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Variety falls prey to Lady Gaga April Fools’ joke

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:30:00 +0000

April Fools' Day is among the worst days of the year for a reporter; just ask the gossip bloggers who, late last night, stopped short of reporting that Lindsay Lohan was pregnant after she said she was with child on Twitter. (Good one, L.L.!)

But Variety forget to tear the page off its desk calendar yesterday morning, and when "X-Men: Days of Future Past" director Bryan Singer tweeted that Lady Gaga had joined the upcoming mutant action movie, Variety rushed a story online -- one that it's now taken down. On the Hollywood trade publication's Twitter feed, the publication noted that "Variety just got April Fooled! Lady Gaga will NOT co-star in the next 'X-Men' movie."

Variety recently shuttered its daily edition in favor of a weekly magazine, which launched in late March. The publication's woes have been well-chronicled on Deadline. Nikki Finke's site has an owner in common with Variety and fights with it as well as sites like The Wrap and The Hollywood Reporter for scoops -- a category into which an unconfirmed tweet from a director announcing casting would fall 364 days a year.

What do you think of Mark Rylance as Cromwell in “Wolf Hall” TV adaption?

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 21:30:00 +0000

This morning, Variety reported that actor Mark Rylance, who won Tonys for "Boeing-Boeing" and "Jerusalem," was cast as Cromwell in the BBC-HBO adaptation of Hilary Mantel's award-winning, best-selling novels "Wolf Hall" and "Bring Up the Bodies." Mantel's pen is a bit more generous in her portrait of Henry VII's merciless adviser, but Cromwell is no less manipulative — a fun, meaty role for an actor. But is Ryland the right man for the job? We put the question to the Blue Glow Award critics. Here's what they had to say:

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Meet the Nate Silvers of the Oscar race

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 17:21:00 +0000

Casual awards-season fans may be debating over whether Anne Hathaway is a lock for her performance in "Les Miserables," or whether a dark horse like "Moonrise Kingdom" can sneak into the best picture race. But among Oscar bloggers, the debate’s already about next year.

“I’ve written out a list of films that are almost certainly going to be best picture nominees” in January 2014, said Jeff Wells, blogger for Hollywood Elsewhere, where he prognosticates about everything pertinent to Oscar season. He’s among a coterie of bloggers who track every change in a race that, this year, has been unusually volatile.

Oscar prognostication and reporting online is hardly a new phenomenon — the zeitgeist-tracking website Gold Derby went online in 2000, and media reporter David Carr was in the game for a while at the New York Times’ Carpetbagger blog. Other grandees include Kris Tapley at Hitfix, Dave Karger at ticket-sales site Fandango’s new editorial arm, and Mark Harris at Grantland. (Harris is taking the season off to avoid a conflict of interest, as his husband, Tony Kushner, wrote the screenplay for "Lincoln.")