Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost appears to have put an end to the latest flurry of Internet rumors surrounding the resurrection of David Lynch's seriously weird but beloved cult series. On Dec. 31, an anonymous poster on the 4chan message board, wrote of attending a meeting between Lynch and NBC executives about bringing back a number of the original characters for a third season of the show, which originally aired on ABC from April 1990 to June 1991. more »
Hugh Grant must be a talented actor, because when he's simply being himself, he comes off as a serious a-hole. The source? None other than Jon Stewart, the anchor of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, and for my money, a more trusted news source than CNN. more »
Feeling that pre-Thanksgiving agita? I know, it's not the food. It's the thought of heaping helpings of stilted conversation about the presidential election and Wal-Mart's Black Friday strike. Well, you can thank me now or later, but I've got you covered. Back for a return holiday engagement is Movieline's gluten- and Trans fat-free turkey day conversation helper: 15 film-related topics that will insure that Grandpa never gets to his "Mitt Romney is the devil, but he's my devil" monologue. more »
If you didn't gather this from Steven Spielberg's Lincoln biopic, then Bill S. Preston Esq. and Ted "Theodore" Logan are back from the 1980s to tell us that the 16th President of the United States is most excellent, as is Socrates and Sigmund Freud. Ghengis Khan and Joan of Arc, on the other hand, are Bogus. more »
James Marsden is not a Barry Manilow fan, no matter what you may have read in his IMDb.com bio. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the Bachelorette actor explains that he's the victim of "a famous actor friend of mine" who "likes to go into other people's bios and add things." more »
Whether you love or hate the idea of Disney acquiring and expanding the Star Wars franchise, you can't say the House of Mouse isn't treating Episode VII like the prestige project is deserves to be. Vulture reports that screenwriter Michael Arndt, who won an Oscar for his Little Miss Sunshine script, and was nominated for another with Toy Story 3, is the leading candidate to write the new Star Wars script more »
If you are a previously godless East coaster who's found himself prostrate and praying for electricity in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, here's a suggestion: Visualize Denzel Washington when you say those Lord's Prayers. If God makes his will known through the people, then it turns out that the Flight star would be the top choice to portray Jesus Christ in a movie about the New Testament. more »
This week, your Labor Day holiday viewing kicks off with Tom Hardy in cardigans in John Hillcoat's Lawless for the grown-ups and the PG-13 horror flick The Possession for everyone else. Well, almost everyone else; if you have eyeballs and live in the targeted marketing range of self-professed Teletubbies PR whiz Kenn Viselman, another new offering is jockeying for the disposable ticket monies of the kid-toting demographic out there. Its name is Oogieloves. And it's coming for you.
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It's not entirely outside the realm of possibility to think that LeBron James innocently Tweeting his love for the 1996 Looney Tunes-NBA hit Space Jam might perk up the ears of some Hollywood suits out there looking for the next bygone property to rescuscitate. If the world loves Space Jam as much as LeBron, who knows how soon we could have Space Jam 2 on our hands, starring King James as the new Michael Jordan?
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Adult actress/filmmaker/reality TV personality Sunny Leone was poised to make a big splash in her non-porny Bollywood acting debut, an erotic thriller that by all accounts had everything: Cleavage-baring love scenes, Bollywood musical interludes, a convoluted plot about a porn star asked to go undercover to lure her insane assassin-ex to the authorities. But on top of its racy material enraging some audiences in India, director Pooja Bhatt's picture had something else working against it, even moreso stateside: Dudes, it's called Jism 2.
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That sound you hear is the cheering of hairy-footed Tolkien addicts everywhere. At 11:30 a.m. Monday morning, the lord of The Lord of the Rings franchise Peter Jackson confirmed via his Facebook page that The Hobbit would indeed be a trilogy.
"It is only at the end of a shoot that you finally get the chance to sit down and have a look at the film you have made," Jackson wrote. "Recently Fran [Walsh], Phil [Boyens] and I did just this when we watched for the first time an early cut of the first movie — and a large chunk of the second. We were really pleased with the way the story was coming together, in particular, the strength of the characters and the cast who have brought them to life. All of which gave rise to a simple question: do we take this chance to tell more of the tale? And the answer from our perspective as the filmmakers, and as fans, was an unreserved ‘yes.'" more »
I finally got a chance to read David Remnick's revealing profile of Bruce Springsteen in the current issue of The New Yorker, and it revived a debate I've been having with myself for a long, long time: Could Hollywood do justice to a Springsteen biopic?
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Hello! Remember me? Oh. Well, anyway, the world's longest coffee break has ended, and as I nestle back into my Movieline work station, I hope you don't mind me asking: What did I miss?
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Cole Abaius over at Film School Rejects performs a post-mortem on Adam Sandler's increasingly inane recent output of comedies, as parodied brilliantly in Judd Apatow's Funny People (then subsequently embraced with stinkers like Jack and Jill — life imitating art imitating life?). "The most prominent George Simmons film in Funny People is a gem called Re-Do where an overworked lawyer is transmuted by magic into the body of an infant," Abaius observes. "By playing Simmons, Sandler was directly commenting on the hollow nature of a lot of his own work."
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Fans of the Broadway musical Rock of Ages may throw tomatoes when they see the big screen version; director Adam Shankman, screenwriter Justin Theroux and even Tom Cruise himself made some major changes to the plot of the stage show. Some make the edgy musical more family friendly, but others sharpen the story. Will fans embrace their toned-down Rock of Ages movie?
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