Britney Spears to play lesbian killer in Quentin Tarantino film!!!!!!
The exclamation points are mine, but they’re implied in this Telegraph headline, which is quickly making the rounds of the “publish first, conveniently forget to retract later” gossip blogs. The rumor is that Britney has been hand-picked by Quentin to “play dancer Varla in a remake of the 1965 cult film Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”
The reality check: as far as I can tell––Tarantino has never even confirmed a Liz Smith report from way back in January claiming that he’s making a remake of the Russ Meyer schlock classic. And, since that story mentioned that Britney was in the running, even if there is something to it it’s kind of old news. It might be a strategic PR drop (I don’t know by who––does Britney even have a publicist anymore?) to counteract the Page Six item from last week, which suggested (without comment from the Tarantino camp) that porn star Tera Patrick was getting the role. But I have a hard time believing that this is anything other than a publicity game at this point, considering that Tarantino hasn’t even finished castingthe epic that he plans to screen in seven months at Cannes.
That said: if it’s between Spears and Patrick, we definitely vote for the former. She needs it more.
UPDATE: Access Hollywood has denials from both Tarantino and Spears. And Media Morgue says Quentin’s agent told them way back in March that the remake was just a rumor.
I don’t know if it’s really appropriate to call Chasing Windmills a “mumblecore webseries,” as Molly at This Recording does, but that’s definitely Oscar winning screenwriter Diablo Cody playing a hippie stripper who teaches pole dancing in her living room, and implores the stars of the show to “throw off the shackles that society has placed on your pelvis.” Watch for the cameo from what appears to be Cody’s now-ex-husband Johnny, who provokes the line, “Do you really want to have a starring role in some ex-stripper’s sex games with her skeezy husband?”
Naked pictures of a stripper? Not news. Naked pictures of a stripper-turned-Oscar winning screenwriter? Eh. Pictures of a stripper-turned-Oscar winning screenwriter emulating the naked-but-for-whipped-cream scene from the classic James Van Der Beek vehicle Varsity Blues? News enough!
Meanwhile, proving that no good-intentioned attempt to bridge the cultural-political divide goes unpunished, some people are mad that soldiers presented Oscars. Interestingly, most of the complaints conflate the two documentary awards into the claim that the Academy implicitly mocked the soldiers by forcing them to give an award to the anti-Iraq war film Taxi to the Darkside. In fact, the soldiers presented the Best Documentary Short award, which went to Freeheld. Debbie Schlussel, probably the most hateful of the Hollywood haters, gets that part right, but she also repeatedly insists that Diablo Cody is fat, which, as the above pictures of her ribcage should show, is definitely wrong.
David Bordwell credits “piracy” for ensuring the classic status of His Girl Friday. “If Columbia had renewed its copyright on schedule, would this film be so widely admired today?” Jason Mittel agrees in theory, but takes issue with Bordwell’s use of the p-word. “Once the film lapsed into the public domain, all of the resulting shoddy copies were legal and licit, not pirated. A more accurate term would be ‘unauthorized’…”
We always assumed Diablo Cody would become a punchline about five minutes after she wins an Oscar, but thanks to SuperDeluxe, it looks like we don’t have to wait that long! New York comedy troupe Olde English (they did that rap video about shooting on the streets of New York) and Jackie Clarke (co-star of the infamous Welcome to Our House videos) team up to take on the unimpeachable symbol of the Juno backlash. Too little too late to stop the inevitable Best Original Screenplay win? Probably. But whatever––the Jason Reitman characterization alone is priceless.
In what is something like the 27th lawsuit to arise from New Line’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkien’s estate is suing the film studio for $150 million, based on claims that “the trust has not received any of its gross profit participation payments for the three films based on the Lord of the Rings trilogy.” The estate also wants to sever all ties between Tolkien’s works and New Line, which means bye-bye to The Hobbit if the suit is successful.
In more franchise news, the new 3D animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars will debut in theaters this summer before moving to several Turner-owned cable networks in the fall. And for the first time, George Lucas is partnering with Warner Brothers instead of Fox to get his robot drivel works of genius to the masses.
And you thought the reviews of Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead skewed skeevy…Marisa Tomei will play a stripper in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Naked pictures of a stripper? Not news. Naked pictures of a stripper-turned-Oscar winning screenwriter? Eh. Pictures of a stripper-turned-Oscar winning screenwriter emulating the naked-but-for-whipped-cream scene from the classic James Van Der Beek vehicle 
In what is something like the 27th 
