We were warned a few months ago that Katy Perry was being courted by Hollywood producers as an instant movie star simply because she’s so pretty. Now an actual project is reportedly being lined up with quirky Katy in a featured role as the girlfriend/common-law wife of late Queen singer Freddie Mercury, who will be played by stunt-butt-for-hire, Sacha Baron Cohen. Katy is said to be thrilled to be considered for the role of Mary Austin because she idolizes Freddie, which doesn’t mean that she’s a talented actress of course or that she has the chops to pull of playing Freddie’s wife. Still, Katy thinks she can do it, and if she’s already been shortlisted, that means someone has faith in her ability, I guess. If you’ll remember, Katy dressed up as Freddie for Halloween in 2008.

MTV has a photo of Mary Austin with Freddie, and I really don’t see the purported resemblance between Katy and Mary at all. But hey, there’s always makeup. Here’s the details:

Katy Perry is reportedly being lined up to play Queen legend Freddie Mercury’s girlfriend in a new film.

According to The Mirror, K-Pez is being considered for the role of Mary Austin and if successful, will star alongside funnyman Sacha Baron Cohen who is set to portray Freddie.

Baron Cohen is said to be already working with remaining Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor on the biopic – which is apparently due to start filming next year.

A pal of Perry’s is quoted by the newspaper as saying that the Teenage Dream hitmaker would be thrilled to play Austin, adding: “Katy would love to be in the film as she is such a huge fan. Katy has a similar look to Mary and would be a brilliant foil to Sacha.”

Mercury famously dated Mary in the 1970′s for six years before admitting that he was bisexual, causing the couple to separate.

Freddie later claimed that despite having several male partners, he remained close to Austin calling her his “common-law” wife.

Before his death in 1991 after a battle with HIV, Freddie said: “All my lovers asked me why they couldn’t replace Mary. But it’s simply ­impossible.”

Katy has previously praised Mercury, describing him as her ‘musical idol’, while also dressing up as the iconic singer at her birthday party in 2008.

The film about Freddie is being produced by Academy Award winner Graham King, with the plot focusing on Mercury’s rise to fame, his time in Queen and the band’s historic Live Aid performance in 1985.

[From MTV]

This sounds like a disaster in the making because Katy has a little experience in voice work (The Smurfs) and will play herself in an upcoming 3-D concert movie, but when she tries to actually act — such as during her “Part of Me” video where she joins the Marines — she comes off looking ridiculous. But hey, if investors want to throw their money her way, I guess that’s ultimately their problem. Poor Freddie Mercury.

Here’s a few photos of Katy showing off a butt cheek as she stumbled out of a London nightclub over the weekend. Pure class, that one.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet and WENN

Shall we discuss what went down on E!’s red carpet last night? No, I’m not talking about how ABC allegedly shut down everybody’s live coverage from the red carpet, thus destroying a rather innocent pleasure and inadvertently emphasizing how lacking and budget ABC’s own red carpet coverage was. No, I’m talking about Sacha Baron Cohen’s stunt with Ryan Seacrest. The back-and-forth between the Academy and Cohen went on all week, and finally the Academy gave “The Dictator” his Oscar tickets. So Sacha arrived in character, of course. And E! was one of his first stops. He was holding an urn with what he claimed were the ashes of Kim Jong Il. And the stunt happened (I’m including two videos, in case one gets pulled!):

Now, was this a funny, memorable moment? Was it planned? I don’t know. I don’t think it was planned on Ryan’s part. I have to give ol’ Dame Seacrest some credit – he seemed pissed off, but he also kept his professional face on. I ended up feeling bad for him, sort of. But, as far as stunts go, getting ashes/Bisquick on your fancy suit isn’t that terrible. I don’t know… blah.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest film, The Dictator, is set for release in May, and like many celebrities with a film to shill, Sacha accepted an invitation to this year’s Oscars. It helps that he’s an Oscar-nominated writer (for Borat) and that he has a supporting part in one of this year’s Best Picture nominees, Hugo. When Sacha appeared at the Oscars when a few years ago, when he was nominated as a screenwriter, he appeared as himself – he wore a tux, and he had his actress girlfriend, Isla Fisher, on his arm. But for this year’s appearance, Cohen was going to do something different – he was going to go to the Oscars dressed up as “The Dictator,” the character of General Aladeen that he created.

Sacha Baron Cohen, the master of buffoon antics, seems to be a good job of stirring up publicity for his upcoming film “The Dictator,” using the Oscars as a peg. Not that “The Dictator” is a likely nominee for the 2013 awards. But Cohen, who did appear in this year’s best picture nominee “Hugo,” had been expected to attend the show Sunday as part of that film’s contingent.

Word started going around Tuesday, though, that Cohen would walk the red carpet disguised as General Aladeen, his character from “The Dictator.”

While red-carpet reporters are always keen to ask stars about their upcoming projects, the academy frowns on the idea of promoting future movies during the Oscars; for instance, presenters of awards are never introduced as “star of the upcoming film…. ”

Academy of Motion Pictures President Tom Sherak told The Times that he called Paramount Pictures, the studio distributing “The Dictator” (as well as “Hugo”), and told them “it’s a bad thing to do” because it would make a mockery of the red carpet.

Paramount representatives declined to comment on the matter. But sources suggested that the studio may be claiming it is unable to control the star of its big summer release, in which Cohen plays a political strongman working to ensure that democracy never comes to his oppressed nation.

Reports circulated Wednesday afternoon that the academy had pulled Cohen’s tickets for the Oscars, but an academy spokeswoman said no decision on the matter had been made and they were trying to learn more about Cohen’s intentions.

[From The LA Times]

Are you kidding me? While I tend to think Sacha’s antics/character-driven-comedy-bits are often played out, the Academy needs to get a grip. Let’s face it – pretty much every presenter at the Oscars will be there because they’re promoting a future project. Just because Sacha’s shill is honest and upfront, the Academy is going to get their panties in a bunch? What are they afraid of? That the red carpet might be interesting? That something funny and unexpected might happen? Remember – the Academy had to eat it when Trey Parker and Matt Stone wore dresses the year that the South Park movie was nominated for Best Song. The Academy doesn’t want anything like that happening this year! Heaven forbid. *clutches pearls*

Anyway, Page Six spoke to one the reps for the Oscar show last night, and the source said that Sacha hasn’t been banned, but the Academy is trying to pressure him into not pulling the stunt – “We don’t feel it’s appropriate to use our Oscar red carpet as a venue for a movie promotional stunt.” BITCHES PLEASE.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

The following statements could sound terribly sexist, but it’s not intended that way in any shape or form. You see, I am terribly disappointed in Megan Fox. Admittedly, part of this sentiment could stem from the fact that I caught Passion Play on Netflix last weekend. In that film (which came after the Transformers movies and was intended to prove her range), she was completely awful while portraying an innocent, baby-voiced angel/bird-woman who inexplicably made love to Mickey Rourke’s trumpet player before gangster Bill Murray busted and and broke up the hasty love affair. Truly, all parties involved should be ashamed.

Still, Fox has much more to lose at this point in her career than either Murray or Rourke, and I am starting to rethink my prior endorsement of Fox in the face of Michael Bay-Gate. Admittely, I had moderately high hopes when she signed on for a cameo in Sacha Baron Cohen’s The Dictator. Now, the trailer for that movie has arrived; and well, the film itself looks overwrought in terms of satirical humor that’s well past its due date. No surprise there. However, in terms of Megan Fox’s attempts to prove her acting mettle, she has spectacularly failed:

Honestly, this film could’ve been much more, and it could just be a case of bad editing as far as what the trailer presents the movie itself to be. To be fair, The Dictator will probably fare as well as Bruno, which made made about half globally as Borat did, at the box office. In other words, Sacha Baron Cohen will be fine. He’s not going to be the permanent fixture that Borat would have projected, but he’s got a career etched in virtual stone and has influenced a terrible Ben Affleck hairdo to boot.

Now as to Megan Fox? She’s worked terribly hard in recent months to repair her image with the general public. She spent Veterans Day tending to actual veterans, erased that dreadful Marilyn tattoo, and gained some weight after giving up veganism. Then, she squanders all of said goodwill by bedding Cohen’s dictator and making a Kardashian joke — “What’s this? A ruby? Is that a joke? What am I, a Kardashian?” — about necessarily accepting jewels after sex.

Okay, so it’s a mildly funny joke. Still, Megan’s agent could’ve scored her a better post-Bay gig than that, right?

Photos courtesy of WENN and AllMoviePhoto

Let me state for the record that, until recently, I hadn’t taken Megan Fox’s side on, well, any issue whatsoever; and I will continue to think she was pretty injudicious to badmouth director Michael Bay in public and expect that she was such an indispensible asset to the Transformers franchise that she’d be able to keep her job. Still, I do feel a rather significant amount of pity for her — which began when Shia LeBeouf starting talking about Megan’s supposed “Spice Girl” brand of feminism — for the way she’s been treated during the promotional tour for Transformers: Dark of the Moon. In just the past couple of days, Bay has made things even worse by using Fox’s name (not just once but
twice) to promote the new movie even though she’s not even in it, which is pretty wrong no matter how you look at it. At the moment (or at least until Bay gives his next interview), however, Fox can look away from her troubles of the recent past, for she’s been signed to the latest Sacha Baron Cohen film:

Megan Fox and John C. Reilly are making cameos in Paramount’s The Dictator, the latest Sacha Baron Cohen comedy currently in production in New York with Borat director Larry Charles at the helm.

The movie has been described as “the heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed.” Cohen is said to play dual roles of a goat herder and a deposed foreign ruler who gets lost in the U.S.

Anna Faris, Ben Kingsley and Jason Mantzoukas are also in the movie, set for release May 11, 2012.

The Fox and Reilly roles are being kept under wraps.

For Fox, the part continues her entry into the comedy world. The Transformers star, who is the only actress in the top 20 of Facebook fan pages with more than 26 million followers, has made a shift away from the action world, recently shooting the ensemble comedic drama Friends With Kids, directed by Jennifer Westfelt and starring Kristen Wiig and Adam Scott, and booking a role in Judd Apatow’s latest project, This Is Forty, which shoots this summer.

[From Hollywood Reporter]

In other words, let’s not count Megan Fox out of the Hollywood spectrum just yet. Is it likely that she’ll be around for more than another year or two? Nope, but at the same time, it’s just gotta irritate Bay (and, presumably, Steven Spielberg as well) that Fox is still kicking around town. For that pleasure, it’s worth the price of admission to at least one of Fox’s upcoming movies, right? Maybe.

In related news, here’s a photo of Cohen (looking slightly hot, no?) on the New York City set of The Dictator.

And here’s the movie’s first official promo photo of Cohen in full regalia.

In conclusion, Megan Fox will always be the girl who foolishly got herself fired from Transformers: Dark of the Moon, but at least Megan can take comfort in the fact that Michael Bay always looks like a damn fool every time he smiles.

Photos courtesy of WENN; The Dictator promo photo courtesy of HuffPo

I remember reading that Isla Fisher, Sacha Baron Cohen’s wife, was pregnant with the couple’s second child, but it kind of slipped my mind because we don’t hear much about the two of them. There was some minor drama a couple of years ago about whether they would ever get married, which they did in March after Isla reportedly converted to Judiasm. It took eight years and two kids together before they made it legal. Apart from that we rarely hear about them although there are the occasional paparazzi photos of Isla out with their daughter.

Now we have some candids of Sacha, Isla, their oldest child Olive, two and a half, and a baby carriage presumably carrying their new arrival. They looked pissed as hell to be photographed out together in the photos we’ve seen. (Which we don’t have access to, you can see a photo on Celebrity Baby Scoop and another one on E! Online and People has a third.) They seem to be very protective of their family, and I guess I don’t blame them. They didn’t confirm Isla’s pregnancy and they’ve refused to confirm the new baby or even the gender. Is this a bitchy move or something they should be respected for?

Who’s that strolling in London Friday with Sacha Baron Cohen, Isla Fisher and 2½-year-old daughter Olive?

It seems as though the trio has welcomed the latest addition to their family, although a rep for the actress says they likely won’t be commenting on the birth of the new baby.

The intensely private pair prefer it that way, having kept quiet about the impending arrival of their second child as well as their March nuptials.

We last spotted Fisher, 34, and Olive out and about in Los Angeles at the end of May, but the actress and husband Baron Cohen, 38, have managed to stay undercover since!

[From People]

It’s my feeling that since they’re famous, they each make a ton of money in movies and are public figures, the least they can do is confirm the birth and sex of the baby. They don’t have to tell us his or her name if they want to keep it private. I like how Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber handle the press. They’re low key and try not to draw attention to themselves but they acknowledge their kids and will talk about them occasionally. Maybe the paparazzo is screaming rude stuff to the Cohens, though, which would explain their bad moods along with their unwillingness to open themselves and their family up to scrutiny. I’m not in that position so it’s hard to tell.

Despite the fact that Sacha can probably no longer work his character-driven shtick on the public due to how famous and recognizable he is, he’s still earning a ton of money. We heard this spring that his agency struck a huge deal for him with Paramount for an upcoming comedy in which he’ll play two roles “a goat herder and a deposed foreign dictator who gets lost in the United States.” According to Deadline Hollywood, Cohen stands to make $30 – $80 million on the deal, which offers him a significant piece of the film’s gross. He didn’t sell out his family to get there though, that’s for sure.

Isla is shown pregnant on 5/10/10 and 4/22/10. Sacha Baron Cohen is shown at LAX on 7/30/09. Credit: WENN.com

No sooner did Isla Fisher and Sacha Baron Cohen walk down the aisle in Paris, then Isla shows up with something looking like a baby bump. Their “surprise” elopement happened about a month ago – and Isla looks to be carrying a second-trimester bump (if not third). Sacha and Isla have been together for eight years, and they already have a a 2-year-old, daughter Olive (in these photos with Isla). Here’s more from Fame Pictures:

It seems Isla Fisher has given up in hiding her apparent baby belly despite the fact that neither she nor her husband Sacha Baron Cohen have made an official announcement yet. The actress took a stroll hand in hand with her daughter Olive Cohen in Los Angeles, CA on April 20, 2010 wearing a shirt that showed off how prominent her belly had really become! It’s a wonder when the couple will officially announce the happy news!

[From Fame Pictures]

This news has been around for a few days, but these are the first photos we’ve had access to, that’s why I’m doing the story. Plus, I’m rather startled to see just how far along Isla is. She must have even had a considerable “bump” when she married Sacha in Paris. Ah, shotgun weddings. At least she got him down the aisle, right? And I think that was her goal in the end.

But you know what these photos really make me think of? Isla’s more talented doppelganger, Amy Adams! Amy is pregnant too, and it seems like she’s been gestating forever. She should be ready to give birth any minutes now, shouldn’t she? Ah, Amy. She’s my real favorite.

By the way, I mean the following images to be a representation of how I think Isla got knocked up:

It finally happened! Sacha Baron Cohen and Isla Fisher were finally married in Paris over the weekend after a six-year engagement! Let me repeat: six-year engagement! And they were together for 2 years before that. That’s a total of eight years together! I didn’t think he was ever going to marry her. He made her convert to Judaism (or his mother made her convert, and Sacha‘s such a mama‘s boy that he does what mommy tells him), they had a daughter together (Olive, who is 2 years old), and he was still keeping Isla waiting. Apparently, their wedding ceremony was very low-key, and very few people were invited, but they notified their friends via e-mail. What the hell?

Borat punkster Sacha Baron Cohen and his fiancé Isla Fisher have married in an intimate Paris ceremony.

British comedian Sacha, 38, wed the Australian actress in a small Jewish ceremony last Monday, according to Aussie magazine Woman’s Day.

Isla, 34, confirmed the good news in an email to friends: “We did it — we’re married! It was the absolute best day of my life and in so many beautiful moments I missed you all so much. I thought of you as everything was happening, but Sacha and I wanted no fuss — just us!”

Sacha and Isla, who have a two-year-old daughter, Olive, have been engaged for six years. They met at a party in Sydney in 2002.

[From OK! Magazine]

Well, congratulations to Sacha and Isla. More to Isla, because she finally at long last got that sh-t nailed down, and this is obviously a man who needs a woman with a lot of patience. Well, he got her! Am I being too harsh? Obviously, they love each other and support each other, and I think they probably had other priorities, especially after Isla gave birth to Olive. And yet… Isla comes across as a girl who likes “tradition” and I’ve always suspected she wanted to be married before she gave birth. It doesn’t really matter to me, I’m saying it mattered to her. But obviously, other things mattered a lot more to Sacha (and his mom). Well, she converted and now everything’s settled. Mazel Tov!

Sacha and Isla at various events in 2007. Credit: WENN.

Remember when Sacha Baron Cohen managed to land right in Eminem’s lap at the MTV movie awards? Cohen was in character as Austrian Bruno at the time, and he flew through the air on cables dressed as an angel. He ended up flipping over and lowering onto Eminem’s seat, his bare ass cheeks and crotch right in Eminem’s face. Em left all pissed off, just as could be expected, and then later tried to play it off like he knew about the stunt ahead of time. Well, Oscar night producers wanted to avoid a similar scenario with Director James Cameron. Cohen had a whole skit planned out with Ben Stiller in which he would have been dressed like a female Navii from Avatar who accused Cameron of getting her pregnant with his love child. Producers were afraid of offending Cameron and decided to scrap it, though. Cohen’s rep said that the segment was canned due to “creative differences,” but insiders say that an Oscar Producer who worked with Cameron realized that the guy didn’t have the sense of humor needed to graciously accept that he was being mocked.

An insider familiar with the Oscar telecast tells Vulture that an Avatar sketch planned by Baron Cohen and Ben Stiller was nixed yesterday by show producer Bill Mechanic, who worried that Cameron would be so offended by it that he might even walk out of the Oscar broadcast on live TV.
So what skit could possibly so incense the HMFIC?

Our insider informs us that Baron Cohen planned to appear onstage as a blue-skinned, female Na’vi, with Stiller translating “her” interplanetary speech. As the skit went on, though, it would become clear that Stiller wasn’t translating properly, because Cohen would grow ever more upset. At its climax, an infuriated Baron Cohen would pull open “her” evening gown to reveal that s/he was pregnant, knocked up with Cameron’s love child, and would go on to confront her baby daddy as if s/he were on Jerry Springer.

Mechanic, now both a producer of motion pictures and of this year’s Oscar telecast, was head of Twentieth Century Fox when Cameron’s Titanic famously went massively over budget and over schedule, so he’s well acquainted with Cameron’s sense of humor — or lack of it. “Let’s just say that Cameron isn’t known to be, shall we say, ‘self-deprecating,’” explained one insider familiar with the decision to cut the sketch.

Academy spokesperson Toni Thompson would only confirm that Baron Cohen was no longer presenting, but Baron Cohen’s spokesman, Matt Labov, tells Vulture that “I hate to use the term, because it’s so ubiquitous, but there were ‘creative differences.’ Nothing acrimonious, but both sides felt that since they couldn’t agree, [Cohen] might as well remain in London.” (Calls to Mechanic’s office were not returned at deadline.)

[From NYMag via WeSmirch]

That’s a shame as it would have added some obnoxious levity to the show. I have to say that last year wasn’t half bad, though, and that attempts to get the Oscars to lighten up and be more entertaining really worked. The skits were fun and I loved that they brought the stage and the audience closer together. There were also short touching tributes from fellow actors to each of the nominees. Overall they did a great job. I’m hoping that they’re going for a similar less formal format this year and that they keep up the momentum throughout the ceremony. Oh and they can always make it a little shorter!

A man portrayed as an angry terrorist in the shockumentary Bruno is suing filmmaker Sacha Baron Cohen, David Letterman, and NBC. Ayman Abu Aita runs a supermarket in Bethlehem and says he’s a Christian guy with a wife and two kids and isn’t a terrorist at all. He’s a Palestinian peace activist who responded to a request for an interview with what he was told was a German documentary filmmaker. Instead, he met with gay caricature Bruno and became an unwilling subject in what he considers an offensive movie. He was portrayed as the leader of a terrorist group and his reputation in his community suffered. They even used his real full name in the movie:

Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, the actor behind the flamboyant character Bruno, is being sued for $114 million in libel damages, reports the U.K.’s Daily Mail.

Ayman Abu Aita, a Palestinian grocer and peace activist, says that the box office hit, “Bruno,” has ruined his life. In the film, Abu Aita travels with Bruno, a gay fashion journalist, to the Ein El-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon to meet with a leader there. A caption that appears during the scene describes Abu Aita as a “Terrorist group leader, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.”

Since the film’s release, Abu Aita says he has received death threats and that he was originally tricked into meeting Baron Cohen in the first place. He claims he thought Baron Cohen was a German producing a film about Palestinians — not an actor making a comedy, reports Britain’s Daily Mail.

Abu Aita alleges that when Baron Cohen spoke with David Letterman on TV last year, he said he had found a “real terrorist” through a contact at the CIA.

He is suing NBC Universal, Letterman and Baron Cohen. “Bruno” has grossed about $137 million worldwide since it’s release in July.

[From The NY Daily News]

The thing that bothers me is that in an appearance on Letterman (link leads to video) Baron Cohen told the story about finding a “real” terrorist to interview as if the whole thing went down just as it looked on film. He said that he used CIA contacts to find a member of the “Al-Axa Martyrs Brigade, the number one suicide bombers out there,” that he had to agree to meet the guy at an undisclosed location, and that the situation was so dangerous he had trouble securing a willing bodyguard. If this guy’s story is to be believed, Baron Cohen just found an average guy with ties to Palestinian rights groups, met him at a public restaurant, and then duped him into appearing in the film.

In an interview with NPR’s Fresh Air, Larry Charles, the director of Bruno and Borat, explained their approach. “A lot of this comedy is about putting people, hopefully who are good targets, in uncomfortable situations.” Not all of the people are good targets and many eventually fight back. This is the second lawsuit against Bruno. The first was by a woman who claims she was left permanently disabled after a scuffle with Bruno filmmakers at a Palmdale, CA bingo game. Baron’s earlier film Borat was the subject of at least seven lawsuits from the people who appeared in the film.

It’s unlikely that Baron Cohen will get the chance to offend more people in character. He told NPR that he’s too well recognized now and that it’s too dangerous for him. “Basically its impossible to do now. Its too well known as a genre, and its just too hard to get people not to recognize me. And also I think I was lucky as a performer in Borat and Bruno that I didnt get permanently hurt.” It’s not just Baron Cohen who can get hurt by his performances.

An Interview with Ayman Abu Aita is below. Here’s a link to a press conference announcing this lawsuit.

Sacha Baron Cohen is shown outside the Late Show as Bruno on 7/9/09. He appeared on the show as himself, not as one of his alter egos. Credit: WENN.com