Movies

On Friday, Foxx mingled with friends and family at the Delano Hotel, supervising as a crew set up the stage and songs from his album "Unpredictable" blasted from speakers.

For New Year's Eve, partygoers will pay $500 just to attend the New Year's Eve event. If they want to eat dinner, which includes jumbo shrimp, lobster and caviar, they will need to shell out $1,200.

The main event will be a performance by Foxx with Ludacris and Snoop Dogg, Foxx said.

"I'm going to take the mike and go into the crowd and ask someone 'What was something great that happened to you this year?'" Foxx said.

Without further ado, the top five censored moments of 2005:

Robin Williams at the Academy Awards

The blockbuster comedy 'Wedding Crashers' put the spotlight on a longtime underground practice: people showing up uninvited at weddings. Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn made the fun so convincing, the movie just may have influenced the rise in people crashing weddings.

So TMZ took an an informal survey of wedding-reception halls around New York City and Los Angeles, and found that there actually have been an increase in wedding crashers, especially since the movie's July 15 release.

"Most wedding crashers are between the ages of 16 to 21," reports Lorin Kalin, director of Belmont Shore Chalet, a popular wedding-reception hall in Long Beach, Calif. "Because it's young people who want to sneak in to get alcohol. The movie may be the reason for why more people are crashing weddings, but the people who crash weddings usually aren't going to say that it's because of the movie."

'Wedding Crashers' was the top-grossing comedy of the year, taking in $209 million at the U.S. box office. New Line Cinema will release the movie Jan. 3 on DVD in the original R-rated version, along with an unrated version.

The movie, which stars Wilson and Vaughn as the title characters, highlights the romantic complications that can occur when people show up uninvited to a wedding.

Those awkward wedding-crasher situations also happen in real life, says Kalin. "At one wedding reception, there was a teenage couple: a girl and her date. But the girl's boyfriend was also at the wedding and didn't know she was going to be there with another guy. It got really testy and it looked like there was going to be a fight, but security calmed everyone down."

Teenagers may be the easiest wedding crashers to spot, but Kalin says that older professionals -- like the ones portrayed in the movie by Wilson and Vaughn -- may get away with more if they fit in with the crowd.

And what happens when wedding crashers are outed at the event?

Kalin continues, "If there's security, they usually ask the bride and groom if they'll allow the uninvited person to stay. If the wedding crasher isn't causing any problems, they usually get to stay."

'Wedding Crashers' may be considered the copycat movie of the year. (Thank goodness it wasn't 'Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous'.) So we started wondering about which upcoming 2006 flick could inspire a bunch of copycats?

Some possible contenders:

'John Tucker Must Die,' starring Jesse Metcalfe (the hot gardener on 'Desperate Housewives'), is about a high-school stud who's unknowingly set up by three of his girlfriends who join forces to find another girl to break his heart.

'The Benchwarmers' stars Rob Schneider, David Spade and Jon Heder as three guys who try to relive their childhoods by starting their own baseball team and taking on the best elementary school baseball players in the state. Wow! Talk about arrested development!

'You, Me and Dupree' tells the story of a newlywed couple (played by Matt Dillon and Kate Hudson) and how they deal with a house guest (Owen Wilson) who's overstaying his welcome ... really seriously overstaying his welcome.

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"It's a different role for me," laughs Jones, the star of "Oklahoma!," "Carousel," "Music Man" and other squeaky-clean movies.

"People ask me, 'Why would you want to do a role like this?' I say, 'Look, I've been Mrs. Partridge for many years. Let's face it: I won an Academy Award for playing a prostitute in 'Elmer Gantry.' This is the kind of role that at my age (71) it's fun to play."

The fun starts, she related, when three housemates -- played by herself, Shirley Knight and Doris Roberts -- find a jar left in the kitchen by a previous tenant. The contents look like tea, so they heat up a brew. What they're actually sipping is hashish. That's when things get wild with a group of fun-loving young men.

A possible antidote to "Grandma's Boy," which opens Jan. 6, could be "Hidden Places," which airs on the Hallmark Channel on Jan. 28 at 9 p.m. Being a Hallmark production, it's gotta have heart and nothing to upset the family.

So appropriately enough, Jones plays an old lady with glasses, long gray wig and men's clothes who has been banished to a back bedroom by her Depression-era farm family. When the father dies, his daughter and two children face losing the farm. Aunt Betty, called Aunt Batty by her relatives, comes to the rescue.

From horny grandma to goofy aunt in the same month -- just another chapter in an amazing, unending career that has seen every form of show business except the circus.

But who knows -- that could be next.

Shirley Jones lives in a rambling, hillside house in suburban Encino with her husband and manager, former comic Marty Ingels, and three dogs.

The pets bark noisily at an arriving visitor, then turn downright friendly. When the noise dies down, Jones settles onto a soft divan for an interview. She'll be 72 on March 31 but shows little evidence of her calendar age except for the snow-white hair, close-cut with stylish bangs.

She demonstrated her resilience last summer when she starred on Broadway in "42nd Street," playing opposite her son Patrick Cassidy. "I hadn't done a show in 38 years, and I had four songs and five costume changes," she remarked. "I'm no kid, and I said to Patrick, 'I'm not sure I can make 8-9 shows a week. I'm not sure I can sing that much, even though I'm still doing concerts.' Patrick said, 'I'll take care of you,' and he did."

Jones started her career in her hometown of Smithton, Pa., where at age 6 she was the youngest member of the church choir. She played leads in high school musicals and appeared summers at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. She won the beauty contest for Miss Pittsburgh and barely missed becoming Miss Pennsylvania.

In the summer of 1953, on her way to college with plans for a veterinarian degree, something "incredible" happened.

"I was 17, and I went to an open audition for Rodgers and Hammerstein, who had three shows on Broadway and needed replacements," she recalled. "I sang for the casting director, and he asked me what I had done, and I said nothing, really. He said Richard Rodgers was across the street, and he'd like Mr. Rodgers to hear me personally."

Rodgers liked what he heard, and he sent for Oscar Hammerstein. By this time the accompanist had left, and the pair took Jones across the street to sing with the City Center Symphony, which was preparing for another company of "Oklahoma!" The girl, who had never heard a symphony orchestra, much less sing with one, did three songs from the show and was offered a contract and a role in the long-running "South Pacific."

"I thought I should go on to college," she said, "but my parents told me, 'This might be the chance of a lifetime; you can always go to college."'

After six months with a minor role in "South Pacific," Jones learned R&H had a grander plan for her: the female lead in the movie version of "Oklahoma!" She did well in an audition but was considered too young and inexperienced.

She was assigned the lead of another R&H show, "Me and Juliet." After six months, during which scores of girls tried out for the role of "Oklahoma's" Laurie, Jones was brought back to the production, sailed through a screen test and was chosen for the part.

She followed with the film version of "Carousel" and "April Love," a youth musical with Pat Boone. Then Hollywood stopped making musicals; they performed well in the U.S. but bombed in the all-important European market.

Jones turned to drama, stunning the film trade with her 1960 performance for "Elmer Gantry." Later, she turned to television, where she was embraced by a whole new generation of fans as the mother of "The Partridge Family" (1970-1974), in which she starred with her stepson, David Cassidy.

She has pleasant memories of the series and keeps in touch with most of her "family." "It was a wonderful almost five years," she said glowingly. "I got to stay home, raise my kids." She has three sons from her marriage to Broadway singer Jack Cassidy, and now she has seven grandchildren.

Shirley Jones gives no sign of quitting. She is booked for four concerts in early 2006, some with symphony orchestras, some with piano accompaniment and clips of her movies. She has regular sessions with a voice coach and pedals several miles daily on her stationary bicycle.

A Sunday night surge gave Universal's "King Kong" the needed push for the No. 1 spot over the Friday-through-Monday period with $31.4 million (euro 26.48 million), edging Buena Vista's "Chronicles of Narnia" estimated $30.1 million (euro 25.38 million) take.

The box office lead shifted back and forth all last week as new releases cropped up Wednesday, Friday and still more Christmas Day.

"It's a battle of the holiday blockbusters. It was very close for the No. 1 position," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box office tracker Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc.

"There's only so much room. I think crowded is the fair term to describe the marketplace right now," Universal Pictures vice chairman Marc Shmuger said Monday, noting overall box office was up 20 percent over the weekend compared to the previous weekend.

The movie tells the life story of Hector Lavoe (played by Anthony) who popularized the Puerto Rican salsa movement in 1975 in the United States. After lifelong battles with booze and narcotics, Lavoe died in 1993. In a case of art imitating life, Lopez will play his wife -- and serve as a producer of the film.

We can all only hope that this project goes better for J.Lo than 'Gigli' and 'Jersey Girl' went with her previous beau, Ben Affleck.

'Postal' is based on Running With Scissors' violent video game of the same name. The game follows a killer who goes on a murderous rampage through a small town. Coleman made a cameo in the video game 'Postal 2'; one of the player's objectives is to get the star's autograph.

Uwe Boll, who's currently directing another video game movie 'Name of the King -- A Dungeon Siege Tale,' told SKNR.net that he will direct. The movie is slated for release in 2007. So far, Gary Coleman is the only star on board.

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Gary Coleman Arrivals

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Gary Coleman

'Munich' tells the tale of a group of undercover agents sent by the Israeli government to kill the Palestinian terrorists who themselves assassinated 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympics in Munich. The film's screenplay was adapted by playwright Tony Kushner from the George Jonas book 'Vengeance,' which told the story from the point of view of the Israeli agents' leader, played by in the movie by Bana.

Spielberg has mostly avoided making public statements about the 'Munich' controversy. So far, he's only granted one interview about the movie, to Time magazine, in which Spielberg said he wanted the film to be 'a prayer for peace.'

'Munich' is a joint venture from DreamWorks and Universal. A DreamWorks representative for the film did not return calls by TMZ's deadline. A Universal spokesperson tells TMZ that neither the studio nor Spielberg had any comment.

The plot twists and turns about gangsters, snitches, magicians, FBI agents, assaassins and hookers. Alicia Keys plays a contract killer out to snuff Piven, while Affleck plays the bail bondsman.

Ryan Reynolds tells the Chicago Sun-Times: "You'll be shocked to see a very different Ben Affleck in this movie."

Not bad for an actress who was thinking a few years ago that maybe she wasn't supposed to have a Hollywood career, after all. Through the few ups and many downs in her career, Huffman often thought about quitting, pulling into her driveway and crying with her head on the steering wheel after bad days and failed auditions.

Huffman managed to fleetingly catch the eye of audiences with bit parts "The Spanish Prisoner" and "Magnolia," and she endeared herself to a cult of fans who caught her as the slightly flighty producer on the acclaimed but short-lived TV series "Sports Night."

To those who wondered why Huffman did not steadily rise to bigger and better parts, the answer is easy.

Allen was in the city on Sunday for the British premiere of his new film "Match Point," which swaps the director's beloved Manhattan settings for the gray streets of London.

"I let the cast improvise a lot, especially with the slang, where they would say 'g and t' for gin and tonic. I wouldn't say that," said Allen. "I would say 'dicey' when they would say 'dodgy.' I learnt a lot."

"Match Point" charts the fortunes of an Irish tennis player, played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, at the hands of an upper-crust English family.

It is Allen's best-received film in years and has gotten Golden Globe nominations for best picture, best director, best screenplay and best supporting actress, for Scarlett Johansson.

"The weather was absolutely superb for photography," Allen said. "Gray skies photograph beautifully, the light it casts is very soft.

But what was different: He did it for a documentary to air on Sundance Channel, the cable network he founded but seldom appears on.

As the season finale of "Iconoclasts," this hour-long portrait sticks to the format of the five that came before. It brings together a pair of innovators from different creative fields for one to serve as an admiring guide into the world of the other. Like chef Mario Batali on rocker Michael Stipe. Actress Renee Zellweger on correspondent Christiane Amanpour.

Or Redford on Newman beyond his role as screen legend. It premieres 10 p.m. EST Thursday (with additional play dates).

"It was never going to be 'The Paul and Bob Show,"' says Redford, who also executive-produced the series. "Instead, the idea of me presenting a friend who was also a colleague to speak about what inspired him -- his salad-dressing company, his racing interests, his camp for children -- those were areas that I thought were worthy of attention.

So it's a little ironic that he publicly worries that his days as an A-list actor are numbered.

Hanks stars in the upcoming summer 2006 movie 'The Da Vinci Code,' based on the bestselling book and directed by Ron Howard. The book has more than 25 million copies in print worldwide and has inspired a trend of religious thrillers. The movie will be an undeniable blockbuster, Hanks will probably get a slew of award nominations and ticket sales will go through the roof. Earlier this year, he was voted America's favorite movie star of 2004.

He reportedly said recently, "There are quite a few people no longer getting hired who were big stars as recently as 10 years ago."

"So I've already overstayed my welcome." He also says he's had luck "by the bucketload."

Which got us here at TMZ thinking: Tom, you really have nothing to worry about. Other stars like Tom Cruise, Robert Redfod, Julia Roberts, also have nothing to worry about. You actors could spit and it would probably garner three Golden Globe nods.

But what about others, those Hanks probably refers to? Meg Ryan? Kevin Costner (who's actually trying to make another comeback with his role in Jen Aniston's vehicle, 'Rumor Has It...')? Sly Stallone (who's making another 'Rocky??')

She may have ended a marriage, moved from a fab Beverly Hills home, dealt with her ex-hubby's very public new romance, and tried to keep her own under wraps, and still, Jen looked fabulous at the LA premiere of her new film, 'Rumor Has It.'

Aniston, her co-stars -- Shirley MacLaine, Mark Ruffalo, Mena Suvari, and Mike Vogel -- and director Rob Reiner all made appearances at the premiere in Hollywood last night.

Jen overcame a scratchy throat to tackle a bevy of rumors on any number of topics, including her recent chat with Jessica Simpson following her oh-so public split from Nick Lachey.

Other entertainers who've resurrected their dead or dying careers include:

Paula Abdul As a singer, she hasn't had a hit on the charts in more than 10 years. But Abdul became a household name again as a judge on 'American Idol,' where she's known just as much for her effusive praise of contestants as her on-camera spats with fellow judge Simon Cowell (and sometimes incoherent ramblings).

Teri Hatcher She was stuck in obscure TV movies and doing embarrassing Radio Shack commercials after her 'Lois & Clark: The New Adventure of Superman' TV series was cancelled in 1997. Then came 'Desperate Housewives' last year, followed by a slew of awards and an ubiquitous media presence that has arguably reached overexposure.

"The Ringer" sounds like a politically incorrect disaster -- but the Special Olympics couldn't be happier.

Knoxville plays a mild-mannered workaday chap who, in a desperate bid for cash, agrees to go along with his smarmy uncle's underhanded plan: he'll feign a mental disability in an attempt to rig the Special Olympics.

"Come on, a normal guy against a bunch of feebs? You'll look like Carl freakin' Lewis out there," says the uncle.

No wonder it took nearly seven years to get the movie made.

But after a long courtship, the Special Olympics decided "The Ringer" could humanize their athletes and add a new cachet of cool to their organization.