By Katey Rich
When I opened my post yesterday with the question "Didja watch the Oscars?", I pretty much assumed that you had. I mean, it's the Oscars! Turns out that wasn't such a safe bet. Sunday's show was the lowest-rated Oscars ever, with a 20% drop in audience since last year. Thirty-two million people tuned in, which according to Variety is fewer than watched the season premiere of "American Idol" and a third of the number that watched the Super Bowl a few weeks ago. Poor Jon Stewart will continue going on the record as the host of Oscar shows that nobody watches, even though his performance last night was pretty stellar by my estimation. And let's not even talk about what it means that the one year the Academy nominates a bunch of great films is the year no one watches; watch out for Shrek Goes Forth sweeping the top five awards in 2010.
Well, now that the dog and pony show is over and done with, it's back to business. In casting news, Jonathan Rhys Meyers has joined Julianne Moore in the horror thriller Shelter, the English-language debut from the Swedish directing team Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein. The two actors make a good pair, but keep in mind that for all their acclaimed work, each has participated in some cringe-worthy material. (August Rush and Next are recent examples that come to mind.) So let's not get all excited just yet, though Lord knows we could use a horror thriller with a fraction of intelligence.
The cast of Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island, already star-studded, has gotten even bigger, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Max von Sydow (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), Emily Mortimer (Lars and the Real Girl, not to mention a hilarious recurring role on "30 Rock") and Jackie Earle Haley (Little Children) will also star in the film, about a patient who escapes from a mental hospital located off the coast of Maine. Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Michelle Williams, Ben Kingsley and Mortimer's Lars co-star Patricia Clarkson are already cast.
And finally, the quietest news today may also be the biggest: Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon have signed on to direct and star in a fourth Bourne movie, as interpreted by Cinematical from a Universal press release. The two had said previously that neither would return to the franchise if the other didn't. There are two more Robert Ludlum books on which to base another movie about the jet-setting spy, and given that Bourne won more Oscars than There Will Be Blood on Sunday, there's a lot of prestige, not to mention a lot of money, left to be gained.
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