Justin Nozuka: Up-and-Coming Star
The tweens have spoken: Half-Japanese and half-white musician Justin Nozuka is a hottie — and he can sing. That makes him practically a biological weapon when it comes to making females aged 15 to 25 scream in agony. Nozuka’s “After Tonight” hit MTV’s TRL Countdown on June 5, but the 19-year-old is no stranger to fame: He comes from a family of actors and musicians. His older brother George sings R&B, and his mom, Holly Sedgwick, is — you guessed it — Mrs. Kevin Bacon’s sister! Too bad dad didn’t stick around. In “Without Her,” Nozuka said of his single mother, “We’d all been dead. … She’s the reason why I’m here, and I just love her.” See Nozuka perform “Down in a Cold Dirty Well”: snipurl.com/ 2obo9.
Steve Carell Tastes Like Kitty Litter
Dwayne Johnson, you’re doing it wrong: Kitty litter freshens the box, not your mouth — or maybe Johnson’s kissing the wrong end lately. “We thought, ‘What’s the funniest entertaining thing we could do at the end of the movie that would really make a good laugh?’ and we came up with the kiss,” Johnson told Star Pulse of his make out with his Get Smart co-star Steve Carell. “But there are 300 crew members; they’re all looking and laughing and joking. I just see Steve Carell’s lips. So the bottom of a cat’s paw — the soft, supple part underneath — that’s what Steve Carell’s lips are like. But his tongue is like kitty cat litter. That’s the physical experience.” Ew, this calls for mouthwash.
Comedian’s Daughter Comes Out to Frameline
The Frameline Film Festival is here — just in time for the biggest gay pride event in America on Saturday, June 28. Guess which famous San Francisco comedian’s daughter will be starring in her own movie? Robin Williams’ daughter Zelda will be walking the pink carpet for her film, Were the World Mine. I’m sure her acting will be superb as she has had plenty of practice keeping up appearances with her parents’ tumultuous marriage. Williams divorced the Mrs. Doubtfire producer (and his children’s former nanny), Marsha Garces Williams, a Filipino American woman, in March.
McInnis of ‘Never Forever’ Does Good for Michelle
Never Forever’s David Lee McInnis shaved his face and put on a clean white tee to star in a video for Project Michelle, founded by a 26-year-old leukemia patient currently undergoing chemotherapy with less than a month to find a bone marrow transplant. McInnis, who has been a busy bee studying for both his CPA and caring for his joint business with his father, filmed with D.C. Wolfe and Brian Yang. Other stars included Better Luck Tomorrow’s Parry Shen, Dirty Sexy Money’s Michelle Krusiec, Steve Aoki, Arden Cho, Lanny Joons Kim and Tamlyn Tomita. You can find the films at snipurl.com/2obmj.
Maya Obama Courts San Francisco
Dr. Maya Soetoro-Ng brought “Aloha!” to San Francisco’s Roe restaurant last Wednesday, June 18, to push the campaign for her brother, Barack Obama. Organizers also noted that, in light of Hillary Clinton’s withdrawal, the event also welcomed Clinton supporters in the hopes to get some good ol’ Democratic Party bonding going on. Politics aside, the bar kept the crowd moving and jolly as over 250 supporters partied the night away with many a cell phone camera and Facebook photo album uploaded that same night! San Francisco assessor, Phil Ting, and Richmond City council member Harpreet Sandhu were also present to deliver opening remarks in the evening.
Fourth ‘Fast and Furious’ Aims for Diesel
Don’t let the skyrocketing gas prices fool you: Fast and Furious is back with a vengeance with the upcoming fourth installment directed by Justin Lin, and Spain is one of his biggest fans. He joked last fall during the San Francisco presentation of Finishing the Game that one thing Spaniards got right by him is paella. “It’s the rice,” Lin laughed, “I can’t live without the stuff. What did you expect?” But, if you ask Spanish teens — it’s the other way around for Lin, who is simply known there as “Fast and Furious”! Sung Kang might be out of luck this time, though: The film is reviving its original stars, Paul Walker and Vin Diesel, who became a daddy on June 5 with girlfriend Paloma Jimenez.
Naomi Campbell: Orange is Back This Season?
As in orange mandatory community service jumpsuit. Naomi Campbell served some time picking up trash in New York City last year as part of her sentence for putting the “crack” in “crackberry,” but her rabid ruckus and almost stiletto-ing a police officer at Heathrow Airport (April) just booked her another 200 hours of community service and a lifetime ban from British Airways. She missed her gig at Sao Paolo’s Fashion Week due to the sentencing, which I’m sure translated to another assistant fleeing for the hills. Too bad she’s a winter: Orange really isn’t her color. It is, however, quite dashing on Donald Trump — who has urged the model to attend anger management classes, which is like Flavor Flav telling you to go see a dentist. (source: Ireland Online)
Sean Lennon, Mark Ronson, Jacko: Childhood Porn Buddies?
Now, now … I won’t comment on Michael Jackson’s official sexual orientation, even in light of speculation over Corey Feldman and Corey Haim’s alleged childhood rape issues aired via reality TV. However, Mark Ronson (aka brother to Samantha Ronson, Lindsay Lohan’s girlfriend), admitted on BBC’s Sunday Night Project to pushing adult porn on to Michael Jackson with neighbor, Sean Lennon, during sleepovers. The creep-factor: he was ten years old at the time. Jackson’s reply at the time was, “Ewww.” And then, it just gets weirder: Gavin Rossdale has given Ronson the thumbs-up for dating his daughter, 19-year-old model Daisy Lowe, who was born from a fling with another British musician, Pearl Lowe. Ronson gets pegged a “gentleman,” Jackson fingered for rape — WTF?
Emmy Winner Says SAG Politics Skewed
Chris Tashima has been in the business for a long time, and the current rift between the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) has him fuming over the upcoming vote pitching union against union on content rights in Hollywood. While SAG members are getting voice recording phone calls from the likes of Ed Asner and Sandra Oh this week, Tashima wants to clear the air on a few things. “A lot of the rhetoric [SAG] is spouting is divisive and away from the real issues,” Tashima explained to me. “SAG shouldn’t be telling AFTRA people what to do … threatening to tell their members to resign from AFTRA!?” Tashima hopes the unions can avoid a debacle the likes of last November’s Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike, which left thousands unemployed and gaping episode voids this season, and can sensibly settle on how to best deal with new media residuals in a responsible, economic way.
Cassandra Hepburn: Secret Scientologist?
It’s no big secret that Will Smith is a Scientologist — and as long as Oprah Winfrey can refrain from giving him a big, comfy couch and asking about his love life, his career will be safe. But did Hell Ride star and Maxim magazine babe, Cassandra Hepburn, fall for the ol’ streetside “Stress Test”? “My favorite quote is by writer L. Ron Hubbard,” Hepburn told Cinema Without Borders. ” ‘To be Happy, one must be able to confront, which is to say, experience, those things that are. Unhappiness is only this: the inability to confront that which is. That which a person works hardest on, he winds up having. That’s one of the fundamentals of this universe. That to which he devotes his energy, he finally has.’ ” Someone tell the Scientologists that using the passive tense is every English teacher’s biggest pet peeve. It makes you sound like Yoda from Star Wars.