· Before he rocketed to success, Sharlto Copley wrote and directed Spoon, a thriller starring Rutger Hauer. Finally, a trailer for the film has been released (after the jump) and somewhere, faintly, I think I can hear some lambs screaming. [MTV]
This is not a good week for 13-year-old girls! Not only are they being objectified and maybe even losing their virginity for J.J. Abrams, but Kick-Ass star Chloe Moretz has lined up a new project with a Hounddog-evoking rape scene. The film, Hick, will be directed by Derick Martini, and it's about a 13-year-old girl who runs away to Las Vegas and then has all manner of bad things happen to her. Is Roman Polanski controlling the news this week? What the hell? [Variety via Slashfilm]
American Idol's winners and runner-ups typically bring in big sales when their singles are first released, even if the numbers taper off afterward, but ninth season winner Lee DeWyze and runner-up Crystal Bowersox haven't even earned the initial boom of last year's top duo Kris Allen and Adam Lambert. In fact, they tanked. A glimpse at the actual figures when compared to 2009's numbers makes me feel a little pitchy, dawg.
Everybody's talking about this week's meeting between James Cameron and a frazzled coterie of scientists and government officials, the latest in a series of discussions to do something, anything to end BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill that's ravaged the Gulf of Mexico for more than a month. While some cultural observers take Cameron's significant underwater-exploration experience more seriously than others, I think the filmmaker has a much more valuable asset worth considering: The toughest, craziest and most all-around resilient character base of any mainstream director working today. Any mind capable of developing such bad-asses is surely one worth turning loose in the gulf. But who among that wide canon might be the best man (or woman) for the treacherous job? Movieline has some suggestions.
Hey, so that Midnight Run sequel you haven't been waiting for is really happening, huh? Deadline reports that original co-star Charles Grodin -- who had been left out of the initial sequel plans -- has been contacted and would likely consider returning. Grodin hasn't appeared on screen since 1994 -- and no, his brief showing in the forgettable Zach Braff film, The Ex doesn't count -- instead spending his time being a parent and volunteering as an advocate for poor, first-time offenders. Still, God love Midnight Run, but if Grodin is ready to return to feature films, shouldn't he have something better planned than an unnecessary sequel? Here are five roles he should consider.
Celebrity Rehab keeps cruising for a loser, and this time they've zeroed in on the most lavish lush of all: Liza Minnelli. According to TMZ, Minnelli's not interested in the series even though she did go to rehab for alcohol addiction in 2004. I take it this stint at Promises would address her dependency on Dereon jeans. [TMZ]
· AICN has scored some concept art of Chris Evans as Captain America. Click for bigger.
· Hope Davis, James Rebhorn and Olga Fonda are joining Hugh Jackman in Shawn Levy's rock-'em sock-'em robot movie Real Steel.
· Kristen Stewart: no fan of the paparazzi! "What you don't see are the cameras shoved in my face and the bizarre intrusive questions being asked, or the people falling over themselves, screaming and taunting to get a reaction," she tells Elle UK. "The photos are so... I feel like I'm looking at someone being raped."
· Might Whit Stillman finally be making a new movie?
· Russell Brand has several tips for getting laid, including "Bring a lot of straws."
If there's anything Movieline learned from viewing Michael Winterbottom's lady-pulverizing adaptation of The Killer Inside Me last January at Sundance, it was that the acclaimed British filmmaker may very well be answering for this one, like, forever. Keep in mind this is a guy who once managed to make graphic, unsimulated screen sex forgettable, so no one takes it lightly that Winterbottom might have really drilled into the cultural consciousness for the first time since 2002's In This World. This could get good -- if only he could articulate his impulse to make ground chuck out of Jessica Alba's face.
According to Daytime Confidential, James Franco will be using his return to General Hospital to promote another member of his acting clan. Word is that his mother Betsy will be joining him onscreen for the soap stint; you may remember the materfamilias from Franco's work for Funny or Die, where she explained in a very touching story how she had to kill Franco's cat for pooping too much. Good luck, Betsy! [Daytime Confidential]
Are those super-hot 13-year-old girls who are readying their headshots for the Super 8 casting call actually auditioning for a different, J.J. Abrams-produced movie? According to The Playlist, the new issue of Production Weekly claims that the leaked casting information was for another project, but I'm guessing the industry trade has merely stumbled on Abrams's plan to keep Super 8 secret, because the potentially fake front movie makes this casting call even more inappropriate.
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Three years ago, the screen adaptation of Frank Miller's brutal graphic novel 300 became a global smash. Or it was a smash everywhere but Iran, which somehow objected to the depiction of an androgynous, bedazzled Persian king Xerxes laying cruel waste to the scrappy, ab-happy Spartans. The ethnic implications seemed the least of moviegoers' concerns -- not to mention Miller's own, which have now returned to the mega-pierced monarch for the prequel Xerxes. The author still has a ways to go on the project, but I think we all know a movie adaptation is inevitable. As such, a first look at Xerxes -- who makes Mr. T look like the Dalai Lama -- clues us in to what will be pissing Iran off in the next two to three years.
Universal's misconceived, underperforming The Wolfman is out on DVD and Blu-ray, which has given makeup-effects wizard Rick Baker an opportunity to elaborate a little on how the film achieved its Benicio Del Toro-to-werewolf transformations. In short: Frustratingly! But that's OK!
It was only a matter of time before Sex and the City 2 hit France in a sort of perfect storm of privilege, and now this: Warner Bros. reportedly recruited a dozen French authors to speak at a Parisian café as part of a promotional event, but the company to which WB outsourced the promo "didn't mention the authors in media alerts, stuck them in a small, dark, back room, and didn't provide a microphone or turn down the music during the talk [...] and, worse, said nothing when the café made the writers pay for drinks." Sacre bleu! When even the French are going to war with you, that is trouble. [NYP]
· Paul Rudd has agreed to star in the ensemble comedy My Idiot Brother, to be directed by Jesse Peretz and co-written with his sister Evgenia Peretz and her husband David Schisgall. Family affair! In more ways than one: Rudd will play the title character, an "idealist dealing with his overbearing mother who crashes into the homes of his three ambitious sisters." Laughs, catharsis and a hell of a female cast follow; Amy Adams has to turn up here somewhere along the line, right? [THR]
What do Brad Pitt, Dustin Lance Black, Steven Zaillian, Gong Li and Frederick Wiseman have in common? They've all got projects in the news as Hollywood Ink continues after the jump.
· Hey, what's Andie MacDowell been up to? And, for that matter, how have things been for Michaela Watkins since she was weirdly let go from Saturday Night Live? Well, the latter's been impersonating the former for Funny or Die (video after the jump) , imagining a world where MacDowell attempts a second career in stand-up comedy. Is it bombing? She hadn't noticed. [Funny or Die]
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