The Week of May 13, 2008 Emmanuelle Chriqui and the Oldest Young Awards Ever: The Hollywood Life Magazine Young Hollywood Awards by Chris Neumer December through February is known in the film world as awards season. There are award shows specifically for actors, writers, directors, producers, special effects people, independent films and even make-up artists as well as general award shows like the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards. Cable channels like MTV have their own awards and, for a while, even corporate America was getting in on the act when Blockbuster had its own ceremony. The general public simply loves seeing Hollywood celebrities being fawned over for being Hollywood celebrities (except when you look at the ratings for the 2008 Oscars, that is). As such, it’s not that much of a surprise for me to learn about new and/or uniquely targeted awards shows that have popped up. The largess of awards shows in winter has actually made some award ceremonies move their dates to the off-peak season, simply so they wouldn’t be overshadowed by the more major award shows. I mention this because I recently learned about the Hollywood Life Magazine Young Hollywood Awards. ALSO IN THIS COLUMN • Can filmmakers be arrested for researching a script on terrorism? • The (supposed) Impact of Grand Theft Auto IV • Publicist tales • Inside the new releases that matter • Classic Quotes • The black Bruce Willis • Speed Racer goes head first into a retaining wall • The review of The Cottage • The Five Things I Learned This Week • Behind-the-scenes of Stumped's interview with Andy Serkis LAST WEEK'S COLUMN The Hollywood LifeMagazine Young Hollywood Awards are not new, per se—this year marked their 10th anniversary—but they are very specifically focused; only the young get recognized. As an aside, this is as good a marketing hook as there can be. Unlike other award ceremonies that have to explain that they extended invitations to their A-list award recipients like Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Harrison Ford and Robert Downey Jr., but, unfortunately, the super stars had previous comitments, the Hollywood Life Magazine Young Hollywood Awards are almost assured to draw every person they wish to honor (providing they don’t try to honor Shia LaBeouf that is). Is Dakota Fanning really going to turn down a mid-major magazine that's giving her an award? Highly doubtful. The Hollywood Life Magazine Young Hollywood Awards caught my attention for one reason: they have a somewhat unique and malleable grasp of the definition of the word ‘young’. The first photo I saw of a Hollywood Life Magazine Young Hollywood Award winner was of Entourage co-star Emmanuelle Chrique. I found this to be interesting because two years ago, when tracking down interviews for my own young Hollywood story, I scratched Chrique’s name off the list because she was 29 and fairly well established. Could a 31 year old really be getting an award labeled the ‘Young Hollywood Award’? As evidenced by her presence at the ceremony, the answer is most definitely a yes. Curious to find out more about the youngness of the Hollywood Life Magazine Young Hollywood Awards, I went to the awards’ web-page and was promptly greeted by five (somewhat well known) members of the entertainment world starring at me. Five members of the entertainment world whose average age is 40.6 years old. (Abigail Breslin, Nikki Sixx, Kat Von D, Billy Baldwin and Donald Sutherland). Scrolling down the page, I saw even more faces whose presence at the Young Hollywood Awards would seem quizzical at best… people like Jamie Kennedy. After a little more research, I learned that the average age of the people pictured on the Hollywood Life Magazine Young Hollywood Awards main web-page was a whopping 31.3 years old.* I would let you know what the average age of the Hollywood Life Magazine Young Hollywood Award winners was, but there was no list of winners that either I or my intrepid assistants could find. I googled, yahooed, imdbed and every other web-site turned verb you can think of the matter and could not come up with a complete list of the winners. I did however learn that the now 31-year old Chriqui’s Young Hollywood award was presented to her by the 44-year old Rob Schneider. (I also learned that, based upon his red carpet poses, I want someone to beat Chriqui’s fellow Young Hollywood award winner Cam Gigandet within an inch of his life with a sock full of doorknobs, but this is neither here nor there). And, for a short while after my research, I felt really, really good. It’s always a nice feeling knowing that even though I’m 32, there’s still a chance that I could win a Young Hollywood Writing Award this year. * Erin Cummings’ publicist did not know (or did not wish to reveal) Cummings’ age and gave us the ballpark answer of “mid-twenties” when asked. Figuring that you couldn’t get more ‘mid-twenties’ than 25, we used that number for Cummings when calculating out the totals.    The Question of the Week THE QUESTION: With an Ohio man successfully convicted for writing out his sexual fantasies in a private journal and a series of people, including Jose Padilla, those guys down in Miami and Zacarius Moussaoui, arrested for merely planning out future crimes, is there any chance that a filmmaker could be arrested for researching material for a script involving a terrorist attack in America? - Eric E. (via e-mail) THE ANSWER: Ah, time to get my Glenn Greenwald on! A laughable first occurred to me while researching this question. I asked something of a government spokesperson and was greeted with the response, “I am precluded from discussing any on-going trials or cases as per the attorney general’s ruling.” Now I know how the White House press corps feels. When I received this question, my first thought was to call the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). I explained the question to the press secretary’s department and after much deliberation, was told to call the FBI. “People always think that DHS does the terrorism stuff,” the woman laughed, ignoring the ‘yellow’ terrorist alert banner prominently displayed on the DHS home page , marking an 'elevated' threat level. “We don’t handle that.” I then called the FBI Office of Public Affairs and chatted with an upbeat spokesperson who went out of her way to assure me that this question was not silly (“I had a guy call me last week who wanted to know how many bricks there were in the FBI building,” she said by way of explanation). After thinking about my query for a brief moment, the spokesperson said, “We, at the FBI, do not arrest people who haven’t committed crimes.” I smiled, instantly being taken back to phrasing of Tommy Lee Jones’ comic line of dialogue in Men in Black, “We, at the FBI, do not have a sense of humor that we’re aware of.” I suspected that some variation of that statement would be given and had my response prepared. “Zacarius Moussaoui and Jose Padilla were both arrested/detained and neither had committed any kind of crimes. As a matter of fact, Moussaoui is specifically charged with ‘conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism’.” You can read even more on this here. The spokesperson told me that the cases of Padilla and Moussaoui were unique because both men had proven ties to al-Qaeda. When I reminded the spokesperson that neither man had actually committed a crime though, out popped the aforementioned statement, “I am precluded from discussing any on-going trials or cases as per the attorney general’s ruling.” Padilla and Moussaoui have, of course, both been found guilty in their trials and sentenced to many, many, many years in prison. Having discerned nothing from the DHS or the FBI that would stand up under any kind of scrutiny, I then turned to another acronym, the ACLU (the American Civil Liberties Union). I ran through the question one more time and was told that this scenario wasn’t only feasible, but that a permutation of it had already happened in 1999 when a New Yorker, Mike Zieper, made a six minute short about a supposed military takeover of Times Square on New Year’s Eve and posted it on line. Zieper's full account can be read here. When word of Zieper’s film got out, the FBI shut down his web-site, because they were supposedly afraid that people would see the home video like movie and then start race riots. Zieper himself was afraid that, from what the FBI had said, he might be arrested and Zieper’s web-host, Mark Wieger, said that, “The FBI misled me into believing that I could be prosecuted [if the site weren’t taken down].” One thing to note: the scenario with Zieper and Wieger occurred in 1999, well before the current administration took office and began, uh, pruning some of the freedoms American citizens have had in the supposed interest of safety. Ask Chris Neumer a question	Classic Quotes "No! Things are not all right! The man does not refer to Pat Boone as a beautiful genius if everything is all right!" - Forest Whitaker makes a valid point that trouble is brewing in Good Morning Vietnam.    New This Week The Cottage THE PLOT: Pete (Reece Shearsmith) and David (Andy Serkis) head a bumbling ensemble of criminals who plans to kidnap a wealthy businessman's daughter. They decide to hold her hostage in the woods and a dark, comedic horror satire follows. THE SKINNY: +Genuinely funny... + ... and scary. -The Cottage features a disfigured killer known simply as The Farmer. + Compares favorably to Shawn of the Dead for its mix of comedy and horror. YES, IT'S TRUE: Serkis rose to fame by playing Gollum in The Lord of the Rings series. READ THE COTTAGE'S REVIEW The Great Debaters THE PLOT: Remember the Titans and/or Glory Road with debate. Set in the 1930's, Denzel Washington stars as the teacher who understands that his group of black students can hold their own with the best college debate teams on the planet. THE SKINNY: +This is the first time Oscar winners Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker have appeared on screen together. - The presentation of the debates is poor and the lack of factual integrity is worse... -... so bad that it deserves a full sidebar mention here. + You will be seen as the consummate gentleman if you refrain from making any 'master debaters' jokes. YES, IT'S TRUE: The Great Debaters was written by Robert Eisele, the screenwriter who also wrote one of the whitest films ever, 3: The Dale Earnhardt Story. Mad Money THE PLOT:When Bridget's (Diane Keaton) husband loses his job, it's up to her to bring home the bacon. She decides to do so by robbing the Federal Reserve Bank with her new friends (Katie Holmes and Queen Latifah). Think Fun with Dick and Jane... minus Dick. THE SKINNY: + Mad Money is directed by Callie Khouri. - The only male star is Ted Danson. - Most positive reviews use the word 'cute' to describe the movie. YES, IT'S TRUE: Callie Khouri won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for her first script, Thelma & Louise. Untraceable THE PLOT: Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) is a cyber crimes expert who matches wits with a psychotic killer whose victims' murders are tied to the number of hits that certain web-sites receive. THE SKINNY: + Untraceable recalls the high tech dramas of the mid-'90s... - ...but it's presently 2008. - Torture porn disguised as a crime thriller. - Colin Hanks is not a mini-Tom Hanks. He's a bad actor with a famous father. YES, IT'S TRUE:By pushing *67 on your phone before dialing a number, you block your phone number. Walk All Over Me THE PLOT: When a small town girl, (Leelee Sobieski) moves to the big city, she has a lot of trouble 'making it'. Desperate, she lifts her roommate’s identity as a dominatrix in order to make ends meet. THE SKINNY: + This is one indie project about a young blonde that is NOT about a girl with teeth in her vagina. + Leelee Sobieski is one younger actor who has always had a knack for picking interesting projects. -Plot could be described as 'small town girl runs into trouble in the big city'. Yawn.. YES, IT'S TRUE: Leelee Sobieski's birth name is, deep breath, Liliane Rudabet Gloria Elsveta Sobieski. The Ten Minute Guide was compiled by Chris DeSalvo and Zach Freeman.
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