If you've monitored my FriendFeed and/or my Google Reader Shared Items, you know that I've been collecting news about the Jessica Simpson movie over the last few days.
The first post I saw was a Duncan Riley Inquisitr post on the movie, entitled "Major Movie Star." After noting that the movie hadn't been released in the U.S. in any form, Riley noted:
[W]hat doesn’t work in the US, sometimes works overseas, with Major Movie Star climbing to the Number One position at the Russian box office.
Riley helpfully provided a promo clip:
I'll admit that I've never seen Private Benjamin. (I'm not a movie person.) However, I still suspect that the older film is fine art compared to this.
The Inquisitr subsequently returned to the movie when Samantha DeWitt announced the strategy for releasing the movie in the U.S. - namely, giving it a different name:
The movie that has been called out by several unkind, and accurate critics as being one of the worst of all time will be renamed Private Valentine: Blonde & Dangerous, and released to an unsuspecting public on DVD in America according to Usmagazine.com.
The Inquisitr links to the US Magazine article, which notes that the movie won't be available here until February 3, 2009.
The article also notes something that I also found in Eye of Polyphemus:
Major Movie Star is the number one film at the box office in Russia.
Better still, it will open in Bulgaria next month, so it is a likely twofer for her. No predominantly English speaking country has plans to release the film. Human rights watch has forbidden it to be shown to Gitmo prisoners. Even Dick Cheney agree it would be cruel and unusual punishment to subject the most vile of the bunch to Simpson's acting.
And there's also the question of timing. Granted that you can't control what companies do, but you'd think that Joe Simpson would try. For the last few months, the message has been that Jessica Simpson is now an authentic country star. This movie does not particularly buttress that message, unfortunately.
It turns out, however, that the trailer shared above has been around for a year (see reviews here), so I guess that the studio was...um...deciding upon the correct way to release the movie.
Oh, and she's releasing a perfume, too. It's called "Fancy."
Now that she’s a down-home Nashville country singer--this week, anyway--perhaps launching an ornate fragrance called Fancy wasn’t the smartest marketing move?
Perhaps "Fancy" was supposed to coincide with the movie, not the musical career. Speaking of which...
Students at Nashville School of the Arts didn't believe it when the rumors started swirling — was Jessica Simpson really performing at the Grammy in the Schools Career Day their school was hosting this year?
"I said I wasn't going to believe it until I physically saw her," said Bruno Jones, 17, who plays in the school's pop ensemble. "Then I did and I thought, 'Cool, they brought someone everyone could look up to.' I think it's neat how she's branching out doing country music."
Simpson was one of dozens of artists and Music Row executives who donated their time to participate in this year's 22nd annual Grammy Career Day this week. Co-sponsored by The Gibson Foundation, the day connects students who aspire to careers in the music industry with professionals who already have them.
Now in a sense, this type of career un-focus isn't surprising. Entertainers know that a particular bubble may burst at any minute, so they try to keep their hand in as many things as possible. Take Willard Scott, who began his broadcasting career in 1950 and did just about everything, from being a page, to hosting television kid shows, to working as a deejay at a radio station. About 18 years later, in 1968, he took a gig as a TV weatherman for the Washington, DC NBC affiliate. Over the next few years, all of his other TV and radio jobs dried up...but that weather job was his ticket to national fame on the Today Show.
So Jessica is keeping active on many fronts - music, movies, perfume - and she's hanging around Irving, Texas a lot.
I guess that makes her multi-dimensional. Sphere: Related Content
Posts
