By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Show Biz News
It’s been a weak week for show biz news. Things should start heating up again as Hollywood returns to its collective desk. The table you’ve been grabbing at The Ivy isn’t yours any more, Mr. Wannabe. While we were sleeping, Jada Pinkett and Will Smith got married, creating the most excitement in Baltimore since Barry Levinson started working at home. The great and glorious Helen Mirren tied the knot with director Taylor Hackford, making them the cerebral version of Geena Davis and Renny Harlin. And one proposal was turned down flat. Chris Rock won’t be teaming up with Samuel L. Jackson in a movie version of “Sanford and Son.” To quote young Rock, “I was like, ‘Are you on crack?'”
Also over the holidays, yet another award for L.A. Confidential, this time Best Film and Best Writer and Best Director from the National Society of Film Critics. Julie Christie secured a likely Oscar nomination for Afterglow with her third major award. And Boogie Nights‘ Burt Reynolds and Julianne Moore both added more brass to the mantle. Robert Duvall grabbed Best Actor for The Apostle, beating out Hoffman, Pacino, Fonda and Ian Holm. If these guys end up being the Academy nominees, people all over town will be double-checking the decade on their calendars. Sadly, the two competitors for best documentary, Thin Blue Line director Errol Morris’ Fast Cheap and Out of Control and Spike Lee‘s Four Little Girls have gone all but unseen by movie audiences, even in Los Angeles.
What’s up with Brendan Fraser? Besides turning up uncredited in two Pauly Shore movies as Link, his character from Encino Man, he put on the loincloth yet again as George of the Jungle, which also reflected his brain-damaged turns in Airheads and The Scout. When he hasn’t been stupid and semi-nude, he’s been a big brain at top institutes of learning, as in School Ties and With Honors. And now, just as Gods and Monsters, the biographical film in which Fraser stars as Frankenstein director James Whaley, is about to hit Sundance, Fraser takes on a remake of The Mummy, another one of Universal’s classic monster movies. I guess he’s a practicing actor. He just keeps practicing the same role until he gets it right.