Ain’t nobody smoother than Denzel Washington! The 58-year-old actor and two-time Academy Award winner is making his umpteenth (we counted!) trip to the Oscars this weekend, where he’s nominated for Best Actor for his harrowing work in Flight. What better time, we thought, to take a look at Denzel’s dapper duds over the years?
The nominations for the 2013 Oscars were announced bright and early this morning, and that brings with it another time-honored tradition: The Oscar betting pool! It’s the time of the year when suddenly everyone is a regular Siskel and Ebert, passionately weighing in on a bunch of films that we (probably) haven’t seen, guessing who’s going to take home the little gold bald dude. Normally we just bet on the thespian who has won the most accolades in the past, but this year it gets a little more tricky: ALL of the Best Supporting Actors have won Oscars before! The track record is fairly similar in the Best Leading Actor category too, with Academy honored legends like Daniel Day-Lewis, Denzel Washington and Joaquin Phoenix going head to head. Ahh, clash of the Titans! What are we going to do!?
Well, never fear, folks, because we’ve taken the time to handicap all of the actors for you, in basically the least-expert way possible. We went through their cinematic performances broken down into all the pros and cons that you need to make an informed decision for your Oscar night scorecard. Don’t worry, we’ve got one for the actresses too! Read on…
Why He Has A Good Shot: Not only did the master craftsman give the performance of his career by bringing back the controversial president, but he also grew his own beard, you guys.
What Might Hold Him Back: The Academy forgets that his last name has a hyphen, accidentally awards an Oscar to a “Daniel Day Lewis.”
Why He Has A Good Shot: Brad really showed that he was much more than a pretty face/funny guy in David O. Russell’s alt- dramedy.
What Might Hold Him Back: People are still pissed at him for beating out Ryan Gosling as People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive back in 2011.
Read more…
Today Abraham Lincoln gets reborn on the silver screen as you’ve never seen him before in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter! We’re pretty pumped to watch Honest Abe kick Dracula’s ass, but those blood sucking fiends aren’t the scariest part of the movie. It’s downright eerie how much star Benjamin Walker resembles the 12th POTUS! Those steely eyes, the bushy brows, the Amish beard…it’s all there!
Countless icons of the past have been popping up in Hollywood lately. Lindsay Lohan has been working overtime to bring Elizabeth Taylor back to life in Liz & Dick, while Ashton Kutcher is taking a more zen approach to his role in the Steve Jobs biopic. Andre 3000 is a dead ringer for the dead guitar legend Jimi Hendrix, and Julianne Moore could practically be Sarah Palin’s twin. If you put those two in a room with Tina Fey, we’d be totally screwed. Hell, even Benjamin Walker has some competition for Lincoln look-alike with Daniel Day Lewis also taking on the role!
For your viewing pleasure, we’ve assembled the 20 most scarily accurate celebrity portrayals of historical figures. Some rely on insane prosthetic and makeup, like Anthony Hopkins taking on the great Alfred Hitchcock. Others like Jared Leto and Charlize Theron just do totally nutty things to their body. And some, like Denzel Washington as Malcolm X, are just born with it. But no matter how they got there, the end result is always unforgettable. Take a look in the gallery below!
[Photo: Getty Images/Splash News Online]
Denzel Washington, you already have two Oscars. What are you doing getting waterboarded for your new movie Safe House? Don’t you know that’s what stunt people are for? “I wanted to see what it would be like,” Denzel told New York mag about consenting to the grueling feat. “It’s strange. You can’t breathe in, because the water comes in, and it’s filling up your mouth. And that was just one time for a short time. Imagine having that done for 20, 30 seconds? You will give up the answers! You may not necessarily tell the truth, but you will tell [your captors] whatever they want to hear.” We want to confess to our captors right now just reading about this, and we aren’t even being waterboarded. Or have captors!
Revealed the film’s director, Daniel Espinosa, “I went up to Denzel and told him, ‘Time to go, now is the moment where the stunt guy kicks in,’ and he looked at me and he said, ‘Let’s go.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘I’m sure.’ And I was terrified, but I let him go and I had to watch him do it.” As if having your mouth filled with water while Ryan Reynolds eats snacks at the craft services table wasn’t terrifying enough, it was Terminator 2 star/homicidal cyborg Robert Patrick doing the waterboarding. “Now, some of the guys we got, the Taliban guys, they only hung in there for eighteen seconds,” Patrick explained. “Denzel lasted five; that’s pretty damn good.” Yeah, “good” isn’t exactly the word we would use. “Insane,” maybe? “”Awesome”…definitely.
[Photo: Getty Images]
A year after Jennifer Lopez sued ex-husband Ojani Noa to keep him from releasing sexy video footage of herself, we now know just what Ojani’s got in his memory chest. While the pair never made a sex tape, he does have clips of J. Lo flashing Cubans on holiday! “JLo is riding a scooter in public in Cuba, while talking to the camera and numerous by-standers, with her privates in as plain view as Paris Hilton, “Britany Spears and Lindsay Lohan have in the past,” explains agent Edward Meyer to Radar, with legal papers saying the singer showed “deviant behavior by consensually exposing her genital area in public,” which she gave “full consent” to Noa to tape. Personally, we’d argue exposing her Gigli to the public was far more deviant.
Meyer’s argument that he shouldn’t be bound by any deal Lopez made with Noa seems a little specious, and we wouldn’t be surprised if this footage fails to see the light of day. But if Noa tried to audition for American Idol, odds are this guy will continue to be a thorn in J. Lo’s side for…well, ever. Check out photos of the fully-dressed star with Denzel Washington and Mario Lopez at a Boys and Girls Club event yesterday in the gallery below.
[Photos: Getty/.com/FayesVision]
Book of Eli
One of those pesky unnamed disasters has turned America into a giant dustbowl. Down these deserted highways a man must walk, and that man is Denzel Washington. For fortitude, he carries with him mankind’s last remaining copies of the Bible and Al Green’s Greatest Hits. (In one of this sci-fi adventure’s nice touches, his MP3 player is recharged by Tom Waits.) When greasy gang overlord Gary Oldman gets wind that Washington is carrying the gospels, the mano a mano stuff is on. Fans of I Am Legend may feel like they’ve been in this post-apocalyptic ‘hood before, but the Hughes Brothers (Menace II Society) revitalize the motions with pulp flair and one of the niftiest shoot-outs in some time.
Extras: Warner Bros. Blu-Ray/DVD combo pack boasts a behind the scenes doc, deleted scenes, an Eli ‘toon and a featurette on the soundtrack.
- By C. Bottomley
Check our exclusive behind-the-scenes DVD bonus clip!
Scarlett Johansson didn’t get tongued by Sandra Bullock or groped by Isaac Mizrahi at last night’s Tony Awards. No, presenter Laura Linney gave her something far nicer than the public molestation she’s used to—the award for Best Featured Actress In A Play! ScarJo’s Broadway debut in A View From The Bridge wasn’t the only theater turn from a movie star to earn an accolade, with Catherine Zeta-Jones (A Little Night Music) and Denzel Washington (Fences) taking Tonys home as well. The Will Smith-produced Fela! had to settle for Best Choreography, though, as Best New Musical went to Memphis—yes, schmaltzed-up faux R&B from the keyboardist for Bon Jovi beat the King Of Afrobeat. Honestly, we might have even preferred Green Day‘s Rent Goes To Iraq to win.
Also attending the ceremony were Jay-Z, Beyonce, Lea Michele, Matthew Morrison, Kristen Chenoweth, Cate Blanchett and many more. See what everyone wore in the gallery below.
[Photo: Getty Images]
While yesterday’s Meet The Nominees reception for the Tonys wasn’t a formal affair—only folks like Catherine Zeta-Jones really went for glamor—Denzel Washington‘s decision to wear a baseball cap and heavy windbreaker to the party (on a warm day in May, no less) made the Fences star look like a movie star planning to split this cheesy thing as soon as possible (that or a guy who needs a dollar). Come on, dude, fellow Best Actors in a Play nominees Jude Law and Christopher Walken are famous film actors too and they wore suit jackets. See all these actors and more in the gallery below.
[Photos: Getty Images]
You might think it’d be unwise to schedule your NYC gala on the same night the Costume Institute Gala takes over the Met. But then again, you’re not Steve Harvey. The comedian held his 1st Annual Steve Harvey Foundation Gala at Cipriani Wall Street Monday, honoring Denzel Washington, raising money for Harvey’s efforts to teach “The Principles Of Manhood” and enjoying a performance by Toni Braxton. That’s all well and good, but what the hell is going on with Marjorie Harvey‘s dress? If that giant-ass bow was an attempt to draw some attention away from the Met and towards this soiree, congratulations! See more photos in the gallery below.
[Photo: Getty Images]
Now that Beyonce and Madonna have been announced as performers, is there anyone left to add to the Hope for Haiti Now lineup? Kanye West seems plausible, but allegedly his mouth is too big. Lady Gaga is another possibility, but she’d probably distract people from donating by wearing a diorama of an earthquake scene on her head.
In addition to performances by Madge and Bey, more than 100 of the “biggest names in film, television and music” will be on hand to either perform, speak or answer phones. We’ve already listed out most of the big names, but there are some notable additions that have just been announced: Haitian artist Emeline Michel, Clint Eastwood, Denzel Washington, Tom Hanks and Will Smith with Muhammad Ali. The event will air Friday at 8PM EST on VH1, MTV and just about every other channel on your TV. Brace yourself for the biggest telethon in history, and don’t forget to have your wallet on hand.
Official press release after the jump.
