And that's the least of the overbearing sports puns I'll leave you with today. What are we even doing exchanging formalities at this point? It's a bottleneck at the box office, with new releases battling holdovers for early-autumn supremacy. Your Weekend Forecast is here.
Speaking with Sigourney Weaver for this week's Abduction, in which the celebrated actress mentors young Taylor Lautner in the ways of the spy game, Movieline proposed a round of My Favorite Scene. Her pick? A scene from a Hitchcock classic starring screen legends Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman that moved Weaver so much she marveled, "It's like the whole movie turns into a different organism."
Good news and bad news, Oz fans. The good: This December, Profiles in History will be selling a pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz as part of their "Icons of Hollywood" auction. This particular pair boasts leather soles that were painted red for the film and an inside lining that reads "#7 Judy Garland." Additionally, the pair being sold is the actual set of shoes shown at the end of the film when Dorothy clicks her heels. The not so good news, for those on a budget: Dorothy's ruby slippers are estimated to sell for between $2 million and $3 million. Good luck, bidders! [EW]
Fantastic Fest's annual Fantastic Debates pit filmmakers, critics, and celebrities against each other in a two-part battle that begins with a podium debate and ends with the ultimate showdown in the boxing ring. This year's Debates, held Saturday night in Austin, Texas, will get even more fantastic than usual as Elijah Wood and Lord of the Rings pal Dominic Monaghan duke it out with some Hobbit vs. Hobbit fisticuffs. Watch their challenge videos after the jump!
As delightful as it is to watch Audrey Hepburn flitting about New York in Breakfast at Tiffany's, gazing adoringly at jewels and pretty things and falling in love as party girl Holly Golightly -- the original Carrie Bradshaw -- a shadow has loomed over that film for decades: Namely, Mickey Rooney's cartoonish turn as Mr. Yunioshi, the buck-toothed, bespectacled and slightly pervy Japanese man who lives upstairs. The good news, circa 2011, is that after years of not knowing exactly how to address that ugly, embarrassing moment in classic Hollywood cinema -- hindsight and all that -- Paramount Pictures, releasing the 50th Anniversary Blu-ray this week, offers a concerted effort to make amends.
In the first image from Tim Burton's long-awaited forthcoming adaptation of Dark Shadows, you'll find Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green, Chloe Moretz and numerous others in various states of undead torpor. Click for bigger, and read on for more Buzz Break.
Nicolas Cage in a glittery face mask. January Jones inexplicably playing bass guitar. Jones being held hostage at gunpoint. Cage getting handcuffed. Jones and Cage raging at Mardi Gras. Separately, all of these images could be part of an entertaining movie. Unfortunately, when strung together though, they give us the curious marketing for Roger Donaldson's long-delayed thriller Justice.
Love the fire, Jose Padilha, but come on: "I love the sharpness and political tone of RoboCop, and I think that such a film is now urgently needed. [...] But I will not repeat what [original director Paul] Verhoeven has done so clearly and strongly. Instead I try to make a film that will address topics that Verhoeven untreated. If you are a man changes into a robot, how do you do that? What is the difference between humans and robots developed? What is free will? What does it mean to lose your free will? Those are the issues that I think." [Film 1 via The Awl]
Happy Thursday! Also in today's edition of The Broadsheet: Elton John wants to make a musical biopic about Elton John... Harvey Weinstein gets to a special Place with Sean Penn... Joe Pesci will reportedly sue for his Gotti role... Ang Lee is very serious about his 3-D Life of Pi... and more.
Beginning January 24, 2012, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences will begin cracking down on the lifeblood that arguably keeps awards season flowing each year: Oscar parties. (Gasp!) "To the extent that the public dialog about the Oscars is who threw a good party or ran a successful campaign versus the quality of the work, that's off-point for us," Academy COO Ric Robertson told The Hollywood Reporter. "We want people to be talking about the work."
Great news today for Ghosbusters-loving gamblers: According to a press release just over Movieline's transom, International Game Technology is combining your two passions with a Ghostbusters™ Slot Machine "that will have even the most die-hard fans' P.K.E meters scrambling." They can win you millions (but most likely will not)! They can keep you company during all of those those cold, lonely lights when Ghostbusters 3 is still just an unconfirmed possibility. And best of all, they're already in Vegas!
I know we all kind of visualize Taylor Lautner as a big strapping serving of beefcake and cheese, but the Abduction star is sensitive, too. Just ask him how he reacted to both the end of production and an early-edit screening of Breaking Dawn, Part 1. Or don't ask him! Fine! Either way, here's your Buzz Break.
You think the Oscars selection process gets political here? Just imagine sitting in the room when Russia's national Oscar committee grudgingly voted for Nikita Mikalhkov's enormous critical and commercial bomb, Burnt by the Sun 2: Citadel (Utomlyonnye solntsem 2: Predstoyanie), to become the country's official foreign language selection. Filmmaker and committee head Vladimir Menshov so strongly opposed the pick of the $45 million flop that he's now lobbying publicly for the film's director to pull out of the race.
"[Hysteria director Tanya] Wexler said she gave everybody on set a vibrator. But getting them there caused a bit of embarrassment for a security guard at a Heathrow airport luggage checkpoint. 'The officer said, "You have 20 or 30 small electronic devices in your luggage," and I said, "Yes, they're vibrators," and the guy just said, "Move along,"' she recalled. [Maggie] Gyllenhaal said she was awash with gift vibrators from friends by the end of filming." Yowza! So, uh, why isn't there more post-Toronto buzz? [NYDN]
What do you get when you take the cartoon/live-action interplay of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, remove the classic WB/Disney characters, and replace them with loud, gurgling, predatory sexual freaks? You get goofy gonorrhea and the 1992 bomb Cool World starring Moneyball-er Brad Pitt, a perverted young Gabriel Byrne, and Kim Basinger, an Oscar winner who exhibits the dramatic range of Claudia Schiffer. This movie's bad because it's drawn that way.
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