This felt like a fait accompli from the moment it was announced, but, hey: HBO has picked up Lena Dunham's Girls from executive producer Judd Apatow. The show, which will begin shooting in the spring, will follow the lives of a group of girls in their 20s. "Lena Dunham quickly established herself as an important young talent with [Tiny Furniture]" said HBO president Sue Naegle in a release. The countdown to Dunham being announced as a cast member in Apatow's untitled 2012 Paul Rudd-Leslie Mann reunion starts now. [HBO]
Count Joseph Gordon-Levitt among the "ignorant, faithless and over-cultured" who loved Black Swan. "Perfect mad brilliance," Levitt wrote on Twitter about Darren Aronofsky's film. "Beauty is bliss; death delusion." Um, spoiler alert, Joe? Of course here's where the cynical part of you remembers that JoGo co-stars with Natalie Portman in the on-the-shelf 2010 Sundance film Hesher, and that an Oscar-winner attached to the indie film will make it a lot easier to market once it gets released. Synergy! [@hitRECordJoe]
This is big: The one and only Ron Howard will be dropping by the Apple Store SoHo next week to discuss his new film The Dilemma, among other varied topics from the Oscar-winner's half-century career in Hollywood. The event is free to attend, and yours truly will moderate the proceedings -- up to and including your brilliant questions.
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The story of golden-voiced Ted Williams rolls on as the first week of 2011 draws to a close. After being insulted by Meredith Vieira on the Today show on Thursday, Williams got another job offer from MSNBC (beggars can't be choosers, folks), was reunited with his mother, and, apparently, got a call from Jack Nicholson to co-star in the Hollywood icon's next movie. Or something.
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Or make that "psycho," I guess, unless you want to count the Hollywood Reporter editor who assigned this actual story late Thursday: "Can the Sci-Fi Flick The Core Explain Mysterious Global Bird Deaths?" The source? Daily Telegraph commenter "Achmed of Rootys Hill," who provided this expert opinion: "This is just like what happened in the movie The Core dead birds are just the start. The world is falling apart I see no hope." Come on, Achmed! You're really going to challenge Kirk Cameron over this? Related: I'm starting happy hour now. [THR]
Is 2011 poised to be the Year of Armond White? Not only was the curmudgeonly New York Press film critic one of the few to heroically stand against the "emo-fascism" of Blue Valentine, but his annual Better-Than List actually includes a lot of legitimate points and criticisms about 2010's most-beloved films. He's making some sense! Except for that part about Jonah Hex being better than True Grit.
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Also in this Friday edition of The Broadsheet: Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann will play married once again for Judd Apatow... Gwyneth Paltrow loves being drunk... Eminem returns to acting... and more ahead.
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Happy Friday! Just not necessarily at the movies, where the first Hollywood offerings of 2011 include a gloomy trip to the Middle Ages with Nicolas Cage and a fitfully satisfying post-rehab journey through country-music stardom with Gwyneth Paltrow. The biggest news likely features a film you've already seen and another that's technically almost four years old. To the Forecast!
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Forget Yogi Bear and Little Fockers, the Nicolas Cage medieval epic Season of the Witch is currently at 3% on Rotten Tomatoes! But despite the best efforts of critics who actually had to sit through this thing, some of these reviews read like glowing endorsements of an amazing entry to the so-bad-it's-good sub-genre. At the very least, maybe we can look forward to another best-of montage, this time with Ron Perlman head-butting the devil? Join us for a look at the most scathing reviews of the film for more hints of what to look forward to on You Tube.
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The first stills released from Steven Spielberg's upcoming TV show about time travel, dinosaurs and writers losing their jobs actually feature no dinosaurs. Unacceptable! With all of the dying animals freaking everyone out, it seems like a perfect time to release a still with some extinct animals walking around, right? No worries though, using my admittedly awful Photoshop skills, I've fixed the problem. Click through to see two official stills as well as the Movieline version, which features 100% more dinosaurs.
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· In case Armond White's critical mashup of Blue Valentine and Jersey Shore wasn't quite your speed, how about Star Wars and Jersey Shore? Greedo the Guido? All right, sorry. J-WOWW the Hutt have just been f*cked up, all right? Click for bigger. [Daily What]
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The other day the interweb guffawed in secret delight at the SFW teaser trailer for Superman XXX, the latest in a string of highly successful adult films to parody mainstream properties. Naturally, we had to shove aside our pristine moral sensibilities to investigate this phenomenon, which is only going to grow larger as porn studios spin-off entire geek-centric imprints to market their wares to all those people crowding Patton Oswalt out of his favorite booth at Bennigan's.
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· Bully for us! We're exactly two weeks away from the return of Parks & Recreation, one of NBC's crown jewels of comedy that was so beloved by the network, they didn't air one new episode of it this fall. Er. Well, at least Outsourced worked out? Anyway, that's spilled milk! Click ahead to catch up with Ron Swanson and the gang, and then stick around for more Buzz Break.
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Before you go off and watch Nicolas Cage hack 'n' slash his way through evil 14th-century witches and demon monks in Season of the Witch, consider this: In real life, those witches have it tough. Over in Romania, a legion of professional witches are up in arms over a new law demanding 16 percent of the income they make from crafting $10 spells, curses and love potions (with ingredients like cat poop and black pepper). Fortunately, these witches aren't going legit without a fight; the Romanian Tea Party movement has begun!
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As you may have heard, the not-very-good Adam Sandler movie, Grown Ups, won the People's Choice Award for comedy on Wednesday night. Ah, yes, the People's Choice Awards, the Mos Eisley Spaceport of awards telecasts -- you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. To wit: The people decide the awards, and if there's one thing that people know, it's that people are stupid! (At least that's what I've been told.) Still, are the winners of the People's Choice Awards really that awful? Is there a good reason these awards are dismissed as a joke when the Oscars -- which, come on -- are not? Let's take a look back ten years at the People's Choice Award winners and compare them to their Oscar counterpart.
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