Yesterday we took a peek at Entertainment Weekly's new issue, featuring Oliver Stone's W -- timely too, considering that just down the road tomorrow, George's lil' Jenna is gettin' hitched with din-din courtesy Eddie Deen and the bridesmaids' gowns by Dallas-born Lela Rose. Well, after we went rollin' with Brolin, news broke last night that Stone's movie found itself a distributor: Lionsgate. And it's got a release date: October 17. Says Ollie: "I'm real pleased that Lionsgate has the independence necessary to bring this provocative story to an American audience." --Robert Wilonsky
Some people have the best gossip sessions under a cape, getting snips, foils and whatever else done to their heads by their stylists. Today, however, we get the dish on two Dallas 'do-ers from Bravo as the network pimps the second season of Shear Genius (think Top Chef for hair stylists and hosted by Jaclyn Smith -- and, yes, that Jaclyn Smith).
Scanning Variety this a.m., I stumbled across this note from the Film Production Chart: Come Monday, writer-director David Jackson Willis is set to start shooting Renaissance Girl in and around Dallas. Which is interesting for several reasons, chief among 'em the plot more or less suggests at least one location: "In the summer before college, an uptight intellectual 18-year-old girl is forced by her aunt to work at a Renaissance Faire. The chaotic and playful nature of the Faire challenges the girl's rigid ideas about life and love." Same thing happened to me first time I went to Scarborough Renaissance Festival, come to think of it.
Nice cast too: Danielle Panabaker, recently seen swimming with Shark; the poker-playing Jennifer Tilly, so very Oscar-nominated for Bullets Over Broadway in 1994; and Chris Elliott, who, to me, will always be The Guy Under the Seats. Or Cabin Boy. --Robert Wilonsky
Yes, that is indeed Josh Brolin as the former co-owner of the Texas Rangers. And, yes, that is indeed Elizabeth Banks as a former Longfellow Elementary School teacher. Entertainment Weekly is graciously providing a sneak peek at this week's cover story, concerning Oliver Stone's W, about a certain former and future Dallas resident, which is currently in production in Louisiana. Best part from my quick scan of the piece: "There's a scene of 26-year-old Bush peeling his car to a stop on his parents' front lawn and drunkenly hurling insults at his father ('Thank you, Mr. Perfect. Mr. War Hero. Mr. F---ing-God-Almighty!'), while another scene set a few years later finds Bush nearly crashing a small plane while flying under the influence." To which Stone later replies, "I'm tired of defending the accuracy of my movies." Can. Not. Wait. --Robert Wilonsky
So, it's official: Your Dallas Cowboys will indeed be the stars of HBO's Hard Knocks this season, which debuts on August 6. Below, from the NFL Network, a lengthy interview with Jerry Jones and NFL Films president Steve Sabol, who says the Cowboys "are always on the red carpet." And Jerry compares the Cowboys "the big showroom" in Las Vegas. Which sounds about right. Also, plenty of Pacman talk. Jerry likes "men and women who've stumbled," turns out. --Robert Wilonsky
Haven't seen much, by which I mean any, American Idol this season, despite the presence of Rockwall's dreadlocked wonder, Jason Castro. But, really, we'd be remiss this a.m. if we didn't include his rendition of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man," which he performed last night a little too much like Robert Zimmerman -- down to the mumbles, 'round about the time he forgets, ah, the fourth line of the song. Apparently, he's going home tonight? Whatever. --Robert Wilonsky
Those Friends for whom the sight of, oh, hedge clippers plunged into eye sockets is a bit too much may wanna stay away from this interview with Dallas filmmaker Israel Luna. The rest of you are welcome to visit Fangoria for just-posted sneak-peek pics from Luna's latest offering, Fright Flick, described on his La Luna Entertainment Web site as "the quintessential campy/slasher who-dunnit flick." Among the stars, says Luna, is "a local stripper here in Dallas under the name ‘Snobby Barbie,’ and she was such a trouper." Sure, I can see that. The trailer's after the jump. --Robert Wilonsky
Bobby Cunningham, left, and brother Jon were among the clowns to gather on a NorthPark parking garage yesterday afternoon.
It started with coordinates posted to a movie studio's promotional Web site; it ended with chaos, confusion and, finally, a movie trailer. A dozen cities -- among them, New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, London and, yes, Dallas -- were selected to host the latest installment in a viral marketing campaign for The Dark Knight. Locally, folks were summoned to a parking garage on the east side of NorthPark Center, with the promise of ... well, no one was quite sure. But no one, not even the promoters, had any idea what to expect when a crown of nearly 300 formed outside the mall.
The coordinates on the site were precise: +32° 52' 10.24", -96° 46' 16.74". But the first sign that things weren’t planned out terribly well was when two security guards showed up and asked everyone to move down to a lot adjacent to the parking garage. The dork knights didn’t know whether to believe the rent-a-cops or not. “Would The Joker follow their instructions?” a guy with gray-green hair asked. “Maybe it’s a trick. To get us off the trail.” Some followed the guards' request; about half stayed put. It was going to be that kind of afternoon.
Besides, she's not really a fan of a few of the cheftestants currently slicing and dicing their way through the show that made her famous: "I was a little disgusted by their behavior," she says. "There are some really strong chefs, but I also think there is a lot of riff-raff that they need to get through. ... They may have worked for some restaurant in New York City, but it may not have even been good. For some, I can't believe what they came up with, and I can't believe they haven't been eliminated yet." For the record, Richard's her current fave. --Robert Wilonsky
We just got very interested in who's gonna become The Next Food Network Star. Local connections and all.
A Friend of Unfair Park wonders: Is the Lisa Garza mentioned below, as the Dallas contestant on the forthcoming season of The Next Food Network Star, the same Lisa Garza who cooks at (and, ya know, co-owns with husband Gilbert Garza) the beloved Suze on Northwest Highway and Midway Road. And, yes, it is: "You're correct," Lisa Krueger, the network's manager of public relations, told Unfair Park after the official announcement today. "We never really limited the show to just professional chefs or just home chefs. The only caveat was they couldn't have had previous national shows." The fourth season debuts June 1. --Robert Wilonsky
Breaking news for the Liz Lemons of the world, or at least the 30 Rock viewers who get the headline: Food Network today announced the 10 peeps competing for the title of The Next Food Network Star, and one of them's a local -- name of Lisa Garza. The series -- now in its fourth season, really? -- bows June 1, with the winner revealed on July 27. I seem to recall last season's "star" looked a lot like Margot Kidder; did she actually get a show, or were those ads just a fake-out? No doubt, the fact I have to ask is why Food Network's planning on giving this season's winner a six-episode series debuting in August. So, ya know, get to work, Lisa Garza. --Robert Wilonsky
On April 2, 1978, the cultural tsunami that was the TV show Dallas debuted with an episode titled "Digger's Daughter" -- and, of course, the hard-drinking, hard-fighting and hard-effin' Ewings may be far more responsible for the fall of communism than the Afghani fighters who beat the Russians courtesy some other Texan named Charlie Wilson. Check out an op-ed piece that appeared yesterday in The Washington Post called “How Dallas Won the Cold War,” by Nick Gillespie, editor of Reason Online, and Matt Welch, editor of Reason magazine. Write the twosome:
Dallas created a new archetype of the anti-hero we loved to hate and hated to love: an establishment tycoon who's always controlling politicians, cheating on his boozy wife and scheming against his own stubbornly loyal family. But no matter how evil various translators tried to make J.R. and his milieu ("Dallas, you merciless universe!" ran the French lyrics added to the wordless theme song), viewers in the nearly 100 countries that gobbled up the show, including in the Warsaw Pact nations, came to believe that they, too, deserved cars as big as boats and a swimming pool the size of a small mansion.
In case you were looking for him -- and we weren't, maybe that was BeloWatch -- Burl Osborne has resurfaced. You 'member him -- former publisher and editor of The Dallas Morning News? Turns out, he's now chairing the "editorial oversight board" of something called CleanSkies.tv, which right now appears to be broadcasting a global warming roundtable from a big closet aboard the Starship Enterprise. There's former CNN and CBS peeps behind the online net concerned with "energy and the environment," but it has several local connections as well -- such as, " Upcoming CleanSkies.tv news programs include contributions from energy guru T. Boone Pickens."
And in other "TV" news, Sam just sent me a media release announcing that something called Shalom TV's finally found a Dallas home on Time Warner -- l'chaim! Says the media release, "It is an exciting development in the history of American television and the first time major cable companies are including a Jewish network in its national lineup of offerings." (It's better if you read it like my grandfather, who sounded a little like this.) Since I have DirecTV, I guess this means I am still stuck with Seinfeld reruns. Mazel tov! --Robert Wilonsky
One of the first rules of the movie business is: Make sure you aren't, ah, borrowing someone else's work in order to finish yours. It's called a "rights clearance," and, yup, it's frustrating and financially debilitating, but it's also a necessary evil -- no matter how many times you claim "fair use, fair use." It's something that Premise Media, the Dallas-based company behind that pro-Intelligent Design (or anti-evolution) doc Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed starring Ben Stein, is discovering in courtrooms 'cross America. And maybe they expected it -- after all, any press is good press, especially when you're trying to gin up "one of the widest, if not the widest, documentary releases in U.S. film history," as Premise claims in documents filed April 14 in federal court in Dallas.
There are two legal fights brewing over clips used in the film: one from a video; another, a song. It's the latter getting press this a.m., as the song is a little something called "Imagine" by a nobody named John Lennon. But first, a Connecticut-based scientific animation company called XVIVO is claiming that Premise infringed upon its copyright by using footage from an animated video called Inner Life of a Cell in Expelled. The award-winning eight-minute short was made specifically for the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University in 2006 to illustrate "a three-dimensional journey through the microscopic world of a cell," and attempts to post it to YouTube in the past have resulted in its being yanked "due to a copyright claim by Harvard University."
The mailman delivered a most unexpected and unusual parcel today: a package from Pennsylvania-based Schiffer Books containing two of its latest releases, Famous Texas Men Paper Dolls and Famous Texas Women Paper Dolls. Both were authored and illustrated by Beaumont's Tom Tierney -- who, says the Famous Texas Men's back cover, "takes pride in the meticulous research of the costumes" drawn for the celebs inside, including Governor Ann Richards, Willie Nelson, Stephen F. Austin, Selena, Mary Martin and Larry Hagman. Also noted: Tierney is "opening a Paper Doll store and museum," with, one presumes, the books as his first salvo into the marketplace. Only, well, we're not terribly sure what to make of the paper dolls -- which seem kinda, um, inappropriate, maybe? By which, of course, I mean "awesome." Jump to see what I'm talking about. --Robert Wilonsky
