For the latest scoop on Texas celebs, we bring you Own Stars, a TM Daily Post regular feature.
Wes Anderson Releases the Trailer for his Newest Movie, Moonrise Kingdom
The trailer for Wes Anderson’s new movie, “Moonrise Kingdom,” has stirred up conversation about it being potentially his best yet most despised film. Writing in Slate, David Hagland said the trailer “feels as though we have taken one step closer to the Platonic ideal of a Wes Anderson Movie. For that reason, I suspect his detractors will hate this.”
This is the second movie Anderson has written with Roman Coppola, who has followed Noah Baumbach as Anderson’s second writing partner since Owen Wilson. Field Maloney, also writing in Slate, made the case awhile back that Anderson has never been the same since The Royal Tenenbaums, his last with Wilson.
But if you subscribe to the notion that the strength of a story is dependent on its characters, then consider Casey Seijas’s list on UGO of Anderson’s top eleven characters. Number one is Bill Murray as Steve Zissou in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, which has three characters total on the list, tying it with Tenenbaums for the most, and making Baumbach arguably Anderson’s perfect match.
The Battle of the Farrah Fawcett Andy Warhol Painting Get Its Fifteen Minutes
Ryan O’Neal lost Farrah Fawcett twice—once in 1997, when he was shacking up with a younger woman, and again in 2009, when she died of cancer—and he’s not going to let it happen again.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, a judge ruled that O’Neal may proceed with a defamation lawsuit against Craig Nevius, the producer who said O’Neal stole the Andy Warhol painting of Fawcett that she had apparently bequeathed to the University of Texas, her alma mater.
The whole affair is a mess, with no foreseeable way of determining the painting’s proper owner. But Forbes writers Danielle and Andy Mayoras said it should be a no-brainer “because a painting with substantial value like this one (which a BBC article claimed was worth in the neighborhood of $30 million) should have been insured while Fawcett was alive. If so, there would be records of whether Fawcett or O’Neal was the one to insure the painting.”
The Inexhaustible Schedule of Yao Ming Now Includes Saving Pandas
Retired Yao Ming is a busy man. Since leaving the Houston Rockets in July, Yao has gone back to school, started a winery, gained ownership of a Chinese basketball team, and now he is the youngest of Shanghai’s 142-member political advisory board, China Daily reported.
Yao has yet to submit a proposal, but his recent good deed toward China’s long endangered pandas, as written about by the Post Game, perhaps hints at one of his first items of business.
Ann Richards Plays “Bubette” in a Documentary about Herself
The success of Ann: An Affectionate Portrait of Ann Richards, Holland Taylor’s play about the spitfire former governor, has set the stage for the debut of the new documentary film, Bubbette: Ann Richards’ Texas.
The Arkansas Times reported that the movie—which includes interviews with VIP ranging from Tom Brokaw to Dolly Parton—will get a pre-release sneak peek at the Athena Film Festival, in New York City, on February 10.
“We hope that this film will expose that we need more people like her, that it’s hard for somebody like her to fit in today, because if you do a lot, your campaign contributions for your re-election can be in peril,” co-director Keith Patterson told KTRK-TV.
Stop. Renovate and Listen.
“Just bulldog it,” Vanilla Ice, the rapper turned house-flipper, told Jon Caramanica of the New York Times as the reporter tried to sand down a knot in the staircase of a home that Ice was renovating as part of his DIY reality show, The Vanilla Ice Project.
The program’s third season comes as the homeowners’ association in one of the gated Florida communities where Ice owns properties is suing him for a second failure to pay assessments, the Palm Beach Post reported.
Ice is used to people tearing him down, having endured a bunch of flak for his 1990 hit “Ice Ice Baby,” so don’t expect him to give up on his dream to reinvigorate a depressed real estate market. “We’ve lost a lot of hope in America,” Ice told Caramanica. “Let me get some encouragement in these people. It’s not about the resale value. It’s about enjoying living.”
