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No sooner did news break that Amy Adams is going to play Janis Joplin in the long-awaited biopic of the drug-bedeviled, bisexual 1960s music icon than the outcry began.

Music critics and Internet chatterers alike are bewailing the choice of Adams as Too Pretty, Not Gritty Enough, Not Gutsy Enough, Not Bluesy Enough, Too Sweet, Too Show-Tunesy.
Indeed, some of the near-misses for a biopic (Zooey Deschanel, Pink, Melissa Etheridge) do seem more readily adaptable into portraying Joplin than Adams, of "Enchanted," "Julie & Julia," "Junebug" and "Doubt" fame.
However, we can't help but remember, Oscar winner Jamie Foxx had lots'a naysayers before he proved just how great he could be with his tour-de-force performance as Ray Charles in "Ray."
How about the advance criticism over Joaquin Phoenix daring to play Johnny Cash (and doing his own singing?! What, is he CRAZY?!!). An Oscar nomination for "Walk the Line" ensued.
Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes? There were complaints that Martin Scorsese should have cast someone more grown-up-looking and manly than DiCaprio for his "The Aviator" -- until the actor turned in a performance that merited an Oscar nom.
It doesn't always work out when stars play stars, of course. James Brolin was critically crucified for his performance as Clark Gable in the film "Gable and Lombard," for instance. Jennifer Love Hewitt's portrayal of Audrey Hepburn in 2000's made-for-television movie "The Audrey Hepburn Story" won her a host of backhanded compliments. Hewitt was said by many reviewers to do an adequate job with the role, and even those critics admitted they were surprised and had expected worse.
However, when performers can nail such a performance, the rewards are big.
That's exactly what happened to Robert Downey Jr., who had done good work in a string of movies, but had yet to prove the immensity of his gifts, when he immersed himself in all things Charlie Chaplin to play Hollywood's supreme genius in the 1992 "Chaplin." He astonished critics and, yep, won an Academy Award nomination.
So Adams deserves a wait-and-see, at least.
TALK ABOUT STUNNING!: British presenter and fashion journalist Louise Roe of MTV's "The City" admits of her July 28-debuting CW "Plain Jane" reality show, "We're ridiculously up to the mark. We are still filming. We're filming till literally four days before it airs. The editors are going to work late at night for sure."
    
But despite the last-minute crunch, she's happy with the show that boasts makeovers "from the inside out. It's not just a giant shopping trip to Bloomingdales."
     
The first episode has Roe even going so far as to employ a hidden dog training electroshock buzzer on a girl, and giving her a jolt each time she falls back into such no-no behavior as slouching and failing to make eye contact. They work up to the big reveal, wherein the girls tell their secret crushes their feelings. Roe hopes viewers get inspired to shape up and speak out themselves.
    
"We've all, every single one of us, had Plain Jane moments where we've felt rejected by a guy or lost confidence for some reason. Hopefully, they can watch and relate. There's a lot of takeaway information, a lot of tips, for instance, when we go shopping -- 'If your body is like this, wear something like this.' I hope it will make everybody want to go out and buy shoes!" she adds with a laugh.
     
Fans can get Roe's help landing a crush without the electroshock aspect at the CW's www.cwtv.com. The website experience offers such goodies as first-date strategies and the opportunity to make a customized video to reveal one's feelings to that certain someone.
     
STAR SPANGLING: Caitlyn Taylor Love of Disney XD's "I'm in the Band" gets to showed off her vocal prowess before a massive crowd when she sang the national anthem in front of the Dodgers vs. Mets game at Dodger Stadium. "I'm so stoked. I don't think I could be any more excited," says the one-time "America's Got Talent" finalist -- who now plays rocker girl Izzy on the series about a teen (Logan Miller) who winds up as part of his favorite old-school big hair rock band.
     
Love is a lifelong music performer -- "I sang my ABCs and 'Jesus Loves Me' at 10 months old" -- and says that she and Miller are always jamming together in between shots on the "I'm in the Band" set. As far as the members of the faux Iron Weasel band, Steve Valentine, Stephen Full and Greg Baker, "They're really good actors. They're awesome. Since we've been doing the show, they've gotten better and better" -- performing musically, she says. "Steve Valentine actually has a pretty good voice."
     
THE BLOODLUST GOES ON: You have to know the vying is intense for the roles of vampire sisters Tanya, Kate and Irina of the Denali coven in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn" -- when speculation over the casting had fans posting prospects for the parts even before Bill Condon was announced as director. Also being cast is vampire Eleazar, and casting notices specify someone who is "able to play a Spaniard." We sure wouldn't want anything unrealistic in a "Twilight" movie, after all. Based on the fourth and final novel in Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" saga, "Breaking Dawn" is supposed to hit theaters Nov. 18, 2011.
(Image: WENN)

Emily Blunt “danced the night away” at her bachelorette party in Los Angeles last night. The 27-year-old British actress is engaged to actor John Krasinski, 30. The pair are rumored to be tying the knot in a lavish ceremony in California in the next few weeks, and Emily and a group of her friends, including actress Amy Adams, celebrated the end of her single days yesterday.

The women arrived at Los Angeles’ Trousdale Lounge at around 9pm, taking a large table in the club’s VIP room. They wasted no time ordering dozens of cocktails and spent the rest of the evening on the dance floor.
“They sipped cocktails and then danced the night away,” an onlooker told People magazine.
Amy, who gave birth to her first child, daughter Aviana, with fiancé Darren Le Gallo last month, left before midnight, but the rest of the group lingered until the early hours of the morning.
Emily and Amy met on the set of 2009 film Sunshine Cleaning and have been close friends ever since.
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Actress Amy Adams (pictured) has reportedly given birth to a baby girl. The Oscar nominee, who starred in Julie & Julia alongside Meryl Streep, welcomed her 7lb baby daughter over the weekend, according to RadarOnline.com.

The 35-year-old star and her fiancé Darren Le Gallo, who was by her side during the delivery, are said to be thrilled with the birth of their first child. The baby's name has not yet been announced.

"Everyone is doing well," a pal told the website. "It's very exciting for Amy, Darren and their families. "They have a large, extended family and all their brothers and sisters are relieved and thrilled that this moment has come for them both."
The couple, who met at an acting class in 2001, announced that Adams was pregnant last December.
Talking about possible names for the baby, Adams recently said: "I think I really have to meet the person before I'm going to know the name, but I tend to be attracted to more traditional names."
(Image: Splash News)

Amy Adams has become a mother for the first time.

The 'Julie & Julia' actress - who is engaged to actor Darren Le Gallo - gave birth to a healthy baby girl in Los Angeles over the weekend and both mother and daughter are doing well.

A source told website RadarOnline.com: "Everyone is doing fine. It's very exciting for Amy, Darren and their families.

"They have a large, extended family and all their brothers and sisters are relieved and thrilled that this moment has come for them both."

It's not surprising, given the success of Amy Adams' first warbling, gown-clad turn, that Disney would press ahead with a sequel to Enchanted. And now the Mouse House has hired both a writer (I Am Sam's Jessie Nelson) and a director (Anne Fletcher of The Proposal) to get it in gear.

Considering that the original floundered for years in development limbo, the studio would like this one to flounce in front of cameras a little quicker, with, according to Variety, the aim of possibly having it in cinemas next year.

Fletcher should be a good fit, since she's a former choreographer who can handle a dance scene with the best of 'em.

Now, though, the big question will be whether Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden and possibly Susan Sarandon would all return for another go-around.

And what will the plot be? No one is saying yet - we'd throw out a guess at Adams's Giselle being flung back into animated fairytale-land, but with the likely tight schedule, we doubt they could get that much created in time...

Amy Adams is pregnant. The Enchanted actress, 35, and her fiancé Darren Le Gallo are reportedly expecting their first child together. The pair have been together for seven years, after they met in an acting class in 2001.

They got engaged in July 2008. Adams made her screen debut in the 1999 black comedy film Drop Dead Gorgeous and, after a series of television guest appearances and roles in B-movies, she landed the role of Brenda Strong in 2002's Catch Me If You Can.

However, her breakthrough role was in the 2005 independent film Junebug, for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
The Night At The Museum actress can next be seen in the rom-com, Leap Year, which is due for release in the US on 8 January.

American actress Michelle Williams wants to inhabit the skin of Marilyn Monroe before she decides to take up an offer to play her on the silver screen. The former partner of Heath Ledger and mother of his child is a highly regarded actress who beat such stars as Amy Adams and Scarlett Johansson for the role in My Week With Marilyn.

But first Williams wants to "live" with Monroe for a while. The move might be seen as a make or break one for Williams, who has a blonde beauty not unlike that of Monroe.

But the part in the movie, which tells the story of the making of The Prince and the Showgirl with Laurence Olivier, is not meant to impersonate Monroe. "She’s not going to be a Monroe lookalike," said a source close to Williams in Brooklyn, where she and Ledger lived.
The movie will be based on a diary kept by Colin Clark, who worked for Olivier and was 23 and third assistant director on The Prince and the Showgirl. His assigned task was to keep Monroe, 30, out of Olivier's hair. The movie has been written by Adrian Hodges and is backed by BBC Films.

Amy Adams is turning producer on her next project. The breakout star of Junebug, who's since gone on to bowl us over in Julie and Julia, Enchanted and Doubt, is clearly fan enough of Adena Halpern's novel My Ten Best Days that she wants to oversee its journey to the screen. That or she knows a starring role when she sees one.

The novel is set in the afterlife: specifically Heaven, which is structured into seven levels, of which the seventh is the most desirable (meaning you can eat what you like and never get fat). Main character Alex wants to stay there with her Uncle Morris and her grandparents, in a perfect house that never needs cleaning, but is in danger of being demoted unless she can provide evidence of having lived a worthwhile life. Hence her homework essay on her ten best days.

Now, we're slightly bummed to learn that Heaven a) has a hierarchy, b) involves homework and exams, and c) means you have to live in the same house as your relatives. There are also echoes of What Dreams May Come and The Lovely Bones, but this will clearly be far more lightweight than either, and on that level could be fun. Heaven portrayed as a kind of Tim Burton 1950s suburbia, for example, could give this the slightly spiky edges it'll need to avoid just being twee.

Josh Klausner, who used to direct second unit for the Farrelly Brothers before turning to writing (he's been working on Shrek Forever After) is writing the script, and Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum) is tipped to direct. Hopefully that's a team that knows how to aim for the funny and hold back on the cloying. 

The trailer for the Amy Adams-Matthew Goode romantic comedy, Leap Year, has gone online over at MSN.

Regular readers will know that we’ve been harsh on this film from the off, fearing that the premise – Adams plays a girl who flies to Dublin on Feb 29 to propose to her boyfriend, taking advantage of an old Irish tradition, but winds up on a torturous journey accompanied by Goode’s charming rogue – would lead to an avalanche of hackneyed Oirish clichés and jokes so old that they pre-date Frank Carson.

And, now that we’ve seen the trailer, we feel pretty damn vindicated. For example, there’s a bit where Adams and Goode are waylaid by a herd of cattle in the road. Well, of course they are. You can’t go anywhere in Ireland without being waylaid by a herd of cattle in the road.

Factor in some truly tired gags, and it all looks fairly underwhelming. However, the considerable charms of Adams and Goode, and the pretty cinematography, may just save the day.

Leap Year is out here early next year (which, of course, isn’t actually a leap year). To see the full trailer, click here.
 

Zach Galifianakis and Amy Adams have signed on to star in the long-gestating comedy drama, Town House.

Galifianakis, stretching his wings a little after booking a series of comedic roles in the wake of his breakout performance in The Hangover, will play an agoraphobic man who lives, with his teenage son, in a large house bought and paid for by his late rock star dad. When the royalty cheques stop arriving, the man has to reassess his life and attitude, with the help of a friendly prostitute, in the shape of Adams.

About A Boy meets Pretty Woman, anyone? Now here’s material that could go either way, with enormous potential for tipping over into the irredeemably mawkish. But we have faith that Galifianakis, who doesn’t seem to have a sentimental bone in his body, can turn this the other way, into a sharp and affecting comedy drama.

No director is yet attached to the Fox 2000 movie, which had its origins in 2007 when Once writer John Carney wrote the screenplay. The writers’ strike put paid to that, though, but the interest of Galifianakis and Adams has reignited it.

Ridley and Tony Scott will produce the movie via their company, Scott Free, and with shooting tentatively set for the summer, expect a director announcement to happen asap.