The kinky erotic pop phenomenon 50 Shades of Grey has finally landed — or shall we say, tied down — a writer! British actress/scribe Kelly Marcel, who co-created the short-lived Steven Spielberg-produced series Terra Nova and scripted the upcoming Mary Poppins pic Saving Mr. Banks, will adapt E.L. James' S&M romance about a young woman who falls for Christian Grey, a damaged dreamboat with a bondage fetish.
more »
Perhaps all of the hoopla surrounding the upcoming James Bond installment Skyfall has created a bubble for all things 007, or this little piece of pop culture is really worth the thousands it recently fetched from its lucky buyer. The swimming trunks Daniel Craig wore as Bond in his first stint as the sexy agent in Casino Royale sold at auction for almost $72,000 at a charity auction in London. Judi Dench's comments on the cleanliness of the shorts may have also triggered a jump in the price.
more »
It's been rumored for years, but it looks like Warner Bros. is finally going to convert the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz to 3-D. Thank James Cameron and the Titanic 3-D rerelease that brought in cruise ship-loads of money. Temper that knee-jerk reaction for just a moment and consider: Could Wizard of Oz 3-D actually be a great thing for cinema?
more »
The Grease duo who melted hearts as love-torn high school couple Danny and Sandy in the 1978 smash big screen musical are joining forces again on a holiday album. This Christmas: John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John is due out November 13th, almost 35 years after their classic brought the two together, setting a new standard for teen romance pics at the time.
more »
New York City officials weren't exactly helpful when Ken Burns and his daughter were making a documentary about the racially charged 1989 Central Park jogger case, but now they're hoping the finished film, The Central Park Five, will be useful to them. more »
Not afraid to show off his political side, Ben Affleck is giving his take on the current U.S. Presidential campaign. Hitting the road promoting his political thriller Argo, the director and star of the film compared Republican nominee to past hopefuls who did not make it to the White House. A past ardent supporter of liberal causes and a full-fledged Obama fan four years ago, Affleck only offered tepid support for the incumbent.
more »
Perhaps she's taking a cue from her Harry Potter co-star Daniel Radcliffe, but Emma Watson has taken a shine for musical theater after performing some numbers from The Rocky Horror Picture Show in her latest film, The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
more »
If you thought that the Beatles have been so pored over that there couldn't possibly be anything new to see, hear or read about them, guess again. The former Fab Four's business concern, Apple Corps has granted the BBC TV arts series Arena unseen footage of the band. Arena has cut this footage to make a short for its Arena Hotel online project with the digital-arts website The Space. Arena Hotel debuted the short exclusively on Tuesday. A spokesman for The Space says the footage was shot during the making of a documentary about the Beatles 1967 Magical Mystery Tour film and features the band on "a coach trip to a classic British fish-and-chip shop, en route to Newquay, the final destination of the tour." more »
This is a little ditty about John Mellencamp's vaguely annoyed reaction to Bradley Rust Gray's Jack & Diane. If you were born after the 1980s, you might not know that Gray's "werewolf-lesbian-psycho-drama," as it has been described, takes its title from Mellencamp's giganto-1982 number-one hit and little else. (The National Endowment for the Arts chose the tune as one of the "Songs of the Century," as in 20th, in 2001.) Mellencamp's song is about a teenaged boy and girl living the so-slow-it-hurts Midwestern life of sucking down chili dogs outside the Tastee Freeze. Gray's movie is about, well, two lesbians, one of whom happens to be a werewolf. more »
These hardscrabble times deserve a movie about hardscrabble life. So, it's not surprising to see Deadline's Mike Fleming report that Sony Pictures and Scott Rudin are talking about making a feature film based on Laura Ingalls Wilder's classic book series about 19th-century farm life in the West, Little House On The Prairie. Judging from the players who appear to be coalescing around the project though, the Little House movie will be True Grit-tier — and, possibly, funnier — than the popular shucks-and-darn NBC TV series that ran from 1974-83. more »
Russell Crowe and Darren Aronofsky are busy with Noah. Will Smith is apparently tackling the Biblical brother rivals Cain in Abel in his directorial debut. Paul Verhoeven is taking on the big man himself in Jesus of Nazareth and now his earthly mother will be getting a big screen focus. Mary Mother of Christ will show Jesus' life up until about adolescence and the recently retired Peter O' Toole is apparently coming out of retirement to join the project, which is being billed as a prequel to The Passion of the Christ.
more »
Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis will take part in a live question-and-answer session on Yahoo! in New York following an early special multi-city screening of Lincoln on Oct. 10. Dreamworks Pictures, which will release Lincoln on Nov. 16, announced on Monday that the discussion with the director and star of the hightly anticipated film will take place in New York after a 7 p.m. screening at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13 on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The movie will also simultaneously screen in nine other cities: Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Boston, Washington DC, Seattle, Miami, Atlanta and Houston. The Q&A will stream live on Yahoo! Movies and audiences at the screenings will view it live via satellite after the film. Questions can be submitted via Twitter using the hashtag: #Lincolnmovie. Let's hope this goes more smoothly than the glitchy Google Hangout session with Spielberg and Joseph Gordon-Levitt that took place Sept. 4.
British super-crooner Adele confirmed via Twitter that she has recorded the theme for the upcoming James Bond installment, Skyfall. The Rolling in the Deep singer posted a photo of the song credits on her Twitter page. The confirmation comes after months of rumors she would lend her talented vocals to the Bond pic.
more »
Thor actress Jaimie Alexander was sidelined after something on set of the Marvel sequel went wrong, Thor: The Dark World. "Today I sustained a pretty horrible injury," Tweeted the erstwhile superhuman warrioress Lady Sif on Monday. "I'm lucky I'm not paralyzed. Thank you (with all of my heart) to those who've looked after me."
more »
First-time filmmakers will be celebrated at the inaugural First Time Fest, a film festival that will take place March 1-4, 2013. At a reception at the Players Club in Gramercy Park on Thursday night, FTF founders Johanna Bennett, the actor and philanthropist daughter of singer Tony Bennett, and producer Mandy Ward (Palestine Blues), announced that they are seeking submissions for the fledgling festival, which will be based out of the arts organization that was founded by Edwin Booth and Mark Twain. (Films will be screened at the Loews Village VII on Third Avenue and East 11th Street.) David Schwartz, the Artistic Director and Head Curator of Museum of the Moving Image is the festival's director of programming, and Mitch Levine, CEO of The Film Festival Group, will serve as an adviser. The festival's Grand Prize winner will receive an offer of theatrical distribution through Cinema Libre Studio (Fuel, Bloodline) in Canoga Park, CA.
