Liam Neeson continues his second career as a bone-crunching, gravelly-voiced action star in this week's Unknown, a Berlin-set thriller following a scientist (Neeson) who wakes up after a freak accident to find that his wife (January Jones) no longer recognizes him and another man has assumed his identity. Though it begins in a quietly eerie reverie, momentum builds as Neeson reclaims his life in a grand, explosive finale -- kind of like the film's Los Angeles junket, where the cheeky Neeson livened up an otherwise sedate press conference, quipped freely about his sex life, and gamely endured Movieline's own terrible Liam Neeson impression. More revelations after the jump:
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Yeah, I went there. But Alison Brie led the way, and come on [ahem] -- who am I not to follow?
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I'm not quite sure what I was expecting when I accepted an invitation to attend Hasbro's portion of the 108th American International Toy Fair last weekend in New York. I think I subconsciously expected Mark Hamill and the guy who voiced "Flint" on the old G.I. Joe cartoon series to be greeters at the door. "Hi, I'm Flint," I imagined him saying, "Would you like to ride around in the V.A.M.P. with me?" Instead, upon arriving, I attempted to get into the spirit of things by tweeting a photo of a life-size Optimus Prime set up outside the convention center. A response came back: "Wait a minute. That's a truck." It was going to be a long day.
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· Director -- and sometime male model -- Lars von Trier has taken to eBay to sell his mobile home. The 1992 Dethleffs Advange has over 75,000 miles on it and will cost the eventual buyer upward of $150,000 once shipping is included (it's coming from Denmark, natch), but at least it's a gem. Right, Lars? "Looking forward to get rid of the smell of Diesel. Hope a potential buyer likes this smell, as Diesel has been poured over the floor several times." Gotcha. Click ahead for some images of the mobile von Trier compound, then stick around for more Buzz Break.
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On Monday, Downward Spiral All-Star Charlie Sheen waged war on Two and a Half Men producers for shutting down production on the CBS sitcom because of his so-called "personal problems." Calling into The Dan Patrick Show, the actor battle cried, "I'm here and I'm ready, they're not. Bring it." (He also found time for a few other delightfully monstrous quotes about crack being socially cool.) Planned or not, just hours later, Two and a Half Men creator and executive producer Chuck Lorre responded to his problematic star via network TV.
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Just over the transom here at Movieline HQ comes word that Michael Bay, Josh Duhamel and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley will serve as Grand Marshals for 53rd running of the Daytona 500 on Sunday, meaning the trio will get to utter the famous phrase, "Gentleman, start your engines." This is all done as a tie-in to Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which will feature NASCAR stock cars as "characters" when it's released this summer. Of course, all of this press release-gleaned information pales in comparison to the two new stills of Bay doing his directing thing on the set of Dark of the Moon. To quote Barney Stinson, they're legend -- wait for it -- ary! Click ahead to take a look, and caption to your heart's desire in the comments section.
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At risk of offending the Bieber fever-suffering legions who lifted Justin Bieber: Never Say Never to a $30.2 million debut, let's be honest: The teen idol's 3-D doc/concert hybrid remains pretty high on the long list of Hollywood's most cynically conceived films. And to those Beliebers who scoff, endorsing NSN on a more purely qualitative basis, I guess I'd ask what you make of the news that Paramount will release an "expanded version" the film with new music -- like 20 songs' worth of new music -- on March 4. And to everyone else I'd ask: How the hell did we get two Justin Bieber movies before we ever got a Lady Gaga film?
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As Louis deduced on Monday, it turns out the whole "Whoopi Goldberg was snubbed by the New York Times in their piece about African-American Oscar winners!" controversy was nothing more than a case of bad reading comprehension. "The error lies with those who are reading the story incorrectly," wrote a spokesperson for the Times in an e-mail to EW. "The point of the piece was not to name every black actor or actress who has been awarded an Oscar, it was to draw a comparison between the number who won prior to 2002 (the year Halle Berry and Denzel Washington won) and those who have won since." No word yet on whether Elisabeth Hasselbeck will renew her subscription to the Gray Lady. [EW]
Wow. Just, wow. Even more of Charlie Sheen's 28-minute radio interview with Dan Patrick has appeared online, and it's filled with the type of denials, rationalizations and desperation that only the most depressing episodes of Intervention possess. Ahead the five worst quotes from Sheen in the interview -- who, to be fair, says he's currently clean and sober.
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Also in this Tuesday edition of The Broadsheet: Never Say Never will get even more Justin Bieber... A Baldwin brother is suing Kevin Costner... The Rock smells what's cooking on Monday Night Raw... and more ahead.
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Producer David F. Friedman, who many say created the splatter film when he collaborated with director Herschell Gordon Lewis on the 1963 film Blood Feast, has passed away at 87 from heart failure. Blood Feast had a thin plot involving a murderous Egyptian caterer who decapitates women (usually naked ones) and contained copious nudity, buckets of blood and not much else. From what I recall, it didn't even contain sound effects during the murder scenes, besides dubbed screaming. He went on to produce cult classics like Ilsa: She-Wolf of the S.S., and the clever, often hilarious gore film Two Thousand Maniacs! And apparently, he really liked fun.
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Somewhere, Uwe Boll is either crying or breathing a sigh of relief. Either way, it looks like Bollywood might be making a Hitler film even more misguided than his dreaded, apparently Oscar-worthy Holocaust film Auschwitz. Amrapali Media Vision held a conference this week in Berlin to hype their first feature film project, a film with an all-Hindi cast about the relationship between Mohandas Gandhi and Adolph Hitler titled Dear Friend Hitler. With songs.
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This extended look at how Armie Hammer managed to play identical twins in The Social Network is more interesting than the average behind-the-scenes featurette for two reasons. First, we get to meet Josh Pence, who also acted out both parts for filming only to find out that his face would be replaced by Hammer. He seems to take the news like a real champ for the featurette, but still... Ouch. Second, take a look at this horrifying sci-fi geodesic dome contraption that Hammer enters so that lasers can copy his face! Welcome to the future! But, why couldn't they invent one that created better CGI breath?
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· You don't have a special someone to spend the night with yet? That's fine because Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown is here for you. Watch it in its entirety below. No last-minute gifts required.
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Who knows more about sex, dating, breaking up, and making bad decisions in the name of love than A-listers like Drew Barrymore, Johnny Depp and Charlie Sheen? This Valentine's Day take a trip into the Movieline Vault -- home of over 20 years of revealing, to-the-point celebrity interviews -- for lessons on first dates, inadvisable hook-ups, and more, straight from the mouths of Hollywood's brightest stars. Well, circa 1990.
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