The Morning Feed: Judge Denies Tattoo Artist’s Request To Stop Release of ‘Hangover 2’

Tattoo artist S. Victor Whitmill, who inked boxer and Hangover supporting actor Mike Tyson with a tribal tattoo around his eye in 2003, filed a lawsuit in federal court April 28 claiming Warner Bros. violated his copyright by giving Ed Helms’ character a similar face tattoo in director Todd Phillips‘ Hangover 2.

According to The Hollywood Reporter the off-screen drama surrounding Hangover 2 ended today when U.S. District Court Judge Catherine D. Perry sided with Warner Bros. and denied Whitmill’s injunction to stop the release of the comedy sequel reuniting cast members Helms, Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ken Jeong and Justin Bartha as friends who travel to Bangkok for another out-of-control bachelor party.

Although Judge Perry did not rule in favor of the injunction, she did allow the case to move forward with the chance for Whitmill to stop the film’s release on DVD and cable if he can prove he has a valid copyright of the Tyson’s facial tattoo and that the tattoo depicted in Hangover 2 is similar.

Visitors experienced 70 female musical artists on two floors of Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in the new exhibition Women Who Rock: Vision, Passion, Power.

Despite the exhibit’s big picture look at the contributions of women, from Bessie Smith and 1920s blues women to Brenda Lee, 1960s girl groups, counterculture singers like Janis Joplin, 1970s rocker Joan Jett and the Runaways, punks Debbie Harry and Siouxsie Sioux all way through to Lady Gaga, the Wall Street Journal promised endless debates among visitors about which artists received proper recognition and which did not.

“Women have played an important role in the last year,” Jim Henke, vice president of exhibitions at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, said in an earlier interview. “And they’re getting the respect they deserve. Going back to some of the great blues and gospel singers like Mahalia Jackson to rockabilly pioneers like Wanda Jackson, women have played a crucial role in music.”

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame scheduled Women Who Rock through February 2012; plenty of time for fans to visit and debate.

Actor-director-writer Albert Brooks continued on the interview circuit but not to talk about his villain role in the upcoming action movie Drive.

Instead, Brooks continued to talk about his future-set novel Twenty Thirty: The Real Story of What Happens to America, about L.A. being hit by a devastating earthquake and the U.S. President forced to partner with China to help rebuild the City of Angels because the U.S. government is too burdened by debt to repair it alone.

Paul Brownfield reviewed Twenty Thirty positively in The L.A. Times and described Brooks’ tale of an 80-year-old widower who loses his condo in the quake and ends up in a refugee camp in the Rose Bowl as similar in comic spirit to his movies. Bronfield also summed up the character President Bernstein, the nation’s first Jewish president, as sounding a lot like Brooks.

Carey Mulligan continued to prepare for her role in the Atlantic Theater Company’s Through a Glass Darkly, set to open June 6 at the New York Theatre Workshop space in New York’s East Village.

Playwright Jenny Worton adapted the 1961 Ingmar Bergman film about Karin (Mulligan), a young woman with schizophrenia on vacation on a small Swedish island with her husband (Jason Butler) her father (Chris Sarandon) and her brother (Ben Rosenfield).

Fans of Mulligan’s innocent character Jenny in the art-house drama An Education and who revel in her cool sense of fashion and pixyish good looks might be surprised by her tortured performance in the play.

“I was in a Christian school choir,” Mulligan told Vogue. “When you’re a good girl, your shadow is much darker.”

Critics have long considered Through a Glass Darkly as one of Bergman’s lesser films; which makes its adaptation at the Atlantic Theater Company all the more interesting.

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