Entertainment In Brief
The battle of the American Idol castoffs, part two. Plus, where to buy magical pants
American Idol Face-off
Katharine McPhee and Kevin Covais went head to head on the fifth season of American Idol. She won that round, finishing second while he came in 11th. Now they do battle again, both starring in films about college life. Here’s how they stack up.
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Katharine McPhee
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Kevin Covais |
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The House Bunny (August 22)
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College (August 29)
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Setting
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The college sorority Zeta Alpha Zeta.
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The college fraternity Beta Phi.
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PLOT
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A sorority of nerds and outcasts hires a former Playboy Bunny (Anna Faris) to be their housemother, and teach them how to attract guys.
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Three nerdy high school seniors (Drake Bell, Andrew Caldwell, Covais) pretend to be members of a fraternity during a weekend at their prospective college, and try to attract girls.
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CHARACTER
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Harmony, a free-spirited member of Zeta Alpha Zeta. She’s pregnant.
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Morris, an awkward teen pretending to be a member of Beta Phi. He’s likely a virgin.
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IMPORTANT PLOT POINT
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Harmony gets a makeover from the Playboy Bunny.
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Morris makes out with a drunk co-ed.
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WRITTEN BY
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Veteran duo Karen McCullah Lutz and Kristen Smith, who wrote Legally Blonde and 10 Things I Hate About You.
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Newbie duo Adam Ellison, a gopher on Shopgirl, and Dan Callahan, an actor with bit parts in Untraceable and Spider-Man 3.
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LOOKS A
LOT LIKE
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Animal House meets The Girls Next Door.
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Superbad 2: Off to College.
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THEIR FANS
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Called McPhans or the Kat Pack, they caught McPheever during American Idol.
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Called The Covies, they have their own website, CoviesOnline.com.
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THEIR FUTURES
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Has a big part in the small movie
The Storyteller. She’ll play the assistant to an obsessed writer (Wes Bentley) dealing with the death of his father. |
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Has a small part in the big movie Labor Pains, which stars Lindsay Lohan as a woman who pretends to be pregnant so she doesn’t lose her job.
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—Marni Weisz
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ARTIFACT
This month’s objet de film: traveling pants
Reluctant about buying clothes off the internet because you’re
afraid they won’t fit? Shouldn’t be a problem with this pair of jeans
worn by America Ferrera in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
The 2005 movie followed four friends — each with a very different shape
and size — torn apart by circumstance, but who keep in touch by passing
around a pair of Levis that somehow fits each one perfectly.
The jeans, which come with a brown suede belt, summery red blouse
and sandals also worn by Ferrera in the film, are available on
PremiereProps.com, where — surprisingly — they’ve been since the film
came out. But with the sequel, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, hitting theatres this month interest should be renewed. The cost? Just $799 (U.S.).
—Marni Weisz
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7 SURPRISING THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN THE STAR WARS UNIVERSE WHEN YOU WEREN’T LOOKING
Unless you’re a huge Star Wars fan, word of this month’s new movie, Star Wars: The Clone Wars probably left you wondering, “What is this?”
Fear not, the film is not the first installment of a third trilogy filmed secretly at Skywalker Ranch on George Lucas’s summer vacation. Instead, it’s an animated feature that’s part of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. In fact, it’s based on an animated TV series, the plot of which takes place between Episodes II and III.
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Again, for those who are not Star Wars aficionados, the Expanded Universe includes all the events/storylines that occur in the Star Wars world beyond the realm of the six Star Wars films. So all the stuff that happens in the Star Wars spin-off movies (like The Clone Wars),
books, TV shows, videogames, radio plays, etc. To keep the Universe in
order and running smoothly, Lucasfilm Licensing even maintains a
top-secret digital encyclopedia called the Holocron Continuity Database.
Here are just seven of the things that have happened to your favourite characters in the Expanded Universe.
• Luke Skywalker established a Jedi academy on Yavin 4. He married a
woman named Mara Jade, a former smuggler and assassin who worked for
Emperor Palpatine. They have a son named Ben.
• Han Solo and Leia Organa got married and had three children: Jaina, Jacen and Anakin (named after Leia’s father, of course).
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• R2-D2 and C-3P0 got jobs guarding passengers for the Star Tours Travel Company.
• Chewbacca was killed saving the life of Han Solo’s son, Anakin. Chewy’s death sent Han into an alcoholic depression.
• Lando Calrissian married a rich woman named Tendra Risant, and joined the Galactic Alliance in its fight against an invading alien species called the Yuuzhan Vong. An estimated 365 trillion sentient beings were killed in the five-year war between the two powers.
• Emperor Palpatine lived on in a series of cloned bodies. However, when one of those bodies began to deteriorate he attempted to possess the body of the infant Anakin Solo, and was ultimately killed.
• Mace Windu travelled back to his home world of Haruun Kal to fight his former Padawan, Depa Billaba, who turned to the dark side.
—Ingrid Randoja
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John Cusack in 2012
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ON HOME TURF
Films shooting across Canada this month
The forecast calls
for volcanoes, typhoons and glaciers in Vancouver from now until
mid-December. But no need to pack up the cats just yet, the extreme
weather events will be localized to the set of 2012, German director Roland Emmerich’s (The Day After Tomorrow, Independence Day, 10,000 BC, Godzilla) next apocalyptic thriller.
According to the Mayan calendar, our world will come to an end in
the year 2012 — which is as good a reason as any to throw an estimated
$200-million (U.S.) into another effects-laden blow-’em-up pic.
In fact, there’s a second film titled 2012 currently in the works for a 2010 release. Emmerich’s movie is expected to come out in July 2009.
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The production will move back and forth between B.C. and Los Angeles throughout the late summer and well into the fall, so look out for principal cast members John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Oliver Platt.
And if you see signs pointing to a set for Farewell Atlantis, take a second look. The project has gone by that name as well.
—Marni Weisz