According to a new report, the roundly chilly response to James Franco's Oscar hosting gig has hardly lessened his profile at Yale. In fact, the post-grad polymath -- who is in the early stages of obtaining a Ph.D. in English from the Ivy League institution -- was back on the East Coast mere hours after the Oscarcast ended, journalists in tow and mythology expanding by the hour.
Rango! Out of nowhere, smack dab in the middle of the early-year movie doldrums, comes this little slice of cinematic treasure. Personally, I just want to go to my roof and scream, "Please, for the love of God, you must see Rango!" (OK, I've actually done that twice this week.) My fear, though, is that Rango's intended audience -- the people most likely reading this -- is going to pass on Gore Verbinski's animated instaclassic, dismissing it as a kids' movie. So, borrowing from this site's more regular "9 Most Scathing Reviews" feature, let's turn it around this week and accentuate the positive! From across the Internet, here are nine of most unabashed raves for Rango.
"[Enrique] Ramos has been a part of the Ripley family for over 20 years, supplying us with many fantastic exhibits," said Edward Meyer, VP of Exhibits and Archives at the Ripley's Believe it Or Not! Orlando Odditorium, in a release just over the wire at ML HQ.. "This piece, however, is his opus -- his 9th Symphony -- both in complexity, detail and historic scope. He has virtually told the history of the film industry in one spectacular sculpture." Hmm. "Spectacular" is one word for it.
Next time you think of retweeting something that Charlie Sheen vomits up onto Twitter, remember this: He's probably getting paid for your hardly earned clicks. Sheen signed up for his account after consulting with Ad.ly, a company that uses celebrity partners to push endorsements. "He had the No. 1-rated show for seven years," said Ad.ly CEO Arnie Gullov-Singh to THR. "You'd expect brands would be lining up to be involved with him in social media." Expect Sheen to start promoting many varieties of energy drinks any minute. #tigerblood [THR]
If you go see Take Me Home Tonight this weekend -- judging from the reviews, maybe you should think twice before doing so -- and leave wondering how star Topher Grace still looks 28 years old, the answer is simple. He was 28 years old when Take Me Home Tonight (then titled Kids in America) started filming. That was Feb. 17, 2007, and since then, four calendars' worth of stuff has happened. Ahead, Movieline offers you a brief timeline of the key events.
After two consecutive weeks of disturbing movie publicity stills, I thought it important to bring out something a little more reassuring and/or maybe even comforting: An official photo of Vincent Kartheiser, Harry Dean Stanton and Ryan Hurst contributing their vocal stylings to Rango. And I do mean stylings.
Also in this Friday (Friday!) edition of The Broadsheet: An outstanding reminder of why Charlie Sheen is a bad guy... A recent Oscar winner could get knighted... James Franco is still doing things... and more ahead.
Happy Friday! Finally, moviegoers earn a break from the high-fiber diet of awards madness and empty-calorie binging of late-winter trash -- though the dessert bar remains fully stocked, and at least two awards-caliber releases find their ways screenward in both the multiplex and the art house. Let's break it down, and weigh in with your own forecast below.
Sheen had already mentioned the poetry in his fingertips, but now we've got some evidence to back that up. GQ has unearthed a self-published book of poetry that Sheen put out in the early 90's. Some of it serves as a somber (and probably overdue) counterpoint to his recent interviews. And then there's that one where the character peels off his latex Charlie Sheen mask to reveal "the rotted skull of President Lincoln."
In case you missed it the first time, Michael Bay has recently reiterated that, like most of us, he realizes that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was pretty awful and again vowed that Transformers: Dark of the Moon will be the opposite of that. But does this candor about the last film mean we can take Bay at his word? To investigate, let's take a look back at what Bay was saying about the last film before the reviews came in.
· Why is it that Suri Cruise is so captivating? I'll tell you: She's the most intimidating, stingy consumer on the planet, and she's serious about her drink order. Double-shot! Half-caff! Soy! Soy Chai, dammit! Mom, kindly tell this barista he could never play a Kennedy. (Slow end of newsday. Happy Thursday, everyone.) [JustJared]
File Scream 4 among one of my biggest curiosities of the spring. After all, its legendarily confused shoot seemed like a harbinger of bad things to come, but the marketing has been airtight -- filled with the energy, humor and multitude of Ghostface suspects that recall the original Scream. One person we can probably scratch off that list of possible killers, though? Alison Brie! An official look at the Community star walking through an empty parking garage has arrived online, and it seems like the calm before the storm. Or in Scream-speak, the calm before someone gets brutally murdered. Click ahead and caption away.
When Cary Fukunaga's moody adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre hits theaters this month, Mia Wasikowska's titular heroine might not be the only one seen onscreen making restrained-but-passionate googly eyes at everybody's favorite man-crush, Michael Fassbender. Even the equine species, it seems, is susceptible to Fassbender's dashing good looks and charm, as one enamored horse very ardently demonstrated on the set of Jane Eyre.
An Oscar is a funny thing. Winning one means you're a respected thespian, but as 1966's Best Supporting Actress Sandy Dennis once noted, it also means you can't be new again. Some Oscar-winners find themselves taking less-than-stellar roles after their big night at the Kodak, and we're commemorating eight whose next trip to the silver screen was a marked downgrade.
When the first trailer for Captain America: The First Avenger debuted during the Super Bowl last month, Movieline HQ was buzzing with the blink-and-you-missed-him glimpse at Hugo Weaving-as-Red Skull. That skull! It was so... red. Now, courtesy of EW, comes the first official look at the villainous Nazi supersoldier -- no screencapping necessary! So, how does he look?
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