Michael Stipe’s status as an alt-rock icon may have waned a bit, but he’s not crying in his chamomile tea about it. According to today’s Variety, the R.E.M. frontman and his partners have sold a huge stake in their two film-production companies, Single Cell Pictures and C-Hundred Film Corp. (yes, he’s a budding movie mogul, too) to RSUB, a New York-based digital entertainment company, which will get the increasingly valuable Internet rights to all movies they make.
Says Michael Simon, RSUB president: “They (Stipe et al.) needed some cash, and now they get financial and digital resources.”
LUCASFILM SUES RAP MOGUL: LucasFilm is suing rap impresario Dr. Dre, alleging that the recording star employed Lucas’ trademarked THX Deep Note (you know, that annoying deep note before every movie at the theater) on his album “Dr. Dre 2001,” MTV News reports today. Also named in the lawsuit are Interscope Records and Aftermath Entertainment.
LOOKING INTO THE PAST: Director Allison Anders (“Gas Food Lodging”) is working on what is her most personal project to date: “Things Behind the Sun,” a semi-autobiographical story about a rape she suffered during adolescence, according to the Reporter. The film is slated to begin shooting in Florida in June.
EVEN HE HAS HIS OWN WEB SITE: Action star Steven Seagal has launched his own Web site, StevenSeagal.com, and announced Wednesday that the site will be exclusive home of his video “Aikido: The Path Beyond Thought” before its release in the spring. The site has already received 15 billion hits since this news brief was published.
TOM CRUISE’S PRIVATE PARTS: This breaking item from MSNBC.com: Talk-show host Rosie O’Donnell was “really uncomfortable,” according to one avid Rosie viewer, when actress Kate Hudson, Goldie Hawn’s daughter (who was on the gabfest to promote her new film “Gossip”), revealed that Tom Cruise ’s private parts can be seen, if freeze framed, in 1983’s “All the Right Moves.” Uh, hello?! This “juicy tidbit” is so 1983.
NOT VERY HAPPY: Judy Garland’s daughter Lorna Luft is criticizing her mother’s biographer, saying that Gerald Clarke’s well-received “Get Happy” contains “out and out lies,” MSNBC.com reports. Luft is also upset that the biographer never tried to reach her. Poor thing.
