Here are some photos from the “world premiere” of Fast & Furious 6. They’re just going to keep churning these out, aren’t they? My aunt loves them. She loves Vin Diesel. I don’t get it, but sure. Anyway, I just thought you’d like to see some photos from the premiere, especially since Celebitchy Fan Favorite Elsa Pataky was there. Surprisingly (or not?), Elsa’s husband Chris Hemsworth was not on hand to support his wife. Huh. Anyway, I know many of you think she’s quite “tacky” but she’s been looking pretty good on red carpets lately. This dress is very “look at me!” but it works.

Here’s your new “Crow” Luke Evans.

Paul Walker. Does he get ANY other work besides these movies?

Vin Diesel. Ugh. Is his head lumpy or is this just a weird photo?

And here’s Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster. I love Michelle. I can’t even explain it, I just love her. I like the fact that she “tried” to really get done up for the premiere, but I think the dress is too girly for her. She needs something cleaner and more minimalist. Jordana is blah. Pretty girl, but forgettable. Jordana is wearing Jenny Packham, one of Duchess Kate’s favorite designers.

Photos courtesy of Daniel Deme/WENN.com.

This weekend was a roaring one at movie theaters, where Thor easily secured the #1 position with an estimated $66 million in U.S. ticket sales (with international sales boosting it to a total of $242 million), which qualifies it as a fairly successful “summer” movie. Between this film, the Iron Man franchise, and the inexplicably successful X-Men movies, Marvel Studios really has the box-office sewn up as far as comic-book adaptations go, while any viable D.C. Comics titles loom far off in the horizon with the Superman reboot and The Dark Knight Rises still in their pre-production phases. At any rate, Thor and his abdominal muscles pretty much killed it this weekend, and while I was pretty skeptical about a newcomer (or, at least, a virtually unknown actor) carrying a major studio tentpole, I will concede that an effective marketing blitz (and inflated 3D prices) really did the trick in boosting Thor to this point:

Reviews have been good, and British Kenneth Branagh’s direction and Aussie newcomer Chris Hemsworth in the title role of The Mighty Thor earned a 92% rating currently on Rotten Tomatoes. The good-looking Hemsworth allowed for heavy PR to drum up appeal among women with his shirtless clip a popular choice for talk shows with large female audiences who also were targeted with a Royal Wedding blitz. To solidify male appeal, Paramount had spots during the Super Bowl and NCAA Basketball, the UFC Marathon and UFC Fight Night Live Premiere. And, to appeal to the feeble-brained, Thor ads aired on the finale of Jersey Shore.

Thor launched in 1962 and has endured for almost half a century across comics, toys, animated series, and now a movie. Like Iron Man, Marvel thought Thor deserved to be made in its own right and lends a long history to The Avengers. (Aka Marvel’s Avengers Assemble strategy. Expect to see agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., previously seen in the Iron Man movies, foreshadowing the coming of The Avengers). The challenge for Paramount was to market a reverse superhero story: a hero becomes a man. “Our challenge was to emphasize what was unique about his character and define him for audiences,” a studio exec told me. So the TV ads reminded: “The world has many heroes but only one is a God.” This epic adventure spans the Marvel Universe from present day Earth to the realm of Asgard with the powerful but arrogant warrior whose reckless actions reignite an ancient war. Thor is cast down to Earth and forced to live among humans as punishment. Once here, Thor learns what it takes to be a true hero when the most dangerous villain of his world sends the darkest forces of Asgard to invade Earth.

[From Deadline]

Elsewhere, the Vin Diesel/Dwayne Johnson homoerotic picture of the decade, Fast Five, held onto #2. Even though it’s springtime, the weekend’s two wedding-themed movies didn’t fare so well, with Jumping the Broom and Something Borrowed (starring Kate Hudson and her nympho ways), scoring #3 with $13.7 million and #4 with $13.2 million, respectively speaking. Meanwhile, The Beaver opened in 22 theaters with only $104,000 total under its already dubious belt. In other words, it probably won’t be opening next weekend in your nearest multiplex, and now Jodie Foster has only herself to blame (and not race psychology) for wasting a $20 million budget on a movie about a guy who’s so depressed that he can only speak though a puppet. Hopefully, this also means she’ll stop praising Mel Gibson for awhile too.

Photos courtesty of AllMoviePhoto and Square Hippies

First of all, I’d like to apologize that we didn’t have a Hot Guy Friday this week. Both Kaiser and I are burnt out doing it every week, and while it is a nice stress reliever on one side, on the other it takes hours to do that post. You’d be surprised how much effort it is, and Kaiser does the bulk of it and doesn’t complain. This was basically my idea after the Royal Wedding last Friday and the insanity that was the Met Gala earlier this week. We’re bringing it back next Friday and HGF will be on an every-other-Friday schedule from then on, just to give ourselves a break. Plus we were running out of guys to do every week. Anyway check out the archives for HGF, they go back a few months and they should help you get this image of Vin Diesel’s robot arms out of your head. In no way am I suggesting this guy as a substitute for HGF, unless you’re into that, and in that case bless you.

So here’s Vin Diesel in all his bald-headed roided glory on the cover of Men’s Fitness. I’ll admit this made me bust out laughing. It’s the look on his face, which is supposed to be serious and kick-ass but just falls flat. Unlike Vin’s costar The Rock, he doesn’t make a bald head sexy and his muscles make him look more like some kind of centaur. Like don’t you expect to scroll down and see that no-neck torso attached to a non-human body?

Inside, Diesel talk about how he used to work as a bouncer in New York and how he first got super fit because “you have to decide at a young age whether you’re going to be predator or prey.” Unlike past Men’s Fitness cover boys, he doesn’t have a specific program he touts but just says he loves to mountain bike and that he switches up his routine to fit whatever character he’s playing. Here are some quotes from his interview:

On being predator or prey
“When you grow up in New York City, you have to decide at a young age whether you’re going to be predator or prey,” he says. “Especially growing up at that time in the city, especially being a little homeboy, especially when you were trying to f*#@ every girl int he city.”

On being a bouncer in his late teens and twenties
“I learned so much in bouncing that I bring to these characters. You have to be able to read people. Speak with a New York City cop, and they talk about having to read people. Bouncing is like that but without the badge and the law. You’re a gunslinger for hire, basically. And you learn a lot in that field of work.”

On being in fights as a bouncer
“I must have been in more than 500 fights. I fought every night, and I bounced for nine or 10 years. And these weren’t pretty fights.”

How he trains for each character
These days, when it comes to staying in fighting shape, Diesel’s workout schedule is strictly dictated by his next role. Practicing a physical type of method acting, Diesel always commits to realistically re-creating the body and attributes his character would possess. If that means staying away form the iron and packing on a few pounds for a project, such as the 2006 movie Find Me Guilty (in which Vin plays an out-of-shape gangster who defends himself at trial), so be it. “I don’t do a service to myself if I succumb to serious powerlifting,” he says. “I have to be somewhat mindful of being typecast. I want to be the character and not just look built.” [For that movie] “It was ‘eat lots of ic cream and get as fat as you can.’ After being so fir from a young age, it was bizarre – and liberating.”

“When I do a role like Riddick, I don’t want to look boxy. I want to be pantherlike, I want to be agile. I have to do yoga or Pilates because I’m trying to get a completely different movement with my body.”

On his future as an actor
“I don’t really give a sh*t about my everyday stock. It’s not going to improve my self esteem. I just want to knock each role out of the park.”

[From Men's Fitness, print edition, June/July 2011]

Well I find him surprisingly likable in that interview. He seems like a smart, together guy and I like his “whatever” attitude toward his career. The dude stays off the gossip radar too, you can say that for him. We’ve heard that he didn’t want to do press for his films and that he made out with Paris Hilton at some point eons ago, but that’s it. I think I remember reading that he had a baby too at some point in 2008, but that was all so vague and we didn’t hear much about it. He keeps his stuff under wraps, but not his big old arms. Those things are like two big slabs of meat hanging out. But I have to admit he’s growing on me a little.

photos courtesy of Men’s Fitness, where there are more. Photos below from PRPhotos

It’s no surprise that a tried-and-true franchise once took first place at the box office this weekend, but it’s somewhat astounding that Fast Five surpassed predictions of $70 million to rake in an estimated $83.6 million at the U.S. box office. In a very distant second place was Rio, which added another $14.4 million (for a total of $103.6 million) in its third week. Taking third and fourth, respectively, were Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family with $10.1 million and Water for Elephants with $9.1 million (which confirms what some of you hoped for last week; that is, the Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson, and Christoph Waltz combo did indeed have legs). Failing miserably over the weekend were Disney’s Prom in fifth place with $5 million and Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil, which also carried a 3D premium but only pulled in $4.1 million to land in sixth position. In sharp contrast to Fast Five the Hoodwinked sequel fared much worse than its 2005 predecessor’s opening weekend of $12 million and a total domestic take of $51 million. The good news in all of this is that there will be no Hoodwinked Three! Wolf Gets It in the Balls Again. Oh, and Universal has already begun its grateful declarations for just how well Fast Five performed in smashing all sorts of records:

Even with a -13% drop on Saturday, which would be normal because its Friday’s grosses expanded by midnight showings, that’s still a bigger North American weekend cume for Fast Five than the top 2 openings this year combined (Rio $39M/Rango $38M). The film received an “A” CinemaScore and an “A+” from moviegoers under age 18. In terms of records, Universal is claiming: the biggest opening in Universal history (besting Lost World: Jurassic Park’s $72.1M), the biggest opening of 2011 (besting Rio’s $39.2M), the biggest Universal opening for 2011 (besting Hop’s $37.5M), the highest opening for an April Release (besting Fast & Furious’ $71M), the highest opening for the last weekend in April (besting A Nightmare On Elm Street’s $39M), the highest opening for stars Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, and producer Neil Moritz, and director Justin Lin. A lot of Uni execs are breathing easier today now that they’ve delivered a nice fat hit to their new Comcast overlords who must have been wondering if they’d bought a bomb factory instead of a movie studio. Fast Five opened first overseas 10 days ago and this weekend grossed a huge $45.3M at 3,211 dates in just 14 territories. That raised its early international tally to $81.4M. So now the worldwide total stands at a whopping $165M. The pic opened No. 1 in each of the 10 new markets. The openings are bigger than all the previous Fast franchise films. (Paramount opened Marvel/Disney’s Thor head-to-head against Fast Five in more than a dozen markets but not in the U.S. and Canada until next Friday. Of course, sequels do better overseas than in this country.) But even rival studios say Fast Five is on track for a $300M foreign and $500M worldwide finish. “Here’s what I’m most proud of: there is nothing obvious about what happened. No one can say of course every single decision how it was going to be made, how it was going to be cast, when it was going to be dated, how it was going to be sold, was very startegically thought out. There is no reason for the 5th movie in a franchise to have pulled off what this pulled off,” Universal Pictures Chairman Adam Fogelson told me this morning.

[From Deadline]

Out of all of the above-mentioned achievements, the most interesting bit of information is that Fast Five set a new high for the franchise, and now we’re left to debate the reason for the extra $12 million or so. Is this unforseen increase due to the IMAX premiums or the presence of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson? Of course, the true reason is probably a combination of both factors, but I like to think that Johnson’s return to the WWE a few months ago and hosting duties for WrestleMania XXVII in early April both maximized his exposure and certainly persuaded more than a few wrestling fans to see his new movie. Also and for those who saw the movie, the homoeroticism of this installment was fairly unprecedented in its extremity (and I’m starting to realize now that the fact that Top Gun was also holding special viewings in many of its AMC theaters this weekend was no mere coincidence). Did anyone else hear audience members yelling, “Just kiss already!” during Vin Diesel and Johnson’s confrontational scenes? Such a nice way to kick off the summer movie season.

Movie stills courtesy of AllMoviePhoto

It’s already sort-of known that Paris Hilton is a racist. (I say sort-of because a lot of people have forgotten it.) In one of the videos unearthed by that “Paris Exposed” site in 2007, Paris is shown dancing at a party or club with her sister, Nicky, and making an awkward reference to their skills by saying “we’re like two n-words.” (You can watch the video here.) On that tape, she also calls a guy the anti-gay f word and calls some girl she doesn’t like a “f’cking hoodlum whore, broke, poor bitch from like Compton. Public school bitch.” It’s dumb, racist and bigoted, but I guess we can’t expect much more from this girl. A new book has come out by Neil Strauss dishing on some of the things he’s witnessed interviewing the rich and famous. He details an interview with Paris Hilton in 1999, when she was just 18 and bragged about getting a boob job at 14 (but supposedly being made to take them out by her mom) and how she rejected a hook up with Vin Diesel because she thought he was black. She was of age, but Vin Diesel is 13 years older than she is and would have been 31 at the time.

HILTON: I went out with that guy last night.
Which guy?
HILTON (points to an actor in Saving Private Ryan): We were making out, but then we went somewhere where it was bright and I saw that he was black and made an excuse and left. I can’t stand black guys. I would never touch one. It’s gross. (pauses). Does that guy look black to you?
How black does a guy have to be?
HILTON: One percent is enough for me.

[From LA Weekly via The Superficial]

I’m sure Diesel didn’t want to catch the herp either, but maybe Paris hadn’t contracted it at that point. (Doubtful.) So not only is she a racist fool, she’s also dumb enough to turn down a hook up with Vin Diesel because he looks possibly black. It boggles the mind that someone could be that bigoted. Chances are that most of her family members are raging racists too. Dumb bitch had to learn it somewhere.

Paris is shown on 3/1, and on 3/18/11 with her high BFF, Brooke Mueller. She’s not looking pregnant anymore, thank God. Credit: WENN.com. Vin Diesel is shown on 11/4/10 in Rio. Credit: Fame Pictures

Action star Vin Diesel, 40, and his girlfriend, 24 year-old model Paloma Jimenez, had a baby girl on April 2 and are just announcing it now.

Am I the only one who assumed that Vin Diesel was gay? You would think that if he had a steady girlfriend he would bring her to events and paparazzi target restaurants to make it known, but Diesel is a private person and prefers to stay out of the tabloids. Maybe that’s how those rumors that he’s of the other persuasion got started.

Congratulations to Vin and Paloma, and their new arrival. People Magazine notes that Diesel is starring in and producing Fast and Furious, which will be out in June of next year, and that he also has Babylon AD coming out at the end of August.

Here are some pictures of Diesel’s hot girlfriend and the mother of his baby, Paloma Jimenez, who was born in Acapulco, Mexico. [via Fashionmodeldirectory.]
Vin Diesel is shown at One Race Global Film Foundation at The Bellagio on 1/18/08.