Movies

News broke today that Premiere magazine will cease to exist -- tomorrow.

Advertising Age carries the story that Hachette Filipacchi has yanked the plug, citing declining subscriptions of the venerable monthly on the eve of its 21st birthday.

Viz, "Premiere's paid circulation has declined slowly over the years, from an average of 616,089 in 1995 to 492,498 in the second half of last year, according to Harrington Associates and the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Even more ominous, Premiere sold 24.7% fewer ad pages in 2006 than it did the year before, according to the Publishers Information Bureau."

In keeping with the rich Hollywood tradition of giving former employees the bum's rush, folks were given 24 hours notice to clean out their desks.

TMZ has obtained video of one of the wackiest marketing stunts in recent memory. To celebrate the launch of Disney's "Peter Pan" Platinum Edition, a team of skydivers in green leotards jumped from 14,000 feet!

Thirty daredevils from Neverland sang a horrifying rendition of "We Can Fly, We Can Fly" as they ascended. When they reached maximum altitude, they leapt from the plane and formed two giant letter Ps in the sky. Look, Wendy!

Rats.

As the Wall Street Journal will report in tomorrow's paper, DreamWorks Animation's fourth quarter was plagued by the underperformance of the rodential adventure "Flushed Away" -- the film is a $109 million write-off that drowned the studio's last quarter, in a net loss of over $21 million.

It's a shame DreamWorks in stuck in the middle of a two-year deal with McDonald's; the rat-themed "Flushed" would have clearly been a better fit for Taco Bell.

The Los Angeles Times' Claudia Eller reports that Team Cruise is closing in on some $500 million in financing that would be spread over several years at United Artists.

Now, we hate to admit this, but Cruise's career almost appears to be stabilizing.

After the "creative suicide" of last summer, Cruise's team has gone into overdrive: First the smart, classy deal that put Cruise into Robert Redford's next movie, "Lions for Lambs," in which in which Cruise plays a congressman.

(Even better, we hear that the congressman's name is not Mark Foley; Capitol Hill Blue, a non-partisan blog, wins our award for best recent Foley headline with "Mark Foley blows town," which in Foley's case could really mean anything. But we digress.)

More encouragingly, the LAT points out that Lambs had everyone, including Cruise, deferring their upfront fees so as to get the movie made for $35 million. Imagine: A Tom Cruise / Robert Redford / Meryl Streep movie for less than the price of a nuclear submarine?

But don't worry: Cruise still has a chance at blowing up this deal: Viz, "People close to the talks cautioned that the deal with expected lead investment bank Merrill Lynch wasn't final, and that terms were still being negotiated. They said an agreement could take an additional 10 days to two weeks to complete."

Well, so much for the theory that there'd be no clear Oscar favorite: "Departed" has taken best picture, director, editor and screenplay.

We also imagine that this is a bad time to be Brad Grey's shrink. I mean, talk about mixed feelings: The good news? You just produced the best picture of the year. The bad news? You produced it for your bloodthirsty competitor, Warner Bros.

"Visual effects: They enable us to see aliens, experience other universes, move in slow-motion, or watch spiders climbing high above the city landscape." (a beat) "For me, just a typical weeknight in the mid-Nineties."

God, I love this guy: Abusive childhood. Seen more snow than the Swiss alps. Regular jail. Movie jail.

Then I just heard KABC's Marc Brown say this stunner: Based on a nationwide poll, only a pathetic 9 (nine) percent of Americans saw all five movies nominated for Best Picture. And only 31 (thirty-one!) percent of Americans saw any of the the Best Picture nominees at all.

Wow.

I mean, don't get me wrong: I think "Letters from Iwo Jima" is the best movie I've seen in years; you'd have to go back to the Oscars of 2004 and "City of God" to find as compelling a film. But when the front-runner for Best Foreign Film ("Pan's Labyrinth") has out-grossed a Best Picture nominee like "Iwo Jima" by more than double, it doesn't bode well for the Oscar's Nielsen ratings. Even nominated "Iwo Jima" director Clint Eastwood looked like he was on total auto-pilot, absently responding to a question by ABC's George Pennacchio about whether award shows get tiring by saying, "We got 'Flags,' we got everything going." When his wife Dina pointed out to him, "That's nonsensical." Eastwood struggled on, "I'm just here... you know, I get some rubber chicken or something," walking away in mid-sentence. We wouldn't be surprised if viewers have the same reaction.

We're not talking about who designed Al's tux, or Tipper's gown; we're referring to the total 180 degree turn their image has taken in Hollywood over the past two decades: Back in 1987, Tipper's role in creating the much-derided Parents Music Resource Center would have made her a red carpet pariah. At the '87 Oscars, Tipper would have been dodging tomatoes, not walking on rose petals.

And even in 1997, a favorite Al Gore joke went, "How do you pick Al Gore out of a roomful of secret service agents?"

Punchline: "He's the stiff, unnatural one."

A few years and an Oscar-nominated documentary later, Gore's electrified the often-neglected documentary category. It's gratifying to see a smooth, relaxed and dare we say it, downright presidential Al Gore on the red carpet.

How come? Well, as Al put it, "I'm old enough to know that a red carpet is just a rug."

If only the Oscars were this much fun!

Sarah Silverman played host to the quirky Independent Sprit Awards last night, with "Little Miss Sunshine" dominating the ceremony. The film took home four awards, including top honors as Best Film.

Celebs like Rosario Dawson, Taylor Dayne, and a "bloodied" Neil Patrick Harris all sang ditties about each of the Best Film nominees in a brilliant attempt to break up the monotony of an awards show.

After cars that GM licensed for "Transformers" were unveiled during a pre-Academy Awards fashion event at Paramount Pictures, speculation has been rampant that GM may be debuting a line of specially-badged vehicles to coincide with the launch of DreamWorks' "Transformers: The Movie."

GM's cast of "characters" in the Michael Bay film include "Jazz," who's played by a Pontiac Solstice; "Ratchet," who's really a Hummer; and "Ironhide," who looks suspiciously like GMC's new TopKick.

Says Mike Jackson, GM North America Vice President of Marketing and Advertising, "'Transformers' is a compelling project and offers us a global platform for marketing GM products and building our brands; it represents the perfect intersection of entertainment, marketing and design."

Great.

Toyota expects to dramatically increase sales this year -- by half a million -- to 9.34 million vehicles. That's well ahead of troubled GM, which is actually in the throes closing plants and laying off 30,000 workers.

Rather than mulling some lame line of "Transformers"-badged cars, how about this crazy marketing idea, GM?

The "Charlie's Angels" stars obtained boarding passes, carried their own luggage and signed autographs as they made their way through LAX on Wednesday.

Drew was captivated by a furry new friend, as she petted a fellow passenger's puppy, almost forgetting to remove her shoes and sunglasses to go through the metal detector. See, even "Angels" have to go through security!

In the upcoming film "Reno 911: Miami," Niecy Nash is the butt of jokes, however it was her butt that was the big joke at the movie's premiere last week. Only thing is ... it wasn't her butt!

While fake breasts may be a dime a pair in Hollywood, Nash took to her red carpet premiere wearing a titanic prosthetic ass just to stay in character as Deputy Raineesha Williams. Now that's dedication!

Wilson flew down to spend Valentine's Day with Hudson, who is in Queensland filming "Fool's Gold" with the shirtless wonder himself, Matthew McConaughey.

Oscar winner Jamie Foxx is being sued by a fashion stylist for allegedly stiffing her on her salary.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, celebrity wardrobe stylist Stacy Young claims Foxx and Foxxhole Records failed to pay her for styling services rendered in 2006. Young says she was hired to work with Foxx for the BET Awards at a rate of $2,850 a day, as well as for "Miami Vice" press junkets at a rate of $3000 a day.

In the lawsuit, Young is asking for relief from the courts, but doesn't say the exact amount she is owed. Young claims she incurred "thousands of dollars in costs in connection with the services rendered," adding that she "turned down other employment offers" to work for Foxx. We ain't sayin' she's a golddigger!

A rep for Foxx could not be reached at press time.