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Halloween is arriving awfully early this year, but moviegoers have flocked to this franchise ever since 1978 when Michael Myers first began causing havoc. (I doubt they'll care that this weekend is the wrong holiday.) My box office gurus expect the R-rated Halloween 9, directed by the aptly named Rob Zombie, to treat more than trick the box office over Labor Day weekend with $20+ million from 3,472 theaters. Finally, The Weinstein Co's long drought hit-wise should ease modestly thanks to this reimagined horror pic from its Dimension Films. (What a relief to distributor MGM.) Sony's low-cost coming of age laugher Superbad from mogul Judd Apatow's comedy wheel expands into 3,002 venues (+54%) and should finish in 2nd place; its cume is already $75.1 mil going into its third weekend in release. My analysts expect Rogue Pictures' extreme sports spoof Balls Of Fury opening in 3,052 runs to occupy 3rd despite some of the unfunniest ads I've ever seen. Universal's The Bourne Ultimatum and New Line's Rush Hour 3 should place 4th and 5th respectively.
Reminder: DHD will be posting box office this holiday weekend but little else.
Then Hollywood producer Dominick Dunne claims Anthony Pellicano talked him out of arranging a hit on the life of the man who murdered his daughter Dominique. So the Vanity Fair special correspondent tells Kim Masters about those well-chronicled dark years after his daughter was strangled by her former boyfriend in 1982. Dunne hired Pellicano to keep tabs on the killer. But Dunne also reached out to the P.I. to help him put out a contract on the guy. "I was nuts at that time with rage and hate that the guy who strangled my daughter for five minutes until she was dead got out in two and a half years," Dunne claims. "I truly went through a period of wanting to hire somebody. I wanted harm to come to him." Dunne didn't expect Pellicano to do the deed but to arrange it. "He said something to the effect of, 'Dominick, you don't want to do this.' I was willing to be talked out of it." Years later, on the night before Pellicano went to prison for wiretapping and recketeering charges, Dunne, now a victims' rights advocate, got an unexpected goodbye call from the P.I.. 
(summer’s biggest vacation week) and foulest tragedy (America’s worst natural disaster). All of a sudden, broadcasters narrated disturbing images of the poor, the minority, the aged, the sick and the dead, and discussed complex issues like poverty, race, class, infirmity and ecology that never make it on the air in this swift-boat / anti-gay-marriage / Michael Jackson media-sideshow era. So began a perfect storm of controversy. Contrary to the scripture so often quoted in these areas of Louisiana and Mississippi, the TV newscasters knew the truth, but the truth did not set them free. Because once the crisis point had passed, most TV journalists went back to business-as-usual, their choke chains yanked by no-longer-inattentive parent-company bosses who, fearful of fallout, decided yet again to sacrifice community need for corporate greed."
"I look at that contract and I think I agree to most of that stuff on the back of my ticket to Disneyland." ...Kid Nation exec producer Tom Forman to TV Week about the draconian 22-page participation agreement which parents had to sign. It was just a matter of time before CBS found a way to blame Kid Nation on someone else. 
So you're a mogul, and you and the wife have split. She stays in the big Brentwood or Beverly Hills home with the kids. You could bunk at the Malibu manse but that's an awfully long commute from Broad Beach or Point Dume. So if you're Paramount boss Brad Grey, United Talent Agency chairman Jim Berkus, actor / writer Larry David, music producer David Foster, and manager / producer on hiatus Brian Medavoy, you move into Santa Monica's Pad-O-Moguls, better known as The Hollywood Halfway House. That white building on Ocean Avenue right near Wilshire Blvd -- I'm withholding the exact address -- is an apartment house specializing in short-term rentals. Short-term because these guys are recently separated or divorced and have put off buying a new house. "It's just a bunch of rich guys walking around a very expensive, well-run place right on the ocean," one of them tells me. "We don't hang out. I wish I could say we even do a lot of business together, but I don't see a lot of them. I go in and up the elevator straight to my apartment." There aren't wild and crazy parties even though NBC Universal Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman, who's famously single, also lives there. "I must not live next door to Ben. I don't hear the water gurgling from his 
Now, in the short term, I want Moonves to lift all the gag orders on the 40 children and their parents who signed that 22-page participation agreement in which a strict confidentiality clause covers disclosure of information about the show and contact with the media for the next three years. If violated, a $5 million penalty is charged. I say, if CBS has nothing to hide concerning allegations of child abuse and violation of child safety and labor laws in the filming of the reality show, then let everyone involved talk freely to the media.
I see that CBS has already rolled out to the media a few kids and parents primarily because they're talking positively about their Kid Nation experience. For instance, two Kid Nation Minnesotans, 14-year-old Maggie and 11-year-old Brett, and their mothers, recently did media interviews arranged by CBS, who declined to reveal anyone's last names for "security reasons". The St. Paul Pioneer Press revealed that Maggie was rushed to the hospital during filming with a stress fracture on her thumb. The network has still not acknowledged that injury, and god only knows how many more occurred.
which urged "viewers to step back and reestablish the line between entertainment and exploitation". Meanwhile, several state and union investigations are ongoing about the show asking what I am: if CBS and therefore Moonves were as proud of Kid Nation as they'd have us believe, then why were such pains taken to shoot in such secrecy, and do it in a state that did not protect children on showbiz sets, and in such a way that guild rules didn't apply? Congress, which back in the 1950s discovered that TV quiz shows were being fixed, should use its oversight and subpoena powers and begin a probe on this latest TV ... 
So old coot Sumner Redstone's secret elixir for long life is four ounces a day of a little-known superjuice called MonaVie. "It's a miracle drug," he told Fortune. "I feel great." The dark purple antioxidant rich concoction has at its main ingredient the Brazilian açai berry long touted among health nuts for its anti-aging ingredients. A bottle costs $40 and is not available in stores; it's marketed only like Avon or Tupperware. Fortune says Redstone first heard of the juice from Viacom exec Bill Roedy on a trip to Germany in January then learned that his butler's sister-in-law was a devotee too. (No, I'm not making this up. It's in the magazine.) "Since I've been on MonaVie I haven't taken a sleeping pill," he says. He even considered investing in Utah-based MonaVie after its CEO, nutritional products salesman Dallin Larsen, came to visit him at his Beverly Park mansion. At a recent party, Redstone gave bottles to Bill Clinton and celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck. "Just about every friend I have is on it," Redstone says - a group he says includes Viacom and CBS board members as well as Michael Milken. Ay-yi-yi. 
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