The News: A Taxing Day For Oldman, Ferrara

By S.T. VanAirsdale

Some of today's movie news of note from around New York:

--It's a slow, soggy, gossipy Monday at Reeler HQ, where news of alleged New York tax scofflaws reveals significant debts for a few local film figures. Top among them is Damon Dash, the hip-hop mogul and upstart movie producer (Mr. Untouchable, The Woodsman) who Sunday's NY Post reports owes upwards of $2 million to the state tax office; Gary Oldman ($236,629), producing scion Daniel Selznick ($234,918), Cicely Tyson ($124,320) and Julie Hagerty ($7,050) are in there as well. Abel Ferrara apparently has $17,000 and change outstanding, which isn't as bad as it sounds if IFC's check is actually in the mail as rumored for Go Go Tales.

--Rose McGowan's anonymous insinuations about a drunken rumormonger who got it all wrong about her and Robert Rodriguez's troubled remake of Barbarella have us sharing Jeff Wells' concern for NY Observer shit-stirrer Spencer Morgan. The original "fanboy" interview with McGowan that Wells referenced Sunday is gone now, but the preserved quotes are pretty rich: "I suppose I should've wasted more of my time trying to decipher the ramblings of a drunken, slurring writer," she said of an unnamed journalist who may or may not have intimated that McGowan isn't a big-enough star for Universal to green-light Rodriguez's remake. "It seems that since I didn't give enough time to this drunk, he took out his bitterness by writing lies. One of the biggest downsides of my business is that when people have the forum to write lies, I don't have a forum to fight back." She does now, I guess.

--Color me impressionable, but Todd McCarthy's review of Enchanted in today's Variety kinda makes me want to see it -- particularly the part about Amy Adams' fantasy-world heroine being pushed down a well to a place "where there are no happily-ever-afters" before landing "penniless ... on the Bowery." Where she meets a handsome divorce lawyer. Played by Patrick Dempsey. A commentary on the clash of old and new? Or just Disney being Disney? Seriously, I think I just found my weekend viewing plans.

Posted at November 19, 2007 8:53 AM