Weekend News Roundup! Oscar Results; Updates on John Galliano and Charlie Sheen; Nikki Finke Denied Backstage Coverage
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February 28, 2011
“I AM ON A DRUG. IT’S CALLED CHARLIE SHEEN. IT’S NOT AVAILABLE BECAUSE IF YOU TRY IT ONCE, YOU WILL DIE. YOUR FACE WILL MELT OFF,” SHEEN SAID. (NOT A JOKE; HE ACTUALLY SAID THAT.) PHOTO COURTESY OF ANGELA GEORGE
Happy Monday! Here’s our compendium of pop-culture news you may have missed while you were doing more important things over the weekend.
• Last night’s Academy Awards saw big wins for The King’s Speech (Best Picture, Director for Tom Hooper, Actor for Colin Firth, Original Screenplay for David Seidler) and The Fighter (Supporting Actor and Actress for Christian Bale and Melissa Leo). Natalie Portman won Best Actress for Black Swan, while heavily-hyped The Social Network won three awards (Adapted Screenplay for Aaron Sorkin, Music for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and Film Editing for Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter). Inception took home several visual/technical awards: Cinematography, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, and Visual Effects. Toy Story 3 won Best Animated Film, and Alice in Wonderland won the costume-design award. [Oscars]
• John Galliano, who was suspended on Friday from his post as head designer at Dior after being detained by police for allegedly making racist and anti-Semitic comments to a couple in a café, filed a defamation suit against his accusers over the weekend. However, a newly released cell-phone video might hurt his case: it depicts Galliano—at the same café, but not on the same night—saying “I love Hitler” and telling other patrons, “People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be f—ing gassed.” Another woman also came forward this weekend to say Galliano had subjected her to the same sorts of remarks in October. [HuffPo, People]
• CBS has canceled Two and a Half Men for the rest of the season, and perhaps indefinitely, following multiple bouts of erratic behavior by star Charlie Sheen. Sheen has announced, variously, that he’ll show up to set today no matter whether the show is filming or not; that he’s suing CBS for $320 million; that he’s penned a memoir and plans to demand $10 million from a publisher for it; that Two and a Half Men producer Chuck Lorre is a “contaminated little maggot;” and that he wants a public apology from CBS in addition to a pay hike (to $3 million per episode), despite the fact that the show is canceled. An interview will run on 20/20 tonight. [NYDN, Daily Mail, Salon, People]
• Gnomeo and Juliet won the weekend box office, which was quite weak overall, with $14.2M; Hall Pass, in its first week of release, followed with $13.4M. Unknown, Just Go With It, and I Am Number Four rounded out the top 5. [BOM]
• Hollywood gossip queen Nikki Finke’s site, Deadline, had its pass to cover the Oscars revoked after publishing a leaked schedule of the Oscar telecast that didn’t include the winners’ names but did include costume changes and surprise bit details. Despite a strongly worded blog post by Finke, she couldn’t get the pass back in time to report backstage coverage. [Deadline]
• Architecture in Helsinki is set to release their first album in four years, Moment Bends, on May 3. The cover art is cool! [Pitchfork]
• The last remaining American World War I veteran, Frank Buckles, died in his Virginia home on Sunday at the age of 110. He’ll be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. [Intel/NYM]
