SkimIt
To paraphrase one Heidi Klum: In the entertainment world, one day you're in, and the next, you're out. Most of the names you'll see in this space each week (should) have the spoils of fame and fortune to show for the years that they were in, but recently have found themselves closer to being out of the loop. But that may not last long, as these stars are climbing their way back to the top.
Eric McCormack
Just like Gilligan, Herman Munster and all of the Cosby kids, McCormack accidentally built a career tailor-made for typecasting. Because he was so memorable on Will & Grace -- and so forgettable in everything he's done before or since Will & Grace -- it's almost impossible to see McCormack on screen and not think, "Hey, it's Will!" It's like running into an old friend.
Not content to live off of rerun royalties, however, McCormack is again trying to make a (new) name for himself. This time it's on the TNT drama Perception, which debuts Monday, July 9. McCormack plays a neuroscience professor with paranoid schizophrenia who is hired by the FBI to help solve cases. So in other words, not at all the kind of guy who would be window-shopping in Manhattan with Grace and Jack. It's sort of like Monk, sort of like NUMB3RS, but with a more unpredictable and potentially dangerous lead character.
We've seen veteran actors like Timothy Hutton (Leverage) and Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer) remodel their careers via TNT crime thrillers, so perhaps Perception is what it will take for Eric McCormack to stop being called "Will" and start being called Eric McCormack.
Amy Winehouse's music
The demand for posthumous Amy Winehouse music is still strong, which is reason enough for hip-hop living legend Nas to help provide the supply with "Cherry Wine," a collaboration with Winehouse that was released this week.
Nas and Winehouse recorded some tracks together about four years ago, one of which ("Like Smoke") appeared on the singer's first -- and surely not final -- posthumous album, Lioness: Hidden Treasures. "It was just magic," Nas said in a recent interview with NME magazine. "It just happened. It was supposed to happen. She made it happen."
Robert Harling
With the (hopeful) exception of sci-fi writers, I would imagine just about everyone who pens stories about real people have based at least a portion of their material on their personal reality. So if that's truly the case, Robert Harling must have the most scandalous family dinners of anybody in the world.
Harling is best known for writing the stage play that was later adapted into the film Steel Magnolias (1989), as well as writing screenplays for Soapdish (1991), The First Wives Club (1996) and Laws of Attraction (2004). In other words, he is to salacious female drama what John Grisham is to unbelievable lawyer stories.
But Harling had fallen off the map for about eight years until he resurfaced in 2012 as a writer/producer for ABC's Texas-sized housewife dramedy series GCB. And later this year, Harling's star-making Steel Magnolias script is getting a Lifetime network makeover in the form of a TV movie starring Queen Latifah, Alfre Woodard and Phylicia Rashad.
Hobbits
Nine years after the third installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (Return of the King) was released, the hobbits are pitter-pattering their little feet back to the big screen. Earlier this week, director Peter Jackson announced he'd finished principal photography on the next two J.R.R. Tolkien-inspired films -- titled (at the moment) The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again.
It will be awhile before Bilbo Baggins and his clan are back in theaters, though, as a long editing process waits. But the Comic Con crowd will get their dose of all things hobbit soon enough.
Since I had Katie Holmes in this space last week, and since it seems all anybody in or around Hollywood can talk about is the impending divorce between Katie and Tom Cruise, it only seems fair to explore how the newly single life will impact Cruise's career.
While there is a perception out there that Katie will enjoy a career revival now that Tom isn't allegedly holding her back, don't count out the idea of Tom also putting out a slew of new projects. If Katie gets full custody of the couple's daughter, Tom will likely have more time to throw himself into his work. And considering that he's 50 years old and can't hang onto his looks or his athleticism forever (right?), the time for Tom to bust out with rapid-fire releases is soon. Big-budget action flicks, young leading ladies, daring stunts that he doesn't actually have to perform... there must be nothing like acting out a post-divorce, mid-life crisis as a mega movie star.
