The Express, but not nearly enough to guarantee a first-place finish ahead of Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Not. Acceptable. Is it too early to ask what the hell happened here?Warners may be the only studio that hasn't yet had its big Iraq-themed clusterfuck; that time appears to have arrived. (Its defunct subsidiary Warner Independent bungled the underrated In the Valley of Elah to a $1.5 million wide release last September, just one of the misfires that cost the mini-major its life.) Universal only opened with $17.1 million for last year's The Kingdom, and Paramount saw Stop-Loss die quickly this past spring, earning almost half of its $11 million total gross in the first week of release. So if Iraq and the war on terror aren't over yet as Hollywood themes, they probably will be when Monday rolls around. Critics aren't digging it either, but maybe even more importantly: Has Leonardo DiCaprio ever seemed more out-of-place than the Body trailers and TV spots?
