Movie Star Blog

Ever since Johnny Depp first appeared to me in a dream (in which we hung out at his parents’ house, who were Mormon, and he was the oldest of ten brothers and sisters all of whom named Fawn, and I was kicked out for smoking in the basement), Mr. Depp has become a dreamland benefactor. He comes to me and offers all sorts of positive advice for whatever issue it is I am facing, as in the other night when he gave me advice on how to keep Brad Pitt from breaking up my relationship with Ryan.

It is 2 minutes until tonights episode and only Kelly/Alec, Joey/Ashley and JPeterman/Charlotte are left. Rachel Hunter got kicked last week. In all honesty she was probably the best dancer of all the stars but she didn't have the popular support. So after tonight there will be 2. Here are the remaining couples...

I have so many favorite movies that span decades of production, but though it is the most recent addition to my list, this year's top Oscar winner found its way into my top five of all time even after just seeing it once. Like the toast sequence in Sophie's Choice, this movie spoke to me in a way that no other film ever has--it takes you on an emotional rollercoaster that reaches deep down inside you and leaves you soaring one moment before ripping your heart out the next. There is no other character from a movie that I see myself in more than Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank); her gutsiness, passion, and determination to achieve her ambitions no matter what the cost are the same attributes by which I strive to live my own life, and, just like Clint Eastwood's character, Frankie Dunn, and his assistant, Scrap (Morgan Freeman), a core network of friends, professors, colleagues, and family have always stuck by me and trained me to never give any less than I can offer.

For dinner this evening, the boys and I visited a nice little lounge called Bar Rouge, located in the lovely Hotel Rouge on 16th Street. It’s a nice little place (I really mean little. It only seats 40), and the food and drinks are tasty, but a Sean Penn (Jack + triple sec + lemonade) and a Sean Connery (Liquor 43 + VO + Bitters + orange juice + soda) cost me $10 each. They have weird drink names, like a standard margarita is called a Madonna, and a Salma Hayek is a Madonna with mango. Food ranges from $6 - $12, but they’re all appetizers. It’s pricey, but the atmosphere is nice. They have chairs that look like thrones, big, comfy couches, and a few cute tables for two, and they have a large screen on the wall that plays old black and white movies and nature scenes. It’s only a stone’s throw away from the apartment, and they have really great cocktails, but I still can’t get over paying $10 for something that I could make at home for $3.

I recently had the pleasure - and honor - of meeting a group of Marines returned from action in Iraq, including in Fallujah. Several of the men bore combat wounds; all of them were eager to return to the fight. The idea that these tough, seasoned veterans or their able commanders are ‘doomed by insurgency’ is laughable - except, perhaps, within the cocktail-party circuit of West Los Angeles … where grown adults can stand around with martinis in their hands and seriously discuss the metaphorics of Martian invasion. But a $150 million budget and a similarly expensive advertising campaign - supported by an A-list star and director - can give even the most lunatic ideas a semblance of credibility. Mr. Spielberg should distance himself from Koepp’s rhetoric with the same rapidity he’s been distancing himself from Tom Cruise, as Cruise’s behavior grows increasingly aberrant. And Spielberg had better do this fast before Tim Robbins - who also stars in War of the Worlds - starts opening his mouth …

With actors like Brad Pitt (Achilles), Eric Bana (Hector), Orlando Bloom (Paris), Brian Cox (Agamemnon), Peter O’Toole (Priam, the king of Troy), and Sean Bean (Odysseus), this was to be a major movie epic. And in some ways is, though mostly because of it’s writer (Homer that is, not the scriptwriters). I think it lacked the drama it was supposed to, because we know the story. Not only do most know about Helen, but Achilles and the Trojan Horse.

Brooke Burke’s new Max Headroomy-website talks to you, if you’re a broadband user.

It's been sitting on my entertainment center for a couple months now so I finally got sick of looking at it and sat down to watch it. It was definitely a fun movie, but if you're looking for lots of Salma Hayek, don't bother. She's in about 5 minutes of flashback scenes spread out throughout the movie. Johnny Depp's character is psychotically good. Definitely worth the rental costs if you like action movies.

In the same period, Katie gained a new member of her posse, identified as Jessica Feshbach by FoxNews.com and as Jessica Rodriguez by New York Daily News' Lloyd Grove.

Jessica Feshbach Rodriguez comes from a wealthy Palo Alto family with deep ties to Scientology. When asked who she is, she replies, "I'm Katie's best friend!"

After all.. I have to suffer through Tom Cruise starring in it. That's pretty tough competition for the aliens.

The movie could have worked with that strange catsuit. It could have worked with Halle Berry. But it had the worst story and acting ever. Like it was written (down) for children, but why all the sex appeal, then? Yes, Berry was ridiculous, but she can't take all the blame. Someone DIRECTED her to act that way.

The film aims to prove that racial tension is not limited to one particular race against another. Unfortunately, in reality, racial tension spreads across all races, all cultures, all steps of the social hierarchy. People live their lives in fear of what they do not know or understand, highly lowering their own quality of life. The characters in “Crash” (amazing performances by Don Cheadle, Jennifer Esposito, Sandra Bullock, Ludacris, Matt Dillon, Brendan Fraser) are all on the brink of some kind of personal disaster. The only way out, the only way to connect in life, is to collide with other people (whether the collisions are negative or positive).

His Poem F*CK Ashton Kutcher can be heard by clicking link below. In the poem Chapelle cites the fact that Ashton’s pranks on Black people always involve the police.

The law was unfortunately flawed. First and foremost it allows the producer of pornography to rely upon the ID presented by the performer. This means that Traci Lords, the 15 year old porn star that triggered the legislation would have still been able to do porn since she had what appeared to be valid ID.

The thing that I really took to was Cate Blanchett. Can’t help it. She looked stunning as the red-headed Hepburn. And I can see why she was nominated and won the Oscar. As for DiCaprio himself, I had an attitude that his nomination was hyped because of who he is, and being directed by Scorsese. But I can see that at least the nod of a nomination was well founded. (Though I am glad that Jamie Foxx won instead for his performance in “Ray”.)

Welles unwittingly set us on the path toward the utter destabilization of reality with “War of the Worlds,” and then compounded the syndrome with his subsequent film masterpiece “Citizen Kane,” a fictional biography of a thinly disguised William Randolph Hearst that invented the pseudo-journalistic docudrama. But it’s only in the past few years that Welles’s ideas have been taken completely over the top by his trashy heirs. Not only do we have TV movies bastardizing the history of celebrities living and dead, but there is also a steady parade of “real” celebrities playing themselves in their own fictionalized “reality” shows. (This summer alone, Bobby Brown, Motley Crue’s Tommy Lee, Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends and Paris Hilton’s mother are all getting their own series.) The Cruise-Holmes antics, not to mention the concurrent shenanigans of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, add yet another variant to this mix, shrewdly identified by Patrick Goldstein of The Los Angeles Times as “a new rogue genre in which celebrities act out their own reality show, free from the constraints of a network time slot or a staged setting, like a boardroom or a desert island.”

Tom Cruise was squirted in the face with water yesterday in London’s Leicester Square:

Let me say this right up front… Avoid this movie at all costs!! For a movie that has some quasi big names in it: Christian Slater, Tara Reid, Stephen Dorff, it sucked! It made no sense. I never played the video game this was based on, but I bet it was a lot better than this movie. The story was chaotic at best. I was hoping the CGI monsters would be kinda cool, but not really. There was a lot of shooting into the dark in this movie, basically for no reason. There was one scene where I guess the director thought it would look cool to have people shooting into the dark in slow/stop motion (think very cheesy/cheap Matrix knock-off effects that didn’t work out) that made me stop and say “WTF? is there a point to this??” I should have read for the 96 minutes I wasted on this movie. Actually I could have watched paint dry and had a better time.

Performances were outstanding. I actually left thinking Sandra Bullock hadn’t been used enough, and that’s impressive since it’s Sandra Bullock. Don Cheadle is, as always, amazing. Even Ludacris pulls off his role.

That is why I thought the movie the Kingdom of Heaven was a movie worth watching for the storyline. A tale of 12th Century Blacksmith who through a twist of fate becomes the Defender of Jeresulem at the time of the Crusades; the story lies comfortably on the narrow shoulders of the the young and boyish Orlando Bloom. Ridley Scott did not want this movie to be about stars.

There’s a seen in Closer where Natalie Portman’s character, Alice, describes a photopgraphy exhibition she’s at:

I can’t believe how popular the Vin Diesel facts webpage is. I remember when I first read the thread over at somethingawful.com and then read them all again at q4.cc/vin. Somehow, this little “web phenomenon” made its way all the way to a crossword puzzle in a newspaper!

Ananova is reporting that Tom Cruise has literally hired a babysitter for Katie Holmes:

As an occult horror film Gothika uses the familiar—ghosts, possession, a tragic past, questioning reality—with effective ease. From the opening session between Dr. Miranda Grey (Halle Berry) and patient/fellow inmate Chloe (Penelope Cruz), questions of possession and repressed memory are raised, to follow the viewer throughout the film. When Miranda switches from staff member to patient, does she share more in common with Chloe than their residence? I don’t want to say more about this, because I don’t want to give away too much.

So now I can sleep tonight, get part of the assignment done, finish the rest over the week-end, and still have time to go watch “Mr. and Mrs. Smith". I can’t wait to see Angelina Jolie again. I found a magazine with her on the cover, in the student life center, but I didn’t even recognize her, since it was a close up of her face and she had a lot of make up on. I always thought I’d be able to recognize those lips anywhere, but I guess I was wrong!

A small update regarding Vin Diesel’s involvement in the movie Hitman. Apparently Eidos and IO Interactive will be talking with Vin Diesel’s Tigon Studios over doing the next installment of the Hitman franchise, which will probably have some sort of tie in with the movie :

Carey and I went to see Cinderella Man last night. It was a really enjoyable experience. I thought when Russell Crowe and Paul Giamatti were in their first scene together, "One could make a worse casting choice than these two." These two actors fall into my phone book list, meaning I would watch them read the phone book to each other. The acting of the film is one of its strengths. This could have had over the top sentimentality, but the quality of the actors keeps it grounded. (I realized when I watched this film that I have a bias against Renee Zellweger for some unknown reason. My tendency is to think that she is not a good actress, but I've actually thought she has done a good job in every movie I have seen her in -- even those films I did not care for like Chicago or Cold Mountain.) Crowe is, well Russell Crowe, i.e., he embodies a character with such ease that one believes he is the person. Crowe is one of those character-leading actors. Not to take away from the likes of Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and Kevin Spacey, but when I watch them in a movie, there is something similar to all their characters. When Crowe takes on a character, I do not feel like I am watching Russel Crowe. Instead I am watching Jeffrey Wigand, John Nash, Jack Aubrey, or in this case, Jim Braddock. Maybe this will be the film that finally earns Giamatti his Oscar nomination after being snubbed for Sideways and American Splendor. By the way, if you have not seen American Splendor, go rent it right now.

Natalie Portman’s acting. She had maybe one scene where she actually seemed to act. The scene in the Senate with Jimmy Smits. Otherwise she just seemed to be phoning it in.

With everything the movie had going for it though, there was still plenty against it. Not the least of which was the completely disgusting overuse of computer animation. DAMNIT George, just because you have the means, doesn't mean you need to use them for every goddamn thing. There wasn't a single real life clone in the whole movie, I think that's what pissed me off the most when it came to all that. They could have put in atleast one, for the sake of those Jerry's Kids, where's there clone huh...HUH? Not to mention the still subpar screenwriting, and the horrible deliverance of most lines. I'm not trying to say I could have done any better, but then again I'm not out there making people sit through my terribly written lines which seem to have the amazing ability to turn good actors into bad one, I know my limitations. I still completely hated the acting of one Hayden Christensen, but for this movie I forgave him, because he did such a good job of "looking the part". I honestly can't imagine anyone who would have visually been better for the part. The way he talks when he's acting though, sound like he has a dead fish in his throat, which is odd, because he wasn't that way in Life as a House. Ewan McGregor starts out just as bad as he was in the first and second, but gets a lot better towards the end. By the very end of the movie, it's almost like he's as good as he is in every other movie he's in...except maybe trainspotting.

Which makes it quite sad really. No doubt there isn’t much variation in the Men-Holding-Guns roles that Stallone, Arnie, Bruce Willis play, or the smarty-pants variant that Tom Cruise plays. But Keanu has now acted in 4 movies as the sullen-stony-faced-reluctant-hero-with-hidden-powers-saving-the-world-from-ULTIMATE-evil-in-a-movie-with-Bullet-Time. Not including Johnny Mnemonic.

Crash is a deeply depressing move. I will never visit Los Angeles. Apparently, only one out of 12 people is decent. The rest are racist and prone to intense violence. And, if you aren’t racist, you will be. In all honesty, the film is really good. The dialogue is SO heavy-handed you can tell the screenwriter never had a subtle thought in his head ever. Every line is about race (or, more accurately, how we hate the other races). The performances were amazing, particularly Michael Pena (so cute and great character). The cinematography also was impressive. And, as always, I love Sandra Bullock for no reason that I can find.

Rod Stewart having babies at 60! �ECK!� What did Rachel Hunter see in him?� Does he have big feet?� Am I missing something?

In my opinion the movie was a delight. Excellent plot, exceptional acting, mind-blowing pod race, Natalie Portman, and an awesome light saber duel. I did have the advantage of seeing the movie after being familiarized with episodes 2,3 though. Attack of the Clones (2) still remains the disappointment featuring the whinny Aniken Skywalker who looks more like Nick Carter from the backstreet boys, with a voice that could never compare to the great Lord Vader.

No list of the best movie series' would be complete without Harrison Ford and Indiana Jones. This is one of the few series where the movies might have actually gotten better as they came out. These movies have humor, romance, adventure, action and even a little taste of historical fiction. Keep in mind, the fifth Indy movie will be out next summer.

Judge Ajay: Prosecutor, I don’t know where you are leading with all this. But if you are considering submitting “Catwoman” as evidence and making us watch that movie, let me strongly suggest that you reconsider your choice. If any other Halle Berry movie will do, let me suggest “Monster’s Ball” .At least it has some..err…hmm… “interesting Halle Berry scenes” in it. Anyways, all this talk about Halle Berry is making me thirsty. Let us resume after a tea break.

Keys, who began studying piano at age 7, only learned of Schuyler after being approached to star in the film by its producer, the Oscar-winning actress Halle Berry.

Universal has tapped Spike Lee to helm “The Inside Man”, which stars Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, and Jodie Foster.

Case in point: Ashton Kutcher’s latest reality TV entry, Beauty and the Geek. Yeah, I was ready to be ashamed I’d watched it, but I’m actually not. I’ll admit to a little snickering over some of the “beauties’” all too apparent lack of IQ (and readily apparent love of tanning booths and hair spray) but what’s really charming about the show is the guys. Smart, shy, nice guys. I pledged my fealty to little Joe, who made me want to hug him every time he was on screen.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith was completely underwhelming. I really wanted to like it. It was, as my mom so aptly described, “a waste of talent.” I expected more from Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie who are, yes, extremely good-looking, but that alone does not make for a very entertaining movie, and from Doug Limon, creator of Go, one of those movies I always enjoy whenever I get a chance to watch it. The scuttlebutt is that Doug Limon is, uh…"idiosyncratic” is how I always put it, my cuz likes to say “quirky” and others might say “difficult to work with.” But I do think we all have our idiosyncracies and quirks that make us difficult to work with at times. It’s a matter of managing them so we can get what we want done without burning bridges. Oh, whatever. I think I need to let Mister Rogers give us some inspiration. Let me see…

We admit that we were a little hopeful when we heard all about how DuWop’s Lip Venom gave you a sexy Angelina Jolie mouth. Certainly our pathetic non-surgically enhanced lips were the only thing keeping us from fame and fortune and Brad Pitt. While we have always been told we have a pretty full set of smackers, we were aiming for complete and utter perpetual pout. Needless to say, we withheld our normal pessimism and jumped at the chance to check out the famed bee sting action for ourselves. And wow, were we under whelmed.

Boston Herald: "The Departed'' director Martin Scorsese plans to film in seven Boston neighborhoods - South Boston, Beacon Hill, Chinatown, Dorchester, Charlestown, Eastie and the North End - during the film's six weeks of filming. As you are well aware by now, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg and Jack Nicholson are headed to the Hub for three weeks this month to shoot their set-in-Boston mob flick. They will return for three weeks in August. We are breathless with anticipation. ..

I would also recommend catching beauty and the geek tonight. Besides featuring a Brandeis graduate as a huge nerd, it actually is something of the “social experiment” Ashton Kutcher claims it to be. Judging by the pilot alone it is the best reality show I have caught since Bands on the Run, which really was top notch and will hopefully get a DVD release eventually.

Natalie Portman was amazing as Alice (and she looks pretty good as a blonde, we were all surprised to see), and Jude Law and Julia Roberts were fitting as the sad-sack characters, Dan and Anna.

You don't need it. Natural is better than fake and the best work is expensive. It's addictive too, Brook Burke is married to one of the best Surgeons in LA (Garth Fisher) and she's just had a facelift at 33. Brooke Burke (who's a solid ten). Facelift. 33. Damn.

In Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), a white liberal couple (Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn) must deal with their mixed emotions when their daughter brings home a black fiancée (Sydney Poitier) and announces that they must grant her approval (or not) by the end of that same night. Adding to the confusion is the couple’s disapproving black maid and the fiancée’s parents, who also join the dinner party unexpectedly. Guess Who (2005) has a successful black couple dealing with the same when their daughter brings home a white fiancée...

L.L. Cool J. gets married. Too obscure? How about this? Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are top assassins who happen to be married to each other but have no idea what their significant other really does for a living (cue scratching record sound)…until they’re hired to kill each other.

I managed to convince everyone that we all should go and see the Pacifier. And yeah I think it was good actually. It’s like pure entertainment, a good family movie. I got all ‘aaaaw’ when vin Diesel got all soft and lovable. So yeah, see it with your family, or if you just want to get in a good mood.