Because people like nothing more than to be told what's good by intelligent-seeming fictional characters, the moving, allegorical pinot noir speech delivered by Paul Giamatti's character in Sideways has helped liquor stores move product:
A spy reports on the Q & A following last night's Back to the Future screening at the ArcLight, which featured a no-show by the series' director that was nearly redeemed by the appearance of Marty McFly's girlfriend from the first installment..until the actress bummed out the crowd with that most reliable of buzzkillers, the cancer anecdote:
What's with this sudden impulse by our favorite filmmakers from the 70s to urinate all over their cinematic legacies? Last week, we were appalled to hear that Martin Scorcese and Robert DeNiro were kicking around ideas for a Taxi Driver sequel (sample dialogue: "You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? No, really, are you? I've got a touch of the Alzheimer's and I can't remember if you were talking to me or not just now. Who are you again? Cats are nice."), and this morning we found out that Francis Ford Coppola and the gang are about to release a Godfather video game, complete with Brando-on-his-deathbed voiceovers. And we'll assume that James Caan's involvement was procured with the dangling of a shiny, five-dollar bill.
It seems that a prankster has squatted on the domain uweboll.com to send a message to director Uwe Boll, the fauxteur behind the Tara-Reid-as-genius-anthropologist abomination Alone in the Dark. Visitors to the site see the above words preceded by the greeting "dear dr boll" in the page's title. Sadly, we doubt that even the most well-intentioned of pranks will stop Reid from continuing to get acting gigs.
· Clint Eastwood wins the Directors Guild Award for Million Dollar Baby. We can almost hear Martin Scorcese's Oscar hopes fading away. [THR]
· Forty Shades of Blue wins Sundance's dramatic competition, while audiences somewhat predictably pick Hustle & Flow, Paramount's nine million dollar baby. [Variety]
· News that five people care about: Nicole Kidman parks her vanity production company, Blueprint Films, with Initial Entertainment Group. [Variety]
· The Daily Show ranter Lewis Black signs up for a television development deal with Sony for an eventual show "built around his cantankerous stage persona." Hopefully that won't translate to playing a widower with two adorable daughters and a well-meaning-but-overbearing mother who moves in to help raise the kids. [THR]
· Spike TV announces that president Albie Hecht is "stepping down," with Comedy Central's Doug Herzog likely annexing the job into his part of the Viacom empire. Somewhere, Les Moonves is cackling and stroking a white cat. [Variety]
We hope that Paul Giamatti takes some small comfort in knowing that people are writing about how he got the cruel, throbbing shaft from the Academy. We wouldn't want some cater-waiter at the Vanity Fair Oscar party getting beaten to death by thoughtlessly offering the dejected actor a glass of pinot noir.
Terence Howard, the star of Sundance's $9 million buzz flick Hustle & Flow, gave a whole career's worth of good copy in a NY Times Magazine story back in early 2001. He's so quotable that we're almost willing to forget that since this piece originally ran, he was in Glitter, Angel Eyes, and Biker Boyz.
· Entourage shuts down Main Street in Park City. Looks like there will be a Sundance plot in the second season.
· Breaking news! Paris Hilton buys a bigger dog! Next week, People will cover the first time it takes a dump in Fred Segal. [second item]
· Blogger Matthew Tobey compiles a list of the 500 Best Songs Ever, Sort Of. For some reason, he thought we know something about music and asked us to contribute. We have to admit, we went a little heavy on the DeBarge.
· Chris Rock already has the press eating out of his hand as he prepares for Oscar night. On not being in the Academy: "If you're darker than a paper bag, you can't get in." Also, he dropped only one F-bomb during the press conference. He's ready.
Johnny Depp is completely over the whole awards thing. To listen to Depp tell it, last year's ceremony was a personal Gethsemane where he begged his Father to let the Oscar cup pass him by:
We finally got a chance to upload some of the cameraphone pics we snapped while walking around and looking for trouble at Sundance. Enjoy this belated photo essay.
While we were riding the shuttle bus to a screening at Sundance, we fell into conversation with comedian Taylor Negron, whom you undoubtedly remember from his iconic roles as the mailman in Better Off Dead and the pizza delivery guy in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Negron was at the festival for the documentary The Aristocrats (one of the hottest tickets of the week, btw), which features comedians telling their renditions of the dirtiest joke in the world, and claimed that his was the filthiest version in the movie. We prodded him to tell it, but he demurred, claiming that the other people on the bus didn't want to hear about "fucking your sister in the ass and fisting dead babies." Despite our assertion that it would depend on the size of the fist, he wouldn't budge, and our stop arrived before we could browbeat him into letting loose.
· Execs try to put together last-minute deals as Sundance draws to a close. The best news: several buyers are eyeballing the Strangers with Candy movie. [Variety]
· Cross your fingers that this will finally cool the heat on poker projects: Drew Barrymore will play Eric Bana's love interest in the high-stakes poker dramedy Lucky You. Get it? Luck and poker? [THR]
· Jennifer Lopez returns from wandering in the agency desert to re-sign with ICM. They're now charged with the task of figuring out a way to increase her overexposure by at least 50 percent. [Variety]
· A Wahlberg is in talks to star in a 70s cop drama for NBC. But don't get too excited, it's just the one from NKOTB. Donnie, we think. [THR]
· Actors come out in support of casting directors' attempts to unionize, trying to ensure that their valuable casting-related sexual favors don't shift any further toward the studios. [Variety]
· Big-time publicist Bumble Ward suffers a mid-life crisis, abandoning the flacking game to write novels. She's generously agreed to help the clients she will one day thinly veil in her fiction find new representation. [Variety]
The LAW's Nikki Finke returns from vacation with her scorched-earth Oscar picks. Here, she breaks down the race for Best Supporting Actress:
Yes, this was actually in Lifetime's gift bag, and it wasn't even the best thing in it. That distinction went to a DVD copy of Meredith Baxter-Birney's Greatest Moments in TV Movie Bulimia.
While an 80th birthday makes most of us think about sticking our heads in the oven to relieve the burden on our children, Paul Newman is going to toss aside the walker and burn some rubber in the name of movie promotion:
The "unseen hand" that "virtually owns" Sundance has become a lot less invisible, as yesterday's NYT profiles Cinetic Media's John Sloss. Sloss has made a name for himself by helping to sell low-budget/high-return movies like Napoleon Dynamite and bleeding overanxious festival spenders like Miramax for every last dollar. (He's so good they call it "getting Slossed.") But don't be fooled—even though he's rolling in indie film cash, Sloss is serving a loftier purpose:
· Lion's Gate ponies up $4 million for the Sundance jailbait revenge drama Hard Candy. [Variety, THR]
· Miramax's 17 Oscar nominations and double Best Picture chances may be the Weinstein's final "fuck you" to Disney. Well, metaphorically at least. Harvey Weinstein will still probably make the occasional expletive-filled prank phonecall to a retired Michael Eisner. [Variety]
· Michael Mann reflects on how his movies (he produced The Aviator and directed Collateral) snagged 13 Oscar noms, but stops short of proclaiming himself the King of Hollywood. [THR]
· The Tonight Show's weepy Johnny Carson tribute special does predictably enormous ratings numbers. [THR]
· American Idol's huge Nielsens keep Fox from backsliding into WB/UPN territory. [THR]
