The fourth season of Alias comes to DVD in October
Buena Vista Home Entertainment has just announced the release of Alias: The Complete Fourth Season for October 25.
The DVD box set will feature over 4 hours of bonus features, including extras such as an Interview with Jennifer Garner and a Featurette called “Meet Mia Maestro.” Also included on the box set are Deleted Scenes and Outtakes as well as other features.
“Alias: The Complete Fourth Season” is scheduled for release on October 25 at a suggested retail price of $59.99
Potter sales tallied, author dreads day it's over
LONDON (Reuters) - Bookstores around the world tallied sales of the sixth Harry Potter installment on Sunday, but after the eagerly awaited global launch over the weekend, the magic was wearing off for some.
"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" is expected to be the fastest-selling book in history, with British retailer Waterstone's forecasting that 10 million copies would have been snapped up worldwide during the first 24 hours of trade.
The early feedback was bullish. British book chain WH Smith reported first-hour sales of 13 books per second across the 391 shops it opened in the early hours of Saturday, compared with eight per second for the fifth Harry Potter adventure.
In the United States, the largest bookseller, Barnes & Noble Inc., said it sold 1.3 million copies in the first 48 hours. In the first hour, the bookstore chain said it sold 379,000 copies or 105 copies per second.
Borders Group, headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said it sold more than 850,000 copies in the first 24 hours. Meanwhile, online bookseller Amazon.com reported that customers had ordered more than 1.5 million copies.
The launch, at one minute past midnight British time on Saturday, ended months of hype and elaborate steps to protect the contents of the penultimate chapter in the seven-story saga.
Children poured into book shops across the globe, dressed as witches, wizards and other favorite Harry Potter characters.
Underlining the anticipation surrounding the book, instant reviews appeared on the Internet within hours of the release, most of them favorable.
Young readers picked up on the darkness of the plot.
"With its dramatic, violent conclusion, this book is by far the darkest and unsettling HP yet," wrote 12-year-old Indigo Ellis in the Sunday Telegraph. "Maybe it will leave a few more seven-year-olds in tears. But it also makes it the best so far."
A sizeable minority of older readers, however, was less than impressed by the 607-page work.
"It's wordy, flabby and not very well edited -- perhaps a bit less inventive than previous ones," wrote Suzi Feay, literary editor of Britain's The Independent on Sunday. "We could have done with some better gags."
AUTHOR "DREADING" DAY IT'S OVER
Author J.K. Rowling, 39, said she had already finished the final chapter of the last book in the series.
Fourteen-year-old Owen Jones, who won a competition to hold a rare interview with the writer, asked Rowling if she was looking forward to completing the Harry Potter series.
"I'm dreading it in some ways, because I do love writing the books and it's going to be a profound shock to me, even though I've known it's coming for the past 15 years," she said in a televised interview.
Eyeing the huge marketing opportunity, publishers issued two hardback versions of the book on Saturday, one for adults and another for children.
Supermarkets, Internet stores and book shops engaged in a fierce round of discounting, with one British outlet offering the book to young buyers for 4.99 pounds ($8.80), less than one third of the recommended retail price.
Rowling has been credited with winning over a new generation of young readers. British newspapers predict that her fortune, already estimated at $1 billion, was set to grow by 20 to 25 million pounds as a result of the first-day sales alone.
The plot of the latest episode was shrouded in secrecy. When a handful of copies were sold before the deadline in Canada, purchasers were ordered not to disclose its contents, and, according to media reports, even to read it.
Rowling defended the security surrounding the launch.
"I find it upsetting and disquieting that some elements are so keen on spoilers because it seems such a mean-spirited thing to do," she said. "This isn't about money or anything other than the pleasure of reading."
Some sought to put the Harry Potter phenomenon into perspective.
"Oh for a timely spell of reality," Roland White wrote in the Sunday Times.
"Let's keep things in perspective. Until Friday, the Harry Potter series had sold about 270 million copies worldwide. Which is considerably less than the one billion shifted by the late, rather unfashionable, Barbara Cartland."
Mandy Moore Set for Scrubs?
Singer/Actress Mandy Moore will having fun on the set of TV’s Scrubs next season. TV Guide says Scrubs actor, Zach Braff, who plays Dr. John 'J.D.' Dorian on the show, has managed to woo his rumored squeeze to appear on the show this fall. The show’s creator, Bill Lawrence, says "The one thing I can tell you is I think we got Mandy Moore on the show. Zach is friends with her, so he got her to come on the show for fun." While Moore hasn’t confirmed her Scrubs appearance, Lawrence says, "She said she'd do it, but nothing's ever definite in acting until someone signs on the dotted line. She's such a talented young lady, she can play whatever the hell she wants to."
Wedding Crashers
At first, it's a little disconcerting hanging out with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn at Dodger Stadium, in Los Angeles, watching a ballgame. Given what you know about them from their movies, you expect a few things. You expect Owen to act lazy, goofy and stoned-out, and Vince to be tossing off raised- eyebrow wisecracks, and girls to be gathered around, hoping for a ride home. Instead, after ordering two hot dogs, two bottles of water, two Cokes, nachos and a bag of peanuts, they turn to each other and start riffing in a Gauloise-smoking, grad-student kind of way, not a joke in sight.
"What exactly does the word 'circa' mean, do you think?" Vince says to Owen, apropos of nothing, really.
"It means 'around,' " Owen says to Vince.
"Right. But what exactly does it mean?"
"It's just a bullshit kind of thing to say to sound kind of smart. 'Presupposes' is another."
" 'Presupposes.' "
"And 'Cite your sources.' "
" 'Cite your sources.' "
Then Vince offers up an example of his own. " 'Parenthetically speaking.' "
" Oh, yeah," says Owen, savoring the phrase. "That's a good one."
Briefly, both are silent. But then, suddenly, Vince erupts with another random query: "Who was the president of the Confederacy?"
Owen: "Jefferson Davis. Who wouldn't know that?"
This is all very well and good, but it isn't exactly what you want to hear from these two, especially since they've got a movie coming out called Wedding Crashers, about a pair of pickup artists who specialize in hooking up at weddings. Skip the history lesson. Let's talk chicks. But that would be so crass, so expected. So, the conversation veers off in any number of different directions.
They both firmly deny that they, along with Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Will Ferrell and Owen's actor-brother Luke, are part of some highly organized, tightknit, power-consolidating, new- order comedy mafia, as recently postulated by the thinking heads at the New York Times.
Getting back to the game, they both say that as kids they stunk at baseball.
"I just wasn't any good," Owen says, looking a bit down. "I'm afraid of the ball."
Licking nacho goo off his fingers, Vince says, "On my team, they called me Eagle Eye. At first, I was excited, like, 'Hey, Dad, they love my eye!' And then, when I'm at bat, they tell me, 'Come on, Eagle Eye. A walk's as good as a hit.' And then I sort of figure it out: 'Hey, wait a minute. They're not cheering me on to swing but to not swing!' It wasn't exactly flattering."
Owen is about to add more of his two cents when out of the blue a dolled-up, exceedingly top-heavy brunette makes an appearance a few rows away. All talk of childhood traumas comes to an end.
Vince checks her out. "There'll be no babies starving on her shift!" he says.
Owen grins.
And suddenly all is right with the world again.
Owen Wilson is most often seen around L.A. wearing jeans and a T-shirt, chewing peppermint Altoids gum, maybe sitting on the lap of some Playboy Bunny or other, his blunted, twice-broken nose not holding him back any, flopsy- mopsy blond hair looking beach-boy-slacker perfect. On the Internet, Wilson watchers refer to him as "the Butterscotch Stallion," for the color of his hair and his presumed wild, wild ways. It's well known but bears repeating: He's a writer as well as an actor, and with senior-year University of Texas roommate Wes Anderson has penned three great movies, Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and the Oscar-nominated Royal Tenenbaums, all of them featuring the roundabout loopy dialogue that suits him so well when he speaks it. His snappy flapping lip single-handedly saved Armageddon from being totally unwatchable, and he's not a bad flyboy-hero-under-pressure, either (Behind Enemy Lines).
Vince Vaughn is staggeringly tall and pretty beefy, with a sometimes puffy-looking face and an odd penchant for wearing fatherly wingtip shoes. Whereas Wilson's laugh is honk-honk-honk, Vaughn's can be a nearly girlish squeal. His first major movie role, playing fast-talking semi- loutish Trent in 1996's Swingers, made him an instant star, though in the movies that followed (way-serious acting roles in The Locusts, the dreadful Gus Van Sant remake of Psycho, The Cell, etc.) he lost his way, only to find it again starting in 2003, in comedies like Old School and then DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story. Nowadays he's most often seen playing a softer, mellower version of his old Swingers self, a welcome sight.
In the past, Wilson has dated Sheryl Crow and, most recently, Argentine burlesque dancer Carolina Cerisola. Vaughn once dated Ashley Judd, Joey Lauren Adams and Janeane Garofalo. At the moment, however, neither is seeing anybody. They're single, out there, on the loose, a couple of ladies' men who are pleased to be free and, of course, free to be pleased, just like their characters in Wedding Crashers.
On the lush green grounds of the Getty Museum, in Los Angeles, Wilson is sitting in the shade, at a table, munching away on a Rice Krispie Treat, just hanging out and talking about some of his preferences in women. He is, he says, primarily an ass man. "It seems to me if a girl has a good ass, she has a good body," he's saying, "but I'd almost just as soon not have sex if you're going to have to wear one of those, even though it's hard to find the moral high ground when making that argument to a girl. Anyway, there are other ways."
As it turns out, this overall general attitude of his recently made the news, in a half-blind item in the New York Post, as follows: "Which blond stud, nicknamed the 'Butterscotch Stallion,' has a perverse sexual bent? He recently picked up a girl at a wedding [!], and the two went back to his hotel room. When the woman asked if he had a condom, the actor replied, 'I don't want to have sex with you, but I do want to do something else' -- and proceeded to lick her buttocks for 'over two hours.' "
OK, so Wilson's real interest in butts is allegedly as objects to be licked. It's nothing to be ashamed of, really, and Wilson probably isn't, nor is he likely to be upset by his fling's loose talk. It comes with the territory, and he's got a sunny attitude about such things.
"It's like, 'Who cares?' " he says. "I play it as it lays. OK, so I may not be the greatest lover in the world. Well, let's make that angle work. There's lots of different paths to the waterfall. You don't have to be Don Juan. And wasn't it Gloria Steinem who said that women have to be responsible for their own orgasms? Well, I take her at her word. I'll do my best, OK, but at a certain point you've got to, like, you know...."
(Excerpted from RS 979, July 28, 2005)
NOT EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS
Imagine Entertainment has set Brett Ratner to helm an untitled heist drama being planned as a screen vehicle for Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock. Scribes Adam Cooper and Bill Collage are negotiating to write the screenplay. Brian Grazer will produce.
Project will mark Imagine's second heist pic at Universal, with Spike Lee-directed drama "The Inside Man" currently in production with Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster.
New project, about a couple of blue-collar guys who aspire to pull off the perfect heist, will be played for laughs. Plot came out of a meeting between Grazer and Murphy, who've collaborated in the past on such pics as "The Nutty Professor" and "Bowfinger."
Murphy hatched the idea and expressed a desire to work with Rock, who is coming off "The Longest Yard" and voicing "Madagascar." They enlisted Ratner, who's directed buddy comedies "Rush Hour" and "Money Talks."
The scribes just worked on the U pics "Accepted" and "Once in a Lifetime," and they will pen the heist pic while Ratner directs the third installment of the "X-Men" franchise for 20th Century Fox.
Project will be overseen by Imagine's James Whitaker, Kim Roth and Chris Wade and U's Donna Langley and Dylan Clark.
Apple says iTunes music downloads top 500 million
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc. on Monday said its iTunes online music service has sold more than 500 million songs since its inception over two years ago.
While iTunes by itself is not viewed as a money maker for Apple, it has helped drive sales of the company's iPod, by far the most widely used digital music player which has helped boost profits.
GEEK PEEK
"Aeon Flux" is a hit. "X-Men 3" is not.
Or at least that's the early buzz from Comic-Con, alternatively known as nerd prom, or "Cannes for fans." The comics convention, which wrapped up this weekend in San Diego, has become a bellwether for summer blockbusters, with film studios actively wooing the nearly 100,000 attendees with star visits and sneak peeks.
"People will talk about a movie preview, go online and blog about it, and tell their friends. It's the best way to get a grassroots promotion going," says DreamWorks spokesman Olivier Moroux.
The buzz this year included:
* Charlize Theron generated the most excitement when she appeared to promote her upcoming film "Aeon Flux." Adapted from a short-lived animated series on MTV, it features Theron (in a skin-tight black catsuit) as an assassin after the head of a corrupt future government. It's due sometime in the fall.
* There's a lot of skepticism about "X-Men 3," which is slated for a spring release. Fans aren't sure the film can be turned around that fast and look as good as the beloved first two chapters. They also worry about the casting of a mutant hooker and Kelsey Grammer as a giant blue furry character, Beast. But mostly, there's grumbling over the director — Brett Ratner, director of "Rush Hour."
* But geeks are ga-ga over the film director Bryan Singer (who helmed the first two "X-Men" movies) left for: "Superman Returns." Singer has been releasing little teases of the film online, including a shot of newcomer Brandon Routh (as Clark Kent) throwing a baseball over an entire cornfield. There's also a rumor (unconfirmed) that the movie, out next summer, will include footage of the late Marlon Brando that was left out of Richard Donner's "Superman" film.
* Could "The Chronicles of Narnia" be the next "Lord of the Rings"? Disney certainly hopes so, and was teasing fans with posters and a trailer from the film. Initial verdict — could be very cool, especially because of the top-notch special effects. It's out this fall.
* Less effect-ing is "King Kong," the new film from "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson. Though fanboys love Jackson's work, the initial peeks show a monkey that has many geeks snickering. They're hoping things turn around by the holiday release.
* Also hot: A bald Natalie Portman in the comic adaptation "V for Vendetta," "Ghost Rider" with Nicolas Cage, Tim Burton's latest stop-animation film, "Corpse Bride" and a movie that won't be out until 2007, but already has split the ranks of geeks. Will "Transformers," about giant transforming robots, be brilliant, or the worst idea ever?
Eminem's Early Retirement?
The rapper is apparently ready to hang up his mike, at least according to a report Friday in his hometown newpaper, the Detroit Free Press.
Citing sources close to the platinum-selling hip-hop star, the Free Press says the real Slim Shady will play his last concert in Dublin on Sept. 17.
The report also speculates that the rapper's most recent release, Encore, will be his swan song, as he focuses on producing other rap artists.
Paul Rosenberg, Eminem's longtime manager, told the Press no final decision has been made regarding Em's future plans. However, Rosenberg did say that Encore, which topped the charts when released in November, was "certainly the cap on this part of his career." The rapper, known for his arch sense of humor, is pictured giving a final bow on the cover of the album and closes out the set with the track "Curtains Down."
If indeed Encore is his last official offering as Eminem, the 33-year-old, born Marshall Mathers III, will go out as the best-selling hip-hop artist of all time. His four solo studio albums--1999's The Slim Shady LP, 2000's The Marshall Mathers LP, 2002's The Eminem Show and Encore--have moved more than 25 million copies in the U.S. alone; he has generated sales of more than $1 billion worth of records.
He's also won nine Grammys to go along with his Best Song Oscar for the 8 Mile track "Lose Yourself."
Eminem has already established himself as a deft A&R man and producer, guiding the debut release of mega-selling Shady Records artist 50 Cent, Get Rich or Die Tryin'. Em also produced two offerings from his Detroit rap crew D-12.
As with his other artists, Em will likely make a cameo on new protégé Stat Quo's debut offering, Statlanta, due early next year on Shady/Aftermath. Quo, who has been touring on Eminem and 50 Cent's Anger Management 3 trek, was hospitalized Wednesday after a tour bus crashed en route to a Denver concert. He is said to be recovering nicely and will likely rejoin the tour Sunday outside Seattle.
Of course, even if Eminem says he's giving up the spotlight, it might be easier said than done. He need look no further than Jay-Z, who announced his retirement from the rap game late last year and has since guested on tracks with Linkin Park, OutKast, Kanye West and Memphis Bleek.
Bullock Marries Jesse James
Hollywood beauty Sandra Bullock married American TV star Jesse James on Saturday. Several hundred guests including Jamie Lee Curtis, William Shatner and Regina King attended the ceremony held at a rented Californian ranch near Santa Barbara, according the Us TV show Entertainment Tonight and People magazine. Bullock and James, who hosts Monster Garage on the Discovery Channel, arrived in a red monster truck, while many guests were unaware they were attending a wedding until the last minute - they were told it was a party to celebrate Bullock's 41st birthday. James presented his new wife with a vintage ring made by Neil Lane while Bullock made her husband a unique steel band. Premature media reports suggested the Speed actress wed James on Friday after photographs of a series marquees erected at the ranch were published. However, Bullock claimed the celebration was being held to mark her 41st birthday - even though her special day isn't until July 26 - but her claim was a smokescreen to hide her imminent nuptials from the media's attention. This is the first time Bullock has been married despite an engagement to actor Tate Donovan and a romance with Matthew McConaughey, while James, 35, has been married twice before and has three children with his ex-wives.
Music Videos May Be Coming to iPods
NEW YORK - An iPod with video? Apple Computer Inc. has been talking to several major recording companies, looking to license the sale of music videos through the popular iTunes music site, The Wall Street Journal reported in Monday's editions.
Negotiations are an indication that Apple is moving to release a device that plays video files, possibly by September, The Journal said. Analysts see the development as likely because of Apple's strength in video software, including the Quicktime movie format and video-editing software, such as Final Cut Pro and iMovie.
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.
The Journal notes that so far, commercial movie download services have not met with much success, nor have devices already on the market allowing users to transfer video files from their PCs.