By Romeo San Vicente
Evan Rachel Wood to 'March' with Clooney
Evan Rachel Wood, who recently talked to "Esquire" magazine about her bisexuality and how she likes to treat the women she dates (for the record, ladies, she will open the door for you and pay for dinner), has a new project to follow her well-received role in Todd Hayne's great HBO miniseries, "Mildred Pierce." She'll be appearing in the upcoming directorial effort from George Clooney, "The Ides of March." It's an idealism-meets-dirty-politics drama based on the play by Beau Willimon and co-stars some heavy hitters from the nomination-and-award-having acclaimed actor end of the Hollywood pool: Ryan Gosling, Marisa Tomei, Paul Giamatti, Jeffrey Wright, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Clooney himself. If she wasn't already considered part of the A-list, Wood certainly is now. Will the next stop be an equally famous girlfriend who's also ready to be her date to the Oscars and let Wood hold the door?
Will Kate Hudson be open for 'Lovelace'?
The biopic that was going to star Lindsay Lohan as Linda Lovelace isn't happening anymore, but there's still a push to get the life of the legendary "Deep Throat" star on the big screen. Gay filmmakers Robert Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, fresh off their triumph of turning James Franco into Allen Ginsberg in "Howl," are prepping "Lovelace," rumored to have Kate Hudson interested in the lead role. The real Lovelace, later in life, said that she was forced to participate in the film by her then-husband, leading her to become an outspoken feminist and porn critic, but it remains to be seen what direction the movie will take with her life. The filmmakers' previous credits include "The Times of Harvey Milk" and "The Celluloid Closet," so they're good at both biographies and pop-culture histories. "Lovelace" is still in pre-production, so no need to pick out a new raincoat just yet.
Haley Joel Osment sees gay people in 'Sassy Pants'
Oscar nominee and former child star Haley Joel Osment seems to have gone underground since "Pay It Forward," but now he's 23 and apparently ready to get back in the game. And what's the best way for a former kid actor to firmly establish grown-up credibility? Playing a gay guy in an indie movie, of course, and that's exactly what Osment's doing in "Sassy Pants." Osment and Diedrich Bader ("The Drew Carey Show," "Office Space") play a gay couple in the comedy, which also features the hilarious Drew Droege. (If you haven't seen Droege's YouTube clips, where he impersonates a name-dropping Chloe Sevigny or an unhinged Tanya Roberts, you've been doing the Internet all wrong.) "Sassy Pants" is in post-production, so it could turn up in theaters by the end of the year. As for Osment, who's spent most of the last decade doing video-game voice-over work, kissing a man and getting "Sassy" might open up a whole new chapter to his career.
The 'Horror' of Jessica Lange's latest career move
Jessica Lange's career-long fear of appearing on a weekly television series is coming to an end, thanks to horror – specifically, a new job on Ryan Murphy's upcoming pilot, "American Horror Story." And OK, yes, maybe "fear" is the wrong word for the Oscar-winner's lack of presence on the small screen; perhaps it's just been plain, old-fashioned disdain all these years. But Lange will now be co-starring opposite Connie Britton on the spooky drama about – and this is every shred of plot that's been made public to date – a therapist, his wife (Britton) and their nosy neighbor (Lange). After "Glee" wraps for the season later this month, production on "Horror" can begin and, with a potential series order, soon the scariest stuff we hear about a Ryan Murphy show won't be the rumors of diva antics among the cast on the set of his all-singing, all-dancing high school musical.
