Drama kick-starts 'Big Brother 6'
The summer of scheming has begun.
The sixth season of 'Big Brother' premiered last night with more drama and intrigue than ever before. If the secret partner twist, a luxury Head of Household suite and a new two-storey house wasn't enough, the producers gave the series a healthy boost by including a Head of Household/Food competition and a nomination ceremony in the premiere episode.
Rachel Plencner, the 33-year-old horse breeder, became the first Head of Household on 'Big Brother 6' by outlasting the other HouseMates in an endurance challenge. Divided into two teams, the players first competed in a Food Challenge requiring them to stand on enormous surfboards and toss coconuts through the mouth of an idol. The team of Maggie Ausburn, April Lewis, Janelle Pierzina, Howie Gordon, Sarah Hrejsa, Rachel Plencner and James Rhine bested the team of Ashlea Evans, Beau Beasley, Ivette Corredero, Jennifer Vasquez, Kaysar Ridha, Michael Donnellan and Eric Littmann in the Food Challenge. Ashlea's team are now on the infamous peanut butter and jelly diet for the week.
The Food Challenge immediately splintered the house into alliances. As the winning team competed in a stand-on-the-surf board-as-long-as-you-can endurance competition for the coveted Head of Household crown, the plotting began. Maggie's team collectively agreed not to nominate or vote each other out for the first week. Confident in their ready-made alliance, most of the competitors bowed out of the challenge leaving Howie Gordon and Rachel Plencner alone to battle it out. It wasn't much of a battle. Howie made a pact with Rachel and agreed to step down under the pretence of having to go to the bathroom at two hours and 30 minutes in.
When it came to nominations, the Surf Board Alliance held strong as practicing Muslim of Iraqi descent Kaysar Ridha and the flirtatious Ashlea Evans were put up by Rachel for eviction. Rachel claimed that she didn't have much to go on to make her decision so she nominated the two HouseGuests she had not connected with on a personal level.
Several sub-alliances were also formed when the male HouseGuests discovered there were eight female players and only six men. Eric Littmann, the 36-year-old firefighter cobbled together a male alliance which deliberately left out gay HouseGuest Beau Beasley and Howie Gordon. Eric stated that Beau belonged with the females and he just couldn't trust Howie.
The Summer of Secrets theme grew even more mysterious with host Julie Chen stating that the teams of players would not be officially revealed until next Thursday's live eviction broadcast. The 14 contestants are actually seven teams of secret partners from the outside world playing the game as covert duos.
Each team believes they are the only such partnership in the house. As an added stipulation, if one team can keep their secret and end up being the last two people in the house, the winner will win $1,000,000 with the second place finisher winning $250,000. If a twosome does not make it to the final two, the winner will win $500,000.
Showing promo footage of a female HouseGuest finding a secret passage of some sort and perhaps a spy cam, Chen also stated that one secret of the new 'Big Brother' house would change the way the game is played forever. The producers have previously stated that the house itself and the HouseGuests too have secrets that will be revealed as the season progresses.
Gang of 'Four' ready to rumble at box office
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - With such sci-fi and comic movies as "War of the Worlds" and "Batman Begins" already dominating ticket sales, the superheroes of "Fantastic Four" face a tough task at the weekend box office.
The Marvel Comics adaptation should have less trouble fending off competition from fellow rookie "Dark Water," a horror remake starring Jennifer Connelly.
20th Century Fox originally planned to open "Fantastic Four" on the Fourth of July holiday weekend and even had ballyhooed a "Fantastic 4th" in early materials for the film, but Paramount's "War of the Worlds" bullied itself onto the coveted date (eventually earning $77.6 million for the four-day weekend) and Fox backed down, shifting back a week its hopeful summer bonanza.
It remains to be seen whether the strategy will work. Conservative estimates for the film's first three days are running in the mid- to high-$30 million range.
That would be an improvement over Fox's most recent entry into the Marvel arena; the studio opened "Elektra" in January to a disappointing $14 million. Although Marvel has had tremendous success with Sony's "Spider-Man" and Fox's "X-Men" and "Daredevil" films, not all adaptations are hits, with "Elektra" and Lions Gate's "The Punisher" being prime examples.
Rated PG-13, "Four" stars Ioan Gruffudd as Mr. Fantastic, Michael Chiklis as the Thing, Jessica Alba as Invisible Woman and Chris Evans as Human Torch. With a lesser-known cast and an inexperienced action-adventure director in Tim Story ("Taxi"), Fox is fielding a number of unknown variables. Many in the industry predict that if the box office wasn't in the middle of a slump, the film likely would cross the $40 million mark.
Meanwhile, Disney bows its first entry in the Japanese horror-remake game, "Dark Water." In the wake of the success of DreamWorks' "The Ring" and "The Ring Two," along with Sony's surprise hit "The Grudge" last year, the genre still looks ripe for the picking. But industry insiders believe "Dark Water" might not measure up. Industry insiders put its opening in the $10 million-$12 million range.
From Brazilian director Walter Salles ("The Motorcycle Diaries"), the PG-13 release is an adaptation of the Japanese film from writer Koji Suzuki. Connelly stars as a woman who rents a decrepit apartment with her daughter only to find eerie happenings that threaten her sanity. John C. Reilly, Tim Roth and Dougray Scott round out the cast. "Dark Water" is tracking best among young girls.
"The Grudge" opened last year to $39 million, while "The Ring," which bowed in 2002 and also was an adaptation of a Suzuki novel, opened to $15 million before going on to gross $128 million. "The Ring Two" opened this year to $35 million but stalled at $76 million.
In limited release, ThinkFilm will bow the Sundance favorite "Murderball," a documentary about rugby-playing quadriplegics, in Los Angeles and New York.
Sony Pictures Classics will open "The Beautiful Country" in Los Angeles and New York. Roth, Bai Ling and Nick Nolte star in the R-rated film about a young man who flees Vietnam on a quest to find his American father.
McCartney Conjures 'Chaos' On 20th Solo Album
Paul McCartney returns to the one-man-band approach that marked his 1970 self-titled solo debut on "Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard," his 20th solo album since the dissolution of the Beatles. Due Sept. 13 via Capitol, the 13-track set was co-produced by McCartney with Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Beck) and is the artist's first new studio album since 2001's "Driving Rain."
"I did not want to rush this album," says McCartney, who played everything from guitar, bass and drums to flugelhorn and harmonium on the project. "I think it was worth the wait though. The music became more interesting over time and I'm really proud of what we did."
The album runs the gamut from piano-led tracks like "Promise To You Girl" and "Fine Line," to a self-described "daughter of [the Beatles'] 'Blackbird'" dubbed "Jenny Wren" to the contemplative "Riding to Vanity Fair" and "At the Mercy."
"We really made a lot of it up as we went along," McCartney says. "I'd try something and if it didn't work I'd try something else until it did. It was like making a go-cart in the backyard."
"Chaos and Creation" will be supported with a previously announced fall North American tour, which begins Sept. 16 in Miami.
Here is the track list for "Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard":
"Fine Line"
"How Kind of You"
"Jenny Wren"
"At the Mercy"
"Friends To Go"
"English Tea"
"Too Much Rain"
"A Certain Softness"
"Riding to Vanity Fair"
"Follow Me"
"Promise To You Girl"
"This Never Happened Before"
"Anyway"