It’s Niagara for Sly, Danger Mouse for Norah, Green Arrow for Amell, and His & Hers for Jessica & Joel

CASTING ABOUT:  When you’re hot, you’re hot. Jessica Chastain and Joel Edgerton are set to star in Ned Benson’s dual pictures The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: His and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Hers,

CHASTAIN: Eleanor Rigby

which tell the same story from the male and female perspectives … Vampire Diaries grad Stephen Amell will play the Green Arrow in Arrow, the CW’s series adaptation of the DC comic book …  Sarah Jessica Parker has replaced Demi Moore as Gloria Steinem in the film biography of tragic porn queen Linda Lovelace … now that he’s wrapped his role in Lincoln for director Steven Spielberg, Deadwood resident John Hawkes, who was Oscar-nominated for Winter’s Bone, has won the lead role in the new screen version of Elmore Leonard’s Switch … and Denzel Washington may team up with Mark Wahlberg in a new action thriller called 2 Guns.

NO BIZ LIKE SHOW BIZ: The 18th Annual Tommy Sexton Benefit is set for this Friday in Sr. John’s at The Bella Vista. The Benefit raises much needed funds to support of the Tommy Sexton Centre, which provides emergency shelter

JONES: Mouse-catcher

services, transitional and supportive housing, and supports to people living with HIV/AIDS and those at risk in Newfoundland and Labrador … Kylie Minogue is celebrating her 25^th year (!!!)  in show business with a year of surprises and gifts for her fans, including a series of especially commissioned new recordings of classic Kylie songs, recorded at the legendary Abbey Road Studios … Norah Jones’ new album, Little Broken Hearts, due this spring, is her latest collaboration with producer-musician Danger Mouse. The two first worked together on his acclaimed 2011 album ROME … and no, I’m not making this up:

STALLONE: Taking the Falls

Fans of Rocky and Rambo, and we are legion, will be trooping to Niagara Falls at the end of the month for An Evening With Sylvester Stallone – Yo, Adrian, it’s the man himself! – at Fallsview Casino Feb. 24-25.

FLICKERS:  It’s the odds-on Oscar favourite, but before there was The Artist, there was Wings. And John Downing’s reminiscences about high-flying under-appreciated filmmaker Sterling Campbell are too good not to share … and here’s another one for the No Good Deed Goes Unpunished file — Clint Eastwood never thought he’d have to defend his stunning Super Bowl ad for Chrysler.  “I’m surprised that people that are supposed to be intelligent have interpreted it otherwise.” As for the backlash from people who thought the ad was endorsing the auto bailouts:

EASTWOOD: Make his day

“No one was endorsing any bailouts or anything like that. That was all supposition. All somebody daydreaming out there.” Hey, in the words of the late, great philosopher Gilda Radner: It’s always something … this year’s annual Swiss Television Awards glamourfest will open the 2012 Rose d’Or Festival on May 6 in Lucerne …. and  this year’s ReelWorld Film Festival is set for April 11-15, with Opening and Closing Night Galas at the Cineplex Odeon Sheppard Cinemas and regular screenings taking place at Famous Players Canada Square. Meanwhile ReelWorld alumnus Ava DuVernay, director of the RWFF 2008 feature documentary This is the Life and the 2011 RWFF Closing Night Gala film I Will Follow, picked up this year’s Dramatic Directing Award at Sundance for her movie Middle of Nowhere, making her the first black woman to win Best Director at the 12-year-old Utah filmfest.

STEVEN & CHRIS: La-Z boys?

LAZY: Feeling La-Z? If you’d like a La-Z Boy Recliner of your very own, why not win one? Dynamic designing duo Steven & Chris (yes, that Steven & Chris) are giving away a La-Z-Boy® gift certificate valued at $1,599. And the certificate can be used towards any La-Z-Boy® products and is redeemable at any La-Z-Boy® store in Canada. Just click here to enter. (I mean, if you’re so reclined.)

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Has Farrell one-upped Clooney? Will Atwood play the Cathedral? Hello again, and here we go again!

Is there a quiet competition going on between big-screen stars about who has the most movies in next week’s 34^th Toronto International Film Festival? Just

CLOONEY: two for the show

wondering. By my count TIFF veteran Colin Farrell (Triage, Ondine, The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus) has a one-flick lead over fellow filmfest vet George Clooney (The Men Who Stare At Goats, Up In The Air) … Jude Law brings his Hamlet to Broadway on October Oct 6, after almost five weeks of previews starting Sept. 12. But you can catch Jude at TIFF even sooner as one of Heath Ledger’s ‘seconds’ in the aforementioned Terry Gilliam epic The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus … and look for some sparks when West Wing alumnus Allison Janney, currently singing and dancing up a storm on Broadway in Dolly Parton’s musical version of 9 to 5, plays the estranged wife of a pedophile (Ciaran Hinds) in Life During Wartime. And no, this one is definitely not a musical.

AUTHOR, AUTHOR: She’s more force of nature than novelist, which is why Margaret Atwood is in England today opening this year’s Manchester

ATWOOD: "unprecedented"

Literature Festival with a unique performance event inspired by her new novel The Year of the Flood. Atwood, script in hand, will be front and centre tonight  at Manchester Cathedral with two celebrated Samanthas – Samantha Giles (Bernice Thomas in Emmerdale) and Samantha Siddall (Mandy Maguire in Shameless) – and singers from a number of prestigious Manchester community choirs. Atwood’s lucky 13^th novel, Year Of The Flood tells the story of God’s Gardeners, a religion devoted to the preservation of all species. 

The Gardeners have long predicted a waterless flood which arrives in the form of a global pandemic obliterating most of human life. Will the human race make it? And, more to the point, should it?

REYNOLDS: going Green

Atwood has also created a new interactive website for the book where you can do everything from buying Flood tee-shirts to ordering tickets to Flood performance events in cities across the world (she’s in London tomorrow and Thursday.) And McClelland & Stewart fiction guru Ellen Seligman says Atwood’s 70-minute dramatic reading with music, directed by stellar stage master Alisa Palmer, is “unprecedented” in the annals of publishing.

I’ll say! Her international tour includes six Canadian stops, including St. James’ Cathedral on Church St. on Sept. 24, two days after the novel officially goes on sale. Tickets are only $10 and proceeds go to Nature Canada. And you can get ‘em right now at the Harbourfront Box Office or order ‘em online just by clicking here.

FLICKERS: The 67th Venice Film Festival kicks off tomorrow with 23 films – yeah, it’s a few hundred films smaller than Toronto’s annual movie marathon  —

EFRON: new role

including such TIFF-bound titles as Michael Moore’s newest opus, Capitalism: A Love Story, Todd Solondz’ Life During Wartime, 
and Werner Herzog’s remake of The Bad Lieutenant with Nicolas Cage. Ex-Rocky Balboa Sylvester Stallone will be the Guest Of Honour when jury chair Ang Lee announces the winner of this year’s Golden Lion on Saturday Sept. 12, by which time TIFF will be well underway … Amanda Crew will romance Zac Efron in his new project Charlie St. Cloud … Canadian heartthrob Ryan Reynolds will be a new screen superhero to reckon with when he stars in Green Lantern … and in the same comic book vein, Natalie Portman will play the love interest of Norse hero Thor (Chris Hemsworth) for director Kenneth Branagh (yeah, that could be the reason she’s doing it.)

TOMORROW:

Reunions to watch for at TIFF —

and Ms Streisand meets Ms Krall.

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More laffs for T.O.! Rick Mercer tweets! Don’s new porn gig! 40th anniversary of John & Yoko Bed-In! All this and more!

THE LAUGHS JUST KEEP COMING: Talk about the little engine that could. Montreal producer Gilbert Rozon’s phenomenal Just For Laughs/Juste Pour Rire comedy festival keeps growing, growing, growing. This year the Quebec-based

DEGENERES: just for laffs

mirth-machine will stage its Toronto festival at the same time as its annual summer comedy extravaganza in Montreal. The Toronto Just For Laughs festival opens on July 15 and runs five days. The Montreal Just For Laughs festival opens on July 16 and runs 10 days. Meanwhile, the first collaboration between cable network TBS and Just For Laughs is set for June 17-21 in Chicago and will feature performances from Ellen DeGeneres, George Lopez, Lisa Lampanelli, Russell Peters, Mike Epps, Jimmy Fallon, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, Bill Engvall, David Alan Grier, Louis CK, John Pinette, Martin Short and more.

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QUOTABLE QUOTES: “I’ve learned one thing: obstacles are your friends. And after you’ve been around as long as I have, you’ve made a lot of friends.”

The speaker?

Actor/director/designer/choreographer/producer and Quebec’s favourite enfant terrible, Robert Lepage, in an intriguing profile by Richard Ouzounian in Saturday’s Toronto Star. Lepage’s new nine-hour theatre-and-music epic, Lip Synch, premieres in T.O. on June 6 at Luminato.

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 NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: Small-screen icon Don Johnson has been cast as a porn director in the Adam Sandler-produced film Born to Be a

 

JOHNSON: porn part

 

Star … Lizzy Caplan and Crispin Glover have joined the cast of the feature comedy Hot Tub Time Machine … Alex O’Loughlin is in negotiations to star opposite Jennifer Lopez in The Back-Up Plan … Rosemary DeWitt is set to join Chris Cooper, Ben Affleck and Tommy Lee Jones in The Company Men … Sylvester Stallone’s Expendables  now include non-expendables Brittany Murphy, David Zayas, Jason Statham and Mickey Rourke  … and the Glenn Gould Foundation is plotting a spectacular week in October with the renown 250-member Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, to honour the creator of the Venezuelan youth orchestra system (El Sistema,) Dr. Jose Antonio Abreu. Dr. Abreu, this year’s winner of The Glenn Gould Prize, has also been named co-winner of Sweden’s Polar Music Prize along with Peter Gabriel.

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TALKING TO TWEETERS: Canuck TV lion Rick Mercer sez he still can’t figure out current social SuperNetwork twitter. “I’m socially twitarded,” he confessed recently on the site. Methinks he doth protest too much. This is the same guy who twitter-warned us (‘twarned’ us??) in 140 characters or less.  that “if the swine flu becomes a pandemic Canadians may have no choice but to find out who Canada’s Health Minister is.”

Call me crazy, but I’d say he’s got the hang of it.

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GIVE PEACE A CHANCE: Forty years later, Peaceworks Now curator Joan Athey has published a new book, Give Peace A Chance, of never-before seen

 

YOKO & JOHN: 40th anniversary

 

photos of the John Lennon/Yoko Ono Bed-in For Peace which took place May 26 to June 1, 1969 at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. At the same time as a limited exhibition of the photos opens in LIverpool, Torontonians can see a full exhibition of the photographs May 26 to June 1 at the Bulger Gallery at Queen St. W.  The public opening is tomorrow from 5-8 pm as part of the current at Contact Festival of Photography. Meanwhile, Jerry Levitan will be the Indigo Eaton Centre tonight at 7 pm to sign copies of his new Collins Harper book, I Met The Walrus, the literary version of his Oscar-nominated doc about infiltrating the infamous Montreal Bed-in.

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QUOTABLE QUOTES: “I do not believe in an afterlife. One does not know. But even though I say I don’t believe in an afterlife, I have made funeral arrangements so that my daughter in Maine doesn’t have to worry. And I decided not to be cremated, so a little part of me must think that my body perhaps goes on. I don’t want to be dust.”

The speaker? Barbara Walters, in a candid moment with her longtime Manhattan chum Liz Smith, in Avenue magazine.

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You win some, you lose some

Joan Rivers is on QVC today – the U.S. forerunner of our Shopping Channel, as if you didn’t know – selling  jewelry from her high-profile Boardroom Collection.

“The power of television!” La Rivers marveled on Twitter this morning. “The jewelry I wore last night on Celebrity Apprentice is being worn by the models at QVC and is almost sold out!”

RIVERS: no Dice

 

After last night’s two-hour opener  — which saw Joan’s team trounce Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker‘s all-male team – Rivers received lotsa pro & con reaction to some of her team members, including brainy Playboy playmate Brande Roderick and Alpha-female poker champion Annie Duke. When some of her friends called her to say how much they hate Annie, team leader Rivers remained uncharacteristically mum. “I could lie and tell them they’re wrong,” she twittered, “but then my nose would grow back.”

And who thought potty-mouth master Andrew Dice Clay would be the first celebrity apprentice to be fired? (Besides Andrew Dice Clay, I mean?)

I’m already looking forward to the second installment next Sunday.

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FALLING UP: After more than three decades of filing daily reports, much-loved New York showbiz columnist Liz Smith is nowhere to be seen in Manhattan newspapers this week. Now a celebratory 86, Liz got sacked last week by her current tabloid address, the New York Post.

SMITH: tabloid-free

 

Still a regular blogger and TV gossipist, Liz considered herself just another newsprint casualty until reporter James Barron put her on the front page of the New York Times.  And then the phone calls and emails started pouring in.

“Liz, I think you have fallen a step up in leaving the Post,” Carol Burnett told her. Canadian crooner Michael Bublé, who had serenaded Liz at her 80^th birthday bash, took time to call her. So did Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg. “I also received a love note from the wonderful singer Josh Groban,” says Liz, “and loving support by e-mail from John Travolta, Tom Cruise and Sly Stallone.”

She also heard from Madonna, who asked, “What is New York without Liz Smith?”

Tom Brokaw called, and so did Warren Beatty. Liz also had “a riotous conversation” with Frost/Nixon star Frank Langella.  And her pal Candice Bergen sent her a cheery message “not appropriate for family reading.”

Ironically, you can catch up with Liz even more easily now, on www.wowOwow.com.

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As expected, Carrie Fisher’s comments on this year’s Oscar weekend were true to form. (“Oh my God, there’s Madonna! Is she with that Jesus guy? Were you invited to her party with Demi on the night of the telecast? Yeah, me neither.”) Good news is that Sean Penn’s Milk producer Bruce Cohen is also producing the adaptation of Carrie last book, The Best Awful, a 4-hour thing miniseries to star Meg Ryan. Meanwhile Carrie has turned out yet another bestseller almost as funny as she is. Addicted to wordplay – remember her novel Delusions Of Grandma? – this one is called Wishful Drinking, and it’s all about growing up with Debbie & Eddie in Hollywood. But more about that (lots) tomorrow.