With all due respect to Rosa Parks' legacy, CBS won't send the checks if we don't help them cast their inevitable M.O.W. If Dakota Fanning's hot enough to force sex changes for characters she's interested in playing, surely her agents can pressure Les Moonves into making some slight alterations to the civil rights legend's life story to better suit their client's bankable gifts.
While we're not too surprised at the lineup of actors supposedly eager to dirty up their pretty-boy images by portraying the ravages of addiction in the Million Little Pieces adaptation, one of the names interested in playing a rehab love interest (can't wait for the first "meet cute" during a violent vomiting fit) really jumps out. Page Six runs down the rumored casting list:
We don't have the strength to find out exactly what Claire Danes was trying to say, but a quick scan of the story did reveal a fair amount of quotation marks, so it seems that her latest mode of expression was verbal. What a letdown! We're still waiting for an actress to finally answer the incisive "Are you exactly like/nothing like your character?" junket question with five minutes of interpretive dance.
Today's NY Times presents Encyclopedia Brown and the Case Of The Guy Who Wrote the Books and the Producers Looking to Get Filthy Rich from the Somewhat Disputed Movie Rights; if our obvious riff on the titles of the storied children's detective series hasn't given you enough of a summary of the fight to bring the books to the big screen, give the article a read. But what's all the fuss about? Producers Howard Deutsch and Ridley Scott realize that with just a few minor tweaks, they can smell the sweet stink of Harry Potter money all over the franchise:
Apropos of nothing but a desire to ease into Friday morning without too much thought or effort, Towelroad has a bunch of screen grabs of an "Easter egg" from the Pearl Harbor DVD, where noted prankster and all-around good time guy Ben Affleck and onetime It-boy heartthrob Josh Hartnett reenact Affleck's famous "animal crackers" scene from Armageddon. Another secret DVD goodie features a montage of Affleck precariously dangling his genitals behind director Michael Bay's head, only letting his manhood drop on the fauxteur's shoulder at the precise moments he calls "action!" A furious Bay, victimized by Affleck's junk over and over again, finally threatens to cast the actor in every movie he ever makes as revenge—a threat, obviously, that he didn't have to balls to follow through on.
And for his next project, CNN reports, Crowe might even make one of these newfangled talking pictures.
Saturday's LAT provided us with another opportunity to play our favorite parlor game, Journalists Making Studio Executives Admit That Their Summer Movies Were Shitty. This latest round of insincere sackcloth-and-ashes fun stars Sony's Amy Pascal and Brian Grazer of Imagine, who do their part to promise the ticket-buying public through gritted teeth that this time, they really, really mean it when they say they're going to rededicate themselves to quality:
We hate to be the last kid in the bounce castle, but we're getting so much e-mail about this re-cut trailer for The Shining, in which the paranoid horror classic becomes the jaunty family comedy Shining, that we're obligated to be the umpteenth blog to pass along the link. The moment when "Solsbury Hill" kicks is so inspired that we feel like getting up from the computer and finding a family to murder (cheerily!) with an ax.
Flight attendants have their adorable little aprons in a bunch over the Jodie Foster how-did-I-lose-my-possibly-imaginary-daughter- in-such-a-confined-space movie Flightplan because (HERE COMES A SPOILER, TURN AWAY IF YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH) one of the fictional attendants turns out to be a bad guy. Unacceptable in these times of tense air travel!, say the aggrieved retrievers of thin blankets and tiny pillows, and boycotts ensue:
40 Year-Old Virgin director Judd Apatow is keeping a diary on Slate this week, where he's been killing some downtime while producing the upcoming Will Ferrell NASCAR comedy in North Carolina by holding forth on such varied topics as the usefulness of Barney in the rearing of young children, Being Bobby Brown, and today, The Aging Comedy Writer Workout:
Hey, SAG-card holding starfuckers, we've got some great news for you! The film adaptation of Lauren Weisberg's inside-Vogue roman clef, The Devil Wears Prada, is casting:
Maybe all that crap Don Johnson was spewing after the Emmys last weekend television becoming the dominant medium, movies becoming a "boutique business," his new WB series Just Legal being our generation's Birth of a Nation, etc. wasn't so crazy after all. The LA Times reports today that the once taboo act of film auteurs "crossing over" to the realm of television (I believe the technical term is 'slumming') is not so taboo anymore:
We aren't the type to kick a girl when she's down. Who are we kidding, of course we are. You can just imagine the art department meeting: Johnny shows up with a scrapbook full of old photos and a head full of memories. Tim sketches fiendishly. A Bride is Born.
Reports a pal from within 4 Times Sqaure today:
Somewhere in cine-Musketeer heaven, Jack Valenti is quietly weeping. He's still alive? Oh. Well then, to paraphrase the President, he must be doubly weeping from the ground. Dan Glickman, his 'meh' successor as head of the MPAA, has admitted the unthinkable: he needs help. From today's Variety:
