Hilary Duff apparently makes for a fabulously slutty pop tart. Who knew?
Yet that's the word from John Cusack, the star and co-author of Duff's next film, War, Inc.
"She's great in it ... The idea of Hilary Duff doing that, because she's so classy and wholesome, seemed very funny."
War, Inc. -- which, if you hadn't guessed, is a comedy in the milieu of Grosse Pointe Blank -- is one of two films Cusack has coming out shortly about the conflict in Iraq.
The other one, Grace is Gone, is, by contrast, a stark drama about a man whose wife, a U.S. soldier, is killed in the war; it premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival.
"It seemed appropriate to make a movie about the world we live in from time to time."
Cusack, next seen in Friday's horror thriller 1408, also reveals he'd be up for a cameo on HBO's Hollywood satire Entourage. (This news might surprise those who have perused reports about a falling-out between Cusack and Jeremy Piven.)
"I haven't gotten around to that one," he says about appearing as, say, one of Ari Gold's clients.
"But sure, why not?"
TORI! TORI! TORI! Cute couple/tabloid fodder Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott do everything together, make babies, run a bed-and-breakfast in Fallbrook, Calif., (soon to be seen in their Slice-TV reality series Tori & Dean: Inn Love).
And this month, they'll be on the movie screen together -- if only for one sexy scene.
It's the comedy Kiss the Bride, about a gay man (Philipp Karner) who's invited to the wedding (to a woman) of his former lover (James O'Shea). "I have a cameo as a plumber-slash-stripper, and Tori plays the bride," says Canadian actor McDermott.
"Joanna Cassidy plays my mom, and she's very cool," Spelling says.
Adds McDermott: "I remember having a crush on her when she was on that television rescue show with Mark Harmon, where they all ran around in tight little jumpsuits and rescued people in helicopters." (240-Robert).
Kiss the Bride is the closing gala this month at the L.A. gay film festival OutFest and is a hopeful fall release. Tori and Dean, meanwhile, have started a production company and can be expected to act together as long as their love survives.
BAITED BREATHED: Now that he has directed the three biggest pirate movies in history, director Gore Verbinski is going from Orlando Bloom to Bloom County. The director of The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy is talking to Berkeley Breathed (creator of the comic strip Bloom County) to see if they can make a Disney animated movie out of his 2003 kids' book Flawed Dogs: The Year End Leftovers at the Piddleton 'Last Chance' Dog Pound.
"It's a really interesting book that at this point isn't much more than a premise. But we're really looking forward to getting some time to hash it out," Verbinski told us. Kid-lit fans will also want to know that Breathed's subsequent book, Mars Needs Moms, is also set to jump to the big screen, with Robert Zemeckis attached as director.
FANTASY ISLAND: With the final Harry Potter book due next month, Hollywood is snapping up similarly themed fantasy tomes in the hope of finding the next Potter or, better yet, Lord of the Rings. The latest series of books to be eyed for adaptation is Terry Brooks' Shannara series. Last year, Rings director Peter Jackson signalled his intention to return to the genre -- The Hobbit be damned -- by optioning Naomi Novik's Temeraire series about dragons and the Napoleonic Wars.
