Cele|bitchy

Winona Ryder hitches her star to a James Franco movie
Beyonce’s new single: Beysus Forever or Willow Smith-esque?
John Travolta visits Kirstie Alley on Dancing With The Stars
Vanessa Hudgens was eating white chocolate, not cocaine
Charlize Theron’s leather pants & sour face: cute or fug?
Tiffany and Debbie Gibson to tour together, will you buy tickets?
Jennifer Love Hewitt is just wearing muumuus at this point
Scarlett Johansson’s latest D&G ad: lovely or corpsey?
Reese Witherspoon hustles to keep up with Robert Pattinson’s fan-friendly moves
Kara DioGuardi’s new memoir reveals molestation, date rape

Winona Ryder hitches her star to a James Franco movie

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 08:59 AM PDT

I can’t help but root for Winona Ryder in her hopeful career resurrection. She gave a very (intentionally) disturbing performance in Black Swan and is a truly talented actress even though, inevitably, she’s “not the ingenue anymore.” Still, I think she can keeping doing the Hollywood thing so long as she steers clear of future mindless projects like The Dilemma, which not only possessed no redeemable value (unless you consider a Kevin James/Vince Vaughn buddy movie to be culturally enriching) but also underperformed at the box office by failing to earn back its budget. In short, the acclaim following Winona’s turn in Black Swan has helped her earn back a few of her former stripes (and seriously, she was punished far too long for one shoplifting incident, whereas Lindsay Lohan keeps getting chances). To maintain this good will, Winona will have to be very careful about what projects within which she participates. For the moment, she’s erroneously selected a James Franco movie:

James Franco will star with Winona Ryder in The Stare, a Jay Anania-directed film that is the first project funded by Waterstone Entertainment, a new producing/financing company formed by producer Jeff Kalligheri and Texas real estate developer and producer Steve Bowen.

Watersone gets started with The Stare, a drama in which a playwright (Ryder) finds her mind beginning to warp as she struggles to launch her next production. She’s plagued by dreams and visions of being watched, but can’t decide if she’s at the center of a manipulative plot or simply losing her grip on reality. Franco plays one of the performers in the playwright’s production. The film will shoot May 6 in New York. Franco is producing with Jolivette, with Kalligheri exec producing with Steven Garcia, Rich Hill and Eric Amadio. Franco previously starred in Shadows and Lies for the film’s writer-director Anania, a teacher of Franco’s who heads the directing program at the graduate film school at NYU.

[From Deadline]

This can’t turn out well, for Franco himself has abruptly fallen from “critical darling” status to “moody, pouting diva” after he thumbed his nose at the Academy with a lackluster Oscar hosting gig and subsequent social media tantrums. In light of Franco’s recent revelation of his true colors, I think it’s a serious mistake for Winona to star alongside him at this turning point in her career. She needs to back out of this one and hold out for brighter pastures, which (if anything else) do not include Franco’s self-referential, cutesy ways that everyone has had enough of for now except, just maybe, on “General Hospital.”

Photos of Ryder at the 17th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards courtesty of Juan Rico/Fame Pictures; Franco photos courtesy of WENN and Franco’s now-defunct Twitter account.

Beyonce’s new single: Beysus Forever or Willow Smith-esque?

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 08:58 AM PDT

These are photos of Beyonce filming her new music video last week. Much like Britney Spears' last video, Beyonce's newest seems to have a slightly apocalyptic flavor as well. The single is called "Girls (Who Run The World)" and Bey just released it. Here you go:

Lots of Beyonce's girl-power lyrics and ladies-are-strong messaging. But the song kind of sucks, in my opinion. There’s too much going on? It sounds like she jammed three songs into one. Also: I got a very strong Willow Smith vibe from this single for some reason. Jay-Z signed Willow Smith, if you remember, and many of Beyonce's lyrics seemed inspired by Willow's immature lyricism, right? I don't know it was just a vibe I got.

Going back to the video - according to the director, Francis Lawrence, the video "will probably be one of the bigger Beyoncé music videos ever done and, I can say that I think the song is unbelievable." Beyonce's new album is due in June. And it will probably be followed by another worldwide tour that will go on for two years. Jay-Z is going to have to wait a bit longer for babies, right?

Photos courtesy of Fame.

John Travolta visits Kirstie Alley on Dancing With The Stars

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 08:34 AM PDT

I’ve been watching DWTS occasionally. It can be entertaining and I like that I can watch it with my kid around, unlike all those forensic science shows and some of the drama that I love, which has adult themes. (Parenthood finale airs tonight on NBC!). They do drag it out forever like they do with American Idol, though. (I don’t know what my problem is, but I feel like I’ll missing something whenever I fast forward.) My favorite contestant is Hines Ward as he’s so personable and has great moves. Ralph Macchio is a close second for me, but there are a lot of great contestants this year. They got rid of the people who were struggling and are now left with some very strong contenders.

Kirstie Alley has actually been holding her own despite some minor setbacks and she can really dance. She’s also surprisingly likable, hasn’t been pulling faces and is putting in some obvious hard work. I thought she’d have issues with people since she’s always getting her hackles raised when people question that cult she belongs to, but that hasn’t been the case and instead she’s tried to distance herself from Scientology recently.

That didn’t stop Kirstie from calling in her good buddy and fellow Scientologist John Travolta to lend her some dancing support. Travolta made an appearance during a taped dance rehearsal segment, and he told Kirstie that she needed to switch up the footwear (she lost a shoe last week) and start up a romance with Maksim. It was kind of cute, and it makes you wonder if Travolta will be on the show at some point. You know that they would love to have him.

E! Online had the clip video of Travolta’s guest appearance (above) and they also have a very thorough recap of the show last night and the current scores. My guess is that Kendra Wilkinson is going to be the next to go, and she seems to know it because she’s been particularly defensive lately. Kirstie might make it to the top five, but I don’t see her in the top three. Still, this stint has really improved her public image and rightfully so. She’s earned it. She doesn’t need to bring in her cult buddies to boost her popularity, though.

Oh and remember how Kirstie said she wasn’t going to beg for votes at all? She told TV Guide “I don't want to do the finger telephone …and go, ‘Call, call.’ I don't like the prayer hands.. I'd rather be voted off than beg to be voted for.” She’s not above asking her friends for help or carrying a sign for the paparazzi as you can see below.

I also have to say something about Kirstie’s ridiculous bright blue pantsuit outfit with the cutout bedazzled sheer fabric over the tummy and the the giant black belt. What were they thinking? Did Maks take off his shirt just to distract from that outfit?

Photo credit: Fame Pictures

Vanessa Hudgens was eating white chocolate, not cocaine

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 08:29 AM PDT

Yesterday, various sites had photos of Vanessa Hudgens at Coachella, licking a mysterious white substance off of her fingers. From the photos (you can see them here, we don't have access to them), you can tell that Vanessa takes out a baggie of something white (and gooey?), dips her finger in the substance and licks/sucks it off. Everyone was like, "ZOMG cocaine paste!!" Does cocaine come in paste form? I don't know. It did look kind of sketchy, and for a brief, shining moment, everybody cared about Vanessa Hudgens and what she was putting in her mouth.

That moment is over. Vanessa's rep tells E! News that it was just white chocolate:

Vanessa Hudgens probably had a pretty great time partying this weekend—but not because she was partying too hard!

The Sucker Punch star, who hasn’t always had the best luck when it comes to photos being posted online, was snapped relaxing on the grass at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, where at one point she reached into a little bag and then leaned forward to lick a white substance off her fingers.

Busted? Hardly.

Hudgens’ rep assures E! News that the gooey (the weather was indeed hot in the desert over the weekend) substance was just white chocolate.

[From E! News]

For some reason, the idea of licking melted, gooey white chocolate off of one's fingers in the middle of a music festival is totally grosser than licking cocaine paste. I like white chocolate too - but I've never been "Oh nom nom nom" on melted white chocolate out in public. But then again, I wasn't there, and I wasn't stoned out of my mind (like Vanessa).

By the way, if I had to guess, I would say that Vanessa just smokes the reefer. I'm not seeing crazy coke eyes, she just seems kind of baked.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Charlize Theron’s leather pants & sour face: cute or fug?

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 08:00 AM PDT

These are some new photos of Charlize Theron out in LA last night. Fame Pictures notes that she seemed like she was in a "sour mood." I think that's just who she is, right? She's not one of those celebrities who smiles at the paparazzi, and she always seems a bit "sour" to me. I kind of like her leather pants, but those shoes look like some kind of torture device.

In other Charlize news, did you know that there are still rumors about her and Keanu Reeves? Soon after Charlize split with Stuart Townsend, there were rumors about her with Keanu, and how he was helping her get over her breakup or whatever. The rumors never really got anywhere, as it seemed like they were just friends. Anyway, Star Magazine reported a few weeks ago that Charlize and Keanu are planning to "finally go public with their romance." Oh, and they somehow managed to keep their relationship under wraps for a year or something, although you could really struggle to find a point in time over the past year where Charlize and Keanu were even in the same city. I didn't report the story at the time because Gossip Cop spoke to Keanu's rep, and he denied it. So now you know: Keanu is not sucking on Charlize's sour face.

Last Charlize story: Charlize has signed on to play The Evil Queen in one of the two Snow White "retelling" films. Charlize is attached to the one with Kristen Stewart as the eye-rolling, lip-biting Snow White. First Viggo Mortensen, and then Hugh Jackman were approached for the role of "The Huntsman" - but Hugh has just left negotiations, so now that version is still in development/pre-production hell. Meanwhile, the Snow White "retelling" with Julia Roberts as The Evil Queen is full steam ahead! Haha, Julia's Evil Queen will probably be better than Charlize's.

Photos courtesy of Fame.

Tiffany and Debbie Gibson to tour together, will you buy tickets?

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 07:55 AM PDT

Well, this sounds like a legwarmer-wearing trainwreck in the making. Hot on the heels of successful revival tours like those of Van Halen and The Police, former 1980s teen songstresses Tiffany and Debbie Gibson are reportedly planning a joint tour, presumably to reel in the same pathetic souls who once showed up to watch Tiffany sing at the mall. In one respect, it seems rather inevitable that these two would end up chained together on tour while inadvertently synchronizing their respective menstrual cycles. On the other hand, Gibson must secretly hate this whole mess because, while she used to write her own music, Tiffany covered most of her own hits from other artists. Regardless, here they are together again:

Tiffany is putting together tour dates with fellow 1980s icon Debbie Gibson. The pair, who starred together in the Syfy movie Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, plan to cover songs that inspired them as well as peform their own material. “We want to journey through the ’80s and all the artists who influenced us,” Tiffany told us, adding that she and Gibson might do covers of hits by Stevie Nicks, Reba McIntyre and Guns N’ Roses, as well as Broadway tunes. They’d also perform their own material. Tiff’s on tour supporting her new release, “Rose Tattoo.”

[From NYPost]

Do you realize what this means? Providing that these two ladies can actually sell a significant amount of venues, we’ll soon have footage of Tiffany screeching her own version of “Sweet Child O’ Mine” that could actually rival Fergie’s nightmare-inducing Superbowl performance. Speaking of genuine awfulness, here’s the “catfight” clip from Tiffany and Debbie’s recent SyFy network movie, Mega Python vs. Gatoroid. If you stick around to the 2:00 minute mark, the fur begins to fly between Tiff and Deb, with the latter saying this actual dialogue: “Oh bitch, please. You’re going down … you’re going to get it, you gator-baiting bitch!”

While these two aren’t exactly national treasures, they are mildly entertaining for about five seconds. Man, I can’t wait for the roadside tour reports to hit the internet.

Photos of Tiffany and Debbie at the SyFy premiere of Mega Python vs. Gatoroid courtesy of WENN

Jennifer Love Hewitt is just wearing muumuus at this point

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 07:34 AM PDT

These are some new photos of Jennifer Love Hewitt out shopping yesterday in LA. As you can see, Love has finally forgone even the pretense of wearing something that would show off part of her body - like that hideous sleeve-button Sister Wife dress, or that recent, unflattering tent dress. She's now just throwing on a muumuu and calling it a day. Take that, haters!

I mean, I get it. She's gained some weight. It's not the end of the world, nor is it some kind of situation where Love is deserving of mockery… for her weight. I couldn't care less about her weight. But I do care that no matter what her weight, Love rarely knows how to properly clothe her pear. This muumuu - in the guise of a long, oversized, long-sleeved sweater-dress - says to me that Love is at the point where she's over trying to make the pear look cute. It says, "I've given up, bitches."

By the way, regarding Love's weight gain - last week's Star Magazine had a bitchy story about it, called "More to Love!" There are references to how Love is "losing the Battle of the Bulge" and how she's likely gained 20 pounds in less than two months. They even got a doctor to talk about how much weight she's gained! Ugh. That makes me want to defend her.

Photos courtesy of Fame.

Scarlett Johansson’s latest D&G ad: lovely or corpsey?

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 07:21 AM PDT

This is Scarlett Johansson’s latest ad for Dolce & Gabbana. Scar became the face of the brand… in 2009, I think. Scar fronts a surprising number of ad campaigns - Mango, Moet champagne, Reebok, just to name a few - which doesn't really comport with the "average, low-key" image she tries to push of herself. She's not average. Anyway, I rarely like Scarlett's "model face" because the girl really doesn't have that many expressions, and her mouth is always open. In the Mango ads, she's always styled to look rather corpsey, and there's some of that going on this ad too. Sure, she doesn't look deathly in this ad, but she doesn't really look… alive, either. It doesn't help that every photographer and stylist seems to pose Scarlett reclining on something, like she's too lazy to actually stand up and pose? At some point, I have to stop blaming the stylists and just blame ScarJo - she just gives off a corpsey vibe in photographs.

In other ScarJo news, her old(er) lover Sean Penn has been photographed a lot over the past few days as he tries to get in shape. Photographers have gotten shots of him jogging and mucking around in the ocean and hanging out with a personal trainer. It's great that a man his age is taking an interest in exercise, especially given that he's a smoker, a heavy drinker, and likely a drug user (?). But something tells me that Sean's new-found interest in exercise isn't about health. It's about his 20-something girlfriend.

Ladies, think about this grunting on top of you. That's all I'm saying.

Photos courtesy of Fame, The Mail, HuffPo.

Reese Witherspoon hustles to keep up with Robert Pattinson’s fan-friendly moves

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 07:06 AM PDT

Even though Water for Elephants is being sold as some epic, period romance, I think the problem for filmgoers and, in the end, for the producers of the film will be the distinct lack of chemistry between the two leads, Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson. I think Reese and Sparkles probably like each other in a friendly sort of way, but I seriously doubt they would ever get hot for each other. They just seem… incompatible, I suppose. Incompatible sexually, professionally, physically. He's so tall, pretty and easy-going, she's so petite and anal retentive. Who thought this would work?

Anyway, it seems that not only are they incompatible, they're also competitive for attention and love from the fans. While Sparkles can create a riot wherever he goes, Reese needs to regain her "America's Sweetheart" status and do the heavy lifting required to cozy up to America yet again. So when Reese heard that Sparkles came to the Water for Elephants premiere an hour early so that he could meet his fans, Reese busted her ass to play catch-up:

Robert Pattinson knows how to work a crowd. The “Twilight” hunk showed up an hour before the premiere of “Water for Elephants” to schmooze with fans Sunday night, sources said. His driver dropped him “at the top of the block” so he could stroll along West 54th Street and sign autographs.

When a rep for co-star Reese Witherspoon saw Pattinson’s populist move, she quickly called her to get in on the act, a witness said. A car “screeched up 20 minutes before the film” and deposited her in the middle of the block. Witherspoon’s rep said, “Both actors came early to meet and greet their fans.”

[From Page Six]

That's so funny! So, according to Reese's rep, they both get credit for showing up early, even though Sparkles seem to do it of his own accord, to be nice to fans, and Reese did it because she didn't want Sparkles to make her look like a bitch. Ha! Reese is really trying so hard, isn't she? I'd like to see her do another movie where she was playing a realistic romantic lead. Or something. I don't know - something that allows her to freely fly her natural high-maintenance vibe.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Kara DioGuardi’s new memoir reveals molestation, date rape

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 06:49 AM PDT

I hate hearing stories like this, because it makes me want to give the side eye to anyone who has anything to do with my child. Former American Idol judge, record producer Kara DioGuardi, has a new memoir coming out in which she reveals that she was molested by a teen neighbor when she was just 11 and was date raped by a producer when she was in her 30s. She also tells a disturbing anecdote about a rock star who made her watch porn and had strippers over when they were supposed to be songwriting together. I want to know who that one is about.

DioGuardi, whose new show Platinum Hit premieres on Bravo on May 30, reveals that she was repeatedly molested when she was just 11 years old by a family friend’s son who was in his late teens. “On one particular day, he took me into the back shed of his house and put his hands all over my breasts and vagina,” she writes. “I remember freezing and not knowing what to do.”

By 2000, DioGuardi’s career started to take off. It was about that time she says that a “fairly known producer” date-raped her after having what she thought was a friendly dinner. “[W]ithin a few hours, he was on top of me, pumping, sweating, and speaking to me in Spanish, not a word of which I could understand,” she writes.

She repeatedly told him to stop, but didn’t try to fight him because she was too scared he’d become violent. She never told anyone about the horrific incident because she feared he would ruin her career.

A few years later, DioGuardi found herself sexually harassed by a “hugely successful artist.” She was invited to a three-day songwriting trip. But instead of working, she writes, “the trip’s activities consisted of watching Russian porn, scavenging around the kitchen for food [and] leering at two strippers…as they performed sex acts in the living room.”

DioGuardi says she continued to work with the artist because, she writes, “I wasn’t gonna let this bastard deter me from doing the job.” She eventually walked away after he chased her around the basement of his suburban home and forced her hand on his privates.

DioGuardi also opens up about her difficulties getting pregnant during her final season of American Idol. After learning on the Internet that her job was on shaky ground because Ellen DeGeneres was leaving the show, DioGuardi asked producers to let her out of her contract. “I wanted a child and there was no way I could get pregnant under the stress of eighteen-hour work days and live TV,” she writes, adding, “I had undergone three unsuccessful rounds of IVF during Season 9.”

[From E! Online]

It sounds like she’s gone though a lot, and I hope the guys who did that to her know who they did and feel guilt and shame about it for the rest of their lives. They deserve to be prosecuted, but that’s not going to happen for these incidents. She surely wan’t either of those creeps’ only victim and it makes you sick to think about it.

I’m not buying that it was Kara who wanted out of her Idol contract. Her dad said that his daughter was disappointed that Idol hadn’t contacted her after there were rumors that she was being let go. It sounded to me like Idol wanted her to leave and that producers did it in a passive aggressive way so that she was forced to resign. I don’t think that Idol lost much with Kara leaving.

You also wonder what kind of interest there is in Kara now that she’s not on Idol. She wasn’t that likable and didn’t really stand out in the two years she was on the show. She has a new songwriting reality show coming out on Bravo called Going Platinum where contestants compete for a $100,000 prize. Jewel will host. She’s still got a great career in music, too. Kara is the executive vice president of talent development at Warner Brothers.

Kara is shown on 4/7/11 and 2/18/11. Credit: WENN.com

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Cele|bitchy

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