With the year 2011 drawing to a close, the stars of Garry Marshall’s New Year’s Eve were a sentimental — and cheeky — bunch talking up the portmanteau rom-com recently in Los Angeles. “When I stopped wanting my New Year’s Eve to be perfect, to ring in the New Year right, is when it started working out right,” admitted Hilary Swank, seated at a podium about as long as the credit roll for the star-studded holiday pic. At the other end of the panel, Zac Efron faux-wooed co-star Michelle Pfeiffer. “You’re coming out with me this year,” he winked at her. “I’ll show you how we do it.”
Like the wide-ranging press conference itself, New Year’s Eve is jam-packed with an assortment of stars (Sarah Jessica Parker! Halle Berry! Yeardley Smith!) a la Valentine’s Day, director Marshall’s first effort in the holiday-themed ensemble franchise. Just try and guess which disparate plot threads will run into another as a host of New Yorkers from all walks of life (A bike messenger! A rock star! The lady in charge of dropping the ball at midnight!) despair, rejoice, and collide on the biggest night of the year.
The unifying theme, of course, is self-reflection and hope for the future, and the idea that on New Year’s Eve, everyone in the world is sharing the same experience. Even, it seems, Hollywood’s biggest stars. Read on to find out who’ll be watching the ball drop in their jammies just like you this year.
1. Worst. New Year’s Eve. Ever? (Or, how to have a better time with lowered expectations.)
The stars and filmmakers agree: Manage your expectations of the big night and you’ll be…
Even Bérénice Bejo acknowledges there’s not a lot left to say about The Artist, the heavily acclaimed silent-film throwback that has been on the awards (and thus the media) warpath since debuting at Cannes last May. But the Argentine-born, French-raised actress also knows full well what a good problem that is to have — even it means wondering how to follow up the role of a lifetime.
Written and directed by Bejo’s partner Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist features the 35-year-old actress as Peppy Miller, an upstart, unflappable young dancer whose chance encounter with silent-film icon George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) catapults her to the frontier of talkie stardom. As Peppy’s meteoric rise intersects with George’s precipitous collapse, the starlet invests herself increasingly in both the creative and romantic heritage of his fallen legend. Anchored in Peppy’s optimistic vision and resisted by George’s institutionalized vanity, their relationship mirrors the enduring conflict at the heart of Hollywood and sets up one of the more stirring screen climaxes of this or any year.
It’s not what you’d call a breakout role — not for an actress who’s been working in film and TV since 1993 (including opposite Heath Ledger in 2001’s A Knight’s Tale) — but it is undoubtedly a milestone among milestones. Movieline spoke with Bejo about The Artist, struggling with perception, and how to move on from Peppy Miller.
Am I the millionth journalist you’ve talked to since Cannes? Let’s get some balloons and confetti in here, maybe.
Yeah, I don’t know how many it’s been. I should start counting.
You know, I’ve asked both Michel and Jean if there’s…
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Movie director and shrimp-eating fapper, Brett Ratner, called into Howard Stern (via EW) yesterday to spit out a half-assed apology to GLAAD for saying “rehearsals is for fags” during a Q&A for Tower Heiest last week and he also admitted that he lied when he said that he “banged” Olivia Munn back when she wasn’t Asian. With the scent of curdled goat leche and shrimp shit wafting off of his finger tips, Brett picked up the phone and said this to Howard about Olivia:
“She’s actually talented. The problem is I made her look like she’s a whore.”
Brett kept backpedaling (unfortunately he didn’t backpedal off of a cliff) and gave GLAAD an “I’m Soooo SOWWY” hug for using the word fag.
“I apologize for any offense my remarks caused. It was a dumb way of expressing myself. Everyone who knows me knows that I don’t have a prejudiced bone in my body. But as a storyteller I should have been much more thoughtful about the power of language and my choice of words.”
Brett is producing the next Oscars and the president of that shit says that his comments were “dumb and insensitive” but “the apology [Ratner] gave I truly believe comes from his heart. If I didn’t believe it, I would do something about it. This is about
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My wet dreams tell me that when you take a mythical ride on the mighty hammer of Thor on ASkars’ crotch, you are suddenly shot into a magical world of wonder where all nipples look like they belong in a Maynards bag and you develop an uncanny ability to make complete sense out of assembly instructions for Ikea furniture. So the fall from that euphoric orgasm is probably a hard one and leads you to do dark and dirty shit. Unfortunately for Kate’s stomach, that “dark and dirty shit” doesn’t involve eating something other than water soup and oxygen burgers. Instead of eating her feelings, Kate is fugging up her feelings and wearing them all over her body.
While leaving a Coldplay concert in L.A. last night with movie director Michael Polish, Kate looked like a wet troll doll stuck on top of a pencil. Easter egg dye is reserved only for hard boiled eggs, not for the splintery mop of straw on your head, ho.
When you tell who ever is doing your hair that you want it to look like a melted Firecracker Popsicle without the fire and he quits your ass on the spot, you should take that as a hint. Bitch looks like the broom my abuelita used when she tried to sweep blue cake frosting off of the patio after
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