Star Magazine is reporting the rumor that Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler are not getting along at all while filming Law Abiding Citizen. What’s the beef between the Oscar-winning actor and the Scottish heartthrob? It all comes down to the ladies, apparently. Jamie is very jealous of the female attention Gerard Butler gets. Um… I’m sure Jamie gets his fair share of the ladies. Or are the women of Philadelphia just obsessed with Gerard Butler and his naked romps through the city? Excuse me, let me savor that image for a little while…

Hollywood catfights aren’t just between the ladies! Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler have been going at it on the set of Law Abiding Citizen. An insider tells Star, “Jamie is jealous of the female attention Gerard gets. And Gerard is annoyed that Jamie’s always jetting off to Vegas to party.”

The Dueling duo even have pet names for each other: Gerard calls Jamie “The Fool”, and he’s known as “Ger-tard!”

“It’s like high school on this set!” says the source. Boys will be boys!

[From Star Magazine print edition]

Uh, not funny. “Ger-tard” sucks. And “The Fool” is unoriginal. I hope that part of the rumor is not true. That’s all I’ve got say about that.

In other Jamie Foxx news, I’m surprised that The Soloist isn’t getting better reviews. From most of the stuff I’ve read about the film, people like it, they think Foxx will get an Oscar nomination, but mostly they think it’s a good-not-great film. The Soloist was going to be a big Oscar contender last year, but the studio pushed the release date. The sometimes lukewarm reviews are making me think that something else might have been amiss in the film’s testing. I was also surprised to learn that Foxx didn’t even try to learn the cello – he merely studied how to fake-play. The Los Angeles Times has a piece about the guy who trained Foxx to make the correct movements to look like a concert cellist:

[Ben Hong] and the Oscar-winning actor began their four-month crash course on the cello in early September 2007. For 10 hours a week, they practiced the movements needed to make Foxx look like he’s actually playing the mostly Beethoven repertoire that includes passages from the Cello Sonata No. 4 and the second movement of the Triple Concerto.

Hong developed a simplified notation so Foxx could learn the left-hand fingerings. He also taught the actor the bowing techniques. (They applied soap to the bow in order to muffle the sound during practice.)

During production, Hong was literally everywhere. He served as technical advisor for all scenes involving music; he coached actor Tom Hollander, who plays the L.A. Philharmonic’s principal cellist; he recorded all of the playback tracks (whenever we see Foxx play the cello, the sound is performed by Hong); and he even plays himself in a few brief glimpses.

For the playback tracks, Hong had to play deliberately out of tune to suggest Nathaniel Ayers’ state of mind. He worked with the film’s composer, Dario Marianelli, in order to perfect the imperfect sound.

“Dario would come out of the control booth and say that ‘it’s too pretty or the intonation was too good, you have to make it worse,’ ” recalled Hong. “That was actually a lot of fun.”

The musician was hired for the film because he had already met Ayers through Steve Lopez, whose articles inspired the movie. Most of the filming took place at a warehouse in Culver City, as well as a few days at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

[From The LA Times ]

Meh. I’ll probably rent it, but I guess I won’t see The Soloist in the theatres. Robert Downey Jr. looks good in it, though. I love when Downey does straight drama – he’s a much better dramatic actor than people give him credit for.

Here are Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx being welcomed to Philadelphia during a press conference at City Hall on January 23rd. Images thanks to WENN.com .