This kind of silly public skirmish seems a little too convenient to just naturally occur in a week when The Artist and War Horse are dominating awards chatter, but either way, stroppy megaproducer Scott Rudin is furious with The New Yorker for breaking a review embargo on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Who can blame him, especially since critic David Denby -- along with the rest of the members of the New York Film Critics Circle who saw the film before voting last week -- signed an agreement assenting to hold his review until Dec. 13 at the earliest? Or maybe the more important question is: Why should you care? I can think of a few reasons, chief among them being that Denby's excuse for breaking his word is hilarious.
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A Croatian author has filed a lawsuit suit accusing Angelina Jolie of lifting parts of his 2007 novel for her writing-directing effort In the Land of Blood and Honey, basically arguing that the female protagonist in both works is subject to "being raped continuously by soldiers and officers" before becoming "a servant at the camp headquarters, a duty assumed by very few of the captives." Having seen Blood and Honey, I can tell you this isn't even an especially accurate description of the film or the context of the woman's servitude, but hey. No such thing as bad publicity, etc. etc. [Radar]
Happy Monday! Also in today's edition of The Broadsheet: Tom Cruise gets his Bollywood close-up... The Up house finally sells... Peter Jackson finishes West Memphis 3 doc... More bad news for snail mailers... and more.
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Breaking Dawn sparkled to the top slot yet again on the quietest weekend of the season, but just take a gander at the healthy size of Shame's art house opening! Meanwhile, the latest offerings from Martin Scorsese and Alexander Payne enjoyed a boost. But I've got to ask: What happened to the Muppets' mojo?
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A light week in new releases yielded an opportunity for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 to claim its third consecutive Friday crown, all while The Muppets, Hugo and Arthur Christmas fought for what remains of holiday table scraps. Your Friday Box Office is here.
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The masses have spoken, and their cry is clear: "Consider Uggie!" Yes, The Artist's unbelievably moving doggie is tearing up news outlets and Facebook with his Oscar potential, and I emit a silent woof in approval! Enjoy this first weekend in December (and Advent, if you still celebrate your repressed Catholic upbringing like I do), and check out this week's highlights.
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This weekend, Gerard Butler revisits the very Shakespeare play that launched his acting career: Coriolanus. This time around, Butler plays Tullus Aufidius, the rival of the title character in Ralph Fiennes's big screen adaptation. So just how did a Scottish actor who started with Shakespeare boomerang back to the very same play a decade later after achieving Hollywood stardom?
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Since our friends at Next Movie totally went there, why not bat this one around Movieline HQ? It's Friday! Live a little. In honor of Michael Fassbender's infamous display of total nakedness in this week's Shame -- emotional and physical, to be fair -- Next Movie ran down the nine greatest "penis moments" in the movies. Yes, Ewan McGregor. You made the list.
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Maybe it's more like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Too Soon: "There is also the question of whether or not certain aspects of Sept. 11 -- such as the people who leapt out the tower windows -- should even be dealt with in a fiction film. 'Should you show the jumpers or not?' wonders Angus Kress Gillespie, who teaches a course on the history of Sept. 11 at Rutgers University. 'It's very controversial. It's terrifying, it's horrible, but it needs to be shown. This is not an abstraction that it was a horrible event; it was a horrible event.'" [LAT]
News flash, people: Britney Spears is 30 years old today. Oh, how the years (and ruined relationships and children and countless bags of Cheetos) have flown by! In honor of the pop princess's milestone birthday, let's flash back to the year 2002, a time when Brit-Brit was not a girl, and not yet a woman. When she debuted her first starring turn, the start of a promising career as a serious dramatic actress! When Zoe Saldana was just that girl from Center Stage! Let us return to Crossroads.
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Every once in a while it's nice to see a "red band trailer" that could possibly disturb somebody. Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie does just that, as well as build nicely upon Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim's Adult Swim series Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, which ran for five seasons. In the trailer for the new movie, which will premiere at Sundance, we watch as Tim and Eric don fetching khakis, sever a finger, astound Zach Galifiankis, reveal a staggering sex toy and "honor their love" for each other. Disgusting and undeniably funny.
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The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo has already established itself as the perfect forum for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's haunting, crunchy musical stylings, but the full breadth of its soundtrack is a bit of a disappointment: It's only three full-length CDs! Damn it. That's barely enough music to occupy me during a four-hour flight from Los Angeles to Chicago. Underachievers. Find out where you can get the soundtrack's Karen O.-led cover of "Immigrant Song," as well as a few clips from the new package, after the jump.
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Fairy tales really do come true... when Hollywood is out of other ideas. EW has the first look at Tommy Wirkola's Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, a film starring Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton as grown versions of the Grimm trekkers who once killed a witch during their youth. Apparently the movie takes on a gritty Pulp Fiction vibe while invoking the very real bonds between siblings who've suffered abuse and trauma. Bread crumbs and broken lives, y'all. Click through for a first glimpse.
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After devolving into a series of direct-to-video sequels (with a 2012 anime film on the way), Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi action satire Starship Troopers, based on Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 novel, is reportedly getting rebooted at Sony under producer Neal Moritz. Onboard for scripting duties are writing partners Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz, who most recently earned credits on Thor, X-Men: First Class, Fringe, and Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles. (They also wrote Agent Cody Banks. Yep.) There's just one question: Who could possibly fill Casper van Dien's bug-stomping boots? [Vulture]
Ahh, the Grammy's -- the one award show that allows films like Black Swan to be nominated in the same category as The King's Speech and Tron Legacy. Late yesterday, the nominees for the 54th Grammys were announced and now that we've had nearly a day to absorb the fact that Zooey Deschanel, Seth MacFarlane and Cher are going head-to-head for a golden statuette, we can decide which artists deserve awards for their soundtrack contributions.
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