1 agosto: On DVD! "People I Know" - Al Pacino plays a publicity spin doctor who tumbles into a quagmire when he tries to smooth over a mess for a Hollywood client. Ryan O'Neal, Kim Basinger and Tea Leoni co-star. The DVD includes deleted scenes and commentary from director Dan Algrant. DVD, $29.99. (Miramax).

2 agosto: News!

	Kim leaves us floored with dark drama Door By Bruce Kirkland The Door in the Floor is that marvellous rarity -- a sophisticated, intelligent, summer film for adults who yearn for something more than popcorn flicks. With its exploration of the human condition in a time of both tragedy and ecstacy, it could just as easily have been a fall release and be talked up as a possible Oscar contender -- especially for stars Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger.  The source material is problematic, yet interesting. Writer-director Tod (Kip) Williams adapted the first part of John Irving's A Widow For One Year for his core story.  I say problematic because Irving's dense novels, with their psychological complexities, usually turn into movies -- and not always successfully -- only after many years and great difficulty.  Like The World According to Garp, The Hotel New Hampshire or The Cider House Rules, The Door in the Floor (the name of a children's book in the saga) is one of the good ones. Williams has simplified the structure of the Irving novel without, it seems, sacrificing the core elements: The essential truth about love, sexuality and their relationship to profound grief.  As a movie, The Door in the Floor is set in a summer in the Hamptons. Bridges and Basinger are a married couple struggling to cope with an unspeakable tragedy that reveals itself in flashbacks.  She is nearly catatonic. He is a shamefully self-indulgent boor who appears to be struck by writer's block in his search for a new children's book. So, despite hiring an assistant -- a wide-eyed creative writing student from a university -- to help him with his writing, Bridges spends the summer doing life drawings of sensual women. Being a horny rascal, the women also become his lovers.  For Basinger's part, she also takes a lover -- shockingly. It is the young assistant (played with delicacy by newcomer Jon Foster). There is a bit of Summer Of '42 here and a touch of Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, as well.  But Basinger, besides looking smashingly sexy -- at 50 years of age, no less -- when she romps with Foster in the nude for her sex scenes, makes the character all her own. Aside from L.A. Confidential, she never has been known for her acting prowess but here she is remarkable for more than her bod.  Basinger shares a scene with Bridges -- absolutely fearless and wonderful, as always -- that will knock your socks off if you think about it later. Like many great movie-acting moments, this sequence seems so subtle and quiet as it unfolds, yet resonates loudly later. That's great acting.  It graces a fine film with quality ensemble work from Mimi Rogers, Bijou Phillips and the uncanny child actress Elle Fanning, an old soul in a young body.  Something this dark, this challenging and this good for adults rarely emerges in summer. Rejoice.  Sun Rating: 4 out of 5
	Two hours not enough for 'Door in the Floor' By CHRIS HEWITT Saint Paul Pioneer Press It's an irony worthy of novelist John Irving: ''The Door in the Floor,'' based on his novel ''A Widow for One Year,'' is both the most faithful adaptation of his work so far and the best argument that the movies should stop trying. Irving has not been served well by the movies, even the stodgy ''Cider House Rules.'' His rambunctious, decades-spanning books -- with multiple storylines and huge metaphors just this side of ridiculous -- find their most felicitous form in the novel, which allows them to sprawl all over the place, immersing us in the lives of his evolving characters so we feel we understand them. There are exceptions, of course, such as ''Lawrence of Arabia,'' but the movies are better at grace notes -- at small, observed chunks of time in which we get briefly close to characters -- and they cannot encompass the rowdy scope of Irving's work. Two hours just aren't enough. In ''Door,'' writer/director Tod Williams has the seemingly smart idea to adapt only the first third of ''A Widow for One Year,'' and he does a fine ''In the Bedroom''-like job of recording the details of a precarious moment in the lives of four people. Ted (Jeff Bridges) and Marion (Kim Basinger) are ripping their marriage apart as they mourn the deaths of their two sons. Their daughter, Ruth (Elle Fanning, sister of Dakota), feels she doesn't fit in the family. When Ted hires Eddie (Jon Foster), a teenage assistant, all three latch on to him in unhealthy ways. As tenderly acted as ''Door'' is, it never finds its tone or purpose. Scenes of Ted on a self-destructive fling are meant to be tragicomic but come across as pathetic and vicious. Marion's affair with Eddie is meant to be poignant but verges on laugh-out-loud ridiculous. And we can't tell, because the movie can't tell, who the focus is. Although Fanning has by far the smallest role, there is a sense that everything revolves around the future of her hopeful, poignant character. But the movie, which seems determined to use its bigger stars as much as possible, does not pick up on that. There's a reason for that, of course, and a reason ''Door'' seems like a beginning with no middle or end. I know I'm harping on the book, but it helps to go back to it as you're trying to figure out what goes wrong with ''Door.'' In the first third of ''A Widow for One Year,'' we're also confused about who to focus on, but the rest of the novel reveals that Ruth is the main character and that the first section of the book gave us vital information about her. In the movie, we get that info and, unless we follow up by reading the book, we have nothing to do with it.GO! THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR 2 stars Starring: Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger, Elle Fanning, Jon Foster, directed by Tod Williams Rated: R, for frank nudity and language SHOULD YOU GO? I'm a big fan of the book, which obviously affects my view, which is that you should read it instead.
	'The Door In The Floor' By CHRISTY LEMIRE, AP Entertainment Writer (AP) The first 183 pages of John Irving's 576-page best seller "A Widow for One Year" provide the basis for "The Door in the Floor." The result is a film that couldn't be more complete, with rich, complex characters, darkly comic moments and a palpable feeling of melancholy. Like the best adaptations of Irving's books — especially "The World According to Garp" — "The Door in the Floor" really captures the author's method of juxtaposing the tragic with the perversely humorous. Writer-director Tod Williams made a few tweaks to the source material — for one, he moved the time frame from the late 1950s to the present day — but he kept Irving's spirit and much of his language intact. Williams' first film was another coming-of-age story, 1999's "The Adventures of Sebastian Cole." This has a sort of "Summer of '42" feel to it, with the faded pastels and pale light of its Hamptons beach setting, and its relationship between teenager Eddie O'Hare (Jon Foster) and the older, married Marion Cole (Kim Basinger) with whom he spends a summer. "The Door in the Floor" also will undoubtedly draw comparisons to a more recent film, "In the Bedroom" from 2001. Both are anguished, excellent, and both accurately convey the fact that people deal with loss in differing, sometimes conflicting, ways. Marion is practically catatonic after the deaths of her teenage sons, Timothy and Thomas. Her husband, Ted Cole (Jeff Bridges), a children's book author and illustrator, has moved Marion and their 4-year-old daughter, Ruth (Elle Fanning, Dakota's younger sister), to pastoral East Hampton, N.Y., in hopes of starting over and moving on. Ted's method of doing that involves alcohol and afternoon trysts, and when we first see him and Marion together, he's telling her that he thinks they should separate temporarily — effectively abandoning her when she needs him most. As for Ted, he needs an assistant (actually, he needs a driver because he's lost his license) so he hires aspiring writer Eddie, a student at Exeter Academy whose father was Timothy and Thomas' teacher, for the summer. Eddie is a tightly wound bundle of eagerness when he arrives and doesn't quite know how to handle Ted, one of his literary idols, who strips down and showers in front of Eddie within minutes of their introduction. (Bridges is a fantastic casting choice, by the way, because he's so adept at playing the breezy, slightly unpredictable cad.) We come to realize that Eddie is there not just to do Ted's schlep work, but to service Marion's needs, as well. He becomes the sons she's lost and the lover she's pushed away, and we don't know until the very end whether this was Ted's intention for him all along or just a serendipitous confluence of events. That Ted is aware that his young assistant has become intimate with his wife, and cares only in a passive-aggressive, territorial way, is one of the movie's many surprising quirks. Eddie also functions as a sort of father figure to bright, young Ruth in her father's absence — Fanning has the same startling poise and maturity as her sister, the star of "I Am Sam" — and the combination of all three newfound roles causes him to grow up confidently and rather unexpectedly. Foster smoothly evolves from playing the conservative, uptight boy to a young man who realizes that doing the right thing isn't as clear-cut as he originally thought. Throughout the process, though, he never loses his innate sweetness. He has some graphic — though realistically awkward — sex scenes with Basinger, doing her best work since "L.A. Confidential," which earned her an Oscar. Some will gripe that she's not really "acting," but merely remaining beautifully stoic. Her performance, and the powerful simplicity of much of the film's emotion, are evidence that less really can be more. "The Door in the Floor, a Focus Features release, is rated R for strong sexuality and graphic images, and language. Running time: 111 minutes. Four stars out of four.
	Why Jeff's a big draw  Bridges and Basinger in the tale of a womanising illustrator provide the grown-up hit of the season  The Door in the Floor is that all too rare species: a summer movie for grown-ups. Crucial to its considerable charm is its source: it was adapted by writer-director Tod Williams from the first section of John Irving's sprawling 1998 bestseller, A Widow for One Year. Faithfully detailed and wholly realised, The Door in the Floor is a sun-drenched summer love triangle set in the Hamptons, part sex comedy, part tragedy.  At 54, Jeff Bridges has slimmed down since Seabiscuit, and he is sexily on his game playing Ted Cole, famous children's book author, illustrator and womaniser. His estranged wife Marion, exquisitely played by Kim Basinger, has a torrid affair with his 16-year-old summer intern Eddie who reminds Marion of her two teenage sons, lost in an accident four years earlier. The movie is dominated by Bridges's hilarious, heart-rending performance as a man who embraces life - and believes that he can contain his grief. He could get an Oscar for this.  When it opened this month, nutrition-starved critics pounced on The Door in the Floor with glee, because the movie gave them at least something to chew on. 'There are more than a couple of moments in this film... that get Irving's sense of grotesque tragedy and tragic grotesquerie just right,' said Premiere.  'The film itself... is no great shakes,' said the San Jose Mercury News. 'It can't quite decide if it wants to be an offbeat "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" or flamboyant personality piece. Bridges doesn't seem to care: he not only rises to the occasion, but he towers above it, like the hilariously bullying Albert Finney of last year's Big Fish.'  Structurally inventive movies with dramatic shifts in tone are almost impossible to get made in Hollywood, especially by a second-time writer-director whose first film (1998's The Adventures of Sebastian Cole), failed to make back its $350,000 budget. Any movie that does not rest solidly on genre formula requires flawless execution. Big-studio Hollywood would certainly never have made this film. But even the supposedly enlightened world of the lower-budget 'indie' film production companies, which require that a producer supply a 'package' - pre-financing, script, pieces of casting and a director - has its own set of rules.  With The Door in the Floor, Bridges and Basinger both took a gamble on director Williams, now 35. It helped that the latter had persuaded Irving (with five movie adaptations to his credit) to sell him the rights to his novel for one dollar, the better to keep the project close. 'I spent three weeks writing a letter to John,' admits Williams. 'His films are super-rich, there are so many things in them.'  When Williams and New York producer Ted Hope visited Irving in Vermont to pitch their vision of the project, the New Englander, who had rejected previous Hollywood suitors, liked what they wanted to do.  'I was able to get into the characters deeply,' says Williams, who admits that Irving read every draft. 'He was very involved. He recognised that, until the movie got made and sold, it was a way to stay in control.'  After four years of shepherding the project Hope, who is known for taking on tricky productions such as American Splendour and 21 Grams, finally raised $7 million from equity investor Revere Pictures. That was enough to make the movie they wanted to make without having to cave in to demands for bankable stars from distributors, who tend to shy away from movies that are driven by actors' performances, says Hope. But the film-makers still needed to cast two quality name actors.  Already an Irving fan after trying to adapt his novel A Son of the Circus into a film, Bridges immediately agreed to play the lead role of Ted Cole.  'Jeff understands that there are indie films and studio films,' says Hope. For his entire career, from Heaven's Gate to [Bob Dylan's] Masked and Anonymous , Bridges has been drawn to the unexpected. The Door in the Floor is hard to fit into a category,' he says. 'The film-makers are ahead of the audience, you don't know what's going to happen next. There are some twists and turns.'  Having worked with Bridges on Robert Benton's Nadine, Basinger, once Bridges was on board, jumped at playing his grief-stricken wife Marion, who can't seem to summon any mother-love for her four-year-old daughter (Elle Fanning). She has an affair with her husband's 16-year-old summer intern Eddie (Jon Foster), who resembles one of her lost boys. 'The reason Jeff helps get a movie made is that every actress and actor wanted to work with him,' says Williams. 'He has a larger than life glamour about him, as much as he fights it.'  An artist himself, Bridges was drawn to portraying an illustrator. 'I like to draw,' he says. 'I asked, "Can I do these drawings?" and they said, "Sure." So I spent the first few weeks before we shot drawing the illustrations for the kid's book.' Ted Cole also likes to draw the women he seduces in the nude, but while Bridges practised sketching on set, 'He never felt he got the vagina drawings right,' reports Williams, who chuckles remembering Bridges taking his mother Dorothy, 85, into a room covered with explicit nudes. 'On set everyone is lighted up by his presence.'  Never judge a book by its cover, especially in Hollywood. This summer, the studios packed their slates with book titles in the belief that a surefire way to grab moviegoers' attention during a cluttered season is to make a film version of an already established hit such as Homer's The Iliad (Troy). But science-fiction buffs expecting to see an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's I, Robot starring Will Smith or thriller junkies expecting The Bourne Supremacy to have anything to do with Robert Ludlum's follow-up to his bestselling The Bourne Identity are in for a shock.  Neither screenplay is based on the original novels at all. And producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Pirates of the Caribbean) might have done better to have stuck with the King Arthur myth as penned by Sir Thomas Mallory, Tennyson or T H White. Stateside moviegoers have had mixed reactions to his King Arthur, which is based on the febrile imagination of screenwriter David Franzoni (Gladiator). 'We went back to the historic Arthur,' says Bruckheimer. 'He was a half-British, half-Roman commander who came in with the cavalry to protect the south from the invading Picts. It has nothing to do with the fantasised Arthur of Camelot, the Lady of the Lake and the Holy Grail. I wanted to see the Special Forces from Black Hawk Down kick ass in the 5th century.'  Clive Owen sports a moulded breastplate, while Keira Knightley's Guinevere bears a great deal of resemblance to another plucky summer archer in leather, Kate Beckinsale's vampire-slayer in Van Helsing. Bruckheimer readily admits the primary function of his King Arthur: brand name.  Talk about twists and turns. M Night Shyamalan's The Village looks like a period horror movie and is being sold like a period horror movie. What it is, more accurately, is an old-fashioned love triangle featuring lissome newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard (daughter of Ron, in a major screen breakthrough) as a blind girl caught between the two men who love her: Joaquin Phoenix and Adrien Brody. Question is: will audiences go along for the ride?
	The Door in the Floor: A gripping affair! The Door in the Floor is not just a study of a fast disintegrating marriage. It looks effectively into the mind of an adulterous husband and how he sets in motion a chain of events that lead his wife into a relationship with a teenager. Here is a sharply observed study of a wounded marriage and the games the affluent writer and his wife play against each other -- and how the teenager, who is at least 25 years younger than the wife, becomes a part of the couple's manipulation. Hollywood is not new to the genre of young boys falling for older women. What makes the film work is the performances by its leading actors Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger and director Tod Williams's gripping narration. What mars the film though is the time Williams takes to build the scenes leading to the affair. And his preoccupation with the sexual fantasies of its teenage character that lead to a predictable affair. The Door in the Floor, based in part on John Irving's novel A Widow for One Year, is one of the few summer releases that deserve serious attention. In limited release now, the film, which is slowly expanding across the country, could become an arthouse hit. Bridges is one of the more underestimated of Hollywood actors. Though he has received excellent reviews for much of his work, the star is yet to be seen in a runaway hit. His performance here deserves to be widely seen and applauded. He plays Ted Cole, a frustrated 'serious' author. Ted has taken up writing children's books and yet cannot enjoy his successful career. His heart is still in what he considers to be serious books. His womanising has robbed energy and enthusiasm out of his marriage to Marion (Kim Basinger). The death of their two sons in an accident seems to have led their marriage to deteriorate further. Ted continues his trysts with young girls and an older woman (a riveting Mimi Rogers). His wife has an affair with Eddie, a 16 year-old boy (a promising Jon Foster) who was hired to help Ted Cole. The psychological games between the husband and wife continue. We learn that Marion has been blaming her husband for the death of their boys. Though Williams maintains a good grip over the film, there are some predictable areas that are jarring. Even those who are not familiar with Irving's work, for example, know soon after Eddie and Marion have met that the sexual tension between the two is going to create more complications. Reason? Eddie resembles one of Marion's dead sons. Oscar-winner Basinger (for LA Confidential) continues to be one of Hollywood's underused stars. She delivers a stinging performance as a woman who knows some of the deepest secrets of her husband.

3 agosto: New doors open for Basinger
With roles in this month's The Door in the Floor and two other movies coming this year, Kim Basinger's career is suddenly healthy again and she's coming to terms with her problem-plagued personal life.
"There are so many aspects of myself that I've grown into lately," the actress says. "I used to be someone who was nervous or self-conscious. But I have grown so much in the last four years that I can't keep up with myself. I feel like I've come into my own game and my own strengths. I'm so much cagier now. And I don't even think that I've hit my prime yet."
Basinger delivers one of the best performances of her career in The Door in the Floor, a drama that reunites her with her Nadine co-star Jeff Bridges. The movie, based on John Irving's novel Widow for One Year, explores the complexities of the marriage between a children's book writer named Ted Cole (Bridges) and his fragile wife Marion (Basinger) after they suffer the loss of their two sons.
The couple's relationship is further tested when Ted invites an assistant named Eddie (Jon Foster) into their East Hampton beach home. The young man, who idolizes Ted, soon finds himself falling in love with Marion.
The actress says she was deeply moved by Tod Williams' screenplay, which, oddly enough, made her all the more determined to turn it down. Every time Williams would call, she'd say no again. Finally, she agreed to meet him in Los Angeles, where she was planning on wiggling out of his offer in person.
When Williams wouldn't take no for an answer, Basinger had an epiphany.
"When I got home, it hit me: I have to play this woman. I have to find a way to do this. So that's exactly what happened," she says. "But I probably turned it down three times. It's funny because my lawyer says I do that with all the worthwhile ones. (L.A. Confidential and 8 Mile director) Curtis Hanson always says to me, `Kim, you'll read something and fear it but then you'll end up doing it anyway.' "
For The Door in the Floor, there was a lot to be afraid of. Basinger was called upon to perform a soul- and body-baring love scene with a man nearly 30 years her junior.ADVERTISEMENT - CLICK TO ENLARGE OR VISIT WEBSITE
Basinger is the first to admit there were some chilling parallels between herself and Marion Cole. When she was married to her now-ex-husband Alec Baldwin, the couple spent at least part of the year in the Hamptons, not far from where the movie was shot.
"The movie has such echoes for me because I lived in the Hamptons," she says. "But it's not a direct correlation. We all go on a journey in our lives. And I was just at the point in my life where I could understand Marion's silence and her aloneness."
It's no secret Basinger has been through a tough time in the last few years. After seven years of marriage, she and Baldwin separated in 2000 and divorced two years later. The breakup was messy, with the couple hurling charges of physical and drug abuse against each other.
For the last several years, they've been battling over the custody of their 8-year-old daughter, Ireland. On June 10, the couple finally reached a settlement that gives both parents legal and physical custody.
"Sometimes you just wonder, `When will it ever be over?,' " Basinger says with a sigh. "I've gone through a couple of trials. It was almost like an out-of-body experience watching these things."
Following The Door in the Floor's release, Basinger will pop up on Aug. 20 in Cellular as a kidnap victim whose only hope for survival is a young man on the other end of the phone. And this fall, she'll be seen in Elvis Has Left the Building, a dark comedy about a cosmetic saleswoman who accidentally runs over a gaggle of Elvis impersonators.
While many actresses are slowing down, Basinger is enjoying a renaissance.
"I turned 50 in December," she says. "And I know so many of us don't want to be 50 or 51 or 60. But I've learned to change all that around. I look forward to getting older. I want to go on. I can't wait for what's up the road." 

4 agosto: Riepilogo box office per THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR.

	#1 WEEK END 16/18 JULY (Studio Estimates) - 20 N The Door in the Floor Focus $445,000 - 47 - $9,468 $572,000 - / - 1.
	#1 WEEK END 16/18 JULY (Actuals) - 21 N The Door in the Floor Focus $456,876 - 47 - $9,720 $584,171 - / - 1.
	#2 WEEK END Jul 23–25 19 $571,825 +25.2% 119 +72 $4,805 $1,363,123 2.
	#3 WEEK END Jul 30–Aug 1 24 $363,277 -36.5% 128 +9 $2,838 $1,995,955 3.
	14.07 - 20 $67,685 - / - 47 / $1,440 $67,685 / 1.
	15.07 - 22 $59,610 -11.9% / - 47 / $1,268 $127,295 / 2.
	16.07 - 22 $121,000 103% / - 47 / $2,574 $248,000 / 3.
	17.07 - 21 $191,000 57.9% / - 47 / $4,064 $439,000 / 4.
	18.08 - 21 $145,000 $456,876 -24.1% / - /  47 / $3,085 $9,720 $584,171 / 5.
	23.07 - 19 $149,651 - / 23.7% 119 / $1,258 $940,949 / 10.
	24.07 - 19 $257,442 72% / 34.8% 119 / $2,163 $1,198,391 / 11.
	25.07 - 19 $164,732 $571,825 -36% / 13.6% +72 / +25.2% 119 / $1,384 $4,805 $1,363,123 / 12.
	30.07 - 24 $94,023 - / -37.2% 128 / $735 $1,726,701 / 17.
	31.07 - 24 $156,689 66.6% / -39.1% 128 / $1,224 $1,883,390 / 18.
	01.08 - 24 $112,565 $363,277 -28.2% / -31.7% +9 / -36.5% 128 / $879 $2,838 $1,995,955 / 19.
	THEATER COUNTS FOR AUGUST 6TH - The Door in the Floor 134 (+6).

5 agosto: Stasera Kim Basinger sarà ospite della trasmissione in onda sulla rete americana NBC "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno". Altri ospiti: Mark Ruffalo, Jamie Cullum.

6 agosto: BASINGER'S BAD MOUTH UPSETS HER DAD - KIM BASINGER's shocked dad once sent her a tube of tennis balls after she upset him by talking about oral sex in a TV interview. The actress was perplexed with the gift until she read the note her father attached to the tube. She reveals, "It read, 'When you give an interview and the feeling of being outrageous is present, please place this ball in your mouth and then tape your mouth shut. If you are still able to say oral sex after doing this, then you are hopeless.'" .

7 agosto: "Una mujer difícil" se estrenará en España el 22 de octubre  Protagonizada por Jeff Bridges y Kim Basinger, se trata de la adaptación cinematográfica de "The door in the floor", de John Irving. El oscarizado Jonh Irving avala la adaptación que ha rodado Todd Williams de una de sus obras más aclamadas: "Una mujer difícil". El reparto cuenta con Kim Basinger y Jeff Bridges en la piel de dos torturados personajes. Después de recibir una unánime recepción positiva por parte de la crítica, "Una mujer difícil" sigue escalando puestos en la taquilla americana. Ha doblado el número de copias en su segunda semana de exhibición en EE.UU., recaudando un 25% que en la primera y con una media por pantalla de casi 5.000 euros. "Una mujer difícil" es el segundo trabajo de Todd Williams, que ya compitió en Sundance con su ópera prima, "The adventures of Sebastian Cole". En "Una mujer difícil", un adolescente llamado Eddie (John Foster) se convierte durante un verano en el ayudante de Ted Cole (Jeff Bridges), un escritor de cuentos para niños. Para ello, Eddie comparte con Cole y con su enigmática mujer Marion (Kim Basinger) su residencia veraniega y los oscuros secretos que cuelgan de sus paredes. Esta pareja vive una crisis tras la muerte de sus dos hijos adolescentes. Su único nexo es la pequeña Ruth, una niña de cuatro años que nació después del incidente y a la que intentan mantener ajena de su distanciamiento. Todo se complica cuando el joven Eddie descubre que siente una irremisible atracción hacia Marion. Su sorpresa crece al descubrir que ésta le corresponde. El tórrido romance que nace entre ellos complica aún más las cosas entre la pareja, desencadenando un final imprevisible. 

8 agosto: From the past .... old interviews!

Kim Basinger Interview  How tough was "8 Mile" for you?  My security was having Curtis Hanson at the helm of this. I knew he would get me where he wanted me to go. It was a wild ride. It was a scary ride. It was really, really scary at times. Stephanie's quite a complex person, and it was a great opportunity for me.  How was it working with Eminem? Was he nervous?  Eminem is very cool. This is a very intense ride and we had to go to some raw places, some very hard places with this script. It was hard. It was tough. I wouldn't say he was nervous, I think we were all nervous. It was kind of like a common bond we all had, whether we could make this real and raw.  Why did this story speak to you?  I think it's talking about communication. I'm prejudiced but I think no one can do this as well as Curtis Hanson can. I think he has his finger on the pulse of America and on people - not just America, on the world - and what people want to see or need or whatever. He went into those waters and I'm glad he took me with him.  What has it meant to you being part of this project?  The day I left Detroit, tears were in my eyes. I said to myself, "I'm really going to miss this crew. We've gone on a really wild ride together." But you know what? I am not going to miss Stephanie!"

The African Queen: An Interview With Actress Kim Basinger  Kim Basinger's story is classic Hollywood stuff, a tale about a shy, small-town girl who quickly rose to fame and fortune as a high-priced fashion model and A-list actress, only to have her name smeared by a Tinseltown scandal that ultimately left her bankrupt. Her financial troubles started in 1989, when Basinger headed an investment group that purchased the town of Braselton, Ga., for $20 million. A few years later, she was sued by Main Line Pictures for backing out of an agreement to appear in the ill-fated film, Boxing Helena. Basinger was ordered to pay $8.1 million in damages, rendering her bankrupt and forcing her to sell her share of Braselton for $1 million. However, in typical E! True Hollywood Story fashion, the blonde bombshell bounced back in 1997, winning an Oscar for her performance in L.A. Confidential.  Of course, in between all that, she starred in films like 9= Weeks, The Natural, and Batman, as well as appearing nude in Playboy. In addition, she was romantically linked to The Artist Who Formerly Had A Career, voiced her concerns as an animal activist, married actor Alec Baldwin, had a baby, and publicly admitted to suffering from agoraphobia, a condition that caused her to remain housebound for six months until she received therapy to combat it.  Basinger currently stars as Kuki Gallmann in I Dreamed of Africa, a true-life film about a woman who had the courage to escape from her comfortable yet monotonous life in Italy to start anew in the wilds of Africa. To prepare for the role, Kim, her husband Alec, and their 2=-year-old daughter moved to Africa to experience life in the bush. drDrew.com spoke to Basinger about the experiences of the wild and how she tamed her life.  drDrew.com: Talk about being devoted to your art you moved to Africa?!  Kim Basinger: My husband and myself made a conscience decision to pack up and go into the bush. We wanted to be away from what many people say is civilization for six months.  drDrew.com: What was your biggest concern about making this move?  KB: I had so many fears about doing this. My biggest one was whether I could do my work and take my [baby] daughter into the bush to live. It was pretty treacherous because everything in Africa has teeth.  drDrew.com: Can you recall one of the oddest things you first came across?  KB: Once I got over there, I learned that a puff adder--that's a snake curled up on a porch--is as natural as seeing a golden retriever in Central Park.  drDrew.com: What was your work schedule like?  KB: I worked seven days a week. On the seventh day, I tried to face some of my fears--like learning how to handle snakes, trying to learn to drive a jeep with a left-hand shift, and trying to make myself be convincing as an equestrian. It was a magnificent journey.  drDrew.com: How did Africa change you?:  KB: You're never the same. We lived in the bush with very little electricity, no water on most days, and without a lot of the bare necessities. The thing that really happened to me over there was that I befriended my fears. I was beginning to not only love it, but [also] wanted to be a part of it. It was such a gift.  drDrew.com: Was it tough to leave?  KB: We all held hands. My husband, my [daughter], and I all cried like babies. My husband had tears running down his face. Till this day my daughter, who is four now, has vivid memories of everything that happened in Africa.  drDrew.com: Why did you move to London for a month after filming wrapped?  KB: I just couldn't come home. I didn't want anyone to ask me questions about Africa. I couldn't even speak about this movie. I had so many requests a year ago to talk about this movie, and I couldn't even describe my experience until now.  drDrew.com: You're very outspoken about your feelings for animals. Did you get a better understanding about them from seeing them in the wild?  KB: I don't need a confirmation of this in any way, shape, or form, because I just don't believe animals belong on chains or in cages. It's always wonderful to see them in their own natural habitat. That's where they belong.  drDrew.com: Much has been written about some of your past personal problems how did you deal with that?  KB: I've had my downs, but with a little faith and a big sense of humor, you can get though them. It's truly a gift to visit the bottom because then you know how much to appreciate coming out of that and not wanting to go back there. There's a great lesson to learn on the other side of the tunnel, and you really come out stronger.

9 agosto: News!

	Ennesima variazione per la data di uscita di Cellular: la nuova data è 10 SETTEMBRE 2004.
	BASINGER'S CELL PHONE EMBARRASSMENT - Fans of KIM BASINGER felt sure the actress had fallen on hard times when they saw her posing in front of a poster promoting her new film CELLULAR - but the actress was just waiting for a pal. The OSCAR winner was left red-faced after a recent visit to the cinema when she was caught on her cell phone in front of a huge poster of her on a cell phone. She explains, "I was standing there in the hall and all of a sudden I see people looking at me and sometimes that happens... but there are a group of people, then another group of people formed around me. "They kept looking, whispering, laughing... and I'm going, 'How rude can you be?' I thought, 'I'm gonna make a call on my cell phone and then they'll go away - but another little group forms, then another little group. "All of a sudden my girlfriend comes out of the bathroom, grabs me and says, `You moron.' She says, `Did you see what was behind you?' and behind me was a gigantic poster of Cellular with me, my face this big, on a cell phone, and here I am making a cell phone call. "People must have been like, 'How much are you getting paid to come down here to the MANN theatre and stand in front of your poster?".
	'The Door in the Floor' - 'Door' opens up on a family's pain.  "It was wrong of us to have had Ruth," Marion says of the child she and husband Ted (Jeff Bridges) had after losing two sons. They tried to make a new beginning and that included a baby, a choice that can bind some splintered couples together but here has produced a bright, anxious 4-year-old (Elle Fanning) who spends most of her days with a teenage nanny.  We meet Ruth in the first scene of the movie, studying the framed photos that run like ribbons along the upstairs hallways of a roomy Hamptons house. "Dead means they're broken ... and they're under the ground," she says, as her father tries to massage that bitter truth about the towheaded boys frozen on film in childhood joy.  This is a family that shares a universe but spins in separate orbits. Marion has retreated into her shell, a victim of shock, while children's book author-illustrator Ted drinks too much and dallies with the locals. It's more than Eddie (Jon Foster), a 16-year-old hired as Ted's summer assistant, bargained for. Much, much more, especially as he falls under the spell of Marion's beauty and fragile existence.  "The Door in the Floor," adapted from the first third of John Irving's "A Widow for One Year," deals with the grief and guilt that have paralyzed one parent and sent the other into a peripatetic frenzy of drinking and painting and playing squash and wandering around nude or in caftans that make him look like a lost prophet. As in life itself, the movie is populated by characters who demonstrate both generosity of spirit and supreme selfishness, with some motives never as clear as we might like.  The title comes from one of Ted's books, and the image and sentiment echo through the film. Writer-director Tod Williams ("The Adventures of Sebastian Cole") does the very thing that Ted suggests a good author must do: prepare the audience for what's ahead and use the tools and manipulations of fiction the way a painter uses colors. Those tools include a small dose of comedy along with portraits of isolation, loss, innocence, lust, discovery and soul-shattering experiences that can harden the heart.  It's no coincidence that people are often covering Basinger's Marion with a blanket; she is chilled in every possible way. Foster (who played Michael Skakel in cable's "Murder in Greenwich") quietly allows his character to mature and change, and Fanning possesses the same uncanny talent as her older sister, Dakota, from "I Am Sam."  "Door in the Floor," which is strictly for adults, given its sexual content and nudity, builds to a powerful scene that demonstrates why Bridges should have an Oscar or two or three on his mantel by now (but inexplicably doesn't). He proves that the showy, award-worthy scenes don't have to be explosions of anger; they can be quiet recollections spun like a bedtime story that will haunt rather than lull you to sleep.  Pain turned inward instead of outward, like a volcano, is still -- in the end -- pain.
	Open that ‘Door in the Floor’ "The Door In The Floor" is a minor masterpiece.  If the Academy Awards were really about honoring great acting and great filmmaking, this movie would be a shoo-in for a nomination, and Jeff Bridges would be the odds-on favorite for Best Actor.  True, the year is just slightly half over. There may be other fine films and performances lurking in the wings. Lucky for us if that’s so. But in the meantime, this will do, and more than quite nicely.  Excellence demands excellence. Bridges is a gifted actor, but without a script to match his talents, a performance like this would be impossible. Tod Williams, working from the first chapter of a John Irving novel, provides the vehicle for Bridges’ prodigious skills.  And speaking of vehicles, they figure importantly, if not prominently, in the film. Two of my favorite scenes are wordless shots of Ted riding a bicycle. Ted, the character Bridges plays, is a successful author and illustrator of children’s books. He’s also a grieving parent whose teen-aged sons have died in an accident, details of which are withheld from us.  Ted’s coping strategy involves the steady consumption of alcohol and barely concealed, serial adultery. His wife Marion’s response to their great loss has been to withdraw into a laconic, almost catatonic state. Marion is played, with artful reserve, by Kim Basinger. And though her role is smaller than Bridges’, it’s no less moving.  Though there are tender moments with his 4-year-old daughter Ruth (a replacement child for a loss that can’t be replaced), for the most part, the face Ted shows the world is that of the charming rogue. But on his bicycle, turning slow circles in the late-night hours, or stopped momentarily at an empty bench, Ted’s grief surfaces. It’s on his face, and in his body. There’s no one he’ll show it to. But we see it and we feel it, and no matter how callous and manipulative he appears in his social transactions, his wounds are ameliorating.  Life isn’t simple. Tragedy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. "The Door In The Floor" is a film about grief and its aftermath. Grief and guilt, love and loss – these are timeless subjects for any artist’s palette, but it would be incomplete without humor and absurdity.  And there’s plenty of that in "The Door."  Enter Eddie, a prep-school upper classman. He wants to be a writer. With his father’s help, Eddie lands a job for the summer as Ted’s assistant. Little does he realize that Ted is orchestrating a story line, and that Eddie is a primary character in it. Innocence is always a casualty in stories like these, and Eddie’s losses are bittersweet. It becomes a summer we know he’ll never forget.  There’s a timeless quality to this film befitting its timeless subject matter. Ted eschews a computer in favor of a typewriter. The cars aren’t ancient, but there’s nothing spanking new in Ted’s driveway. He uses a phone attached to a very long cord.  The only background item I spotted that fixes the time in the present moment is a movie poster for Neil LaBute’s "The Shape Of Things," which was released in 2003. Props are not accidental on movie sets. Remembering the artist in "The Shape Of Things" may legitimately flavor one’s reading of this film.  "The Door In The Floor" is a movie for grown-ups. It’s uncompromising in its assumption that there’s a place for intelligence in the movies. I’ve watched it three times, and it gets better with each viewing, especially the performance by Jeff Bridges. "The Door In The Floor" is easily one of the best films of the year. It should not be missed.
	Kim Basinger, rinascere a 50 anni Boom di offerte per la star americana Ha superato i 50 anni ma Kim Basinger sembra sfatare il mito di Hollywood che mette da parte le attrici alle prime rughe. La protagonista di "Nove settimane e mezzo", ancora sex appeal da vendere, sta vivendo una seconda giovinezza. Dopo alcuni film da dimenticare ("La mossa del diavolo" e "Sognando l'Africa"), l'attrice è tornata alla grande. Prima "8 Mile" di Eminem. Ora "A door in the Floor", "Cellular" e "Elvis has left the building". Dopo "In linea con l'assassino" con Colin Farrell e il coreano "Phone", "Cellular" di David Ellis ("Final Destination 2") è il nuovo thriller "telefonico" che sbarca sul grande schermo (nei cinema americani uscirà a settembre). Nel film Kim Basinger viene rapita e rinchiusa nel vano portabagagli di un'auto. Preda del terrore, compone sul cellulare un numero a caso e raggiunge uno sconosciuto. Il problema è che non è in grado di indicare il luogo in cui si trova e la batteria del telefonino sta per scaricarsi... Co-protagonista del film, accanto alla Basinger, Chris Evans ("Non è un'altra stupida commedia americana").  Di tutt'altro genere il secondo film che l'attrice americana ha finito di girare di recente, "Elvis has left the building". Si tratta di una commedia romantica diretta da Joel Zwick ("Il mio grosso grasso matrimonio greco"), che segue le disavventure di Harmony, una venditrice di cosmetici nata durante un concerto di Elvis Presley. Recatasi ad un incontro di fans del "Re del r'n'roll", Harmony ammazzerà accidentalmente due sosia del suo idolo. Perseguitata dall'FBI, incontrerà, infine, l'anima gemella.  E' appena uscito negli States "A door in the Floor", libero adattamento del romanzo di John Irving "Vedova per un anno". Il film ha fato già parlare abbondantemente di sè per le scene di nudo della ritrovata Basinger. Quindici anni dopo l'indimenticabile spogliarello di fronte a Mickey Rourke in "Nove settimane e mezzo", l'attrice di Athens (Georgia) si imbarca in una spregiudicata e travolgente relazione con il giovane assistente del marito.  Insomma, dopo diverse stagioni down, Kim Basinger sta risalendo decisamente la china. Gli anni Novanta, se escludiamo l'Oscar come migliore attrice non protagonista per "L.A. Confidential" di Curtis Hanson, non le hanno regalato molte soddisfazioni (una per tutte: Julia Roberts le soffiò il ruolo in "Pretty woman"). Ora, superati i 50, la riscossa. Si può dire che il rilancio della star sia partito proprio con il ruolo drammatico che le ha offerto Eminem nel suo bellissimo "8 mile": una madre alcolista e disperata. Il rapper, ancora una volta, ci aveva visto giusto...
	IMB news 'The Door in the Floor' - Critics, by and large, are reserving their most positive reviews to a small film starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger that is the very antithesis of a summer movie. A. O. Scott in the New York Times, calls The Door in the floor, based on a John Irving novel, "surely the best movie yet made from Mr. Irving's fiction. It may even belong in the rarefied company of movies that are better than the books on which they are based. And above all, Jeff Bridges offers perhaps the wittiest and richest piece of screen acting by an American man so far this year." Ty Burr in the Boston Globe calls it: "a stunningly well-acted drama for grown-ups." But Ann Hornaday writes in the Washington Post: "This is a carefully conceived, thoughtfully orchestrated effort in taste and restraint that ultimately is too restrained and tasteful." And Mark Caro observes in the Chicago Tribune: "The Door in the Floor is the kind of novel adaptation that constantly reminds you of its literary origins. That is, the characters talk and behave the way characters in novels do -- so if you like lyrical dialogue and fanciful metaphors, you're in luck. If you're inclined toward characters whose behavior is more grounded in the way people act in the real world, you may be less forgiving." .
	Kim Basinger vs. Melanie Griffith - Battle of the Unjustly Oscar-Celebrated Bombshells. Before you get all uppity and snort, "What the heck do Kim Basinger and Melanie Griffith have in common!? I mean, one's an Oscar winner and one's married to Antonio Banderas! One's a cinematic beauty for the ages and one's ravaged by way too much surgery! One's all squeaky-talkin' and the other's all breathy-talkin'!" -- which, you must admit, would be an impressively long snort -- stop and ask yourself this: Which one of these actresses starred in A Stranger Among Us, playing a cop who goes undercover by pretending to be an Hasidic Jew? You may well have answered correctly. (It's Griffith.) And you may well have answered quickly. (It's Griffith!) But we're guessing you paused, if only for a second. We're guessing you could imagine a universe in which Kim Basinger played that part. (With equally dismal results.) We sure paused, and we were the ones asking the question in the first place. Both Basinger and Griffith made their respective names as young, strikingly attractive blondes in salaciously sexual, mid-'80s films. For Basinger, it was 1986's 9 1/2 Weeks (remember, we said "sexual," not "sexy") and for Griffith, it was 1984's Body Double (remember, we said "salacious," not "watchable"). Both went on to flirt with critical respectability that was not, in hindsight, entirely deserved: Basinger won an Oscar (!) for L.A. Confidential, even though all she did was stare soulfully into the middle distance, while Griffith was nominated for an Oscar (!!) for Working Girl (!!!), even though she had a mind for business, a bod for sin, and a voice for irritation. Both are now shining fixtures in the night sky of the tabloids -- Basinger for her spats with Alec Baldwin; Griffith for her unfortunate inability to resist peeling, pruning, and plumping up various portions of her face. And both have been part of high-profile Hollywood marriages to sexy brunet men: Basinger to Baldwin; Griffith to Antonio Banderas. Baldwin! Banderas! Baldwin! Banderas! Why, these women are practically living parallel lives. And both once purchased an entire town, then went bankrupt. Oh wait, that was just...which one? Quickly now! Don't wait for the translation! Answer: Kim Basinger. The non-Hasidic-Jew impersonating one. It's true that, of late, these women's paths have diverged. Basinger can currently be seen in the moody and satisfying The Door in the Floor, in which she stares soulfully into the middle distance. Her next film, Cellular, may not be so well received, if only because soulful staring doesn't translate over the phone. Griffith, for her part, starred recently in, er, Stuart Little 2. If we were her, we'd wonder: How come Kim Basinger gets to mix in the odd respectable film among her flops, while I can only do flops? And little-seen flops at that? If we were her representatives, we'd answer by suggesting she work on her stare. Advantage: You brought her, you Basinger

10 agosto: News incassi!

	BOX OFFICE - WEEK END ESTIMATES (Aug 6 - 8): 25 The Door in the Floor Focus $288,000 -20.7% 134 +6 $2,149 $2,480,000 $7.5 / - 4.
	TOP US RENTALS "PEOPLE I KNOW": Week ending 25 July 2004: 15. New People I Know (2002) 5 $2.57M $2.6M. Week ending 1 August 2004: 14. 15 People I Know (2002) 12 $2.33M $4.9M.

11 agosto: Un po' di news:

	Bridges grabs attention - Jeff Bridges wants to get his "The Door in the Floor" more attention from moviegoers, but even he knows it's a tricky proposition. The complex drama, from John Irving's "A Widow for One Year," has drawn similarly complex reviews. Critics the likes of Rolling Stone's Peter Travers call it "extraordinary in every way," while others sound almost angry at the film, written and directed by Tod Williams, and its central characters, grieving parents Bridges and Kim Basinger, who aren't what anyone would term admirable. "It's hard to tell people what a John Irving story is like," says Bridges. "If you say it's about a couple who lost their two sons, you're giving a misimpression because there are so many different layers to it, and a lot of comedy as well."  Even critics who aren't keen on the film as a whole have been heaping praise on Jeff's performance as the affable, cruel, womanizing writer who practically sets up his wife to start an affair with a 16-year-old (Jon Foster) who resembles one of their dead sons. "I'm pleased the critics like the work," he says. Bridges also says he loves to "be involved in movies that are a little risky."  His latest effort has a pretty high-risk factor as well. Jeff just finished production on "The Moguls."  "I hope that sound bite doesn't shrink it down too much. Like 'Door in the Floor,' it's kind of a complex story," he adds of the romp that also has Ted Danson, Tim Blake Nelson, Joey Pantoliano, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Glenne Headly and "Valerie Perrine, an old buddy of mine." The character he portrays in "The Moguls" is a small-town loser with a propensity for get-rich-quick schemes – who manages to convince his friends to join him in making their own adult movie.
	Top 50 United States Video Rentals for the week ending 8 August 2004 - 15. 14 People I Know (2002) 19 $2.11M $7M.
	WEEKEND BOX OFFICE August 6-8, 2004 - 28 25 The Door in the Floor Focus $284,312 -21.7% 134 +6 $2,121 $2,476,687 $7.5 / - 4.
	THEATER COUNTS - Aug. 13th Estimates - 9 33 The Door in the Floor Focus 134 0 5.

12 agosto: MOVIE REVIEW: THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR - 'Door' more of the same, but it's still not enough. No offense to the many fans of writer John Irving, but haven't we seen all this before? Each Irving book, such as "The World According to Garp" and "The Hotel New Hampshire," tends to be about sex, death, infidelity, betrayal, fear, writers, private prep schools, sports, the art of writing and the sexual initiation of a teenage boy. Virtually all of these elements are in all of his books. Sometimes, one may be emphasized more than another; and on occasion, an additional theme will be introduced as well, such as abortion in "The Cider House Rules" or destiny in "A Prayer for Owen Meany." But basically the books are the same, which means the movies made from the books are the same, too. The latest brush with cinematic familiarity is "The Door in the Floor," which is based on the first section of Irving's "A Widow for One Year." It, too, covers all the expected topics of sex, death, infidelity, betrayal, fear, writers, private prep schools, sports, the art of writing and the sexual initiation of a teenage boy. See? You've read that list only twice now, and already it's becoming annoying. The writer in this case is played by Jeff Bridges, the wife he will betray is Kim Basinger, the teenage boy/writing student who will enthusiastically receive his sexual initiation is played by Jon Foster, the sport is squash and the prep school is Exeter. Death has already come, taking with it the couple's two sons in a car accident (we are getting into serious Garp territory here). The secondary victim of the accident, we are to understand, is the couple's marriage. At the film's beginning, they are about to start a trial separation. Fear - of the unknown and of death - is felt most keenly (but not exclusively) by the couple's daughter, played by Elle Fanning. She is a dead ringer for her older sister Dakota, both in looks and in the impressive quality of her acting. Basinger is still an exquisitely handsome woman, which the story requires, but her minimal talent for acting has long since deserted her. Bridges doesn't have that problem, but perhaps he overplays his character's impassivity just a tad here. That is, he overplays his underplaying. Writer-director Tod Williams has a finely honed visual sense, though his dialogue gets a bit clunky at times. He does not produce the chemistry from Bridges and Basinger that they displayed in the long-ago "Nadine," though this could possibly be Basinger's fault. Williams maintains an appropriately introspective tone, enlivened considerably by plenty of over-50 nudity and sex (or, in the case of Mimi Rogers, over-49). But the mood disconcertingly breaks toward the end, when Williams suddenly turns his film into a Keystone Kops show. "The Door in the Floor" isn't a bad movie at all, and the final image is fairly haunting. The biggest problem with the film is that there is not enough there there. Williams may have wanted to trot out all of Irving's old ideas, but he made the movie on only the first third of the book. That must be why it ultimately seems so unfinished.

13 agosto: The Naked Truth - Stars are baring more than their souls on the big screen lately. HOLLYWOOD -- Middle-aged movie stars are fearlessly fleshing out their resumes like never before. Drop into Los Angeles and the Hollywood hills are alive with the sound of sucked-in guts and flabby butt cheeks flapping. The most recent examples? In The Door in the Floor, Kim Basinger goes topless, Jeff Bridges bares all and Mimi Rogers shocks with a full-frontal scene. But they're just a few of the disarming number of heretofore respected, 40-plus actors who have doffed their duds like nudity was going out of style -- and maybe it should if it means filmgoers are spared William H. Macy's near full Monty in The Cooler. Is all this just a fleshy fluke? Doesn't seem so. In the past two years, audiences have seen 66-year-old Jack Nicholson's dimpled derriere in Something's Gotta Give, Danny DeVito's 59-year-old backside in Tim Burton's fable Big Fish and -- who could forget, even if you tried with months of psychotherapy -- Kathy Bates' skinny dip in About Schmidt. Baring all "for your art" is nothing new in La-La Land, of course. But what is new -- and probably unwelcome by most moviegoers who want to escape reality, not have its wrinkled hide pressed up against their retinas -- is that it's no longer the domain of buff heartthrobs and sleek, curvaceous glamour girls. Sure, there has always been the "controversial" fare of directors looking to lick, stamp and push the envelope of on-screen acceptability -- Harvey Kietel's knickerless turns in Bad Lieutenant and The Piano come to mind, or even David Cronenberg's love letter to malformed body members in the kooky, kinky Crash -- but that doesn't explain the likes of Something's Gotta Give (in which Diane Keaton donned her birthday suit), Calender Girls (with Helen Mirren leading a cast of middle-aged matrons) and Swimming Pool (with Charlotte Rampling revealing all). In an interview with TV's pop-junk news rag Entertainment Tonight, Rogers, 48, admits she was wracked with nerves prior to her full-frontal scene -- until her director calmed her down. "He wanted to shoot it quite beautifully and he had a very interesting, well-known photograph that was his inspiration," she says. "That made me feel much more comfortable and confident about doing it." Basinger's topless sex scenes in The Door in the Floor are nothing new for the 50-year-old actress, who starred nearly 20 years ago in 9 1/2 Weeks. "I've done love scenes before and they're horrible! They're choreographed and just a mess. I've tried to make sure to not get involved with anything gratuitous." Is it a shocking show of sagging solidarity? A salute to wrinkles and rolls instead of the usual six-pack abs? Not quite. Even Macy, in an interview with People magazine, seemed baffled that anyone would want to see his less-than-buff bod. "Why didn't they ask me when I was 25?" asks the 53-year-old Fargo actor. "I tried to squeeze six months of exercise into six days and tore my shoulder." Macy can probably credit -- or blame -- the success of The Full Monty and the always-potent consumer power of the aging baby boomer generation. Both Something's Gotta Give and Calender Girls undoubtedly appealed to affluent older women who feel neglected in our Britney Spears-worshipping world. But it's not mere commercialism driving the explosion of bare bodies on the big screen. There's also the charge a raunchy film can give a career. Take Macy's Cooler co-star -- and sex-scene participant -- Maria Bello. At the ripe old age of 37, she was nearing what Hollywood typically considers senior citizenship eligibility. (Of course next to Macy she's a spring chicken.) But after The Cooler -- which was a fine film in which she gave a strong performance -- she found her career rejuvenated. She's been working nonstop ever since, last starring opposite Johnny Depp in Secret Window. For Bello -- and others -- explicitly exposing herself wasn't career suicide, but career rehab. Halle Berry struggled for years to gain either critical kudos or box-office clout. Yet Berry, who had always refused to be nude in her films, didn't garner either until her pantyless performance (at the age of 37) in Monster's Ball, the movie for which she won the best actress Oscar. Just a year earlier, Berry bared her breasts in the thriller Swordfish -- for which she received a $500,000 US bonus. In other words, $250,000 per nipple. For some, it's less about the cash than it is about their character. If it was appropriate for the film, Princess Diaries star Anne Hathaway tells The Sun, "I have no problem with nudity in films and I have no problem with doing nudity in film." She adds, "It's not like I'd walk down the street stripping, though." Berry and Bello aside, not all nude behaviour results in creative credibility. Sharon Stone was game to show her gams -- and much more -- in Basic Instinct. But while the gambit paid off -- it made Stone an international star -- she was long considered a pariah in the Hollywood community until her role in Casino. Most recently, Colin Farrell raised a ruckus when his member in A Home at the End of the World was lopped off and left on the editing-room floor -- initially, said rumours, because its size distracted the audience. Whether that's true or not, what's irrefutable is that without the controversy over Farrell's full frontal foray, the film would have been quickly forgotten. "If Colin Farrell does it, it's cool, but I don't know if it's cool for me," shrugs Aaron Eckhart in a interview with Sun Media. "I'm not big on nudity. I just saw The Door in the Floor, which I really liked, and Jeff bared it all in that ... I just don't know how much nudity does for the story, any story. "I think it's more gratuitous, it's more manipulative and it takes us out of what's really going on." Eckhart isn't alone. Hathaway's Brokeback Mountain co-star Jake Gyllenhaal turned down the lead in The Dreamers because of the amount of nudity it required. It's a sentiment echoed by Matrix maven Carrie-Anne Moss, who co-stars with Eckhart in this month's Suspect Zero. "It's just not in my nature. I won't do nudity and I never felt comfortable with ... huge sexual content. It's not my thing. I respect it when it's done right, but it's not going to be me. Now that I've had a kid, even more so I feel that way and thank God I felt that way before because ... I don't want that out there." 

14 agosto: Fametracker's Ten Least Essential Fall Films, 2004.
Often, fall can be a lean season for inessential films. Sure, we all realized how inessential The Hours and The Human Stain were after they came out, but in the months prior to their release, they had Potential Oscar Gold written all over them.
This year, however, we have a bumper crop of obviously skippable, clearly not-watchable films. Why? Counter programming! Don't go see some dreary, serious film this weekend! Go see a dreary, was-apparently-supposed-to-be-funny film, like Taxi!
Here, once again, Fametracker doesn't see the ten most missable films of the season, so you don't have to... either.
You're welcome.
10. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason 
Release Date: Nov. 19 
The Plot: Everyone's favourite daffy zaftig British singleton is back again! On the edge of reason! 
The Pitch: Holy cow, is Renée Zellweger ever fat. 
Why It's Inessential: Because we'll now have to live through another round of magazine stories about how Renée Zellweger is really fat. Then a round about how she lost all the weight. Then a round of her talking about how she hated putting on all that weight, and hated being fat, and boy, isn't she glad she's not fat anymore. Then a round of photos of her with her shoulder blades sticking out of her back like angel's wings, to prove she's taken off all that weight.
9. First Daughter 
Release Date: September 24 
The Plot: The President's daughter is, like, totally bummed out about all these restrictions, man! And the security guards! She totally can't have a decent slumber party! 
The Pitch: If you liked Chasing Liberty...oh, wait. No one liked Chasing Liberty. 
Why It's Inessential: Katie Holmes was reportedly reluctant to sign on at first because, according to producer John Davis, she "wanted to make sure it wasn't a kiddie pic, another Mandy Moore/Hilary Duff movie." Um, we're not experts, but perhaps the best way to make sure of that is not to make a movie that's nearly identical to a recent Mandy Moore movie.
8. Meet The Fockers 
Release Date: December 22 
The Plot: The crazy family you loved from Meet the Parents are back -- meeting another crazy family! It's two times the crazy! Fock me! 
The Pitch: For everyone who sat through Meet the Parents thinking, "It's good, but it needs a touch more Streisand." 
Why It's Inessential: If you want to see Ben Stiller in a funny uptight family meets funny hippie family movie, please rent Flirting With Disaster. It's 100% Dustin Hoffman-free!
7. Cellular 
Release Date: September 10 
The Plot: Kim Basinger's called a guy on his cell phone and he really can't get off that cell phone! 
The Pitch: If you like Phone Booth...oh, wait. No one liked Phone Booth. 
Why It's Inessential: Isn't the plot of this movie played out every single day in L.A.?
6. The Grudge 
Release Date: October 22 
The Plot: A big haunted house really, really doesn't like Sarah Michelle Gellar. 
The Pitch: Ew! I've got a weird lump in the back of my head! Scooooby! 
Why It's Inessential: Even if you are a huge Buffy fan, you will end up rooting for the house. And the lump.
5. Shall We Dance? 
Release Date: October 15 
The Plot: Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez star in a movie about an uptight guy who loosens up through dancing. 
The Pitch: Richard Gere + J.Lo = sizzling chemistry, without the sizzle! Or the chemistry! 
Why It's Inessential: Hey, what's that Jennifer Lopez up to? We haven't heard from her in awhile.
4. Surviving Christmas/Christmas with the Kranks 
Release Dates: November 12/November 24 
The Plot: Ben Affleck learns the meaning of Christmas. Meanwhile, Tim Allen learns the meaning of Christmas. 
The Pitch: The meaning of Christmas is apparently so complex that we have to relearn it every year. 
Why It's Inessential: Couldn't they just meld this into one movie: Surviving Christmas with the Kranks? Come on, people -- think synergy! Or, in this case,crapergy!
3. Ladder 49 
Release Date: October 1 
The Plot: John Travolta leads a firehouse full of brave men, all smeared with smoke, yet who emerge from myseriously smoke-free fires. 
The Pitch: It's just like Backdraft, except it's not, because no one saw Backdraft. Please -- forget we mentioned Backdraft. 
Why It's Inessential: Boy, everyone loves firemen. Yet firemen movies never do well. Why is that? And how to remedy this paradox? Of course! Travolta!
2. National Treasure 
Release Date: November 19 
The Plot: A secret treasure map is hidden on the back of the Declaration of Independence. We the people...are ready to kick some ass! 
The Pitch: It's just like The Da Vinci Code -- just think of it as The Declaration Code. Now stop thinking. 
Why It's Inessential: This movie, like its title, feels like it was spat out by a computer. Computers are totally mocking us at this point. Once they beat us in chess, they lost all respect for us. Bonus Inessentiality: Choose your own alternate title: X-Patriot; Extreme Signatories; Maximum Constitution.
1. Taxi 
Release Date: October 8 
The Plot: Jimmy Fallon is a cop and Queen Latifah is a cabbie -- and together they've united to stop Brazilian crooks. 
The Pitch: This movie is not at all like the TV show whose title it shares. At all. In the least. Are you psyched yet? 
Why It's Inessential: Because this may well do for Jimmy Fallon what D.C. Cab did for Bill Maher.

19 agosto: 'Door in the Floor' a rich ghost story - Courtesy of Focus Features
Kim Basinger and Jeff Bridges are the shattered parents at the heart of "The Door in the Floor." 
***1/2 
Rated: R for strong sexuality and graphic images, and language 
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger, Elle Fanning, Jon Foster 
Writer/director: Tod Williams 
Family call: The dark, sexual material will make adults uncomfortable, and it definitely isn't for children. 
Running time: 107 minutes 
Tough job - love scenes with Basinger 
Jon Foster, now age 20 and the star of "The Door in the Floor," which opens today, says he was a kid when he first saw Kim Basinger in the movies, in the erotic thriller "9 1/2 Weeks." 
Little did Foster know that he would be in Mickey Rourke's place one day, filming love scenes with the screen goddess. 
"Kim was so good, so helpful," Foster said in a telephone interview in June. "She really made me feel comfortable." 
So comfortable was Foster, who plays a high school student who carries on an affair with a woman played by Basinger in the film, that he says if he had his pick from any possible actress to do his next love scene with, he would choose Basinger again. 
Not that Foster wants to make a career out of playing young men who sleep with older women. 
"I've had to turn a few things down because I don't want to be the young guy who has affairs with older ladies in everything I do," he said. "I've already done it twice. I don't know what it is about me that makes them see me in these roles." 
The other project Foster referred to is "Life as We Know It," an hour-long comedy-drama on high school life set to air on ABC in the fall. In that series, Foster says, his character will romance a teacher. 
'The Door in the Floor" is a ghost story. The ghosts live in the walls, wreaking havoc on the living and tormenting the dreams of the loved ones they left. 
This ghost story is all the more frightening, emotionally wrenching and sad than usual, though, since these ghosts don't jump out of corners or break plates. These ghosts are children, and they inhabit their parents in the form of rotting self-doubt, regret and bitterness inside the minds and soul. 
In the vein of "In the Bedroom" and "Moonlight Mile," the film tunnels the gloom-scarred, soul-scorching labyrinths parents travel after the deaths of their children. Unlike those other films, which catalog the time immediately following the tragedies, "The Door in the Floor" looks in on its characters years afterward. 
The Coles - renowned children's book writer Ted (Jeff Bridges) and homebody Marion (Kim Basinger) - have tried to move on by moving to a new house by the lake and having another child, 4-year-old Ruth (Elle Fanning, Dakota's younger sister). The changes have done nothing to ease the Coles' pain, which occurred because of an accident that isn't spoken of until the movie is almost over. 
Mutual blame continues to drive a wedge between the couple. He drinks and philanders; she stews in a distant daze. Black-and-white pictures of the departed Tim and Tom line the hallways, reminding Ruth of the brothers she never knew. She clings to the pictures and the stories behind them, maybe as a way to try and be closer to her parents. 
Based on the first third of the John Irving novel "A Widow for One Year," "The Door in the Floor" takes its title from a book by Ted, which he reads aloud at a signing. Like this film, the book is haunting and laden with telling metaphors. 
In an act that at the time seems innocent enough, but we can guess has unseen motives, Ted hires Eddie (Jon Foster), a high school boy who aspires to be a writer, to spend the summer with him as an assistant. 
Marion and Ted have separated, and rotate back and forth from a rented apartment and the lake house, while Ruth and Eddie stay put. 
In sequences layered with humor and tenderness, Eddie forges relationships with all three: as a surrogate parent to Ruth, a chauffeur/taskboy to Ted, and a secret admirer of Marion. 
Director Tod Williams leavens the darkness with doses of humor and triumphant emotional release. We see the Coles through Eddie's eyes, and grow with him as he unravels their mysteries and tries to affix himself to the disjointed family. 
Some moments involving Eddie, who stumbles over his words and tries to carry out a regular masturbation schedule amid a chaotic household, are so cringingly awkward, you almost want to turn away. We truly feel Eddie's pain of adolescence, and fear his alternatingly soft and firebrand-ish boss. 
"The Door in the Floor" is a stark, welcome contrast to the window-breaking noise blasts from most other films in the summer cineplexes. This is a film to wrap around yourself like a blanket, huddling from life's harshness and tasting its riches. 

20 agosto: NEWS!

	Top 50 United States Video Rentals for the week ending 15 August 2004 - People I Know (2002) 26 $1.64M $8.6M.
	WEEKEND BOX OFFICE August 13-15, 2004 - 26 28 The Door in the Floor Focus $254,943 -10.3% 134 - $1,902 $2,881,127 $7.5 / - 5.
	THEATER COUNTS > Week #34 - August 20 Estimates - 8 34 The Door in the Floor Focus 112 -22 6.
	THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR - Domestic Total as of Aug. 19, 2004: $2,999,539.

21 agosto: LA-LA LAND HEADLINES - COMING SOON: Composer Guy Gross unleashes an orchestra and a 40-member choir to ensure a supersonic takeoff for the Sci Fi Channel World Premiere Mini-Series FARSCAPE: THE PEACEKEEPER WARS and acclaimed X2/THE USUAL SUSPECTS composer John Ottman redefines suspense with his orchestral score to the upcoming New Line Cinema thriller CELLULAR, starring Kim Basinger and William H. Macy. 

22 agosto: Hollywood Stars Turn Back the Clock 
Hollywood stars seem to have found the fountain of youth. 
Not only do celebs like Holly Hunter (search), Patricia Heaton, Kim Basinger, Lori Loughlin and Sheryl Crow appear not to be aging, some say they actually look younger than they did years ago.
How is this possible?
Experts say it's a combination of factors, including the usual suspect — plastic surgery — and the aid of personal trainers. But they also say good looks could simply be the result of good grooming, a healthy lifestyle and flattering photos.
"In Hollywood, we’ll assume they had work done, but that's not always the case," said celeb and beauty expert Elycia Rubin (search), author of the upcoming book "Frumpy to Foxy in 15 Minutes Flat." "I think it can be a combination of things — anything from haircut and color to makeup to fine tuning."
In large part, Rubin said, when a star suddenly appears younger than ever, it often comes down to expert styling.
“They say that lighter hair, especially on screen, gives you an overall lift. Brow-shaping — it’s like a mini-facelift almost. Makeup should get lighter as you get older."
In Holly Hunter's case, it seems the trick was going with longer, lighter hair. Hunter, who can now be seen co-starring with Brittany Murphy in the chick flick "Little Black Book," has even been commended in some of the film's reviews for her youthful appearance and long, lightened locks. And "Full House" star Lori Loughlin (search), nowhere to be seen for a decade, has impressed viewers of her new show "Summerland" with her golden brown hair and tanned, toned bod.
Rubin said Kim Basinger (search) and Sheryl Crow (search) are also looking noticeably better.
"Some women just get more beautiful as they age — even if they haven’t had anything done," she said. "And people get more beautiful as they get more famous."
Dr. Leroy Young, chairman of the emerging trends committee at the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (search), agreed that many celebrities who retain their youthful beauty probably just have healthy habits, as well as the resources to find people who help them do the right things.
"If you avoid excess sun and don't smoke, skin stays healthy a lot longer. There's an explosion of medi-spas – they really do work."
Still, Young surmises that the vast majority of people we see in movies have indeed had something done.
"Among the males, a lot have had rhinoplasty. Among the actresses, many have had their breasts done and liposuction. Botox (search) is almost like taking vitamins now."
Patricia Heaton (search) is a proud member of the plastic surgery club. Years ago, viewers of "Everyone Loves Raymond" reportedly wrote in requesting that the star, originally cast as the ordinary wife-next-door, make more of her looks — and were pleased when she did. Heaton later wrote a controversial book, "Motherhood and Hollywood: How to Get a Job Like Mine," in which she candidly discussed her decision to have a tummy tuck and breast reduction.
Of course, in today's celebrity-obsessed culture, some say seemingly ageless stars set unreachable standards of beauty.
"In magazines you see unreasonably fit and thin people," said Young. "They probably work out four hours a day and eat nothing but tofu. All that places pressure on people to try to conform to those standards through diet, exercise and plastic surgery."
But Redbook magazine beauty director Cheryl Kramer said real women know how much effort the stars put into their looks, and their success in fighting Father Time can be inspiring.
"Yes, of course they have trainers, plastic surgery consultants, hair and makeup, people at their beck and call," she said. "I don’t think real women are looking at them and saying, 'My chin is sagging, why isn’t hers?' They say, 'She looks great, what can I do?'"
Celebrity makeup artist Craig Jessup said many women, just like the stars, are finding that simply using the right skin care products can make a huge difference.
"Technology-wise, a lot of age-defying cosmetics are out on the market — topical 'Botox,' silicone. There are probably no more spas anywhere in the country than in Los Angeles. [The stars] really go in for treatments every week."
That said, Jessup says don't believe every picture you see in a magazine.
"If it looks too good to be true, it probably is," he said.

25 agosto: BASINGER AND BALDWIN BATTLE OVER IRELAND PICTURE - KIM BASINGER and her ex-husband ALEC BALDWIN are embroiled in another bitter battle over a photo of their daughter IRELAND. Both want the picture as part of a custody deal, but only one shot of the little girl exists and Alec's attorney VICKI GREENE insists her client wants it. Baldwin currently has the photo hanging in his New York home and Basinger insists she'll only move furniture that belongs to her out of his penthouse if he hands over the portrait of her daughter. Baldwin wants his ex-wife's possessions out of his house, so he can revamp the property and fit it with new furnishings. Authorities in New York have ordered the warring couple's attorneys to find out if the photo can be duplicated well enough to keep both parties happy. 

26 agosto: HBO to air rap star Eminem's film debut '8 Mile' - HBO will air the film debut of rap star Eminem 8 Mile on 21 August at 9 pm with repeats on 26 August at 11 pm, 6 September at 11:30 pm and on 14 September at 6:45 pm. The film is loosely based on Eminem's life story -a white man trying to break into a black dominated arena. The film's title refers to a gritty stretch of road in inner-city Detroit that separates the haves from the have-nots. Eminem's character Jimmy "Rabbit" Smith lives in a trailer home with his drunken washed-out mother Stephanie plaued by Oscar winner Kim Basinger L.A. Confidential. He's stuck in a dead-end job as a factory drone and wants out. The only way he knows is through his budding talent as a rap artist--- not easy when he's the white kid trying hard to make music in a predominantly African-American community.

27 agosto: Baldwin Loses Cool in Court - Alec Baldwin showed up in Los Angeles family court Wednesday to tie up some loose ends in his ongoing custody dispute with ex-wife Kim Basinger, who was not present. Recently, "CJ" showed you the divorce papers of the ex-couple, which testify to the bitterness of the negotiations. Today, things turned explosive, and only "CJ" has the details. After earlier court appearances, Baldwin typically high-tailed it, literally running away from the crush of press outside. Today in court, the star fidgeted in his chair and told the judge he wanted to be heard. The judge, however, said the lawyers would do the talking. We're told that a frustrated Baldwin began talking anyway -- and talking loudly. Neal Hersh, Basinger's lawyer, rose up and objected, and the judge saw things Hersh's way. Attorney John Ellis, who was in the courtroom on a different matter, gave us the details of what happened next. "(Baldwin's) conduct was completely inappropriate," Ellis told us. "He pounded his fist on the table several times and grabbed his belongings -- which consisted of a magazine, a newspaper, his dark glasses -- pulled back from his seat very quickly, went through the swinging doors, slammed them open, went through the back door, slammed through that and was gone." Outside, we saw an angry Baldwin leaving the courthouse. Apparently, the custody issues are still unresolved. Alec's lawyer had no comment on the incident. 

28 agosto: Aggiornamento riguardante i dati d'ascolto dei film con Kim trasmessi recentemente in tv:

	Sabato 21 Agosto - Canale 5 ORE 23,00 NESSUNA PIETA': 1.008.000, 15,58% share.
	Venerdì 27 Agosto - Rai 3 ORE 21,00 MAI DIRE MAI: 1.775.000, 9,07% share.

29 agosto: Box office americano:

	WEEKEND BOX OFFICE - August 20-22, 2004 - Studio Estimates: 26 The Door in the Floor Focus $195,000 -23.5% 112 -22 $1,741 $3,194,000 $7.5 / - 6.
	WEEKEND BOX OFFICE - August 20-22, 2004 - Finals: 35 26 The Door in the Floor Focus $179,571 -29.6% 112 -22 $1,603 $3,179,110 $7.5 / - 6.
	THEATER COUNTS > 2004 > Week #35 - August 27 Estimates: 11 37 The Door in the Floor Focus 83 -29 7.