1. Friday Night Lights star Adrianne Palicki (aka Tyra Collette) has been cast as Wonder Woman in David E. Kelley’s pilot for NBC. We’re excited by the news, but we bet that Lyla Garrity is super jealous. [via THR]
2. Wondered what Antony Hegarty has been up to lately? Glad you asked. He’s writing new songs for “The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic,” a play about the infamous performance artist, who will star in the production alongside Willlem Dafoe at the Salford Quays arts center in the UK. [via Spinner]
3. Yesterday Borders officially filed for bankruptcy. Here’s a map of which stores will be shut down — about 30 percent of all locations. [via Pop Candy]
4. Attention Gleeks: Kurt’s dad might be getting his own spin-off series. According to Vulture, “Mike O’Malley, who’s won raves (and an Emmy nomination) for his nuanced performance as a blue collar dude coming to terms with his son’s identity, has been cast as the lead in Fox’s comedy pilot Family Album.” Hopefully this won’t take him away from Glee all together.
5. Every back issue of Spy Magazine — Kurt Andersen and Graydon Carter’s fabulous satirical monthly that basically introduced the idea of skewering celebrities to American audiences — is now available for your reading pleasure on Google Books.
Bonus link: Get paid $50K to be Ashton Kutcher’s VP of Pop Culture
New York Fashion Week begins today, and according to the Wall Street Journal, in a rejection of “the air-brushed perfection of the digital age,” one of the most sought after looks at model casting calls was gapped teeth. Frankly, we couldn’t be more excited. We’ve always found it refreshing when celebrities embrace what makes them unique — instead of paying to get it fixed — and to see this kind of thing happening on the runways can only mean good things for gap-happy youths everywhere. Imagine fashion-minded young girls deciding not to get braces! After the jump, we present 10 of our favorite gap-toothed beauties, from old school favorites like Lauren Hutton to young upstarts like Ed Westwick. Leave anyone we’ve missed in the comments.
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Last night’s Gotham Independent Film Awards saluted the best in American independent cinema, with top honors going to Kathryn Bigelow’s gritty war drama The Hurt Locker. Presented by the Independent Feature Project, the often boozy ceremony heralds the start of the film awards season, and in past years has proven a good indicator of which indies will receive Oscar nods.
The crowd at Cipriani Wall Street — which included Willem Dafoe, Meryl Streep, and Alec Baldwin — was eager to express their support for independent filmmaking. Said presenter Ellen Burstyn, “I love independent film because I think that’s where all the people stories are now. The big studio films have gotten to be so much about explosions and special effects.” Richard Kind, a character actor currently in A Serious Man and previously in every movie, sitcom, and animated film ever, added, “The Coen brothers said that when they got a really big budget it wasn’t as much fun as keeping it small, and I think they’re right. I think you’re more focused.”
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The opening sequence of Antichrist is an oscillation between, “oh, isn’t this lovely” and, “oh c’mon, give me a break.” In many ways, it’s a fractal for the remainder of the picture, as well as Lars Von Trier‘s entire career to date. Every frame in the destined-to-be-debated Antichrist might sever audience reactions more precisely than its notorious scissor wielding sequence, but there is no denying its visual appeal. It has a video-game-like clarity that pushes digital to a place celluloid snobs never dreamed it could breach. But while the images are breathtaking, the content is often cheesy, overwrought, and borders on parody.
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Ever the event, The Public Theater announced their six-play subscription series for 2009-2010. Having made waves on Broadway by transferring the Tony-winning revival of Hair form Central Park to the Great White Way, eyes were definitely peeled on what they had to offer this year, at the very least, to see what kind of Broadway-bait they were locking and loading to fire at New York. And they absolutely delivered. Read More »
Mardi Gras is receding behind us and we’ve now entered forty days of sacrifice. Even if you didn’t spend Ash Wednesday looking as if someone had stubbed out a cigar on your forehead, the urge to abstain may still be lurking in your subconscious. Don’t worry: you don’t have to become a teetotaler. Jesus probably didn’t touch a drop in the desert but he had other things to deal with like, oh, resisting Satan?
So what should you drink to honor the season of Lent?
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