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Neil Patrick Harris: Wants 2012 Star for HIMYM
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Tony Awards; ZumaPress.com
Amanda Peet may be getting a call soon from the folks over at How I Met Your Mother.
Neil Patrick Harris says he's itching for the 2012 star to guest on the CBS show...
France Goes Ahead, Makes Clint Eastwood's Day
REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes
Clint Eastwood always could command an audience. Now he has the title to prove it.
This morning, French President Nicolas Sarkozy not only welcomed the Oscar winner into the French Legion of Honor, but elevated him to a ranking normally out of bounds for foreigners—that of commander.
The honor is one of the nation's highest and is reserved for those who have made great cultural contributions to the country, a point not lost on Eastwood, who referred to France as his "second home" and to Sarkozy, jokingly, as "my president."
"This is a wonderful honor," he said. "It is just a great pleasure for me. I really love France. I love movies, and I love the appreciation that the French people have for movies."
The 79-year-old doesn't plan on wasting any time in seeing how much leeway his hard-earned credential can give him.
"As a commander of the arts and letters, I think I will go out on the streets of France today and throw my weight around," he said.
Clearly, he feels lucky. Vive la punk!
________
Clint's not the only one on the receiving end of some hardware this week. Check out the country cuties who graced the red carpet in our 2009 CMA Awards gallery.
Feud Factor: Bill O'Reilly Takes Sean Penn, Other Celebs to Task
Jason Merritt/ Getty Images, Jemel Countess/Getty Images
Fox News' Bill O'Reilly's fame is based on his opinions, but he doesn't think too highly of the famous who share theirs.
The O'Reilly Factor host especially can't stomach Oscar winner Sean Penn.
When the Hollywood Reporter asked him if there were any actors whose political leanings bugged him to the point of refusing to see their movies, he responded, "Just Sean Penn."
"He's a great actor, and if you hire him, you'll get a good performance," he said. "I'm just not going to give a guy who gives aid and comfort to people like [Iran president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez and Saddam Hussein, when he was alive, my 10 bucks. That's my right as an American."
While he admits he won't advocate that everyone do the same—"It's a personal decision," he says—O'Reilly neglects to share whether he saw Mystic River, for which Penn also took home an Oscar. The film, however, was directed by his favorite celebrity, Clint Eastwood.
Who else does the right-wing king love, hate and love-hate?
No Oscar Noms, No Problem for Gran Torino
Warner Bros.
Clint Eastwood and Batman: See the resemblance? They're both famed crime-fighters. They're both employed by the same studio. And they're both very popular—except among Academy voters.
On a weekend when Oscar's Best Picture candidates flooded theaters, Eastwood's Gran Torino, the hit thriller that, along with The Dark Knight, was one of Oscar's notable snubees, beat all five, adding another $16 million to its nearly $100 million haul.
Overall, Kevin James' Paul Blart: Mall Cop ($21.5 million) was No. 1 for a second weekend. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans ($20.7 million) took second.
In third place, Gran Torino outgrossed and outranked the Best Picture gang: Slumdog Millionaire ($10.6 million), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ($6 million), Frost/Nixon ($3 million), The Reader ($1.4 million) and Milk ($864,342).
Drilling down into the numbers, based on studio estimates compiled today by Exhibitor Relations:
Slumdog's Freida Pinto to Clint: Make My Workday
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for VH1
Slumdog Millionaire beauty Freida Pinto may be the new It girl in Hollywood these days, but she's not looking to relocate from her native India for the sunny glitz of Tinseltown anytime soon.
"I'm going to back to Bombay. I have a wonderful agent there," Pinto told me at yesterday's In Style and Diamond Information Center lunch in Beverly Hills. "But I'll probably be going back and forth."
Slumdog is Pinto's very first movie. And things are moving fast.
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