“Rebirth’s” first week tracking here.

Holla.

Two confirmed “quality” actors have movies dropping in coming weeks. Both of whom were firmly established as “serious” actors in the early ’00s, but who got smacked with some of that reality shit in the past year and now have vehicle movies dropping in February (aka the movie biz’s Nevuary).

Point the first, Benicio Del Toro in The Wolfman. Dude caught a lot of (well-deserved) love from “Traffic” and spent the rest of the decade slowly squandering same. And now he’s in a wannabe tent-pole pic that was suppoed to come out last Halloween but got pushed and pushed like it was in labor and Heathcliff Huxtable was the attending. Shame cuz the previews looked like fire from a fanboy’s perspective. Apparently there were mutliple re-shoots and re-cuts and they had to change the score and shit. SMH. Dude prolly didn’t know that “Che” was gonna come out and be 4 hrs long and kill his career, but still. Del Toro’s always been a bit of an instigator, so you reap what you sow, wolfboy. Illbert Garenas’ first weekend prediction: $25-30 milli.

Second is prettyboy DiCaprio. Damn, damn, damn, James. Dude cannot get rid of that babyface, but still is A-List than a mug. However, everyone knows that they were showing previews for “Shutter Island” back in Summer ’09 with an October ’09 release date. Paramount decided that they couldn’t spill the guap on an Oscar campaign for the flick, so they pushed it to February…and still showed previews at every damn movie that came out between then and Winter. Now, this push is more of a slap in the face for Scorsese and Dennis Lehane (author of the book this is based on) than it is for DiCaprio, but still. Middle America thinks DiCaprio did everything from the production to the craft services, so holla at him. Illbert Garenas’ first week prediction: $30k.

We here at IDW are mostly on Team Conan, but we have to think that all of his recent stuntin on them hoes at NBC is, in some ways, meant to distract people from actually contemplating how huge of a slap in the face this is for him and, frankly, how embarrassing this is for him. As red as the carpet might be over at FOX (or FX), he’s got a long and steep uphill battle ahead of him when it comes to regaining his relevancy after his hiatus.

LA Reid and Def Jams Epidemic

In what has probably been one of the toughest / worst weeks for the label this year (has to be, the year is only 3 weeks old) and perhaps recent history, a day after the label had massive layoffs that saw three senior executives leave, the employees who still had jobs to show up to on Friday were asked to go home due to a bed bug scare.

One would assume that the problem was large enough to ask all employees to evacuate the building, or maybe it was a preemptive measure.

Or perhaps this is why layoffs happened on a Thursday and not a Friday, should people just think that everyone was being let go and that Island Def Jam was closing up shop ( a rumor that has been out there since last year).

Either way, this must have been quite the embarrassment for the house that LA destroyed.
Here’s hoping 2010 is better on the back of Bieber.

Lil Wayne = Rockstar... not really

With the impending release of Lil Wayne’s “Rebirth”, can we talk about how much of an epic misstep this is gonna be. The Chicago Sun-Times Jim DeRogatis spake thusly:

“How could anyone have thought this forced, joyless, plodding Frankenstein’s mess was worth the trouble of releasing?”

Right before he gave it 1/4 stars.

Wayne’s claimed that his inspiration for this was Kanye exercise-in-going-to-the-left “808s & Heartbreak.” As a rule, concept/”artistic statement” albums are a terrible idea that never pan out. “808s” was a rare exception to said rule. Based on “Prom Queen” alone (which dropped in spring ’09 btw…you know, back when “Rebirth” was supposed to drop), it was clear that “Rebirth” would adhere to the rule like a damn Army colonel. It’s understandable from an artist-relations standpoint that Cash Money / Universal would want to let Wayne do whatever he wanted after selling a million units of “The Carter III” in a week, but cot damn. For one thing, the whole rock/rap shit hasn’t worked since Ice-T came out with that Bodycount group in the ’90s. And it’s a shame that Wayne’s falling right into the dumbed-up cliche of what rap/rock is when projects like Blakroc get a collective eye-roll by the buying public. But whatever. Wayne put his foot down and now “Rebirth” will be the last thing we get from him till he gets out of prison. Sucks too, cuz he demonstrated on recent mixtape “No Ceilings” that he can still dumb out and just spit and murder some beats like whoa. Illbert Garenas’ first week sales prediction for “Rebirth”: 100 – 150k.