Greg in the Afternoon: Sunday Edition

Spending the weekend in Newport Beach with my friends Danny and Lorna and their two boys. We went to see Sunshine Cleaning at the Lido Theatre last night sitting in the upstairs balcony. It’s one of those great old single-screen theaters with loads of charm. In the early 90s, Danny and I were roommates and lived up oin 20th street on the Balboa Peninsula. We went to the Lido all the time and for some reason, I remember seeing Woody Allen and Bette Midler in Scenes from a Mall and just hating it! I kept waiting for Bette to be funny or for Woody to be funny. It didn’t happen.

FAST AND FURIOUS WINS RACE: We were among the minority of weekend moviegoers who didn’t jump at the chance to see heartthrobs Vin Diesel and Paul Walker together again on screen.  The original stars of The Fast and the Furious reunited for the fourth film in the racing franchise and easily won the box office derby . Their film, simply titled Fast and Furious, grossed an estimated $72.5 million in its opening weekend, according to studio estimates released Sunday. That is the biggest April opening for any move ever. Furious earned an additional $30 million in the international market. Variety reports that the film was predicted to open somewhere in the $40 million to $50 million range.

GOOD THOUGHTS FOR FARRAH: My heart sank when I read that Farrah Fawcett, who has been battling cancer for more than two years, has been hospitalized. There are few details available. Farrah is just 62 and I’ve loved her since Charlie’s Angels. I admired how she went on to become superb actress in such films as Extremities, The Burning Bed, Small Sacrifices, Between Two Women, Nazi Hunter: The Beate Klarsfeld Story and The Apostle opposite Robert Duvall. She’s a three-time Emmy nominee and always so interesting on screen. Farrah had left Charlie’s Angels behind after just one season but it was television magic at the 2006 Emmys when, in a tribute the the late Aaron Spelling, she walked onto a stage – for the first time in nearly 30 years – with fellow Angels Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith. I was watching from the backstage press room and remember it being the highlight of the night and each lady looked as if they had not aged a day. Farrah was diagnosed with cancer shortly after and has been undergoing treatment in the US and Europe.

SNL CLIP: And finally, here is a clip from last night’s Saturday Night Live featuring an “adoption-off” between Madonna and Angelina Jolie. Madonna was just denied a second child from Malawi while Jolie has adopted kids from Cambodia, Vietnam and Ethiopia.Madonna (Kristen Wiig) tells Seth Meyers, “I love babies, but I especially love getting babies from crazy places.”

Enjoy!