Lizzy Caplan's spoofy commercial "Fashion Film" is like ASMR meets an Anthropologie catalogue. "Sometimes I think to myself in French, and listen to old records from the ’60s. They're way better than stuff today."
From Kirstie Alley oversharing about conspiring with George Wendt to snap a picture of Ted Danson's dick during the Cheers years to the revelation that Mel Gibson is dating Jennifer Aniston's body double, this year we learned more than we could have possibly ever wanted to about celebrities.
Last night SpikeTV aired Eddie Murphy: One Night Only, a star-studded tribute to Eddie. And even if it wasn't SpikeTV, where every programming decision seems vaguely nefarious and inexplicable, it felt like kind of a strange time to do it. At any other point after, say, Dreamgirls, it would have made sense: Sure, Eddie's mostly fallen off, but let's celebrate all the awesome stuff he did back when he was on top. But then we got last year's false-start adult-comedy comeback, encompassed by the lukewarmly received Tower Heist and the canceled plans to host the Oscars. So now it's like we can't help but think about how, at some point in the last decade, Eddie either lost his nerve or decided he didn't really feel like trying anymore. It was an odd thing to see comedian after comedian come up and praise Eddie with what you could tell was genuine devotion, respect, and, sometimes, straight slobbering fandom, and to think, "but what about Norbit? Isn't anyone gonna give this guy shit for making Norbit?"
As an excuse to get a lot of funny people together and to watch a lot of prime Eddie footage, though? It was pretty good.
Back in February, Grantland pointed your attention to the news that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was in talks for Brett Ratner's comeback flick: Hercules, a "big stomp-y sandals-and-swords flick [based on Steve Moore's Hercules: The Thracian War], a hyper-aggressive 300-style romp through mythology." Well, now it's official. Deadline reports that both Johnson and Ratner are signed on, and that production will start in 2013. Congratulations, The Rock: You now continue to have a multitude of professional reasons to look like this.
Tower Heist
While I haven't seen Bret Ratner's movie about a group of small-time crooks and hotel employees planning a major heist (and have no particular plans to), the idiotic Tower Heist theme song gets stuck in my head a minimum of once a day. It's a tower heist!
Sandra Bullock and Brett Ratner: "Sad for so long," Bullock was "miserable" after her marriage to Jesse James fell apart with a cheating scandal and Ryan Reynolds rebuked her advances in favor of the younger and blonder Blake Lively. But "cuddling with a new male companion at an after-hours party on Oscar night, Sandra Bullock looked happier than she's been in nearly two years." Friends were stoked until they "realized who her mystery man was: Hollywood's sleaziest bad boy, Brett Ratner." Sandra's rep issued an immediate denial, but eyewitnesses say she was "hanging out a lot" with 42-year-old Ratner, "who has crudely bragged about sleeping with a slew of starlets and resigned from his latest job producing the Academy Awards after using an anti-gay slur." Maybe Sandy likes bad boys, but "Brett is a real player. He always talks about meeting girls and partying." Could be he's all talk and shrimp juice, if you listened to what Olivia Munn had to say about their brief casting couch encounter. "She wanted somebody her age or older — a tough guy who could handle her lifestyle, but with enough dating experience that he wouldn't want to cheat on her like Jesse did." She spent Oscar week flirting with Ratner and fellow "notorious player Gerard Butler." She's serious about settling down, and "her need to be in a relationship has trumped" her good judgment, although "she isn't looking for a fling. She is looking for a man to grow old with, who can help her raise Louis — a nice, decent guy."
And when you think nice and decent, you think Ratner, who "recently bragged on The Howard Stern Show that he wraps it up because, "If I breathe on a girl she can get pregnant."
Can you smmmmmeeeelllllllllll what The Rock is cooking?* It's a Hercules movie directed by Brett Ratner! Dwayne Johnson is now in talks for the project, which is written by Ryan Condol (who also had a credit on the Bradley Cooper Paradise Lost movie that's, actually, now not being made) and is an adaptation of Steve Moore's graphic novel Hercules: The Thracian War. From the looks of it, Moore's book is a hyper-aggressive 300-style romp through mythology, which pretty much makes sense. Considering the principals' track records, a big stomp-y sandals-and-swords flick is the only way to go.
The failure of Brett Ratner's $75 million Tower Heist last weekend was overshadowed by the director's bigger failures as a human. Still, it must be asked: What went wrong? Heist had plenty going for it, including a timely premise, a release date light on competition, the usually bankable Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy in his most promising role in years, and some of the least-awful reviews of Ratner's career. Predicted to top the box office with at least $35 million, Heist made off with a mere $24 million, landing in second place behind the week-old Puss in Boots. So as Ratner embarks on an apology tour, Murphy sulks back to movie jail, and Stiller calls his agent to see if there are any Fockers we haven't yet been introduced to, we asked a pair of Hollywood professionals (a prominent agent and producer) for insight into why Tower Heist bombed — and what the fallout might be for its makers.
Following the lead of his Tower Heist director Brett Ratner, Eddie Murphy has dropped out of his gig as host of next February's Oscars, leaving the Academy with just over three months to find a replacement. Who should they go with? We polled the Grantland staff and have a few suggestions.
Well, that was an interesting couple of days. Deep breath aaaaaand … reboot. Welcome to the first day of the rest of your Oscar season, now without the man who was supposed to reinvent the awards ceremony. As potential best supporting actor nominee Albert Brooks brilliantly tweeted yesterday, “Wow, the Brett Ratner produced Oscar show flew by.” And with his unplanned departure, the Academy finds itself back in a very familiar place: right next to the panic button. Panic is what, more often than not, has ruled the organization’s decisions about the show in recent years. Panic is what led them to Ratner in the first place. And while I’d like to believe that panic won’t be the deciding factor in what’s likely to be a short, public, and speculation-heavy hunt for a replacement, old habits die hard.
“Look, we saw some amazing people. _________ was great. It was a great audition, I’m telling you. But the thing with ________ is, you can’t wait for her to take her clothes off.” — A.
“I used to date ________ when she was Lisa. That was the problem. She wasn’t Asian back then. She was hanging out on my set, I banged her a few times but I forgot her. Because she changed her name I didn’t know it was the same person." — B.
"It's so nice when I think about the beginning of the movie, with the scene in the parking lot, in the car, up into the room. She was just sitting there. Before I put the ball gag around her mouth. Her glow was unbelievable. Her smile was like — wow. There was a presence there that was very unique." — C.
Guess which of these quotes are Brett Ratner on Olivia Munn (B), David Fincher on Scarlett Johansson's failed audition for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (A), and the late John Leslie — director of films such as Anything That Moves, Big Tit Crackers 2, the Fresh Meat series, Slut Tracker, the Ass Trap trilogy, and some whose titles I can't legally say here on Grantland — discussing porn star Naomi (C). Is it just me or does John Leslie (RIP) sound the most respectful of the woman he is talking about?
Earlier today, New York magazine’s entertainment site Vulture reported that at a Los Angeles Q&A after a screening of Tower Heist, the film’s director Brett Ratner dismissed a question about his process by saying, “Rehearsing is for fags.” Since Ratner has been signed to produce this year’s Oscars, I would say he has a problem. There are many public responses that can follow an incident like this: The Sincere Apology, The 12-Step Apology (“My intemperate remarks have led me to understand that I need to seek treatment for …”), the Non-Apology Apology (“I’m sorry if my choice of words offended …”), the Can’t-You-Take-A-Joke Apology (“All my gay friends know that I don’t use PC language …”) or the Sidestep Apology (“I didn’t mean anything homophobic, I was just using ‘fags’ to mean, you know, losers!”).
Update: It's official.
Groucho Marx once famously remarked that he wouldn’t want to belong to any organization that would accept him as a member. It appears Eddie Murphy agrees with him, as the notoriously sore loser is in talks to host the upcoming 84th Academy Awards. Just four years after being denied entry to the exclusive, gold-statuette-having club he should have joined on the back of this scene alone, Murphy might return to the very same theater he angrily decamped after losing the Supporting Actor Oscar to an equally unsmiling Alan Arkin.
Earlier in the month it was announced that Hollywood fauxteur/stubble enthusiast Brett Ratner would take on producing duties for the upcoming Academy Awards. This week came word that schticky Yankees fan Billy Crystal was interested in returning to the hosting job he abandoned eight years ago. For anyone who confidently assumed the Oscars could get no worse than this past year’s Franco-phile disaster, the following text messages — hacked using British ingenuity from Ratner’s iPhone — should lower your expectations well below sea level.
