Cynthia Nixon, Mary Louise Parker and Julianna Margulies take in the Chaiken show during Fashion Week in NYC. (photo: Jemal Countess/WireImage.com)

A Plea for Pullo

And a ray of light for Stevenson fans

"It is sick and wrong how much I love his character, Titus Pullo," writes April MacIntyre of Monsters and Critics. "My friends and I talk about Ray [Stevenson] as if we knew him, like a bunch of sappy 15 year olds. My son gives me the dreaded teenager eye roll. I don't care." MacIntyre has a message for the Irish-born actor: come to LA. If she has to trip over Brits like Daniel Craig in her Jamba Juice line, why can't it be that man who "delivers coarse Eastender-tinged turns of phrase" while "reeking testosterone in that good sort of way"?

Her readers couldn't agree more. "He's a big teddy bear in a cold-blooded killer's body," writes MagnoliaSouth. "Eirene is one lucky woman indeed."

As MacIntyre notes, there's light at the end of the Roman grotto for his fans: Stevenson is set to appear on the big screen later this year in 'Outpost,' an action-horror film "in the tradition of 'Alien' and 'The Descent.'" Shooting just wrapped in the west of Scotland, so maybe he's ready for some sunshine and a Jamba Juice in LaLa land. (photo: Avik Gilboa/WireImage.com)

[Monsters & Critics]

Rag and Bone

Cle Sloan explains why the Bloods should trade their rags for berets

Cle "Bone" Sloan was a member of the Athens Park Bloods gang in south LA, had been shot, jailed and seen countless friends killed when he got a job as a production assistant on a film after someone saw him on Larry King as a gang "spokesperson." That was the first step towards another life and career. His documentary 'Bastards of the Party,' nine years in the making, about gang life in LA, is now airing on HBO.

The doc focuses on a seldom-told side of things: "Nobody in gangs knew the history of gangs," he told the LA Times. "But it's actually linked to the black liberation movement. We're not just dysfunctional n**ers who can't get our act together. There was a movement deferred. Instead of wearing blue and red rags today, we could have been wearing berets." (photo: Johnny Nunez/WireImage.com)

[LA Times]

Repressed Memory

Richard Lewis's Polanski moment with Larry David

Richard Lewis and Larry David play themselves on 'Curb,' and in real life, they have known each other since the age of 12. But it wasn't love at first sight. As Lewis explained to TV Guide: "We met at summer camp and we despised one another. He was annoying, I was annoying to him.... We were arch rivals. When the summer was over, we moved back [to our respective] homes, and I had no intention of ever talking to that moron again, nor him me. Fourteen years later, [without recognizing each other] we became the best of friends on the stand-up circuit. One night, about two years into our friendship, I looked at him and something about him really scared the hell out of me. It was like a Polanski moment. So we sat down and retraced our childhoods, and lo and behold, when we came down to camp we flipped out. " (photo: Rebecca Sapp/WireImage.com)

[TV Guide]

Alice Eve, James McAvoy and Rebecca Hall at the Los Angeles premiere of Picturehouse's 'Starter for 10.' (photo: Eric Charbonneau/WireImage.com)

More Morton

Samantha Morton is on a roll. At Sundance last month, in addition to her turn as Myra Hindley in the premiere of 'Longford' (airing on HBO starting February 19th) Morton could be seen in 'Expired,' playing a meter maid who lives with her mute mother (Teri Garr). (Morton was nominated for an Oscar® for her own portrayal of a mute in Woody Allen's 'Sweet and Lowdown.') In September she'll be seen as Deborah Curtis, the widow of Joy Division's front man Ian Curtis in the upcoming biopic 'Control.' And she's signed on to film 'Synecdoche, New York' playing Philip Seymour Hoffman's lover (Catherine Keener is his first wife and Michelle Williams is his second). The film will be the directorial debut of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman.

[Time Out]

[Reuters]

[Uncut]

Blonde Ambition

Roseanne Barr wants to cut the apron strings

Roseanne Barr talked to the McClatchy newspapers about her return to stand-up. "Stand-up comedy, that's the freest thing that there really is, as far as performing arts," Barr says. "To me the stand-up comic is the ultimate rock star. You always hear truth from a stand-up comic."

Barr credits her return to soothsaying (and her HBO special 'Roseanne Barr: Blonde and Bitchin'') to feeling she needed to speak out after 9/11 — and to being given the opportunity to do so by Michael Moore, when he invited her to be his opening act for his college engagements. A major concern in her act is that women's power is being eroded yet again — as evidenced by the resurgence of the apron as fashion accessory. "You get back in that apron and get ready to wear a veil....It's such out-of-control breeder mentality. We're getting put back in our pens." (photo: Lester Cohen/WireImage.com)

[McClatchy news papers via Monterey Herald]

Beat Cop?

The return of Ed Norris

Ed Norris, former police commissioner of Baltimore, had no idea that when he did a cameo on 'The Wire' it would turn into a recurring role (he plays Detective Edward Norris, Kima Greggs' new homicide partner). Especially since he spent 6 months between his early and subsequent appearances in jail. (Norris lost his commissioner job when he plead guilty in a federal corruption case in which he was charged with using an off-the-books police expense account for personal use.)

"I didn't think we'd see much of him in Baltimore," 'The Wire' creator David Simon said, of inviting him to return to the show. "I had a feeling that whatever love he felt for this town was going to be gone. And I thought, what does a guy like that do? You know, when you've been a career cop, what do you do? But, you know, [F. Scott] Fitzgerald is full of [crap]. There are second acts and third acts and fourth acts in a lot of lives."

For his second act, Norris has had to rebuild his life from the ground up, working at an $8/hour retail job and now, as host of his own radio show: 'The Ed Norris Show, locked and loaded.'

Though he considers himself lucky for the second chances he's gotten, he still misses his old job. "You pay your penalty, but you never finish paying it. You never finish," Norris says. "And I'm doubly outraged, because in my mind, I still didn't do it. I've been convicted of a crime I never committed and now I've got to live with this forever."

[Baltimore Magazine]

Drea De Matteo at the Charlotte Ronson show at Fashion Week in NYC. (photo: Jason Kempin/FilmMagic.com)

One for the Heart

Life imitated art — sort of — at Fashion Week on Friday when Kim Cattrall traded her seat in the audience for a stroll down the runway as part of the ongoing Heart Truth Campaign. NY1 reporter Jill Scott reminded Cattrall of the 'Sex in the City' episode where Carrie took a header during her runway strut, something Cattrall remembered all too well: Absolutely," said Cattrall. "I went out there and it's carpeted, a lot of carpet. Usually, it's like a sheet of ice. So I am hoping that the Blahniks will pick up and get me through it. If not, I will fall down and pick myself up."

Joining Cattrall on the carpeted strip were other powerful female role models including Angela Bassett, Billie Jean King, Marlee Matlin, Rachel Ray and Betsy Johnson. Each woman wore a red dress by a different designer. The campaign is intended to raise awareness of the dangers of heart disease for women in particular and to urge women to take precautions — like exercise, diet and regular checkups. (photo: Thomas Concordia/WireImage.com)

[NY1]

Duncan's First Dunk

She plays the most dignified woman in Rome, but Lindsay Duncan's first TV role, which also happened to be set in the Eternal City, wasn't quite so stately. In 1975, she played a girl called Scrubba in a campy farce about Roman revelry called 'Further Up Pompeii.' For the audition, she was asked to show her legs. "When I say, 'I had no idea what I was doing,' I had NO idea," Duncan tells the AP. "I didn't even know how television was made, and it was live, so it was a kind of nightmare, though perhaps a very funny nightmare," Duncan recalls.

She's come a long way. Next week, she'll play acclaimed historical biographer Lady Elizabeth Longford, wife of the controversial liberal politician Lord Longford (played by Jim Broadbent) who fought for the rights of UK convicted child murderer Myra Hindley (played by Samantha Morton). Duncan, who knows the Longford's family, worked very hard to capture her character. "It was important to try to get the sense of someone from that period and background, very intelligent, a woman whose way of expressing herself was that of a thinker." (photo: Ferdaus Shamim/WireImage.com)

[AP via Canadian Press]

Oscar® Fever

If you were nominated for an Oscar® would you vote for yourself? During the press conference after the annual Academy Awards® nominee luncheon in Beverly Hills, best actress contender Helen Mirren ('The Queen') said it was an awful moral dilemma. "You think, 'I absolutely can't do this.' And then you think..." as she made devil horns on her head, 'Well, it's the one vote."'

Added Djimon Hounsou (left) nominated for his supporting role in 'Blood Diamond,' "Who else is going to vote for me?"

If they were eligible, probably not fellow supporting-actor nominee Mark Wahlberg's mom and dad. The Wahlberg progeny (right) says his work on the crime thriller 'The Departed' was based on his own youthful indiscretions with the law. According to the National Post, Wahlberg admitted being arrested by the Boston Police Department about 20 to 25 times. "When I got the call that I was nominated, I was able to call my parents and tell them good news," the 'Entourage' and 'In Treatment' executive producer joked. (photo: Steve Granitz/WireImage.com)

[National Post]

Chloë Sevigny at Fashion Week in New York. (photo: Todd Williamson/FilmMagic.com)

Zabriskie's Point

Grace Zabriskie finds meaning in art

Most know her as the unsettling woman with the big eyes from the David Lynch movies (most recently 'Inland Empire') or as Bill Paxton's fiery mom on 'Big Love.' But Grace Zabriskie (pictured here with Amanda Seyfried) has been a visual artist most of her life, and her sculpture and photographic collages show at various galleries. The actress and her painter daughter, Marion Lane, often collaborate, creating elaborate "light boxes." "You have to see them to understand them," Zabriskie says. (www.MarionLane.com). "I make all the wooden panels that my daughter paints on."

A New Orleans native (Zabriskie grew up in the French Quarter on top of Lafitte's Café on Bourbon Street), she also carves intricate wood "hideouts." As she writes on her site: "I have come to see all human endeavor as pastime, as refuge from constant awareness of mortality, futility; therefore terribly important and of no consequence whatsoever...When the piece is done, it tells its story, and I'm free to figure out what the hell I was talking about." (photo: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic.com)

[gracezabriskie.com]

[HBO.com]

Horror Queen Gets Into Treatment

Since her move to Los Angeles, Australia's Melissa George may be best known for her work on the hit remake 'The Amityville Horror,' and with starring gigs in the upcoming thrillers 'Turistas,' 'Waz' and '30 Days of Night' she's sure to be bloody well famous to gore fans. But inside the industry, she's infamous for scoring five TV series that were slashed by the studio knife — destined never to live past the pilot. Once, at a casting call, as she waited her turn with 25 other actresses, the legendary producer Brian Grazier came out looking for her: "I want to meet the highest-paid actress who's never worked a day in her life! Who is it?" and George sang out, "It's me."

Now that George has landed a role in the up-coming HBO series 'In Treatment,' maybe her Hollywood horror story will have a happy ending. Produced by 'Entourage' execs Mark Wahlberg and Stephen Levinson, George will play a therapy patient of series headliner Gabriel Byrne, whose own therapist is Dianne Wiest.

"The show is so good," says the girl from Perth. "Each episode is just two people talking in one room...It's 36 pages of dialogue, so it's pretty full-on. And it just goes to show what this industry's like: one minute I'm told there's only a 50/50 chance of it going ahead; 12 hours later, I'm being told we start shooting in April." (photo: Hal Horowitz/WireImage.com)

[The Daily Telegraph]

Idiot Savants

Are Merchant and Gervais the Laurel and Hardy of our time? According to Stephen Merchant, the comedy duo was influential. "We're big fans of people like Laurel and Hardy," Merchant told amNewYork. "Oliver Hardy is a man who constantly thinks he's dignified and erudite and sophisticated and a thinker and he's constantly undone by both his own sort of pomposity and the fact that he's with an idiot."

They may play dopes on TV, but the real-life writing partners behind 'The Office' and 'Extras' apparently know how to turn idiots into success. "I think the show in itself is an alternate universe if we had perhaps made wrong decisions or had more bad fortune," Merchant explains. "It's us trying to think of the worst ways our careers could have panned out." (photo: Alison Buck/WireImage.com)

[amNewYork]

Stars of Picturehouse's 'Pan's Labyrinth' Ariadna Gil and Maribel Verdu at the Goya Cinema Awards Nominations Gala in Madrid. (photo: Lalo Yasky/WireImage.com)

Put On Her Red Dress

Lorraine Bracco put on a red dress for charity on February 1st — and now you can buy it on e-Bay. The frock, designed by Michael Vollbracht for Bill Blass, was commissioned by the Campbell Soup Company to raise money and awareness for the American Heart Association's "Go Red for Women" movement. Bracco wore the gown to the Women's Day magazine Red Dress Awards to honor those who fight heart disease. As the actress told ShowBuzz: "Both of my parents have been afflicted with heart disease, and I was shocked by the numbers. I couldn't believe that half a million women die of heart disease here in the United States." As for the dress: "It's very beautiful, it's red silk taffeta, it's a shirt and a skirt, it's light as a feather." Bidding starts February 15th on e-Bay. (photo: Jemal Countess/WireImage.com)

[ShowBuzz]

[Yahoo.com]

Dances With Wolf

Dick Wolf is happy to have teamed up with HBO on the forthcoming HBO Films project 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,' according to his comments at the Winter TV Press Tour. "I'd love to send some network people to intern [at HBO] for a while," he joked. The film, five years in development ("I'm not kidding. I think this picture was fast-tracked at HBO," Wolf said), is about the mistreatment of Native Americans during the later 19th century. Airing in May, it stars Aiden Quinn, as well as a few faces familiar to 'Law & Order' fans: former senator Fred Thompson and Adam Beach (who just joined 'Special Victims Unit').

According to the Washington Post, Wolf hopes the film will educate viewers about this part of U.S. history, as well as "other things this nation becomes involved with." Ka-Chung. (photo: Dan Gorder/FilmMagic.com)

[Washington Post]

Media Blitz

Five years ago, filmmaker Jeffrey Blitz was at Sundance with his doc 'Spellbound.' This year he was in the dramatic competition with his first feature, 'Rocket Science,' about a boy who stutters and tends to keep to himself in high school. That is until he falls for the girl who's the hotshot on the debate team, compelling him to enlist to win her over. Blitz, who reveals he stuttered in high school, told the Sundance Channel that he particularly enjoyed working with his young cast (pictured here: Nicholas D'Agnosto, Vincient Piazza, and Aaron Yun). "One of the great things about working with young actors is that they haven't developed a lot of the 'useful' habits that older actors have. So I really wanted to make them feel comfortable that if they got an itch in the middle of a line, to scratch it." The natural results can be scene in some of the scenes included in Blitz's interview on Youtube — and in theaters when Picturehouse releases it this spring. (photo: C Flanigan/FilmMagic.com)

[YouTube]