Move over Penny Lane, Lindsay Lohan is the newest groupie on the scene! Lohan was spotted in Boston on The Wanted’s tour bus as the personal guest of Max George. Max initially denied inviting Lilo backstage and Philadelphia’s Jingle Ball, but he’s since changed his tune. While it’s pretty clear these two are probably getting horizontal, Max isn’t looking for anything serious. He recently broke things off with English actress Michelle Keegan.
With Lindsay Lohan staring down four new charges after her nightclub fight with Tiffany Ava Mitchell , and once again facing the wrath of celebrity gossip bloggers, the very troubled actress has a surprising fellow celebrity on her side: Demi Lovato. In an exchange with Perez Hilton on Twitter, Lovato – who went to rehab a year ago and understands what it’s like to struggle in the spotlight – made a plea for the public to stop laying into Lindsay’s personal life. “I really wish we could go back in time when artists were known for their work,” Lovato wrote. “Not their personal lives.” She then addressed Hilton directly and added: “The media (not just you) don’t realize when you need to stop… This isn’t a headline for your readers. This is someone’s life…why does it need to become everyone’s business? If you believe someone needs help – help them.” What do you think, THGers? Does Demi have a point? Is the media too harsh on Lindsay Lohan? Yes, give her a break! Huh? No! She brings this on herself! View Poll »
If Lindsay Lohan doesn’t go back to jail as a result of today’s news, I have an idea for a film project for her: It’s a remake of Groundhog Day in which LiLo plays the Bill Murray role and wakes up every day to new criminal charges until she gets her act together. Since Tina Fey is the last person to get a memorable performance out of Lohan, she should write and direct. Harold Ramis , who wrote and directed the original Groundhog Day , could have a cameo as the wise prison warden, and…Jesus, why am I even bothering? I used to actually believe that Lohan had it in her to carve out a great second act in her life and career by stopping the nightclubbing, cutting off her embarrassing parents and devoting herself to work. But after five trips to rehab, the latest critical savaging she received for her performance in Liz & Dick and reports of her arrest Thursday morning and new criminal charges that are about to be filed against her, I think it may finally be time to declare Lohan a lost cause. As you probably know, Lohan was busted around 4 a.m. on Thursday morning after she allegedly punched woman at a Manhattan nightclub. Earlier that night, she’d caught Justin Bieber’s concert at Madison Square Garden, but apparently the good vibrations didn’t carry LiLo through the night. The NY Daily News reports that after exchanging words with 28-year-old Tiffany Eve Mitchell at the Chelsea nightclub Avenue, Lohan slugged the alleged victim in the face. TMZ reported that Lohan, 26, was arrested as she attempted to flee the scene in a friend’s car. “Are you kidding? Oh my God, are you kidding?” Lohan can be heard saying on the video of her arrest that the celebrity site posted. (I’ve embedded it below.) Lohan was issued a desk appearance ticket for misdemeanor assault and faces a Jan. 11 court date, but that’s just the beginning of her troubles. As TMZ reports, “she’ll face a total of four new criminal charges on the same day on different coasts.” In addition to the above charge, law enforcement sources told the website that the Santa Monica City Attorney will also hit Lohan with three criminal charges stemming from her car accident there last June on the Pacific Coast Highway. Lohan’s Porsche slammed into the rear of an 18-wheeler and though she told police she was a passenger in the car, it turned out she had been driving. The charges: Giving false information to a peace officer, obstructing or resisting a police officer in the performance of his duty, and reckless driving. (Meanwhile, Lifetime reportedly may sue Lohan for breach of contract because this incident happened during the shooting of Liz & Dick and the cable network’s insurance policy on the actress forbid her from driving.) Lohan is still on probation for felony jewel theft and TMZ notes that when the actress is arraigned on these charges, probably next week, the judge will revoke her probation and set a hearing to “determine if she will go to jail for a long period of time.” I can already see a tearful Lohan pleading for leniency, but will the judge, or anybody, be moved? At this point, it’s hard to feel any empathy — or even pity — for a 26-year-old actress who has squandered what should have been the most productive and exhilarating years of her career. Lohan could have been wowing us with her acting talent, but instead she chose to amuse and, ultimately, bore us with her bad behavior. [ TMZ , New York Daily News ] Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Christopher Nolan may have left the door wide open for speculation at the end of The Dark Knight Rises where Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Gotham cop John Blake is concerned, and he is producer/co-writer on Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel , which the rumor mill suggests could see a Very Special Gordon-Levitt cameo . But in a chat with Film Comment about his entire Batman trilogy, Nolan was asked if he was completely done with his Dark Knight universe. So what are the implications for those JG-L rumors? (Spoilers, if you haven’t seen TDKR …) “For me, The Dark Knight Rises is specifically and definitely the end of the Batman story as I wanted to tell it,” Nolan said, “and the open-ended nature of the film is simply a very important thematic idea that we wanted to get into the movie, which is that Batman is a symbol. He can be anybody, and that was very important to us.” I know, I know. Nolan keeps using phrases like ” specifically and definitely the end ” but it’s just so hard to let go of the hope that he’s just messing with us. ” Nah, J/K you guys — Joe’s totes the new Batman! ” the geekosphere desperately waits for him to say. Well, good luck getting anything concrete out of Nolan. I believe him when he says his run with the Batman universe is over, although that doesn’t mean it’s not possible that Gordon-Levitt might pop up at the end of Man of Stee l in a bat-cowl to give Superman a Justice League fist bump. Warner Bros. may love Nolan for giving them a super respectable, arguably Oscar-worthy Batman series, but they’re not dumb. WB will squeeze every drop of Bat-juice out of the character, regardless of how Nolan retains the integrity of his fully explored, definitely closed chapter of Bat-lore. “Not every Batman fan will necessarily agree with that interpretation of the philosophy of the character,” Nolan said, “but for me it all comes back to the scene between Bruce Wayne and Alfred in the private jet in Batman Begins , where the only way that I could find to make a credible characterization of a guy transforming himself into Batman is if it was as a necessary symbol, and he saw himself as a catalyst for change and therefore it was a temporary process, maybe a five-year plan that would be enforced for symbolically encouraging the good of Gotham to take back their city.” “To me, for that mission to succeed, it has to end, so this is the ending for me,” he continued. “And as I say, the open-ended elements are all to do with the thematic idea that Batman was not important as a man, he’s more than that. He’s a symbol, and the symbol lives on.” Symbol, protege, replacement, reboot — what do you make of the Gordon-Levitt rumors in light of Nolan’s comments? [ Film Comment ] Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Kathryn Bigelow’s angular thriller Zero Dark Thirty begins and ends with events that have been seared into public memory — the attacks on September 11, 2001 and the death of Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011 in Abbottabad, Pakistan, two incidents that bookended a decade in which America’s sense of security and place in the world were radically shaken. The film presents the story of what happened in that dark space between. Using a combination of whatever details screenwriter and journalist Mark Boal could turn up in his research and cautious fiction, Zero Dark Thirty details how the U.S. was finally able to track down and kill the elusive head of the organization responsible for the worst terrorist attack on our soil. But at almost two and a half hours long — an epic running time that never seems excessive but makes you feel the stretch of the years being chronicled — the film also teases your attention away from those known events, and brings it to the gritty, exhausting and sometimes ugly work being done on the ground and the type of people who engage in it. It’s a curious thing that two of the awards season’s most significant films are stealthy procedurals: Lincoln , which beneath the surface gloss of a prestige biopic is a vivid showcase of the messy, difficult means by which the amendment to outlaw slavery was passed, and Zero Dark Thirty , which is an examination of how contemporary warfare has so much more to do with information than with sending troops out into battle. Both reveal the strenuous, time-consuming and ethically complicated efforts behind their well-known achievements. While Steven Spielberg’s film uses these exertions to bring animation, prickliness and warmth to characters that could have been wax-museum distant, Bigelow’s consciously holds its emotions at arm’s length, where they’ll be less likely to interfere with the work being done. Such is the choice made by its heroine, known only by her first name, Maya, and played by Jessica Chastain as a crisply dedicated but green CIA analyst with few other interests in her life other than tracking down bin Laden — a target she comes to fixate on as she builds experience and confidence. Zero Dark Thirty plays out in the shrouded and unpretty backstage of the War on Terror: embassy cubicles, dusty military camps and black sites where detainees undergo “enhanced interrogation techniques” that the film does not soften. Maya arrives fresh from D.C. to witness a prisoner being worked on by Dan (Jason Clarke, slipping easily from sardonic to savage). Sleep deprivation, waterboarding, confinement boxes and beatings — Maya doesn’t take easily to these techniques but doesn’t shrink from them either. Soon she’s ordering them herself as she searches for information about Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, rumored top al-Qaeda courier and the man she thinks is key to finding bin Laden. The early fuss by Obama opponents who claimed the film (originally slated for an October release) would be a propagandizing election tool is laughable in context. The story starts long before Obama’s arrival on the presidential stage, and his on-screen presence in a single scene, in which Maya and her colleagues watch his televised speech about America not engaging in torture, is representative, in a wincingly complicated way, of how the new administration’s stance will complicate and slow what they’re doing. Zero Dark Thirty eschews the personal by design. We know nothing about Maya’s background, she has little enough of a life to explore outside of her work and doesn’t take to others easily. Our sense of her emerges slowly by way of Chastain’s elegantly steely performance. Maya doesn’t tend to let down her guard in front of others, and so our ideas about her inner life come from glimpses around its edges and through those moments when she lets things slip — from the warmth that bleeds into her interactions with her coworker and eventual friend Jessica (Jennifer Ehle) or the way she takes to writing the number of days of bureaucratic inaction on important information she uncovered on the door of her boss George’s (Mark Strong) office. Maya is suited to this life, as draining and dangerous as it is, and Chastain’s physical delicacy provides stark contrast to the character’s strength. She’s an unconventional action heroine with an amusingly atypical (for a female lead) interest in making nice with those around her. Like Jeremy Renner’s bomb tech in The Hurt Locker , Maya hones herself to become the perfect tool for the job at hand. But Zero Dark Thirty is less interested in movie indulgences than its predecessor, which may be why its coolness makes it an easier effort to admire than to lose yourself in. Its periodic action sequences — involving two very disturbing bombings, a shootout and the raid itself, which is staged in urgent darkness and threaded with misgivings about whether or not it’s a mistake — are brilliantly staged, but they’re stations along the journey, to be braved, pushed past or endured. Maya’s true place is at a computer or making her case with growing conviction in a conference room as important men played by Kyle Chandler, Harold Perrineau, James Gandolfini, Mark Duplass and others are confronted by the force of her will, and the SEALs brought in to storm the compound (among them Chris Pratt, Taylor Kinney and Joel Edgerton) eye her with wary respect. Zero Dark Thirty makes you feel every step of Maya’s journey, but it’s her impressive achievement and that of the film itself that we’re left contemplating, not her humanity — a stunningly well-realized whole with few soft spots to latch onto. RELATED STORIES: ‘Zero Dark Thirty’: Strong Women, Ambiguous Ethics Drive Bigelow’s Oscar Pic TRAILER: Jessica Chastain Hunts Bin Laden In Kathryn Bigelow’s ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ CIA, Defense Dept. Sued Over Kathryn Bigelow’s Osama Bin Laden Movie, Naturally Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
It’s been a good Thanksgiving for Chris Brown. The polarizing singer spent the actual holiday hooking up with Rihanna , and then awake this morning to positive legal news: Neither he nor Drake will face any charges for a brawl that broke out in a NYC nightclub this summer between their entourages. According to TMZ insiders, the investigation into the bottle-throwing fight that broke out on June 14 is complete – and there is no evidence to charge Brown, Drake or anyone associated with either singer. The stars, of course, have clashed for months over their personal connections to Rihanna, and the rivalry reached its apex this summer when words and middle fingers were allegedly exchanges at at WIP nightclub. The Chris Brown and Drake fight resulted in a nasty chin gash for the Teem Breezy President, supposedly from a bottle thrown by someone at Drake’s table, along with various complaints and injuries from others at the establishment. San Antonio Spurs guard Tony Parker sued the club for a wound to his eye; he is seeking $20 million damages. However, law enforcement officials say surveillance video from the night is is blurry and multiple interviews conducted by the NYPD with witnesses have proven to be inconclusive.
You’re done gorging on turkey, which means only one thing: ‘Tis the season to be stuffed with Oscar punditry. Movieline ‘s Institute For the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics has awoken from its L-Tryptophan slumber to provide you with our latest Oscar Index , which evaluates the contenders for Best Director. The latest Index on Best Picture can be found here , and over the course of the long weekend, we’ll be weighing in on the Best Actor, Actress and Support Actor and Actress races. How The Oscar Index Works With each award category that we track, we’ll present four different rankings. Movieline Executive Editor Jen Yamato , Managing Editor Brian Brooks and myself will each provide our personal weekly rankings of the movies and actors in the running, and then those results will be weighted and averaged to determine an official Movieline ranking for each category. Let’s begin: Best Director In terms of perception, the Best Director category has been fairly static for a while now, but that should change next week as Les Misérables and Zero Dark Thirty screen for critics and reaction to them begins to flow through the blogosphere. Up to this point, the strong standings of the directors of those films, respectively, Tom Hooper and Kathryn Bigelow , has been almost pure buzz, so their positions could rise or fall sharply once actual scenes and performances can be scrutinized. Until then, Steven Spielberg remains the auteur to beat despite Lincoln ‘s at-times sloggy pace, and Ben Affleck is holding strong as his Argo continues to do well at the box office and on the word-of-mouth exchange. The Master director Paul Thomas Anderson could use a Harvey Weinstein-style reheating, and Ang Lee may need a different kind of PR campaign after he annoyed critics, including Movieline’s Alison Willmore and the New York Times’ A.O. Scott ,, by undercutting the often-breathtaking visual narrative of Life of Pi with a cliched journalist-interviews-story-subject framing device. That could result in Lee falling in favor harder than the zebra hits the lifeboat in his film. Frank DiGiacomo’s Picks Jen Yamato’s Picks Brian Brooks’ Picks 1. Steven Spielberg 1. Tom Hooper 1. Steven Spielberg 2. David O. Russell 2. Steven Spielberg 2. Ben Affleck 3. Kathryn Bigelow 3. Ben Affleck 3. Ang Lee 4. Ben Affleck 4. Kathryn Bigelow 4. Michael Hanecke 5. Tom Hooper 5. David O. Russell 5. Benh Zeitlin And the leaders are… Movieline’s Top 5 Best Director Contenders: 1. Steven Spielberg ( Lincoln ) 2. Ben Affleck ( Argo ) 3. Tom Hooper ( Les Misérables) 4. Ang Lee ( Life of Pi ) 5. David O. Russell ( Silver Linings Playbook ) Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Isabeli Fontana …is a bikini and lingerie model who started modeling bikinis and underwear when she was 16….and age you probably wouldn’t want to hire your neighbor’s kid to model lingerie for your personal photoshoot…because that’s the kind of thing that will get you arrested for being a sex offender…while it is the kind of thing that generates major corporate funding and sponsorship…when it’s done for a magazine… I always found that weird… But not as weird as a naked girl in pictures…not looking naked at all…cuz she’s strategically posing and might as well be wearing clothes…that upsets me…. Happy thanksgiving….
” Elmo is bigger than any one person,” the producers of Sesame Street declared last week when Kevin Clash, who was the voice of the furry and very famous red muppet, was first accused of having sex with a minor. That statement is about to be tested in the wake of Clash’s resignation from the venerable children’s show after a second allegation, this time, in a lawsuit, was reported by the Associated Press on Tuesday. Although Clash’s first accuser recanted his claims, a lawsuit filed in federal court in New York charges Clash with sexual abuse of a second youth, Cecil Singleton, then 15 and now an adult. According to the AP (via Yahoo!) , the lawsuit, which seeks damages in excess of $5 million, alleges that Singleton was persuaded by Clash to meet for sexual encounters. A statement posted on the Sesame Workshop blog, also on Tuesday, noted that “the controversy surrounding Kevin’s personal life has become a distraction that none of us want.” The statement additionally read that Clash had resigned after 28 years at Sesame Street , because he’d concluded that “that he can no longer be effective in his job.” “It’s a sad day for Sesame Street ,” concluded the statement. It’s also a thorny public-relations problem for Sesame Workshop. But while Clash’s career won’t likely bounce back from this scandal any time soon, the reality is that Elmo is going to be fine. Movieline ‘s offices are located in the Times Square and even as news of these new allegations were breaking, there were two people dressed as Elmo circulating among the tourists and making a few bucks by taking pictures with children. They did not seem to be having trouble attracting business and no one was taunting them about the Clash story. In fact, when I approached one of the Elmos, who identified himself as Jose Segarro — that’s him in the picture with Hello Kitty — he was unaware of Clash’s resignation and told me that business was “the same.” In a recent piece on the growing scandal, The Grio.com interviewed Jim Silver, Editor in Chief of the online family site, Time to Play.com, who pointed out that while a small group of parents may be hesitant to buy an Elmo-related product for their kids in light of Clash’s problems, the brand remains strong. (He estimates that Elmo generates more than 50 percent of the $75 million in sales that Sesame Stree t toys generate each year. ) “Kevin [Clash] is the voice and is not Elmo the same way James Earl Jones is not Darth Vader.” Exactly. Despite this scandal’s great potential as a media story, my experience as a father tells me that kids, who are in the Elmo-loving age bracket, aren’t going to spend a lot of time thinking about what the voice of Elmo does in his personal life, even if they’re savvy enough to understand that Elmo is a puppet voiced by an actor. And even if there are a few preternaturally aware youngsters who watch a lot of cable news and grasp what’s happening here, they’re probably going to grow up to be the kind of knowing pop-culture savants who will convert this unfortunate chapter in Sesame Street history into some form of art or journalism, whether it be a documentary, book or comedy routine. That may be cold comfort, but, at this stage in the story, the silver linings don’t look all that plentiful. Related Stories: TALKBACK: Can ‘Elmo’ Puppeteer Kevin Clash Bounce Back From Abuse Allegations? INTERVIEW: Kevin Clash, the Man Behind Elmo, on Jim Henson, Puppetry, and Jason Segel’s The Muppets [AP via Yahoo! The Grio.com] Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
If you haven’t noticed, there’s a fierce battle being fought out there for the right to heft a gold statuette at the Dolby Theater on Feb. 24 and forget to thank some vital member of your family. And though more than a half dozen pictures and performances that the blogosphere is touting as Oscar-worthy have yet to be seen by the public (and, in some cases, the very bloggers who are touting them), the virtual home office at Movieline has decided it’s time to throw open the doors to the Institute For the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics and start up the Oscar Index . How The Oscar Index Works This year, Movieline’ s Oscar Index will be presented differently than it has been in the past. We’ll soon add the now-iconic graph that tracks the weekly rise and fall of the candidates based on fluctuations in the Institute’s extremely sensitive media seismometers. What will be different is that, with each award category that we track, we’ll present four different rankings. Movieline Executive Editor Jen Yamato , Managing Editor Brian Brooks and myself will each provide our personal weekly rankings of the movies and actors in the running, and then those results will be weighted and averaged to determine an official Movieline ranking for each category. This week, we begin with the Best Picture category. Next week, we’ll weigh in on the Best Director, Best Actor, Actress and Best Supporting Actor and Actress races. Oscar for Best Picture 2013 Right now, Lincoln is the picture to beat with its heart-and-soul performance by Daniel Day-Lewis — his world-weary slump-shouldered walk alone is worth the price of admission — a beautiful script by Tony Kushner and some pitch-perfect scenery chewing by Tommy Lee Jones and James Spader. The picture finishes at the top of two of our three lists, and Awards Daily calls it “Arguably, the best film of the year so far,” adding: “Films this thoughtfully created don’t come around very often.” The consensus at a number of blogsites, such as Indiewire , is that Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, Ben Affleck’s Argo and David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook are also going to be nominated for Best Picture. Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master has also been mentioned, but the film opened so early in the race and, with the exception of Joaquin Phoenix’s comments about how he really feels about Oscars, the movie could use a second wind unless The Weinstein Company is shifting its weight to a Silver Linings push. But coming up fast is Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables , which our own Ms. Yamato notes, is “scaring” a lot of the other contenders. Meanwhile, Michael Haneke’s Amour and Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild are long shots, but still in the race. Indeed, the latter film finished in the number 10 spot on each Movieline editor’s list. An even darker horse is Skyfall , but I (alone) agree with Deadline that the movie’s critical and box-office success and its popularity among Academy members bode well for a best-picture nomination. Here’s the rundown of each Movieline editor’s Best Picture picks in descending order: Frank DiGiacomo’s Picks 1. Lincoln 2. Silver Linings Playbook 3. Argo 4. Les Misérables 5. Life of Pi 6. Skyfall 7. Zero Dark Thirty 8 . Flight 9. The Master 10. Beasts of the Southern Wild — Jen Yamato’s Picks 1. Les Misérables 2. Lincoln 3. Silver Linings Playbook 4. Argo 5. Life of Pi 6. Zero Dark Thirty 7. Anna Karenina 8. The Master 9. The Hobbit 10. Beasts of the Southern Wild — Brian Brooks’ Picks 1. Lincoln 2. Silver Linings Playbook 3. Les Misérables 4. Argo 5. Life of Pi 6. Amour 7. Django Unchained 8. Anna Karenina 9. The Dark Knight Rises 10. Beasts of the Southern Wild And the winners are…
