In this weekend's Happy Feet Two, Robin Williams voices Ramón, a South American penguin lothario, and Lovelace, a deep-voiced love guru. So how did a self-described quiet child from Chicago transform himself into one of Hollywood's most energetic Academy Award winners and skilled impressionists, who pulls double duty in Warner Bros.'s latest animated feature?
It wasn't quite a complete reunion for Peter Bogdanovich and the cast of his 1971 breakthrough The Last Picture Show last night at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; there was no Jeff Bridges or Ellen Burstyn in sight, but plenty of the other main players including Cybill Shepherd, Timothy Bottoms, Cloris Leachman (who gives a funny anecdote about an underwear-related scene), and Eileen Brennan joined Bogdanovich to recount stories from behind the scenes of the adapted Larry McMurtry novel. Yeah, it'd have been nice for The Dude to stop by, but you'll find yourself transfixed by Brennan very soon anyway. Mrs. Peacock in the flesh, yo. Video (featuring moderator Luke Wilson) after the jump.
Variety reports that Scarlett Johansson will soon join the ranks of actresses-turned-directors with Summer Crossing, Truman Capote's first novella, about a 17-year-old Manhattan socialite who breaks away from her family and has an affair with a working class parking lot attendant in the summer of 1945. The Avengers star had discussed her directorial debut previously this fall, but with backers and The Deer Hunter producer Barry Spikings it seems the project is actually happening. Yes, but will it measure up to Jen Aniston and Demi Moore's cancer dramas? Gauntlet dropped, ScarJo. [Variety]
Madonna reedited her new film W.E. after its mostly disastrous premiere at the Venice Film Festival a few months ago, and now it's in new trailer, her watercolored royalty tale looks sleeker, sexier, and -- phew -- just as ridiculous. In terms of Madonna paramours, W.E. just made the admirable jump from Vanilla Ice to Dennis Rodman. Now there is something colorful and electric about its freakish antics.
Part of the wave of initiatives in Elvis Mitchell's rebooted Film Independent at LACMA programming is a series of live script reads directed by Jason Reitman (Up in the Air, Juno), who kicked things off last month with a star-studded rendition of The Breakfast Club. Last night's second script read of the 1960 multiple Oscar-winner The Apartment, with Natalie Portman and Steve Carell in the Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon roles, respectively, demonstrated how the marriage of cherished movie memories, live theater, and fresh talent is such an inspired idea to begin with.
Kevin Clash. You know him. You love him. Or at least you love Elmo, the enduringly, endearingly winsome Muppet whom Clash brings to furry red life for a living -- an association profiled in the award-winning new documentary Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey. But it's just a matter of getting to know Clash, which will be easier than ever for New Yorkers who drop by the Apple Store this weekend. (And that's not even counting our special guest. Ahem!)
It seems like only yesterday that the team behind the upcoming James Bond film Skyfall tweeted the first photo from the first shot of Day 1: A camera slate in front of bathroom sinks that nevertheless stirred the imagination of what was to come from Sam Mendes's 007 blockbuster. Today, however, comes a new photo of a Skyfall slate on Day 10 -- and can you believe it's even less enthralling than the first? Which is fine, I guess, but you can do better.
Sure, Lindsay Lohan lost the lead role in that Linda Lovelace biopic long ago, but notorious Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss believes it's not too late for the beleaguered LiLo to make an honest living out of paid sex: "She's hot. She would have made a great hooker," Fleiss said on HLN's Showbiz Tonight. "I could have made millions off her." Additionally, Fleiss says that Lohan's decision to pose for Playboy is "brilliant." This is exactly the kind of encouragement Fleiss needed on Celebrity Rehab. [ONTD]
Breaking/shocking update: Not only is the L.A. County Sheriff's Department re-opening their investigation of Hollywood icon Natalie Wood's 1981 death, but the boat captain in charge the night she drowned now says that Wood's husband, Robert Wagner, was to blame.
"I kind of went my own way, really. I didn't watch the [Alien] films. When I found out I was doing it, I didn't revisit them. [...] Greg Louganis was my first inspiration. I figured that I'd sort of base my physicality roughly around him, and then it kind of went from there." [MTV Movies]
Happy Friday! Also in today's edition of The Broadsheet: Steven Soderbergh walks from U.N.C.L.E.... Angelina Jolie linked to the latest movie Ridley Scott will never make... I, Frankenstein casts its leading lady... The $775 million opening week... and more.
"It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that I have decided to end my six-year marriage to Ashton," Demi Moore said in a statement to the Associated Press today. "As a woman, a mother and a wife there are certain values and vows that I hold sacred, and it is in this spirit that I have chosen to move forward with my life." The announcement arrives after numerous reports of Kutcher's infidelity around the time of their sixth wedding anniversary in September. [AP]
Edward Burns's newest film Newlyweds closed out the Tribeca Film Festival this year, and the director/writer/star is happy to tell you how he allocated the $9,000 in its budget: "5k for actors, 2k insurance, 2k food and drink. 9k in the can." That's according to Burns's Twitter, which is a pretty fun and inspiring scroll for independent filmmakers. Movieline premieres the new poster for Newlyweds after the jump.
Even I, a beleaguered devotee of Tyler Perry's melodramatic, muumuu-rocking oeuvre, had a difficult time accepting the inevitability of... God, I can't even write it. Kim... ugh. Kiiiimmmm... fuck. KimKardashian. Kim. Kar. Dashian. Whew. OK. Even I had a difficult time accepting the inevitability of Kim Kardashian's casting in Perry's upcoming The Marriage Counselor, and that was before the tragic unraveling of her nuptials to that discarded oaf, whoever he was. I wasn't alone, either; other fans' disapproval pelted the door of the specially reinforced storm closet where Perry sought refuge. Now, with Kar... Kar... da... Ugh. With her shooting completed, the filmmaker finally took to his blog today to explain himself.
"The Twilight series challenges what I would call the 'Buffy Summers Maxim': that teen heroines be physically empowered, oftentimes at the expense of emotional clarity. Bella Swan diverges from many of our more recent teenaged female heroines. The ones who appear in films -- the feisty Olive from Easy A, the quirky ironist Juno MacGuff -- often seem to be written by thirtysomethings seemingly desperate to revisit high school to work some alchemical magic: turning the abjection of it all into a badge of indie cred. But even the more complicated female heroines of recent young adult fiction -- Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games or Katsa of Graceling -- embody a suspiciously pleasing, 'empowered' form of female adolescence." [The Hairpin]
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