getty images
Today in Cannes Hell: Spike Lee vs. The World, ‘Che’ Unveiled and Mouthbreathing Over Penelope Cruz
2:55AM Defamer Hollywood | Only a few days remain before Cannes ends and we can roll our bleary eyes from the backs of our heads. In the meantime, the rubbernecker in us can’t help but take an interest in Spike Lee’s latest sortie against the Hollywood establishment — this time as personified by Cannes darling Clint Eastwood, whom Lee railed against while promoting his upcoming Afro-centric World War II drama Miracle at St. Anna:
Shocker! Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie Make Oscar-Bait Drama Everybody Loves
2:00AM Defamer Hollywood | Ho-hum. Clint Eastwood went to Cannes and all he got were more late-career raves, award mentions, his star Angelina Jolie on his arm and perhaps the most meta title switcheroo in Hollywood history: The Exchange (née Changeling) has all kinds of fans at the festival, where the child-disappearance drama premieres today in competition and already has Variety’s Todd McCarthy running back at his hotel room to change his pants: The intercutting of two heavyweight proceedings, a murder trial and a landmark City Hall hearing, provide the story’s dramatic crescendo, although even greater tension stems from what comes thereafter. In the end, Changeling joins the likes of Chinatown and L.A. Confidential as a sorrowful critique of the city’s political culture. More »
Today in Cannes Hell: Indy, Indy, Indy! (And Harvey and Woody)
3:35AM Defamer Hollywood | The first-in-the-world hype accompanying Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’s premiere at Cannes appears to remain the only story of interest to most festivalgoers, with everything from live-blogs of the screening to more meditative reads (”I was bored out of my mind,” writes A.O. Scott) peppering the spectrum of feedback. Of course there’s always Harvey Weinstein, who continues his Cannes dealings with impunity despite our corporate death sentence leveled last week. And people actually seem to like Woody Allen’s latest! It’s the ’80s all over again!
Bill Murray’s ‘Stupid Country Bumpkin’ Look Doesn’t Impress Greta Scacchi
8:10AM Molly Friedman | We’ve had a thing for Bill Murray since the first time we saw clips of his pity-me-but-look-at-me skits on SNL right up until his sad lonely guy role in Lost In Translation, when his grey hair and inability to smile deflated our crush ever so slightly. But unlike actress Greta Scacchi, who blabbed to a London paper about the night he innocently asked for her number and was harshly rejected by her and the too-cool group of Eurotrashy friends she rolls with, we’d never resort to the level of cattiness the Italian quasi-star did today: More »
Original Hollywood Power Flack Warren Cowan Dead at 87
3:15AM Defamer Hollywood | It’s almost impossible to conceive of a publicist earning a legend these days for much beyond sexuality crisis management or the degree to which s/he lies to Page Six. All the more reason to miss Warren Cowan, one of Hollywood’s original Power Flacks who passed away Wednesday at the age of 87. After founding his seminal firm Rogers & Cowan with his mentor Henry C. Rogers in 1950, Cowan went on to make his name as the press agent for everyone from Frank Sinatra to Elizabeth Taylor to Paul Newman to Audrey Hepburn to Ronald Reagan. He never fully retired, either, selling R&C in 1988 and later launching another influential firm, Warren Cowan and Associates, which further capitalized on his earlier revolutions in Oscar campaigning.
‘Nailed’ Returns as Troubled Producers Search For Stability
2:00AM Defamer Hollywood | All the drama affecting David O. Russell’s new film Nailed settled down a bit Monday when production resumed on the South Carolina set. But while the producers squared away their money issues with SAG, which shut shooting down last Friday, our own suspicions about precariously-budgeted distributor ThinkFilm got another look from Variety yesterday afternoon: More »
Roman Polanski’s Victim Apparently a Fan of ‘Roman Polanski’ Documentary
8:50AM Defamer Hollywood | The curious path of the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired took another bizarre turn this week when HBO hosted an actual red-carpet “premiere” for the film in New York — the same city where it had attempted to secretly screen the doc for a week-long Oscar-qualifying run last month. Then, as Vulture noted today, things got even weirder when Polanski’s 1977 statutory rape victim, the then-13 Samantha Geimer, showed up as one of the guests: More »
L.A. Courts Literally Go To Shit As Notorious Director Faces Obscenity Trial
7:25AM Defamer Hollywood | Defamer would like to take just a moment to salute a true American hero — a local filmmaker whose vision, dedication and utter depravity have resulted in some of the bravest and most honest films of our time. His name is Ira Isaacs; you may know him as the maker of such “shock art” (i.e. fetish porn) masterworks as Laurie’s Toilet Show, Gang Bang Horse (Pony Sex Game) and Hollywood Scat Amateurs No. 7, and soon you may also know him as the man sent up the river in what Radar today describes as perhaps “the most extreme obscenity trial in U.S. history.” More »
The Wachowskis Still in Hiding as ‘Speed Racer’ Circles the Drain
3:30AM Defamer Hollywood | For all its confectionery imagery, Christina Ricci scene-stealing and the few other things Speed Racer gets right, it still faces a box-office false start that could make Leatherheads look like a hit in comparison. We sketched a few of the hurdles here yesterday (number one being its own studio’s resignation to its underachievement), but at this point there’s only one that counts: Larry and Andy Wachowski need to climb out of their hole. More »
