Scarlett Johansson, the keeper of Ryan Reynolds' heart, will grace the December issue of Allure magazine. And she's going to be (kinda sorta) fully clothed, too (sorry guys). According to the actress, being ScarJo is tough: "[The photographers] wanted me in my underwear—story of my life."
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ESQUIRE: PLEASE NOTE, VINCE VAUGHN HAS GOTTEN HEAVY • "Vince Vaughn looks a lot like Vince Vaughn, only bigger…His face is full, puffy enough to make him sometimes look as though he's fighting to keep his eyes open—not as though he's just woken up but as though he's never bothered to go to bed in the first place."
The triple murder tragedy of Jennifer Hudson's family wasn't going to be ignored by the celebrity weeklies. Sadly, multiple deaths are what it takes to get a black girl on the cover of a tabloid. The editors of each weekly, then, had to consider how the competition was going to play the game. Only People and Us gave Hudson A1 treatment, while every other magazine at least included her in a sidebar or footer.
Life & Style and OK! ended up with the same photo. Only the Globe went with a picture of Jennifer with her mouth closed — because nothing says tragedy like eyes staring into the horizon and a mouth agape.
And the honor of Going Full Exploitative goes to, not surprisingly:
Ali and Dina Lohan ruined cats for everyone last night at Animal Fair Magazine's Halloween pet costume party in NYC. The 14-going-on-45-year-old strutted around in cat ears and a white mesh tank, which … no. Just no.
Forget the animals for a second — is there some sort of charity that can benefit the Lohans and buy them some anonymity and/or class? CONTINUED »
Chace Crawford is gracing the cover of the most recent issue of VMan magazine to say the exact same things he's rattled off in the past: He knows he is pretty but believes there's talent to back it up, he tries not to buy into the fame and — oh yeah — he's totally not gay. We wouldn't say these pictures are necessarily helping his heterosexual male cause, but he's definitely correct on the pretty front.
Britney Spears just wrapped a top-secret Rolling Stone cover shoot while also promising an in-depth interview in the mag's upcoming issue. The Spears Comeback Train is obviously in full force, following through with the redemption arc by granting personal access to the same magazine that had plenty to say about the BS "tragedy" back in February — and the same publication that ran the "scandalous" (but not so bad in hindsight) cover in 1999. Very clever, Larry Rudolph. Keep up the good work.
Actor James Franco appears on this month's cover of Out to help hype his new gay flick, Milk. (He also did a cover for Interview magazine.)
The movie's story: Harvey Milk was California's first openly gay elected official and was later assassinated, along with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone. Franco's starring opposite Sean Penn, who has not been doing press for the movie, which is a bit queer.
So, Franco's getting all this attention and people are loving him. Or hating him. It depends on who you ask.
World famous pornographer Hugh Hefner, who's somehow convinced everyone that he's better than the common street pimps who do what he does, is being forced to can Playboy staffers in both New York and Los Angeles.
Since Hefner's once reputable magazine went from interviewing people like Malcolm X to interviewing people like Pete Wentz, and since anyone interested in masturbating to pictures now has the Internet for that, Playboy the brand has seen its stock fall precipitously, from $11.40 to $2.85.
This is just the latest blow to the 83-year-old Hef's empire, which has been in a rough patch for quite sometime now. Besides being turned down by falling starlet Lindsay Lohan, it's rumored that Playboy's notorious mansion parties have a tenuous future and that two out of three of Hef's girlfriends, Holly Madison and Kendra Wilkinson, have ditched him for younger men (magician Criss Angel and football player Hank Baskett, respectively).
Whaddya know? Women for whom one pays have no loyalty.
Update: Whoops! Page Six reports today that Hef's final girlfriend, Bridget Marquardt, is now dating Marisa Tomei's ex.
Hoverboards, colonization on Mars, cars that run on love — out of all the promises late 80s/early 90s films made to its children, how come the only thing technology reaped is better CGI to portray things that we still don't have?
Well, wonder no more, as the future is officially here, albeit in a crappy, analog form. Esquire's digital cover, y'all:
MAGAZINES FEEL THE RECESSION "Add magazines to the list of things Americans are foregoing due to the rising cost of living. Based on the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) numbers released today, sales of U.S. magazines dipped 6.3 percent according to the Associated Press' Jeremy Herron. … the magazines that faired the best were those aimed at older readers: AARP Bulletin, AARP The Magazine (whose Web site boasts it's the "World's Largest Circulation Magazine"), and Reader's Digest. AP reports that two magazine's that actually saw increases were Time Inc.'s People, which has a 5.2 percent newsstand increase (thanks a million, Knox and Vivienne) and In Style."
Samantha, Mark and Charlotte Ronson grace the pages of the latest issue of Harper's Bazaar in a fairly boring article that only gets exciting when — who else? — Lindsay Lohan becomes the topic of conversation. Naturally, Sam played coy: "I'm not going to talk about Lindsay because she's my friend, you know? She's great. She's also 22 years old. I think people forget that." Maybe people forget she's only 22 years old because she looks 40.
We're not sure what type of person keeps tabs on years-old magazine covers, but they exist, and one of them has noted a striking similarity between Kate Hudson's new W image and a Bazaar cover from 1994.
We suppose this might be more scandalous if eyeliner placement and facial expressions could be patented. But they can't be. La di da.
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Sorry, playgirls and gay boys, after 35 years of nude dudes, Playgirl magazine is shuttering its print publication. According to an e-mail editor-in-chief Nicole Caldwell sent to the media, "Playgirl is going all-Web. The last print issue will be the Jan/Feb 2009 magazine, which comes out Nov. 18."
After the jump, a (Wikipedia-assisted) list of all the famous men who appeared either nude or semi-nude in Playgirl's pages over the years.
CONTINUED »
Later this fall, when the sales data for Vogue's September issue is available, we might all have a good laugh about how terrible it did on the newsstand because Anna Wintour put Keira Knightley on the cover, even though when she appeared on the magazine last June, it was among the year's worst-sellers (405k newsstand). To be fair, Knightley was seen dressing an elephant in Louis Vuitton.
Ann Shoket is not on the good side of Gossip Girl Blake Lively. The blonde starlet — tragically seen in the sequel to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants — pops up on Vanity Fair and Cosmopolitan this month, but her cover role on Shoket’s Seventeen has her pissed. Even her rep says she’s not happy about it!
Except, well, this isn’t the worst cover on which we’ve ever seen Lively. In fact, we have three candidates that are at least equally terrible.
Remember that Vogue-King Kong controversy that ambushed the media chattering classes back in March? Anna Wintour and Annie Leibovitz were gouged by politically correct knives for repeating a racist and stereotypical image of King Kong and a lady of liberty, making cover star LeBron James look like a screaming ape next to a helpless (though smiling!) Gisele Bundchen. Now that the dust has settled, it's time to look at how Americans at large viewed the issue. In a word, poorly.
THE COST OF CELEBRITY CULTURE "Jann Wenner is said to be quietly exploring a sale of celebrity magazine Us Weekly to Condé Nast and the price tag could hit $750 million."
Editor
