Can she beat the Men in Black -- in 3D?

Universal just may have assembled the most beautiful movie cast this side of Twilight. The studio has signed three of-the-moment stars — Friday Night Lights‘ Taylor Kitsch, True Blood’s Alexander Skarsgård, and, most recently, pop idol Rihanna – for Battleship, an action film based on the Hasbro board game that’s set for release on May 25, 2012.

For those of you who haven’t already done the math, that’s almost two years from now. Two years — a virtual eternity in pop-culture time. Kitsch, Skarsgård and Rihanna are hot now, but will we still love them tomorrow? Chances are that we will. But what about in 2012, when Battleship must wage combat against Men in Black III-D at the box office over Memorial Day weekend?

The film’s price tag, reported to be in excess of $100 million, is a lot of money to bet on three unproven leads up against Will Smith, probably Hollywood’s most bankable star. (Eight of his last nine movies have grossed more than $130 million in North America.) If Universal were smart, the studio would rush this thing into production for a 2011 release date (originally, it was supposed to come out next summer), if not to get away from Smith, to make sure that its principals are still piping hot.

I suspect that Rihanna will continue to sizzle. She’s beautiful and stylish, the perfect pop package, and we know the camera adores her. But can she act? For a film like Battleship, that might be beside the point. She already proved in the “Hard” video that she’s perfected her battle pose, and she wears combat couture gorgeously. She’ll also have some extra time to work on her acting technique for what will be her film debut —  at least as much as she needs to prepare for a role that is sure to be not particularly demanding on a thespian level. And she can even revive Jordin Sparks’ great 2009 hit “Battlefield” for the soundtrack.

Kitsch, who will portray Naval commander Alex Hopper should have no problem handling whatever acting tasks are thrown his way. He’s already spent four seasons as the resident bad-boy hunk on one of the most critically beloved shows on TV, so I’m surprised that he has yet to break out as a big-screen leading man. As for Skarsgård, who’ll costar as Hopper’s brother, he’s as improbably gorgeous as the others; he has a respectably lengthy resume (which includes the 2001 cult classic Zoolander); and HBO’s True Blood is nearly as high-buzz as Glee among TV shows. I have yet to be washed in the True Blood viewing experience, but I loved Skarsgård as Lady Gaga’s lover/tormentor/poison victim in the “Paparazzi” video.

So potentially disastrous release date aside, Rihanna has chosen wisely for her first movie role. She has two strong costars, and in Peter Berg, a well-respected director with a decent rack record. (Ironically, his last film, 2008’s $227.9 million-grossing Hancock, starred Will Smith.) That Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) considered taking on Kitsch’s role before opting to do There Will Be Blood director Paul Thomas Anderson’s next movie gives it a slight credibility boost. It might not be the best test of Rihanna’s potential as an actress, but it could be her ticket to movie stardom — at least for one summer blockbuster.

The only thing standing in her way will be Will Smith.

Look out Slim Shady, I'm coming to get you!

We’re still three months away from the October 25 release of Taylor Swift’s third album, Speak Now, and already the pressure is on. Although her label, Big Machine Records, is forecasting first-week sales of 750,000, which would put it just ahead of 2010’s biggest debut so far, Eminem’s Recovery, which opened at 741,000, some industry executives are wondering if she could be the first artist to top the one-million-in-week-one mark since Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III’s 1,005,545 seven-day total in June of 2008.

Personally, I’m not ready for another round of Swift, but if she can assist Eminem in lifting the music industry out of its current sales doldrums, I’ll grudgingly root for her. And I agree with Will Botwin, president/CEO of Red Light Management and ATO Records, who recently told Billboard magazine why the odds are stacked in her favor.

It feels like if anybody can do it now, she could be the one. She has the sales base and the heat from the last two albums. And with all the amazing things she has going on, she is as likely as anybody to reach a million units, especially with the efforts of Big Machine and Universal behind her.”

That’s not all she has on her side. The fourth-quarter release date immediately gives Speak Now a sales edge. Album sales typically peak from the end of September through the holidays, with people purchasing more music as Christmas gifts and a larger number of major stars releasing new music, which drives increased traffic into record stores and onto iTunes and Amazon.

Swift’s previous album, 2008’s Fearless, also was released during the fourth quarter (November), and it sold 592,000 copies in its first week. Though the industry has slumped further since then, Swift has gotten much bigger, becoming the most successful country-pop crossover star since Shania Twain. Lady Gaga might get more attention, but Swift sells more albums in the U.S., if not worldwide. In 2009, Forbes listed her at No. 12 on its list of the 100 richest and most powerful celebrities, with $45 million in earnings, up from No. 69 and $18 million in 2009. (In comparison, Gaga, whose international profile is considerably higher than Swift’s, was No. 4 in 2009, with $62 million, while Eminem didn’t make the list.)

In addition to her increased earning potential, Swift now has a busload of industry awards, including an Album of the Year Grammy (for Fearless); she’s been in a hit movie (Valentine’s Day); she’s gotten the Kanye West seal of disapproval; and she’s become a major media star without having to suffer a public meltdown, get arrested or take off her clothes.

She’s also an independent women — a singer, songwriter and producer — putting her completely in charge of quality control. Swift has said that she wrote every song on Speak Now by herself, and she co-produced it with her Fearless/Taylor Swift collaborator Nathan Chapman, which means she probably won’t be giving herself a bad ill-advised makeover to prove to the world that she can’t be tamed — and hopefully, there won’t be any poorly spelled song titles (“California Gurls,” ugh!) or misplaced rap cameos to stink up the proceedings.

Although I still don’t think she belongs in the company of the Paul Simons and Laura Nyros of the songwriting world, her description of the first single, “Mine,” due in mid August, sounds promising. She recently explained what it’s all about on Ustream.

My tendency to run from love… Every really direct example of love that I’ve had in front of me has ended in goodbye and has ended in break ups and things like that. So I think I’ve developed this pattern of sort of running away when it comes time to fall in love. This song is sort of about finding the exception to that.”

OK, so she’s about as eloquent as you can expect any 21 year old to be, but the subject matter would appear to be more universal and less high school than “Love Story” or “You Belong with Me.” And what I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall the first time her ex, Joe Jonas, hears this one.

No strings attached: Timberlake races to world domination

I’ve always thought of Justin Timberlake as the second coming of Michael Jackson. Like the late, great King of Pop, Timberlake started out as the lead singer and youngest member of a hugely successful boy group, and emerged as the breakout star with a solo career that transcended his boy-band origins.

The parallels only begin there: As a solo artist, Timberlake has racked up multiple Grammy nominations (and six Grammys), including Album of the Year nods for both of his solo works, 2002’s Justified and 2006’s Future Sex/Love Sounds; he sings, he writes, he creates hits for other artists; he takes his cool sweet time making albums; and he’s the greatest dancer.

But Justin Timberlake might be en route to a place where Michael Jackson was never able to get to: movie stardom. Over the past decade, while dating movie stars (Cameron Diaz and Jessica Biel), he’s been slowly building his Hollywood resume, with supporting roles in Edison, Alpha Dog and Shrek the Third, and two Emmy wins. Come October 1, he’s poised to ascend to level two with his supporting role in the David Fincher-directed Facebook drama The Social Network. Jesse Eisenberg may have the lead, as Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, but Timberlake nabbed the pivotal role of Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster who went on to become Facebook’s first president.

Some Oscar bloggers already are putting Timberlake on the shortlist for a best supporting actor nomination, and considering Fincher’s recent track record, it’s not entirely implausible. His last film, 2008’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, was a $127.5 million hit and the long-acclaimed director’s Oscar breakthrough, scoring 13 Academy Award nominations, including acting citations for Brad Pitt and Taraji P. Henson. Also on the creative team: Emmy-winning writer Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing), who wrote the screenplay, and Oscar winners Kevin Spacey and Scott Rudin (No Country for Old Men) as producers. (Incidentally, by working with Fincher, Timberlake has walked even farther in the King of Pop’s moonwalking shoes: Fincher directed Jackson’s 1993 video “Who Is It.”)

It’s too early to tell for sure, but the trailer (see below) is intriguing, and Fincher’s films are usually well received critically. A strong commercial run is almost a no-brainer, given the zeitgeist subject matter, and if it plays well with the critics groups throughout Oscar season, it would have a good shot at one of the 10 Best Picture slots, and Timberlake easily could be carried along on the wave of adoration.

Though he’s got a long way to go before he joins the hallowed $20 million-a-film club, Timberlake will continue to move up the Hollywood food chain. His next project, after voicing Boo-Boo Bear in the upcoming Yogi Bear (December 17), is a leading role in the romantic comedy Friends with Benefits, which he began filming this month in New York City with Mila Kunis — soon to improve her own resume with Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan. (Guess we’ll have to wait even longer for that new album.) Friends with Benefits doesn’t sound particularly Oscar bait, but it does have a trio of Academy Award nominees among its supporting cast: Woody Harrelson, Richard Jenkins and Patricia Clarkson.

Which goes to show, with talent, smart choices and a little luck, there can be plenty of life after 20 for a former boy-band teen idol.

Jolie and her "plus one" at Salt's Los Angeles premiere

As an actress, Angelina Jolie always has had a bit of a split personality.

There’s Jolie, the acclaimed Oscar-winning star of Girl, Interrupted, who first came to Hollywood prominence in the late ’90s with Golden Globe-winning and Emmy-nominated TV roles in George Wallace and Gia. In recent years, this side of Jolie has been most visible, winning acclaim (and, in my opinion, being robbed of an Oscar nomination) for 2007’s A Mighty Heart, and then finally scoring her second Academy Award nomination for the following year’s Changeling.

Unfortunately, one day, when the dust settles on Jolie’s career, little-seen performances like her lived-in turn as Marianne Pearl — pregnant widow of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and killed by Al-Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan in 2002 — which made A Mighty Heart seem more like a documentary than a biopic, probably won’t be the ones for which Jolie is best remembered.

Blame it on Jolie’s alter, the woman who would be Hollywood’s first action queen. This is the Jolie that people pay good money to see, star of 2000’s Gone in 60 Seconds ($101.6 million), 2005’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith ($186.3 million) and 2008’s Wanted ($134.5 million). In the early ’00s, she nearly became the first woman since Alien star Sigourney Weaver to launch a successful action franchise when Lara Croft: Tomb Raider grossed $131.2 million at the North American box office, but those high hopes were doused two years later when the sequel, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, collected a disappointing $65.7 million.

If at first you don’t succeed…

It’s possible that trying again — and again — might be working for Jolie. The Friday box-office estimate for her latest action venture, Salt, was an impressive if not quite blockbuster $12.7 million. Although that’s behind the one-day total for Inception ($13.2 million), it’s more than most films headlined by a solo female star earn in their entire opening weekends. And for the sake of comparison, Grown Ups, the latest Adam Sandler movie, pulled in $14.5 million on opening day and has grossed $137.2 million to date. Decent, as in not overwhelmingly scathing, reviews have helped Salt. Also, Jolie has become a bigger star in the near-decade since the first Lara Croft, thanks in part but not only to her relationship with Brad Pitt, raising her box-office potential.

Sony Pictures Entertainment’s estimates for Salt’s opening weekend were in the $30 million dollar range, and the studio might actually get it right this time. Saturday-night grosses generally build on Friday estimates, and it’s possible that Salt will end up exceeding Sony’s expectations. That wouldn’t necessarily make it Jolie’s best opening weekend ever: Both Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Wanted landed in the $50 million range, and the first Lara Croft: Tomb Raider did $47.7 million, but with built-in interest from the video-game character. Still, if it has legs as impressive as Jolie’s and plays well internationally, it could be the start of a new franchise, with Jolie as a kind of female Jason Bourne.

Interestingly, Evelyn Salt, a CIA agent accused of being a Russian spy, wasn’t intended as a Jolie vehicle. It was meant to be The Tom Cruise Show, but when he dropped out, the role was rewritten for the female lead. This weekend, as Jolie dodges bullets onscreen, Sony must be thanking their lucky, limber star that they dodged Cruise’s.

UPDATE Salt ended up with an estimated $36.5 million over the entire weekend, behind Inception, which added $43.5 million, raising its 10-day total to $143.7 million. Although taking inflation into consideration, Salt would fall short of peak-era Julia Roberts (1999’s Runaway Bride, $35 million) and Reese Witherspoon (2002’s Sweet Home Alabama, ($35.6 million), it’s slightly higher than Sandra Bullock’s two 2009 hits, The Proposal ($33.6 million) and The Blind Side ($34.1 million), which both opened on several hundred fewer theaters. Get ready for the sequel!

So far so bad.

In what might be a last-ditch effort to save the album, which is miles away from platinum and in danger of failing to go gold (500,000 copies sold) in the U.S., Aguilera is back to doing what she does best: singing. Releasing the delicate ballad “You Lost Me” as the album’s third single might be the smartest move Aguilera has made since 2002, when “Beautiful” rescued Stripped — which had been similarly marred by “Dirrty,” an under-performing first U.S. single — from commercial mediocrity. The song is a delicate ballad in which Aguilera allows her voice to be center stage where it belongs, not shrouded in overdubs and overpowered by over-production.

The new video (watch the full clip here) might be problematic, though. While it’s refreshing to see Aguilera looking beautiful and demure — no traces of “skanky,” nor of Madonna, nor of Lady Gaga — nothing much happens. Though it undoubtedly cost a fortune to make, the video looks a little cheap and homemade, like it could have been filmed with a $200 digital camera. The “visual effects” are sort of cliché, with some sequences appearing to be over-lit or under-lit, and there’s not a single “wow” moment in its nearly 4:30 running time. I understand that Aguilera probably was aiming for minimalist after nailing over the top, but as she proved with “Beautiful,” low-key need not mean boring. More primary colors would have livened things up, or she could have gone for the dramatically bare but striking look of Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U.” At least its pretty dull, not ugly dull.

Even if the video and the song fail to reverse Bionic’s chart direction (and I suspect, fear, that they won’t), at least they’re solid reminders that when it comes to delivering a power vocal, no pop diva can match Aguilera. May her career live to see another massive hit.

Today, as usual, I groaned while going over Billboard’s latest hit list, and I’ll probably continue to do so as long it’s cluttered by the likes of Ke$ha and Jason Derülo. But for the first time in weeks, I cheered a few times, too. The main reason for my lack of extreme discontent: The summer of 2010 won’t go down in history as the one where Katy Perry and Snoop Dogg ruined the season with their dreadful hit, “California Gurls.” This week, after challenging the singing-rapping pair from the No. 2 spot for three charts straight, a new rapping-singing duo ascends to the top. In the process, Eminem and Rihanna’s “Love the Way You Lie” marks the first time the rapper has scored back-to-back chart-toppers (“Not Afraid” debuted at No. 1 in May), and Rihanna lands her seventh No. 1 hit of the last five years. That’s more than any other artist during that period.

What else about the new Hot 100 has me cheering?

1. The ’00s aren’t totally over. Some weeks I’m so overwhelmed by all the new names in the Top 10 that the mere presence of a relative veteran like Eminem makes me hopeful that the life expectancy of a hit-making pop career hasn’t dropped to less than five years. Last week, Enrique Iglesias featuring Pitbull joined Billboard vets Enimen, Usher and Snoop in the upper reaches of the chart with “I Like It,” Iglesias’s first Top 10 hit in eight years, and this week he holds at No. 8. If only the song weren’t such a hot Euro-pop mess that couldn’t help Iglesias’s new album, Euphoria, sell more than a measly 27,000 copies the week after its July 6 release.

2. Usher, the instant hit maker, is back. “OMG” was no fluke. After a series of singles that did middling chart business, “OMG” returned Usher to No. 1 back in May. With that hit still loitering in the Top 5, he debuts at No. 19 this week with “DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love,” which, like Iglesias’s single, is a Pitbull collaboration. He managed this particular feat by ripping a page from Lady Gaga’s book on how to extend an album’s life span. “DJ” is the first single from Versus (due August 24), an extended-play album that, The Fame Monster style, will be available as a stand-alone eight-track mini-album and as part of a new deluxe version of Raymond V Raymond, Usher’s 17-week-old current album, which has sold more than 918,000 copies in the U.S.

3. Speaking of Gaga, is she finally about to give us a break? With “Alejandro” heading down the chart (13-14) and no new single waiting in the wings, we might be on our way to a Gaga-free Top 20 for the first time in what seems like eons. Now if that’s not a reason to cheer, I don’t know what is.

Image via Wikipedia

Living in Argentina is messing with my mind. Since the seasons down here are in reverse, while the folks back in the U.S.A. are reaching for the beach, in Buenos Aires, we’re shivering, shaking and praying for spring. I was never a summer person until I moved to BA. Although the winter temperature rarely drops below 30°F here (recently, snow has blanketed practically the entire country except for BA), the humidity can make 45°F feel as unbearably frigid as the snowiest, most blustery day in the Big Apple. It can also make jogging outdoors — my favorite form of exercise, after Pilates — more pain than gain. So for the first time in my life, I find myself cursing cold and worshipping heat.

My previous disregard for summer so affected how I listened to music that those Best Summer Songs lists never meant anything to me. I spent so much time griping about the heat that I rarely paid attention to what was on the radio. Not that I had anything against songs that were released during the summer, but until my friend Lori recently cited the great “No Scrubs” by TLC as one of her favorite summer songs ever, I had never associated it with any particular season.

So for me, coming up with a list of the 10 best summer songs would be an exercise in futility, so I’ve decided on another approach — a list great “summer” songs for people who hate the season, or for people who live in countries where everyone was turning up the thermostat when “No Scrubs” was topping the charts. These are 10 great songs about summer. It doesn’t matter during which season they were popular. The only requirement is that they have the word “summer” in the title.

“Cruel Summer” Bananarama (June, 1983) Of course, there is no summer more cruel than one spent with Katy Perry and Snoop Dogg’s dreadful “California Gurls” lodged at the top of Billboard’s Hot 100.

“Summer Son” Texas (August, 1999) Not many people know about Texas in the U.S. (not the state, the Scottish band — and they are named after the film Paris, Texas, not the Lone Star State), but for a several years from the mid ’90s to the turn of the century, they were massive in the UK. This Top 5 single is one of their greatest hits and best songs.

“The Boys of Summer” Don Henley (October, 1984) From my friend Lori’s keyboard to my Facebook inbox: “LOVE ‘The Boys of Summer.’ Just listened to it yesterday. So wistful. I love in the video when it says, ‘Don’t look back, you can never look back,’ and Henley turns around and looks back.” Such a minor detail, but it’s the kind of touch that makes Henley such a great artist. Building the Perfect Beast, his second solo album included the equally brilliant singles “All She Wants to Do Is Dance” and “Sunset Grill,” all so different from his hits with the Eagles and so much better because of it. The flip side — the good side — to LFO’s summer of 1999 annoyance, “Summer Girls.”

“Summer of ‘69″ Bryan Adams (June, 1985) Though it’s best known as a karaoke classic or the perfect tune for a sing-along, this Bryan Adams hit doesn’t fly with me just because it pays homage to the summer after my birth (which was exactly one and a half months before the official onset of the summer of ‘69). I love it because, though upbeat and poppy, it’s also kind of sad, and it so perfectly conjures feelings of nostalgia for unforgettable moments pasts.

“Hot Fun in the Summertime” Sly and the Family Stone (August, 1969) You gotta love Sly Stone. Though thought of primarily as a funk pioneer, he did pretty much everything — and on this great hit from, yes, the summer of ‘69, he crooned, too. He was Prince back when Prince was still a virgin.

“Summertime” D.J. Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince (May, 1991) As a rapper, Will Smith, the artist formerly known as the Fresh Prince, was always too soft-core for my taste, but he had exactly one great hit. And no, it wasn’t “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It.” The shuffle mode on my iPod recently stopped on this, the duo’s solo U.S. Top 10 single, and I actually listened to it twice.

“Summertime, Summertime” Nocera (1986) What’s summer without a little bit of irresistible cheese? This dance hit from the Latin freestyle era that brought us a Exposé, Debbie Deb and the Cover Girls fits that bill perfectly.

“Summertime” The Sundays (September, 1997) Ah, the Sundays. Remember them? Probably not. Although two of this British band’s three albums went gold in the U.S. (curiously, Static and Silence, which included this, the group’s biggest UK hit, didn’t), the Sundays are mostly forgotten, but the current lack of smart alternative-pop singles like this one are one of the reasons why I miss the ’90s.

“That Sunday, That Summer” Nat King Cole (September, 1963) That year, Cole would enjoy his final Top 10 pop hit with an actual summer song, “Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer,” while this superior “summer” song, from the the same Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer album, only made it to No. 12 a few months later. (It also has been beautifully recorded by Dinah Washington and Cole’s daughter Natalie for her 1991 Grammy-winning album, Unforgettable… With Love.) The imminent arrival of the Beatles was more or less the knell for such elegant pop on the Hot 100. But we’ll always have “That Sunday, That Summer.”

“Suddenly, Last Summer” The Motels (September, 1983) Beauty and the heat. Martha Davis’s voice chills like winter, the melody blooms like spring, and the romantic sentiment burns like summer. The most gorgeous “summer” song of all.

Honorable Mentions

“Summer Rain” Belinda Carlisle

“Summer Night City” ABBA

“Summer of Love” The B-52’s

“Sweet Summer Lovin’” Dolly Parton

“Summertime” Fantasia Barrino

DiCaprio and his Inception A-team: Ellen Page, Marion Cotillard and Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Twelve days ago, on this very blog, I asked, Will Inception finally get Leonardo DiCaprio and Oscar past first base? We’ll have to wait until early next year to find out if he scores, but Inception’s $60.4 million opening weekend (DiCaprio’s best ever — yes, even better than Titanic, which, in all fairness, opened with $28.6 million on 1,100 fewer screens at 1997 movie-ticket prices) was good for at least one confirmation: Leonardo DiCaprio has quietly become one of the most bankable movie stars in Hollywood.

Will Smith, Adam Sander, Johnny Depp, Sandra Bullock, Meryl Streep, meet the competition.

Despite its huge buzz, $100 million marketing campaign and excellent reviews before pulling out of the starting gate, some wondered if Inception would prove to be too confusing for massive mass consumption, citing the intricate plot (blink and you might miss the key to understanding the entire thing) and unexpected twists and turns. Not even DiCaprio’s A-list name above the title made it a sure thing. If it ended up making money, some reasoned, it would be from word of mouth, over a span of weeks, or months.

Boy did Inception and DiCaprio prove them wrong. Not only did they outdo the prognostications, but those aforementioned twists and turns most likely will help Inception build nicely in the coming weeks with both word-of-mouth and repeat business padding its intake. A $200 million-plus final North American gross is not only a possibility —  it’s a likelihood, one that would make the film’s $160 million price tag more than worth it.

Even leaving Titanic out of the equation, DiCaprio has produced the goods before at the box office. Though his focus since Titanic — and throughout his career since he made the leap from Growing Pains to the big screen — has been more on quality over quantity with highly esteemed directors (Martin Scorcese, who’s directed him in four films, Steven Spielberg, Sam Mendes, Inception’s Christopher Nolan), he’s enjoyed several major successes. Between 2002 and 2006, he scored four for four at the box office with Gangs of New York ($77.8 million), Catch Me If You Can ($164.6 million), The Aviator ($102.6 million) and The Departed ($132.4 million).

In fact, of the 12 films DiCaprio has starred in since Titanic, there only have been a few total duds: Celebrity’s $5 million take was meager, even for a Woody Allen movie, while 2008 was a particularly bleak year, with both Revolutionary Road ($22.9 million, despite boasting what I consider to be one of DiCaprio’s strongest performances) and Body of Lies ($39.4 million) underperforming at the box office. (Although his Revolutionary Road and Titanic costar Kate Winslet would go on to finally win her Oscar for that year’s The Reader, it must have been no consolation for DiCaprio.)

But 2010 is looking to possibly be DiCaprio’s Sandra Bullock moment. Last year, Bullock was queen, with back-to-back hits (The Proposal and The Blind Side); this year, DiCaprio is king — if not of the world, at least of Hollywood. If he doesn’t start asking for more than $20 million a film, he should.

Though he probably doesn’t need career advice, were I to give him some, it would be to branch out. Relax. Lighten up. Every movie doesn’t have to be crazy intense boasting the performance of a lifetime. If I were DiCaprio, just to prove to everyone that I can indeed do everything, I’d find a high-quality comedy and book it for my next film. Look what discovering comedy has done for Meryl Streep — his Marvin’s Room mom — in the second half of her career. DiCaprio rarely gets to crack a smile onscreen, and comedy is the one genre in which he has yet to prove himself.

I hear Sandra Bullock is in the market for a post-Oscar project. Picture it: DiCaprio and Bullock, together for the first time. It could be the worst idea of all time or Hollywood’s biggest romantic pairing ever. And if nothing else, it would be nice, for once, to laugh at DiCaprio.

“Oh, and I’m richer than you are, too!”

A large part of Oprah’s initial appeal among her core audience of women was that they looked at her and saw themselves — and what they could be. She had the perfect rags-to-riches story; she struggled with her weight; she was attached to man who wouldn’t commit — or whom she couldn’t commit too (or whatever was/is going on between her and Steadman Graham). She is the American Dream, but with enough nightmarish sequences thrown into the mix to keep it real.

My fascination with her began after she became an icon. I was both repelled and intrigued by the way she played everywoman while name-dropping and constantly reminding us that she’s a billionaire. (She was worth $2.7 billion as of May 2009, making her the wealthiest black person in the U.S., according to Forbes.) But icons don’t have to make sense. They just have to be… iconic.

Unlike so many superstars of her caliber (Cruise, Tiger Woods, Mel Gibson), Oprah seems to be more or less scandal-proof. In 2006, when James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, a supposedly autobiographical memoir and a 2005 Oprah’s Book Club selection, was found to have been largely fabricated, Winfrey turned Frey’s manipulation (and her own duping) into a highly praised live episode of her eponymous daytime talk show in which she interviewed and skewered Frey.

More recently, Oprah: A Biography, Kitty Kelley’s unauthorized Oprah exposé, painted quite the unflattering picture of our girl, but it seems to have done minimal PR damage — for now. According to EW.com, it’s being made into a movie, so we’ll have to wait until its 2011 debut to assess the ultimate fallout. Additionally, some have speculated that her endorsement of Barack Obama as well as her religious views (she believes there are many roads to heaven, and not all of them include a firm belief in God or Jesus) lost her some fans. I suspect both also gained her new fans, while others remain neutral regarding her political and religious beliefs. For years, Tom Cruise, a known Scientologist, was one of the biggest draws in Hollywood, and supporting Obama hasn’t hurt Will Smith’s career any more than Sarah Palin’s politics have stopped her from extending her 15 minutes indefinitely.

But eventually, every icon has his or her day, the moment when the crown goes a bit crooked, and the subjects start looking for someone new to adore. According to numerous headlines this week (including my own — keep reading, my answer is coming), for Oprah, that moment might have arrived the week of June 28, when the ratings for her talk show hit an all-time low of 2.9 (or 3.8 million viewers) — the first time in the show’s quarter century on air that it has fallen below 3.0., and a 23 per cent decline from the same week in 2009.

There could be several explanations for this. It’s summer rerun season, and there’s naturally a decrease in overall TV veiwership as people are out enjoying the summer weather and anticipating the return of first-run episodes of their favorite shows in the fall. Also, because of increased competition from cable and so many options to choose from, TV ratings overall are falling, so not even the Queen of Daytime (sorry, Susan Lucci!) would be immune to the downward trend. And yes, the Oprah Effect, in which her endorsement sends a book racing up the bestsellers list or an album speeding up the charts, seems to have cooled recently, but largely by her own design. The book club has been inactive since 2009, when Uwem Akpan’s Say You’re One of Them was the only selection of the year.

Also in her defense, the ratings for Oprah, still No. 1 among talk shows, though it’s lost to Judge Judy 14 out of the last 16 weeks, have been up and down for the last few years. Around this time in July of 2009, she experienced another all-time ratings low. (Hmm… wonder if the July 4 holiday has anything to do with it.) Then in November, thanks to an interview with Sarah Palin, the show enjoyed its highest ratings since 2007. Oprah (the woman and the show) is also still a big hit with the Hollywood A-list, including Twilight stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, who stopped by in May, so it’s way too early to consider her a goner.

But her show soon will be, literally: She’ll host her final episode in September of 2011. Even when Oprah (the show, not the woman) is history, she’ll have plenty of ways to wield her still-considerable clout. Let’s not forget that she executive produced the 2009 film Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire, playing a major role in the $10 million film’s $62.8 million gross and six Oscar nominations. There’s also her magazine O, which for the second half of last year had a circulation of 2,479,722, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (good enough for a No. 23 ranking among U.S. magazines), and OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, a venture between Oprah’s Harpo Inc. and Discovery Communications Inc., will debut on January 1 of next year in more than 70 million U.S. homes, with Shania Twain as one of its flagship stars and series that will feature appearances by Lady Gaga, Jay-Z and Avatar director James Cameron, among other top-tier stars.

And if, while tending to her many irons in the fire, Oprah gets a little bored and wants to go overboard, she can always sign on to play herself in that movie version of Kitty Kelley’s biography (a la Oscar winner Sophia Loren, Joan Rivers and Naomi Judd, who all have played themselves in TV movies). Hollywood’s obviously not over her, so who wouldn’t cast her? I’m not over her either (yes, my fascination continues), and chances are, neither is most of her still-massive core constituency, so while starring in her own life story might do nothing for her credibility, it would practically guarantee her the biggest ratings of her career.

But I moved here anyway, and braced myself for the worst. There was some threatening and some disapproving, but not on the level that I experienced it during my years living in the U.S.A. And four years later, Argentina has proven itself more highly evolved when it comes to gay and lesbian rights. Early this morning, the Argentine Senate passed a bill granting gays and lesbians the right marry — not the right to form legal civil unions, which gays and lesbians already had, but the exact same marriage rights as heterosexuals throughout the country. This is a first for any Latin American country. A historic moment indeed.

For me, it’s a moment of bittersweet triumph. I’m proud to live in a country where I’m free to marry whomever I want to, but at the same time, I’m ashamed. Ashamed because the country where I’m from — the one that, in some ways, I still consider home — is so far behind the curve. I’ve railed before about the trouble the movie I Love You Phillip Morris is having getting a firm release date in the U.S. because it’s about two men in love who also happen to have hot sex onscreen. (Ironically, The Kids Are All Right, starring Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a lesbian couple — a concept that always has been more palatable in the U.S., and titillating even, to many straight males — was released last week to excellent reviews.) Phillip Morris has come out (no pun intended) in a number of countries in Europe, but still not in the United States. I’m not surprised, but I’m disappointed.

All over the world, nations are slowly seeing the light, but a large enough portion of the U.S. remains in the Dark Ages when it comes to acceptance of gays and lesbians that the right for them to legally marry nationwide still seems so far off. Perhaps eyes will be opened by the example Argentina set this morning. I’m hoping for it, but I’m not counting on it.