Welcome to Movieline's new daily feature, where we step into the wayback machine, hit the "I feel lucky" button, and revisit events and people, tremendous and trivial.
And wouldn't you know it, the very day we start is the 115th birthday of the movies! After the jump... See! Workers leave their factory! Thrill! As... industrial... functionaries... exit... their place of... employment! Plus! The flop that was SelectaVision and birthday best to James T. Kirk.
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Comic-book movies are the gold standard and studios did pretty well out of westernizing J-horror. So could a combination of the two -- multiplex manga movies -- be a new license to print money? DreamWorks is still shaping their live-action 3-D remake of Ghost In The Shell and now Warner Bros. -- who're already developing a two-part live-action adaptation of 1988 landmark Akira with The Hughes Brothers -- are reportedly adding Bleach to their slate.
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Twilight will be firmly in his sights if he's to host the MTV Movie Awards but even so, Aziz Ansari faces some tough decisions. Which jokes are too obvious? Too offensive to the Twi-hards who'll make up a large chunk of the audience? And now -- breaking! -- there's the bummer of your foil spoiling the laughs by 'fessing to exactly what much of the over-16 population of this planet has been saying for a few years.
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According to the Los Angeles Times blog Show Tracker, Parks and Recreation MVP and all-around comedy king, Aziz Ansari is in "final negotiations" to host the 2010 MTV Movie Awards, airing live on June 6 at Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City. Justin Bieber better grow eyes in the back of his head. [Show Tracker]
Maybe Tim Burton should plan on directing The Addams Family in 3D after all. For a third straight week, Alice in Wonderland topped the box office in dominating fashion and it now ranks as Burton's highest grossing movie ever. Congrats! No such praise is necessary for The Bounty Hunter co-stars Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler, but despite what you've read, the opening for their film wasn't that disastrous. Find out why—and see the rest of the top-five—after the jump.
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Whether or not Ben Folds is actually the infamous Chatroulette piano player known as Merton (and he's probably not), that doesn't mean he can't have some fun. Last night at a concert in Charlotte, North Carolina, the singer performed a tribute to Merton in front of 2000 people. The video, as Movieline editor Seth Abramovitch said in an e-mail, is "something awesome." Watch after the jump!
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Even on its co-productions, Marvel Studios can't seem to catch a break. Fresh off the controversies surrounding Captain America (have you heard about those?), now comes word that the flagship franchise, X-Men, has hit some choppy waters. Possibly. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, director Bryan Singer and producer Lauren Shuler Donner discuss all things Men with the glowing optimism of two people who made massive fortunes off the trials and tribulations of Wolverine and his friends. The big takeaway is that Singer is returning to the franchise after a two-film absence for X-Men: First Class (written by Gossip Girl and Chuck executive producer Josh Schwartz), a prequel to the 2000 original. And there's even talk of him directing a sequel to Wolverine and a fourth X-Men film. Though of the latter project, Singer demurred, "Hold that one off for just a little, I'm fixated on the other one [First Class] right now." This should all be great news, except for one Giant problem: a prior engagement.
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Hot Tub Time Machine: A well-respected cultural touchstone? Maybe! In the last week alone the ridiculous time-travel comedy has gotten a rave review from Jeffrey Wells (in typical Wells fashion, he said that anyone who doesn't find Machine funny is "dead inside") and been mentioned on 30 Rock (though Liz Lemon didn't seem like a fan). And now it even makes an appearance in the Old Grey Lady herself, The New York Times. In today's Arts & Leisure section the film's four stars--John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson and Clark Duke--discuss all things 80s during a roundtable discussion. The questions cover everything you'd expect--Michael Jackson, The A-Team--and the answers range from fairly straight (Robinson) to funny (Corddry) to "trying to hard to be funny" (Duke). And then there's John Cusack...
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Despite the lovely weather around the country—unless you live in the midwest; sorry suckers!—there's a good chance a large number of 'tween girls haven't left the house since 12:01 a.m. this morning. That's because they're too busy watching The Twilight Saga: New Moon over and over again on DVD and Blu-ray! However, unless they were smart enough to travel to their local Walmart, they likely haven't gotten a chance to watch a brand new scene from Eclipse.
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By now you've no doubt heard that Marvel has tapped Chris Evans to play Captain America in The First Avenger: Captain America. If he accepts the nine (nine!) film deal that he's being offered, Evans will join the Marvel universe for a second time--he was Johnny Storm in Fantastic Four--and keep the anti-Channing Tatum contingent from burning Hollywood to the ground. That's all well and good obviously, and Evans is actually good for the role (even the geeks agree!), but there's seems to be an even bigger problem with this planned summer 2011 tentpole than who dons the red, white and blue tights. Namely, Joe Johnston.
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Maybe it wasn't the best time for Gerard Butler to co-star in a movie that's being called "embarrassing" because of its box office totals. Fresh off The Bounty Hunter, Butler is among the final choices to play CIA counterterrorism agent Mitch Rapp in the CBS Films adaptation of Consent to Kill, one of the 11 best-selling novels in a series by Vince Flynn. Joining the Scottish hunk on the short list are the Colin Farrell and Matthew "Hey, what am I doing mentioned here?" Fox.
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Unless you're Armond White, you're probably pretty excited to see Noah Baumbach's latest film, Greenberg. In the sad-eyed comedy, Ben Stiller plays Roger Greenberg, an unctuous New Yorker who transplants temporarily to Los Angeles to housesit for his absent brother (a hilarious Chris Messina), build a dog house and, hopefully, work out his many psychological issues. Of the latter problem, it helps when a girl who looks like Greta Gerwig is around to be a shoulder to cry on (or, in the case of Greenberg, irrationally yell at and have sex with). It's being called a career highlight for Stiller--he's still better in Zoolander, but whatever--but where does Roger Greenberg rate on the list of unlikable characters created by Noah Baumbach? To the tale of the tape!
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And you wonder why Warner Brothers shoehorned a third dimension into the upcoming Clash of the Titans. For the third Friday in a row Alice in Wonderland was the top choice for ticket buyers with $8.6 million in ticket sales. As for the newcomers, the results ranged from disappointing ($7.5 million for Jennifer Aniston's The Bounty Hunter) to "whatever" ($7 million for Diary of a Wimpy Kid) to downright ugly ($2 million for Repo Men). Remember what Chris Rock said about Jude Law at the Oscars in 2005? Turns out he was right. Take that, Sean Penn!
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Join us now in welcoming Christopher Rosen, who'll be guest editing for us this weekend. A regular contributor to the NY Observer's website and the man behind the Clockwork Orange-esque experiments going on over at 42inchtelevision.com, Christopher will be here over the next glorious 48 hours to break any developments in the ongoing firestorm surrounding Heidi Montag's psychic manager, while keeping one eye trained on the box office. A warm round of applause for Christopher, if you please.
You've sprung forward through another week of news and commentary at Movieline, for which your devoted staff sends its thanks over the nonstop squeak of our hamster wheel. We'll slow it down for a few days, if you don't mind, but please do read on for a look at the week's rich, redoubtable results. And have a splendid weekend!
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