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Scott Mendelson: Twilight Saga: New Moon shatters single-day record with $72 million.

2009-11-22T02:20:17Z

Twilight Saga: New Moon grossed $72.7 million on its first full day of release. This is the biggest single day of all time, besting The Dark Knight's $67 million opening shot back in July of 2008. This is also $3 million more than Twilight grossed in its entire opening weekend. See, this is what happens when you cast Dakota Fanning! Gosh, remember when The Lost World shocked us over Memorial Day weekend of 1997 all by earning $26 million in one day and $72 million in a single weekend? Well, New Moon just grossed $26 million in just midnight and 3am showings, and it clocked $72 million in just the first 24 hours. Why do I feel like Tommy Lee Jones at the end of No Country For Old Men?

Were this any other franchise (and maybe Harry Potter), we'd presume that the $158 million Fri-Sun record set by The Dark Knight was pretty much toast. Alas, Twilight's previous opening weekend was the most front-loaded in history (it's still number two behind the Hannah Montana Movie). If we recall, the first Twilight opened with a $35 million Friday (about $7 million worth of midnight screenings) and a $69.6 million three-day take. That was a stunningly low 1.9x multiplier. Now sequels are more frontloaded than originals as a rule (has there ever been a sequel that had a less front-loaded opening weekend than its predecessor?), so one presumes that the best New Moon can hope for is another 1.9x weekend, which would equal about $138 million. That would make it the third-biggest opening weekend of all-time, behind The Dark Knight ($158 million), Spider-Man 3 ($151 million). Of course, any additional frontloading would probably knock it down below the $135 million opening sprint of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, but above the $122 million weekend for Shrek the Third. But fear not Team Edward, Team Jacob, or Team Bella (or Team Dakota), it could do a pathetic 1.5x multiplier and still top the three-day $108 million Fri-Sun gross of Transfomers: Revenge of the Fallen, which would give it the biggest opening weekend of 2009. It is also guaranteed to claim the record for the biggest non-summer opening of all time. To paraphrase The Lost World: Congratulations, now you're Harry Potter.

The film grossed $26 million in midnight sneaks and $46 million in traditional Friday showtimes. Comparatively, The Dark Knight grossed $18 million in sneaks and $47 million in normal business hours. Over the last twenty years, there have been only three other pictures that have shattered the single-day record without claiming the opening weekend title. All were in the last five years, all of them opened on a Wednesday or a Thursday, and all of them were on the same pre-Memorial Day weekend. Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace opened in 1999 on a Wednesday with a record $28 million, but ended up with a Fri-Sun take of $64 million (the five-day take was a then-record $105 million). Shrek 2 opened on a Wednesday in 2004 and made just $20 million in its first two days. However, the film exploded over its Fri-Sun portion, grossing $28 million on Friday, $34 million on Sunday, and a record $44 million right in between. Alas, its three-day take was $108 million and not enough to beat Spider-Man's $114 million. Now you know why I consider Shrek 2 to be an anomaly when discussing five-day openings, as it opened with a slightly higher Wednesday than Pokemon The Movie but ended up with a $129 million five-day gross. And, finally, in 2005, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith opened on a Thursday to the first $50 million single day in history, but it's Fri-Sun portion was 'only' $108 million. Amusingly, its first actual three days - Thurs, Fri, Sat - actually grossed $123 million, more than Spider-Man's $114 million record at the time. But, should New Moon fail to surpass $158.4 million (and it probably will miss the mark, it has to achieve a 2.2x multiplier), it will be the first film in history to break the single-day record on a traditional Fri-Sun opening and not take the three-day title.

Still, let's not make this 'it won't break the opening weekend record' look like anything resembling failure. This adaptation of a popular young-adult book series just outgrossed The Golden Compass and The Spiderwick Chronicles in one day. It surpassed the opening weekend of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in one day. It has a plausible chance of surpassing the entire domestic gross of Prince Caspian in three or four days. I'm not going to embarrass those involved with The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising by pulling up those numbers. On second thought... oh... $8.9 million... poor Susan Cooper. As far as franchises in the last ten years, it will have one of the biggest opening-weekend upswings from first film to second film in modern history. The biggest shot of pain has to be felt at Fox, where everyone knows full well that Avatar will be happy to gross $72 million over it's entire weekend. The record for a no-star, no major franchise opening is 300, with $70 million. If you don't count the bible as a prior franchise, then The Passion of the Christ wins at $83 million. Or if you count the bible and the cult comic book 300 as a prior source, then The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 win the day, with $68 million and $65 million respectively. Either way, Cameron's game-changer just got smashed by a $50 million gothic romance aimed at teen girls, the very audience that helped propel Titanic into the record books.

Ok, there will be more tomorrow when the weekend figures are released. In the meantime, let's also give props to Sandra Bullock, whose real-life drama The Blind Side took in $10 million yesterday. Before this year, Bullock had never had a $20 million opener in her life. Now it looks like she may have two $30 million openers just this year.

Scott Mendelson

Liz Glover: New Moon Cast Members On Kristen & Rob, And Health Care

2009-11-21T17:03:00Z

Liz Glover http://www.huffingtonpost.com/liz-glover/

Levi Johnston Playgirl Pictures: MORE Beefcake Shots (PHOTOS)

2009-11-21T16:52:45Z

(Lucky?) Playgirl.com members now have access to even more beefcake shots of former Alaskan First Grandbaby Baby Daddy Levi Johnston.

The first Levi Playgirl photo was released last week, and now, via gawker, are two more (tamely cropped) shots.

But, for those who pay, there is some more body action than the innocent chest (hairless) and brooding headshots seen below.

PHOTOS:

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Liz Glover: Flava Flav On Khaleid Sheik Mohammed's Upcoming Trial In New York City

2009-11-21T16:24:00Z

Liz Glover http://www.huffingtonpost.com/liz-glover/

William Bradley: Mad Men: Three Seasons On and Looking Forward

2009-11-21T14:54:04Z

Mad Men's brilliant third season finale earlier this month is still echoing in the mind. And in the culture. January Jones was a game host of Saturday Night Live the following weekend. (Though she didn't make anyone forget Jon Hamm's great hosting gig last year. He is seriously funny.) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revealed that she's a fan of the show. And of course her husband, former President Bill Clinton, is a Mad Men fan as well.

Which is simply too perfect for words. I could easily write a column comparing Bill Clinton and Don Draper. Avoiding the obvious cheap shots. Another time, perhaps.

Don Draper and Roger Sterling move forward with new plans for the future.

I've been thinking about the arc of the series from its excellent pilot, "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," set in March 1960, to the fabulous third season finale, which takes place in December 1963. Where has the series been, where is it now, and where might it be going with creator Matthew Weiner?

The reality is that our beloved old Sterling Cooper was a rather stodgy advertising agency. That's clear in the series premiere. We meet Don Draper, our protagonist anti-hero. He's trying hard to come up with a campaign for a tobacco company. And to help it deal with these awful rumors that cigarettes are very bad for you.

We learn that Don, while very creative, is wedded to an old paradigm. He doesn't like research. He doesn't like quirky advertising. He doesn't think, so far as we can tell through all the smoke around him, that there's anything wrong with cigarettes. We see that his agency is on the wrong side of change. That's really spelled out when Roger Sterling says he doesn't see any reason why America won't fall in love with a good-looking Navy hero like Dick Nixon.

As the season goes on, we see the Sterling Coo crew blindsided by the advent of John F. Kennedy. (Except for Pete Campbell.)

The only art we see highlighted, and this is in season two, is Bert Cooper's Rothko. Which the characters view as a great mystery. It's a key prop in season two. In fact, you could say that the Rothko set in motion most of the principal events for the rest of season two and all of season three.

After all, it was Jane Siegel's impish decision to goad a group into venturing into the forbidden territory of Bert's office to view the painting that led to her being fired by Joan. And reinstated by Roger, who had happened upon the perfect context in which to casually hit on Don's gorgeous, smart young secretary without looking like an aging lech. That in turn led to the collapse of Roger's marriage, his decision to marry Jane, and the need to sell Sterling Cooper to the Brits to settle his divorce.

The essential milieu of Mad Men is not all that admirable.

In that sense, the Rothko is the show's McGuffin, a mysterious object of wonderment which triggers action.

Yet the fact that it is a Rothko which serves as the trigger for monumental change in the show points up the time warp nature of Sterling Cooper. A dangerously time warp nature, what with the cascading changes about to unfold in the 1960s.

Rothko is Abstract Expressionism. Avant garde in the '50s. And it placed New York City at the center of the art world, supplanting Paris. But by the '60s, it was establishment art. What was popping across, as it happens, New York at the very time of Mad Men's seasons two and three, was Pop Art. Heavily influenced by advertising, mass media, and pop culture -- in many respects an ironic commentary on them -- and executed by ex-commercial artists like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and James Rosenquist, Pop was centered in New York City.

Yet we see not a hint of Pop in the world of Sterling Cooper, even as it's beginning to explode across the same city, with Lichtenstein's classic Drowning Girl produced in 1963. The gang finally gets Kennedy, as we see right along from Jackie Kennedy's TV special on the White House, which takes place during season two. And Peggy and a few others discover Bob Dylan, while Don dabbles with a beatnik girlfriend. But on the whole, this is a crew that is largely behind the curve of change, as is so shockingly clear in the Derby Day episode early in season three, with Roger singing in blackface and Pete and Trudy dancing the Charleston. We barely even see anyone dance the Twist.

And while it's a shock to see that great Sterling Cooper set slip into the rear view mirror, it's okay with me. I thought it was brilliant, but I didn't really like it. I like the fashions of the early '60s more than the design aesthetic.

In any event, Sterling Coo felt more late '50s than even early '60s, and the real "Sixties" are definitely getting underway.

The characters react to the shocking news of the assassination of President Kennedy.

It's like comparing and contrasting North By Northwest with Dr. No. The films are only three years apart -- with North By Northwest in 1959 and Dr. No in 1962 -- but they have a very different feel. North By Northwest, which clearly influenced the show, is definitely of the '50s, refined and rather mannered. Dr. No is definitely of the '60s, rawer and more sexual and violent. (North By Northwest, unlike Dr. No, is a great movie, which I'll write about as its 50th anniversary edition is now out this month.)

And the change we see reflected in those films will be even more pronounced the next time we see the ex-Sterling Coo crew, which I expect to be 1964. It's the year of the Beatles and Goldfinger, the last Bond film in which Bond wears a hat (and then only while golfing with the villain). And it's the year of LBJ's election (as well as that of a new senator for New York named Robert F. Kennedy), the year of civil rights and the real beginnings of the Vietnam War. Advertising is the perfect prism by which to view these characters moving through a hyper-capitalist society that is accelerating and fragmenting as it does.

It's interesting that President Kennedy basically killed off most of the hat industry after he was elected president and went hatless on the day of his inauguration. The fact that one of the last things Don does in the old Sterling Cooper offices is pick up his hat signifies how he has clung to the past while clinging to Sterling Coo. If he wears a hat from now on, it will be through sheer force of habit. And I doubt he will, as it's important to his self-image as an image professional for Don to be cool.

Betty confronts Don with his little box of big secrets in this past season's Episode 11.

So where are Don and the other characters now in this fabulous novel for television?

** Don Draper is the one constant in the series. Though there was a moment when I thought he just might swim out to sea, like Bruce Dern in Coming Home. Now, prodded by his eccentric but clear-sighted amigo Connie Hilton, he's flown the coop (even though he forced Coop to come along for the big ride), setting up a new advertising agency that can be fast and nimble enough to drive change rather than be washed away by it.

His marriage to Betty is over. I suspect he'll be happier without the pressure and energy drain of having to pretend to keep up the facade of a life which itself was a facade. Don never really got Betty, as we saw in the aftermath of their big trip to Rome. He wanted the image of Betty, kept safely behind the gilded white picket fence cage of the "perfect" suburban life. Ironically, had he engaged her in his professional life, which she wanted, she could have been a great partner in his new venture.

In any event, Don Draper is on the loose. That frees up the show in many ways. I thought this season was quite brilliant, in much the same way that a great long novel can be brilliant, in exploring the permutations of family and married life that led to the big break-up. But like such a novel, portions of it dragged for me, necessary though they probably were. Now that is largely done, pared away, presenting exciting possibilities for Don.

Did Don actually blow his best chance to revive his marriage to Betty after they returned from Rome?

** Betty Draper has been another central constant, because she is married to the protagonist. In some ways, this season was as much about Betty as it was about Don. Now their marriage has ended, and so has Betty's centrality to the story. She'll still be a significant player, certainly because of the children. But she's likely to disappear for stretches of the story now. In that sense, she may become a more likable character.

She is marrying someone she barely knows, which is never an especially brilliant idea. But Henry Francis is a more real concept to her now than Don, since she's learned that there really is no Don. Like Don, she fell in love with an image. When she learned that the picture she had held in her head of "Don Draper" was false, what faith she had left was cracked. The Kennedy assassination, and especially its immediate aftermath, shattered their already fractured bond.

** Sally Draper was always an intriguing child. This season, she became one of the principal characters in the series. She's the quintessential baby boomer in the series. She's already being raised largely by television. That will only accelerate with her parents split apart. Her brother Bobby is a less interesting character, perhaps because boys that age are not all that fascinating. Though he did have some telling moments late in the season.

** Roger Sterling is the character I enjoy the most. His funny, frequently sarcastic, nearly always spot-on observations are a real treat. His character really sold me on the series in its early days when it was still unfamiliar and sometimes slow-going. He and Don have a great rapport, and a fascinating dynamic. Kind of like sweet and sour chicken. It was hard when he was sidelined from the main action through much of the season. But he is certainly right in the thick of it now. And with a real existential challenge. He inherited his business. Now he gets to find out what he can do on his own, reliant though he will be on Don. And vice versa.

** Peggy Olsen is the forerunner female professional, with the clearest arc. As pollster Paul Maslin puts it: "She is going to be the litmus test on a lot of the change -- gender roles, first and foremost, but I could see her getting radicalized by the times as well."

January Jones played Grace Kelly in this Saturday Night Live version of a scene from Hitchcock's classic Rear Window.

** Joan Holloway has been the betwixt and between female character. She's used her sexuality to get ahead. But ironically, her looks have gotten in her way professionally. Now, with her central role in this very high-powered little start-up agency, she has the opportunity to shine in ways she never could have before.

Then there's Joan's husband. It's tempting to talk sardonically about Vietnam and land mines, but suffice it to say that their lives are going in very different directions. He's in the Army, he has training and postings overseas, and I really don't see Joan chucking her new role as, essentially, the chief operating officer of Sterling Cooper Draper Price to sit around base housing somewhere.

** Pete Campbell has always been ahead of the curve in his thinking. He's also been a big pain in the ass and worse, pouting, snobby, backstabbing (remember Freddy Rumsen, one of my favorites?), forcing himself on the neighbor's nanny.

Yet he is growing up, in tune with the times. He turned out to be the Kennedy person at Sterling Coo, even though in season one he had dutifully come up with a very clever gambit to help Nixon. He's helped tremendously by having the best marriage, to the estimable and delightful Trudy, who I think will be more of a player in the series as the new agency moves forward.

** Bert Cooper is not ready for the ice floe. The eccentric sage of Sterling Coo, who can play real hardball when he wants to (recall how he finally got Don to sign his contract) is now way outside his comfort zone, working in a hotel room with people young enough to be his grandchildren. There's no place for him to nap or watch TV during the day there. The slumbering old lion in the winter of his days may have a rebirth.

** Lane Pryce quickly became one of my favorite characters. The ultimate company loyalist proved to be quite the skilled plotter when he cast aside his old company tie. I think he will end up working well with Joan. Capable people admire capability. After all, without both of these characters, there is no Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

Mad Men's third season opener set a strong stage for things to come.

** Sal Romano has had a terrific character arc which dropped him in the middle of his identity's central contradiction. He won't easily return to the crew. After all, there is no agency without the big tobacco account, and unless the odious Lee Garner Jr. steps in front of a bus, or tries to be a movie mogul in Hollywood, this scrambling start-up is in no position to play hardball in order to rehire Sal as art director. He could be a consultant, however. He's a terrific character, and I hope and expect we will see a lot more of him.

** Ken Cosgrove was one of the "left behind." We don't really know why yet. As talented as Pete is, especially in terms of ideas and foresight, Ken is the better accounts man, for the reason that Lane laid out. He makes it look effortless. And he's certainly talented, a fine writer as we know from season one, with a better touch with talent than Peggy, as we saw in season two.

** Paul Kinsey lost his copywriting duel with Peggy. He went to Princeton (as he mentions on occasion), she went to secretarial school. But she has the knack for advertising, and he doesn't. The new crew could certainly hire him as they staff up, but they could hire somebody else, too.

** Harry Crane, the luckiest character in the series -- his key career moment came when he saw that Sterling Coo should have a television department, which was not exactly a stroke of genius -- keeps on keeping on. He has the connections now and is the amiable facilitator they need.

** Duck Phillips looked as though he might be the deus ex machina setting big changes in motion this season. But he turned out to be more of a red herring; unless he marries Peggy, which is hard to see, I don't know how he plays into things.

** Henry Francis, of course, is now a serious character. Will he marry his Grace Kelly whom he's rescued from the suburbs -- as he sees it -- and make Betty the princess she was raised to be? Well, he has a presidential campaign to work on, that of his governor, Nelson Rockefeller. This 1964 campaign, incidentally, marks the fundamental defeat of the liberal East Coast wing of the Republican Party and the rise of the Sun Belt right.

This might portend a more nomadic existence for Henry, if he were principally a campaign operative. But he works in the governor's office. And Nelson Rockefeller is going to be governor of New York for another decade. Then he becomes vice president of the United States. As Henry Kissinger knows, there is sustaining power and prestige in being a senior advisor to Rockefeller, a famed art collector and one of the richest men in America. And a rather glittering world of power for Betty to explore.

** Suzanne Farrell is not crazy. Sorry, folks. she's not. A lot of fans think she is (fill in the blank) psychiatric designator. What she is is a forerunner in her own right, a smart, free-spirited, proto-hippie. She's also very good-looking, a brunette (like Don likes when he is not in Grace Kelly dream mode). Oh, and little Sally absolutely adores her ex-teacher. Hmm ...

** Jane Siegel is someone we might see more of next season, especially if the ABC scifi drama Flash Forward doesn't start doing better. That's because the actress who plays the new Mrs. Roger Sterling is a regular on this new show. A lot of fans want Roger and Joan to get together. There are two problems with this. One, they are both married to other people, only one of whom is going to be sent overseas. The other is that they work together. In very confined spaces. And Roger, as Bert pointed out, is too old for Joan. He's not too old for Jane, however paradoxical it may seem. When Roger passes on, Jane is still pretty young, and very well off, and can more easily restart her life with someone else. Jane is also one of the most contemporary characters on the show, something of a neo-Mod, actually, before she married Roger.

** Conrad Hilton proved to be a most interesting character. After all, he set the events of the finale in motion, with Don finally doing what Connie wanted to hear him say he would do: Go out on his own and make his own mark. Connie can only be approving of what his sometime surrogate son has done. And since Don didn't burn his bridges, and then acted very rapidly on his own -- and there is no redundancy of Hilton advertising now -- there's no reason these two can't work together down the line.

You know, Don Draper does look a little bit like George Kaplan. Or Roger O. Thornhill. What does the "O" stand for? Nothing at all.

Well, I think that's enough for now. This is a novel playing out on television, and can be discussed endlessly.

I'm really a political writer, not an entertainment writer, so this has been a very interesting experience. I do write about movies from time to time. In fact, I'm going to write over Thanksgiving about the 50th anniversary edition of North By Northwest, a movie which has an obvious connection to this great series.

And having been writing about the best show on television for the past three months, I'm going to write about the biggest show on television. That's NCIS, a very different sort of show, very well done, which has surprisingly become more popular as it has aged, being in its seventh season now. And, oddly, no one has written about it.

But I won't be analyzing NCIS every week. Not that it would not be much easier, though the Ziva character (the agent who is the daughter of the head of Israel's Mossad secret service, which, contrary to your expectation, doesn't come off at all well) is certainly complicated enough to be on Mad Men.

I could write about Lost. After all, I've watched it from the beginning. And this is the last season. Sadly, I still don't really know what's going on. With the characters time shifting so often I sometimes feel like I have a concussion while watching it.

24? It got better again last season, though it's not as good as it was in its first few seasons. And the constant torture motif certainly is significant, if too predictable. But that might be too much like writing about politics. Though it might be good to examine how Jack Bauer manages to drive across Los Angeles in less than half an hour. Sadly, the show no longer takes place in LA, so that humor angle no longer exists.

Let's see. It's less than nine months till Mad Men's season four begins ...

You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.

Suri Cruise Has Fun With Security Tape (PHOTOS)

2009-11-21T14:06:11Z

Little Miss Trouble Suri Cruise decided to have some fun on the set of her mom's latest movie, The Romantics, in Long Island yesterday.

Suri arrived while cameras were rolling, but the action clearly wasn't exciting enough for the youngster.

The 10 Best Thanksgiving Movies Of All Time (VIDEO)

2009-11-21T14:00:26Z

What will you rent this Thanksgiving when the tryptophan kicks in and no one wants to move from the sofa? Vote on your holiday favorites and let us know what we missed in the comments.

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Carrie Prejean's Sex Tape Recipient Helped Fill Out Miss CA Survey

2009-11-21T13:38:26Z

TMZ has learned Prejean's former cross-country booty call received an email from Carrie on 11/7/07 -- when she was 20 -- in which Carrie asked for help answering several brain-busting questions such as:

If you could have lunch with any one (1) person, who would it be and why?

Britney Spears' Ex Sentenced To Jail

2009-11-21T13:31:06Z

LOS ANGELES — Britney Spears' ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib is being sent to jail for 45 days for leaving the scene of an accident.

Los Angeles District Attorney's spokeswoman Jane Robison says Ghalib was taken into custody immediately after being sentenced Friday.

He pleaded no contest last month to leaving the scene of an accident that injured a man who was trying to serve him with a restraining order. The order was sought by Spears' father and was eventually granted.

The process server has sued Ghalib, a paparazzo. That case is still pending.

Robison says Ghalib was also ordered to serve three years of formal probation and perform 45 days of roadside cleanup duty.

The 37-year-old was facing up to a year in county jail.

Travolta Family Appears At Fundraiser In Florida Hometown

2009-11-21T13:10:01Z

OCALA, Fla. — John Travolta and his family made their first public appearance in their adopted Florida hometown since his son's death, helping raise thousands of dollars for charity at a screening of the actor's new comedy Friday night.

Travolta, wife Kelly Preston and daughter Ella Bleu greeted hundreds of fans for a sneak preview of Disney's "Old Dogs," which opens Wednesday.

An emotional Travolta thanked the crowd for supporting the family since 16-year-old Jett Travolta died Jan. 2 at the family vacation home in the Bahamas.

"We know that we are loved," Travolta said. "We appreciate it. Jett appreciates it. We love you, Ocala."

The private gala raised at least $37,500 for five nonprofit agencies: The Jett Travolta Foundation, Florida Highway Patrol Advisory Council, Project Hope, the Marion County Public Safety Assistance Trust and the Humane Society of Marion County.

The Travoltas live just north of Ocala, about 90 miles northwest of Orlando.

___

Information from: Ocala Star-Banner, http://www.starbanner.com/

Joe Vogel: Review: Adam Lambert's 'For Your Entertainment' An Instant Classic

2009-11-21T10:44:32Z

Adam Lambert "For Your Entertainment" (19/RCA)

Ten or twenty years from now, when people are reflecting on the defining albums of the current pop-synth-glam revival, For Your Entertainment will undoubtedly be at the top of many lists. From its packaging to its songs to the persona of Adam Lambert himself, it seems to comprehensively represent a distinct cultural and musical zeitgeist. "I wanna start a revolution," Lambert sings in "Strut," and for Lambert, the revolution emanates from within the fantastical alternate reality he conjures. It is a nod to Sixties psychedelia, Seventies disco, and Eighties glam-pop. But Lambert and his array of creative partners somehow manage to synthesize it into something fresh and current.

This doesn't mean For Your Entertainment is a perfect album. The "glam" genre itself implicitly carries certain strengths and weaknesses and Lambert's debut will likely be assessed by the degree to which these matter to people. The album, for example, mostly lacks the emotional subtlety of some of the singer's best moments on American Idol ("Mad World," Tracks of My Tears," etc.; the stunningly haunting "Broken Open," co-written by Lambert, is a notable exception). It also generally refrains from major risks or social commentary. But an album like For Your Entertainment is best understood and experienced according to its own criteria. What the album generally concedes in depth, it makes up for in sheer energy, playfulness and pleasure (this, indeed, was Lambert's intention). It is best viewed, then, not as a final statement, but as a starting point, a launch pad to what is certain to be a fascinating and diverse artistic odyssey. It can be looked at as Adam Lambert's Off the Wall, a coming out album that not only symbolizes a re-invigorated hybrid aesthetic and sound, but introduces the world to a transformational new pop superstar.

For Your Entertainment certainly isn't lacking in potential hits. "Music Again" is the sonic equivalent of the album cover art--a deliberately campy, effectively updated glam rock homage to several of Lambert's inspirations (Queen, David Bowie, T. Rex). The result is an invigorating, sing-along opener that will sound utterly fresh and unique next to most contemporary Top 40 material.

Lambert re-visits some of these retro themes in "Soaked," a flourishing Queen-like ballad contributed by Muse, in which Lambert is able to demonstrate his remarkable vocal range. The racing strings and piano add exotic drama to the song.

Generally an uptempo dance record, Lambert does slow it down occasionally. The singer's effortless falsetto is gorgeous on the spacey ballad, "A Loaded Smile." The radio-friendly "Whataya Want From Me," while deploying some tired pop cliches in the chorus, still makes one of the album's more poignant emotional statements, anticipating the heavy burden of expectations the singer is likely to carry while expressing vulnerable appreciation for the acceptance he has received. "I'm a freak," he sings, "but thanks for loving me/ 'Cause you're doing it perfectly."

For Your Entertainment, however, primarily operates from a disco/glam aesthetic of escapism and liberation via dance, dress-up, and desire. This intention is on full-display in club-ready hits like the title track, "Strut," "Fever" and "If I Had You," all of which fully accomplish what the singer had in mind for the album: songs that make you want to let loose, dance, work out, have fun.

The album's hidden gem, however, is the closer. An ethereal electro-soul ballad, "Broken Open" is a powerful expression of loneliness, vulnerability and yearning for connection. Sonically, it feels like it belongs alongside Thom Yorke, The Killers, and Grizzly Bear on the New Moon Soundtrack.

While eclectic, For Your Entertainment works surprisingly well as an album. Most listeners likely won't be skipping for the token three or four "singles" since it effectively maintains strength, variety, energy and catchy choruses throughout. "Aftermath" is the lone glaring weak track, hearkening regrettable Idol anthems like "No Boundaries." Yet this is a small quibble for an album so viscerally enjoyable.

As a whole, For Your Entertainment marks one of the most impressive mainstream pop album debuts in recent memory, surpassing its trailblazing sister-album, Lady Gaga's The Fame. While Lambert's work obviously covers some similar terrain (thematically and sonically), it showcases greater consistency, diversity and creativity. It also should have wider appeal, given its pop and rock attributes.

From its iconic cover, to its unique retro-contemporary fusion, to its memorable hooks, Lambert's appropriately labeled album contains all the elements of a massively successful--and influential--pop-rock classic. And fortunately for fans, it only seems to be scratching the surface of its creator's potential.

4.5 stars/5

UPDATE:

A couple of commenters have mentioned disappointment at my (and other reviewer's) overlooking of "Sleepwalker." This was indeed an oversight because in my notes I had this among the three or four best tracks on the album. Great atmospheric piece, deft vocals, explosive guitar work (by Orianthi), and some of the most evocative lyrics on the album (by Aimee Mayo, Chris Lindsey and Ryan Tedder). This song is ripe for a music video.

UPDATE 2:

This review has been expanded and revised from the original version.

Marshall Fine: Oren Moverman delivers with The Messenger

2009-11-21T03:34:40Z

It's referred to as "development hell" - that period between when a script is optioned and when it gets a green light - an endless series of notes, meetings and rewrites when the original script falls prey to the whims of all the chefs involved with creating this particular soufflé.

Yet writer-director Oren Moverman says that, without that lengthy development, he wouldn't haven been able to uncover the heart of The Messenger and create the compelling film it became. Nor would he have made his directorial debut with the film.

"Along the way, we stripped it down to its essence," Moverman says.

The Messenger" which opened in limited release Nov. 13 and goes into wider release in the coming weeks, focuses on a young soldier, Will Montgomery (Ben Foster), wounded in the Iraq war and returned to duty stateside. He is assigned duty as a casualty notification officer, given the job of notifying the next-of-kin of those killed in the Iraq war and teamed with a veteran of the detail (played by Woody Harrelson).

The idea for the script originated with Moverman's cowriter, producer Alessandro Camon: "He brought up the idea of casualty notification as an unseen part of the war - one of the parts that they all but made illegal to show, like they wouldn't let the media show the returning bodies," Moverman, an Israeli native, says. "That's really when it started. We were off and running."

Running a marathon, as it turned out: The film went through three other directors before it got made. Sydney Pollack worked with the writers, trying to use the milieu as the backdrop for a love story: "We did a complete draft and eventually came to a mutual agreement that it was not that kind of movie," Moverman says.

The next director, Roger Michel, wanted to focus on the relationship between the two men. For a while, Ben Affleck was interested in directing. As they worked on the script with different directors, Moverman and Camon found it revealing itself as something they - not the directors - wanted to make.

"We took away the plot-driven thing and stayed with the emotional core," Moverman says.

Eventually, it became clear that Moverman was the logical choice to direct. But the writer (I'm Not There, Jesus' Son) had another film he was working on that he hoped to direct as his first film.

"I never lobbied to direct it," Moverman says. "I had another picture I was going to direct. My initial reaction was no. I was trying to be a responsible screenwriter. It felt wrong to say I'll take over and my writing partner's role would be diminished. But he gave his blessing. Now I'm unable to go back to that other script I was going to direct."

Continued...
For the rest of this interview, click HERE to reach my website: www.hollywoodandfine.com.

Wes Anderson: Behind The Filming Of One Of My Favorite Fantastic Mr. Fox Performances

2009-11-21T01:08:17Z

When you're making an animated film, one of the big differences is that you can add scenes, change dialogue and re-write as you're going along because you only shoot a little bit of the movie each day.

Mr. and Mrs. Fox "on set" shooting a scene in the supermarket.

So, with Fantastic Mr. Fox, about half-way through the shoot, I had this idea for a scene between the two characters played by Jason Schwartzman and my brother, Eric Anderson. I thought one place to start was with something I grew up with: bunk beds.

My initial sketches for how the scene in Ash's (Jason Schwartzman's character) bedroom would be shot and acted

In this case, Jason Schwartzman's character does not allow the bunk beds to serve their usual purpose of sleeping two. So, his foreign cousin is forced to sleep underneath the train set. This train set is particularly miniature, because the puppets themselves are only probably about 7 inches high and the train set is very easily the smallest I have ever seen. Throughout the film we all traveled back and forth between France and England a lot. So, we thought it might be fitting that the electric train would actually be something in the vein of a Eurostar. It's actually labeled 'High Speed French Train'. One unusual fact is that the model train is actually the same train that we use for most of the full scale shots of the train.

I don't know, but this is probably an unusual alternative in the movies. The bunk beds themselves are based on the Gypsy Caravan after which Dahl named his house, and it's still there in Great Missenden.

Artist Turlo Griffin's concept artwork for Ash's bedroom, showing the use of the Gypsy Caravan motif

And also on the set, we have the white cape comics which are drawn by our story board artist Christian De Vita, and which are Ash's (Jason Schwartzman's character) sole reading material and the inspiration for his wardrobe. Jason and Eric give two of my favorite performances in the film, and this scene more or less encapsulates their entire relationship. I hope you'll enjoy watching it as much as I did making it.

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Kim Morgan: A Good Cop Is Hard To Find: The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

2009-11-20T22:48:49Z

Werner Herzog's approach to "the truth" has always been fascinating, fearless, at times ferocious and to continue in this alliterative vain, faithful. Faithful to life -- to its wonderful or horrifying craziness, to its lyrical splendor, and to its appalling ugliness that in turn, can often reveal a deep, multi-faceted beauty. Life is unclean. Life is violent. Life is corrupt. Life is fantastical. Life is chaos. Life is, yes, beautiful.

Watch his Lessons of Darkness, concerning the Kuwait fires and you're left breathless by their destructive magnificence. As the oil wells burn we hear Prokofiev, Verdi, Wagner, Grieg and gloriously, Mahler's "Resurrection" (2nd) Symphony. Interestingly, Mahler conceived the second Resurrection as recalling positive remembrances for the dead. Yes. Laudable thoughts. Burn baby, burn -- in a wonderfully optimistic and exalting pitch. This feels like Herzog.

And Herzog feels like Herzog. When meeting him, I was so inspired by his presence, his intelligence, his realness, his voice, that talking to him made me feel (and please excuse me for sounding hyperbolic but I'm being honest here) like how Marlene Dietrich described Orson Welles, like "a plant that's been watered." And I thank god I'll never forget our meeting because, perhaps not surprisingly, after one of the most interesting and fulfilling interviews I've ever conducted, the tape jammed. Sitting late at night in my bedroom, ready to transcribe this fascinating talk, my heart stopped when I heard that awful sound of tape being sucked into machine. Broken. Fearful of pulling it out of the recorder, I stared at it in disbelief. Unspool and possibly repair? Or leave it? I decided to leave it there. I suddenly felt like Herzog was telling me I must never listen to it.

This disappointing reality caused further reflection of Herzog and his movies. You don't go to a Werner Herzog picture and think: "That's not realistic." Because, really, what does that mean anyway? This is his truth. This is their truth. Or your truth. Or an iguana's truth. It's part of Herzog's grand yet entirely grounded theories about "reality" -- what he calls "ecstatic truth." Herzog claims that his approach toward filmmaking, whether in his documentaries (like Little Dieter Needs to Fly or Grizzly Man) or biographical pictures (like Aguirre: The Wrath of God or Fitzcarraldo) reveals, as he has said: "Something deeply inherent, where you recognize yourself as a human being again, where you find images that have been dormant inside of you for so many years and all of a sudden it becomes visible and understandable for you -- you read the world differently, your perceptions change."

A true auteur and a true adventurer, Herzog understands (instinctively and intellectually) just how much we take for granted when not looking out of the corner of our eye -- when we only see what's right in front of us. "Reading the world differently" is an important element to his filmmaking, and as he braves Antarctica, or walks hundreds of miles, or drags boats over mountains, or contends with true forces of nature -- the jungle, the cold, the animals and Klaus Kinski -- Herzog is adept at tackling any type of movie, any type of obstacle, any type of eccentricity.

And now he's taken on Nicolas Cage.

With his un-hinged, gloriously debauched, hilarious, and uniquely gorgeous The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (one of the best films of the year so far), he's dazzlingly in synch with his subject -- the portrait of a man, a crooked cop (Cage) rotting and raving in a decimated land. That's post-Katrina New Orleans, a place that well covers Herzogian themes -- the violence, the beauty, the destruction of nature, the warped passion of a fanatical man. Cage's Terence McDonagh -- drug impaired, dishonest, abusive, and yet, often kind and certainly conflicted is a jangly, imbalanced creature of inspired madness. What's brilliant here is that Herzog, not one to create a standard police procedural, places Cage in something like that: there's a an internal affairs investigation, a murder mystery and strangely sweet complications with a prostitute (Eva Mendes) and a drug dealer (Xzibit). There's also gambling and drug addiction, inappropriate pat-downs, lucky crack pipes and relations with his downtrodden dad and stepmother, that recalled a Flannery O'Connor story or Rip Torn visiting his pill addicted mother in the brilliantly brave Payday.

And like Mr. Torn, Cage is absolutely fearless in his approach to character. Throw out all the rules and just be. Be crazy. But be real. To describe his rhythms and humor and in the end, his humanity isn't easy -- Cage is almost musical in his approach, and he stirs mysterious, complicated emotions that will yes, make many people laugh. At him, with him, and with the very things that make him laugh. When we are looking at iguanas from the perspective of the animal and the perspective of drugged out Cage considering the animal, the hallucinatory power borders on hilarious and yet, remains honestly poetic (it reminded me a bit of the chicken at the end of Stroszek).

Which comes to the question: what kind of movie is Bad Lieutenant? It's a noir, it's a comedy, it's a character study, it's a southern gothic, it's a police story. Yes, it's all those things. But really, it's a Herzog picture. Real, unreal, maddening, inspiring and utterly sincere.

Blake Lively Talks Lying Naked On Top Of Alan Arkin

2009-11-20T22:32:12Z

Blake Lively's next big screen role is a runaway drug-addled S&M video star who seeks refuge in the arms of a much older man in 'The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.'

The 'Gossip Girl' star tells Parade magazine just what it was like lying naked on top of 75-year-old screen legend Alan Arkin.

"Apparently naked, not fully naked," she explained. "I was lying partially naked on Alan Arkin, but strategic body parts were covered. It's always scary when you're in front of strangers half naked, but the fact that it was with Alan, honestly, didn't make it any weirder. I think being with a young dude would have been more awkward because I might have been like, 'Well, does he think I look cute right now?'"

Blake also told the magazine about being dragged around on a dog leash by her lesbian movie aunt, Julianne Moore.

"Pippa does get very dark," she said. "Like, that was me on a dog leash being led around for a photo shoot by Julianne Moore, who plays a lesbian photographer. It sounds bizarre, but it was exciting for me because I never really went through that dark and wild stage, so to get to explore that in the safety of a movie set was great."

You can read the whole Parade interview here.

'The Private Lives of Pippa Lee' opens November 27. You can watch the trailer and see sexy stills from the movie here.

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