Tom Cruise’s ego must be pretty wounded. Wait, scratch that. If Tom was a regular guy and had a regular ego that was capable of being wounded, it probably would be right now. Luckily Tom’s entire psychological makeup is pretty far from the norm, and his ego, pride, and self-worth are all covered in a protective layer of hardened Xenu juice, making him impervious to even the most rational criticisms of others.

Tom was the star of all of the previous Mission Impossible films. His people recently approached Paramount to see if they wanted to start working on MI4. Their response? Thanks, but no thanks. But as a courtesy they did offer to let Tom can produce it – which he contractually has the rights to do anyway.

Paramount’s response was to ask whether Cruise would like to produce the film—as in, produce but not star in. And, since he’s contractually guaranteed the right to produce such a film at this point, it wasn’t much of an offer. This tells us not to read too much into that supposed rapprochement between Cruise and Sumner Redstone. And it suggests that the fighting between Cruise and Paramount studio chief Brad Grey over the deal for M:I3 was a lot more rancorous than we knew at the time.

We don’t want to keep you in suspense: Cruise’s answer was no. Our source tells us that Paramount met this with a shrug, since in the not-too-distant future the studio expects that it will be free, contractually, to make the movie without involving Cruise’s production company. Some film executives say they think Paramount is being foolish, because they believe there is an avid audience for Cruise in this role. After all, the last one grossed about $400 million worldwide. (Maybe M:I4 could pair Cruise with Shia LaBoeuf as the young successor.) But Paramount seems to think it could relaunch the franchise with a young star and leave Cruise out of the equation.

[From Slate]

Sucks for you, Tom Cruise. I don’t know why, but it makes me deliciously happy. I hope somewhere deep in his subconscious, Tom is keeping a list of all his epic fails.

Slate also noticed that United Artists – the film studio which Cruise now heads up – seems to have altered images of German hero Claus von Stauffenberg to make him look more like Tom Cruise. Tom plays von Stauffenberg in the upcoming film Valkyrie.

The first photo set is the side-by-side version that United Artists released. They look pretty similar, no?

This next set adds an AP photo of von Stauffenberg (left).

In the last photo, one of Slate’s designers overlaid the AP photo of von Stauffenberg with the version released by United Artists – then put THAT photo next to their photo of Tom Cruise.

Jim Festante, a Slate designer, wrote: “Look @ the nose, mouth, and chin. Definite (but slight) altering. Also, the head’s width is squeezed slightly.” And then designer Holly Allen added this: “To me, the nose looks different and definitely the eyebrows. Cheekbones and angle of the chin, too.” Finally, as a coup de grace, designer Jacob Berlow overlaid the AP photo of von Stauffenberg with the United Artists version. Looks like someone tweaked the photo.

[From Slate]

Looks like someone at United Artists must not be feeling so confident about Valkyrie if they went to so much effort to make Tom Cruise appear more legitimate.

I often think that I don’t really like Anne Hathaway. Probably because she has such a shady boyfriend. Though she often seems nice, she also seems a little lacking in personality. Though she could just APPEAR that way because she’s one of the few Hollywood starlets that doesn’t go out, get wasted, and act like a fool every other night. So by comparison, she’s a lot more sedate. But I can’t help but like anyone who compares making out with Steve Carell to “the yummiest lollipop.”

Hathaway is making the rounds on the media circuit, promoting her upcoming film Get Smart with Carell and Duane “The Rock” Johnson. She was asked what it was like filming the movie almost entirely with men – and how she felt about getting intimate with Carell.

Before the movie ends, the two of them become drawn to each other emotionally and physically. That leads to the inevitable question: What was it like to “make out” with Carell?

“Making out with him is like the yummiest lollipop,” says Hathaway who is a big fan of Carell’s TV series, The Office. “You are so full of it,” protests Carell, who’s sitting next to her. “Dipped in sunshine!” Hathaway continues. “Stop it!” insists Carell, who’s now starting to break up. “And wrapped around in a masculine wrapper,” she adds serenely. “That’s the only way I can think to describe it.”

Actually, Hathaway has more to say about these amorous scenes. It seems she wasn’t at all well at the time. “OK, so you’ve got to hear this,” she chortles. It seems a certain contact lens solution had ended up giving her conjunctivitis.

“And I had a sinus infection at the same time, so I had to go up to Steve — my eye is red, puffy and dripping green, I am just snotty — and I’m like, ‘Come here!’ The worst thing was we didn’t know I had conjunctivitis at the time, so I had to call our producer, Alex Gartner, that night and say, ‘You might want to let Steve know I had pink eye and my tears kind of got in my mouth, so he might want to worry about that.’”

[From Canada.com]

Wow, that’s incredibly gross. As flattering as Hathaway is about making out with Carell, I can’t help but doubt that he felt the same about her. What with the snot and the pink eye and all. Hathaway claims that the final version of the make out scene came out “very glamorous.” They must have some really good editors at their studio.

Here’s Steve Carell, Brad Bird and Anne Hathaway at the Academy Awards on February 24th. Images thanks to WENN.

Lindsay Lohan’s epically terrible film I Know Who Killed Me won a record 8 Razzies, which I’m pretty sure makes it legally the worst film of all time. That’s right, it’s so bad you actually have to invoke the law to explain how awful it is.

Starz – one of those premium movie channels (the sucky kind that makes HBO look really, really good) – must have gotten a pretty good deal on the rights to the film. Which I’m guessing means the studio is actually paying Starz to air it. Needing some kind of advertising – and sensing that the also needed to justify airing such unmitigated crap – Starz came up with a novel approach to market the film to its subscribers.

In a relatively novel approach to movie marketing, cable TV premium film channel Starz has launched a promotion for its airing of Lindsay Lohan’s box office bomb, “I Know Who Killed Me,” by urging people to tune in not because it is good, but because the movie is so bad!

… Starz’s June 14 airing of “I Know Who Killed Me,” tells of twin girls stalked by a serial killer. Lohan plays both twins. The movie not only tanked at box offices ($7.5 million U.S.), it was killed by critics (only 8 pct had good things to say, according to review aggregator rottentomatoes.com).

With its promotional tongue firmly planted in its TV cheek, Starz trumpets the bad reviews in its ad promoting the movie. “A disaster that exerts a perverse fascination,” Variety wrote in its review last year, as it appears on the Starz ad.

While promoting bad movies is rare, it is not unheard of. A few years back, Starz did the same thing for 2003’s ”Gigli,” another poorly reviewed film that tanked at box offices. It starred Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. “It did extraordinarily well” for Starz, said the spokesman, although he did not have exact viewer figures. “More people watched on Starz than probably went to the theaters to see it.”

[From Reuters via Gossip Rocks]

Lohan was so terrible in the film that she was actually nominated for two Razzies for her acting – one for each twin she played. I’m sure what applied to Gigli will apply to I Know Who Killed Me. If 14 Starz viewers just leave the television on while they clean the house, that’ll be more people than actually sat through it in the theaters. I was going to try to watch it, just to see why it was so terrible. But then my illegal download failed, and I realized I’d been saved by some cosmic force. Though I commend any of you who try.

Here are stills from the film, courtesy of Allmoviephoto.

Heath Ledger’s family will reportedly travel from Australia to represent the late actor at the opening of his film, “The Dark Knight,” in which he portrayed notorious comic book villain The Joker. The film is one of the most highly anticipated movies of the summer blockbuster season and many believe would have catapulted Ledger to Tom Cruise/Will Smith heights of fame had he lived.

Word is that Heath Ledger’s family will travel from Australia to attend the world premiere of “The Dark Knight,” the late actor’s final completed film, in New York in late June. (Update: buzz is the NY premiere will be on July 15) The film has been dedicated to Ledger by the director, Christopher Nolan, and will have a memoriam to the actor at the end.

In this latest installment of “Batman,” Ledger plays the Joker with a terrifyingly psychotic performance that, to me, surpasses Jack Nicholsen’s in large part because Jack was basically doing Jack wearing clown makeup (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

But Heath’s creepy performance (with garish melted makeup like that of “The Crow,” played by Brandon Lee, who also died needlessly young) seems to have summoned up demons no one could have imagined accessible to him, particularly after his seeemingly effortless Oscar-nominated role as Ennis del Mar, the emotionally repressed, painfully shy and inarticulate cowboy in “Brokeback Mountain.” There’s already rumors floating around Hollywood that his “Dark Knight” role will earn Ledger some posthumous supporting actor nods at the 2009 Oscar, Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild awards.

[From the LA Times]

Personally, I cannot wait to see this film. The teasers look amazing, and the first film in this new franchise was great. I’d feel that way about the film whether or not Ledger had survived. This must be a very bittersweet occasion for his family, however. I can understand why they’d want to come out and support his film, but at the same time, they must get sick of all the questions and cameras pointing at them.

Kim Ledger is shown making a statement to the press before Heath’s memorial service on 2/8/08, thanks to Splash.

Liv Tyler and Ed Norton are the stars of the new Incredible Hulk movie, the latest Marvel Comic film adaptation. While an Incredible Hulk film came out just five years ago, directed by Ang Lee in 2005, it received mixed reviews although it was a box office hit. Critics are raving about the new action-packed Incredible Hulk film, and say it’s definitely entertaining and worth your money.

Norton plays scientist Bruce Banner who desperately seeks a cure for the affliction that turns him into a bulky green smashing creature whenever he gets angry. Liv Tyler is his love interest and William Hurt plays her father, General Thunderbolt Ross, who is also out to get Banner. Tim Routh is his nemesis, “The Abomination.”

In an interview with ET on the red carpet, Tyler described herself as a geek and says she has to work not to slouch. She said she doesn’t have a full length mirror at the apartment where she’s staying and couldn’t properly practice her red carpet pose. Both Tyler and Ed Norton said they were supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama when asked about it and expressed enthusiasm for his nomination. Marvel Comics head Stan Lee said there’s a Captain America movie coming up but that he’s not sure who will play the lead, which is rumored to be Matthew McConaughey.

I’m not too fond of Tyler’s one-shoulder short silk shift dress with the arm ruffle - it looks like something Gwyneth Paltrow would wear, especially with those shoes - but it’s Liv Tyler and she’s gorgeous and manages to pull off the look.

Here’s the trailer for The Incredible Hulk, which is out in the US on June 13.

Shown in order are Liv Tyler, Ed Norton, Julie Benz (you may know her as the girlfriend on “Dexter”), Jon Favreau, William Hurt, Tim Routh and family, and Natassia Malthe. Thanks to PRPhotos for these pictures.

The new trailer has come out for Burn After Reading, an upcoming comedy which counts such luminaries as Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, John Malkovich, and Frances McDormand among the cast. It’s the story of a gym employee, played by Pitt, who finds a CD with the memoir of a CIA agent, Malkovich. McDormand is Pitt’s sidekick and friend from the gym where they work, and they try to blackmail Malkovich, with of course hilarious results. It’s directed and written by the Coen brothers, who are responsible for such great films as The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou, and Intolerable Cruelty. It looks funny as anything and I can’t wait to see this film. It’s due out in the US on September 12, and in some European countries in October.

The Chinese now have one small bit of light in their otherwise dark world right now: they will no longer have to watch Sharon Stone films. Okay technically they will no longer be able to watch Sharon Stone films – but really, if you’ve ever tried to sit through one of her fine performances, you realize it’s not something any rational person would choose to do. One of China’s largest movie theater chains has banned her films, refusing to show them after her insensitive comments implying the devastating Chinese earthquakes were the result of bad karma.

The 50-year-old actress suggested last week that the devastating May 12 earthquake in China could have been the result of bad karma over the government’s treatment of Tibet. That prompted the founder of one of China’s biggest cinema chains to say his company would not show her films in his theaters, according to a story in The Hollywood Reporter.

Ng See-Yuen, founder of the UME Cineplex chain and the chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers, called Stone’s comments “inappropriate”. UME has branches in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Hangzhou and Guangzhou, China’s biggest urban movie markets.

During the brief interview, which has also surfaced on YouTube, Stone also said she cried when she received a letter from the Tibetan Foundation asking her to help quake victims. “They wanted to go and be helpful, and that made me cry,” she said. “It was a big lesson to me that sometimes you have to learn to put your head down and be of service even to people who aren’t nice to you.”

“To Sharon Stone’s comment, it’s unlikely that we will respond,” said a woman who answered the phone at the Foreign Ministry in Beijing. She refused to give her name or position. After-hours phone calls and email to a representative for Stone were not immediately returned Tuesday night.

[From the Daily Mail]

I’m not quite sure how to interpret the second part of Stone’s comments, where she mentions getting a letter from the Tibetan Foundation. That part wasn’t quoted in any of the articles that came out in the last few days. You could argue that she’s praising the Tibetans and nothing more, or you could argue that it slightly mitigates the inflammatory nature of the first part of her comments (while still not making them appropriate). But it still was an incredibly unwise and thoughtless thing to say.

The Internet Movie Database shows that Stone has five movies coming out within the next two years. Generally speaking, movies recoup their costs in the U.S. and make their profits overseas. The Chinese market is very important – in fact Stone was a guest at the Shanghai International Film Festival last year. It makes you think she must not have that big a problem with the Chinese treatment of Tibet, since she’s willing to chill with them when it furthers her career. Regardless, if other theaters follow the lead of UME Cineplex as expected, it could dramatically affect her future film’s profits.

Thank you to all the thoughtful readers who commented on Celebitchy’s Chinese Earthquake relief post, and helped us reach our donation goal.

Here’s Sharon Stone at the Che premiere at Cannes on May 21st. Images thanks to PR Photos.

The Sex and The City US premiere was held at New York’s Radio City Music Hall last night. After premiering the film in London, then in Berlin, the gang finally headed to the states for the much-anticipated opening. US Weekly reports that dressed fans screamed and swarmed the premiere, many of whom had arrived early in the morning trying to get a seat.

Sarah Jessica Parker said “The best part about making the movie was being back with the women on the set all day every day, and the best part about tonight is being here with you and being with the fans.”

Pictured, in order, at the premiere are Sarah Jessica parker wearing “a silver Nina Ricci bustier gown,” Cynthia Nixon spot-on in flowing white Narciso Rodriguez, Kim Cattrall in Vivienne Westwood, and Kirsten Davis in Donna Karan. Also shown are Matthew Broderick, Darren Star (with Kirsten Davis), Jennifer Hudson, Ashley Olsen looking really cute here, Molly Sims, Mary J Blige, David Eigenberg aka “Steve,” Jason Lewis, Fergie, Chris Noth, ‘Lil Kim, Willie Garson, and Mario Cantone. Also shown are after party pictures at Momo, which include Lindsay Lohan’s girlfriend Samantha Ronson, who was probably DJing and looked the same as she always does. Thanks to WENN for these photos.

Amy Winehouse’s longtime friend and producer, Mark Ronson, told reporters that she was in no shape to record the soundtrack for the upcoming James Bond film Quantum of Solace. However Winehouse is claiming that she’s got enough material – good material – to fill up the entire soundtrack. But 007 film bosses still aren’t sure if they want her tunes.

Fiery Amy Winehouse last night told James Bond film bosses to “put up or shut up”. She has been shaken and stirred by claims she has abandoned plans to record the theme tune for new 007 blockbuster Quantum Of Solace. Speaking exclusively to the Daily Star Sunday, the troubled singer said she was delighted with the result of her recording efforts – believed to be without top producer Mark Ronson. And, barely disguising her annoyance at 007’s movie bosses, she said it was now “up to them” if they want the sure-fire hit songs or not.

It is also believed Bond bosses fear using her music in case it detracts from the movie, even though star Daniel Craig recently said: “It would be amazing if she could.” Amy, 24, whose family say is now on the road to recovery, said: “I’ve done loads of Bond songs, there are loads of good ones I’m really happy with. I don’t know what is wrong with them or what the problem is, to be honest. It’s there, ready and done, and it’s up to them if they want it or not.”

Pals say the main track up for consideration is a big Shirley Bassey 60s-type number. Record company bosses are pleased with the “surefire hit”. But Bond chiefs are still dithering. And a source said: “It’s at a delicate stage. Amy is still seen as damaged goods – she will have to prove she’s on the road to recovery before she’s signed up.”

[From the Daily Star]

Several media outlets are reporting that Beyonce has already been tapped to replace Winehouse as the film’s songstress. Though frankly I think her music could detract from the film much more than Amy’s.

I find it curious that the “Bond chiefs” are saying Amy would have to “prove she’s on the road to recovery” to sing the film’s songs. It’d be one thing if they had yet to be recorded, and thus studio bosses were afraid she couldn’t follow through. But Winehouse is claiming they’re already done. So unless the studio doesn’t like the music, I can’t see what the problem is.

I guess it’s possible the studio might want Winehouse to perform a few songs from the soundtrack to promote the film. That could be problematic. Either way, it could only help Amy to be on the “road to recovery” as they put it. She sounds pretty annoyed with them, and it sounds like it’s quite likely her songs will never see the light of day… or the darkness of a movie theater.

Here’s Amy, answering her door to sign autographs barefoot and wearing only a bra on Friday. Images thanks to WENN.

Michelle Williams, 27, made her first red carpet appearance since her daughter’s father, Heath Ledger, died of a prescription drug interaction on January 22. People Magazine reports that she made a last-minute decision to fly to Cannes to promote her film, Wendy and Lucy. She wore “vintage Chanel Haute Couture” to the premiere of the film last night, and appeared refreshed and happy at a photocall with her co-stars today.

“It was decided on Monday night that she could come to Cannes, and she got on the next plane to arrive just in time to get dressed and come to our premiere,” said a rep for Wendy and Lucy. “She came in and had a long nap and then came to the screening.”

Williams, 27, was radiant in a vintage Chanel Haute Couture dress. She will remain in Cannes at least through Friday night to promote another festival movie in which she appears, Synecdoche, New York, before flying back to the United States to resume filming a Martin Scorsese movie in Boston.

[From People]

Williams is the star of the film Wendy and Lucy, which IMDB describes as “a narrative feature about woman whose life is derailed en route to a potentially lucrative summer job. When her car breaks down, and her dog is taken to the pound, the thin fabric of her financial situation comes apart, and she is lead through a series of increasingly dire economic decisions.” Williams’ performance has been well reviewed. Cinematical notes that she didn’t attend the screening for the film, and that it is thought that she attended the screening for Adoration next door.

I love her hair like that, it’s lovely in soft controlled waves. She looks beautiful and relaxed, and this seems like a good time for her to resume her career and start making public appearances again.

Also shown at the photocall are Samantha Morton, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener. Thanks to WENN.