I refuse to believe that Sacha Baron Cohen’s stunt at last night’s MTV Movie Awards — in which he, as Bruno from the upcoming Bruno, flew through the air in an assless winged costume and landed with his legs wrapped around Eminem’s neck, was in any way unscripted — Completely lacking in genuine (and genuinely dangerous) spontaneity — and completely ripped off from a Howard Stern gag from 17 years ago — the incident feels of a piece with the carefully managed anarchy on display in the Bruno clips shown in March at SXSW. See it for yourself after the jump. I’ll look forward to your comments telling me to “lighten up.”

…Read more

• A couple of days ago, the new Ghostbusters video game––which features voice contributions from most of the major actors from the franchise and, for all practical purposes, is as close to Ghostbusters 3 as we’re going to get––was presented at Comic-Con. Today, its release is by no means guaranteed. Its publisher, Vivendi Games, recently merged with Activision; Activision Blizzard, the new company formed by the merger, has declined to exercise options on a number of Vivendi brands, including Ghostbusters.
• Shia LaBeouf’s drunk driving incident last weekend hasn’t shut down production on the Transformers sequel, but it has thrown a wrench into the proceedings. Whist Drunky McHearthrob takes a month to recover from an hand injury, Josh Duhamel’s scenes have been pushed up.
• Oh, these sound like baaaaad ideas: Howard Stern has hired Alex Winter––Yes, Bill from Bill and Ted––to write a remake of Rock n’ Roll High School. How are these two qualified to trample on the love child of The Ramones and Roger Corman? Well, Winter has also written a film about the inventor of Napster, and Howard Stern is also producing a remake of Porky’s. Of course!
• Disney’s overall income and revenues are up, even as their summer grosses are––thanks to Prince Caspian not being about pirates or having anything to do with Keith Richards––way down from last year.