Entries from May 2010 ↓

The Reaper seems to have it in for entertainers these days, what with the recent passing of Lena Horne, Lynn Redgrave, Gary Coleman, Ronnie James Dio, and others. Now, Dennis Hopper, a known rebel and hellraiser prone to paranoid delusions, but a screen legend regardless, passed away in his home in Venice, California, at 74 from complications due to prostate cancer.

Hopper, who was going through a difficult divorce with his fifth wife, wrote, directed and acted in 1969’s classic Easy Rider, which featured other acting legends Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda. Easy Rider, a film that changed Hollywood and which was made for less than $500K and grossed tens of millions of dollars, gained Hopper two Oscar nominations. Before that, he played Goon in 1954’s Rebel Without a Cause, beside James Dean. Amongst his 200+ acting credits, he also appeared in numerous other films including Apocalypse Now and Blue Velvet. More recently, he played Ben Cendars for 26 episodes of Crash, and had two film projects in progress: Alpha and Omega (voice) and The Last Film Festival.

He’s survived by four children from four of his five wives.

That Bret Michaels, he’s like the Energizer ™ bunny ™, he just keeps going. He gets out of hospital (for the second time this year) and what does? Not recuperate. That’s for pussies. So to prove how much of a man he is, despite suffering a brain hemorrhage and a mild stroke within less than two months, he goes off to the finale of Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice. The Donald is so excited at milking the whole situation that after he wets his pants, he gives Bret the title. You’re hired, Bret!

What’s next for Bret? He doesn’t tell his docs he’s going to sing Every Rose Has its Thorn on American Idol. And now there’s talk of Bret talking Simon Cowell’s judge slot for next season of American Idol. Sure, Bret knows music, and he’s expecting to tour again this summer, but I’m not sure he can be as mean as Simon. Then again, Bret did pit tons of desperate women against each other, vying for his heart on national TV, most making fools of themselves. Not once but for three seasons. Obviously he wasn’t pleased with the Rock of Love harem and had to keep searching for true love. But Bret? I know the Bunny keeps going and going, but doesn’t it eventually run out of juice without a recharge?

So Jesse James may have cheated on Sandra Bullock but he’s made his fake penance by revealing all on Nightline, implicating his father of abuse. Now he says he’s tired of being thought of as a monster, and someone close to him hopes the Nightline interview will make him seem more human.

Sorry, not sure he’s achieving that goal. According to his former stepmom, Janina James Coan, he supposedly killed baby animals as a teen, emulating the Nazi “Angel of Death” Joseph Mengele by injecting them using a syringe filled with alcohol. She says that he was also obsessed with Adolf Hitler, and sometimes gave the Nazi salute. His own chopper business’ logo incorporates the historic Iron Cross, which hasits own negative connotations. But Jesse James insists he’s not a racist.

In his defense, he did adopt baby Louis Bardo with wife Sandra Bullock. I’ve also known numerous non-racist people with a geometric obsession with the Iron Cross and the swastika — the latter didn’t originate in Germany; it’s in many cultures. I also knew a talented young musician with a phenomenal voice much like David Bowie’s but who had once been obsessed with Hitler yet had several friends of “color.” So it is possible that Jesse’s not a racist — even despite that the subject of his affair, Michelle ‘Bombshell’ McGee has what might be deemed racist tattoos.

Yet, given the contradictory information from Coan, Jesse’s sister Julie James England, and their dad Larry James, someone in the family is lying about something. Usually it’s the person who perceives that they have the most to lose, not the person who has nothing comparative to lose. But not always.

Death threats? Justin ‘Baby’ Bieber’s fans are like what? 8 year-old girls? And they’re giving death threats to Bieber “haters”? It’s amusing the first time, when they threatened Kim Kardashian after Bieber tweeted that she was his girlfiend. These moppets grow tiresome; snotty little pests. Parents, lock up your Bieber babies, ban them from the Internet, take away their smartphones, and teach them that not everyone likes mediocrity Justin Bieber as much as they do, and that it’s really okay. They need to find their happy place every time someone publicly doesn’t like Justin, or they’ll have an aneurysm. Teach them a sense of humor, because it’s a free country and that Shaved Bieber software is funny to those of us who don’t want to listen to any more ‘baby baby baby’ from him.

On the other hand, the video of  two year- old Ella performing his song is quite amusing. Here it is below, in case you’re one of what, 5 people in the world who haven’t seen it:

That Russell Brand, such a kidder. Always joking around about something. Says he needs to have an orgasm every 15 minutes. Oh and that he’s hoping for a child with Katy Perry some day. “I’m hoping for a hybrid creature, something from, Greek mythology like a satyr.” But what a lucky guy, about to marry the very sexy Katy Perry. Brand is of course the British actor/ comedian who played the kooky rockstar Aldous Snow in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

The best quote out of his recent Parade interview is in reference to sex addiction:

Men don’t face the imperative of having a baby grow in their belly, so the male mating strategy is based on making a lot of women pregnant, or at least having sex with them. The female strategy is to get one good man. That’s why marriage is not fair.

He jokes about trying that excuse on fiancee Katy, and you might think given what a babe she is, that there’s no reason to cheat. But then again, Tiger Woods and David Boreanaz both have beautiful wives and that didn’t stop them. In Tiger’s case, it’s probably going to cost him $750M, which just seems surreal. Russell might be a notorious joker; hopefully he’ll be faithful.

Notes: Huffington Post via Parade.

Actor Gary Coleman has passed away at age 42, after suffering suffering an intracranial brain hemmorhage, according to his wife, Shannon. Coleman was in critical condition at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, after falling and injuring his head. His brother-in-law called 911 after discovering him. [RadarOnline]

Coleman had had two kidney transplants and was prone to seizures. He’s been hospitalized twice this year for seizures — once during a TV interview taping. He’s probably best known for his role as the short, lovable Arnold Jackson in Diff’rent Strokes, and his trademark saying, “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?,” when talking to his TV brother Willis Jackson, played by Todd Bridges. The cast of the show has been plagued by misfortune. Bridges has been arrested once. Co-star Dano Plato, who played Kimberly Drummond, committed suicide by drug overdose on May 8, 1999. Her son, Tyler Lambert, followed her nearly 11 years to the day, on May 6, 2010, taking his life with a shotgun after a drinking binge.

Movie-wise, there’s possibly something for everyone this week, with a couple of big flicks, at least in hype if not in quality. IMDB lists four new releases, and you can get more details from their profile pages, which I’ve linked to from each movie’s title.

New Releases

• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley. Directed by Mike Newell. This one looks very much like the recent Mummy flicks with Brendan Fraser, at least in terms of the CGI. But it does look entertaining, despite being based on a video game. Apparently Gyllenhaal put in quite the effort to improving his physique.
• Sex and the City 2: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon. Directed by Michael Patrick King. I was enough of a fan of the TV series to watch when I could, but I missed the first movie. Unfortunately, I’ve heard nothing good so far about SatC 2; only that there’s a lot of “bore” and “excess”. Still, die-hard fans will probably go, for completion.
• Survival of the Dead: Alan Van Sprang, Kenneth Welsh, Kathleen Munroe. Directed by George A. Romero. Romero’s back with yet another ‘Dead’ zombie flick, but again in his newer style, which fans of his original material (before Land of the Dead) apparently tend to stay away from.
• Micmacs [limited; French]: Danny Boon, Andre Dussollier, Nicolas Marie. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Jeunet is a multi-award-winning director, as well as a writer, producer and actor. Notable is 1991’s Delicatessen dark, futuristic comedy, balanced against a genre flick like 1997’s Alien: Resurrection. But beyond the plot as listed in IMDB, I know nothing about Micmacs.

Data from IMDB’s Now Playing page.

Also Playing

Still in theaters: Shrek Forever After, Iron Man 2, Robin Hood, Letters to Juliet, Just Wright, MacGruber and others, mostly released last week.

Upcoming Movies/ Roles

• Logan’s Run, slated for a 2012 release might have a new director, Carl Rinsch. The movie is being produced by Joel Silver and Akiva Goldsman, and is based, I assume, on both the 1976 movie (with Michael York, Farrah Fawcett, Peter Ustinov) and the short-lived 1977 TV series (Gregory Harrison, who is Paul Norris on One Tree Hill), not to mention the original novel from 1967. [Heat Vision]
• Emma Roberts will join ‘Scream 4′. I must have lost track; I thought they were at #5. But the much of the original cast is in it: Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Neve Campbell. [Hollywood Insider]
• Brendan Fraser will likely not be starring in the sequel for Journey to the Center of the Earth. Directing duties might fall to Brad Peyton. [Deadline]
• The next Spiderman script has five contenders for the lead role: Jamie Bell, Alden Ehrenreich, Andrew Garfield, Frank Dillane, Josh Hutcherson. [Perez Hilton]
• Nina Dobrev of the show Vampire Diaries will join Kellan Lutz and Samuel L. Jackson in the action movie Deathgames. [Heat Vision]
• James McAvoy will play the younger version of Professor X (previously played by Patrick Stewart) in the next installment of the X-Men movies, X-Men: First Class, which takes place before the trilogy. [Hollywood, Heat Vision]

Screen Scene Tidbits

• Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are two of the best actors in Hollywood, and on my top five faves. But does that mean they’re qualified to play Rat Pack pals Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra in an upcoming biopic? Martin Scorcese thinks so, and that means it’s pretty likely to happen. [The Playlist]
• The Harry Potter film series is coming to an end. Can you believe it’s been about 10 years since the first one?! Apparently a few of the cast members, including Daniel Radcliffe, are a bit emotional as they’re wrapping up the last movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I (2010; Part II will be released in 2011). [People]
• Human Centipede is said to be one of the most revolting films ever made — so much so that some audience members were dry heaving in their seats during a viewing; the rest made for the door. But some wag got the clever idea to turn the opportunity into a Web-based video game — which doesn’t seem as offensive. If you don’t already know why Human Centipede the movie is so offensive, trust me, you never want to know. Even the description is revolting. Don’t even look it up. If you’re a little curious, play the Human Centipede Web game, which is just a clone of the original Centiped video game. Note: this game is NOT for the kiddies.

Enjoy the movies!

(GettyImages.com)

The Hobbit will have a new honcho.

Guillermo del Toro announced on Sunday that he is no longer going to direct the highly anticipated two-part prequel to Lord of the Rings.

“In light of ongoing delays in the setting of a start date for filming The Hobbit, I am faced with the hardest decision of my life,” Del Toro said on J.R.R. Tolkien fan site TheOneRing.net.

“After nearly two years of living, breathing and designing a world as rich as Tolkien’s Middle Earth, I must, with great regret, take leave from helming these wonderful pictures.”

Del Toro delivered dazzling visuals as the director of Pan’s Labyrinth and the Hellboy movies.

A replacement has not been named.

The films are still scheduled to be released in December 2012 and December 2013.

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Celine Dion is pregnant with twins, her rep confirms.

After undergoing six in-vitro fertilization attempts, Dion is now pregnant again.

The singer is about three and a half months along.

Dion and her husband, Rene Angelil, do not know the sex of the children at this point.

Back in November an in vitro embryo didn’t take, but the couple vowed to “try again.”

Dion, who is 42, is already the mother of a 9-year-old boy René-Charles.

Gossip Cop will update as more details emerge.

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Miley Cyrus can’t get into the hit show “Glee.”

Even though her song, “The Climb,” was in a recent episode of “Glee,” Cyrus says the popular series is just too unrealistic for her.

“Honestly, musicals? I just can’t. What if this was real life and I was just walking down the street on Rodeo Drive and all of a sudden I just burst into song about how much I love shoes?” says the “Hannah Montana” star in the June issue of Billboard before adding with a laugh, “It would get hits on YouTube.”

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