The CLOG - A Clevver Blog

Journalism, Whoopi.  You’re doing it wrong.

But that’s okay, because so is Glenn Beck.

Anyway, the big deal this go-round is that when Glenn Beck was on The View, his stock having shot up considerably since he stopped being CNN Headline News’ puppet and instead became Fox News’ puppet, when he told a story about how Barbara Walters, Whoopi,  and some of the Sixty Minutes crew had somehow managed to winkle reserved seating out of Amtrak, when such is not normally their policy.  Goldberg and Walters in turn loudly denied such, and Beck tried to defend himself, but his defense was short lived at best.

I saw the video of this debacle–and man, is it ever a DEBACLE when the man setting himself up to be, in the words of Spider Jerusalem, “the hard man of American letters” can’t take on four has-beens running a daytime talk show.  He probably should have known better than to take on The View on their own turf–though he should’ve got some support from known right-winger Elizabeth Hasslebeck whose silence spoke volumes throughout the interview.

But this one, Glenn, was an epic fail for you.

Chances are you’re wondering what’s wrong with that hash I made out of the headline but I assure you it’s for a good reason.  Check THIS out:

Hayden Panettiere has been showing off a tattoo along the left side of her back lately. But the tattoo, which reads “vivere senza rimipianti” (”to live without regrets”), is misspelled—her “rimpianti” has an extra “i” in it.

So basically, Hayden’s walking around with a misspelled Italian phrase on her back.  Thankfully, almost no one who sees it will actually SPEAK Italian in the first place, so almost no one will notice.  But we’ll notice, won’t we, folks?  Oh, you bet we will.  That’s half the fun!

I’m quick to land on Pattinson with both feet when he screws up, but never let it be said that I’m not equal opportunity, either.  Apparently, the Twilight saga star swung by Cannes to catch some movies, including upcoming Tarantino war flick Inglourious Basterds, while he was wrapping up the Italian round of shooting for New Moon.  He even managed to get some quotes out about how amazed he is by his own celebrity and how much new security had to be added on at the New Moon set just because of him.  Dig the word:

“It is still strange,” Pattinson said Tuesday. “I just don’t get the immediate-recognition thing. I was at the Frankfurt airport yesterday, and people just immediately know who you are. It’s never, ‘Are you …?’ It’s just like, ‘Can I have a photo?’”

Then on the point of security, he added:

“They had tons of security, but then at the end of the day actually, hardly anyone knew where we were shooting,” Pattinson said. “I’m walking around with, like, three guys following me around all the time, and no one ever turned up. There was never any infiltrators.”

Well, good for you, buddy–though you may want to stop and consider that some of that might be the Taylor Lautner effect you were so concerned about earlier.  Just as a possibility, you know.

Seriously, this woman has given me more laughs over the last few months than my Dave Barry book collection.  Her paranoia, her raging egomania, her sheer hubris have all coalesced together into a beautiful package of gleeful hatred that makes it just so much fun to point out her many, many, MANY foibles.

Apparently, Gwyneth’s coming back to play Pepper Potts in the upcoming Iron Man 2, and she’s glad to be back but she’s having some serious trouble dealing with co-star Scarlett Johansson.  Dig the word:

“Gwyneth was looking forward to working with EMILY BLUNT, who was originally in line for the part, but it ended up being Scarlett. Gwyneth’s had to live with that and she has been very professional, but she and Scarlett haven’t developed a friendship on the shoot, which is almost at the half way point.  In fact, it’s quite the opposite.”

Uh oh, Gwyneth–a new “frenemy” on the horizon?  Will there be another scathing GOOP piece like your mid-April Be about “evil tongues”?  I’m eagerly awaiting the news post that says she’s been chucking expensive toilet paper and Faberge eggs at Scarlett’s trailer.

So thanks to Gwyneth Paltrow for once again being a massive prat and giving me tons of cannon fodder!

Why, none other than Kate Hudson!

Here’s some scary news for you, folks–after Madge ditched the baseballer for a new model some time ago, we haven’t heard a whole lot out of A-Rod on his social life.  Well, it may surprise you to know that Kate Hudson’s been spotted with him on several occasions.  Once at the Fountainbleau in Miami, a second time at a recent Yankees game, and then there was this:

Then she and A-Rod went to an awful Southwestern restaurant on the Upper East Side where they, according to sources, made out in a back room.

It’s a bad sign when someone like Kate Hudson is stooping to be the rebound girl for a guy Madonna dumped, but hey, more power to the two of them if they’re happy together.

So Paris Hilton, as you may or may not know, has been in a slew of cheesy direct to video craptaculars that make me want to gouge my eyes out whenever I see one on the shelves.  We’re all at least passingly familiar with The Hottie and the Nottie, but maybe you don’t know about stuff like Nine Lives, The Hillz, and Pledge This!, three other titles Hilton was involved with.

They didn’t do very well, quite possibly because video store patrons could see that disaster coming three miles away like it was toting a fifty foot neon sign on its back saying “Warning: Horrendous Movie Beneath This Sign”, but Pledge This! in particular lost its investors just over eight million dollars.  The investors involved blame not a weak script or lousy acting or the fact that no one really wanted to touch a movie involving Paris Hilton that wasn’t shot in night vision, but rather that she, Paris, didn’t sufficiently promote the movie, as was required by her contract.

Hilton and attorneys, of course, loudly and vociferously insist that she promoted the movie “relentlessly” and there was nothing more that could be done, but U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno ruled that there’s enough evidence to take this sucker to trial.

The biggest question here, of course, would be if more promotion would have made a difference to begin with….

So the race to be the first to report Patrick Swazye’s ultimate end at the hands of cancer is on and fierce, with the first victim, the crew out at Buzz Newsroom, falling prey to a bogus tip received from “several sources” that the actor had finally lost his battle.  The word from Buzz:

Updated: this rumor, which started on the radio, has been verified as not true from Mr. Swayze’s representation (too bad they didn’t return our calls). This morning our inbox was inundated with email messages from reliable sources stating that indeed he passed away, which is the reason we stated this was a “tip” and with a question mark.

They got the word from a radio station–Floridian radio station Kiss FM–and then passed it on.

Can’t blame them too much, says I; you get information from “reliable sources”, you pass it on.  That’s how celebrity journalism works.  Reliable sources are only RELIABLE, not infallible.  There’s a difference.  That’s why most celebrity journalism couches everything it says in terms like “reportedly”, “supposedly” and “allegedly”.  So, a hearty laugh in the direction of Buzz Newsroom, because there but for the grace of God goes anybody else.

It’s getting to be that time of year again when the TV networks make all their difficult decisions, namely: piss off small but vocal fan groups, or lose money?

Usually they go for the latter, but a couple of the underdogs — namely NBC’s Chuck and Fox’s Dollhouse — got renewed for at least thirteen episodes next season.

(The stipulation for Chuck?  Massive budget cuts.  Two writers and at least one cast member will be let go, and the supporting cast will likely not all appear in every episode.)

Not everybody was as lucky.  Dollhouse’s timeslot companion, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, was canceled despite the absurd hotness of Summer Glau.  (She’s an alum of Joss Whedon’s Firefly — I wonder if she’ll pop up on Dollhouse next season?)

Other noteworthy canceled shows include ABC’s The Unusuals and Samantha Who (the latter of which was expected to get a renewal) and CBS’s long-running Without a Trace (Cold Case, on the other hand, will survive).

Fox’s Fringe, the second-biggest new TV show of the year (after CBS’s The Mentalist) won an easy renewal, as did Bones (for two seasons!)  Scrubs, somehow, some way, will also be back on ABC next season, despite airing a very clear-cut series finale last week.  Zach Braff won’t be the star anymore, but he might show up from time to time.

Director Kenneth Branagh is going with a cast of unknowns for the upcoming Marvel superhero movie Thor.  Landing the title role is Chris Hemsworth (pictured), whom you might know because he played Kirk’s dad in the sensational opening sequence of the new Star Trek movie.

And despite rumors that Josh Hartnett would play Thor’s nemesis Loki, the role has gone to another unknown, Tom Hiddleston.  Hiddleston, who initially screen-tested for Thor, is a British actor who has yet to make one American movie.

The comic books followed mild-mannered med student named Donald Blake, who discovered that he was actually the titular Norse god, complete with the Viking helmet and giant hammer.

Aside from the stand-alone movie, which recently pushed its release date back from July 2010 to May 2011, Thor will also be part of the superhero team in The Avengers (along with Iron Man, Captain America, and possibly the Incredible Hulk), which is scheduled to open in May 2012.

Angels & Demons was no Da Vinci Code, but the Tom Hanks/Ron Howard pairing was still strong enough to be the #1 movie in America, with $48 million.  (It’s reviews were actually slightly better than the pans Da Vinci garnered, and it’ll do great business abroad.)  Star Trek, meanwhile, dropped only 43% from its better-than-expected opening weekend to $43 million — a terrific hold for a summer blockbuster.  It’s already made $147 million and is the highest-grossing Trek flick by a long shot.

Last week, X-Men Origins: Wolverine fell 69% from its opening weekend, but this week it leveled out nicely and dropped only 44% to $15 million.  It’ll end up with about $175 million, which is less than X2 and X3 but still more than the first X-Men.

Overall, the box office was up 5% from last year, laughing in the face of the economy.  It isn’t likely to slow down next weekend, when both Terminator Salvation and the Night at the Museum sequel rake in zillions of dollars.

The Expendables, Sylvester Stallone’s third consecutive film as writer/director/star (after the impressive Rocky Balboa and the mostly unnecessary Rambo), just got a couple of posters, which you can check out below.  Looks like they’re marketing it as a Stallone/Jet Li/Jason Statham headliner, which kind of snubs all the Eighties stars that the film packs in: Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, and most notably, Mickey Rourke.  Lose Best Actor to Sean Penn, and now your name’s not good enough to headline a Stallone movie?  Weak.

Selling a new movie by reminding audiences of your old hits is pretty typical in Hollywood, especially for kids’ movies.  Half of Wall-E’s first trailer was devoted to nothing but footage of Pixar’s Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and Monsters Inc. Warner Bros. regularly includes footage from earlier Harry Potter movies in their new trailers so we can marvel about how the kids have grown up.  And now we can add The Princess and the Frog, which spends the first forty seconds of its trailer showing us Disney’s past “75 years of magic.”

It’s not a bad move, considering this is Disney’s first attempt at a hand-drawn cartoon since 2004’s blink-and-you-missed-it Home on the Range.  And it’s also not a bad move for them to go back to hand-drawn cartoons, since their non-Pixar computer-animated movies, Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, and Bolt, have struggled to make half the amount of money that the smallest Pixar movies make.

But it doesn’t look that great.  At least based on the one scene from the film we get in this trailer.  Take a look and judge for yourselves:

Mitchel Musso’s self-titled debut album from Walt Disney Records hits stores on June 2nd. The second single from the new album called Mitchel Musso is a song called Hey. The music video for Hey was just recently released. The song Hey is all about being done with a girl but she keeps coming back. The music video for Hey was shot mostly in an urban outdoor setting using cranes and green screens to complete all the effects.

The clearly tormented stripper-beau Robert Pattinson is shaking in his boots, folks.  In a new and interesting pose for Hollywood, Pattinson understands that celebrity is a tenuous thing, and it’s really only maintained by keeping his fans happy.  Check THIS out!

“You see all these people that surround you and you think that one way or another you have to please them. I WANT to please them. They are the reason I get to do this job. I just worry that I don’t please them - but I don’t know what they want.”

I have to give him his due props for this one.  Every day I hear about celebrities who don’t appreciate that it’s the fans that keep their careers going, not some kind of superhuman ability on their part.  You can be good, but if no one’s paying attention, then what good is it?  But anyway, that’s some REAL humility the guy’s got going on, and if it’s not staged, which even I admit is doubtful, this is a guy who deserves his rabid fan base.

Nicely done, Rob.  You get a pass today.  Savor the flavor because I don’t give out many.

So it seems that Daniel Radcliffe, the naked musical fruitcake playing Harry Potter in every Harry Potter movie ever released EVER, has struck up what’s described as a “close friendship” with Dolly Parton impersonating transvestite Our Lady J.  Dig the word:

“He’s a lovely guy and he and Our Lady J got on like a house on fire. They have eaten out together and been to parties. They have become quite close,” the source stated. It seems that the drag queen is equally taken in by Radcliffe, and boasted about their latest meeting on a Twitter site. “

So here’s the interesting question–is “good friends” just something to be taken at face value, or is Harry Potter learning how to cast Datus Transvesticus?  No one but the two of them really knows for sure, but either way, man…this is just sheer lunacy.