Swing Vote

Kevin Costner knows what works for him and he’s going back there.

Following duds like last year’s Swing Vote (we still have nightmares about that torture), Costner is in talks to produce a new TV mini-series about the Wild West in post-Civil War America.

The Oscar-winning history buff plans to direct and star in the series, which will study settlement in the western United States.

You know, around the same time some of the best films of his career was set.

No, not The Bodyguard or Field of Dreams (our personal favorite).

Let's get the painful worst out of the way first so we can end this year on the high note of what was great.

Worst
1. Hounddog
A terribly written, amateurishly directed, horrendously acted, self-important parable about lost innocence rife with Adam and Eve symbolism; the film’s major claim to fame is the rape of 12-year-old Dakota Fanning. To call it offensively bad is to be kind. 

Kevin Costner is following in Jessica Simpson’s footsteps and releasing a country music album.

Swing Vote is like that one annoying friend who always needs rides to the airport or wants to borrow money. It doesn’t know when to stop asking for favors from the audience, requiring you to suspend your disbelief for two exhaustively long hours and try to believe that an American presidential election could be decided by one vote. Oooookay. The film is all glossy Americana, all the time, even trying to give a trailer park the Michael Bay treatment, making it look sexy, golden and wind blown.

Just a month after suffering a near fatal heart attack, Kelsey Grammer has been hospitalized in New York.

The Frasier star decided to seek attention after feeling faint.

The 53-year-old former Frasier star has been very open about his cardiac arrest and the moment his heart stopped.

That is one foxy couple.

Singer Robin Thicke (son of Growing Pains star Alan Thicke) escorts his exquisite wife Paula Patton to the premiere of her new (absolutely terrible, but more on that next week) film Swing Vote at the El Capitan in Hollywood.