Scarlett Johansson isn’t just a talented actress, she’s also a singer with a beautiful voice. Her debut album, Anywhere I Lay My Head, comes out May 20th. Except there’s only one original track. The other ten songs are covers of Tom Waits songs. But if you listen to her great lounge singer voice in the video clip below, and if you are familiar with Tom Waits, I think you’ll agree that her voice is ideal as any for Tom Waits covers.
Johansson was recently asked by Courtney Love to portray herself in a biopic about Curt Cobain. She’ll also be appearing in The Other Boleyn Girl (Feb 29), He’s Just Not That Into You (Aug 1), Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and Mary Queen of Scots this year.
…on the edge of your seat? Keep reading!
Poor Jessica Simpson. First she finds a great guy, Tony Romo, but his Dallas Cowboy fans think she’s a jinx. Then her movie, Blonde Ambition, tanks in the six Texan theaters it open at on Dec 21st. And now the guy dumps her for being too needy. Oh well, at least her movie came out on DVD this week, in case anyone wants to see it.
You think you have a great home cinema, with a large screen? Have look at these ten ultra-geeky home cinema setups at Deputydog and you might feel differently. Talk about obsession with a movie. Not surprisingly, several are setup to look like the “bridge” on Star Trek. The article has links to several sources, so if you want to learn more about the people behind each home cinema setup, you can probably find out there.
Seth Godin wrote a great article about how the “new” digital movie rental model is priced all wrong, and why reducing the price to $0.50 per rental will actually pay off. [Seth Godin]
Actress Kathleen Turner has written a very revealing autobiography. The Daily Mail has an excerpt in it which discusses not only her sex scenes with William Hurt in Body Heat (and other movies), but why she detests Burt Reynolds and Nicolas Cage.
What’s really surprising is a comment about her appearance, when she was 25 and working on Body Heat:
But I was no great beauty: back then, I was a skinny woman with long legs, almost no boobs, good hair and bad teeth. Indeed, one of the studio’s worries was that my teeth didn’t look American – so they paid to have a fake cover made for them. It was awkward because it changed my lips and the way I spoke. It was uncomfortable, too, but I didn’t have any choice.
Proof that actresses are human and have the same neuroses as anyone else.
As for why she hates Nicolas Cage, it seems Cage was trying too hard to prove he didn’t get his role as Turner’s boyfriend/husband in Peggy Sue Got Married due to nepotism (uncle Francis Ford Coppola was directing). Cage apparently contradicted everything Coppola asked him to do. Turner also claims he might have stolen a chihuaha dog he liked by tucking it into his jacket.
…on the edge of your seat? Keep reading!
NY Post’s Page Six and others are lamenting the presence of idiot celebrities at the Sundance Film Festival, which opened last week. Most of these people have never acted in anything other than their bathroom mirrors but are huge publicity whores.
Well, Sundance isn’t the only place this happens. The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, September) was once barely attended, but once Toronto started being called Hollywood North because of all the film production, a lot of B-, C-, and D-list celebs started showing up. And probably the paparazzi that goes with such turnouts.
Vancouver has not yet suffered this problem, despite all the film production there, but after the 2010 Winter Olympics, they might. [Updated] The city does have its VIFF (Vancouver International Film Festival), so the same sort of “d-list movement” is bound to occur there. Where there’s publicity, there’ll be publicity whores.
Based solely on the trailers, Untraceable is the first movie releasing this month that I’m really looking forward to. It opens this Friday and stars the talented Diane Lane (Hollywoodland, Must Love Dogs, Under the Tuscan Sun, Unfaithful) as FBI agent Jennifer Marsh. A clever serial killer is using the Internet to kill his victims. He has a device hooked up that increases the amount of a lethal injection proportionate to the number of people visiting the site to view the live video. (Yeah, I know. It sounds like a story line potentially rife with all kinds of technical inaccuracies. But it’s Diane Lane for crying out loud. And I’ve had a long-standing interest in FBI-related movies and TV shows.)
Also appearing in Untraceable are Billy Burke, Colin Hanks, Joseph Cross, Mary Beth Hurt and Peter Lewis.
Lane will be in two other movies this year: Jumper, and Nights in Rodanthe. Her 43rd birthday was yesterday.
Production has been halted in Vancouver, Canada, for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. This was the next movie that Heath Ledger would have been working on. The inimitable musician/ actor Tom Waits was co-star. Ledger’s work as the Joker in Batman: The Dark Knight was supposedly already complete.
Ledger died yesterday, possibly of an accidental overdose of anti-depressants mixed with sleeping pills. Not unexpectedly, his family and many close celebrity friends – including Lindsay Lohan, Helena Christensen, and ex-fiancee Michelle Williams – are said to be very distraught about Ledger’s passing, which some anonymous friend, possibly Jack Nicholson, claims to have seen coming.
Ledger apparently had many sleepless nights, thanks to insomnia partially caused by his work on The Dark Knight. This might account for the sleeping pills found near his body. Autopsy results are 10 days away.
A judge has ruled that Denise Richards and her two very young children can participate in a reality show. Ex-husband and father of the children Charlie Sheen had opposed their participation in the reality show.
Richards will also appear in two movies this year: Jolene and Deep in the Valley. Sheen will provide voice work for Foodfight! this year.
[sources: TMZ]
Gorgeous Sarah Michelle Gellar (aka Prinze) has bared all for a Vaseline ad. Nice skin. But the pics, one of which is shown above, does not show her face. Very odd.
Gellar will appear in Possession and Alice, both in 2008, and will do voice work in Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey in 2009.
[sources: Daily Mail]
The WGA has dropped one of their demands, that reality and animation show writers be unionized. Looks as if we now know something more about the hierarchy of Hollywood. [TV Squad]
BurnAware Free is free CD/DVD burning software for MS-Windows (98, NT, 2000, XP, Vista 32, Vista 64) that includes support for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. [Download Squad]
Blatant T+A Dept: io9 has a collection of naked-babe pics from a couple of “Nerdcore” calendars that pay homage to various various video games or science fiction/ superhero movies. WARNING: VERY NSFW. [io9]
Give Me A Break Dept: The much-hyped loved Cloverfield movie will have it’s own monster toy from Hasbro. It has two interchangeable heads, is 14 inches tall, aimed at kids aged 4 and up (yeah, right), and costs – wait for it – US$100. Ok, $99.99. Like I said, give me a break. Are parents going to go for that? Will they even have a chance? It’s going to be a collector’s item, and I’m guessing that no matter how much I hate hyped movies (especially those that appear to be shot on a handheld video camera), box office returns suggest that there are more than enough fans that’ll snap this toy up, before any kiddies get a chance to get their grubby mitts on them.
Hasbro no image on the product page, but Variety reports that it won’t ship until Sept. 30.
Oh, and for those keeping track, there are probably not only sequels coming for Cloverfield but an Internet campaign to keep the hype buzz going until then. If you haven’t seen the movie, you’ll just have to keep guessing at what the monster looks like.
[via: io9]
