As any other episode worthy of The Twilight Zone would begin: Imagine, if you will, an upstanding lawyer. A man who, after two years working in Los Angeles, returned to his home state of South Carolina, where he eventually became the first independent elected to the state's House since Reconstruction. A man who emerged eight years later to his long-held dream of filmmaking, and who realized this dream with a 2007 mockumentary and his 2008 pièce de résistance -- the "hysterical Appalachian comedy" The Hills Have Thighs. A man known among friends and associates -- and now the world -- as Bubba. A man who never knew about his doppelgänger, or what it would cost him. A man who now knows the treachery, shock and numbness that follows that most incredulous cultural cry of "Say whaaaa?"
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Alas, not Bryce Dallas or the others you'd hoped. Baumbach is reportedly attached to direct The Emperor's Children, previously assigned to Howard as early as 2007. Baumbach had adapted the screenplay from Claire Messud's novel about a trio of 20-somethings battling post-college doldrums in the months approaching and following 9/11. Keira Knightley, Eric Bana and Richard Gere are also new additions to the project, which has a summer shooting date in mind. Listen hard and you'll hear the knife-sharpening in Armond White's study already. [The Wrap]
The King of the World took on Fox News's sniveling Boy Prince yesterday during a press junket promoting the enviro-conscious DVD/Blu-ray release of Avatar. "Glenn Beck is a f*cking a**hole," James Cameron cheerily told gathered journalists. "I've met him. He called me the anti-Christ and not about Avatar. He hadn't even seen Avatar yet. I don't know if he has seen it." Jim, Jim, Jim -- don't ever change. The filmmaker wasn't done there, either.
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· The A-list glacier better known as Will Smith has inched ever closer to determining his next project, which is expected to be either the third installment of the Men in Black franchise or the previously cited family fantasy The City That Sailed. The latter film is about a street magician living in London, unhappily separated from his daughter in New York, who makes a wish with magical candles that sends Manhattan sailing across the Atlantic to reunite them. Awww! Smith's insistence on Lexy and Stephany as the closing-theme singers is proving to be a sticking point, but probably nothing that Fox can't work out. [Variety]
Spy Kids 4 (in glorious-ish 3D!) sets a target date, the Taylor Lautner-Directing Sweepstakes get even more competitive, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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You heard it here first: the sleeper hit of the summer might not be Letters To Juliet but the altogether more powerfully titled Letters To God. Here's what you need to know: it's a Christian indie, it's going to be in 750 theaters on April 9, and there's already a grass-roots, church-based campaign to get the word out. Oh, and it's being associated with two faith-based flicks that've already demonstrated the power of the Christian dollar.
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Last week's news of the Avatar DVD/Blu-ray tie-in to Earth Day's 40th anniversary had some howling that this represented the cynical corporate hijacking of an event that's meant to be about cleaning up more than just the hundreds of millions -- let's call it billions -- left on the table from what's already the biggest-ever box-office blockbuster. Now, more news about the release corrects that rapacious impression -- kinda -- and details of what buying the disc in April will get you.
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Unleash your Krakens: Harry Hamlin crowned sexiest man alive! Halle Berry makes us cry with her history-making Oscar win! Super-slacker Keisha Castle-Hughes begins her rather unambitious life!
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· Garry Marshall told TV Guide that he's working on an urbanized big screen version of Laverne & Shirley, currently being written by Jamie Foxx because we have no f'ing idea why. Team T "Lenny" Pain and The "Squiggy" Situation! [TV Guide via AICN]
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Movieline's intrepid video correspondent Carly Steel was front and center at L.A.'s Geffen Playhouse last night for annual fundraiser Backstage at the Geffen, where, undeterred by his legendary ball-retracting glare, she cornered Clint Eastwood. She proceeded to grill the Hollywood elder statesman on the status of the Dustin Lance Black-penned J. Edgar Hoover bio he's recently been linked to, which he confirmed to Movieline was a go. But not before work was done on his current project, Hereafter -- his second outing in a row with Matt Damon, in which you learned here first the Invictus star plays a shy factory worker trying to suppress his ability to see ghosts. Click on for the video.
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Attack of the Show host and all-around fanboy wet dream Olivia Munn hit something of a jackpot when Jon Favreau tapped her -- er, selected her -- for a role in Iron Man 2. And to hear Munn tell it in a new interview, she did everything she was instructed to do when summoned to the set. So why did she have to go back while the film was editing and reshoot all her scenes?
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Unfortunately for Michael Bay, his firmly Luddite Team 2D just lost two more crucial members. Coming Soon reports that holiday holdouts The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Gulliver's Travels will be converting to 3D in post-production, so as not to stand out as inferior products in what will be a 3D-dominated winter at the multiplex. In other news, Nintendo announced a new 3D portable system today, the 3DS. How soon until we get real life in 3D? I can't take the discrepancy! [Coming Soon]
OK, let's back up and try this again. Screw Star Search. Star Search is for losers. The cool kids are into way hipper sh*t, like flash mobbing! Everyone's doing it! It's totally peanuts and groovy! And Paula Abdul is on the flashing-edge of the trend, reportedly in negotiations to host a show about mass public choreography. On the plus side, this sounds like fun and Kenny Ortega, who's proven to have the magic touch when it comes to working with perfectionist pop luminaries, is involved. On the minus side, it's not in-studio, which exponentially increases the chances of misplacing Paula. Developing... [EW]
You know what's been missing from the internet lately? A nice, satisfying meme. Something timely and simple-to-use, that delivers on its ridiculous premise over and over again. And wouldn't you know it Urlesque has one, that conveniently repurposes the catchiest line from the Clash of the Titans trailer for our selfish memeistic needs. No, not "Titans Will Clash!" -- that's just the dumbest -- but rather Zeus Neeson's thunderous command to "RELEASE THE KRAKEN!" What ungodly leviathan shall rise up from the ocean depths at his summoning to terrorize us mere mortals? A stymied pachyderm? A surfing granny? The possibilities are terrifyingly endless! [Urlesque]
It's unofficially 3D Day at Movieline, so let's keep things going with the movies -- and the moviemakers -- that keeps on giving. In the last 24 hours Michael Bay and Avatar producer Jon Landau have each weighed in at length over the haste and sloppiness with which Hollywood has been pushing 2D-to-3D conversions, carrying the flag James Cameron himself first raised shortly after the Oscars. ("It's typical of Hollywood getting it wrong," Cameron said at the time. "We do a film that is natively authored in 3D, shot in 3D, and so they assume from the success of that they can just turn movies into 3D in 8 weeks... throw a switch and that's gonna work somehow.") But are these guys really creative altruists, or just hypocrites in aesthetes' clothing?
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· Hey, it's the new poster for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse! Did Taylor Lautner just get back from a Caribbean vacation or something? Dude is like John Boehner-level tan.
· Did Zuleikha Robinson accidentally let a secret slip when she revealed the last name of her Lost character to Vulture?
· The next film from James L. Brooks, the Reese Witherspoon dramedy How Do You Know, is set for release on December 17.
· Maybe don't go up to Jake Gyllenhaal in a bar and say loudly, "Isn't that the guy who killed Heath Ledger?"
· Jackass 3-D's potential was fully realized when Chris Pontius strung a toy helicopter to his penis and made it twirl around. Cinema!
