Lonely sci-fi nerds, listen up: It was only a matter of time following the recent influx of geek-themed porn, but Dennis Hof, the professional pimp and entrepreneur behind the Moonlite Bunny Ranch brothel seen on HBO's Cathouse, is about to make your fantasies come true. Soon, in the not-so-distant future (ok, a few months from now), Hof and partner/"chief alien design queen" Heidi Fleiss will open the Alien Cathouse 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas -- a legal brothel with a science fiction theme. Bring on the green-skinned Orion hotties!
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Matthew McConaughey may be Hollywood's reigning shirtless superstar, but long before he first bared his abs onscreen, Sylvester Stallone had mastered the art of gratuitous torso in each Rocky installment, Rambo film and a number of other action titles. Thirty-five years after his bare-chested breakout role as the Italian Stallion, Stallone returns to the screen this April for a feature called Bullet to the Head, which, again -- amazingly -- features the action icon topless as evidenced by a brand new still. (Don't bother questioning how a shirtless 65-year-old man fits into the narrative -- it just does, guys.) In honor of the actor's impressive history of appearing semi-nude onscreen -- even decades after audiences started shielding their eyes from his grisly old-man muscles -- Movieline salutes Sylvester Stallone's shirtless valor in the photo essay below.
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In a new, spoiler-ish Dark Knight Rises piece over at Hero Complex, Anne Hathaway manages to stoke fanboy flames with talk of her Catwoman's sleek gadgetry while invoking the name of screen siren (and Movieline heroine) Hedy Lamarr. Now that's good media management. See if her four-quadrant Catwoman chat hits you in all the right places, too.
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Since we've all watched The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo like good little people-who-are-trying-to-figure-out-why-the-hell-it's-is-such-a-phenomenon-because-even-my-parents-care-about-it-now, it's the perfect time to reflect on what would've happened if David Fincher ditched Rooney Mara and opted for another ingenue to play Lisbeth Salander. Carey Mulligan? Ellen Page? Anne Hathaway? If I had the MS Paint prowess, I'd whip up renderings of Barbara Stanwyck, Faye Dunaway, and 94-year-old Joan Fontaine in the nose studs and combat boots, but I'll leave that to your imagination. After the jump, check out a bunch of very accurate, wholly hypothetical Lisbeth portraits.
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In the new trailer for Detachment -- the latest entry in the teachers-are-big-ole-saints genre of filmmaking, Adrien Brody plays a teacher who has not spent all his life living in a gangsta’s paradise. That’s where the conflict is. He wants to help his group of troubled students, but he can barely get them to sit down, let alone listen up. The execution looks charming enough, and the movie fared well at Tribeca, so let’s indulge director (and showman) Tony Kaye’s vision and dig this new group of Freedom Writers.
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A bit of maintenance around Movieline HQ has resulted in some behind-the-scenes improvements -- and a few design/technical quirks on the published site. Please know we're on it! In the meantime, our commenting apparatus has been restored (though we're still working on that as well), so feel free to resume your pithy, brilliant feedback as usual. More updates as events warrant... Thanks for your patience!
Traditionally a "guilty pleasure" is something you'd be embarrassed for the world to know you secretly enjoyed or for your Facebook friends to see you clicked on, but you know what? Around here we embrace the bad-to-godawful movies we love, and besides; what the heck does it even mean to like something ironically, you insufferable hipster? Toss away your pretentious hat, sit down in the circle of trust, take a deep breath, and join Movieline in unabashedly celebrating the inane, misguided, off-the-mark, and downright B-A-D but nevertheless shamelessly entertaining movies of the year - the Top 9 Not-So-Guilty Pleasures of 2011. Because we all love some terrible things, don't we?
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"I'm going to suggest something radical: We'll never know whether Grant was or was not gay, and it does not matter. What matters was that his image, for all its perfection, also had its points of flexibility -- living intimately with a man for long stretches of time, doing cute man things together -- that leaves the possibility open. Grant made millions of women swoon, and millions of straight men aspire to his likeness. But he also provided thousands of queer audience members with the hope that famous, successful, high-profile performers and homosexuality were not mutually exclusive, further suggesting straight, high-class masculinity as an elaborate masquerade." [The Hairpin]
If Rooney Mara's fearless turn as Stieg Larsson's goth-punk hacker heroine Lisbeth Salander teaches us anything, it's that you should never, ever cross a woman with fire in her heart and vengeance on her mind. But the titular Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is just the latest in a long history of utterly human movie heroines who remind us how ferocious and unrelenting a woman wronged can be. Celebrate the fictional ladies who have helped teach society not to fuck with the so-called "fairer" sex, and let their righteous fury be a lesson to us all during this warm and fuzzy holiday season.
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What a momentous week for Ralph Fiennes -- the august British thespian turns 49 today and lands at No. 7 on my list of the year's best performances, therefore knocking Elizabeth Olsen out of the top 10 -- ouch! Let's keep his parade of good times rolling with a quick debate over his best onscreen moment. I dare you to disagree with mine.
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Exciting news for fans of Orson Scott Card's sci-fi series Ender's Game: Harrison Ford has officially joined the cast as Hyrum Graff, the manipulative colonel responsible for training students in a futuristic military academy called Battle School.
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Glee has scored another Oscar-winning guest star. Nearly eight months after Gwyneth Paltrow's last episode, the Fox musical series has cast Helen Mirren in a role that was written explicitly for the British actress.
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Presenting the best-worst Bill Murray rumor of the week: The National Enquirer (I know, I know) reports that the actor has finally gotten around to that Ghostbusters threequel script he had been avoiding for months -- by shredding it and sending the carnage to Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis along with a note that read, "No one wants to pay money to see fat, old men chasing ghosts!" Fictional tabloid Bill Murray kind of has a point. [The Playlist]
I can't believe it either, but I've chosen to accept GWAR -- the satirical, Grammy-nominated heavy metal outfit -- as real film critics. In a new clip, the costume-loving dudes both praise and rip on War Horse, unleashing a fiery badinage that Ebert and Roeper would have killed for. Just watch it, dammit.
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For those of you who've ever wondered if or how Xenu factors into the more conventional holiday season, along comes this dispatch from the Church of Scientology: "Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard honored the great religious leaders of the past for the wisdom they brought to the world, writing that Scientology shares 'the goals set for Man by Christ, which are wisdom, good health and immortality.' It is in this spirit that Scientologists celebrate the holiday season, whether Christmas, Hanukah [sic], Kwanzaa or any other religious or cultural tradition. [...] In an annual tradition beginning in 1983 when Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard provided a 60-foot Christmas tree as a gift to the people of Hollywood, Winter Wonderland holiday village is erected each year on Hollywood Boulevard as a service to the community." Annnnd now I can't get "Frosty the Thetan" out of my head. [Press release]
