Some beautiful black bangers…. ESSENCE Black Women In Hollywood luncheon After hitting up Alfre Woodward’s Sistahs Soiree , a bevy of black beauties took to ESSENCE’s 8 th Annual Black Women In Hollywood Luncheon sponsored by Lincoln. The 2015 festivities honored outstanding women in television and film industry, while David Oyelowo co-presented the Lincoln Breakthrough Award to actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Other attendees included Jurnee Smollett, Jeanette Jenkins, Tracee Ellis Ross, Tia Mowry and Holly Robinson Peete… as well as Selma director Ava Duvernay. You like???? Hit the flip for more photos from ESSENCE’s 2015 Black Women In Hollywood Luncheon.
O.J. Simpson’s House Gets Sold At Auction The hits just keep on coming for ex-football star turned jailbird O.J. Simpson. While he’s currently serving time in prison, his Miami mansion has been sold at auction to the highest bidder. Miami Herald While he bides time in a Nevada desert prison, fallen football icon O.J. Simpson’s Kendall home was sold Tuesday in a foreclosure auction. The house, at 9450 SW 112th St., went for $655,000 to a yet-to-be-identified private online bidder, according to county auction records. The winning bid came in nearly $100,000 above what Simpson paid for the property in September 2000. It’s currently assessed by the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser at $481,043. From his cell, Simpson tried to fight the foreclosure action filed by mortgage holder JP Morgan Chase. Why? He hoped to return home soon, says his attorney. “He has been trying to do everything he can to win his release, and the idea was that he’d have a home to come back to,” said Leonardo DaVinci Starke, who represented Simpson in the foreclosure. “We were hoping for the best, but it didn’t happen.” Simpson owed JP Morgan $892,283 in back payments, principal, fees, court costs and penalties, according to court records. This dude is a living example of what NOT to do to eff up your money and ruin your life. SMH. Continue reading →
O.J. Simpson’s House Gets Sold At Auction The hits just keep on coming for ex-football star turned jailbird O.J. Simpson. While he’s currently serving time in prison, his Miami mansion has been sold at auction to the highest bidder. Miami Herald While he bides time in a Nevada desert prison, fallen football icon O.J. Simpson’s Kendall home was sold Tuesday in a foreclosure auction. The house, at 9450 SW 112th St., went for $655,000 to a yet-to-be-identified private online bidder, according to county auction records. The winning bid came in nearly $100,000 above what Simpson paid for the property in September 2000. It’s currently assessed by the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser at $481,043. From his cell, Simpson tried to fight the foreclosure action filed by mortgage holder JP Morgan Chase. Why? He hoped to return home soon, says his attorney. “He has been trying to do everything he can to win his release, and the idea was that he’d have a home to come back to,” said Leonardo DaVinci Starke, who represented Simpson in the foreclosure. “We were hoping for the best, but it didn’t happen.” Simpson owed JP Morgan $892,283 in back payments, principal, fees, court costs and penalties, according to court records. This dude is a living example of what NOT to do to eff up your money and ruin your life. SMH. Continue reading →
One of the original friends in Wendy’s head, Holly Robinson Peete, dressed up as Nicki Minaj on The Wendy Williams Show’s Halloween episode! youtube Continue reading →
One of the original friends in Wendy’s head, Holly Robinson Peete, dressed up as Nicki Minaj on The Wendy Williams Show’s Halloween episode! youtube Continue reading →
Lena Dunham pokes a nice-sized hole in The New Yorker ‘s we’re-witty-not-funny facade with her promotional-film-within-a-film for the magazine’s new iPhone app. In the first part of the clip, the Tiny Furniture filmmaker and Girls creator — who never lets her ego get in the way of good comedy — lolls around in a ridiculous pair of pants on a talk show hosted by Mad Men ‘s Jon Hamm. After explaining to Hamm’s technologically retarded character just what an iPhone app is, Dunham does what every talk-show guest does eventually: urges him to play her clip. Dunham stars as the New Yorker ‘s editor, despite bearing little resemblance to the publication’s actual chief, David Remnick. Girls cast member Alex Karpovsky also appears as her slow-witted assistant and offers up a series of slyly stupid reaction shots as Dunham then gives a so-rudimentary-its-funny demonstration of the app for those New Yorker readers who are really fighting the leap from print to digital. After breaking it down for the Luddite crowd, Dunham then suggests that she and her assistant have sex the following week. Actually, that’s the one false note of Dunham’s short. Everyone who’s ever worked at Conde Nast knows that the first rule of The New Yorker ‘s Sex Club is that you don’t talk about Sex Club — until a fact checker vets your comments. Check out the clip below, then write the New Yorker to suggest that Dunham, who has contributed a couple of smart pieces to the magazine, guest-edit a future special issue about anything she damn well wants. That kid is full of good ideas. Watch It on YouTube. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Also in Thursday afternoon’s round-up of news briefs, political drama Knife Fight is heading to U.S. theaters courtesy of IFC Films . Saoirse Ronan will headline a new royal role and Steve Pink is eyeing the director’s chair for a remake of 1986’s About Last Night . Knife Fight Heads to Theaters Bill Guttentag’s political drama Knife Fight starring Rob Lowe,Jaime Chung, Julie Bowen, Richard Schiff, Saffron Burrows, Jennifer Morrison, David Harbour Eric McCormack, and Carrie-Anne Moss will head to theaters presumably before the election. The Tribeca 2012 premiere centers on a political strategist who spins every news cycle and a shrewd reporter (Bowen) on behalf of his clients: a philandering Kentucky governor (McCormack), a blackmailed California senator (Harbour), and an idealistic doctor turned gubernatorial candidate (Moss). The deal for the film was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films with WME Independent on behalf of the filmmakers. Around the ‘net… Sean Penn Eyes Crazy for the Storm to Direct Based on the survivor memoir by Norman Ollestad, Crazy for the Storm centers on Ollestad’s relationship with his father who forced him into the world of extreme surfing and competitive downhill skinning beginning at age three. Penn’s last directorial project was 2007’s Into the Wild , THR reports . Billy Crystal Working on a Book About Aging He’s hosted the Oscars and has multiple Emmys to show for it along with his many dozens of film roles. And to mark his 65th birthday next year, Crystal is using the milestone as a segue for a book and perhaps a stage show. He said he hopes to have the book completed by his birthday on March 14, 2013. “There are 77 million of us baby boomers in the country and this book will speak to them and how we look at the world,” he told A.P. Saoirse Ronan Dons Mary Queen of Scots Ronan will play the Scottish monarch in the Working Title project in a script written by Michael Hirst. Mary was crowned the Queen of Scotland at age one and her first husband became King of France. But she ran afoul of her distant relative, England’s Queen Elizabeth, Deadline reports . Steve Pink Eyes Sexual Perversity in Chicago The project is a remake of the 1986 film About Last Night from a script by Bachelorette director Leslye Headland. Michael Ealy is starring in the role originated by Rob Lowe and Kevin Hart is taking on the Jim Belushi role in the Screen Gems project, Deadline reports .
King of body horror David Cronenberg hasn’t dipped his toes back into the creepy-crawly well in years (his next, the Rob Pattinson starrer Cosmopolis , arrives later this month) but fear not: son Brandon Cronenberg is here to follow in his father’s footsteps with his own disturbing directorial debut! Who’s hungry for a story about cloned flesh-chomping, disease-surfing celeb hobbyists? Snack on the trailer for Antiviral after the jump. Caleb Landry Jones ( X-Men: First Class ‘s Banshee) stars as Syd March, an employee at a medical facility where celebrities grow viruses on their skin that are sold to fans eager for a way to get closer to their idols. When he steals an infection from superstar Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon) that turns out to be fatal, Syd must unravel the mystery behind her particularly squirmy strain. It’s a metaphor! Antiviral debuted at Cannes and will screen during next month’s Toronto Film Festival. Early reviews from the Croisette heralded Cronenberg Jr. as a compelling heir to his pop’s genre legacy and praised Jones’s central performance (you may also remember him from The Last Exorcism and Friday Night Lights ). Watch the trailer below courtesy of Yahoo! A word of warning to the needle- and blood-averse: Prepare yourself for a few very squirmy minutes. Verdict: Total appetite-spoiler. I guess that means it works? IFC Midnight will distribute Antiviral . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
My dreams are dashed. After enjoying the big-screen treatment of 21 Jump Street — replete with cameos by original cast members Johnny Depp , Peter DeLuise and Holly Robinson Peete — I held out hope that Fox would make a smart alecky theatrical adaptation of Beverly Hills 90210 . But the Hollywood-goes-to-high-school-series just opted for smaller rather than bigger. Our sister website TV Line reports that cast members of the original Fox series, Jennie Garth, Jason Priestley, Luke Perry and Gabrielle Carteris are taking part in an ad campaign for the Old Navy clothing company’s fall line. The situations are familiar. Carteris moons over Priestley, as she did in the 1990s, and Garth chooses jeans over Priestley and Perry, which pretty much sums up the 2000s to the present. I’d like to suggest that Old Navy tap Garry Shandling as Larry Sanders for another campaign. I swear I’ve seen Shandling wearing mom jeans at media events, and Old Navy could strike advertising gold by putting a sell-sell-sell twist on one of Shandling/Sanders signature lines — we’re paraphrasing here — “Do these pants make my ass look fat?” Why no, Mr. Shandling, your ass looks a-mazing! Check out the Old Navy commercials below. Watch It on YouTube. Watch It on YouTube. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
MTV News has been awaiting the arrival of the TV-show-turned-R-rated-comedy since it was first conceived back in 2008. By Kara Warner Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill in “21 Jump Street” Photo: Sony At this point in the end of a long promotional stretch for “21 Jump Street,” it seems as though we’ve been talking about the hilarious TV-to-movie adaptation forever. As it turns out, we have. Well, not forever, but for nearly four years, since it was first announced that Jonah Hill and screenwriter Michael Bacall would be tackling the screenplay for an R-rated version of the popular ’80s TV show that launched Johnny Depp’s career. Here’s everything you need to know about the next great action/ buddy comedy: It’s Based On a Really Awesome TV Show “21 Jump Street” has a special, nostalgic significance for a lot of us who grew up in the late ’80s. The series, which ran for five seasons from 1987 to 1991 on the fledgling Fox network, followed a group of undercover cops who posed as high school and college students. The show featured an attractive group of young actors led by Depp, Holly Robinson, Peter DeLuise and Richard Grieco (as loose cannon Dennis Booker), and was a unique hybrid of television archetypes: the classic cop show and the teen-issue show. Back in May 2008, news broke that Sony was working on adapting the show for the big screen and had tapped Jonah Hill, then most well-known for “Superbad,” to do it. The then-24-year-old would write the screenplay and serve as executive producer of the film, but no announcement was made about casting at that time. It Wasn’t Exactly Welcomed With Open Arms Because of the show’s cult status, many people seemed to have issues with a young funnyman like Hill adapting the material and took to the Internet to air their grievances. But Hill set the record straight, assuring fans that his version would not be “crappy.” “People expect you to do something crappy [when] adapting a TV show into a film. … When I hear it, it seems totally unoriginal,” Hill told MTV News . “We’re approaching it from an original standpoint, I’ll tell you that much.” Hill promised that it would not be a spoof, revealing that he and Bacall had written a Johnny Depp cameo into the script with hopes that somehow the Academy Award nominee would think about making an appearance in the film. Not long after that, the casting announcements started rolling in, with Hill and Tatum in the lead roles supported by the likes of Ice Cube, Rob Riggle, Dave Franco, Ellie Kemper, Nick Offerman and Jake Johnson. You’ll Get to See a ‘Bit’ of Johnny Depp We’re not ones to toot our own horns or take credit when it’s unwarranted, but with regard to the Depp cameo in the film, we can trace both Hill’s and Depp’s comments back to interviews we conducted with both parties separately. After Hill told us about what they’d written with Depp in mind, we asked the man himself, who seemed open to the idea at the time, even though no one had passed along a script yet. A couple years and several will-he-or-won’t-he rumors later and Depp confirmed that he did his “bit” in the film. Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum Are Total Bros MTV News was lucky enough to be invited down to New Orleans to visit the film’s set, where we got our first glimpse of Hill and Tatum in action , along with their obvious real-life friendship that translates onscreen. “I’ve got to be honest: I’m about as ‘fish out of water’ as I can possibly get,” Tatum said of his first full-on comedic role, adding that he knew he signed onto the role for a reason. “I signed on for Jonah, and I watched this show growing up, so this is home for me.” Hill later revealed that he “begged” Tatum to sign on, that he needed someone with Tatum’s action and leading-man background to help carry the film. They’re Already Planning a Sequel When we finally saw the first full-length red band trailer and realized that the film was very well going to deliver on all Hill’s early promises, we were psyched, to say the least. And then came an exclusive extended clip , followed by a few interviews with all the key players at both the New York press day and the film’s world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival, where Hill revealed that he got the call to start on the film at SXSW five years earlier. All the while, the buzz kept building, so much so that it seems that the studio has already commissioned a sequel which, according to Bacall, will take place almost immediately after the end of the action in the first film. Check out everything we’ve got on “21 Jump Street.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: ’21 Jump Street’ Exclusive ’21 Jump Street’ Red Band Clip Premiere
