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For the last fifteen years, Corey Haim had been a joke, whether he was being parodied on The Simpsons, or unintentionally making a mockery of himself on A&E's The Two Coreys. It was easy to laugh at a bedraggled ex–teen idol who couldn't get over his own young stardom, whose Peter Pan fantasies had outlived all his fans' adoration. But when his death by overdose was reported this morning, many of those who used his name as a punchline felt a distressing despondence.
As if the April 21, opening-night premiere of Shrek Forever After weren't enticing enough, the Tribeca Film Festival today announced its full lineup. Among the notable highlights: James Franco's William Vincent, in which the General Hospital star plays a hapless criminal who falls for the favorite prostitute of a gangster (Josh Lucas); and a work-in-progress screening of Alex Gibney's documentary Untitled Eliot Spitzer Film. Not all the movies are hooker-themed, though.
It’s been a dramatic few months for OK Go: In January, the pop-rockers released their third album, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, and their front man, Damian Kulash, wrote a Times op-ed calling out their label, EMI Music, for making their YouTube videos un-emebddable. Earlier this month, they released a video for their single “This Too Shall Pass” that was seen 6 million times in its first six days on YouTube. Oh, and today, they announced they were leaving EMI. We got Kulash on the phone just now to tell us why.
When Liars released their first album, 2001’s They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top, they were part of Williamsburg’s then-burgeoning music scene alongside bands like TV on the Radio and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. But while the other bands grew into indie-rock titans, Liars got weirder: Their second album, 2003’s They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, dropped their debut’s swaggering dance-punk for songs mostly about German witch folklore. 2006’s Drum’s Not Dead, which sketched out a relationship between the fictional characters Drum and Mt. Heart Attack, was another fascinating doozy, and maintained the band’s sterling critical reputation. Then came 2007’s Liars, a surprisingly straightforward batch of awesome rock songs. With their latest, Sisterworld, out yesterday, the band seems to have found a balance between their two poles, providing both exceptional standalone moments and a unifying theme. Vulture chatted with Liars' Australian front man, Angus Andrew, about the dark side of L.A, not fitting in, and Whitney Houston. (Fun fact! Andrew and Karen O dated, and “Maps” is about him.)
The Oscars! It’s a night when the stars shine bright, but infotainment shines brighter! This week, "Babble On" pays tribute to the flood of red-carpet shrieking, yelling, and inappropriate questions, with Precious's Gabourey Sidibe being asked about a Chris Rock grope, an in-depth look at Hilary Swank’s peekaboo dress, and Tina Fey being dubbed Miss Oscars 2010 by Cojo. Attention must be paid! Also: Tiger Woods, because not even the Oscars can loosen infotainment’s obsession with sex addiction.
OK Go is leaving EMI Music, according to a press release issued this afternoon. The band, which publicly squabbled with EMI after the label made their crazy-popular YouTube videos un-embeddable, is creating a new company, Paracadute, to handle all distribution and promotion. (Check out our interview with OK Go front man Damian Kulash about the band’s smash, embeddable video for “This Too Shall Pass” here). You know what would be fun? Going back in time ten years and trying to explain this band-versus-label, YouTube-embeddablity beef to your younger self.
Crispin Glover’s reputation as an unpredictable eccentric hasn't kept him from getting cast in big studio films: He can currently be seen in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland as the villainous Knave of Hearts, a sort of Darth Vader to Helena Bonham Carter’s Red Queen. He will also be seen in the upcoming Hot Tub Time Machine, which will no doubt remind many of his iconic role as Michael J. Fox’s father in Back to the Future. Glover's body of work includes scene-stealing in Charlie’s Angels, concocting his own, odd indie films such as What Is It? and It Is Fine, Everything Is Fine, and touring around the world with his Big Slide Show, a multimedia experience in lovable strangeness. (You can keep track of all that Glover is up to on his website.) The actor recently spoke with us about his part in Alice and his idiosyncratic career.
"People don't really come up to you and say, 'Oh, I thought you were gonna be really crazy.'" 
Photo: PRNewsFoto/Interscope Records
When intelligence surrounding Lady Gaga and Beyoncé's "Telephone" video surfaced, insiders reported that Beyoncé and Gaga would wear destroyed denim pieces by designers Franc Fernandez and Oscar Olima. And the first official still of Beyoncé from the video proves the speculation correct. Also, we were totally right when we wrote on January 29:
[I]f anyone can do the opposite for [denim] of what Jessica Beil did for it on the cover of Vogue, it's Gaga and her friend Beyoncé, who owes it to the world to explore just how skimpy cutoffs can get.
Look how skimpy her cutoffs are! They're like tattered panties! In our minds, our proven sixth Beyoncé sense brings us one step closer to our lifelong dream of babysitting Beyoncé's children one day.
I love Ben episodes.
I adore Michael Emerson.
And while I've been like the Lorax all season -- speaking for the Haters, if not the trees -- I enjoyed this episode so much I couldn't even obsess about the still-looming issue that the show has become a chess game between two coy, superpowered smirkers.
Besides, Ben's relationship with Alex has long been one of the show's most poignant elements. Watching his quiet satisfaction as she bounced toward her future was way more touching, for me, than Jack's detente with his son or Locke's with his own limits. And while the redemptive tangle of the two timelines offered numerous thumping ironies, there was ambiguity, in part because Emerson is such a terrific performer. Ben perked up at Smokey's offer. It wasn't very long ago that he killed Locke. Things could go either way.
The Richard/Jack scene didn't do as much for me, but then, I have Jack issues. I admit that and I will try to submit myself to a higher power. Not Jacob though. He's shady.
Tonight, Vogue editor-at-large André Leon Talley debuts as a judge on America's Next Top Model, giving the old CW warhorse a much-needed dose of fashion cred — and Tyra Banks a worthy partner in dramatic, unintentional clothing crimes. A.L.T. brings with him a reputation as large as his stature and a penchant for saying things that are at best hilarious, and at worst, kinda snotty. Such tendencies usually make for pretty interesting TV, so if André can live up to his billing (not to mention our imaginations), he could vault into the pantheon of great — or at least greatly amusing — reality-TV judges. Then again, in order to displace any of the top ten best that we've identified here, Talley has a lot of sass to sling.
Photo: Andy Kropa/WireImage
To any die-hard theater geek, a show that begins with Joel Grey and ends with Liza Minnelli ranks as a good one — so well done, Monday night’s benefit for the Vineyard Theatre! The evening, honoring John Kander (of legendary Broadway songwriting duo Kander and Ebb) was hosted by a dependably droll David Hyde Pierce, who told bad theater jokes (“I’m hosting, so it’s a gay-la”; “We wanted to capture the perfect tenor for this evening — and we did, he’s waiting off stage”) and gave a wonderfully deadpan rendition of “Ten Percent,” a lost Chicago ode to theater agents.
The full trailer comes out tomorrow, just in time for Friday's release of the Robert Pattinson–starring Remember Me (spoiled completely here!), but here's the teaser trailer, which puts Bella in her expected place as the mute, helpless rag doll chew toy being fought over by Edward and Jacob. If these ten seconds are any indication, Taylor Lautner will be shirtless for a full 20 percent of the movie. Also, isn't the phrase, "I will fight for you until my heart stops beating?" Maybe we're missing a basic tenet of Stephenie Meyer's vampire world, but the way he says it, it sounds like a threat.
The producers of Broadway's Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark can add one more problem to a pile that already includes their show's $50 million price tag and the total unlikelihood of it ever actually opening: Evan Rachel Wood, who was to play Mary Jane, has dropped out owing to a scheduling conflict. She apparently had another obligation between now and Dark's eventual cancellation. [Variety]
Mattel is making fully licensed and Matthew Weiner–approved Mad Men Barbies to coincide with July's season-four premiere. The dolls come in Joan, Roger, Don, and Betty, because those are the best-looking characters, and if you want them to drink or smoke you'll have to supply your own tiny vice objects, because these Barbies are clean living. While we don't know exactly what kind of person has $300 in their Barbie budget for the whole set, we do kind of want to take them out of their boxes and reenact famous scenes from the show. (Though, actually, a mere glimpse of Don Draper–Ken's "smooth area" just might ruin the show's mystique forever.) You know who will definitely be getting the Roger Sterling Ken as a gift? Its doppelgänger, Anderson Cooper!
‘Mad Men’ Dolls in a Barbie World, but the Cocktails Must Stay Behind [NYT]
Good news for Office writers who might've otherwise had to come up with some implausible excuse for Jim to gain 40 pounds of muscle mass: Deadline's Mike Fleming says that of the original seven actors on Marvel's short list to play Captain America, only two unfamous ones are still actually competing for the role: Cloverfield's Mike Vogel and Garrett Hedlund from the upcoming Tron: Legacy. Which means it won't be Chace Crawford, Michael Cassidy, Scott Porter, Patrick Flueger, or, most importantly, Krasinski, despite what was reported yesterday. This doesn't necessarily mean that Marvel hated their auditions; the winning actor will be required to sign on for nine potential sequels and spinoffs, and be paid only $300,000 for the first America movie, making this sort of a crappy job for a guy with a fictional baby to put through college.
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This Weekend's Concerts, From Muse to Neon Indian
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OK Go’s Damian Kulash Talks About Leaving EMI
The Runaways: “In patches it’s agreeably lurid, but it’s otherwise ho-hum.”
Morrison and Breslin at The Miracle Worker
Hawke, Gere, and Snipes at Brooklyn's Finest
Butler Discusses Oscars at Cosmo Awards
Gyllenhaal at the Character Approved Celebration
Trachtenberg at the Cop Out Premiere
