"Da-vyyyyy! Daaaa-vy Crockett! King of the Wild Frontieeeerrr..." That will be stuck in your head the rest of the day now that the sad news of Fess Parker's death has hit the wires. The 85-year-old actor made his name in Disney's '50s-era franchise about the legendary American settler, discovered by Walt Disney himself while battling authority in the schlock classic Them! His resolve, intelligence and sensitivity became the hallmark (and somewhat of an albatross) in future Disney efforts including Old Yeller and Westward Ho!, until finally breaking free of the studio shackles and becoming a renaissance man on TV and in the business field as well.
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Another entry in Noah Baumbach's rough guide to the modern American narcissist, Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) is a kingdom unto himself. Terminally self-conscious and yet brutally un-self-aware, stunted and solipsistic to the point of generating his own toxic atmosphere, he is -- or should be -- the cautionary middle-aged male. At 41 he is recovering from the nervous breakdown that his distant ancestors Holden Caulfield and Hal Incandenza had upon coming of age. Greenberg is of that generation that forgot to officially acknowledge adulthood's arrival -- whether with a child or a career or a drop-in at an asylum -- and the reckoning is humiliating indeed. Recently released from a hospital in New York and minding his brother Phillip's Los Angeles compound while he and his family are off in Vietnam (one in a series of oblique and overt '70s references, the idea of a young man traveling to Saigon to build a hotel is played for one of the film's typically sidelong laughs), Greenberg is tasked with some basics: build a doghouse; see old friends; try not to be such a five-alarm asshole.
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· Will this poster for Killers turn up defaced in the background of Grey's Anatomy this season? Stay tuned!
· Jamie Foxx will star opposite Bruce Willis in the videogame adaptation of Kane & Lynch, even though his game avatar has way more in common with Billy Bob Thornton.
· Might Charlotte Gainsbourg reunite with Lars von Trier for Melancholia, now that Penelope Cruz is out of the picture?
· Amanda Seyfried and McG are attached to The Girl Who Conned the Ivy League.
· If your little girl looks up to Disney princesses, get ready to explain away some terrible romantic advice.
EW.com is reporting that the cast of Glee will appear on the April 7th Oprah, in a Glee-themed episode gleefully overstuffed with interviews, never-before-seen footage, and a live Glee performance. It airs the day after the Glee crew perform at the White House for the gleeriffic annual Easter egg roll! Can I stop saying Glee now? Thanks! [EW]
It's official: The shining light of Bright Star, Abbie Cornish, has taken a role in W.E., Madonna's second directing effort. Co-written by Alek Keshishian, director of her Blonde Ambition-era documentary Truth or Dare, W.E. is based on the true story of King Edward VIII abdication of the throne in 1936 to marry twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. Already signed on was Vera Farmiga, whom Madonna had wooed with several cups of tea. Farmiga said yes to taking on the role of The Duchess of Windsor without having seen Madonna's first directorial effort -- 2008's musical menage-a-twat Filth and Wisdom, which was dismissed by most critics (though Ben Lyons saw potential).
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It's Thursday again which means that you're going to have to find something to watch instead of Jerry Seinfeld's disappointing foray into televised marriage counseling. (We doubt that tonight's panel -- Cedric the Entertainer, Martha Stewart and Jason Alexander -- will muster enough courage to rise up against Tom Papa like Larry David did brilliantly last week). No worries though, because Movieline has some suggestions on how to ease past NBC's latest letdown.
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Phew. For a second there, we were worried that this movie would be terrible! [Twitter via Lucas]
We live in a bold new era of reproductive sciences, yet Hollywood has only begun to take notice of that fact. Most notable was 2008's Baby Mama, which felt less like a standalone film than it did a 90-minute episode of 30 Rock devoted entirely to the Liz Wants a Baby plotline. Coming soon is The Back-Up Plan, in which Jennifer Lopez plays a single gal with an atomic biological clock, who inseminates herself with her best friend's sperm only to meet the man of her dreams and hope he doesn't dump her for being ... too hungry? Finally, we have a project opening this August that until now was referred to as The Baster, but now is called The Switch. Sadly, our suggestion of Vagjacking Kassie has fallen upon deaf ears. In any case, its trailer debuted today. Let's investigate.
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Fresh off of what is one of the biggest successes of his career, Tim Burton has found his next project in The Addams Family. The director will helm a stop-motion, 3D take on the property, and plans to harken back more to the tone of the original Charles Addams drawings than the TV show or live-action film adaptations did. And yes, Tim Burton doing stop-motion Addams Family sounds like a perfect fit, but we said the same thing before he made Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland, didn't we? Handle with care, Tim. [Deadline]
Hey guys, Crazy Aunt Julia is back and in a movie! It is called Eat, Pray, Love, and as near as I can tell from the trailer, it is about a woman who gets tired of having sex with Billy Crudup and James Franco, so she goes around the world eating carbs until she gets to have sex with Javier Bardem. Anyway, that's not the important part...the important part is that Jules is going for it. No more of this "minimally acting ice queen" business we've seen as of late in Duplicity and the Ocean's movies -- instead, this is way closer to the kooky aunt we know, love, and want to get drunk with. As proof, make those damn kids take a nap, grab a glass of cabernet, and enjoy both the trailer and this collection of the 9 best Julia Roberts faces from it:
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Sometimes you're interviewing a comedy legend whose impressive career has spanned over sixty years, five Emmys and the respect of every person in Hollywood -- and all you can think is, "I've gotta know. Does this chick put out?" Most interviewers would dismiss the illicit thought and skip to the next question but if you're Larry King, you toss out the questions you weren't using anyway and just ask.
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Just hours after publishing our probe into a possible link between winning the Best Actress statue and divorce, People reports Sandra Bullock has left the home she shares with TV personality and motorcycle builder Jesse James -- or "that," as she referred to him in her acceptance speech. This comes after abruptly canceling a trip to London for The Blind Side's UK premiere for what a Warner Bros. rep called "unforeseen" reasons. At issue? James's alleged affair with Michelle "Bombshell" McGee, a tattooed lady (with eyes that folks adore so, and a torso even more so) who sold her story to InTouch. [People]
While 2009 and 2010 both may be considered Year of the Schnickers, 2004 and 2005 certainly weren't for Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi of MTV's Jersey Shore. In high school, Polizzi, along with two others, was charged with Prohibited Sale of Alcoholic Beverages after a several-month investigation found that her classmate was killed in a drunk driving accident after buying and consuming booze at her house party. Michael Truncali left Polizzi's residence with a blood alcohol level of .18 and died after rolling his vehicle on Thanksgiving morning in 2004. In a new interview, Truncali's parents say they don't blame Polizzi for the death of their son, but they intend to speak out to promote a message.
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Welcome back to Moment of Truth, Movieline's weekly spotlight on the best in nonfiction cinema. This week, we hear from the filmmakers behind Waking Sleeping Beauty, which was opens March 26 in limited release.
The riveting documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty is a film that probably shouldn't exist under virtually any or all circumstances. The behind-the-scenes story of the renaissance at Walt Disney Animation between 1984 and 1994 is dense with candid insights from the animators and studio bosses -- including Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Roy Disney -- who were there at the time, and the truths it reveals about the ego and fragility of the enterprise are of a quality you never see coming from Hollywood, let alone from the fortified walls of the Disney compound. Thankfully, like the creative culture that gave the studio its second golden era, the circumstances were just right for director Don Hahn and producer Peter Schneider to reconvene the insiders for the definitive tale.
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As we've learned over the past 13 seasons of South Park, some episodes brilliantly satirize news stories while other installments belabor a single point so much that the entire episode collapses under the heavy hands of Matt Stone and Trey Parker. Last night's 14th season premiere, 'Sexual Healing,' leaned more towards the latter side of the South Park spectrum, taking the ridiculousness of sexual addiction so far that Cartman, Butters and Kenny disappeared in the shuffle -- or for one character, after the odd, Batman-costumed autoerotic mishap.
Rather than harp on the inconsistencies though, Movieline would like to pause each week to reflect on the one constant in the Comedy Central series: the continual victimization of pop culture figures with a new feature -- The South Park Casualty Count.
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