It's the end of an era. A culture-defining, couch-jumping, Matt Lauer–berating, Brooke Shields–bullying, publicist-sacking, psychiatry-denying, temporarily-career-enfeebling, tabloid-enriching, adorable-clonebaby-producing, Beckhams-befriending, hairy-fat-suit-wearing, Burj-Dubai-scaling, Def Leppard–singing era. The end of an era we all hoped would last a billion years, but which, in the end, spanned a mere five. But doesn't it seem like they've been together forever? You know what they say: Time flies when you're secretly recording your escape plans in a journal you hide inside a hollowed-out Build-A-Bear in the nursery.
Rachel McAdams is supersmart for doing more romantic weepies after The Notebook earned her a steady spot as an A-list actress. They can't cost very much to make, do well in theaters, and have a very long afterlife on cable and DVD. This way she can do movies with Terrence Malick, Woody Allen, and Brian De Palma without ever having to show up as the fifth lead in ensemble rom-coms focused around holidays. I just wish she'd do more comedies, since I worshiped her as Regina George in Mean Girls and don't care much for melodramas that culminate with weddings and death.
Justin and Jessica Biel: CAN SHE TRUST HIM? The formerly womanizing Justin "Trousersnake" is doing a 180 for love, having proposed to Jessica Biel. "Can one idyllic trip offset four years of heartbreak and drama?" The couple "split last spring in the wake of reported infidelities on his part." Biel's friends are skeptical that Justin will clean up his act. She gave him an ultimatum and he "came back to her with his hat in his hands." (Was it the hat he wore in the video for "Like I Love You"? That guy has a LOT of hats.) "She laid down the law: aisle or exit." After that, "it was understood that he was going to propose." She is not stupid about the stakes: "Everybody knows Justin has a wandering eye." But she ignored it "because she really wanted to stay with him." Timberlake, ever the charmer, told her "he wants to make this work too." Jessica won't put up with Justin's skeevy FutureSex/LoveCrap this time around. "There is no way Jessica will deal with his straying eye now that they're engaged. You are going to see some changes from Justin." Can we just hear some fucking MUSIC please, JT? Some people Justin may have banged or tried to bang, some while he was dating Jessica: Mila Kunis, Scarlett Johansson, Olivia Munn, Kate Hudson, Ciara, and Rihanna. "Then of course there are his layman conquests." Biel "struggles with his flirting, but loves him so much." Justin "seems to have all the power and is treating Jessica like a doormat. Often a week will go by without seeing him. He's calling all the shots. But she's taking what she can get — and the one thing she wants is to be his wife — at any cost." Timberlake "really loves Jessica, but he just can't stay monogamous." Ah c'mon, CAN'T or WON'T? "Basically his brain and his penis operate separately, and the brain proposed to her." So on their wedding night all she gets is brain?
Reese Witherspoon is attached to Atom Egoyan’s movie on the West Memphis Three, adapted from Mara Leveritt's Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three. She will play the mother of one of the victims, who eventually doubts the guilt of the wrongly convicted Jessie Misskelley Jr., Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin. As something of an expert in the legal considerations and financial remunerations conventionally involved in adaptations of true life stories, I would like to officially state that if Misskelley, Echols, and Baldwin don’t make mad bucks off this movie, it’d be some bullshit. Grade: A [HR]
