Not every Facebook game can be as engaging as that of our sister site Deadline. Take the Hollywood social-media fun-time application unveiled today: Dirty Dancing, a hip-swinging, watermelon-schlepping journey through all the rocking romance of the classic 1987 film. But pixelated! Because, you know, nobody puts Baby in a corner, but apparently putting her in 16-bit animation is totally fine.
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Back in 2007, during the filming of Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen and his film crew stormed a California bingo hall. They asked the unsuspecting patrons to sign Standard Consent Agreements, alleged that they were filming a "documentary-style film," and then Bruno was invited on stage to call numbers. Only instead of just calling numbers, the flamboyant Austrian character related each digit to a milestone in his relationship with a former gay partner -- a showy extreme that ended in tears, a call to the paramedics, security officers forcibly removing Cohen, a "brain bleed" and a lawsuit against NBC Universal, that we learn today, the studio has won.
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Try as she might up in Toronto, Madonna just can't shake the stink of Hydrangea-Gate. Despite a quasi mea culpa for her insensitivity to the flowers and their provider, a new video from the singer-filmmaker suggests that not only is she not remorseful, but she will also not hesitate to kill again. "It's a free country!" she "roars" in the silent short scored to the Godfather II theme. "So f**k you I like roses!!" Classy. Click ahead for the video and more Buzz Break.
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"It's changed how I see the world and how I interact on a daily basis. It's changed the parent I am. It's changed the friend I am. It's changed the kind of work that I really want to do. It's become the lens through which I see life -- that it's all impermanent." On the eve of her turn as Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn, Michelle Williams opened up to Vogue even more about her career, family, and personal life. Including: "I'm not lonely, and I think that has a lot to do with what's on my bedside table rather than what's in my bed." [Vogue]
This month marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Nevermind, Nirvana's 12-track (or 13-track, if you're lucky enough to own a copy with the hidden track "Endless, Nameless") masterpiece that trumpeted Gen X's weariness and forced MTV to overhaul its entire perception and appreciation of "alternative" rock. Is it time for lead singer Kurt Cobain's perpetually "in development" biopic to happen, or is there simply no one good enough for the role? Are Robert Pattinson, superfan Jared Leto, and Ewan McGregor all dismissible?
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Just when you'd written your last letter to Juliet and cleaned up your star-crossed gnomes, in comes one more retooled Romeo and Juliet called The Locals. In the upcoming indie, director/writer Sue Kramer treats the Montagues and Capulets to "a Jewish/Italian twist." Shirley MacLaine, who just titillated us with fabulous anecdotes at the LA Film Festival, is the first cast in the film, and Vera Farmiga and Alan Arkin are in talks to join her. But who will she play?
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Happy 42nd birthday, Tyler Perry! What better way to celebrate than by being named "entertainment's highest paid man" by Forbes? And to everyone else, I am sorry to inform you that to earn said title, Tyler Perry banked $130 million between May 2010 and May 2011. Ahead, Movieline parses Perry's windfall to give us some perspective on Madea's moneyed maker.
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"I wanted to do a portrait film with extended takes. Smoking came into it later, as the ploy to get people to stand still and not be totally conscious of being filmed, although a big part of Twenty Cigarettes is that very self-consciousness of a person in front of a camera and how that changes over time. Cigarettes also have this built-in duration and people will smoke at a different rate, and they'll smoke the whole cigarette or part of the cigarette. Smoking has such a stigma now, especially in the U.S., so I thought it would be interesting to make a film where I won't have any value judgment at all on smoking." Sorry! This has NC-17 written allllll over it. [NYT]
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Happy Tuesday! Also in today's edition of The Broadsheet: Willem Dafoe's next tumbles into lawsuit limbo... A provocative question about interfaith sex finally gets its own movie adaptation... Seann William Scott's hockey comedy finds a buyer up north... Danny Glover has unfortunate taste in footwear... and more.
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If ever there was a time for a well-placed "Noooooo!" it's now, upon the news that Alcon Entertainment and Warner Bros. are planning to remake Kathryn Bigelow's seminal 1991 surfing themed cop thriller Point Break. What have the producers got planned and what has it got to do with Salt and gun-fu?
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Before there was Dreamgirls the musical (let alone Dreamgirls the movie) there was Sparkle, the deliciously melodramatic 1976 R&B musical about the ups and downs of a trio of singing sisters from Harlem who make it big in 1950s New York. The tale was loosely, infamously based on the real-life experiences of The Supremes and lead singer Diana Ross's ascent to solo stardom, but Sparkle had a dark edge, with threats like drugs, criminals, and jealousy around every corner.
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Child actors all grown up, Oscar-winning directors popping their collars, stars going silly for the camera -- anything goes when you stick actors and filmmakers in the studio for some good, old-fashioned family-style portraits. See who came to town for the 2011 Toronto Film Festival and gave good face for the camera, uberdramatic, super goofy, and otherwise, in Movieline's TIFF 2011 Photo Booth.
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If you've been wondering whether Megan Fox, the Transformers bombshell who dared to compare director Michael Bay to Hitler, has seen Dark of the Moon after being replaced by pouty pin-up Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, the answer is no. "I haven't seen it yet, but I will see it," Fox told Moviefone. "I mean, if they hadn't been hitting me so hard on the press tour, I would have gone to the theater. [...] I love Shia to death; I love him unconditionally. And I love that crew. [...] I want to see it for them. I know it looked amazing in the trailer." [Moviefone]
Carrie Fisher would not approve: "Mistakes are a drag, because you get in the area of regret and self-pity. I don't like to linger in this zone. Obviously, drug use is a huge mistake. So I've made some bad choices. That's reflected in the Princess Leia thing. I do not take it on. Me having a tantrum in the corner for my cut of Star Wars toothpaste? I don't want to get into it. Every so often, I wonder if Natalie Portman is getting more money than the none I'm getting. If she's holding a check for Princess Amidala's likeness in one hand and her Oscar in the other, that would piss me off." [The Daily Beast]
Earlier today, we learned that Bryan Fuller is writing a television project about Hannibal Lecter for French TV studio Gaumont. The one-hour drama called Hannibal will center on the early days of the cannibalistic serial killer -- the Thomas Harris character made famous by Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal and Red Dragon -- when he faced off against FBI agent Will Graham. While that sounds more interesting than that Sex and the City prequel series that the CW is developing, Movieline HQ has thought of five more entertaining television projects for Lecter that could not only land him a few Emmys, but might help the deranged doctor shed his bad rap and worm his way into the couch potato hearts of Americans.
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