While the past week may have been a little slow for celebrity news and gossip, it was a fabulous week for bizarre photos. This should be good news for those who follow the world of crazy celebrity fashion and expected a lull between the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards. Admittedly, the SAG awards definitely helped. Jeffrey Sebelia provided us with a rundown of the SAG fashion trends, but mere words cannot do justice to some of these outfits.

The following roundup of last week's movie-celebrity gossip items includes some truly hair-raising photos ... and at least one that you don't want to view from the office, so be careful.

The film that's been lauded as "This year's Lord of the Rings" (I highly doubt that, but I enjoyed the book and am looking forward to the movie) could be decorating your walls soon if you're lucky. This would be the perfect stocking stuffer for someone who loves fantasy, dragons or John Malkovich. While it's great to see another fantasy film hitting the box office, it makes me nostalgic for movies like Dragonslayer, which defined the genre for me when I was kid.

Eragon's big claim to fame is that it was written by Christopher Paolini when he was 15 years-old. Since being published, it has attracted a lot of attention, and the film stars actors like Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich and Robert Carlyle, which isn't too shabby for a fantasy film. The trailers haven't wowed me yet, and I played a demo of the video game based on the movie -- which was almost enough for me to give up on the film, it was that bad. However, I'm determined to give this one a fair shake. At the very least, they've got themselves a cool poster.

FirstShowing.net will be giving away 20 of these as part of their "Poster Madness Contest," so head over and sign up before midnight, December 16. You have to answer a couple of trivia questions, but with the help of your trusty sidekick 'The Internet,' we have every confidence that you'll come through with flying colors. Good luck!

Let's get this out of the way right here, right now: I'm not a huge David Lynch fan. While I feel the man is a phenomenal artist who creates sensational visuals to accompany a fleet of complex characters, his films never hit that special spot for me, if you know what I mean. That being said, life-long Lynch fans should feast on his latest effort; a three-hour long experimental epic called Inland Empire.

To give you a small example of how odd this film is, its press materials included an assortment of still photographs (actor bios printed on the backs of each one) and a very brief synopsis (if you can call it that) which read, "A story of a mystery ... A mystery inside worlds within worlds ... Unfolding around a woman ... A woman in love and in trouble." Welcome to a David Lynch film -- next stop, Bizarro Land.

It's hard to believe, I know, but it's been a whole year since Cinematical was officially born. Actually, our birthday was last Saturday, March 10, but we were so busy with our heads buried in movies we let it slip right by. A lot has changed around here in the past year - we've gone from being a little film blog with former editor Karina Longworth blogging all by her lonesome, to a site with a full-fledged staff, covering festivals, reviewing lots of movies, and bringing you up-to-the-minute movie news. Now Karina has moved on to another project (although we're very glad she's still around writing her excellent new column, Laws and Sausages, and doing some other cool stuff for us), and spandy-new Editor-in-Chief James Rocchi is at the helm, with Martha Fischer and me rounding out the editorial team, working hard to continue to bring you what you've been coming here for, while adding a few refinements here and there. It's been a great year at Cinematical, and we're looking forward to the next one. In the meantime, here's a look back at the past year in Cinematical:

 

All because they want to give some money to Music Matters, a non-profit group that supports music education for kids, Rhino Records is letting Ewan McGregor do horrible vocal things to cover Sade. Wow is that scary to type. McGregor's version of The Sweetest Gift is just one track on an album of "night-themed songs and lullabies" called Unexpected Dreams: Songs from the Stars, which Rhino will unleash on April 11.

A saving grace of the situation is that several of the stars - including Jeremy Irons, who will be singing Bob Dylan, and John C. Reilly, singing something called Lullaby in Ragtime - have legitimate musical backgrounds, and the rest of them were forced to work with a vocal coach before stepping into the recording booth. But, really. Can't Rhino just give Music Matters someone money without subjecting us to Teri Hatcher singing The Beatles? Is that too much to ask?

It's been awhile for David Lynch, but he's got a new film coming out called Inland Empire and the first stills from the film have now arrived online. Though they're a bit blurry and hard to make out, there's some stuff involving a circus that immediately peaked my interest. Lynch doing the circus? Count me in.

We don't know much about the plot here, only that it takes place in Los Angeles, is a mystery and revolves around a woman in trouble. One interesting thing about Empire is that, although Lynch knew the basic premise, he shot the film without an actual script. Instead, he would just write each scene before shooting it. Now, I'm far from a filmmaking genuis, but I can only see this going one of two ways: Either it's a brilliant move that will help make the film look and feel more natural, or it will come off as an unbalanced train wreck. He's got some brilliant veteran actors in Jeremy Irons and Laura Dern, so here's hoping we're not halfway through the thing and hear, "Can somebody feed me a line? Oh, it's not written yet - nevermind."

 

[via Twitch]