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Barbra Streisand to Direct First Film In 16 Years with Colin Firth and Cate Blanchett

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Exclusive: Although it’s been alluded to, here’s the real story about Barbra Streisand’s return to directing. She’s agreed to direct “Skinny and Cat,” an epic love story about writer Erskine Caldwell and photojournalist Margaret Bourke White. Colin Firth and Cate Blanchett are officially attached, and Linda Yellen is producing from a script she wrote. Streisand is said to be very excited. Lynn Kressell is casting. The film will be independently financed, with CAA putting together the package.

The film has a go date for January 2013. Streisand last directed “The Mirror Has Two Faces” in 1996. It’s high time she was back behind the camera. There’s a reason Streisand was chosen to give Kathryn Bigelow her directing Oscar for “The Hurt Locker” a couple of years ago. That’s because Barbra early bucked a system that resisted female directors. But once she caused a stir with “Yentl,” in 1983, the doors opened for Penny Marshall, Amy Heckerling, Nora Ephron, Betty Thomas, Susan Seidelman and all the ladies who followed them. Producer Yellen is a good partner for Streisand: she has a long string of quality credits including the landmark television movie, “Playing for Time.”

Streisand has a full plate this fall. While preparing for “Skinny and Cat” she has those dates at Brooklyn’s new Barclay Center, already sold out. And she stars with Seth Rogen in “The Guilt Trip” coming out for Christmas. There’s also talk of recording a duets album. And she still has “Gypsy” on her docket. Nothing like staying busy!

Is God Dead On Broadway? All Three Religious Themed Musicals Closing

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God is not having a good run on Broadway. It’s just been announced that within weeks of each of other, the three Broadway musicals with religious themes are shutting down for lack of business. “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Godspell,” and “Sister Act,” will be gone by the end of the summer. “Jesus Christ Superstar”–which is really a terrific production–will be gone by July 1st if business doesn’t pick up. “Godspell” has to close. Not a great production in the first place, it’s barely staying alive with very low ticket sales. It will close on Sunday after hanging on–shall I say it?– day by day by day. “Sister Act,” based on the Whoopi Goldberg movie, says it’s closing on August 26th when its current star Raven-Symone, is scheduled to leave. It’s a weird coincidence, to say the least. Meanwhile, the most god-less musical of all time, “The Book of Mormon,” is packing them in like never before. On a personal note, I loved this production of “Jesus Christ Superstar.” If they really do have to close, then try and get over there and see it. Josh Young is outstanding as Judas and the whole cast is terrific.

Box Office: Tom Cruise “Rock” Falling Apart Faster than Adam Sandler’s “Boy”

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Wow. Even though, really, “Rock of Ages” is a better movie in about 30 ways than “That’s My Boy,” bad things are happening at the box office. On Monday and Tuesday, “Rock of Ages”– with Tom Cruise as the nominal lead–has started to fall apart at the box office while Adam Sandler’s “Boy” has held on. Indeed, if the trend continues today and tomorrow, “That’s My Boy” will pull ahead of “Rock” even though it’s playing at fewer theaters. As of right now, they’re almost tied at $17 million plus change. When the weekend finished, “Rock” was ahead of “Boy” by about a million dollars. But on Monday “Rock of Ages” started to drop, and on Tuesday it fell further below. Adam Sandler obviously has a few dedicated fans left.

I didn’t intend for this piece to be a review also of Andy Samberg’s “Celeste and Jesse Forever,” which I saw last night. Samberg co-stars with Sandler in the hideous boy, although he keeps his head low and stays out of sight. “Celeste and Jesse,” which opens in August, is going to erase this whole episode. It’s a fine romantic comedy, a little bittersweet and totally adult in its outlook. It’s a slam dunk date movie for people in their 30s, sort of like “(500) Days of Summer.” Rashida Jones, daughter of Quincy Jones and Peggy Lipton, who’s been doing great on TV (“The Office,” “Parks and Recreation”) and in small movie roles, hits a home run as the star of this film. It’s like Melanie Griffith in “Working Girl.” And Samberg os just great.

But “Rock of Ages” looks like it’s going to be a total wash at this point. Something really went wrong. At least it vindicates my feelings about groups like Journey, Kansas, and Poison. Ugh.

John Edwards: People Mag Pic Proves My 2008 Story About His Clandestine Meeting

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In August 2008, I reported an interesting tidbit in the then unfolding John Edwards scandal. A former campaign worker of Edwards ran into him at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on June 18th. Edwards was sneaking in from the basement elevator. Using this elevator means you can bypass the lobby and shoot straight upstairs.

Edwards, I reported, was having a clandestine meeting with Rielle Hunter and their then three month old daughter, Quinn. It was a few days before Father’s Day, and Edwards’ other children and his wife Elizabeth were home in North Carolina. Edwards had already denied that Quinn was his child and was still fudging the truth of the affair.

But now People magazine has a picture in their new issue of Edwards with Quinn dated June 20, 2008. It’s taken at the Beverly Hilton. Edwards looks like he’s just come from the gym. So we can conclude he was there for a few days visiting with his lover and secret child. In the end, it’s nice to learn the end, or the other side of a story that I reported.

A month later, The National Enquirer– tipped off by someone–found Edwards in the hotel and trapped him in a public bathroom.They didn’t know  then that he’d already been with Hunter and the baby a month earlier.

Here’s my original story: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,409964,00.html

Rielle Hunter: “24” And There’s So Much More — Will She Spill On Her Hollywood Days?

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Rielle Hunter’s book is being excerpted in Radar Online, the AP, and ABC News has an exclusive on it. Hunter is quick to say John Edwards had other mistresses. Or he lied to her about other mistresses. But what about her other boyfriends? At the television show “24” in Hollywood, one man was very concerned when he heard Hunter was pregnant. He thought he was the father. He’d put Hunter up in an apartment, according to my sources. He was married. Ironically, his marriage had to withstand other tests once Edwards was named as the dad.

Is that in Hunter’s book, coming out next week?

Hunter clearly came to Hollywood with dollar signs in her eyes when she divorced husband Kip Hunter in 2000. and moved to Hollywood. “It was clear,” says Emmy-nominated cinematographer George Mooradian, “that she wanted to be in the movie business.”

As I wrote in 2008:

Rielle Hunter was first known as Lisa Druck. But some time in the late ’80s, after moving to Los Angeles from New York, the Florida native met and married Alexander “Kip” Munro Hunter III. During her decade-long marriage, her father-in-law was the prosecutor in the celebrated Ramsey case in Boulder, Colo.

Kip’s father, Alexander Munro Hunter, was the famous Boulder district attorney who, beginning in 1996, tried but failed to find and prosecute 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey’s killer. The crime — still unsolved — remains an international sensation.

It seems Rielle — known then as Lisa — hooked up with Kip in Los Angeles after her run as a Manhattan party girl and inspiration for a 1987 Jay McInerney novel. The author recently recalled that the book “was narrated in the first person from the point of view of an ostensibly jaded, cocaine-addled, sexually voracious 20-year-old who was, shall we say, inspired by Lisa.”

According to his own bio, Kip Hunter lived in New York from around 1990 to about 2005, and he had his own law firm, Hunter & Associates, where he “specialized in general corporate representation.”

In 2000, Lisa Druck re-emerged in Los Angeles as newly single Rielle Hunter, writer and producer of a 20-minute-long comedy called “Billy Bob and Them,” which she also acted in and self-distributed.

Mooradian worked on “Billy Bob and Them.” When he met Rielle, he said, she was just getting or had gotten a divorce.He conceded he was paid about $50, if that, to shoot the low-budget film in Hunter’s “very nice” Los Angeles-area home that he supposed she’d gotten in the divorce.

The film, he said, didn’t have much of a plot. “It was very New Age-y. It had something to do with altars and temples and crystals.” The shoot lasted two days.

Mooradian told me: “She definitely had some connection to the Dalai Lama and Richard Gere, and there was an offer to meet the Dalai Lama.”

Things have definitely changed. Hunter’s name sends a cold chill up the spines of the ‘24′ gang– and their show is about terrorism!

And there is still a much disputed story about Hunter’s friendship with actor Jeff Goldblum before he got added to “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and moved to New York. Hunter denies it, but the LA peeps can’t stop talking about it.

Alec Baldwin in Greatest Story New York Post Won’t Tell

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Alec Baldwin is now in the middle of a good one. Tonight is the movie premiere of Woody Allen’s “To Rome with Love.” Will Baldwin show up at the Paris Theater, walk the red carpet, do the whole song and dance? Security is going to be tight as Baldwin got himself into a physical  altercation yesterday morning with photographers for the Daily News. There are pictures, and everyone is at fault. But the News is touting the story and it’s been picked up by everyone except…The New York Post.

That’s right. The hottest celebrity story in town, and the Post can’t touch it. Otherwise they’d be promoting the enemy. And they’d have to pay for use of the pics, even if the News would sell them a set. So in the Post, Baldwin’s story never happened. Which is funny, since he hates the Post. But now they’re his only safe haven. Meantime, Baldwin baits the News by sending nasty Tweets to editor Colin Myler referring to the News editor’s problems in the UK with phone hacking and News of the World.

You cannot make this up. And meanwhile, Woody and Sony Pictures Classics needs him for publicity today for “To Rome with Love.” And Alec is walking around the Upper West Side like Casper the Ghost, with a white sheet over his head, so he can’t be photographed. All this, and the temperature is supposed to hit 95 degrees today. Oh, baby.

Scientology-Like Movie “The Master” Gets a Second, Mysterious Trailer to Decipher

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Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” now has a second official trailer. It plays at the bottom of the home page here in our video player. For the first time we see Philip Seymour Hoffman as the L. Ron Hubbard character, describing himself to acolyte Joaquin Phoenix as a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher. But above all, I am a man. A hopelessly inquisitive man, like you.” The music is creepy, the movie looks a little scary and portentous. Hoffman’s character is already trying to pry into Phoenix’s psyche. These are little pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. What they’re going to add up to could be anything, but it’s going to be intense, that’s for sure. We’re watching a L. Ron Hubbard, or someone like him, develop a belief system that will become a cult.

As I Said: Glee’s Chris Colfer Sells Comedy to Robert DeNiro’s Film Company

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Tribeca Films announced this morning what I told you back on June 6th: they’ve bought “Glee” star Chris Colfer’s excellent comedy, “Struck by Lightning,” for distribution. http://www.showbiz411.com/2012/06/06/glee-star-chris-colfer-22-sells-hot-film-to-deniro-company-and-publishes-first-novel. I also wrote in that item that 22 year old Colfer was publishing his first novel. Anyway, “Struck by Lightning” is the kind of comedy that Fox Searchlight used to pick up– like “Juno” or “Little Miss Sunshine.” It’s spot on, and sure to do well. Colfer did a great job.

Here’s the press release:

Tribeca Film announced today that it has acquired U.S. rights to “Glee” star Chris Colfer’s film debut, the high school comedy Struck By Lightning. In addition to starring in the movie, Colfer also wrote the screenplay for the film, which had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival and was met with a standing ovation. Directed with awareness and exuberance by Brian Dannelly (Saved!), the highly anticipated film also stars Allison Janney, Polly Bergen, Rebel Wilson, Christina Hendricks, Dermot Mulroney, Sarah Hyland and Angela Kinsey.

Tribeca Film plans a late 2012 theatrical release day and date with on-demand platforms where it will be available in 40+ million homes through a variety of video-on-demand offerings, in addition to iTunes, Amazon Watch Instantly, VUDU, Xbox and Samsung Media Hub.

High school senior Carson Phillips (Chris Colfer) was destined for bigger things than his close-minded small town could ever offer. He was on a path to greatness, but destiny had a different plan when he was suddenly killed by a bolt of lightning in his school parking lot.

Demonstrating that life is what happens while you’re busy planning your future, Carson recounts the last few weeks of his life via witty, insightful flashbacks, including a blackmail scheme targeting the popular kids in school that he concocts with his best friend (Rebel Wilson, Bridesmaids), and a home life that includes a mother (Allison Janney, Juno, “The West Wing”) who’s more interested in the bottle than

“Homeland,” “Community” Pick Up Critics Choice TV Awards

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“Homeland” and “Community” won Best Drama and Best Comedy, respectively, at the 2nd annual Critics Choice TV Awards. Special nod to our old pal Giancarlo Esposito for winning Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, “Breaking Bad.” More on the Critics Choice night later…

 

WINNERS OF THE 2nd ANNUAL CRITICS’ CHOICE TELEVISION AWARDS

Best Drama Series

Homeland – Showtime

Best Actor in a Drama Series

Bryan Cranston – Breaking Bad – AMC

Best Actress in a Drama Series

Claire Danes – Homeland – Showtime

Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series

Giancarlo Esposito – Breaking Bad – AMC

Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

Christina Hendricks – Mad Men – AMC

Best Guest Performer in a Drama Series

Lucy Liu – Southland – TNT

Best Reality Series

Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations – Travel Channel

Best Reality Series – Competition

The Voice – NBC

Best Reality Show Host – TIE

Tom Bergeron – Dancing with the Stars – ABC

Cat Deeley – So You Think You Can Dance – FOX

Best Talk Show

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon – NBC

Best Comedy Series

Community – NBC

Best Actor in a Comedy Series

Louis C.K. – Louie – FX

Best Actress in a Comedy Series – TIE

Zooey Deschanel – New Girl – FOX

Amy Poehler – Parks and Recreation – NBC

Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series

Ty Burrell – Modern Family – ABC

Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy

Julie Bowen – Modern Family – ABC

Best Guest Performer in a Comedy Series

Paul Rudd – Parks and Recreation – NBC

Best Animated Series

Archer – FX

Best Movie/Miniseries

Sherlock – PBS

Best Actor in a Movie/Miniseries

Benedict Cumberbatch – Sherlock – PBS

Best Actress in a Movie/Miniseries

Julianne Moore – Game Change – HBO

“Mad Men” Star Jon Hamm Eyed as Larry David’s Nemesis in Coming Improv Film

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Exclusive: Jon Hamm has proved himself so adept at comedy on “30 Rock” and “Saturday Night Live” that it’s about to pay off in movies. I’m told that Hamm is about to sign on to play Larry David’s nemesis in the still being worked out improv film David is set to shoot this fall. The film, without a title, will star David as a Larry David like character–but with a different name. He’ll get into the same kind of situations as Larry David on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Greg Mottola is directing, and the “script-ment”–a script-slash-treatment–is being worked up by David and his “Curb” and “Seinfeld” writers. Fox Searchlight will distribute. All of this is still in the planning stages, which means it will be some time before we see another season of “Curb” on HBO. But Don Draper as Larry’s sparring partner could be very funny. Hamm’s recent turn on the live version of “30 Rock” showed that he’s capable of a lot more than smoking and brooding.