Josh plays Brahms, Doug plays on Twitter and Red Green & Strombo play Vancouver’s Comedy Fest

MAKE ‘EM LAUGH, MAKE ‘EM LAUGH: She was in the theatre when it happened. Funny lady Joy Behar of The View reports that a cell phone went off

CRAIG: It's for you

during a performance of the new Broadway play A Steady Rain with Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig. What happened? “Craig stopped talking and said, ‘wanna get that?’” But despite the detour she said she loved the play. “The play was great. Two hotties with acting chops!” … Tom Arnold (a.k.a. Rosanne’s ex) and Red Green (a.k.a Steve Smith) host the Best Of The Fest galas coming up this weekend at the Vancouver Comedy Fest. Arnold hosts the first gala this Friday night with Andy Dick, John Dore, Tim Rykert and more, and Possum Lodge proprietor Green hosts the second gala Saturday night with Derek Edwards, Glen Foster, Peter Kelamis, Mike MacDonald and more.

GREEN: in B.C.

Meanwhile, George Stroumboulopoulos hosts the Saturday Edge Of The Fest gala with Picnicface, Garfunkle & Oates, and more. (They sure do get interesting acts out west!) … and remember when Jeremy Piven abruptly left the Broadway revival of David Mamet’s Speed-The-Plow because of mercury poisoning from eating too much sushi? While lawsuits flew back and forth, playwright Mamet was asked why Piven had jumped ship. “I believe he left to pursue a new career,” said Mamet, “as a thermometer.”

Now that’s funny.

AUTHOR, AUTHOR: Novelist and man-about-art Doug Coupland tore back a fingernail at Heathrow recently and asked security if they had nail clippers he could borrow. “They had a bucket filled with 5,000

COUPLAND: Twitterbug

clippers,” he reports. (So that’s where they go.) Meanwhile, after trying a Klondike ice-cream bar for breakfast one morning, he now finds he can’t do without them. “I really have become addicted to Klondike bars for breakfast… they’re like square frozen bowls of cereal — they’re practically vitamins.” Coupland also posts the most intriguing videos on Twitter. Have you seen the time-lapse video of the new Dubai Metro where the ‘train’ ends up going 800 mph? And no, I’m not making this up. For further proof, just click here.

SEPTEMBER SONGS: Toronto Symphony Orchestra kicks off its new season tomorrow night when conductor Peter Oundjian welcomes Joshua Bell for

FEORE: with TSO

an evening of Brahms. Marquee showstoppers set to appear with the TS this season include Peter Appleyard, Russell Braun, Measha Brueggergosman, the Canadian Brass, Sir Andrew Davis, James Ehnes, Barbara Hannigan, Evgeny Kissin, Anton Kuerti, Erich Kunzel, Lang Lang, Kent Nagano, Itzhak Perlman, Michael Schade, Pinchas Zukerman and stage and screen lions Colm Feore and Paul Gross. To sample the upcoming season, and order tickets, just click here.

TOMORROW:

What are doing Jesus and Norah Jones doing on the same CD?

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Joanne Woodward, Robert Redford & Julia Roberts will make Monday June 8 a night to remember

On Monday June 8, the night after Neil Patrick Harris hosts the Tony Awards, Broadway will have a second starry night, for a spectacularly good reason. Joanne Woodward, Robert Redford & Julia Roberts will co-host

REDFORD: Paul pal

a fundraiser Celebration of Paul Newman’s Hole-In-The-Wall Camps with performances by Joshua Bell, Harry Connick, Jr., Art Garfunkel, Yo-Yo Ma, Jerry Seinfeld, Take 6 and James Taylor. Tickets begin at $50 and are available through Center Charge, 212-721-6500 or www.lincolncenter.org. Benefit tickets including an after-party begin at $1,500 and are available for purchase through the Benefit Office, 212-627-0678. The evening will benefit the Association of Hole in the Wall Camps – the world’s largest family of camps for children with serious and life-threatening medical illnesses. The camps were Paul Newman’s dream and this event will celebrate his legacy.

To which we say, Bravo!

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NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: Mentalist star Simon Baker is set to co-star with Casey Affleck in the thriller The Killer Inside Me … dynamic

PARKER: prescient

Weeds heroine Mary-Louise Parker is still smarting over her nude bathtub scene from last year’s finale. “I didn’t think I needed to be naked, and I fought with the director about it, and now I’m bitter,” she tells More magazine in its June issue. “I knew it was going to be on the Internet: ‘Mary Louise shows off her big nipples.’ I wish I hadn’t done that. I was goaded into it.” So are we surprised that “Mary Louise shows off her big nipples” is currently among the Most Viewed clips on Google Trends? … and ‘gorgeous’ Kerry Connelly opens a two-night stand tonight at the Jane Mallett Theatre, bringing some of her favourite repertoire by Stephen Sondheim, Georges Bizet, Steven Schwartz and more. For a soupcon of Kerry in action just click here.

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SANDLER: reunion

 

FLICKERS: Chalk up a first leading role in a feature film for Christina Aguilera. She’ll play “an ambitious small-town girl with a big voice who tries to escape a hollow past” in Steven Antin’s Burlesque …  Ray Stevenson has the title role in the forthcoming crime drama The Irishman … Adam Sandler‘s new comedy, The Lake House, is not, repeat, NOT a remake of the Sandra Bullock-Keanu Reeves melodrama. In this one Sandler plays one of a bunch of guys (Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, David Spade) who get together for a reunion at a summer cottage … and Robert De Niro will play parole officer to Edward Norton’s arsonist in John Curran’s Stone.

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BUT WHAT I REALLY WANT TO DO IS DIRECT: Currently launching Inglourious Basterds in Cannes, Quentin Tarantino is reportedly plotting

AGUILERA: leading lady

 

a new film called Weekend, to be filmed in Serbia (!?!) with Sharon Stone, Jessica Biel, Lucy Liu, Dennis Hopper and Michael Madsen … remember H.A.L., the wondrous computer magically voiced by Douglas Campbell in Stanley Kubrick’s masterwork 2001: A Space Odyssey?  Now Kevin Spacey is following in his voiceprints, playing Sam Rockwell’s robot companion in Moon, a new sci-fi thriller spine-tingler penned by two famous sons – Nathan Parker, son of filmmaker Alan Parker, and Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie. Duncan, formerly known as Zowie, also directs … and as we near the 40th anniversary of the murder of actress Sharon Tate and four others at the hands of Manson family cult members, Oliver Stone is in talks with Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecuting attorney on the Manson case, to bring his creepy classic  Helter Skelter to the big screen.

Hope not. Four decades later, it’s still too fresh for some of us.