Back in July, I dropped my name in the Pulitzer hat with my incredible coverage of the breakup of Twilight stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. In case you were in a coma, Pattinson kicked K-Stew to the curb after she was busted cheating on him with her Snow White and the Huntsman director, Rupert Sanders. But if you had two months in the “How long until PattiStew conveniently gets back together in time to create absurd buzz around the final Twilight film?” pool, then step up and claim your prize.

The Sun, which is always right, is reporting that Pattinson has taken Stewart back, despite the fact that she admitted to cheating on him. But I can’t really criticize the guy, because it’s not like he could have any girl on the planet or anything, so it’s good that he’s sucking it up and settling for an emotionless sheet of blank paper.

Pattinson, 26, was revealed to have had a heart-to-heart with the tearful Hollywood beauty, 22, over the weekend and forgiven her “stupid mistake.”

A source told The Sun how Pattinson had set up home with the brunette once more, adding: “They pretty much decided they couldn’t live without each other.”

“Kristen poured her heart out to Robert and told him it was a one-off and a mistake,” the source told The Sun. (Via FOX News)

Honestly, I don’t blame Pattinson. For starters, he just moistened a billion pairs of panties and guaranteed that Twilight: Breaking Whatever 2 will gross at least $100 million more than it was already guaranteed to make. But he also now holds the greatest “Get Out of Jail Free” card in history. Either way, I have $10 that says they’re done by the time Breaking Dawn leaves theaters.

However, my skepticism might also be unwarranted, because even though Stewart admitted that she cheated and has at no point denied her indiscretion, there are still conspiracy theorists who believe this was all drummed up by the hateful media. And one hero has even made a video that explains why this is all a lie.

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"And that's me in a broom closet with the director of 'Jumper'."

In case you’re a functioning member of society and not an illiterate teenage girl, you might have missed the MTV Video Music Awards last night, as the network that once routinely played music videos remains locked in a limbo of painful irony. At some point between Chris Brown fans butchering the English language in celebration of his award for Best Autotuned Woman Beater and Dwight Howard pretending he’s a huge celebrity, MTV unleashed a brand new 90-second trailer for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (Holy Sh*t Is This Over Yet).

The trailer promises fans the “epic finale” as we watch Bella get used to her new vampire powers by f*cking up nature, while Taylor Lautner shows up and is like, “Shirt? Never heard of it. ABS!” But then some vampire lady is all like, “Their baby is a crime” and the vampire police come to break up the Cullen party. And I’m sure it all looks so fantastic to Twilight fans, especially that part where Edward is like, “You know what vampires hate? Kung fu.”

But I noticed it was a little light on something. Great job by the producers to almost completely refrain from showing any connection between Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. Regardless, I’ve got $10 that says these two are sucking face on the red carpet for this film’s premiere, because if Rihanna can kiss Chris Brown at the VMAs, then love can make anything possible.

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Brooooooooood!

R-Pattz ponders existence and sh*t

The heads exploding in Scanners. The compound-fracture forearm splintering in The Fly. The guy with his jaw blown off, the rough sex on the stairs in a History of Violence. When I think David Cronenberg, I think of the visceral – lurid, memorable scenes of glorified sex and gore. As you might expect of a guy who once filmed James Spader having sex with a vulva-like scar on Rosanna Arquette’s leg (Crash, 1996), Cronenberg is fascinated by the human body, and he excels at shooting it. Dialog? Not so much. Remember the parts of History of Violence without the sex or the violence that felt like a weird, stilted after-school special? The last thing you want to see him do is make a movie that’s ninety-five percent people standing around and talking, which is what Cosmopolis is. There are isolated moments of genius, but they’re like Easter Island isolated. Yeah, geography, bitch, what.

Based on the Don DeLillo novel of the same name, Cosmopolis is a shaggy dog story centering around Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson), a billionaire asset manager on a trip across Manhattan in his limo to get a haircut on the same day that the president comes to town and sparks an anti-capitalist riot by rat-toting anarchists. There are a couple short, action-ish sequences that were nice (the rat-toting anarchists, mainly), but for the most part, it’s a game of musical chairs, with Robert Pattinson sitting in different places talking to different people, about, like, the nature of existence and stuff. “Dude, like what does it all mean or whatever?”

As soon as Robert Pattinson opened his mouth I knew I was in for a long movie. Part of the problem is the source material. I haven’t read Cosmopolis, but I’m otherwise familiar with Don DeLillo, and one DeLillo hallmark is dialog that’s stylized to the point that it’s almost Shakespearean, in that exists unto itself moreso than the physical world. His characters converse in existential, hyper-verbose, hyper-articulate, disconnected circle-speak – think Beckett, or Joseph Heller, or Flannery O’Connor. His dialog never seems intended to convey the way real people actually speak, it’s more a tool to present elaborately braided paradox. That’s not a knock on it, it’s smart, but polarizing, overwrought mostly in a good way. But that DeLillo’s scenes are built in your mind and often don’t seem to involve recognizable people presents some obvious problems for actors trying to present this believably, burdened as they are by their basic real peoplehood. I don’t know if DeLillo’s fetishized doubletalk ever works in a visual medium like film, but I can tell you that Robert Pattinson sure as hell isn’t up to it, at least not without better direction than this. I don’t doubt for a second that it’s hard to play a detached character, but R-Patts (who I haven’t minded in other stuff) never gets past high school theater club “hard boiled.” Squint, purse lips, furrow brow, squint some more, can you squint harder? Try anyway, repeat.

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Robert Pattinson was on The Daily Show last night promoting David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis, and while I generally adore Jon Stewart, I got through about three minutes of him eating ice cream and waiting for him to ask a goddamned question before I clicked onto something else. C’est la vie say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell. Anyway, hopefully it’ll be a better interview in a few months when Pattinson goes back to promote Queen of the Desert, a movie in which he’ll be starring, from director Werner Herzog.

Robert Pattinson has joined the cast of Werner Herzog’s indie “Queen of the Desert,” which will star Naomi Watts as English writer Gertrude Bell.
Pic will chronicle Bell’s life as a writer, archaeologist, explorer, cartographer and political attache for the British Empire. One of the first women to graduate from Oxford at the turn of the 20th century, she traveled through the Middle East, defining the borders of Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Pattinson is attached to play T.E. Lawrence, a British Army officer whose writing earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia, on whom David Lean’s classic 1962 epic is based. Lawrence was a good friend to Bell over the years, as the duo helped establish the Hashemite dynasties in Jordan and Iraq.
Cassian Elwes and Nick Raslan (Herzog’s “Rescue Dawn”) are producing the pic, which is aiming to start production in late fall.

Werner Herzog and I happen to be dear friends, so I was able to reach him for comment:

“Vhen I cast mein film, I pick za Row-bert Pattinson, because, just as I look eento za eyes uff za greezzly bear, oont see nuzzink but za cold eendeeference uff nature, so eet must be vhen Row-bert Pattinson stares eento za cold eendeeferent blankness uff za Kristen Schtewart. She bite her lip, oont ‘e see nuzzink. Zee abyss. Blackness. Za reptilian animal stupidity uff za common chicken. Eez beautiful. Eet eez vhen I sink ziss, zat I know he must understand za true poetry. Za poet must never look away.”

[banner pic via GQ, DailyShow]

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I know Summit probably realized years ago that they could release literally any promo material from Twilight and the Twihards would eat it up like their cats with so much fancy feast, but this is getting ridiculous. This new batch of 11 promotional stills they just released is far and away the most boring marketing I’ve ever seen. It’s like they went out of their way to make it especially unexciting just to keep from getting sued when that British Shrek chick finally has a heart attack. This batch of half-assed pictures reads like some bastard child of Mervyn’s fall collection, that calendar from Zoolander, glamour shots by Deb, and Hot Topic jewelry. Oh, and a LOT of gayness. Like, a lot a lot.

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