E! News today reports that Michael Douglas, next set to star as Shia LaBeouf’s father in law in Wall Street 2: Step Up to Tha $treetz (which opens next month), has been diagnosed with throat cancer.  It doesn’t sound life threatening, but then I’m not a doctor.  I use this stethoscope to amplify farts.

According to publicist Allen Burry, Douglas will undergo eight weeks of radiation and chemotherapy.
No word whether the lump in his throat is benign or malignant, but doctors have given Douglas an excellent prognosis and expect he’ll make a full recovery.

E! News naturally took this occasion as the perfect opportunity for a sh*tty pun. Their lead paragraph:

Michael Douglas’ most basic instinct right now is staying healthy.

Nicely done, E.  Stay classy.  We here at FilmDrunk also wish this Wonder Boy a speedy recovery.  We hope he gets to his treatments on time and that there isn’t Traffic, because this is cancer, it’s not The Game.  Full Disclosure: my uncle had a throat tumor, but the Solitary Man ended up Falling Down when the cancer became a Fatal Attraction.  But Don’t Say a Word.

I know the man-child thing is all the rage these days, especially for the vocationally pantless like me,  but I’ll be honest, it feels good to be excited about a trailer that doesn’t feature people in spandex shooting guns for once.  This one’s called A Solitary Man, featuring a cast of chicks nerds want to bang of all ages (Jenna Fischer, Mary Louise-Parker, Olivia Thirlby), not to mention Michael Douglas, Danny DeVito, Susan Sarandon, and Jesse Eisenberg, with direction by the guys who wrote Rounders.  Excited yet?  Here, try this cocaine.

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Fox just released the international trailer for Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, from Oliver Stone, starring Shia LaBeouf and Michael Douglas.  The domestic version didn’t reveal much about the plot, probably because we Americans don’t care about plot, only snuggies and giant sodas.  But for the foreigners they provide a longer cut.  We find out that Gordon Gekko is out of jail and becomes some sort of celebrity.  Meanwhile Shia LaBeouf is busy trying to four-finger blast Gekko’s estranged daughter because she has boy hair. Josh Brolin is a bad guy, which you can tell because he takes Shia on a scary motorcycle ride like Jacob did with Bella.  In fact that whole time through the forest I kept expecting him to turn into a giant wolf.  That would’ve been so awesome, I’d totally be cleaning the jizz off my Taylor Lautner sex pillow right now.  Well, more jizz anyway.

(“Greed is good, kid. You know what else is good?  Bein’ regular.  Now pass me that Activia.”)

Finally we have the long-threatened teaser trailer (click on the picture to play) for Oliver Stone’s sequel to Wall Street, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.  It doesn’t give us a ton of footage, but it’s definitely going to probably suck.  And I’m judging solely on the basis of the Fox logo here.

Emerging from a lengthy prison stint, Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) finds himself on the outside of a world he once dominated. Looking to repair his damaged relationship with his daughter, Gekko forms an alliance with her fiancé Jacob (Shia LaBeouf), and Jacob begins to see him as a father figure. But Jacob learns the hard way that Gekko – still a master manipulator and player – is after something very different from redemption. [IMDB]

Is it money?  Ooh, I bet it’s money, Gekko, you rogue.  This trailer is basically finance-guy porn, and regardless of what political message Oliver Stone tries to hammer home, I expect this movie to be for pushy, New York A-holes what Entourage is for shiftless, L.A. douchebags.  You know, pretty much like the first one. Except this time, LaBeouffed to a fine Sheen.  …What?  Screw you, you just don’t understand clever wordplay.

People Magazine reports that Steven Soderbergh has cast the principals in his Liberace biopic: Michael Douglas as Liberace, and for his lover?  MMMMAAATT DAAAAAMON.

“We’ve already done some costume and wardrobe tests on Michael, and they’re very, very, very good.” Soderbergh told a French newspaper at the Deauville Film Festival. “I swear to you, Michael amazed me. He crushed it.”

Damon, Soderbergh said, has agreed to portray Scott Thorson, the assistant/boyfriend whose 1982 palimony suit for $110 million publically outed the entertainer.

Before he died in 1987, Liberace would sue for libel any publication that implied he was gay, including The Daily Mirror, who had to pay him $22,400 for calling him “fruit-flavoured” in 1956*.  My question: when the same guy later gets sued for palimony by his boyfriend and dies of AIDs, shouldn’t his estate have to pay the money back?  Really, this picture should’ve been all the proof they needed:

I’m assuming the giant “S” ring stood for “Scott.”

*full, awesome quote: “…the summit of sex—the pinnacle of masculine, feminine, and neuter. Everything that he, she, and it can ever want… a deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love.”