It's one thing to be a fraud as a director. It's another entirely to actually practice fraud as a director. This is the simple lesson imparted today to New York University film students, who last month attended a mildly unethical guest lecture by Hangover director and NYU alum Todd Phillips. Forget giving weed to teenagers and filming them; how about insurance fraud as the filmmaker's new low point?
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· The first shots of Monica Belluci in The Sorceror's Apprentice have been leaked, and she is really nailing that abject fear of automobiles required of her character.
· It looks like Neve Campbell won't be returning to Kevin Williamson's Scream 4, because she's busy doing...I dunno, guys. Help me out.
· Susan Boyle pulled out of another concert after she was seen shouting "I want my cat! I need my cat!" Good job on this one, world!
· Meg Ryan will be giving Larry David some lip on the new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
· "Pouring rain and sticky humidity still do not make Angelina Jolie have a bad hair day," gushed the Today Show's Ann Curry in her blog. Ann, give it a rest -- she doesn't adopt in your age range.
With just a little less than a month to go before the Entourage gang pops back into our lives for another fun-filled season of starlet-nailing and Gaysian-flogging, we thought it would be a good time to check in with star Jeremy Piven. Piven, as you probably well know, kicked up quite a controversy last December when he abruptly left his Broadway engagement in David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow, for what his Dr. Spaceman-esque personal physician claimed was mercury poisoning from a diet consisting of entirely too much raw fish. This led to a gripping Actors' Equity court-martial ("I want the tuna." "You cant HANDLE the tuna!" etc.) in which the tearful actor admitted that he was indeed powerless over his addiction to albacore-with-the-little-fried-onions-sprinkled-on-it, and other controlled substances. (The case is still in arbitration.)
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· The German thriller Das Experiment is the next Euro-hit in line for English-language reimagining, with double-barreled Oscar talent Adrien Brody and Forest Whitaker joining Elijah Wood and Cam Gigandet as men roped into a prison-based study of authority. Whitaker's guard becomes corrupted by absolute power, while Brody plays the lead prisoner struggling to get over on the tyrant. So basically it's Last King of Scotland vs. The Pianist, winner gets to keep his career. Fair enough. [Variety]
A new deal for Sam Mendes and a new Conan for the world (maybe?) as Hollywood Ink continues after the jump.
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Welcome back to Movieline Attractions, your regular guide to everything new, noteworthy and relentlessly upbeat at the movies. At least it feels relentlessly upbeat this week, with three new comedies going up against the summer's biggest laffer to date, a nifty stop-motion import, and a great American classic finally reaching DVD. Survey the scene with me after the jump.
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Much has been made about the fact that Michael Bay outfitted one of his robots with wrecking ball testicles in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, but really, it's Bay who has the giant cojones. There are so many utterly shameless moments in this film that I could have filled another Movieline Nine with Bay's wacko, unfettered hubris, but for now, I'll stick to the movie's first hour and try to be non-spoilery.
So what exactly do I mean by "shameless"? Well, have a look at the very first item on our list and I think you'll get the picture:
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· This is just kind of silly, not to mention seizure-inducing, yet I can't stop looking at Three Frames, the site that takes three frames from various old movies and loops them ad infinitum. They had me at Cr-ru-ru-ru-ru-ru-ruising.
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People is reporting that dreamy-haired Remember Me star Robert Pattinson was sideswiped by a speeding taxi in lower Manhattan today as he fled a rampaging crowd of unruly Twi-hards. "Pattinson, 23, did not appear to be injured and was able to walk away from the incident," they report. The shaken taxi driver, meanwhile, was last seen detailing his version of events to two NYPD officers, apparently a formidable Twilight fan in his own right as he explained, "I very nearly killed my beautiful, beautiful Edward! If only I could have leaped to his safety, and held the infernal vehicle at bay with one outstretched, super-vampire-strengthed arm. Do you think I could meet Taylor Lautner, or is that not in the cards?" [People]
· Michael Bay has his keyboards custom-made.
· "so i asked francis ford coppola if he was asked to direct new moon what would he say," Ryan Seacrest Twittered. "well it would be a very polite NO."
· Chace Crawford is still talking about Footloose, a movie he doesn't shoot for another nine months.
· Spencer's apology to Lauren on The Hills was staged, to no one's surprise but Al Roker's.
· Jon and Kate have a special announcement that will hopefully stem their recent ratings drops. Ooh, I know! She's pregnant!
Antichrist, the notorious, penis-lopping Cannes sensation from provoc-auteur Lars Von Trier, is being adapted into a video game, reports Slashfilm after painstakingly running a Danish news item through Google Translate.
The basics:
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America is still trying to process the latest Entertainment Weekly cover featuring the fur-dusted torso of Ryan Reynolds -- ab for ab, the most perpetually shirtless above-the-title actor in Hollywood, short of Matthew McConaughey. It was an act of blatant beefcakeism from a pop culture periodical not typically known for such tactics, further compounded by some suggestive snorkel-fiddling by the subject.
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Esquire cornered Michael Cera recently to glean his penetrating life insights for the "What I've Learned" feature. Beyond the requisite Arrested Development movie update (delays aren't his fault, stop blaming him!) and a few comments about Year One's less-than-convenient gold body paint, however, the principal revelations here have less to do with Cera's learning than your own. For starters, how badly did one of his earliest auditions -- for the role of haunted young Cole Sear in The Sixth Sense -- go more than 10 years ago?
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· Tom Cruise is reportedly set to return to Paramount, where he and J.J. Abrams will co-produce Mission: Impossible IV for a 2011 release. Which still isn't as cut-and-dry as it might sound, with Cruise already attached to the Fox project Wichita, Abrams on the hook for Star Trek 2 and Sumner Redstone selling off assets this morning to cover his sizable losses in Viacom's "Will Never Work with Tom Cruise Again" office pool. [Variety]
Reese Witherspoon gets drugged, bad drivers take over, and much more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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There's an interesting struggle for the top spots of the Twitter Top 40 going on. #nicerfilmtitles refuses to give up, even climbing a notch or two to third place (it's gotta run out of steam pretty soon, as it got old kind of quick). But the new trending topic of #gokeyisadouche has shot up the ranks, even surpassing for a while #iranelection -- the global political movement that has inspired many users to tint their avatars green in support of Iranian democracy -- to take the top spot. Why the sudden surge of collective animus against the Aerosmith-butchering American Idol finalist? It's an interesting story, actually, and it also involves something tinted green.
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· He's a winner! MTV Movies Blog has Shia LaBeouf singing a few bars of "You've Got the Touch." Or should we call him ... Shia LaBush! [MTV Movies Blog]
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