Amy Winehouse To Sing The Next Bond Song

Amy Winehouse has certainly been an entertaining celebrity trainwreck this year. How many people get caught smoking crack and win Grammys within the same year, let alone the same month? You have to give her credit for maintaining her credibility in the face of never ending controversy. Now Winehouse has been picked to sing the Bond song for the latest entry in that never-ending franchise (Quantum Of Solace). It’s certainly a surprising choice, particularly given how unstable the songstress has become. But the “kids” seem to love her and she’ll sell some singles, so I’m sure that’s all the producers care about. If nothing else, it’s going to be great to hear Winehouse and her songwriters attempt to turn “quantum of solace” into a catchy lyric.

Steven Soderbergh To Direct A Movie About Prostitutes

Steven Soderbergh is a willfully unpredictable director. Who else in Hollywood would have the balls to follow up a glossy commercial blockbuster like Ocean’s Eleven with a experimental digital video effort like Full Frontal? Nobody would dare to try that but him. Well, the director is about to do it again. After calling the shots on Ocean’s Thirteen and his upcoming 2-part Che Guevara biopic, Soderbergh will return to his low-budget roots with Girl Friend Experience, a digital video effort about $10,000-a-night prostitutes. The movie will also be released simultaneously in theaters and on DVD like Soderbergh’s previous effort Bubble. That release scheme is a gamble that didn’t pay off last time, but with subject matter as timely as this, the movie could very well take off. It will also mark the first time that the director has dealt with frank sexuality since his debut Sex, Lies, And Videotape and it should be interesting to see what his current take on that material will be. Elliot Spitzer has allegedly pre-ordered a copy of the DVD.

Mel Gibson Will Return To The Big Screen

After a few years out of the limelight, Mel Gibson has signed on to star in the police thriller Edge Of Darkness. While it’s certainly not a shock to hear that Gibson would take a lead role in a movie, it is a surprise to see him reenter the limelight after his drunken anti-Semitic run-in with the police. After that unfortunate incident, Gibson directed a rather good film (Apocalypto) that almost instantly vanished into obscurity thanks to his tarnished reputation. While few years have passed since Gibson’s racist rant, it still remains to be seen if audiences are willing to accept him again. Michael Richards’ career is definitely over, but he was never as big a star as Mel. There was a time when casting Gibson in a movie could never be described as a gamble, but that time has passed. We’ll see if mass audiences are willing to embrace him once more when Edge Of Darkness is released. –PB, News Extensions