Jason Priestley’s hosting gig at the Gemini Awards Gala

Jason Priestley has trekked back to Canada to enjoy some cold weather, some hockey, and to host the 23rd Annual Gemini Awards, which take place tonight (November 28).

I was a religious watcher of Beverly Hills, 90210 (every Wednesday at 8pm) from the very first episode airing in 1990 all the way to the bitter end ten years later (though the last few seasons I may have been watching out of pure habit). All throughout, Brandon Walsh was one of my favourites. Smart, nice, funny and dreamy looking, he possessed all the qualities a girl could want. While Priestley is no longer Brandon (he’ll be 40 next summer and long gone are the days of acid wash tapered jeans), insideEonline discovered he possesses similar qualities that made Brandon a solid guy (and still looks damn good for almost 40).



As we brace ourselves for what the Farmer’s Almanac is predicting to be a wicked winter, Priestley sounded psyched to be in sub zero temperatures. “I live in Los Angeles, when I left it was 97 degrees, and the city was on fire…It’s freaky! In November, 97 degrees is not right!” he exclaimed, adding, “it’s nice to come back here.” The reason he’s back is the Gemini Awards at which he has hosting duties, something that’s not new to Priestley. “[I] hosted the Junos in ’98, I hosted the World Music Awards with Gloria Estefan [also in ’98] and I hosted SNL. Hosting gigs [aren’t] what I do everyday so it’s new and it’s challenging and it’s also a lot of fun. It’s live TV!”

Hosts can make or break shows. Take the Oscars for example, Billy Crystal hosting was hilarious, Letterman heinous. So what host-models does Priestley look up to? “I’m a big Jon Stewart fan, so if there’s any bell I’m trying to ring I guess that it would be Jon Stewart's,” he said, adding, “not that I’m anywhere near as capable, nowhere as funny as he is but if there was anyone I would try to emulate it would be Jon Stewart.”



But that doesn’t mean Priestley’s planning to follow Stewart’s political edge. “I don’t want to make this a political conversation at all…but there could be a Stephen Harper shot in there too, you never know. My job is to keep the show light, funny, moving and keep it entertaining for the audience and keep it entertaining for the people at home. If at the end of the night the people at home have gotten a glimpse into the best of Canadian television and if some of those people have gone ‘Wow, I didn’t really know what Canadian television had to offer but a couple of those shows I think I might actually tune in and check them out, put them in my PVR.’ Then we’ve all done our job. And if some of the people at the end of the night go ‘You know, I really enjoyed that awards show, I’m gonna watch the Geminis next year’ then I know I’ve done my job, and that’s as simple as it is.”

The Gemini Awards will be airing tonight on E! and Showcase with a Red Carpet Special starting at 7:30 and the Gemini Awards Gala at 8pm.

Twilight

STARRING: Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Taylor Lautner, Nikki Reed, Ashley Greene, Jackson Rathbone, Kellan Lutz, Cam Gigandet

OPENS: November 21

By insideEonline's Emer Schlosser

The hype surrounding Twilight turned to hysteria when hundreds of teen fanatics began counting down the days and hours if not minutes til their favourite handsome vampire descended upon the big screen on November 21. In fact, Twilight has already broken all records previously held for pre-sales at Cineplex Entertainment Theatres. An impressive, but not surprising fact considering you’d be hard pressed to find any media outlet not covering the frenzy surrounding the flick (think NKOTB, Tickle Me Elmo and Jonas Brothers all rolled into one).

Part romance, part action, part supernatural, part horror, part teen flick (yup, that's a lot of parts); the story centres around the Romeo and Juliet-like romance between Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). Bella recently moved back to her hometown of Forks, Washington to live with her father (Billy Burke) after her mother takes up traveling with her new amateur baseball-playing husband. Almost immediately after Bella reenters the cloudy town, she falls heart, life and sucker for the beautiful but broody Edward. The attraction is immediate and intense to a point where Bella seems more scared of those deep feelings than finding out her beloved in undead, has been undead for quite some time now, and lives off blood. Edward’s thirst for her is equal (the draw he describes by telling Bella she’s like his “own personal brand of heroin”). While I mean the thirst part both figuratively and literally, Edward suppresses his literal desire to nibble on her neck (in the bad, blood draining way), because he and his “family” of vampires are the equivalent of vegetarians like Angel in Buffy (Edward even compares those undead who refrain from feasting on human blood to humans who eat tofu: never fully satisfied). Nevertheless, they fall hard for each other and thus begins what fills a large portion of the movie: intense broody stares with underlying sexual tension and a dash of fear. I was reminded of when one of my awesome English teachers from highschool paused the A&E version of Pride and Prejudice to point out Colin Firth’s passionate “sex eyes.” These two definitely got their “sex eyes” down pat (see pic above).

While the chemistry took me a while to believe, the awkwardness was extremely well done (to the point that I squirmed in my seat with sympathy discomfiture). But all in all Stewart and Pattinson put in a solid performance. Once the film got going it managed to suck me in and even gave a tiny tug to my heartstrings (which triggered some tickling of the tear ducts at one point). Some of the action sequences are pretty cool (like a brawl in a mirrored ballet studio), but many of the effects are kinda corny (like the speed-piggyback-hiking and a baseball game that somewhat resembled Quidditch) and some of the edits were jarringly choppy. While I liked the idea of film and love that a series like this gets people excited to read (a la Harry Potter, which, Pattinson appeared in as the cute and courageous Cedric Diggory), I couldn't help but feel like something was lacking.

But let’s be honest, the real reasons people - and by people I mainly mean teenage girls and smattering of parents and boyfriends that may be dragged along - will flock to the flick are twofold: the success of the book series by Stephanie Meyer and hot guys. The amount of girls I saw wearing shirts with the faces of Pattinson and (bad boy vampire) Cam Gigandet were too many to count. These undead boys, particularly new heartthrob Robert Pattinson, have created an epidemic of crushes that will override any criticism the movie may endure and provide piles of pictorial content for Big Bopper and Tiger Beat.

Photos courtesy of Seville Pictures

Izzard gone ape shit?

You may have heard the theory that if you put 100 monkeys on 100 typewriters they're eventually write all of Shakespeare's work. Think the same would work if you substituted typewriters with cameras? We may find out as that sounds like Eddie Izzard's backup plan following the cancellation of The Riches. "We're doing a film," he told the BBC. "We're going to write it and we're going to raise money like Barack Obama through the Internet. And we're going to shoot it guerrilla-style, using gorillas to actually shoot it. We're going to give them cameras. It's going to be crazy." The peeps at insideEonline said he was "either joking or just gone bananas."

Hugh Jack(sexiest)man

Hugh Jackman has been named this year's Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine. Not sure how I feel about that. According to imdb, this Aussie's 6'2" (that's a giant in Hollywood height), and yet he seems small to me (and no, I'm not making an sexual innuendos).

While I may sound surprised, Jackman's wife certainly wasn't."God bless her, she said, 'I could've told them that years ago,'" he told People. "And then she said, 'Obviously, Brad wasn't available this year.' And I said, 'That was a joke, right?'"

Australia costar Nicole Kidman also doesn't sound surprised either. "Hugh is tough and romantic at the same time," she said. "Australian men are a different breed. They're rugged and they sweat."

Drunk Delgado arrested

She won her prince charming in The Bachelor, but Mary Delgado acted like anything but a princess when she allaegedly attacked an innocent car radio when she was cuffed in teh back of a squad car for public drunkeness.

According to TMZ, police were called to a bar after a crunked Delgado refused to leave, arguing that it was her "constitutional right" to be there. Right, and was it her constitutional right to (allegedly) punch her Bachelor-star fiance Byron Velvick last year? Yeah, this is one classy broad!

Nic served sweet nothings by Keith

Nicole Kidman recnetly revealed the sickly sweet lines Keith Urban layed on her that sound like they came straight out of a sappy Hugh Grant rom com... OK, maybe not in that Grant isn't-it-cute-how-bumbling-I-am way, perhaps more McDreamy-like.

"Three and a half years ago a man came along and said, 'I'm going to take you to Tennessee,'" Kidman was quoted as saying at the Glamour awards by WENN. "And he took me down there and he said, 'I think you deserve to be loved. Let me love you, let me give you a home and let's make a baby.' So thank you, Keith...I don't believe that you can [have it all]. But I believe you can have balance...Three and a half years ago I had a wonderful career, I had two kids, I had movie offers, great directors offering me things, but I wasn't loved."

And we all know it's love that makes the world go round...

Paul Rudd on making out with movie stars

Tonsil hockey, tongue tango, smooching, snogging, swapping saliva... call it what you want, Paul Rudd's done it all with some smoking hot leading ladies. While I'm sure the actresses wouldn't mind sucking face with the handsome actor, how does his wife feel?

"I think she's okay with it," Rudd, who you can currently catch kissing Elizabeth Banks in Role Models, told parade.com. "It can be kind of weird because I didn't know Michelle Pfeiffer or Jessica Alba before we did our kissing on camera. It's like, 'Hi, how are you? It's nice to meet you.' And then you film a scene where you're kissing. You just take a step back and go, 'My life is weird.' Weird, by the way, could also, in everything I just described, be replaced with awesome."

Twilight's Pattinson reveals hunger fan requests

Twilight vampire-hunk Robert Pattinson recently revealed some of his fans are lusting for him to take a bite out of them.

The 22-year-old British babe told eonline about an incident involving a 7-year-old girl who asked for his photo in New York. Sounds harmless enough, right? "But then she went really quiet," Pattinson recalled while laughing a little nervously. "And she was like, 'Can you bite me?' It wasn't a joke...I looked at her and thought, 'Do you know what you're saying?' There are these kinds of sexual thoughts that come out of people that they don't even know are sexual."

No kidding, but can you blame the girl? I wouldn't mind that man nibbling on my neck!

Leona Lewis claims she doesn't have any desire to become a famous superstar with status like that of Madonna, Cher or Celine.

"I don't know if I'd like to be that big," the singer was quoted by breakingnews.ie as saying. "I like to lead a relatively normal life. I like the normality of being able to go to the shops, go out with my friends."

Right, isn't that what they all say when they don't have it? See, she even back-tracked a wee bit. "I love the way huge stars like that have been able to connect with so many people and make so many albums of great music, so that's what I want as well. But I think it's a balance. I don't want to go off the rails."

Dammit, with Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears on the road to normality, we really need some newcomer to go off the deep end, Hollywood has been borderline normal lately.

Rudd on role playing

There are some pretty interesting fantasy faux-battle scenes in Paul Rudd's latest flick, Role Models. Rudd's character gets "big-brothered" up with a kid (McLovin from Superbad) who defines dweeb to a T. Not only does he walk around in a cape, he partakes in a reenactment society-of-sorts and ends up dragging Rudd into it.

"These groups really exist," Rudd told parade.com. "They're 'LARPs' which stands for Live Action Role Playing. We really took it as seriously as they do, even though everyone fights with fake weapons like paper swords. I worked with the stunt coordinator who had trained Matt Damon for The Bourne Identity to get the right moves. Most of the battle scenes were played for laughs, but we wanted them to be like Braveheart. That kind of stuff was never my thing growing up. I was hooked on LEGO."

If you're intrigued by these people running around in medieval and regal paraphanalia while hitting each other with nerf-like weapons, you should check out the documentary Darkon which provides a more in depth look.