Oscar nominee and erstwhile Sexiest Man Alive Bradley Cooper at The Hangover Part III premiere last night in Los Angeles ...
OR
... Looney Tunes hair-monster Gossamer?
David O. Russell's follow-up to The Fighter deals, once again, with the question of male aggression, only this time the fights are all strictly amateur. (Still violent, though!) After discovering his wife cheating on him, Pat (Bradley Cooper) assaults the man who's cuckolding him and ends up getting treated in a mental institution. After returning home to live with his parents in Philadelphia, Pat is determined to give himself a whole-life makeover so that his ex-wife will find him worthy again, despite the fact that she has taken out a restraining order against him. But his path keeps crossing that of Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a young widow who's dealing with her grief by teaching herself ballroom dancing.
Playbook was an awards monster: Its stars were nominated in all four acting categories at this year's Oscars, with Lawrence taking home her first Academy Award for playing Tiffany. The two leads have nice chemistry despite the fact that she is clearly way too young for him, but midway through the movie tries to make you forget that it's been making Tiffany's depression, Pat's bipolar disorder, and Pat's father's OCD seem like cute personality quirks, as opposed to debilitating mental illnesses, by turning into a dance movie. But hey: If you rent it this weekend, you kind of get two movies for the price of one.
The Western Jane Got a Gun has been suffering through a historic string of defections, with Bradley Cooper its latest exit. You might even be tempted to say that Jane Got a Gun … but very little else. (I'm so, so sorry for that. Please keep reading.)
The flick stars (for now!) Natalie Portman, Noah Emmerich as her estranged outlaw husband, and Joel Edgerton as the ex-lover Portman calls on for help when Emmerich rides back into town riddled with bullet holes. Cooper was set to play the villain — he's chasing down Emmerich to finish off the job, threatening Portman's homestead in the process — but has now dropped off the project because of scheduling conflicts. The sad/hilarious thing is that Coops had already been a replacement for Jude Law, who dropped out because of scheduling conflicts, and Jude Law had been a replacement for Michael Fassbender, who dropped out because of, yep, scheduling conflicts. Oh, also: The original director, Lynne Ramsay, didn't show up on the first day of shooting, so they had to get Gavin O'Connor (Warrior) to step in instead. What in the hell is going on here?
Sometimes movies slip through the cracks and, for better or worse, I catch up with them. Here's a handful, all directed by a range of men, from an Italian visionary to some dude named Robert Redford.
The Place Beyond the Pines, directed by Derek Cianfrance
A slow-burning drama told in three connected movements, all featuring an unusually haggard, unusually good Eva Mendes. The first has Ryan Gosling doing a version of his Drive persona, a bank-robbing, tattooed stunt biker living in Schenectady (a Mohawk word that gives the movie its title). The second miscasts Bradley Cooper as a lawyer turned cop in the same town. The last has two fantastic performances from Emory Cohen and Dane DeHaan, whose relationship to each other and the rest of the movie is basically from the people who brought you Romeo and Juliet.
What Cianfrance has written has scraps of surprise and a fine chase sequence, but it doesn't reach for the stars or the emotional cosmos — or, at least, it doesn't know how to get there. He's given us plot points and episodes in search of thriller and tragedy. But no suspense. His previous movie with Gosling, 2010's martial-disaster drama Blue Valentine, was similarly unsure about how to build into something greater than shouts and murmurs. This time, you wonder whether Cianfrance reached the film's final third and realized that this was his movie, two high school burnouts who fascinate each other. But he had Gosling and Cooper and probably couldn't turn back. Once Ray Liotta shows up as his umpteenth crook, it's tempting to believe that a piece of software made the whole movie happen.
Bradley Cooper & Leonardo DiCaprio? "Bradley Cooper is getting a lesson in no-strings-attached hookups from Hollywood's ultimate bachelor, Leonardo DiCaprio! The guys [both are 38 years old] got to know each other during awards season, and Leo took Bradley under his wing. Bradley was moaning about finding Mrs. Right. But Leo told him to chill out and enjoy all the beautiful women. Leo, who has romanced a string of catwalkers, explained his master plan to the Silver Linings Playbook hunk." Leo says, "He's going to date as many supermodels as possible before he's 40, then he'll settle down with a good woman." Ohhh, good for yoooou! "Bradley's been following his pal's advice — good times with no committment."
Who Is Khloe Kardashian's Baby Daddy? "Photos of the reality TV star hopping into the tattooed arms of rapper The Game in L.A.'s Runyon Canyon ignited a firestorm of talk that she was cheating on her husband Lamar Odom — a controversy that shows no signs of abating." OK! then uses every photo they can find of Khloe with her hand on or near her stomach (there are a lot, from all different times) to claim she is pregnant. While pregnancy was her dream, "that doesn't mean it's all roses and lollipops." (Is that a phrase?) The Game says he and Khloe were just promoting his 60 Days of Fitness program. According to him, "We have never and will never be sleeping together. Lamar is my homie and her husband and I wish people wouldn't spread such false rumors." Do you though, Game? Because this is the most publicity you've had in years.
Katy Perry & John Mayer Break Up: Call me a naive sucker, but I really thought these two could go the distance. They made it almost a year, which is like a decade in John Mayer relationship time. As recently as March 2, she tweeted, "My boyfriend is taking me to a kitten shelter in his truck. I can't think of a more perfect Saturday." In the time since then, something must have gone down, because by March 18 she was tweeting "ATTENTION: Mercury is OUT of retrograde today. Thank GOD." The split has now been announced in People, which means it was probably confirmed to them by either Mayer's or Perry's rep. So what went wrong? Let's do a postmortem.
Almost Famous was a treasure trove of feel-good triumphalism, but it's got a sad little footnote attached to it: For some reason, Cameron Crowe has never quite been able to bring the hot sauce since. I mean, I'll go to bat for Vanilla Sky any day of the week (that crazy twist ending?! With the thing?!), but critical consensus isn't quite as warm, and after that we're talking Elizabethtown and, gah, We Bought a Zoo. And then there's the post-AF career of Patrick Fugit, who you know better as Rolling Stone’s most adorable cub reporter, William Miller. While he's been popping up in stuff steadily since — Saved!, Wristcutters: A Love Story, this MadTV Almost Famous parody that I'm just finding out about now and is totally incredible — without ever getting another juicy leading role. It wasn't the most surprising thing that his career didn't shoot off into the stratosphere: A large part of Fugit's charm in Almost Famous was his blankness, and blankness is probably not the most desired tool in the actor's arsenal. But, considering how hard he slayed in Almost Famous, it was still a bit of a drag. Anyway, you can dry your tears now. The kid from Almost Famous just got a TV show.
THE BEST AND WORST LOVERS IN HOLLYWOOD:
US Weekly
Miranda Lambert & Blake Shelton: Splitting up is not on the table for the country supercouple. Lambert says she's questioned whether her marriage to Shelton will last "a million" times. "Divorce is not an option," Lambert said. "I will fight to the death. I am a ninja." That seems like a weird thing to say about your relationship. In order to keep communication open, Lambert and Shelton "are allowed to snoop through each other's phones." Has she never heard of a burner? They never spend longer than two weeks away from each other. "We text a lot. Even if it's just sending a picture of the onion rings we're eating!" OK, that seems less weird. They bond at home, "hang out on the porch, drink beer and cook burgers." Lambert says "I think it's important as a married couple to be friends." This all feels strangely defensive. I'm rooting for Lambert (how could I not be?), so I hope things work out.
Omar Sy and Bradley Cooper are in talks to appear in The Weinstein Company’s comedy Chef. Cooper previously starred in Fox’s Kitchen Confidential, but you probably don’t remember that.
Star
Lindsay Lohan Is a High-Paid Escort: According to her father, Michael Lohan, Lindsay "is getting paid to date rich men. Dina is pimpin her out. It's disgusting." A second source confirms the story. "The dates last for days, and the guys pay for everything — hotel, travel costs, food, whatever — as well as jewelry and other gifts." While she might just be receiving a fee to act as "arm candy for wealthy men who like to be seen with beautiful and famous women." Clients include Prince Haji Abdul Azim, third in line to the throne of Brunei, and Spanish-American painter Domingo Zapata.
"Domingo let Lindsay live in his penthouse at the Bowery Hotel in NYC for free and at his L.A. pad at Chateau Marmont." Zapata rescinded his kindness after Lohan's hit-and-run incident in September. "He said that Lindsay kept taking, taking, taking and asking for more — cars, dinners, clothes, everything." Lohan is now hanging out with "Vikram Chatwal a.k.a. The Turban Cowboy, who owns a chain of luxury hotels." Is that a self-appointed nickname? Michael Lohan says "Dina is exploiting Lindsay because she's broke too and gets 20 percent of everything Lindsay makes." Michael Lohan is not the most reputable source, though. A friend of Lindsay's says her escort work is "no big deal" because Lohan is "totally broke and in serious debt, and no one will hire her." Plus Lindsay thinks of it as a kind of method research for some future role. "Being an escort is just an easy way for her to stay above water. [Lindsay] says she's an actress and won't turn down getting paid good money to act a certain way!"
So much eyebrow-raising Hollywood casting news and project announcements, so little time. Let's get to it!
Bradley Cooper has signed on for Dark Invasion, a "true spy thriller" based on an upcoming Howard Blum nonfiction book of the same name. The year is 1915, the heart of WWI, and Cooper is NYPD captain Tom Tunney, the man putting together a team to fight German spy tactics sabotaging America's support of the Allied war effort. As Deadline reports, "The Kaiser's spies bomb factories, sabotage ships, shoot JP Morgan Jr (a financier of the Allies), bomb the U.S. Capitol Building, and set up an anthrax lab six miles from the White House." Sounds exciting and action-packed, and also this probably means Bradley Cooper will have a mustache! My only concern? That a nation of teenagers who skipped American History to rip butts and chug Georgi on the benches behind the soccer field will see evil Germans and be utterly confounded as to where their swastikas went.
Demi Moore Out Of Control in Miami: "Dancing wildly and downing Red Bull after Red Bull at 1:30 A.M., Demi Moore — wearing a thigh-baring romper and black glasses — made quite a spectacle of herself in Miami Beach." There for Art Basel, the "50-year-old mom of three grinded against fellow reveler Stacy Keibler, 33, as Lenny Kravitz, 48, looked on." How come nobody's calling nearly 50-year-old father Kravitz "out of control" for still going out and partying? Oh right, he's not a woman. Then again, Demi did just get out of rehab, so the age-shaming can be also be played off as genuine concern for her health. "Demi partying was really something else. Lenny was rolling his eyes." Moore's boy-toy Vito Schnabel, 26, "was keeping a safe distance from the self-proclaimed puma." He tried to ditch her, but "she won't let it go. He told her to leave him alone, but she went to Miami anyway." I would totally watch this if it were a movie, but the reality is pretty hard to take. "Demi is insecure about getting older." OH YOU THINK? "That's why she hangs out with so many young people." A friend defends her by saying, "She was having fun." She looks like she was having fun twerking like an awkward white lady. Before Schnabel, she hooked up with Hard Rock Hotel heir Harry Morton, who dated Lindsay Lohan. Moore's daughters were in Miami to party, but they have exiled their mom. "They're not talking. She and Scout haven't spoken in a long time." This is very sad. Actresses get punished for getting older but mocked for acting young. Demi Moore obviously has a lot of problems, but shaming her isn't gonna help.
Scarlett Johansson Is Depressed: "She was totally out of control in Moscow recently" at a champagne brand's promo event. "She was drinking nonstop and barely slept. It was obvious that she was trying to numb her feelings." She's sad about her breakup with ad exec Nate Naylor. "She's not used to going home alone — it's a shock to her system. The fact that Ryan Reynolds is happily married while she's single again has done a number on her. And the drinking is taking its toll — she's been crying because she feels so fat." She got a lucky horseshoe tattooed on her ribcage "because she's feeling a bit unlucky." A rebound with ex-boyfriend Jared Leto quickly went south. "She thought a fling with Jared would make her feel better, but since it was only a hookup, it only made things worse." Time for Lost in Translation 2? I know I'd pay good money to watch Scarlett be sad in Russia.
