If one was so inclined to compare Barack Obama's Tuesday night Oval Office speech on the BP oil spill to a current summer movie, Sex and the City 2 would probably suffice. Goodness what a disaster. As MSNBC host Keith Olbermann said -- presumably with the glee of Rex Reed trashing SATC 2 -- "I thought it was a great speech if you've been on another planet for 57 days." OK, then! With this oil-and-watershed moment for President Obama now sinking in the rear view mirror, Movieline wonders which fictional president's could have done a better job last night. Answers ahead!
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Beyond the recruitment of Bill Condon to direct it in two easy installments, the only thing the casual moviegoer really needs to know about The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn is that its source novel features some, er, significant childbirth complications by young mother Bella Swan. The franchise's fans, who've pumped the franchise into the billion-dollar monolith it is, wanted the scene -- plus the vampire sex that begets it -- preserved from the start, PG-13 be damned. Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg would officially like to start deflating those hopes. [Mild spoilers follow.]
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Remember back in April when Nicollette Sheridan filed a $20 million lawsuit against Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry alleging that he "forcefully hit" and then wrongfully terminated her? Sheridan's lawyers recently amended the lawsuit, noting that ABC investigated the claim and dismissed the abuse as a "light tap on the side of the head" meant to provide screen direction. [THR]
With Summit having a 100-mile head start on its own, 3D Three Musketeers, director Doug Liman may step back from Warner's planned adaptation in favor of All You Need is Kill. Based on novelist Hiroshi Sakurazaka's sci-fi war thriller, it's about a soldier forced to relive his death at the hands of an alien species until he finds clues and means to hopefully survive. Skeptics are already calling it a Groundhog Day ripoff, but it's eerily closer to the Crook Brothers' 2006 horror indie Salvage, which features a young woman confronting her brutal killer day after day after day. For what it's worth. I guess we'll see. [Deadline]
So a few weeks ago I'm in a bar with a friend, and we're talking movies, alas, and he says, "You hear about the Ghost Writer sequel?" I thought about this and wondered who slipped drugs into my beer. "A Ghost Writer sequel?" I repeated. "What would that even be? Roman Polanski's under house arrest! What characters would even be around for it?" Friendo shook his head. "No, no, no -- Ghost RIDER. The Nicolas Cage thing? Marvel Comics? Hairpiece?" I sheepishly, desperately gulped the rest of my beer. Anyway, this is the scenic route to saying that Sony is finally moving on a Ghost Rider sequel, and Cage is finally considering joining up. Oh, and Karate Kid 2 isn't far behind.
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What is it with USA Today getting all this first glimpses lately? On Tuesday, it was the ridiculous Hugh Jackman robot boxing movie Real Steel and now here comes the equally ridiculous big screen adaptation of The Smurfs. Hey, remember when everyone in Hollywood said audiences wanted originality and not reboots of popular '80s brand names? Just kidding! After the jump, check out your first look at The Smurfs (shouldn't this be subtitled "Take Manhattan"?) and find out why all the purists will be flaming message boards with hatred over a change in the Smurf mythology.
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· It's a good day to be an Australian actor! Or least it's a good day to be a few Australian actors, particularly Nicole Kidman, who followed her attachment to an HBO biopic about Ernest Hemingway and his lover with the genre thriller Trespass. Joel Schumacher will direct and Nicolas Cage will costar; the Oscar-winners will play a married couple taken hostage by four criminals whose quest for money reveals all kinds of dark secrets between the two. Girl's gotta eat. [Variety]
Russell Crowe contemplates an '80s TV reboot, Simon Baker visits the Margin, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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· After touring for months, Conan O'Brien arrived at TBS's studios for the first time and was welcomed like an astronaut at a ticker tape parade. That reminds me of the moon and stars in Conan's old Late Night logo. Ugh. Sorry, this is happy, I swear. [THR]
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Disgraced New York governor Eliot Spitzer has been a consistent cable news personality recently, but his TV gig may become permanent. He's reportedly close to signing a deal to star as one half of a Crossfire-style debate show on CNN, acting as a liberal counterpart to an as-yet-unannounced conservative. How long will it take before Jon Stewart appears and kills this too? The faster the better, as Donald Trump will get fussier each passing year that Eliot Spitzer is not on Celebrity Apprentice. [<a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/shrinking_cnn_taps_fallen_duo_gxfjSoQxDwGHUNxbNn6KsL
">NY Post]
You might have heard it's Cheer Up Keanu Reeves Day, the culmination of a meme that swept through Facebook, Tumblr, and the rest of the civilized world when a photo of a... well, sad-looking Keanu Reeves and an even sadder sandwich hit the wires. The resulting outpouring of support -- and creative Photoshopping -- is really the best thing we could ever hope for from the Internet.
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Larry David's ex-wife has already responded to reports that she had a two-year affair with Al Gore. "The story is completely untrue," she told the Huffington Post. "It's a total fabrication. I adore both Al and Tipper. I look at them both as family. And I have happily been in a serious relationship since my divorce." Regardless of whether or not these reports are true, one thing is for certain: the eighth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm just became a lot more interesting. Can Ricky Gervais do a Tennessee accent? [HuffPo]
These days, it seems like everyone wants to direct The Hobbit except for Peter Jackson. After Guillermo del Toro left the project, it appeared that Jackson would be a natural fit to take the reins back to his Lord of the Rings franchise, but his reported reluctance has opened the door for unlikely contenders like David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers) and Brett Ratner (X-Men: The Last Stand). We're on to this game that the suits from MGM and WB seem to be playing: flirt with completely inappropriate directors who aren't right for the franchise in the hopes that they'll bait Jackson into directing the film himself! Here are five more candidates for the job who ought to be leaked to the press immediately:
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· Taylor Lautner is your next GQ cover boy. He's up to regular GQ stuff like sitting on a motorcycle in a suit and turning backflips off classic cars. Just brunchtime shenanigans with Tautner!
· Surprise, surprise: Bravo's The Real Housewives of Washington D.C. will star infamous dinner-crasher Michaele Salahi.
· The WB is turning the teen book series Clique into a web series. Ugh. I miss Popular too.
· The promise of "Kim Kardashian slimed" should really be more brutal and Nickelodeon-tastic than this Twitpic, but I'll take it.
· A.J. Cook has been cut from the cast of Criminal Minds -- probably because she doesn't hang around a gym with Tim Curry.
Have you ever wanted to see Craig Ferguson dive with sharks? Beginning August 1 you can -- when the Late Late Show Scotsman travels to the Bahamas to host the Discovery Channel's Shark Week. Ferguson made the announcement last night via his shark puppet Brian, who suggested that all of the sharks of the world unite to eat Ferguson so that CBS "can finally get Kilborn back." [THR]
Even for the guy who played Wolverine, saying the following quote with a straight face had to be a bit tough for Hugh Jackman. "The heart of the story is this father and son relationship and in comes this junkyard robot called Atom that the kid's in love with. I abandoned the kid pretty much at birth. But we come together because the boy's mother has died. (Ed. note: Um, spoiler alert, Hugh!) We have a lot of distance to make up. It's through this mutual interest in robot boxing that they find a way to come together and form a bond." Yep, you read that right: In his latest blockbuster, Real Steel -- which just started filming yesterday -- Jackman deals with boxing robots. After the jump, check out the first image from the film and find out why this boxing robot film is different.
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