My trip from The Grove, brithdays, movies, and new news
Before anything, I wanted to say Happy birthday and Happy be-lated birthday to 2 people.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANNIE!!!!!!!
I'm sorry I give you your gift today @ summer school, but I'll give it two you tomorrow! (: PINEAPPLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DANIEL RADCLIFFE
Yes, it was Dan's bday on Sunday. Now the Harry Potter actor is 17. Sorry I didn't mention anything!
lol I can't stop thinking about how funny everything from Saturday. When my mom and I finally left The Grove, my mom asked one of the store owners where the 10 E was. He told her and we went to our car and left. Well, I was showing my mom how Vanessa Paradis sounded. We kept talking about how Donald and the fact that I was happy that I didn't go to Vegas with my brother and my cousins. Well, my mom wasn't paying attention and went to the 10 W. Does anyone know where the 10 W goes? Yup. Up to Santa Monica and Malibu.
So we continue to talk and then I saw a ferris wheel and bright lights around it. I know the way back home from The Grove, and this really wasn't it. I took my mom to look to the right. It was the Santa Monica pier. It was so pretty at night. Of course my mom was getting worried. Because:
1)we were on the wrong freeway
2)we couldn't turn back and make a U turn.
3)it was 10 and it was dark
I personally liked it. It was really pretty. The temperature was nice and the lights from the pier was really pretty. I kept encouraging my mom to kept going forward so we could end up in Malibu and we meet more celebrities. Plus, Jake's always been photographed in Malibu. Okay, maybe if we did stay in Malibu for the night till morning, it wasn't like we were going to walk down one of the streets and see Jake walk down one of the streets or pass us by on his bike. That would be really cool though! (: lol I told my aunt this and she said that if I did see Jake on his bike, I'll probably chase after him till he stopped and then ask him for a picture. lol she's probably right. lol jk!
But we were planning to go to Malibu and be like paparazzi and look for Jake, Lance, and Matt. I was going to try to find Jake, while my aunt was going to take Lance and Matt's picture. She had a huge thing for Lance when he first came out in the Tour De France back 7 years ago (hence the fact that I watch the tour de france. i watch it every year with her. jake was there! why, why didn't i go to europe this year instead of next year!?!??!) and she loves Matthew. But Katie's party came up, so we couldn't go.
But anyways, I saw two movies this weekend. My Super Ex Girlfriend (UMA!!) and Lady in the Water (BYRCE!!). I liked both, but in Lady in the Water, you really need to pay attention. But personally, I really wanted to see Clerks 2. But my mom didn't and she was paying.
Did anyone go to the Comic-Con? If you did, I ENVY U SO MUCH!!!!!!
here's some new news:
Friday, July 21, 2006
Gael García Bernal
Gael Garcia Bernal was born on November 30, 1978 in Guadalajara, Mexico. He has starred in some of Mexico's most celebrated films. Beginning two years ago with Amores Perros, then last year's Y Tu Mama Tambien and El Crimen del Padre Amaro, he has come to represent Latin America's new breed of filmmaking - daring, visceral, subtly political.
It was his debut as the working-class street thug in Oscar-nominated Amores Perros that first grabbed Hollywood's attention. Like a Mexican Marlon Brando, Gracia Bernal transmits vulnerability beneath a bad-boy sexuality.
There is this internal complexity that he reflects in his eyes. He resembles River Phoenix; he has the same tenderness but also this sense of being on the edge. He has an ambivalence that is very interesting and that the camera loves. He is cinematic animal - a type of animal that is almost extinct.
But his path to stardom has been unusual, considering that his feature films have been small and - outside Mexico - foreign. If his luck holds and he continues to land the right roles, he could be on his way to becoming a new breed of international movie actor. One of his recent projects, The Motorcycle Diaries, for example, is British-financed, directed by a Brazilian, about an Argentine revolutionary, starring a Mexican, with dialogue in Spanish and developed by an American company.
Walter Salles, director of Motorcycle Diaries, said Gael Garcia Bernal has a sponge-like ability to soak up his surroundings. Some of this he has learned as an actor. Most of it follows from his sensitivity and natural curiostiy.
Gracia Bernal started acting as a one-year-old and spent most his teen years starring in soap operas. But just as he became a soap heartthrob, at age 19, he left Mexico's television world to study acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
Unlike with many Hollywood stars, you get the sense that he is humbled by his success. He is embarrassed by his popularity. He says he pursued a career in acting to have fun.
He greets female fan with a kiss on the cheek and happily poses for pictures with them. One moment, he plays the naughty schoolboy; the next, he is as intense as a philosophy student. Right now, he's tired. He has been filming and promoting movies nonstop for three years.
"I feel like a ping-pong," he says. "I need to recharge my batteries."
He was raised in nonconformist ways by somewhat bohemian, leftist parents who worked in theatre. His mother, Patricia Bernal, is an actress and former model. His father, Jose Angle Garcia, is a director.
Apparently, Lance Likes It In The Rear Too
For all the talk last week about the supposed "offensiveness" of Lance Armstrong's joke at the ESPYs about Jake Gyllenhaal "liking it in the rear," many have noticed that the non-doping Tour de France dominator and the guy who looks like Spider-Man but isn't have been hanging out a bunch of late. Their interaction has been an international mystery that has plagued sports fans for minutes ... no, hours!
Well, be not confused any longer, friends. It turns out that Gyllenhaal is going to play Lance Armstrong in a movie about the cyclist's life.
Gyllenhaal and Armstrong have become pals during Jake's method process to get to know the sports legend. The actor of Brokeback Mountain and Jarhead fame is even a long-time cyclist and has begun training for the film.
This, of course, will likely end up being the top story to come out of the Tour de France over the weekend, eclipsing Floyd Landis' rather awesome victory, even though he's having surgery soon that could possibly end his career. (The AP story about the win of course quotes Armstrong in the second paragraph; Landis doesn't get to talk until the fourth.)
By the way, we think we can all agree that Sacha Baron Cohen should play the buffoonish French doping investigator, yes?
Brokeback Mountain truck perfect vehicle to see Alberta scenery
Mon Jul 24, 2:51 PM
The scenery featured in the 2005 movie Brokeback Mountain continues to win rave reviews, this time from two American men on a tour of Alberta in the truck featured in the film.
Bob and Jeff Welsh, a father and son from Indiana, won an auction on eBay for a tour of the Brokeback Mountain sites in the 1950 pickup truck used in the movie.
"Great scenery ... lot of friendly people and absolutely stunning," Jeff Walsh said after spending Saturday touring the Kananaskis area where the mountain scenes were shot.
"It was really interesting now that on some of the scenes we've looked at how close they were to the roads. So you know there was just a couple of scenes where we had to walk off on a trail and not for a great distance," he told CBC Radio.
Rob Freeman of Bragg Creek bought the vintage truck driven by Jake Gyllenhaal in the movie from a teenager from Pincher Creek, Alta., for $70,000.
He restored it and offered to take two people on a tour of all the spots in Alberta where the movie was shot.
'Trying not to have an obsession'
"I got thinking about it. You know what? Maybe I'll do one trip. And put it on eBay. And we'd do a trip in the actual Brokeback truck and visit all the different places where the movie had been filmed," he told CBC Television.
Freeman spent painstaking days seeking out each authentic location.
He even contacted the movie crew and eventually found all the sites.
Freeman said he's "trying not to have an obsession, but it won't be hard to develop one, that's for sure."
Bob Welsh said the best part of the tour has been the truck.
"I'm a little 76-year-old guy. In 1950, I had a truck just like that ... brand new ... $1,100. But at any rate, I enjoyed riding in the truck - I enjoyed driving the truck - brought back old times."
Going behind the scenes
The tour was also the perfect way to spend time with his movie-loving son.
On Sunday, they visited the Rockyford and Carseland areas, where the bank, rodeo and bar scenes were filmed.
"It's really interesting to see how they've done some of the shots because I like to see what they do with the magic behind the movies," said Jeff Walsh.
"So you can see what they've done in the movie and then see how the (real) scene is different."
Their three-day tour wraps up Monday in the Fort Macleod area.
Freeman doesn't expect to pull out the truck too often in future, but he is willing to share what he knows with other tourists wanting a glimpse of the backdrop from the famous movie.
The money from the tour is going toward raising funds for cancer and HIV research.
Dawson explores comic books
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rosario Dawson, the butt-kicking babe from "Sin City," has gone geeky.
The 27-year-old actress appeared last week in San Diego at Comic-Con, the country's largest comic book convention, to discuss her foray into the genre.
Dawson is the co-creator of "The Occult Crimes Taskforce," a comic book series that tells the story of the supernatural gone wild in New York City.
Dawson was the inspiration for Sophia Ortiz, a detective who "deals with crimes of the magical context," she said.
Writer David Atchison described the series as "CSI' meets Harry Potter."
Dawson said in many ways working on a comic book is more fulfilling than film.
"This really is the most exciting thing I've been doing," she said. "As an actor, you're only a third of the production. With this I get to be so much a part of it."
Working with Atchison and artist Tony Shasteen, Dawson contributes story lines and character development to the four-book series that she hopes to see adapted into a film and video game.
Unlike Hollywood, the comic-book world doesn't deal in false flattery, she said.
Comic reviewers offer "very intelligent criticism, which is really sorely lacking in film reviews right now," Dawson said.
Her other upcoming projects include Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof" and "Sin City 2."
Could Johansson Be Woody's Next Muse?
By Christopher Michaud
Reuters
NEW YORK (July 24) - There's an undercurrent of deja vu coursing through Woody Allen 's new comedy "Scoop," starting with its London setting.
But perhaps most significantly, Scarlett Johansson , the leading lady of Allen's last film, "Match Point," once again plays a displaced American woman -- though in "Scoop" she's more damsel in distress than femme fatale.
So is Johansson, 21, poised to become the director's next muse, succeeding Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow ?
Allen enthused in a production notes interview that: "She's a total joy. It's like I hit the lottery or something."
He compared her to Keaton, who starred in Allen classics such as "Annie Hall" and "Sleeper."
"There are certain people I've worked with over the years -- Diane Keaton was one -- who were just hit with the talent stick and had it all. And Scarlett has got it all," Allen said. "It's a treat to work with her."
After years of filming nearly all of his pictures in New York City, Allen returned to the British capital, where he shot last year's dark drama "Match Point."
He also revisited the caper territory of "Manhattan Murder Mystery," which the director said was a favorite of his films.
In "Scoop" Johansson plays a student reporter named Sondra Pransky who gets a tip from a dead journalist ("Deadwood's" Ian McShane) who returns from the afterlife to ensure that his big scoop makes it into print.
The scoop is that an English lord's dashing son, played by Hugh Jackman , might be behind the "Tarot Card" serial killings terrorizing London.
TRIBUTE OR OLD GROUND
Allen intended "Scoop" as a sort of tribute to "The Thin Man" and Bob Hope murder mysteries, then tweaked the genre by adding mystical elements that marked "The Purple Rose of Cairo," "Alice" and his segment of "New York Stories."
Early reviews have been mixed, with some grumbling about revisiting old ground, but Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter described the film as an "amusing if minor work that delivers many of the hallmark Woody Allen pleasures."
Allen, who used to cast himself as the romantic lead to far younger actresses, relegates himself to a comic role as a cut-rate magician Splendini (real name Sid Waterman), who ends up posing as Johansson's father to help find the killer.
The rising actress, known for quirkily diverse projects such as "Lost in Translation," "Girl with the Pearl Earring" and "Ghost World," and the veteran director said they had so much fun on the set of "Match Point" that Allen set about writing another project in which they could co-star.
"She leaves me for dead," Allen said.
Johansson said making "Scoop" was a joy: "It is definitely reflective of the sort of banter that Woody and I have," she told reporters in New York promoting her second Allen film, which opens on July 28.
"It was like going back to summer camp," she said.
Promoting the film, however, was more of a trial.
Her famous whiskey voice went flat when the subject turned to her boyfriend, actor Josh Hartnett , her co-star in the upcoming Brian De Palma thriller "The Black Dahlia."
"I just don't talk about any part of my private life," she said, adding that there were more important topics, such as Iraq, for people to focus on.
"It's nice to have everybody not know your business."
Bloom Blasted by PETA
By WENN| Monday, July 24, 2006
Photo GalleryHOLLYWOOD - Orlando Bloom has been slammed by an animal rights group for abandoning his dog in his car while he enjoyed a romantic meal.
The Pirates of the Caribbean star, 29, received a frosty letter from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) telling him of the dangers of leaving pets in vehicles for longer than an hour.
Bloom reportedly neglected beloved mutt Maude while he dined with girlfriend Kate Bosworth.
BREAKING NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
TINA FEY'S LEAVING SNL!!!!!!!!!!! NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SHE CAN'T !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'M GOING TO CRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*tear tear* here's the story:
Tina Fey Plans to Leave 'Saturday Night Live'
AP
BURBANK, Calif. (July 22) - Tina Fey is leaving the anchor chair at "Saturday Night Live." Fey says she's quitting the show after six seasons as head writer and co-anchor of the "Weekend Update" fake news segment to focus on her new NBC prime-time series, "30 Rock."
"The new show's going to take a lot of time," Fey said while appearing on Friday night's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno ."
"I wanted to stop doing 'Saturday Night Live' so I could spend more time with Star Jones," she joked, referring to last month's dramatic departure of "The View" co-hostess.
Fey, 36, first joined "Saturday Night Live" as a writer in 1997 and became head writer in 1999.
In 2000, she first appeared on camera on "Weekend Update" alongside co-anchor Jimmy Fallon , who was replaced by Amy Poehler two years ago.
Fey plays the head writer of a fictional late-night sketch show in "30 Rock," a show she developed for NBC that also stars Alec Baldwin .
"This is the big leap I'm making, it's a show about working at a late-night comedy show," she told Leno. "I'm very creative."
SNL's not going to be the same without Tina. I'm going to miss her on Weekend Update. She's the reason a lot of people watched. Plus she was one of the writers of the show. *tear tear* I hope no one else leaves SNL. Well, anyone that's funny. ):
As for the OB story, it's true. I saw pictures and video thingy on TMZ.com. Oh, by the way, his dog's name is Sidi, not Maude. SIDI! Get it right! Maude lives with his ex! Sorry if I seem rude. I'm kind of mad over the Tina Fey thing and the fact that Orlando did that. ciao!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANNIE!!!!!!!
I'm sorry I give you your gift today @ summer school, but I'll give it two you tomorrow! (: PINEAPPLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DANIEL RADCLIFFE
Yes, it was Dan's bday on Sunday. Now the Harry Potter actor is 17. Sorry I didn't mention anything!
lol I can't stop thinking about how funny everything from Saturday. When my mom and I finally left The Grove, my mom asked one of the store owners where the 10 E was. He told her and we went to our car and left. Well, I was showing my mom how Vanessa Paradis sounded. We kept talking about how Donald and the fact that I was happy that I didn't go to Vegas with my brother and my cousins. Well, my mom wasn't paying attention and went to the 10 W. Does anyone know where the 10 W goes? Yup. Up to Santa Monica and Malibu.
So we continue to talk and then I saw a ferris wheel and bright lights around it. I know the way back home from The Grove, and this really wasn't it. I took my mom to look to the right. It was the Santa Monica pier. It was so pretty at night. Of course my mom was getting worried. Because:
1)we were on the wrong freeway
2)we couldn't turn back and make a U turn.
3)it was 10 and it was dark
I personally liked it. It was really pretty. The temperature was nice and the lights from the pier was really pretty. I kept encouraging my mom to kept going forward so we could end up in Malibu and we meet more celebrities. Plus, Jake's always been photographed in Malibu. Okay, maybe if we did stay in Malibu for the night till morning, it wasn't like we were going to walk down one of the streets and see Jake walk down one of the streets or pass us by on his bike. That would be really cool though! (: lol I told my aunt this and she said that if I did see Jake on his bike, I'll probably chase after him till he stopped and then ask him for a picture. lol she's probably right. lol jk!
But we were planning to go to Malibu and be like paparazzi and look for Jake, Lance, and Matt. I was going to try to find Jake, while my aunt was going to take Lance and Matt's picture. She had a huge thing for Lance when he first came out in the Tour De France back 7 years ago (hence the fact that I watch the tour de france. i watch it every year with her. jake was there! why, why didn't i go to europe this year instead of next year!?!??!) and she loves Matthew. But Katie's party came up, so we couldn't go.
But anyways, I saw two movies this weekend. My Super Ex Girlfriend (UMA!!) and Lady in the Water (BYRCE!!). I liked both, but in Lady in the Water, you really need to pay attention. But personally, I really wanted to see Clerks 2. But my mom didn't and she was paying.
Did anyone go to the Comic-Con? If you did, I ENVY U SO MUCH!!!!!!
here's some new news:
Friday, July 21, 2006
Gael García Bernal
Gael Garcia Bernal was born on November 30, 1978 in Guadalajara, Mexico. He has starred in some of Mexico's most celebrated films. Beginning two years ago with Amores Perros, then last year's Y Tu Mama Tambien and El Crimen del Padre Amaro, he has come to represent Latin America's new breed of filmmaking - daring, visceral, subtly political.
It was his debut as the working-class street thug in Oscar-nominated Amores Perros that first grabbed Hollywood's attention. Like a Mexican Marlon Brando, Gracia Bernal transmits vulnerability beneath a bad-boy sexuality.
There is this internal complexity that he reflects in his eyes. He resembles River Phoenix; he has the same tenderness but also this sense of being on the edge. He has an ambivalence that is very interesting and that the camera loves. He is cinematic animal - a type of animal that is almost extinct.
But his path to stardom has been unusual, considering that his feature films have been small and - outside Mexico - foreign. If his luck holds and he continues to land the right roles, he could be on his way to becoming a new breed of international movie actor. One of his recent projects, The Motorcycle Diaries, for example, is British-financed, directed by a Brazilian, about an Argentine revolutionary, starring a Mexican, with dialogue in Spanish and developed by an American company.
Walter Salles, director of Motorcycle Diaries, said Gael Garcia Bernal has a sponge-like ability to soak up his surroundings. Some of this he has learned as an actor. Most of it follows from his sensitivity and natural curiostiy.
Gracia Bernal started acting as a one-year-old and spent most his teen years starring in soap operas. But just as he became a soap heartthrob, at age 19, he left Mexico's television world to study acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
Unlike with many Hollywood stars, you get the sense that he is humbled by his success. He is embarrassed by his popularity. He says he pursued a career in acting to have fun.
He greets female fan with a kiss on the cheek and happily poses for pictures with them. One moment, he plays the naughty schoolboy; the next, he is as intense as a philosophy student. Right now, he's tired. He has been filming and promoting movies nonstop for three years.
"I feel like a ping-pong," he says. "I need to recharge my batteries."
He was raised in nonconformist ways by somewhat bohemian, leftist parents who worked in theatre. His mother, Patricia Bernal, is an actress and former model. His father, Jose Angle Garcia, is a director.
Apparently, Lance Likes It In The Rear Too
For all the talk last week about the supposed "offensiveness" of Lance Armstrong's joke at the ESPYs about Jake Gyllenhaal "liking it in the rear," many have noticed that the non-doping Tour de France dominator and the guy who looks like Spider-Man but isn't have been hanging out a bunch of late. Their interaction has been an international mystery that has plagued sports fans for minutes ... no, hours!
Well, be not confused any longer, friends. It turns out that Gyllenhaal is going to play Lance Armstrong in a movie about the cyclist's life.
Gyllenhaal and Armstrong have become pals during Jake's method process to get to know the sports legend. The actor of Brokeback Mountain and Jarhead fame is even a long-time cyclist and has begun training for the film.
This, of course, will likely end up being the top story to come out of the Tour de France over the weekend, eclipsing Floyd Landis' rather awesome victory, even though he's having surgery soon that could possibly end his career. (The AP story about the win of course quotes Armstrong in the second paragraph; Landis doesn't get to talk until the fourth.)
By the way, we think we can all agree that Sacha Baron Cohen should play the buffoonish French doping investigator, yes?
Brokeback Mountain truck perfect vehicle to see Alberta scenery
Mon Jul 24, 2:51 PM
The scenery featured in the 2005 movie Brokeback Mountain continues to win rave reviews, this time from two American men on a tour of Alberta in the truck featured in the film.
Bob and Jeff Welsh, a father and son from Indiana, won an auction on eBay for a tour of the Brokeback Mountain sites in the 1950 pickup truck used in the movie.
"Great scenery ... lot of friendly people and absolutely stunning," Jeff Walsh said after spending Saturday touring the Kananaskis area where the mountain scenes were shot.
"It was really interesting now that on some of the scenes we've looked at how close they were to the roads. So you know there was just a couple of scenes where we had to walk off on a trail and not for a great distance," he told CBC Radio.
Rob Freeman of Bragg Creek bought the vintage truck driven by Jake Gyllenhaal in the movie from a teenager from Pincher Creek, Alta., for $70,000.
He restored it and offered to take two people on a tour of all the spots in Alberta where the movie was shot.
'Trying not to have an obsession'
"I got thinking about it. You know what? Maybe I'll do one trip. And put it on eBay. And we'd do a trip in the actual Brokeback truck and visit all the different places where the movie had been filmed," he told CBC Television.
Freeman spent painstaking days seeking out each authentic location.
He even contacted the movie crew and eventually found all the sites.
Freeman said he's "trying not to have an obsession, but it won't be hard to develop one, that's for sure."
Bob Welsh said the best part of the tour has been the truck.
"I'm a little 76-year-old guy. In 1950, I had a truck just like that ... brand new ... $1,100. But at any rate, I enjoyed riding in the truck - I enjoyed driving the truck - brought back old times."
Going behind the scenes
The tour was also the perfect way to spend time with his movie-loving son.
On Sunday, they visited the Rockyford and Carseland areas, where the bank, rodeo and bar scenes were filmed.
"It's really interesting to see how they've done some of the shots because I like to see what they do with the magic behind the movies," said Jeff Walsh.
"So you can see what they've done in the movie and then see how the (real) scene is different."
Their three-day tour wraps up Monday in the Fort Macleod area.
Freeman doesn't expect to pull out the truck too often in future, but he is willing to share what he knows with other tourists wanting a glimpse of the backdrop from the famous movie.
The money from the tour is going toward raising funds for cancer and HIV research.
Dawson explores comic books
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rosario Dawson, the butt-kicking babe from "Sin City," has gone geeky.
The 27-year-old actress appeared last week in San Diego at Comic-Con, the country's largest comic book convention, to discuss her foray into the genre.
Dawson is the co-creator of "The Occult Crimes Taskforce," a comic book series that tells the story of the supernatural gone wild in New York City.
Dawson was the inspiration for Sophia Ortiz, a detective who "deals with crimes of the magical context," she said.
Writer David Atchison described the series as "CSI' meets Harry Potter."
Dawson said in many ways working on a comic book is more fulfilling than film.
"This really is the most exciting thing I've been doing," she said. "As an actor, you're only a third of the production. With this I get to be so much a part of it."
Working with Atchison and artist Tony Shasteen, Dawson contributes story lines and character development to the four-book series that she hopes to see adapted into a film and video game.
Unlike Hollywood, the comic-book world doesn't deal in false flattery, she said.
Comic reviewers offer "very intelligent criticism, which is really sorely lacking in film reviews right now," Dawson said.
Her other upcoming projects include Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof" and "Sin City 2."
Could Johansson Be Woody's Next Muse?
By Christopher Michaud
Reuters
NEW YORK (July 24) - There's an undercurrent of deja vu coursing through Woody Allen 's new comedy "Scoop," starting with its London setting.
But perhaps most significantly, Scarlett Johansson , the leading lady of Allen's last film, "Match Point," once again plays a displaced American woman -- though in "Scoop" she's more damsel in distress than femme fatale.
So is Johansson, 21, poised to become the director's next muse, succeeding Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow ?
Allen enthused in a production notes interview that: "She's a total joy. It's like I hit the lottery or something."
He compared her to Keaton, who starred in Allen classics such as "Annie Hall" and "Sleeper."
"There are certain people I've worked with over the years -- Diane Keaton was one -- who were just hit with the talent stick and had it all. And Scarlett has got it all," Allen said. "It's a treat to work with her."
After years of filming nearly all of his pictures in New York City, Allen returned to the British capital, where he shot last year's dark drama "Match Point."
He also revisited the caper territory of "Manhattan Murder Mystery," which the director said was a favorite of his films.
In "Scoop" Johansson plays a student reporter named Sondra Pransky who gets a tip from a dead journalist ("Deadwood's" Ian McShane) who returns from the afterlife to ensure that his big scoop makes it into print.
The scoop is that an English lord's dashing son, played by Hugh Jackman , might be behind the "Tarot Card" serial killings terrorizing London.
TRIBUTE OR OLD GROUND
Allen intended "Scoop" as a sort of tribute to "The Thin Man" and Bob Hope murder mysteries, then tweaked the genre by adding mystical elements that marked "The Purple Rose of Cairo," "Alice" and his segment of "New York Stories."
Early reviews have been mixed, with some grumbling about revisiting old ground, but Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter described the film as an "amusing if minor work that delivers many of the hallmark Woody Allen pleasures."
Allen, who used to cast himself as the romantic lead to far younger actresses, relegates himself to a comic role as a cut-rate magician Splendini (real name Sid Waterman), who ends up posing as Johansson's father to help find the killer.
The rising actress, known for quirkily diverse projects such as "Lost in Translation," "Girl with the Pearl Earring" and "Ghost World," and the veteran director said they had so much fun on the set of "Match Point" that Allen set about writing another project in which they could co-star.
"She leaves me for dead," Allen said.
Johansson said making "Scoop" was a joy: "It is definitely reflective of the sort of banter that Woody and I have," she told reporters in New York promoting her second Allen film, which opens on July 28.
"It was like going back to summer camp," she said.
Promoting the film, however, was more of a trial.
Her famous whiskey voice went flat when the subject turned to her boyfriend, actor Josh Hartnett , her co-star in the upcoming Brian De Palma thriller "The Black Dahlia."
"I just don't talk about any part of my private life," she said, adding that there were more important topics, such as Iraq, for people to focus on.
"It's nice to have everybody not know your business."
Bloom Blasted by PETA
By WENN| Monday, July 24, 2006
Photo GalleryHOLLYWOOD - Orlando Bloom has been slammed by an animal rights group for abandoning his dog in his car while he enjoyed a romantic meal.
The Pirates of the Caribbean star, 29, received a frosty letter from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) telling him of the dangers of leaving pets in vehicles for longer than an hour.
Bloom reportedly neglected beloved mutt Maude while he dined with girlfriend Kate Bosworth.
BREAKING NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
TINA FEY'S LEAVING SNL!!!!!!!!!!! NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SHE CAN'T !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'M GOING TO CRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*tear tear* here's the story:
Tina Fey Plans to Leave 'Saturday Night Live'
AP
BURBANK, Calif. (July 22) - Tina Fey is leaving the anchor chair at "Saturday Night Live." Fey says she's quitting the show after six seasons as head writer and co-anchor of the "Weekend Update" fake news segment to focus on her new NBC prime-time series, "30 Rock."
"The new show's going to take a lot of time," Fey said while appearing on Friday night's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno ."
"I wanted to stop doing 'Saturday Night Live' so I could spend more time with Star Jones," she joked, referring to last month's dramatic departure of "The View" co-hostess.
Fey, 36, first joined "Saturday Night Live" as a writer in 1997 and became head writer in 1999.
In 2000, she first appeared on camera on "Weekend Update" alongside co-anchor Jimmy Fallon , who was replaced by Amy Poehler two years ago.
Fey plays the head writer of a fictional late-night sketch show in "30 Rock," a show she developed for NBC that also stars Alec Baldwin .
"This is the big leap I'm making, it's a show about working at a late-night comedy show," she told Leno. "I'm very creative."
SNL's not going to be the same without Tina. I'm going to miss her on Weekend Update. She's the reason a lot of people watched. Plus she was one of the writers of the show. *tear tear* I hope no one else leaves SNL. Well, anyone that's funny. ):
As for the OB story, it's true. I saw pictures and video thingy on TMZ.com. Oh, by the way, his dog's name is Sidi, not Maude. SIDI! Get it right! Maude lives with his ex! Sorry if I seem rude. I'm kind of mad over the Tina Fey thing and the fact that Orlando did that. ciao!