In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Penn says that he met Obama during the campaign and was since offered a position as a public liaison:

I got to know the President and some of the staff during the campaign and had expressed interest in working there, so I'm going to be the associate director in the White House office of public liaison. They do outreach with the American public and with different organizations. They're basically the front door of the White House. They take out all of the red tape that falls between the general public and the White House. It's similar to what I was doing on the campaign.

Penn says that's he's not necessarily retiring from acting, and that the time-span of his White House job is unclear, but that he does plan to pursue a career in politics for the long haul. So, good for him.

[EW]

While it appears that the expansion of the nominees is designed to reward those eternally on-the-bubble critical favorites who can never sneak into the final five, the Academy also announced that it is dismantling the "blue-ribbon" panel it recently instituted to help guide worthy nominees there in the first place. That panel was convened after too many good shows were passed up in a dunderheaded general vote; without the quality committee in place to help cull the entire membership's vote down, that sixth slot will probably be filled with representatives from generic CBS sitcoms and crime dramas that go heavy on the acronyms, like CSI and Law & Order: SVU.

So, good news, Jon Cryer, Christopher Meloni, and the actors from Big Bang Theory! You now face even less of a challenge from Battlestar Galactica and Weeds. Enjoy your comfy new leg room!

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OK! So that's that. I'd love to talk at length about what a truly amazing experience this has been (and it has been pretty amazing), but I've promised to save all the weeping, gnashing of teeth, and goodbyes until Friday, when I've scheduled a spectacular emotional breakdown; suffice it to say that the ambulance to Cedars Sinai has already been reserved. And, of course, the rest of our Defamer team isn't going anywhere—in fact, we're still trying to grow the family; expect a post shortly from Fearless Managing Editor Mark Graham with the details.
—-Mark Lisanti, Editor

"We'd always been a very script-driven company," Emmerich says. "But now, with so much competitive pressure in the marketplace, we have to focus as much on marketing as on the script. If we'd had a vision of the one-sheet when we were hearing a pitch, not just after we've made the movie, maybe we wouldn't have suffered through so many of our mistakes."

Emmerich not only invited OTX market research guru Kevin Goetz to speak to the troops, he had him do a market test of some of the films they had in development. "He's the guy who's there when the rubber meets the road, so having him assess the marketability of our casting ideas was a lot better litmus test than a bunch of development execs sitting around talking about whether the third act worked or not."

But embracing this marketing-driven approach doesn't mean that Shaye and Emmerich will completely abandon the instincts that have brought them so much success in the past; going forward, their billion-dollar guts will collaborate with focus groups to produce an unstoppable, hybrid "Fuck yeah, that's just crazy enough to work!"/"We've run the numbers and they seem to bear out that this is just crazy enough to initially bomb, but then turn a tidy profit in the home video market!" approach to moviemaking:

When it comes to counterintuitive thinking, nothing beats making a sequel to "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle," a 2004 stoner comedy that was a box-office dud. "Everyone said, 'Are you out of your mind?' Why would you want to do a sequel for a movie that lost money!' " recounts Emmerich. However, the original film was a DVD smash, much like the first installments in the "Austin Powers" series that spawned hit sequels for the studio. Emmerich believes the "Kumar" sequel, due next spring, is more outrageous than the original, citing a plot twist in which its heroes escape from Guantanamo Bay and end up getting high with the president.

"At our test screening," he explains, "George Bush was the highest-rated character in the whole film."

Of course, once they start counting the receipts from this weekend's Rush Hour 3 debut, they may succumb to the temptation to scrap this ambitious overhaul and just have an assistant follow around Brett Ratner with a tape recorder, greenlighting every one of the semi-coherent ideas ("It'll be like my Rush flicks, but with a Mexican cop and Larry the Cable Guy. Also, they're in Iraq.") they're later able to transcribe, so let's not get too attached to the idea of a White Castle spin-off series starring a bong-toting President's attempt to eat at every Chick-Fil-A in America in just a week.

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