Jessica Biel’s Multiple Professions
Jessica Biel’s Multiple Professions
Despite the fact that she keeps lining up roles in new movies, Jessica Biel seems to be taking an interest in adding the job duties of a paparazzi to her credentials.
After snapping up pictures of the photogs following her around on a Saturday shopping trip, the 7th Heaven hottie was armed and ready once again on a Monday afternoon outing to the nearby gym.
Back to the new film roles, recent reports tell that Jessica actually just signed on to co-star with Rendition actor Jake Gyllenhall in Al Gore’s daughter, Kristin Gore’s, new political comedy, Nailed.
According to press, “The offbeat movie takes a look at an immoral congressman and a sex-addicted lobbyist. Biel’s character accidentally has a nail shot into her head, which elicits bizarre sexual urges. During her visit to Washington D.C. for lobbying purposes, she meets Gyllenhaal’s character, who takes advantage of her.”
Still in the planning stages, no release date has been set thus far.
Nobel Peace Prize Concert Draws A-List Crowd
Nobel Peace Prize Concert Draws A-List Crowd
Oslo, Norway was overflowing with celebrity presence as the Nobel Peace Prize concert got underway last night.
Hosted by Kevin Spacey and Uma Thurman, this year’s festivities centered around honoree Al Gore. And the former Vice President had quite the night of musical performances in his honor.
Pop sensations like Alicia Keys, KT Tunstall, Annie Lennox, and Kylie Minogue all took the stage to add their own flavor to the night. And Gore showed his appreciation by applauding wildly after each song.
At the end of the event, Gore addressed the crowd with the utmost enthusiasm with a message of hope. “Let’s get on with it. We can do this,” he said, referring to the necessary global steps to better the environment.
Frenching Neil, Schmoozing Al and My Big Night at the Emmys
I interviewed Al Gore. Al Freaking Gore. Say what? Also, Neil Patrick Harris frenched me, Rebecca Romijn invited me to a threesome (jokingly, but still) and I finally got to tell Sally Field I really, really like her. These are just a few of the surreal moments I experienced out on the red carpet here moments ago at the Shrine Auditorium, and let me tell you, I'm like a cracked-out piggy in poo.
It was my first time being part of E!'s Live from the Red Carpet, and all I know is that it was a dream.
I can't tell you really what happened out there aside from the moments mentioned above, 'cause it was all such a whirlwind and, thanks to the nonstop loudspeaker harassments from the Emmy announcer lady, I was reduced to lip-reading nearly everyone I interviewed. Not to mention, I was drunk on TV-star love.
But I can tell you that this year's Emmys carpet was just about the most exciting time I've ever had professionally—and I'll be bringing you much more scoop and red carpet fodder and hopefully photos and video as the night (day after?) goes on. So stay tubed.
Meantime, to all you haters who gave me shiznit for predicting Katy Heigl to win, I have three words: Boo-freakin'-ya! Hee hee. I saw Miss K.H. moments before the show started and can tell you she did not expect to win, which makes it all the more badass. And hi? Terry O'Quinn and Jon Stewart also winners? It's as if someone created a perfect, magical Emmys and wrapped it up with a bow.
'Kay, Sopranos tribute now over, and I have to head out to all the parties. First up, HBO—then TV Guide, then…who knows?…Maybe an after-party at Masi's? Just maybe.
Anyway, if you have Q's for the Emmygoers, well, post 'em below, and I will do my best to work it for you before I turn back into a pumpkin! The clock is ticking…
HBO’s Recount: A review
After the first 15 minutes of the HBO movie Recount, I was so upset, so filled with rage that I wondered if I wanted to watch the rest of the movie. Did I want to relive the events of November 7, 2000? Did I want to watch what happened, the craziest election fiasco in the last 25 years? I was compelled to stick with it because I had lived through it and I was dying to know what I didn’t know when it unfolded in real time. I thought the HBO movie might teach me something, and, in fact, it did.
For those who don’t want to know what happened in Recount, I won’t reveal any spoilers until after the jump. Of course, if you don’t already know how the election turned out, you’ve either been in a coma or are woefully out of touch. Suffice to say that Recount doesn’t rewrite history. The ending is exactly as it was in 2000.
In some ways, Recount is like All The President’s Men, although not nearly has epic or cinematic. Jay Roach (Meet the Fockers) is no Alan J. Pakula, but he’s pretty good with Recount. What he does right is set the time and place and add suspense to a story that we all know. That’s pretty good directing, and he and writer Danny Strong are to be commended. They take what could have been a tedious subject — the counting of votes and the legal wrangling over whether to do it or not — and made it intense and exciting.
If I have a complaint about Recount it’s only this: I wanted to know what was going on in George W. Bush’s head and Al Gore’s head through all of this business. We hear an occasional voice on a phone, but Bush and Gore are not characters in Recount. This isn’t like The Late Shift, the HBO movie about how David Letterman left NBC and Jay Leno became the host of The Tonight Show. In that film, actors playing Letterman and Leno gave us insight into their hearts and minds. We don’t have that with Recount.
Minus the main men, it’s left to their surrogates to step up and carry the film. That means Tom Wilkinson as James Baker, a former cabinet secretary for George Bush (President #41), to represent W., and Kevin Spacey as Ron Klain, Al Gore’s former chief of staff. They’re both really good.
Ironically, neither Baker nor Klain is completely enamored with their candidate — Klain at one point admits, “You know what’s really funny about all this? I’m not sure I really like Al Gore.” And Baker explains that his motivation is linked to W.’s father, an old friend who turned him from a Democrat into a Republican. Those shades of gray help with the storytelling.
Still, there’s no question the seconds, Denis Leary’s character and Bob Balaban’s, are strongly left and right, respectively. Balaban’s Ben Ginsberg (and he really looks like the guy) is so anti-Dem that he says they steal elections. When Bill Dailey, the son of former Chicago Mayor Richard Dailey, is shown talking on TV, Ginsberg claims, “He’s trying to steal the election for Gore like his father did for JFK.”
The movie suggests that the Democrats lost the fight for the recount early on. Gore’s choice to head his team is former Secretary of State Warren Christopher (played by John Hurt); he is all about diplomacy and being fair. He’s a gentleman. He says, “No shame in placing country above party.” Meanwhile, on the other side, James Baker declares that this is a street fight. The Republicans were determined to win; they didn’t want the results changed, so they were anti-recount and every step. By the way, Christopher and Baker, two famous Americans, were played by two British actors — with not a touch of England in their voices.
The story turns to the Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, to rule on legalities, and that’s when Laura Dern enters the picture — and steals it. She’s terrific. Her interpretation of Harris reveals her to be a woman ill-equipped to do the job. She’s manipulated by a Republican lobbyist (the always-fun Bruce McGill) to continually put obstacles in the path of those who want the recount — the Gore camp. My favorite Dern moment is right before she announces that the State of Florida certified the election and gave Bush the victory. She stands in the wings before going to face the media, takes a big breath like she’s a singer ready to face a concert audience, plasters on a smile, and strides to the microphones. Katherine Harris sets the women’s movement back 100 years, she’s that inept as depicted here.
In the end, Baker and company best Klain’s team. The film leans in the direction of the Gore camp — they are the underdogs after all — but as Baker points out about the Bush team, “We won every single recount. The system worked. No tanks on the street. Peaceful transfer of power. The strength of the constitution and the rule of law.”
He says this, but in one of the strongest sequences in the film, you see the Miami-Dade canvassing board being intimidated into shutting down the hand recount by a mob that’s allowed to go into the building and storm the hallway. Those protesters were orchestrated and financed by the Bush campaign. Those tactics, including turning the recount atmosphere into a circus with grown men dressed like babies, holding signs that say Gore is whining like a baby, and kids in tee-shirts that said “Gore lies,” undermined the process. It was right out of the Nixon dirty tricks playbook. You don’t see anything like that from the Gore side. The Gore camp is all about strategy, turning the law inside out to get the votes counted. Their cause is not to give Gore the win, but the count the votes. The Bush camp simply wants the win they think they’ve already won.
Spacey gives an excellent, controlled performance. No histronics here, his most moving moment occurs at the end when Gore calls him to say it’s over. “Even if I win, I can’t win,” Gore says, and Spacey is in tears. The character blames himself for not getting every vote counted.
Even though the film lacks Gore and Bush as characters (although there is one exchange when Gore rescinds his concession), they do appear in real news clips. Also included are all the major network talking heads, and those news people and their real reports add a lot to the verisimilitude.
In the end, you’re left with the same feeling that you’ve been hoodwinked, the public was cheated. Why wasn’t every ballot counted? Why did the Supreme Court interfere in Florida’s business? How can you believe that they weren’t playing politics when it was so clear that this was the most important political issue of all at stake?
“Did the best man win?” that’s the question Klain asks Baker near the end of the film. Neither can say for sure.
And as for the votes, in a scene that evokes Raiders of the Lost Ark, Roach shows us the boxes and boxes of ballots in a Florida warehouse. Still there, still uncounted. Who the hell really won that election after all?
Other points of interest
— David Boies, the best appellate attorney in the land, is played by Ed Begley Jr. A brilliant lawyer, he can’t scoop ice cream onto a cone without dropping the scoop onto the kitchen table.
— In a subtle indictment, after the case is done, two of the principals from the Bush team — Ted Olsen and Joe Allbaugh — are shown in headlines to be appointed to the new President’s staff as Solicitor General and head of FEMA. The implication is clear.
— By cross-cutting from the Christopher lead Gore team to the Baker lead Bush team, Roach shows how the tone was set early. Christopher didn’t want to get their hands dirty; Baker did.
— At one point, Spacey’s character says to Leary’s, “You like to say f*ck a lot.” Good inside shot at Leary — and true!
— Just use of the CSI-style forensics camera-work (you know, when they show a bullet going through a body) to explain how the ballots could have hanging chad (which is the plural for chad) and dimpled chad. Also how the machines could be clogged with chad so that it wouldn’t register every vote.
— Ginsberg said early on when Bush was given Florida by the networks, and they declared him the winner, “The stains of Bill Clinton will be washed away.” Talk about anti-Clinton fervor.
— Klain is established early on as having been dissed by Gore, offered a demotion to stay with the campaign once Gore was President. This set up the fact that Klain wasn’t doing the recount for selfish motives; he really didn’t have a reason to be as passionate as he was accept to see every vote counted.
— How goofy was Katherine Harris? She compared her part in the proceedings to Queen Esther from the Old Testament. Esther gave herself to a King to save the Jewish people. Where was the connection except in her head?
— When Klain gets to Palm Beach county and sees the old people — mostly Jews — complaining about their votes not being registered properly because of the butterfly ballot, he refers to the scene as Night of the Living Bubbies. (Bubbies is Yiddish for grandmother).
– The exchange between Bush and Gore on the phone, shown from the backs of their heads, had a nice nastiness to it, when Bush claims his little brother — Jeb, the governor of Florida — said he’d won the state. Gore replies that his little brother isn’t the final authority.