First Paul McCartney, now Billy Crystal!

In an embarrassing display of pop culture ignorance, hundreds of young Twitter users expressed their confusion over the identities of some of the world’s most established entertainment heavyweights during award season this year, including former Beatles member Paul McCartney, and actor and legendary Oscar host Billy Crystal.
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Though a legion of high strung Hollywood publicists would tell you otherwise (through news release or statement to People Magazine), all press is, in the end, good press, so long as it gets people talking.

Ricky Gervais’ Golden Globes hosting performance last January was the stuff of insult legend, with the Brit star insulting Charlie Sheen, ripping John Travolta’s Scientology, calling out Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp’s terrible “The Tourist,” mocking the Globes’ elderly president, and riffing on Robert Downey Jr.’s struggles with substance abuse (amongst many other slams).

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In order to accommodate the least-deserving movie star of all time, makers of the upcoming “R.I.P.D.” have changed the name (and implied ethnicity) of Ryan Reynolds’s character, from Nick Cruz — as it is in the corresponding comic book and graphic novel — to Nick Walker.

The technical term for this little operation is “race-lifting,” and it happens all the time. Sometimes it’s repellent, like when “Spawn” director Todd McFarlane caved into studio concerns and turned a key black character white, and sometimes it’s simply silly to hang on to a character’s original ethnicity at the expense of an actor or actress who truly fits the part. At all times though, something is lost, the idea of a person who’s enthralled us somehow.

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The duo has become as sure a bet as any actor-director team in Hollywood, but for their next project together, Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio may be going gambling.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Scorsese is signing on to direct a remake of the 1974 James Cann-starring drama, “The Gambler,” about a New York English professor who, despite his legendary work in the classroom, suffers from a secret gambling addiction.

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Brad Pitt is taking on an on-screen zombie invasion in Scotland, but for a moment on Thursday night’s shoot, the Oscar-nominee took on the role of a real life-saving hero.

Starring as Gerry Lane in the big screen undead apocalypse film, “World War Z,” Pitt was in the midst of shooting a scene in which fearful masses rush through Glasgow’s George Square, trying to get away from the scourge of the face eaters. One woman, involved in the stampede of fearful Scots, fell over amidst the madness, and was in danger of being trampled upon by her fellow extras.

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Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann claims the U.S. has more energy resources than any other country but isn’t exploiting them because of radical environmentalists.

Bachmann says with shale oil, natural gas and coal, the United States shouldn’t be “begging” others for oil and energy supplies.

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The Ghostbusters are being called on once again, Dan Aykroyd insists. But its most iconic star may not be answering the phone.

Aykroyd, the mind behind the hit comedy franchise, told Dennis Miller today on his radio show that the long-awaited “Ghostbusters” film would be lensing in Spring, 2012 — with or without Bill Murray.

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Conventional wisdom may have men favoring blondes, but a new UK study shows that actually men prefer brunettes.

As reported by the Daily Mail, social networking site Badoo polled 2,000 British men, asking them the features they found most attractive in women.

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Above all else, Tom Cruise is still a major movie star.

And as such, being his film love interest is a major shot of exposure and star power, a boost A-list actresses openly seek as aggressively as they did during Cruise’s 80s and 90s heyday.

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“Now all of this may look like some crazed hallucination,” Johnny Depp, as Hunter S. Thompson stand-in Paul Kemp, says, “but it’s all true… I think.”

And so it goes in this long-awaited big screen version of “The Rum Diary,” Depp’s latest film adaptation of a Hunter S. Thompson novel.

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Former Vice President Dick Cheney writes in his new memoir that President George W. Bush rejected his advice in 2007 to bomb a suspected nuclear reactor site in Syria.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Cheney says he was “a lone voice” for military action against Syria. Other advisers were reluctant, Cheney says, because of “the bad intelligence we had received about Iraq’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction” before the 2003 invasion of that country.

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In perhaps the most welcome instance of worlds colliding, Paul McCartney has written music for a ballet, and the date of this happy marriage has finally been set.

The former Beatle is releasing the album recording for “Ocean’s Kingdom” with Hear Music/Telarc in the U.S. on Oct. 4 and with Decca label in the UK on Oct. 3. Decca is notorious for rejecting The Beatles back in 1962, telling them that “guitar groups are on the way out” and “the Beatles have no future in showbusiness.”

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England’s Daily Mail has a stern article up detailing inaccuracies in Meryl Streep’s upcoming Margaret Thatcher biopic, which was screened last night for an audience of Thatcher’s closest friends.

The article claims the movie, called “The Iron Lady,” uses dream and hallucination scenes to paint Thatcher as a woman haunted by regret over her own ambition.

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Gaelan Edwards, 12, of British Columbia, was watching TV early Saturday morning, when he heard his mother call for help from her bedroom, the Times Colonist reported.

Having experienced no contractions or labor pains, Danielle Edwards, 30, was shocked to feel her baby already crowning.

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The best way to avoid divorce, even before you get married, is to understand the power of the “R” word, i.e., rationalization.

This is the process of trying to create a sense of logic for something that we know is wrong. Oftentimes it is the quicksand that devours our ability to reason in the first few weeks and months of dating.

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New research suggests simply limiting saturated fat may not be the best bet for cutting cholesterol.

Adults who ate a diet rich in nuts, soluble fiber, soy and plant sterols saw a far greater drop in low-density lipoprotein, or “bad” cholesterol, than those who followed a low-saturated fat plan.

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Warren Buffett is playing well in France.

A group of 16 of the richest people in France has signed a petition asking the French government to increase their taxes. The group includes Liliane Bettencourt, the billionaire heiress of L’Oreal; Christophe de Margerie, the head of oil giant Total; Frederic Oudea of bank Société Générale; and Jean-Cyril Spinetta, president of Air France KLM SA. (Given SocGen’s share price, Mr. Oudea may not have as much wealth to tax).

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Tucked near the end of Facebook’s 1,200-word blog post detailing a slew of privacy changes was a short obituary for a Facebook feature unveiled with great fanfare last year.

Facebook quietly admitted that it would be “phasing out” Places, which had been available only on cellphones, while at the same time expanding the ability to add locations to posts by allowing users to tag cities, venues and landmarks in everything from status updates to Wall posts using any device.

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Journalists trapped inside a Libyan hotel have described the increasingly worsening situation there.

About 35 foreigners–including journalists and politicans–have been holed up inside Tripoli’s Rixos hotel and barred from leaving for the past five days. On Wednesday, one of the journalists, the BBC’s Matthew Price, spoke to the “Today” program’s Evan Davis on Radio 4.

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The White House is scrambling to fix its mensaje and timing problem with Latino voters as demonstrated Thursday by a significant immigration policy change.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that approximately 300,000 undocumented immigrants facing deportation will have their cases individually reviewed, and if classified “low priority” can apply for work permits and stay in the U.S. indefinitely.

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