"In the movie Wall Street I play Gordon Gekko, a greedy corporate executive who cheated to profit while innocent investors lost their savings. The movie was fiction, but the problem is real." And with that, Michael Douglas stumps for the FBI in a new public service announcement warning investors against financial misdeeds. If Gordon Gekko himself says greed is no longer good, it must be true. Fraudsters, beware!
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Late night host Jimmy Kimmel's tradition of filming a post-Oscar movie-related spoof continued Sunday night with a "trailer" for Movie: The Movie, the ultimate star-studded epic to end all epics. In addition to featuring a host of stars, from Taylor Lautner to Helen Mirren to Tyler Perry (er, "Daniel Day-Lewis as Tyler Perry as George Washington"), the Kimmel-produced gag covered just about every genre and trope known to the movies. I give it a few years before some suit turns this into a reality.
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Any great awards show monologue skewers the nominees and sets the tone for the festivities to come, and this weekend's awards tour didn't disappoint -- if you were watching the Film Independent Spirit Awards and not the Oscars, that is. Host Seth Rogen trumped Billy Crystal the day before the Academy Awards when he roasted Hollywood's brightest along with Spirit Award nominees (like "creepy" -- and apparently good humored -- Michael Shannon). As for Rogen's best joke? It's got to be a toss up between his Ratner snipe ("Without awards season we wouldn't know how much of a horrible bigot Brett Ratner is") and his Lars von Trier hiding-in-Argentina bit. Hit the jump to watch the magic.
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Some folks out there may have enjoyed Billy Crystal's ninth outing as host of the Academy Awards last night, but his turn was as tepid as James Franco's 2011 "performance" was bizarre. Crystal's Oscars-themed song and dance routine? Dated. The weak banter and soft barbs at Hollywood's gathered illuminati? Snoozeville. Given that the previously and frequently great Crystal was upstaged by the night's random moments (Angelina Jolie's leg, J. Lo's boob, those Cirque du Soleil acrobats) and young, actually funny presenters (the Bridesmaids crew and Emma Stone) it's time to start anew and refresh what's already known as the fussiest night in the film calendar. In other words: Who would make the ultimate, charismatic, hilarious, non-sucky Oscar host?
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The champagne's been tippled, the winners are all celebrating, and somewhere Uggie's getting a LOT of sausages. So let's relive the highlights of the 2012 Academy Awards show! Click through for Movieline's gallery and name your favorite moment from the big night. Was it Best Supporting Actress Octavia Spencer's emotional acceptance speech? Or Descendants co-scripter Jim Rash's impromptu Angelina Jolie impersonation? Those bits and more in vivid photographic detail after the jump!
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It's Oscar Sunday! Keep track of your Oscar pool ballots with Movieline's list of Academy Award winners, updated throughout the telecast -- and chime in below with your thoughts on which of Hollywood's brightest most deserved their statuettes, who gave the best acceptance speeches (and runners-up-caught-on-camera faces), and which were the biggest surprises of the night.
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"Nothing will come from this if you win!” joked Seth Rogen as he opened his hosting gig at the 2012 Film Independent Spirit Awards. “Absolutely nothing. This won't help you get paid anymore -- if anything, it proves you'll work for nothing.” That may be painfully true for many of the indie film nominees honored today at the annual Spirit Awards, held in a tent on the beach in balmy Santa Monica. But what does it mean that the night’s big winner was the Harvey Weinstein-backed awards season juggernaut The Artist?
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These deals-in-the-making stories always carry a grain of salt since nothing in Hollywood is ever so sure just about until the cameras roll, but the trade scoop that The Killing's Joel Kinnaman may be your next RoboCop is just too tantalizing. Joel Kinnaman who, you may ask, and rightly so? The Swedish-American actor's been in a handful of stateside film projects here and there (including the recent Safe House and, briefly, Fincher's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) but the closer I look at his work, the more enticing this casting move becomes.
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It's almost showtime, folks! Ready your Oscar picks, sharpen your wits, and join Movieline as Hollywood and Indiewood fete the best of the year. Your friendly Movieline editors S.T. VanAirsdale and Jen Yamato will be on hand at @movieline during Saturday's Independent Spirit Awards and Sunday's Academy Awards, so synchronize your watches and join us in tossing back a few and Tweeting up a storm on the big day(s).
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Kevin Tent had been nominated for three ACE Eddies before winning this month for The Descendants, which the American Cinema Editors deemed Best Edited Feature (Drama). Tent’s work in the cutting room played an important role in placing The Descendants firmly in the drama category. The longtime collaborator with Alexander Payne — Tent's other Eddie nods were for Sideways, About Schmidt and Election — says that much more comedy from the King family was shot than what we see onscreen and that removing it just felt right. In a few days, Tent will vie for the Best Film Editing Oscar for the first time. Movieline spoke with him about how the movie’s dramatic story came together, the attention from the Academy and his plans for Oscar night and beyond.
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Meet Otis the Oscar Cat, Movieline's resident feline awards prognosticator. Like the majority of Academy members, he's white, male, and owns a black tie; his tastes tend toward the traditional, although he'll bite at the occasional tasty treat. To get an inside line on Sunday's Best Picture winner, we consulted Otis for his Oscar picks -- will the Academy Award go to The Artist, starring that rascally pup Uggie? Or perhaps War Horse, by a nose?
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Here is your first look at Mark Ruffalo in his full motion-capture Hulk get-up from The Avengers. No spoilers on the home page; click through for the Hulk-y goodness/weirdness, whatever.
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"I’ll keep this short and sweet because it's been a rough 12 days for me, with what would have been my mother’s 67th birthday one day and the awful news about Whitney the next. I can’t even think about it... we’ll talk about that some other time, but for now I just want to be sure you’re planning on going to the movie theaters to see Good Deeds this weekend." [TylerPerry.com]
First day advance ticket sales (i.e. sales on the first day tickets are made available) for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse had held the number one spot in Fandango history until this week, when the YA adaptation The Hunger Games took the crown. You hear that? It's the sound of Lionsgate execs exhaling a month ahead of their franchise-starter's March 23 debut. The Hunger Games could still drop off considerably after its first week of release, but this is a great early sign for Katniss & Co. [Deadline]
Forget John Carter's controversial budget woes and terrible tracking for a minute; Wrath of the Titans has been threatening to be the first big biff of 2012 since it was announced, thanks largely to its poorly received predecessor, Clash of the Titans. The sequel's initial Marilyn Manson-themed trailer didn't help, either, but Warner Bros. have thankfully tightened things (and stopped lingering on Sam Worthington's Kenny Powers 'do) for a new trailer that actually promises some fantastic CG creature work. Bring on the lava monster thingy!
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