It's
been a weak week for show biz news. Things should start heating up again
as Hollywood returns to its collective desk. The table you've been grabbing
at The Ivy isn't yours any more, Mr. Wannabe. While we were sleeping,
Jada Pinkett and Will Smith got married, creating the
most excitement in Baltimore since Barry Levinson started working
at home. The great and glorious Helen Mirren tied the knot with
director Taylor Hackford, making them the cerebral version of
Geena Davis and Renny Harlin. And one proposal was turned
down flat. Chris Rock won't be teaming up with Samuel L. Jackson
in a movie version of "Sanford and Son." To quote young Rock, "I was
like, 'Are you on crack?'"
Also
over the holidays, yet another award for L.A. Confidential, this
time Best Film and Best Writer and Best Director from the National Society
of Film Critics. Julie Christie secured a likely Oscar nomination
for Afterglow with her third major award. And Boogie Nights'
Burt Reynolds and Julianne Moore both added more brass
to the mantle. Robert Duvall grabbed Best Actor for The Apostle,
beating out Hoffman, Pacino, Fonda and Ian Holm. If these guys
end up being the Academy nominees, people all over town will be double-checking
the decade on their calendars. Sadly, the two competitors for best documentary,
Thin Blue Line director Errol Morris' Fast Cheap and
Out of Control and Spike Lee's Four Little Girls have
gone all but unseen by movie audiences, even in Los Angeles.
What's
up with Brendan Fraser? Besides turning up uncredited in two
Pauly Shore movies as Link, his character from Encino Man,
he put on the loincloth yet again as George of the Jungle, which
also reflected his brain-damaged turns in Airheads and The
Scout. When he hasn't been stupid and semi-nude, he's been a big
brain at top institutes of learning, as in School Ties and With
Honors. And now, just as Gods and Monsters, the biographical
film in which Fraser stars as Frankenstein director James
Whaley, is about to hit Sundance, Fraser takes on a remake of The
Mummy, another one of Universal's classic monster movies. I guess
he's a practicing actor. He just keeps practicing the same role until
he gets it right.
E-mail.
Nothing more than e-mail. Trying to forget my ... enough of that!
