syriana

Fat Clooney Still Winning Things

A French screenwriter who sued the makers of Syriana, claiming that portions of her own script had been stolen and reworked into the screenplay for the film which would win George Clooney his first Oscar, has lost her case:
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brokeback mountain

'Syriana,' 'Brokeback' Fall Victim To Arab MPAA

Syriana was not exactly a tourism commercial for the United Arab Emirates, unless of course your idea of a vacation is to retrace a girthy, bearded George Clooney's footsteps through a global military-petro-industrial conspiracy. After a four month review, UAE government censors have decided to release the film, minus two minutes of what they consider to be objectionable material. Still, that's nothing compared to the 134-minute edit they made to Brokeback Mountain: More »

brokeback mountain

'Brokeback' Is Hollywood Word Of The Year; Means 'Gay'

A mysterious organization known only as the Global Language Monitor has released its annual list of the year's most influential "Hollywood words and phrases." Using advanced and sophisticated tracking techniques available to anyone with access to Google, the group has decreed "Brokeback" that highly evocative cluster of geographical peaks and valleys on the map of the human heart that has quickly turned into yet another synonym for "faggy" as Hollywood's word of the year: More »

syriana

Stephen Gaghan's Oscar Ballot Spit Take

When Syriana writer-director Stephen Gaghan finally got around to reviewing his Oscar ballot yesterday, he was alarmed to discover that his screenplay, which he maintains was largely based on Robert Baer's memoir See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism, was reclassified by the Academy from an adapted to an original work: More »

syriana

Softening Syriana

Boing Boing notes an interesting bit of dialogue from the original Syriana script, pictured above, that didn't quite make it to the screen: More »

trade roundup

Trade Round-Up: Fat Clooney, Master Of The Per-Screen Average

· Selected cosmopolitan audiences love Fat Clooney! Syriana pulls down over half a million bucks on only five screens spread across LA, NY, and Toronto. Personal anecdote loosely illustrating Syriana's big city popularity: We were among those lining up for a sold-out showing at the Grove (do we live there now?), and enjoyed a satisfied laugh when the theater's crack crowd-control personnel punished evil line-jumpers by loudly yanking them aside and making them wait to enter the lobby. [Variety]
· "There was a time when Howard Stern fans could hear — but not see — a naked porn star giving a hot-oil massage on TV uncensored." God bless the brave new world of VOD. [THR]
· CBS seems likely to repeat as November sweeps champs in the coveted 18-49 demographic, as well as in the merely AARP-lusted-after 25-54 demo. NBC, it seems, is still valiantly refusing to cease its primetime broadcast operations, even in the face of unspeakable Nielsen horror. [Variety]
· Harry Potter dominates the foreign box office, bringing its international treasure chest up to $207 million, an amount that will almost certainly be written off as "offshore piracy" when figuring out profit participation. [Variety]
· Mad About You writer Danny Jacobson will pen the suddenly, officially single Nick Lachey's comedy pilot for The WB. Lachey will play a baseball player trying to navigate a new marriage, but who quickly fades into obscurity once the wife discovers how many movie stars are willing to sleep with her. [THR] More »

george clooney

Hey, Have Your Heard About George Clooney's Dramatic Weight Gain?

If there's one awards season storyline threatening to challenge Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger's column-inches crown for overcoming the cooties to honestly portray the love between a pair of Oscar-baiting gay cowboys, it might be George Clooney's vanity-free willingness to obscure his six-pack for his role in Syriana: More »