Photo of the Week: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid No matter how you look at it, this is a large of chunks of wood flying at stuntmen who are very close to the explosion at hand. I don't care if this is balsa wood or how much padding they have or protective gear they're wearing--and none of it seems to be around their heads--this just has to sting. Click to enlarge. News & Notes Another "Wait, What?" Story An Inconvenient Truth is getting turned into an opera In one of the weirdest pairings of subject material and medium ever (far stranger than The Bourne trilogy and the Museum of Modern Art), it was announced this week that former vice-president Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth is being turned into an opera, to be performed in the Milan Opera House in Italy, beginning in 2011. The mind simply boggles trying to figure out how this one is going to work. Let me get this straight, you’re turning a middle aged man giving a two hour long PowerPoint presentation into an opera, complete with song, spectacle and, one would assume, a plot of some type? Insert jokes here about the rising action involving temperatures and he overweight leads needing a bigger crane on which to stand. The really inconvenient truth is that this just isn’t going to work. If the operatic version of An Inconvenient Truth does follow the movie’s and lecture’s PowerPoint presentation style, people are going to be in for a much worse experience at the opera than usual; it will be the original presentation… except longer and with more singing. If some kind of plot or character development is added to the material to make it palatable to paying audiences, it’s a wonder that the company is paying good money to obtain the rights to An Inconvenient Truth; it seems like one could easily concoct an opera about global warming without securing the rights to Gore’s project. On the other hand, if Gore works on his baritone, busts out a Viking helmet and belts out a few numbers courtesy of Melissa Etheridge in Italian this might just work... Charlize Theron Does Not Like Characters with Normal Names When studios release big tent pole films, it’s almost comical how “American” the names of the protagonists are. If it were possible to name every character John Stevens and Nicole Johnson, I think the studios would get behind the movement incredibly quickly. The reason for this trend is that the studios feel that the generic names allow more people from more walks of life to identify with the characters and it will bring the movie its biggest possible audience. It’s for this reason that there’s been only one Jewish action hero in recent memory: Mordechai Jefferson Carver in The Hebrew Hammer. It’s this studio logic that explains why so many lead characters have such non-varied names. One actress who has managed to shed these marketing ploys and stretch out her wings is Charlize Theron. Looking over her filmography recently, I was extremely surprised to see the wide horizon of unusually named characters she has played. Sure, she has a “Jill Young”, an “Erica Stoltz”, an “Emily Sanders” and a “Karen Jennings” to her credit, but in a few short years, Theron has also racked up credits as: * Stella Bridger * Jillian Armacost * Gwen Sunday * Sara Deever * Adele Invergordon * Laura Kensington * Josey Aimes * Aileen Wuornos * Helga Svelgen * Candy Kirkendall That’s a diverse and eclectic grouping of names. I mean, Adele Invergordon? That alone earns Theron points.	Quotes "I'm still burning up. Do you have any ice cubes I can rub on my nipples?" - James Duval needs to work on his pick-up lines in May. Interview Spotlight: John Corbett You know John Corbett from Northern Exposure, Raising Helen and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I knew him from Sex and the City. The thing that always impressed me about Corbett was his ability to have screen presence while he wasn't actually doing anything. He could just be standing in the corner and, for some reason, your eyes gravitate towards him. It's an impressive ability and one about which I was very excited to talk to him. Corbett, however, wasn't as excited. He hadn't heard of the magazine and when he heard the title, Stumped, envisioned some magazine that supplied questions most often heard on morning radio. "When did you start jerking off? Ha! You're stumped!" I assured him that wasn't the case and we set off to find a quiet room on the set of Baby on Board. Corbett first scanned over my list of questions, then squinted hesitantly at me and asked, "You did research on me?" I nodded. He seems impressed. And we started talking. We ended up talking for about two hours--only 45 minutes of which were recorded--and it ended up being one of the most pleasant, interesting interviews I've done. Corbett has a great deal of self-awareness which is rare in life, rarer yet in Hollywood, and it all made for a very intriguing conversation. This is one of those interviews, like my interview with Jeff Daniels, where I wasn't sure what the article was going to be about, but I had a lot of directions in which I could go. read John Corbett's interview Poster of the Week 5 Things I Learned This Week 1) Shia Labeouf's publicist's first name is Shea. 2) John Malkovich's middle name is Gavin. 3) Barack Obama's friends call hims "Barry". 4) There is an agent at ICM named "Boaty Boatwright." 5) The catcher for the Chinese baseball team is named Yang Yang.
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