By Romeo San Vicente
Will Rosie rule the ratings again?
Rosie O'Donnell's coming back to daytime television. That's the first bit of good news. Along with her former producer, Dick Robertson, who worked with Rosie on "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" from 1996 to 2002, the comedian is working on a new syndicated series that's set to air in 2011. More good news comes in the form of her one-time main competitor, Oprah, leaving the air that same year, creating a space crying out for substance. And best of all, the pressure to be the nice lesbian with a talk show has fallen to Ellen, who seems to handle it with much less personal angst. After her time on "The View" audiences already know they're going to get a highly opinionated version of O'Donnell this time around, so now it all comes down to what Donald Trump will have to say about it. Like she cares.
Black dressing up J. Edgar Hoover
You'd think it would have happened a little more quickly than this, what with J. Edgar Hoover dying in the 1970s and the secret details of his private life leaking out not long after. But there's finally going to be a big screen biopic about the former head of the FBI, and Clint Eastwood is going to direct it. The screenwriter on the project, currently titled "Hoover," is none other than Oscar-winning golden boy Dustin Lance Black ("Milk"), which virtually guarantees that the "rumors" of Hoover's closet homosexuality and enthusiasm for cross-dressing like a really burly lady will play a role in the finished product. No cast announced yet, but this sounds like the perfect career-changing dramatic role that Seth Rogen needs to diversify his big screen portfolio (the movie will begin with Hoover as a young man founding the FBI in 1935). But they'll probably just ask Philip Seymour Hoffman first and digitally age him backwards or something. That guy gets all the good weird parts.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The Super-Lesbian
Hello lesbian nerds, your summer just got awesome. That's because "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" is coming to a comfortably air-conditioned multiplex near you in the dead of August and here are its stats: It stars Michael Cera as a (well, yes, hapless) young man who falls for a girl with seven super-powered ex-lovers. Our hero must battle and defeat them all in order to win his new lady's love. One of those exes is a lesbian half-ninja named Roxy Richter (Mae Whitman, she played "Ann Veal" alongside Cera on "Arrested Development") who's pretty angry about the whole "only half" part of the ninja situation. Best of all, it's from Edgar Wright, the man who brought you "Hot Fuzz" and "Shaun of the Dead," which is as close as you get to a guarantee that it's going to be inventive and hilarious. Summer suddenly doesn't feel like a decent-movie graveyard after all.
Before the Kardashians…
A long time ago, when there was no "reality TV," before the Gosselins and Kardashians were born and Ozzy Osbourne was still in Black Sabbath, there was a groundbreaking 1973 documentary series on PBS called "An American Family." They were The Louds, a well-off Santa Barbara clan who allowed cameras into their home to show what a real family was like. Drama took over and the parents divorced midway through the shoot while the eldest son, Lance, came out of the closet on national television. Needless to say, they all became overnight stars whether they were looking for it or not. And now their story will come full circle as a drama for HBO called "Cinema Verite" from producer Gavin Polone ("Gilmore Girls") and the writing-directing team of Shari Springer Berman and Bob Pulcini ("American Splendor"). Casting will take place soon and reality will get the fictional treatment it always really needs.
