Last week, we suggested five potential directors who should take the helm of Channing Tatum's stripper biopic, but the formerly banana-hammocked actor has someone wholly different in mind. "I'd like Nicolas Refn, who did the movie Bronson, to do it because he's insane for it," he told the Sydney Morning Herald. Truly, he would be! And as anyone who saw Bronson knows, Refn had no trouble stripping the clothes off Tom Hardy... [Sydney Morning Herald via Vulture]
A great movie catchphrase doesn't have to come from some summer blockbuster -- in fact, it can spring from the most unlikeliest of sources, the awards season contender. Whether it's a line that sticks thanks to sheer audacity (like the campy, terrifying "I drink your milkshake!" from There Will Be Blood) or simply through its constant repetition in trailers and Oscar ads (such as "I wish I knew how to quit you!" from Brokeback Mountain), the run-up to the Academy Awards often produces some of cinema's most lasting quotes. How does this year's crop of contenders fare on that front? Let's see!
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Sunday night's Golden Globes featured the talents of two Project Runway designers. Season four fourth-place finisher Chris March designed Meryl Streep's belted black gown, and season four champion Christian Siriano took on the Herculean task of outfitting Mad Men's Christina Hendricks. So, who won this challenge? Meryl looked elegant and sleek, and Christina looked -- well -- washed out. Congrats, Chris! Is it only a matter of time before we see Streep don a pantsuit trimmed with human hair? [Project RunGay]
· GQ has named Johnny Depp one of the most stylish men in the world, as is clearly evidenced by this cover photo of him wearing no clothes.
· Reliable song-and-dance man Neil Patrick Harris is nearing a deal to appear in a Joss Whedon-directed episode of the increasingly stunt-cast Glee.
· The Duplass Bros. have Cyrus at Sundance this year, but they're gearing up to shoot the stoner comedy Jeff Who Lives at Home next.
· Life Unexpected premiered pretty well for the CW last night, while across town at NBC, Heroes sunk to its latest series low.
· China has uprooted Avatar's Hometree, yanking the film from over 1,600 2-D screens to make way for a Confucius biopic. That, or they were simply in agreement with Roger Ebert.
Harry Knowles has the day's most interesting rumor, claiming that Tim Burton is interested in retelling Sleeping Beauty from the villainess's point of view in a new project called Maleficent. I think we all know that Maleficent was absolutely the freakiest member of Disney's rogues gallery, but there's no word yet on whether Burton's revisionist take will be reveal her to be a terrifying drag queen who's high on cocaine. [AICN]
Glance at the Sunday bill from this morning's announced Coachella lineup, and you might wonder what superstar its promoters are holding out on revealing -- Gorillaz, Pavement and Thom Yorke seeming a more-than-sufficient headliner. Turns out the ???? next to Yorke's name is now actually part of his name. How do you pronounce that? "Whk Whk Whk Whk?" The rest of the lineup, including Jay Z, Muse, MGMT, Devo and Sly Stone, is suitably sick. See you in the desert! [Coachella]
That's the charge of a writer at Big Hollywood, the conservative movie site that counted Hitch, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, David Lynch and Ridley Scott among the most misrepresented of Hollywood helmers. To each his own, but the author's comments about Quentin Tarantino ("To paraphrase William McAdoo on Warren G. Harding, Tarantino's films are like an army moving over a landscape in search of an idea") and Mike Nichols ("The ending of [The Graduate] alone makes it unworthy of human viewing) suggest that someone's just doing his best to hold down the site's chief aesthete slot until Victoria Jackson gets around to contributing again. [Big Hollywood]
· Bill Murray has joined the cast of Passion Play, a romantic thriller featuring Murray as the bad guy opposite leads Megan Fox and Mickey Rourke. Murray will play a gangster named Happy, who apparently attempts to thwart a budding relationship between a down-and-out trumpet player (Rourke) and a "winged beauty (Fox) who's now part of a sideshow attraction at a carnival." Sounds interesting, but they really ought to just fake the movie and sell tickets to the raucous, candid and eminently quotable press tour to follow. I'd guess it'll start September in Toronto; production began Monday. [THR]
Paranormal Activity 2 is on the way, pro wrestling suffers a studio suplex, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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Anticipating the forthcoming announcement in which NBC will make official his reinstatement to The Tonight Show -- along with the departure of the late night colleague who has called that network his home since 1993 -- Jay Leno offered his audience a long explanation of the backroom maneuverings that led to an unprecedented broadcasting debacle. Amazingly, it's not that far off from our own satiric imagining of what such an explanation might sound like; but make no mistake, this is the real deal. What follows, courtesy of Variety, is the full text of Leno's remarks from tonight's The Jay Leno Show:
"I thought maybe I should address this. At least give you my view of what has been going on here at NBC. Oh, let's start in 2004. 2004 I'm sitting in my office, an NBC executive comes in and says to me, 'Listen, Conan O'Brien has gotten offers from other networks. We don't want him to go, so we're going to give him 'The Tonight Show.''
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· The Playlist found some behind-the-scenes stills from Sofia Coppola's upcoming Somewhere at I Heart Sofia. Behold: Stephen Dorff reading a script. Hey, it's all we've got on this film for now, other than one more candid picture of Dorrf's costar Elle Fanning. That one's after the jump:
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After cornering Bradley Cooper on the Golden Globes red carpet last night, Billy Bush asked, "Has The Hangover 2 started?" Typically, the cast and crew of the aspiring comedy franchise have demurred and said it's merely in development, so imagine my surprise when Cooper confirmed, "Yeah, we're gonna do that in the fall. That'll be a lot of fun." That sets The Hangover 2 up nicely for a summer 2011 release date that I imagine is forthcoming. Still waiting to hear if there will be any nude beach set pieces.
Three intriguing revelations from Sunday's NYT Magazine piece on famous movie misquotations: 1) Bartlett's Familiar Quotations features inaccurate citations from both Apocalypse Now ("I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like victory") and Tarzan the Ape Man ("Me Tarzan, you Jane"). 2) The Monkees' TV series is partly to blame for the misquoted "Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges!" And 3) Cary Grant never said, "Judy, Judy, Judy" in a film. Go ahead, impress your friends. [NYT]
· As planted items go, you'd have a tough time outdoing this one: According to reports, both Kathryn Bigelow and Terrence Malick -- the Terrence Malick, who has made only five films in almost 40 years -- have their eyes on Held By the Taliban, a (hopefully) tentatively titled adaptation of David Rodhe's New York Times account of being, well, held by the Taliban for seven months. The story has been out to studios for a while, with Bigelow's attachment floated as part of a project produced by Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy. Malick has since jumped in with his own interest in producing, which might be the better option considering the war in Afghanistan might end before the famously slow, reclusive filmmaker can get this developed and made. [THR]
Gerard Butler battles bullies, The Green Lantern gets a bad-guy update, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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If it's Sunday afternoon, then it must be time to count another stack of cash generated by another stellar week of Avatar. The blockbuster soundly outgunned a few other effects spectacles (including one surprisingly strong-performing former awards hopeful) on its way to a fifth consecutive first place finish; read on to see just how soundly.
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After the fizzled release of The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3, Denzel Washington's got reason to celebrate: His The Book of Eli opened to $11.7 million, suggesting this could be one of his biggest first weekends ever (still, the tenaciously holding Avatar could climb back on top by the end of the four-day weekend). In other news, The Lovely Bones opened in third, which is not bad, considering the film's seriously tempered expectations as of late. Full results after the jump:
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